In this year’s Senate race in Arizona, John McCain faces a strong primary challenger from the right and an opponent in the general election who “knows what it’s like to run in tight, expensive races,” Jim Newell writes. Can McCain survive Our Year of Trump? Newell breaks down the senior senator’s chances of continuing to thrive in a political climate he helped create.
Daniel Engber reviews disgraced science writer Jonah Lehrer’s latest book, and finds it “bloodless” and boring, rife with small mistakes and distortions. Lehrer isn’t alone in committing these sins, Engber makes clear. “Science journalism can go wrong in many different ways, very few of which require explicit acts of fraud,” Engber writes. “The quest for cleaner, more surprising, better-selling stories leads to sloppy work—with studies cherry-picked to make a point, or statistics taken out of context.”
“Congratulations, greedy European bureaucrats,” Franklin Foer writes in the wake of Portugal’s unexpected victory in the Euro 2016 on Sunday. “You took the perfection of the European Championships and turned them into a bore and farce. By expanding the tournament from 16 to 24 teams, you diluted it.” (See the game-winning goal, by substitute forward Éder, here.)
Over the weekend, the New York Times’ new public editor, Liz Spayd, wrote her first column, calling on journalists to “interact” more with their readers, and Isaac Chotiner was not pleased. “Spayd never really wrestles with the implications of her own questionable argument,” Chotiner writes. “Why is this ‘distance’ [between journalists and readers] no longer possible? Is it purely a matter of economics? If so, is it Spayd’s job to worry about the economics of the paper? And if it isn’t purely economics, then why will this style no longer ‘work fine?’ ”
For fun: Here are some memes that may be funny to you if you are playing Pokémon Go.
I hear it is Very Enjoyable,
Rebecca
