The Daily Wrap

Today on the Dish, Andrew took on Richard Cohen over the muscled modern man, joined Melik Kaylan in lamenting the Internet age's effect on privacy, joined readers in responding to ex-stoner Obama's silence on legal weed, supported Frederic Filloux's more sensible release schedules for TV shows and movies, and was awed by Einstein's brain and the "physical incarnation of human intelligence".

In political coverage, Chris Geidner examined this week's possible SCOTUS announcements regarding marriage equality, Massie broke down the civility gap between the US and UK, Hertzberg wanted to bust up the filibuster, Tom Ricks didn't apologize for calling Fox News a wing of the Republican Party, and we rounded up some responses to the left-leaning of Asian-Americans. Not forgetting the looming fiscal cliff, Stan Collender anticipated a nail-biter, while we also heard the ACA was already changing US healthcare for the better, aired more discussion about the demographic advantages of American immigrants, and explored Obama's possible kill-list hedge in the event of a Romney victory as well as contemplated the present state of America's autonomous killing machines.

In international coverage, we checked in on the massive anti-Morsi protests in Tahrir Square, readers thought through the logic of Israel's blockade of Gaza, the UK backed Palestinian statehood, and Marta Franco summed up the status of gay rights in India.

In assorted coverage, Tyler Cowen took apart Robert Solow, Phillip Cohen looked into the statistical relationship of violent crime to single motherhood, while Human Rights Watch disconnected violent crime from marijuana use, Allison Aubrey took us to war over nutmeg, John Quiggin deflated the importance of oil, and Emily Wilson noted the dangers of motherhood in ancient times. Also a reader suggested a Dick Morris Award for the sports world, McArdle and Yglesias mixed it up over the Walmart strike, Dolly Parton was mistaken for a drag queen, Ritwik Deo shared his perspective as a nimble-toed butler, and Jane Hu destroyed the myth of live-gerbil sex toys. We also wondered if 401(k)'s were just subsidizing the rich, learned not to expect electric brains outside of science fiction, saw Albanian pride on the FOTD, saw Winston-Salem through the VFYW, let readers zoom in on Chile in this week's VFYW contest, then watched as dogs and babies went at it in our MHB.

- C.D.

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Killing Machines

Last week, Human Rights Watch warned about "fully autonomous weapons, which would inherently lack human qualities that provide legal and non-legal checks on the killing of civilians." Spencer Ackerman sizes up the military's current technological limitations:

It’s reasonable to worry that advancements in robot autonomy are going to slowly push flesh-and-blood troops out of the role of deciding who to kill. To be sure, military autonomous systems aren’t nearly there yet. No Predator, for instance, can fire its Hellfire missile without a human directing it. But the military is wading its toe into murkier ethical and operational waters: The Navy’s experimental X-47B prototype will soon be able to land on an aircraft carrier with the barest of human directions. That’s still a long way from deciding on its own to release its weapons. But this is how a very deadly slope can slip.

Gary Marcus contemplates machine morality more generally:

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Fighting Back

A reader proposes a Dick Morris Award nomination:

I know that you are not much for talking about sports on the Dish, but an August 16 article by Rick Reilly, "Demoting Notre Dame," deserves a mention like no other this year. When I moved here from Ireland I figured that I should get into American sports and the obvious choice was Notre Dame. The last few years have been pretty grim with some horrible losses against poor teams and the Fighting Irish were generally written off. Reilly's piece was the most potent put-down of all:

If I told you about a team that had lost 10 of its last 12 bowl games, had dropped nine of its last 10 to USC, had led the nation only in disappointment, you'd figure that team would be halfway down the Mountain West standings. But Notre Dame still gets perks and love from the NCAA and BCS as though the year is 1946. Brian Kelly confers with one of his QB candidates, Everett Golson. I'm declaring an end to all that. In Europe, if you play too much bad soccer for too many years, you get "relegated" to a lower division, moved down, demoted. It just happened to the Blackburn Rovers. It needs to happen to Notre Dame football.

But how wrong can any one person be: an undefeated season, going to the national championship game and ranked number 1 in the nation. It has been an amazing ride and there is a definite sense of schadenfreude rereading articles such as Reilly's.

Update from a reader:

Your Notre Dame fan reader is getting a little ahead of himself.  

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Oil Is Overrated?

John Quiggin argues that "oil is no more special or critical than coal, gas or metals—let alone food":

If oil is a commodity of modest importance, why does it loom so large in the thinking of U.S. policymakers and the general public? The answer, undoubtedly is the memory of the OPEC oil embargo imposed in retaliation for U.S. support of Israel during the Yom Kippur war of 1973. This shock was followed by months of queues and rationing, and by the double-digit inflation and high unemployment of the late 1970s.

