Year: 2013

Today on the Dish, Andrew questioned why it should matter if Hagel is in the "mainstream" of the Washington consensus, while having a chuckle over DC culture. He addressed the different sides of the administration’s Louie Giglio imbroglio, and reflected on the enigma of Nixon on the man’s would-be 100th birthday. Andrew also traded blows with Dreher and Frum over nanny-state drug policy, engaged with Jonathan Glick over how to run the pay-meter at the new Dish and surveyed reader thoughts on this week’s cage match between Piers Morgan and Alex Jones.

Elsewhere, the debate over the mega-coin rolled on, Adam Ozimek debunked the mythos of small business, and Ronald Bailey made the case for fracking.  We aired more thoughts on Brennan’s nomination, and parsed a poll that put Congress’s favorability ratings somewhere between poser-rock and STDs. We expressed concern over Obama’s lack of presidential pardons, and Jim Manzi dove even further into Drum’s lead/crime conundrum. Looking abroad, the Leveretts made their case for Iranian uranium enrichment, we asked whether a full withdrawal from Afghanistan is in the cards, and Armin Rosen exposed the moral hazard of U.S. aid to North Korea.

In assorted coverage, we checked in on scientists’ grasp of the human genome, took the country’s temperature during this nasty flu season, pushed away overbearing new "smart forks," and spotted some pushback against homophobia in the Boy Scouts. Michael Santos struggled to catch up with technology after serving time while the late Paul Fussell pointed out the significance of that college sticker on your rear window.

We also kept up with Canadian standup as Beck sprinkled his new album across the Internet. Elaine Blair marked the difference between romance in rom-coms and sitcoms, Ta-Nehisi and Marc Ambinder parted ways on Django Unchained and Mikl-Em reminded us that "Happy Birthday" isn’t public domain.  After gazing at an overcast Usheaia, Argentina in today’s VFYW, we witnessed some badass table tennis during the MHB, and paused for a poem by Bei Dao here. 

– B.J.

(Chart of current flu epidemic from Google's statistics)

Released from prison in August 2012, Michael Santos describes the difficulties of adapting to the technological development that he missed:

I served more than 25 years in prison, and I haven't yet been free for five full months, so maybe others can understand my ignorance on the subject of technology. I can accept that volumes of basic information are beyond my ability to comprehend right now, but with everything I have to learn, I don't know whether I'll ever grasp all that I need to know. I don't have any idea what a "server" is, and I don't know much about how to make my content available to the people who need it.

He goes on:

I consider myself as having a responsibility, or duty, to help others understand prisons, the people they hold, and strategies for growing through confinement in ways that will help people emerge with values, skills, and resources that translate into success. Technology could really help me succeed, but since I don't understand how to use it effectively, I'm kind of in a lost world.

Mark Whitney praises the accomplishments of Santos, "the first and only prisoner in history to gradually earn his way from a maximum security cell block to a fenceless camp." Santos' personal website here, and a collection of his writings from prison here. Previous Dish on the difficulties of adapting to life outside of prison here.

Elaine Blair explores how sitcoms portray romance, noting that the shows "offer a salve for the bruises of urban single life":

Sitcoms rarely ask us to believe that any particular couple is, as they say, meant to be. Like romantic comedies, sitcoms might nurture and draw out a sense of chemistry between two characters while also putting obstacles in their way, setting us up for a long-deferred union. (Sam and Diane on Cheers, Ross and Rachel on Friends, for instance.) But romantic comedies traditionally end at the moment the obstacles are overcome and love is declared.

They leave us aglow with a sense of the couple’s felicity. In sitcoms, the story must go on well past the first round of obstacles. As often as not, couples break up and the characters have other affairs, and for good reason. Happy couplings are notoriously difficult to pull off; script writers, used to working in a mode of farce, struggle to find the right tone for domestic satisfaction (think of Niles and Daphne finally married on Frasier). Like any kind of comedy, a sitcom can have a marriage at its very end, but a marriage somewhere in the middle is narrative disaster. And since sitcoms are, effectively, comedies without end, it’s hard to write a marriage into the show in a way that encourages—rather than dashes—our illusions of its rightness.

