That cheap ticket you found online is the byproduct of deregulation in the extreme, which allows major carriers to transfer to smaller carriers the high-cost (and all liabilities) of what once might have been a costlier, premium flight. According to “Frontline,” half of all domestic flights are now handled by smaller carriers, no matter what the brand-name logo on the plane's tail might suggest. And, as it happens, the last six fatal crashes in the United States involved commuter flights.

via ‘Flying Cheap’: Buckle up, indeed – washingtonpost.com.

Let the revels begin (Image via Wikipedia)

A number of people wished me a happy birthday on Tuesday, which was an odd coincidence as Tuesday happened to be the anniversary of the day I was born.

I’ve always felt proud of that accomplishment. Perhaps it’s immodest of me but when you think about how many people have never achieved it, I think I deserve some credit. Whatever else you may say of me, I did get born and I’ve lived with the consequences ever since.

Of course my birth happened a very long time ago, so long ago that I can’t even remember it. But it must have been very special because the authorities issued a certificate commemorating the event.

My late mother used to claim that she was somehow involved but she never went into detail so I suspected that she was probably just trying to grab a little of the glory for herself.

“You’ve got your own birthday,” I would remonstrate. “Don’t try to horn in on mine.”

Now that she’s gone, I sometimes wish I hadn’t beaten and kicked her so much. She was a pretty good sport about it, though.

I’m grateful for the birthday greetings I’ve received. Scientific studies show that saying or writing “happy birthday” does in fact make the recipient happier.

On the downside, I can’t help thinking that every passing minute brings me closer to the end of my birthday. When the time comes that it’s no longer my birthday, then what? Will I have to wait another year to be happy again?

Also I was surprised and not a little disappointed to find no mention of my birthday when I scanned The New York Times and Google News on Tuesday.

Now I understand why so many people don’t trust the media.

The truly weird thing is that no one ever wishes anyone a happy deathday. I mean isn’t that when you really need to be cheered up?

A real estate mogul-turned-miner, Palmer has spent the past two decades hustling in the minerals market, snagging various iron ore, nickel and coal assets with an eye towards forging a long-term supply contract with energy-starved China, the holy grail of export partners. And over the weekend, he finally got it. Almost.

Clive Palmer, a 55-year-old businessman, harness-racing enthusiast and poet, on Saturday announced a deal in which the Export-Import Bank of China will arrange US$5.6 billion of the $8 billion in financing he needs to build his planned megamine, dubbed “China First,” in Australia’s Queensland state.

China Power Investment Corp. agreed to buy 30 million metric tons of coal annually from the project for 20 years, further increasing the odds the mine will be developed.

Via Australian Billionaire Gambles on China – WSJ.com.

Quick back-of-the envelope math on that deal: at coal’s current price of roughly $90 per metric ton, China First could reap Palmer $54 billion over the term of the contract. China First indeed.

Though this deal’s far from done- notice that Export-Import Bank is ponying up only 70% of what it will cost to build what would be the country’s biggest coal mine- Palmer has a plan. The other $3 billion or so will be raised next month in a public offering of shares in his company Resourcehouse (who owns the rights to the proposed mine). He’s already lined up state engineering firm Metallurgical Corp. of China to dig the big hole and the Aussie government is said to be set to fast-track federal approvals- purportedly due to the economic boost the deal would bring to rural, inner Queensland.

Palmer calls it “the project of the century.” And he’s no stranger to hyperbole. In fact, his rather blustery track record when it comes to business dealings might be worth a closer look. The portly mogul spent most of last spring touting the impending $5 billion-IPO of Resource Development International, a new holding comprised mainly of an undeveloped magnetite iron ore mine in Western Australia. But analysts were skeptical about the quality of magnetite, the float was delayed and by July, officially shelved.

Lucky for him, his other antics successfully distracted the press from dwelling much on the business failure. We were too busy reporting on his self-funded launch of a brand-new soccer team, his efforts to revolutionize harness racing in Australia, his defamation lawsuit against a Queensland politician, his record donations to other political parties, the $5 million  yacht be bought for his 15-year old daughter and the time he called Australian authorities “racist” for spurning business deals with China- mere months after he accused the Chinese of deliberately slowing their economy in order to quash commodity prices.

So while China First could certainly be a massive boon to Australia’s export revenues, make Palmer wildly rich and help China grow dirtier, faster, there are sizable hurdles still ahead. As the Journal noted, the mine will require significant logistical investment (it’s located 300 miles inland) and the Resourcehouse shares need a lot of eager buyers. I think I will pass.

The Mehrzeller's body can be customized to look like any soap bubble you can imagine.

Fortunately for them and gas refineries everywhere, a pair of German design students has created the Mehrzeller travel trailer. Its luxurious interior (HD TV, full kitchen, etc.)  is surpassed only by an exterior fit for a Tokyo art museum.

Forget about impressive (Or menacing. Your call.) blocks of aluminum and glass or shining metal blisters; the Mehrzeller trailer is a polygonal puzzle. It might be a Four Seasons take on NASA’s lunar landers. I sort of see a White Castle bag left behind by Glenn Manning, The Amazing Colossal Man.

The jumble-of-angles theme is even more pronounced inside. Random outcroppings, nooks and wall angles make the Mehrzeller feel like a Fritz Lang movie set. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, given the intended audience.

Designers Christian Freissling and Theresa Kalteis dreamed up the Mehrzeller at Graz University of Technology, as an example of mass customization.

They prefer to describe their project as multi-cellular. Buyers would use an online tool — The Configurator — to assemble predesigned pieces, or cells, until they have the look and features they want.

And though the Mehrzeller is just a concept now, its site, www.mehrzeller.com, lists about 40 “partners,” including BMW and 3M. Whether those partners are laying down cash is an open question.

Personally, I’m still stuck on Europeans vacationing in trailers. Really?

The Mehrzeller's very post-modern interior

Admittedly, that's a show-stopping rear end.

One breakfast nook/bedroom configuration.

Apparently this is real, not a product of Photoshop.  Details here.

My answer: No, sir.  I do not.

But 8 years of you and 1 year of your successor have put me in a place I thought I’d never be: missing Bill Clinton.

Image via Wikipedia

London women are taking flirting lessons — using the vowels AEIOU to help them remember what to do:

Sue Ostler, a flirt coach and the author of four relationship manuals, has started a weekly learn-on-the-job flirting tour of the heaving bars of London’s West End.

During our briefing, we are warned of our male rivals who operate in the same territory. The so-called Pick-Up Artists crawl Friday night bars in small tuition groups with a guide to talk them through pulling tactics. The phenomenon caught on in the UK after the success of Neil Strauss’s memoir, The Game.

“You can smell them when you enter a bar,” Ostler says. “They home in on anyone without a male by their side and come up with cringeworthy lines. We won’t do that. We are focusing on our personalities and developing a sense of warmth and likeability.”

Her guide to flirting well is so complicated I couldn’t possibly remember it without writing it — Palinesque-ly — on my sweaty little palm:

Ostler has a formula for the conversation stage: A-E-I-O-U. A is for ask lots of questions. E is for ears to listen, rather than talk. I is for the essence of ‘I’ – making sure your personality oozes out. O is for Oh my God – showing some animation and a human side. U is for you – the person you are talking to – making them the focus of conversation.

If you need to be taught to “show some animation and a human side,” good luck to you, darlin’. To be fair, though, British culture (which many Canadians imbibe culturally) is considerably more buttoned-up than American. If you say “Hey!” to a Londoner, a pretty standard, friendly, all-purpose American greeting, he might wonder where your horse is; I’d never heard it, or used it, before I moved to the U.S.

Although I’m off the market, so to speak, I still love to flirt. At its best, it’s fun and friendly. But I find that few men, or women, do it well and easily. I think the key ingredient is a playful confidence.

Do you like to flirt? Be flirted with? What works for you?

After election night Yulya disappeared

Since Sunday night, when exit polls predicted she would lose the Ukrainian presidency to a man who can’t spell, Yulya Tymoshenko has been in hiding. To be honest, I would have sooner expected her to pick up a tambourine and hop on a tour bus with Lynyrd Skynyrd. She has always loved the cameras, and no one thrives as she does on political combat and confrontation.

 But on Monday, she canceled two press conferences. A couple of hours ago, her adviser said that Tuesday’s appearance before the media had also been cancelled. And I just got word that tomorrow, Wednesday, she is skipping a meeting of her own cabinet of ministers (she is still Ukraine’s prime minister, at least for the next couple of days) in order to attend the funeral of a Soviet factory designer in the backwater of Zaporozhye – 550 kilometers from Kiev and its camera sprays and microphones. I really wish I were joking. But it’s true. An 81-year-old factory man who died on Monday.  

Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife

Her next public appearance, advisers say, will probably be on Thursday, “but we can’t promise anything for certain.” All the while, her lieutenants are claiming that the election was a fraud. Poor Yulya must really be in a panic. Her options are pretty much nil. Almost half the country voted for her because she is the lesser of two nitwits, but no one will follow her into the streets. On the Maidan today, the central square in Kiev where Yulya led the Orange Revolution protests in 2004, a security guard named Stas told me, “It would be another humiliation if she tries to challenge this election with protests… She’ll be standing on the square by herself.” What an image.

 Her other option is to challenge the vote in the courts, but both local and international observers have deemed the election fair. She won’t get very far. And she can’t hide forever, although exile might be an option as well.  

Viktor Yanukovych, her adversary is meanwhile doing his victory dance for the cameras. For about a week before the elections, advisers had kept him muzzled so he wouldn’t let slip one of his idiot gaffes. (These usually derive from the fact that he can’t speak Ukrainian very well. It’s the national language, but he prefers Russian.) On Tuesday he went on CNN.

Already, I’m coming unconscionably late to the smack down–very un-Twitter like of me. It started a whole seven days ago. However, The Atlantic blogged about it yesterday, which gives me an excuse.

The discussion follows the typical parameters we’ve come to expect from this kind of “debate:” New Media technology X enters marketplace, Old Media types whine about the kids these days.

It’s a bit tired, true. But it also provides some fun, time-wasting, Internet entertainment for all involved. Myself included. Techno-evangelists get to rail on traditional media figures, while traditional media figures get to play the Luddite victim.

Okay, so.

The graying New Yorker scribes  are worried that we’ll soon see a generation that doesn’t read books–you can get Kierkegaard for .99 cents on the Kindle, btw–and that the Twitterverse has brought journalists one step closer to extinction.

Personally, I think this misses the larger point–the financial problems of media companies have more to do with the failure to understand technology than the technology itself. The Internet isn’t putting journalists out of business–it’s the fact that media companies, arrogant and clueless, decided to give away reporting for free. That’s the original sin.

Putting that aside, like Packer and Coll, I make my living writing long form narrative non-fiction. I’m confident, that at least while I’m alive, there will be a market and expense accounts for in-depth reporting. Perhaps it will be a smaller market than in the past, and maybe more competitive. But I hope–there goes my confidence!–that eventually the radical shift in the way we ”consume”  news will work itself out, and journalists will again be able to make a stable and comfortable living.

It might be that the journalist’s life will be more of a hustle, more entrepreneurial than in the past few decades. (Hello, True/Slant!) This can certainly be annoying for journos, and it can be uncomfortable to blatantly embrace the self-promotion that it entails. (I mean, really,how many times will I have to email Glenn Greenwald before he links to this blog…) It’s easier, and more gentlemanly, to have that self-promotion done by others who work for your company (as Packer noted after he was informed that his blog was being sent out on Twitter by the magazine’s PR apparatus.)

But, if you’re afflicted with the writing/reportage gene, then these hurdles aren’t going to stop you. Where there’s a will(and a readership) there will be a way.

Caveats: I’m not a techno-booster. I don’t own a Blackberry anymore. I think of a lot of blogs are waste of time. I don’t have a Facebook account. Twitter can occasionally be pretty cool, while at other times, lame. (See: Tequila, Tila.) I share my colleagues concerns that our attention spans have diminished, and that journalism’s future seems to be heading towards the direction of Politico.  But, contrary to The New Yorker angst, I can say that I’ve read probably a good 50 plus books since joining Twitter nine months or so ago. I’ve written hundreds of blog posts. I’ve entered into interesting exchanges with folks on Twitter(like Newsjunkie 365) as well as here on the blog. I’ve gotten a lot of normal writing and reporting done in that time as well–mainly, because I’ve managed to unplug.

So, while we are getting flooded with this constant flow of information and the agitation of being permanently connected, it just means we have to adopt new values, too. One of those values–which is actually a pretty old value with a new name–is unplugging. Moderation, an appreciation of quiet time, space for intellectual discovery etc. Maybe this value will need to be taught to our up and coming hyperactive generations, but I don’t really see the problem with doing that.

Anyway.

In conclusion, a word on drug/technology comparisons.

The best line in The New Yorker post is when Packer admits to living a crack-free lifestyle. (”I haven’t used crack, either,” he writes.) Well, I have smoked crack. I recommend it for all writers to try at least once, especially to New Yorker staffers. It’s pretty good–it’s crack, after all–and down the crack pipe went my first semester at college. But torching a crack rock is very different from typing a Tweet.

For what it’s worth, I’ve always thought that blogging, not Twittering, was the media version of crack. Metaphorically speaking: I get an intense high from instantly publishing, but the minute I stop, I get a kind of an empty and anxious feeling, as if I’ve just poured part of my soul into a spiritual void. I stopped smoking crack ten years ago–it got a little out of hand– but I have come to terms with blogging. It’s healthy as long as I don’t allow it to totally consume me.

Maybe we can view Twitter in the same way, while managing to avoid an abstinence only rehab.

UPDATE: For the record, crack certainly isn’t for everyone. And yes, I’m being a bit facetious here.

Intertwining couples and singles in Los Angeles break-up and make-up based on the pressures and expectations of Valentine’s Day.

Funny that these characters can’t get dates; they all look like supermodels. Does the idea of the movie Valentine’s Day make you sick?

Watch my new video and decide:

Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife

The world’s tallest skyscraper, the Burj Khalifa, opened amid heavy hype a month ago. But all is not well at the Burj. The skyscraper’s owners, Emaar Properties, just announced that they are indefinitely closing the property. The sudden news is a shock.

Why was the most well-known construction project of 2010 shut down, less than 60 days into the new year?

It turns out that tourists visiting the Burj’s observation deck had their worst fears come true. The elevators to the observation deck suddenly started spewing smoke and tourists were trapped on the observation deck. Guests were stuck on the observation deck without any way to get down for more than an hour. We’ll put it this way: rescue crews had to use ladders to reach stranded patrons on the 124th floor:

Michael Timms, a 31-year-old telecommunications engineer from the US, said: “I was walking around the observation deck when I heard this really loud noise and what looked like smoke or dust coming out from one of the elevator doors. There were at least 60 people on the deck at the time. Employees and security staff were telling people that everything was ok. But once it became clear we were not being allowed back down, some people got really angry while others started crying.”

Timms added: “Civil Defence, paramedics and the police all arrived on the scene. One of the elevators had not reached all the way to the 124th floor and I saw some people climbing a ladder from the elevator up on to the observation deck.” Timms said they were given an offer to return for free.

Let’s go back to the last paragraph of Timms’ testimony for a moment: Tourists visiting the world’s tallest skyscrapers were stuck in a broken, smoke spewing elevator more than 100 stories above the ground for more than an hour.

Emaar Properties says the shutdown is “routine”:

In a brief statement responding to questions, the building’s owner, Emaar Properties, blamed the closure on “unexpected high traffic”, but then suggested that electrical problems were also at fault.”Technical issues with the power supply are being worked on by the main and subcontractors and the public will be informed upon completion,” the company said, adding it is “committed to the highest quality standards at Burj Khalifa”.

This is the second elevator problem for the Burj recently. Several days ago, fourteen people were trapped for an hour in a stalled observation deck elevator that broke down at more than 1400 feet into the air.

A reopening date for the skyscraper has not been announced, but the Burj’s website is currently selling observation deck tickets for February 14th. Hey, we imagine that being stranded in a smoke-spewing observation deck could be pretty romantic for Valentine’s Day.

Most people who use Twitter have just one personal account. And that’s fine. But over the almost two years I’ve used Twitter, I have seen some creative uses of more than one personal account. For example, Chris Cillizza from the Washington Post tweets at The Fix and speaks authentically as himself. But when there’s a press conference or something like the State of the Union address, he rapidly live-tweets everything at a second, supplementary account: The Hyper Fix.  No less authentic, just a different way of conveying a different kind of information.

Another example is former Apple evangelist and now founder of AllTop.com, Guy Kawasaki.  His personal account is a bit impersonal, by design – it’s an information fire hose that points to whatever he thinks is interesting (and often routed through one of his own sites). But what if he wants to reply to someone’s question – he can’t disrupt the information hose, right? No problem. He has a second account, named Guy’s Replies, where he writes back to people.  Another cool social hack, in my opinion.

Some of you may have seen my blog post announcing that I’ve joined Microsoft as Director of Innovative Social Engagement for their U.S. Public Sector division in Washington, D.C.  As part of that effort, I’m reading more than I previously had been about Microsoft business and products and services, and also those of companies like Google, IBM, Apple, Cisco, Adobe, and so forth. Often my philosophy has been to take the best of what I’m reading and thinking about and tweet it on my personal account, but I’ve come to think that overwhelming my personal stream with tons of Microsoft links would start to become inauthentic to some degree – or just annoying to the people who have come to like the diversity of my postings.

Thus, I've started a new Twitter account named “Microsoft Mark.” If you’re interested in science, technology, innovation, communications, the future, and particularly news, opinion, and events in the information technology and Web space, I encourage you to follow my new account. It will be a high-quality fire hose of the best information I find (and to some degree, produce myself) for the communities I’m a part of and care about. It will not be a company marketing stream with Microsoft-only information (those already exist), and it will not be impersonal. It will merely be specialized.

And I’ll continue tweeting as Cheeky Geeky. That account won’t change at all, save for the fact that my life in 2010 will be a bit different than it was in 2009. But that’s just an authentic change that I hope you and I both enjoy. I think that Chris and Guy are good examples of social hacks whose tactics can make both your professional and personal lives work just a little better. As I wrote in my original post,  I want to use my position with Microsoft as not just a job, but as a thought leadership platform where I can continue to personally innovate and contribute ideas and tactics to the larger community. I hope that the evolving way I will be using Twitter this year is part of that contribution.

Posted via email from Mark’s Cheeky Posterous

Image via Wikipedia

For a country founded on the spirit of the enlightenment, the United States pays a bizarre amount of respect to Edmund Burke. The Irish philosopher and patron saint of “conservatism” is cited widely by American political elites from all ends of the political spectrum. David Brooks of the New York Times is often found penning paens to Burke, and a think tank in Washington bears his name. Meanwhile, on the alleged left, many have approvingly cited the similarities between Barack Obama’s governing style and the musings of the eighteenth century philosopher.

Yet there is much that is objectionable and repellent in Burke’s writings. It would been more appropriate to title his seminal work, Reflections On The Revolution In France, Reactionary Histrionics On The Revolution In France. It is little more than a litany of complaints and objections to rationality (yes, this from a “philosopher”), and the equality of man. (Indeed, in a remarkable confession of elitism, Burke admits that he feels more sympathy for people who are “exalted” rank. Hence his fealty to aristocracy.)

Many of Burke’s contentions are sinister, but, happily, they are no longer dangerous. After all, it is unlikely that, under leadership of the intellectual and multicultural Obama administration, America will reject racial equality or the pursuit of rationality. Yet, there is one strain of Burke’s thought that has infected (if not infested) the mentality of the Obama Administration and much of our political elite. And that is a deep suspicion of technological and social progress.

Burke took pleasure in contrasting the allegedly noble conservatism of his adopted home of England with the nefarious progressive revolutionaries of France. He claimed, “thanks to our sullen resistance, thanks to the cold sluggishness of our national character, we still bear the stamp of our forefathers . . . we are not the converts of Rosseau.” Further, “instead of casting away our old prejudices, we cherish them to a very considerable degree.” And according to Burke, this is a good thing. Innovation and progress are bad things – dangerous things.

Alas, this strain of thought is one that is now embraced by the Obama administration. Consider the President’s wrong-headed attack on risk, which will forestall economic and technological innovation and progress. Or look to Obama’s science and energy policies, which are designed to reduce humanity’s “footprint” on the Earth. This is approach is “Burkean” approach, in that it seeks to limit the pace and scope of human progress.

It is also a dangerous and and potentially disastrous approach. With economic growth and hiring stagnant, America needs to encourage risk-taking and innovation. Likewise, the societal and cultural gains that readily available electricity, transport, and modern conveniences have wrought need to be maintained and expanded.

Edmund Burke was a reactionary and an enemy of progress. Hopefully, progress will pass him by and our elites will come to treat him in the way he so poetically deserves: forgotten, ignored, and passed by.

I regularly cover the committee for Indian Country Today, and it’s usually one of the most responsive bodies to Native American affairs in the federal government, so it will be interesting to see if its chairman, Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., will mention this issue in a hearing that’s scheduled later this week.

On a side note, you gotta wonder how Keith comes up with his “worst persons” list. Usually, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News are his obvious top contenders, but sometimes a shocker comes out of the blue like this one. I’ve observed in the past that these shockers sometimes involve scores he wants to settle. I wonder if the score in this case is squarely against Dorgan, who Olbermann and many Democrats are greatly peeved with for choosing to retire.

Not that Olbermann didn’t make his proclamation because it’s the right thing to do. I just haven’t seen him focus on Indian issues all that much in the past. So my curiosity is piqued. Now he needs to have a chat with his MSNBC colleague Chris Matthews.

Palin is a grand master — or perhaps mistress — of the art of Us v Them politics. Some of us who still hang onto the hope for an Us and Them America were dismayed by her rhetoric. Not that it has changed, just that it was so comfortably forgotten for a while. Palin seems unenthusiastic about letting anyone forget her for a while.

Political commentator Amy Walter suggested, on last night’s PBS NewsHour, that Palin and the Tea Party boosters are simply capitalizing on the general American frustration with the status quo. Politicians like Marco Rubio in Florida and Scott Brown in Massachusetts, she said, are “recognizing the mood” and adjusting their messages to fit.

The mood of the Us-and-Them Together  party is glum. One Tea Party conventioneer explained to NewsHour about Palin that “She speaks like we do, she thinks like we do.” God help us. Maybe someone else will join in the U&T Together Party”s effort to respond to Palin’s latest:

“How’s that hopey changey thing workin’ out for you?” — Well, not exactly as we’d wish, but better, we think, than those hopey changey things you are promoting.

And about that comment you made re running for President of the United States — I’ll just keep on doin’ a darn good job… Could we respectfully request you confine your darn good job to Fox News? The U&T Together Party is not feeling hopey changey about Fox News.

I am the worst, making a 'sun tea' joke in a blog post about Michael Jackson's tragic death. But that episode of '30 Rock' was pretty funny.

Reflecting on Dr. Conrad Murray’s involuntary manslaughter charge on Monday afternoon, I argued that it was pretty clear that the bad doctor was nothing more than a fall guy in the death of the king of pop. And now Joe Jackson and his daughter LaToya are saying the same thing:

“To me, he’s just a fall guy” Jackson said. “There’s other people, I think, involved with this whole thing. But I think that he’s interrogated — he would come clean and tell everything he knows.”

[...]

La Toya Jackson later issued a statement through a publicist.

“Michael was murdered and although he died at the hands of Dr. Conrad Murray, I believe Dr. Murray was a part of a much larger plan,” her statement said. “There are other individuals involved and I will not rest and I will continue to fight until all of the proper individuals are brought forth and justice is served.”

via Joe Jackson: Dr. Murray ‘a fall guy’ in Michael’s death – CNN.com.

Man….when you’re starting to sound like the craziest living members of the Jackson family, maybe it’s time to take a break. Of course, I won’t go as far as to suggest that there was a ‘plan’ to kill MJ or that Dr. Murray is in need of ‘interrogation.’ But I have to admit that I’m feeling a little too close to Joe Jackson for comfort.

Still, the more you read, the more you see how much drugs like propofol and oxygen tanks had become normal things in Jacko’s life. The King of Pop had a lot of problems and a lot of people happy to tell him that his troubled life was normal.

