Author: Andrew Sullivan

Jonah Lehrer explores why we are more likely to trust people when we're holding a warm cup, and why cigarette addicts should blame the insula portion of their brains:

[The insula] detects the bodily changes associated with smoking – the escalated pulse, the slow inhalation, the slight nicotine rush – and combines those physical sensations with the idea of a cigarette. Over time, these bodily cues lead to the development of an addiction: When we crave a cigarette what we are actually craving is this sequence of fleshy feelings.

On a related note, Jon Hamilton spoke with Yale University brain scientist Ralph DiLeone on the connection between eating and addiction. DiLeone explains why the toughest habits to break can be those developed in childhood:

The motivation to take cocaine in the case of a drug addict is probably engaging similar circuits that the motivation to eat is in a hungry person. …That doesn't necessarily mean food is addictive the way cocaine is, DiLeone says, but he says there is growing evidence that eating a lot of certain foods early in life can alter your brain the way drugs do.

A new study explains:

Plucking out of line most of the vaguely Middle Eastern-looking men at the airport for heightened screening is no more effective at catching terrorists than randomly sampling everyone. It may even be less effective. … [I]t devotes heightened resources to innocent people — and then devotes those resources to them repeatedly even after they’ve been cleared as innocent the first time. The actual terrorists, meanwhile, may sneak through while Transportation Security Administration agents are focusing their limited attention on the wrong passengers.

Athens, Greece, 11.30 am

Stephen Bainbridge makes a strong case that they do. On admitting mistakes:

Let's assume arguendo that the ordinary universal Magisterium does evolve over time. Is Posner (and O'Neill) correct to think that this undermines the Church's authority? When all is said and done, after all, this is Posner's key claim.

I think the answer is no. Noonan gives three reasons to think this is so: (1) "Do parents lose or gain authority with their children when they admit to a mistake in guiding them?" (2) The American judicial system gains authority by admitting its mistakes. Indeed, contrary to Posner's apparent view as expressed by his reference to Supreme Court precedents, Noonan acknowledges that the Supreme Court makes mistakes and that its doctrines develop, but nevertheless fairly asks where "is the prestige of a judicial system higher than in the United States?" (3) No one loses respect for science, which is constantly changing its mind.

Noonan concludes: "Admitting error, the Church would not fare worse than parents, judges, or scientists, except perhaps among those who have conceived of the magisterium as a perfect machine perfectly enunciating moral truth in all ways at all times in all places."

Bainbridge also goes after Posner for asserting that the Catholic church is a corporation. 

Michael Lind defends big businesses:

It is true that 99 percent of American firms are defined as small businesses. But this is only because the federal government defines a small business as one with fewer than 500 employees. How many ordinary people think of a company with 499 employees as small?

According to Scott Shane, a leading expert on small business and entrepreneurship, medium-to-large businesses account for a disproportionate share of job creation in the U.S. Shane writes: "From 1992 through 2008, the 4 percent of small businesses that had 50 to 499 employees created 30 percent of all net jobs, whereas the 79 percent of small businesses with fewer than 10 employees created only 15 percent."

I enjoy reading Frank Rich's column every week. It's usually a deeply researched, beautifully constructed, passionate read. But I wish it varied a little more. Longing for Barack Obama to be some kind of Huey Long, opening can after can of whup-ass on Rush Limbaugh's jiggly behind  seems, well, quixotic to me. And if I thought there was some way to win a culture and rhetorical war against the FNC/RNC vortex, I could see the point of this very elegant sentence:

No one expects Obama to imitate Christie’s in-your-face, bull-in-the-china-shop shtick. But they have waited in vain for him to stand firm on what matters to him and to the country rather than forever attempting to turn non-argumentative reasonableness into its own virtuous reward.

This strikes me as grotesquely unfair. I sure know what matters to the president, and a brief survey of his first two years would reveal it rather baldly.

"Non-argumentative reasonableness" so far has prevented a second great depression, rescued Detroit, bailed out the banks, pitlessly isolated Tehran's regime, exposed Netanyahu, decimated al Qaeda's mid-level leadership in Pakistan and Afghanistan, withdrawn troops from Iraq on schedule, gotten two Justices on the Supreme Court, cut a point or two off the unemployment rate with the stimulus, seen real wages for those employed grow, presided over a stock market boom and record corporate profits, and maneuvered a GOP still intoxicated with failed ideology to become more and more wedded to white, old evangelicals led by Sarah Palin. And did I mention universal health insurance – the holy grail for Democrats for decades?

Ah, yes: Obama's restraint has been such a disaster, hasn't it? I'm with Carpenter:

Obama of course did stand firm on upper-end tax cuts throughout the 2008 campaign and continued standing in like manner as president — until, that is, it became all too obvious that success in Congress was not an option.

The timing of Obama's D-Day offensive against the recalcitrant GOP remains precarious. My initial thoughts were, for reasons explained, that he'd dismiss the tax-cut issue as his artillery-opening opportunity, but use it to assault Republicans when they then denied him a vote on New Start. Some reasonably lengthy demonstration of presidential good faith is incumbent on Obama in order to persuade independents that he's the reasonable One; and, it seems to me, on tax cuts Republicans are playing right into his carressing hand.

Yet, as I noted earlier, such timing might be aggressively premature. Obama might yet delay his assault well into 2011, and, my guess, initially over some relatively insignificant piece of legislation (for what else will we see next year?) — a political skirmish on which he can build, more and more thunderously, more and more Trumanesquely, heading into 2012.

