Month: May 2012

Maria Streshinsky ponders it:

[I]s it possible that the death of marriage is an exaggeration? Is the old institution simply going through some shape-shifting that is as much economic as cultural? Consider that the studies also show that marriage, while declining among the majority of Americans, remains the institution of choice for one particular subset: adults with a college education and a substantial income.

In a recent interview, Andrew Cherlin commented that "Marriage matters more now as the symbol of the good life than as a legal institution." He added, "I don’t think the battle over same-sex marriage is about rights anymore. It’s about being allowed to have a first-class social status."Perhaps what we are witnessing is not so much the death of a tradition but a further widening of the class divide. The institution is dying — for the poor.

Charles Murray recently addressed that class divide for our "Ask Anything" series.

(Graph from Pew's report on the decline of marriage)

Aaron Carroll busts two big ones:

[I]t's true that an emergency room won't let you die if you show up at the door, but short of that, you can't get care for a host of medical issues. And, while they will provide that lifesaving care to you even if you have no insurance and no money, they will send you a bill. And if you can't pay, it may cause you, and your family, financial ruin. That's a far cry from universal health care, and nothing to brag about.

A reader writes:

In reference to the other North Carolina residents who have contacted you over the course of today, I too am appalled and embarrassed for our state.  I felt great pride in living in the only Southern state not to have a gay marriage ban written into our constitution.  However, I see this as a short-term defeat, and I am even more motivated than I was before to help bring about an end to such discriminatory practices.  We are victims only if we allow ourselves to be.  No one can take away our self worth unless we let them. If we allow them to do so, then we allow them not only to win the argument of the day but we allow them to destroy our very sense of humanity.   I am proud of who I am and will continue the fight until we win full equality.

Another:

Don’t get so stressed by this.  It’s all part of the marketplace of ideas: some states are going one way, and other states are going other ways.  And we’ll see how people respond to it. My guess is that companies who employ professionals will find it harder to get people to work in North Carolina.  If domestic partnerships are not recognized, that will make it harder to run many benefits plans.   It will also be a more unpleasant place for many people to live.  It might also affect the military bases they have there.  And the universities, in the big complex around Raleigh-Durham.

On another note, I’m still waiting for the same pro-marriage people to criminalize adultery, pornography and divorce.  Somehow, I don’t see that happening any time soon.

Another:

I do get a little bit tired of all of the self-flagellation when it comes to these amendments. I agree that our side could do a better job communicating.  I agree that our side should not shy away from the gay/lesbian angle.  I agree that we are far too skittish when it comes to these battles, promoting multiple messages and, often, falling short on the campaign front.

But at some point we also have to look at our opponents and recognize that these ballot initiatives are – and usually always have been – intentionally confusing.  They know that they are losing the fight for public opinion, so they muddy the waters putting legalese on the ballot and then over-simplifying the message.  In this particular case, a "YES" vote is a vote AGAINST gay marriage and civil unions.  Let me repeat that – YES actually means … NO.

A majority of voters don’t understand the amendment.  Why?  It’s intentionally vague, seemingly aimed at gay marriage but broadly constructed to affect civil unions.

Another:

I'm amazed you haven't yet mentioned the twisted irony that as North Carolina is going to the polls today to "defend traditional marriage," the state's former Senator and presidential candidate – who did plenty to discredit marriage in his own right – is on trial in a very public manner.

Another:

In a confluence of recent Dish topics, a tweet from Neil deGrasse Tyson led me to this video, in which a black minister speaks out against Amendment One, and equates the marriage equality movement with the Civil Rights Movement.

Yet another:

Daniel Kirk, an evangelical theologian at Fuller Theological Seminary, has a great post on Amendment One.  I especially like this quote:

When we hold positions for reasons that are clearly and fundamentally religious positions, we must take extra care not to impose these on our non-Christian neighbors–if, in fact, we would love them with our religious convictions in the same way we would have them love us with theirs. In other words: if you don’t want the convictions of your Muslim neighbor to be forced on your through the laws of the state, you should not force your Christian convictions on your neighbor through that mechanism.

Lastly, a bit of dark humor:

I'm a North Carolina resident, and I'm under 30.  Almost all of the people I call friends down here are opposed to the amendment, yet I also fear it will pass.  When I think about the amendment amongst this group versus the state, I think to the Proposition 24 rally scene on the Simpsons [seen above] … ultimately passing in a landslide despite Homer's speech and the rally making it seem otherwise.