Take TMZ’s report today that “a closed bottle of urine” was found in the bedroom where Jackson perished. “That’s how he peed” one-time doctor Arnold Klein had told the gossip-mongers. If you’re surrounded by people who will look the other way and fail to tell you at age 50 that there’s something out of sorts with you pissing in a bottle, you’re probably also surrounded by people who will go to extreme lengths to get you drugs you shouldn’t be taking and doctors who are willing to administer them.

And with a canny eye, I think I could see the lengths these people will go to in order to make Murray into their scapegoat. TMZ showed live video of the scenes outside the courtroom in Los Angeles where Dr. Murray was formally charged with involuntary manslaughter. Not only were there protesters holding up all manner of signs accusing Murray of being a murderer. There were also people who could be seen making new signs on the spot. So it’s not like some fans just randomly came down to the courthouse in order to express their sorrow over the king of pop’s death. Someone was ‘astroturfing’, enabling the appearance of grassroots outrage where none truly existed.

There’s a lot of money to be made in Jacko’s memory, and some of those king of pop profiteers want to make sure that all the downside goes to Murray so they can bring in the bucks. Sadly, Joe and LaToya Jackson may be the loudest voices in harping on the point that the bad medicine wasn’t just coming from Murray.

Image via Wikipedia

Working at newspapers for a long time, you notice something (heck, if you read Internet comments you’ve probably noticed the same thing): Everyone thinks you’re biased. Now, I’ve written a lot of opinion and commentary in my life, so of course I’m biased. But even the letters to the editor and comments on seemingly neutral news stories, if the subject’s the least bit controversial, tend to fall into the same trap: No matter how neutral or balanced the story, it’s always “biased” against side the letter writer or commenter is on.

Is this effect real? Do people really see bias where there is none? And, if so, where does this bias for seeing bias come from?

To be clear, truly neutral news reporting is pretty much impossible. Everyone has some opinion and some set of assumptions from which they’re working. But that doesn’t mean there’s no way to test if people are inventing bias in their minds — in addition to what might actually exist in the news. For instance, PsyBlog highlights this study from the 1980s, which showed a group of pro-Israel, pro-Arab, and neutral participants the same news reports of the “Beirut Massacre.” Keep in mind, they were all watching the same reports (from ABC, NBC, and CBS).

What happened?:

Here are the average ratings for the news coverage from each group:

• Pro-Israeli: 2.9 (perceived a marked pro-Arab bias)
• Neutral: 3.8 (perceived a slight pro-Arab bias)
• Pro-Arab: 6.7 (perceived a marked pro-Israeli bias)

As you can see the pro-Israeli participants thought the news reports were biased against Israel while the pro-Arab participants thought the news reports were biased against Arabs.

The neutrals thought there was a slight pro-Arab bias — which could indicate either that this is what the news reports actually had, or that the participants who called themselves neutral actually had a slight pro-Israeli bias. But again, the point isn’t to figure out if the broadcast leaned slightly one way or the other. The point is that these groups watched the same news and came to opposite conclusions as to which way it was biased. And each side thought it was biased against their side.

Why is this? Back to PsyBlog:

The study demonstrates what the authors call the ‘hostile media phenomenon’: people’s tendency to view news coverage about which they hold strong beliefs as biased against their own position.

There were two mechanisms at work here:

1. The truth is black and white: partisans generally thought that the truth about the Arab-Israeli debate was black and white. Any hint of shades of grey in the news reports was interpreted by partisans as bias towards the other side. In other words: any balanced report will seem biased to partisan viewers.
2. The news report was too grey: as well as thinking the Arab-Israeli issue was either black or white, partisans also perceived that the specific news report they watched was too grey.

Put simply: when we care about an issue, we tend not to notice all the points we agree with, and focus on the ones we don’t.

This isn’t to say, of course, that Fox isn’t conservative and MSNBC isn’t liberal. But when you’re looking for bias, you might also want to check your eyes.

For the uninitiated, The Bechdel Rule, or the Bechdel Test, is a way of judging movies based on the following criteria:

1) there are at least two named female characters, who
2) talk to each other about
3) something other than a man.

The rule was first introduced to the world by cartoonist Allison Bechdel in 1985 in a comic from her popular strip, Dykes To Watch Out For. According to Bechdel, it should actually be called The Liz Wallace Test, as her friend actually came up with it, but I’m sticking with tradition, so nevermind that. The test, or rather the difficulty in finding movies that pass it, is a testament to the shocking (not really) lack of diversity in Hollywood production, even in 2010. And the problem doesn’t end with gender, obviously. Take Deggan’s Rule, an offshoot of The Bechdel Test, coined by Eric Deggans of The St. Petersburg Times:

1) At least two non-white human characters in the main cast…
2) that’s not about race.

Now it would seem, as a white man, I’m not personally injured by the failure of most movies to pass either of these tests. Our stories are being told, our concerns are being addressed, our grievances are being aired; all is well in White Boy Town. But that is not so. First off, any group that only hears it own stories is not getting the full story. Surrounded by only look-and-think-alikes, it becomes impossible not to become parochial and stagnant. After all, one of the main social benefits of fiction is the encouragement of empathy, and these narrow narratives deny us its full expression.

But as much social harm as excluding half the population from being fully realized fictional characters does, I’d say it does even greater damage to movies as an art form. Think about it. Any screenwriter/director/producer that can’t think of anything more for a woman to do than be a girlfriend, wife, mother, or kidnapped daughter is probably going to lack imagination in other areas as well. A filmmaker who only sees minorities as Issues or wacky sidekicks is, more likely than not, a hack. After all, what are stereotypes if not clichés in the real world? But why talk in generalities? Let’s look at this year’s Oscar nominees.

Boy Toys

The most egregious current Oscar offenders on the Bechdel scale are Up in the Air and Crazy Heart. They violate the letter and the spirit of the rule. The two lead actresses, Vera Farmiga and Maggie Gyllenhaal, give solid performances playing what seem like strong female characters on paper especially since [SPOILER ALERT] neither one of them choose to stay with these dysfunctional men. But that’s pretty sad consolation, given that they still both function only as satellites in orbit around the world of the male leads. The little inner life that they possess is only there to contrast against the guy’s wants and needs. They are machines to initiate the protagonist’s redemption, never coming close to being flesh and blood people themselves. And that’s a large part of why, the Academy’s opinion aside, both of these films are infuriatingly predictable Hollywood hackery. Their surprises are telegraphed a mile away, their insight are focus-grouped within an inch of their life, and their honesty has had every bit of rough edge sanded off to make it palatable to a wide audience. Much of that has to do with the incredibly limited role women are allowed to play in these stories.  Once you know the gender, you know the role they play.

Let Me Help You Help Your People

But it’s in the racial sphere where this year’s Oscar nominees really muck it up. Take box-office juggernaut, Avatar, James Cameron’s attempt to “reinvent” cinema through the use of giant 3-D Smurf warriors and sledgehammer-subtle liberal soapboxing. Far be it for me to say David Brooks got something right, but, well, David Brooks got something right in his column blasting Avatar for continuing the long tradition of “The White Messiah Complex”, and calls it a “racial fantasy par excellence”:

It rests on the stereotype that white people are rationalist and technocratic while colonial victims are spiritual and athletic. It rests on the assumption that nonwhites need the White Messiah to lead their crusades. It rests on the assumption that illiteracy is the path to grace. It also creates a sort of two-edged cultural imperialism. Natives can either have their history shaped by cruel imperialists or benevolent ones, but either way, they are going to be supporting actors in our journey to self-admiration.

Speaking of white saviors and supporting minority actors who exist only for the main character’s rdemption, let’s talk about Dangerous Minds Freedom Writers Gran Torino Radio Glory Road The Soloist Music of the Heart The Blind Side, a movie that people are forever going to be looking back at and saying, “That was up for Best Picture?” Using the cover of a true story, as usual, the movie tells the inspiring tale of one large, and largely mute, black teenage male and the saintly white lady who saves him from the life of homelessness and despair so common to ‘those people’. And, of course, learns a little bit about herself in the process. Ugh. While this has been a great vehicle for Bullocks’ redemption as an actress in the press, it’s been less effective for telling the true story of Michael Oher, who remains superfluous in his own movie, an oversized prop for Bullock’s character to lift up and lean on depending on her needs at the moment.

There are some bright spots in Oscar Land, though. Inglorious Basterds, despite the title, is more about Shoshanna Dreyfuss’s struggles than the boys, and its her scheming rather than theirs that saves the day. And while An Education doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test by the letter, it does in spirit. Still, it’s sort of the exception that proves the rule: even in a movie about a young woman learning to have an identity separate from men, she doesn’t have a real conversation with a woman apart from talking about her man. And while District 9 and Precious both have racially problematic elements, they’re nowhere near as bad as Avatar and The Blind Side in that regard.  The Hurt Locker, while unavoidably a guy’s story, could bring the first directing trophy for a woman in Oscar history. So, I guess like any progress, we have to keep repeating the mantra: baby steps. Even Hollywood can learn something if you give it enough time. Maybe.

Geller actually seems to think she came off well on this show, in which she tells Ron Reagan what his own father would have thought about Sarah Palin, and rants continuously like a howler monkey on crack for the whole segment. Notice that it ends as Joy Behar tells Geller, “You have not shut up.”

This disgraceful, obnoxious performance was a big hit on the wingnut blogs, of course.

Pamela Geller is a full-on, raving Birther. She tried to claim Barack Obama is the love child of Malcolm X, and she wasn’t kidding. She regularly uses terms like “libtard,” calls President Obama “Hussein,” and often compares him to Adolf Hitler. She promotes the neo-Nazi British National Party, and praises other fascist groups like the English Defense League and the Vlaams Belang. She doesn’t just criticize radical Islam; she’s a flat out, bigoted Muslim-hater who believes that every single Muslim is a terrorist by nature. And she has the personality of a treacherous rattlesnake.

If Joy Behar was trying to make the right wing blogosphere (and fans of Sarah Palin) look terrible, she couldn’t have picked a better person.

Image by Ed Yourdon via Flickr

Why is it that we think we can jail our problems away? The Chicago Tribune obviously thinks so.

Their recent article, “CTA Panhandler arrested 178 times,” chronicled the daily begging of Clarence Ervin, a homeless man who traverses the Chicago El Green line, asking for money from its passengers. The article states that Ervin has been arrested 178 times.Among his 178 arrests are charges for panhandling, disorderly conduct, drug possession and assault and battery.

Obviously, something needs to be done in this situation. CTA riders expressed their fear of Ervin to Tribune reporters:

“Although I have been trained to ignore what happens on the Green Line after taking it for so many years, this guy … is getting more and more aggressive by the encounter,” said Christie, a CTA customer who asked not to be fully identified for safety reasons.

David, another regular Green Line rider, said: “I always ride in the front car of the train and in the back of my mind is the question: ‘Is today the day I have to fight?’ This guy doesn’t have a lot to lose, but I do.”

Their fears shouldn’t be overlooked. People with mental illness and drug abuse problems can be dangerous, and shouldn’t be allowed to roam free, hurting and intimidating citizens left and right.

But what is jail going to do for this guy?

The article quotes police officers, judges, riders and even a currency exchange employee, but not a single homelessness advocate or mental health expert.

At a time where our state can barely contain violent criminals in our prison systems, do we really have room for Clarence Ervin? And even if we did, is it really fair to say at this moment that this man deserves to be put away for life for panhandling?

Mental illness isn’t a crime. Drug abuse is, but it’s also an illness. Years of living on the streets can bring on both.

Not once does the article mention the possibility of rehab, of counseling, of interim housing or intervention. If mental health or homelessness experts were called to comment, no mention was made. The article has a clear solution – put this guy away – and puts the blame on cops and a legal system that doesn’t have enough teeth to crack down on criminals like Ervin.

Let’s say Ervin was put in jail, even for 10 years. What then? He’ll just be put back out there, having spent 10 years living on the taxpayer’s dime, no better off – perhaps worse.

This is the kind of article that makes me wonder what people are talking about when they say “objective journalism.” Clearly, the reporters and editors who put together this story have an idea of what should be done to this man. They interview the sources that back that up. It’s clearly an important local story, but there’s no objectivity to be found. It might as well be a 1,300 word opinion piece on criminalizing homelessness.

Should something be done? Yes. Should CTA passengers be safe from aggressive, perhaps even violent panhandlers? Yes.

But is jail the answer here? Probably not. Our nation’s complex social problems and journalism as a dying profession need more complex, thoughtful solutions than the ones offered.

Ervin may not be Chicago’s citizen of the year, but he’s still a human being. If the $55 a day he collects were put toward a mandatory comprehensive rehabilitation program, there’s a chance he could still be a productive member of society, instead of a nuisance to Green line riders or another guy in an orange jumpsuit.

Image via Wikipedia

One year into the Obama era, and sadly and predictably even his supporters are disappointed with him. The latest evidence of our desire for instant political gratification (or belief in the White Knight narrative of politics) comes in a Washington Post feature on how even the masses who thrilled to his victory in Grant Park are running short on hope:

A year ago, Barack Obama’s true believers were euphoric. The huge and jubilant gathering in Chicago’s Grant Park on election night 2008 gave way to almost 2 million people on the Mall for the president’s inauguration.

He took office as the most popular incoming president in a generation. A movement had become a mandate of nearly 70 million votes. People hoped the new president would bring change to Washington, the hallmark claim of his historic candidacy.

Now, the mood through much of the nation seems restive, even sour. It is almost jarring to look at the photographs from Grant Park, to study those upturned beaming faces, many streaked with tears. Was that a movement? Or just a moment?

That’s a good question. But the answer is not up to Obama. It is up to his supporters. The President has tried very hard to deliver on the promises he made in the campaign: real political dialogue and bipartisanship as opposed to demagoguery, a willingness to actually try to solve problems instead of use them for political advantage, and a commitment to trying to move the United States into the 21st century on health care, education, energy, foreign policy and terror. But he has run smack into a wall of highly partisan parliamentary maneuvering in the Congress aimed at fostering exactly the sort of frustration and disillusion expressed by the tea partiers, and now even the President’s base. And his own party is too busy raking in PAC money aimed at the status quo to care or do much about it.

Okay, so maybe the bipartisan emphasis wasn’t such a good idea. But can anyone doubt that if the Senate were inhabited by 100 Obamas–even if they had the same basic diversity of ideological outlook that currently exists–an awful lot of good and important legislation would be getting passed? I thought so. Good will and a desire to actually solve problems is critical given the big challenges we face, and it is almost completely lacking. Throw in the wholesale corruption of the process by lobbyists and PACs and you have an almighty Congressional clusterf*ck that is guaranteed to drive Americans to epic levels of cynicism and derangement.

So what should Obama’s faithful do? Well, they should do what all Americans who care about the future should do. They should look to Congress and the sold-out, hyper-ideologues they (the voters) keep electing. Slate’s Jacob Weisberger recently did an excellent job of making the case that we have met the enemy and the enemy is us:

The more compelling explanation is that the American public lives in Candyland, where government can tackle the big problems and get out of the way at the same time. In this respect, the whole country is becoming more and more like California, where ignorance is bliss and the state’s bonds have dropped to an A- rating (the same level as Libya’s), thanks to a referendum system that allows the people to be even more irresponsible than their elected representatives. Middle-class Americans really don’t want to hear about sacrifices or trade-offs—except as flattering descriptions about how ready we, as a people, are, or used to be, to accept them. We like the idea of hard choices in theory. When was the last time we made one in reality?

So stop whining, America. We are who we vote for. And if you don’t want to turn Obama’s hope-fueled Grant Park ascendancy to the Presidency into a mere moment, you need to continue the movement: against Congress and the way it works. Here are my emerging principles when it comes to voting:

1. I will vote for no candidate who takes PAC and lobbying money.
2. I will vote for no candidate whose policy proposals are based on focus-groups instead of expert advice, and pretend there are no hard choices
3. I will vote for no candidate who demagogues instead of debates

Even if I treat my vote as something that must be honestly earned, it won’t make much of a difference (though I will sleep better). But if millions of Americans did the same it would make a big difference.

I’m sure there are more good principles that should apply, and I’d be happy to hear suggestions (heck, I’ll start a Facebook group based on The Voter’s Manifesto and we’ll get it all rolling). In the meantime, I have had the privilege of voting for one candidate who met this standard: Barack Obama.

I may quibble with his tactics (please, oh please, put the hammer down on health care, and keep calling Congress out). But to the extent that I am a disaffected, cynical citizen, I know that the real problem is not in the White House. It is at the other end of Pennsylvania Ave.

Making passengers reach for a Xanax?

There are proper places and improper places for airline advertising. This photo of a Turkish Airlines advert on an unfortunate escalator was recently posted by a user of aggregator site Buzzfeed. According to one commenter on the site, the picture was taken at the San Francisco Centre mall. However, we can’t confirm. Do any readers have more info?

Image via CrunchBase

This new survey pointed out by Gawker this morning doesn’t really tell us anything new – that Republicans outnumber Democrats on Twitter – that much was pointed out by the Los Angeles Times and others back in August.

But, in case this is news to you, here are some of the basics:

60% of the members of Congress with Twitter accounts are Republicans, and that fully half of all congressional Twitterers are House GOP members. The study, which was conducted in August of last year is limited to U.S. senators and House members, shows GOP pols out-Twittering Democrats in virtually every category: A whopping 67% of all congressional “Tweets” are written by Republicans.

First, I think this actually says very little about the House members who are themselves Twittering, because very, very few politicians with Twitter accounts actually operate them themselves; they’re generally managed by some communications staffer. That being said, the poll also found that GOP Twitterers also tend to have many more followers than their Democratic counterparts. I suppose I should be disappointed by this, but instead, it only looks like proof that Republicans are indeed only interested in stirring up people’s passions against their opponents, and care little about actual governance. All of the Republican tweets I see highlighted by others or featured in news stories are ones in which they’re bashing a Democrat or the White House, rarely are they sending out tweets to tout important legislation they helped pass.

For further insight on this issue, I went to an expert: my best friend, Elizabeth Brotherton, who co-writes the Heard on the Hill column for Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill. Beth covers congressional silliness for a living, y’all. Here are some of her thoughts:

While most Members of Congress on Twitter still use the new media tool in an old-fashioned sense (i.e., read my press release) several Members have really embraced it. Usually, these are Members who post their updates themselves, as opposed to designating a staffer to do it. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) is probably the queen of Twitter, posting updates on everything from her Congressional work to her latest trips to Target. She was one of the first to embrace Twitter, and has millions of followers (and is, I should point out, a Democrat.) Others who use it well include Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who just today posted a tweet on the trouble he had getting back to DC because of the storm; Rep. Ileana Ros Lehtinen (R-Fla.), who posts regular updates on her legislative priorities and her new granddaughter; and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), a freshman member who has embraced Twitter to help raise his profile in Congress. …

I think one of the reasons there aren’t as many Democrats on Twitter is because when you are in charge, you need to maintain a sort of, sense of prestige. I think some Dems fear that Twitter will make them look less serious, and that is why you don’t see Harry Reid tweeting about his flight back from Nevada or where he went for dinner, for example. However, for politicians looking to be heard – either because they lack seniority or because they want back into power – Twitter is among the easiest ways to get your message out there. And Republicans certainly have done that.

And, to be sure, there are House Twitterers – both Democrat and Republican – who use the medium for acts of navel-gazing (gasp! on the Interwebs?!) There are also some useful politician tweets out there: Portland Mayor Sam Adams, for example, often takes to Twitter to update Portlanders about emergency weather conditions or construction projects that might hamper commutes.

The American Prospect’s Paul Waldman suggests that Republicans have jumped on the Twitter bandwagon because they’ve consistently been behind when it comes to using the Internet effectively:

It’s possible that the experience of being behind in most kinds of Internet organizing for the last few years made Republicans particularly eager to jump on board the latest Web 2.0 thing. So when that young staffer says, “Hey, we should totally get the Congressman on Twitter!”, the Congressman himself says, “Yes, I should be on this Twooter you speak of. Make it so!”

Waldman’s assessment ties in nicely with another Web usage survey pointed out by fellow True/Slanter J. Maureen Henderson, which found that teens are using Twitter far less than adults. There you have it. Nothing will chase young people away from something more than a group of  mostly aging white men embracing it.

If you really want to be entertained by congressional tweets, I suggest you try any of the less authentic but decidedly more hilarious Twitter accounts that have been set up to imitate or mock House members. There’s @demonsheep, which sends out tweets intended to be from the possessed sheep in Senate candidate Carly Fiorina’s new ad, and @NudeScottBrown, an incarnate of the new senator from Massachusetts from his Cosmo centerfold days.

A short video from Harvard Business School Publishing on getting stuck in a lie.

The story references a column I wrote in 2002 for the Sunday New York Times about Sandra Baldwin, the former president of the U.S. Olympic Committee. You can read that column here.

For information about the Harvard Business School Publishing project of which this video is a part, click here.

Image via Wikipedia

You open the doors and sigh.

Every magazine urges you to “shop your closet!”, as though there’s actually anything in there. You click through the hangers, booooored with what’s on them. These clothes are not you. Who would wear them? Did space aliens invade while you were asleep and suck out your every ounce of style?

This is where I have landed.

Today’s Wall Street Journal reports that even cheapo’s like me, the “aspirational shopper” are heading back into stores. And this week, again, marks Fashion Week in Manhattan, which attracts 1116,000 people and during which a gajllion more garments will slither across the runways hoping to find favor with bloggers, retail buyers and editors.

In search of guidance, I’ve  read Lucky and In Style and find them, mostly, overwhelming and terrifying. Who really has $750 to spend on a handbag?  The clothes they combine look bizarre and uncomfortable, even if they look really great on size 0 17-year-olds.

In vain, I read fashion magazines hoping I will find something useful. I now know the names of every designer and who just got fired and hired, even if I can’t possibly afford a $2,500 Prorsum dress or Proenza Schouler’s new handbag. I know how to tell Louboutins from Choos (not that I own either, since a pair of either costs more than my mortgage payment.)

I need a new look.

And so, I bought a pair of black suede shoes this week that would utterly horrify most people I know. They’re a version of a style now shown in every fashion magazine, and the kind of thing I would never have imagined wearing in a million years: too trendy, too high, too edgy. Perfect!

The sweetie’s eyes lit up when I put them on — especially since they add 4.5 inches to my 5′5″ height.

I’ve been in a style rut for a while, a combination of a severely restricted budget, (i.e. no shopping), currently wearing a size that many stores refuse to carry (why bother shopping when all you end up with is frustration?) and, perhaps most crucial, no cool gal-pal, a fashion mentor, as it were, to help me figure this style thing out.

Trying to kick-start your look just by reading magazines or watching “What Not To Wear” is like trying to practise Mandarin by reading a menu. You gotta work it.

So this out-of-character footwear is, I hope, the first step to a new (er) me. I’ll still reach for my go-to classics, whether an Hermes silk twill scarf or my beloved pale gray down jacket (bought with my discount when I worked retail), but it’s time to test-drive some new looks. Some, no doubt, won’t be great. (I live in the ‘burbs, so it’s not as though anyone will notice.)

What a style shift really demands, is a lot more than cash. It’s the confidence to try it and pull it off.

Journalists generally dress very badly, as much because their pay is low as the inherent clash between fashion and function. Fashion means drawing attention, while working well in journalism demands its deflection.  We’re there to observe, not to be observed.

Dressing to be warm, comfortable and unobtrusive may make for great reporting, but it can kill a wardrobe.

Have you ever re-booted your look? Where did you find inspiration? Did you have help?

Pictured: A Video Game Pirate

I just finished reading an Australian news story about James Burt, a 24 year old Brisbane resident who is facing a $1.5M fine for illegally distributing his copy of Super Mario Bros. Wii, which he received six days earlier than the release date. Nintendo actually hired a P.I. to track Burt down, and they claim his copy has been downloaded “thousands of times” since it was uploaded.

Is this verdict fair? Is one copy of Mario Bros. Wii put on the internet really worth $1.5M in damages? Most distribution of stolen property or grand larceny laws max out fines at around $7,500 to $10,000. So why the hell does piracy inspire such ridiculous sums of money? Is it legal to increase fines to such a preposterous proportion just to “make an example” of a pirate to other pirates? To me, that’s like saying you can cut off the hands of a murderer to “make an example” of him to other murders, which might be an effective deterrent, but we don’t do that in the U.S. (or presumably Australia), as it’s what’s known as “cruel and unusual punishment.” So to fine someone that large of an amount of money for an offense that minor would seem to be over the top, much like the recent verdict of the woman fined $1.9M for downloading twenty-odd songs from the internet.

