Month: January 2013

The Daily Wrap

US_Map

Today on The Dish, Andrew explained what our soon-to-be-independent business model was, as well as made clear how transparent the Dish would be (and why) before then releasing the overwhelmingly-positive data from our first 24 hours signing up members. Andrew also went through more reader responses to our announcement and appreciated Jay Rosen’s appraisal of the “mutualized journalism” the Dish is trying to do. In other IndieDish coverage, Dean Starkman questioned the likelihood that others could follow our lead, Jeff Bercovici passed along The Atlantic’s new thoughts regarding a pay-meter of their own, and @MelloMcGee mashed up MGM with the Dish’s independence in our Tweet Of The Day.

Andrew also responded at length to the pending investigation of the CIA’s involvement in Zero Dark Thirty, tried to unpack the polarized vitriol between conservatives and liberals, and called out the Obama administration for its “indefensible secrecy” regarding the assassination of US citizens who wage war on the US.

In political coverage, David Brooks noted the GOP’s fiscal rock-and-a-hard-place, Tim Huelskamp pushed back on the idea the the full House GOP really supported Speaker Boehner, hunter Ari LeVaux took on the NRA, and David Gutting claimed that Obama rolled the GOP with the fiscal cliff deal. We also explored Al Jazeera’s purchased-entry into the US television market, about which Pamela Geller made a deranged statement to earn herself a Malkin Award nomination. Looking overseas, Ackerman tried to make sense of the newest death toll out of Syria, Jacob Newberry was troubled by reverse exploitation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Keith Humphreys questioned pot’s profitability for drug cartels, Max Paris surveyed the sad state of the Kyoto climate change treaty, and we learned about China’s democratic near-miss of a hundred years ago.

In assorted coverage, Drum highlighted the link between lead exposure and crime rates, Eric Moll detailed what we could do to combat fossil fuels, Ian Frazier lamented modernity’s lack of mystery, Adam Green introduced us to the world’s greatest pickpocket, and Tom Jacobs examined the psychological power of a woman in high heels. Also, Evgeny Morozov dispelled the environmental friendliness of telecommuting, a reader further explained the dangers of eating fructose, Jelani Cobb pointed out that Django Unchained was “a riff on the mythology we’ve mistaken for history”, and Willoughby Cooke stood up for the typically over-worked and under-paid line cook. We then wondered if being a little overweight might actually be good for us, again contemplated the universe’s possible opinion of humanity, considered the interactions generated by provocative-book reading in public, saw a Brooklyn substation through the VFYW, literally took a second look at 2012 in today’s MHB, and an owl was inventoried in our FOTD.

Once again, please consider joining the Dish as a founding member here, and a massive thank you to the nearly 12,000 of you who already have.

– C.D.

The Dish Model, Ctd

Dustygate

Just a simple point: Jay Rosen grasps and explains better than I could the reasoning and hope of "mutualized journalism." Here is how Alan Rusbridger defines it:

This open and collaborative future for journalism – I have tried the word “mutualised” to describe something of the flavour of the relationship this new journalism has with our readers and sources and advertisers – is already looking different from the journalism that went before. The more we can involve others the more they will be engaged participants in the future, rather than observers or, worse, former readers. That’s not theory. It’s working now.

Indeed it is. It pretty much sums up the inchoate thing we all have been developing on this page for a decade or more. Rusbridger adds:

And, yes, we’ll charge for some of this – as we have in the past – while keeping the majority of it open. My commercial colleagues at the Guardian firmly believe that our mutualised approach is opening up options for making money, not closing them down.

Exactly our intention: everything you see on the Dish will remain free if you never press a Read On button. You will be able to link to any post with no meter counting. But the deep dish experience will be paid for by the core Dishheads. My fuller explanation of the move is here.

Join the experiment and become a member here.

What If The Universe Doesn’t Care About Us? Ctd

Lawrence Krauss sees humanity's insignificance and eventual disappearance as reason to cherish the time we have. Norm Geras pushes back:

[W]e may celebrate an individual life when it has ended, as having been rich in experience, loving relationships, achievement and so on; but when it's over, that is a loss some people will grieve about and more people still will feel as being such. How much more true must this be if death is the future, even a remote future, for humankind? What a gigantic loss! We might accept – those of us who do – that it is both inevitable and irredeemable. But to treat the whole business, smilingly, as only spiritually uplifting seems to miss a certain tragic dimension in things.

The Life Of A Line Cook

Chef Paul Gerard is going back to his roots:

 

Willoughby Cooke criticizes how high-end restaurants take advantage of kitchen staff:

[My] career has spanned eleven years, during which I’ve worked as a prep cook, fry cook, pantry cook, grill cook, pastry chef, and baker. The least I’ve made was $7.50 per hour; the most was $13.50. To be a line cook and eventually a chef you must submit to the hell that is the professional kitchen: long hours, low pay, no breaks, no respect. As you advance up the line, the work gets harder and the responsibility increases while the pay does not. An entry level line cook job starts at as low as $8 an hour and tops out at around $15. (In 2011, the national median wage for line cooks was $10.61, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.)

