Robert Wright

In truth, this would represent no such departure. Long before these talks, the US signaled that Iran could be allowed to enrich uranium--as is permitted under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty--if new, more intrusive monitoring measures could ensure that the uranium isn't part of a weapons program.

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Is it a bad sign that this rings true to me? I don't mean that spending five minutes on Facebook leaves me despondent and alienated. But with both Facebook and Twitter, there's something weird about the experience that keeps me from diving in wholeheartedly.

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Kristol noticed, in a Sunday Times piece about Breitbart, the parenthetical embedded in this sentence: "For good or ill (and most would say ill), no one did it like Mr. Breitbart." Kristol thinks the author of the piece, David Carr, is "intelligent enough" that he wouldn't have written this. "I suspect this parenthesis was added by Times editors who couldn't stand the notion that innocent people might read Carr's piece and decide that Andrew's achievements were, on the whole, admirable."

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I remember thinking, "But how many people are so worried about crime that they're going to strap a camera to their head?" With Google glasses now officially unveiled, the answer is in: Just as smartphone cameras piggyback on a pocket computer, head-mounted cameras could become standard equipment as part of a bigger, more broadly useful package. That's why Brin's future will probably arrive, sooner or later. Is that a good thing?

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The existence of partially democratic enclaves within a democratic system does not necessarily discredit it. Residents of Washington, D.C., are taxed without representation, while those in the U.S. territories -- Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands -- cannot vote in presidential elections. Anomalies exist in every democracy, and Israel's is not voided by the situation in the West Bank.

It's true that within its 1967 borders Israel is a democracy, and that this democracy isn't "voided" by the situation in the West Bank. But I don't think Beinart ever said it was--in fact, Beinart refers to the Israel within those borders as "democratic Israel." The argument, rather, is about how we should think of the West Bank. Oren wants us to think of it as meaningfully analogous to the District of Columbia and to US territories such as Puerto Rico. I have some problems with that. For example:

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The piece consists of advice Derbyshire has given his children for navigating a world featuring black people, and one of his tips is, "Avoid concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally."

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Apparently I was being too optimistic. Only hours after I posted the piece, the two-state solution was pronounced dead by someone who knows a lot more about this than I do--Gideon Levy, columnist for Haaretz, a.k.a. "the New York Times of Israel." Levy wrote, "It's time to raise the white flag, to admit publicly that the two-state solution has been foiled." It was doomed, he says, by "the plundering settlers, the establishment that embraces them and the majority of Israelis, who do not lift a finger to stop them."

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Let's be clear about one thing: Jennifer Rubin doesn't have the slightest idea what she's talking about.

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A quick refresher: Two and a half years ago, Woods's wife, wielding a golf club, chased an Ambien-addled Woods out of their house and into his Cadillac SUV, which, with her in hot pursuit, he drove into a fire hydrant and a neighbor's tree. Then came a parade of purported mistresses, a remarkably brief sex-addiction rehab, a speedy divorce, and a sustained inability to win golf tournaments--in particular, an inability to win one of the four annual "majors". Woods needs five more majors to break Jack Nicklaus's record of 18 and claim the "greatest golfer ever" title--a goal that once seemed assured and is now in doubt. But two weeks ago Woods won his first PGA tournament since his career collapse, and now, at the first of this year's four majors, he seems poised for a breakthrough. Today, on the first day of the Masters, he fought adversity to wind up at par, and he's very much in the running to win the tournament come Sunday.

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My view is if anything more pessimistic. But apparently I should cheer up: After I last expressed that pessimism, fellow Atlantic contributor Zvika Krieger explained that it rests on confusion.

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I have a question for you men out there: Are your erections less strong? "Than what?" you may ask. To which I reply: Don't ask me! I'm not the one who designed the "Low T Quiz."

The Low T Quiz is a ten-question online survey designed to tell whether you suffer from low testosterone. It was put together by Abbott Laboratories--a company that, coincidentally, sells a prescription testosterone supplement called Androgel.

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It might be nice if there were communications equipment whose use is inherently confined to evasive maneuvers. But I'm not aware of any. Inevitably, the equipment we're giving the rebels will help them organize as they attack Syria's military, not just as they retreat. It may even help them attack Syrian civilians who share the Alawite ethnicity of Syrian president Bashar al Assad. (Rebel attacks on Alawite civilians took place during the siege of Homs.) What's more, according to the Syrian National Council, this "communications equipment" is going to include night-vision goggles--and I doubt it's just nighttime evasions that the rebels have in mind.

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Joe Nocera of the New York Times, contemplating prospects such as this, says it's time to just make it official: Let's call college basketball (and football) players pros and use some of the revenue from TV rights and merchandise licensing to pay them real salaries.

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Instead I'll complain about his replacement, Eliot Spitzer. It isn't so much the prostitution scandal, though in an ideal world that might have counted against him. My bigger problem is this: If Current TV is going to anoint a guy to carry the progressive banner, couldn't they check out his foreign policy positions as well as his domestic policy positions?

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This fix came up in Wednesday's Supreme Court argument when Justice Sotomayor showed that she is indeed a "wise Latina woman" by suggesting the following: Charge every American a health care tax and then hand out exemptions to those who buy insurance. In other words: Just rename the financial "penalty" imposed on those who don't buy insurance. If you call it a tax instead of a penalty, then the "mandate" to own insurance won't be a mandate, and the constitutionality question won't arise.

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Alain de Botton, author of The Consolations of Philosophy and How Proust Can Change Your Life, has a new book out called Religion for Atheists. It encourages atheists to appreciate things religions do well--ranging from fostering community to orchestrating rites of passage--and come up with
comparably effective atheist versions of them.

De Botton, himself a confirmed atheist, is surprised by how much blowback he's gotten from prominent atheists over this idea. Here he discusses that, and further down the page he talks about (1) how universities could do a better job of one thing religion has long done--conveying wisdom; and (2) how atheists might develop rirtuals comparable to a bar mitzvah or Catholic confirmation.

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Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that the facts of the case are basically as Zimmerman's defenders claim: Zimmerman killed Martin because Martin was beating him up and Zimmerman felt his life was in danger. Even so, it seems to me that Zimmerman should do jail time for killing Martin.

Here are some things we know about the case:

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Headline of the weekend goes to "30,000 Godless Undeterred by Rain." It was a reference to the "Reason Rally," which brought lots of atheists and agnostics onto the Washington Mall.

Some of my best friends are reasonable, and I try to be that way myself most of the time, but there is one thing about this rally that bothered me: the intermittent lack of reasonableness evinced by its most famous participant, Richard Dawkins.

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