the zeitgeist report

A thorough deconstruction of pro-choice bumper stickers by America's greatest pastor:

Here is my effort to propitiate the pro-choice frustration and give the inside story of what pro-lifers see when they read pro-choice bumper-stickers. Since it is always helpful to accurately understand the thinking of those with whom you disagree, this should benefit everyone.

Is this a sticky patch in a slippery slope or is the whole slope sticky...like the back of a bumper sticker?

I've moved and I've had a diffucult time with Blogger, so there is a bit of a backlog of posts. Let me catch up and than we'll get back to our usual 3 to 5 posts per day.

I have the most beautiful view of Mt. Hood from my desk this morning.

The state of New York is offering free access to tons of information that would otherwise have to be paid for:

New Yorkers will now be able to use their driver's licenses to gain free access from their home to thousands of subscription-charging newspapers, magazines, extensive reference works and cutting-edge research.

The State Library's New York Online Virtual Electronic Library -- also known as NOVEL -- provides access to the largest state library system in the nation.

And now, it's all available to New Yorkers from their home computers just by using the identification number on their driver's license or state ID card.

This WSJ/NBC poll is interesting to me. It records peoples impressions and feelings about things without any basis in reality or the pesky world of facts. Was there something that, at one point, made the war right and now that people are dying, something which usually happens in a war, were the reasons for going to war wrong.

President Bush and fellow Republicans approach the fall midterm elections facing one political problem above all others: responding to rising public anxiety about Iraq.

The new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll charts the toll that Iraq has taken on the Bush presidency. The survey shows the president's approval rating falling to 37%, a low for Mr. Bush, with disapproval highest for his handling of the war. His party's advantage on handling Iraq has narrowed amid public pessimism about the conflict, helping Democrats open a double-digit edge in voter preferences for controlling Congress.

An aggressive assault on Iraq is occuring as I write. Will a success in this offensive make the war right again? Polls both record and shape public opinion.

Do the math. We all go back to two people a few millenia ago:

People may like to think that they're descended from some ancient group while other people are not. But human ancestry doesn't work that way, since we all share the same ancestors just a few millenniums ago. As that idea becomes more widely accepted, arguments over who's descended from Jesus won't result in lawsuits. And maybe, just maybe, people will have one less reason to feel animosity toward other branches of the human family.

There is a link from this article to the mathamatical formula for working this all out. This is an article about the DaVinci Code trial, dealing with the very stupid question: what if Jesus had ancestors? The article points out what a big if that is, but if he did it would not be that big a deal to be a related to him.

I had saved this column from a ways back because Mr. Alasky considers this man, Peter Singer, to be the most influencial philosopher alive. Interesting because he is so very creepy in his views. I get nervous when people start to talk about complicated moral issues, as that usually means that somebody is going to die and some "ethicist" is going to try to make us feel okay about it:

Many readers may be saying, "Peter who?" -- but The New York Times, explaining how his views trickle down through media and academia to the general populace, noted that "No other living philosopher has had this kind of influence." The New England Journal of Medicine said he has had "more success in effecting changes in acceptable behavior" than any philosopher since Bertrand Russell. The New Yorker called him the "most influential" philosopher alive.

Don't expect Singer to be quoted heavily on the issue that roiled the Nov. 2 election, same-sex marriage. That for him is intellectual child's play, already logically decided, and it's time to move on to polyamory. While politicians debate the definition of marriage between two people, Singer argues that any kind of "fully consensual" sexual behavior involving two people or 200 is ethically fine.

For example, when I asked him recently about necrophilia (what if two people make an agreement that whoever lives longest can have sexual relations with the corpse of the person who dies first?), he said, "There's no moral problem with that." Concerning bestiality -- should people have sex with animals, seen as willing participants? -- he responded, "I would ask, 'What's holding you back from a more fulfilling relationship?' (but) it's not wrong inherently in a moral sense."

This is how it's done now. Attention to detail, win/win arrangements, specialization, and fanatical quality control:

Cho, 32, is one of the Washington area's new young food entrepreneurs. A tireless promoter, he hosts a popular coffee podcast and is known as a champion of "specialty roast coffee" -- the industry term for high-quality beans grown on small estates, roasted in small lots and brewed with care. Cho will help anyone -- including potential competitors -- interested in roasting, brewing or selling, in his words, coffee "that's better than customers ever imagined it could be."

