Year: 2013

Physicist Mark Jackson suggests that the prize can hasten the end of a productive research career:

Ironically, receiving the prize that recognizes a great accomplishment is often accompanied with a decline in scientific accomplishment. This is most likely due to the deluge of social demands placed upon the laureates, who are perceived not just as great scientists but also sages. French biochemist André Lwoff, winner of the 1965 physiology or medicine prize, speaking on behalf of his colleagues, observed, “We have gone from zero to the condition of movie stars. … When you have organized your life for your work and then such a thing happens to you, you discover that you are faced with fantastic new responsibilities, new duties.”

The most bizarre post-Nobel career is undoubtedly that of Brian Josephson, who shared the 1973 physics prize for devising the eponymous solid-state junction. Afterwards Josephson became a follower of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and attempted to reconcile quantum physics with transcendental meditation. He is now director of the Mind-Matter Unification Project at Cambridge University, working hard to keep Britain at the “forefront of research” on telepathy.

It was another grueling, dispiriting day in Washington. What truly terrifies me is the almost Egypt-level of mutual incomprehension that is being displayed. I take it for granted, for example, that the deficit is falling fast, that the current continuing resolution that is now in suspension affirmed the sequester levels of spending that are far lower than most Democrats would like, that Obamacare is settled law that can only be repealed by the usual democratic process, and that no sane government would default on its debts. But none of this seems to be accepted by the spokespeople of the Republican “party”.

They argue that we are facing a Greece-like implosion because of the current levels of debt (and not because they have shut down the government and are refusing to pay our bills until they stop Obamacare), that the deficit is growing (according to Speaker Boehner this week), that Obamacare is such a destruction of the entire American economy that it must be stopped or delayed at even the cost of a default, that a default is impossible anyway, and that even if we defaulted it would be no big deal.

That’s where we are. We cannot agree upon basic empirical fact in order to have a conversation, let alone a negotiation. If we were for a moment to step outside this cognitive abyss, I’d simply defer to the view of almost every single expert on the subject that even thinking about a default could be a catastrophic event not just for the American but for the entire global economy. Whatever your view of the budget or healthcare reform or the debt, surely no responsible government leader would want that to happen. And yet one party seems openly prepared to threaten it, even to save face among their increasingly radicalized followers.

The Republicans, alas, have two advantages that stem from their radicalism (yes, in a classic piece of total projection, they are the real Alinskyites and Obama is the real conservative). To any neutral observer – say, anyone outside the US – they are easily the crazier ones.

And they are holding a gun to the head of the American government and the economy. Do I believe they would happily explode this country’s credit and economy rather than have to go through the difficult task of building an actual majority in the country for their agenda? Yes, I’m afraid I do. I’ve been waiting to see some scintilla of resistance to ever further radicalization, and I see none whatsoever.

More to the point, most of the public’s eyes glaze over when you explain that the budget – with sequester-level austerity – has already been agreed to and that we are discussing now whether the Congress, having set such a budgetary path, will keep the federal government open and pay the country’s bills. Instead, the GOP can simply switch the subject, claim we are in a perilous debt crisis already and that the debt ceiling is the last stand before we end up like Greece. There is no evidence for this, so far as I can see. But that doesn’t matter if you really live in your own mental universe. In that universe, when the default occurs and the economy crashes, and the stock market collapses, and the dollar sinks like a stone, you can simply state that it was all Obama’s fault. And there are enough true-believers out there who’ll actually buy it. Worse, an economic collapse will inevitably make Obama less popular.

So there are two choices, it seems to me. Obama can invoke emergency executive authority to protect the unquestionable credit of the United States and dare the Courts to over-rule him and the Congress to impeach him. Or Obama can give in to what is an unbelievably outrageous tactic – and try to salvage some kind of interim budget deal that will raise the debt ceiling in return for some kind of Republican trophy. That would be a surrender of profound implications for future presidents – yes, Republican ones too – and fundamentally alter our political system to reward the kind of blackmail we’re now witnessing. But it would end the immediate emergency and remove the blackmail – for a while, until the GOP insists that, even though they lost the last election, they have a right to run the country permanently, regardless of electoral outcomes.

Better perhaps for the president to act to save the economy and the world in a truly perilous self-induced crisis than to allow this rogue faction to concoct a Lehman-style collapse to the power of 10 and then blame him for it. It remains staggering and outrageous that this is where we are. But if one faction of one party controls the House, and it goes completely rogue, as it has, then what can a sane president do? Juan Linz, as Chait as noted, was onto something.

All I can offer at this point is some relief: my favorite post of the day – on the genius of octopus brains –; a jumping greyhound; an all-too relevant clip from a fantastic stoner apocalypse movie; a truly WTF tourism commercial; a really tough Window View contest; and for pure camp value, Michele Bachmann making me shit myself.

