Fraywatch

Immigration Policy 101

Fraysters hold a seminar.

In response to Shmuel Rosner’s article on what America can learn from Israel’s West Bank security barrier, fraysters conducted their own seminar on immigration, with the following keynote speakers and topics:

Good Fences/Good Neighbors: revisionist (Re)readings of Robert Frost

“High fences don’t always make good neighbors.” I suggest you repeat this over and over. The Chinese failed with walls, the Romans failed with a wall, the Soviets failed with a wall, the Israelis are failing with their wall.

Fences and neighbors was from a bloody poem. Not historical wisdom. —janeslogin

The Wall: A Global History

1) Nobody has screwed with the Chinese on the west border for centuries. Yes, I know about Japan during WWII.

2) The Roman empire stood for how many centuries???
And it fell because of a malignant leadership, not because of a wall.

3)The Soviets wall was to keep people IN!!

4)The Isrealis wall in ineffective because they are SURROUNDED by countries that want to destroy the country entirely.

Walls are effective however, only when there are people willing to stand behind them and enforce the boundries that the wall is there for in the first place. As a countrry, we are unwilling to make that commitment! —evensteven

Israel’s Fence: Rethinking the Analogy

The biggest problem the Palestinians have with the Israeli wall/fence/barrier is that it is mostly on Palestinian land as opposed to on the actual border between the West Bank and Israel. The wall cuts off farmers from their fields and people from their schools, hospitals, and other needed places. The Palestinians have said they would totally support the wall if it was on the 1967 border line! A wall on the 1967 line would have been just as effective in keeping out terrorists. As it is, a large percentage of the West Bank is on the Israeli side. Its route reveals its true purpose - to illegally grab land.

The correct analogy for a US wall would therefore be a wall that was largely in Mexico, effectively annexing portions of Mexico in the process. It would snake through private Mexican property and even through some Mexican towns. Can anyone see that as justified? —azfWhile I don’t doubt that the fence helped, it is clear that a number of factors contributed to the drop in terrorist attacks in Israel. Arafat’s death. Better security at checkpoints. Better security at Israeli cafés and buses. A feeling among Palestinians that the attacks aren’t effective. The loss of payments to bombers’ families from Sadam Hussein. The list could go on and on.

Is the fence effective? It’s unclear at this point. It isn’t even finished yet. —BarkinJ

Immigrant Labor: Policy Solutions

1) Temporary Guest-Worker Program

I have a lot of business dealings in Mexico, both with Mexican business men and with the Mexican government. They seem to have a much better handle on this that we Americans do. Their solution would be to have a guest worker program that pools the labor. American businesses that need Mexican labor could recruit the personnel they need, then draw up a contract with them for a certain job and duration. At the end of the contract period, they could either renew the contract or let it expire, upon which time the Mexicans would go back across the border and await a new contract. The logistics of this are not simple, but it would be workable. —AmericaFirst

2) Living-Wage Employer Fine

Make it a law that any employer caught hiring an illegal – from Walmart sweepers to your sister-in-law’s maid – be fined the difference between what they paid the illegal and $20 per hour worked by the illegal. The money to be paid into local road, school and law enforcement budgets. —the_slasher14

3) Snitch Reward and Protection Law

Provide a “snitch reward” of a dollar per hour worked to anyone turning in an employer for hiring an illegal, and make it a mandatory minimum 10-year jail sentence for anyone who attempts reprisals against a snitch. —the_slasher14

Register for the seminar here in Foreigners. AC6:54pm

Monday, June 5, 2006

To all you desk jockeys out there, welcome back to the five-day workweek. In honor of that special muddle-headed Monday state of mind, we here at Fraywatch present you with teasers. Since you can release the suspense at your leisure, we’re hoping you’ll find them less cruel than that other teaser—the prospect of that oh-so-distant summery Friday. Enjoy:

I was born in the seventies, grew up around LA, went to one of those valley prep schools.