John Aravosis secured a much better deal on his iPhone service in France than he does in the US:

Unless you're paying $26 a month for unlimited phone calls, unlimited text, free international calls, and 3 gigs of data, per month, you are being royally ripped off. Because that's what they pay in France for far more service on their iPhones, and other phones, than we pay in the states for three times as much. … Folks, Americans need to wise up.  We are being royally ripped off, compared to the rest of the world. 

When I tell people here that I pay Comcast $180 a month for home Internet and cable TV (and I don't even get the premium movie channels), they laugh, since folks here pay $30 a month for high speed 100 megabyte fiber optic Internet, cable TV, and phone service (that includes unlimited calls around the world) combined. We should be embarrassed, and then outraged, by how badly we are being cheated by American phone companies and Internet providers. 

Supporters listen as Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi delivers a speech during the opening ceremony of a new office for the National League for Democracy (NLD) in Dagon Township, downtown Yangon on May 8, 2012. Myanmar has issued Aung San Suu Kyi with a passport, her party said on May 8, as the former political prisoner prepares to travel abroad for the first time in 24 years. By Soe Than Win/AFP/Getty Images.

Uffe Schjødt examined the neuroscience of prayer:

Surprisingly, considering God’s postulated invisibility, omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniscience, we found that conversing with God was not associated with regions that process abstract concepts. Rather, we found a marked pattern of activity in four regions that typically activate when humans relate to other humans. … One might ask if these findings, then, are evidence that God is just an illusion, an imagined friend that always listens in times of distress? Or may they in fact be proof that God affects us even at the level of brain function? 

The Romney camp notes another lackluster jobs report: 

The RNC uses Obama's first campaign speech against him:

Previous Ad War Updates: May 7, May 3, May 2, May 1, Apr 30, Apr 27, Apr 26, Apr 25, Apr 24, Apr 23, Apr 18, 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.

Is just as bad as ethnic food in America:

Americans pile lo mein and Kung Pao chicken next to crab Rangoon and fortune cookies, without regard for regional boundaries. The average Chinese person might find it weird to put those foods together on one plate. But to the average American, who can't tell Szechuan from Hunan cuisine, it's all just "Chinese" food. Similarly, in the Middle East, pizza and burgers equally conjure up the exotic national identity of "American" cuisine. Why wouldn't you eat them together?

Jonathan Gottschall dissects them in The Storytelling Animal:

Clever scientific studies involving beepers and diaries suggest that an average daydream is about fourteen seconds long and that we have about two thousand of them per day. In other words, we spend about half of our waking hours — one-third of our lives on earth — spinning fantasies.

We daydream about the past: things we should have said or done, working through our victories and failures. We daydream about mundane stuff such as imagining different ways of handling conflict at work. But we also daydream in a much more intense, storylike way. We screen films with happy endings in our minds, where all our wishes — vain, aggressive, dirty — come true. And we screen little horror films, too, in which our worst fears are realized.

Louis Klarevas bets that Greece's newly empowered leftists aren't as radical as some signs suggest:

Even if SYRIZA earns the mandate and manages to somehow seize the reins of power, the changes in Greek policy will hardly be "radical," as the Coalition of the Radical Left's name misleadingly implies. The party's young, charismatic leader, Alexis Tsipras, has made it clear that he has no intentions of withdrawing Greece from the eurozone, let alone the European Union. Instead, we should expect a more nuanced approach to economic revitalization, which would likely include an aggressive renegotiation of the bailout terms currently in place between Greece and the "troika" composed of the EU, the European Central Bank, and the IMF, as well as a demand for more public investment in lieu of loans.

Francis Fukuyama doesn't see what option the leftists will have:

Outside pressure will never succeed in bringing about change by itself unless it can be allied to internal forces that themselves want reform. In Italy, these forces at least potentially exist, but in Greece they seem altogether absent. … [A]ny fix would have an effect only over a prolonged period, and is therefore not terribly relevant to the short-term future of either Greece or the EU.  If the Greek public wants to reject the austerity agreement, which seems pretty clear, the country will be heading for outright default and exit from the euro.