| The GOP’s Inconvenient Truths |
[07 Aug 2015|07:25am] |
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http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/08/republican_presidential_candidates_admit_to_some_inconvenient_truths_in.html In the Republican Party, you’re expected to adhere to certain orthodoxies. You can’t admit that public assistance is good for people or that the Iraq war was a mistake. You’re supposed to pretend that single-payer health care is socialism, that we could balance the budget by cutting pork, and that with a little more backbone, we could make Iran utterly capitulate. But with 17 candidates running for the party’s presidential nomination, somebody, now and then, is bound to blurt out the truth. That’s what happened in Thursday night’s debates. Here are some of the heresies that slipped out.
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| Split the Bill |
[07 Aug 2015|02:09pm] |
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http://www.slate.com/articles/life/travel_explainer/2015/08/money_belts_are_old_news_here_s_the_safest_way_to_travel_with_cash.html When it comes to keeping your financial instruments secure while traveling, things are a lot better than they used to be. Stolen credit or debit cards can be canceled and reissued with a fairly quick phone call, and banks are increasingly sophisticated regarding fraud monitoring and recovery. But there are lots of places where having cash is still necessary—and having all of it stolen in one go by a skilled pickpocket could be a serious problem or even dangerous. What’s the best way to keep cash secure during a trot around the globe?
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| A Tightrope Walk Over the Abyss |
[07 Aug 2015|03:35pm] |
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http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2015/08/karen_russell_talks_to_helen_phillips_about_the_beautiful_bureaucrat.html Listen, let me start by saying that I don’t envy anybody who had to write flap jacket copy for Helen Phillips’ debut novel for adults, The Beautiful Bureaucrat. How to describe it? In a way, The Beautiful Bureaucrat is a sort of urban bildungsroman/existential detective story. Two newlyweds from “the hinterland,” Joseph and Josephine, move to a narrow sublet in a city that, like a city in a dream, both is and is not New York. Josephine tries to feel grateful for her job in a windowless compound, where she inputs an infinite number string into “The Database.” Soon after she becomes employed, her husband begins to disappear for lengthening intervals of time.
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| Catty and Selfish and Indomitable |
[07 Aug 2015|06:51pm] |
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http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2015/08/charlotte_silver_s_first_novel_bennington_girls_are_easy_reviewed.html Don’t be fooled by the title of Bennington Girls Are Easy, Charlotte Silver’s clever and ultimately wise first novel for adults. While Cassandra and Sylvie, the Bennington grads who make a playground out of New York City across the book’s 257 pages, fall in and out of bed with plenty of men, there’s nothing easy about these encounters—there’s a lot of analyzing and dissecting and misery and joy. In tiny chapters comprising colorful anecdotes and tidy lessons about trying to create a life in a big, ruthless city, we watch them find and lose jobs and apartments and roommates, fiancées and friends, the just-right vintage gems New York sometimes gifts the poor-but-stylish, Le Creuset pans that make the perfect omelets, themselves, and ultimately each other. Many of the characters would place the same amount of importance on that Le Creuset pan as they would the lost friendships and shifting allegiances, but that’s part of the book’s wicked deliciousness. There are plenty of reasons not to like these girls—they’re catty and selfish and lazy and their priorities are all wrong—but they’re also indomitable and savvy and full of moxie that’s hard not to enjoy.
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| Why Donald Trump Isn’t Going Away |
[07 Aug 2015|11:32pm] |
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http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/08/donald_trump_why_the_republican_candidate_isn_t_going_away_anytime_soon.html To understand the rise of Donald Trump, you’d do well not to fixate on the fact that he’s running under the Republican banner. During Thursday night’s Fox News debate, Trump made it clear that failing to secure the GOP nomination wouldn’t stop him from exploring an independent candidacy. And honestly, he’d be crazy not to. Trump is very far from a Republican regular. He represents an entirely different phenomenon, one that bears little resemblance to garden-variety American conservatism. That’s why Republicans shouldn’t fool themselves into believing that one lackluster debate performance will send him packing.
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