Given this sequence of events, it was easy to conclude that control over oil exports is a powerful weapon in the hands of the OPEC states, and that shocks to the supply and price of oil represent a major cause of economic crises. Neither of these conclusions was correct at the time, and any validity they once had is long gone.

Face Of The Day

Ethnic Albanian girls stand by a Albanian flag during a rally marking the Albanian Flag Day on November 27, 2012 in Bujanovac, southern Serbia. At least 2,000 ethnic Albanians, who form a majority in this region bordering Kosovo, gathered today to celebrate. By Sasa Djordjevic/AFP/Getty Images.

Walking Up To The Fiscal Cliff's Edge

Stan Collender expects the fiscal cliff negotiations to go down to the wire:

Why is anyone surprised that no negotiating sessions on the fiscal cliff between the White House and Congress are scheduled this week? Why is anyone shocked that statements made about the cliff since Congress returned from the Thanksgiving recess seem to have gotten more strident rather than less? How is it possible that the two sides seem further apart now than they were a week or so ago?

The answer: It was both totally predictable and absolutely predicted. There will be no deal on the fiscal cliff before December 15 and from what I can see December 31 may be the better bet.

America Isn't Filled To Capacity, Ctd

Joe Wiesenthal compares US workforce demographics with Japan's, finding that "Americans should be thankful" for a "demographic lift" that the latter country lacks. Alex Hern worries that America will lose this demographic advantage:

Japan's demographic squeeze has been predicted and feared for a long time, but Weisenthal goes further by pinning a lot of hopes on America's demographic health. Is he right? Time will tell, but one thing which is noting is that this demographic lift isn't something which comes out of nowhere. In fact, it is something which, with the popular consensus around the need to limit immigration, is being actively fought by most US policymakers.

Pushing back on the bipartisan enthusiasm for attracting high-skilled immigrants, Noah Smith fears the implications for US higher-education costs:

Those immigrants will be great for the economy, but their kids are going to be competing with native-born kids for college spots. Unless we do something, that competition could cause a xenophobic backlash among the high-skilled native-born, as well as driving up tuition even further.

Reforming The Fillibuster

Harry Reid reportedly wants to "diminish the power of Republicans to slow or stop legislation by putting limits on the filibuster." Hertzberg thinks we should kill the fillibuster:

The filibuster is a bad idea when Democrats are nominally in charge, and it’s a bad idea when Republicans are in the supposed driver’s seat. Absent the filibuster, Congress would have passed meaningful climate-change and immigration reform, among other desiderata, by now. And, yes, President Reagan might have been able to abolish a federal agency or two back in the day. (He couldn’t even get rid of the tiny Legal Services Corporation.) Over time, the country will be better off if the parties can put their ideas into practice and be judged accordingly. As it is, neither side gets a fair shot, the voters never quite get what they voted for, and everybody complains about how politicians never keep their promises.

The View From Your Window

Winston-Salem, North Carolina, 8.58 am

Shattering The Release Window

Driven to illegally downloading his new favorite show, "Homeland", Frederic Filloux wants to end release windows, or the amount of time between the airing of a TV show or movie and its availability online or through DVD:

Motion pictures should probably be granted a short headstart in the release process. But it should coincide with the theatrical lifetime of a production of about three to four weeks. Even better, it should be adjusted to the box office life – if a movie performs so well that people keep flocking to cinemas, DVDs should wait. On the contrary, if the movie bombs, it should be given a chance to resurrect online, quickly, sustained by a cheaper but better targeted marketing campaign mostly powered by social networks.

Similarly, movie releases should be simultaneous and global.

I see no reason why Apple or Microsoft are able to make their products available worldwide almost at the same time while a moviegoer has to wait three weeks here or two months there. As for the DVD release windows, it should go along with the complete availability of a movie for all possible audiences, worldwide and on every medium. Why? Because the release on DVD systematically opens piracy floodgates (but not for the legitimate purchase on Netflix, Amazon Prime or iTunes).

I've effectively stopped "going to" the movies, because TVs are as good, if not as giant, and because I don't like crowds, can stop the movie at home to take a pee or grab some munchies, and rewind parts I didn't quite catch.

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Dismantling Solow On Hayek

Tyler Cowen has a field day.

Mental Health Break

Baby's best frenemy:

Why Does Greater Israel Blockade Gaza's Exports? Ctd

A reader writes:

My guess is that they are cracking down on exports to keep Hamas in theory from purchasing weapons with monies earned from basic capitalism. Never mind that the rockets and other weaponry are being smuggled in free of charge, but my guess is that you will get that answer from Israel if anyone bothered to ask.

