The Dish

Jonah Lehrer connects smell and memory:

Why is smell so sentimental? One possibility, which is supported by this recent experiment, is that the olfactory cortex has a direct neural link to the hippocampus. In contrast, all of our other senses (sight, touch and hearing) are first processed somewhere else – they go to the thalamus – and only then make their way to our memory center. This helps explain why we're so dependent on metaphors to describe taste and smell. We always describe foods by comparing them to something else, which we've tasted before. ("These madeleines taste just like my grandmother's madeleines!" Or: "These madeleines taste like the inside of a lemon poppy seed cake!") In contrast, we have a rich language of adjectives to describe what we see and hear, which allows us to define the sensory stimulus in lucid detail. As a result, we don't have to lean so heavily on simile and comparison.

Matt Steinglass argues that the American obsession with a falling dollar isn't irrational:

People have been reporting Americans’ discomfort with the idea of a falling dollar as if it were completely irrational and based on linguistic confusion, as if Americans just like the idea of “strength”.

Dan Drezner hypothesized in late October that Republicans were just looking for an anti-Obama economic talking point, and Ezra Klein advocated switching to the locutions “high dollar” and “low dollar”. But in fact, the short-term benefits of a strong dollar are much more widely shared than those of a weak dollar. Only 11.7 million Americans worked in manufacturing as of October 2009, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (That has been falling relentlessly since 1979; it was at 17.3 million just 10 years ago.) Even fewer work in agriculture and resource extraction. People in knowledge-based industries with international or export components, like software or television, do benefit somewhat from a weaker dollar, but I’m not sure how strongly they benefit or even where to look for an analysis of that effect. 

Meanwhile, every consumer benefits from a strong dollar. It means cheaper gas, cheaper mobile phones, cheaper kids’ toys — in short, cheaper almost everything. Of course this is something of a vicious circle: because our manufacturing employment has shrunk and we buy so much from abroad, we don’t feel the effects of a boost to our manufacturing as strongly or as rapidly as we feel the effects of a blow to our import-purchasing power. And in the long run, the dollar has to fall, because we can’t keep importing more than we export forever. Gradually, the effects of more competitive American goods and a falling trade deficit will show up in increased prosperity. But the short-term impact runs in the other direction for most Americans, and to some extent the popular desire for a “strong dollar” is not so much irrational as shortsighted.

"I was very struck also by Janet Napolitano’s comment, I hadn’t read it before to see her say that, that the number one priority is to bring [Hasan] to justice is such a knee-jerk comment and such a stupid comment. He’s going to be brought to justice. He is not going to be innocent of murder. There are a lot of eyewitnesses to that. They should just go ahead and convict him and put him to death," – William Kristol, appearing on Fox News.

Let us be clear: this is a fascist statement.

You begin to understand now why these goons instituted torture. They have total contempt for the Western system of justice, utter contempt for the rule of law. Kristol here is all but calling for a lynching. This is what "conservatism" has come to: the worship of violence and revenge. It makes the Cheney years more comprehensible, doesn't it?

Newsweek makes a commemorative video.

A reader writes:

That e-mail you highlighted struck a chord. I am 39, straight and happily married for 21+ years to my high school sweetheart. Since my childhood I have always defended gays, even before I knew who among my close friends were gay.  For this I was ridiculed and rejected by many – including members of my family – but mostly I was myself labeled gay by these critics.  Being called effeminate and gay was something that, as a sensitive, artistic kid, I had dealt with plenty growing up.  Honestly, the label was meaningless to me since I didn't associate homosexuality with anything bad.  That and I knew who I was.

As a tenth-grader I met and fell in love with my soulmate.  It was a strange period, though, and shortly thereafter I dropped out of school to become a hairdresser.  At cosmetology school I met an incredibly gifted hairdresser with whom I clicked and left home to move in with.  That he was gay made no difference to me or my girlfriend, who was a regular fixture at our house.

Salon life surrounded me with gay men and women.  My bosses were gay.  Encircled by creative people I felt I had at last found my people; that most of them were gay, of course, didn't matter to me.  My dad, on the other hand, really struggled to understand my comfort in that scene.

A few of my early salon colleagues became very close friends to my then-fiancee and me.  In time I asked three of my closest friends, those whom I thought best understood what marriage represented, to be my groomsmen, regardless of the fact that two of them were gay.  That those fellows immediately and graciously accepted didn't strike me as exceptional at the time.  But as I look at my wedding pictures today and see these guys standing next to me (babyfaced, just a month after my 18th birthday), their hands on my shoulders and beaming smiles, it is bittersweet.  I will never accept that these men could participate in my wedding, but that I might never have the honor and privilege of participating in theirs.  Particularly since these men were the ones who so clearly illustrated for me the value of monogamous, supportive and positive relationships.  My own parents divorced before I was one year old.

To me this debate is about how comfortable America can pretend to be while marginalizing a group of its citizens on the basis of bigotry.  Arguments made in defense of traditional marriage are a type of sophistry designed to legitimize a repugnant view that we have otherwise worked so hard to shed.

