Correct.

Time magazine has a very disturbing cover image this week, because the magazine thinks it has a very important point to make about the war in Afghanistan. Editor Richard Stengel decided to make the cover a photograph of an Afghan woman with a gaping hole where her nose used to be, where the Taliban had mutilated her.

But the pretense that putting the woman's picture on the cover is politically neutral is fake naivete, covering over a real and dangerous naivete. The headline on this non-political image is "What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan."

It is a gut-wrenching assertion of what's at stake in the Afghan war—except, as a photo caption, it is completely false. A correct and accurate caption would be "What Is Still Happening, Even Though We Are in Afghanistan."
-Scocca

America! Opiates! Jail!

Massachusetts is a liberal state, but its drug laws are anything but. It treats opium-derived painkillers such as Percocet like hard drugs, if illicitly sold. Possession of a tiny amount (14-28 grams, or ½-1 ounce) yields a minimum sentence of three years. For 200 grams, it is 15 years, more than the minimum for armed rape. And the weight of the other substances with which a dealer mixes his drugs is included in the total, so 10 grams of opiates mixed with 190 grams of flour gets you 15 years.

Why is white bro yelling so much?

Lizzy Caplan

Basically, every book about a reformed addict is Sarah Palin's Going Rogue but with more self-aware debasement at the beginning.
-AWL

Hunter S.

"Fuck England," I said. "This is Middle America. These people regard what you're doing to them as a brutal, bilious insult. Look what happened last night. I thought my brother was going to tear your head off."

Steadman shook his head sadly. "But I liked him. He struck me as a very decent, straightforward sort."

"Look, Ralph," I said. "Let's not kid ourselves. That was a very horrible drawing you gave him. It was the face of a monster. It got on his nerves very badly." I shrugged. "Why in hell do you think we left the restaurant so fast?"

"I thought it was because of the Mace," he said.

"What Mace?"

He grinned. "When you shot it at the headwaiter, don't you remember?"

"Hell, that was nothing," I said. "I missed him...and we were leaving, anyway."

"But it got all over us," he said. "The room was full of that damn gas. Your brother was sneezing was and his wife was crying. My eyes hurt for two hours. I couldn't see to draw when we got back to the motel."

"That's right," I said. "The stuff got on her leg, didn't it?"

"She was angry," he said.

"Yeah...well, okay...Let's just figure we fucked up about equally on that one," I said. "But from now on let's try to be careful when we're around people I know. You won't sketch them and I won't Mace them. We'll just try to relax and get drunk."

"Right," he said. "We'll go native."

?

It’s an economy that suggests an EKG- shaped recovery -- a sequence of mini booms and busts as consumer fads and pent-up demand drive sales, until the impulses fade.
-BLMBG

David Foster Wallace Predicted the Housing Bubble!

As of spring '04, though, the most frequent and concussive ads on KFI are for mortgage and home-refi companies—Green Light Financial, HMS Capital, Home Field Financial, Benchmark Lending. Over and over. Pacific Home Financial, U.S. Mortgage Capital, Crestline Funding, Advantix Lending. Reverse mortgages, negative amortization, adjustable rates, APR, FICO … where did all these firms come from? What were these guys doing five years ago? Why is KFI's audience seen as so especially ripe and ready for refi? Betterloans.com, lendingtree.com, Union Bank of California, on and on and on.
-David Foster Wallace, "Host." Atlantic Magazine, April 2005.