TNC won't be seeing Tarantino's latest:

I'm not very interested in watching some black dude slaughter a bunch of white people, so much as I am interested in why that never actually happened, and what that says. I like art that begins in the disturbing truth of things and then proceeds to ask the questions which history can't. Among those truths, for me, is the relative lack of appetite for revenge among slaves and freedmen. The great slaughter which white supremacists were always claiming to be around the corner, was never actually in the minds of slaves and freedman. What they wanted most was peace. It's true they had to kill for it. But their general perspective was "Leave me the fuck alone."

Ambers, on the other hand, feels that "Django Unchained is probably the best movie about slavery, ever":

Django's plot is totally implausible, unlike Lincoln, which pretty much happened the way Kushner described. But I think Django conveys a better gut sense of what slavery, and by proxy, the Civil War, was all about. Both movies are great. One makes you cry; the white men did something right; the country realized its mistake and began atone for it with Constitutional amendments. The other makes your innards turn: you'll know how utterly evil, insane and unique the practice of American slavery was and why political and legal transformations are still, today, not enough to expiate our shame.

Anne Trafton reports on new research that allows researchers to "[edit] the genome with high precision":

To create their new genome-editing technique, the researchers modified a set of bacterial proteins that normally defend against viral invaders. Using this system, scientists can alter several genome sites simultaneously and can achieve much greater control over where new genes are inserted, says Feng Zhang, an assistant professor of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT and leader of the research team.

In other genetics news, Mark Lynas, a long-time opponent of genetically modified (GM) crops, recently reversed his stance. He recounts how a little research revealed some of his "cherished beliefs" to be "little more than green urban myths":

I’d assumed that [GM] would increase the use of chemicals. It turned out that pest-resistant cotton and maize needed less insecticide. I’d assumed that GM benefited only the big companies. It turned out that billions of dollars of benefits were accruing to farmers needing fewer inputs…

I’d assumed that no-one wanted GM. Actually what happened was that Bt cotton was pirated into India and roundup ready soya into Brazil because farmers were so eager to use them. I’d assumed that GM was dangerous. It turned out that it was safer and more precise than conventional breeding using mutagenesis for example; GM just moves a couple of genes, whereas conventional breeding mucks about with the entire genome in a trial and error way.

In honor of historian Paul Fussell, who passed away [NYT] last year, Dean Robinson digs up a great quote from Fussell's "Class: A Guide Through the American Status System":

Americans are the only people in the world known to me whose status anxiety prompts them to advertise their college and university affiliations in the rear windows of their automobiles. You can drive all over Europe without once seeing a rear-window sticker reading CHRIST CHURCH or UNIVERSITÉ DE PARIS. … These stickers pose an ethical problem uniquely American: How long after a family member has ceased to attend a classy college may one display the sticker? One year? Ten years? Forever? The American family would appreciate some authoritative guidance here, perhaps from the colleges themselves.

(Photo by Steve Snodgrass)

How Felix Salmon understands it:

The #mintthecoin meme has successfully migrated from the outer reaches of the econoblogosphere into a fair amount of mainstream media coverage, and as a result it has actually started to be taken seriously outside the Beltway. And even, in a few cases, inside the Beltway too. But be clear, this is absolutely a media-driven meme: people talking about it are not talking about an actual political proposal which an important number of serious DC politicians genuinely want to implement. As I say, it’s a Flying Spaghetti Monster thing — it’s a ticklish thought experiment, nothing more. Many media organizations are having a lot of fun with it, and that’s their right. But, especially in this case, it’s important not to mistake media coverage for reality.

