Dish Staff

Will That Cohiba Taste The Same Without The Mystique?

by Dish Staff

Roberto Ferdman deflates some of the hype surrounding Cuban cigars, which Americans will soon be able to buy more easily:

Each year, Cigar Aficionado, the leading industry magazine, publishes a list of the top 25 cigars in the world. Last year, the number one cigar was the Montecristo no. 2, which is made in Cuba. But only two of the remaining 24 also came from the country. By contrast, 11 were from the Dominican Republic, and 10 were made in Nicaragua. The magazine has yet to reveal its top pick for 2014, but among the remaining 24 the vast majority are once again from countries other than Cuba. And a similar pattern can be seen in virtually every year that the publication has issued its rankings. “The playing field has been leveled,” said David Savona, executive editor of Cigar Aficionado.

Alison Griswold suspects that the storied tobacco derives its reputation from scarcity as much as from anything else:

“It’s a forbidden fruit,” explains Eric Newman, president of Tampa, Florida-based J.C. Newman Cigar Company, a cigar manufacturer. “The biggest market in the world prohibits them from entering the marketplace.” Rather than deterring U.S. consumers, that ban may have in fact proved the biggest selling point for Cuban cigars over the last 50 years. People in the industry compare their allure to that of Coors beer before it became easily available beyond the American west. So great was the East Coast’s unrequited love for Coors in the 1970s that the quest to bring the beer from West to East was depicted in the popular 1977 film Smokey and the Bandit.

With both Coors and Cuban cigars, the question has been whether the product is ultimately worth the hype surrounding it. “Coors isn’t a bad beer, but is it the best beer in the world?” [president of Corona Cigar Company Jeff] Borysiewicz asks. “Cuban cigars are kind of the same way.”

But Dylan Matthews relays some evidence that Cubans really are superior:

So Cuba produces some excellent cigars. But do they, on average, surpass those of other countries? A 2003 paper in the Quarterly Journal of Economics and Finance suggests yes. The University of Virginia’s David Freccia and Wesleyan’s Joyce Jacobsen and Peter Kilby collected Cigar Aficionado quality ratings and price data for 689 different cigars, and sought to identify determinants of both high prices and high ratings. They took into account a battery of subjective factors — did the Cigar Aficionado review describe the cigar as mild? as well built? as smooth? was it nutty or cocoa-y or creamy? — as well as national origins.

They found that the single most important determinant of both prices and ratings was whether or not the cigar originated from Cuba. Being from Cuba bumped up a cigar’s rating by 4.05 points on a 100-point scale, on average; by contrast, being described as “well built” only gained a cigar 1.28 points, and being “leathery” only resulted in a 1.87 point gain.

(Photo by Alex Brown)

Cast Away

by Dish Staff

Chris Mooney flags a troubling new study finding that the world’s oceans now contain more than five trillion pieces of plastic, weighing more than 250,000 tons:

With a global population of about 7.2 billion, that’s nearly 700 pieces per person.

The study, published in the journal PLOS One by Marcus Eriksen of the Five Gyres Institute in Los Angeles and a large group of colleagues, is based on data from 24 separate ocean expeditions, conducted between 2007 and 2013, to sample plastic pollution. Plastic was either observed from boats, or hauled up from the ocean by nets, in 1,571 locations. The data were then used to run an ocean model to simulate the amount and distribution of plastic debris.

The result not only yielded the estimate of over 5 trillion pieces of plastic in the global ocean — it also cast light on how plastic changes within the ocean (breaking down into smaller pieces) and circulates around the globe. Pieces between 1 millimeter and 4.75 millimeters in size were by far the most prevalent class of plastic in the ocean. However, by weight, really large pieces of plastic, greater than 200 millimeters in size, were the most significant.

Katy Steinmetz touches on efforts to rein in microbeads – the tiny bits of plastic found in exfoliating body washes and face scrubs – which contribute significantly to this problem:

These little orbs, introduced to replace harsher exfoliants like pumice, are so small that after they’re washed down the sink or tub, they sneak through sifters at water treatment plants and end up in the ocean and other bodies of water. Once in the ocean, researchers have found, these plastics act like sponges for toxins, and can be accidentally ingested by fish, thus ending up in the food chain. Several states considered bills to ban microbeads last session, but only Illinois passed a law, becoming the first state to do so. Now lawmakers in at least three states are gearing up for another go in 2015.

