Author: Andrew Sullivan

Michael White examines our still limited understanding of it:

How strong is the genetic basis for autism, anyway? Could it be that researchers are searching for genetic causes that don’t exist? Actually, no. That there is a substantial genetic contribution to autism is well-established, but it has been difficult to pin down just how large it is. Previous studies have estimated the heritability of autism to be as high as 90 percent, or as low as 38 percent. A large study published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association by researchers at the Karolinska Instutet in Sweden have come up with the most precise estimate yet for the heritability of autism: 54 percent.

The scientists looked at autism diagnoses in a population of more than two million Swedish children born between 1982 and 2006. By looking at rates of autism diagnosis among relatives—specifically identical twins, fraternal twins, full siblings, half siblings, and cousins—the researchers determined that, at least among Swedish families, “genetic and nongenetic influences on the risk for [autism spectrum disorders] and autistic disorder were similarly important.” Strikingly, they found that shared family environmental influences “have only a negligible effect on [autism spectrum disorder] etiology”; only non-shared, individual-specific environmental influences were significant. Just what those influences are remains unknown.

Commenting on Romney’s and Santorum’s recent endorsements of a higher minimum wage, Douthat wishes moderate Republicans would fight for more economically sound conservative ways to help low-wage workers:

In fairness to the pro-minimum wage Republicans, there are various nuances here — indexing the wage to inflation, as Rick Santorum has proposed, is better than just having periodic, politically-motivated hikes, and the state-based minimum wage increases favored by some Republican politicians would have fewer perverse effects than a federal increase. And of course the minimum wage is a winning issue in the polls, and you can’t win every policy battle …

… but the case for tactical surrender would be a lot stronger if more Republican politicians, and Republican moderates especially, would first actually try to make the argument for an alternative, right-of-center suite of policies on jobs and wages. That could mean payroll tax cuts, it could mean an expanded Earned Income Tax credit or (as Marco Rubio has proposed) a wage subsidy as a replacement for the EITC, it could mean some of the American Enterprise Institute’s Michael Strain’s proposals to help the unemployed … there’s a whole range of potential policies, and policy combinations, that might deliver some of the minimum wage increase’s benefits with fewer downside risks.

Reihan is on the same page but sees why it won’t happen:

The irony is that the conservatives who might be amenable to something like Strain’s approach — let’s not risk excluding workers from the formal labor market by raising the statutory minimum wage, but let’s spend intelligently to get people back to work — are the ones who are embracing a minimum wage increase as (essentially) a proxy for some better mix of policies, or as a way of signaling that they care about the well-being of American workers and that they’re willing to use the power of government to improve their well-being. And most of the conservatives opposed to a minimum wage increase are also disinclined toward active labor market policies of the kind Strain has in mind, including an expansion of federal wage subsidies, on the grounds that such policies represent big government overreach, or that they involve spending money we don’t have. It’s no wonder that low- and middle-income voters are skeptical as to whether conservatives are doing enough to defend their interests.

Gabriel Arana, the only member of an ethnic minority on the staff of The American Prospect, examines why the newsrooms of progressive publications’ are so monochromatic and how that undercuts their social mission:

Nearly 40 percent of the country is non-white and/or Hispanic, but the number of minorities at the outlets included in this article’s tally—most of them self-identified as liberal or progressive—hovers around 10 percent. The Washington Monthly can boast 20 percent, but that’s because it only has nine staffers in total, two of whom belong to minority groups. Dissent, like the Prospect, has one.

Given the broad commitment to diversity in our corner of the publishing world, why is the track record so poor? …

[T]he primary reason magazine staffs are so white is structural. “We practice fairly specialized form of journalism and the pool of people who do it isn’t terribly large to begin with, and then you look at the group of people who are practicing at a higher level and it’s just not a diverse pool,” [The New Republic editor Franklin] Foer says.

