Most Recent Posts: 2014-11-02

суббота

Not My Job: 'Elementary, My Dear (Dale) Watson'

Wait Wait is in Austin, Texas this week, and so we've invited country singer Dale Watson to play our quiz. Watson has that true Austin sound — not to mention his own honky-tonk bar.

We've invited Watson to play a game called, "Elementary, my dear Dale!" Three questions about the immortal detective, Sherlock Holmes.

PETER SAGAL, HOST:

And now the game where we travel the country to find people who at least didn't have to leave home to do this. To many, Austin, Texas means music - specifically country music - and by that, we don't mean the stuff they pedal in Nashville. We mean the down home twanging songs about cold beer and true misery. Dale Watson has got the true Austin sound...

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: ...He's got the tats, he's got the pompadour, and he's got his own honky-tonk right here in Austin. Dale Watson, welcome...

DALE WATSON: Thank you.

SAGAL: ...To WAIT WAIT ...DON'T TELL ME.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Austin City Limits - that's the great music program out of Austin - they call you Austin's king of country music. Does that sound right to you? Do you accept that title?

WATSON: Oh, no, I couldn't do that.

SAGAL: Really?

WATSON: No, but I'm very honored. I play Ameripolitan music.

SAGAL: I've read about this - Ameripolitan music. You have decided that the word country music has been what? Degraded? Misused?

WATSON: Well, no, it just doesn't describe what I grew up to know as country music anymore. I'd like to say that the definition is original music with prominent roots, influences - started with Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams and, you know, Kitty Wells. So it started there and it goes on. And if you can hear the influence of an artist in another artist, than that's your roots.

SAGAL: Right.

WATSON: And to me, the mainstream stuff coming out of from Nashville has got their roots firmly planted in midair. They have no roots whatsoever.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: But, so...

FAITH SALIE: Hey, Dale, how do you feel about the banjo?

(LAUGHTER)

WATSON: There's a thing called perfect pitch. You ever heard of perfect pitch?

SAGAL: Yeah, people who can hear a note and know exactly - sing a note...

WATSON: No, no, no, no, no. It's when you throw an accordion in a dumpster...

(LAUGHTER)

WATSON: ...And it doesn't hit the rim and it lands on a banjo.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: For people, Dale, who are not lucky enough to have heard you play around Texas where you play all the time or your own club in Austin, what songs are you known for?

WATSON: Probably "I lie when I drink."

(APPLAUSE)

WATSON: (Singing) I lie when I drink. I drink a lot.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: When I told people you we were going to be on the show, the people from Austin who I told, they said, well, you got to ask him about his Sunday gig every Sunday. And I know it's going to be difficult...

WATSON: Chicken poop bingo.

(APPLAUSE)

WATSON: For a poultry $2 donation, you can win...

(LAUGHTER)

WATSON: You can win over $100 if the same number that's in the bag, you draw, is the same number the chicken picks in her chicken picking way.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: All right. So you've got some sort of like dirt thing on the floor?

WATSON: It's free hot dogs and...

SAGAL: Free hot dogs?

WATSON: ...And $2 Lone Stars.

SAGAL: All right.

BOBCAT GOLDTHWAIT: Well, it'd be weird to eat chicken in front of the chickens.

SAGAL: Yeah, I know.

GOLDTHWAIT: It wouldn't really motivate them.

SAGAL: So the way this works is you've got like, it marked down on the floor - maybe a dirt floor - I haven't been there. I'm guessing.

WATSON: No.

SAGAL: No, not dirt floor?

WATSON: Cement floor.

SAGAL: Cement floor. And you got to mark that with numbers. Cement, that's what they have here in Texas.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: So you got your cement floor. You got it marked out with numbers. And you have chickens...

WATSON: No, no. There's a board that we put on the pool table...

SAGAL: OK.

WATSON: ...And it's got numbers on it. And if the chicken picks that number - that one you draw out of a bag - then they won the money.

SAGAL: And the chicken picks the number by relieving itself on the number?

WATSON: There is a line ticket, which, you know, is the luckiest ticket.

(LAUGHTER)

WATSON: In case it crosses into a line.

GOLDTHWAIT: Sure, I got you.

SALIE: Is at the same chicken every week?

WATSON: Yeah, well, actually we've been doing it for so long I think we're on our sixth chicken now.

(LAUGHTER)

TOM BODETT: Do you have a lucky chicken?

WATSON: Doesn't everybody?

(LAUGHTER)

WATSON: No.

GOLDTHWAIT: That's rather personal, Tom.

WATSON: Well, you know, the thing is we've had them pass away. I never knew how long a chicken could live, but they can - they be a good long time.

GOLDTHWAIT: Yeah, they're tenacious.

(LAUGHTER)

WATSON: We've had one killed by the chupacabra.

(LAUGHTER)

GOLDTHWAIT: That'll happen.

SAGAL: You have a...

GOLDTHWAIT: Did the chupacabra lose the week before?

SAGAL: Did the chicken actually killed by the chupacabra?

WATSON: Oh, yeah. His...

GOLDTHWAIT: Are you drunk now because you said you lie when you drink.

SAGAL: I want to hear about the chupacabra eating your chicken.

WATSON: Well, we assume it was 'cause the chicken's body was still in the chicken coop and the head was on the outside.

GOLDTHWAIT: Could've been the Mafia.

WATSON: Could've been the Mafia - the Texas Mafia.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: And you know how they thought it was the Mafia? 'Cause it's feet were in a little tub of cement.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Now you are dressed - is this the rig you perform in - what you're wearing now? 'Cause you're wearing really shiny cowboy boots. And you've got fabulous hair. You've got this beautiful white pompadour.

WATSON: Well it didn't used to be white, it used to be pretty black.

(LAUGHTER)

WATSON: It's getting whiter as this show goes on.

SAGAL: Yeah I know.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Dale Watson, we are so enjoying talking to you, but we have asked you here to play a game we're calling...

BILL KURTIS, BYLINE: Elementary, My Dear Dale.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Should've seen this coming.

WATSON: I love the way Bill says that.

SAGAL: Don't you? I love the way he says anything. So you are a Watson, but what do you know about Holmes? We're going to ask you three questions about the immortal detective Sherlock Holmes. Get two right, you'll win our prize for one of our listeners, the voice of Carl Kasell himself on their voicemail. So Bill, who is Dale Watson playing for?

KURTIS: Elizabeth Day of Austin, Texas.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: She's out there somewhere.

WATSON: Elizabeth - let me just first say Elizabeth, I will make this up to you.

