Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 271

It’s Not Just Concussions

Joseph Stromberg observes that one “reason many doctors are especially concerned about the risks of playing football is the mounting evidence that mild, routine hits — which present no immediate symptoms and are generally categorized as sub-­concussions, rather than concussions — might lead to [chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE)] as well.” He highlights a new study that supports this theory:

In it, doctors studied 25 college football players who’d previously suffered concussions, 25 who’d never been diagnosed with concussions, and 25 non-football participants of similar ages. Using MRI scans, they looked at the sizes of each person’s hippocampus — a brain region heavily involved in memory. This is important because people with CTE often have dramatically shrunken hippocampi by the time they’re diagnosed.

They found that previously concussed players had smaller hippocampi than non-concussed players — but, disturbingly, both groups had smaller hippocampi than the non-players. Within both groups, the more years of playing time a player had, the smaller his hippocampus.

Piketty Saw This One Coming

David Katz takes stock of the boom in the butler industry:

Thirty-five years ago, there were only a few hundred butlers left in Britain; today there are roughly 10,000, plus thousands more abroad, including the fastest-growing butler market of them all, China.

“For the Chinese, it’s a status thing,” says Sara Vestin Rahmini, who founded Bespoke Bureau. “They’re like, ‘Just send us somebody who looks British, who looks European.’” … Gary Williams, a London-based staffing agent who himself was a butler for 15 years, credits much of China’s butler demand to Downton Abbey. Watched by millions of Chinese, it’s one of the biggest British TV imports ever. The show is more than just a soapy diversion, he says; it’s a guidebook for living in a stratified society. “The Chinese aren’t even really sure what a British butler should do,” says Williams. “It will take them 10 to 15 years to really understand that.”

But they’ll pay – and pay well – to find out. A new butler willing to go east, to Shanghai or Dubai or anywhere else suffering an Anglo-servant shortage, can start at $60,000 a year and run his employer’s estate from the start. In the West, where standards are higher and the competition more fierce, a rookie typically apprentices for a few years and earns a starting salary of maybe $40,000. A butler in either market should hit six figures within five to six years – sooner if he learns a few dirty secrets or gets poached by one of his boss’s billionaire friends.

Commencement Speakers Are Dropping Like Flies

IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde has withdrawn as Smith College’s commencement speaker after students and faculty protested and launched a petition to have her disinvited. Olivia Nuzzi thinks the Smithies’ successful protest says something about millennials’ entitlement:

Millennials have grown up in a world where you are never forced to see, hear or read anything that you haven’t personally selected. 7,000 TV channels, a DVR to skip commercials, millions of websites—we have been able to curate our own little worlds using technology, wherein nothing unpleasant or offensive can creep in. So when we’re forced to sit through a commercial or, heaven forbid, listen to someone talk who isn’t Mary-freakin’-Poppins, we can’t handle it.

The entire point of college is to be exposed to different things: Different types of people, different ideas—and maybe some of those people will hail from organizations that negatively impacted poor countries, or maybe they were partly responsible for a war that ate up the country’s resources and resulted in human rights abuses and lots of needless death. But if, at the end of your time as an undergrad, you haven’t learned that oftentimes you find great wisdom in shitty people, or just that there might be some value in hearing what someone you don’t like or respect might have to say, what on earth have you learned?

Amanda Hess also rolls her eyes at the protesters:

When Smith announced that former president Ruth Simmons would be replacing Lagarde as commencement speaker, some students claimed that the choice of Simmons was equally offensive (when she was president of Smith College in the run up to the financial crisis, Simmons also served on the board of Goldman Sachs). But others expressed disappointment that their commencement had been downgraded to “forgettable.” It’s hard to have it both ways, kids! These recent flare-ups reveal less about the speakers than the students’ own entitlement—students who believe they have paid for the right to a commencement experience that perfectly reflects both the stature and the political values of their elite higher educations. They want their commencements to be both high in profile and rich in personal meaning. That’s not just political correctness gone awry; that’s a bunch of 22-year-olds thinking they are owed exactly the experience they want. On the other hand: A uniquely tailored experience is just what elite schools are promising their students in exchange for their astronomical costs.

Damon Linker chastises the students’ “lazy moralism”:

Could the IMF be improved? Probably. Should it be replaced with another organization that would do a better job of helping the developing world? Perhaps. The point is that getting the IMF’s managing director disinvited from a college commencement ceremony brings us not one millimeter closer to either goal. …

And that’s what might be the most disheartening thing of all about this year’s commencement protests — how each of them grows out of a longing to simplify the world, to wish away our conflicts and deny the need to get one’s hands dirty. Fighting for the rights of women can be morally messy. The same can be said of serving as America’s leading diplomat. And overseeing the global economy. The Smith students haven’t learned this lesson yet. They’re too young to have seen the need to put away their childish things.

