Month: August 2013

Your Cubicle Is Your Castle

Tom Jacobs parses research showing that privacy and a personalized work space significantly boost productivity:

Research assistants noted whether they worked in a private office (with a door that can be closed) or a cubicle. They also counted the number of items each worker had brought from home to decorate his or her workspace—a list that included photographs, posters, artworks, bumper stickers, and coffee mugs. Not surprisingly, [professor Gregory] Laurence and his colleagues found a connection between the amount of privacy an employee enjoys and his or her rate of burnout. “High privacy conditions tend to serve as strong protectors against unwelcome interferences and distractions,” they note, “contributing to a work environment supporting reduced emotional exhaustion.”

But this link disappeared when those employees had personalized their cubicles. Employees who had turned their workspaces into areas that reflect their interests and personalities reported the same (relatively low) level of emotional exhaustion, regardless of whether they worked in an office or a cubicle. The researchers credit “the calming effect” of having your own stuff around you.

Debates The GOP Would Rather Not Have

Today the GOP threatened to cancel 2016 GOP primary debates on NBC and CNN. According to RNC chairman Reince Priebus, CNN’s upcoming Hillary Clinton documentary and NBC’s forthcoming Clinton mini-series are to blame. Zeke J Miller sees other motivations:

Republican Party officials believe the 20 GOP primary debates during the 2012 cycle hurt their party and Mitt Romney, the eventual nominee. CNN’s John King, in particular, drew attacks when he questioned former Speaker of the House New Gingrich about his prior marital infidelities in a debate before the South Carolina primary, while Republicans have long been weary of working with NBC given the liberal-leanings of its cable network MSNBC. Priebus has previously proposed a more modest 10 to 12 debates, in part to protect better-funded candidates from insurgents who capitalize on their time before the cameras.

Alyssa makes related points:

Given that the Republican Party seems no closer than it was in 2012 to reaching a decisive break between its radical and moderate wings, if I were Priebus, I might want to keep that debate between them as far away from mass audiences as possible. Given how far moderate Republicans like Mitt Romney have had to run to the right during their primary campaigns, one of the things that debates do is generate a vast trove of high-quality clips of things that the eventual nominee will eventually have to try to explain away in a shortened general election season. If I were Priebus, I’d want as few of those debates as possible, and I’d want them to happen further from the public eye so my eventual candidate has less baggage that can eventually be hung around her or his neck.

Will The Generals Give Up Power? Ctd

The Economist worries that, in the interest of gaining leverage, the US has given a pass to Egypt’s junta for killing scores of pro-Morsi demonstrators:

After the killing, Barack Obama kept his counsel. It fell to John Kerry, the American secretary of state, to speak out—and then he merely called on Egypt’s leaders to “step back from the brink”. Likewise in Britain David Cameron, the prime minister, left it to William Hague, the foreign secretary, to rap the generals over the knuckles. America’s protest at the ousting of Mr Morsi had been to delay the supply of some F-16 fighter jets to Egypt. But that modest gesture was more than undone just before the shootings. In an unwise precedent, the administration declined to say Egypt had suffered a coup, because to do so could have triggered an automatic block on aid.

The Muslim Brothers—and other Muslims across the Middle East—will conclude from all this that the West applies one standard when secularists are under attack and another when Islamists are. Democracy, they will gather, is not a universal system of government, but a trick for bringing secularists to power. It is hard to think of a better way for the West to discourage the Brothers from re-entering Egypt’s political process.

David Rohde remembers that the US has “used the same logic in Pakistan,” to no effect:

Washington has given $11 billion in military aid to the Pakistani army in the name of maintaining American “influence” in Islamabad. From new equipment to reimbursements for Pakistani military operations, the money flowed year after year, despite complaints from American officials that the Pakistanis were misusing funds and inflating bills. … One of the lessons from the last decade in Pakistan is that money might buy American officials a seat at the table. But Pakistani generals — or Egyptian generals — will not necessarily listen.

And they will definitely blame their problems on us. For the last decade in Pakistan, military officials have used pro-military media outlets to spread a message that an all-powerful United States is behind the country’s ills. Some of the same patterns are emerging in Egypt. Pro-military Egyptian media blame the United States for the country’s problems.

General al-Sissi is already blaming the US for “turning its back on Egyptians” by not sending him fresh F-16s. He also insists that he and his generals are willing to give up power:

[Lally] Weymouth: Aren’t the Americans warning the interim government against any further civil strife or bloodshed?

Sisi: The U.S. administration has a lot leverage and influence with the Muslim Brotherhood and I’d really like the U.S. administration to use this leverage with them to resolve the conflict.

