Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 49

Christmas Wishes From A Grinch

In his sci-fi series Black Mirror, the great Brit Charlie Brooker uses his mordant wit to send up technologically-dependent modern life. The series’ newest episode, White Christmas, is a holiday special critics are hailing as “about as festive as being bludgeoned to death by a stocking full of coal, but … also an unerringly brilliant piece of lo-fi sci-fi.” Louisa Mellor sums up the episode’s central conceit:

Taking Google Glass to its logical conclusion, the world of White Christmas is populated by augmented humans whose Z-Eye implants let them control and share what they see. It’s in this kind of technological advance – one that doesn’t seem far off in the realm of possibility but that has the potential to shatter human relationships – that Black Mirror specialises.

The episode features John Hamm as Matt, who makes a living off such advanced tech. Sam Wollaston thinks Brooker’s “dystopia isn’t outrageous, it’s plausible, and all the more terrifying for it. Less sci-fi, more like now after a couple of software updates”:

Matt’s day job … – working for Smartintelligence, a company that, accompanied by Rossini’s Thieving Magpie overture, extracts “code” from people under anaesthetic, stores it in a widget called a cookie before implanting it into a simulated body, which is what happens to Greta (Oona Chaplin) – well, that’s basically human cloning. There’s probably a company in South Korea that’s about five minutes away from doing that. There’s a company in South Korea that thinks it can clone a woolly mammoth from a piece of 40,000-year-old frozen mammoth meat; putting people’s code inside plastic eggs like this, before turning them into slaves, has got to be easier.

Yes slaves. Because this isn’t just about the technology, it’s about the issues – very real world ethical issues – surrounding the technology. It’s about slavery and morality and torture and separation and access to children as well as the technology, and what the technology does to us. It’s about people, which is its real beauty. Along with all the razor-sharp wit, the nods and the winks, it manages to be a very human story.

Willa Paskin also finds the episode eerily relevant:

In “White Christmas,” wearable tech has advanced beyond the rudimentary stages of Google glass and become Z-eyes, irremovable implants that let you take pictures and record things and, if you must, “block” other people. As used in “White Christmas,” blocking makes the person who is blocked and the person who has done the blocking look like grey, fuzzy outlines to one another. They can’t hear each other or communicate, and the blocked party has no recourse.

The terminology suggests a lineage with blocking someone on Facebook or Twitter. But here in 2014 we tend to understand blocking as essentially protective: It insulates people from unwanted attention and (often misogynistic) threats—though of course it also keep ex-friends and other irritants out of your feed. While Black Mirror understands the protective quality of blocking—the episode expressly deals with some messy, vile misogyny—it is more concerned with the ways blocking can be abused. In “White Christmas,” blocking is largely something women do to men in lieu of communicating with them. It’s the technological equivalent of sticking one’s fingers in one’s ears, an all-powerful silent treatment that can, sometimes, take on draconian legal backing.

If that sounds a bit wrong-headed, “White Christmas,” like the most disturbing episode of Black Mirror that exists, the similarly titled “White Bear,” asks questions about what we are willing to do to the least worthy amongst us: the convicted, the guilty, the criminal. When technology makes it easy to ignore, ostracize, manipulate, and torture the worst of us, might not the rest of us comply?

Merry Christmas.

The Christmas special is currently only available outside the UK on Direct-TV, but other would-be viewers can stream the previous two seasons on Netflix. The show, as Emily Yoshida explained last year in a spoiler-free guide, is best watched without much foreknowledge.

The Dark Side Of Christmas

Lisa Miller analyzes why “Bridget’s” self-loathing Christmas cards are such a social media hit:

Bridget’s cards won their internet moment not just because they’re clever and funny, but because they articulate that thought and the way it can become so explosive during the holidays: All this jollity rings false to me. Everyone, no matter what their relationship status, feels a little like Bridget this time of year — outcast, exiled, discontent; her cards capture a sentiment heartfelt enough to catch the attention of millions of newsfeed browsers but also noncontroversial enough to bypass the conformity threshold. Hark! Bridget has tapped our inner misfit, which emerges in a guffaw like a genie from a bottle. Isn’t that a gas?

