Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 377

The Best Of The Dish This Weekend

 

“You start with a random clump of atoms, and if you shine light on it for long enough, it should not be so surprising that you get a plant,” is one sentence you want to read more about. Here you can.

“Simply living in an area with a large concentration of conservative Protestants increases the chances of divorce, even for those who are not themselves conservative Protestants,” is another. Read more here.

Here’s the post on a new theory of life. A brilliant 3 minute documentary about a grandfather and a grandmother and a life together is your Sunday cry. Thomas Merton channels Chuang Tzu, as was increasingly his wont before his untimely death.

Four more: The “art of presence“, some Democrats’ betrayal of Obama on Iran, dirty sex with Bigfoot, and two Updike poems of exquisite truth.

The most popular post of the weekend was Denominational Divorce; runner-up: The Selective Secrecy Of Bill de Blasio.

See you in the morning.

Into The Woods

Environmental illness made Jill Neimark ”insanely reactive to everything – most clothing, my gas stove, a new mattress, the faint odour of fragrances on my partner, Paul, when he came in from work.” She sought health and solace in living outside:

Camping has not cured me, but it has helped to heal me. I’m still sick – vulnerable genetics, a few tick bites, and some bad environmental luck has made me forever fragile. … Yet I’m back in the game of life. Much of the world and its chemicals sit well with me now. I wear whatever I want, cook over gas and propane stoves, and don’t notice residues of fabric softener on [my partner] Paul’s clothes. I’ve camped winter and summer, and enjoyed them both. Where once I could barely walk to my bathroom, I now walk miles on nature trails and country roads. I become cold-adapted in winter, cooking in a hoodie and sandals, in temperatures that might have formerly made me shiver – and research backs me up there, too (cold thermogenesis, as it’s called, burns brown fat and raises antioxidant levels. It’s the reason Finns like to jump in the snow after a sauna).

This summer I spent time at an RV park in the northeast corner of Georgia, where I saw the glitter and dust of the Milky Way from horizon to horizon. And all the clichés held true: I was awestruck by my beautiful universe, and grateful to see it before me.

(Photo of “the night sky as seen from our camp at Machame Huts” at Kilimanjaro by Stig Nygaard)

A Death Blow To Net Neutrality, Ctd

Readers push back on Matthew C. Klein’s claim that net neutrality amounts to “one-size pricing” and “an effective subsidy” for high-bandwidth users:

I have worked for a web-hosting company for over a decade, and customers are absolutely charged for how much bandwidth they use. I’m certain that The Dish pays for how much bandwidth it uses. Klein can’t even hide behind the wiggle words “same rates” because larger customers get a volume discount and pay a lower rate per megabit than smaller customers, so in reality the all-text websites “subsidize” the video-streaming sites. For example The Dish pays more for its bandwidth than Netflix on a per-megabit basis.

The real issue here is that the ISPs are accustomed to selling more bandwidth than they are able to provide. When service ultimately degrades, they are forced to build out infrastructure to support what they have sold. Yes, this is expensive, but it’s a matter of customers getting what they paid for. One way to avoid the cost of building out infrastructure is to prioritize packets for your largest customers so they never feel the effects, while the little guy gets screwed. Even better if you charge a fee for this “service.”

Another adds:

The telco/cable duopoly is trying to confuse the issue. What they don’t like to pay for is Internet backbone capacity. If the traffic is on their network (local to the Verizon or Comcast network), the ISP does not pay for this traffic. They only pay for traffic that hits the “real” internet. There are many ways to reduce the internet backbone bill. Verizon/Comcast could install proxy servers that cache popular content. They could set up peering so that the Verizon network can talk directly to Amazon or Youtube. To me, this is just another cash grab, and it shows how incredibly corrupt our political system has become. The death of net neutrality will cost each of us a lot more than we think.

Another:

I used to sympathize with the argument that the ISPs paid for the infrastructure to support the Internet, and should not be forced to subsidize content providers. I see the moral and logical appeal of that point.

However, that argument assumes that Internet infrastructure is a normal commodity that can be sold or created by others to increase competition. For example, say a downtown area contains only one parking garage that only accepts Ford cars or charges $50/day. Someone else will likely build another parking garage that accepts all cars to take advantage of the irrational discrimination against non-Ford cars. Or someone will build a new garage and charge less than $50. If there are not enough cars to fill both garages, the first garage will have to lower its rate, benefiting consumers and allowing the market to work.