The role of the businessman is to excede the customers wildest imagination. Can we ask this of a cup of coffee?

A batch of journal entries from a suicidal prisoner in Gitmo was printed in Wapo today:

"The detainees are suffering from the bitterness of despair, the detention humiliation and the vanquish of slavery and suppression," Dossari wrote, according to a translation. "I hope you will always remember that you met and sat with a 'human being' called 'Jumah' who suffered too much and was abused in his belief, self, dignity and also in his humanity. He was imprisoned, tortured and deprived from his homeland, his family and his young daughter who is in the most need of him for four years . . . with no reason or crime committed."

Slate has a slide show feature on dadaism and asks the tough questions:

Tristan Tzara staged utterly anarchic plays whose bawdiness, obscenity, and sheer cacophony outraged respectable audiences, as if to salve the chaos of war with a chaos that didn't hurt. Such antics raise an essential question about Dada. Was it an antidote to the modern madness, or a culturally destructive symptom of it?

They have a manifesto. It's spectacular. If you don't get it you might be right:

Life is seen in a simultaneous confusion of noises, colours and spiritual rhythms which in Dadaist art are immediately captured by the sensational shouts and fevers of its bold everyday psyche and in all its brutal reality. This is the dividing line between Dadaism and all other artistic trends and especially Futurism which fools have very recently interpreted as a new version of Impressionism.

Here's a little dadaist construct by me based on sonnet by Shakespeare.

The founder of Dominoes Pizza is building a Catholic utopia in Naples, Florida. I guess this is one way of doing it:

In March of last year, Tom Monaghan, founder of Domino's Pizza, promised that Ave Maria , the planned community he is developing near Naples, Fla., would be a Roman Catholic haven in secular America. "We're going to control all the commercial real estate, so there's not going to be any pornography sold in this town," he said. "We're controlling the cable system. The pharmacies are not going to be able to sell condoms or dispense contraceptives." Monaghan backed down a bit this month, saying that birth control will be permitted, though not sold to students at the town's Catholic college . But his history of donations to conservative Catholic organizations suggests that he's spending his $250 million to seed a town of 20,000 that is, if not quite a theocracy, then as close to it as he can manage.

I only note this because Jack Black is so funny and he married my favorite living jazz musician's (Charlie Haden) daughter:

Funnyman and 'King Kong' star JACK BLACK has eloped with his girlfriend, 34-year-old musician TANYA HADEN , according to People .

"They love each other very much. We're thrilled," says the bride's father, jazz bassist CHARLIE HADEN . The 36-year-old Black and Haden first met at Crossroads, a private high school in Santa Monica, and only recently started dating.

Isaac Hayes has resigned from ""South Park". He just noticed the show was offensive when they started making fun of his belief system:

Rather, Hayes said the show's parody of religion is part of what he saw as a "growing insensitivity toward personal spiritual beliefs" in the media generally, including the recent controversy over cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad.

The singer, who became the first black composer to win an Oscar for best song with his theme to the film "Shaft," said he formally asked to be released from his contract with "South Park," on the Comedy Central cable channel.

South Park co-creator Matt Stone calls Hayes on the hypocracy:

But series co-creator Matt Stone said the veteran recording artist was upset the show had recently lampooned the Church of Scientology, of which Hayes is an outspoken follower.

"In ten years and over 150 episodes of 'South Park,' Isaac never had a problem with the show making fun of Christians, Muslim, Mormons or Jews," Stone said in a statement issued by the Comedy Central network. "He got a sudden case of religious sensitivity when it was his religion featured on the show."

More good news from MIT, the happiest place on earth. Lab animals are regrowing brain matter after being injected using nano technology. Lab rats who have lost their vision are able to see again:

In their experiments, the researchers first cut into a brain structure that conveys signals for vision, causing the small lab animals to be blinded in one eye. They then injected a clear fluid containing chains of amino acids into the damaged area. Once in the environment of the brain, these chains, called peptides, bind to one another, assembling into nano-scale fibers that bridge the gap left by the damage. The mesh of fibers prevents scar tissue from forming and may also encourage cell growth (the researchers are still investigating the mechanisms involved).