For a certain subset of people in that part of the world, the Chili Peppers were an essential element of your growing up. You can hardly think of walking up Hollywood Boulevard barefoot in summer at fourteen or fifteen, or candy flipping at Topanga Beach at dawn, or your friend saying he’s been kicked out of school cause they found shit in his locker and that he has to tell his father he’s hooked on heroin that night, without thinking of them.

dot, dot, dot, and finish that thought! Thanks to thebluenomad, responding to Friday’s Music Box.

Berger goggled.

“Oh, these are trade secrets and then some. You won’t remember this meeting but it’s everything you’ll be picking up on the first few weeks of the job anyway. In fact, we believe you’ll be especially effective in targeting the ‘key consumers’ as we call them, which is why you have been recruited. Our research and early analysis shows that your unusual cognitive structure makes you especially adept at identifying marketing nodes. Mr. Berger.”

She flicked a few switches on the tall panel. “You have no idea how bloody difficult an imposition on my time it is that I trust so few people with the second kind of binding.” She looked back at him. “With any luck, you’ll work out as my new second. Otherwise…” She let the imposition dangle.

Dot, dot, dot, and finish that thought! Thanks to Dr_Thanakar. (Have you been following The Unbinding?)

I am always dumbfounded by how we treat the truth in this society. On the one hand, we raise our children to tell the truth all the time, even when it hurts. But, we really don’t expect them to tell the truth all the time, only when we ask them a direct question. Now, to me the only true measure of a lie is when you knowingly answer a direct question with a misleading or erroneous statement of fact.

But in this society, if you follow this rule you will surely be a very unpopular person and likely out of work very quickly. Americans have a peculiar way of dealing with the truth. We expect the truth when we want assurance for our own desired outcomes but shun it when we are afraid of the answer.

As Jack said “you can’t handle the truth”. Its very true. For instance, I am a sales person.

Dot, dot, dot, and finish that thought! Thanks to Woolley, responding to Wednesday’s Politics article.

WHY did he eat the fruit? He ate it because he knew his wife was going to get evicted. And you know what? He loved her and wanted to protect her and take care of her. So when God came back, Adam wasn’t slinking when he made the whole “the woman you gave to me” speech. He was owning up to being a man. He stood up and basically said “look, she’s mine. You gave her to me and I’m not letting her go. If you put her out then I’m going too. If the choice in one hand is my friend/boss/landlord, my job, my wealth, my life and the other hand is the woman I love. Then I choose my wife. No contest.”

Dot, dot, dot, and finish that thought! Thanks to bracip, belatedly responding to an earlier installment of Blogging the Bible.

DC Comics has just announced the reintroduction of Batwoman. The original superheroine premiered back in 1956 but was subsequently killed off in 1979. The new Batwoman will share some commonalties with her predecessor – her alter ego is named Kathy Kane and she will wear a costume replete with cape and boots. However, DC says they have also decided “to give her a different point of view.” By this they mean that Batwoman is now a lesbian.

Fan reaction to the change ranged from outrage to hearty approval, with a wait-and-see sentiment dominating. “This is not just about having a gay character,” DC insists. “We’re trying for overall diversity in the DC universe.” […]

Let us examine some of the reasons why people “just don’t like” Clinton in a more analytic light. One Democratic strategist has labeled her “black licorice,” meaning that the people who like Clinton find her irresistible while those who dislike her absolutely despise her. I would argue (tongue-in-cheek) she is also the new Batwoman of politics and can be best understood in those terms.

Dot, dot, dot, and finish that thought! Thanks to The_Bell, responding to another Frayster.

Department of Homeland Security

THREAT LEVEL ASSESSMENT – NEW YORK CITY

Central Park
Birds ‘n shit.

THREAT – low

Yankee Stadium
A-Rod can’t hit in the clutch. Haven’t won since 2000. Damon looks sharp in pinstripes. Expensive hot dogs.

