Month: April 2012

Michael Crowley notes that Mitt opposes talking to the Taliban in Afghanistan, a "relatively extreme position": 

Romney whacks Obama for being too open about his intentions for exiting the country, and implies he’ll listen more closely to the military’s advice, but he doesn’t disavow Obama’s 2014 goal for ending America’s combat role in the country. Rejecting  peace talks, by contrast, is a game-changer. It casts into doubt all our assumptions about the war–including that 2014 deadline. “We should not negotiate with the Taliban. We should defeat the Taliban,” Romney has said. But we’ve been trying to do that for an awfully long time, with awfully limited results. … At what point will Romney be forced to square this incredibly awkward circle?

Previous Dish on the GOP and Afghanistan here. 

A report from the field. The bright side:

In a world full of infinite partner choices, herpes had narrowed mine to the understanding, the open minded, the risk takers. I am now confined to partners who think my awesomeness eclipses my cellular flaw — so instead of killing my love life, herpes has weirdly deepened it.

It's growing:

Tiny Houses—as little as 89 square feet—are designed by company founder Jay Shafer to reduce your carbon footprint to its absolute minimum. The latest development is Tiny – A Story About Living Small, a film documenting Christopher Smith's conversion from ordinary life into Tiny House living.

And one that is easily depleted:

[N]o matter what the self-help books say, the research suggests that willpower isn’t a skill. If it was, there would be some consistency from one task to the next. Instead, every time you exert control over the giant system that is you, that control gets weaker. If you hold back laughter in a church or classroom, every subsequent silly notion is that much funnier until you run the risk of bursting into snorts.

The Romney campaign taunts Obama in Charlotte, ahead of the Democratic Convention: 

Meanwhile, the Paul campaign is running this spot in Rhode Island, and the Obama team launches its first series of Spanish-language ads featuring Latino organizers for the campaign in Colorado, Nevada, and Florida. Here's the Nevada spot: 

Alex Burns notes the positive and proactive nature of the campaign: 

Most of Obama's ads so far have fallen into a defensive mold, pushing back on third-party group attacks on his energy record. In this case, the president's campaign is taking the initiative in spending early to define the 2012 race among the Latino voters he must win by a massive margin. Today is also the national launch day of Latinos for Obama.

The DNC continues to target women: 

Mitch Daniels' version of the ad here. 

Previous Ad War Updates: Apr 17, Apr 16, Apr 13, Apr 11, Apr 10, Apr 9, Apr 5, Apr 4, Apr 3, Apr 2, Mar 30, Mar 27, Mar 26, Mar 23, Mar 22, Mar 21, Mar 20, Mar 19, Mar 16, Mar 15, Mar 14, Mar 13, Mar 12, Mar 9, Mar 8, Mar 7, Mar 6, Mar 5, Mar 2, Mar 1, Feb 29, Feb 28, Feb 27, Feb 23, Feb 22, Feb 21, Feb 17, Feb 16, Feb 15, Feb 14, Feb 13, Feb 9, Feb 8, Feb 7, Feb 6, Feb 3, Feb 2, Feb 1, Jan 30, Jan 29, Jan 27, Jan 26, Jan 25, Jan 24, Jan 22, Jan 20, Jan 19, Jan 18, Jan 17, Jan 16 and Jan 12.

A reader writes:

While I agree that RISUG is very promising, we shouldn't prematurely decide that it's the best solution to the problems with contraception.  Here's a blog post from a public expert as to why. Money quote: "Yes, in one sense it exists. But on the other hand we don’t really know how well it works, and we don’t really know how safe it is."

Another focuses on gender politics:

The call for a female version of the Vasalgel injection highlights a serious problem in how culture factors in to adoption of birth control usage. No matter how many men I've linked to articles on the injection (perhaps foolishly expecting an enthusiastic reaction), all of them seem to have some kind of gripe that seems to be a big enough justification to not get it even after vigorous safety testing: "They have to make an incision?!" "I don't like the idea of putting stuff in my body!" "What if they're wrong and it's not reversible?"

