Month: November 2011

A reader writes:

There's been something about the Perry moment I couldn't put my finger on until this morning. His defense, of course, amounts to, "Everyone has a brain fart now and then." Of course that's correct, and the only response he can give. But here's the problem: We don't have brain farts about the substance of things we know well and care deeply about. So, if Rick Perry had carefully combed through the federal budget and concluded that the functions of those three agencies were either unnecessary, or best moved elsewhere, he'd know that. He'd know that he wanted to either eliminate funding for energy research, or move it elsewhere. And thinking about the substance of the issue for a millisecond would give him the name of the department he planned to cut.

He forgot because he doesn't actually plan to do any such thing. He forgot because he was just trying to remember talking points – talking points about which he doesn't evidently care much. Apart from the implications for the country about electing someone so seemingly duplicitous, his erstwhile supporters ought to be especially upset: If a major part of his appeal is slashing the size of government, it looks like he's just playing them. (Of course some of the others are too; they're just better at it.)

Another writes:

I suppose that Governor Perry’s forgetfulness is unavoidably the story of Wednesday night’s debate. And there’s nothing exactly new about the Republican Party’s distaste for the Departments of Energy or Education. But Commerce?

The Commerce Department is responsible for a lot of things, many of them obscure. One of them that isn't is the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which was housed, until 1941, in the Herbert C. Hoover building around the corner from the White House. Incised over one of the building’s entrances is a quote from Abraham Lincoln – the only U.S. president to actually apply for and receive a patent – that reads "The patent system added the fuel of interest to the fire of genius."

Lincoln understated the case. The single most important thing that governments can do for long-term economic growth is to promote intellectual property. Partly this is because patents and copyrights – unlike most tangible property – can’t even exist without a government to offer their creators a mechanism by which they can sue people who steal them. But mostly it’s because the recognition of patent rights was the decisive intellectual advance that permitted humanity, after thousands of years of essentially static per capita economic growth, to finally increase its prosperity faster than its population. Before the introduction of patents, worldwide per capita GDP was stuck on a treadmill to nowhere; the number in 1600AD was essentially identical to that of 400BC: in current dollars less than $1000 annually. Which means that the average person living in the time of Homer produced no more – and as a consequence lived no better – than the average person living in the time of Shakespeare.

Today that number is $10,500. And, along with a thousand percent increase in productivity has come similar improvements in lifespan, literacy, calories consumed, childhood mortality, just about every sort of welfare that can be measured.

Millennia stuck in neutral; three centuries of growth. Anything that changed the direction of history so dramatically has many causes, but one of the biggest – I’d argue the biggest of all – was the revolution in innovation fuelled by the ability of inventors to prosper from the exclusive use of their ideas. The notion produced more wealth than any other in history – first for the inventors themselves, then for the societies in which they lived.

The members of the convention that met in Philadelphia during the summer of 1787 knew this. That’s why they made sure that one of the most basic powers granted to the new federal government was enshrined, without a single dissenting vote, in Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

So, while we’re all poking fun at Governor Perry’s brief attack of amnesia, what he remembered is a lot more revealing than what he forgot. A presidential candidate who wants to get the government out of the patent business is a whole lot scarier than one who finds it difficult to recall that he dislikes the Department of Energy.

Howard Gleckman sees nothing but political posturing thus far:

This performance will go on a while longer. After all, today is only Nov. 10th and the super committee’s deadline for action is not until at least Thanksgiving. Do not believe lawmakers when they say they must have a deal this week in order to finish by Turkey Day.

Edward Tenner compares data fabricators to Ponzi schemers:

Tom Bartlett at the Chronicle of Higher Education, outlining the techniques of the Dutch psychology professor Diederik Stapel who has admitted fabricating data, makes scientific fraud sound a lot like Madoff-style financial deception: both include social networking, stonewalling disclosure, indignation when questioned … Retractions of scientific papers have soared in 9 years from 22 to 339, and the more prestigious the journal, the greater the number of retractions — possibly because those papers receive more attention, but also because the rewards of acceptance are so much greater. The New York Times reports that 70 percent of psychology researchers responding anonymously to a survey admitted "cutting some corners" in reporting data.

(Image of Bernie Madoff by Flickr user Adobe by Chaos)

Farhad Manjoo puts a fork in the social network:

Why am I so sure that Google+ can’t be saved? Because there’s no way to correct Google’s central failure. Back when companies were clamoring to create brand pages on the network—or users were looking to create profiles with pseudonyms, another phenomenon that Google shut down—the company ought to have acceded to its users’ wishes and accommodated them. If Google wasn’t ready for brand pages in the summer, it shouldn’t have launched Google+ until it was. And this advice goes more generally—by failing to offer people a reason to keep coming back to the site every day, Google+ made a bad first impression. And in the social-networking business, a bad first impression spells death.