THREAT – low

Special instructions: Torre will need to be ferreted to secure location.

Cats
No longer playing.

THREAT – moderate

Dot, dot, dot, and finish that thought! Thanks to august, responding to the weekend’s big story.

May you have yourself a bearable Monday. GA1:00am PDT

Saturday, June 3, 2006

Over the last week, one of the Fray’s finest conversations has been on slow burn in our Undercover Economist Fray. Readers responded to Tim Harford’s article on the historical puzzler of our measured rate of inflation with a wealth of thoughtful and informative posts.

Looking at the abundant larder of Peter Bruegel’s “Peasant Wedding,” Harford observes that our distant ancestors had far more to eat than the half ounce of daily potato a modern economist would extrapolate from a backward projection of the inflation rate. Poster GCaldwell points out that a 16th-century peasant wasn’t necessarily a prole:

Although we now use “peasants” to refer to very poor persons, the term originally referred simply to commoners living in the country. Since, unlike nobles, they could work for a living, they could become wealthy as a result of their labors. Don Quixote, published in the early seventeenth century, begins with a picture of our nobleman hero living in relative poverty, and in Chapter 20 of Part I, he and Sancho attend an opulent wedding feast put on by a peasant called Camacho the Rich.

Though Harford’s article might conflate caste with class, the daily diet of a Dickensian workhouse backs up his claim that the poor had more to eat than we’d otherwise suppose. destor23 finds something suspicious about the entire argument:

While economists might think we’re overestimating inflation, I think that people living and working in the contemporary American economy would probably differ with them on the point. Wage growth in America has been horrible for decades now and it’s been especially bad during the last five or so years. We’ve got record low unemployment but still not tightness in the labor market that is driving wages higher. The notion that we’re richer than we think seems like a bit of trickery that doesn’t jive with the real world.

The award for Best Commentary goes to Arkady’s anecdotal assessment of the inflation rate’s overbreadth:

The inflation rate differs greatly by socio-economic class, and the government makes no attempt to consider this. Coming up with a consumer price index means selecting a “basket of goods” and tracking what happens to the cost of buying that basket over time. But the obvious question is WHOSE basket do you work with. The basket of the average consumer will differ from that of the median consumer, and the basket of someone at the 10th percentile will differ greatly from the basket of someone at the 90th.

I can’t recommend strongly enough that you read the whole post, but I’m recommending it with all of my might. portorchardkid adds to the point with an admirably economical survey of his own economic indicators:

I recall a British saying about gin; Something like, “drunk for a penny, dead drunk for tupney.” With the price of a good martini around $5.00 nowadays, THAT’S inflation.

Other informative posts of note include Degsme’s lucid explanation of marginal utility and Gingham_Dog’s discussion of productive innovation.

Arguing for more than an academic exercise, Shrieking_Violet issues a call for political action:

The real issue isn’t inflation, it’s the way changes in the relative value of our wants and needs are slowly turning the fundamental elements of middle class life– home ownership, adequate health care, financial security, and a college education– into luxuries, while items that would once have been unfathomable luxuries become inexpensive and commonplace.

This is the natural outgrowth of the political and economic changes over the past 25 years, which have nearly all been calibrated to systematically hold down wages and reward investment earnings. It has created a fabulous amount of wealth and luxury, and some of this has trickled down to the bottom half of the economy, but there’s a distinct air of Roman decadence to this arrangement– wealth and security for the patricians, bread and circuses for the masses.

If you look only at unemployment, inflation, and the affordability of both basic needs and luxury items, the economy has never been stronger. But the long-term trends are toward a bifurcated society of owners and debtors. […]

I don’t have a magic wand to change this situation, but I respectfully suggest that after 25 years of holding down wages, flattening taxes, and rewarding investment income, it’s high time we let the pendulum swing back the other way for a while.