Yousef Munnayer cites the 2005 agreement that Israel signed agreeing to up to 400 trucks of exports a day by 2006. Here's what actually happened in graph form (the red line is the agreement; the blue ine is Israel's follow-through):

He concludes:

Note the total failure to meet the 150 TPD commitment by 31 December 2005, let alone the 400 TBD by end of 2006, or ever. Keep in mind, Israel's failure to keep this commitment regarding exports precedes Hamas' electoral victory on 26 January 2006 and their solidification of control in the strip in June 2007.

This isn't about Hamas, this isn't about security. This is about punishing the Palestinian people of Gaza by crippling their economy.

Another reader adds:

Isn't the FAR more interesting question: Why does EGYPT blockade Gaza at all? After all, if Egypt maintained no blockade, Israel could hardly enforce one. Why is all the pressure on Israel? We give a huge amount of aid to Egypt, too. Or am I completely missing something? I never, ever see this discussed - MSM or elsewhere. If Egypt is perfectly fine with the blockade, then why does Israel bear the sole blame for it?

Why Do Asian-Americans Increasingly Lean Left? Ctd

Charles Murray reframes the discussion:

It’s not just that the income, occupations, and marital status of Asians should push them toward the right. Everyday observation of Asians around the world reveal them to be conspicuously entrepreneurial, industrious, family-oriented, and self-reliant. If you’re looking for a natural Republican constituency, Asians should define “natural.”

Murray ultimately answers that Asians vote overwhelming for Democrats because they see Republicans as "as the party of Bible-thumping, anti-gay, anti-abortion creationists," a characterization he deems "ludicrously inaccurate." Weigel counters:

Richard Posner argues that culture is a key factor:

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The Walmart Strike, Ctd

McArdle argued that Walmart can't afford to increase worker wages significantly. Yglesias counters:

Wal-Mart's profit margins, though by no means enormous, are larger than those of its main competitors. Given the weak national labor market, Wal-Mart has no reason to cough up extra money to its workforce. But a strong labor union could coerce them into coughing up higher pay and bringing their margins in line with Costco and Macy's. As a result, each Wal-Mart employee might get a bit less than $3,000 more a year. Whether that's "life-changing" or not is an interesting question, but since we're talking about low-wage workers here, I think the intuitions of highly paid professionals may be a bit off. It seems very plausible that the marginal hedonic value of a thousand bucks or three to Wal-Mart's workforce would be very large.

McArdle goes another round:

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A Return To Tahrir?

There is a LOT of first time protesters here in #Tahrir today. Morsi's constitutional declaration was a breaking point. #Egypt

— Bassem Sabry باسم (@Bassem_Sabry) November 27, 2012

Reports coming in of protests across the country from Upper #Egypt (Sohag, Assyut) to the Delta (Damietta, clashes in Mahalla, Tanta) #Nov27

— Jack Shenker (@hackneylad) November 27, 2012

The media is not covering #Tahrir adequetly, and the MB's jan25 channel is acting as if nothing is happening. Same shit different regime.

— السيد مانكي (@Sandmonkey) November 27, 2012

Every time I start giving up on #Egypt, it's people surprise me.

— Egyptocracy (@Egyptocracy) November 27, 2012

More than 100K protesters took to Tahrir Square today against President Morsi's recent power grab. Video here. Abdel-Rahman Hussein reports from the scene:

[Many] marchers – who took to the streets in numbers similar to those that toppled Mubarak – called for Morsi not merely to rescind his decree but to step down from the presidency. The iconic chant of the 2011 revolution – "The people want to bring down the regime" – was echoed in other major Egyptian cities, including Alexandria and Suez. Police continuously fired tear gas not far from Tahrir Square, and fighting between police and protesters continued nearby even while people continued to mill in. 

Al Jazeera catches us up on yesterday's developments:

On Monday, Morsi met with the nation's top judges and tried to win their acceptance of his decrees. But the move was dismissed by many in the opposition and the judiciary as providing no real concessions. The senior judges that were in that meeting with Morsi on Monday night "are right now in an emergency session, trying to come up with one united stance - an answer to that meeting", according to our correspondent. Presidential spokesperson Yasser Ali, said Morsi told the judges that he acted within his rights as the nation's sole source of legislation, assuring them that the decrees were temporary and did not in any way infringe on the judiciary. He underlined repeatedly that the president had no plans to change or amend his decrees.