The road that ends with a spot on staff at places like The New Republic, The Atlantic, or the Prospect is paved with privilege. It starts with unpaid internships, which serve both as training grounds and feeders to staff positions. “Most of our staff comes through our intern program,” says Harper’s editor Ellen Rosenbush. “Do we get as many applicants of color as we’d like? Probably not, but we do get them and we have hired them.” There’s a straightforward reason for the dearth of intern applications: Those who can afford to rely on mom and dad for a summer or a semester tend to be well-off and white.

Alyssa responds:

Relying on your network is a way to speed up the hiring process. You can discard résumés that do not come backed by personal recommendations, or skip reading résumés altogether and just start talking with candidates who have been identified for you.

If organizations could remove time pressure from the hiring process, that network would become less necessary. Hiring managers and editors could take the time to read résumés, cover letters and clips from a much larger pool of applicants. If someone promising does not come in during the initial wave of applications, the publication can repost or revise the job ad and reach out to more potential sources of candidates.

An interactive look at India's massive shift to the opposition party: http://t.co/s4qDlPd4o0 pic.twitter.com/ze0rc5j5ki

— Bloomberg News (@BloombergNews) May 13, 2014

Exit polls from the last phase of India’s national election predict a major victory for the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party:

A poll by C-Voter, a research group, indicated the BJP and its allies could win 289 seats in Lok Sabha, India’s lower house of Parliament, giving the coalition the majority needed to oust the incumbent Congress Party and form the nation’s next government. A poll by ABP-Nielsen predicted the BJP-led coalition would secure 281 seats, according to Reuters. If the exit polls prove to be correct — which is no guarantee — they would put BJP leader Narendra Modi in pole position to become the next Prime Minister of India.

But Heather Timmons cautions that Indian exit polls are notoriously unreliable, and the final results could look very different when they come out on Friday:

Opinion and exit polls have been so inaccurate so often in the past that not only are they not taken seriously by analysts, but many in the general population believe they are wrong on purpose in an attempt to curry favor with politicians. Election opinion polls are viewed in India as “covert instruments used by media houses in collusion with political parties for falsely predicting their fortunes with the aim of influencing the electorate in India,” said Praveen Rai, a political analyst with New Delhi’s Centre for the Study of Developing Societies.

In the last national election in 2009, for example, television network NDTV, Hindi channel Aaj Tak, and media house Zee News predicted based on opinion and exit polls that the BJP and its allies could get between 230 and 250 seats, and Congress and its allies between 176 and 205. The actual number for the BJP group was 189, and Congress and its allies got 222.

Nonetheless, the commentariat is already talking about what a Modi premiership might look like. Harsh Pant explains why the BJP chief is such a big deal:

Modi’s rise has shaken the foundations of the Indian polity. You may not like his politics, but you cannot deny his impact. He has broken old norms, challenging the Gandhis openly, talking about them disparagingly, embellishing his record, sidelining the old guard within his own party, leading a tech-savvy campaign, reaching out directly to the people, and making a strong pitch for national leadership without inhibitions. He wants to be India’s next prime minister, he is telling his countrymen and women, and he is not ashamed to ask for their support. Modi’s ambition is his greatest asset in an increasingly ambitious India.

And it’s precisely because of this that Modi’s rise matters. The liberal intelligentsia continues to sound alarm bells, some even threatening to leave the country if Modi is elected. But they fail to comprehend how radically India has changed. Modi is a product of a contemporary India where the fault-lines of religion and caste, while important, are no longer the be all and end all of politics. An absence of leadership over the last decade has led to a craving for decisive leadership. Modi fills that vacuum.

Milan Vaishnav wonders if he can meet the public’s extremely high expectations, especially regarding the economy:

Yes, signs suggest the struggling Indian economy may be bottoming out. The International Monetary Fund recently announced that it expects India’s growth rate to recover from 4.4 percent in 2013 to 5.4 percent in 2014 and 6.4 percent in 2015. Consumer price inflation has come down from 11 percent in 2013 to 8 percent this March. The rupee, which experienced a free fall last summer after the Federal Reserve’s tapering talk, has since stabilized. Thus, with or without Modi, India may be able to muddle through.