As a result, nerve cells restored severed connections, allowing 75 percent of the animals to see well enough to detect and turn toward food. The treatment restored around 30,000 nerve connections, compared with 25-30 connections made possible in other experimental treatments, Ellis-Behnke says.

Because the treatment overcomes key obstacles to the healing of nerve tissue in stroke and traumatic brain and spinal cord injury, the researchers, as well as other experts in the field, believe it could prove to be an effective treatment for these types of nervous system damage.

Pierce Bush appeared on the Saturday Today show. This kid is spectacular. Check it out!

Brown: Have you heard from the President or anyone from the White House about this?

Pierce: No, I'm kind of surprised that they haven't. Normally you know-the stuff- hot button issues kinda hits the forefront you know-maybe get a call or something, but um.. I haven't heard from them...

On the end of the Yugoslavian death monger -- many are rather upset that he got off so easy:

Slobodan Milosevic, the deposed Yugoslav leader who had spent the last four years on trial accused of genocide and crimes against humanity for his role in nearly a decade of Balkan wars, died Saturday in his prison cell near The Hague, according to the U.N. international war crimes tribunal.

A guard found Milosevic "lifeless on his bed in his cell," according to a statement issued by the tribunal. The statement said that Dutch police and a Dutch coroner had been summoned and that an autopsy and a full inquiry had been ordered. Court officials said there was no evidence that Milosevic, who suffered from high blood pressure and chronic heart problems, had committed suicide.

Lifetime has new eight part reality series, following an awardwinning Cheerleading squad:

The channel's out-of-stepness has led to some good things: Lifetime has managed, against the odds, to distinguish itself with openly philanthropic and activist projects, and it has even become a noteworthy lobbying force on urgent women's issues like sex slavery and domestic abuse. But those good deeds seem to have compromised its credibility with guilty-pleasure programming, which is what "Cheerleader Nation," a reality series in the vérité mode, ought by rights to be.

Nope — there's no guilt here, and only a little pleasure. Don't look for beauty, catfights or even short skirts. (On tomorrow night's episode, at least, the girls mostly wear gym shorts.) Instead, "Cheerleader Nation" is a set of stylized encounters between mothers and daughters. Rarely has a reality show — even "The Simple Life" — had dialogue that seems both so scripted and so mundane. The girls, already under pressure to perform as athletes, seem doubly pressured to shine as reality stars, and there is something moving and even a little sad in their willingness to divine and advance the plot of "Cheerleader Nation." When, amid their exertions on behalf of this feminist channel, did these girls do any schoolwork?

I wonder if the new rules regarding acceptable cheer maneuvers is covered?:

ust as college basketball moves to center stage for March Madness, college cheerleaders have had their wings clipped by new safety rules that ban their tall pyramids and highflying stunts at the national tournament games — to the dismay of the cheerleaders who say they're trained and ready to show their spirit safely.

I am reminded of two great cheerleading films: Bring It On and Sugar and Spice

The NYTimes found a blog about the death of TV:

ONE recent week, the video blog Rocketboom drew an average of 200,000 people a day to watch its short daily news reports on technology, the arts and other topics.

"The Abrams Report" on MSNBC, meanwhile, drew 215,000 viewers to its weekday hourlong show about legal issues.

Does this anecdote — that an unpopular cable news show and a wildly popular Web site draw similarly sized audiences — prove that the Internet is upending the economics of the television business? It does for Prince Campbell, a former media executive who runs the Chartreuse (BETA) blog.

Mr. Campbell wields superlatives in a particularly bloggish manner at chartreuse.wordpress.com . "Broadcast television is dead," he declares. "Just like the Internet killed the music industry, it's about to do the same thing to broadcast TV."

There are some interesting ideas. Check it out!

This on the success of American Idol, which is frequently sited as evidence that TV is alive and well:

American Idol is not Television.

American Idol is MySpace under the guise of a TV show.

Didn't I say that dictators would make slamming subject matter for a reality show. I didn't think about using the relatives of genocidal maniacs:

Osama bin Laden 's niece, an aspiring singer who posed for a sexy photo shoot in a men's magazine last year, has signed up for a reality television show about her life and her as yet unfulfilled "quest for stardom."

