Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 321

An Ipsum For Every Occasion

Spurred by Nick Richardson’s brief history of Lorem Ipsum, the enduring dummy text from the 16th century, Sal Robinson looks to variants in the Internet Age:

[T]here are Lorem Ipsum generators that combine dialogue from Downton Abbey and The IT Crowd and SpongeBob Squarepants; there are regional generators (the Mainer, the Newfie), and generators that mix and match language often considered to be babble anyway (the po-mo academic paper, corporate-speak,inspirational quotes). As a nearly full-time text generator myself, I don’t see one for book jacket copy, though there is an excellent old school chart for assembling your own blurbs.

These generators are pretty satisfying for people who miss Maurice Moss or have to write academic papers, and give you plenty of useful dummy text, but they don’t often come close to the original’s level of lyricism. Maybe you’re only as good as the guys you steal from? For superior nonsense, it’s best to turn to Lewis Carroll, who, when Lorem Ipsumated, produces passages like this:

Alice laughed. ‘There’s a mile high and down

in an egg, Sir,’ Alice asked, handing her hand and drank some poetry repeated thoughtfully. ‘An

uncomfortable sort of old clothes

than anything else, you know, with some time the

poor Gnat went on growing older.’

‘ONE can’t, you know, with all alive, and thirsty!’

One has the feeling that Carroll would approve.

Ask Shane Bauer Anything: Shattered By Solitary

Here he emphasizes how terribly ineffective solitary confinement is as a method of rehabilitation:

And in our final video from Shane, he shares how he and his fellow hostages kept each other sane while imprisoned in Iran:

Shane, Sarah and Josh’s memoir based on their experience as political prisoners in Iran is called A Sliver Of Light. You can find a selection of excerpts from the book here, or read about what happened when Shane was able to break out of his cell for a night here. Bauer’s Mother Jones special report about solitary confinement in America is here. You can also support his further efforts to investigate the US prison system by contributing to his Beacon campaign. His previous Ask Anything answers are here.

(Archive)

Religious Belief And Bigotry, Ctd

I was away and missed Ross Douthat’s Q and A on marriage equality. Check out the last question from one Lewis Armen, from Oregon. Money quote from Ross’s response:

As a matter of public policy, I’m skeptical of same-sex marriage because I think it instantiates (or ratifies, since obviously we’ve been headed down this road for a while) a public meaning of marriage that’s too formless and open-ended to do the very specific job that the institution evolved to do: To bind and channel heterosexual desire in ways that are specific to the nature of procreation, and that aim to offer as many children as possible the opportunity to grow up in an intimate community with their mother and their father. But saying “we should maintain a distinctive public institution designed to specifically encourage lifelong heterosexual monogamy” — which is basically the traditional-marriage argument, in a phrase — doesn’t preclude making legal accommodations for same-sex relationships, and it certainly doesn’t require gay people to disappear back into the closet or all take vows of celibacy.

I think it’s possible, in other words, for the law to treat different kinds of relationships fairly without always treating them identically.

My problem with this argument is that it must make heterosexual civil marriage a superior contract than homosexual civil marriage, and require a different and necessarily inferior appellation. If the differnce is not all or nothing, then what is the difference? Does Ross support, for example, civil unions with all the rights of marriage? I suspect not. But if not, which civil marital rights would he exclude gays from? And why? That’s the practical answer that almost no one on the right has explicitly offered in the last three decades.

These questions become practical, while Ross is operating entirely within the abstract.

But my main point here is that Ross’ point, though I disagree, is nowhere near bigotry. Or does Mark Joseph Stern really believe that such a position is tantamount to “hate”?

The Ennui Of The End

Tom Jokinen ponders an afterlife of neither bliss nor torment, but unrelenting banality:

The 2004 French film Les Revenants (translated as They Came Back and since spun off into a Sundance TV series) imagines a world in which the dead neither ascend to heaven nor disappear to a black oblivion, but merely, as the title says, come back. To pick up where they left off. One day they emerge on the streets of a small French town in the same business-casual attire and over-coiffed funeral-home hairdos in which they were buried, seeming no worse for the wear. But they’ve changed. Emotionally flat and unreachable, it’s as if they’ve emerged from an unsatisfying, dreamless sleep and are caught in some vague, post-traumatic affective disorder which seems reasonable. Their attempts to re-integrate into society are fraught. Their families don’t know what to do with them. From here the director and co-writer Robin Campillo takes the ball and doesn’t so much run with it as amble into dark corners: this is a very quiet, very European zombie film.