It appears that most of the country's judges have gone on strike. Michael Wahid Hanna contends that "Morsi's majoritarian mindset is not anti-democratic per se, but depends upon a distinctive conception of winner-takes-all politics and the denigration of political opposition." He continues:

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Quote For The Day

"They had a bunch of Chers and Dollys [in the drag show] that year, so I just over-exaggerated -- made my beauty mark bigger, the eyes bigger, the hair bigger, everything. So I just got in the line and I just walked across, and they just thought I was some little short gay guy...and I got the least applause! ... It's a good thing I was a girl or I'd be a drag queen," - Dolly Parton.

Are 401(k)s "A Tax On The Unaware"?

Matthew O'Brien squares the findings of recent research on Danish tax-exempted retirement accounts with the $240 billion annually that the US government loses to 401(k) tax exemptions:

[O]ne penny's worth is exactly how much extra saving a dollar's worth of retirement subsidies produced in Denmark, according to [the study]. In other words, we might be spending $240 billion to get people to save $2.4 billion more.

But don't the trillions of dollars in 401(k) accounts tell a different story? Not necessarily…. Households save where the subsidy is, but don't save more because of the subsidy…. It's mostly the well-off, who have retirement savings to move around, who move their savings to where the subsidies are. The 401(k) doesn't do much if your goal is to get people who don't save much to save more, and it doesn't do this at quite the cost. 

Ray Fisman echoes this point:

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Who's More Credible?

Tom Ricks, speaking the bleeding obvious (that the Benghazi conspiracy was effectively created and hyped by Fox for partisan purposes), or a Fox spokesman via the Hollywood Reporter? Silly question, I know.

Einstein's Brain

Not bigger but way more complex than most:

"In each lobe," including the frontal, parietal and occipital lobes, "there are regions that are exceptionally complicated in their convolutions," Falk says. As for the enlarged regions linked to the face and tongue, Falk thinks that this might relate to Einstein’s famous quote that his thinking was often "muscular" rather than done in words.

Although this comment is usually interpreted as a metaphor for his subjective experiences as he thought about the universe, "it may be that he used his motor cortex in extraordinary ways" connected to abstract conceptualization, Falk says ... "Einstein programmed his own brain," Falk says, adding that when the field of physics was ripe for new insights, "he had the right brain in the right place at the right time."

This is not some kind of ace in the nature versus nurture argument. Both were involved (Einstein's parents were devoted and his musical capacity was highly developed). But what you begin to realize, or appreciate more deeply in this study, is the most powerful thing to have impacted planet earth since the last asteroid: the physical incarnation of human intelligence. And we are only beginning to understand its potential. My favorite comment from ScienceNOW:

Obliviously Einstein was exercising the triceps of his mind.

And all I want at this stage in my life is to obliviously exercize the triceps on my arm.

(Illustration from the Washington Post)

Marriage Equality Update

SCOTUS could announce which marriage equality cases it will or won't hear on Friday. Chris Geidner lists likely outcomes. The first one:

The court takes multiple DOMA cases and the Proposition 8 case. This outcome would be the “all in” option, and it would make clear that at least four justices want the court to resolve the legal questions surrounding these issues, from what level of scrutiny that laws classifying people based on sexual orientation should be given (see more about this here) to whether gay couples have a constitutional right to marry.

Another possibility:

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The Roid Age

It's a slow news week and I guess a Washington Post columnist's resentment of James Bond's amazing body is not exactly an important issue. But Richard Cohen regrets what he sees as the loss of real manhood:

Maybe the best example of the unmuscled hero is Humphrey Bogart in “Casablanca.” Bogart was 15 years older than Ingrid Bergman and it did not matter at all. He had the experience, the confidence, the internal strength that can only come with age. As he did with Mary Astor in “The Maltese Falcon” — “I don’t care who loves who, I won’t play the sap for you” — he gives up the love of his life because age and wisdom have given him character. These older men seduce; they are not seduced. They make love. They do not score.

I'm not sure I agree - and not only because of that cringe-inducing boomer use of the term "make love". I know my knowledge of heterosexuality is, er, limited, but it always struck me as a function of sexism, not elegance, that older, physically over-the-hill guys routinely date much younger and far more attractive women in movies. It's only a milder version of men in straight porn: in general, apart from the size of their member, they look much more like a regular Joe than the fantasy, plastic porn-bots they penetrate. I don't see that as different in kind than Woody Allen casting himself as a love object for women a third of his age, only different in degree. And it's bullshit by and large - but bullshit that flatters most male viewers, including, it would appear, Richard Cohen.