Whoever will clean these squares or resolve these sit-ins will not be the military. There is a civil police and they are assigned to these duties. On the 26th of [July], more than 30 million people went out onto the streets to give me support. These people are waiting for me to do something.

Weymouth: How can you assure the U.S. that you don’t want the military to rule Egypt—that the army wants to go back to its barracks?

Sisi: Mark my words and take me very seriously: The Egyptian military is different from other militaries around the world.

Weymouth: Do you really want to have civilian rule here?

Sisi: Yes, absolutely.

Recent Dish on the military coup here.

The 404 Kids

Russian teenagers are pushing back against homophobia with the “404–Kids” campaign. Organizer Lena Klimova explains:

On the Internet, sometimes you see the “404 – Page Not Found” error message. Likewise, our society thinks that homosexual teens don’t exist in nature, as if gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgenders fly in from Mars as adults. Meanwhile, in every twentieth Russian family, an LGBT child is growing up. These 404–Kids are invisible to society. … Stop, people! Hear them! These are your children. Who knows: Maybe you’ll see the letter of your own child here?

Find more on the campaign (in Russian) here and here. More Dish on the state of gay rights in Eastern Europe here, here, and here. Translation of the above tweet by Ksenia Varlyguina:

404–Kids! We stand with you! Love whomever you love!”

What If Republicans Refuse To Buy Health Insurance?

Ramesh Ponnuru downplays the consequences:

[P]eople who “contract leukemia” will be able to buy insurance once they’re sick at the same rate they could have gotten it for when they were well. That’s the part of the Obamacare law that its defenders are usually most keen to emphasize. People who go without insurance while they’re healthy may have to pay a tax — although even at that the Internal Revenue Service will be limited in its methods of collection — and may, if they get sick, find their options for getting insurance limited for a few months.

Adrianna McIntyre differs:

Sure, there’s the penalty; everyone knows about that. But there’s also the limited open enrollment issue. That’s insurer-speak for “you can only sign up for exchange plans during certain months”; despite the rhetoric, people actually can’t just buy insurance whenever they fall ill.

The initial enrollment period is extended, from October 2013 through March 2014. But in subsequent years, enrollment will only last from October to December. There are special exceptions, like losing employer-based coverage during an off month, but I double-checked the regs.“I accidentally burned my Obamacare card” didn’t make the cut.

Sarah Kliff adds:

The idea of waiting until one gets sick only works if you manage to schedule said major illness for sometime in the early spring. Otherwise, opting not to enroll is a decision that sticks with you through the early fall.

Jonathan Cohn asks whether FreedomWorks will pick up the tab:

Keep in mind that just one visit to the emergency room can easily generate bills that reach into five figures. All of which brings us back to the question Kevin Drum asked a week ago: Is FreedomWorks prepared to cover the medical bills for young people who take the group’s advice, turn down insurance, and end up with crippling medical debts?

Earlier thoughts on FreedomWorks’ anti-enrollment campaign here.

Ask Frederic Rich Anything: Post-Obama Christianism

In our latest video from Rich, he considers how the Christian Right bounces back from defeat:

Frederic Rich is an American lawyer, environmentalist and author. His new book, Christian Nation, is a work of speculative fiction imagining what would have happened if McCain had won the 2008 election and subsequently died, making a former half-term governor the president and putting America on the path to theocracy. His previous Ask Anything answers are here. Our full AA archive is here.

It’s So Personal On The Silver Screen, Ctd

A reader writes:

As a patient of one of the doctors in After Tiller, I can, most unfortunately, assure you and the reader who doubts the scarcity of late-term care in this country: No, wealthy women don’t get to have these procedures in hospitals. Very few people do, and in those cases, it is almost always the case that the woman is in imminent danger of dying because of her pregnancy. Even then it’s a maybe, not a certainty. Because of legal restrictions or simply lack of comprehensive doctor training in this procedure, many women have to be flown ASAP to late-term abortion doctors to have their lives saved when they, say, experience organ failure from pregnancy-related illness.

When I learned of my need for a late-term abortion, the doctors at my hospital – my HUGE, important, very legitimate hospital for high-risk pregnancies in Boston, the city of medicine and liberalism – did not know whether or not I had ANY options for termination.

They turned up one clinic – only one in the entire country – and it was nowhere near here. I think that two of the doctors here might have been able to help me (not all four do the procedure as late as I needed it), but nobody in Boston could. So even if there may be a few more reputable doctors who practice late-term abortion, none materialized out of all of Boston when I needed help. Money and good insurance will not save you. Know that these few doctors serve most cases of late-term abortion in the Americas (including Canada) and even Europe.

