Month: November 2013

Joseph Stromberg explains why scientists draw on pop culture when naming new species, citing the genus of ferns named for Lady Gaga and the jellyfish and bee species named for a character from “The Big Bang Theory”:

“Mostly, when you publish research about termite gut microbes, you don’t get much interest—even most of the people in the field don’t really give a crap,” says David Roy Smith, a scientist at University of Western Ontario who studies these and other types of microorganisms for a living. Recently, though, he saw firsthand that this doesn’t always have to be the case: His colleagues discovered two new species of protists that lived inside termite guts and helped them digest wood, and the group named them Cthulhu macrofasciculumque and Cthylla microfasciculumque, after the mythical creature Chtulhu, created by influential science fiction writer H.P. Lovecraft.

“I remember Erick James, who was the lead author on the study, telling us that he’d named it something cool right before we submitted it, but we didn’t really pay him much attention,” Smith says. “Then, afterwards, day after day, he kept coming into the lab telling us he’d seen an article on the species on one site, then another. By the second week, we were getting phone calls from the Los Angeles Times.” Eventually, James was invited to present work on the protists at an annual conference of H.P. Lovecraft fans, and a search for Cthulhu macrofasciculumque now yields nearly 3,000 results.

Thomas Frank proposes retiring the phrase “I would argue”:

I’m familiar with this particular cliché-formation because in the early 1980s, when my friends and I were high school debaters, we talked this way all the time. Arguments were what allowed us to keep score back in those days: one team argued for something, the other team argued against it, and the argument was won or lost. But high school debate was a game – a game for teenagers. The point wasn’t for an individual debater actually to believe any particular argument and win the room over with the radiance of his faith; it was for him to be able to argue anything. Insincerity was essential.

For the commentator class, the usage has a similar distancing effect. It’s a sort of shortcut to objectivity, which suggests that the pundit in question doesn’t actually believe something – oh heavens no! – but is merely reporting that the belief might be held by someone, somewhere. So when Nina Easton appears on Fox News and says (in a sentence I have chosen for its utter averageness) that “one could argue that Barack Obama’s smartest political move was putting Hillary Clinton in his cabinet so that she wasn’t outside with Bill Clinton causing mischief,” she isn’t actually asserting this as the truth. She’s only reporting that one might assert this, were one so inclined. Modifying “argue” with “could” or “would,” as Easton does here, distances the wise person even further from the forbidden stuff of opinion.

Kevin Williamson worries that Bill de Blasio, New York’s new mayor, will to cause the rich to flee the city:

His tax-the-rich program overlooks that an ever-dwindling number of high-income people and firms have a strong financial attachment to New York. You meet a lot more hedge-fund guys in Dallas these days than you used to. The headquarters of a fair number of Manhattan-based financial firms already have over the years followed their employees to Connecticut or beyond.

The super-rich may or may not mind that much — especially given that their income tends to come in the form of capital gains, which receive preferential tax treatment — but your $100,000-a-year midlevel workers already have discovered the roads to Charlotte and Salt Lake City. And as Mike Bloomberg was lambasted for pointing out, you can’t ignore the super-rich, either, given that fewer than 100,000 New Yorkers pay half the city’s taxes, and 500 of them pay 15 percent of the city’s taxes. That is problematic in and of itself, but it’s not like everybody else gets off the hook — de Blasio’s tax hike on those who make $500,000 or more will have real consequences for people in less rarified income brackets. When your landlord, vendors, or customers get a tax hike, their problems have a way of becoming your problems, which is why a fair number of people who will never have incomes approaching that cutoff point understand that they will nonetheless be affected by it. That and a great deal of skepticism about de Blasio’s commitment to sustaining Mayor Giuliani’s crime policies have a fair number of New Yorkers across the income spectrum rethinking their leases.

Richard Schragger strongly disagrees:

If a city’s economy is otherwise healthy, then redistributive fiscal policies are unlikely to make much of a difference. And mayors probably cannot control the size of the local economy as much as they claim anyway. But mayors can fight inequality by channeling resources to those who need them most. To those who believe that society has an obligation to pursue social justice, the moral benefits are obvious. The economic benefits of having an urban, healthy, educated workforce are obvious, too.