(LAUGHTER)

GOLDTHWAIT: All the free chicken bingo you can handle.

SAGAL: There's nothing I want to right more with my life than go to play chicken bingo on Sunday.

GOLDTHWAIT: I have a confession - I'm the chupacabra.

(LAUGHTER)

GOLDTHWAIT: I owe you a chicken.

SAGAL: Here is your first question Dale. The BBC version of "Sherlock" - you might've seen it, it's a huge hit in China. They lovingly refer to the stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman by nicknames which are what? A, Rizzoli and Isles; B, the Captain and Garfunkel; or C, Curly Fu and Peanut.

(LAUGHTER)

WATSON: OK.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: You're thinking.

WATSON: I am. I'm not used to it.

(LAUGHTER)

WATSON: I'm going to go with Curly.

SAGAL: Curly Fu?

WATSON: Peanut.

SAGAL: Curly Fu and Peanut is the right answer.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

SAGAL: Curly for Benedict Cumberbatch's luxurious hair and Fu is the Chinese derivation of Holmes, apparently. All right. Two more questions. "Sherlock Holmes..."

GOLDTHWAIT: Wait. What's the Peanut for?

SAGAL: Well, Peanut is Martin Freeman. I guess he's smaller - he's a rather short man so I guess that's where that comes from.

GOLDTHWAIT: Oh, OK.

SAGAL: Sherlock Holmes, some believe, is the most filmed character ever, right? More movies with Sherlock Holmes than any other human character. Which of these is the title of a real "Sherlock Holmes" film? Is it A, "Tom And Jerry Meet Sherlock Holmes;" B, "Sherlock 2: Sherlocker;" or C; "Holmes On The Range"?

(LAUGHTER)

WATSON: Those - one of them is real?

SAGAL: One of those is real.

(LAUGHTER)

WATSON: Well, now could one of them be a cartoon, is that what you're talking about?

SAGAL: One of them could be a cartoon.

WATSON: OK, well, I'm going with a Tom and Jerry.

SAGAL: You're right, "Tom And Jerry Meet Sherlock Holmes."

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

WATSON: Wow.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Now one more question. Let's see if you're perfect. Hundreds of people around the world right to Sherlock Holmes.

WATSON: Oh, I'm not perfect.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Do you want to talk about it?

WATSON: No.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: We're all friends here if you want to discuss anything.

BODETT: Sing about it.

SAGAL: I'll ask you the question. Hundreds of people around the world write to Sherlock Holmes for help each year. And these letters end up at the Sherlock Holmes Museum in London. Now most are - please to help solve mysteries, oh, please Mr. Holmes. There's one letter on display at the museum that is what? Is it an e-mail from a Nigerian Prince asking for Sherlock Holmes' help in a business opportunity? Is it B, a postcard from a local optician reminding Mr. Sherlock Holmes it's time for his checkup? Or is it C, a J.Crew catalog addressed to Sherlock Holmes and advertising their fall collection of deer stalker hats?

(LAUGHTER)

WATSON: All right. I'm going to say the catalog.

SAGAL: The catalog. No, I'm afraid it was the optician.

WATSON: Was it really?

SAGAL: Yep, an optician wrote to Sherlock Holmes saying you're ready for your next eye appointment. When their last one was, we don't know.

(LAUGHTER)

WATSON: Didn't he have just one thing - monocle?

SAGAL: No, no, no, you're confusing him with somebody I can't even imagine right now.

GOLDTHWAIT: With Mr. Peanut.

SAGAL: That was Mr. Peanut, yes. Bill how did Dale Watson do on our quiz?

KURTIS: Two out of three and that's a winner Dale.

SAGAL: Yes it is.

(APPLAUSE)

WATSON: Good.

SAGAL: Congratulations.

WATSON: Thank you.

SAGAL: Well done. Dale Watson is recording in January for Red House Records. Then he's heading out on an East Coast tour with Reverend Horton Heat and Rosie Flores. Dale Watson, thank you so much for being on WAIT WAIT ...DON'T TELL ME.

WATSON: Thank you.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WHISKEY OR GOD")

WATSON: (Signing) Whiskey or God, going to bring me relief. Believing or not, bending my elbow or my knees.

Copyright © 2014 NPR. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to NPR. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.

The Ancient Art Of Cheese-Making Attracts Scientific Gawkers

The Salt

Chowing Down On Meat, Dairy Alters Gut Bacteria A Lot, And Quickly

From Swiss to cheddar, cheeses depend on the action of microbes for their flavor and aroma. But it's far from clear how these teams of microbes work together to ripen cheese.

To a cheese-maker, that's just the beauty of the art. To a scientist, it sounds like an experiment waiting to happen.

A handful of scientists who study cheese recently gathered to share their latest findings at a farm in the English county of Somerset. They know cheese well here — after all, Somerset invented cheddar.

Somerset cheese-maker Jamie Montgomery hosted the conference. "We've been making cheddar here for three generations," he says. "My grandfather bought the estate in 1911."

Montgomery's cheese is particularly microbe-rich. That sets it apart from most supermarket-bought cheese, which is made from milk that is pasteurized to kill any potentially harmful bacteria. Then a few microbes are added back in to ferment the cheese.

But Montgomery and many other artisan producers never pasteurize their milk – it's raw. The milk's natural microbial community is still in there. This microbial festival gives it variety and richness that commercial cheeses can't copy.

"That's our defense, that's where the artisan cheese-maker is always going to have an edge," Montgomery says.

It's this complex community of microbes that intrigues the scientists and cheese-makers gathered in Somerset. For Rachel Dutton, whose lab at Harvard University studies everything from tangy stilton to creamy brie, cheese is a very cooperative subject, she says.

"I wanted to find a microbial community to study that I would be able to grow the organisms in the lab, deconstruct and reconstruct these communities," she says.

Dutton's team just finished a study of more than 130 different cheese samples from around the world. Different types of cheeses have different microbial tenants – less to do with geography, and more to do with cheese-making method, like whether you wash the rind of the cheese with brine, or age it, or keep it in a moist room.

Whatever type you favor, Dutton says that cheese could be affecting the microbes in your own body. Our guts are teeming with bacteria that help us digest food, and many of the bacteria found in fermented foods make it through the digestive tract unscathed.

But whether they interact much isn't clear, she says. "What they're doing, if anything, I think is still a wide-open question."

Cheese lovers would like to think that – like other microbe-rich foods – cheese could be good for us.

"There's a very good chance that consumption of them will influence the gut microbiome, and could in turn have some positive benefits," says microbiologist and cheesemaker Dennis D'Amico, who traveled to the meeting from his base at the University of Connecticut.

