Search Results for: The Atlantic

Green Juice and the Grim Reaper

Nikolai Tarkhov, "La Grande Faucheuse." Image in the public domain.

Nutritionist, writer, and intuitive eating advocate Michelle Allison pens an essay in The Atlantic on diet culture, our relationship to food, and what really underlies our obsession with food choice and finding the “best” diet.

This is how the omnivore’s paradox breeds diet culture: Overwhelmed by choice, by the dim threat of mortality that lurks beneath any wrong choice, people crave rules from outside themselves, and successful heroes to guide them to safety. People willingly, happily, hand over their freedom in exchange for the bondage of a diet that forbids their most cherished foods, that forces them to rely on the unfamiliar, unpalatable, or inaccessible, all for the promise of relief from choice and the attendant responsibility. If you are free to choose, you can be blamed for anything that happens to you: weight gain, illness, aging—in short, your share in the human condition, including the random whims of luck and your own inescapable mortality.

Humans are the only animals aware of our mortality, and we all want to be the person whose death comes as a surprise rather than a pathetic inevitability. We want to be the one of whom people say, “But she did everything right.” If we cannot escape death, maybe we can find a way to be declared innocent and undeserving of it.

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Finding the Limit of a Nation of Laws: Integrity, or the Lack Thereof

Drawing by DonkeyHotey (CC BY 2.0).

Rushed to publication because of the speed with which the Trump administration is already damaging the rule of law in the U.S., this David Frum piece in The Atlantic  is a roadmap to Trump’s likeliest path to authoritarianism and self-enrichment — and therefore also a guide to what Americans of conscience need to do to protect democracy.

If Congress is quiescent, what can Trump do? A better question, perhaps, is what can’t he do?

Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House, who often articulates Trumpist ideas more candidly than Trump himself might think prudent, offered a sharp lesson in how difficult it will be to enforce laws against an uncooperative president. During a radio roundtable in December, on the topic of whether it would violate anti-nepotism laws to bring Trump’s daughter and son-in-law onto the White House staff, Gingrich said: The president “has, frankly, the power of the pardon. It is a totally open power, and he could simply say, ‘Look, I want them to be my advisers. I pardon them if anybody finds them to have behaved against the rules. Period.’ And technically, under the Constitution, he has that level of authority.”

That statement is true, and it points to a deeper truth: The United States may be a nation of laws, but the proper functioning of the law depends upon the competence and integrity of those charged with executing it. A president determined to thwart the law in order to protect himself and those in his circle has many means to do so.

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Why Verizon’s Former Pitchman Is Working for Sprint

You might have noticed that actor Paul Marcarelli, who played a memorable role as Verizon’s “Test Man” for many years, has begun to star in commercials for Sprint, a rival telecommunications company. Why the switch? Some insight can be found in a 2011 profile of Marcarelli by Spencer Morgan in The Atlantic:

Among other things, his initial five-year contract had prohibited him from doing any other commercial work and stipulated that he not discuss any aspect of the Test Man campaign, including the particulars of his contract. (He is still reluctant to go into detail, since he remains under contract with the company.) A 2003 article in Ad Age—titled “Verizon Keeps ‘Test Man’ on Short Leash”—noted that the cellular firm “adamantly maintains … that the actor who plays [Test Man] should certainly not be ‘heard.’” (Indeed, Verizon had declined to verify Marcarelli’s identity even after Ad Age revealed it, in 2002.) The contract was amended in 2006 to include language articulating Marcarelli’s right to promote his own projects, but he still felt hemmed in by the need to protect the character—and with it, his income.

After nine years, Marcarelli was informed via email that Verizon was taking their advertising in a different direction, and Marcarelli was free to pursue other projects.

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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Illustration by: Oliver Munday for The New Yorker

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox.

* * *

Read more…

Volkswagen and ‘the Normalization of Deviance’

Volkswagen recently admitted to intentionally skirting U.S. emissions controls by installing “defeat devices” in nearly 500,000 vehicles. This scandal has undermined their credibility and profitability. In The Atlantic, Jerry Useem looks at historic precedents in other large organizations such as Johnson & Johnson, Ford and NASA to explore Volkswagen’s expensive mistake and the corporate climate that led to it:

The sociologist Diane Vaughan coined the phrase the normalization of deviance to describe a cultural drift in which circumstances classified as “not okay” are slowly reclassified as “okay.” In the case of the Challenger space-shuttle disaster—the subject of a landmark study by Vaughan—damage to the crucial O‑rings had been observed after previous shuttle launches. Each observed instance of damage, she found, was followed by a sequence “in which the technical deviation of the [O‑rings] from performance predictions was redefined as an acceptable risk.” Repeated over time, this behavior became routinized into what organizational psychologists call a “script.” Engineers and managers “developed a definition of the situation that allowed them to carry on as if nothing was wrong.” To clarify: They were not merely acting as if nothing was wrong. They believed it, bringing to mind Orwell’s concept of doublethink, the method by which a bureaucracy conceals evil not only from the public but from itself.

