Year: 2013

A reader responds to this post:

I’m one of the users who attempts to reach an after-work glass of wine-like buzz. I can get close to accomplishing this by placing a small amount of pot in a vaporizer, but I still have very little certainty that I’ve got the dose right. Unlike alcohol, where the proof is written on the bottle and assured by regulators, you can only gauge THC levels through trial-and-error or your dealer’s sales patter.

What’s worth mentioning is that increasing purity is another natural economic consequence of prohibition, as manufacturers seek to mitigate risk by reducing the volume of product and increasing per-gram profit margins. It’s infuriating to see the DEA and ONDCP point to increased THC levels of marijuana as a talking point against legalization.  They hope to convince middle-aged parents with fond memories of gentle buzzes from the 1970s that the harmless weed of their day has morphed into a powerful narcotic that could harm their children. Yet somehow they can’t see that their very actions have contributed to the incentive to amp up THC levels.

In a review of a number of new books on Adolf Hitler, Carlin Romano turns to Laurence Rees’s Hitler’s Charisma to understand the connection between the Nazi leader’s mercurial temperament and mass appeal:

Rees observes that Hitler “found it impossible to debate any issue. He would state his views and then lose his temper if he was systematically questioned or criticized,” and was “the least likely person in the world to change his mind on any issue he thought was important.” Hitler specialized in “screams, tantrums, rapid changes of mood, sulks.”

Rees notes, however, that the “overconfidence” implicit in such behavior was widely “perceived as a mark of genius” and persuaded millions—in part because Hitler made “in an extreme form” arguments already in the minds of his German listeners. Was that not a canny use of reason? Hitler understood, says Rees, that it’s smart to present oneself as “infallible.” Hitler may also have thought it effective to appear volatile. Rees writes that Hitler rooted his hatreds in “an emotionality that was given such free rein as to appear out of control. The ability to feel events emotionally and to demonstrate that emotion to others was a crucial part of his charismatic appeal.”

German listeners, according to Rees, thought of Hitler as someone who spoke with “conviction” and an “absolute certainty” that they liked.

(Photo of Hitler in 1933, from the German Federal Archives, via Wikimedia Commons)

Christian Caryl accuses journalists of failing “to show the [Iraq] war as it was”:

Americans who did not serve may think that they have some idea of what the war in Iraq was like, but they’re wrong. The culprit here is a culture of well-intentioned self-censorship that refuses to show the real conditions of modern warfare.

You can search the seven years of US broadcast news from Iraq almost in vain for images of dead US soldiers, or the grotesque effects of a suicide bombing on buildings or bodies, or the corpses of Iraqi families who had been riddled with bullets by nervous young Americans manning nighttime checkpoints. (The photo of the blood-spattered Iraqi girl taken by the late Chris Hondros is one of the most disturbing exceptions.) For writers the task was somewhat easier: reporters like Peter Maass, Dexter Filkins, and C.J. Chivers were able to confront their readers with gruesome realities. But the problem remains. We can hardly expect Americans to comprehend the grisly reality of wars like the one in Iraq until we’re prepared to show the consequences of the policies we so blithely adopt. The Iraqis themselves, of course, need no counseling on this matter. The war was never invisible to them.

The Dish’s stance on posting graphic images of war is here.

(Photo: The remains of three US servicemen, their equipment and a Humvee lay scattered on a dirt road after a massive IED vaporized their vehicle on August 4, 2007 in Hawr Rajab, Iraq. By Benjamin Lowy/Getty Images)

Ben Merriman contemplates the conservatism of Kansas:

Though Kansans vote overwhelmingly Republican, there are seventeen states where a higher proportion of residents self-identify as “conservative.” Because most Kansans will vote Republican most of the time, but most Kansans do not identify themselves as conservatives, the results of low-turnout primary elections can lead to dramatic political swings. The protracted contest over evolution, for instance, hinged on Republican primaries for seats on the State Board of Education, with extremists, moderates, extremists, and moderates winning in four successive elections. Evolution is now firmly installed in the state curriculum, though the leader of the anti-evolutionist group, Steve Abrams, is firmly installed in the State Senate, where he serves as Chair of the Education Committee.

This weekend on the Dish, we provided an eclectic mix of religious, books, and cultural coverage. In matters of faith, doubt, and philosophy, Thomas Merton taught us how to pray, Reinhold Niebuhr found the essence of Christianity, and Jody Bottum pondered the ways Pope Francis eludes contemporary political categories. Dominique Ovalle urged us to believe in the beautiful, Marc Hopkins investigated the ways jazz music can contribute to Christian worship, Valerie Weaver-Zercher sized up the market for Amish romance novels, and Richard L. Rubenstein remembered a guru’s advice about outgrowing religion. Andrew Ferguson argued that philosophical materialism can’t be lived, Emma Woolerton revealed why Lucretius presented his philosophy in the form of poetry, Kurt Gray explained why playing the victim is the best way for a guilty person to escape blame, and Caitlin Doughty noted the benefits of confronting one’s own death.

In literary and arts coverage, T.R. Hummer mused on a possible recording of Walt Whitman, Darryl Pinckney recalled an embarrassing  encounter with James Baldwin, and Tom Jokinen asked if a certain amount of infatuation led to writing good biography. Brad Leithhauser contemplated various authors’ versions of Hell, Colin Dickey surveyed the literary career of opium addict Thomas De Quincey, David McConnell discussed his book about six notorious killings committed by straight men against gays, and Grady Hendrix fondly looked back at MAD magazine’s film satires. David Mamet ruminated on the role of the dramatist, the herbalist Olivia Laing considered the symbolism of Shakespeare’s plants, Greg Bottoms penned an open letter to photographer William Eggleston, and Tom Bissell thought about the literary potential of the video games. Read Saturday’s poem here and Sunday’s here.

In assorted news and views, Lizzie Plaugic unpacked a report on marriage among the millenials, a couple survived long-distance dating with the help of technology and the photogenic dog they shared, Eric Jett lamented missing the golden age of the booty call, and Garance Franke-Ruta offered a theory about why women have difficulty climbing the corporate ladder. Peter Foges told us all about rose champagne, Martha Harbison wondered if some beer drinkers could be addicted to hops, and Katie Arnoldi described how cartels have seized control of the human trafficking business. MHBs here and here, FOTDs here and here, VFYWs here and here, and the latest window contest here.

– M.S.

(“The Deposition” by Dominique Ovalle)

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A reader writes:

A friend of mine did something I haven’t seen mentioned yet in this interesting thread.  He is a second-generation Greek-American, and his grandfather Americanized the family name to something quite bland and WASPy.  When they got married, he and his wife took that original Greek name as their new married last name.  So he had a new last name too, and their kids will have the last name of their immigrant forebears.  Very creative and a great way to connect to the past while also creating a new future: the American way!

Another:

Another factor is race. I’m in an interracial marriage, and my Chinese-American wife said she would have felt very weird having a European last name – that it would have felt like a kind of ethnic betrayal. (I don’t really believe in changing one’s name regardless, so I was surprised she’d even considered it.) I haven’t seen numbers on this, but I bet women in Asian/non-Asian couples take the last names of their husbands far less often than do women who marry inside their race. And I bet that’s about equally true for both white and Asian women.

Several more readers add to the post on foreign customs:

I work with schools and teachers in Honduras’ mountains, mostly below poverty level areas. I love it. But my comment comes from a conversation one evening with friends there. The women could not understand why any female would want to take the name of their husband.

Everyone’s last name comes from the father, and when the woman marries, she keeps that last name. She doesn’t change it and they all think it’s crazy to do that. Children they have then get the name of the father. This seem fairly logical to me. They explained it as the way of keeping the family line going.

I’ve often thought that the change to the husband’s name is a left-over from women as property. ‘You are mine!” is just another way of the ‘patriarchal’ society that keeps women under wraps.

Another:

Not that we’ll ever do this, and not that it isn’t patriarchal in its own way, but I’ve always thought the Icelandic naming custom was kind of cool. In Iceland if you’re a son and your father’s name is Sven then your last name – for all of your life – will be “Svensson”. However if you’re a daughter and your father’s name is Sven then your last name – for all of your life (even if you marry) – will be “Svensdottir”.

Another:

In Kentucky, when I was married about 15 years ago, the clerks insisted that my name would change with marriage and that if I wanted to keep my name I had to have it legally changed back. That’s right, I had to pay court costs to keep my name, but do nothing to change it.

Another:

I am surprised that this thread has been running so long and you haven’t yet mentioned the Spanish practice of how last names are passed down.  It’s complicated for Americans but makes perfect sense.  A friend of mine who lives in Spain told me that most women don’t change their last names anymore and it does not cause confusion since one of her surnames is still passed down to the child.  In fact, it makes it quite easy to trace genealogy.

The Norweigian surname practice was far more confusing.  There was a geographical custom of taking the surname of the farm upon which one lived.  So, if one purchased a farm, one’s surname changed as well.  Many Norweigians who immigrated into the US before 1923 practiced this custom and took the farm name of the most recent farm upon which they lived in Norway.  This is exactly what happened to one branch of my husband’s family.  I was surprised to see that 70% of Norweigian immigrants acquired their surnames in this way.

Carrie Frye traces the influence that Lord Byron had on the first modern vampire story, written by his personal physician John Polidori:

“The Vampyre” was first published, in 1819, in New Monthly Magazine as a story by Byron. It created an international stir. A play and then an opera were based on it, events that seem unlikely to have occurred if the story had gone into the world as the work of a London physician. It’s widely assumed that Polidori passed the story off as Byron’s in an intentional imposture, but the evidence there is murky. Just as possible is that, the manuscript having passed through several hands after Polidori wrote it, the details of its connection to Byron grew confused on the way to publication. (Byron, breezily waving it off: “… I scarcely think anyone who knows me would believe the thing in the Magazine to be mine, even if they saw it in my own hieroglyphics.” He might just as well have added: “He can’t jump either.”)

(Image: “Lord Byron on his Death-bed” by Joseph Denis Odevaere, via Wikimedia Commons)

Matt Soniak explains:

You can thank sodium laureth sulfate, also known as sodium lauryl ether sulfate (SLES), or sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) for ruining your drink, depending on which toothpaste you use. Both of these chemicals are surfactants “wetting agents that lower the surface tension of a liquid” that are added to toothpastes to create foam and make the paste easier to spread around your mouth (they’re also important ingredients in detergents, fabric softeners, paints, laxatives, surfboard waxes and insecticides).

While surfactants make brushing our teeth a lot easier, they do more than make foam. Both SLES and SLS mess with our taste buds in two ways. One, they suppress the receptors on our taste buds that perceive sweetness, inhibiting our ability to pick up the sweet notes of food and drink. And, as if that wasn’t enough, they break up the phospholipids on our tongue. These fatty molecules inhibit our receptors for bitterness and keep bitter tastes from overwhelming us, but when they’re broken down by the surfactants in toothpaste, bitter tastes get enhanced.

T.R. Hummer listens to a reading (above) of Walt Whitman’s poem “America” – allegedly by Whitman himself, recorded by Thomas Edison:

Is it Whitman? Who hears this voice hears a man. Out of the text, out of the abandonment of song, a living voice arises, transubstantiated. How glorious to hear him, whoever he might be. He reads the first four lines of a six-line poem called “America” (why only four? A revision of the poem? Or was that all the time the wax cylinder allotted? Does this elision itself constitute an abandonment of song?). Decease calls him forth. He reads the poem that is the namesake of the nation in which he had such mystical faith, such metaphysical hope. For the duration of the recording, the tension between orality and text is resolved. He springs from the pages into our arms.

The text of the poem:

Centre of equal daughters, equal sons,
All, all alike endear’d, grown, ungrown, young or old,
Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,
Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love,
A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother,
Chair’d in the adamant of Time.