You haven’t seen much of me this week, and won’t see much of me next week — I’ll be out at the University of Maryland directing a summer seminar for college students interested in public policy. (And I’ll be honest: I can’t believe I found a job that actually pays me to basically go back to the college life.) Expect things to pick up here again in August.
I have plenty of opinions about this, but for now all I want to do is link to this article I’ve been meaning to share for a few weeks. A teaser:
Pop culture abounds with examples of friends who’ve navigated (or attempted to navigate) the path to romance. Think “Friends,” in which Monica and Chandler get together. And “Little Women,” when Laurie longs for childhood pal Jo March. Or, most famously, “When Harry Met Sally . . .,” which explores the muddy waters of sexual tension to determine if, in fact, men and women can be friends.
So let’s start with that controversial question: Can men and women be friends? I mean, can they really be just friends? Okay, yeah. Yes. And yet:
“All friendships, even same-sex ones, have ambiguous and changing boundaries,” says Linda Sapadin, a clinical psychologist and author of “Now I Get It! Totally Sensational Advice for Living and Loving” (Outskirts Press, 2006). “You may think somebody’s a best friend, and they just consider you a casual friend. How it’s perceived is not always the same.”
In other words: Your perspective can shift. Suddenly you see a friend as desirable, but he or she still sees you as only a friend. Which leaves you with two choices, Sapadin says: You can try to change it to a romantic relationship. Or you can learn to live with it so that there’s flirtatious banter — footsie, anyone? — but nothing else.
By the way, I can’t wait for the He’s Just Not That Into You movie, in spite of the fact that I just know it’s going to have an unrealistically happy ending. Here’s the courageous ending: the hottest woman gets her dream guy, a couple of them “settle” for someone average and dependable, and the rest, after seeing the hot woman get her dream guy, hold out well into their 30’s, spend a few years as cougars, and then grow extremely bitter about men and society as their desirability plummets, never quite understanding why not all women can be Carrie Bradshaw.
Hey, it’s not my fault reality gets mistakenly interpreted as cynicism — that’s a false mental model caused by idealist propaganda :)
I haven’t said anything about the Heller decision since my post on the first day, so I figured I’d offer a brief roundup of the most interesting thoughts I’ve read on the decision:
Reason’s roundup is also very informative.
Finally, here are the proposed changes to DC’s handgun rules in the wake of the decision.
Pretty much everyone has heard about the Obama satire on the cover of the New Yorker — I’m so confident of this that I’m not going to bother linking to it, and you can Google it if you don’t know what I’m talking about. Far more interesting to me is the subsequent commentary about how difficult it is for comedians to joke about Obama.
The Chicago Tribune discussed the Obama joke deficit yesterday:
The New Yorker cover that portrayed Obama and wife Michelle as fist-bumping terrorists in the Oval Office brought out the boo birds who declared that it was offensive and tasteless, which, of course, doesn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t funny.
It’s possible that cartoonist Barry Blitt was driven to this scathing satire because the Obama joke deficit is growing every day. You need jokes about John McCain and you need jokes about Obama, to keep things balanced. But one candidate—McCain, because of his age, his mannerisms and his off-the-wall humor—is generating most of the jokes.
I personally don’t think it was funny, mainly because I think the number of people who even understood the satire without explanation is probably limited to the readership of the New Yorker. I do, however, respect the magazine’s attempt to find something to joke about. Also, I agree with Megan McArdle that it was much funnier than this absurd attempt at McCain counter-satire.
The Times had a fascinating story on Tuesday about comedians’ difficulty finding something about Obama to joke about. Basically, their reasoning is that he hasn’t done anything non-serious or worth joking about:
“The thing is, he’s not buffoonish in any way,” said Mike Barry, who started writing political jokes for Johnny Carson’s monologues in the waning days of the Johnson administration and has lambasted every presidential candidate since, most recently for Mr. Letterman. “He’s not a comical figure,” Mr. Barry said.