“We were outgunned,” says Stiv Wilson, associate director at 5 Gyres, a non-profit dedicated to fighting plastic pollution. In California, the industry group Personal Care Products Council—which represents companies like Johnson & Johnson and Clinique—lobbied members to oppose a bill that would have banned the use of microbeads, saying it was “overly aggressive and unrealistic.” The bill failed by one vote. The same state assemblyman who proposed that bill, Richard Bloom, plans to try again, with what Wilson says will be a “much broader coalition” of supporters.

Previous Dish on microbeads here and plastic more generally in the oceans here.

(Image via Antonio Foncubierta)

The Simpsons, Eternal

by Dish Staff

Marking the show’s 25th birthday yesterday, Todd VanDerWerff pens an appreciation:

Yes, the show repeats itself a fair amount, but it would be hard for it not to. And, yes, the show has sort of lost a point-of-view character, as its writers have aged past first the Simpson kids and then even the Simpson parents. Many stories in its later years tend to be along the lines of “Can you believe things are this way?!” and have the tone of a particularly perturbed anecdote in the “Life in These United States” feature in Reader’s Digest. All of these things mean it’s hard for the program to create classic episodes week in and week out now.

But what the [recent Simpsons] marathon underlined for me, more than anything, is that the series has attempted to stay true to its characters, and that it still takes chances, especially in its visuals. Both of these things are immensely important to its longevity, and the fact that it remains a pretty reliable form of entertainment from week to week. Seeing all of the episodes one after the other made the continuum that much more apparent: the show started great, became absolutely brilliant, then declined back to just great, before taking a few seasons to find a plateau of better than average.

Listening For The Voice Of God

In an interview about his new book, A Mess of Help: From the Crucified Soul of Rock’n’Roll, David Zahl notices that many of the artists he profiles – who range from ABBA to Morrissey to Axl Rose – “point to some sense of strength being found in weakness, of inspiration being bound up with suffering rather than apart from it.” Still, he’s wary of the didactic approach Christians too often bring to their cultural commentary:

That phrase “Christian approach” often implies that religious people should approach things with trepidation and/or suspicion, and measure them against the standard of our religion. There seems to be an agenda, sometimes an unspoken or unconscious one, that culture is valuable only insofar as we can harness it in some way. But I’m convinced that, to quote someone I admire, “any goodness, beauty, truthfulness, or enlivening candor we have the wit to discern is something for which we have God to thank.” That is, that it’s already been harnessed. So this isn’t a Christian “take” on secular music, at least as I see it. The artists I wrote about are the ones that have spoken and continue to speak to me rather than vice versa; I talk more about what I’ve learned from them than how their work filters through a religious framework. I gave myself plenty of room to explore, though, so who knows (“preacher brain” is not the easiest thing to shut off). Again from the introduction:

“It wasn’t that I set out to write about the intersection of Christianity and culture; it was simply that music was the most honest language available to me—the lingua franca of my inner life, my immediate vocabulary for understanding what was happening to me. In fact, so immersed in it was I, that to avoid pop culture would have been to embrace precisely the kind of phoniness that permeates so much religious ‘engagement’ with it these days.”

Why Not Open Up To Cuba?

by Dish Staff

Aaron Blake flags one argument that won’t get much traction – that Cuba is a genuine national security threat:

Despite Cuba’s proximity to the United States (about 90 miles from Florida) and its alliance with other antagonistic countries like North Korea and Russia, Americans have grown progressively less and less concerned that the island country actually poses a threat to the United States. A CNN/Opinion Research poll earlier this year, in fact, showed that just 5 percent of people viewed Cuba as a “very serious threat” and 21 percent said it was a “moderately serious threat.” Another 72 percent said it wasn’t a threat at all or “just a slight threat.” Back in 1983, two-thirds of Americans viewed Cuba as at least a “moderately serious threat,” but that numbers has fallen steadily since then.