If you missed the discussion, take a spin through the Undercover Economist Fray. GA6:24am PDT

Friday, June 2, 2006

As summarized by Arkady here, Jacob Weisberg’s article about Al Gore’s post-2000 environmental activism “suggests that Gore can or will do more to educate America about the global warming crisis outside the White House than inside.”

Sure, Gore the “freelance professor” will devote far more time and energy to the global warming question than Gore the president. Sure, Gore the keynote speaker has license to be bolder about the subject than Gore the cautious political campaigner ever could. But that misses the point. Right now Gore is preaching to the choir, and that’s pretty much all he can hope to in his current role.

Those who go to his movie already agree with him. Those who read his books will already be aware of the issues. At best, he’ll help a very, very small group of people become a bit more engaged and a lot more informed than they otherwise would have been. But the real work is in educating the roughly two hundred fifty million Americans who are entirely disengaged and almost completely ignorant, and he won’t have a chance to reach them.

I’d take a fifteen minutes of cautious and quiet words of warning about the environment from President Gore over fifteen years of bold and insistent evangelizing on the subject from Professor Gore. The former will be vastly more important to the future of the human race, because it has the hope of reaching those who wouldn’t otherwise be reached. Hell, if nothing else, President Gore would be in a position to remove the muzzles from government scientists, bureaucrats, and report-writers, which would be a huge step in the right direction.

Catorce notes the great irony of Gore’s movie tour:

he is promoting science – global warming – that no reasonable person disparages anymore. Where Gore was once out-in-front as “ozone man,” he is now merely correct. So while he was running for President in 1999-2000, Gore’s movie may still have been precient, it is now told-you-so triumphalism…

In retrospect, Gore looks precient on a lot of issues, most notably with regard to Iraq, where he voted for the first war and opposed the newer debacle. But as with global warming, Gore now doesn’t have to convince most people that he was right from the start about Bush’s war – he has to provide solutions…

Therein lies Gore’s challenge. More than any candidate, Gore will be looked to – most especially by the media – to provide solutions to the problems he had the foresight to identify. His answers will be dissected, and no doubt, mutated into whatever “I invented the Internet” statement that suits the right-wing attack machine.

Gore would make a compelling candidate. If nothing else, even a failed primary run would play a key role in battle-testing Hillary Clinton and energizing the Democratic base. But my instinct is that Gore will miss the opportunity because he’d rather be viewed around the world as global warming’s Bono than as an American politician. And maybe as to global warming, the world would be better off that way.

On the issue of “giving Gore credit” for averting environmental disaster, KevClark draws this interesting parallel between Gore and Bush:

If he [Gore] is regarded as a hero, it may well be the first time in human history that a man has been regarded as a hero for preventing a theoretical catastrophe. How much credit has President Bush gotten for the fact that there has not been a major terrorist attack in the US since 9/11? Pretty much no credit, which is the same credit Gore will get, even if he is right.

the_slasher14 reminds us that global warming is our problem collectively, not simply a potential political minefield for Gore:

The reason Gore has soft-pedaled global warming while running for office is no mystery – there is a very high level of ignorance, disinformation and fear on the subject for most working Americans. And the forces of disinformation, having billions of dollars at stake, would spend almost any amount of money to tell any number of lies if he were to make it the centerpiece of a campaign…This is not GORE’S problem. He’s telling the truth as he sees it, and all of the experts who are not on the extractive industry payrolls agree with him. The problem is US. We are either going to find ways to attack global warming without victimizing working people whose jobs presently depend upon it, or our grandchildren will have to live with the consequences.

For those doubtful of Gore’s electoral chances, take a look at this strange “Affective Encryption Analysis” study conducted by Media Psychology Affiliates, which is predicting with “93% accuracy … a landslide victory for former Democratic Vice President Al Gore in the 2008 presidential election. However, should Hillary Clinton gain the Democratic nomination, any potential Republican challenger will win the presidency.” AC6:40pm PDT

Monday, May 29, 2006

Walkers of the San Francisco waterfront may have been brought short by an arresting passage upon the pavement:

Stop in your tracks, you passer-by
Uncover your doubting head.
The working men are on their way
To bury their murdered dead.