That being said, I believe there should be a difference in punishment between someone distributing illegally gotten merchandise and someone taking it. If someone downloads a game illegally and is caught, it would seem to be fair that the punishment be the same as if that person was caught shoplifting the game from a store, which would likely be a fine of $250 to $500 and probation. On the other hand, a distributor of stolen goods (like say, someone selling copies of Mario Bros. Wii from the back of a van) should face a steeper penalty, like the aforementioned $10,000 fine and maybe even a bit of jail time or community service. Note that none of these numbers are anywhere close to $1.5M, and I can’t for the life of me figure out just who the hell thinks that kind of number is justified in cases like these. And in the case of a distributor like Burt, his offense would seem to be even less severe than someone selling stolen merchandise out of the aforementioned van, seeing as by giving it away for free, he’s not even profiting from the endeavor.

The moral of the story here is that yes, I do believe game piracy is wrong (unless it’s combating idiotic DRM issues), and there should be consequences for those who steal games or give them away for free. But because pirates are seldom actually caught, this allows companies to believe that when they do hook someone, they should be able to publically filet them to an inch of their life with fines that have no bearing whatsoever to actual damages caused by the piracy itself.

There is currently nothing short of a price fixing scheme going on in the video game industry right now. Game prices are WAY higher than that of any other form of media, but seemingly not for any good reason. You may argue that 60 hours worth of Mass Effect 2 is worth $60, but what about five hours of playing time of Halo Wars? The across the board, sky high prices of games exist solely because all the companies have agreed that’s how much games should cost, and frustrated consumers have turned to piracy for titles they think aren’t worth their hard earned cash.

In order to combat problems like this, game companies should be looking into straight-up digital distribution, and eliminating price-gouging middlemen like Gamestop which would make games more affordable for everyone, and would create a legal download system that would be a welcome alternative to brick and mortar purchases. This is already happening with places like Steam, which offers downloadable games on the cheap for PC users, but as of yet, there’s nothing really like that for consoles, though I predict that will change soon enough.

If you view piracy like a virus like most companies do, don’t try to stamp it out altogether, which is a feat you will find impossible. Rather study it, and maybe you’ll be able to come up with a cure.

Image via Wikipedia

My credit card philosophy has always been simple: Put everything I can on one credit card that earns frequent flier miles on one airline, in my case, American.

Don’t worry: This is NOT an ad for American Airlines. Its seats are built for kids or vertically challenged adults.  The American crews I’ve met tend to be pretty surly, none of the easy good cheer of, say, Southwest. And after losing my bags on one thunderstorm-interrupted flight, I always stuff everything into a carry-on, which, of course, saves me from one item on the airlines’ growing list of hidden fees.

But hey, I gotta have a fix. American flies a lot of places. And I’ve always got miles toward a leg to somewhere, California or Hawaii, Florida or France, that keeps me hooked to the system.  Who wants to lose miles?

Still, even I’ve got my pride, American.  So I’ve pay you $5 on board for some stupid stale snack pack. So I’ve flown six hours with my knees jammed against the reclining seat in front of me, my feet turning numb. So I’ve been stopped cold for sneaking from boarding group 4 to group 3 in a desperate attempt to assure my carry-on can be jammed into the overstuffed bins overhead.

Enough. Now I’m supposed to pay $8 for a god-gersnuffled blanket? Oh, really.  Give me a blankety-blank break.  This is more obscene than the ads Southwest uses to make fun of its competitors’ nickel-and-diming. Turns out, it’s also true.  As of May 1, USA Today reports, American Airlines will charge $8 for a blanket on flights over two hours.  Shorter flights? Deal with it. Just freeze.

Remember when air travel was fun? Oh, I’m sorry. You’re not that old.

Anyway.  This time I’m tearing up my credit card, moving to Continental or Capital One or Southwest. Changing airlines for good … at least after I use those miles I’ve accrued for a visit to Calfornia this summer.

American, you damn well better have a seat for me.  I’ll carry extra cash to stay warm.

And clearly, the administration could have handled some aspects differently.

But some of it has just been over the top to the point of you have to wonder about the well-being of some of the people speaking.

One of the strongest — or rather, loudest — critics has been Mitch McConnell, the Senator from Kentucky and the Republican leader of the Senate.

In a recent speech before the Heritage Foundation, McConnell ripped into the administration over its handling of Abdulmutallab, saying they were more concerned with  ”reading him his Miranda Rights and getting him an attorney” than treating him as “a terrorist who could provide us with vital information to stop new attacks” and that Americans were “outraged” by that.

Of course, it turned out that despite warnings to the contrary, Abdulmutallab has been cooperating with investigators.

Last week, Attorney General Eric Holder wrote to McConnell, answering many of his criticisms, pointing out that the policies and practices used to determine the treatment of Abdulmutallab were consistent with what what done under the Bush Administration and that those policies “were not criticized when employed by previous Administrations.”

In other words, Um… Senator? Is it possible your criticisms are linked to the fact there’s now a Democrat in the White House and not a member of your own party?

Of course, McConnell wouldn’t be the first forget about the reality of the situation and try and score points for purely political reasons.

Holder goes on to write that “without a single exception” the US Government has — since Stptember 11th, 1001 — arrested and detained “under federal criminal law all terrorist suspects who are apprehended inside the United States.

He points out that in 2003, President Bush signed a policy directive stating: “the Attorney General has lead responsibility for criminal investigations of terrorist acts or terrorist threats by individuals or groups inside the United States.”

And — “the Bush Administration used the criminal justice system to convict more than 300 individuals on terrorism related charges” including Richard Reid, the would-be shoe bomber who “was advised of his of his right to remain silent and to consult with an attorney within five minutes of being removed from the aircraft.”

Meanwhile, former Federal Judge and Attorney General Michael Mukasey wrote in the Wall Street Journal that Abdulmutallab should have been held in military custody, supposedly giving the administration more time to interrogate him and decide what to do about charging him.

The only problem, Holder points out, is that “the government’s legal authority” to hold someone “indefinitely without providing him access to an attorney” is “far from clear” and that “when the Bush Administration attempted to deny Jose Padilla access to an attorney, a federal judge in new York rejected that position, ruling that Padilla must be allowed to meet with his lawyer.”

Now, who was that judge?

Holder writes: “Notably, the judge in that case was Michael Mukasey.”

Oh. That Federal Judge.

Former UN ambassador John Bolton

Every time I read ThinkProgress, there’s a new report about how John Bolton is fed up with all of this not-bombing-Iran business, because seriously let’s bomb them already. WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR?  It’s quite remarkable, actually.  This elementary Google search shows you just how regularly JoBo goes on a televised “program” on FoxNews to advocate on behalf on the powerful Fuck Iran Let’s Bomb Them lobby, whose headquarters remains located in JoBo’s warrior moustache, to advance their bomb Iran agenda.  

Since yesterday was a day, in a year, on Earth, John Bolton once again woke up, grew a moustache, and said to himself, Today, I’d like to bomb Iran.  ThinkProgress reports:

On Fox News today, John Bolton declared that “Iran simply has no intention of being talked out of its nuclear weapons program” and that “very severe sanctions” will not work. Later, when host Gregg Jarrett asked if military action is “the only answer,” Bolton agreed.

Bolton later clarified to the host of the program that yes, he seriously wants to bomb Iran, how many goddamn times does he have to say it!?

JARRETT: Is military force probably in the end the only answer?

BOLTON: There are two outcomes, one is Iran getting its nuclear weapons, the other is Israel or somebody uses military force to stop it. That’s where we are. [emphasis by TP]

Expect to see this post, or variations of it, for a long long time, so I hope you like the life-like rendering of JoBo I found up top.

via Thompson on Hollywood.

There is an old, apt bromide in flying world: It’s easy to end up with a million dollars in the aviation business…just start with twenty million.

And so it has gone for the airline industry. Since the airline business began nine decades ago, airline companies have collectively not made a dime.

And these days the business is as bad as it ever has been. Facing high fuel costs, restrictive labor contracts, an epic recession and intense pricing pressure, the are grasping for ways to make a buck. We all know this – after all we are getting tenned and twentied to death to fly our bags, get some chintzy headphones, a flimsy pillow and thin blanket or a microscopic snack. How far off can pay toilets be?

I always assumed (perhaps it was denial) that this dysfunctional business model did not mean the safety bar was lowered an iota. But over the past nine months, while working on the PBS Frontline documentary “Flying Cheap”, I have learned that is not the case. Airline flying in the United States may be the safest means of travel ever devised since the invention of the wheel, but it is often not as safe as you maybe led to believe.

Over the past twenty years, the airlines have been doing what is common on so many other industries. They have been outsourcing.

The idea has its roots in deregulation. When Jimmy Carter took the government out of the business of dictating airline routes and rates, it was not too long before the airlines cooked up a new operating model we now call hubs and spokes. The idea: gather up passengers from smaller cities – get them to the larger airports – and stuff them into bigger planes for the longer hauls.

Hamstrung by expensive, restrictive union contracts, the big ”legacy” carriers were not structured to efficiently fly short runs in little airplanes. So they started hiring others to jump the puddles and came up with a scheme called “code sharing”. The legacy airlines paid commuter carriers to fly a certain number of flights to their hubs. The smaller carriers borrowed the name and livery of their clients – who would sell the tickets. These airborne contractors were paid by the completed segment (on time) – regardless of the number of passengers on board.

For passengers it made life much more simple. They could buy one ticket form a familiar brand name airline to take them from Peoria to Paris. Most of us would assume that the smaller airline would operate the same way as its larger customer.

But in fact the big airlines generally go out of their way to stay out of the business of their contractors. They point the finger at the FAA and say it is responsible for the maintaining “one level” of safety in airlines large and small. And that is technically true. But the legacy carriers exceed FAA minimums in almost every regard. They have discovered enhancing safety, maintenance and training programs actually accrues to the bottom line. Flying safer also means flying more efficiently.

But all of this requires some significant up front investments – which would put the smaller carriers at a competitive disadvantage. After all they win those flying routes by being the low bidder.

The major airlines do not send their maintenance and training experts – or their Sully’s -to to their regional contractors – because they prefer keeping a thick firewall between the operations.

Perhaps they are listening to their lawyers too much. As it stands right now, the big airlines are not liable when one of their outsource carriers crashes. If the laws were passed forcing that liability to be shared (“joint several liability” is the legal term of art), things would change about as quickly as Continental/Colgan 3407 went from a routine flight to a horrible disaster.

They say this industry has a “tombstone mentality” – meaning people have to die before things change. Let’s hope the souls we lost a year ago did not die in vain.

Considering the rate hike comes in the middle of the profound economic disaster that is California, it takes a pretty cold-blooded company to institute such a boost. But then, nobody should be particularly surprised when considering that, just last year, the company raised premiums for many of these same people by up to 68%.

California Insurance Commissioner, Steve Poizner, who is engaged in a primary battle for the California GOP gubernatorial nomination, has weighed in big saying that he is hiring an independent actuarial firm to determine if the price increase is reasonable.

Even HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has sent a letter to Anthem’s president calling foul.

But to those about to be slammed with the increase, I wouldn’t get too excited by all this government action.

In California, the Insurance Department can regulate the premium charges on home and automobile insurance. Not so for health insurance. Regulators can, technically, ‘oversee’ the increased cost but they have no power whatsoever to control these charges. Thus, it is anyone’s guess what it means to ‘oversee’ when you can’t regulate.

As for Secretary Sebelius, while she can write tough letters letting us know the Obama Administration cares, she too has no authority to regulate these premium charges.

What does Anthem have to say about the matter?

In a statement, Anthem Blue Cross attributed the increased premiums to a bad economy and rising health care costs, forcing members to drop coverage, which “leaves fewer people, often with significantly greater medical needs, in the insured pool.”
Via ABC News

Is it me or is that the greatest circular argument ever? Because of the bad economy, members have had to drop their coverage leaving them uninsured. Because the healthy people can no longer afford the coverage, that leaves more sick people in the pool, raising the costs to the insurance company and forcing them to raise premium costs for those who can continue to pay for their coverage.

I don’t suppose this ever occurred to Anthem, but based on their logic, were they to lower their prices, they would attract more members, rather than force members to drop out, greatly improving the ratio of healthy to sick in their insurance pool. This would leave them with the opportunity to earn more profit.

But these are tough times. No doubt Anthem has been struggling to make money in this difficult economic environment.

Or not.

In Sebelius’ letter, the Secretary points out –

Anthem Blue Cross’s parent company, Wellpoint Inc., earned a record $2.7 billion in profits for the last quarter of 2009. Its quarterly sales grew to $19 billion, up 26 percent from $15.1 billion in the comparable 2008 period, Sebelius pointed out.
Via ABC News

For you consumer driven health care and free market believers, you might be interested to know that there is virtually no competition in California when it comes to individual health insurance policies. Anthem pretty much has the market sewn up.

And for those who buy into the GOP nonsense that the answer to rising health insurance costs is to allow insurance companies to sell their policies across state lines, you might care to note that Anthem Blue Cross is the California branch office for Wisconsin based Wellpoint, Inc.

It is worth noting that those who have individual policies with Anthem are middle class Californians who can – or previously could – afford to pay the already high premium charges.

For Jeff Sher of San Francisco, who is both an independent health insurance agent and an Anthem customer, his 38 percent increase comes on top of a 41 percent increase last year. That means that in just a year, his premium increased from $273 to $530 per month, or 94 percent. Sher, who is 59, said he hasn’t needed to see a doctor in seven or eight years.
Via San Francisco Gate

What happens when the middle class can no longer afford health insurance?

Like it or not, say hello to single-payer government provided insurance. It’s one thing to leave the poor or those just above the poverty line without health care coverage. The truth is, they don’t vote in sufficient numbers to get the attention of the politicians.

However, it’s quite another when the middle class no longer can afford coverage.

So far, California’s GOP congressional caucus has been conspicuously silent on the subject. And, contrary to what most think, there are quite a few Republicans representing the state in Congress.

So, Darrell Issa – are you out there, brother? We know you are and can’t wait hear what you have to say about all this? 

Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife

As foreign leaders call to carefully congratulate Viktor Yanukovich on his electoral victory, Tymoshenko’s momentum is starting its fatal sputter: She promises to challenge election results in court while four thousand Yanukovich supporters rally outside the Ukrainian Central Election Commission.

We’ll miss you, Yulia.

Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife

Today at the Daily Beast, readers are being subjected to a pseudo-intellectual essay on why we’re all misguided in thinking that eating disorders are actually a problem, and that the fashion industry plays some part in their onset and popularity among women. Lisa Hilton, an Oxford-educated (good god) author of two books, has written a column called “What’s Wrong With Skinny?” that makes me – and presumably thousands of other readers – wonder, “What’s wrong with Lisa Hilton?”

If you’ve been living on black coffee and cigarettes, and are therefore too exhausted to read over the entire three-page masterpiece, allow me to summarize. Lisa Hilton just wants us to enjoy Fashion Week this year. Models who subsist on diet soda to squeeze into size-zero frocks aren’t disordered or naive, she says. In fact, they’re actually disciplined and empowered. Little pocket-sized entrepreneurs. Of course, she admits, eating disorders are terrible. But obesity is much worse, and afflicts far more women than anorexia and bulimia. Oh, also, women have always tried to be thin. Fashion won’t sell unless women are thin. And why isn’t anybody upset about male jockeys trying to make race weight?

Sure, I get that Hilton and the Beast are trying to be provocative. But can’t they manage to be intelligent and reasonable at the same time? Here are a few examples of misguided, disordered thinking at its very worst:

1. “Anorexia and bulimia are horrific psychological conditions, destroying lives and families, and carrying devastating long-term health risks even when not fatal. Sufferers deserve nothing but respect and support for their condition. But is that condition nearly so prevalent as the barrage of attention it regularly attracts actually deserves? And are women really so pathologically stupid that they are unable to distinguish the fantasy of the runway from the realities of their own bodies?”

She’s got the first part right. Eating disorders are pernicious, incredibly damaging and even life-threatening. Sentence three is where things really veer off-course here. If Hilton had done her research, she might have realized just how many eating disorders go undiagnosed. Not because a sufferer doesn’t seek medical attention, but because their illness simply doesn’t match the strict criterion to qualify as either anorexia or bulimia. Women and men are skipping insulin shots, spending six hours a day at the gym, waking up at 1 a.m. to binge on chocolate cake, puking up dinner “every once and awhile,” or obsessing over their food intake in the form of journals, charts and lists. Disordered eating and exercise, yes. Eating disorder? No.

That’s why these “conditions” receive a “barrage of attention.” Because they are incredibly prevalent, and either go under-diagnosed or misdiagnosed or are never even detected.

And no, women aren’t stupid. But thank you for asking. Actually, I think Hilton sums it up quite nicely when she describes “the fantasy of the runway.” Exactly. Fantasy. Runway models, and the fashion industry more generally, have taken on an aspirational, fantasy-oriented identity. Teenagers, and adults, aspire to that ideal. We aren’t deluded into thinking this is reality, but we can’t help but let it soak in a little. After all, these are the images we see every single day. So excuse us for our pathological stupidity, but sometimes, when we’re surrounded by it, we just can’t stop the fantasy from trickling in.

2. [Quoting a former model named 'Sasha']: “Sure, we had to be skinny. I lived on Diet Coke and apples for two years. For the couture, we had to get up at 4 a.m. to be sewn into the clothes and there was huge pressure to be thin. But I made a million dollars by the time I was 20, I bought a town house in Manhattan and put myself through Columbia. Does that make me a victim?”….For every Sasha, there are a hundred hungry wannabes who fall by the wayside.

This, to me, sounds like some seriously unhealthy and dangerous behavior, done in the name of some sort of career advancement. Sasha sounds either desperate, or “pathologically stupid” to tacitly consent to unfair standards that demanded she turn her body over to an industry, all in the name of a seven-figure pay-check. That’s not “par for the course,” as Hilton suggests. It’s actually really, really damn sad. And at least Sasha made some money, so she can pay for fertility treatments when her ovaries are dried up like raisins, and fork over for osteoporosis meds when her bones turn to ashes at 35. You know, because she lived on diet coke and fruit for two years just to sashay down a runway.

What about “those hundreds of hungry wannabes,” that Hilton dismisses in a single sentence? This is an industry that’s demanding women sacrifice their physical health, and then maybe allowing them to earn a living.  Sounds very reasonable. What sounds less reasonable is Hilton’s subsequent justification for all of this:

“Are we just a bit angry that young women with no qualifications other than what nature gave them get to be so powerful?”

Memo: A starvation diet of calorie-free soda and apples is not nature.

3. We rarely get hysterical about the weight qualifications required of male sportsmen. Jockeys, boxers, and wrestlers put themselves through torture to make weight.

Nobody is saying that male jockeys who starve themselves to make weight don’t suffer health consequences, or don’t deserve medical attention. But how many men do you know who consider horse jockeys an “aspirational identity”? How many television shows called America’s Next Top Jockey always include a “token fattie” who gets dropped after the fifth episode? And how many of you really thought Toby Maguire looked sexy in Seabiscuit?

Men contend with their own struggles with regards to disordered eating, cultural pressure and physical stigma. But that has nothing to do with whether female models ought to be starving themselves to fit sample sizes, and perpetuating an unrealistic body ideal. The issue of men and eating disorders is another issue – maybe one for a male version of Lisa Hilton to butcher?

And, finally, Hilton throws out a moral argument for tradition:

Women have always gone to absurd and often dangerous extremes in pursuit of the beauty myth. Fourteen-inch waists and mercury-eaten complexions for the Elizabethans, pthisis- inducing sponged muslin for Romantic groupies.

Years of academia and a husband in moral philosophy have taught me this important lesson: appealing to tradition doesn’t make a practice morally acceptable. Hilton seems to suggest that women are hard-wired to strive for “absurd and often dangerous extremes,” in pursuit of physical ideals. Which, correct me if I’m wrong, would make us all “pathologically stupid.”

The program, reported by Miles O’Brien, makes clear that while airline passengers may like to think that they always have a Capt. Chesley B. Sullenberger at the controls, what they often have is a cockpit full of the sleep-deprived, the undertrained and the underpaid.

via Television Review – ‘Frontline – Flying Cheap’ – On PBS, Up in the Air With Frayed Safety Nets – NYTimes.com.

via TV Preview: ‘Flying Cheap’: Buckle Up, Indeed – NewsFlash – NJ.com.

“It took my breath away that a professional cockpit…would be so unprofessional,” said O’Brien. “It became a cause for me, a mission… I was determined to understand this crash and what the roots were.”

via Pergament: ‘Flying Cheap’ focuses on Flight 3407 crash : Don’t Miss : The Buffalo News.

via Safety Risks At Regional Airlines Detailed By PBS : NPR.

via Plane Answers: The Frontline episode regional airlines don’t want you to see | Gadling.com.

Don’t get me wrong, my fellow citizens, I am not holier than thou. I lie all the time. Especially to my wife, mother, friends, co-workers, and strangers at random. But when it comes to dutifully banging one — and only one — person: I. Am. A. Champion. You could put me in a room full of horny Playboy models, and I guarantee you, none of them would sleep with me.

Now, I understand that some voters might expect a little more from their elected officials than marital fidelity. And I’ll admit, I can’t budget my own checkbook, so I’m not entirely sure how I’ll deal with the fiscal mess that is New York State right now. Albany is ugly and boring, so I’ll be doing most of my gubernatorial work from my Manhattan apartment. Also, full disclosure: I’ve got little use for bi-partisanship. We’re passing gay marriage first, or I’m not signing a single bill. The government can grind to a halt, state employees won’t be paid, I don’t care. Good Government = #2, My Agenda = #1.

But, since you’ll never catch me in a closet that doesn’t exist with a woman who shouldn’t be there, what do you care? I’ll wake up every morning knowing that the fate of New York rests with my willingness to masturbate in the shower instead of showering with an intern. And I won’t let you down.

Still, it is curious that so many men seem incapable of following my path of monogamy. Yet we’ve come to expect public outrage whenever it turns out that another elected official likes to have sex with many different women. Is there any way we can get the powerful and the people on the same page about this issue?

Cheating 101 after the jump.

A couple of months ago, I wrote:

Rich and powerful guys cheat even when they are married to much more attractive, intelligent, and/or loving women than the ones they cheat with. I could explain why this is, but it’s an entirely different topic that is hard to explain unless you’ve ever had a penis.

Allow me to elaborate.

I don’t buy the biological imperative argument of cheating. You know the argument, it goes something like: “Man. Must spread seed. Boobies too powerful. Arrggghh.” Many of you have made that argument or heard it yourselves. I understand that’s how it works in the animal kingdom, but I also understand that Homo sapiens sapiens are blessed with marvelous powers of reasoning and self-awareness. Everyday, we overcome biological instincts in order to fit in with the rest of society. For instance, if another man hit on my wife, and I was a chimpanzee, I grab two of my friends and we would systematically rip off the other guy’s testicles. That’s how animals roll. If I can overcome the urge to mercilessly brutalize my wife’s ex-boyfriends (not saying that those urges don’t exist), then I can overcome the urge to contribute to the continuation of the species by banging a drunk co-ed.

What I do believe is that our modern society has decided to equate sexual adventures with power, prestige, and social acceptance. We’re told — especial as men — that real men have multiple liaisons with any woman they want, at any time, under any circumstance, the more the better. If a buddy has sex with an especially attractive woman, I’m going to respect him (or envy him, pretty much the same thing in Manworld) and treat him like he’s cool. If I don’t have sex with an especially attractive woman, my buddies will make jokes about my spinal column. My female friends will say things like “aww, how cute. You’re such a decent guy.” And I’ll be faced with the desire to shoot firearms, just to regain a measure of machismo.

That’s not nature, that is nurture.

Notice that these arguments don’t have anything to do with one’s spouse or significant other. Cheating, of course, has little to do with the person you are cheating on.

And so, most men are only one low-self esteem day away from having an affair. It starts off innocently. You want to feel like you “still got it” so you flirt with some attractive person. She (to your surprise) flirts back. And now you’re caught. If you do the right thing and back off, well, then you have to deal with the fact the you are a loser with no game. If you press the issue, well, don’t get me wrong, boobies are really powerful.