Walking Like A Woman

Tom Jacobs reviews research on high heels. A recent study's findings:

[H]igh heels exaggerate the differences in the ways men and women walk, making the wearer appear more feminine. This stimulates "sexual arousal in males," as well as increased attentiveness on the part of women who are scoping out potential competitors for male attention. This can happen on either a conscious or an unconscious level, but this evidence suggests the dynamic is real, and transcends fashion fads.

Face Of The Day

158901860

A Barn Owl is held during London Zoo's annual stocktake of animals on January 3, 2013 in London, England. The zoo's stocktake takes place annually, and gives keepers a chance to check on the numbers of every one of the animals from stick insects and frogs to tigers and camels. By Dan Kitwood/Getty Images.

The Dish Model, Ctd

Dean Starkman cautions that the Dish's new business model "may not be as much of a bellwether as you might think, or hope":

To a certain extent, Sullivan and his crew are, if not sui generis, an anomaly on the Web—one of only a handful of established bloggers able to draw what amounts to a mass audience, month after month, year after year. In The Myth of Digital Democracy, published in 2009, Matthew Hindman assembles the data to show that, for a number of technical and cultural reasons, a small number of bloggers—and Sullivan was one of those singled out—dominate traffic heading to politically oriented sites. A lot of traffic goes to a few sites, while the vast majority gets very little. Hindman calls this the “missing middle.”

I addressed this line of argument in an interview with Techcrunch:

Asked whether this approach can be replicated by other, less well-known bloggers, [Sullivan] said, “Well, we don’t know if it’s even going to work for us yet, so let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” After all, low six-figure revenue isn’t enough to sustain even a year of the Dish. At the same time, he said that smaller blogs that are “just one person blogging out of a room” will have lower costs.

“If you get rid of all the overhead … I think it is scalable with a smaller blog,” he said. “I don’t see why not.”

Fighting Against Fossil Fuel

Reflecting on Bill McKibben's "Do the Math" tour, which encourages grassroots activism against the influence of the fossil fuel industry, Eric Moll spells out some strategies:

Potential tactics for climate activists fall along a wide spectrum. On one end are safe and legal options: petitions, electoral campaigning, legal obstruction, boycotts, strikes. Then there are peaceful tactics that fall into legal gray areas or unabashedly break the law: sit-ins, blockades, physical obstruction. At the far end is property destruction, sabotage and violence.

McKibben’s tour began the discussion on the "safe and legal" side of the spectrum, with a campaign of divestment called "Fossil Free"—getting universities, pension funds and governments to stop investing in fossil fuel companies. In his video, Archbishop Tutu explained how such a campaign helped end apartheid in South Africa. In one example of the type of activism encouraged by [McKibben's] 350.org, the Mayor of Seattle recently called for the city to "refrain from future investments in fossil fuel companies and begin the process of divesting our pension portfolio from these companies".

See our collection of "Ask McKibben Anything" videos here.

A Few Extra Pounds Are Good For You?

Kent Sepkowitz contemplates a new report on the health implications of an individual's weight:

Compared to people with a normal weight (a BMI less than 25), the overweight (BMI between 25 to 30) had a 6 percent lower mortality rate—and both groups had a rate about 15 percent lower than the obese, especially the very obese (BMI above 35).

The explanation for the finding is uncertain. Perhaps the pleasantly plump but not obese have an extra reserve—a literal spare tire—that confers a survival advantage should they become seriously ill, whereas the lean-iacs do not. Or maybe the thin ones were thin because of a serious illness that, in the course the various studies, killed them. Or maybe the thin ones were thin because they were chain smokers living off Scotch and potato chips. Or just maybe the occasional pig-out does soothe the soul and make for a happier, healthier individual. 

Whatever the explanation, the observation—a truly startling one—stands.

Paul Campos adds:

[I]t’s true that the fattest people in this study — those with a BMI of 35 and above — had a 29% higher mortality risk than the “normal weight” (sic) reference group. But what people tend not to take into account about these sorts of statistics is that, for most demographic groups, baseline mortality rates are extremely low, which means a few extra deaths will produce an impressive-sounding spike in relative risk.

For example, if you compare the risk that a 50-year-old man will die within the next five years to that of a 50-year-old woman, you’ll find that the man’s mortality risk is 71% higher. That sounds pretty bad, especially if you happen to be a 50-year-old man, but what this actually means is that the man has a 2.51% chance of dying over that five-year span, rather than a 1.47% chance. And note that this hazard ratio is nearly two and half times higher than that found among the very fattest people. So among the middle-aged, gender correlates far more powerfully with mortality risk than even the highest levels of “obesity.”