Year: 2013

XOXO 2013 > SXSW 2013. This may be the year SXSW (really) jumps the shark and Portland takes over. Maybe. 2013.xoxofest.com

— Mike Lee (@mikel_ee) February 7, 2013

Music journalist Andrea Swensson is skipping the Austin festival this year after attending the previous six:

[E]ach year, more and more celebrity-sized acts and corporate conglomerates seem to crash the party. Remember when Kanye West stole all the SXSW headlines in 2011 by setting up camp at a massive abandoned power plant and throwing a star-studded, Vevo-sponsored blowout? It hollowed out downtown Austin and led to paltry attendance at the actual festival’s closing night activities. On the plus side, I was able to waltz up to the front row to see one of SXSW’s biggest bookings of that year, Yoko Ono; on the downside, hardly anyone wrote about the iconic performer’s disarming set, or much of anything else the festival was presenting that evening. That stunt was on a scale that only a pop star like Kanye could pull off, but it signified a sea change that some attendees had seen coming for years. The extracurricular parties that happen during SXSW had outgrown and overshadowed the festival itself. And in this era of pageview-chasing journalism, which events do you think the media are going to cover: The fledgling band playing a tiny club on Sixth Street, or the celeb throwing the once-in-a-lifetime rager?

A writeup of last year’s fledgling XOXO festival here.

(Hat tip: Xmastime)

Peter Orszag observes college graduation rates:

Not surprisingly, but somewhat depressingly, those who don’t finish are disproportionately poor. Among those born around 1980, only about a third of college students from low- income families got their degrees, compared with about two- thirds of those from affluent families.

As another indication of the challenge, the college completion report from the KIPP charter school network shows an impressive 95 percent of KIPP students receive their high school degree, and 89 percent enroll in college — but then less than 40 percent graduate from college. This is a crucial and challenging problem. The College Board’s College Completion Agenda recommends some strategies to support and motivate students that might help, starting in preschool and continuing after they reach college, but the truth is that no one yet knows what will work.

A reader quotes Marin Cogan:

Studies suggest that men are more likely than women to interpret friendly interest as sexual attraction, and this is a constant hazard for women in the profession. The problem, in part, is that the rituals of cultivating sources—initiating contact, inviting them out for coffee or a drink, showing intense interest in their every word—can often mimic the rituals of courtship…

That doesn’t mimic the rituals of courtship; it is the rituals of courtship. Some of them, at least.  The reporter is just employing them for a different purpose (to “cultivate” a relationship other than a romantic one). Nonetheless, the only reason the behaviors she described work is because they are courtship rituals. The parts of the brain that produce emotional attachment don’t know anything about modern cultural contexts or complex rational motivations.  They see behaviors and do their thing.

In this case, what the reporter is shooting for is to perform just enough courtship behavior to elicit just enough emotional attachment to produce an exclusive and ongoing relationship of openness and trust without getting the rest of the relationship that courtship is designed to produce.  Sometimes the source’s prefrontal cortex can figure all this out and realize that what’s going on isn’t real courtship, but sometimes it can’t.  (Likewise, sometimes the reporter modulates her courtship behavior just right, and sometimes she overshoots.)

I’m not saying female reporters are intentionally leading on male sources, nor am I saying male sources are looking for love in exchange for information.  Exactly the same applies when the genders are reversed. I’m just calling a spade a spade, and I’m puzzled that Cogan is describing these situations as if they’re surprising or accidental.  Courtship behaviors often elicit courtship responses.  This is neither surprising nor accidental.

Russell Brand describes why he had to give up drugs completely:

Drugs and alcohol are not my problem — reality is my problem. Drugs and alcohol are my solution.

If this seems odd to you, it is because you are not an alcoholic or a drug addict. You are likely one of the 90 per cent of people who can drink and use drugs safely. I have friends who can smoke weed, swill gin, even do crack, and then merrily get on with their lives. For me this is not an option. I will relinquish all else to ride that buzz to oblivion. Even if it began as a timid glass of chardonnay on a ponce’s yacht, it would end with me necking the bottle, swimming to shore and sprinting to Bethnal Green in search of a crack house.

Not really. Nate Cohn disagrees with Jeb Bush’s advice:

Bush’s book offers this advice for Republicans: “Get religion.” He adds, “What is most striking about Hispanic religious beliefs is their attachment to ‘renewalist’ faiths—Pentecostal, evangelical, and charismatic,” he adds. But Hispanics aren’t as socially conservative as this assumes. Hispanics, by a 59-30 margin, think society should accept homosexuality, which is slightly higher than the general population’s 58-33. Even 38 percent of Hispanic evangelicals think homosexuality should be accepted, compared to just 29 percent of white evangelicals.

Elizabeth Dias explains why Latinos are attracted to Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism:

Many Latino Catholics, especially in Latin America, also identify with evangelical-like and Pentecostal-like practices and incorporate them into the Catholic mass. In the United States, Latino Catholics often attend evangelical services because they are conducted in Spanish and incorporate cultural elements—like food and dance—from their home countries. “Most Latinos are becoming Protestants within their ethnic identity and not as part of an assimilation process,” explains Juan Francisco Martínez, professor of Hispanic studies and pastoral leadership at Fuller Theological Seminary, in his book Los Protestantes.

Previous Dish on Jeb’s new book here.