All of these issues are compounded when you are rich and/or powerful. In Manworld, you only get minimal credit for having a lot of money, or holding a prestigious position. “Ooh, you may be rich but I can kick your ass.” “Kick your ass” is always followed by “and take your woman.” (Manworld is a fantasy place where women sleep with whomever wins the cockfight. I know women find Manworld funny.)

What’s the point of kicking somebody’s ass if it doesn’t involve a woman? What, you think think the snooty rich guy has WMDs in the trunk of his Beamer?

As Machiavelli teaches us: “It makes [The Prince] hated above all things, as I have said, to be rapacious, and to be a violator of the property and women of his subjects, from both of which he must abstain. And when neither their property nor honour is touched, the majority of men live content.”

Now if you read Machiavelli, you’ll note that the quote above essentially represents the only restrictions he puts on his totalitarian leader. That’s right, the poster boy for the Eric Cartman “I do what I want” style of leadership has only two prohibitions: don’t steal the people’s money or their women.

So it was then, so it is today. The American public will suffer any manner of totally incompetent leadership. Negligent fiscal understanding, disastrous military strategy, obvious stupidity, nothing that a campaign slogan can’t fix. But when it comes to outright thievery, we get pissed. And when somebody puts his penis where he’s not supposed to, there is hell to pay. (Note: I’m really interested to see what happens when a woman with a national profile gets caught banging the pool boy. If Sarah Palin started banging her receptionist — played by Jack McBrayer — would that be an issue? Or are we so sexist that it would be passed off as “still hot”?)

In any event, I think the public overreacts to political infidelity because there is still that unconscious fear that if a leader can have sex with any woman he wants to, he might come for your spouse or significant other. As a society, we can’t let that happen. Shame him, shun him, keep him away from my wife! See honey, I’m much more attractive and charismatic than that dirty old codger, Bill Clinton.

And so, my fellow Americans and my fellow New Yorkers, you can trust me. Not to tell you the truth — but I mean come on, you don’t even care about the truth anymore (see e.g. the health care debate). The one thing you can count on is that I will never, ever, come to your town and try to have hot, powerful, enjoyable sex with your wife. Unlike most men who seek high office, the only thing I’m interested in is having the power to remake the world as I see fit. All you men out there with multiple girlfriends and huge … gun collections, I can see how manly you are. I won’t try to fight you. Just cede your right to self-governance to me, and I promise I will go home every night to the same woman. A woman who, miraculously, isn’t ashamed of my simple ambitions to rule the world.

(Image from Wikipedia)

To watch the Dow jockies on the teevee leaves one with the impression that Americans collectively win something when the industrial average rises above 10,000. But Americans don’t win anything. Most of them don’t even really understand what the 10,000 mark means, but they have learned to equate Wall Street winning with a booming American economy.

Do you earn a bonus when the Dow breaks 10,000? Does your job become more secure? Do your credit cards and medical bills disappear? Do your kids get college scholarships? Does the air you breathe become cleaner?

No, of course not. Americans don’t win anything when Wall Street prospers, and in fact, the opposite is usually true: what’s good for Wall Street is bad for America.

Pam Martens explains this “tails they win; heads you lose” philosophy:

Wall Street can and does make enormous profits on bets that share prices will decline (shorting), that companies will disappear (credit default swaps), that the economy will crater (interest rate swaps).  And there’s a slogan on Wall Street: the trend is your friend.  When it’s clear the bull is lying in the center of the ring (think Lehman’s death and the Merrill Lynch shotgun wedding on September 15, 2008), Wall Street moves its bets to the downside.

The market and its players have no conscience. There is no soul on Wall Street. The almighty dollar dictates everything, and so the boards of cash machines known commonly as “corporations” are legally obligated to their shareholders to make as much money as possible even if doing so demands engaging in things like shady lending practices that ultimately tank the entire US economy.

There is no government-provided incentive for Wall Street to behave morally. If the right players make tons of cash when they win, and shift the financial burden to taxpayers when they lose, why would they ever change their behavior? Wall Street makes crap, sells it to the public, and then when citizens get sicks, they’re responsible for their own medical bills.

Think: cigarettes, or as the FDA calls them, “nicotine delivery systems.” In 1995, Martens reminds us, the FDA told Americans that Big Tobacco was manipulating “nicotine delivery at each stage of production.” People were hooked on something that was killing them.

Insiders on Wall Street call their retail brokerage firms, now also dangerously merged with commercial banks, a “distribution” system. The investment banks create the toxic product, the brokers distribute it to the public under an enshrined carrot and stick system that is virtually identical at every major firm. That is, the internal research department puts out a buy recommendation. The brokers’ local manager holds a sales meeting and pushes the firm’s latest offerings. The brokers’ commission system dramatically favors risky products that the firm is pumping out over safer investments.

The reason the government must now create huge job programs is because the private sector has failed to provide for the masses. “According to the Labor Department, 9.3 million Americans could not find work as of January and millions more are involuntarily working part-time or too discouraged to look for work,” writes Martens.

So Wall Street corporations earn billions in profits racing to the bottom by slashing benefits and outsourcing American jobs overseas, while sheltering revenue in tax havens. Then, in the midst of failing to provide jobs to Americans, they ask for trillions more in taxpayer cash.

The suits provide nothing and ask for everything in return. Massive cojones, fellas.

Just in case anyone was worried President Obama may do the right thing and reinstate a Glass-Steagall wall between commercial and investment banks, fear not. Obama’s proposed bank curbs are “not a return to Glass-Steagall,” says the U.S. Treasury’s No. 2 official, Neal Wolin, who was also formerly general counsel to Lawrence Summers, a key proponent of repealing the Glass-Steagall Act during the Clinton administration.

No one has any intention of doing anything that will work. And you can quote them on that.

Well, it appears not – say the French.

After sniffing around for year and perhaps quaffing a glass or two of vino, French authorities charged 13 defendants including several wine co-operatives, executives from two wineries and the conglomerate Sieur d’Arques with selling Gallo wine which was labeled Pinot Noir, but was really the aromatic grape cut with far less expensive Merlot and Syrah. The quantity involved is a spectacular 3.57 million gallons worth nearly $5.5 million. That would be enough to fill 16 million bottles, or 460 oil tankers writes Decanter.com.

Perhaps I’m expecting a little too much know-how from duped winemakers Gallo who’ve been dealing with grape juice for over 75 years but they really should have been tipped off by some not-too-elusive clues. The amount of Pinot Noir that was exported from the Languedoc-Roussillon region in Southern France between 2006-2008, the window of deception, far exceeded the amount of previous years. In fact, this really was a case of wily Frenchmen turning water into wine. Though Sieur d’Arques’ suppliers produce a total of 15,000 hectoliters of Pinot Noir annually, 135,000 hectoliters were sold to the gullible Americans for its Red Bicyclette brand.

They may have saved several millions of euros by mis-labeling their red, but if found guilty, the companies involved will be shelling out in the hundreds of thousands for their trickery. And with the prosecutor calling for to 12 months of jail time, the sentencing will not be easy drinking.    

 Though this is allegedly the biggest wine con yet, it is merely one amongst a plethora of fine vintage cases dating back to the ancient Romans who suffered free-flowing volumes of manipulated, counterfeited and contaminated wine. 

Wine Scandal Hall of Fame

 1. Death By Tainted Wine – Italy, 1986
At least 20 people died and Italy, the motherland of the Bacchanalian beverage, was forced to temporarily freeze all wine exports when cheap tipple was adulterated with  methyl, or wood, alcohol to raise the wine’s alcohol content to the average 12 percent. The contamination only affected low grade booze that was sold to neighboring European countries to mix with their own local wines and the locally drunk, unpedigreed Vino di Tavolo that was sold at such low prices that only adulterated incarnations could be profitable. 

2. Not-So-Sweet, Sweet White – Austria 1985
A odorless chemical found in anti-freeze, diethylene glycol, was used by some white wine producers in Austria to sweeten their booze and upgrade the quality of drier whites to more expensive, fuller bodied, fruity offerings. Why not just add sugar, you ask? Well, that would be a pretty crass con as the addition of sugar is highly detectable. In small doses diethylene glycol is somewhat harmless and the amount used in the scam was low enough not to have any detrimental effect on drinkers. You would have to chug 28 of those adulterated bottles every day for two weeks to notice any effects, and by then you’d be long dead of alcohol poisoning. Still, anything that belongs in anti-freeze should stay in anti-freeze. 

3. Coloring Clarets – France 1973
Three wine merchants in the posh Bordeaux wine region “manufactured” some typically deep red claret which didn’t contain any of the world famous red at all. The conniving  trio mixed mediocre white wine with dark red wine to create 1.45 million liters of the perfectly colored concoction. Allegedly several old Bordeaux families who literally had the red stuff flowing through their veins they had been dealing with wine for so long, had bought the adulterated wine and re-sold it in bottles bearing prestigious Bordeaux labels.   

4. Oops, I Accidentally Made Me Some Tipple – US, Prohibition
A wine scam of the most unique varietal occurred during the prohibition when wine production was illegal. Grape growers would sell bricks of grape concentrate together with a packet of yeast. A warning label accompanying the curious duo would advise against combining the concentrate and yeast with water and sugar in a sealed pot and letting the mixture sit for seven days lest “an illegal alcoholic beverage” would result.

Horgan directs the Center for Science Writings at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. He took to the streets of Hoboken to survey passers by whether they thought war would ever end once and for all. Only about 10 percent of the people he surveyed expressed optimism that war would ever end. When asked why, people chalked it up to our “human nature” to be aggressive.

Part of what I want to do with this blog is to point out examples of unquestioned, unarticulated values and beliefs masquerading as science or as Truth. In this case, the idea of a human nature has little to do with carefully considered logic and everything to do with whether people can accept the possibility of change.

Horgan wrote an article for Discover magazine in which he works to undercut some of our ingrained belief that war is a part of human nature. Here’s one juicy bit:

Environmental conditions can also override biology among baboons, who, much like chimpanzees, seem hardwired for aggression. Since early 1978, [biologist Robert] Sapolsky has traveled to Kenya to spy on baboons, including Forest Troop, a group living near a tourist lodge’s garbage dump. Because they had to fight baboons from another troop over the scraps of food, only the toughest males of Forest Troop frequented the dump. In the mid-1980s, all these males died after contracting tuberculosis from contaminated meat.

The epidemic left Forest Troop with many more females than males, and the remaining males were far less pugnacious. Conflict within the troop dropped dramatically; Sapolsky even observed adult males grooming each other. This, he points out in an article in Foreign Affairs, is “nearly as unprecedented as baboons sprouting wings.” The sea change has persisted through the present, as male adolescents who join the troop adapt to its mores. “Is a world of peacefully coexisting human Forest Troops possible?” Sapolsky asks. “Anyone who says, ‘No, it is beyond our nature,’ knows too little about primates, including ourselves.”

And further:

[Anthropologist Douglas] Fry believes that empowering females may reduce the rate of violence committed within and by a nation. He notes that in Finland—which has a low rate of crime and violence compared with other developed countries—a majority of the cabinet ministers and more than 40 percent of the members of Parliament are women. “I don’t see this as a panacea,” Fry adds, recalling “iron lady” Margaret Thatcher, “but there are good reasons for having a balance of the more caring sex in government.”

For those who see no end to war, a more defensible position might be that *conflict* will never end so long as we exist. War and violence are specific responses to conflict, as are peace and mercy. The question is how to activate those latter qualities, especially in light of climate change, which is bound to increase conflicts over rights to water and other natural resources.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Walk breaks.  Salvation of many new runners, who credit the brief reprieves from the pounding of running with their ability to complete a marathon, half marathon, or 5K.  Yet in many runners’ minds, getting caught in a walk break by your friends and family who came out to watch you run, not walk, is akin to showing up to high school in your underwear.

But walk breaks aren’t just for first-timers or those who are physically unable to run the whole way.  In his book Marathon!, former U.S. Olympic marathoner Jeff Galloway prescribes walk breaks every mile, even for marathoners trying to break 2:50.  Somehow though, even with the backing of an Olympian, walk breaks have always managed to seem — well, soft.

When I was a younger, brasher, testosterone-charged new runner and I came across the idea of stopping every mile or so to walk, I vehemently denounced it. The point of running is to run, I said.  It shouldn’t count as a marathon if you don’t run the whole thing.  If you’re going to count that, then I run marathons every week; they’re just punctuated by 22-hour walk breaks.

I can understand that walk breaks might help avoid injury, but when you think about it, it’s a little bit counterintuitive that they should help you run faster.  If someone were to tell me my family was kidnapped and the only way to get them back was to run a 5:20 mile, it’s possible that I’d muster the strength to do it.  (Later, I’d wonder why the kidnapper took such an interest in my running a 5:20 mile.)  But I sure as hell wouldn’t do it by trying to run a pair of 2:30 half-miles with a twenty-second rest in the middle.  That’s just stupid, and if I tried it, I would never see my family again.  Anyone who has ever done interval training knows that the way to run fastest is to spread the effort out evenly over the allotted distance or time, because required effort increases exponentially with speed.  The same goes for hills: You try to maintain a constant level of exertion over them to avoid burning yourself out.

After I got a stress fracture while training for my first marathon — not entirely surprising, given my attitude — I started to rethink things and decided to try Galloway’s method in hopes of avoiding injury, doing six-and-one’s (six minutes running, one minute walking) for a few weeks.  It didn’t last; I got bored with it.  The inspiration of running long distances melted away when I knew that I’d have to stop to walk.  I was 22 years old, for god’s sake!

But finally, a singular experience changed the way I look at walk breaks — I injured my knee a month before my second marathon.  I was devastated, given that I had already planned the road trip out West in my dad’s camper.  As race day approached, I discovered that I could delay the onset of the pain by taking walk breaks every mile or so.  Against better judgment, I lined up at the start of the Rock n’ Roll Arizona marathon, and somehow, I made it through the entire race.  And by “somehow,” I mean “stopping to walk after every mile until about 18,” at which point adrenaline took over and I was able to run the rest of the way.  Someone even told me to slow down on the final hill because I was making him look bad!  To this day, that’s the best I’ve ever felt during the final miles of a marathon, and there’s no question that the walking was to thank.

I haven’t made walk breaks a habit (though I do walk through water stops now), but more and more I’m coming to understand that there’s something to the idea.  All that talk about effort increasing exponentially with speed really only applies to short distances where the cardiovascular system is the limiting factor; there’s tremendous value in giving your leg muscles occasional breaks over long distances.  In trail running, where hills are far steeper than those encountered on roads, it’s common knowledge that you walk the hills to run a faster race.  It’s about doing whatever it takes to get to the finish line as fast as possible, and sometimes, to finish at all.

This I know now: There’s no room for machismo when it comes to running far.  No, there is no shame in walking.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Which New York Times stories are most e-mailed? Short, punchy ones? Not so, writes the Times’ John Tierney:

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have intensively studied the New York Times list of most-e-mailed articles, checking it every 15 minutes for more than six months, analyzing the content of thousands of articles and controlling for factors like the placement in the paper or on the Web home page.

The results are surprising — well, to me, anyway. I would have hypothesized that there are two basic strategies for making the most-e-mailed list. One, which I’ve happily employed, is to write anything about sex. The other, which I’m still working on, is to write an article headlined: “How Your Pet’s Diet Threatens Your Marriage, and Why It’s Bush’s Fault.”…

But it turns out that readers have more exalted tastes, according to the Penn researchers, Jonah Berger and Katherine A. Milkman. People preferred e-mailing articles with positive rather than negative themes, and they liked to send long articles on intellectually challenging topics.

Perhaps most of all, readers wanted to share articles that inspired awe, an emotion that the researchers investigated after noticing how many science articles made the list. In general, they found, 20 percent of articles that appeared on the Times home page made the list, but the rate rose to 30 percent for science articles, including ones with headlines like “The Promise and Power of RNA.”

They’re seeking emotional communion, Dr. Berger said. “Emotion in general leads to transmission, and awe is quite a strong emotion,” he said. “If I’ve just read this story that changes the way I understand the world and myself, I want to talk to others about what it means. I want to proselytize and share the feeling of awe. If you read the article and feel the same emotion, it will bring us closer together.”

They have decided they will use their economic clout to try and coerce the network into lightening up its investigation into the severe safety problems that have been discovered in their lethal product and suggestions of a coverup.  These guys don’t seem to understand that their advertising buy does not give them the right to blackmail a news medium’s coverage.

They probably don’t comprehend why they should be ashamed. The usual justification, when advertisers try to apply this kind of suppression is that they are not required to financially support anyone who is making their lives miserable.  While that’s true, it also demonstrates that they simply don’t understand, or don’t care enough about this country’s free press values. It’s sometimes and inconvenient bargain: If we are to have  commercial TV as opposed to government-controlled media , sponsors are not allowed to substitute their own control.

If anything, there has not been enough information about the mess out there, as evidenced by the thousands upon thousands of Toyota owners who are scared silly. They still don’t know how or when to get their vehicles repaired and if the company is finally being straight about what really needs fixing.  This is not an image problem, this is life or death.

And yet, here are these people, who believe their money can insulate them from the most rudimentary public accountability.  They apparently run businesses that  demonstrably place profits ahead of their customers’ safety.  It’s not acceptable.  Their bullying and/or ignorance cannot be tolerated. It’s fundamentally extortion.

Anyone who is still buying a Toyota in that region should reconsider or should certainly boycott the dealers who have signed on to this blatant attempt at intimidation.  Why would anyone trust organizations and retailers who take such ethical shortcuts and engage in what amounts to attempted blackmail.  After all, what other corners do they cut?  Can they be trusted to provide the service they promise or, in their fevered pursuit of the almighty dollar, do they allow their mechanics to do hasty and dangerous repairs, or sloppy maintenance.

The 173 dealers in the southeastern states cover about 20 per cent of the Toyota sales in the U-S. Without a doubt, many of them have the huge stars and stripes flags flying outside their showrooms showrooms.  Considering how UN-American they’re acting, maybe they should take them down.

And what do I find in the newsprint?

After I had rather rashly declared democracy in Iraq “dead” (at least in the headline–if you read closely you’ll see there’s a caveat taking into consideration just such a development) the government, according to the NYT, has “staggered toward a resolution of its election crisis on Sunday as the country’s leaders gave an appeals court time to reconsider a ban on hundreds of candidates barred from next month’s election because of alleged links to Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party.”

It appears they’ve done the time honored Iraqi tradition with tough political issues, and kicked the can down the road. The ban of the 500 candidates, it seems, will be reviewed after the election. How this “sweep it under the rug” move will work in practice is anybody’s guess.

In other words, the crisis might be resolved, or it might be about to get worse. Per the NYT:

But the fate of some of the most prominent candidates accused of having Baathist ties remains unresolved, and the crisis could still worsen.

More importantly, this highlights the rather unusual relationship that the U.S. will have with Iraq in the year ahead. While at the same time  claiming that Iraq is a sovereign country, Americans are still mucking about in its government process in a pretty signifcant way. In this case, Prime Minister Maliki’s people haven’t been too appreciative of it, accusing the U.S. of  ”interfering in Iraq’s internal affairs by trying to put pressure on the judiciary to reinstate the candidates.”

Is that you, Mary?

I was looking for a new friend on Facebook the other day and because she has both a common first and last name, there were hundreds of people to search through. Since almost no one lists their city or other affiliations anymore, many times all you have to go on to determine if you have the right “Mary Smith” is their picture.

As I scrolled through endless profiles and saw that more than half of them displayed pictures of babies, I realized that even more disturbing than the people who don’t even bother to upload a photo, thereby ending up with the default silhouette, are those who post a picture of their child instead of themselves.

To me, this says, “I have no identity other than that as someone’s parent.” It means, “The first thing that should come to your mind when you think of me is I have a child.” It could mean, “I don’t like the way I look, but my baby is so adorable so look at him.” It may mean, “Everything that I was before I was Bobby’s mother is no longer relevant. Forget the fact that I am a college graduate who once climbed Mount Everest and was vice president of my company, all you need to know about me now is that I have reproduced.”

Maybe some proud parents are trying to say, “Look how cute my kid is,” or perhaps, “Hey, I didn’t want to send out birth announcements so take a look at what I’ve been up to.”

But your profile picture is a bit like a modern day calling card. At the very least, it tells the world how you want to thought of, viewed as or think of yourself. Cosmopolitan magazine’s U.K. edition did a survey of Facebook pics and asked a shrink to interpret but about as close as he got to the kid-instead-of-me shot was people posing with their dog, cat, iguana or other pet. Apparently your type can be brooding. Another analysis identified 30 popular styles, ranging from “The Tourist Landmark Photo,” to “The Middle Finger Shot,” to “Me as a Baby.” As for the “This is My Baby” shot, it means, “this is the most important thing in my life.”

My current profile picture.

I get that. No one’s saying your kids aren’t important or even the mostest, bestest, superfinest thing that’s ever happened to you. But are they…you? Do you really want to your own sense of self completely subsumed? You may be a mother or a father, but is that all there is to you? So go change the photo and maybe you’ll find out how much easier it becomes to find yourself.

Meanwhile, I never did find my pal. Guess I’ll just wait for her to friend me. I should be easy to find; I still haven’t changed back my picture from that celebrity doppelganger thing that was going around so that’s me looking an awful lot like Brenda Starr.

“She’s really nice,” actress No. 1 (Alba) says of actress No. 2 (Lohan), her costar in the upcoming action film Machete, in the new UK issue of Cosmopolitan. “We hang out and chat for hours about girl stuff.”

Never mind those pesky rumors from last December that Lohan was caught going mouth to mouth with Alba’s husband, Cash Warren. Alba, who denies them in the interview, likes Lohan. She really likes her.

Of course!

Every time there are rumors of discord on a movie set — and when actresses work together, isn’t that generally the case? — the players involved insist that everyone gets along really swell.

Last year, when undisclosed sources had Gwyneth Paltrow and Scarlett Johannson fueding on the set of Iron Man 2 because of the media attention Johannson was getting for her villainous role as Black Widow, the official word was that the actresses had nothing but love and respect for each other.

Of course!

Just once, wouldn’t you love to hear one of their mouthpieces say, “Well, actually, they can’t stand the sight of each other”?  How great would it have been — for sales of Us Weekly, for the movie’s box-office and for catfight fanatics everywhere — if rumors had placed Nicole Kidman and Penelope Cruz at each other’s throats, practically pulling out each other’s hair extensions, on the set of Nine (after all, they are both Tom Cruise exes), and the actresses actually agreed? Picture it: “I despise the ground she slithers over,” Cruz says of Kidman. And Kidman could shoot back: “I don’t understand how she keeps getting those Oscar nominations. She’s, like, such a horrible actress!”

Every so often in Hollywood, actors and actresses let loose lips get the best of them — like years ago when Jennifer Lopez slammed Madonna, Gwyneth Paltrow and Winona Ryder in the space of one interview — and usually use that old standby excuse: “My quotes were taken out of context.” But for the most part, in Hollywood, everyone says, “I love you” — whether or not they really mean it.

A rundown city in Afghanistan. Two Blackwater officers stand in front of a ragged group of Afghan trainees.

Officer Clark: …and that is why you never use the safety on your machine gun. Now, let’s move on to breaking and entering-

Officer Gamble: Tactical initiatives.

Officer Clark: Right! Sorry! Breaking and entering makes it sound illegal. Tactical initiatives. What’s the first rule?

Trainee Wasim: Search for valuables!

Trainee Farzan: Protect the innocent.

Officer Clark: Correct! Very good, Wasim. I’m sorry, Farzan, but…

Officer Gamble: Hold on a minute, Gilbert.

Officer Gamble looks displeased, and walks immediately up to Trainee Farzan. He stops inches in front of his face.

Officer Gamble: Farzan, what’s that I smell on your breath?

Trainee Farzan (nervously): Nothing, sir. Just a breath mint.

Officer Gamble: God damn right, just a breath mint. Your mouth is as fresh as a bubbling brook! Why don’t I smell alcohol on your breath, soldier?

Trainee Farzan: I didn’t think-

Officer Gamble: No, you didn’t think! A Blackwater man doesn’t enter the field a battle without a pint of booze in his belly, you got that, son?

Trainee Farzan: Yes, sir.

Officer Gamble: Keeps you loose! Keeps you dangerous! You can’t predict what a drunk man is thinking, and if there’s one thing people want in their national police force, it’s unpredictability! Now give this man a drink.