For one thing, the return of the dead presents a social problem without precedent.

Do they get their old jobs back, given that they’re just not as bright or engaged as they used to be? Committees are struck, town meetings are held. Some families have moved on, spouses have remarried, so where will the dead sleep? Refugee-style facilities are considered. What about social programs? Are the dead still eligible for unclaimed pension benefits? Implications mount.

He goes on to compare the film to the “postmortem rom-com” Truly, Madly, Deeply:

[B]oth films have [a] thread in common: they present death as something less than spectacular, not unlike certain after-Modernist views on life itself—one dull thing after another. There are no zithers. We wear the same clothes. Cold air still chills us, we suffer from hangovers. It is a view of death for those who have outgrown grand narratives, where the afterlife is just more of the same. It is neither alluring nor transcendent: we will not come back as a flower or a frog or a potato, all of which at least promise a change of scenery. These films contemplate the plodding, uneventful banality of death: we’ve lost the comfort of the story with a happy ending.

(Video: Scenes from Les Revenants)

Michael Pollan Was Right

James Hamblin reviews new research on nutrition:

[David] Katz and Yale colleague Stephanie Meller published their findings in the current issue of the journal [Annual Review of Public Health] in a paper titled, “Can We Say What Diet Is Best for Health?” In it, they compare the major diets of the day: Low carb, low fat, low glycemic, Mediterranean, mixed/balanced (DASH), Paleolithic, vegan, and elements of other diets. Despite the pervasiveness of these diets in culture and media, Katz and Meller write, “There have been no rigorous, long-term studies comparing contenders for best diet laurels using methodology that precludes bias and confounding. For many reasons, such studies are unlikely.” They conclude that no diet is clearly best, but there are common elements across eating patterns that are proven to be beneficial to health. “A diet of minimally processed foods close to nature, predominantly plants, is decisively associated with health promotion and disease prevention.”

In a commentary, Katz slams low-fat junk food:

For years, the food industry has willfully misinterpreted prevailing dietary guidance into the most profitable of distortions. No nutrition expert ever said “eat low-fat, starchy, high-sugar, high-calorie cookies.” But when we were fixated on low-fat eating, that’s just what the food industry gave us. They have done much the same with every nutritional preoccupation to follow.

But that sort of thing can’t happen when we know where we are going. For those who understood that advice to eat “low fat” meant less meat and cheese, more vegetables and fruits, Snackwell cookies were never much of a temptation, and certainly never mistaken for a panacea. Similarly, for those inclined to seek the benefits of prudent low carb dieting, low-carb brownies cobbled together out of miscellaneous junk are not much of a temptation – but again, those looking at their feet and not clear on where they are going on vulnerable to the sales pitch for just such junk. Low-carb eating was intended to be about less starch and added sugar, more lean meats, nuts, seeds, and vegetables – not the reinvention of brownies and cupcakes.

He adds:

A basic knowledge of where we are going is required to avoid getting misdirected in the interests of someone else’s interests, and at the expense of our good health. We have that basic knowledge. We are not clueless about the basic care and feeding of Homo sapiens. …. Whether low-fat or high, low-carb or high, with or without grains, with or without meat, with or without dairy; Paleo or Asian or vegan; Michael Pollan really did pretty much nail it: eat food, not too much, mostly plants.

Faces Of The Day

Elaine Young on March 25 hugs her dog, Bo, days after a mudslide narrowly missed her home in Oso, Washington. The massive mudslide killed at least fourteen and left many missing, and Young has assisted in the search-and-rescue efforts. By David Ryder/Getty Images.