Wafah Dufour Bin Ladin, whose mother was married to the al Qaeda leader's half brother, was born in California but lived in Saudi Arabia from the age of three to 10.

"I understand that when people hear my last name, they have preconceived notions, but I was born an American and I love my country," Dufour said in a statement from ReganMedia announcing the deal to develop a reality TV series.

Another story on the trend that is redefining television, broadcasting and the inernet:

n the last six months, major media companies have received much attention for starting to move their own programming online, whether downloads for video iPods or streaming programs that can be watched over high-speed Internet connections.

Perhaps more interesting — and, arguably, more important — are the thousands of producers whose programming would never make it into prime time but who have very dedicated small audiences. It's a phenomenon that could be called slivercasting.

The article points out the niche-ing that is becoming increasingly the norm, with smaller and smaller audiences which can be identified and marketed to.

The NYTimes has a feature on Wallace. It includes a long sample from his new book, 'Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays.

There is also a review:

Turning to literature in essays on Kafka, Dostoyevsky and Updike, Wallace employs a largely moral vocabulary to dismiss such older American novelists as Norman Mailer and Philip Roth as "Great Male Narcissists." For him, Updike is "both chronicler and voice of probably the single most self-absorbed generation since Louis XIV." In contrast, he is all praise for Dostoyevsky, largely because the Russian writer's "concern was always what it is to be a human being — that is, how to be an actual person, someone whose life is informed by values and principles, instead of just an especially shrewd kind of self-preserving animal."

Indeed, reading Dostoyevsky revives Wallace's old complaint that American writers face an unparalleled difficulty in trying to create a literature informed by ethical values and principles. In an earlier essay titled "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction," Wallace claimed that television in its more sophisticated phase had appropriated the "rebellious irony" of the first postmodern writers (Pynchon, Barthelme, Gaddis, Barth), thereby pre-empting and defusing the "critical negation" that was the literary and moral responsibility of his generation of writers. More than a decade later, Wallace remains convinced that "many of the novelists of our own place and time look so thematically shallow and lightweight, so morally impoverished, in comparison to Gogol or Dostoyevsky."

There is also a list of past articles about Wallace.

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the Dubai port deal a case of straight racism? This from The Note:

The Washington Wire has a Port of Seattle official saying that Americans are "xenophobic" about globalization, but they "like their '$1.98 underwear at Wal-Mart.'"

"The outcome did nothing to solve the underlying issue exposed by an uproar that has consumed the capital for weeks. A vast majority of containers that flow daily into the United States remain uninspired and vulnerable to security gaps at many points," writes David Sanger of the New York Times. (And Note how high up he plays the sell vs. transfer language.)

I am not sure what to think about this, just that I find it extremely curious:

Some Chicago-area pastors who incorporate jazz into worship services use it as an evangelical tool for attracting new members. Others embrace the music as a spiritual connector.

"I see jazz as mirroring God's continuing creation in the world," said Pastor Janet Volk of Northlake Lutheran Church in Northlake. "You never know what's going to happen."

Volk's church was awarded a $14,000 church grant last spring to introduce jazz services, which include secular and faith-based songs. "We were looking at target audiences and casting a wide net as fishers of people," she said.

There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with this:

The South Michigan Avenue church has no choir, but as the congregation lifts its collective voice to the melodies of the King Fleming Trio, soulfulness sweeps the room. Members tap feet and pat their hands on laps while bopping to the buoyant notes. They smile.

Slate has an article that may prove controversial or just, you know... duh:

In The Feminine Mystique, the late Betty Friedan attributed the malaise of married women largely to traditionalist marriages in which wives ran the home and men did the bread-winning. Her book helped spark the sexual revolution of the 1970s and fueled the notion that egalitarian partnerships—where both partners have domestic responsibilities and pursue jobs—would make wives happier. Last week, two sociologists at the University of Virginia published an exhaustive study of marital happiness among women that challenges this assumption. Stay-at-home wives, according to the authors, are more content than their working counterparts. And happiness, they found, has less to do with division of labor than with the level of commitment and "emotional work" men contribute (or are perceived to contribute). But the most interesting data may be that the women who strongly identify as progressive—the 15 percent who agree most with feminist ideals—have a harder time being happy than their peers, according to an analysis that has been provided exclusively to Slate. Feminist ideals, not domestic duties, seem to be what make wives morose. Progressive married women—who should be enjoying some or all of the fruits that Freidan lobbied for—are less happy, it would appear, than women who live as if Friedan never existed.