I have heard of other doctors who practice late-term procedures coming out of the woodwork lately – unscrupulous doctors who operate illegally or in sketchy legal territory and take unacceptable risks with their patients’ well-being – doctors like the convicted Kermit Gosnell, and another operating out of New Jersey. They have terrible safety records, but they provide cheaper care.

Despite there being no hidden network of upper-class abortion providers for the latest-term procedures, money is a huge issue for access anyway. You hear “abortion clinic” and you think “cheap!”, but the doctors in this film preform a serious four-day procedure at a place that has to constantly stave off frivolous lawsuits filed constantly by political “pro life” activists, defend its right to exist in its legislature over and over and over again, and has to provide comprehensive protection from “pro life” terrorist attacks. The doctors are not getting rich off of this, but the procedure is not cheap. Mine cost $25,000. Because of the medical urgency of the situation, I had only one business day to come up with the cash or the credit – a business day I had to spend on an airplane to reach my destination. I incurred an additional $3,000 in travel expenses. My “Cadillac” insurance plan, which claims to cover this procedure, has only deemed a small fraction of it worthy of reimbursement. I can choose to sue or eat the difference. A woman without established and supportive connections (or a huge personal fortune) would have been out of luck.

I hope that this perspective is a little bit illuminating. My need for a third-trimester abortion was a deep personal tragedy. I lost a baby I loved and wanted, and she lost her shot at life – but our other options were just so much worse. To endure this situation, to travel this journey of loss … it added layers of pain and fear that I couldn’t stay home in my local care network.

My heart is full of gratitude for the doctors in this film. One of them saved my life and my baby’s life, too. But I will never get over that sense of fleeing into the night to find the care that was appropriate for my needs. It hurts me to hear the scarcity of care dismissed by those who erroneously assume that there are other doors open for care. The scary truth is this: I am an educated woman of reasonable means. When I needed my care, I could only find one door. I was lucky it was the door of one of these four capable and reputable doctors. In my desperation, I could easily have fallen into much more dangerous hands.

TV’s Counter-Counterculture

Tim Riley argues that we no longer portray drugs as we did in the 60s and 70s. He uses series like Breaking Bad and Nurse Jackie as evidence:

In cable terms, “drug culture” has graduated from free love to grandiose narcissism. Nurse Jackie turns hedonism into a daily grind; Breaking Bad‘s Walter White descends into villainy. …

Jay Leno’s 1984 standup opener put it best: “I know it’s wrong, but when Nancy Reagan says ‘Just Say No,’ it makes me want to shoot up in the gutter and die.” Both Breaking Bad and Nurse Jackie riff on the war on drugs as a kind of mass psychosis we all participate in, incentivizing purer and more violent potions, dealers, and tactics. Across boundaries of race, class, demographics, and gender, these shows portray the resultant drug culture as mass expressions of self-centeredness that, paradoxically, still define our immigration policy and eat at our public health solvency. Professional displays of decency from doctors and nurses (often inebriated), enforced by familial connection (DEA Schrader), now mask a gnawing hypocrisy. Communal purpose has collapsed. It’s Woodstock in reverse.

Ask Kate Bolick Anything

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Kate Bolick is a contributing editor for The Atlantic and writes regularly for Elle, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Slate. Her 2011 Atlantic cover story, “All the Single Ladies”, addressed why more and more women are choosing, as she did, not to get married. From the piece:

[W]e keep putting marriage off. In 1960, the median age of first marriage in the U.S. was 23 for men and 20 for women; today AllTheSingleLadiesit is 28 and 26. Today, a smaller proportion of American women in their early 30s are married than at any other point since the 1950s, if not earlier. We’re also marrying less—with a significant degree of change taking place in just the past decade and a half. In 1997, 29 percent of my Gen X cohort was married; among today’s Millennials that figure has dropped to 22 percent. (Compare that with 1960, when more than half of those ages 18 to 29 had already tied the knot.) These numbers reflect major attitudinal shifts. According to the Pew Research Center, a full 44 percent of Millennials and 43 percent of Gen Xers think that marriage is becoming obsolete.

The Dish debated the piece here and here. Kate is currently working on her first book, Among the Suitors: On Being a Woman, Alone, to be published next year by Crown/Random House. To submit a question for her, simply enter it into the Urtak survey after answering all of the existing questions (ignore the “YES or NO question” aspect and simply enter any open-ended question). To vote, click “Yes” if you have a strong interest in seeing her answer the question or “No” if you don’t particularly care.