The most popular post? Still my take on the GOP’s core, evolving, contradictory, hysterical bargaining position: “There Is No There There”. The second? “What Moderate Republicans?”

See you in the morning, if I can get out from under the covers.

Window view: Duluth, Minnesota, 12 pm.

Dreher reflects on it:

Fundamentalists don’t compromise. That is their strength. But it’s also their weakness. I went over a book the other day written by a theologically stout Evangelical (which is not the same thing as a fundamentalist). The book was about approaching culture. I found it hard to take, even though I found myself agreeing with the author on most general points. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was that irritated me so much about the book. What finally became clear to me was that it wasn’t so much the opinions the author held as it was the iron grip with which the author held them. It was as if nuance, irony, and complexity were the enemies of clear thought and pure faith. The worldview expressed in this book was pretty conservative, and as I said, I agree with much of it. But it was airless and highly ideological.

I have been critical of the fact that I didn’t have any doctrinal rigor in my religious education as a young person, and I am allergic to Andrew’s idea that just about any attempt to draw or hold to doctrinal lines makes one into a quasi-fundamentalist (“Christianist”). But I tell you, if I had been raised as a fundamentalist or an Evangelical who was taught to see the world through a narrow and severe idea of truth, I wonder if I would be a Christian today. It’s impossible to say. These things always are. Raise a kid with tap-watery religion, and don’t be surprised if he leaves it. Raise a kid with a religion as hard and cold as ice, and don’t be surprised if he leaves it. This is hard!

I do not believe that adherence to doctrinal lines makes one a Christianist. A Christianist, like an Islamist, cannot rest until his view of the world is enforced by law on others through political action. A Christian can be a rigid doctrinal enforcer in his own faith community without being a Christianist. Let me give Rod an example of a doctrinal line I would not cross: the Incarnation. Or, in fact, the entire Nicene Creed, which I recite at Mass with conviction. But I have no desire at all to impose that view of the meaning of the universe on anyone else whatsoever – let alone backed by the coercion of the state. That is where I differ from Christianists.

Where I differ from doctrinal fundamentalists is where the Pope differs. To wit:

If a person says that he met God with total certainty and is not touched by a margin of uncertainty, then this is not good. For me, this is an important key. If one has the answers to all the questions—that is the proof that God is not with him. It means that he is a false prophet using religion for himself. The great leaders of the people of God, like Moses, have always left room for doubt.

That means not making things like homosexuality and contraception the focus of our faith – turning matters of faith and morals into inviolable doctrine – but insisting on the very core truths and accepting mystery about so much else. In important things, unity; in doubtful things, humility; in all things, charity. But I take Rod’s point about upbringing – and its sometimes counter-intuitive effects. My elementary school – Our Lady and Saint Peter’s – was a wonderful Vatican II Catholic place of learning.

I discovered my faith as a joyful, wondrous, mysterious thing. When it came time for me to go to what Americans call high school, I was enrolled for a while at a Catholic Grammar school, until my parents took me for a visit. Its dourness, brutality, darkness and rigidity made me and my parents shudder and they mercifully placed me at a Protestant high school. I think I probably owe my faith to that decision. If I had been exposed more fully to the dark side of the Catholic church and its institutions – and you only have to look at the hideous history of the church in Ireland for how dark it truly was – then I almost certainly would have rebelled completely. I have authority issues, as some readers may have noticed.

Fighting for my faith in an alien space and climate made me own it more deeply – which is, perhaps, another reason why I have never really believed that enforcing religious beliefs in law helps religion at all. It is more likely to kill it.

A recent study suggests that spending time on the social networking site may darken your outlook:

[P]articipants initially completed a set of questionnaires, including one measuring their overall satisfaction with life.  Following this, participants were sent text messages 5 times a day for two weeks.  For each text, participants were asked to respond to several questions, including how good they felt at that moment, as well as how much they had used Facebook, and how much they had experienced direct interaction with others, since the last text.  At the end of the two weeks, participants completed a second round of questionnaires.  Here, the researchers once again measured participants’ overall satisfaction with life.

So, how does online interaction make us feel?

The researchers attempted to answer this question by examining the data in two different ways.  First, they looked at how the participant’s moment-to-moment feelings, or affect, changed between each text message.  The data showed that as participants reported using Facebook more often in between any two texts, the more their affect tended to change for the negative.  In other words, across the two weeks, increased Facebook use was associated with declines in affect.  Interestingly, this relationship disappeared when participants had very little direct social contact, and was much stronger when they had quite a lot of social contact.

In the second set of analyses, the researchers looked at whether each individual’s average amount of Facebook use over the course of two weeks was related to their overall life satisfaction at the end of the study.  People who tended to use Facebook more also tended to have larger declines in life satisfaction at the end of the study.

Previous Dish on Facebook here, here, and here.