Officer Gamble walks back to his position and several of the other Trainees hand Farzan beers and liquor bottles they have stashed in their uniforms. One of the men gives him a beer helmet.

Officer Clark: Ok, now that we’ve all settled down a bit, let’s try a common scenario. You’re walking through Jalalabad and you see a car parked in front of a fire hydrant. What do you do?

Trainee Behrang: Shoot it with a gun!

Trainee Jawid: Blow it up!

Trainee Farzan: Write a ticket.

Officer Gamble: Hold on!

Officer Clark: Oh dear.

Officer Gamble again walks up to Trainee Farzan, even angrier than before. He looks like he might be sick.

Officer Gamble: Did you just say, “write a ticket”?

Trainee Farzan: Yes, sir. In the case of a traffic violation the handbook says-

Officer Gamble:  We don’t use a stinking handbook, Farzan! We’re Blackwater! You’re in a situation, you handle it the best you see fit! Trainee Jawid, when is the only time you are to write a ticket?

Trainee Jawad (by wrote): To establish an alibi in another part of town when you have been doing something a short-sighted government might view as unethical or illegal, sir!

Officer Gamble: Very good, Gaywad.

Trainee Jawad: It’s Jawad, sir.

Gamble ignores, and steps back to the front of the group. Farzan looks sad and defeated.

Officer Clark: OK, final question. You’re on patrol when a group of elderly women approach you and tell you about a opium hide-out on the other side of town. When you get there you discover crates of narcotics and weaponry. What do you do?

Trainee Behrang: Shoot it with a gun!

Trainee Merzad: Steal the weapons and consume the drugs!

Trainee Shaya: Sell it all on the black market!

Officer Clark: Very good, gentlemen. All acceptable answers, well done!

Trainee Farzan (determined): Wait. This isn’t right.

Officer Clark: Oh dear.

Officer Gamble: What did you say, Farzan?

Trainee Farzan: What you men said, it isn’t right. This isn’t the way we should be doing things.

Officer Gamble: Are you questioning me in public, Farzan? Are you questioning Blackwater?

Trainee Farzan: Maybe I am sir. But all I know is…

He pauses and looks defiantly into Gamble’s eyes, who is on the verge of explosion. Farzan’s frightened, but trying hard to appear brave.

Trainee Farzan: All I know is…you better shake down the old ladies to make sure they’re not hiding any IED’s.

A smile crosses Gamble’s face, and the entire group explodes into applause and cheering. Farzan lets out a huge sigh of relief, and Clark looks like he may cry.

Officer Gamble: Give this kid a badge!

Farzan takes a swig of vodka from one of the earlier bottles, then he and Gamble embrace. Fade to black. Country ruined.

Image by debaird™ via Flickr

In fact, it seems as if youth, in contrast to older Gen Ys and other age brackets, are redefining their online presence to reflect an increasingly one-sided relationship with the wired world. They’re avid consumers of electronic media in the form of information on politics and current events and are becoming bigger e-commerce patrons, but are simultaneously abdicating a potential role as creators of original content ( in the form of blogs or micro-blogs). The most obvious explanation may be that as cell phone use spreads among teens (Pew reports that 73% of 12-year olds are cell phone owners), youth might simply be using texting as a more immediate, real-time means of communicating with peers.

But could the relative lack of youth voices in the blogosphere have a more insidious root? The ever exclamatory Daily Mail ran a piece last month that sounded alarm bells about the dubious future employability of British youth with limited vocabularies, citing the fact that while teens know tens of thousands of words, they often limit their quotidian communication to as few as 800. This feature, coupled with the Pew’s findings, raises the question of whether relying successfully on such a condensed vernacular actually discourages youth from being more verbose (If 800 words gets the job done, why use more?). And if so, whether it’s a conscious choice on the part of youth to eschew communications channels (i.e., blogs and Twitter) that require a wider vocab or whether it’s simply  a case of losing what they’re not actively using. Put another way, are we entering Flowers for Algernon/1984′s Newspeak territory where the strictures of a limited word pool actually renders youth unable to effectively articulate their thoughts and ideas via traditional prose? And is a rejection of long-form blogging simply the tip of this iceberg?

Image via Wikipedia

When it comes to sex scandals, South Africa makes Italy look like the United States. President Jacob Zuma has three wives and is engaged to be married with a fourth.  In 2006, while beating charges of rape, he admitted he had sex with his alleged victim, the daughter of a family friend. Last week, the 67-year-old politician apologized for fathering a child with a woman he isn’t married with.

But South Africa is different from the Italy and the United States, in that it’s engaged in a desperate fight against a deadly sexually transmitted disease. Elisabeth Pisani, an expert in AIDS prevention and the author of the excellent book The Wisdom of Whores, points out that in this context, Zuma’s dalliances are far from a personal matter.

Want a hyper-epidemic? All you need is a tradition of polygamy AND high levels of female autonomy. Big Men have their little network of wives and/or lovers. Women buy in to duty sex for the status and security, but get to run their own little networks on the side, for the fun of it. That has been the pattern in South Africa, Swaziland, Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe and a number of other countries where more than one adult in seven has HIV.

But woe betide anyone who points this out. At best, you are insensitive to cultural traditions. At worst, you are perpetuating racist myths of the hypersexualised African male, blah, blah, blah.

Now South Africa’s president is unrepentantly living the myth. He has been married five times, and is currently shared by three wives (one of the others killed herself). He’s got another fiancée in the wings for good measure. In 2006 he was acquitted of rape charges, and now we find he’s bonking the daughter of an old mate who’s running the World Cup organising committee. This puts him in good company. In neighbouring Swaziland, where one adult in three has HIV, the king sets an example by taking a new teenaged wife every couple of years — a baker’s dozen so far.

Following his rape trial, Zuma was ridiculed for testifying that he knew the woman he had unprotected intercourse with was HIV positive, but thought he could avoid contracting the virus by showering after sex. His latest escapade (you don’t father a child while wearing a condom) shows that he’s learned nothing. That’s the real scandal.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Talk about a Trojan horse. Now you can disguise your valuable, steal-able Macbook within something that no one would really want — an old-fashioned dead-trees paper book!

The covers, $79, are individually crafted to look like some worn and weathered tome pulled from the private library of a stately pile in Gloucestershire or Tuscany.

I love my iMac, and if I get a Macbook, I would definitely want to protect my investment and its contents.

But using a book-as-decoy to protect the means with which some of us are still actually producing books — the old-fashioned kind, printed and bound and sold in stores and, we hope, added to library shelves both public and private, in addition to their every possible electronic iteration — seems a little sad.

Morgunblaðið, Iceland’s oldest newspaper and most-visited website (now co-edited by the former prime minister and head of the central bank) has just announced an anti “deep linking” policy saying that Icelanders aren’t allowed to link to individual pages on the site, only the front door. Which is to say, the people of Iceland can no longer talk about any news online unless it happens to still be on the front page of the newspaper.

Morgunblaðið forbids “repeated and systematic use of links, including deep links, where a certain piece of news or other material is referred to”. Of course this is supposed to stop platforms like Google News to get traffic from aggregated material.

Curious if somebody dared ask the question in what way this wil really help Morgunblaðið.

Image by sultmhoor via Flickr

Here are this morning’s:

* Does racism affect teamwork in the NBA? — nope — I wasn’t aware of any such theory outside of this paper, but I don’t follow sports

* Chocoholic mice fear no pain — chocolate-craving mice are ready to tolerate electric shocks to get their fix — next up, humans

* Intrusive images and intrusive verbal thoughts are different phenomena — intrusive images are a a hallmark of post-traumatic disorder — understanding these basic processes is likely to be valuable in developing more effective treatments for PTSD that focus on maximizing change in verbal thoughts and intrusive images separately

* Patients with amygdala injury unafraid to gamble — looked at two women who had a rare condition which produced lesions on their amygdalae but no other brain damage — the patients whose amygdalae were damaged would play even if there was a much poorer ratio between gains and losses, and one sometimes played even if the potential loss was greater than the potential gain

* Speaking of charity as a signal for mating — Lap Dances for Haiti — “You don’t hear much about strip clubs giving back to the community.”

Follow Neuroworld on Twitter: @ryansager

Cover of Under the Dome: A Novel

I hadn’t read Stephen King since I was 12. Needful Things, which came out in 1991, was the last gasp of what you’d probably call a childhood obsession. Over about 16 months, helped by an aunt who ran a used book store in rural Montana, I devoured them all — The Stand, Misery, even his pseudonymous Bachman Books. I was hooked on the horror and drama, of course. But there was an inkling in the breakneck reading that I was being driven by desires more important than mere titillation.

On reflection — and as inspired by this latest reading — I now realize that my King thing was more than a child’s first crush on scary stories; it was a young man’s effort to figure out how to be an adult. Because — more than macabre tales — King’s novels almost always take some big-hearted stand on what is wrong and what is good and how we should live. (Cujo was about the frailty of man in the face of animals; The Stand about the inherent danger of big cities and the technology that comes with them; Pet Semetary cautioned us not to love animals — or each other — too much.) And a King book is invariably a very long book, a fact that made reading any of them feel like that much more of an accomplishment.

For a young man, there were also male characters to emulate. I’ll never forget one of the lead characters in It: He was a limousine driver, and we got deep into his head as he drives to help conquer a homicidal, sewer-dwelling clown. Years later, more memorable than the hash of metaphors belied by the clown battle was how this guy had conquered being a chubby kid by spending an entire summer eating salads. (He also drove two miles over the speed limit, the optimum rate for both gas efficiency and cop avoidance.)

But that older, slimmer me of course moved one. After my own summer eating salads, I gave up King for a brief fling with Chrichton, then a torrid affair with Grisham, then a workmanlike relationship with Clancy. By the time I was actually old enough to drive two miles over the limit, I had grown into what a whole new realm of literature, one in which a young man wasn’t grasping as furiously at the heavy, obvious emblems of adulthood. By then I didn’t need to: Manhood was staring me right in the mirror. I wasn’t as much reading to learn how to read and how to mimic; by then, mired, for real, in the high-school/college questions of how to live and what to do, I had graduated to the more subtler literary questions of beauty, discourse, rebellion, etc. And reading a 1,000-page book wasn’t any longer some feat of courage.

Nearly 20 years after the last time I’d read King, I was perusing my snobby journals and encountered glowing reviews of a novel in which a small Maine town is  trapped under a giant, impenetrable dome. How perfectly compelling! “It has the scope and flavor of literary Americana,” Janet Maslin wrote in the New York Times. That was argument enough to try King again. I bought Under the Dome and gave into an old familiar feeling: Hefting a 1,000-page book, I disappeared.

As I read obsessively over three days, plunging into the fast-paced fantasia with the bad old mania of a 12-year-old, I discovered not words to live by, but utterly unbelievable characters who spoke in hoary old cliches: (Actual quote from the novel: “He was high as a kite, happy as a clam, cools as a cucumber, other similes may apply.”) Were King’s books always this ridiculously half-baked? I encountered old men who were very, very bad; young women who were very, very horny; buff dudes who were very, very good; and a story line that ran very, very fast. (Nowhere else I’ve read has a lesbian couple been added to a story more gratuitously or more ridiculously.)

Still, I read and read, ignoring friends and family. I walked to the kitchen, thumbing pages as I took zombie steps. I forgot to eat, then I stopped sleeping. Then bad things started happening: I reached to hold a baby, looked in its gentle eyes, and imagined it biting my fingers off. At night, I was dreaming the world was ending in a lake of fire.

So not only was the book a hastily assembled dude’s ensemble, it had made me go a little crazy. But what did it mean that a book could still be so irresistible — every waking moment I was reading — yet at the same time be written so brutally and inelegantly? How could a writer — 20 years ago — have given me an idea of how to live, but now he made babies scary and sleep the terrain of doom?

Hundreds and hundreds of pages later, the experience seemed like more than a cruel lesson in the hazards of reading genre fiction. King had been my man, the guy who showed me how to love getting lost in a book. Sure, I’d given him up, but it’s not like I’d determined for good that our time had been wasted. Surely, though, my disappointment in reading Under the Dome felt like something final, the actual last gasp, some kind of referendum on the kind of writing that had first made me a reader.

How many times do you say goodbye, forever, to someone who had once been so important to you? Maybe it’s just that I’ve outgrown you, Mr. King. Never again, perhaps, will your big, too-fast books beckon, never again will I mount the semi-athletic trick of gorging on one of those lurid doorstops.

But never say never. As I read the final pages, I suppose I realized that King — in his ingenious knack for never letting something die — had left room for a return. Like some lurking sewer-clown or the overeager boy of 12 I once was, I guess there’s part of me that will always be curious, part of me that will always be up for the 1,000-page challenge. After all, who among us can resist the simple notion of a summer of salads, or life under a dome — no matter how ill or ill-at-ease they might make us.

Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife

The Ukrainian Central Election Committee has counted 99.94% of the ballots and prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko is down by almost 3.5%. The European Union has endorsed Sunday’s election, praising it for its “calm atmosphere,” “open campaign,” and the “genuine choice” presented to the voters. Yanukovich supporters partied in the streets on Monday as the international press crowned their man the presumptive winner.

What did Yulia do? She sulked through the day, remaining uncharacteristically silent before postponing and then canceling a press conference. It was a sign of scrambling. And then this morning, news leaked that, last night, in a closed-door meeting with her party members, Tymoshenko called for them to fight on, to contest ballots in the courts and to — oh geez — push for a third round of voting. “A third round is not actually stipulated in the law,” said a deputy head of Tymo’s party. “But it wasn’t stipulated in 2004 either,” she added, referring to the third round of voting that swept Yushchenko and Tymoshenko into power.

In 2004, the OSCE instantly reported that there was intimidation, multiple-voting and other violations at the polls. Given the unanimous endorsement of election observers this time around, given that her party members are publicly pleading with her to concede and go into the opposition (which, according to her advisers, she’s better at anyway) — given all this, asking for a third round just looks insane and undemocratic.

It’s also classic Tymoshenko.

After returning from Kiev in December, I wrote a profile of her for The New Republic in which I noted that Tymoshenko’s thirst for victory — and power — often blinds her.

Tymoshenko’s mania for quick victories, however, has often cost her, or her country, in the long run. Her constant back-biting with Yushchenko, for example, may have hurt his ratings, but it has dragged hers down as well. In November, she made a big show of fighting a swine flu epidemic that didn’t exist (the WHO said there was nothing unusual about Ukraine’s flu numbers). The spectacle briefly boosted her popularity but also triggered a dangerous hoarding of supplies. Within a month, Ukrainians had caught on to the game, costing Tymoshenko a dip in the polls…

If she wins, Tymoshenko’s presidency could also be hampered by the fact that, while she thrives on clashes with those she seeks to overtake, she often miscalculates once she’s on top. “She feels more comfortable in the opposition,” says her campaign adviser Taras Berezovets, “but she loves power.” Most notably, when Yushchenko called for new parliamentary elections in 2008, Tymoshenko blocked them in the courts in order to remain prime minister and refused, against the urgings of many in her party, to join the opposition. Then came the financial crisis, which slammed Ukraine especially hard. “If she had been in the opposition, she’d be the number one candidate right now, without a doubt,” says Fesenko of Kiev’s Center for Political Studies. “But she made the decision to get power and, as prime minister, ended up taking on all the responsibility for the crisis.”

A friend of mine once mocked Hillary Clinton during the 2008 presidential elections in the U.S., saying that she seemed like the type of woman who, at the age of 7, haggled and quibbled and cheated at Monopoly. Hillary, however, knew when to pack up the battle gear and get on board for the sake of the country. While she serves as a discreet and competent Secretary of State, observers of Ukrainian politics see a future in which Tymoshenko, back in the opposition, makes life hell for Yanukovich.

Because, to Tymoshenko, governance is a game, and the way to win is to haggle and quibble and cheat.

But no matter. If you want to come visit Moscow, you’ll still be paying boom prices so high that, if you can afford them, you probably didn’t know there was a kreezis anyway.

How expensive are Moscow hotels? Moscow hotels are soooo expensive that at an average rate — I repeat: average — of $420 a night — wait let’s stop and breathe on that one for a minute. $420 per night. On average.

Okay, so not only does that figure put Moscow hotels at a full $70-a-night higher than those of Abu Dhabi, it puts Moscow, again, in first place.

And, with GDP growth at -7.5%, hotel prices obviously aren’t coming down this year either.

via Gazeta.ru

Engel proposes that instead of revising our current federal education law we start with the end in mind, considering

…what should children be able to do by age 12, or the time they leave elementary school? They should be able to read a chapter book, write a story and a compelling essay; know how to add, subtract, divide and multiply numbers; detect patterns in complex phenomena; use evidence to support an opinion; be part of a group of people who are not their family; and engage in an exchange of ideas in conversation. If all elementary school students mastered these abilities, they would be prepared to learn almost anything in high school and college.”

She goes on to describe what a child’s classroom might look like if we followed this path:

Imagine, for instance, a third-grade classroom that was free of the laundry list of goals currently harnessing our teachers and students, and that was devoted instead to just a few narrowly defined and deeply focused goals. In this classroom, children would spend two hours each day hearing stories read aloud, reading aloud themselves, telling stories to one another and reading on their own…. Children would also spend an hour a day writing things that have actual meaning to them — stories, newspaper articles, captions for cartoons, letters to one another…. [C]hildren would also spend a short period of time each day practicing computation — adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. Once children are proficient in those basics they would be free to turn to other activities that are equally essential for math and science: devising original experiments, observing the natural world and counting things, whether they be words, events or people. These are all activities children naturally love, if given a chance to do them in a genuine way.”

(The op-ed includes a rationale for this design, so I encourage you to read the entire piece–it’s a quick read at only 800 words.)

I was left pondering whether or not this would be the ideal thing for children. On one hand, it sounds just like how I learn right now–through discovery. I might hear about an interesting documentary while talking with a friend, order it through Netflix, pause it a few times while watching to investigate a specific person or event on Wikipedia, then buy a book that allows me to delve deeper into the subject. And I usually will retain much of what I watch/read because I am interested in the topic and chose to pursue it. However, my elementary school education had a traditional structure and curriculum that did not include  much choice and was not driven by student interests. So there’s a part of me that thinks my early, traditional education may have played a part in getting me to where I am today–a voracious reader who is intellectually curious and understands and enjoys the process of learning.

Engel writes that “if we want to make sure all children learn, we will need to overhaul the curriculum itself,” and that the curriculum currently in place is “strangling children and teachers alike.” But as I noted in my February 3 post about the socioeconomic achievement gap, some solid research shows that schools help children achieve at about the same rate when in school; factors outside of the school building and school year seem to account for many students falling behind. A case can be made that these external factors strangle the ability of teachers to fully implement the curriculum and make sure all children learn.

What’s your take? Is Engel’s educational plan something you’d like your own children or grandchildren to experience? Do you think parents would respond if a national charter school network was designed around this model? Or are we blaming schools for not getting it right when in fact the current model works but other factors (I’m thinking primarily of poverty) are holding students back?

There is a yarzheit candle, meanwhile, flickering in my kitchen window. It marks the 20th anniversary of the death of my husband’s late wife, Judith Clancy. Had she lived, she would be 77 next month. She was a gifted artist whose drawings are in some significant museums and collections. Her work has been exhibited in France and a number of American cities.

Representative Murtha, despite some questionable financial issues, also had a distinguished career. It was a long one — a few weeks ago he became the longest-serving congressman from Pennsylvania. He died of complications from gall bladder surgery, a procedure after which my husband also recently suffered some pretty horrendous complications. But my husband, who was born a few years before the rest of us, survived. In the late news being reported as I type this, an announcer is once again noting Congressman Murtha’s death. “He was 77.”

There are reasons to appreciate tomorrow’s sunrise.

More Than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City, By William Julius Wilson, 2009

American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass, By Douglas Massey & Nancy Denton, 1993

Differentiating School Leadership: Facing the Challenges of Practice, By Daniel L. Duke, 2010

Also, I read some different blogs and online newspapers each day for my education news. These include:

Chicago Tribune Education Page (I think the Tribune does a better job covering urban education than any other media outlet, anywhere. From gang violence to violence prevention, from school reform efforts to early literacy programs, from politics to parenting to poverty, the Tribune’s writers produce substantive, relevant, well-written stories.)

Washington Post Education Page (This page includes regular news stories as well as blogs from Valerie Strauss & Jay Mathews)

National Journal Education Blog

Education Week

Public School Insights: What Is Working In Our Public Schools

If you’d like to pass along any education-related books, articles, or websites you’ve read lately, please post a comment!

Agreeing on standards is essential to ensure that we prepare teachers well for tomorrow’s classrooms. As University of Michigan’s Deborah Ball said to me during an interview last summer, how can we know what teachers should know and be able to do in a classroom until we know what we expect students to learn? That really is so very basic.”

Let’s hope that teachers, legislators, and citizens in our 50 states see it the same way. Creating national standards would allow educators to spend less time and energy creating different sets of standards and different tests, and more time and energy focusing on how to help children learn.

Image via Wikipedia

As detailed in a post last week, there’s no credible evidence that vaccines increase the risk for children contracting autism.What is significant, however, is the age of the parents when they conceive said child.Via the NY Times:

In a study published online on Monday in the journal Autism Research, the researchers analyzed almost five million births in California during the 1900s and 12,159 cases of autism diagnosed in those children–a sample large enough to examine how the risk of autism was affected when one parent was a specific age and the other was the same age or considerably older or younger.

What’s interesting about this study is that it shows how the relation in age between mother and father can also affect autism risk, so that men over 40 who have children with women under 30 have a 59 percent higher risk for having an autistic baby than if the man was younger.

Moreover, the UC Davis study showed that every five-year increase in a mother’s age meant a rise of 18 percent in terms of the risk of having an autistic child.

As a society, we are having children later in our years. There’s a lot to be said for that. Waiting until the folly of youth passes us by sounds sensible enough when entering into a project as serious as raising a child. On the other hand, there are risks with waiting. Downs syndrome–and now autism–are factors that are not easily ignored in the decision of when to pro-create.

Though the study did not find a matching rise in the number of women and men who had children later in their years as compared with the rise in the number of children diagnosed with autism, it may not be unreasonable to think that the difference can be made up for by the fact that older parents tend to be more engaged in every aspect of a child’s early years. In other words, the older the parent the more likely he or she will be to look for the first signs of trouble.

Don’t remember Crisis of Conformity? Perhaps the video of the reunion will jump your memory [via Unlikely Words and The Daily Swarm]:

Ok, there was no band by that name. But, kudos to “SNL” for a well-played satire of all-walks-of-life bands reuniting, especially when the lyrical content doesn’t quite match the modern reality of the individuals involved.

The Swarm played the cool covert punk in their post, mentioning members of Trenchmouth and Scream performed in Crisis of Conformity. For those curious about that headline, Fred Armisen was the drummer for Chicago art-punks Trenchmouth in the 90s, and Dave Grohl sat in on drums for D.C. hardcore punk act Scream before joining a little band called Nirvana.

What’s also interesting about this performance is that it’s quite possibly the closest thing to a hardcore punk show featured on “SNL” since Fear’s infamous spot on the program in 1981. The hardcore act was recruited to play the Halloween episode that year thanks to John Belushi (a fan of the band’s) and their set became one of the more infamous moment’s in “SNL” history. The video of said gig has been removed from YouTube, but let’s just say there’s a whole lot of shoving and things gone awry. (Or, feel free to check it out here.)

Image via CrunchBase

Putting a password on your phone is good for keeping a paranoid significant other from snooping. It’s also a good idea in case you’re arrested. From the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

Police in Daly City, California seized a suspect’s iPhone during his arrest. Hours later, investigators bypassed the password and searched through the data on the device without a search warrant. After the officers realized that the information was too extensive to write down, they finally obtained a warrant to search the phone.

EFF has urged the court to suppress evidence gathered by police from the suspect’s phone during the warrantless search, including contacts, called phone numbers, emails, text messages, Internet search history, and photos. EFF has also asked the judge to quash the warrant that was eventually issued in part based on the information illegally accessed on the phone.

via EFF Asks Court to Suppress Evidence Illegally Gathered From Password-Protected Phone | Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The court documents [PDF] offer a bit more detail. Christian Taylor is a founder of Hype UniverCity, a company with an annoying name and a confusing mission — something about harnessing college-bound students’ purchasing power. Whatever it is that Hype does, it requires many BlackBerrys.