Ms. Coulter always has a bitey little voice when commenting on the American culture:

Jon Stewart, this year's host, was very funny -- but not quite as funny as the fact that the audience didn't get the jokes. (There were a lot of actors in the audience.) Apparently, the one comedy bit capable of bringing down a house of actors is: Ben Stiller hopping around in a green unitard.

However liberal Stewart is personally, his best jokes are always mildly conservative.

He twitted the Hollywood audience, saying:

"I have to say it is a little shocking to see all these big names here, these huge stars. The Oscars is really, I guess, the one night of the year where you can see all your favorite stars without having to donate any money to the Democratic Party."

Clooney made a speach where he claimed that Hollywood was on the cutting edge of reform in America. Not so claims Coulter:

The point is: The Hollywood set didn't start wearing AIDS ribbons to the Oscars until 1992: 10 years after The New York Times described AIDS; seven years after AIDS was the cover story on Life magazine; seven years after AIDS was in People magazine; five years after Oprah did a show on AIDS.

Only recently has George Clooney heard about segregation. (He's against it.) But he still can't nail down the details of something that ended nearly half a century ago.

Contrary to Clooney's impassioned speech, no theaters ever forced black people to sit in the back. If you were trying to oppress people, you would make them sit in the front, which are the worst seats in the house. Or you'd just make them watch a George Clooney movie.

Nat Hentoff makes some good points about liberty in the Village Voice:

In a lead editorial on February 17, the British Financial Times said of the Abu Ghraib revelations, and this also applies to what has happened at Gitmo since: "There was no independent investigation and no real accountability: the two most visible privates in the photos were jailed, and a junior general was demoted.

"But responsibility lay—and lies—further up the chain of command, as far as Donald Rumsfeld . . . and officials such as Alberto Gonzales, now attorney general, who devised a framework for circumventing the Geneva Conventions. It is they who should be held to account."

In the fifities and sixties (and earlier) churches were burned in the south by frightened racists trying to intimidate African Americans. In the Eighties there was a rash of church burnings to collect insurance money. In the 21st century college kids burn churches for kicks:

Three college students from the prosperous suburbs of Birmingham, Ala., were arrested yesterday in the burning of nine Baptist churches last month in rural Alabama. Federal officials said the fires were a "joke" that spun out of control while the students were deer hunting.

After initially setting ablaze five churches in the county just south of Birmingham, two students burned four additional churches days later in more remote areas, hoping to divert investigators, the authorities said.

In a Wonkette post entitled "The Exquisite Disillusionment of Pierce Bush" we are given a blog posting which I just could not look at hard enough or long enough. The story is that of President Bush's nephew leaving Georgetown University because he is fed up with the Washington political scene:

“Half the reason I wanted to leave Georgetown is that I was kind of burnt out by politics,” he said. “Living in Washington for a year and a half, you kind of see what kind of BS it is.”

He added:

“My uncle is this guy with all this power and he gets blamed for everything.”

Young Bush unburdened himself in a phone interview in the Houston Chronicle. He had previously written a letter to the Chronicle over the Dubai Port issue:

When the political firestorm over Dubai Ports World broke out last month, President Bush's nephew sent the Houston Chronicle an electronic letter to the editor, defending his uncle's drive to allow the United Arab Emirates company to buy a firm that helps run six U.S. ports.

To the University of Texas at Austin student, opposition to the deal — it had been approved by the administration before being scuttled Thursday — sent an "ignorant and offensive" message that the owners were being discriminated against because they are Arab. The protests of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., and other congressional leaders seemed "racially prejudiced," he said in the letter, which the Chronicle published.

So we have one of the greatest blog posting headlines ever. We have the earnest ruminations of a fortunate young man and than to illustrate the story is a vintage cover to J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye. On the cover is a drawing representing Holden Caulfield with the words:

This unusual book may shock you, you will laugh, and may break your heart-- but you will never forget it

This oddly worded description may characterize Pierce Bush as well as Catcher. Someone needs to keep an eye on this Bush. It seems like there is some kind of movie or book or MTV special here.

