The Dish

Artists Sebastian Acker and Phil Thompson highlight the surreal phenomenon of “copy towns”, where cities from Europe and the Americas are replicated for Chinese citizens:

[G]enerally China has a long history of copying, especially within architecture and the arts. For centuries the emperors would replicate lands that they had conquered within their own palace gardens. These constructs would often include fauna and plants from the conquered regions. This ability to replicate and maintain the distant land demonstrated the emperor’s control over the original region. Then there is also China’s desire to replicate the West and become a first-world country. A lot of Chinese people look up to the West as an ideal, so the construction of these towns could be seen as a way of accelerating their progress; a quick way of achieving through emulation.

(Photo above of Thames Town by Flicker user triplefivechina. Wikipedia describes it as “a new town in Songjiang District, about 30 kilometres (19 mi) from central Shanghai, China. It is named after the River Thames in England. The architecture is themed according to classic English market town styles. There are cobbled streets, Victorian terraces and corner shops.” )

Humans aren’t the only ones being displaced by climate change:

Each cold-blooded fish species has a particular temperature range in which it thrives. If water temperatures depart from that range, they may experience reduced growth and reproduction, ultimately reducing their numbers in a particular area and changing the species’ distribution. Climate change-driven shifts in fisheries pose the biggest threat to livelihoods in developing countries, especially in the tropics, where adaptation capacity of both people and fish themselves are more limited, [researcher William] Cheung said.  …

With climate change predicted to accelerate in coming decades due to the rising amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, even faster shifts in fish populations are possible, which could even lead to disputes between countries if commercially valuable fish shift out of one country’s waters and into another’s, according to Boris Worm, a marine biologist at Dalhousie Univeristy in Nova Scotia who was not involved in the Nature study.

Previous Dish on populations displaced by climate change here and here. Photo of a school of sardines by TANAKA Juuyoh via Wiki.

Robert Jones and Daniel Cox examine support for civil unions over time:

The changing political composition of civil union supporters shows that the center of gravity of this debate has shifted significantly. The civil union option has moved from being a middle way dominated by political moderates a decade ago to one that is, today, most attractive to political conservatives. And looking ahead, there is evidence that the civil union option may have a limited future, at least if younger Americans are any indication. When given a three-way choice, civil unions are the least popular option among Millennials (Americans born after 1980). Only slightly more than 1-in-10 (13%) Millennials prefer civil unions, while 67% say they support allowing gay and lesbian people to marry, and 15% oppose any legal recognition of a gay couple’s relationship.

But Chris Geidner highlights a promising development for transgendered members of the military:

The Pentagon formally recognized earlier this month that there are transgender veterans — a step that LGBT advocates say is a long way from open transgender service in the military, but also a significant first step in that process. In a short letter dated May 2, a Navy official told Autumn Sandeen, a veteran and transgender activist: “Per your request the Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System (DEERS) has been updated to show your gender as female effective April 12, 2013.”

John McWhorter defends ending sentences with prepositions:

Should “she refused to come in” be recast as “in she refused to come”? Of course not. [Eighteenth-century author Robert] Lowth [who popularized the preposition rule] was referring only to language in its Sunday best when he wagged his finger about the sentence-ending preposition, and at one point in his book, he even wrote, “This is an idiom, which our language is strongly inclined to.” Whether Lowth was aware of the irony is something he took to his grave.

Jon Kelly lists the top 10 “most scandalous euphemisms”:

2. “Discussing Uganda” In 1973, the satirical magazine Private Eye reported that journalist Mary Kenny had been disturbed in the arms of a former cabinet minister of President Obote of Uganda during a party. Variations of “Ugandan discussions” or “discussing Uganda” – the term is believed to have been coined by the poet James Fenton – were subsequently used by the Eye to describe any illicit encounter, and the phrase soon became part of common usage.

Two more choice picks from Jon: “slipping my moorings” and “watching badgers”. These, one should add, are very British. They’re basically inside jokes for an entire country, and Private Eye is their central location.

A reader is on the same page as De Niro, seen above:

I am a life long “dog person” who has been going through a conversion. I am pretty sure I own my last dog precisely because one day the amount of basic existential dependency my dog has on me stopped affirming me and started making me feel guilty and needy. He’s a great dog! But he has no independent purpose beyond me. His work is to do what I’m doing – to follow me to work, where he lays at my feet. And to the dog run, where he will only play with other dogs when I am watching. And to my errands, where if he’s lucky he gets treats and when he’s not he gets tied up outside.

From a resource allocation perspective, my dog is my personal sidecar that eats meat, shits into plastic bags, pees on trees sometimes despite my best efforts, and occasionally needs a car. This bugs me. But what really bugs me is that he wakes up every morning and devotes his life to me for no clear purpose beyond keeping me company. I feel sad and needy when I think about this.

Previous thoughts from readers here.

Internship done right. MT @sullydish Seeking editorial intern for Dish: full-time, six months, paid, health insurance dish.andrewsullivan.com/2013/05/07/dis…

— Beth Kujawski (@beth4158) May 7, 2013

Full details here. Resumés and cover letters are due by the end of Monday, May 20.