Taylor went to a Sprint store to buy 30 BlackBerrys for his company, but he didn’t have proper documentation for his business with him. He said he would return the next day with his company’s tax id and articles of incorporation. For some reason, this made the clerk suspicious.

When Taylor returned the next day, the clerk called the police…

According to the complaint that EFF has filed on Taylor’s behalf, the police arrested Taylor and seized his iPhone:

Mr. Taylor’s iPhone was password protected. Rather than placing the phone in inventory, as is appropriate when an item is seized incident to arrest, Officer Bocci bypassed the password on the phone and searched its contents.

Apparently, Taylor didn’t have a very cryptic password?

Detective Bocci told Mr. Taylor that he knew how to access iPhone information because he used to own one. The officers then questioned Mr. Taylor about information they found during the search of the iPhone, including questions about why his girlfriend needed a nice new outfit to wear on Friday….

The information officers found stored on the iPhone, or by accessing Mr. Taylor’s email accounts via his iPhone includes, but is not limited to, the number 510-378-**** displayed on the phone, the number Defendant provided on the booking sheet, a large amount of information, including phone book contacts, called phone numbers, emails, text messages, Internet search history, and photos.

The EFF has filed a motion to have the evidence found during this warrantless search suppressed. (They don’t include information about what incriminating evidence was found or why buying 30 BlackBerrys is suspicious.)

Still: Just because a police officer knows how to operate an iPhone doesn’t mean that the Fourth Amendment ceases to exist.

It also illustrates why it’s important to put a fairly complex password on your smartphone. “1-2-3-4″ — or whatever easy combination Taylor likely chose — isn’t going to cut it.

I’ll therefore focus my commentary elsewhere, and in doing so, I must admit that he gets this exactly right:

Sarah Palin’s speech to the Tea Party convention in Nashville showcased all of the former Alaska governor’s strengths. She was confident, funny, down-to-earth, at times emotional–and she took a scalpel to the Obama administration and congressional Democrats.

Read that passage carefully, and you’ll see that Mr. Continetti acknowledges, whether slyly or inadvertently, that Ms. Palin’s strengths are limited to confidence, humor, down-to-earthiness, and an ability to attack the opposition party. Conspicuously missing from her list of strengths are intelligence, prudence, foreign policy experience, self-awareness, impressive achievements, patience, perseverance, integrity, intellectual honesty, and rhetorical precision.

Normally intelligent writers refrain from touting politicians who lack these qualities, but not Mr. Continetti, who continues to marshal his considerable talent in Ms. Palin’s service. The second paragraph in his piece is a small example of how far he is willing to go as her sycophant:

The timing of the speech was also significant. Palin used the talk, broadcast live on Fox News Channel and C-SPAN, to respond to the president’s State of the Union address from last week. Palin’s mention that today is Ronald Reagan’s birthday positioned her squarely among his heiresses.

So talented is Mr. Continetti that I almost read right past that without pausing, but wait a minute — can politicians now position themselves as heir or heiress to Ronald Reagan, the political figure most beloved of conservatives, merely by mentioning his birthday? Perhaps Ms. Palin can also give speeches on the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln, F.A. Hayek and Winston Churchill, positioning herself as their heiresses too. “The media are playing into Palin’s hands,” Mr. Continetti writes. “They’ve used her celebrity as an excuse to cover her relentlessly even though she holds no office–and yet the attention helps her communicate to her supporters and reach out to audiences who may be giving her a second thought.” It is truly jaw-dropping to see Mr. Continetti of all people slag the media for covering the former governor relentlessly despite the fact that she holds no office.

Image via Wikipedia

With another storm set to dump up to 16 inches more on the nation’s capital Tuesday and Wednesday, the federal government will be closed for a second straight day tomorrow.

Has anyone noticed?

Less than a month after the Congress scuttled health care — after a full year of debate — does anybody care?

There actually could be some environmental benefits.  Less hot air from the halls of Congress may allow all that fresh snow to linger awhile and reduce global warming a bit to boot.  That, of course, could be more progress on energy policy than our elected officials have made in years.

I hope they did remember to turn off the lights before they left.

Image via CrunchBase

Apparently, the big New York Times piece on the relationship between Goldman and AIG (okay, I’m self-serving — I’ll link you to my blog piece on it) has really struck a cord at Goldman. It has posted an item-by-item response on The Huffington Post (okay, fair is fair — here’s the link to that).

The responses seem namby pamby to me, using words rather than facts. But I’m not ready to go to the mat on that, maybe there’s more substance than I’m picking up on.

I can’t quite understand the choice of Huffington Post as the venue for combat, though. Toyota, after all, took full-page ads in newspapers detailing its recalls — and apologizing, while it was at it. Goldman apparently doesn’t think it has anything to apologize for — but it still seems to me that an ad, maybe even a double-truck, would make sense. Goldman certainly can afford it.

Why doesn’t it tackle the Times on its home court, buy ads in the business section to tell its side of the story? I don’t think Blankfein et al are silly enough to say they won’t financially support the paper that blasted them. But imagine the impact of an ad that says, The New York Times got it maliciously wrong — running in the New York Times??!! And I don’t think the paper would be silly enough to refuse to run it. If it did, think of the impact of an ad in, say, the Wall Street Journal that trumpets the fact that the Times declined to accept it?

All told, a muddled PR response in the Huffington Post seems way below the fight-back level I’ve come to expect from the Bad Boys of Wall Street.

Image via Wikipedia

The soon-to-be released remake of “We Are the World,” a mega-collaboration of artists to benefit Haiti, will feature one hip-hop star who has been out of the limelight as of late; and another who is on his way out.

Kanye West, who I noted was conspicuously left out of the lineup to perform at the Grammys despite having a prominent role in the song “Forever,” took part in the charity single. Lil Wayne did also – perhaps the last time the rapper will be in a recording studio before he begins a stint in prison.

The hip-hop community was well-represented on the performer list for “We Are the World,” which was once again organized by Lionel Richie, Quincy Jones, and other industry veterans who helped spearhead the effort the first time around. Hip-hop veteran LL Cook J helped craft a good chunk of the rap lyrics, at the request of Quincy Jones. Among the hip-hop stars contributing were: will.i.am, Wyclef Jean, LL Cool J, Akon, Snoop Dogg, Busta Rhymes, Kid Cudi and Bizzy Bone. They joined performers from various other genres, including Barbra Streisand, Josh Groban, Celine Dion and Pink.

I know what you’re thinking – it’s about time Snoop Dogg and Barbra Streisand finally got around to working together.

Jones told the media in a statement:

“Twenty five years ago, the entertainment industry showed the power of community to help our fellow man when we recorded ‘We Are The World’ to bring relief to those suffering from famine in Ethiopia. And while the need to assistant Africa continues, today the country of Haiti is suffering immeasurably from the destruction due to the recent earthquake and is in immediate need of relief that will last long after the television cameras have left. As artists, we have joined together on this 25th anniversary and in the spirit of ‘We Are The World’ to help meet that need.”

The remake will premiere this Friday, during the opening ceremony for the Vancouver Winter Olympic Games

The revelations came in the midst of a U.N.-backed trial of Taylor at The Hague on 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity during Sierra Leone’s 1990s civil war. Taylor is accused of directing a Sierra Leone rebel group, the United Revolutionary Front (RUF), in a campaign aimed at securing access to the country’s diamond mines. The rebel movement stands accused of committing mass atrocities in the late 1990s in the West African country, including the mutilation of thousands of civilians.

The international prosecutors contend that Taylor offered concessions to Western individuals in exchange for lobbying work aimed at enhancing his image in the United States. The prosecution maintains that Taylor also spent $2.6 million on lobbying firms and public relations outfits in the hopes of influencing the policies of former President Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

Under cross-examination, Taylor said that Robertson had volunteered to make Liberia’s case before U.S. administration officials, and had spoken directly to President Bush about Taylor. He also confirmed that Robertson’s company, Freedom Gold Limited, signed an agreement to exploit gold in southeastern Liberia, but that it never generated any profit.

“Mr. Taylor, indeed at one point you said that you can count on Pat Robertson to get Washington on your side,” he was asked by the lead prosecution counsel, Col. Brenda Hollis, a former U.S. Air Force officer. Taylor replied: “I don’t recall the exact words, but something to that effect.”

A spokesman for Robertson, Chris Roslan, confirmed that Robertson was awarded a gold exploration concession by the Liberian government during the 1990s. But he said that there was “no quid pro quo” to provide the government with anything in return. Roslan said the company, Freedom Gold, is no longer in operation and has never found any gold.

Image via Wikipedia

From somewhere beneath a snow mound north of D.C., a friend in Montgomery County, Md., writes:

We got 30″ of snow!  It’s crazy here!  The universe is telling us: SLOW DOWN.  You are not in control!

Read the daily headlines and you know she’s right. This is the time of year when the dour drumbeat of negative news meets the dreariness of  too little sun and too little sensory stimulation.  It’s the time when I miss the fragrance of lilacs, the taste of a ripe peach, the smell of fresh cut grass, the look (at my age, that’s it) of the opposite sex wearing something stylish and maybe a tad revealing.

I miss, too, the sound of something other than the cold wind that’s now whistling through my sixth-story office window. I miss the  sense of life renewed, of rebirth, of the hope and promise that is always Spring.

On this eighth day of February, I can’t much hope for the crocuses to break through the frozen ground anytime soon.  But my friend Heather’s note leaves me with a little hope.  Let the heaven’s dump,  late at night, when Kathy and I are both safe at home. Let it snow so hard that we can’t open the door, that we have no choice but to build a fire and read a book, or, better yet, go back to bed, pull up the covers and sleep for, say, two months.

Now that would truly be grand.

American Airlines at SEA. Sue Frause photo.

I remember when Air Canada started charging two bucks for a pillow back in 2005. It was in fact an inflatable pillow, and along with it you received a polyester blanket.

Beginning May 1, 2010 American Airlines is charging $8 for a blue fleece blanket and an inflatable pillow.

But apparently this is sort of old news. In February 2009, US Airways was selling a reusable blanket and pillow kit for $7. And JetBlue also started charging passengers $7 for a blanket and pillow in 2008.

Years ago, I used to laugh at the occasional trave;er who would board the plane with his/her personal bed pillow as part of the cargo. What next, passengers in Snuggies?

Image via Wikipedia

I was over at the Fox News website–digging around for something to disagree with– when I had one of those “I hate when they’re right about something” moments.  Of course, it wasn’t about anything happening in DC or the world,  but a shared hatred of the pornification of young girls by megastars and megacorporations.

The latest pornified 8 year old is none other than Myley Cyrus’s little sister, Noah, and her Disney “Hanna Montana” star pal, Emily Grace Reaves.  It seems Emily recently launched a line for Oh La La Coutour, the Emily Grace line, that is lingerie for the little ones.

According to the official press release announcing the line in September, the designs feature “versatile styles that can be worn with sweet ballerina slippers, casual sneakers or paired with lace stockings and boots for more of a rock and roll look.”

Okay, I suppose “rock and roll style” might involve animal prints and corsets… for eight year olds.  But take a look at these images from the line:

Is that a pole in the background?  Are there ANY parents involved in any decisions made in these kids’ families- including Ms. Miley there, who as you might recall did pose almost topless for Vanity Fair at aged 15.  But 15 is a sexual age. It’s supposed to be anyway, even if crazy religious groups would like 15-year-old girls to pledge eternal virginity and wear “promise rings” from their fathers.

Eight is NOT.  I’m not going to impose on any sexualized being’s “right” or “choice” to dress like a sex worker and call it fashion, despite having serious doubts that such fashion is “liberating.”  But as 3rd Wave Feminism has been telling us, there’s something “liberating” about embracing one’s inner lap dancer.

And I supposed to be fair to the mostly middle-class white women who think “pole dancing” is both fashion and a great exercise class (as opposed to the primarily poor and disproportionately of color women who do it for a living), engaging in their own pornification can provide some resistance to the “sexual innocence” and “purity of white womanhood” so near and dear to the racial hierarchies of America.

But seriously – is there anyone who believes there is anything resistant or liberating about turning little girls into “female chauvinist pigs”?  Does anyone other than the Cyrus family and Disney and all the rest of the megastars and megacorporations making a profit off of the pornification of 2nd graders think this is a good idea?

I have to  believe that when Fox News and I both think that the pornification of 2nd grade girls is a bad idea, then most of America will not be buying these slutty little numbers for their 8-year-old girls.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

John Murtha, Pennsylvania Democrat, Vietnam war combat veteran and outspoken Iraq war critic died on Monday at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, Va., spokesman Matthew Mazonkey said.

Although Mutha’s strong stance against the war in Iraq surprised many,  he was beloved by veterans and veterans groups for his support for the Veterans Administration, as well as various hospitals and Veterans facilities.

As more troops will be sent overseas, Veterans will continue to need as much attention and support as possible.  The documentary, “When I Came Home” examines the issue of homeless U.S. military veterans-from Vietnam to Iraq-who struggle to receive the benefits promised to them by their government.

McCain: Congressman Tancredo went on TV and he was the first opening speaker and he said, ‘People who could not even spell the word vote or say it in English put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House whose name is Barack Hussein Obama.’ And then he went on to say that people at the convention should have to pass literacy tests in order to be able to vote in this country, which is the same thing that happened in the 50’s to prevent African Americans from voting. It’s innate racism and I think it’s why young people are turned off by this movement. And I’m sorry, but revolutions start with young people, not with 65-year-old people talking about literacy tests and people who can’t say the word ‘vote’ in English.

The knee-jerk “government is bad” argument against health care reform, the jobs bill or banking regulations is always “it creates more bureaucracy.” This is mainly from Republicans who want to be called lawmakers. Yes, there are people working in the government – gladly cashing their government paychecks – whose default is always that the government is incompetent. And admitting government can’t do anything right actually, sometimes, gets them elected.

Which is like hiring a mechanic who prefers not do anything that requires wearing overalls, using power tools or knowing what a car looks like – but he knows a guy…

Bureaucracy is always bad, you see. It’s slow, deliberate and full of well – bureaucrats. People who thrive on rules and checks and balances. A bunch of hall monitors. Form filling bed-wetters.

The alternative to bureaucracy? Privatization. Yes, the private sector is the cure-all for all the cumbersome, slow-witted, pencil pushers in the government. The sexy private sector is full of innovators we’re told – entrepreneurs. People who are moving and shaking and forward thinking. The private sector is shaping our future.

So the next time you have to call AT&T about a mistake on your bill, or your Internet going out or why your cell phone works perfectly on the Inca Trail but not in your living room, think of how much better the private sector works. Yes, after you’ve been transferred to the fifth person who also isn’t accountable, knowledgeable or responsible for how poorly the mega-corporation is performing think of how horrible it would be to have more bureaucracy. And when they tell you the call is being recorded for quality assurance because after an hour of being transferred to three continents you still need assurance, smile inside that this is a preferred alternative to your tax dollars being wasted.

And to anyone who’s ever been harassed for years by a billing department mix-up only to have the charge show up as unpaid on your credit report take heed, at least it’s not the anal-retentive IRS with all that red tape. And when Capitol One just arbitrarily decides your APR should be north of 33%, feel pride that at least there’s not a government bureaucrat between you and your banker. And the next time Bank of America charges you unlimited overdraft fees and you’re left with absolutely no recourse look up at that shiny red, white and blue sign and feel the glow of patriotism because it’s not the dreaded government interfering in your life.

From a consumer vantage point – privatized bureaucracy seems an awful lot like regular bureaucracy.

Waiting in line at the court house to clear up a parking ticket is the same hour spent in line at your cable company to switch out your defective DVR. All tedious, de-humanizing, time-sucking authoritative bodies are the same to their victims. The only difference is politics. No wonder people are afraid of the government taking over Medicare (psst it’s a government program). It’s one giant soulless entity being confused with another giant soulless entity. The right would have us believe it’s the government that’s the problem and the left would have us believe it’s the unregulated corporations. A privatized world is no utopia – not anymore than a government run one is. It would be nice to have a healthy pool of both, however.

The difference between the government and the private sector is you don’t have people pulling a paycheck in the private sector championing for more money and power to go into the government.

The only reason the government is preferable is because it doesn’t turn a profit. Its motives are not to make money and it is at least successful at that. Plus in the government you and I are the shareholders. We have ownership of our government, ideally. We have a say. It’s for the people, by the people. If bureaucracy is an inevitable evil, a symptom of civilization, between the private sector and government, between the DMV or Etna, I’ll choose indifference over monetization.

There are common factors to all of these scare-tactic conversations:  South Korea has a gaming problem that bleeds over into their normal lives, children grow up with technology and no-one understands the effect it may have, and the Internet is fast replacing knowledge retention.  As if these issues weren’t enough, speculation tends to be produced that “Google is making us stupid”, “multitasking is a deficient behavior”, “technology is separating humanity from itself”, along with many, many more unfounded claims.

The stark reality is, however, that the latest generation of technology, known as the Internet, is not particularly new in its lifestyle changes – radio, television, and movies changed entertainment forever; telephones radically augmented the process of communication; video games of eras past invaded the lives of children; the printing press changed the format of learning.  What is the Internet, if not an amalgamation of all of these former revolutions?

With the Internet comes email, video games, social networking, entertainment delivery, and myriad distractions – these are not aspects of a scary revolution, but instead a continuation of humanity’s past.  It is always the older generations that fear new technology, however primitive, and claim it will bring about the end of both society and humanity, so the latest bout of fear mongering is, at best, thin.  When video game arcades first appeared, just like home television, parents and pundits alike feared it would destroy their children’s minds and forever entrap them in a fantasy world – almost exactly the same fear now being vocalized about the latest round of technological evolution.

This is not to say that the Internet is an entirely safe place, since there are various dangers both known and unknown, but merely that an individual’s depth of immersion is entirely dependent upon themselves – if they have an addictive personality, video games become just another vehicle for their disposition, in place of alcohol or drugs.  A lack of judgment is undoubtedly the downfall of individuals that choose to spend entire weekends on gaming binges, or eschew the real world for an entirely fantasy, just as an introverted bookworm may spend all of their time reading novels.

If the Internet, or any technological revolution, were to be as destructive as its detractors would have the world believe, then what is to explain the younger generations’ last ten years?  While the world collapses at the hands of the Baby Boomers, the under-30’s have been busy building software, inventing new technologies, envisioning the future, and, above all, communicating across the world – these are not the behaviors of individuals with damaged brain matter.

There will always be a vocal group of Chicken Little-esque individuals that harbor resentment and fear of the unknown, and that is exactly what the Internet represents to everyone involved: there is no way of knowing what new innovation could legitimately change the world from one day to the next.  Technology, and humanity, seem to be evolving at a faster pace, but it is definitively in the direction of progress.

The sky still is not falling.

Kyle can be found on his blog, via email, or on Twitter.

The Forbes Q&A is a good summation of Dobbs’s new position, and similar to that of other mainstream conservatives– regulate immigration as a function of labor market needs, and make it easier for people to enter the country legally.

DOBBS: If there is any lesson over the past decade it is that this is a warm, welcoming, energetic economy and nation. But we cannot responsibly continue to leave open our borders and our port for the purposes of a responsible immigration policy. I’ve made it very clear that I’m in favor of higher levels of immigration into this country if indeed the economy and our society requires it and if it is an expression of conscious public policy. That said, why are we not talking about it in terms of the needs of the nation and the needs of the businesses and the economy for labor. And what type of labor we should be bringing in.

After a White House meeting christened the “carp summit,” federal and state officials today announced a multi-pronged attack with a $78.5 million price tag to prevent Asian carp, an invasive species, from establishing populations in Lake Michigan.

….

The new strategy calls for a multi-tiered defense of the Great Lakes to keep carp out which scientists try to develop biological controls to prevent the prolific, non-native fish from developing self-sustaining populations.

Officials said a priority is limiting the number of carp that enter Lake Michigan. Key containment measures include:

• Constructing and operating a third electric barrier on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal at the cost of $10.5 million. Two existing barriers are near Romeoville, Ill.
• Awarding a $13.2 million contract next month to construct concrete and chain-link fencing between the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal and the Des Plaines River. The aim is to prevent fish passing around electric barriers when flooding occurs.
• Opening Chicago’s navigational locks less frequently to block carp movement and studying the feasibility and impact of permanent lock closure.
• Deploying larger field crews to conduct physical and sonar observation, electro-shocking and netting.
• Testing 120 water samples a week, twice the current number, for eDNA, which refers to environmental DNA showing trace amounts of carp.

via Officials detail plan to handle Asian carp threat – Chicago Breaking News.

he would not have let my mother vote.

Over the weekend, a group calling themselves Tea Party Nation held a gathering at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center. There, with many dressed in their finest Revolutionary War outfits, they paid good money to listen to a handful of speakers, including someone who briefly served as the Governor of Alaska.

One of those speakers was former Republican Congressman Thomas Gerard Tancredo, a small man with a giant appetite for hate. During his less than remarkable speech, Mr. Tancredo claimed people “who could not even spell the word ‘vote’ or say it in English” essentially decided the last election. You know? The one that put an African-American in the White House. He went on to suggest a literacy test be required to insure such a travesity does not ever again happen to the country he claims to love. A literacy test which would effectively bring back the days of Jim Crow. A literacy test which prevented African-Americans from voting. A literacy test which was banned by the Voting Rights Act of 1964.

 Now, you would expect such statements to produce outrage from the crowd or, at the very least, a smattering of boos. Well, you would be wrong, such sane acts do not occur in the Real America of either Tea Party revelers or GOP supporters. Tancredo received wild applause and later was congratulated by Jason Phillips, founder of Tea Party Nation, who called the former Congressman,”an amazing politician.”

 It is no secret Tancredo hates immigrants–regardless of color or nationality. He doesn’t see them as hard-working people trying to make a life in this country (much like his very own Italian-born grandparents). He puts no human face to them at all. Which means, Mr. Tancredo would have hated my mother.

My mother was born in Italy. By the age of 24, she had already suffered the loss of a husband, a six-month old child and a younger brother to disease and the bombs of World War II. Eight years later, she married my father and spent 35 years in a long, lonely, abusive and poverty-ravaged relationship. In the process, though she spoke barely a word of English, she became a proud citizen of the United States. She voted in every election, even though she could neither pronounce the word ‘vote’ nor spell it. I remember the hours we both put in as she prepped for the test which would certify her as a US citizen. One of the questions was to name the first President of the United States. In the event my mom forgot George Washington’s name, I asked her to keep a dollar bill folded in her hand.

She passed the test and cried when the Judge pronounced her and the others in the crowded room US citizens.

But if Tom Tancredo had his way, she would never have had the chance to vote. Instead, she would be ridiculed by a small-minded man and his merry band of followers. And maybe my mother couldn’t speak English as well as Mr. Tancredo but here’s what else my mother couldn’t and wouldn’t do:

She wouldn’t join a group called Young Americans for Freedom as the student activist Tancredo did and give speeches in support of the Vietnam War. But when it came time to show his real Tea Bag colors, as it did when he received 1-A draft status in 1970, Mr. Tancredo did not go fight as he had urged so many others to do. He came armed with a doctor’s note which claimed he suffered from depression and panic attacks reducing his status to 1-Y deferment. Further proof that the ones who are always eager to send our young men and women into harm’s way have never themselves fought in the field of battle. They just go to the dinners.   

My mother would not raise her hand as Mr. Tancredo did when asked during a Republican debate for the Presidential nomination if he did not believe in the theory of evolution. She knew her Bible and may have lacked for a formal education, but she wasn’t an idiot–she never bought into the theory of a man with a white beard sitting on a cloud who looked an awful lot like Charlton Heston inventing the world and all that’s in it in six days and on the seventh kicked back and popped open a keg of beer.

My mother would not create something called Team America as Tancredo did and put it in the hands of a man who assaulted and insulted an African-American woman and pled guilty to the charges. She would certainly not have kept him on the job after he copped the plea, as Tancredo chose to do.

She would not have voted against the renewal of the Voting Rights Act as Mr. Tancredo has done nor would she have called Justice Sonia Sotomayor a racist as he has done on more than one occasion.

 My mother died in 2004, so she did not hear the words spoken by this angry and bitter man. But there are others who did hear them and said nothing. Not one single representative of the Republican Party has yet to condemn his words. And they have had plenty of opportunity to do so, to come down on the hate and to side with what is good and decent.