Those gains could include boosting metabolism, or stopping "bad" bugs from taking hold. But there's no evidence for this yet, because the microbes in our guts and in our foods are so complex that it's hard to work out how they affect each other.

Farm owner Jamie Montgomery is delighted that his cheese will be keeping scientists busy for a while yet. "They're all saying that in cheese, they're probably only scratching the surface. And I love that."

microbiome

cheese making

microbes

cheese

New York Exhibitions Dance With Death Through Victorian Mourning Culture

People often get flummoxed around death. Some get teary, others emotionally distant from the inevitable. An exhibition at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, "Death Becomes Her: A Century of Mourning Attire," embodies that tension with mourning fashion from the mid-1800s to the early 20th century. It has multi-layered fabric, tight bodices and enveloping head gear that emulates the garb of cloistered nuns. Even the faces of the ghost-white mannequins seem closed off, demure and unshakable. This is death at its most bloodless.

"I wanted Victorian melodrama; I wanted widows collapsing on the floor," says Harold Koda, curator in charge of the museum's Costume Institute. Still, Koda, who worked with a co-curator, says he would have liked a bit more juice in the installation. "You see an inert dress on a stiff mannequin. How do you get the fact that this was because somebody died, you know?"

i i

Joanna Ebenstein, creative director of the Morbid Anatomy Museum, poses with a taxidermy two-headed duckling. Liyna Anwar for StoryCorps hide caption

itoggle caption Liyna Anwar for StoryCorps

Joanna Ebenstein, creative director of the Morbid Anatomy Museum, poses with a taxidermy two-headed duckling.

Liyna Anwar for StoryCorps

Across the river, in the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn, the Morbid Anatomy Museum tells a different story. Creative Director Joanna Ebenstein describes a scene from the museum's gallery walls: "You see here four women weeping into handkerchiefs. Their faces are obscured by their handkerchiefs and they're standing around a column in black. To me, that sums up the romanticism of Victorian mourning."

Ebenstein is a very serious woman in her 40s; she wears glasses and shoulder-length, straight hair. Standing in the museum's front gallery, she points to a box with a glass top.

"What we're looking at here is a large, framed shadowbox and in that shadowbox is a wreath of brown flowers," she explains. "And if you look closely, each of those flowers is made from hair coiled around wire. And this is probably a whole family's hair; you can tell from the different colors — you can see gray, you can see black, you can see brown."

Part of the beauty, she says, is its permanence. "What symbolizes mourning more than a floral wreath? This is a floral wreath, made of the hair of the family, that will never decay."

i i

This shadowbox, which features a floral wreath of human hair, is also part of the museum's "Art of Mourning" exhibition. Shannon Taggart/Courtesy of the Morbid Anatomy Museum hide caption

itoggle caption Shannon Taggart/Courtesy of the Morbid Anatomy Museum

This shadowbox, which features a floral wreath of human hair, is also part of the museum's "Art of Mourning" exhibition.

Shannon Taggart/Courtesy of the Morbid Anatomy Museum

There can be beauty in death, but there's tragedy here too. One vitrine has photographs of dead infants, many of them swaddled in their mother's arms. To Ebenstein, none of this is morbid.

"My whole life I've been called morbid for thinking about death and I used accept that," she says. "And at a certain point, I began to think: Well, why is it morbid to look at death? If we're all going die and every single culture but us seems to have some sophisticated, aboveboard way of talking about it in art and philosophy, why don't we? And why should I be considered morbid for being interested in what I consider the greatest problem of being a human being, which is foreknowledge of our own death?"

Ebenstein seems to have come by this obsession naturally. In a back room of the museum, there's a library of books, bones, ephemera and specimens in jars (hence the museum's name). One jar holds a bat, another a snake and yet another a pig fetus, and they're all stored in a cabinet once owned by her grandfather, who was a doctor.

The Morbid Anatomy Museum's staff seems to be a kind of extended Addams family. Tracy Hurley Martin, the museum's CEO and board chair, grew up around death. She says, "Our uncle Vito had a funeral home and he lived in it and he treated people like they were deli meat."

For Morbid Anatomy Museum Founder, Spooky Things Are Life's Work Oct. 31, 2014

The museum's attraction is partly its creepy funereal vibe. The black painted building is no Metropolitan Museum of Art, but it's become a destination. Cawleen Cavanis lives in Queens, a 40 minute subway ride away. She brought a visiting friend and was checking out the gift shop's offerings: a diaphanized mouse, sugar skulls, museum T-shirts and books, including The Morbid Anatomy Anthology, with essays about stuffed humans and demonic children. "It looks like just a lot of interesting specimens here, you know," Cavanis says. "It's definitely worth the trip."

But if you're wondering about taking selfies in the museum, Joanna Ebenstein points to a sign on the door to the galleries: "Photograph taking, digital, analog, video, spirit, is absolutely forbidden."

For those visitors who want to do more than admire, or acquire, the Morbid Anatomy Museum has lectures and workshops on making a bat in a jar and Victorian hair art.

Not My Job: 'Elementary, My Dear (Dale) Watson'

Wait Wait is in Austin, Texas this week, and so we've invited country singer Dale Watson to play our quiz. Watson has that true Austin sound — not to mention his own honky-tonk bar.

We've invited Watson to play a game called, "Elementary, my dear Dale!" Three questions about the immortal detective, Sherlock Holmes.

Mexican Authorities: Drug Traffickers Confess To Killing 43 Students

Mexican authorities says drug gang members have confessed to killing 43 students from a teachers college in the country's south and described a grisly disposal of the bodies — burning them on a pyre and then pulverizing teeth and bones to prevent the remains from being identified.

Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam, speaking at a news conference in Mexico City on Friday, played a video purporting to be three gang members confessing to the killings, The Associated Press reports. Another video, the AP says, "showed hundreds of charred fragments of bone and teeth that had been dumped in and along the San Juan River" near the town of Cocula.

i i

Pictures of the detainees for the case of missing students are seen displayed on a television screen during a news conference at the Attorney General's Office building in Mexico City on Friday. HANDOUT/Reuters/Landov hide caption

itoggle caption HANDOUT/Reuters/Landov

Pictures of the detainees for the case of missing students are seen displayed on a television screen during a news conference at the Attorney General's Office building in Mexico City on Friday.

HANDOUT/Reuters/Landov

Authorities recovered black plastic garbage bags containing ash and bones. Karam said the remains matched what authorities were told by the suspects, who described in detail how they loaded the students into two trucks, killed them, dismembered and burned their bodies and then tossed bags full of remains into a river.

