(cache) Mike Pence Pretends That Donald Trump Never Happened

Isaac Robert Cruikshank / Lewis Walpole Library / Wikimedia

The Psychology of Victim-Blaming

Kayleigh Roberts

When people want to believe that the world is just, and that bad things won’t happen to them, empathy can suffer.

In August, the comedian and former Inside Amy Schumer writer Kurt Metzger reignited a national conversation about victim-blaming when he posted a series of rants on social media criticizing the ways women report being the victim of a crime and the effects of those reports on the accused. After the Upright Citizens Brigade theater in New York banned a performer in the wake of several women accusing him of sexual assault and abuse, Metzger took to Facebook.

"I know because women said it and that's all I need! Never you mind who they are. They are women! ALL women are as reliable as my bible! A book that, much like a women, is incapable of lying!” Metzger wrote in a now-deleted Facebook post. He went on to seemingly criticize women for not going to the police, adding “If we ask them to even merely also post a vague account of what happened before asking us to believe that would like re-raping their rape!”

Abortion Returns to the Debate

Emma Green

The issue finally came up at the vice-presidential debate on Tuesday night, showing why religion and conscience are important in this election.

In a debate filled with yelling and interruptions, it was the moment when Tim Kaine and Mike Pence finally got quiet: They were talking about their struggles with faith. Kaine spoke about having to preside over executions while he was governor of Virginia, even though he’s morally opposed to the death penalty. Pence, however, turned the question around and brought up an issue no moderator has dared to ask about: abortion.

“For me ... the sanctity of life proceeds out of a belief in that ancient principle of God,” Pence said. “What I cannot understand is Hillary Clinton—how she can support a process like partial-birth abortion.” He recognized that Kaine “holds pro-life views,” but “I cannot conscience a party that supports that.”

Clinton and Trump Are Shuffling the Electoral Map

Ronald Brownstein

Democrats are increasingly looking toward Sunbelt states rather than Rustbelt states for victory in 2016 and beyond. Not long ago that would have been unthinkable.

In the campaign’s final weeks, Hillary Clinton’s position now looks stronger in Florida than in Ohio; in Virginia than in Wisconsin; and in Colorado and even North Carolina than in Iowa.

In other news, the sun today rose in the West.

With Trump advancing in Rustbelt states dominated by older and blue-collar whites and struggling in Sunbelt states that contain more younger, college-educated and minority voters, these starkly polarized patterns of support are reconfiguring the Electoral College map by accelerating long-developing trends rooted in changing demography and shifting partisan allegiance. From the mid-1960s through the early part of this century, this pattern of relatively greater strength for Clinton in the Sunbelt than Rustbelt would have been unrecognizable to Democratic strategists. Now, The 2016 race is explosively fast-forwarding changes in the campaign map that many political professionals had expected to unfold more gradually over the next decade.

Western Fashion Is Turning the World's Offices Into Freezers

Sarah Zhang

Can loose-fitting, breathable outfits help countries resist the West’s energy-wasting air-conditioning habits?

In the beginning, in offices, there were men in suits. And ties and calf-length dress socks and shirts buttoned all the way up top. In other words, men perfectly comfortable with having the air conditioning on full blast.

And so, as anyone who has suffered in frigid offices can attest, that became the standard in office buildings.

In the academic world of “thermal-comfort” research, men in suits became the standard, too. The mathematical models for thermal comfort assumed as much. As more women entered the workforce, researchers caught up to study women’s clothing. But in recent years, an even bigger change is afoot: Thermal comfort research is shifting to the developing world. And western clothing is no longer the only standard.

Pence Upstages Trump

David A. Graham

The Indiana governor overshadowed Tim Kaine, his Democratic rival—even as he declined to defend his own running mate.

For a summit derided as a showdown between two affable boring suits, Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate turned out to be an acrimonious affair. If this was a pair of dads, they were the type who get into near fist-fights on the sidelines of Pop Warner games, not the friendly ones who cheer for both teams.

Mike Pence, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, dominated throughout the night. He was smooth, smiling, and unflappable. Tim Kaine, his Democratic counterpart, wasn’t able to break through, trying—often unsuccessfully—to cut in to rebut Pence, and to deliver a series of carefully prepared one-liners. But Pence, the governor of Indiana, seldom took the bait, grinning, raising his eyebrows in mock surprise, and shaking off Kaine’s attacks with a Reagan-style shrug. At one point he even copped the Gipper’s line: “There they go again,” he said.