Furthermore, Matt O’Brien points out, the left really needs to update its talking points on the IMF:

[T]he IMF has become, if not cuddly, at least clear-eyed, in the wake of the Great Recession. Other organizations like the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have been busy inventing reasons to ignore textbook economics and tighten policy despite high unemployment and low inflation. The BIS went so far as to warn in 2011 that “growth must slow” — yes, really — if were going to keep the inflation monster from coming out under the bed.

The IMF, though, has kept its head firmly out of the sand. Now, it did, against its better judgment, go along with the draconian Greek bailout. But, unlike the 1990s, it was the one arguing for a more lenient approach, only to be overruled by the European Commission. It’s also shown that austerity hurts more than policymakers typically assume it does in a zero-interest rate world; that, in econospeak, the fiscal multiplier is unusually high now. Not only that, but it’s found that within reasonable limits, redistribution actually tends to help growth by decreasing inequality.

Katie Zezima notes that driving away commencement speakers is becoming pretty trendy:

Earlier this month former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice withdrew her decision to speak at Rutgers University commencement after students and faculty objected to her role in the Iraq war. Some students at Harvard University are opposed to former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg speaking at graduation, and students and faculty at Rowan University have created a petition protesting that the school is awarding its commencement speaker, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, with an honorary degree. Robert J. Birgeneau, the former chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, declined an invitation to speak at Haverford College’s commencement after students objected to a use of force by police during 2011 Occupy movement protests on campus.

Last year, former Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick didn’t speak at the graduation of his alma mater, Swarthmore College, after students said his involvement in the Bush administration and strong support for the Iraq war conflicted with its Quaker roots. Dr. Ben Carson withdrew from addressing graduates of Johns Hopkins University after students voiced unhappiness about his comments on same-sex marriage.

“Universities,” Greg Lukianoff argues, “have only themselves to blame for this mess”:

—not just for caving to pressure, but for teaching students the wrong lessons about the value of free and robust discourse. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), of which I am the president, has found speech codes—policies that heavily restrict speech that is protected under the First Amendment—at 59% of the more than 400 colleges we survey, and deals every day with campus censorship of often even mildly offensive speech. Colleges have taught a generation of students that they have a “right not to be offended.” This belief has inevitably morphed into an expectation among students that they will be confirmed in their beliefs, not challenged. It’s no wonder, then, that they apply increasingly strict purity tests to potential campus speakers.

Face Of The Day

A miner reacts after being affected with toxic gas while searching for co-workers who remain trapped underground on May 14, 2014 after an explosion and fire in their coal mine in the western Turkish province of Manisa killed at least 201 people. By Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images.

The Merger Of Tea Party And Establishment

Last night, Ben Sasse handily won the Republican Senate primary in Nebraska. Molly Ball analyzes the outcome, which is being hailed as a Tea Party victory:

Sasse actually represents less the Tea Party’s anti-incumbent rage than the sort of fusion candidate who can unite the party establishment and base—a well-credentialed insider who can convince the right wing he’s on their side. As Dave Weigel put it in Slate, “Sasse is a veteran of the establishment who masterfully ingratiated himself with the conservative movement.” Particularly in red states, he could represent the harmonizing future of the GOP in a post-GOP-civil-war world. Last week, Thom Tillis won the North Carolina Republican primary more by straddling the establishment and Tea Party than by taking sides; Sasse did so even more effectively.

Kilgore also reflects on last night’s elections:

All in all, last night definitely represented a hiccup for the “Year of the Republican Establishment” narrative.

I’m guessing the Powers That Be in the GOP and the mainstream media will emulate [Jennifer] Rubin by dismissing the results and focusing their attention on next week’s primaries, when the establishment is expected to do better in Idaho (Rep. Mike Simpson appears likely to hold off a right-wing challenger), Kentucky (Mitch McConnell has bludgeoned Matt Bevin into submission), and perhaps Georgia (“outsider” businessman David Perdue and career appropriator Rep. Jack Kingston are leading most polls and could be headed to a runoff).

At some point the pro-establishment narrative is going to have to come to grips with the fact that in almost every case the establishment champion has had to run hard right to survive, making victories when they happen mostly symbolic. But after Tuesday, just winning would be helpful.