Directly adjacent, one finds a memorial to the tragic events of Bloody Thursday—several days of conflict between police and laborers—which culminated in the occupation of an American city by American tanks.

Memorial Day is another such marker—an invitation, delivered in imperative tone, to stop and reflect upon the violent loss of American military men and women across 23 decades of warfare. The memories and observations of Fraysters can be found, intermixed with responses to Fred Kaplan’s recent assessment of China’s menacing mewl, in our War Stories Fray.

One of the most touching stories is Berzerker’s account of the all-too-frequently forgotten service, America’s Merchant Marine:

I attended the Noncommissioned Officers Acadamy in Biloxi, Ms that lasted 4 weeks, including over a Memorial Day weekend. As a class, we went to the VA home in Biloxi. They had several permanant residents there. Outside each mans room was a plaque that identified their Service, Rank, Name, and even battles they fought, or medals they held.

Other classmates were swarming to rooms that had obvious MoH’s or famous battles like Normandy or Guadacanal. Those rooms were full with my fellow classmates.

I looked around and saw a room nobody was going to. The service and rank was unfamiliar to me. USMS BMCS. He also had a “Mariners medal” and 19 combat bars. His “theater” was the North Atlantic.

I went in and talked to the man in the bed. Turns out he was in the Merchant Marine. This man had 19 ships torpedo’d out from under him in the North Atlantic during WWII.

What bravery.

Many people don’t know it, but the Merchant Marine had the highest casualty rate of all the services. More than the Marines. More than the Army. More than the regular Navy. They had a 1 in 26 chance in being a casualty. The Marines were next, with a 1 in 34 chance.

And with all this, it took 43 YEARS of court battles to get the WWII merchant men VA status.

“Shorting” our vets is nothing new.

A veteran of World War II, grandpa_moses, shares his nostalgic dread at the unexpected achievements built upon his generation’s sacrifice:

I’ve lived a long, long time. I’ve been there and done that, traveling everywhere worth going to or doing anything worth doing. I’ve tried just about everything outside of charming snakes, taming tigers and organizing orgies and chawing a cud of Sparkplug.

I even got caught-up in a war once. That opened my eyes, or so I thought. After the humiliating defeat that Japan and Germany suffered in 1945 I really had dreams of a time when people, no matter how aggressive they were, would realize that war was just not the way to garner your wants.

Now, years and years later, I realize I erred. We’ve had several wars, or police actions, or whatevers since that time, most of which were, according to the propaganda of the era, to contain communism and preserve liberty. I guess everybody has to get into the act sooner, or later, so we now have become an aggressor ourselves in the truest sense of the word under a guise of spreading democracy to a society who actually isn’t interested in practicing democracy. […] We’re trying to drive a square peg (democracy) into a round hole. No more containing communism. We wore that “battle cry” out.

I wonder sometimes if it ever occurs to anyone that we could eventually lose a war and become the vanquished and suffer a humiliating defeat. Evidently it doesn’t occur to very many folks, anyway, but it does to me. And what could be worse than being defeated from within because we’re too complacent to tackle the issues that prevail under this administration’s agenda? Overwhelmed by a superior force from within or from without, losing is losing.

Gullible me.

Jack-D offers a short but moving meditation on the planting of roots, perhaps a redemption of the soil to which we entrust our fallen:

Around here, and maybe other places as well, Memorial Day marks the last possibility of a frost and it’s, therefore, the weekend that vegetable gardeners get serious about putting in the tomatoes, beans, peppers and such. I kind of like the marriage of remembrance of loss with the optimism in growth that putting in the vegetables represents. It’s not so much that what people died for was or was not in vain; it’s more that, regardless, life will assert itself. One can only hope that one day that assertion will be in the absence of war and violence. One knows not to hold one’s breath but one hopes nevertheless. Planting a tomato plant reinforces hope. I think those we’ve lost would approve.