Zack Beauchamp notes that another favorite talking point of anti-Cuba hardliners – calling the country a state sponsor of terrorism – is a bit outdated:

The US government designated Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism in 1982, which imposed financial penalties on the Cuban government. At the time, the US accused Cuba of supporting the Spanish Basque terrorist group ETA and the FARC militants in Colombia. Though the US continues to label Cuba a terrorism sponsor, that’s just transparently untrue. According to the State Department‘s most recent annual review of terrorism worldwide, “there was no indication that the Cuban government provided weapons or paramilitary training to terrorist groups.”

“Cuba’s ties to ETA have become more distant, and that about eight of the two dozen ETA members in Cuba were relocated with the cooperation of the Spanish government,” the report reads. And “throughout 2013, the Government of Cuba supported and hosted negotiations between the FARC and the Government of Colombia aimed at brokering a peace agreement between the two.” That doesn’t sound much like a state sponsor of terrorism.

In fact, FARC announced a unilateral ceasefire yesterday, possibly (though not necessarily) pointing the way to peace in Colombia. Richard McColl wonders whether these two events were connected:

How much influence Cuba had in the decision taken by the FARC is up for speculation since Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos has been making conciliatory overtures in his statements to the press in recent weeks. Now the question in Colombia, is, will a bilateral ceasefire be announced in coming days? In the past, Santos has been stubbornly opposed to a bilateral ceasefire, but his position on the issue may be shifting. In an interview with W Radio in Bogota on Wednesday morning before the news about Cuba broke, he said that he was waiting for concrete actions from the FARC that would enable a deceleration of the conflict. Less than six hours later, the FARC potentially came good on the challenge.

Larison pushes back on the notion, per Elliott Abrams, that Obama’s opening to Cuba will embolden other enemies of the US:

Restoring diplomatic relations with Cuba isn’t going to have negative “repercussions” around the world. For one thing, persisting in a useless policy towards Cuba doesn’t tell us anything about Washington’s willingness to back up its guarantees elsewhere in the world. It does hint that the U.S. is eventually capable of recognizing policy failure when it is staring it in the face, and that has to be modestly reassuring to our allies and regional neighbors. If there are any repercussions from this decision, they are all likely to benefit America. Latin American governments will have less of a reason to fault U.S. policy towards Cuba. The U.S. will be able to demonstrate that it is still capable of resuming relations with states that it has previously treated as pariahs, and that might make U.S. diplomacy more effective in other places.

Ishaan Tharoor finds it odd that Republicans who tout the benefits of trade liberalization everywhere else don’t extend the same optimism to Cuba:

It’s a strange irony that some of Washington’s biggest proponents of free trade don’t want to see the United States enable such liberalizing changes in Cuba. Closer ties to Cuba, including trade links, will ideally lead to a deepening of Cuba’s own curtailed civil society. That, at least, is the current message of the Obama administration. The more open Cuba gets, the more access its people may have to the Internet and to outside channels of information. That, the hope goes, may speed political reform in Havana.

Critics may point to countries like China and Vietnam, where decades of economic development and free enterprise have yet to yield any real liberal, democratic dividend. But Cuba is fundamentally different; it exists in the U.S.’s shadow and its links to the American mainland, including some 1.5 million Cuban Americans, mean that even the most dogged authoritarian leader will struggle to inoculate the regime from American influence — that is, once Washington finally chooses to engage with Cuba.

Joe Klein makes a similar argument:

Those who favor a continuation of our failed Cuba policy are a reflexive lot with a muddled argument. They’re the usual myopic tough guys–John McCain and Lindsey Graham immediately jumped on the President after his Cuba announcement today–who have no idea of the seductive power of the American way of life in the rest of the world. I can understand why the corroding Iranian regime would want to keep us out (a sign in Tehran: “When the Great Satan praises us, we shall mourn”). I’ve always thought: then let’s recognize the hell out of them. Let ‘em mourn. Let the Revolutionary Guard try to fend off Kanye West and Star Wars. Good luck with that.