Douthat imagines "what would actually happen if the president was understood to be taking the 'mint the coin' option seriously":

Those Republicans in Congress who believe that they’re justified in risking chaos in order to combat the White House’s fiscal irresponsibility would have their hand immeasurably strengthened. The internal pressure on the Republican leadership not to cut a deal with the coin-minting tyrant Obama would be be ratcheted significantly higher. And public opinion, which currently favors Obama and the Democrats and regards Congressional Republicans as the more irresponsible party in these negotiations, would probably tilt sharply the other way, essentially validating Republican intransigence.

In other words, a White House that played the coin card in negotiations would be answering threats to sabotage the nation’s credit with a threat to … massively sabotage its own political position.

I'm with Ross on this. Earlier discussion here and here.

Katie McDonough points to a growing grassroots shift in the Boy Scouts:

Ryan Andresen is an honor student who has been in the Boy Scouts since he was six years old. He also happens to be an openly gay teen, which is why the Eagle Board of Review refused to approve his Scouts’ Eagle application. Until [Tuesday], that is. After appearances on Ellen DeGeneres and Anderson Cooper and 460,000 signatures on a Change.org petition, a California-based Mount Diablo-Silverado Council approved Ryan’s status — in direct defiance of the national organization’s policy against gay scouts. "It’s the first in-your-face (challenge)," Boy Scout district review board chair Bonnie Hazarabedian told Reuters.

But the national organization overruled the locals:

"The Eagle application was forwarded, by a volunteer, to the local council but it was not approved because this young man proactively stated that he does not agree to Scouting’s principle of ‘duty of God’ and does not meet Scouting’s membership requirements," said a prepared statement from [BSA spokesperson Deron] Smith. "Therefore, he is not eligible to receive the rank of Eagle."

When the controversy first arose last fall, Greg Laden downplayed the role of sexual orientation in the story:

Here we have the claim that the Boy Scouts were repressing this young man because he’s gay, and we have a petition that is adding dozens of names a minute, passing the quarter million mark as I write this, but in reality, a key reason, maybe THE key reason, that Ryan is not able to go Eagle is because he is some sort of Atheist or Agnostic or other form of non-believer.

The Friendly Atheist added:

The BSA is a private organization. If they want to be homophobic and God-centric, they have every right to do that. But public schools shouldn’t give them space to recruit members, the government shouldn’t give them taxpayer money, and the rest of us shouldn’t give them any respect.

Ronald Bailey argues that the "environmental and economic benefits of fracking greatly outweigh the costs":

Natural gas is outcompeting coal as a cheap fuel for producing electricity and the result is that U.S. carbon dioxide emissions are down sharply to a level last seen around 1992. In addition, a study comparing the costs and benefits of coal with those of conventional and shale gas in the February 2013 issue of Energy Policy finds that burning natural gas produces far less in the way of air pollutants like sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, soot, and mercury. The authors conclude that a shift from coal to gas would "reduce the overall likelihood of health problems affecting the nervous system, inner organs, and the brain"…

He goes on to address concerns related to methane leakage, local water pollution, and land disturbance. Meanwhile, Andrew Revkin relays two approaches that could "potentially [end] fights over the source of any subsequent contamination of water supplies in a drilling area":

[The first] technology, [developed by Southwestern Energy and Rice University] uses specially designed nanoparticles that exhibit a unique profile, or "signature," that can be detected at low concentrations. This new tracer technology is a stable, non-invasive, non-toxic tracer that can be used for long term fluid identification. The current schedule is to complete the laboratory testing by the end of the year and, if successful, start field testing in the first quarter of 2013…

[The second approach, from startup BaseTrace,] uses a unique, proprietary structure to make it withstand extreme temperatures/pressures and stop codons to make it completely inert. Because DNA has the advantage of providing a near-infinite number of sequence variations, the tracer is well-specific and easily testable.

Previous Dish on fracking here, here, here, here, here and here.