April 2013 – Page 94

The Partisan Court

by Doug Allen

Jonathan Bernstein calls on Justice Ginsburg to retire:

There’s every possibility she could not only continue in office beyond the Barack Obama presidency but that she could survive even eight years of a Republican in office after that, if that’s what’s in the cards. And yet: “Every possibility” isn’t good enough. Ginsburg will turn 84 soon after Obama’s successor will be sworn in. Realistically, anyone planning for the future has to assume there’s a 50 percent chance of that successor being a Republican.

He follows up:

I don’t understand the objections that this line of thought is insulting to Ginsburg, or what I think is a related argument that SCOTUS should be above politics. I think that’s a real misunderstanding of the Court. It’s true that Supreme Court justices don’t, and shouldn’t, simply vote the way that Members of Congress vote on issues. But yes, absolutely, the Court is and is meant to be “political” and a part of the US democracy. And during an era in which the polity is highly partisan and polarized, it’s no surprise that the Court is, too. Not only no surprise, but it’s basically what we should want. The idea that the Court should be the same regardless of what voters want is anti-democratic — and, given the Constitution, unrealistic.

The View From Your Window Contest: Winner #147

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

The leafless trees and an evergreen in the background made me think of a northern climate, but since my guesses are rarely even in the correct hemisphere, I’m going to go out on a limb: The orange tree, yellow house, and white-washed garden walls point to Athens, Greece. The red-tile roofs visible in the photo make me think its in the Old Town area of Athens below the Acropolis.

Another reader:

This is my first time guessing a VFYW. I am not using any investigative tools for this guess; I just have a hunch. The orange tree reminds me of the kind I used to see and pick oranges from walking through Damascus, but the roof shingles on the yellow building and lack of satellite dishes tells me this can’t be an Arab country. However, it does have a Mediterranean feel, just emerging out of winter. Letters on the building could be Greek? It’s be in the news lately. But let’s go with Cyprus. To be more specific: Limassol, Cyprus.

Another:

The first step was to identify the logo in the lower-right corner. It’s ProCredit, and a quick search online reveals that they only operate in Latin America, Africa, and Eastern Europe. You’d think after cross-referencing the specific countries where they operate with orange-producing countries you could cross off Eastern Europe and Africa, but that’s not quite true. Since ProCredit’s website doesn’t offer an easy way to display all of their locations in any given country, I’m going to stop here and just guess Guadalajara, Mexico, since Mexico is the #1 orange producing country among countries where ProCredit operates.

Another:

Through a combination of Wikipedia and luck, I identified that building on the right as a ProCredit bank within a ten minutes. But it’s 60 degrees and sunny in New York today, so I’m not going to spend much of it indoors trudging through Google Maps. Time for educated guessing:

Given the week’s news, I suspected Cyprus, but ProCredit lists no branches there. The oranges made me think Mediterranean, where it has branches in Albania and many of the former Yugoslav Republic countries. Then again, Cyprus involves Russia, and Georgia is in the Russian sphere, grows wonderful citrus, and has ProCredit banks. So now I’m leaning Georgia. But hang on — the people who live where the picture was taken are clearly concerned with heavy rain: The drainpipes and gutters are prominent and well-tended. So, a tropical country? I’ll say Nicaragua, because Dish-heads seem to travel off the beaten path, although ProCredit also operates in El Salvador, Mexico, Honduras, and Colombia and I think it could just as easily be one of those.

Now I’m going out for some sun.

Another:

I’m going to go with Italy, and I’m going to go with a post-WWII neighborhood of Florence since the orange tree was a symbol of the Medici.

Another:

The picture this week was pretty difficult to due to the lack of coverage in Serbia of Google Street View, but thankfully the photo has a clear view of a Pro Credit Bank branch, and apparently they are pretty common throughout Serbia. The photo also offers other clues such as the “aesthetics be damned, we are putting a Mitsubishi a/c unit in this place, and are going to plop the brilliant white condenser outside the window”, a common practice throughout the city of Vranja, where the citizens, like the rest of the country, prefer to grow apricots on any available area of their back yard to help block out these eyesores.

