Month: April 2012

Today on the Dish, Patrick waded into the debate and humbled pundits attempting to estimate the cost of Obamacare, Maisie reframed the Buffet Rule debate, I pushed back against a drug war talking point, and Chris gave you the above weirdness and reupped Ask Jennifer Rubin Anything. We wondered if Santorum really pulled Romney right, looked at Mitt's next steps, heard the case for Romney-Ryan, pinned the Democratic platform's embrace of marriage equality to 2016 at the latest, and acknowledged Bush's tax victory. Ad War Update here.

We also surveyed Arab attitudes toward Iran, previewed the upcoming negotiations, busted some myths about Israeli and American politics, examined 9/11's impact on Canada, and pinpointed the most violent place on Earth. Economic growth increased death rates, IPOs created "death spirals" for young buisnesses, Facebook bought Instagram for some pretty understandable reasons, and future earnings hypothetically financed college. Reading surged, some YA novels really were worth it for adults (thread-ending Quote for the Day here), and age didn't always increase wisdom. Race divided a parent from child, American Pie broke down sexual norms, religiosity mattered, and humans were incorrigibly optimistic. We pondered the rationality of hating murders, thought through veterinary ethics, heard the sound of meals, and readers continued the cannabis and hockey violence threads. Ask Charles Murray Anything here, Hathos Alert here, VFYW here, MHB here, and FOTD here.

– Z.B.

by Patrick Appel

Sam Harris believes so:

Ordinary people want to feel philosophically justified in hating evildoers and viewing them as the ultimate authors of their evil. This moral attitude has always been vulnerable to our learning more about the causes of human behavior—and in situations where the origins of a person’s actions become absolutely clear, our feelings about his responsibility begin to change. What is more, they should change. We should admit that a person is unlucky to inherit the genes and life experience that will doom him to psychopathy. That doesn’t mean we can’t lock him up, or kill him in self-defense, but hating him is not rational, given a complete understanding of how he came to be who he is. Natural, yes; rational, no. Feeling compassion for him would be rational, however—or so I have argued.

by Chris Bodenner

"Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development.

When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up," – C.S. Lewis, who gets the final word for our popular discussion thread on adults reading books such Harry Potter and Hunger Games.

by Zack Beauchamp

Facebook came in for heavy criticism after its $1 billion purchase. Om Malik explores one possible motivation behind the move:

Facebook was scared shitless and knew that for first time in its life it arguably had a competitor that could not only eat its lunch, but also destroy its future prospects. Why? Because Facebook is essentially about photos, and Instagram had found and attacked Facebook’s achilles heel — mobile photo sharing.

Kelli B. Grant proposes a second theory:

[Facebook] gets a bigger foothold on phones via the Instagram app, which could allow it to gain more access to the data on your device…Experts said photographs on Facebook could be among the more valuable data on that scale. “That’s the holy grail,” says Scott Steinberg, chief executive of business consulting firm TechSavvy.

“It tells them exactly where you are, and what activities you’re interested in.” Marketers can analyze the photo content itself for basic details like presence of children or pets as well as specifics like friends you tagged and what keywords you included in the caption, he says. That tells them what ads to send your way, improving the chances that you’ll click through. So, post a slew of candids of the baby and ads could start popping up for diapers. Repeatedly tag yourself in vacation photos, and airline credit card pitches may come your way.

Paul Ford zooms out:

(Photo by Zoe, lending her Instagram account to the Dish cause.)

by Maisie Allison

Scott Galupo makes the case for a Romney-Ryan ticket: 

If Obama wins a contest in which the Ryan budget is a centerpiece of the GOP campaign, then perhaps enough Republicans will be ripe for a Bowles-Simpson- or Gang of Six-style compromise next year. Perhaps, under this scenario, enough Republicans will concede that the country can't afford more tax cuts. Conversely, if a Romney-Ryan ticket unseats Obama, then the Romney administration might have a clear electoral mandate. And with such a mandate, the GOP could begin to honestly reshape the public's expectations about the level of government services it will receive in the future.

by Zoë Pollock

How the country traditionally understood the role of its military:

For more than fifty years, the peacekeeping story flourished. It became an integral part of the national character; a determination of how the country believed its foreign policy should be conducted and of what sort of global citizens Canadians imagined themselves to be.

The numbers today:

In January 2010, the month in which an earthquake devastated Port-au-Prince, Canada’s rank among nations contributing to UN stabilization operations had plummeted to fifty-seventh position, with just seventeen actual troops among its 142 personnel serving in peacekeeping roles.

A dog looks through the fence at the Sirius animal shelter some 80 km from Kiev where some 1600 stray dogs and cats are housed, on April 11, 2012. By Sergei Supinsky/AFP/Getty Images.

— C.B.

by Zack Beauchamp

Elias Isquith questions the by-now standard framing:

Yes, Romney was pulled to the Right by Santorum; but there’s something about that framing that implies Romney, in a Santorum-less world, would not have had to make a similar journey in order to secure enough delegates. Barring a scenario in which Romney runs unopposed (or, just as unlikely, as the rightmost candidate) I see no reason to conclude there was something special about my former Senator. If it wasn’t Santorum, it would’ve been someone else. Because, really, all Santorum did was stand as a simulacrum of conservatism for the wide swathe of the GOP base that never liked Romney and never believed he wasn’t, deep-down, a damned pragmatist.

by Zack Beauchamp

Alyssa Rosenberg is unexpectedly impressed by the treatment of sexuality in the series:

I re-watched American Pie in preparation for a piece about American Reunion last week, and found myself spending a surprising amount of time talking to people about the franchise this week. For all its crass, happy commercialism, the movies have struck a deep chord with people, particularly on the question of how they portray sexuality. Take Michelle, for example.

Everyone remembers the payoff to her endless recitations of band camp memories in the first movie: “And this one time… at band camp… I stuck a flute in my pussy!” But no one seems to remember the line that comes after it, when Jim can’t believe what he’s heard. “What? You think I don’t know how to get myself off? Hell, that’s what half of band camp is—sex-ed,” Michelle informs him. “So are we gonna screw soon, ‘cuz I’m getting kind of antsy!” It’s a fabulous inversion of stereotype: while Jim is a clueless virgin who wants to sleep with a woman by the end of high school in part to know what it feels like, Michelle’s in touch with and knowledgeable about her own pleasure. She wants to sleep with him because she knows what she likes and wants more.

by Zoë Pollock

A mother considers her transracial adoption:

The most difficult moments occur when I wonder but don’t know for sure if race is the reason a situation plays out poorly. If I think she didn’t get to go to a party because the parents are uneasy with interracial friendships, am I suspicious, obsessed? But if I don’t consider this and monitor her friendship with that child, am I one of those people who sees the glass forever half-full as a way of avoiding unpleasant realities? There’s no easy answer, no readymade politesse, no etiquette for talking about race or—given the fact that perceptions about how American institutions serve us are so segregated—talking across race.