Internet infrastructure, like power lines or telephone wires, does not work that way. It is extremely onerous to build. So much so that only one of the most cash-flush and influential companies in the world (Google) has seriously attempted to challenge the incumbents by building new infrastructure, as it did in Kansas City. The incumbents’ infrastructure also just piggybacks on preexisting phone and cable TV networks. I concede they have to maintain the infrastructure, but it’s not like they paid billions upon billions of present dollars to build new infrastructure, the way a new entrant into the industry would. ISPs are more like utilities than a typical business in the current setup. If they want the monopoly, perhaps they should be regulated like utilities. I bet they’d love that.

Another raises a free-speech concern:

If someone can pay for faster, ‘premium’ delivery of information, why can’t they also pay to slow, or even block the service of their competitor?

For all these reasons, and having studied this some more, I’m emphatically for net neutrality – for reasons of democratic equality in online speech in an economically unequal age. Can we not have one oasis in which one argument is always just as accessible as any other. This, after all, is the great thrill of the democratic web. Every page is like every other page; that principle of a core check on power.

Quote For The Day II

“New information is not always — and perhaps not even usually — the most important information for understanding a topic. The overriding focus on the new made sense when the dominant technology was newsprint: limited space forces hard choices. You can’t print a newspaper telling readers everything they need to know about the world, day after day. But you can print a newspaper telling them what they need to know about what happened on Monday. The constraint of newness was crucial. The web has no such limits. There’s space to tell people both what happened today and what happened that led to today,” – Ezra Klein.

20,050 20,352 21,000!

[Updated and re-posted from yesterday]

Thursday night I wondered if we could make it to 20,000 auto-renewing subscribers (out of 35,000 total subscribers) by the end of the week. You did it overnight. It confirms a new trend. The average subscription price is much higher than last year – try the “double chai” option increasingly popular with readers -  and revenue in our second week this year is now twice what it was last year.  (Here’s a Washington Post piece on our progress.)

Could we get to 21,000 by Saturday night? We inched ever closer – but just passed the 21,000 milestone three minutes ago. Thanks – and keep the momentum going. Renew now! Renew here!

It’s really easy, as a reader just emailed to say:

You may have pointed this out to potential subscribers before, but it bears repeating: the interface you use for subscribing (Tinypass) is the best I’ve ever encountered for purchasing a subscription and managing access.  Nothing I’ve encountered – donation pages for the non-profits and political folks I donate to, sign-up sites for dozens of running events, or commerce sites – comes close to its simplicity and unobtrusiveness.  Anyone who’s putting off subscribing because they’re dreading of the hassle of yet another Gordian knot of password, address and credit card information fields should have no fear.

Seriously, it takes two minutes and is still as little as $1.99 a month and $19.99 a year. And what other blog gives you the range of topics we cover on the weekend? Or poetry? Or an actual conversation about faith and non-faith, life and death, that doesn’t degenerate fast into flame-wars or invective? If you appreciate our weekend coverage, there’s only one way to keep it alive: Renew now! Renew here!

Update from a Founding Member:

I just, finally, renewed today, increasing to $39.98 – it’s the most I could realistically go to for now, and doubling the base amount after dipping my toe in last year at the minimum price. My suspicion is that today or this weekend you’ll see a spike in the number of people renewing, since it’s payday for a lot of folk and one that’s far enough away from the backlog of Christmas that we start to have what looks something like a disposable income again.

Another:

I renewed after one or two pitches from you, and did so at $5/month on auto-renewal.  My wife and I have made 2014 the year of Balance and Order. We spent our holiday break organizing, throwing away, upgrading, cleaning, sorting, and generally deciding what was really important for us to feel ordered and balanced, and what wasn’t.  We’re artists – we both have managed to find stable careers working in the arts, with two reasonably well-off salaries.  We’re in our late 30s and have no children, so there is some (some) disposable income each month.

What I’ve come to love about The Dish since I was first introduced to you by Bill Maher about five years ago is that you, your staff, and all Dishheads order my day.  I check the blog in the morning, during my lunch break, and again in the evening to catch up on developments throughout the day. During the political season, I find that the analysis and commentary helps order my own arguments pro and con for whichever issue is being debated.  And as for balance – your occasional lack of it (for example, your reaction to Obama’s first debate performance) throws me out of sync, and I find I need to take a day or two off from reading The Dish, otherwise I might teeter over the edge.

So here’s to both of us maintaining more balance throughout the year.  It’s only going to get crazier and crazier as we approach the mid-terms.

On that note:

I laughed out loud when I read the email from another subscriber who called you a “blowhard.” Because when I renewed my membership, I thought, “Well, he is a fucking blowhard, but he’s my fucking blowhard.”