I doubt I have much of a chance this week, as I am sure somebody’s ex-girlfriend’s cousin happens to be banker’s associate for Pro Credit Bank in Vranja, and has already sent them exact coordinates of the location to send in to The Dish and claim the prize. Nevertheless, if I win, I promise to send in my subscription.

Don’t let a loss stop you! Another reader:

Well, I started in Serbia and ended up in Macedonia. I was able to identify ProCredit Bank on the corner and I figured orange trees grow far enough south in Macedonia that it just might be the place. That’s as far as I can get without some decent software so this is where I have to stop. Prilep, Macedonia:

Another Eastern European country:

I recognized ProCredit bank instantly from my time spent in Moldova doing development work. Problem is, it’s a huge bank, and branches could be anywhere in the developing world. The combination of the fir tree in the back and the unique roof shingles narrow this location down to Eastern Europe (no major Asian countries have ProCredit banks, and those shingles are only found in a handful of countries outside of Asia). It looks like Romanian graffiti on the top of the white brick building, so we could be in Romania or Moldova (Moldovan is essentially Romanian). I’ll limit my Google Maps search to what I know: Moldova.

It doesn’t look like any of the major branches in Moldova (many of which are located in more urban housing than this). From the satellite, I’m guessing it’s possibly this branch: Ştefan cel Mare şi Sfânt 33, Soroca, Moldova.

Yet another:

You sent me on my first ever VFYW witch hunt, searching for ProCredit banks in Kosovo. I could probably spend several more hours trying to pinpoint the locations, but I’m not sure I have the time or the energy (although it is kind of fun to see all the streets named after American politicians, like Eliot L. Engel St in Peja!).

Why my sudden VFYW participation?

A couple years ago, you had a picture of Cartagena, Colombia. I swore it looked familiar as I was planning a trip there for my friend’s wedding. Of course I thought my hunch would have been thousands of miles off. (During my trip, I actually took a picture of the window it was taken from). Then, a few months later, you had an entry from Mozambique. This failure to go with my gut cut much deeper. Not only was my friend the one who had submitted the picture, but I was the one who had advised him to submit something while he was working overseas. After not entering my guesses those two times, I vowed to pursue any future leads.

Now, here I am with no confidence whatsoever in my guess fully aware that some other Dishhead will have pinpointed the exact home from which the picture was taken. It kind of looks like it could have been taken from Haxhi Zeka, in Prizren Kosovo, but I really have no idea.

More coincidences from our contest here and here. Another Kosovo guesser:

Another gets the right country:

I noticed the graffiti on the apartment wall that says “Para Laci”. This appears to be a reference perhaps to the European football team from Laç, Albania. Laç is near an ancient church that is a destination of pilgrimage dedicated to St. Anthony of Padua. There is a dearth of photos and map details of the town. I can’t say for sure the photo is not from somewhere else such as Tirana, but I am going with Laç.

Another gets closer:

Going on the Laçi graffiti, I’m guessing it’s in Albania. There are two ProCredit Bank locations that Google Maps finds there, and one is next to the Hotel Lisus in Lezhe. So perhaps it’s a first or second story hotel window facing north.

Another nails the right city:

What a frustrating contest this week! The more of these I do, I notice how we VFYWers have assembled a collective toolbox, and in this regard narrowing down to the country was mostly an act of standing on the shoulders of giants. Those window units point me to eastern Europe and the geographically limiting orange tree pushes me south. I figured out the commercial bank sign and went to its website to learn the scope of its worldwide footprint. Grafitti confirms the usage of the Latin alphabet. Google “Para Laci”, and the wisdow of crowds points you to … Albania, via links about fooball clubs and rappers, amongst others. Less than an hour to confirm the country, and with the requisite shot of luck we have the city of Tirana, Albania inside another thirty minutes.