If that comparison sounds overwrought, consider the words of Denny Gioia, a management professor at Penn State who, in the early 1970s, was the coordinator of product recalls at Ford. At the time, the Ford Pinto was showing a tendency to explode when hit from behind, incinerating passengers. Twice, Gioia and his team elected not to recall the car—a fact that, when revealed to his M.B.A. students, goes off like a bomb. “Before I went to Ford I would have argued strongly that Ford had an ethical obligation to recall,” he wrote in the Journal of Business Ethics some 17 years after he’d left the company. “I now argue and teach that Ford had an ethical obligation to recall. But, while I was there, I perceived no strong obligation to recall and I remember no strong ethical overtones to the case whatsoever.”

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Seven Takes on Obama for the Final State of the Union

Call me an optimist, but I have high hopes for tonight’s State of the Union—and not just because the White House will be live-annotating it on Genius. We’ve been promised that President Obama’s seventh and final State of the Union address will depart from convention—and the usual laundry list of legislative priorities—in favor of “a grander call to arms on the major challenges facing the nation.” What that may mean is anyone’s guess, but here are six stories about Obama and one speech, for those who like to scroll while they watch. You can livestream the State of the Union here, starting at 9pm ET.

1. “Obama, Explained” (James Fallows, The Atlantic, March 2012)

Written as Obama campaigned for a second term, Fallows analyzed the first chapter of his presidency, in historical context.

2. “The Obama Memos” (Ryan Lizza, The New Yorker, Jan. 2012)

A look at hundreds of pages of internal White House documents, and what they reveal about the president’s decision-making process

3. “Inside Obama’s War Room” (Michael Hastings, Rolling Stone, Oct. 2011)

The late Michael Hastings on Obama’s decision to intervene in Libya, and what it says about his evolution as commander in chief.

4. “For a Look Outside Presidential Bubble, Obama Reads 10 Personal Letters Each Day” (Eli Saslow, Washington Post, March 2010)

The black binder arrived at the White House residence just before 8 p.m., and President Obama took it upstairs to begin his nightly reading. The briefing book was dated Jan. 8, 2010, but it looked like the same package delivered every night, with printouts of speeches, policy recommendations and scheduling notes. Near the back was a purple folder, which Obama often flips to first. “MEMORANDUM TO THE PRESIDENT,” read a sheet clipped to the folder. “Per your request, we have attached 10 pieces of unvetted correspondence addressed to you.”

5.“Barack Obama’s Work in Progress” (Robert Draper, GQ, Nov 2009)

Robert Draper on Obama, the writer.

6.“The Obamas’ Marriage” (Jodi Kantor, New York Times, Oct. 2009)

How can any couple have a truly equal partnership when one member is president? Jodi Kantor paints a rich portrait in this New York Times Magazine cover story.

7. “A More Perfect Union” (Speech delivered by then-Senator Barack Obama on March 18, 2008).

Who else sat around a computer and watched Obama’s race speech and felt like something big was about to happen? Seems apt to revisit it before he takes the stage tonight, especially if you are feeling hopeful.

How the Mason Jar Got Hip

That, in a nutshell, is why the Mason jar has become emblematic of gentrification: Holding a cocktail or a Slurpee, it’s removed from its original context—which is rooted in functionality—and made into an icon of ironic contrast. Used to serve a drink in Hackney Wick, the Mason jar becomes a vacant signifier. It’s meaningful in its evacuation of meaning—a far cry from delivering the pleasures of summer in the dead of winter, or ensuring that, in a time of need, there will still be enough.

This current incarnation of the Mason jar has a lot to do with the hunger for greater legitimacy: How can I be more real, and more unique in my realness? One of capitalism’s most enduring legacies has been persuading people that they can purchase a singular style. In some areas, like fashion, the effort to be unique has come full circle, so that the best way to be an individual is to dress with utter banality (hence the trend known as normcore). Mason jars—with their enticing aura of thrift, preservation, and personal labor—have become a potent signifier in this quest. Rather than ensuring against scarcity, however, Mason jars confirm the presence of abundance—and suggest that we’re rather fatigued by it.

Ariana Kelly, writing in The Atlantic about the invention and impact of the Mason Jar ─ that simple, indispensible glassware that facilitated rural American life ─ and what its current popularity in urban culture signifies. Kelly’s piece ran in September 2015.

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How Prison Nurseries Help Incarcerated Mothers and Their Babies

Photo: Janine

Looking more closely at the results, the researchers found that children who stayed the longest in the nursery had the best outcomes. About half of the mothers had less than a year left on their sentence when their baby was born, and had returned home by the time of the assessment. The rate of secure attachment among those children, while still not significantly different from the rate for the comparison group of middle-class children, was lower than among their peers who had stayed in the nursery for a full year. Byrne hypothesized that rather than being harmed by the correctional setting, the babies actually benefitted from the structure the prison provided—particularly the restriction of drugs and alcohol, as well as the parenting support their mothers got from staff and other inmates. (The longitudinal study included parenting guidance from a nurse practitioner, which Byrne believes also contributed to the outcomes.)

— Sarah Yager reports in The Atlantic about how nursery prisons are helping incarcerated mothers and their babies.

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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox.

* * *

Read more…