But Cohen misses something important as well: surely many superman-like movie stars are on steroid cycles, as are many of the young guys and Jersey bros detailed in this recent NYT piece. The male body changed on screen because of steroids. Arnold started it all, essentially requiring men to be as physically ravishing in movies as women generally are. Advertizing took the baton, with Marky Mark leading the charge, followed by Herb Ritts and Bruce Weber filling the airwaves and magazine ad pages (remember them?) with physically enthralling super-men. Over three decades, the increasingly sophisticated results are everywhere. Not so long ago, you'd be able to point out the guys in the gym who were obviously on roids. Now, you're lucky to spot a body that hasn't been transformed by steroids. So when Cohen says

Every rippling muscle is a book not read, a movie not seen or a conversation not held.

He's not wrong. But he is over-estimating the amount of work and time needed in a gym to get a great bod if you eat right, rest well and use the right, responsible mix of steroids. I think this quiet revolution in the use of steroids explains a lot in our culture.

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The Kill List Rules

Over the weekend, Scott Shane reported that, in preparation for a possible Romney win, the Obama administration "accelerated work in the weeks before the election to develop explicit rules for the targeted killing of terrorists by unmanned drones, so that a new president would inherit clear standards and procedures." Greenwald sighs:

Now that Obama rather than Romney won, such rules will be developed "at a more leisurely pace". Despite Obama's suggestion that it might be good if even he had some legal framework in which to operate, he's been in no rush to subject himself to any such rules in four full years of killing thousands of people. This makes it safe to assume that by "a more leisurely pace", this anonymous Obama official means: "never".

Amy Davidson adds:

Did the idea that some Presidents are better than others at deciding whom to kill cause anyone to feel smug rather than abashed? When it comes to “kill lists,” Obama’s weakness has been to act as though the clarity of his judgment is the same thing as a clear standard; perhaps the thought of losing gave him a sense that this wasn’t the case. But what was most vivid for those in the present Administration, in their vision of President Romney haphazardly dispatching drones? Their distrust of Obama’s successor, or embarrassment about what they might be leaving, unattended to, on the Oval Office desk?

The View From Your Window Contest: Winner #130

A reader writes:

Based on the type and amount of erosion on those very green mountains in the background, I’d guess Hawaii. I’m also guessing Oahu because of the development in the foreground. This is truly a gut reaction; because the picture makes me homesick, I think it’s Hawaii. Go Bows!

Another:

When I enlarge the photo, the characters on the binder just on our side of the window are still illegible; however, their spacing makes me think of an east Asian script. The flags in the foreground and on top of the tower appear to be Malaysian. Maybe the Taiwanese flag, but I think I see bits of white under the red, which would probably mean Malaysia's flag (the one that looks like a rip-off of ours but is actually apparently a rip-off of the British East India Company's flag - thanks, Internet!). Beyond that, I got nothing. Johor, Malaysia?

Another:

The outskirts of Taipei, Taiwan? That's a complete guess, as I haven't been there.  But the geography seems to fit Taiwan better than Haiti, Samoa, or Liechtenstein, which are also countries that have a flag with blue and red borders and something white in the middle, as the flag in the center of the photo seems to have.

Another:

The flags in the middle and on top of the building suggest either Myanmar, Samoa, or Taiwan.  My first thought was that someone in the diplomatic corps sent you this from Myanmar's new capital of Napyidaw. But it appears to be on the same giant delta that cuts through most of Myanmar. Taiwan, on the other hand, is covered with hills like this, including most of Taipei.  After a couple hours on Google Maps, I can't pinpoint the location, but I'm sure it's somewhere in Taiwan.  I'll go with Xizhi the hills northeast of Taipei:

Another:

My first hunch: a resource rich country, probably in the tropics, a city with verdant volcanic mountains very close by. I tried Google Images for Caracas, and the mountains looked very similar to your View. Could that be a Venezuelan (or Taiwan?) flag just left and below the center of the picture? And maybe one at the top of the nearest tower? The design of the towers has a Miesian influence, albeit softened by curves, which suggests a place with more affection for Western aesthetic values than say China or Taiwan. I'll go with Caracas.

Another:

I would swear that this view is from a window in the country of my birth, Costa Rica. I would even venture to say it is somewhere in the area of Escazu, because of all the construction. The mountains, the lushness, the colors: they all speak to my childhood. Now watch me be wrong and they'll take away my passport!

Another:

This week's contest is killing me.  

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Britain Backs Abbas At The UN

There are conditions attached, but the shift toward UN recognition of Palestinian statehood by the UK and France could bring the entire EU bloc with them. As time goes by, Israel is losing all its Western allies except the US.

The Silent Stoner President, Ctd

A reader speculates:

I don't know if it's occurred to you that the president is raising two teenaged daughters. As the mother of a teenaged daughter myself, it's very, very difficult to discuss pot use with them. Weed is the new cigarettes for this age group. It's really hard to say, "Yes, it's harmless, mostly, and I did it a lot in the '70s, but YOU CAN'T." I think President Obama may be more silent on this issue because of what he's teaching at home. It would be very hard to tell his girls, "Absolutely not!" when publicly you're all for it.

