Can one review Naomi Wolf's Vagina without a graphic?

When Vagina is right in the title of the book, very, very difficult to dodge that, eh!

The Economist has this:

The New York Review of Books has this in its home page, and then has a more arty full-nudity in the inner pages.

The Guardian shows that the book can, indeed, be reviewed without using any such props, and the graphics there are photos of Wolf.

Sure, the images that the Economist and the NYRB have used are arty and wonderful, but were they really needed?

In reviewing Jesse Bering's book, Why is the penis shaped like that?, will these magazines then include graphics of the penis?  (Click here for the post I did after reading the article in the Scientific American.) Or, perhaps not using any arty male nudity will be a reflection of that old and tested idea that both men and women find the nude female body to be beautiful to look at, whereas very few among both the genders find the nude male body truly an arresting view!

The Guardian's approach to review is more, for want of a better word, straightforward, while both the Economist and the NYRB want to draw the reader in by resorting to a Fox News-like sensationalism.

The NYRB opens with:

Lady, love your cunt.

The Economist's review begins thus:

FOR Shakespeare it was a “detested, dark, blood-drinking pit”; to Henry Miller, “that bushy twat”. That special place between a woman’s legs has been a “Heavenly Gate” to Chinese Taoists,

Contrast those with the opening sentences in the Guardian piece:

Naomi Wolf has been one of the world's most famous feminists for more than 20 years and she herself admits it is a very odd job. When she wrote The Beauty Myth in 1991, she was 27 years old, enrolled on a PhD course and not intending to make her career in the field of feminist criticism

Oh well.  It is not that I am going to read this book anyway; never been a fan of Wolf's work.  But, I suspect that the Economist and NYRB are intentionally using those images to minimize her book--subliminal slighting!

Protectionism and currency battles

Somehow, I cannot imagine Christine "I am not a witch" O'Donnell casting a meaningful Senate vote on bills that address anything remotely related to the following discussions :)
(editor: why pick on O'Donnell?  You think Al Franken can? Awshutup!)

My increasingly favorite economist Raghuram Rajan is interviewed by Der Spiegel:

SPIEGEL: China and India are advancing to become the engines of the world economy, whereas the economies in the old industrialized world have become sluggish. What is the future role of economies like those of the US, France or Germany?
Rajan: The traditional industrial countries have to be prepared for the fact that they will lose their natural advantages. Let me give you an example: When you're working for a fashion company in Milan, you just have to look outside your window to be inspired. But the new customers live far away -- in Shanghai, for example. That's where the demand is and where the designs will soon have to be created. Things will not be as easy in Milan as they once were.
SPIEGEL: So you're saying that Western companies will not only be moving parts of their production abroad, but also services?
Rajan: The central question is this: How can industrial companies serve the demand that is developed thousands of miles away? This is the great challenge for the coming years. I suspect that in such an environment protectionist impulses will get stronger.

Over at Financial Times, Martin Wolf explains how the global economic wars are being fought:

To put it crudely, the US wants to inflate the rest of the world, while the latter is trying to deflate the US. The US must win, since it has infinite ammunition: there is no limit to the dollars the Federal Reserve can create. What needs to be discussed is the terms of the world’s surrender: the needed changes in nominal exchange rates and domestic policies around the world.

Hey, Professor Bernanke, rev up those dollar bill machines :) 

Wolf adds:

The global consequences are evident: the policy will raise prices of long-term assets and encourage capital to flow into countries with less expansionary monetary policies (such as Switzerland) or higher returns (such as emerging economies). This is what is happening. The Washington-based Institute for International Finance forecasts net inflows of capital from abroad into emerging economies of more than $800bn in 2010 and 2011. It also forecasts massive intervention by recipients of this capital, albeit at a falling rate (see chart).
Recipients of the capital inflow, be they advanced or emerging countries, face uncomfortable choices: let the exchange rate appreciate, so impairing external competitiveness; intervene in currency markets, so accumulating unwanted dollars, threatening domestic monetary stability and impairing external competitiveness; or curb the capital inflow, via taxes and controls. Historically, governments have chosen combinations of all three. That will be the case this time, too.

WTF is all I can think now!