But voter expectations are far greater; surveys suggest that they are flocking toward the BJP in the hopes that Modi can generate millions of new jobs, plug India’s infrastructure gap and attract the kinds of foreign money he has lured to Gujarat. Beyond voters, Modi is also moving stock markets: On the basis of pre-election polls projecting a BJP victory, India’s Sensex has risen more than 15 percent over the past six months. In meeting these expectations, Modi faces obstacles ranging from the difficult to the impossible.

William Inboden considers how the US should deal with Modi, who has been banned from visiting the US since 2005 over his role in a massacre of Muslims in Gujarat three years earlier:

Modi may not be the leader we want for India, but he will likely be the leader we get. Additionally, on the issue of religious toleration itself, the visa ban has outlived its effectiveness. Twelve years after the Gujarat massacres, there is little evidence that Modi’s continued blacklisting will do much to protect religious freedom in India.

But lifting the visa ban alone would be insufficient. The Obama administration should couple this with a series of other specific measures that show America’s willingness to work with Modi does not diminish our concern for religious freedom. While Modi has moderated some of his rhetoric, regrettably he seems to still embrace some of the more intolerant and toxic strains of Hindu nationalism. Many of India’s Muslims and Christians in particular fear that a Modi government could bring them increased discrimination and even persecution. The Obama administration should start communicating to India now its support for religious toleration, and should start developing specific policy initiatives to support religious freedom in India.

Previous Dish on Modi here and India’s elections here.

Maureen O’Connor questions the difficulties of long-distance relationships:

A Queen’s University study recently found relationship-­satisfaction levels for long-distance and “geographically close” couples to be virtually indistinguishable on nearly all measures, including sexual satisfaction. Oddly enough, digital communication may actually be more romantic than face-to-face interaction: A study from Cornell University found that confessions made via one-on-one web chat were consistently considered more intimate than identical confessions made in person. Call it the Manti Te’o phenomenon, the tendency some people have to ignore a campus full of suitable partners in favor of the one conjured digitally.

“In real dating, nobody waits,” my friend Holly observed, which means long-distance dating is “like all those sexy-time suburban-mom books about delaying sex for made-up reasons like vampire death so there can be sexual buildup.” Forbidden love is harder to come by than it once was; in the absence of blood feuds and imprisoned princesses, the doomed romances of our time are those conducted with lovers whose affections we imagine in the silence between text messages. The only stars that cross to keep modern lovers apart are those they willingly subject themselves to—like geography.

Helen Croydon, author of Screw the Fairytale: A Modern Girl’s Guide to Sex and Love, considers long-term relationships closer to home:

What, for example, is the obsession with living under the same roof?

In my last committed relationship the most common question I encountered was: “Do you have plans to move in together?” Why anyone would voluntarily give up a peaceful breakfast with John Humphrys, happily drinking anything in the fridge direct from the carton, and trade it for morning dramas of lost shirts and a daily telephone conference about meal-planning is something I can never understand.

There are now 3.5 million people over the age of 45 living alone in the UK, an increase of more than 50 percent since the mid-1990s. Domestic conveniences like vacuum cleaners, modern compact apartments and supermarket deliveries make it all very easy. In researching my book I interviewed married couples who live apart. One couple were on the verge of separating when they rented the house next door as a trial separation. Without the domestic minutiae overshadowing their “romantic” relationship, they thrived, so they made it permanent. The wife told me in glee: “I can invite people back and have parties. I could never do that before because he’s such a miserable anti-social thing.” So common is this new trend that the Office for National Statistics has created a term for it—LAT (living apart together). It estimates there are currently two million LAT couples in the UK. More people choose to live alone because they can.