Category: The Dish

Chasing the American Dream author Mark Rank lists its three main elements, based on his extensive interviews and social surveys:

The first is that the American Dream is about having the freedom to pursue one’s interests and passions in life. By doing so, we are able to strive toward our potential. Although the specific passions and interests that people pursue are varied and wide ranging, the freedom to engage in those pursuits is viewed as paramount. The ability to do so enables individuals to develop their talents and to truly live out their biographies. America, at its best, is a country that not only allows but encourages this to happen. As one of our interviewees put it when asked about the American Dream, “What I’ve always known it to be is being able to live in freedom, being able to pursue your dreams no matter what your dreams were, and having the opportunity to pursue them.”

A second core feature of the American Dream is the importance of economic security and well-being.

This consists of having the resources and tools to live a comfortable and rewarding life. It includes working at a decent paying job, being able to provide for your children, owning a home, having some savings in the bank, and being able to retire in comfort. These are seen as just rewards for working hard and playing by the rules. Individuals frequently bring up the fact that hard work should lead to economic security in one’s life and in the life of one’s family. This is viewed as an absolutely fundamental part of the bargain of what the American Dream is all about.

Finally, a third key component of the American Dream is the importance of having hope and optimism with respect to seeing progress in one’s life. It is about moving forward with confidence toward the challenges that lie ahead, with the belief that they will ultimately be navigated successfully. Americans in general are an optimistic group, and the American Dream reflects that optimism. There is an enduring belief that our best days are ahead of us. This abiding faith in progress applies not only to one’s own life, but to the lives of one’s children and the next generation, as well as to the future of the country as a whole.

(Stereoscopic image of right arm and torch of the Statue of Liberty, 1876 Centennial Exposition, via Wikimedia Commons)

#ThingsTimHowardCouldSave lololol pic.twitter.com/q0Ga7WSQoo

— Ben ‘Benson’ Bowe (@Benson_EU) July 2, 2014

The American goalie who made a record 16 saves in Tuesday’s World Cup match against Belgium also happens to live with Tourette’s syndrome. As Melissa Dahl notes, the neurological disorder may actually help Howard’s goalkeeping abilities:

Kids with Tourette’s have better timing than kids without it. In one study, researchers asked two groups of children — one with Tourette’s and one without — to judge whether two circles were on a computer screen for the same length of time. The kids with Tourette’s were better at the task overall, which could be because their brains have to work harder to suppress their tics, and tic suppression is thought to involve an area of the brain that’s also associated with timing.

People with Tourette’s have more self-control.

In an earlier study, researchers tested cognitive control on people with Tourette’s versus people without, via an eye-movement-tracking experiment. Participants were sometimes told to make speedy eye movements toward a target; other times, the directive would suddenly switch, and they were told to quickly send their gaze away. People with Tourette’s were better at switching back and forth than the people without Tourette’s, and, as with the other experiment, researchers think it may come down to tic suppression.

That doesn’t detract from the accomplishments of a phenom so beloved by America that fans are petitioning to name an airport after him. Indeed, it makes them all the more incredible. But Howard isn’t the first Tourette’s sufferer with incredible sports skills; years ago, Oliver Sacks wrote about a patient who was practically unbeatable at ping-pong:

Sacks cited a study where a control group of “neuro-typicals” and a person with Tourette’s were asked to react as quickly as possible to a situation. The control group proved able to respond two to two and a half times faster than usual and with poor aim. The person with Tourette’s responded five to six times faster than usual and without compromising accuracy. “This is very real, this mixture of speed and accuracy,” Sacks said. “I think it often is part of Tourette’s.”

But another expert is more cautious about making that link:

“The research is not in yet if they can perform at a higher level than can be normally expected,” said Dr. Michael Okun, professor of neurology at the University of Florida at Gainesville and chairman of the Tourette Syndrome Association Medical Advisory Board. Okun has found that other aspects of Tourette’s can prove highly beneficial in a wide range of endeavors. He noted that people with the condition often have obsessive-compulsive tendencies. They repeat tasks over and over with a ritualistic and often perfectionist bent. “Obsessive-compulsive tendencies really help to enhance abilities,” Okun said. “In chess, piano, or when they’re playing goalie for the World Cup team.”

OK, let’s get back to the meme of the week:

We might also need a Tim2Houston campaign RT @rafipaez #ThingsTimHowardcouldsave #stillhurts pic.twitter.com/Z4iAh0GUEp

— Daryl Morey (@dmorey) July 3, 2014

#ThingsTimHowardCouldSave pic.twitter.com/IBoCpsu90a — Tim Howard Saves (@TlmHowardSaves) July 3, 2014

#ThingsTimHowardCouldSave pic.twitter.com/coqseTzIR9

— Tim Howard Saves (@TimHoward_Saves) July 3, 2014

#ThingsTimHowardCouldSave pic.twitter.com/HJO0yAWfgI — Tim Howard Saves (@TimHoward_Saves) July 3, 2014

A reader protests:

I hope you like the taste of worms, because you’ve opened a big ol’ can of them with excerpt of Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza’s piece on the adoption of African-American children overseas. There are several things in that article that I can see Dish readers vociferously debating – like the citation to an unnamed legal scholar who thinks Western Europe is a less racist place to raise a black child – but I want to focus on her implication that domestic adoptions in the United States ought to be colorblind.