Jokes have been made about what Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton really thought about Mr. Obama during the primaries, and about the vulgar comments the Rev. Jesse Jackson made about him last week. But anything approaching a joke about Mr. Obama himself has fallen flat.
When Mr. Stewart on “The Daily Show” recently tried to joke about Mr. Obama changing his position on campaign financing, for instance, he met with such obvious resistance from the audience, he said, “You know, you’re allowed to laugh at him.” Mr. Stewart said in a telephone interview on Monday, “People have a tendency to react as far as their ideology allows them.”
On one hand, I’m not surprised the comedians are afraid of trying Obama jokes – have you ever watched a late-night show where the comedian attempted to make an Obama joke? The audience usually tenses up in a how dare you joke about Senator Barack Obama sort of way. But on the other hand, it seems like the issue is a serious lack of sense of humor on the part of some of Obama’s supporters — although I am merely defining the problem, not solving it.
More importantly, I fundamentally disagree with the notion that there’s nothing un-funny about Barack Obama. If I were a comedian, I would work the same angle that JibJab recently did so well in their “Time for Some Campaignin’” video — riffing on Obama’s messianic aura. Every cartoon of Obama should have him surrounded by white light, perhaps accompanied by doves and unicorns, and hordes of people behind him chanting “yes we can!” The fact that no one can find anything to caricature is the most obvious caricature!
And the best part for the comedians – assuming that most of them plan to vote for Obama — is that I don’t think this caricature would hurt Obama at the polls, and certainly not to the extent that constantly referring to McCain’s age will hurt McCain.
I’ve enjoyed reading the blog WhyI Hate DC for probably three years now. It actually had a different blogger when I first discovered it, and at some point it was passed down to a guy named Rusty, who in turn has just passed it on to new blogger Liz.
Washingtonian magazine just did an excellent exit interview with Rusty. Anyone who trashes Baltimore, thinks the Nationals stadium deal is a crime of humanity, and describes Adams Morgan as a place that ”takes the worst demographics from the three major Northwest universities and packs them into overcrowded bars to listen to Bon Jovi” in the same interview is all right in my book.
(He did pass up an opportunity to slander DC kickball, but I’ll let it slide this time.)
Apparently it takes at least twelve years of training, plus you have to be good at everything, plus you have to tolerate a perpetually erratic sleep cycle, not to mention you have to be a billionaire. Bummer; I was thinking about Batman as a career but it sounds hard.
A common question I hear in the course of my work is “what is a think tank?” It’s sort of ironic since I don’t technically work for a think tank, but I suppose I work closely enough with them that I ought to have something at least approaching an answer.
A recent BBC News story defines think tanks as ”organisations that conduct research with a view to causing political policies to change.” Not a bad short definition, but also not very revealing. Back in 2002 the U.S. State Department put together a “think tanks for dummies” resource that is pretty limited, but does profile a few think tanks to provide a flavor of their structure and content.
A much better explanation of the origin, role, and importance of think tanks was provided in 2005 by John C. Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis. He refers to think tanks as “idea factories” and outlines how they can and do incubate ideas to solve real problems and then disseminate those ideas to effect change. Also interesting is how Goodman describes the value of “ideological” think tanks, as well as the way think tanks are responding to changes in communications and the internet.
To contrast, Sourcewatch, a site that would be extremely useful if its users would stop blurring the line between well-researched whistleblowing and partisan straw-grasping libel, gives us a much harsher definition of the think tank:
A Think Tank is an organization that claims to serve as a center for research and/or analysis of important public issues. In reality, many think tanks are little more than public relations fronts, usually headquartered in state or national seats of government and generating self-serving scholarship that serves the advocacy goals of their industry sponsors; in the words of Yellow Times.org columnist John Chuckman, “phony institutes where ideologue~propagandists pose as academics … [into which] money gushes like blood from opened arteries to support meaningless advertising’s suffocation of genuine debate”.
Of course, some think tanks are more legitimate than that. Private funding does not necessarily make a researcher a shill, and some think-tanks produce worthwhile public policy research. In general, however, research from think tanks is ideologically driven in accordance with the interests of its funders.