Matt Lewis expects “Ben Sasse to be a very serious conservative Senator — not a ‘bomb thrower’ or a red-meat hurler”:

So I couldn’t be happier with the results. But I do think there is something else that deserves mentioning. There seems to be a sort of phony game that smart conservative candidates  – those who are willing to do what it takes to win a Republican primary — must at least tacitly agree to play (or permit to be played on their behalf): They have to talk like tea party populists, even if they walk like cosmopolitan conservatives.

Weigel looks at the big picture:

The Tea Party, easy as it is to mock and blame for defeats, has managed to install half a dozen senators who are young enough to run the upper house some day. Cruz, Sasse, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, and Mike Lee won when they were in their 40s. Oklahoma’s T.W. Shannon and Mississippi’s Chris McDaniel, two Tea Party favorites for this year, are even younger. When given a shot at a safe seat, the movement elevates young, dynamic, ideological candidates.

Mental Health Break

Crumbling Cuba

After visiting Havana and stepping outside the city’s small, sanitized tourist sector, Michael J. Totten reviews how dismally the island’s Communist experiment has failed:

As for the free health care, patients have to bring their own medicine, their own bedsheets, and even their own iodine to the hospital. Most of these items are available only on the illegal black market, moreover, and must be paid for in hard currency—and sometimes they’re not available at all. Cuba has sent so many doctors abroad—especially to Venezuela, in exchange for oil—that the island is now facing a personnel shortage. “I don’t want to say there are no doctors left,” says an American man who married a Cuban woman and has been back dozens of times, “but the island is now almost empty. I saw a banner once, hanging from somebody’s balcony, that said, DO I NEED TO GO TO VENEZUELA FOR MY HEADACHE?”

Housing is free, too, but so what? Americans can get houses in abandoned parts of Detroit for only $500—which makes them practically free—but no one wants to live in a crumbling house in a gone-to-the-weeds neighborhood. I saw adequate housing in the Cuban countryside, but almost everyone in Havana lives in a Detroit-style wreck, with caved-in roofs, peeling paint, and doors hanging on their hinges at odd angles.

Education is free, and the country is effectively 100 percent literate, thanks to Castro’s campaign to teach rural people to read shortly after he took power. But the regime has yet to make a persuasive argument that a totalitarian police state was required to get the literacy rate from 80 percent to 100 percent. After all, almost every other country in the Western Hemisphere managed the same feat at the same time, without the brutal repression.

Capitalism Resurrects The King Of Pop

Although Michael Jackson’s new posthumous album is topping the charts in 50 countries, Andrew Romano is disappointed with Xscape, which reworks Michael’s unreleased material into tracks like the “duet” with Justin Timberlake above:

Xscape is the second Jackson disc assembled by Sony since the artist’s death in 2009; the first was 2010’s Michael. But unlike MJ’s previous posthumous release—10 songs that Jackson wrote, recorded, and reworked from 2007 to 2009 but never got around to releasing—Xscape doesn’t have anything fresh to offer. It’s not a glimpse of what Jackson was working on post-Invincible (2001), his last studio LP. Nor is it a collection of archival ephemera and outtakes, like the Beatles’s Anthology. Instead, it’s something else entirely: a meager batch of pre-1999 scraps and stray demos selected by Epic Records boss L.A Reid to be “contemporized”—read: inflated, balloon-like, into something that will sell—by Timbaland, Stargate, Rodney Jerkins, John McClain, J-Roc, and various other producers.

In other words, Xscape is a product—and that’s exactly what it sounds like.

Peter Tabakis is outraged, not at the quality of the album, but rather at the crass profiteering it represents:

Xscape is far from terrible. The album’s source material is regularly pleasurable, often fascinating, and sometimes revelatory. But as merchandise – the noblest term you could apply to Xscape – most casual listeners will purchase a scandalously meager product. The “standard edition” consists of just eight songs, “contemporized” by Timbaland and a handful of guest producers (including Jerome “J-Roc” Harmon, Stargate, Rodney Jerkins, and John McLain). It comes at the low, low price of $8.99 on Amazon (for an MP3 download) and a buck more on iTunes. Conspicuously not included on the basic model are the original versions of Xscape’s songs. To get those, you’ll have to upgrade to the “deluxe edition”, which comes at a seven-dollar premium. But wait, there’s more. As an added bonus, “deluxe” customers will also receive a third version of “Love Never Felt So Good,” with Justin Timberlake plunked in. Why? Well, why not? Jackson’s family is strapped for cash. Epic isn’t doing much better. And they’re both looking to fleece you further over the coming years. So please, for their sake alone, act fast and purchase your copy today!

Or in the words of Black Keys drummer Peter Carney:

“[It's] some fucking bullshit that sucks so bad that it took them three years after he died to make it listenable,” he tells Rolling Stone’s Patrick Doyle. “Like he had to be dead for three years for it to be released.” He suspects it finally saw the light of day because “L.A. Reid needed a new boat.”

