A street entertainer performs on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile during the city’s Festival Fringe on August 7, 2013. The city is in full swing with hundreds of entertainers performing at the festival, which runs August 2 – 26 and is one of the largest arts festivals in the world, dating back to 1947. By Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images.
Byron York wonders why Rick Santorum isn’t considered the GOP’s 2016 frontrunner:
In 2012, he won 11 primaries and caucuses, making him the solid second-place finisher in a party that has a long history of nominating the candidate who finished second the last time around. (See Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole, John McCain, and Mitt Romney.) And yet now, no one — no one — is suggesting Santorum will be the frontrunner in 2016, should he choose to run. As far as the political handicapping goes, Santorum’s 2012 victories don’t seem to count for much.
Larison solves the mystery:
York presents Santorum’s message on economic issues as one of the strengths of the campaign, and to some extent it was, but what goes unmentioned here is how allergic many in the GOP are to anything that sounds like economic populism.
His voting record is littered with all of the major blunders of the Bush years, so he can’t very credibly pose as a champion of limited government, and he has been denouncing libertarians for the better part of a decade. Santorum also comes across as abrasive, and when he speaks it usually feels as if he is lecturing and dictating to the audience rather than trying to appeal to them. If you wanted to invent a politician who could alienate several different parts of the Republican coalition all at once, you would design someone like Santorum.
Yglesias digs into Santorum’s economic agenda:
York quotes Santorum saying various things about the need to champion working class economic interests. And indeed on the campaign trail, Santorum said a fair amount about this. He also championed a tax plan that relative to a scenario in which the Bush tax cuts were fully extended would have extended an additional $448,000 per year in tax cuts to people earning over $1 million per year, while delivering around $1,000-$2,000 to the median family. To pay for that, you would need to enact large cuts in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other programs.
Maybe that’s a good idea. But I sincerely doubt that it would serve the financial interests of the typical working class American. But this seems to be about where we are in terms of economic policy discourse in the conservative movement.
Joyner adds:
Santorum simply comes across as harsh and extreme, even to die-hard Republicans. While it’s true that the GOP has a tradition of nominating the guy whose “turn” it is, my strong guess is that, as when George W. Bush was nominated in 2000, none of the candidates from last time around will be relevant. Mitt Romney almost certainly won’t run again. Santorum hit his ceiling in 2012. Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich, who barely mattered, are has-beens.
Bee Wilson considers the literary merits of the recipe:
Recipes have a story arc. You need to get through the tricky early prepping stages via the complications of heat and measuring before you arrive at the point of happy closure
where the dish goes in the oven or is sliced or served. When a recipe has many ingredients and stages and finicky instructions, it can be hard to concentrate, like reading a Victorian novel with so many characters that you need a dramatis personae to keep things straight. Sitwell includes a lamb korma recipe from Madhur Jaffrey, with an ingredient list that goes on for more than a page (“a piece of ginger, about 1.5 inches long and 1 inch wide, peeled and coarsely chopped, 1 large tomato (tinned or fresh) or 2 small ones, peeled and coarsely chopped, 1 tsp ground turmeric,” and so on). I’ve cooked this dish. It is, like all of Jaffrey’s recipes (or rather, all of the ones that I’ve tried, which is about twenty), very delicious, with a wonderful balance of flavors and textures. But if we forget cooking and “simply” read, you might get a quicker payoff from the recipe for peach melba by Auguste Escoffier, the nineteenth-century chef who popularized French cooking
Poach the skinned peaches in vanilla-flavoured syrup. When very cold arrange them in a timbale on a bed of vanilla ice cream and coat with raspberry puree.
There are many mysteries here: What is a timbale? And how do you make a vanilla-flavoured syrup? If Escoffer tried to clear them up, the recipe would be easier to use but less intriguing. And part of the pleasure of recipe-reading is the feeling that you are about to discover a great secret.
(Photo by Flickr user Muffet)
Fisher asks, “How is it that U.S. and Soviet leaders went ahead with decades of summits despite disagreements so severe they implied a threat of World War III, while today a summit falls apart over a single NSA contractor and the slow progress in some minor security and trade cooperation measures?”:
It may actually be the case that the reset was doomed not by high tensions but by low stakes. Obama and Xi feel compelled to force a smile for the camera at Sunnylands in large part because the U.S. and China have arguably the most important bilateral relationship in the world; neither can afford to let it fall apart. The same was true of Washington-Moscow summits during the Cold War, when leaders who might despise one another would meet not despite but because of the very real threat of mutual nuclear annihilation.
Today, though, the United States and Russia have found themselves in a not-so-sweet spot in which they have enough overlapping areas of interest to spark bitter disagreements, but not enough that either wants to commit the necessary resources to get along. It’s just not the priority.
Ioffe provides the view from Moscow:
[F]or all the Kremlin’s pouting, there’s also a consensus in Moscow that, well, there’s not much left to talk about.