The bizarre case allegedly began when the mayor of Iguala, Jose Luis Abarca, ordered police to attack the students.

The Los Angeles Times reported earlier this week that authorities believe Abarca and his wife, Maria de los Angeles Pineda, "ordered local police to intercept and do away with the students, from a rural college for the poor, who were en route to Iguala and might have planned to disrupt a party and speech by Pineda."

The newspaper says: "The case soon revealed the deep infiltration by drug gangs of police and City Hall in Iguala, about 80 miles south of Mexico City, and in other municipalities in Guerrero state. The governor, Angel Aguirre, was forced to resign amid the scandal, which has also handed President Enrique Pea Nieto his worst security crisis in nearly two years of government."

Six students were killed in the Sept. 26 police assault and 43 others were allegedly handed over to members of the Guerreros Unidos drug gang. Authorities believe the police told the gang that the students were members of a rival trafficking group.

NPR's Carrie Kahn says that at Friday's news conference, Karam admitted that he cannot positively say the remains are those of the students, but he said he can say with certainty that the three new suspects killed the 43 students.

"The high level of degradation caused by the fire in the remains make it very difficult to extract the DNA that will allow an identification," Karam said at a news conference.

"What I can tell you with certainty [is that] there was a homicide of many people," he said. "The statements of [the suspects], the work of the experts, what they found in each one of the tombs, the certainty of where the garbage bags were ... I have no doubt that there was a mass homicide."

More than 70 people have been detained in the case so far, including Abarca and Pineda, who were captured Tuesday after weeks on the run.

Mexico's drug wars

Mexico

The Cold War Broadcast That Gave East German Dissidents A Voice

"The dissidents in the East had to trust us," he says. "But we had to trust them too. We weren't in a position to fact check whether an arrest at this or that demonstration had really taken place."

Not surprisingly, the Stasi were some of the show's most dedicated listeners, but their activities were not limited to monitoring.

At this time, Gorbachev ceased jamming Voice of America and the BBC in the Soviet Union, yet the East German authorities launched their first jamming campaign in a decade.

But the measure backfired. Radio Glasnost simply repeated the blocked shows, thanking the Stasi for the free promotion.

As the Stasi began to lose its grip on East German society, it gave up jamming the show. Radio Glasnost served as a vital communication channel for the resistance movement for over two years until it was no longer needed. The final show was broadcast just three weeks after the Berlin Wall fell on Nov. 9, 1989.

"I still get emotional now when I think about that last show," Jahn says. "How we all came together for the first time in our studio and celebrated the fall of the wall and the peaceful revolution."

Even today, Jahn — still a broadcast journalist at heart — believes the power of radio should not to be underestimated: "By November 1989, Radio Glasnost had done its job."

"It had contributed to the fall of the wall," he says.

Germany

Berlin

Berlin Wall

Capitalism Is Making China Richer, But Not Democratic

As far back as the early 1990s, Washington thought trade and investment eventually would make China more democratic. In the past couple of years, though, the Communist Party has doubled down on repression at home and become more aggressive overseas.

In short, things have not turned out as Washington had hoped, and relations between the world's two major powers are tense these days.

President Obama will continue to work on that tricky relationship after he arrives in Beijing on Monday for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit The gathering provides Chinese President Xi Jinping with an international platform as he hosts leaders from Japan, India and Russia and tries to boost China's standing in world affairs.

Prosperity's Unexpected Consequences

The Two-Way

China, Japan Agree To Disagree On Disputed Islands

Parallels

On China's Mainland, A Less Charitable Take On Hong Kong's Protests

China Sentences Professor Accused Of Separatist Activities

6 min 34 sec

Add to Playlist

Download

Two decades ago, Republicans, Democrats and some prominent China scholars argued that economic engagement would change China's political system over time.

"By working with China and expanding areas of cooperation, dealing forthrightly with our differences, we can advance fundamental American interests and values," President Bill Clinton said in 1997.

James Mann, author of The China Fantasy: Why Capitalism Will Not Bring Democracy to China, says the conventional wisdom was China's authoritarian system naturally would evolve.

"Part of the theory was, it was just inevitable," says Mann, a scholar-in-residence at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. "Any country that became prosperous and had growing trade and investment ties with the world would automatically liberalize."

One popular U.S. columnist argued that as Chinese enjoyed greater and greater consumer choices — such as various types of coffee at Starbucks — a desire for political choice would follow. After meeting with then-premier Wen Jiabao in 2005, then-U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair told reporters China was heading towards a more open political system.

"The whole basis of the discussion I have had in a country that is developing very fast — where 100 million people now use the Internet, and which is going to be the second-largest economy in the world — is that there is an unstoppable momentum toward greater political freedom," Blair told reporters in Beijing, according to Bloomberg News.

But Mann says capitalism had the opposite effect.

Chinese naval soldiers stand guard on China's first aircraft carrier, Liaoning, as it travels toward a military base in Hainan province, in this undated picture made available on Nov. 30, 2013. Tensions in the South China Sea have grown over territorial disputes between China, the Philippines, Japan and others. Reuters/China Stringer Network/Landov hide caption

itoggle caption Reuters/China Stringer Network/Landov

"It resulted in a rich, authoritarian regime, which is not what we were looking for in the first place, and which is more of a problem to deal with," he says.

China has poured some of its riches into naval power and is now tangling with Japan and the Philippines, close American allies, over disputed islands. China claims most of the vast South China Sea as its own, despite the protests of various neighbors.

Mann says American policymakers thought China would follow the path of other East Asian dictatorships, such as Taiwan and South Korea, which democratized in the 1980s. Those countries, however, relied on the U.S. for their defense, which Washington used as political leverage.

"The United States pushed Taiwan over a decade," says Mann. "None of that is going to happen in China. It has an entirely different relationship with the United States."

Minxin Pei, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College in California, says that instead of democratizing China, economic growth helped the party strengthen its grip on power.

"The U.S. has gravely underestimated the capabilities, the determination, the resourcefulness of the Chinese Communist Part. Better economic performance gives them greater political legitimacy, and [then] they don't have to do political reform," says Pei. It also "allows them more resources to use repression to defend one-party rule."

Since coming to power in 2012, President Xi has cracked down on Internet speech and jailed all sorts of critics. Last month, an 81-year-old writer known by the pen name Tie Liu was charged with "creating a disturbance." Among his apparent offenses: publishing the accounts of some of the political victims of Mao Zedong, who died in 1976.

