The Dish

The man who designed our window views page, my Atlantic colleague, Shaun Raviv, produces another site and another project, dedicated to finding, scanning and recording book inscriptions. They’re not from or to famous people; they’re just glimpses of one person’s relationship to another, as filtered through the gift of a book, across the centuries and the world. I got lost perusing the other day. The one above reads:

"dear Tim—
This glorious book has very
many weird stories in it.
It is also a Playboy book-
so when you read this book
think of the weirdest,
sexiest girl, you will think of me
Love, Gayl"

Check it out here. And send in your own discoveries.

Columbus, Ohio, 7.45 am.

For an interactive gallery of Dish readers’ window views across the world, click here.

It’s hard to avoid the inexorable rise of cognitive neuroscience as the dominant dicourse of the next decade. At the same time, of course, its very faddishness leads many to believe things that are not actually credible or even scientific. Non-experts are particularly vulnerable. But they’re not the only ones susceptible to b.s.

The IMDB review of the 1980 movie, "Can’t Stop The Music," puts it as well as I can:

Rarely in the history of mankind have we seen a movie so incredibly awful that it becomes a "must-see film".

Indeed. It is jaw-dropping to think of this vehicle for the Village People – starring Steve Guttenberg and athlete Bruce Jenner – as a serious, big budget movie. But it was, and everyone so far as I can tell is in denial about who the Village People really were. The finest scene is probably the one below. On Washington’s Gay Pride weekend, I might as well engage in some can’t-help-myself shame.

The enthusiastic son of the Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, Tagg Romney, has a MySpace page, complete with contributions from his friends, including "Brittney":

hello. IS IT TRUE THAT YOUR DAD AND YOUR FAMILY ARE REALLY MORMONS? does the public now? will that effect the debate?

Who knows, Brittney, who knows? More Taggish shout-outs from his friends:

I’m SO EXCITED that Mitt is running!!!
He is just what this AMAZING country needs.

Or a simple series of gurgles from "Sam":

You’re dad is awesome! …  Excited for the debate? oh man, I can’t wait to see your dad. He’s so smart! I wouldn’t want to debate him.

Tagg’s favorite books:

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Rex, The Bible, The Hobbit, Lincoln, The Victome de Bragelonne, Battlefield Earth, Dragon Flight, Dune, Book of Mormon, Tale of Two Cities, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Screwtape Letters, Les Miserables, Harry Potter (my guilty pleasure), Pride and Prejudice, A Farewell to Arms, Ender’s Game, Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage.

There’s "Battlefield Earth" again. Uh-oh. It seems to have made quite an impact on the Romney family. Here’s a good question for Romney if any reporter has the balls to ask: "What is your view of Scientology? Is it a religion?"

A reader writes:

What’s wrong with politicians doing whatever it is we want, regardless of their own personal views?  Isn’t that what we elect them for, to do the will of the people?  It’s better than politicians who stick to their own asinine views as a matter of principle, the will of the people be damned.

Maybe Bush is helping Romney, after all.

Mercifully, the system envisaged by the founders seems gradually to be unraveling this president’s ad hoc, arrogant and unconstitutional post-9/11 detainee policy. Here’s a masterful post on the subject that sums up where we’ve come from and how. Money quote:

All this goes to show that creating a new system from scratch is a terrible idea, especially when we already have systems perfectly well suited for the exact tasks. We have courts that can try people for war crimes, and have done so. We have courts that can try people for crimes, and have done so. We have courts that can provide an independent review as to whether someone is or is not properly held, pending hostilities, under the laws of war.

This was done in the 1760s, and can be done as easily now. Now it may not fit the outsized view of executive power some people find in emanations from penumbras in the Constitution (I’ll just note that people who think their legal theories are correct don’t go around trying to have court jurisdiction eliminated prior to getting rulings) but it fits the actual Constitution that is our patrimony, that was crafted with similar concerns regarding conflict in mind, and was based on the proposition, well tested over the centuries, that diffusion of power best serves the interests of freedom and safety.

If the latest report pans out, Ron Paul has leaped out of the asterisk box in the GOP campaign. His largely online funding, if verified, would put him on a par with McCain. Money quote:

Observers close to the campaign are revealing – with some astonishment – that donations to the campaign in recent weeks have pushed the total up to perhaps $4 or $5 million. "That’s a huge number at this stage," says one observer. "That starts to put him in a position where he can compete – state by state, anyway – with the major candidates."

I’d credit the Internet, wouldn’t you? Stay tuned for confirmation. If it holds up, it means he’s in this race for a good while yet – which is good for philosophical diversity in the GOP.

(Hat tip: Radley. Photo: Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty.)

No sooner do I predict that Romney will alter his position on Iraq depending on – what else? – his political interest, than he goes and does exactly that. It’s not much of a step, because he’s still appealing to the base. But it’s an early first distancing from the extreme positions of Giuliani and McCain on endless occupation of the Muslim Middle East:

"Our objective would not be a Korea-type setting with 25-50,000 troops on a near permanent basis remaining in bases in Iraq," the former Massachusetts governor told the Associated Press.

"I think we would hope to turn Iraq security over to their own military and their own security forces, and if presence in the region is important for us than we have other options that are nearby," Romney said.

He aims to please … whoever he needs to.