“Obviously, Obama just can’t come to Moscow with Snowden there, but they made clear they’re not totally shuttering the relationship,” says Fyodr Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs, a voice that, traditionally, is not far from the Kremlin’s line. “Okay, well now, the score is now 1-1, but the other problem is that the relationship has no content now. Even if Obama came to Moscow, it’s not really clear what they’d talk about.”
Kimberly Marten believes that “Obama did exactly the right thing”:
Obama had made it clear that the Snowden case was his line in the sand, and Putin crossed that line unnecessarily. Putin could have chosen instead to give the Snowden request the 3-month administrative consideration period that the Kremlin originally mentioned when he originally made his asylum application, rather than granting Snowden the yearlong temporary asylum straight off. It looks like the meeting in Washington tomorrow between Secretary of State Kerry and Secretary of Defense Hagel and their Russian counterparts is still on, and that is the truly substantive part of the diplomatic interaction anyway. Assuming that the Russian side doesn’t cancel their participation in that meeting, then there has been no real change in the quality of the relationship.
Larison sees the issue differently:
As rebukes go, Obama’s cancellation of the bilateral summit meeting with Putin isn’t that strong, but it could and probably will be used as a pretext for greater antagonism on some issue. It goes without saying that the decision to cancel will have no positive effect on Moscow’s internal conduct, its asylum decision on Snowden, or any other outstanding disagreement between Washington and Moscow, but then it isn’t intended to have that effect. This is a decision primarily meant to placate American critics of Russia, who predictably won’t be satisfied with this gesture, and to save Obama the trouble of a meeting that would likely have been fruitless anyway.
Greenwald fumes:
The US constantly refuses requests to extradite – even where (unlike Russia) they have an extradition treaty with the requesting country and even where (unlike Snowden) the request involves actual, serious crimes, such as genocide, kidnapping, and terrorism. Maybe those facts should be part of whatever media commentary there is on Putin’s refusal to extradite Snowden and Obama’s rather extreme reaction to it. … I think it’s becoming increasingly clear here who the rogue and lawless nation is in this case.
Kaplan, on the other hand, supports the cancellation:
Given the random pointlessness of the last Obama-Putin session and the risk that a high-profile reprise might aggravate the growing sense of despondence, it’s best, at this point, to turn the task of recasting relations to the diplomats.
This year, Discovery’s “Shark Week” started off with a program (teaser here) offering “evidence” that there are still prehistoric Megalodon super-sharks living today. But except for a short, vaguely-worded disclaimer at the end of the show, its producers failed to point out that the program is essentially fiction. Christie Wilcox fumes:
No whale with a giant bite taken out of it has ever washed up here in Hawaii. No fishing vessel went mysteriously missing off of South Africa in April. No one has ever found unfossilized Megalodon teeth. Collin Drake? Doesn’t exist. The evidence was faked, the stories fabricated, and the scientists portrayed on it were actors. The idea that Megalodon could still be roaming the ocean is a complete and total myth.
Here’s what I don’t get, Discovery: Megalodons were real, incredible, fascinating sharks. There’s a ton of actual science about them that is well worth a two hour special. We’ve discovered their nursery grounds off the coast of Panama, for example. Their bite is thought to be the strongest of all time—strong enough to smash an automobile—beating out even the most monstrous dinosaurs. The real science of these animals should have been more than enough to inspire Discovery Channel viewers. But it’s as if you don’t care anymore about presenting the truth or reality. You chose, instead, to mislead your viewers with 120 minutes of bullshit. And the sad part is, you are so well trusted by your audience that you actually convinced them: according to your poll, upwards of 70% of your viewing public fell for the ruse and now believes that Megalodon isn’t extinct.
The above video is from Discovery’s Megalodon special from last summer that presents a fascinating but fact-based look at the extinct predator. Wil Wheaton thinks the network has now betrayed its core audience:
An entire generation has grown up watching Discovery Channel, learning about science and biology and physics, and that generation trusts Discovery Channel. We tune into Discovery Channel programming with the reasonable expectation that whatever we’re going to watch will be informative and truthful. We can trust Discovery Channel to educate us and our children about the world around us! That’s why we watch it in the first place!
The Megalodon special was the highest-rated “Shark Week” program ever, and a producer is still defending the program as some kind of journalistic enterprise. Chris Kirk notes a growing trend:
This isn’t the first time Discovery Communications, the media company that runs the Discovery Channel, has broadcasted dubious documentaries, and judging from the ratings it won’t be the last. The company also runs Animal Planet, which aired two pseudo-documentaries claiming to show scientific evidence of mermaids. The second documentary attracted 3.6 million viewers, unprecedented for the network.
These faux documentaries, which can best be described as anti-educational, seem to have grown more common on in recent years. The Disney-owned History channel, for example, has earned criticism for airing pseudoscience programs like Ancient Aliens, UFO Files, and the Nostradamus Effect instead of programs about, you know, history.
If these programs offer any signs that they are fictional, they are brief and inadequate signs. Unsurprisingly, then, many viewers buy into the false claims these documentaries peddle. Shortly after Discovery’s documentaries aired, for example, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association found it necessary to assure the public that “no evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found.”