An All-Consuming Communion

Meg Favreau reflects on the centuries-old practice of “sin eating”:

The belief [hundreds of years ago] was that, by consuming food and drink that had been passed over the body of the deceased, sin-eaters could take on the sins of the dead. Generally, these sin-eaters were poor, paid a pittance for their work, and treated with disdain in a community. Sometimes, however, the sin-eating was performed by more prominent members of the community or even members of the funeral party. In 2010, BBC News reported on efforts to restore the grave of Richard Munslow, a prominent Ratlinghope farmer who was buried in 1906 and purported to be the “last-known sin eater.” And the 1894 edition of Bye-Gones: Relating to Wales and the Border Countries, includes a letter from woman named Gertrude Hope, who had this note about an 1892 funeral in Shropshire:

Directly the minister ended, the woman in charge of the arrangements poured out four glasses of wine and handed one to each bearer present across the coffin with a biscuit called a ‘funeral biscuit.’ One of the bearers being absent at the moment, the fourth glass of wine and biscuit were offered to the eldest son of the deceased woman, who however, refused to take them, and was not obliged to do so. The biscuits were ordinary sponge biscuits usually called ‘sponge fingers’ or ‘lady’s fingers.’ They are however also known in the shops of Market Drayton as ‘funeral biscuits.’ The minister, who had lately come from Pembrokeshire, remarked to my informant that he was sorry to see that pagan custom still observed.

While sin-eating might indeed have pagan origins, the sin-eating in this case was conducted as part of Christian funerals.

The Software Will See You Now

David Blumenthal argued that electronic medical records haven’t been widely adopted because they mostly benefit patients, not doctors. Fallows passes along some pointed criticism of that view. Here’s Creed Wait, “a family-practice doctor in Nebraska”:

The saying is, “Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.” The saying is not, “Build a different mousetrap, pay out nineteen billion dollars in incentives to use the mousetrap, mandate its use by law and punish those who fail to adopt it.  Then shove the world kicking and screaming against their will through your door.”

So far, doctors have been paid $19B in incentives to buy [Electronic Medical Record systems].  No one had to incentivize the cotton gin.  It was simply a better product. The current EMR system is a mess because the current EMR systems in use by the majority of physicians were written in the Rube Goldberg School of Software Design and work poorly.  There is no ‘asymmetry of benefits’ as proposed by Dr. Blumenthal.  Unless, of course, what he means by this is that only the software companies are benefitting from these federal mandates.

Wait offers a personal example:

One year ago in private practice I could see eighteen patients per day.  A transcriptionist typewrote my notes. These were typically three pages long, concise, complete and extremely useful.  Then our group bought an EMR.

After one year I was seeing fourteen patients a day, my notes were twelve pages long, the vital signs alone required a half page and the notes bordered on being useless.

My reimbursement per visit had increased, my face-to-face time with the patient was shorter, I was doing a poorer job, patients were less satisfied, and I was completely frustrated by trying to build each note out of dozens of pages of drop down menus.

Before implementing an EMR I had approached each patient encounter with an attitude of, “What can we do today to improve your health, happiness and overall satisfaction with life?”  The patient and I would have a meaningful conversation about the pertinent issues.  Once an EMR was implemented, a subtle change began.  It was so gradual that at first I did not even recognize the poison.  But after a few months I realized that the visit had slowly evolved into, “Just a minute, we need to be sure that we have checked off every box on every screen and we need to be sure that a narrative of some sort has been entered into every required field.”  Then there were realizations like, “Oh, look.  If we add one more point to the Review of Systems then we can raise the billing code one notch.  Hold that thought while I click, ‘wears glasses’ under the ROS field!”

Well, time’s up!  The fields are all now completed and all goals have been met!  Next!

The EMR had become the primary influence in the interview.  The dynamic had changed.  The patient and I were now both in the room to feed the hunger of the software.

Ebola Is Back

Fruzsina Eördögh relays the bad news:

Ebola, which may well be the most terrifying virus on the planet, has killed 59 people in Guinea in a month in the first outbreak of the virus seen in West Africa. There are 80 confirmed cases so far and officials are concerned the virus has spread to neighboring countries Sierra Leone and Liberia, as a 14-year-old Sierra Leone boy who attended the funeral for one of the earlier victims is now showing signs of infection.