 You know who did pin Tancredo to the mat? Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas. On an MSNBC program, Moulitsas came out in favor of health care reform and used the care given to veterans as an example of a government-run program. On the other side, Tom Tancredo scoffed at such a notion and claimed that veterans would prefer a private choice.

And that was his big mistake, taking on Moulitsas. Yes, the right can attack the man and they like to poke fun of him, but the kid has chops and the kid also has done something Tancredo and his ilk never had the courage to do–he served his country. “I’m a veteran,” Moulitsas said. “I did not get a deferment because I was too depressed to fight a war I supported in Vietnam. I’m a veteran and veterans want a more effective V.A.”

 And what did Tom Tancredo do? He demanded an apology for being called what he was–a coward–and when he did not get one he stormed off the show. As he does whenever he is asked to stand his ground and fight, Tancredo runs. Maybe he headed for the doctor’s office to get another note. 

My mother would have loved that. She always liked it when punks were shown the door and bullies were beaten at their own game.

 I was ashamed to learn that Tom Tancredo is Italian-American. As if we didn’t have it bad enough with a high drop-out rate and growing drug problem among our youth. And for every Mario Cuomo we get up and out, we somehow end up with a million tattooed melons like the “Jersey Shore” crowd. So, the last thing we as a group needed on our plate was this gnat spewing his venon in Nashville.   

I’m afraid the hate will not end, there are far too many people in this country who feel the way Mr. Tancredo does. Some hide their words better, some are sharper and have learned to use the coded language that their fellow brethern seem to understand and embrace, others are brazen and shout it out loud and often. The election of an African-American has given them free reign to open the flood gates of hatred–of minorities, immigrants, gays, working women, or just anyone who is not like them, looks like them, thinks as they do.

I don’t know what kind of an America these people who ridicule science, insult hard-working immigrants (many who have sons and daughters fighting overseas, Mr. “Can I have another Xanax”  Tancredo), mock gays, hate unions, and point with disdain at other countries as if our land was perfect and free of poverty and strive want.

They do seem eager to embrace war, that never seems to bother them, so long as they are not the ones doing the fighting and the dying.  

They look to the past for their answers, a past where they controlled the levers, where they decided who could vote and who couldn’t and who could work and who had to sit by the sidelines and watch. 

A past filled with discrimination and hatred.

A past where a woman like my mother would be laughed at for not being able to say the word ‘vote’ or spell it. As if that very act serves as the calling card of a model citizen.

A past where the tools of ignorance were embraced as if they were a badge of honor.

A past that is all too painfully crawling on its belly toward our present.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

In the spring of 2007, I got to spend a chunk of a Washington, DC morning in a press question and answer session with Rep. John Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat who passed away today at the age of 77. I always liked the Congressman and members of his staff, and he gave an impressive performance that day, cogently switching back and forth between the details of the fight over funding for the Iraq War and the mind-numbing boredom of various defense appropriations issues. The assembled DC press corps that morning had its attentions split between the hardware of war machinery and the human tolls of war itself.

That was kind of Murtha in a nutshell – a man who could talk defense appropriations as clearly as he could talk about the personal cost of the national defense.

For the appropriations part of it, you can say what you want about all the pork he sent back home, and the ethical cloud it left hanging over him. But in a Congress with representatives who serve districts that elect and reward with re-election men and women who make their homes better places, it’s hard to argue with the results that the Congressman achieved – look at the number of things in the Johnstown area with the Murtha name attached to them. However right-leaning his district was (they voted McCain in 2008!), they kept sending him back to Congress, by comfortable margins.

And this whole point about the right-leaning tendencies of his district is an important one when you consider what really stands as the legacy of his final years on the national stage. Murtha probably single-handedly changed the discussion about the Iraq War in 2005.

It felt like Murtha was the one who really put some iron in the spine of the anti-Iraq War movement among Democrats in Congress. As an honored Marine, Rep. Murtha was able to speak proudly and fairly about why the American mission in Iraq had to change, and without charges that he was a coward (although there were some who tried). Until he helped galvanize the anti-war feelings that had bubbled up from the left into something that a broader swath of Americans could get behind, the Bush administration was showing every sign of letting inertia run its course, all while tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians were being slaughtered by a worsening civil war among the country’s endless assortment of factions.

The good guys rarely win in America, certainly in any outright fashion. We are not yet out of Iraq. American men and women still die there, and the political situation remains fractious. But Murtha made it possible to change the discussion from “we have to beat the terrorists at all costs” to “a moment is coming when America must leave.” And I hope that more than airports and other pork, Murtha will be remembered for that accomplishment in the annals of America’s congressional history.

Benny Hinn (not Benny Hill) is a multimillionaire/TV evangelist/faith healer. He claims to heal people simply by touching them. While on Larry King Live, Hinn said that if people touched their television sets while he prayed for them, they would be healed.

My goal is to save tons of money healing my ailments without bothersome doctors and all their medical hoo-ha.

Onward to the land of Benny Hinn!

ON YOUR MARKS, GET SET, BE HEALED!

In order to test the healing waters, I’ve decided to walk with crutches and wear a fashionable Swine Flu hospital mask. As I hobble toward the entrance of a big gaudy building, I begin shouting Benny Hinn’s name.

“Do you need some help?” asks a man in an expensive suit manning the door to a room that appears to have been decorated by the same guy who did Michael Jackson’s house.

“No,” I mumble from beneath my Swine Flu mask. “Benny Hinn will take care of that.” Then I add, “Does he heal everyone in the audience?”

“He doesn’t heal you,” clarifies a woman standing by a metal detector and sign that reads No Weapons Allowed. “God heals you!”

“Do I need to sign up or anything so he can heal me?” I ask, slightly lifting up my Swine Flu mask so she can understand me.

“He’ll pick people from the audience,” she explains, moving back slightly.

The metal detector goes nuts as I crutch through.

“Oh, just go right on in,” says one of the many large security guards, leaving me safe in the knowledge that used crutches and a Swine Flue mask make suitable credentials to bypass security.

Crutching on, I pass many photos of Benny Hinn in action. Some look like he was awkwardly inserted via Photoshop. There’s Benny Hinn with the Pope, Benny Hinn with Mother Teresa, Benny Hinn holding a small child towards the heavens and various people weeping, weeping, weeping – all touched by the miraculous hand of Hinn.

As a big-haired woman shows me to my seat, I accidentally step on several people’s feet trying to crutch to my chair.

“Sorry,” I say while lifting my Swine Flu mask. Tacky fountains, Greek pillars and ornate chairs make the This Is Your Day set look like a king’s living room, or the set of a get-rich-quick-through-real estate infomercial.

“Let me take those for you,” requests the woman with big hair. She then walks away with my crutches (perhaps this is Benny Hinn’s first step towards helping me walk on my own!).

People’s hands are in the air in stick-em-up fashion, singing along with Benny Hinn when a swarthy man with logic-defying hair takes the podium. His suit looks very expensive.

“I got some great news!” he excitedly announces. “We just got the building next door. They wanted $10 million, but we got it for $7.2 million!” The crowd hoots and hollers.

“Now we’ve got to start raising the money!” Benny Hinn adds with a laugh.

Read on…….

SHOWTIME!

The filming starts.

“The following program has been made possible by viewers like you,” announces a voice from somewhere (heaven?), forgetting to include that the viewers have also made Benny Hinn’s private jet possible.

Benny Hinn kicks things off by announcing his arena healing tour. Having just returned from Central America, the tour represents the U.S. leg of Hinn’s perpetual road trip of Madison Square Garden-sized venues (Benny Hinn is the AC/DC of faith healing).

“Today, I want to tell you what we did in Panama. Twenty thousand people were turned away,” he states. “Three deaf mutes were healed!”

“Praise Jesus!” exclaims the believer next to me, shaking her head.

“This woman came back to Panama to die. She’s not going to die. She’s healed of uterus cancer!” Benny Hinn proclaims to the audience. Now howling in a Ricki Lake-like fashion, Hinn adds, “God healed the people of Panama. Now… HE WANTS TO HEAL YOU!”

The crowd goes religiously ape-sh*t. We’ve taken the bait. Benny Hinn closes his eyes.

“Bone cancer has just been healed. Thank you, Jesus! I see someone with cancer of the spine. Thank you, Jesus! Someone’s ears have been healed. Thank you, Jesus! Someone’s leg has been healed. Thank you, Jesus!”

He doesn’t tell us who these people are, but we take his word they’re being totally healed. The religious organ music builds, and Benny Hinn looks directly into the camera. “I want to do more of these crusades like in Panama.”

Gazing at the monitor, I feel as if he is talking to me, and only me. I’m hypnotized.

“Partners, all you need to spend is less than a dollar a day!” He stresses this, I believe, with condescension.

I nearly reach for my wallet to pull out handfuls of money. Luckily, I have none.

BRING OUT THE GUESTS

Benny Hinn’s first guest is a Baptist woman with poodle hair, author of a book called Spiritual Housecleaning. She is the most uptight woman on the planet.

“That magazine hidden under your son’s mattress can affect your whole household,” she stresses with extreme concern. “It’s spiritual pollution and can bring demons into your entire household.”

Whoa, that seems a bit harsh. But there’s more.

“Sometimes people have arguments that only happen at home. That’s because you have demons in your house!”

She goes on to list other things that bring demons into your home: antiques (you don’t know who owned them before), books by certain authors, Pokemon (”it’s a little demon in your pocket!”) and, of course, Potter, Harry Potter.

“There’s something un-Christian about that book,” she bellows with fervor, making an angry face. “Harry Potter is not Witchcraft 101. It’s advanced witchcraft!”

She urges parents to go through their children’s rooms and proclaim, “Spirit of God, show me anything that needs to be removed from my house!” at which point you’re supposed to burn the offending items on a big bonfire, or, as the most-uptight-woman-in-all-the-world stresses, “pawn anything of value and send the money to Benny Hinn.”

“I REBUKE THE ENEMY!” Benny Hinn interjects. The crowd goes Pentecostal on his ass with shouts of “Amen!”

TIME TO HEAL!

The next 30 minutes are used as an infomercial for a myriad of Benny Hinn tie-in merchandise. I’m starting to feel possessed by the powers of Satan, because I want to SCREAM! I begin looking for my crutches (where the hell are they?) so I can hobble out of here faster than you can say brimstone.

But before I can make a quick exit, Benny Hinn goes mad with healing power. People are healed left and right! All at the touch of a hand! I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s freakin’ weird.

“Those who are sick, place your hand on that part of the body, and I will heal that sickness in the name of Jeeee-sus!”

Since I can’t find where they hid my damn crutches, I place my hand on my little finger (I cut it while slicing a bagel).

“There’s somebody getting healed in the shoulder,” Benny Hinn cries. No one fesses up. Regardless, Benny Hinn adds with uncanny telepathic power, “You feel warmth on your shoulder and you’re sitting to my right.”

With the anonymous shoulder work complete, Hinn adds, “Thank you Jesus!”

Now I’m beginning to feel a little skeptical. That’s quite a stretch, considering all he had to do was look at someone touching his shoulder. To the right of the stage is a group of people in wheelchairs and walkers. There’s a man in a neck brace. Why the hell doesn’t he heal one of them?! You don’t have to play peek-a-boo games to see they need healing. Maybe God doesn’t want to heal them!

Instead, This Is Your Day becomes like the flippin’ Price Is Right.

“Lady in red, do you have a problem with your lower back? Come here, come here. God is healing you!”

The lady in red runs towards the stage.

He touches her head.

“I REBUKE IT IN THE NAME OF JESUS!”

She lets out an audible shriek. Benny Hinn’s power knocks her backwards into the arms of one of his handlers (how does one become a faith healer handler? Seems like it might look good on a resume). He gently places her in a heap on the floor. Healing is very dramatic. The circus continues.

“Someone’s skin itches. Come quickly!”

A man in a black and white striped sweater hauls ass for the altar.

“It’s your right arm. JESUS, I REBUKE IT!” vHe collapses in a heap next to the other woman. The people in wheelchairs look very pleased at Benny Hinn’s abilities (yet remain in their wheelchairs).

“Lady, right there. You have a pain in your chest? I REBUKE IT! Right there, arthritis in the hand? I REBUKE IT! You’re healed. You will never have that problem again! Lady, there in the purple. What am I seeing? Is it something with your shoulder? I REBUKE IT.” Benny Hinn is now on a serious roll.

“There’s someone with something on the end of your nose. A pimple. I know who you are. I won’t embarrass you,” he says, staring at a teenage girl who looks like she wants to crawl under a rock. “I REBUKE IT IN THE NAME OF JESUS!”

Whole families get rebuked with the same intense energy. They lay piled on stage.

“I’m sensing someone with a problem with their spine…”

“It’s me! It’s me!” I scream.

I vigorously wave my crutches that I finally found. This is too much. I can’t leave here without being healed. Healing time is running out. I bolt towards the stage. The woman next to me looks amazed when I do so carrying my crutches.

“Sorry, I have to be healed,” I blurt, accidentally stepping on her foot.

I make my way down to the stage.

“Yes, it’s me! I’m the one you were sensing with the problem in the spine!” I scream, ready to be REBUKED!

Without missing a beat, the hand of Hinn graces my forehead.

“I REBUKE IT!”

Unfortunately, I don’t fall backwards. Maybe he didn’t give me a big enough dose of Jesus. Instead, his handler grabs me and assists me to the ground. On the way down, I rip off my Swine Flu mask and throw it in the crowd.

“I won’t be needing that anymore!”

As I lay there, seeing other rebuked people laying next to me, the only thing I can do is giggle. It’s the kind of giggle you giggle when you realize your parents are Santa Claus.

WHEN THE HEALING ENDS

As buckets are handed out for money collecting, Benny Hinn shares a funny anecdote about casting out Satan while staying in a castle in Germany. I write “Satan Loves You!” on a slip of paper and place it in the bucket. My little finger still hurts.

The buckets of money are passed to the center as people pull out wallets and checkbooks, clearly impressed by the high theatrics and carnival atmosphere. I feel sorry for these people. They want so dearly to believe, that they’ll throw hard-earned money at Benny Hinn, who will SO be riding in a Rolls-Royce and dining on swan.

Walking out, I no longer feel a need for my crutches. I’ll just claim I was healed vicariously. Those who didn’t get picked get slightly catty.

“She always gets picked,” someone mentions on the way out.

I hand my crutches to the man who originally greeted me at the front door.

He looks at my crutches, then stares at me walking in normal fashion.

“Praise! Praise! Praise!” he keeps repeating. Praise, indeed.

Democratic lieutenant governor candidate Scott Lee Cohen, a Chicago pawnbroker whose surprise primary win last week was followed by scandalous revelations about his troubled past with a prostitute ex-girlfriend, said Sunday night he would quit as nominee.

“For the good of the people … I will resign,” a tearful Cohen told reporters at a news conference he chose to hold at a Far North Side bar during halftime of the Super Bowl.

via Scott Lee Cohen, Democratic lieutenant governor nominee, quits race – chicagotribune.com.

Now the next candidate will be chosen by Democratic State Central Committee, headed by powerful Speaker of the House Mike Madigan.   Gee, can’t wait to see what fine upstanding Springfield insider will be added to the ticket!

Drew Brees would have been just as impactful in a mid-January Super Bowl (image via Wikipedia).

Good thing I didn’t ask the ol’ gang from Mather High School — “Men of a Certain Age” transplanted to real life — to remind me what day it was while we ooohed and ahhhed over Drew Brees’ pinpoint Super Bowl passing the other day at a local sports bar.

If one of the boys had said “Feb. 7,” I might have pointed out that high-school basketball playoffs are mere weeks away. Or that spring training starts in 10 days. Or that it’s beyond the halfway point of the NBA season.

Obviously the more casual fans don’t care. Whether they’re snowbound in the dead of winter or just happy to party to take their cares off a stressful like, they watched the Saints’ inspiring, exciting Super Bowl triumph in record numbers. Some 106 million is impressive, with Brees proving that for just one game, the best defense is a good offense when you’re playing Payton Manning.

But this here blogger, writer, columnist, crank, whatever you want to call me, is both a purist and a dinosaur. There’s no way the climax of the NFL season should be played in the dead of winter. And now NFL commissioner Roger Goodell wants to expand the season to 18 games?

It’s not just the nation’s most popular team sport that’s guilty.  Baseball should not force pitchers and catchers to report Feb. 15 for a season that begins April 5, which in turn is about a week to 10 days too early anyway.  Two weeks early when the season actually began in March recently.  And on the other end, baseball should not logically continue after Oct. 15, maybe stretch it to Oct. 20 at the very latest. Slopping into Halloween or even five days into November, past the start of the NBA and NHL seasons, is ridiculous.

The NHL starts way too early in October. The NBA could stand to wait another week or so from its Nov. 1 tipoff. But their end games stretch way too long past the practical end of spring. I remember the Bulls-Suns Finals in 1993 with temperatures of 110 outside America West Arena in Phoenix in mid-June. By the time the “winter” sports are finished, NFL training camps are ready to go and first pre-season games are played before the end of July.

I know we can’t turn back the clock to a long-gone era where major-league players like Gene Conley could hold second jobs as NBA players in the off-season, and only miss most of spring training if they were caught up in playoffs in March before switching to their baseball flannels.  Money is sports’ golden calf, so the seasons collide and overlap and intrude into places they logically should not go.

In my ideal world, baseball starts April 15, ends the regular season Sept. 25 and finishes the World Series no later than Oct. 20. The NFL begins the second week of September, has playoffs through the first week of January and stages the Super Bowl no later than Jan. 15. The NBA and NHL begin Nov. 1, go into playoffs in late March and finish by mid-May.  No wearing winter gear to a World Series game, no shorts and halter tops to a hockey game in mid-June.  Imagine if the old Boston Garden still existed, in which the fog wafted off the ice on an 85-degree late-spring day with locker rooms like sauna baths?

I have this memory of attending the only Bears game ever played in Dyche Stadium (now Ryan Field), Northwestern’s home field in Evanston, back in 1970. Cecil Turner of the Bears ran back a kickoff for a TD. The game was the Bears’ home opener and their second of the season. It was played on the final Sunday of the MLB regular season. The overlap was minimal.

Things seemed more right with the world, and sports, at that time, when future men of a certain age had only teen-age problems about which to worry.

Image by ian_ransley via Flickr

I drove out to central PA to watch the Super Bowl with my father. Since my childhood, he and I spent many an hour in mutual frustration watching the Philadelphia Eagles do this or that. During the Super Bowl yesterday, he asked me what I’d been doing lately, and I mentioned an interview with Christopher Dickey and our talk about the poetry and fiction of his father, James Dickey. 

Which got me to thinking about various themes of masculinity in Deliverance, (novel, not the movie), which made me wonder just what kind of manliness crisis is going on in America as depicted in several Super Bowl commercials, all of which can be seen at CBS Sports.com.

Right after the best ad of all — the “Casual Friday’s” ad — came a Dockers commercial in which a group of men are wandering in a field singing the Poxy Boggards song, “I wear no pants! I wear no pants!” with the concluding voice-over declaring, “Calling all men — it’s time to wear the pants.”

The obvious suggestion is that someone else is wearing the pants, or, worse, has taken the men’s pants and put them on (is it something to do with so many men out of work, while their wives still have jobs; or the 6:4 women-to-men ratio in college attendance?). Perhaps the implication of the commercial is that if you wear Dockers, you will always have pants because no one else wants them. 

Then there was an ad for the Dodge Charger titled “Man’s Last Stand.” The commercial depicts exhausted-looking, exasperated men staring into the camera, not speaking, while voice-over narration describes their bedraggled  lives, summed up thusly: “I eat and do what she tells me to do and eat, and I work all day at a job that kills me and I come home and watch the stupid shows she wants to watch and keep my mouth shut and because I do all that this is the car I drive.” Vvvvrrrrooooooommm.

So, the Dodge Charger: A. Restores and liberates lost, downgraded, or suppressed masculinity. B. Grants masculinity where it never was before. C. Makes married-and-mortgaged men crazy enough to quit their jobs and start their own small businesses. 

Late in the game, as the Saints began to make their case for victory, came a commercial, “Removed Spine,” for a hand-held, wireless TV service called FloTV (does the iPad help with Flo?). In the drama of the commercial, some poor schlub, Jason, is shopping with a girlfriend who has removed his spine, “rendering him incapable of watching the game.”

In fact, I was amazed Jason even has a girlfriend. Yet the fellow has a red bra draped over his shoulder, is carrying bags, and he appears partly sedated. At one point his girlfriend grabs him and says, “C’mon, silly,” while the poor guy was trying to get a glimpse of a game on a store television while he and GF were heading to the next women’s section.

CBS Sportscaster Jim Nantz is the on-screen narrator of this commercial, and kicks it off by saying “There’s an injury report,” i.e., the guy losing his spine. The implication is that if you’re going to get stuck helping your GF shop for clothes, you should at least be able to watch the Three Stooges, something Nantz might do given his recent divorce and revelations about a girlfriend. (Maybe he chose this endorsement for this very reason.)

In commercials other than these, a very young kid slaps his mother’s new boyfriend and warns him, “Keep your hands off my momma, keep your hands off my Doritos.” A skinny geek whose wireless isn’t fast enough gets clobbered by a Sumo wrestler. Russell Crowe appears as a pudgy, bloodied, dirty Robin Hood, while Benicio Del Toro is dirtier and hairier as the Wolfman. And most of the guys in the Bud Lite commercials shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a Dodge Charger or anything sharp.

There’s no way any of these commercial messages are to be taken seriously (right?), but the cumulative message of these three particular, wholly-masculine themed commercials is this: Once I have pants (Dockers), a hand-held TV, and a new American hot rod, I will have tipped worldly power away from women/girlfriend/wife and back into my favor as an American man, and — bonus! — will also have reasserted myself in the face of the corporate state.

What’s the real crisis of masculinity as I’ve seen it lately? Fourth-quarter interceptions.*

What’s the opposite? Standing on the field as Super Bowl MVP holding your 1-year-old son in your arms. 

*For the record, I was rooting for the Saints, but I would have been happy to see Manning win his second Super Bowl. And then he pulls a Favre. I want that to enter the lexicon — “I pulled a Favre” — when you force something you know you shouldn’t even try in the first place and the whole situation collapses on your head. 

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The fact that she looked at notes on her hand isn’t the issue; it’s that she was even there in the first place. Sarah Palin’s appearance at the National Tea Party Convention this past weekend has already spawned a flurry of discussion, mostly focusing on the fact that she looked down at one point at a few notes scribbled on her palm. But who cares about that?

At the Guardian’s Comment is Free, Lola Adesioye wondered, “I don’t know if Palin is in it for the people or the publicity. But if there’s one thing you can be sure of, it’s that when opportunity knocks, Sarah Palin goes running. Is this the type of future “leadership” that America wants or needs?”

Presumably, what some of America wants is Sarah Palin, and perhaps she’s what America needs as well. After all, she’s the embodiment of a cultural mythology that refuses to die, and it seems that for a lot of people this is very comforting. Even though most Americans haven’t been a state governor, a vice-presidential candidate, or a commentator for Fox News, her image as “one of us” remains intact because of our culture that forever urges us to expound our own personal greatness to the world.

In his Vanity Fair piece last year, Todd Purdum wrote,

More than once in my travels in Alaska, people brought up, without prompting, the question of Palin’s extravagant self-regard. Several told me, independently of one another, that they had consulted the definition of “narcissistic personality disorder” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—“a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy”—and thought it fit her perfectly.

Numerous times in her speech on the weekend, Palin referenced former President Ronald Reagan, reminding the audience several times (as if they needed it) that had he been alive, Reagan would have been turning ninety-nine years old on that day. Reagan will probably be nostalgically remembered as one of the Good Guys, no doubt partly due to his own biography of the movie star-turned-President. And as an example of where popular culture has ended up in the last twenty-five years, he’s basically the perfect specimen. You want to be a movie star? You can do that. You want to be an author? No problem. You want to be President? You can do that, too.

Enter Sarah Palin, stage right, and let’s look at Adesioye’s question again: is she in it for the publicity or the people? The answer is probably that there’s no difference – people are the publicity. They love Palin because she publicly says everything they want to before she even opens her mouth. She’s Made It and now the haters will just have to deal: the basic war cry of a society fueled heavily by the cyclonic, self-reinforcing grandeur of the online world.

