Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 2631

Tweets from the Hermit Kingdom

by Conor Friedersdorf

After noting that North Korea is now on Twitter, Rob Long wonders if you can be the last insane despot on earth and be Tweeting:

It's entirely in Korean, which is the only reason I'm not following
them.  That, and because I already know that rice production has been
stellar this year, Kim Jong Il won the British Open, and workers around
the world despise the reactionary American hegemon.

The handle is @uriminzok. And when the inevitable Twitter fight with Andrew...

Mental Health Break

by Chris Bodenner

A meme worth revisiting for this:

Web Design and Development - Hosting - Free - Sports Related - Lisa Graham Keegan

Perspective

by Conor Friedersdorf

Radley Balko writes that Muslim immigration in America is a success story:

In contrast to many of the minority Muslim populations inEurope, American Muslims embrace modernity, , and earn more money than theirnon-Muslim fellow citizens. suggests American Muslims are also doing justfine when it comes to assimilating and viewing themselves as partof America. According to the poll, just 5 percent of AmericanMuslims express any level of...

"I'm Pat Fucking Tillman" Ctd

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

The Tillman mess reminds me of Brando as Colonel Kurtz near the end of Apocalypse Now:

We train young men to drop fire on people. But their commanders won't allow them to write "fuck" on their airplanes because it's obscene.

Apocalypse Now - Fuck - Chris Bodenner - Arts - Warfare and Conflict

How Is Everyone Middle-Class? Ctd

by Patrick Appel

A reader writes:

In contrast to your reader who felt like the poor kid in a very rich area, I was always teased as the rich kid in my rural Appalachian hometown.  The markers of our wealth?  A two-story house (a century old and under rolling renovation) and the fact that my brothers and I paid full price for school lunch, rather than free or reduced.  In a way, we were rich: our parents were college graduates, we had all the books we could ever want and all three of us are in...

Dogs In The Workplace, Ctd

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

I am not a dog trainer, but I live with one and therefore know a good number of them. Since you mentioned Cesar Millan, I would like to mention that he is basically reviled in the animal behavior community.  His training methods are almost completely aversive and punishment based.  Scientific research has shown positive training techniques to be more effective and have fewer side effects.  Clicker training looks like the marine animal training you would see...

China's Spider Man Complex

by Patrick Appel

Damien Ma explains it:

It is simultaneously extremely poor and ostentatiously rich, dependingon the evidence that's selected for emphasis. Which country will Chinaput forward to face the future? It is afraid of assuming outsizedresponsibility that comes with greater power, or what I call the"Spider Man complex" ("with great power comes great responsibility,Peter"). And just as Spider Man, China too gripes about beingmisunderstood and occasionally being cast as a villain...

In Defense of Talk Radio Listeners

by Conor Friedersdorf

In order to offer a more persuasive defense of talk radio listeners, let me share some
correspondence I've engaged in lately. Longtime readers are aware of my
various arguments with talk radio's Mark Levin, who engages in ad hominem
attacks, juvenile name-calling, and inaccurate statements about people
who criticize him.

As it happens, I know a few of his radio listeners personally, and they're people for whom I couldn't have more respect. A recent experiment

Two Wrongs

by Conor Friedersdorf

Dave Weigel, Ben Smith and Kevin Drum remember the Dubai Ports controversy, a 2006 kerfuffle when Democratic pols were playing on populist Islamophobia and invoking the memory of 9/11 victims for political gain.

Democratic - United Arab Emirate - Dubai - Middle East - Government

Disincentivizing Dissent, Ctd

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

An interesting side note to the tenure discussion
one you don't often read about, is tenured librarians. Many
working at academic institutions across the country have tenure
like professors do - and in many cases, with the same benefits
salary.

Avoiding the question of why this ever happened in the first place,the result is that they have jobs for life, take months off forsabbaticals (with nothing to show for it when they come back)...