Month: January 2013

The first trailer for To The Wonder came out last week:

Peter Bradshaw saw the film back in September:

Just two years after The Tree of Life – hardly more than an eye-blink in terms of his usual production-rate – Terrence Malick has returned with something which could be seen as a B-side or companion piece to that film. It is a bold and often beautiful movie, unfashionably and unironically concerned with love and God, and what will happen to us in the absence of either. … Malick goes unhesitatingly out on a limb and the branch creaks a bit. When To the Wonder ended, there was the now traditional storm of hissing and booing at the Venice film festival. Malick gets this treatment, while the most insipid, unadventurous movies here can fade to black and roll credits in respectful quiet. I can only say that I responded to its passion and idealism.

Rob Walker wonders:

Once upon a time, of course, it was a declaration: An authoritative statement from the experts about What (or Whom) To Talk About. But how often do you actually see the cover of Time these days, anyway? And what does the magazine’s cover choice communicate to you on any given week? 

He thinks it indicates an authority that we haven't quite figured out how to replace:

Arriving at some kind of replacement for that would involve a consensus not just about what has authority this second, but about what has authority that could plausibly endure. 

The two most Instagrammed locations in 2012 were in Bangkok – the Suvarnabhumi Airport and a mall – followed by Disneyland and Times Square. John Herrman zooms out:

What's happening to Instagram now is what happened to Facebook in about 2011: It's becoming a site that depends as much on the rest of the world than on the U.S., if not more. Southeast Asia is where the most growth is coming from …

Unlike Facebook, Instagram is an photo-based service, where language takes a backseat to imagery. Yet how many Bangkok residents do you follow on Instagram? How many new friends from Thailand have you made this year? If this teaches us anything, it's that nothing — not the gathered, American-service-using, largely English-speaking digital population of world — can prevail over the power of the filter bubble.

(Image: An Instagram taken by Kasama Poengkuna at the Suvarnabhumi Airport)

Atossa Araxia Abrahamian claims that "[e]very dietary preference has its corresponding political stereotype." For libertarians, it's the paleolithic diet:

Paleo-Libertarian logic maintains that the U.S. government is to blame for obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and dozens of other ills by virtue of telling us to eat the state-subsidized fruits of Big Agriculture’s labor. It says the USDA’s nutrition guidelines were created with the food lobby, not the human body, in mind.

These are by no means implausible or even particularly radical claims. Some socialists and environmentalists have come to the same conclusions, at least nutritionally speaking. Still, this admittedly healthy distrust of government — not to mention the adoption of a diet that is the complete antithesis of the USDA’s recommendations — is innately libertarian. Gary Taubes, a science writer best known for his anti-sugar crusades, is widely cited in Paleo circles. When Reason magazine asked him why so many libertarians are drawn towards Paleo, Taubes responded that perhaps they simply "like the idea that government agencies and federal agencies can be just dead wrong."

This holiday season, the Dish continued to track the latest in politics and culture. Andrew wished readers a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and urged readers to support the Poetry Society of America with a rumination on verse. He also dissected the Pope's incoherence on gay marriage, provided further thoughts on the Zero Dark Thirty debate, relayed a personal anecdote about the "mutts of war," sounded off on marijuana prohibition, watched Bibi become even crazier, and charted Krauthammer's continued descent into Fox News absurdity. In a somber year-end meditation, he declared the American polity "broken."

The fiscal cliff loomed large, and you can read Andrew's evolving thoughts on it here, here, here, here and here.

Andrew also closely tracked opposition to Chuck Hagel possible nomination as Secretary of Defense. He told the President to grow a pair and face down the former senator's AIPAC-led critics, lamented the purity of neocon McCarthyism, evaluated the reasons for the anti-semitic slurs against the man, defended Hagel against Barney Frank, and followed the ridiculous Log Cabin Republican resistance to Hagel, including questions about who paid for the NYT ad they deployed against him, here, here and here.

– M.S.

Ask The Leveretts Anything

[Re-posted from yesterday with several questions added by readers]

During the Iranian uprising of 2009, the Dish continuously clashed with Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett, the most well-known skeptics of the Green Movement. The husband and wife team continue to blog at The Race for Iran. In a recent post, they argue that the regime isn't the threat it's made out to be:

The most detailed, data-rich extensive study of suicide terrorism, done by scholars at the University of Chicago and the U.S. Air War College, concluded that there has literally never been an Iranian suicide bomber. … And so people like to talk about the Islamic Republic as run by these ‘mad mullahs,’ or even if the president is a layman, it’s this ‘crazy,’ ‘millenarian’ Ahmadinejad who just is waiting to get his hands on a nuke so he can turn the whole 70-plus million people in Iran into history’s first ‘suicide nation.’  And there is just absolutely no historical or even rhetorical support for that line of argument.  This is a country that, since its revolution, has basically been much, much more concerned about defending itself, defending the Iranian people, consolidating and maintaining its own independence in the face of hostile regional powers and hostile outside powers including, most notably, the United States.

To submit a question for Hillary and Flynt, simply enter it into the field at the top of the Urtak poll (ignore the "YES or NO question" aspect and simply enter any open-ended question). We primed the poll with questions you can vote on right away – click "Yes" if you have a strong interest in seeing them answer the question or "No" if you don't particularly care. We will air their responses soon.

A reader writes:

I couldn't read this without remembering Don Becker, the bipolar Denver comedian who laid down on train tracks to cut off his own arms after becoming convinced his own hands were trying to kill him. At the time it was reported as a drunken accident. I saw the first show he did after recovering enough to perform. His opening joke: "I wanted to lose some weight and I thought 'How can I lose that weight and really keep it off?', so I joined the Amtrack weight loss program."

Oliver Burkeman, whose book on the power of negative thinking we've covered before, offers a word of caution about resolutions:

Spoiler alert: most of them will fail. It’s a curious truth about the happiness industry that, unlike most other industries, it doesn’t have much to gain from selling a product that actually works. If you bought, say, a smartphone that performed much worse than advertised, you might avoid that manufacturer in the future. But the doctrine of positive thinking that underpins modern self-help rests on circular logic: when a given technique fails, the implication goes, it’s because you weren’t thinking positively enough—and so you need positive thinking even more.

In reality, psychological research increasingly suggests that repeating “affirmations” makes people with low self-esteem feel worse; that visualizing your ambitions can make you less motivated to achieve them; that goal setting can backfire; and that emotions can’t be controlled through sheer force of will. But the temptation to just try even harder can be hard to resist.

But, "if you must make resolutions," he says, "it’s preferable to make tiny individual ones, repeatedly throughout the year, rather than multiple, ambitious ones at the start of it."

(Cartoon from XKCD)

Eric Jaffe explains the logic of pay-per-mile car insurance:

You wouldn't buy an unlimited fare card if you only took a few transit rides per month, but when it comes to car insurance that's pretty much how things work. Drivers who are similar in age, gender, and residence pay about the same premium even if some drive 5,000 miles a year and others 50,000 miles. The problem is not only that low-mileage drivers end up subsidizing high-mileage ones — it's that everyone has an incentive to drive as much as they can.