In my opinion they're being a big bunch of babies, because if such a fallopian tube injection was available anywhere I would be flying abroad to secure my 10-year, no-hormones required investment immediately. But the more I think about it, the more I'm reminded that male culture ultimately says that the junk is untouchable, and that any modification or interference is somehow emasculating or "too risky" for the family jewels. Men don't consider how infinitely more invasive contraceptive options are for women, because taking on the risks of chemically or physically modifying one's body to avoid pregnancy is still the woman's job. Because of how much men's interests already control pharmaceutical research dollars and distribution, I'm convinced that if men really wanted it they could have it here inside of a year.

Additionally, the Gates Foundation has interest in developing a female injection because of their work in ensuring that women all over the world have safe effective choice in when they would like to be parents, even when their societies do not wish to permit them that choice within the context of a marriage. A female injection would provide a low cost, single visit, 100% effective and 100% discrete solution for women in the developing world, particularly for those who cannot openly use contraceptives with a controlling or abusive partner, or cannot ask their husbands to consent to the male version of the procedure. It's worth exploring, and I wouldn't mind benefiting from that research either.

Today on the Dish, Andrew lauded Poland's investigation into Bush-era torture, feared Romney would make the same grave mistakes as his Republican predecessor on foreign policy, chatted with Ross Douthat about whether Romney was a Christian, and heaved at the current election news cycle. We used science to predict a wave of muck from now till November, found the party bases unified around their candidates, figured out just how badly Romney could lose among women and minorities Romney could lose and still win, determined that GOP-leaning cities were the least walkable, and wondered what Herman Cain was up to (hint: making money). Deficits seemed in important ways beside the point, Mormon women stayed home, and candidates lacked beards.

Andrew also blasted an "intellectually challenged" bishop, responded to readers on tax reform and religion on the Dish, got disgusted by some picture from Afghanistan, and previewed the right-wing backlash if Iran makes a nuclear deal. We debated the differences between Iran and Iraq (re: Jennifer Rubin's Ask Anything video on same), pushed the limits of free speech on a terrorism case, debated the "humor" in Text from Drone, and situated our infrastructure well ahead of China's. The moral intelligence of a calf's mother astonished, veganism was marginally healthy, and trees were good for cities. People struggled to catch cabs, criminal justice fees rankled, an autism epidemic may have began, humanity got lucky, and robots appeared to be next. We rubbished the cohabitation effect, speculated about growing old alone, pinned romcoms to fairy tales, and profiled WebMD addiction. Ask Jennifer Rubin Anything here, Malkin Award Nominee here, Hathos Alert here, Quotes for the Day here and here, VFYW here, MHB here, and FOTD here.

– Z.B.

It required some serious luck:

The atmosphere that we take for granted is a relatively recent thing. In particular, it took billions of years of organisms turning sunlight, carbon dioxide and water into carbohydrates — an energy source that could be used even in the absence of sunlight — which produced oxygen as a by-product. At first, this trace amount of oxygen was absorbed by the oceans or by the seabed rock. Once the oxygen began to make its way out of the oceans, it was absorbed by the land surface. Finally, the oxygen accumulated in the atmosphere, paving the way for life as we know it.

Some perspective on the scope of human history:

About 83 million years separated Apatosaurus from Tyrannosaurus and Allosaurus from Triceratops. The so-called Age of Mammals—which began when the non-avian dinosaurs were wiped out—has been going on for about 66 million years. Less time separates us from Tyrannosaurus rex than separated T. rex from Stegosaurus.

(Video: A mashup of Carl Sagan narrating the creation scene from Tree of Life)

What diagnosing yourself online and gambling have in common:

Gamblers make the mistake of seeing patterns in a set of randomly generated events, deciding that a positive result on one or two rolls of the dice indicates that positive rolls of the dice will continue. For cyberchondriacs, that same tendency means deciding that hitting a streak in the list of symptoms (headache, followed by nausea, followed by fatigue) means you must also have all of the other symptoms in the list.  … The way gamblers say they have a "hot hand," [study author Virginia Kwan] says, cyberchondriacs believe they have "hot symptoms": if they hit the first two in a list, they believe they must have the third one as well.

A spider monkey eats watermelon at 'Rosy Walter' zoo, on El Picacho hill in northern Tegucigalpa, on April 18, 2012. By Orlando Sierra/AFP/GettyImages.