Tom Moon’s review is more favorable:

There’s still no mistaking that voice; that fervent intensity he brought to every line. Can’t lie: It’s nice to hear. Still, there’s reason to wince about this project — it’s devoted to material that Jackson worked on for various albums, but didn’t finish or elected not to share. Making matters worse, these tracks don’t represent Jackson’s vision alone: Label president L.A. Reid commissioned producers to “contemporize” — his word — Jackson’s demos to appeal to the current market.

But the deluxe version also includes the raw demos before they were “contemporized.” Even in what sounds like a rehearsal situation, Jackson manages to convey the heart of a song. He nails all the twists of the melody. His passion sells it — you forget it’s not a final take. At times, he sounds like he’s thinking back to Motown days and recalling the influence of Stevie Wonder.

Better Not To Get HIV In America, Ctd

In contrast with the US, some good news out of Canada:

Once labelled absurd, the idea of mass testing of adults for HIV and AIDS is now part of the routine in British Columbia, proving the province is showing the world how to control and defeat the cruel disease, says the doctor leading the program. The B.C. government announced Monday it will become the first jurisdiction in Canada to introduce guidelines for health-care providers to encourage all adult British Columbians to get tested for HIV.

A Canadian reader just got some personal news:

I was told this April 25 by my GP that I had tested positive for HIV.

On April 29 I had my first appointment at the infectious diseases clinic; my doctor is medical director of the county-level Infection Prevention and Control. That day I also had bloodwork and a baseline chest x-ray. On May 2 I had my second appointment with the ID doctor. He had my T-cell count but was a little upset that the viral load readings were not back yet. My next appointment is June 3, by which time I’ll have been vaccinated for pneumonia and Hepatitis B. I’ll also have been tested for tuberculosis.

Today I applied for the provincial drug program that will help pay for the inevitable cocktail it appears I’ll be on this summer. There’s an income-based deductable, for me it’s about $150 a month.

I am ashamed that I have the virus, and I feel like I’m adrift in a dark strange river, loosened from humanity. I cannot imagine how I’ll tell family and friends when it’s time. But I am being cared for. I will not lose everything I have in order to stay alive as long as science will allow. Society and state are acting with compassion and alacrity and foresight.

I am positive.

P.S. Your accounts of treatment and life with HIV pretty much helped me avoid a freakout a couple weeks ago.

Spurious Correlations

That’s the name of Tyler Vigen’s site. How he describes it:

I created this website as a fun way to look at correlations and to think about data. Empirical research is interesting, and I love to wonder about how variables work together. The charts on this site aren’t meant to imply causation nor are they meant to create a distrust for research or even correlative data. Rather, I hope this projects fosters interest in statistics and numerical research.

Adi Robertson examines the many graphs:

Sift through its data sets, and you’ll find all sorts of statistics that can be mapped onto each other — margarine consumption and the divorce rate, crude oil imports and number of train collision deaths, bee colony growth and the marriage rate. If you ever need to demonstrate that two things can appear connected purely by chance or some entirely separate factor, this is your site.

Nathan Yau highlights his favorites:

Some of the gems include: the divorce rate in Maine versus per capita consumption of margarine, marriage rate in Alabama versus whole milk consumption per capita, and honey produced in bee colonies versus labor political action committees. Many things correlate with cheese consumption.

Dylan Matthews joins the conversation:

Those all have correlation coefficients in excess of 0.99! That is very very high! By comparison, Alan Abramowitz’s extremely accurate “Time for Change” model of presidential elections (it predicted Obama would get 52.2 percent of the two-party vote; he got 51.4) has a correlation coefficient of 0.97, which Abramowitz correctly calls “extraordinary.” The point is that a strong correlation isn’t nearly enough to make strong conclusions about how two phenomena are related to each other. Abramowitz’s model is worth trusting not just because of its high correlation but because it predicts presidential elections based on factors that logically should matter to voters, like the state of the economy and what party currently controls the White House. That gives it theoretical plausibility, which a theory in which, say, US whole milk consumption is driven by the marital status of Mississippians, lacks.

Michael Byrne adds:

Humans love correlation. We love correlation because we love stories, narratives: this happened, leading to this, and next should be this other thing. We look for the forms of stories in the world, and a story is roughly the opposite of coincidence, which is things just happening together because time is just a substance of many layers, a stack of happenings.

Update from a reader:

Notice the icon of the site - it’s a small picture of the number 42. I emailed Tyler Vigen yesterday because my colleague and I had a guess of why ’42′? He confirmed that it’s a reference to The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Neat :)