Recent Dish on mermaids in their proper place – fiction – here and here.
“To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring – it was peace,” – Milan Kundera, as quoted in The Canine Hiker’s Bible.
Beatboxing in Brady Bunch format:
Euny Hong profiles pharmacologist Ethan Perlstein, who tired of taking postdoc positions and is now crowd-funding his own research:
In September 2012, Perlstein decided to start a meth lab for mice to find out where radioactive amphetamines accumulate in mouse brain cells. He launched a crowdfunding campaign on the site Rockethub, a kind of Kickstarter for science for academic projects. The tag line, “Crowdfund my meth lab, yo,” was accompanied by a photo from Breaking Bad, about a teacher who runs a meth lab. The goal: to raise $25,000. … It is a safe bet that some of his former peers thought the move populist or unbecoming of an academic, particularly with the Breaking Bad allusions. But it worked: He raised $25,460 from over 400 people.
Perlstein expects more researchers to break outside the confines of the university:
The independent scientist movement is not a fad, said Perlstein, as long as problems for scientists in academia continue. “There are too many people rising up in the pyramid scheme of academia to be absorbed by positions,” he said. “Independent science is a safety valve that allows the pressure building from all this excess human capital. The independent path could absorb them, but that’s not going to edify academia. They will keep charging along as if nothing ever happened.”
But Jay Ulfelder wonders if the money will actually materialize outside of academia, particularly for social scientists:
As someone who’s managed to make a good living for the past two and a half years as an independent scholar—or freelance researcher or consultant or whatever the heck it is that I do—I want this to be true. Honestly, though, I think it’s still very, very hard to survive professionally without a regular paycheck and an institutional or corporate mooring, and the vast majority of people who try will fail.
Why? Let’s start with Perlstein’s story. His mouse meth-lab project raised about $25,000 on Kickstarter. Getting one $25K chunk of funding is great, but it’s hardly going to make your year. For that, you’re going to need to string together at least a few projects of that size or larger (remember, that funding also has to cover research expenses). Each of those projects will require a proposal or crowdfunding campaign, and those things take a lot of unpaid time to put together. Most projects won’t have a Breaking Bad hook, and many attempts to inject that kind of playful tone and pop-cultural relevance into your marketing campaign will fall terribly flat.
Elias Groll takes note of a novel tourism campaign:
A group calling itself Rabaa Tour is trying to attract tourists to the most unlikely of places in Cairo: the central battleground between security forces and Muslim Brotherhood members. For weeks, Brothers and their supporters have been occupying the area around Rabaa al-Adaweya mosque, and Egyptian officials have repeatedly threatened to clear the sit-in. With tens of thousands of people camped out there, any effort to sweep away the protesters, who are clamoring for the reinstatement of ousted President Mohamed Morsy, will surely result in bloodshed. But this is where Rabaa Tour would like you – yes, you – to come visit in order to learn the truth about the protesters. They even have a slogan: “Heard enough? Time to see!”
Groll says the group, which falls “on the Islamist side” of the Egyptian divide, is “doing outreach in a way the Brotherhood never quite understood”:
Having operated underground during the Mubarak regime, the Brotherhood came to power with a rigid hierarchy and an abiding respect for its leaders. That made the organization remarkably bad at democratic politics. So it should come as no surprise that the Brotherhood never even attempted to pitch itself to Western audiences as something other than a scary Islamist body.
The Rabaa Tour seems to understand that. “Our goal is not to convince people to join us or to adopt our objectives,” the group writes on their Facebook page. “It’s just for people to know the truth and to respect our right of having a peaceful sit-in without being attacked!” With the military regime branding them terrorists and with the likelihood of further violence in Cairo all but certain, the plea by these young people to be considered on their own terms is a powerful one.
Annie Murphy Paul outlines the benefits of “tracking formulas” that gauge a young student’s likelihood to drop out of high school:
There is a danger, of course, that people who struggle early on will be written off too soon, before they’ve had a chance to prove themselves. But ignoring these super-early warning signs also carries risks. That’s because small initial differences have a way of snowballing into bigger ones over time. Here’s how one common scenario plays out …
Difficulties in third grade lead to the “fourth-grade slump,” as the reading-to-learn model comes to dominate instruction.
While their more skilled classmates are amassing knowledge and learning new words from context, the less-adept readers begin to avoid reading out of frustration. A vicious cycle sets in: school assignments increasingly require background knowledge and familiarity with “book words” (literary, abstract, and technical terms)— competencies that are themselves acquired through reading. Meanwhile, classes in science, social studies, history and even math come to rely more and more on textual analysis, so that the struggling readers begin to lag in these subjects as well. What began as a small gap has widened into a chasm.
Researchers call this the “Matthew effect,” after the Bible verse found in the Gospel of Matthew: “For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.” The availability of very early indicators of performance puts a whole new spin on the Matthew effect: teachers can use these indicators to address trouble spots before the student or employee ever has a chance to fall seriously behind.
The Dish 