But in Colorado and Washington, the point is that the voters are all for it except for kids. A parent can now say to her kids: you have to wait till you're older to do that, because doing it now will harm your development. And if you buy or possess it as a minor, you are still a criminal, as with alcohol. So Obama has a perfect out: "I was a hardcore stoner ... but it's illegal until you're 18 or 21. If you promise me you won't try and get some illegally, we can all buy some legally when you're adults and I can help you navigate marijuana just as parents help kids navigate alcohol." Another reader:

That old footage you showed of Obama speaking in favor of decriminalization in 2004 reminded me of one of the wierdest Obama videos I've ever seen. It's from the summer of 2007 when he was running for president and in it someone on a rope line in New Hampshire asked what his stance was regarding medical marijuana.

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A Web That Can Entangle And Expose Us All

In the wake of the Petraeus scandal, Melik Kaylan sounds the alarm over the loss of privacy in the Internet age:

It’s no good arguing that the famous or powerful have signed on to such risks, that they are crucially different from us. With the advent of the Internet, anybody can shame anybody, and the stain can endure through generations across continents. Nor is there real comfort in the notion that digital media promotes the exposure of genuinely egregious offenders such as the Jerry Sanduskys and Jimmy Saviles. A precisely appropriate forum exists for such cases: the criminal justice system. And there are reasons why it has checks and balances—to protect the innocent while calibrating punishment for degrees of guilt.

Today’s scandals do no such thing. Instead, they unleash ancient mythological furies with the power of modern technology. Suddenly, we are back in the archaic time of fear, where anyone who rises too high can get arbitrarily destroyed by the Gods, where there’s no distinction between guilty and innocent, merely between the lucky and unlucky...

I have lived this - being humiliated and falsely accused of hypocrisy by the gay far left because I once tried (and failed) to find other HIV-positive guys to have sex with online when I was single. Since that searing experience - I was a pioneer target in Internet shaming and exposure - I've seen countless others go through the same thing, sometimes for reason, more often for no reason at all.

This is a huge loss that accompanies the huge gain of the Internet. Non-saints all need some zone of privacy if they are to remain sane. And yet no one can really avoid the tools of email and texting and tweeting and Tumblring and Instagramming if they want to be part of society - and any single image or text or email can be instantly communicated to everyone on the planet by almost anyone. Anthony Weiner will therefore always live with the image of his fruit-of-the-loom chubby as if it were stamped to his forehead like a Scarlet Letter of old. Yes, there are great advantages to transparency - we would never have grasped the full extent of the torture under Bush and Cheney if some hadn't taken digital photos of the Cheney-authorized techniques in use at Abu Ghraib. But there is also great human cost.

The only way past this, alas, is through it. The more poor souls this humiliation happens to, the more used we become to the humiliation, the less potent it becomes. In the end, it will likely happen to everyone in public life at some point in their lives, ranging from minor embarrassment - a photo of your love-handles on a beach - to a major scandal whose graphic texts every page-view-grabbing website will broadcast with relish.

Maybe some of our hypocrisies will wither away in this paralyzing sunlight. Maybe we will live less embarrassing lives. Or, more likely, we will build up personal and social scar tissue to live as actual flawed creatures in a terrifyingly transparent world.

Ask Massie Anything: Are Politics More Civil In The UK?

From his bio:

Alex Massie is a Scottish journalist. A former Washington correspondent for The Scotsman, he has also written for The Daily Telegraph, Scotland on Sunday, The New Republic, The Daily Beast, The Los Angeles Times, Foreign Policy, National Review Online, The Sunday Telegraph, The New York Times, The American Conservative, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Observer, Slate, The Irish Independent, Newsweek and The Sunday Business Post. Since January 2009 he has written a blog that is published by The Spectator. In 2012 he was short-listed in the blog section for the Orwell Prize for political writing.

Follow that blog here. Watch his previous video here.

Healthcare Is Already Changing

The ACA is working:

Private insurers and government, as part of health reform's cost-cutting, are changing the way they pay for care. Rather than reimburse for every service a doctor performs, they have begun to pay lump sums per patient, forcing doctors to more efficiently manage the health of patients, especially those with chronic illnesses.

To adapt, doctors have been forced to change the way they practice. They have to stay open longer, use electronic records, keep better tabs on patients with chronic illnesses and make other changes aimed at keeping patients healthy and out of expensive hospitals and emergency rooms.