(Photos of Dish subscribers used with permission)

A Forgotten Firebombing, Ctd

Several readers recommend the 1988 anime film Grave of the Fireflies for some insight into Japan’s wartime experience:

The movie opens, very memorably, with the firebombing of Kobe and the intense panic, horror, and death of those bombings. Roger Ebert called it “an emotional experience so powerful that it forces a rethinking of animation,” and I can only agree. Viewing the movie is the only reason I became aware of the firebombings of Japan, and I imagine it played a similar role for many other people outside of Japan.

Another suggests re-watching Errol Morris’ The Fog Of War:

Morris interviews Bob McNamara, an architect of the war in Vietnam, about his participation in the planning and execution of the firebombing campaign in WWII. It wasn’t just Tokyo. Start at 2:43 or so in this clip (though the whole thing is a valuable viewing).

Meanwhile, another reader found herself confronting America’s wartime past on a trip to Japan:

In 1995, I visited Tokyo on business. A couple of us went to the recently opened Edo-Tokyo Museum, which focuses on the history of the city. Browsing the exhibits, we came upon a television that was set to run footage of the firebombing of Tokyo. A group of fellow museum-goers was watching the footage in silence. We did as well. We were the only Caucasians in the museum that day – Easter Sunday, as it happens – and it was probably obvious we were Americans. I can think of few occasions on which I have felt more uncomfortable.

The Future Of Legal Cannabis

It may have arrived, and it’s not exactly the stoner stereotype:

Sinsemil.la is the first marijuana experience dedicated to fine dining. Founded in New York City, this underground supper club highlights exceptional and locally-sourced ingredients according to season.

The meal is a carefully calibrated experience from start to finish. Marijuana varietals are tested not just for their organic qualities, but specifically to balance the flavors of each dish and for their psychoactive properties throughout the flow of the dinner.

It’s starting … now if only we could let the free market and sane regulation do the rest.

“We Need Faith, Not Dogma”

Nick Ripatrazone warns against “devotional fiction” that “feels too insular, too ‘finished,’ too contingent upon assumptions of shared dogma”:

We probably wouldn’t have many Catholics if identification required living one’s entire life–every moment–according to the Catechism. Hopefully good Catholics are shooting for everything, but we slip up. We need faith, not dogma. And the point is that God is watching us, but there’s not someone there with a chart, checking yes or no to each decision. The responsibility is on us. In the same way, characters in great Catholic or religious fiction need that free will.

Dana Gioia, a Catholic poet, makes a similar point:

I don’t think most people come to God (or most other core beliefs) through rational argumentation. They usually do the reasoning afterwards to explain to themselves and others why they believe. We experience faith, as we do almost everything else in life, holistically. We feel it with our emotions, intuition, and imagination as much as with our intellect. We even experience with our physical bodies.

The power of art is that it speaks to us in the fullness of our humanity. When the Church loses that capacity, it loses [its] ability to speak to most of humanity in its natural language. Theological arguments don’t even convince theologians to change their minds on a topic.

A Poem For Sunday

“Perfection Wasted” by John Updike:

And another regrettable thing about death

is the ceasing of your own brand of magic,

which took a whole life to develop and market—

the quips, the witticisms, the slant

adjusted to a few, those loved ones nearest

the lip of the stage, their soft faces blanched

in the footlight glow, their laughter close to tears,

their tears confused with their diamond earrings,

their warm pooled breath in and out with your heartbeat,

their response and your performance twinned.

The jokes over the phone. The memories packed

in the rapid-access file. The whole act.

Who will do it again? That’s it: no one;

imitators and descendants aren’t the same.

(From Collected Poems, 1953-1993 by John Updike © 1993 by John Updike. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC.  All rights reserved. Photo: John Updike (1932 – 2009) in Massachusetts, February 1994. By Michael Brennan/Getty Images)

Do Babies Fake Tears?

According to a recent study, some do:

Just over 98 per cent of Baby R’s crying episodes were also preceded by negative affect, but there was a single instance at 11 months where her crying immediately followed positive emotion (indicated by smiling or laughing), and then positive emotion abruptly followed the bout of crying. The mother recognised this behaviour as fake crying, and the emotional analysis appeared to confirm this. “Infant R appeared to cry deliberately to get her mother’s attention,” said [researcher Hiroko] Nakayama, “[then] she showed smile immediately after her mother came closer.”

People might have a negative impression of “fake crying” said Nakayama, but they shouldn’t…. It attracts the attention of the care-giver, and “such individual interaction contributes greatly not only to an infant’s social development but also to their emotional development. Infants who are capable of fake crying might communicate successfully with their caregivers in this way on a daily basis. Fake crying could add much to their relationships.”