If a revived urban liberalism is possible, then its time is now, while cities like New York can take advantage of their privileged position as highly desirable places to live. Not all cities are in that enviable position. Many cannot afford what Mayor de Blasio proposes. But if New York City’s new mayor succeeds, he will advance an idea that has mostly gone out of fashion: that cities can play a significant role in creating an urban middle class by providing the kinds of resources necessary for upward mobility. Those resources are basic and obvious: security, education, transportation, health, and shelter. Expanding access to those kinds of municipal goods will create a more equal city. And it may teach us that a progressive city is still possible.

Barro argues that de Blasio will have to become “New York’s most pro-development mayor in decades” if he wants to accomplish his goals:

If he hopes to buy labor peace and fulfill his progressive missions, de Blasio will have to find another way to get more money coming into the city’s coffers. That’s where development comes in. To the untrained ear, de Blasio has run as a critic of developers, complaining that too many “luxury condos” are going up in New York. But he has also been clear that more development is a key to growing the city’s economy and addressing the affordability crisis. And while many of the city’s business elites are freaking out about de Blasio’s “class warfare,” he’s maintained good links with (and raised a lot of money from) the real estate industry.

Drum attacks another part of Williamson’s argument – the idea that crime is suddenly going to skyrocket:

I almost don’t care anymore if you accept the hypothesis that reductions in childhood lead exposure are primarily responsible for America’s dramatic decline in violent crime over the past two decades. But can we at least get our facts straight? Lots of big cities have seen drops in their violent crime rate. At least three others—Chicago, Dallas and Los Angeles—have seen declines as big as New York’s. Others, like Phoenix and San Diego, now match New York’s crime rate. They did this without Giuliani and Bloomberg. They did it without CompStat. They did it without broken windows. Hell, even New York did it for four years without these things: Its crime rate started plummeting in 1991, long before these reforms showed up.

(Photo: Bill de Blasio stands near New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg during the 9/11 Memorial ceremonies marking the 12th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2013. By Adrees Latif-Pool/Getty Images)

The thread takes another turn:

I think one of your readers, when talking about all kinds of distinctions between different kinds of “rape” – inadvertently mentioned something that is a huge distinction between when a female is the aggressor and when the male is the aggressor. He wrote:

There is a double standard, or a multiple standard, and one of the key factors is penetration. I think I would have felt differently had there been a digit or object inside me than I felt waking up inside her.

Exactly.  I think rather than trying to draw an analogy between female-on-male rape and male-on-female rape – perhaps a closer analogy is male-on-male rape to male-on female rape. I don’t know if it makes sense or not, but having somebody insert a body part into your body it certainly seems different that someone using your body part to insert it into them.  (Even more so when something gets ejaculated into your body).

Ask a man how he feels about getting raped by a woman?  No: ask a man how he feels about getting raped (orally or anally) by a man.  That might be a better analogy.

Another reader:

Your thread on rape is fascinating, but let me add a gay perspective. We often define rape in rather surreal and erotic ways. As an older guy, I have taken on the “daddy role” (I’m now 50), and I can’t tell you how many men – younger and older – have told me about their “rape fantasy” involving a guy (or guys) forcing them into sex.

Through the years, I have gladly made the fantasy come true for some of these men, but I also know that I may be putting myself at risk by unknowingly picking the wrong guy. Having a rape fantasy and getting it fulfilled can often elicit two conflicting emotions. I often warn guys of this when sober, but I’m not as coherent about it when both of us may be under the influence of alcohol. I had that happen a few years ago. I met a young guy (early twentysomething) at a bar, who wanted me to “make him my sex bitch.” He was hot and I was more than willing. We went back to his place, and I immediately immersed him into his fantasy by talking dirty and forcing him to his knees to blow me. He loved it.

As we got further into it, he began to push back more, but I thought that still was part of his fantasy. It wasn’t until he pushed me off and told me to leave that I realized his reality had crashed into his fantasy.

Did I “rape” him? No, of course not, but he could have easily told someone I did. Just as women get the default position of “victim” over a man, an older gay person automatically is assumed to be the aggressor over a poor, naïve younger guy – even when the latter initiates the encounter.

Maybe the lesson here is don’t act upon something when you are drunk, but such a thing goes by the wayside when you are kicking back beer. This is also why I understand the debate over the drunk-vs.-sober aspects of a man who picks up a woman at a bar. Alcohol certainly increases your sex drive and drops your inhibitions. But both men and women have to be aware that the perception of the encounter could feel different after the alcohol-fueled buzz leaves you.