Yes, we have totes – and at $16, they're much more affordable than the vintage, hand-printed Dish Ts. Check here for the design on the reverse and several new colors for the Ts, including this one (red and white now available too):

Many readers have had their jaws drop at the price of the regular Ts. We know, we know: $50 is a large amount for a t-shirt. And you feel that way until you see or wear the Rogues' Gallery clothes. I picked them because I wear them and love them – and suspect you will too. They are each hand-printed on vintage old t-shirts, that have a soft and yet robust texture, never shrink, and last forever. They're the most comfortable and durable t-shirts I have ever bought or worn – and I can't stop wearing them. I wanted Dish readers to have something classier and subtler than the usual mass market merchandise, even at the price of a higher cost. But the totes – and upcoming cheaper items – are much more accessible, even though they are also hand-printed.

Women readers have also asked if the unisex t-shirts work for them. Yes, they do – just pick a size one smaller than your usual in women's sizes. They're meant to be loose-fitting and hang beautifully on men and women of all shapes and sizes.

If you love the Dish and want to show it, have at it. If you're wondering what to get for Christmas for someone you know is a Dish-addict, you couldn't do better. And if you also want to support the Dish, and show your appreciation for the truly hard work that Patrick, Chris, Zoe and Conor do every day, the revenue from this will help support their work going forward.

The full shop is here. Merry merry. And please support the Dish in our first ever merchandising effort ever. We want to be around for another ten years and this added revenue stream is one way to help that happen.

Don Davis does the math on DADT:

[T]he next time someone’s talking about how much national security might be threatened if we change DADT, you can tell them that there’s a cost to national security from keeping DADT as well.

How much of a cost? If you pulled those 115,000 potentially affected troops from the Army, DADT could cost us two Iraqs worth of troops, with 15,000 reinforcements left over, and if it was just the Navy, it could affect enough sailors to crew every aircraft carrier and submarine and 30,000 more besides.

If you removed that many personnel from the Air Force it would affect more people than the entire Air National Guard and seven years’ worth of new pilots combined—or, if you prefer to look at it through the prism of a eagle, globe and anchor, it could be enough LBGT Marines to take and hold darn near anything, from the halls of Montezuma, to at least somewhere near the shores of Tripoli.

Jeffrey Toobin takes stock of Bush v. Gore on its tenth anniversary:

In the first ten years after Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 decision that ended the doctrine of separate but equal in public education, the Justices cited the case more than twenty-five times. In the ten years after Roe v. Wade, the abortion-rights decision of 1973, there were more than sixty-five references to that landmark.

This month marks ten years since the Court, by a vote of five-to-four, terminated the election of 2000 and delivered the Presidency to George W. Bush. Over that decade, the Justices have provided a verdict of sorts on Bush v. Gore by the number of times they have cited it: zero. …

Many of the issues before the Supreme Court combine law and politics in ways that are impossible to separate. It is, moreover, unreasonable to expect the Justices to operate in a world hermetically cut off from the gritty motives of Democrats and Republicans. But the least we can expect from these men and women is that at politically charged moments—indeed, especially at those times—they apply the same principles that guide them in everyday cases. This, ultimately, is the tragedy of Bush v. Gore. The case didn’t just scar the Court’s record; it damaged the Court’s honor.

Yoav Fromer profiles Yaakov “Kobi” Shimoni, also known as Subliminal, one of Israel's most popular conservative rappers:

Although a rapper by name, Subliminal radically defies the archetypical characteristics of traditional hip-hop performers. He doesn’t drink, smoke, do drugs, or fight, and he preaches against these things in his music. Sporting a self-styled wardrobe he refers to as “chic-Zionism,” his bling is a colossal diamond-covered Star of David necklace. He wears baggy pants, oversized knee-length jerseys, and sideways baseball caps—the style of a “gangsta rapper” without any of the “gangsta” features. Like a reformed rapper who lacks those rebellious qualities that for good or bad may actually make rap interesting in the first place, Subliminal offers his fans a sterilized hip-hop spectacle: Snoop without the weed, Eminem without the rage, or Tupac without the guns….

For anyone seeking to understand Israel’s right turn in recent years—a trend exemplified by the government’s decision to require loyalty oaths from its non-Jewish population—Subliminal’s music seems like a good place to start. …

Unlike American hip-hop, which developed in stark opposition to anything that could be associated with the establishment, Subliminal’s self-proclaimed “Zionist hip-hop” has always followed an inverted model. (He half-jokingly told me, “I am the establishment.”) While Public Enemy called on listeners to “fight the power,” Subliminal instead decided to join it. “This is Israel, not America” he explained. “If I see a cop chasing someone down the street, odds are, you will see me running along to help out the cop.”

Listening to all of his music at once can feel like taking in a full DVD box set of after-school specials, with a broad set of subjects: hope, patriotism, strength, unity, order, faith, and peace. There is no mention of hatred, racism, Islamophobia, Israeli occupation, or other touchstones of Israeli radicalism. The image of violence—the sine qua non for any self-respecting extremist—is unequivocally presented in a negative light and shunned rather than sanctioned by his music. “When a song makes a left-wing stance they call it protest,” says Arye Avitan (aka “Tchulu”), who owns a chain of hip-hop clothing stores and is a veteran music producer who has mentored many young rappers, including Subliminal. “But when it suggests something remotely right-wing, they immediately call it fascism.”