As a man who has cherished his so-called traditional marriage for more than half his life, let me state clearly that shutting out gays from this essential cultural institution is out-and-out wrong.  I don't just know it; I live it.

(Image: Justin Sullivan/Getty)

Ezra Klein interviews Greg Koger, the author of an upcoming book on the filibuster. Koger:

The benefit to the majority can be that public attention focuses. They know the bill is there and they know the Republicans are blocking it. That becomes the basis for news coverage. When will the bill be done? What's going on today? In that sense, you can win. The point is not that you exhaust the Republicans, but that you embarrass them. X number of people died today. I hope that whatever you had to say was more important.

Today on the Dish we aired reaction from Ambinder and Marcy Wheeler over news that KSM and others will stand trial in a civilian court near Ground Zero. Andrew reacted to word that Obama will tackle the deficit head-on next year. He also responded to Dreher's questioning of him remaining a Catholic and laid into Hannity's corruption of conservatism.

In advance of the Oprah interview airing on Monday, we discovered that Palin will go after McCain staffers, her book has little accuracy, it also has no index, and that she is "too dumb" for Althouse.

Most of all, we learned that Palin wanted to sue the Dish.

— C.B.

A reader writes:

I really have to chime in on this topic. I spent the better part of last year deployed to Afghanistan, where I was stationed at Bagram. Part of my job, actually the most important part, was to coordinate the transfer of my unit's fallen back home. This was something that I never, ever looked forward to, but it was a duty I took very seriously. Part of this duty was a departure ceremony as our fallen left Afghanistan for Dover. I don't think you can ever realize how powerful these ceremonies are until you've taken part in one.

At Bagram, all personnel not performing an essential task would line up on the main drive through Bagram. As the open backed HUMMV carrying the flagged draped transfer case slowly proceeded from the mortuary down the main drive to the airfield, everyone would come to attention and render a salute. There would be thousands of people, soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, lined up as for this. The fallen hero would be taken on to the tarmac and driven to an empty C-17 that had its ramp lowered, waiting to receive the transfer case. An honor guard and a cordon, as well as hundreds of servicemen and women, would be silently standing at attention as an honor guard carried the remains to the center of the aircraft. Whenever possible I would arrange for the honor guard and cordon to come from the fallen's team or platoon. Always, always, always, they wanted to be the ones to perform this service.

The last fallen hero ramp ceremony I put together still stings in my memory.

Ramadan had just ended, it was the first few weeks of autumn. A few kilometers from our base one of our police mentoring teams (PMT) was almost attacked by a vehicle bourne improvised explosive device (VBIED). I say almost as the attack was thwarted by one of our HUMMV drivers who took evasive action. Unfortunately, this resulted in the rollover of the HUMMV which caused the death of the driver. I was at the mortuary when the MEDEVAC helicopter brought this young man's broken body in to be prepared for the journey home.

The rest of his team were brought to Bagram as well. They were very adamant that they be the ones to escort the fallen brother to the C17. Although dirty and disheveled from their encounter, I agreed as I am certain their brother would have had it no other way. To a man, they wanted me to know one essential fact about him: he was Muslim. They insisted that he be sent home with a Muslim cleric presiding. We had one at Bagram, a major who was an Islamic chaplain – in fact I had dinner with this man just a few nights prior. We were able to grant the PMT's request.

I do not have the words to adequately describe the emotion in the night air on the tarmac. Under a crescent moon the fallen hero was carried onto the C17 by his team brothers, followed by the honor guard, the Commanding General and Command Sergeant Major of the 101st Airborne, and of course the Muslim chaplain.

(Photo: U.S. Army soldiers stand together as salute during the playing of taps at the memorial service that U.S. President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama attended for the thirteen victims of the shooting rampage allegedly by U.S. Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan on November 10, 2009 in Fort Hood, Texas. Hasan, an army psychiatrist, is accused of killed 13 people and wounded 30 in a shooting at the military base on November 5, 2009. By Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

I've heard it before from a source very close to her – a source who also told me that Palin was obsessed with this blog for much of the campaign. But today a Wall Street Journal reporter also came across that story, asked me for comment and is publishing it tomorrow. Apparently, the idea was quashed because it was thought a libel suit wouldn't work (duh) and it would only give me and the Dish more publicity (double duh). Much better to ignore me completely, and to smear me as a loon, and get Palin lapdog Howie Kurtz to do your dirty work, as the campaign wisely did.

But two thoughts: has she ever heard of discovery?

Since the only point of my asking factually verifiable questions about her deeply strange accounts of her fifth pregnancy was to get at the truth of the matter and resolve it for good and all, a libel suit would only have enabled me to really answer the salient questions – questions the McCain itself never asked her and were too mortified to look into after it was too late. 

Secondly, it's obvious such a libel suit would have failed. It is not libel to ask a politician to verify a public claim relevant to her campaign that seems weird on inspection, especially when the verification would have been easy. But to Palin, such questions were outrageous!

Palin believes that asking questions of a public figure that she doesn't like is a form of lese-majeste, or insufficient deference. Now imagine what that kind of paranoid attitude would mean if she had ever parachuted into the Oval Office thanks to a temper-tantrum by John McCain.