Anna Brones discusses "pay-what-you-can" restaurants, which encourage diners who can't pay to do an hour of service in exchange for their meal:

With the same idea as donation only museums, pay-what-you-can restaurants are exactly that: order a meal and then decide how much you think it's worth, or give what you can afford. … [D]o people pay? Over a year ago, chain operation Panera Bread Co. and its Panera Bread Foundation opened the first Panera Cares pay what you want restaurant, and since then they have found that about 80 percent of their clientele pay the suggested amount or more. 

Game developers are also putting the business model to the test.

(Hat tip: Laura Hazard Owen.)

Steve Coll deconstructs the view from the other side of the border:

About forty-five thousand Mexicans have died since Calderón called out the dogs. Many thousands of the victims are public servants—police, judges, mayors, and legislators—or civilians caught in crossfire. In the name of defending them, the country’s military has carried out horrifying atrocities, degrading the legitimacy of a state that was weak enough to begin with, as a Human Rights Watch report released this week documents. For all this, the flow of marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and crystal meth into the United States—although hard to measure with any precision—has not been substantially reduced.

Meanwhile, the cartels are going after Mexican bloggers and social media users:

The moderator of a popular Mexican social network has been murdered, allegedly for tipping off the authorities about the local drug cartel. Nicknamed “Rascatripas” or “Scraper” (literally “Fiddler”) on the network Nuevo Laredo en Vivo, the 35-year-old appears to have been handcuffed, tortured, decapitated and dumped beside a statue of Christopher Columbus one mile from the Texas border. Below the man’s body was a partially obscured and blood-stained blanket. Written on the blanket in black ink: “Hi I’m ‘Rascatripas’ and this happened to me because I didn’t understand I shouldn’t post things on social networks.”

(Photo: The corpses of a man and a woman hang from a pedestrian bridge in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico on September 13, 2011. By Raul Llamas/AFP/Getty Images.)

Sarah Elizabeth Richards contests the link:

"When women hear things in the press about the causes of infertility, they feel guilty that they’ve done something that prevented them from getting pregnant," explains Sharon Covington, a psychologist at Shady Grove Fertility Center in Washington, D.C., who reminds patients that many women who have endured severe trauma, such as the Holocaust or rape, still got pregnant. "There is nothing worse than hearing a family member say, ‘You’re way too stressed out’ or ‘You’ve just got to relax.’ It’s not something they can turn on and off."

Today on the Dish, Andrew processed the horrific scandal at Penn State, we absorbed the Sandusky Grand Jury report (a reader's response here), and a Penn State fan asked for calm. Buzz Bissinger wanted us to be explicit, Mark Madden saw this coming, and Andrew deplored the cult of authority. 

Readers weighed in on last night's debate, Kathryn Lopez and Rick Perry attempted damage control after his historic meltdown, and Gingrich was clearly more than a high-paid "historian" for Freddie Mac. Ideology trumps race, Huntsman missed a big opportunity, and Pete Wehner woke up. Herman Cain's candidacy is clarifying, talk radio gave him an understanding of "the critical issues," and readers complicated his accuser Sharon Bialeck's account here and here. The GOP is revealing itself as utterly unfit for governing responsibility, and in our video feature, Andrew shared his favorite things about England. 

McArdle braced for phase two of the global financial crisis, and Millman faulted insecure leadership. The protestors in Syria bravely plunged ahead, and democratic Islamism is possible.

We assessed the long-term market for solar energy, our tax code does send jobs overseas, and health monitoring is going cyborg. Anti-vaccine moms engaged in inadvertent bioterrorism, Sam Harris prepared us for violent attack, and we imagined a future without lying. The development of pumpkin hurling technology is halting, and pegging happens. 

Von Hoffman award nominee here, hathos alert here, VFYW here, FOTD here, and MHB here. 

— M.A.

(Photo: Local artist Michael Pilato paints over former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky that was in his 'Inspiration' Hiester Street mural on November 9, 2011 in University Park, Pennsylvania. Sandusky was replaced with a chair and blue ribbon. The painting contains notable figures of State College. By Patrick Smith/Getty Images.)

