Month: March 2012

A recent study tested the taste-buds of wine experts. Allison Aubrey summarizes the findings:

"We evaluated hundreds of wine drinkers," says Hayes, by having them sample/taste a chemical that measures their reaction to bitter tastes. He found that wine experts — people such as wine writers, winemakers and wine retailers — were about 40 percent more sensitive to the bitterness than casual consumers of wine. They have a more acute sense of taste. Hayes says his findings fit with prior research on so-called supertasters — people who are more sensitive to the sweetness of sugar, the sting of chili peppers and the saltiness of chips.

In the same ballpark, Jacob Sullum, pivoting off the reporting of Jonah Lehrer, ponders a diet pill that works by making people enjoy food more. 

Maybe:

Casey Chan is unimpressed by the TSA's response:

The official TSA blog responded to what the TSA called a "viral video about body scanners" that "is a crude attempt to allegedly show how to circumvent TSA screening procedures." Oh, okay. That's where you expect the TSA to refute the claim that you could fool the body scanner right? To prove us internet folk wrong! To shut everybody up! To keep peace! To curb terrorism! Nope. The TSA didn't do that. At all. Instead they ducked the whole fiasco with this non-denial non-statement statement

The Guardian hears mixed messages from experts. Here's a spokesman Manchester airport, where bodyscanners are used if a passenger sets off the metal detector:

Of Corbett's experiment, spokesman Russell Craig said: "He's taken a small metal tin through. And the guards are looking for a threat object. That's not one. It's not a valid test. To say this shows it undermines airport security technology is totally wrong."

Hannity parodies himself:

Jim Newell rolls his eyes:

We all know how reporters hate getting major national scandal scoops. That’s the only explanation for why Buzzfeed wouldn’t have paid the video archives some additional hundreds of dollars for the Hug Interlude between speaking parts. Don’t even try us with your “it had no news value because it was just a perfunctory hug” pablum, Soviet Buzzfeed.

Earlier Dish here and here on the right's latest attempt at a "whitey tape".

In response to the Dharun Ravi trail, Tish Durkin trashes hate crimes laws:

Is a maniac who opens fire in a shopping mall less objectionable than a maniac who opens fire in a gay club? Does a man who kills his daughter out of anger that she is having sex with a man deserve less punishment than a man who kills his daughter out of anger that she is having sex with a woman? A college lacrosse player was recently convicted of beating his ex-girlfriend to death, apparently enraged that she had begun a relationship with a player for another team. If the victim had begun seeing a female lacrosse player, or an African-American, would her murder have been worse? 

Along the same lines, James Jacobs claims that hate crime laws are mostly used against small-time criminals:

In the 1980s, proponents of the original bias crime laws said they meant to go after murderous plots by members of neo-Nazi and similar hard-core hate groups. Now, bias crime prosecutions most often involve young defendants, frequently mixed-up teenagers, who commit low-level offenses like criminal mischief and simple assault, typically escalating from spontaneous altercations at a party, in a parking lot or at a school event.

Earlier coverage of the case here and here. My problems with hate crimes law explained here and above. My essay, “What’s So Bad About Hate,” can be read here.

A new instant classic:

Obamacare’s expansion of the welfare state leads people to believe that someone else, and not they themselves, are responsible for their livelihood, their families, and their health. But this is contrary to the teachings of the Church. To quote Pope John Paul II: “Not only the world, however, but also man himself has been entrusted to his own care and responsibility. God left man ‘in the power of his own counsel’ (Sirach 15:14), that he might seek his Creator and freely attain perfection. Attaining such perfection means personally building up that perfection in himself.”

There is no place for this teaching in Obamacare.

In Google, the only place I can find that applies this very general theological principle to opposing universal healthcare is … from the interview above. For a more specific example, lets go to the Catholic Bishops' actual position [PDF] on universal healthcare guaranteed by the government:

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has long advocated health care for all. In their pastoral letter, Health and Health Care, the bishops called for a “comprehensive health care system that will ensure a basic level of health care for all Americans.” Pope John XXIII, in his encyclical Peace on Earth, listed health care among those basic rights which flow from the sanctity and dignity of human life. In the same tradition, Pope John Paul II addressed the need for health care in On Human Work, where he focused on the availability and affordability of health care for workers … The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is launching an effort to unite Catholics around a common message:

In this, the wealthiest of nations, it is unacceptable that so many people do not have access to affordable health care.

Yes, the document also insists that universal healthcare be governed by Catholic doctrines on life, sex, etc. But there is no question about the Vatican's support for universal, government-guaranteed healthcare services, especially for the poor. So where do the theocons stand on that question?

Their candidates would gut Medicaid, slash Medicare, and lower taxes on the already very wealthy. For good measure, the two leading Catholic candidates favor torture and pre-emptive war – both clearly outlawed by Catholic just war teaching. I can see the argument for these policies from a Randian or neoconservative perspective. But from a Catholic one?

Catholicism isn't just about sex – whatever impression the current Bishops want to give.

A reader notes what was linked to but not explicitly stated in our previous post:

When I saw that video making the rounds yesterday, I didn't watch it.  Do you know why?  I'd already SEEN it.  It was part of a PBS Frontline documentary that came out in 2008.  It's available for instant streaming on Netflix.  Dud, indeed.

Money quote from PBS: "It’s been online at our site and on YouTube since [2008]." Another reader:

All that video proves to me is Obama was a good public speaker even 21 years ago, while he was still a student. With no teleprompter.

Brad Delong snarks that supporters of the untrammeled free market have no standing to criticize the Koch takeover of Cato:

[T]he delicious irony is that the arguments against the Kochtopus–powerful and convincing arguments–are not libertarian but rather Burkean, communitarian, and social democratic ones, and thus arguments that no true libertarian could ever possibly make.

Julian Sanchez finds Delong's position ridiculous:

I’m not arguing that Congress should intervene somehow. I’m arguing that exercising those rights as they seemingly intend to is a bad idea; that their direct control would, in itself,  be damaging to Cato’s credibility; and that I’m not interested in working for the Republican talking-point factory that all evidence suggests they envision. Like rain on your wedding day and other infamous Alanisisms, that’s kind of crappy, but not "ironic" in any recognizable sense. I realize progressives think libertarianism is just code for uncritical worship of rich people, but as that’s not actually the case, the only irony here is that people think they’re scoring some kind of gotcha point when they’re actually exposing the silliness of their own caricature.

Corey Robin counters. James Grimmelman piles on:

The irony here is that the nation’s preeminent libertarians—who ought to be exquisitely attentive to freedom of contract, institutional design, and observing the letter of the law—couldn’t get their rights right. They built this Streeling of libertarian thought, with its $20+ million annual budget and world-wide reputation, on a shareholding structure that is either actually or nearly under the control of people who do not share many of their values and have not for decades. The entire enterprise may well have been for years only one death away from Koch domination. If so many libertarians are now so worried about a Koch takeover, one has to ask, why have they spent so many years building a brand with an unshielded thermal exhaust port?

 Jessica Flanigan's riposte:

Who’s really the hypocrite here? Critics on the left seemingly delight in attacking the most extreme version of libertarianism, and then attributing that extreme picture to every libertarian they meet. … I think one reason for the progressive resistance to the more moderate versions of libertarianism stems from the fact that moderate libertarians are in many ways beating them at their own game. As Glenn Greenwald and Matt Stoller have both brilliantly argued, libertarian politics is currently more in line with progressive values than popular progressive political candidates.