Meanwhile, Sarah Condon ponders yuletide misery from a theological point of view:

Whether or not we realize it, we pointedly deny the harsh realities of our lives this time of year. I know I do. The moment we remember Jesus coming into the world is the same moment we hold up our perfectly posed Christmas photos. To the one who came to save us we say, “See how good we look? We are totally pulling this off.”

Only, we are not pulling it off, not even remotely. We are disappointed in our children, our spouses, the world, and ourselves. We deny our feelings of loneliness and inadequacy. We scurry to hide them. And the season provides some pretty amazing crutches for our denial: Jim Beam, party mix, and online shopping. All of a sudden, it becomes easy to make failure look like success. To make heartache look like mildly hungover.

Isn’t it odd that, more than any other time of year, Christmastime is when we want everyone to know just how glorious our lives are? I’m already bracing myself for the post-Christmas newsfeed. We can all gather round the old iPhone and sing a hymn of Sanctification by Gift Giving. For the record #besthusbandever #fairtrade and #santarocks are my own self-righteous picks for the season.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. We are actually allowed to admit that we are screwed up, yes, even at Christmas. Let the record show, St. Paul already gave us the bones in Romans 7: I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.

Mental Health Break

Robots rockin’ around the Christmas tree:

The 2014 Dish Awards!

Calling all Dishheads: it’s the end of the year and that means it’s Dish award time! As usual, our elite, highly-specialized blue-ribbon panel has pored over more than a thousand posts in order to select this year’s finalists, now it’s up to you to pick 2014’s best (and worst).

If you have some free time today, click the links below and vote for the 2014 Malkin Award, Hathos Alert, Poseur Alert, and Yglesias Award. Polls are also open for the year’s best Chart, Mental Health Break and View From Your Window, as well as the 2014’s Coolest Ad, Face Of The Year, and for the first time ever, Map Of The Year and Beard Of The Year!

Our polls will close on Wednesday, December 31, at midnight. Winners will be announced soon after. Have at it:

Click here to vote for the Beard Of The Year!
Click here to vote for the Chart Of The Year!
Click here to vote for the Cool Ad Of The Year!
Click here to vote for the Face Of The Year!
Click here to vote for the Hathos Alert Of The Year!
Click here to vote for the 2014 Malkin Award!
Click here to vote for the Map Of The Year!
Click here to vote for the Mental Health Break Of The Year!
Click here to vote for the Poseur Alert Of The Year!
Click here to vote for the Window View Of The Year!
Click here to vote for the 2014 Yglesias Award!

Please note: due to there not being enough nominees this year, we will not be issuing a 2014 Hewitt Award, Moore Award, or Dick Morris Award. Learn more about all our awards here.

A Poem For Christmas

“Christmas Card to Grace Hartigan” by Frank O’Hara (1926-1966):

There’s no holly, but there is

the glass and granite towers

and the white stone lions

and the pale violet clouds. And

the great tree of balls in

Rockefeller Plaza is public.

Christmas is green and general

like all great works of the

imagination, swelling from minute

private sentiments in the desert,

a wreath around our intimacy

like children’s voices in a park.

For red there is our blood

which, like your smile, must be

protected from spilling into

generality by secret meanings,

the lipstick of life hidden

in a handbag against violations.

Christmas is the time of cold air

and loud parties and big expense,

but in our hearts flames flicker

answeringly, as on old-fashioned

trees. I would rather the house

burn down than our flames go out.

Please consider supporting the work of the Poetry Society of America here.