A student at Penn stands up to his peers:

Tod Kelley connects the Penn State coverup to the Catholic Church's abuse scandals:

In his book Losing My Religion, William Lobdell writes about his experience covering a local Catholic Church child abuse scandal for the LA Times. One of the most fascinating – and terrifying – parts of his account is the meetings of parishioners once the Church had confirmed that the abuse had happened, that it had been going on for a long time, and that it had been known about by the Church leaders. (In fact, if I recall correctly, the abuser was sent to their church after having been caught abusing children in his previous church.) The outraged parents rose up – but not how you might think. The people they blamed for the travesty were not the leaders of the church, or even the priest that abused their children – who was quite popular. Instead, they blamed the media. Given the choice between crucifying the reporters who were writing about a very serious crime or getting rid of a priest that betrayed their community in the worst way possible, they rallied around the priest.

Jessica Banks, a Penn State alum, agrees with this parallel and takes it one step further:

Most of [the Penn State students] are going to graduate twenty to fifty thousand dollars in debt, much more than they would pay to go to one of the many Commonwealth Campuses across Pennsylvania. Part of what they’re paying for is the experience in State College, and for almost 50 years, that experience depends on having a team to be proud of, and a school that others admire. It’s their reputation, too, that’s been destroyed, without consent or knowledge. Firing Joe Paterno was the only legitimate action that Penn State could take, but to kids and alumni, that’s an admission of guilt that’s on par with having to admit that the Pope is no longer infallible.

Alyssa Rosenberg attempts to understand the backlash:

I cannot possibly imagine a cause so mighty and righteous that it outweighs shrugging aside child abuse and child assault. Certainly not football. College sports may be a business with deeply engaged consumers. But it’s still just a business. And Joe Paterno is just a man, subject to the normal rules of accountability and decency. These are the basic facts of which moral educations are made. Some of us, apparently, need remedial lessons.

I think Alyssa is unfamiliar with the sacred aspect of college football to so many. As one reader noted, if a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry had been found in the showers buggering a ten-year-old, the cops would have been called immediately. But an assistant coach and likely successor to the great Paterno? Immune. Ari Kohen compares Paterno's role to that of Sandusky and others:

Because he’s famous, because we know a lot about him, Paterno gives us someone upon whom we can focus our anger. In no small part, this because he seems to have done the morally wrong thing in this case by not coming forward himself (and thereby enabling the abuser). But that wrong undoubtedly pales in comparison to the moral and legal wrongs committed by university officials and, most of all, by Sandusky. No one’s going to hold a rally or overturn cars on behalf of the ousted university administrators or former assistant coach because those people are unknown to us, because they seem like replaceable parts, and because — of course — they seem to have committed a series of terrible acts. 

And they are going to face a trial. Paterno, apparently, isn't. And his comments on his "sadness" were enraging.  He's sad that many other children were subjected to this abuse and violence? Sad?? Earlier thoughts here and throughout today's blog so scroll down. To those of you who think I am getting excitable about this, just read the Grand Jury report. Then tell me to calm down.

Penn State alum Michael Weinreb tries to get at the mindset that caused all of the warning signs outlined in the Grand Jury report to be ignored:

On the front page of my old college newspaper, a senior marketing major named Andrew Hanselman said this: "Being accepted to Penn State felt like a family, and Joe Paterno was the father." Well, we're on our own now, Andrew. It's time to grow up.

Does anyone not see the extraordinary ironies and parallels here? Yes, this is a classic "father" figure, like a priest or bishop or Pope. The man is even called "Paterno". And what Paterno did is what the current Pontiff did when he was an archbishop in Munich, where he was told of a priest under his jurisdiction who had raped children. He didn't alert the police; he merely sent the rapist on to a psychiatrist and the man went on to rape many more children. And we might as well face it: college football is a kind of religion for many. Challenging the Pope of Penn State was unthinkable.

I regard the current actual Pope as an accessory to child-rape, as I do Paterno. But their paternal authority within religious institutions allowed them to carry on. And this is another thing one can say about this profoundly fucked-up culture of abuse: once condoned or treated lightly, the abuses often get worse and worse. I am not surprised that prescient Mark Madden is now hearing rumors that Sandusky was "pimping out young boys to rich donors." Pedophiles find each other.

All they need is for good people to look the other way. And a cult of authority that never challenges the father figure. 

(Photo: Police try to control students and those in the community as they fill the streets and react after football head coach Joe Paterno was fired during the Penn State Board of Trustees Press Conference, in downtown Penn State, in the early morning hours on November 10, 2011 in State College, Pennsylvania. By Patrick Smith/Getty Images.)