Author: Andrew Sullivan

An Online Ivy? Ctd

by Patrick Appel

A reader writes:

People who think TED is a new Harvard must have had an experience at Harvard that was very different from mine.  Some of the things I learned came from lectures/class, but 75% or more came from hanging out with friends and acquaintances in the residential houses, and being painlessly exposed to threads of manifold disciplines while eating, drinking, smoking various things, and chasing objets d'amours.  When TED can get drunk and stoned and need me to hold him up, undress him, and put him to bed, while he questions his orientation and talks about how everything is ultimately about math, or about biology, or about linguistics, let me know.

Face Of The Day

DonkeyMattCandyGetty
A donkey, one of the several thousand currently looking to be rehomed by the Donkey Sanctuary stands in the yard at a farm where it is being cared for, on August 16, 2010 near Sidmouth, England. Founded in 1973 and now one of the largest equine charities in the world, the Donkey Sanctuary is urgently appealing for new fosterers across the UK to give a home to rescued donkeys. Since 2008 the number of donkeys being rescued or relinquished to the Sanctuary has almost doubled and the current global economic problems have had a serious effect on the animal charity. The significantly increased intake figures have seen the charity's seven farms in Devon and Dorset fill to near capacity and the charity is looking to rehome over 2500 donkeys. By Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

Hard Times

by Conor Friedersdorf

Annie Lowrey reports on the recession and its impact on suicides:

During the Great Depression, the suicide rate increased about 20 percent, from 14 to 17 per 100,000 people. The Asian economic crisis in 1997 led to an estimated 10,400 additional suicides in Japan, Hong Kong and Korea, with suicides spiking more than 40 percent among some demographic groups. But such statistics can mislead, social scientists say. Joblessness does not cause suicide. Rather, it correlates: Depressed persons tend to lose their jobs due to poor work performance, and a few also commit suicide. Jobless people tend to turn to alcohol, worsening their depression, and increasing the chances that they harm themselves. Still, academic studies show that suicide rates tend to move with the unemployment rate. Researchers in New Zealand found that the unemployed were up to three times as likely to commit suicide, with middle-aged men the most likely.

So how many suicides are associated with the recession? Nobody knows, not yet. The statistics lag about three years, so the official Center for Disease Control numbers still predate the financial crisis. Right now, therefore, the reports remain anecdotal. But looking at individual counties’ or cities’ data, there are ominous signs of a real spike. Some counties show no change. Others show dramatic climbs. In rural Elkhart County, Ind., where the unemployment rate is 13.7 percent, there were nearly 40 percent more suicides in 2009 than in a normal year. In Macomb County, Mich., where the unemployment rate is also 13.7 percent, an average of 81 people per year committed suicide between 1979 and 2006. That climbed to 104 in 2008 and to more than 180 in 2009.

The suicide prevention hotlines also show signs of stress.

Here's one to call if you need help.

Iran And 2012

by Patrick Appel

I'd like to join Fallows and disassociate myself from Elliott Abrams claim that Obama may eventually bomb Iran in order to win reelection. Boiling down questions of this magnitude to crass political calculation is no way to have a debate. But since Abrams raised the point, over on the Israel-Iran debate page Karim Sadjadpour rebuts Abrams, writing that any honest analysis from the White House "would conclude that a military attack on Iran, and the myriad long-term repercussions of such an attack (which I will address later), could well sabotage Obama's chance at re-election." Greg Scoblete finds another weak link in Abrams's argument

Wars have frequently been waged for balance-of-power concerns, but in this case [if Iran acquired a nuclear bomb], how significant would the balance of power shift out of America's favor? Pakistan has nuclear weapons and is not the top country on the subcontinent – it can barely curtail its own home grown insurgency and it was threatened/cajoled by the U.S. to allow us to bomb portions of the country almost at will. North Korea has nuclear weapons and you'd be laughed out of a room if you suggested they had anything resembling "hegemony" in Asia.

Iran with a crude nuclear weapon would still be poor, weak and surrounded by unfriendly states.

License to Steal

by Conor Friedersdorf

Radley Balko writes:

Civil asset forfeiture is an unjust, unfair practice under any circumstance. The idea that the government can take someone's property on the legal fiction that property itself can be guilty of a crime is an invitation to corruption, and provides a way for the government to get its hands on private goods under a lower burden of proof than it needs to actually convict someone (criminal forfeiture, different from civil forfeiture, requires an actual conviction). What's happening in Indiana, where the entire legal system is essentially ignoring the spirit if not the outright letter of state law, only confirms that once you give government license to steal, it's very difficult to wrest it back.

He offers details here.