Sneezing across all kinds of species:

A recent study reviewed the published literature and talked to climate scientists about whether human activities are driving climate change. Their results indicate a general consensus in the scientific community:

An international team of scientists analyzed the abstracts of 11,944 peer-reviewed papers published between 1991 and 2011 dealing with climate change and global warming. That’s right — we’re talking about 20 years of papers, many published long before Superstorm Sandy, last year’s epic Greenland melt, or Australia’s “angry summer.”

About two-thirds of the authors of those studies refrained from stating in their abstracts whether human activity was responsible for climate change. But in those papers where a position on the claim was staked out, 97.1 percent endorsed the consensus position that humans are, indeed, cooking the planet.

The scientists involved with the new study also asked the authors of the peer-reviewed papers for their personal reflections on the causes of global warming. A little more than one-third expressed no opinion. Of those who did share a view, 97.2 percent endorsed the consensus that humans are to blame. Out of the 1,189 authors who responded to the survey, just 39 rejected the idea that humans are causing global warming.

But the main reason many Americans still refuse to believe it is religious fundamentalism. That is immune to science and reason. But it is the bedrock belief of one of our political parties.

Kevin Craft opines that the finale of The Office is long overdue, since “the original theme it explored—office work sucks—is only funny if the characters never grow”:

So The Office‘s characters developed, and their individual stories gradually outshone the show’s focus on survival in a corporate setting. By Season Five, the show was struggling to transition from a narrative about a listless workplace to a comedy that just happened to be set in an office. … Thus, throughout its long autumn, The Office often came across as the shell of something once great. (Perhaps this is why Ricky Gervais pulled the plug on his Office after only three seasons.)

This is one effect of purely commercial broadcasting. If your primary goal is money and your secondary goal is creative integrity, then you will get what we see so often: TV series that do not know when to stop, and ghastly endless piss-poor sequels to cash in on an original hit. Because a lot of British TV is directly subsidized by a government tax, there’s less pressure to milk something until it’s truly a dead show walking.

Gervais, for his part, doesn’t seem to mind: “It’s the gift that keeps on giving, syndication.”

“There are all kinds of ways to argue about what the original gay rights movement was about. But if you look at it collectively from the buttoned-up Mattachine Society to the hippie drag queen kids who threw bottles at Stonewall and you put them all together I think they could all come to the conclusion that, yeah, marriage should be an option for us because what’s at the core of this?   “Oh, my full citizenship,” some would answer.  Yes, there’s that. But what is at the even deeper core?  “My romantic heart,” is my answer.  It’s all about who you love.  At its core, the gay rights movement is the most romantic revolution of all time,” – David Drake, whose 1993 play, “The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me” is being revived for a one-night charity event for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and the Sero Project next Monday night.

(Full Disclosure: Aaron’s in it.)

“At the moment, simply opposing gay marriage doesn’t make you a homophobe, any more than opposing affirmative action makes you a racist or opposition to settlements on the West Bank makes you an anti-Semite,” – Mike Kinsley.

I’m with Mike. I’m deeply opposed to stigmatizing people who disagree with me on this. I’m in favor of allowing them maximal free speech so I can engage their arguments. Hence my anthology, which presents both sides fairly.

We are considering nixing the Daily Wrap as a feature but would like to get reader feedback first. Is it useful to you? It’s very time-consuming for us. But if enough readers find it helpful, it’s your blog as well as ours. So let us know in the above poll if you feel strongly either way, or if you barely notice it at all.

From the American Enterprise Institute’s countdown of the “21 Greatest Conservative Rap Songs Of All Time” is a close-reading of Dr. Dre’s “Still D.R.E.” featuring Snoop Dogg. It is not apparently a parody:

[J]ust because something is hip and new it is not necessarily better (“Still the beats bang, still doing my thang / Since I left, ain’’ too much changed, still”). Hope and change are not a substitute for skill and competence: “I bring the fire till you’re soaking in your seat / It’s not a fluke, it’s been tried, I’m the truth.” But of course, even Dr. Young’s tried and tested approach to producing beats is of limited worth without hard work. From the moment he wakes up till the moment he goes to sleep, his mind is focused on his professional obligations (“Treat my rap like Cali weed, I smoke til I sleep / Wake up in the A.M., compose a beat”). But that does not mean that he is unwilling to dedicate some of his time to teaching, passing on the truth of the ages to new generations (“Kept my ear to the streets, signed Eminem / He’s triple platinum, doing 50 a week”).

Near the end of the song, all this culminates in a warning to wannabe revolutionaries everywhere: “Dr. Dre be the name / Still running the game.” And this extends, of course, to those who believe that a Marxist utopia can be established through democratically endorsed redistribution of wealth. As Dr. Young explains in “Forgot About Dre,” a song from his next album: “If it was up to me / You motherf****** would stop coming up to me / With your hands out lookin’ up to me / Like you want something free.”