From there the toolbox disintegrates. We look at every storefront photo of a ProCredit Bank, but none quite fit right. Albania’s capital has not yet succumbed to the intrusiveness of Street View. Aerial shots are as inscrutable as I wish my own home were. But we’ve found that tallish brick building in a photo, we know we have. But it’s across the street from a different ProCredit branch. We think perhaps there’s another branch, or possibly an abandoned one across the street, but we can’t get behind the brick building to confirm. After nailing the neighborhood in 1.5 hours, we spend 3 more trying to find the window.

Then despair – a mile down the road, another similar brick building, adjacent to another ProCredit branch. It all crumbles. I still believe in Tirana, but I have no confidence in my specifics.

Another Tirana guesser:

A lot of the aerial views of Albanian towns show red-tiled roofs like the one in the photo. And when you go on ProCredit’s Albanian website – whose webmaster is probably wondering why they’ve been getting so many hits this past weekend – you see a lovely picture of this smiling man in a blue shirt:

This is exactly the same image that you see hanging in the window of the ProCredit bank in the VFYW.

A group effort:

So here’s how my weekend went: I had all these plans to catch up on homework for my master’s program. Then the weekly VFYW contest started on Saturday, and my entire afternoon and night were completely shot. Here’s what I did: my girlfriend, a mutual friend, and I all scoured the photo for any evidence. I was the first to realize that the bank was a ProCredit Bank (I googled “ProC” and saw what came up in the AutoComplete box). Then we went to the bank’s web site and started eliminating countries. My girlfriend noticed that the guy on the advertisement on the window of the bank was the same guy that appeared on ProCredit Albania’s web site, so we had a country match.

Since that time, we spent hours and hours on Google Maps and Street View (turns out, satellite imagery of Albania is not quite what it is in, say, New York). We especially focused on Lac, since graffiti on the building on upper left says “para laçi.” Anyway, the point to all this is: we still don’t know which branch it is. Damn ProCredit and its all-too-convenient branches.

So I’m guessing Tirana. Because it seems like the kind of place that might have both a ProCredit Bank branch AND a backyard orange tree. So there.

Another nails the right building:

This week’s “View From Your Window” is located in Tirana, Albania. Of this I am 100% positive. I am also about 99.5% sure that this picture has been taken from the City Hotel Tirana on Rruga Ismail Qemali. If I had to be more specific, I’d say it was taken from the second floor window next to the “E L” in “hotel” on the southern side of the building, facing the alley.

In the event of multiple correct guesses (as is likely; I’m guessing 50-60 correct hotel-level guesses), this is my fifth correct guess. Previous correct guesses include Queenstown, New Zealand; Sausalito, California; Anchorage, Alaska and Kagoshima, Japan.

The number of correct hotel guessers was actually ten (all of whom will now be on the “Correct Guessers” list, which will give them an edge in future contests). But only one of them has guessed more prior views than the above reader without yet winning. That reader’s entry:

That persimmon tree initially had me thinking Asia. But the sign for ProCredit Bank – a surprisingly large network of microloan and retail banking establishments through Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Africa – quickly redirected me toward SE Europe.

Let this be said: While there may be more Rodeway Inns and local police stations in North America than ProCredit branches in the Balkans, there are still plenty of the latter. What’s more, they’re represented pretty spottily in Google Maps. Most of Serbia’s and Kosovo’s show up in map view, for instance, but you won’t find any in, say, Bosnia-Herzegovina that way.