Or the doctors have decided to quit their own businesses and go work for hospitals, which can use their bigger multiple-physician leverage to negotiate costs down further.

Pot Smokers Aren't Particularly Violent

Human Rights Watch examined the recidivism rates of NYC residents arrested for possession of marijuana:

We tracked through mid-2011 the criminal records of nearly 30,000 people without prior criminal convictions who were arrested in 2003 and 2004 for marijuana possession. As shown in the figure [above], we found that 3.1 percent of them were subsequently convicted of one violent felony offense during the six-and-a-half to eight-and-a-half years that our research covers; 0.4 percent had two or more violent felony convictions. That is, 1,022 persons out of the nearly 30,000 we tracked had subsequent violent felony convictions. Ninety percent (26,315) had no subsequent felony convictions of any kind.

Furthermore:

There is no readily available data on the rates of felony or violent felony conviction for comparable demographic groups in New York City who do not enter the criminal justice system on marijuana charges. But the rate of felony and violent felony conviction among this group of first-time marijuana arrestees appears to be lower than the rate of felony conviction for the national population, taking into account age, gender, and race.

The Kink That Wasn't There

Jane Hu separates fact from fiction in the non-history of gerbiling:

Not too long after the gay gerbiling rumor made its splashy early 80s debut, Doctors David B. Busch and James R. Starling published a surgical-stats report in Surgery titled "Rectal Foreign Bodies." This 1986 article, which gathered information from prior literature on Rectal Foreign Bodies (or RFOs), is the most frequently cited scientific document when it comes to gerbiling. Busch and Starling tabulated 182 cases by type and number of objects, among which included two whip handles, one plastic rod, one bottle with an attached rope, and one frozen pig's tail. No gerbils, though. Not even a tail.

Hu traces the myth's origin to the AIDS epidemic:

At the start of the 80s, gay men were already perceived as socially and sexually deviant. And if anything is not a secret, it's how especially openly homophobic American culture was throughout this decade. With the addition of AIDS and its attendant narrative of Gay Desires Being Punishable By Death, there seemed to be concerns in the mainstream that maybe gay people, already alienated, weren't being alienated quite enough. Toss interspecies sex with small dirty rat-like creatures into the mix, and you simply get a variation on a theme: gay sexuality as a realm plagued with abnormality, shame-inducing behaviors, and incomprehensible stupidity.

Chart Of The Day

Philip Cohen interprets it:

Violent crime has fallen through the floor (or at least back to the rates of the 1970s) relative to the bad old days. And this is true not just for homicide but also for rape and other assaults. At the same time, the decline of marriage has continued apace. 

He adds:

I've written before about the assumption that the rise in single-parent families was responsible for the violent crime bonanza of the 1980s and 1990s. (Romney and Ryan returned to this theme….) By my reading of the research, it is true that children of single mothers are more likely to commit crimes. But other factors are more important. 

Nutty For Nutmeg

The colonial powers certainly were, explains Allison Aubrey, leading to many blood confrontations over control of the spice:

So, why was nutmeg so valuable? ... It was fashionable among the wealthy. It was exotic and potent enough to induce hallucinations — or at least a nutmeg bender, as detailed in this account from The Atlantic. "Nutmeg really does have chemical constituents that make you feel good," explains culinary historian Kathleen Wall of the Plimoth Plantation.

How the nutmeg wars wound down:

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A Modern-Day Jeeves

Ritwik Deo describes his time as a butler:

[T]he art of the modern butler is altruism at its best. Butlers live a life of anticipation. Whether the silver-haired administrator butler at a large estate or a housekeeper butler at a dual-income middle-class home, he or she is marked by a remarkable devotion to service. Ever nimble-toed, the efficient manservant can scurry like a dormouse through a lounge full of broken crockery, scooping, clearing and dusting even as the guest rests undisturbed, couched in a chesterfield with the latest edition of the Esquire at his elbow and a tawny port by his side.

The Perils Of Ancient Motherhood

Emily Wilson reviews a spate of books on motherhood, among them Mothering and Motherhood in Ancient Greece and Rome:

Even male authors of antiquity were aware that motherhood was a very dangerous business, for women as well as for men and babies. Those who survived to adulthood must have been conscious that their mothers could have died giving birth to them; men must have been aware that fathering children on their wives could, and quite likely would, kill them. Orestes, who kills his mother in adulthood, is supposedly justified in his action, because he is avenging his father – and the Oresteia itself can be read as, among other things, an attempt to justify matricide and fatherhood (which are, revealingly, linked together). But the cultural background of the play includes the awareness that children very often "kill" their mothers, simply by being born; and husbands often "kill" their wives by making them pregnant.