I love lists and even though the methodology is a little flakey, this is probably as good a list as any to moniter what people are doing on the internet:

How do we come up with our 50 best? Short answer: we take your suggestions, probe friends and colleagues about their favorite online haunts and then surf like mad. This year's finalists are a mix of newcomers, new discoveries and veterans that have learned some new tricks

There are a number of online museums and art galleries. The blog section has several of Nick Denton's Gawker Media blogs but doesn't include two of my favorites Wonkette and Gawker about Washington D.C. and New York respectively.

And just what is cool anyway? And when did Time become the arbiter of cool.

Justification for your hardcore religious practices:

What does the pious person get in return for all of his or her time and effort? A church full of passionate members; a community of people deeply involved in one another's lives and more willing than most to come to one another's aid; a peer group of knowledgeable souls who speak the same language (or languages), are moved by the same texts, and cherish the same dreams. Religion is a " 'commodity' that people produce collectively," says Iannaccone. "My religious satisfaction thus depends both on my 'inputs' and those of others." If a rich and textured spiritual experience is what you seek, then a storefront Holy Roller church or an Orthodox shtiebl is a better fit than a suburban church made up of distracted, ambitious people who can barely manage to find a morning free for Sunday services, let alone several evenings a week for text study and volunteer work.

At some point, of course, the disadvantages of zealotry outweigh the benefits. A church reaches that point when it fails to offer acceptable substitutes for everything it has asked its members to give up. Cults that lure their followers into the wilderness but provide them with no livelihood soon fade into history.

Slate is publishing a serialized online novel starting during March:

On Monday, March 13, Slate will launch an exciting new publishing venture: an online novel written in real time, by award-winning novelist Walter Kirn. Installments of the novel, titled The Unbinding , will appear in Slate roughly twice a week from March through June. While novels have been serialized in mainstream online publications before, this is the first time a prominent novelist has published a genuine Net Novel—one that takes advantage of, and draws inspiration from, the capacities of the Internet. The Unbinding ,a dark comedy set in the near future, is a compilation of "found documents"—online diary entries, e-mails, surveillance reports, etc. It will make use of the Internet's unique capacity to respond to events as they happen, linking to documents and other Web sites. In other words, The Unbinding is conceived for the Web, rather than adapted to it.

Some of my Zeitgeist observation includes a little wishful thinking. I have a model for progress that I have been working on -- a set of standards that I can moniter -- stories that I could look for which indicated a society moving forward, according to a set of criteria that, I admit, are my own, but which, I hope, have universal appeal.

For example, in the field of health, progress would be recorded if people were living longer and if diseases were being cured at a reasonable cost. In the area of morality, if society was moving towards more ten commandment style behavior. This might show up as a cut in crime or divorce rates. In economics, increased incomes, increased savings, decreased debt, and lowered unemployment and participation in government programs. An innovation which makes people more productive or less reliant on drudgery would be noted. In the area of education, increased literacy and increased availability of educational materials.

Anyway. This is one of those stories that fits into that model:

The D.C. government is preparing to ask companies to bid on building a wireless Internet system through much of the city, including free service for low-income residents.

But unlike other municipalities such as Philadelphia and San Francisco that have commissioned such networks city-wide, the District plans to give its contract to the company that goes furthest in serving low-income residents with free Web access and even free computers and training.

Perhaps a parallel model of decline from Gibbon would be helpful at this point to contrast decline with progress:

Referring to Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire he lists five attributes that marked the end of Rome:–

1. a mounting love of luxury (ie. Affluence)

2. a widening gap between the very rich and poor

3. an obsession with sex

4. freakishness in the arts (masquerading as originality)

5. an increased desire to live off the state.

It seems like someone could make a slamming reality show based on this list:

A “dictator” is a head of state who exercises arbitrary authority over the lives of his citizens and who cannot be removed from power through legal means. The worst commit terrible human-rights abuses. This present list draws in part on reports by global human-rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, Reporters Without Borders and Amnesty International. While the three worst from 2005 have retained their places, two on last year’s list (Muammar al-Qaddafi of Libya and Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan) have slipped out of the Top 10—not because their conduct has improved but because other dictators have gotten worse.

Don't forget the 10 runners up.