I had a good feeling about Albania (Wikipedia singles the country out as a regional leader in persimmon cultivation, for whatever that’s worth), but even on ProCredit’s Albanian website, a lot of the branches had no photos available. Google apparently has no Albanian Street View database, and its grasp of exact addresses there is a little shaky. Thank goodness some kind folks took photos in the vicinity of one of the several Tirana branches, this one on Ismail Qemali St.:

The colored outlines correspond to the same on the original VFYW and the Google map view:

The first floor seems the most likely, given the position of the stone wall (light blue) and gate (yellow). And as this image shows, there’s a ventilation unit (in pink!) by the first floor window, southwest corner, matching the one in the original image:

From the photo’s owner:

On a recent trip to Albania for work, I stayed an extra few days to check out Tirana and the surrounding areas. I stayed at a small hotel on a side street that was recommended by a friend called City Hotel on Rruga Ismail Qemali, Nr 8/1. It was taken from the first floor, room #2. I quite liked the orange tree in the yard outside my window and thought I’d share it.

Congrats to that colorful reader on the tough win. This was truly one of the most impressive contests yet. I had picked what I thought would be a really tough photo because I knew I would be especially busy this week with Andrew on vacation and I wanted to cut down on the submissions. Silly me: there were close to 150 entries, half of which were of Albania. Readers still continue to amaze me when it comes to this contest, after nearly three years of running it. As one reader puts it:

The VFYW contest is creepy. Seriously. How can these people – from just ONE random photograph – pinpoint the EXACT location down to the apartment unit it was taken from?! It’s creepy.

(Archive)

Lessons Not Learned

by Doug Allen

Jackson Diehl defends his interventionist stance on both Iraq and Syria:

Iraq was unquestionably costly and painful to the United States — in dollars, in political comity and, above all, in lives, both of Iraqis and Americans. It hasn’t turned out, so far, as we war supporters hoped. Yet in the absence of U.S. intervention, Syria is looking like it could produce a much worse humanitarian disaster and a far more serious strategic reverse for the United States. … The tragedy of the post-Iraq logic embraced by President Obama is that it has ruled out not just George W. Bush-style invasions but also the more modest intervention used by the Clinton administration to prevent humanitarian catastrophes and protect U.S. interests in the 1990s.

Larison scoffs:

One lesson from Iraq that many war opponents have learned is that the U.S. shouldn’t be waging unnecessary wars that serve no discernible U.S. interest. That isn’t the wrong lesson to learn. It’s one that Diehl simply ignores, which is probably why he never really addresses how it would serve U.S. interests to go to war in Syria.

Another lesson is that forcibly collapsing a regime creates far more instability and chaos than leaving it in place would. There is no likely scenario in which hastening regime collapse would have limited the loss of life and displacement of civilians in Syria. …

Military interventions almost always take longer than expected, and that’s always true for interventions that are sold to the public by emphasizing how low-cost and easy they will be. Take an interventionist’s original estimate for how long a given military action will take, and then multiply it by ten or fifteen and you’ll be closer to the real figure. One of the reasons no one trusts the promises of Iraq war hawks is that they were promising a swift and easy war in 2003, too, and all that many of them can say after an eight-year debacle is that it “hasn’t turned out, so far, as we war supporters hoped.”

Why Not Hillary?

by Patrick Appel

Frum claims that Hillary winning the 2016 nomination will be bad for the Democratic party:

After eight years in the White House, a party requires a self-appraisal and a debate over its way forward. Bill Clinton offered Democrats just such a debate in 1992 with his “New Democrat” ideas. Barack Obama offered another in 2008 with his careful but unmistakable criticism of Clinton-era domestic policies and Hillary Clinton’s Iraq war vote. But if Hillary Clinton glides into the nomination in 2016 on the strength of money, name recognition, and a generalized feeling of “It’s her turn,” then Democrats will forgo this necessary renewal.

Kilgore pushes back:

I’m all for fresh talent and helpful intra-party debates, but I’d say what Democrats probably want and need most is a 2016 victory to consolidate the policy achievements of the Obama administration while perhaps convincing Republicans the vicious obstructionism they’ve been exhibiting since 2009 is a dead end.