Shen Dingli, a professor of international relations at Fudan University in Shanghai, knows China's political failings, but says the party has made improvements for which it doesn't receive credit. Those include term limits for top leaders, who — though not popularly elected — pay close attention to public opinion.

"America somehow is impatient," says Shen, who says Americans seem to think the only form of democracy is the one-person, one-vote Western model. America "is too idealistic and is too chauvinistic."

Trends That Undermine Communist Power

How long can the Communist Party stay in power? Pei expects it to run out of gas in 10 to 15 years.

"The people who work for this system have no fundamental loyalty to the system," says Pei. Indeed, the conventional wisdom among Chinese themselves is that most people who have joined the party in the past decade primarily did so to enrich themselves through connections and graft.

"All they want to do is benefit personally from their relationship with the system," Pei continues. "So, over the long run, the system will go bankrupt."

Cheng Li, director of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, says the party has another trend running against it. Young Chinese have dramatically different expectations than their parents.

"Let's look at the young people in Shanghai, Beijing," he says. "They are more similar to their peers in Taipei, in Tokyo, in Washington, in New York. That's a very powerful force.

"They have similar lifestyles, they have similar kind of inspiration, and sooner or later they will also want to have freedom."

Li says that's natural. When that might happen, though, is anyone's guess.

capitalism

democracy

Wealth

China

Saudi Council Reportedly Recommends Letting Some Women Drive

In an unprecedented move, a Saudi advisory council says it approves of lifting a ban on female drivers. The Shura Council proposes that certain restrictions be applied, however: Women must be at least 30, have permission from their male guardian, not wear makeup and drive only in daylight hours, The Associated Press reports.

For years, the kingdom has refused to review the ban on female drivers, which is unique to Saudi Arabia, where conservative Muslim clerics have expressed concerns that female drivers could spread "licentiousness."

The AP reports:

"The Shura Council's recommendations are not obligatory on the government. But simply making the recommendation was a startling shift after years of the kingdom's staunchly rejecting any review of the ban.

"The council member told The Associated Press that the Shura Council made the recommendations in a secret, closed session held in the past month. The member spoke on condition of anonymity because the recommendations had not been made public."

As The Two-Way's Bill Chappell reported last year, there have been a number of bold protests against the ban, with Saudi women getting behind the wheel for a day. Thousands have signed online protests against the ban. The October 2013 protest highlighted by Bill was the third of its kind since 1990.

The AP says that the Shura Council recommended that women 30 and older be allowed to drive until 8 p.m. each day if they have permission from a male guardian. They would be allowed to drive from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday through Wednesday and noon to 8 p.m. Thursday and Friday, the Muslim weekend.

The council is also recommending a "female traffic department" made up of female officers to deal with female drivers, the AP says.

Saudi women driving

Saudi Arabia

In 'The Theory Of Everything,' Science Takes A Back Seat

British science is having a cinematic moment, with The Theory of Everything now and The Imitation Game soon. Yet neither film has much science in it. These accounts of Stephen Hawking and Alan Turing, respectively, are engaging and well-crafted but modeled all too faithfully on old-school romantic dramas.

In the movie universe, scientific breakthroughs — even when they help defeat the Nazis, as Turing's did — must be less important than love. Which, come to think of it, is also the corn-belt communique beamed back from Interstellar, a film that relies on the cosmological savvy of Kip Thorne, one of Hawking's closest colleagues.

Thorne appears briefly in The Theory of Everything, which introduces several of Hawking's scientific peers but focuses on a single companion: the one who wrote the book from which co-producer Anthony McCarten's script is derived.

She's Jane Hawking, nee Wilde, as embodied by the ideally named Felicity Jones. Pretty and vivacious, yet not so delicate as she appears, Jane is irresistible to the young Stephen (Eddie Redmayne) when he spots her at a party. This is one of many incidents depicted in the film that didn't exactly happen. Every time an everyday event can be transformed into a movie moment, McCarten and director James Marsh (Man on Wire) go for it.

In broad outline, the story they tell is true. Hawking, a brilliant Ph.D. candidate at Cambridge, is distracted and disorganized, but becomes studiously focused on Jane. He's diagnosed with a motor neuron disease related to ALS soon after they meet, but she marries him anyway. Soon she has three young children and a husband whose body is withering.

The couple struggles medically and financially, but he retains his intellect and wit and she her radiance and good humor. She even learns enough of his work to illustrate the conflict between quantum mechanics and the general theory of relativity — using peas and potatoes — to Jonathan (Charlie Cox), a choirmaster who becomes an intimate family friend.

Stephen wins fame as the author of A Brief History of Time, although the equation that will unify all astrophysics remains elusive. (Marsh embodies the universe in a swirling cup, quoting not Einstein but Godard's Two or Three Things I Know About Her.) Then pneumonia — whose operatic onset is another fictionalized episode — leads to a tracheotomy, and further loss of ability to communicate.

Ultimately, Jane becomes very close to Jonathan, while Stephen does the same with a therapist (Maxine Peake). And so a 25-year marriage ends, a rupture that may have been a little stormier in actuality than in this sanitized telling. Although it probably is hard to get into a shouting match with a husband who speaks through a voice synthesizer.

Devolving from a man who seems a bit clumsy to one who can barely move at all, Redmayne gives an impressive physical performance. It recalls Daniel Day Lewis' in My Left Foot — minus the rage. There's little acrimony in The Theory of Everything, which may reflect Hawking's actual outlook or just the movie's puppyish desire to please.

As gentle and saintly as Jennifer Connolly's character in A Dangerous Mind, Jones' Jane is immensely appealing if a bit unbelievable. And since in movies the essence of female virtue is cuteness, Jane barely ages over three decades.

Perhaps she took a rejuvenating whirl through the wayback machine that, in one of the clunkier touches, rewinds the story at the movie's end. Certainly it feels as if the script did, yielding the time anomaly of a 2014 film that seems to have been written when its 72-year-old protagonist was still in short pants.

Tech Week: The New U.S. CTO, Silk Road 2.0, Amazon Echoes Siri

Happy weekend, folks. Here's our weekly roundup of the headlines in tech, from NPR and beyond.

ICYMI

Ms. Smith Goes To Washington: In our profile of the new U.S. Chief Technology Officer, Megan Smith, she talks about unconscious bias, how she fell in love with science and how being in tech over the past few decades as changed her.

Amazon Introduces Echo: The e-commerce giant's answer to Siri is Echo, a contextually aware virtual personal assistant that looks like a cylindrical speaker that you place in your home. You say "Alexa" before asking it a question about your schedule, instructing her to play music or to search something on the Web. (And the "Alexa" promotion has already inspired a parody...)