Rich Lowry, however, insists that easing trade restrictions won’t spur the growth of free enterprise in Cuba, but rather will only enrich the Castro regime:

Consider tourism. The Cuban military has a enormous holding company called GAESA. One of its companies, Gaviota, operates an extensive network of hotels and resorts from which it earns a bonanza of foreign exchange, according to the strategic consultancy Stratfor. Imagine if the Pentagon owned the Radisson, Marriott and Hilton hotel chains. That is the Cuban tourism industry in a nutshell. If tourism were the key to empowering and eventually liberating the Cuban people, the country would be a robust democracy by now. About a million Canadian tourists go to Cuba every year. In total, more than 2 million tourists visit annually, and yet the Castro regime is still standing.

Michael Daly, meanwhile, points out that Cuba still harbors a number of American fugitives, including the infamous Assata Shakur:

Among the roughly 80 other American fugitives in Cuba is Ishmael Ali LaBeef, who hijacked an airplane after he and four buddies murdered eight innocents during a robbery at a Virgin Islands golf course in 1972. There is also Victor Gerena, who is wanted in connection with a $7 million armored car robbery in Connecticut in 1983. And then there is William Morales of the Puerto Rican independence group the FALN. He lost most of both hands while assembling a device in an FALN bomb factory in 1979, but managed to escape from a hospital ward where he was being fitted for prosthetic hands after being convicted of weapons charges and sentenced to 99 years.

Face Of The Day

by Dish Staff

A Mynah bird feeds its young in Sydney, Australia on December 18, 2014. By Guillaume Gros/GG. Update from a reader:

I’m sure I’m not the first to tell you, but those do not look like Mynah birds. They look to be swallows, but I don’t know what species they would be in Australia.

Another adds, “They are probably Welcome Swallows, Hirundo neoxena.”

Getting High For Two

by Dish Staff

Libby Copeland tells the story of Tamara Loertscher, “a woman arrested for drug use even though she says she stopped when she realized she was pregnant, brought to court and twice refused lawyers (even though her fetus was given one), and then sent to jail for 17 days, where she was placed in solitary confinement, denied prenatal care even as she began cramping, and not given her thyroid medication for two days, according to the woman and her lawyers”:

[Y]ou can’t consider Wisconsin’s punitive approach to pregnant women—which purports to protect “unborn children”—without first considering how the state has failed to promote actual family values.

Loertscher, who suffers from hypothyroidism and depression (they are often linked), says she quit her job last February during a depressive episode and then found herself without insurance. Wisconsin is one of the states that turned down the Medicaid expansion tied to Obamacare that might have made it easier for people in her situation to get health insurance. She says she started using meth and marijuana in an attempt to self-medicate for the fatigue and depression she was experiencing, using meth two to three times a week and marijuana less often. She also took an over-the-counter supplement for the thyroid problem.

Commenting on the case, Katie McDonough notes:

Wisconsin is far from the only state to subject pregnant women to a different set of rules and the threat of arbitrary detention. Earlier this year, Tennessee became the first state in the nation to criminalize pregnancy outcomes, though other states have used existing child abuse laws to detain pregnant women.

Between 1973 and 2005, National Advocates for Pregnant Women have documented 413 documented cases in which a woman’s pregnancy was a necessary factor in criminal charges brought against her by the state. There have been an additional 350 cases documented within the last decade. In each of these cases, women have been deprived of due process, the right to legal counsel and other basic constitutional protections because they were pregnant.

Amanda Winkler focuses on Tennessee:

The number one cause of death in Tennessee is drug overdose, surpassing the number of vehicle accidents fatalities in 2013. And pregnant women aren’t immune from addiction: approximately 900 babies were born with Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS) in the state last year, a ten-fold increase from a decade ago. NAS is caused when mothers continue their opiate or narcotic drug use through pregnancy; babies can usually be weened off the drug within a few weeks after birth and there are no known long term effects.

However, Tennessee officials have declared NAS an “epidemic” and took action this past July with the implementation of Public Chapter 820. The law makes it possible for a woman to be charged with assault for the use of a narcotic drug while pregnant if her child is born harmed by the drug. An assault conviction is punishable by a fine and anywhere from one to 15 years in prison. So far, around 9 women have been charged under this law. The law has been controversial, with opponents saying it’s counter-productive to put a drug-addicted mother in jail.