Agreed. The Democrats have their differences but the party is more ideologically unified now than it has been in decades and the Democratic coalition is basically sound.

Ask Andrew Anything: Processing The Progress On Marriage

by Chris Bodenner

Andrew talks more about his recent trip to West Point here. His analysis of the SCOTUS hearings here and here, and his reaction to Rob Portman’s conversion here. By the way, the reader reaction to the AA reboot has been positive so far:

I just wanted to say that I really liked the new set up and look for the Ask Anything series. I didn’t really like the surreal filter that was used before and often found it more distracting than helpful when listening to the videos. I just watched the AAA on Pope Francis and Ratzinger. The clarity and HD quality used in that video is, in my opinion, preferable to what was set up before. Keep up the great work!

Another:

I really like the un-distorted visuals, larger format, and understated background. And I really really really like that you’ve gotten rid of that horrible typing sound when printing out the questions. A brief (and blessedly silent) title at the beginning works perfectly.

A special thanks to Chas for assembling the Dish mobile studio, shooting the footage, and processing the videos. The Ask Anything series is also available on YouTube.

The Televised Underclass

by Doug Allen

Drew Gardner views reality TV shows like Killer Karaoke – “essentially a mash-up of American Idol and Fear Factor” – as microcosms of the current capitalist economy:

Capitalist economic systems require one central point of internal logic for them to function; in order to constantly expand profits, workers must be paid less than the value their work creates, ideally as little as possible, as little as the labor market will bear. In classical economic theory, new value only comes from one place, labor. In order to concentrate wealth for owners, shareholders and managers, this surplus value is then concentrated into financial instruments and forms of rent that charge the workers who created the value in the first place. It is a parasitic relationship.

Reality TV contestants are an excellent object for this kind of relationship, because they are a disposable, easily replaced group of workers. Because their working conditions are not regulated by the Screen Actor’s Guild, contestants can work unusually long hours. … Most agree to work for food and shelter during the time they are being filmed, in hopes that the exposure might lead to some future opportunity, if not just for the sheer narcissistic reward of appearing on television.

Alyssa Rosenberg adds:

Hotels, big-box stores, and other employers that rely heavily on low-wage workers increasingly seem to have tested, and found, the floor for what they can ask employees to do and still find a steady stream of labor without provoking union organizing drives. But unlike reality television, low-wage American jobs were never going to offer massive prizes to a few workers to defuse more general discontent about compensation and working conditions. In the lottery that is the American economy, if you promise millions of dollars to a single person, you’ll be able to take many millions more from even those who know they’re getting played for suckers—particularly if you’re asking them to participate in one bad subset of the economy because the one they long to escape is worse.

A Worrisome Recovery?

by Patrick Appel

Judis doubts that “the current recovery is leading toward the buoyant growth and widespread prosperity that we enjoyed after the country’s last great crash and downturn.” Among his reasons:

During the golden years, wages often accounted for almost 60 percent of national income. They are now at an abysmal 43.5 percent. Productivity has continued to rise faster than median wages. In January, incomes fell by the largest amount in twenty years. Consumer spending increased because the savings rate declined. That’s exactly the pattern that occurred in the years prior to the crash and Great Recession.

After a brief hiatus at the beginning of the Great Recession—when the crash eliminated wealth at the top—the top of the income scale has resumed expanding at the expense of everyone else. Corporate earnings increased 20.1 percent a year since 2008, but as much as $1.5 trillion of these profits remain uninvested. In other words, we have a growing accumulation of wealth at the top that is at the expense of consumer demand and that could potentially create new speculative bubbles.

Working Remotely Doesn’t Always Work

by Patrick Appel

On the pros and cons of telecommuting:

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Making Pet Food Palatable

by Zoe Pollock

It’s a multi-part process:

To meet nutritional requirements, pet food manufacturers blend animal fats and meals with soy and wheat grains and vitamins and minerals. This yields a cheap, nutritious pellet that no one wants to eat. Cats and dogs are not grain eaters by choice, [AFB International vice president Pat] Moeller is saying. “So our task is to find ways to entice them to eat enough for it to be nutritionally sufficient.”