An overhead shot of students with open notebooks on desks in a lecture hall — Michaela Rehle / Reuters

Why the 'Safe-Space' Debate Is a Problem for Adjuncts

Oliver Bateman

The debate over academic freedom and the desire to make students feel welcome leaves professors’ job security in a precarious limbo.

The University of Chicago lit up social-media feeds last month after its dean of students published a letter informing incoming freshmen that “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings” had no place on a campus dedicated to “freedom of inquiry and expression.”

Although some journalists noted that the letter may have been aimed at pleasing high-profile right-wing donors, opposition to such measures doesn’t track neatly along party lines. Neither the Marxist philosopher Slavoj Žižek nor the paleoconservative pundit Ann Coulter has much use for so-called “political correctness” measures.

As is usually the case with blanket denunciations of these terms, the dean’s letter doesn’t bother to define either “safe space” or “trigger warning”—a major problem for adjuncts and other vulnerable university employees, whether they are required to use them or to refrain from doing so. And since safe spaces are now a critical part of modern pedagogy, students may have utilized them in other areas long before encountering harried, at-will instructors thrust into introductory courses at the very last minute.

Is Clinton Hatred Fueled by Dislike for Trump?

Conor Friedersdorf

One way to talk yourself into supporting a candidate is to decide that the alternative is flatly unacceptable.

When Hillary Clinton won the Democratic Party’s nomination, I knew that she was in for harsh criticism. She is a flawed candidate, conservatives disagree with much of her agenda, and most Republicans have disliked her since Bill Clinton was president. I also figured that, as usual, some of the attacks would stray into hyperbole.

As it turns out, some have strayed into hysteria.

Publius Decius Mus suggested that “a Hillary Clinton presidency is Russian Roulette with a semi-auto.” Angelo Codevilla wrote that the republic is dead. A conservative acquaintance told me that her victory would be like “the fall of Rome all over again.” Why does their rhetoric so far exceed the words these Bill Clinton- and Barack Obama-haters used when those presidents were elected, even though there is every indication that Hillary Clinton would govern much as her predecessors?

On the Right to Know Everything

Ta-Nehisi Coates

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Here’s an interesting piece from Hamilton Nolan arguing for a rather expansive journalistic mission. The cause is the recent unmasking of celebrated novelist Elena Ferrante. As most of her fans know, “Elena Ferrante” is (or was) a pseudonym. Nolan believes that the revelation of Ferrante’s real name and identity, against her wishes, is at the core of what journalism is ultimately about:

The very general proposition of journalism is this: The public has a right to know true things that are important to the public. It is the job of journalists to supply the public with these true things. This broad idea applies in practice not just to the goings-on of government, but to crime, and business, and science, and sports, and the actions of all sorts of people who are famous and/or notorious, either temporarily or permanently.

Rick Osterloh, Google's senior vice president for hardware, introduces the Pixel phone — Beck Diefenbach / Reuters

Why Google Is Building Its Own Phones Now

Kaveh Waddell

The company wants to beat Apple at its own game.

It was the sort of thing Steve Jobs might’ve said at an Apple event: “It’s details like these we worked hard to get right—these little things that make the whole experience easier and more seamless.” But it wasn’t him—it was a guy named Clay Bavor.

Bavor is Google’s vice president for virtual reality, and he was talking about the company’s new VR headset. And in the hour before he climbed on a stage in San Francisco Tuesday morning, a slew of other Google executives shot off similar lines as they announced a new smartphone called Pixel, the first-ever Android phone designed entirely by Google.

The whole product-launch event sounded equal parts Google and Apple. It built on Google’s strengths—nearly two decades of search-engine dominance—at the same time as it took direct aim at Apple’s hardware throne.

Sam Kurtul / 2016 National Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year

2016 National Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year Contest

Alan Taylor

National Geographic Magazine has opened its annual photo contest, with the deadline for submissions coming up on November 4.

National Geographic Magazine has opened its annual photo contest, with the deadline for submissions coming up on November 4. The Grand Prize Winner will receive a 10-day trip for two to the Galapagos Islands. The kind folks at National Geographic were once more kind enough to let me choose among the contest entries so far for display here. The captions below were written by the individual photographers.