Month: December 2011

Will Doig takes on the venerable practice of making "top 10 cities" lists:

Cities are experiences as much as they are physical locations. They’re not just places with a certain number of coffee shops or Apple stores or antidepressant users. Those data points may gesture in the general direction of a city’s temperament, but what matters most to urban dwellers are the things that are much harder to nail down. A 2008 study that surveyed 43,000 people over a course of three years found that what attached them to their communities the most weren’t the things that are easy to measure, like job availability or quality of schools. They were more ephemeral aspects, like openness, social offerings and aesthetics — “Very much the same qualities that make a good place and can only be measured qualitatively,” says Ethan Kent, vice president of the Project for Public Spaces.

Orexin is a neuropeptide that influences energy levels. Sugar reduces orexin levels, which makes us sleepy. Jonah Lehrer digests a new study finding that protein counters the inhibitory effects of sugar: 

These experiments also document, at a biochemical level, why the modern American diet is such a catastrophic mess. The typical supermarket is filled with processed foods where the only relevant "nutrient" is some form of sweetener. (So-called "added sugars" – they are injected into food during manufacturing – now account for 16 percent of total caloric consumption. That’s 21.4 teaspoons of sugar and corn syrup every day.) While such snacks are unfailingly cheap and tasty, they also lead to sudden spikes in blood sugar and a reduction in orexin activity. We eat them for the energy boost, but the empty calories in these foods make us tired and sad instead. (There’s some suggestive evidence that chronically low levels of orexin can increase the likelihood of depression.)

(Image: What have you got in your head?, a two-part series of human brains made with food, by Italian artist Sara Asnaghi)

Jason Zengerle profiles Andrew Kaczynski, a college student who "dives into C-SPAN’s extensive online archives" in his free time and uploads what he finds to his YouTube channel:

Kaczynski describes himself as a moderate Republican. "I hate to pick on Mitt Romney—I think he’s the most electable Republican other than Huntsman," he told me one recent afternoon, a couple of hours after he’d gotten out of his English class. "But because of these perceptions that people have of Romney—that he’s a flip-flopper, that he’s socially awkward—it’s really easy for me to search through video archives and find things that people find entertaining." Once upon a time, opposition research was designed to score political hits. Now it can just be about scoring page views.

Lowe's has pulled its ads from TLC's "All-American Muslim" just as the show was being attacked as "propaganda that riskily hides the Islamic agenda's clear and present danger to American liberties and traditional values." Alyssa Rosenberg is furious:

[T]he idea that Muslims deserve to be judged by a majority of believers rather than a small minority, is all you have to believe is true to support the show. I’ve never really understood why Muslims in particular shouldn’t have that last right. Should all depictions of Christians include references to the Inquisition, religion-inflected colonialism, and anti-gay hate crimes? Is the truest way to depict Catholics to look at the faith from the perspective of Cardinal Law and the pedophiles he protected? Do we judge all Jews by a car accident in Crown Heights or Baruch Goldstein? Lowe’s fallen prey to this kind of thinking made clear whose its most prized customers are. And acting on the principals of solidarity that motivate Russell Simmons, this homeowning Jew is glad she bought her washer-dryer from Home Depot.

Adam Serwer nods:

[Islamophobes] biggest fear is that shows like "All-American Muslim" will succeed at fostering the idea that Islam and American values are not necessarily in conflict. After all, if non-Muslim Americans begin to see American Muslims as being like themselves, then it becomes far more difficult to argue that Muslims' rights should be curtailed, that Muslims should be treated with greater suspicion than other Americans, or that Muslims shouldn't be able to build houses of worship on their own private property. It also becomes much harder to sustain a million-dollar industry devoted to persuading the country that Muslims as a whole are dangerous.

We've discussed the show previously here.

A reader writes:

DOMA is a tax nightmare. If you want to simplify people's taxes, repeal it and let states define marriage as they always have in the past.

The article you linked to did not mention that some businesses now keep two sets of books: one for state taxes, the other for federal taxes. The companies need to keep track of which deductions they can take in the state that are not allowed at the federal level. It creates a silly amount of accounting that lines the pockets of the Big Four accounting firms and pretty much no one else.

Tax law scholar Pat Cain noted at an ABA Tax meeting in D.C. last year that some same-sex couples are filing joint returns against the rules. Since the IRS computers do not check for gender in determining your refund, some same-sex couples are receiving joint refunds illegally. No one would be any wiser unless one of those couples gets audited. In that case, the IRS could issue a notice of deficiency to the couple stating they owe more tax because they never should have received the joint refund.

With that notice of deficiency, the couple could petition the U.S. Tax Court for review of the IRS's determination and base their case on the unconstitutionality of DOMA. If that happened, you could see a Tax Court judge ruling on DOMA's constitutionality. It is unclear whether the Obama administration would instruct the IRS Office of Chief Counsel, which represents the IRS in Tax Court (a.k.a. Bachmannn's former employer), not to defend DOMA as it did with DOJ.