(From the Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara © by the University of California Press. Reprinted by permission of the University of California Press. Also reprinted in Christmas Poems © New Directions Publishing Corp. Photo by Flickr user Dominick)

The View From Your Window

Champaign, Illinois, 7.30 am

Mindfully Merry

Anna Leyland suggests that meditation could improve your day today:

From the time you wake up on this Christmas morning, take time to fully notice the little things, the smells, textures and tastes of Christmas. Each chocolate, cuddle and gift. Take time to savor it. How do the sweets look in your hand? How do they smell? How does it feel in your mouth? Notice the effort others have made to give you gifts. Look at the way they are wrapped. How it feels to pull off the paper. Consider that many other people you do not know have made effort to grow, make or transport parts of your present too. Be kind and compassionate to everyone you have contact with – including yourself. And if things don’t quite go as planned or you are feeling overwhelmed by the celebrations, just take your seat by the side of the road and spend a few moments focusing your attention on your breath.

Losing Your Faith In Santa, Ctd

A reader sends the above video:

I know you are not prone to posting Norwegian music-videos, but this Santa exposé from a children’s program in 2005 caused some turmoil when every five year old in the country was told at the same time that “Santa does not exist”. The video is quite self-explanatory – and very funny! The refrain goes something like “Santa does not exist, it’s just bullshit.”

Another perpetuates that theme:

I love the reader’s stories on learning about Santa Claus. Mine’s probably not as interesting as some of the others, but here it is anyway. I was eight and was deeply fascinated by science. I had just learned about the experimental method and decide to see if I could apply it. The test was simple: I asked Santa for one set of things and told my parents that I had asked for a different set. I then waited to see which I would get. As I suspected, I got the second set and that was that.

Another reader:

It just happened an hour ago with my two kids. We went to a department store to see Santa. After they saw him, the older one said that “If Santa kept us waiting for half an hour, then how can he be clever enough to deliver presents to a million children?”

Another pins the blame on a Muslim:

I think I hung on to the Santa myth a little longer than most kids around me. One day, as I was playing on the floor, I noticed that Muhammad Ali was being interviewed on TV. I had no idea what he was talking about, but I distinctly remember him saying something was a lie, that it was a lie just like Santa Claus. At that moment, it all came to me – the flying reindeer, giving toys to every child in the world in one night, climbing down the chimney even though we didn’t have a fireplace. All of it was exposed as conspiratorial fraud.

Another got greedy:

I was maybe 7 years old, and my dad told me that if you put a list of what you want in your stocking, Santa will bring it for you. I remember that I wrote down every possible toy I could think of and put it in my stocking. My mom took the list out and gave my dad the dirtiest look ever – that was when I knew.

How another’s consciousness was raised:

When I was 7 years old, I got a Super Nintendo for Christmas, and I was probably the most excited boy in the entire world. A lot of my friends wanted Super Nintendos that Christmas, but I and maybe one other kid actually got one. But for some reason, I didn’t think that was fair. Why did I get one when ALL my friends wanted one too?

I decided to ask my mom why Santa wasn’t fair in gift giving. All of my friends, at least to my knowledge, were “good” too, so why did Santa not give them Super Nintendos too? It was then that my mom decided to tell me how Santa worked.

As I got older, this was a lesson that stuck with me when I had kids of my own. It was a sort of realization that what we are doing is equating “being good” with our parents’ socioeconomic status. My wife and I talked a lot about it and decided that we wouldn’t “do Santa” with our kids. We didn’t want our kids thinking that they were “better” than other kids because we could afford to give them a nice Christmas and other kids’ parents might not be able to. Our kids know of Santa and what he represents at Christmas time, but we prefer for our kids to appreciate that their gifts come from love and, to an extent, our financial capabilities, and not equating these things to their behavior.

Another gets a bit morbid, even for us:

It’s good to teach children to believe in Santa Claus, because they need to learn, early on, that those they love and trust will conspire to deceive them.

Another ends on a cheerier note:

One Christmas, when we had no money because I was unemployed, I spent hours out in the barn in my workshop building a dollhouse for our two girls, aged four and six. It was a replica of our house. We got them scaled people and furniture to go with it. It turned out really nice.