For the historically minded, Titan_Arum juxtaposes bygone speeches—illustrating the consistency of American debate through a century of dizzying change:

[Fray Editor] Geoff left us with an inspiring speech on the glory and sacrifice for a higher purpose that was—in the speaker’s mind—the Civil War. Reading the speech, we learn that the ‘race problem’ was eradicated by 1905 (the date of the speech), the blue and grey were able to put aside their differences to beat up on Cuba. We also learn that the Spanish-American war was a good thing.

I’d like to juxtapose that speech with this one by Maj. Gen. Smedley Darlington Butler (USMC Ret.). Gen. Butler’s speech begins, “War is a racket. It always has been,” and ends, “To hell with war.” In between, Gen. Butler skewers those who do not fight, but cheerlead the war as their companies make thousands upon thousands of dollars. He also tells what must be done to stop war—stop the war profiteers.

Which speaker is remembering the spirit of the actual people who went to war? I’d say the second one clearly understand that those that boast of the glory of war are rarely those that fight, die and pay in any war. I’d also say that Gen. Butler was in a better position to speak on the subject.

The first speech seems to glorify war and rewrite history to justify the U.S. imperialism seen in the Spanish-American war and it’s aftermath, the Philippine Occupation.

There’s much more material to be found in our War Stories Fray. Please feel welcome to join the discussion. GA1:00am PDT

Friday, May 26, 2006

Despite Slate’s generous week-long tribute to pulp fiction, from Terry Castle’s discovery of an erotic lesbian thriller to Christopher Benfey’s discussion of Edgar Allan Poe’s lasting influence, many fraysters were left seeking some basic clarity on “pulp” as a literary genre, with Jaque and PulpsGuy making their own enterprising efforts to fill in the lacunae with links to a Wikipedia entry and this reference site.

Typical was sfdoddsy’s complaint:

I couldn’t help noticing that in the many articles so far under the aegis of ‘pulp fiction’, there has been very little discussion of any actual books that most people would place under the moniker.

A James M Cain mention today, Parker yesterday, but the rest seem to be attempting to shoehorn regular lit into the pulping machine, as exemplified by the pulp covers for The Iliad and the attempt to classify Tobacco Road as pulp simply because it came out in paperback.

BronxBoy answers the call for a canon with this list, followed by some professorly commentary on pulp fiction as

… the logical conclusion to the post WW1 pessimism in novels by Farrell, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Dos Passos that were a direct result of the 1st wars shattering of any illusions that society was moving toward a more “utopian” platform.

With [Raymond] Chandler and [Dashiell] Hammett social mores and moral clarity in society are in great upheaval and distress. Into this vortex moves “Gray Knights” of justice (Marlowe; Spade; The Continental OP)…seeking not truth or enlightenment but control over a world blinded by its own misguided light of right and wrong

anyway…great stories, terrific writing and truly a part of the canon of American Literature.

Ted_Burke makes an even grander claim for “pulp fiction and its film noir offshoot” as “the nearest thing America has produced as truly self contained as Tragedy.” Read his mini-treatise here. itchybrother makes his case for classifying Gustave Flaubert’s Salombo as a 19th-century antecedent to pulp. lump516 thinksMadame Bovary should be included, too.

Attributing the demise of pulp to what she calls the “English major syndrome,” oldie asks

why is most of the cheap fiction stuff written today so stilted and boring? Yes, for the most part, today’s stuff is better edited, the sentences are more carefully worked over, but the pure joy of telling the story, of spinning the yarn, just isn’t there…My off the cuff explanation: the cookie cutter approach to good writing taught in most writing classes ruins spontaneity and fun.