Those are serious charges, and worth exploration, but in the end I largely disagree. I happen to believe that the propagandist charge is seriously overblown, and that the relationship between research and funding is often misunderstood and in many cases the reverse of the above.
Chris DeMuth, former president of the American Enterprise Institute, argues that starting with a particular set of principles can lead think tanks to superior research to that of academia:
To be sure, think tanks–at least those on the right–do not attempt to disguise their political affinities in the manner of the (invariably left-leaning) universities. We are “schools” in the old sense of the term: groups of scholars who share a set of philosophical premises and take them as far as we can in empirical research, persuasive writing, and arguments among ourselves and with those of other schools. This has proven highly productive. It is a great advantage, when working on practical problems, not to be constantly doubling back to first principles. We know our foundations and concentrate on the specifics of the problem at hand. Working in schools encourages collegiality, and boldness and clarity in our work. These are healthy correctives to the vices of “academic politics” (personal and overwrought) and “academic writing” (timid and overqualified), but their positive virtues are more important. The solitary genius is a wonderful romantic figure, and a rarity. Intellectual progress depends heavily on milieu: significant achievements in the arts and sciences have been highly concentrated in time and place. Think tanks try to apply that lesson in the realms of political and social criticism and policy reform. In contrast to political partisans and ideologues, we welcome competition from other schools of thought. We like to work on hard problems, and there are many fertile disagreements in our halls over bioethics, school reform, the rise of China, constitutional interpretation, and what to do about Iran.
Think tanks aim to produce good research not only for its own sake but to improve the world. We are organized in ways that depart sharply from university organization. Think tank scholars do not have tenure, make faculty appointments, allocate budgets or offices, or sit on administrative committees. These matters are consigned to management, leaving the scholars free to focus on what they do best. Our research faculties are organized around issues rather than academic disciplines, and include not only scholars in established fields but also intellectuals (who make up their own fields) and people with practical experience in government, politics, and the professions who have the knack for generalization and organized argument and the zest for reform.
Ed Crane, president of the Cato Institute, comes at the issue of bias from a slightly different angle. In his view, the principled argument complements the pragmatic argument provided that it is made on ideological rather than partisan grounds:
The essence of classical liberalism is a respect for the dignity of the individual. It is axiomatic that such dignity is enhanced to the extent individuals have more control over their own lives, whether we’re talking about spending our own money, choosing the school our children go to, or picking a personal lifestyle. Our policy proposals should be consistent with that goal. Our loyalties must be to the principles of liberty, not to any politician or political party. Just as African-Americans have greatly diluted their political influence by seemingly reflexively voting Democratic, so, too, will think tanks find their influence reduced when politicians know they will always tow the party line. We must make it a point of honor to remain nonpartisan.
The closer one gets to politics, the easier it is to lose sight of the principles of liberty. Nobel laureate James Buchanan wrote in the Wall Street Journal on New Year’s Day, 2002, “My larger thesis is that classical liberalism cannot secure sufficient public accountability when its vocal advocates are limited to ‘does it work?’ pragmatists.” And pragmatism is the name of the game when it comes to worrying about legislative mark-ups. How many of us have heard solid pragmatic arguments against the minimum wage (there are many) that nevertheless end up sounding greedy more than principled? Why not a principled argument, as well? You and I have a natural right to agree to a job and a salary. Rights are not cumulative. A majority does not have the right, through legislation, to tell us we cannot agree on a job and a salary. In this day and age, the latter will not carry the day; the pragmatic arguments need to be made, as well. But we should always try to insert the principled argument into the debate. Over time, such arguments will have more force. More importantly, such arguments keep us headed in the right direction.
So there’s a brief overview of what think tanks are, and a few arguments for or against this particular breed of organization — and now when people ask me for an explanation, I have somewhere to refer them.
Go out for a casual drink as you normally would, but bring along a friend who is highly likely to falsely incriminate you via animated gif. Caleb gets bonus points for capturing the pinky finger and an especially feminine-looking beverage.