Other West African countries are on high alert:

Mali’s government yesterday warned against unnecessary travel to the contaminated area, after the health ministry held a crisis meeting and called on citizens to be “vigilant.” Liberia’s New Democrat newspaper ran an editorial in which it said there was an immediate need for increased surveillance on all border posts with Guinea. Many of the goods sold in Monrovia, Liberia’s capital, come from Guinea. Ivory Coast set up a coordinating post in Man on the border with Guinea and will increase surveillance and run awareness campaigns, the country’s health ministry said. Gambia, an enclave in Senegal, is monitoring the situation, its health ministry said.

But Kent Sepkowtiz urges Americans not to worry:

While this sort of thing makes for frightening headlines and occasional dud movies (here and here for starters), Ebola and its related group of devastating infections will never become a threat to the US. The disease simply sickens and kills too quickly, plus anyone in the US with an odd febrile illness and rapid progression to prostration is placed into gown and glove isolation at just about every hospital in the country.

Pre-K Prejudice? Ctd

Several readers are skeptical over the conclusions drawn here:

We know that by preschool differences in math and reading skills emerge between white and African-American students, so why shouldn’t we expect the same for behavioral issues? How does this research address the possibility that differences in home experience may create authentic differences in school behavior? Does this research tell us that two kids who commit the same offense will receive different punishments based on race? By immediately labeling this as “prejudice” we are imposing a set of assumptions. Don’t we owe these students a more rigorous approach to the problem?

Another is more direct:

I can’t be the only one who realizes that the widely-reported statistics from the DOE’s Civil Rights Data Collection are not, in fact, persuasive evidence of prejudice or discrimination. A glaringly obvious yet unexplored possibility is that the minority students in the data are simply engaging in more actions requiring punishment than their white counterparts. Full stop.

Why would this be so?

The possibilities are numerous, but I suspect socio-economic status and family environment are the main culprits. The federal studies in question don’t adjust for those factors.

Just to be clear: I’m well aware of white privilege and the many economic, social, and legal barriers that prevent full equality in modern society, but simply saying “unequal outcome = racism” is bogus. And I think in this context it is particularly absurd coming from the Department of Education. There are plenty of areas where statistics have uncovered racially biased enforcement of rules. I’m thinking particularly about marijuana arrests, where it’s clear that rates of use are pretty much the same everywhere but minorities – and black people in particular – are being singled out for punishment. Those are the kinds of statistics that would, for me, evidence racially-motivated punishment in the school context.

So we need to compare apples to apples. How often are the different ethnic groups engaging in behavior for which suspension is a possible punishment? If white students were getting into on-campus fights at the same rate as minority students but being suspended only one-third as often, that would be clear evidence of discrimination. Perhaps an enterprising Dish reader can find a study showing disparate punishment outcomes despite identical behavior. Until then, your readers need to recognize the crummy and possibly misleading nature of these statistics.

Another gets very anecdotal, with a second-hand source:

When my daughter was in a small suburban elementary school, every black male in her grade of 120 students was in trouble to one extent or another. Her principal told me, and I’m paraphrasing, “Every black male student in this school is under some form of corrective counseling. Every student currently under escalated counseling in this school is a black male.”

One called his teacher a bitch. Expelled. Another refused to take his seat and stop talking, ever. Removed from regular schooling. All of them, every single one – so I was told, anyway – used foul language openly. Most were removed to remedial facilities on the second or third foul language offense. There were only one or two black male students left in regular classes and they were on thin ice, I was told.

The school principal told me that the fathers – and here we’re talking degreed professionals, for the most part, including executives and at least one lawyer as recall – were responsible for the behavior. During counseling sessions, some of the mothers expressed outrage, one screaming at the father “I hope you’re satisfied; you’re ruining his life and he’s only in first grade!” One of the mothers told her, “It’s not the school. It’s a black-male thing nowadays, with black fathers encouraging sons to be black and aggressively stand their ground in school.”

I found it interesting that the principal told me that “this is all new, in recent years”. And that there was little or no pushback or denial from the parents about the behavior. No lawsuits or protests. Also no similar behavior at all from black female students, who seemed as normal and well-adjusted as their white and Hispanic counterparts.