Talk To The Animals: Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed a dog harness, equipped with speakers and vibrating motors, that could be used in search and rescue or to improve dog training.

The Big Conversation

Silk Road 2.0 Goes Down: The original Silk Road went down after the FBI captured "Dread Pirate Roberts," a.k.a. Ross Ulbricht, who officials believe is the mastermind behind it and is currently in jail awaiting trial. The FBI seized the latest Silk Road this week, and according to Ars Technica, had been selling $8 million worth of drugs each month. Arrests in connection with underground online markets extended to 16 European countries.

No To Net Neutrality Hybrid: Demonstrators in two dozen American cities rallied against a proposal from the Federal Communications Commission that could allow Internet service providers to charge for paid "fast lanes" to their consumers. In Philadelphia, our member station WHYY reports about 30 protesters showed up at Comcast headquarters, with one sign reading "The lions are at the door."

Curiosities

The Awl: Sympathy for the Nerd

What does it mean to be a nerd, really? A touching piece on the breadth of nerds, and of human alienation.

Quartz: This Week's Top New iPhone App Is Helping Kids Cheat On Math Homework

I'm torn between thinking, "Yikes, this is terribly dishonest" and "Why wasn't this around when I was a kid?" You point your phone camera at an equation, the PhotoMath app solves the problem for you and gives you the step-by-step process on how to solve it.

The Washington Post: The controversial GPS device that helped police catch an alleged abductor

A GPS device planted in the suspect's car by the dealership that sold him the vehicle helped police find the man and his alleged victim, a woman whose abduction in Philadelphia was caught on surveillance video. The dealership had installed the GPS device because of his poor credit.

tech week

Hello 'Car Talk,' I Need A Good Car To Get Around Africa

When Tom Magliozzi, cohost of NPR's Car Talk, died this week from complications of Alzheimer's disease, he left behind a fan base that extended far beyond the United States. Tom and Ray, his younger brother, took calls from and gave advice to people all over the world.

Take, for example, the mother-daughter duo who wrote in about buying a car for a yearlong trip around the African continent. Tom and Ray responded via their blog, telling the women to skip buying and instead invest in a guide with a car. They recommended finding someone with a Toyota Land Cruiser, the "official vehicle of sub-Saharan Africa." That way, the tourists will have "an experienced driver, an on-board mechanic, a local translator, a cultural attach and someone to help you with whatever else comes up during your adventure — like hungry lions."

Tripping Into A Black Hole In This Week's Movies

I've learned a lot about physics this week at movie screenings, and let me start by saying I've no idea how much of it is accurate. All I can swear to is that it comes vetted by (or at least associated with) some very high-powered theoretical physicists.

Chief among them is Stephen Hawking, the subject of a biopic called The Theory of Everything, which starts with him as a young collegiate type, bracing for skepticism from his Cambridge professors about his doctoral dissertation. He needn't have bothered. They can scarcely contain their smiles as they query him about black holes, before telling him he'll henceforth be Dr. Hawking.

The young physicist then sets about trying to come up with a singular theory to prove space-time singularity, or ... something. Happily, The Theory of Everything is centered on Eddie Redmayne's terrifically physical performance, which (as ALS takes over Hawking's body) slowly reduces Redmayne to conveying emotion almost entirely through his eyes — a decent distraction from the film's inability to deal with science, especially the science of black holes.

Science!

Science

Stretch Or Splat? How A Black Hole Kills You Matters ... A Lot

13.7: Cosmos And Culture

Do Black Holes Exist?

13.7: Cosmos And Culture

Voyage To The Center Of A Black Hole

For that this week, you need to head for either San Fransokyo in Disney's animated Big Hero 6, or the outer rings of Saturn in Christopher Nolan's Interstellar. San Fransokyo being closer, let's head there first, in the company of an animated teen robotics nut named Hiro, and his five nerdier-than-thou, ethnically diverse buddies: Wasabi, Gogo, Honey Lemon, Fred, and an inflatable health robot named Baymax.

They're on a mission to stop a guy who's determined to suck them all into a wormhole — which is to say an Einstein-Rosen bridge between two black holes on opposite ends of ... well, I'm already out of my depth here. But the filmmakers consulted with Cal Tech's theoretical cosmologist Sean Carroll, who specializes in dark energy and relativity, so while Big Hero 6 is still a cartoon, it's not an uninformed one. Kids watching will have a leg up when they hear about this stuff in their science classes a decade from now.

Of course, that's assuming this stuff will still be taught in science classes a decade from now, a notion on which the movie Interstellar very quickly casts some doubt. Nolan's sci-fi epic portrays a near-future earth that has — in the wake of unspecified disasters that have unleashed drought and blight, and left a much diminished population unable to feed itself — grown science-averse. This is a problem because, as the title suggests, humankind needs to head to inhabitable planets elsewhere, and soon.

Although purged textbooks might keep students of the future from understanding this, the Laws of Physics say getting to other stars in time would be all but impossible. But a wormhole would fix that problem, and happily, one appears — extremely well vetted by physicist Kip Thorne, who is not only Interstellar's executive producer, but is also a friend of Stephen Hawking. An early treatment of the film's story reportedly had Hawking as a character, but that was scrapped. Instead, the filmmakers used his theories to accurately visualize a rapidly rotating black hole, so that Matthew McConaughey and friends could plunge into it.

Nolan's script goes so deeply into explaining black holes and their effect on time that if I were 19 and Interstellar were my 2001: A Space Odyssey, I'd be, um, over the moon. But I'm not, and it's not, so I contented myself with admiring its special effects. Which are indeed special, and precise enough, apparently, to inspire dissertations in their own right.

Wouldn't it be nice if Stephen Hawking weighed in?

'Viva La LibertГ ' Offers Harmless Electoral Fun

Whether you viewed this week's midterm elections as exhilarating or bruising, you're probably ready to move on at this point, which makes the timing problematic for Roberto And's lightweight election comedy, Viva La Libert (Long Live Freedom).

Not that opening the week before local elections last year did much for it at the Italian box office. Perhaps party scandals don't register as they once did. The film begins with Enrico Oliveri, a leftist politician who's used to losing, arriving at a party function feeling listless and out-of-sorts. His opposition party's poll numbers are in the tank. And his dull, bureaucratic speeches don't fire up crowds. They sometimes even get shouted down, and that's what happens with this supposedly friendly audience.