Happy Memorial Day Weekend to all! My compatriot Geoff has invited anyone with relevant thoughts on this holiday to contribute them to War Stories. AC5:32pm PDT

Friday, May 26, 2006

The Fraywatch feature generally focuses on a single issue of debate from Slate’s reader feedback forum, the Fray. But our boards are trod by a teeming community of smart, thoughtful, and articulate readers, with as much to say to one another as to the authors of our front page. In today’s digitized world, thousands of people find themselves chained to a computer for a big chunk of the day. It’s a matter of some pride to Slate that so many of the best and the brightest choose to invest their surplus screen time with us.

Many of our communities are oriented around a single intellectual passion, such as the learned litterateurs of the Poems Fray or the erudite exegetes of the Faith-Based Fray. Other Frays, like Dear Prudence or Blorple Falls, serve as a gathering place for light-hearted entertainment and banter. I’ve been here for years, and I still can’t accurately describe the appeal of the Best of the Fray—whose only consistent feature through years of reinvention has been a collection of fearsomely intelligent and analytical minds. And, like any Web site open to the public, we have our share of chummers and trolls. If the devil’s looking to punish Walter Annenberg for his crimes, he might consider appointing him to monitor Ballot Box, otherwise known to its editors as “Bedlam’s Listserv.”

Blogs:  Many groundbreaking blogs (most notably BTC News and Instapundit) found their start among users of the Fray. They might not have invented the medium—but Rembrandt didn’t have to invent paint to change the face of art.

Readers of Fraywatch might be especially interested in one new blog from Ender, an invariably innovative Frayster: Best of the Fray (Self-effacing, with nuggets). It already serves as a digest of noteworthy and idiosyncratic posts Slate can’t highlight. (If only space and time allowed!) Its author’s statement of purpose suggests how we might better integrate our insightful part-time contributors—quite deserving of wider readership—with the wider “blogosphere.” I’ve got the site bookmarked. You should consider it, too.

Fiction: To complement Slate’s serialized novel, The Unbinding, Fraysters have begun their own work of collaborative fiction, thanks to the initiative of rundeep:

“What do you mean; you don’t have a hit counter?” I asked, adjusting my wireless headset. “If I am not much mistaken, you called me and asked if my company would advertise with you.” I paused to allow the point to sink in. There was no sound other than a soft click I imagined being produced by cleaning one’s fingernails. This irritated me, and I was already irritated. I was bored and the market had not been very productive so far, at least according to the feed playing in the corner of my monitor. “We are not the local drug store or a retail bank, ma’am. I don’t sell lollipops or mortgages to the depressed or children’s shoes. I represent a financial powerhouse which deals only with accredited investors. You know what I mean by accredited: the cream of the crop, the wealthy, the sophisticated, the discriminating. The kind who don’t troll the web looking for investment opportunities. ”

An amateur author would be hard-pressed to find a better workshop for constructive criticism than our Fray. This advice to an author, from DawnCoyote, stands out as a masterpiece in its genre—a testament to what supportive writing can be.

Reporting: It’s a simple fact—with thousands of writing readers scattered throughout the world, Fraysters are an excellent source of firsthand information. For a supplement to June Thomastheater review of Stuff Happens, check out this entry from august:

Although Stuff Happens is an ensemble piece, it is not (as June Thomas’s review implied) mere reportage. It’s true that many of the famous folk on display are mere caricatures of themselves, but even caricatures can ask pointed questions. The setting of the play is indeed the build-up to war, but the drama comes in the figure of Powell.

In Dear Prudence, eutie authors a critical takedown of the latest hype on American obesity:

There are a dozens medical studies pretty much proving that most of the conventional wisdom about obesity is myth and that much of one’s tendency to gain weight is hereditary.

If you can’t afford a subscription to the New York Review of Books, you could do far worse than Fritz_Gerlich’s sterling reportage of Puttin’ on the Frick.

Anyone looking to kill time over this long weekend—without killing brain cells—should pick your poison and spend some time getting to know the Fray. GA2:00am PDT