This is where “palatants” enter the scene. AFB designs powdered flavor coatings for the edible extruded shapes. Moeller came to AFB from Frito-Lay, where his job was to design, well, powdered flavor coatings for edible extruded shapes. “There are,” he says, “a lot of parallels.” Cheetos without the powdered coating have almost no flavor. Likewise, the sauces in processed convenience meals are basically palatants for humans. The cooking process for the chicken in a microwaveable entrée imparts a mild to nonexistent flavor. The flavor comes almost entirely from the sauce—by design. Says Moeller, “You want a common base that you can put two or three or more different sauces on and have a full product line.”

(Hat tip: Dave Pell)

Truthiness Serum, Ctd

by Chris Bodenner

A reader adds a first-hand perspective to a recent post:

I have no idea whether narcoanalysis will be useful as a psycho-diagnostic technique or as a law enforcement or intelligence gathering device, although it does seem less onerous than waterboarding. I do know that it can be very useful to the criminal defense attorney in certain limited instances. In the early part of my career I defended more than 50 homicide cases and found the technique to be very useful in three cases. I was fortunate to have the services of an experienced psychiatrist who had used it in treating what we now call PTSD in WW2 veterans suffering from repressed memories of traumatic events.

My first and most helpful experience was with a man who had undoubtedly shot and killed his wife but could not recall exactly how or why. When pressed to recall the event he could do so up to a point and then would start belching – a rather bizarre response. He was under indictment for second-degree murder under circumstances that suggested an execution-style killing. He had come back from a visit to the factory where he was employed while it was on strike.

The first indication that he was being truthful while undergoing the amytal interview came when he contradicted an earlier account of the reason for his visit to the strike scene. Before the medicated interview he said he had gone there to see how it was going. Under amytal he said he had gone there to try to get on television.

At the crucial point in the interview, for the first time he described how while he was pointing the gun at his wife to try to get her to admit a marital indiscretion, she grabbed the gun and jerked it downward, causing it to discharge. The 15-degree downward angulated entrance wound suggested she might have been on her knees begging for mercy without the revered memory he had suppressed. I played the recording of the interview for the grand jury, who returned a superseding indictment for manslaughter, based on causing death while in the commission of the unlawful act of threatening her with a gun.

On another occasion I used the technique to gain some confirmation of my client’s claim that although he had gone along on a burglary, it was his partner who suddenly displayed a gun and killed two elderly people. His account of this was accompanied by the emotional response one would expect under these circumstances. He still went to prison for murder, but his partner was sentenced to death.

In another case the client admitted the complicity of another that he had refused to acknowledge even when confronted with evidence that only made sense if another was involved. More that admitting the involvement of another, he identified the person, which he confirmed when confronted with the tape recording.

All these people were of modest intellect. It is accepted that a thoroughgoing sociopath can lie even under the influence of amytal. Ordinarily, an attorney would not bother to use the technique with that kind of defendant.

The above video is a scene from John Huston’s Let There Be Light, a 1946 documentary about the experimental treatment program for traumatized WWII veterans that employed hypnosis and sodium amytal. From the film’s Wiki page:

The film, commissioned by the United States Army Signal Corps, was the final entry in a John Huston trilogy of films produced at the request of the U.S. Government. This documentary film follows 75 U.S. soldiers who have sustained debilitating emotional trauma and depression. … The film was controversial in its portrayal of shell-shocked soldiers from the war. “Twenty percent of our army casualties”, the narrator says, “suffered psychoneurotic symptoms: a sense of impending disaster, hopelessness, fear, and isolation.” Apparently due to the potentially demoralizing effects the film might have on recruitment, it was subsequently banned by the Army after its production, although some pirated copies had been made.