So, without telling a soul, including his wife, Enrico packs a suitcase and disappears to the out-of-country home of a somewhat startled ex-girlfriend he hasn't seen in years, determined to lay low for a few days and see what his party does without him.

Knowing the press will have a field day with the disappearance, his campaign manager frantically tries to find him, even contacting Enrico's brother Giovanni, who's just out of a mental institution. Enrico's identical twin brother, as it happens, and ... well, you see where this is headed. Unlike his political sibling, who never says anything remotely controversial to a reporter, cheerfully unbalanced Giovanni is a walking soundbite.

"Fear is the music of democracy," he tells a journalist who shows up while he and the campaign manager are dining in a cafe. "And in the chamber of deputies, not one idiot knows he's an idiot."

The interview makes headlines — good headlines for a change — and the campaign manager decides to see if Giovanni can deliver an actual speech, only to have him crumple it up and say he'll just improvise.

"You must be crazy," sputters the manager.

"So they say," chuckles the imposter, who is soon charming union leaders, whipping campaign crowds into a frenzy, and dancing barefoot with a previously skeptical Madame Chancellor, quite literally sweeping her off her feet ... along with the electorate.

The film's writing isn't as pointed as it might be. Giovanni rallies his leftist troops with speeches every bit as bromide-filled as most political chatter. And director And doesn't worry much about what having an actual madman in office might do to Italian politics. He seems content to let actor Toni Servillo lark about, alternately depressively and irrepressibly, as the two brothers. As for the party-that-never-wins having to actually govern — that's a scenario that might be fun to watch ... playing out harmlessly on screen.

Even After SpaceShipTwo Crash, Many Space Tourists Hold Onto Tickets

The dream of hundreds of space tourists was dealt a blow last Friday when Virgin Galactic's experimental SpaceShipTwo broke up over California's Mojave Desert. The pilot was injured and the co-pilot died in the accident.

But many are still holding on to their tickets.

"We're in a testing phase, and things happen," says Jim Clash, an adventure journalist who put down a $20,000 deposit on his $200,000 ticket in 2010. (Prices for tickets have since risen to $250,000.)

Clash has no plans to cancel. "I've done a lot of the things I've wanted to do on my bucket list, but space is something I haven't done," he says. "And I really want to do it."

SpaceShipTwo doesn't travel all the way into orbit. It's designed to rocket just to the edge of space and then float back to earth. Passengers get a couple of minutes of weightlessness and one heck of a view. That was enough to get hundreds of people to sign up.

Since the accident, Virgin Galactic reports that 20 or so ticket-holders have asked for refunds. Among them, the U.K.'s Princess Beatrice, according to media reports.

"That doesn't surprise me, I think there's a group actually, that bought the tickets because they're fashionable," says Clash.

But more serious ticket-holders seem to be hanging on, at least for now.

"We think that this is going to be a very productive area across the 2010s and into the 2020s for research applications," says Alan Stern, an associate vice-president with the Southwest Research Institute, a nonprofit research institute based in Texas. The institute has bought a total of nine seats on future flights for their own experiments. "We want to be out front," Stern says.

Both Clash and Stern say they expected setbacks when they purchased their tickets. "Just like the early airlines and the early jet age, there will be some bumps along the road," Stern says.

And despite the fact the NTSB investigation could take up to a year (and the fact that SpaceShipTwo's replacement isn't yet ready to fly), Clash doesn't see himself cancelling his ticket.

"I'm willing to wait as long as it takes," he says.

SpaceShipTwo

Virgin Galactic

Jet Fuel Is Down, But Not Enough For A Thanksgiving Fare War

Airlines are paying less for jet fuel these days. But don't expect that price drop to translate into Thanksgiving travel bargains for you.

Rather than cut fares, airlines are turning fuel savings into cash for acquiring aircraft, upgrading software, rewarding workers and attracting long-term investors, according to John Heimlich, chief economist for Airlines For America, A4A, a trade group.

The major carriers that filed for bankruptcy during the Great Recession have learned to be more "fiscally responsible," Heimlich told reporters Thursday. After years of fighting with creditors, "they are paying their bills," he said.

In the long run, "enhanced creditworthiness" will create a more stable industry that can better serve travelers, Heimlich said.

But for now, those bill-paying efforts are sending air fares higher, with carriers pushing them up five times this year, according to Farecompare.com.

While A4A notes that fares are lower than in 2000 after adjusting for inflation, consumers might point out that today's higher fees and taxes have driven up total travel costs. In addition, in many markets, fliers have fewer choices following a merger wave that combined American Airlines with US Airways; United with Continental; Delta with Northwest; and Southwest with AirTran.

Business

Regulators And Airlines Fight Over Fares, Fees And Fairness

Heimlich points out that the consolidated industry needs additional revenue to keep pace with higher operating costs for aircraft loan payments, rents, landing fees, new software and skilled labor.

In fact, the industry's capital expenditures for the first nine months of this year amounted to more than $1 billion per month — the highest rate of reinvestment in 13 years, he said. Customers are benefiting from those investments by getting more Wi-Fi options, updated gate areas, new aircraft and better kiosks.

These upgrades may attract more travelers in the future, but for now, domestic air traffic growth has been restrained, still running below pre-recession levels.

Heimlich predicts that this year's improving economy will help nudge up air travel to 24.6 million passengers over the Thanksgiving travel period, an increase of 1.5 percent from last year. But that number is still about 6 percent lower than the Thanksgiving period before the recession hit, he said.

He says this year, Sunday, Nov. 30, will be the busiest air travel day of this year, followed by Wednesday, Nov. 26.

George Hobica, founder of Airfarewatchdog.com, says bargain hunters have better luck finding cheap flights when they are willing to accept "middle seats next to the lavatory, red-eye flights, or 5 a.m. departures."

air travel

Airlines

For-Profit Colleges Sue The Federal Government Over Student Loan Rules

A trade group representing more than 1,400 for-profit colleges has filed a lawsuit against the federal government over regulations aimed at curbing industry abuses.

The group seeks to stop a federal regulation, known as the "gainful employment rule," that was formally put into place last week by the U.S. Department of Education. The rule restricts access to federal student-aid dollars for institutions deemed to have too many students who struggle to pay back their student loans.

The rule is aimed at cracking down on institutions that charge excessive tuition, especially for programs that have little value on the job market. The Department of Education says the regulation could potentially affect up to 840,000 students, and, the trade group says, 3.5 million in the next 10 years. Two million students are currently enrolled in for-profits.

The for-profit colleges depend heavily on federal aid money, and the lawsuit filed Thursday is the latest salvo in a battle that has now stretched over five years and at least one other lawsuit.