Today on the Dish, Newt opened up a bigger lead in the early states, he took up the fundamentalist's war against secularism, and he acted "exactly like one of those obnoxious elitist intellectual know-it-alls that the right-wing no-nothings think is the hallmark of an intellectual" (more on Newt's appeal here). Andrew embraced Gingrich's proposal for a series of Lincoln-Douglas debates, we placed the former speaker in the recent history of improbable candidates, and the GOP field erupted into negative attacks. Greater Israel is at the core of the GOP base, Santorum once gave an award to Jerry Sandusky, and Romney self-consciously ducked class warfare. The debates have been a disaster for the GOP (further reax to the $10,000-bet debate here), the headline unemployment rate could actually rise next year, and a 15-year-old boy spent his entire adolescence imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay. 

We tracked developments in Syria, Stephen Walt warned against covert war in Iran, and Marty Peretz stood up to right-wing Israelis. A former AIPAC spokesman introduced a campaign to target several critics of Netanyahu as anti-Semites over a list-serv, Middle Eastern Jews and Palestinians are genetically almost identical, Britain resisted European integration, and the British coalition showed worrying signs of fracture. 

In our AAA video, Andrew discussed his opposition to infant circumcision, Xeni Jardin Instagrammed her mammogram, and Roland Fryer measured school culture. Molten lava is nothing like water, fungi grow toward their food, and Facebook is keeping tabs. We continued the debate over emergency contraception for teens, addressed the first rule of blogging, and the Army invented a sandwich that stays fresh for two years. We shouldn't require "sparks" on the first date, cremation powered electricity in England, birds see things humans cannot, and there's a theory that only someone who has had a twin in utero can be "truly left-handed." 

Quote for the day here, hathos alert here, chart of the day here, VFYW here, MHB here, and FOTD here. 

— M.A. 

(Photo: Republican Presidential Candidate former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich arrives for a Lincoln-Douglas style debate with Jon Huntsman at Saint Anselm College on December 12, 2011 in Manchester, New Hampshire. By Matthew Cavanaugh/Getty Images.)

Fred Barnes assesses the damage. Jamelle Bouie adds:

The debates have had an astonishing and unprecedented impact on how conservative voters view and evaluate the Republican presidential candidates, and it’s hard to say that this has been a positive development. Texas Governor Rick Perry is the obvious choice for a decent candidate who was damaged by the debates, but this extends to Mitt Romney as well. Romney has produced his fair share of gaffes and extreme rhetoric, and if he wins the nomination, he’ll face a torrent of attacks that showcase these debate performances. If the Republican presidential nominee succeeds, it will—at least in part—be despite these debates. 

Harold James looks into the legacy of Britain's long history of resistance to European financial integration:

As in 1978 and 1992, British obstructionism today may be a blessing in disguise for the rest of Europe. In particular, it opens the way to a Europe of variable geometry, in which only those countries willing to accept stability criteria will go forward with deeper integration. Institutionally, this may be more complex than an EU-wide treaty amendment, but the result can be tailored and crafted more appropriately to the real situations of rather diverse countries.

By contrast, for Britain, the legacy of its heroic defiance of Europe has been much bleaker. In both 1978 and 1992, the immediate aftermath was a substantial period of economic and political turmoil. Monetary shocks led to geopolitical irrelevance.

And Britain would be far better off now with the euro, wouldn't it? Please. As for geopolitical relevance, why should Britain care? Why not just be an island, with a proud past, a working democracy and a trading partner for the world? The whole concept of a United States of Europe to counter the United States of America was and is a horribly hubristic venture. Jennifer Welch thinks through Britain's interests in the current European crisis. Bart Cammaerts focuses on the UK's political role in the broader European project.

(Photo by Christopher Elison)

Alex Massie compares Gingrich to Kerry:

Nominating Gingrich – that is, choosing the guy who makes you feel best about your team and doing so for kicks and the hell of it – might almost make sense if he were tasked with challenging a nigh-on unassailable incumbent. But the Republican nominee has a decent shot at winning the White House. This is not 1984 and nor is it 1972 or 1964. Selecting Gingrich would be an act of unpardonable folly and a declaration that the Republican party has lost its political bearings. That's fine but it's not serious politics. Newt isn't Kerry, he's Howard Dean. (And worse than that: he's also Newt!)

John Heilemann, on the other hand, likens Romney to Dole and Gingrich to Buchanan:

It wasn't just the Establishment rallying around Dole that slayed the dragon that threatened to trample over him; it was Dole himself suiting up in chainmail and running a sword through Buchanan's heart. If Romney can do the same to Gingrich, he will have earned his party's nomination — and if he can't, he never deserved the fucking thing in the first place.

As Syria goes through a slate of "elections" and the biggest general strike to date, Andrew Reynolds worries that the revolution can't succeed:

That nation is poised on a knife edge: it could plunge into civil war or come to rest in a valley of repression where Bashir al-Assad's opponents have fallen. The entrails of the Arab Spring suggest that Assad will be the fifth dictator to fall only if the Syrian military irrevocably splits or if international military force intervenes on the side of the opposition.

Neither looks likely. The Syrian army is dominated by Assad's Alawite minority and foreign powers have demonstrated no stomach to insert themselves into the quagmire of a civil war in Syria which would spark tensions, not just between Turkey, Israel and Lebanon, but would ominously see NATO, Russia and China picking sides.

Paul Salem is more upbeat. Joshua Goldstein watches Homs for signs of escalation into a full-on civil war, but Elliott Abrams thinks it has already begun. Below are some Army defectors documenting the use of Iranian weapons by Syrian troops during the crackdown:

This is a funeral/protest in Douma today:

This man was murdered in Idlib yesterday: