You have until noon on Tuesday to guess it. City and/or state first, then country. Please put the location in the subject heading, along with any description within the email. If no one guesses the exact location, proximity counts. Be sure to email entries to contest@andrewsullivan.com (the old address still works as well). Winner gets a free The View From Your Window book. Have at it.
Maria Bustillos interviews author and gaming aficionado Tom Bissell about the literary potential of the medium. Bissell was encouraged by a game version of The Walking Dead:
Obviously it’s got zombies, and so it’s both incredibly violent and upsetting, but, unlike most zombie games, you’re not just constantly pulling the trigger. It’s not a shooter. It’s not a shooter. In fact, it’s using the devices of one of the purer, more literary game genres out there: the old-school, point-and-click adventure game. You walk around static environments, looking at stuff, picking stuff up, and talking to people. That’s really what the game is about: talking to people, forming relationships. The relationship between the two main characters (a disgraced black academic and a little girl) is genuinely affecting. I wouldn’t put it on the same level of affecting-ness that you’d find in a really good literary novel, but there are times when it comes tantalizingly close to that. So it’s a writer’s game, in that sense. It’s a game that manages to create high drama out of deciding whether or not to cut a little girl’s hair, believe it or not, because if he keeps her hair long, a zombie will be able to grab it. And you have to have this conversation with her, and sort of allow her to see why she needs to get her hair cut without really telling her why, because you don’t want to alarm her. It must sound like pulpy nonsense described in this way, but the way the game humanizes these people really pays emotional dividends.
More and more, I’m seeing that games are mining good, old-fashioned human anxieties for their drama, and that’s really promising. Games, more and more, are not just about shooting and fighting, and for that reason I’m optimistic and heartened about where the medium is heading, because I think game designers are getting more interested in making games that explore what it means to be alive.
Relatedly, Liel Leibovitz reviews “Applied Design,” a new MoMA exhibition of 14 video games:
While art is bound only by its creator’s imagination, code is bound by the limitations, more numerous than you’d imagine, of computer comprehension.
Code can’t, like Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake, abandon logic and decide to imitate the sounds of nature instead. It can never be poetry, just a series of if/then statements. Code has more in common with the hinges that connect the museum’s doors to their frames than it does with Nude Descending a Staircase.
This divide between code and image, between the algorithms responsible for the experience of play and the pixels representing its visual manifestation, is what makes games so complicated and compelling. MoMA, however, has chosen to largely ignore this question: A number of the games displayed in its exhibition are merely loops of video footage, allowing visitors to watch, as the museum put it, “guided tours of these alternate worlds,” but not to play the games themselves.
The question, then, is not whether video games are art, but whether whatever is currently gracing MoMA’s walls could even be called video games. Anyone who has ever been truly transformed by a game—that is, anyone who realizes that games, unlike paintings or movies or books, are made not to be observed but to be actively played, repeatedly and over long stretches of time—knows that the answer is no.
Previous Dish on artistic videogames here.
Herbalist Olivia Laing, a fan of Shakespeare, recounts her training in phytotherapy:
We used Ophelia’s flowers day in, day out. Rosemary, Rosmarinus officinalis, was deployed as a kind of mild stimulant, to sharpen the mind and improve concentration and circulation. Pansies, Viola tricolor, I mixed most often for childhood eczema. Fennel, Foeniculum vulgare, that marvellous aromatic and carminative (aid to digestion), which was likewise good for promoting milk flow (an action known as a galactagogue), and gentle enough to be taken by a child.
Did we have rue, Ruta graveolens, which flowers a sour yellow and stands in floriography for both regret and the grace of God? I don’t remember. I certainly studied it. It grew in my boyfriend’s garden, and I once idly mashed a leaf back and forth between my fingers. The next day there were red weals and pustules all over my hand, which itched and burned for almost a week. Like many dangerously toxic plants, it had been used traditionally as an abortifacient (‘It expellethe the dead childe,’ wrote Gerard in his Herball of 1633) and so became associated in folk memory with regret, especially in women. This is why Ophelia gives it to Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother: a statement of disgust masquerading as respect.
(Photo: Ruta graveolens by H. Zell via Wikimedia Commons)
In the second part of her series on the problems of prohibition, Katie Arnoldi describes how the cartels have seized control of the human trafficking business:
In the old days, crossing into the U.S. was an unorganized system of independent men working as guides for migrants. Typically a friend of a friend, who had experience crossing the border, would show you the best route for a few hundred dollars; families would refer one another to their favorite guide, and it was mostly done by word of mouth.
It’s very different now, very organized. The drug trafficking organizations have essentially eliminated the independent guide. Either the coyote works for the cartel, or he doesn’t work at all. They control the smuggling routes and have armed militia on both sides of the border insuring that no one poaches on their territory.
Today a migrant can expect to pay several thousand dollars to cross with a guide. There are opportunistic bandits everywhere and trigger-happy border agents on the U.S. side. Even with the cartel assistance it’s incredibly dangerous. Women have an especially difficult time; more often than not they are forced to perform sexual favors if they want to arrive safely at their destination. It is said that rape is part of the price of admission when crossing illegally into the United States.
(Photo: A cow skull, probably hung by an immigrant smuggler, points the way up a backcountry trail into Arizona from Mexico near Green Valley, Arizona on July 31, 2010. By John Moore/Getty Images)
Citing the success of Casablanca, David Mamet contemplates the role of the dramatist:
A man thinks he’s getting over a problem, the problem reasserts itself (Bergman shows up), he tries to deal with it through revenge and then through fantasy (they can pick up where they left off), but finds these do not answer the question. The question is, “How does one deal with Betrayal?” He has tried distance, rage, and alcohol, and they do not work. The true solution, he finds, is, “DO NOT BETRAY OTHERS.” The answer, then, is found because the hero reformulates the question. It used to be, “What do I do about Ingrid Bergman?” but the deeper question, which alone has an answer, is, “WHAT KIND OF MAN AM I?”
This is great melodrama. … The lazy drama informs us, at the end, “It was in you all the time!” This is handy as a way to get offstage, but, as anyone who’s ever talked to a mediocre counselor will tell you, “It just ain’t helpful.” For the essential question is, “WHAT was in me all the time?”
He goes on to discuss the melodrama in Phil Spector, the HBO film written and directed by Mamet that premieres tomorrow. Matt Zoller Seitz slams the film:
Mamet has always had a thing for righteous macho martyrs — see Oleanna, about a professor whose pending tenure is scuttled when he is accused of sexual harassment by an ambitious young female student*, and Hoffa, which compared the mobbed-up labor leader to Jesus and wasn’t remotely joking — but now that he’s entered a right-wing troll phase of his career, he’s cranked up the persecuted truth-teller affectation to the point where you can picture Mel Gibson talking him off a ledge. I’m pop-psychoanalyzing Mamet here not because I particularly enjoy it, but because Phil Spector’s tone and thesis are so out-of-nowhere weird that it doesn’t really make sense as anything but an example of an artist projecting himself onto another artist and saying, “I feel you, bro.”
Brooklyn, New York, 2.01 pm
Garance Franke-Ruta offers a theory as to why women have difficulty climbing the corporate ladder:
Men learn early that to woo women, they must risk rejection and be persistent. Straight women, for their part, learn from their earliest years that they must wait to be courted. The professional world does not reward the second approach. No one is going to ask someone out professionally if she just makes herself attractive enough. I suspect this is why people who put together discussion panels and solicit op‑eds always tell me the same thing: it’s harder to get women to say yes than men. Well, duh. To be female in our culture is to be trained from puberty in the art of rebuffing—rebuffing gazes, comments, touches, propositions, and proposals.
Sensing that they are not prepared for the world they have entered, many professional women seek still more academic credentials. I’ve come to think of this as intellectual primping—the frequently futile hope that one more degree will finally win notice, and with it, that perfect job or raise.
Friday on the Dish, Andrew plumbed his motivations for supporting the Iraq War, admired Obama on Israel while remaining skeptical that he could make a difference, and prayed for David Kuo and his family. Turning his eye abroad, he wondered if Boris Johnson could reshape British politics, expected big green things from Francis, and endorsed outing a bishop whose hypocrisy couldn’t be ignored.
In political coverage, the Supreme Court endorsed the right of resale and Marc Lynch called for Americans to have more perspective in their Iraq retrospectives while veteran Brandon Fielder allowed himself some distance. Overseas, we took a broader look at the implications of the Cyprus bank struggles, a young British blogger sorted through Syrian YouTubes, readers expressed skepticism about the comparison of Iraq and Hiroshima, and John Judis questioned the impact of Obama’s speech in Israel.
In miscellaneous news and views, Douthat distinguished between men and women who delay marriage, readers debated the categorization of Trans surgery, and more education led to more time in the office while the rich donated less of their income. While civil disobedience went viral, Mark Kleiman favored swiftness and certainty over severity in punishment, a judge allowed the Aurora shooter to be drugged for questioning, and zero tolerance in the schools found zero support in the evidence.
Elsewhere, Phil Donohue blamed his MSNBC firing on the bottom line, a reader contributed their own book dedications, Marc Champion revealed how banning horse slaughterhouses led to more animal suffering, and Eduardo Porter capped our fossil fuel use. Parents judiciously doled out screen time, Brian Ries scored a smart watch, Drum distinguished between software and the cloud, and Adam Alter dressed to impress in his OKCupid pic. A laser forged an unlikely alliance in the MHB, we waited for Obama in the VFYW, and an Egyptian protest turned bloody for a member of the Muslim Brotherhood in the FOTD.
– D.A.
Rest of the week below the fold.
Thursday on the Dish, Andrew foretold trouble for GOP if they continued their anti-gay rhetoric, felt optimistic about Francis’ influence on the Church, and provided a home for difficult pictures. In politics, conservative opponents of capital punishment hid in the shadows, congress trailed popular opinion on gay rights, and Charles Pierce railed on Ezra Klein’s “unmitigated codswallop.” While Obama visited Israel, his Israel speech wowed as Israelis and Palestinians diverged from a peace agreement. Elsewhere overseas, the Middle East heated up, Dahr Jamail showed us the human cost of the Iraq War, and Felix Salmon worried about Cyprus and the EU.
In assorted coverage, Kenneth Goldsmith transcribed history, publishing was always subject to the whims of the market, and we examined personalized book dedications. CentUp mixed micropayments and charity, Kyle Wiens wished that buying something meant you owned it, and Michael Hahn photoshopped a drone. As readers drilled down into the arguments on fracking, Eric C. Anderson looked to the stars for raw materials, and researchers miniaturized heart attack prevention. Fallows lost faith in Google products after Reader and Bozhan Chipev achieved equality through piracy as Twitter turned seven.
Meanwhile, Jenni Avins traced the rise of denim, Sharon Astyk spread the word about foster parenting, Emma Maris talked to the mellower marijuana crowd, while the last name debate crossed borders. Readers defended CNN’s Steubenville coverage, Sarah Palin made an appearance on Inside the Actors Studio, and Alyssa Rosenberg gave Iraq War movies a thumbs down for missing context. We waited for spring to come to England in the VFYW, Paulo Wang painted with CGI in the MHB, and a baby bengal bared its teeth in the FOTD.
Photo by Marc Israel Sellem-Pool/Getty Images
Wednesday on the Dish, Andrew struggled to come to terms with his support for the Iraq War, distinguished between Syria under Assad and Iraq under Us control criticized our marginalizing sectarianism in Iraq before the war, and waited for the NYT to come clean on their own role in the march to war. He viewed Obama’s Israel visit through the prism of Washington’s Farewell Address and could find no middle ground on Israeli settlements. Elsewhere, he called out closeted gays for their dereliction of duty and gave readers one more shot at picking Ask Me Anything questions.
In political punditry, Mark Kleiman removed the cultural divide from the marijuana debate while the NYPD wasted time on small-scale arrests. Seth Masket characterized party platforms as capable of evolution but not revolution, Ralph Reed separated doctrine from politics, and the White House threw out a red herring drone policy. A reader provided the mitigating context for Elizabeth Warren’s Moore Award Nomination as we weighed Rand Paul’s upside and updated nuclear policy for the post-Cold War era. In our continuing look back at the Iraq War, Karrar Habeeb chose not to memorialize the beginning of the failed Iraq War, while Richard Perle refused to look back and David Rieff rebuked those stuck in the neocon mindset. Overseas, Obama spread on the charm in Israel and Cyprus rejected the EU’s bailout deal.
In assorted coverage, opinion dominated the cable airwaves while CNN missed the point on the Steubenville rapists. Readers added some thoughts on fracking’s impact, Schneier pivoted from security to resilience. The Simpsons integrated itself into the fabric of our society, Reddit dumbed down complicated issues on YouTube, and Maureen O’Connor committed Netflix infidelity.
We polled readers on adopting a spouse’s last name as women bore the lion’s share of responsibility for messy houses, and Rajiv Srinivasan argued that veterans have it better now than ever before. Maurice Sendak penned his last book for lifelong fans, but David Cameron’s plagiarizing subterfuge was old news. We dug up the first Hathos Alert from the archives and backed our way through the MHB, an Angela Merkel effigy burned in the FOTD, and fog shrouded Santa Monica from view in the VFYW.
Tuesday on the Dish, Andrew pondered the Iraq War’s impact on American hegemony, glimpsed a second-best salvation for the GOP in activist judges, and was powerless to resist his beagles’ charms. In political coverage, Douthat preferred justice to humility in the Catholic hierarchy and conservatives raced to get their marriage equality endorsements in under the wire. While Chait revised his odds for immigration reform, Joe Romm raged against the idea of “reversible” climate change.
On the 10th anniversary of the Iraq invasion, we wondered whether the Arab Spring would have swept up Iraq, and parsed the current support for the Iraq War. We gathered stories from the ground and reflected upon the human toll of the Iraq War in the FOTD. While Frum and Greenwald debated Halabi, a war criminal tweeted, the US stopped training Iraqi police despite continuing civilian casualties, and Iraqi refugees chose between a rock and a hard place.
In assorted coverage, Orlando Cruz KO’ed expectations for an out boxer, readers took another look at taking names, and Sarah Marshall deflated America’s ego. Freddie deBoer traveled the long road home, Douglas Rushkoff maintained eye contact, and dog runners helped pudgy pooches slim down, while time crunches forced parents to make tough decisions and “Likes” replaced applause. Libraries faced a budget crunch, Evgeny Morozov praised imperfection, and a reader tired of our sponsored content coverage as Derek Thompson delivered some bad news for newspapers.
Elsewhere, vinyl wasn’t worth it for Jason Heller, Rob Thomas filled in the details on the Veronica Mars movie, Ursus Wehrli balanced order and chaos. As we tasted the “pie-in-the-sky”, reputation proved to be an important asset in the sharing economy, and App Academy invested in its students. As we reached back in the archives for our first hathos-filled MHB, recycling mesmerized in today’s MHB, we visited Austria in the VFYW, and arrived at Victoria Station in the VFYW contest.
Monday on the Dish, Andrew continued to work through Washington’s (and his own) failures leading up to the Iraq War, unpacked the latest polling data on marriage equality, and liked Francis as we filled in the details on his past. In home news, he dove into the details on our first month behind the meter and dissected the similarities and differences between the Dish and Veronica Mars.
In political coverage, Bill Clinton drastically underestimated the scope of the Iraq War, a Republican pot prohibitionist was forced out of the cannabis closet, and favorability for the death penalty declined in the face of bad PR. As Hillary voiced her support for equality, some readers saw an empathic deficit in Portman’s sudden reversal on same-sex marriage, while others cheered his progress. Overseas, the Cypriot financial sector struggled through the weekend, with potentially dire consequences for the rest of Europe.
Elsewhere, Bjørn Lomborg pointed out the irony of Earth Hour and we debated resurrecting recently extinct species. Technological advancements graduated from the Defense Department to your kitchen and banished UFOs. Rebecca Davis O’Brien brought us along on her morning commute, Greg Beato employed big data in hiring and firing, while Chris Albon felt tied down by the digital record. Christine Haughney showed us that quality still matters in journalism, Google Reader’s coming death opened up an opportunity for Twitter, and authors tried to game the Amazon rankings,
In arts and leisure coverage, Scott Tobias had his fill of formulaic documentaries, Steven Sodergbergh’s latest film twisted us around, and while sound engineers spun audio gold from everyday noises, we were left with unanswered questions about the explosion of the Death Star. Amanda Nazario walked us through a day in the life of a dog-walker-for-hire, diet soda may be to blame for ballooning waistlines, and whiskey makers stretched their boundaries. We crossbred a horse and a naked mole rat in the FOTD, framed a frost-covered tree in the VFYW, and Ze Frank instructed us on the finer points of fecal flirting in the MHB.
By Franco Origlia/Getty Images
This weekend on the Dish, Andrew marveled at Pope Francis’s first press conference, shared the latest installment of his debate with Hitch, asked if Krauthammer would offer a retraction, noted an egregious example of Instapundit’s use of sponsored content, and pondered the latest in Obama’s drone strategy.
We also provided our usual eclectic mix of religious, books, and cultural coverage. In matters of faith, doubt, and philosophy, Andrew Byers sought a more substantive spirituality, Adam Kirsch traced the invention of religion, and Rachel Aviv remembered when the gods fell silent. A.N. Wilson noted C.S. Lewis’s kinky side, Sam Tanenhaus profiled the controversial Catholic Garry Wills, and Marcus Mumford expressed ambivalence about the label “Christian.” The Pilgrims proved to be fond alcohol, Giles Fraser unpacked the secularized Christian assumptions behind the belief in progress, and Ed Voves highlighted the spiritual side of the Pre-Raphaelite painters. Theodore Dalrymple categorized the varieties of pessimism, Stephen Asma defended favoritism, and David P. Barash outlined the convergences between evolutionary biology and existentialist philosophy.
In literary coverage, Tocqueville became a surprise bestseller in China, Justin E.H. Smith praised George Saunders’s distinctly American idiom, and Andrea Barrett mused on the way writers don’t feel at ease in the world. Francine Prose rejected her 7th grade teacher’s writing advice, Alexis Coe looked at Virginia Woolf’s tumultuous relationship with her servant, and Sara Davis ruminated on how we portray death’s inevitability. Read Saturday’s poem here and Sunday’s here.
In assorted news and views, a reader sounded off on corporate feminism and the class divide, Evan Soltas described the graying of the workforce, and Jordan Weissmann wondered why private colleges need public money. Tessa Johnson revisited the first commonly prescribed tranquilizer, Christopher Ryan painted a dark picture of the future of human sexuality, and an adult film star gathered data about orgasms. Katie Arnoldi continued the conversation about cannabis not being so green, Matthew Power investigated the urban explorer movement, and Alex Cornell mapped ideal seating arrangements for dinner guests. MHBs here and here, FOTDs here and here, VFYWs here and here, and the latest window contest here.
– M.S. & D.A.
Iraq War veteran Brandon Friedman, author of The War I Always Wanted, marks the anniversary of the war:
This week, when I tried to remember the day we invaded, I couldn’t remember if it had been the 19th, the 20th, or the 21st. When I tried to think of the date we sustained our first killed in action in July 2003, I couldn’t remember that with any certainty, either. And when I tried to recall everyone I knew personally who’d been killed in the last decade, I came up with a list of half a dozen guys. But I wasn’t sure if it was everyone.
These are dates and names I once told myself I would never forget.
Most of my war stories now sit on the shelf in my living room, locked in a 256-page time capsule that I never open. Writing about the war was cathartic and served its purpose. I don’t really go there anymore. I don’t have to. The memories are trapped on the pages, like wasps in a jar.
A reader sends the above image:
In 1964 I received this. Forty-eight years later, after a 45-year separation we are, again, together.
Another reader:
I have had the experience of unexpectedly finding poignant and sad book inscriptions in my own home. When I was a teenager, I opened a copy of Salinger’s Franny and Zooey given by my father to my mother, apparently during their divorce, which said:
Someday we will learn to stop saying goodbye. Love Richard.
Later, in my grandmother’s house, I found a copy of The Tempest inscribed with my uncle’s name. However, I never met Mark, because he committed suicide after his freshman year in college. This book is all I have of him.
The Dish 