Gay Equality In India

Marta Franco checks in on the pace of progress:

[A]fter more than a century of being spurned by their families, reviled in public and harassed by police, India’s gays and their supporters say [2009's] 377 ruling [decriminalizing homosexuality] is encouraging a gradual emergence from the shadows. "They’re not so open with their families yet, but they feel relatively more free now," said Anand Grover, lawyer and director of the Lawyers Collective HIV/AIDS Unit. While the situation remains difficult for many homosexuals, particularly in rural areas, Grover points to the new gay tourism market, the spread of queer parties at nightclubs, and the rising divorce rate among gay men who had previously been pressured to marry women.

And a cultural shift is gradually underway:

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An Electric Brain

Don't expect one any time soon:

At present, we still know too little about how individual neurons work to know how to put them together into viable networks. For more than twenty-five years, scientists have known the exact wiring diagram of the three hundred and two neurons in the C. Elegans roundworm, but in at least half a dozen attempts nobody has yet succeeded in building a computer simulation that can accurately capture the complexities of the simple worm’s nervous system. As the N.Y.U. neuroscientist Tony Movshon notes, "Merely knowing the connectional architecture of a nervous system is not enough to deduce its function." One also needs to know the signals flowing among the elements of neural circuits, because the same circuit can perform many different functions under different circumstances. By extension, building a device whose wiring diagram mimics the brain (e.g. Markram’s Blue Brain) does not guarantee that such a device can simulate the brain in any useful way.

The Daily Wrap

Today on the Dish, Andrew appreciated Bruce Bartlett's ballsy reason-following, warmed up a bit to New York City, reiterated the real-world incompatibility of Israeli settlements, and didn't buy Walter Russell Mead's dispassionateness about Gaza. In other Middle East coverage, Beinart grimaced at the Palestinian Authority's UN statehood bid, Sarah A. Topol reported on Gaza's many border tunnels, and we rounded up analysis of President Morsi's power grab in Egypt.

In political coverage, David Corn pointed out Obama's fiscal backbone, Eliza Gray let us see the GOP's Univision problem, Pareene did a postmortem on Campaign 2012's Twitter humor, and Rick Hertzberg did the math to unravel the House GOP's mandate claim. Meanwhile, readers shared the political views from their Thanksgivings, Surowiecki advocated for more infrastructure spending, Frum anticipated a changing Obama/GOP dynamic, and Mark Mazower took liberal intellectuals to task for ignoring controversial political theories. We also wondered about healthcare cost reductions via Obamacare, Lauren Sandler broke down the fertility divide between red and blue states, Rick Perlstein reflected on dishonest conservative leadership, and Bill McKibben highlighted the partial success of anti-coal environmentalism.

In assorted coverage, Benjamin Wallace-Wells thought through the ramifications of a possible end to the war on drugs, The Economist went over the dropping murder rate in Mexico, Mike Konczal worried about the high incarceration rates of black parents, and Radley Balko was encouraged by new police training on how to better handle pet dogs in the field. David P. Barash dug for the biological roots of homosexuality, William Langewiesche let us know what it was like to be in the French Foreign Legion, Daniel Siedell suggested the cause and effect of artists acting weird, and Randall Fuller championed the literary rebellion of Melville, Dickinson and others. Also, McArdle dismissed the Walmart strike, Rebecca Joines Schinsky took us to tumblr for some unhelpful Amazon product reviews, and Bilge Ebiri reality-checked the schemes of Bond-villains, while we looked forward to gamers becoming surgeons, traveled to Seville for the VFYW, watched a man's clothes drop in our MHB, and waited with our FOTD for a polluted-fish meal.

Extra-long Thanksgiving weekend wrap here.

- C.D.

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After The War

Benjamin Wallace-Wells imagines a possible end to the war on drugs:

The prohibition on drugs did not begin as neatly as the prohibition on alcohol once did, with a constitutional amendment, and it is unlikely to end neatly, with an act of a legislature or a new international treaty. Nor is the war on drugs likely to end with something that looks exactly like a victory. What is happening instead is more complicated and human: Without really acknowledging it, we are beginning to experiment with a negotiated surrender.

He predicts a complicated readjustment:

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Face Of The Day

A cat waits while Nicaraguan Arturo Garcia cleans the fish given to him by fishermen at Xolotlan Lake, also known as Lake Managua, one of the biggest and most polluted in Nicaragua, in Tipitapa, some 20 km from the capital, on November 26, 2012. The administration of President Daniel Ortega three years ago obtained international funding to restore the lake back to health, where it is estimated that over a thousand fishermen fish. By Hector Retamal/AFP/Getty Images.