While there is no doubt that the overwhelming number of African-American children in the foster care system is an urgent matter that needs to be addressed, I disagree with Buckwalter-Poza’s suggestion that we can help solve this problem by dismissing cultural competency concerns in transracial adoption applications.

Firstly, as a historical note, she doesn’t mention that a major reason for the mid-20th century backlash against transracial adoptions was because of programs like the Indian Adoption Project, where Native American children were taken from their communities and deliberately placed with white adoptive parents in order to mainstream them (and give them ostensibly “better” lives). This was widely perceived by Native American tribes as an effort to stamp out their language and culture, and when transracial adoption proponents turned to African American children in need of families, there was wariness that this was going to happen to the black community next.

Secondly, whether we like it or not, raising a minority child in a white-centered, prejudiced society today is still a complicated task – one that is made even more fraught if parents are ignorant of or unwilling to address the effects that a child’s race will have on how he or she is treated by society. Parenting a minority child is always going to be different in some regards from parenting a white child, so why shouldn’t the ability of prospective families (regardless of their race) to navigate those issues be considered as part of the adoption vetting process? Whether it’s having the skills to properly care for black hair, knowing where to find resources for your Chinese child who asks about his/her heritage, or knowing when and how to engage in “The Talk” with your African-American kid (something that I as an Asian person was completely ignorant about until Trayvon Martin), having cultural awareness is hugely important.

To be clear, I definitely do not think that any parents should be out of the running for adopting a child simply because they are of a different race, nor do I assume that cultural competency is automatically present so long as a prospective parent is the same race as the child. I am saying, however, that getting rid of that consideration entirely (as opposed to, say, beefing up cultural competency training and support for transracial adoptive parents) is a mistake.

An independent oversight panel appointed by the White House has found that the NSA’s online data collection program is both legal and effective:

As the NSA’s troves of ostensibly foreign emails and Americans’ international communications come under heavy scrutiny, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board dealt the NSA a victory on Tuesday night by calling the information reaped “valuable”. It pointedly rejected similar claims for the bulk collection of US call data in a January report. Under the so-called “702 program” – named after section 702 of the Fisa Amendments Act of 2008 – the NSA can harvest large amounts of ostensibly foreign digital information, including Americans’ international communications.

But the board did question the NSA’s intrusion into Americans’ data and recommended limits to the government’s ability to access large amounts of American communications data that the NSA inevitably collects and searches through without a warrant.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is less than thrilled with the report:

The board skips over the essential privacy problem with the 702 “upstream” program: that the government has access to or is acquiring nearly all communications that travel over the Internet. The board focuses only on the government’s methods for searching and filtering out unwanted information. This ignores the fact that the government is collecting and searching through the content of millions of emails, social networking posts, and other Internet communications, steps that occur before the PCLOB analysis starts.

The foundation also slams the panel for not taking a firmer stand on whether government agencies need warrants to search Americans’ communications:

The Fourth Amendment requires a warrant for searching the content of communication. Under Section 702, the government searches through content without a warrant. Nevertheless, PCLOB’s analysis incorrectly assumes that no warrant is required. The report simply says that it “takes no position” on an exception to the warrant requirement when the government seeks foreign intelligence. The Supreme Court has never found this exception.

Although they have few qualms about the data collection itself, the Bloomberg editors favor a warrant requirement:

A lot of regulations cover the use of these data. But the NSA asserts that, once collected, it can be lawfully searched by its agents and others. The Central Intelligence Agency conducted about 1,900 queries of such information in 2013. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, alarmingly, says it doesn’t track how often it accesses the communications of Americans gathered under this program but “believes the number of queries is substantial.” In fact, the report says that the government has no idea how much data it collects on Americans, and it notes that the rules “potentially allow a great deal of private information about U.S. persons to be acquired.”

The board was split on exactly how to treat that information, an issue that gets pretty complicated. But the bottom line is this: If intelligence agencies are intentionally sifting through these data for the content of specific Americans’ communications, they should get a warrant — except in emergencies — just as the Constitution requires in all other cases.

This was the standard recommended by the president’s NSA review panel in December. And it’s the standard the House of Representatives voted to affirm last month. The Senate should do the same.

And Susan Crawford pivots from the report to make the case for stronger judicial oversight:

What’s needed now is better oversight by the FISA court. That means Congress needs to expand the court’s authority. The PCLOB report makes clear that the FISA court is being informed about the procedures that the surveillance authorities are following with respect to broad categories of foreign intelligence information. But that’s it. The court does not otherwise exercise any judicial review over the substance of these programs.

Surveillance will inevitably continue. An overly timid NSA would not serve domestic or foreign interests. But the court needs to double-check that federal agencies don’t overstep their legal limits on targeted surveillance. In this murky context, the FISA court remains at a distinct disadvantage when attempting to balance national security and privacy interests.