At issue in the current suit are the criteria used to determine whether, and how many, students are struggling. The Education Department is proposing to compare graduates' student loan debt to their earnings. The schools say such a measure is unfair because how much money students make after graduating is not in their control.

"The gainful employment regulation is nothing more than a bad-faith attempt to cut off access to education for millions of students who have been historically underserved by higher education," Steve Gunderson, president and CEO of the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities, which brought the lawsuit, said in a statement.

Dorie Nolt, the Education Department press secretary, said, "We're confident that the department is within its legal authority in issuing gainful employment regulations that will protect students and taxpayers' investments by bringing more accountability and transparency to career training programs."

Barmak Nassirian, an independent policy analyst, says the legal case is really trying to get at something much bigger: "An industry is really challenging the right of an agency to question its entitlement to free federal money."

Both he and Ben Miller, a senior education policy analyst at the New America Foundation, say that even should the rule survive this new challenge in court, enforcement efforts could be defunded by the new Republican-controlled Congress, or the idea could be axed altogether by the next president.

Bottom line, Nassirian says, "I think 'gainful' is as good as dead politically."

And, Miller points out, in the long run having the rule on the books may be beside the point.

He notes that enrollment in for-profit colleges fell by about 250,000 students between 2010 and 2012. "Three things happened," he explains. "First, when the department started this process in 2010, it started to freak schools out and force them to go re-evaluate programs and close or shrink the poor performers."

Miller points to the example of one-year certificate programs in criminal justice that advertised after the popular CSI drama series on TV but gave graduates few plausible job prospects.

Second, media attention over the past few years has highlighted the problems with these and other practices in the for-profit industry.

"Continued public attention got students to be more discerning in consumer choices," Miller said.

Finally, he added, the financial troubles and collapse of Corinthian Colleges this summer took one of the most frequently criticized large players out of the picture.

All of which means, Miller said, that "the idea behind the rule works faster than the rule itself."

Jet Fuel Is Down, But Not Enough For A Thanksgiving Fare War

Airlines are paying less for jet fuel these days. But don't expect that price drop to translate into Thanksgiving travel bargains for you.

In the long run, "enhanced creditworthiness" will create a more stable industry that can better serve travelers, Heimlich said.

But for now, those bill-paying efforts are sending air fares higher, with carriers pushing them up five times this year, according to Farecompare.com.

Business

Regulators And Airlines Fight Over Fares, Fees And Fairness

Heimlich points out that the consolidated industry needs additional revenue to keep pace with higher operating costs for aircraft loan payments, rents, landing fees, new software and skilled labor.

These upgrades may attract more travelers in the future, but for now, domestic air traffic growth has been restrained, still running below pre-recession levels.

He says this year, Sunday, Nov. 30, will be the busiest air travel day of this year, followed by Wednesday, Nov. 26.

air travel

Airlines

Book News: John Steinbeck Story Resurfaces After 70 Years

More than 70 years since it surfaced in public, John Steinbeck's story "With Your Wings" will see publication in print today for the first time Friday. The Associated Press reports that, despite being read during a 1944 radio broadcast by Orson Welles, the story had never been put to page and released — so far as experts are aware.

Andrew F. Gulli, managing editor of The Strand Magazine, reportedly stumbled across a transcript of Welles' broadcast during a trawl through the archives at University of Texas at Austin. The piece itself is very much of its time, a wartime story that dwells on the challenges of a black American pilot's return home.

"Steinbeck was an idealist. He saw America as this wonderful land with so much to offer but on the flip side, he could see inequality, he could see greed and excess destroying the working classes," Gulli told the AP in an email. "This story strikes me as an effort to show middle America that African-Americans were carrying on a huge burden in defending the United States and the allies during the war."

The story appears in the quarterly's holiday issue, which is out today.

In The Nick Of Time: Joshua Ferris has won the 2014 International Dylan Thomas Prize. In a ceremony Thursday night, the American author's recent novel, To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, beat out a shortlist of six other books that included such favorites as The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton's 2013 Man Booker Prize winner; and Eimear McBride's Baileys Prize-winning A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing.

The Dylan Thomas prize, which awards just under $50,000 to "the best published or produced literary work in the English language," this year bumped up its age limit from 30 to 39 years old, the age at which the poet himself died. And the rule change came not a moment too soon for Ferris, who turns 40 on Saturday.

Peter Stead, the president of the prize, raved about this year's winner, calling it "a novel which encapsulates the frustration, energy and humor that goes into the making of New York."

It's a sentiment echoed by Michael Schaub, in his review of the book for NPR. "To Rise Again at a Decent Hour isn't just one of the best novels of the year, it's one of the funniest, and most unexpectedly profound, works of fiction in a very long time."

Calvin's Creator, Back In Panels: Bill Watterson, the man behind the beloved Calvin and Hobbes, has made another tentative step back toward the spotlight this week. Tapped for honors at the Angouleme International Comics Festival in France, Watterson drew up a brand-new strip to serve as the festival's poster. Reporter Steve Silberman tweeted the madcap results.

1st new comic in 20 years from creator of Calvin and Hobbes. Delightful and needs no caption. http://t.co/qE0xiBTS3R pic.twitter.com/nWpcwdmygN

— Steve Silberman (@stevesilberman) November 5, 2014

Audio Expansion At Scribd: The e-book subscription service Scribd has announced a massive expansion to its catalog, adding more than 30,000 audiobooks to the e-book titles it already offers. The move adds a new layer to Scribd, which began in 2007 as a document sharing website and just over a year ago launched its e-book lending arm.

The new audiobooks will be available to subscribers under their current plan of $8.99, and the library will feature not just older titles, but frontlisted ones. According to TechCrunch, the availability of these newer titles is owed partly to a subscription model introduced by the Amazon-owned audiobook service, Audible, which figures to be an immediate competitor.

With the new addition, Scribd says its e-book service now totals more than 500,000 books.

Young Obsession: At The Millions, Jared Young offers an appreciation of Michael Crichton, who passed away six years ago this week. With it, Young pairs a few stories of his own desperate attempts — and failures — to follow in the considerable footsteps of the man himself.

"What fascinated me about Michael Crichton's books was that they were so utterly, magnificently plausible," he writes. "It had seemed, at the outset, like an easy thing to accomplish, but I soon faced the unfortunate truth: I wasn't a novelist ... not, at least, in the meticulous, academic manner of Michael Crichton."

michael crichton

Orson Welles

Book News

Dylan Thomas

books

For-Profit Colleges Sue The Federal Government