Note that I’m mainly posting on this because I know Google hearts trackbacks, and I would really like for this picture to one day become the top hit for the search string “Jacob feminine pinky.”
The new blog We Love DC reviews Ray’s Hell Burger, a new venture by the owner of, and about two doors down from, Ray’s the Steaks. I ate there this weekend and was quite impressed overall. I generally agreed with their review, so I encourage you to read it and I’ll only cite minor points of disagreement or addition:
My only substantive criticism, also mentioned in the review, is that they probably ought to tell you the burgers come at least a grade of done-ness lower than you order them. I typically order my steaks medium-rare and my burgers medium, but the person I was with likes her burgers well-done and hers would have been borderline acceptable for me. The “medium” burger I ordered was sufficiently below my tolerance that I could only eat half of it — and yes, I considered returning it, but we were pressed for time.
Finally, I’m not entirely certain what’s going on with some circles calling the restaurant Butcher Burger and other circles calling it Ray’s Hell Burger. My unsubstantiated suspicion is that Arlington County won’t let them put “Hell” on an official restaurant name. Regardless, at least colloquially the owner now has two restaurants with play-on-words names.
Today I’m reaching far out of my element to highlight two really interesting things I learned today thanks to neuroscience. First, when I read information that impacts my financial investments, my amygdala declares war on my prefrontal cortex. Second, I like football because “the brain processes aggression as a reward—much like sex, food and drugs.”
The clear implication is that anyone with bad news about my investments should avoid delivering it to me in person.
Don’t know if this has been out there for a while and I’m a late arrival, but this is awesome nonetheless. The five fallacies are:
1. Ostracizers Ae Evil
2. Friends Accept Me As I Am
3. Friendship Before All
4. Friendship Is Transitive
5. Friends Do Everything Together
The descriptions are better than the rules themselves — well worth a read. I personally used to suffer significantly from GSF3, and probably had a mild case of GSF1 as well, but pretty much avoided the rest. Unfortunately, I’m confident that my life is more difficult because of people I know who are serious carriers of some or all of these.
[Update 7/7/08: Link here – sorry. I suppose the fact that it took three days for anyone to notice tells me something, either about the interest in this post or about the effectiveness of posting right before a major holiday weekend….]
Just kidding.
I know people have commented before that I should stop beating this dead horse, but I found today’s editorial on 5-4 Supreme Court decisions particularly offensive. Here’s a summary of their argument:
1) This term sucked because there were lots of cases decided 5-4 in ways we didn’t like.
2) Those cases included the awful, illogical, harmful, disastrous, and transparently partisan and wrongly decided cases [lists all cases where conservative justices were in the majority]. These cases HELPED CRIMINALS, DISENFRANCHISED VOTERS, BENEFITED CORPORATIONS, and LEGITIMIZED TORTURE. ExxonMobil is waterboarding a disenfranchised voter and her small puppy as we speak thanks to conservative justices.
3) Fortunately, it wasn’t all bad news. We also managed, barely, to win the following amazing, completely unbiased, righteous, obviously correctly decided cases [lists all cases where leftist justices were in the majority]. These cases RESTORED RIGHTS, PRESERVED OUR HUMANITY, HELPED WORKERS, and PREVENTED DISCRIMINATION. Fifty million indentured servants had their dignity restored, and “the man” was harshly rebuked, thanks to leftist justices.
4) All it takes is one more conservative justice to give us more CRIMINALS, DISENFRANCHISEMENT, CORPORATIONS, and TORTURE, and less RIGHTS, HUMANITY, WORKERS, and EQUALITY.
5) “Voters should keep that firmly in mind when they go to the polls in November.”
Glad to hear constitutional law is so obvious. All the news that’s fit to print.
Here’s a good overview of how DC meters have “fared” thus far. It looks like the total cost of a ride has been relatively unchanged in the aggregate, with the benefit of reduced confusion. One notable exception seems to be significantly more confusion when it comes to group rides — where, of course, the only confusing part of the rule is the one thing DC chose to do differently than nearly any other city.