On Christmas morning, I did the whole “Waltons” thing, stolen from “The Homecoming.” I whipped a big rock on to the roof above their bedrooms and made a lot of noise downstairs until they came pounding down. I told the girls that I had just caught a burglar in the house, a fat guy in a red suit with a bag of our stuff. I told them that I had whipped a rock at him and that he had run away and jumped in a sled. I told them that some packages had fallen out of his bag when he ran. They saw the dollhouse and the people and the furniture and their eyes went wide. Merry Christmas.

I am getting to the point. A couple years later, when they were about six and eight years old, the older neighbor girl clued our girls in on the Santa thing. They came back for dinner and asked us directly whether Santa was real. I don’t lie to my kids, so I told them that no, there was no Santa.

“Then who made the dollhouse?”

My wife pointed at me.

Their eyes went wide again. I was Santa. Merry Christmas times two.

The Lights Of The World

What our holiday lights means for NASA:

Scientists at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and Yale University in Connecticut used satellite imagery to track light patterns in 1,200 cities over two and a half years. They found that increased light correlated perfectly with the holiday seasons for Ramadan in the Middle East, as well as Christmas and New Year’s Eve worldwide. They also saw variations in how cities and neighborhoods within those cities celebrate these holidays, the team announced this week at the American Geophysical Union’s annual meeting in San Francisco.

“What’s happening during the holidays is our patterns are changing,” says Miguel Román, a physical scientist at NASA Goddard. In the West, we’re staying up late drinking eggnog and going home from work early. “Those changes in behavior are changes in the locations of demand for energy services.” Understanding such seasonal shifts might ultimately tell us what’s driving carbon emissions at a local level.

Chris Mooney elaborates on the findings about Ramadan:

[The researchers] examined three years, from 2012 through 2014, and saw a marked lighting increase in Cairo:

This time, of course, the lighting isn’t Christmas lights. Rather, it’s people changing their schedules due to the religious holiday. “It’s a change in the timing of human activity, because people are fasting from dawn to dust,” says Yale’s Eleanor Stokes. “So activity, commerce, heating, family gatherings are all being pushed later into the night.”

The Cairo picture shows something else interesting as well, notes Stokes — economic differences. The researchers found that in poorer areas, people were still celebrating Ramadan but were not using more energy at night, presumably instead choosing to conserve and save money.

(Image via NASA)

The Post-Apocalyptic Diet

Matt Novak looks into how humans would feed themselves following an apocalyptic disaster:

In the event of a super-volcano, asteroid impact or nuclear winter, the sun would be completely blocked out and it could be up to five years of darkness before we might start up agricultural systems again. A five-year supply of food would take up an enormous amount of space and cost about $12,000 for a family of four, according to the researchers. So what will be our options? “We came up with two primary classes of solutions,” [Feeding Everyone No Matter What co-author Joshua] Pearce said in a release. “We can convert existing fossil fuels to food by growing bacteria on top of it—then either eat the bacterial slime or feed it to rats and bugs and then eat them.” Rats and bugs can also consume wood products, which would likely be plentiful in a disaster scenario. The researchers also included ideas about creating tea out of pine needles, which they insist would “provide a surprising amount of nutrition.”

Pearce and co-author David Denkenberger admit to having tried out these post-apocalyptic provisions:

A lot of it was just to make sure that the taste wasn’t so bad that it would never happen. Stuff like pine needle tea is really not that bad. Many insects are, I would even go so far as to say, tasty? If you get by the initial sort of gag reflex. Let’s say we grow mushrooms on logs and everybody’s eating mushrooms. Of course, that’s not too scary. And then the waste product from that goes to feed ruminants like cows, and then [you’ve got] beef so you know, you can still have hamburger. It’s not that bad. We might be eating more of the cow than we do now, but it’s not that bad.