In fact, just by writing this, I’m playing into Palin’s Greatness Machine. The media chatter stokes the idea that her rousing of the conservative rabble might be something more than a collective desire to hang on to what was once thought to be the American Dream, rather than the culmination of twenty-five years of me-first thinking, embodied by an overgrown ninth-grader who got caught cheating on a test that she should have studied for two years ago.

Whoops, we’re back to the notes. And back, again, to the question of What Is Sarah Palin? A grassroots political leader, or a cry for help from the narcissistic soul of America – a country that was loved in the “morning” of Reagan, but that now can only love itself? That even Palin herself appealed in her speech to God, suggesting the leaders of future look to the skies for guidance, is probably an affirmation of the latter.

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The AP reports that Conrad Murray has been charged with involuntary manslaughter in the June 2009 death of Michael Jackson, the King of Pop. Faster than you can say ‘propofol,’ the drug that the Houston cardiologist used on Jackson to help him sleep, and which killed him, he has pleaded not guilty.

I can’t blame Dr. Murray for not wanting to take a deal and plead out. After all, it’s 4 years at most if he is convicted of the crime that brands him with neither malice, nor intent to kill Jackson; perhaps it will  be less than that. And if he’s found not guilty, it will be none at all.

Murray in a sense seems to me like a fall guy. Jackson clearly lived a very difficult life, with a range of unhealthy activities and behaviors reinforced by his sycophantic entourage. No one would see Jackson’s scary jack-o-lantern pumpkin nose without knowing that this was a superstar who had burned a bit too brightly. Murray was brought onto the scene in a sense to protect Jackson and his many medical problems from scrutiny. And let’s face it: the farther outside established medical systems and procedures you go, the more likely it is that your medical provider will push the envelope and do things that aren’t wise to care for you, driven by a sense that he has to perform to expectations not only driven by his patient, but also by whoever is handling the affairs of his patient.

To me, this makes Murray seem a bit like The Fool in Shakespeare’s King Lear. He appears at the side of this great man at a strange moment when his greatness is undermined beyond his knowledge by all the other characters playing in the background of his life. The Fool in some ways gave King Lear crappy advice and a false sense of security; but Lear was a crappy king, surrounded by crappier children and schemers eager to undo all he had built. Murray may have made some poor medical decisions, but how poor were Jackson’s life decisions, and how much worse was the counsel and decision-making Jackson was getting from the people who surrounded him?

Ultimately, it’s more difficult to charge Jackson’s enablers than it is to charge Dr. Murray for the very real role he played in Jacko’s end. And that’s why prosecutors have focused on the doctor to achieve justice, Hollywood-style.

If Murray spends four or less years in jail, he’s going to be OK. Sure, he may never practice medicine again, but the man will lead a very comfortable life subsequently, given the number of people who will be eager to hear, and pay for, the story of the man who was with the King of Pop in his final moments. The question now is what fingers he’ll point at trial in his defense. There are likely to be a lot of them.

More useful details from the LA Times.

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The art of defense in boxing is perhaps one of the most underrated aspects of the sport. The ability not to get hit is just as important as the ability to hit, and can be a crucial factor in determining a fighter’s longevity.

Certain styles, particularly aggressive ones, have a short lifespan in boxing. Fighters like Ricky Hatton rely on speed and aggression to win fights, but as they age, their ability to take punishment decreases. To counteract that, they must rely on skill not to get hurt, and if they haven’t focused on defensive fundamentals, they can decline rapidly from too much punishment. James Toney is an example of a fighter who at 41 years of age can still operate at an elite level without taking too many blows because of his prowess as a defensive specialist. His ability to roll with shots, parry, slip and side step is virtually unparalleled in the sport, and Toney would give any heavyweight in the world a tough night (if he was in shape of course). Floyd Mayweather is another example of a fighter with such defensive ability that he could go on for 10 years without taking too much punishment. Mayweather has only been hit clean a handful of times during his career and has never looked remotely troubled in the ring. We don’t know too much about his chin, mostly because no one has got to it yet.

The best defensive fighter in history in my view was Pernell Whitaker, a slick southpaw stylist from Virginia who would go rounds at a time without being hit. ‘Sweet Pea’ fought some tremendous punchers in his time from 135-154lbs, but was so keenly aware of the timing and distance needed to land an effective punch, he was always one step ahead of his opponents. Whitaker wasn’t a big puncher or a particularly flamboyant personality, so never became a marquee name like Oscar DeLaHoya or Felix Trinidad, but true fight fans know just how good he was, and for a time, Whitaker was considered virtually unbeatable

As Whitaker once said, “I don’t care who I’m fighting. I don’t care if it’s God. If I don’t want God to hit me, he’s not going to hit me.”

Take a look at some of the best defensive specialists in history:

During the Q & A portion of her appearance, Palin referred to the scribbling on her palm when asked her thoughts on what top three priorities of the Republican Party should be if it wants to recapture a Congressional majority.

Has Sarah Palin always been writing crib notes on her palm this whole time? I can only imagine what has been scribed on her palm in the past: “Hockey Mom,” “Putin Airspace,” “See Russia Front Yard,” etc…..

I’m sure she feels that the posting of her palm crib notes across the Internet is yet another hatchet job against little Sarah from Wasilla. The good news for Democrats: she’s not ruling out running for president in 2012!

So far, though, I’ve been pleasantly surprised that Barack Obama has shown no sign of weakening America’s support for Israel, and no sign of weakening the US refusal to negotiate with Hamas until they recognize Israel’s right to exist.

And a reliable indicator that our policies haven’t hopenchanged: head terrorist Khaled Meshaal is in Russia, whining about it. Hamas leader says U.S. blocking Palestinian unity.

MOSCOW, Feb 8 (Reuters) – Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal on Monday accused the United States of undermining Palestinian unity efforts and said he saw no chance for peace in the Middle East under Israel’s current leadership.

Shunned in the West because his Islamist group refuses to recognise Israel — a position he said stands — Meshaal used a hospitable Russia as a platform to blame Washington and Israel’s hardline government for a lack of progress.

His remarks underscored barriers on the road to Palestinian reconciliation and to renewing Middle East peace talks.

Hamas wants a reconciliation deal with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ rival Fatah movement “as fast as possible”, Meshaal told a news conference after meeting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who invited him to Moscow.

“Unfortunately, there are a whole series of hurdles to a swift reconciliation, first of all external influence and concerted pressure from the United States,” he said, which he said was using “various means” to scuttle the efforts.

Meshaal did not elaborate, but said portions of an Egyptian-drafted reconciliation deal had been changed without consultation with Hamas and that the group would not sign it unless they were restored.

Showtime has “Nurse Jackie”; TNT has “HawthoRNe” and NBC is back with a new one that adds an “M,” a “C” and a “Y” to “E” and “R” and that gives us “Mercy.” (Oh, stop groaning—you saw that one coming a mile away.) (“Mercy” Website)

But alert Nurse Hathaway! In this network show, the nurses—not the doctors—are running the asylum. Starring Taylor Schilling, Michelle Tractenberg and my guest today, Jamie Lee Kirchner, “Mercy” lets viewers know who’s really in charge on the floors.

“Mercy” airs every Wednesday night at 8 p.m. on NBC.

AUDIO EXCERPT: “It’s a friendship show. It’s like ‘Sex and the City’ with cheaper footwear. There’s a lot of comedy; just when you think you know who these people are, they make a hard left turn.”

Hear it now!

You can LISTEN to this interview with JAMIE LEE KIRCHNER, co-star of NBC’s MERCY, by clicking HERE!

When the iPad was announced in late January, the biggest part of the announcement was pricing. While camps were separated on just how great the device actually is, one thing most could agree on is that pricing is reasonable. Well, given Apple’s premium nature, of course. Still, for a device that intends to fill the gap between laptops and smartphones, $499 to $829 depending on features is still a little hefty. It wouldn’t be completely surprising if sales start off slow, but Apple has a plan in the event of a lukewarm reception.

According to Credit Suisse analyst Bill Shope, who recently met with Apple executives, Apple is going to be flexible about pricing depending on initial sales. “While it remains to be seen how much traction the iPad gets initially, management noted that it will remain nimble (pricing could change if the company is not attracting as many customers as anticipated),” writes Shope to his clients.

The same was done with the iPhone when it launched back in June 2007. While it wasn’t the poorest of debuts for a new gadget, $599 was a steep price to pay for an 8GB smartphone. Just weeks later, prices were dropped to $399 and those who bought the device at the original sale price were given $100 gifts to spend freely at Apple.

So, if you’re dying for an iPad and you’re typically an early-adopter, take one for the team and just wait. If we ban together and hold off on our impulses, we just might see more attractive pricing options from Apple!

[via Business Insider]

Canada-US Peace Arch crossing. Sue Frause photo.

Although I’m not an anti-Olympic activist, I am a journalist. And several times while traveling from my home state of Washington to British Columbia, I’ve been questioned about my reasons for visiting O Canada!

But nothing like the radio journalist who was recently denied entry to Canada when he flew into Vancouver from Chicago. The reason? His involvement with the Olympic Resistance Network.

The few times I’ve been questioned have seemed a bit silly. Once, when arriving in Sidney on Vancouver Island via Washington State Ferries, I was asked why I was on the island. “I’m a travel writer,” I replied. The person then asked me, “What’s a travel writer?” Granted, she was young (I think a seasonal summer worker), but who doesn’t know what a travel writer is/does?

On another occasion, while traveling aboard Amtrak between Seattle and Vancouver, I was questioned as to why I had so few icons on my MacBook. Huh?

American journalist Amy Goodman went through some intense grilling by the Canadian Border Services Agency while traveling to Vancouver to promote her book, Breaking the Sound Barrier.

I’ll let you know what happens when I head up to Vancouver this week.

The details from an unnamed Palestinian official, include:

“These contacts will be aimed at creating a better climate and reaching an understanding on the borders of the Palestinian state, and they will begin on February 20,” the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

“They will last three months, with the Americans negotiating directly with the two sides after determining a timetable and agreed-upon mechanisms for implementation.”

The official said US Middle East envoy George Mitchell would shuttle between the two sides, either travelling between Jerusalem and the West Bank political capital of Ramallah or between separate rooms at a hotel or other location.

Under the proposal, Israel would implement a five-point initiative proposed by Mitchell that would include the freeing of Palestinian prisoners and a halt to Israeli incursions in Palestinian cities, the official said.

Israel would also transfer additional areas of the West Bank to Palestinian control, reopen Palestinian political offices in east Jerusalem, and allow building materials and other goods into the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

Abbas has also demanded that Washington present a document with its position regarding final status issues, including the fate of Palestinian refugees, the status of Jerusalem and final borders, the official said.

This appears to confirm Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s comment last week at the Herzliya conference: “I have reasons to believe, realistically, that we will resume the peace process with the Palestinians, without prior conditions, in the coming weeks.”

This news, if it proves true, could help explain why there was such thunder last week from the religious right – including an anti-peace political caucus formed in Israel’s Knesset, and the extremist tactics of a group called Im Tirtzu involving the Jerusalem Post. These folks see Israel’s withdrawal from any of the occupied West Bank as a mistake, despite all the violence and despair the 42-year-old occupation has caused with neighboring Muslim states – and with followers of Islam around the world.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz, offering a moderate voice for peace, had some great advice yesterday for Netanyahu:

A resumption of peace negotiations centered around an almost total Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank presents Netanyahu with a two-fold challenge. If he takes positions in keeping with the sentiments of the Land of Israel lobby, he will be thrust into a confrontation with the U.S. administration and denounced internationally as an opponent of peace. But if he takes the path proposed by Secretary of State Clinton, he will run into confrontation with his own Likud party and his right-wing coalition partners….

Netanyahu has thus far avoided making a decision and for some time has relied on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ refusal to engage in direct negotiations….

Instead of senselessly courting the right, he should take a courageous stand and state clearly to his political partners that a withdrawal from the territories and the evacuation of the settlements are what is needed. Otherwise Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s warning that without partition Israel will become a binational apartheid state will become a reality.

Follow @Peacemakersblog on Twitter.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Five years after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, the Who Dat Nation prevailed 31-17 over the Indianapolis Colts.

“This is the way we envisioned it,” Saints running back Reggie Bush said to the press. “From day one, I knew we had something special here. When I was drafted here and I took my first tour of New Orleans and I saw all the destruction, I knew that we could be part of something bigger than football.”

After raucous celebration and reborn hope spawned by an inspiring football season and Superbowl win, New Orleans marches on.  Take a closer look at the individuals to whom the Saints are dedicating their tremendous season.  Here is a candid and refreshing documentary on the aftermath of Katrina through the eyes, voices, and drawings of nineteen of the city’s children.

The recession has interrupted historically high immigration levels – legal and illegal – that had been underway for almost two decades, and has sidelined the public controversy generated by large-scale immigration for the moment.

The question, says Meissner, is whether the labor market will soon return to pre-2008 conditions and again exhibit high demand for unskilled workers from abroad. Or whether the Great Recession will leave the country with permanently reduced labor needs in this department. In other words, has the historic 1990s and 2000s immigration wave ended? Not because of a border fence, or enforcement, or changes abroad– but because of a major fundamental downshift in the U.S. economy?

The current decrease in illegal immigration does bode well for a climate conducive to reasoned talk on immigration reform since there is less alarmist sentiment in the air, as Meissner also notes.

Angela M. Kelley, who analyzes immigration policy for the Center for American Progress, has put it this way: “You don’t fix a bridge at rush hour.” In other words now that immigration’s “rush hour” is past, it’s a good time to revamp the system.

But opponents of streamlining immigration or legalizing undocumented workers will read things differently. They’ll argue that now’s the time to focus on enforcement and border build-ups to deter future immigration.

“So what,” you might say. “Any random nutjob could show up at this event and say anything they want. This has nothing to do with the real tea party movement.”

Except that when Joseph Farah of World Net Daily gives a keynote speech calling for theocracy in America and raving about Obama’s birth certificate, and receives a standing ovation for it, that excuse seems just a tad .. weak.

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Much has been written about how the last season of “The West Wing” – in which a young, relatively inexperienced minority candidate beats an older Western-state GOP senator to seize the presidency – mirrored the actual presidential election of 2008.

According to a Washington Post op-ed that ran in the run-up to the 2008 election, the similarities between Obama and the fictional Matthew Santos were not coincidental:

the Santos-Vinick campaign was invented in mid-2004, about the time Barack Obama gave his acclaimed speech at the Democratic convention. David Axelrod, Attie’s friend and now Obama’s chief strategist, suggested that Obama was a “rock star” politician whose profile was perfect for Attie’s needs. Since NBC had already signed Smits to play the part, the character became Hispanic.

There were other freaky parallels too, ones that the “West Wing” creators couldn’t have predicted – for example, in a last-ditch effort to appeal to his base, Republican Arnie Vinick ditches his campaign manager in favor of a family values-preaching, sexy, outspoken woman. Or that Santos would finally pull ahead when a last-minute catastrophe made him seem more trustworthy than his opponent (on the show, it was an explosion at a nuclear power plant that Vinick had helped create; in real life, it was of course the crashing economy).

Now that Sarah Palin made clear this weekend that it would be “absurd” for her to not consider a run against Obama in 2012, it’s entirely possible that the next election could again become a repeat of a familiar “West Wing” storyline – the one in which the sitting president, a former professor and all-around smarty pants, runs against someone who is, well, less smart (I’m trying to choose my words more carefully, lest I be labeled one of those condescending liberals).

I wrote last week about how much Obama’s recent showdown with members of the GOP resembled the “West Wing” episode in which President Jed Bartlet destroys Republican candidate Bob Ritchie in a debate. Who knows whether the same thing would happen if Obama and Palin were to hold a debate (she didn’t implode, like some predicted, when pitted against Joe Biden) – there could certainly be another reference to Alaskan schoolchildren being forced to learn “Eskimo poetry” like there was on that episode.

It’s far too early to tell how 2012 will shake out. But if things do come down to Obama vs. Palin, I sure hope that real life can mimic art yet again.

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Now that the Saints have won the Super Bowl, beleaguered New Orleans residents will finally be moved from their trailers, and the destroyed Ninth Ward will finally be rebuilt, right? That’s certainly the impression that I’m gathering from the media coverage of Drew Brees and company’s victory. New Orleans’ paper of record, the appropriately named Picayune, went so far as to declare that, “Sunday’s game was about much more than Xs and Os for us, because since Hurricane Katrina the Saints are much more than just a football team — they are a civic cause. The storm transformed our region into a metaphor for despair and tragedy in the eyes of the world, but the Saints gave us reason for optimism. They embodied our resilience and our unity. That’s priceless for a region still in recovery.”

Alas, the editorial board of that storied paper has the situation exactly backward: for the Saints really are just a football team, and, in truth, it is the Saints who are nothing more than a metaphor – that is, a substitute for reality. Their victory is not a victory for the city of New Orleans writ large, but a victory for the Saints’ players, coaches, and owners.

I like sports – I enjoy watching the athleticism and outright beauty of great athletes in action. (I’m looking at you Dwight Howard – as much TNT will allow.) But allegiances to sports franchises are the result of simple coincidences of geography, convenience, and exposure. I didn’t become a bona fide fan of the Trail Blazers until I moved to Portland, and was able to watch many of their games on my local TV stations. (Indeed, I’m off to Oakland this evening to watch the Warriors play – not out of love for Monta Ellis or the color red, but solely because they are the closest team around.) Familiarity may breed contempt – but it also breeds association, and loyalty. Even allegiances that seem somehow deeper rooted, like those towards national teams, are the result of coincidences and accidents. I may support American teams in the Olympics – but that’s only because I happen to have been born here. Somehow though, and in too many cases, sports teams become proxies – or, to use a word that’s currently en vogue, avatars – for ourselves.

The metaphorical association with sports teams has effects seemingly both negative and positive. International sports competitions like the World Cup lead to ugly, nationalistic rhetoric – and sometimes even violence. I was in South Korea during the last World Cup – a country whose nationalism is already a bit frightening – and was taken aback by the vitriol directed at the foreigners associated with whatever team the Koreans happened to be playing. Viewing sports teams as proxies for ourselves is noxious and dangerous. After all, the Koreans – inevitably – lost. What did this do to their national psyche? And why should a sporting event have that kind of effect?

But even where the emotive connection with sports team can seem a positive, such as with the “uplifting” victory of the Saints, it can still have deleterious effects. By placing so much importance on the fortunes of a football team, real problems can become lost in the fray. After all, the Saints’ victory will not rebuild the city of New Orleans. Conditions in that city, by all accounts, are still quite bad. It’s going to take a Hail Mary of a different kind to make life there livable, again.

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Yet another danger of  obesity has come to light:  inadequate vaccination.

In a new study, the researchers report that using a standard 1-inch needle to immunize obese adolescents against hepatitis B virus produced a much weaker effect than using a longer needle.

via For obese, vaccine needle size matters | Reuters.

It makes sense.  If you’re trying to administer a vaccine into a muscle that’s covered by more than one inch of chub, a one-inch needle clearly won’t cut it.  This study showed that using a 1.5-inch needle greatly improved the success of vaccinations in the obese.  I suspect it’s only a matter of time before someone suggests that a body fat measurement be performed prior to vaccinations in order to determine the proper needle size.  That, or that everyone gets their vaccinations with the hypodermic equivalent of a javelin.

Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife

If you’re thinking of celebrating Valentine’s Day — which for many, is a bah-humbug faux celebration — don’t buy red roses. (Unless   it’s your sweetie’s absolutely favorite flower and color.) The only thing worse than not getting a present, if your heart is somehow set on it, is getting the same old tired trio: roses, chocolate, lingerie.

Roses will be marked up hugely on Feb. 14, because florists know they can. Chocolate is pleasant, but fattening and lacks imagination. Lingerie is tricky — most women are wearing the wrong bra size anyway, so buying her more of the wrong thing isn’t helpful. If you can sneak a peek and be sure you’re getting the right size, look at her tastes and treat her to more of the same.

Much as it’s a lovely fantasy that she really wants hot pink Victoria’s Secret because it looks soooooo good on all those models, it may not look so hot on her or be the least bit comfortable. Even if it only stays on a few minutes, a bra also needs to feel lovely, not just some lace/wire/cantilevered torture device that makes the girls look great.

This catalog, filled with an impressive array of almost every possible iteration of lingerie, from balconettes to sports bras, landed at my door this week and there are some gorgeous things on offer; check out this one, at $50.

I chose the flower above because it’s a less predictable choice, a gerbera. A bouquet of flowers in one color, mixing textures and sizes, is a lovely option; any good florist  — get there long before V-Day — can help you steer clear of the usual picks toward more intriguing, and appealing, options like delphinium or parrot tulips or stock.

1) Think of a fun, shared experience: Tickets to an upcoming concert or show. Visit a museum together. Plan a weekend getaway. Season’s tickets to the ballet, opera or her favorite sports team.

2) If you’ve got kids and don’t have household help, how about a month’s maid service? Do it yourself or hire someone to give your partner a break.

3) Take stock of the kitchen and dining area. A gorgeous new stockpot? A pretty set of stemware? A set of new linen napkins? An espresso maker? One of my favorite gifts, dirt-cheap, is a narrow glass beaker with a metal device that froths milk and makes any coffee into cappucino, available at most kitchen stores. I also love my two little chicken-shaped kitchen timers. (Check out this site, Ballard Designs, and this one, Wisteria, for all sorts of pretty, useful homegoods. I’ve bought from both and find their items stylish and well-priced.)

4) Jewelry is a default choice and, when chosen well, a treat. But how many men really understand what their partner or wife truly loves? Take a good look at the sizes, colors, styles and scale of her usual choices: silver? costume? Deco? Does she prefer necklaces or earrings? Check out EBay or local antique shops for vintage, antique or estate jewelry, a nice change from the usual mall offerings. For a woman who likes bold, strong designs, look for items from the 1930s or 1940s; more delicate styles from the Edwardian or Victorian eras. Try etsy.com for fun and quirky handmade options.

5) If you live in a cold, wintry part of the world, a pair of cashmere gloves or extra-long luscious leather or suede gloves (silk or cashmere or wool-lined) makes a practical but luxurious gift mid-February. If you don’t know her exact size, go with wool or cashmere.

6) A spa day rarely goes unappreciated. Whether she prefers a manicure, pedicure, massage, facial — or all of the above — it’s a treat to disappear and get pampered.

7) Make something with your own hands — a meal, a card, a framed photo. A slow, attentive massage.

8) If your sweetie is athletic, a yoga fanatic or a dancer, there’s a whole range of cool possibilities: some pretty, fresh workout clothes, (try Title Nine or Athleta or Lululemon), new sneakers, a set of training sessions or dance classes, new cleats or a glove or skiwear.

9) If your sweetie has everything, make a donation on her behalf to a cause or charity she values, like donorschoose.org.

10) Perfume is probably the most personal, and difficult, to buy for someone else. If you know her scent(s), go for it. If not, a safer bet might be a scented candle, triple-milled soap, like these babies from Fresh, (that smell so good they’ll perfume the bathroom and last for a month of daily use), or sachets for her drawers or suitcase.

Knowing, (not just guessing wildly) what your loved one really craves — not just some withered supermarket bunch of carnations — is the ticket.

Primarily, the people I see excited about Data.gov and similar efforts are what I call "tech elites." Bloggers, evangelists, startup companies, software developers, former CTO's, large tech company execs, and the like. They hold apps contests, they run BarCAmps on weekends, they create new websites with open data, they get consulting contracts with local, state, and federal government. I see nothing wrong with tech elites or their behavior per se. But I wonder if a larger community – average citizens – has been ignored to some degree.

Ellen Miller related to me that the Sunlight Foundation did a poll which showed 80% of citizens were in favor of more government transparency. Interesting, but that could mean many different things. I'm interested in knowing if there's a poll, or even some man-on-the-street type video, asking citizens if they want more government data, and if so, what – specifically and individually – they would do with it. I suspect that few people want more data.

The data might benefit them indirectly, through websites and tools that others develop, no doubt about it. But what citizens – the real community the government serves – really want is information. They want news. They want analysis. They want content. Not XML, a tool catalog, or geodata. To me, this begs the question of whether the government should have an Information.gov site full of compelling, immediately useful, simple content for average citizens. What do you think?

It's great that the government can check some boxes on a form and say, yes, we have a new "open" website, and yes, we have made more data public and available (counting the number of data sets per agency has become a bit of an amateur sport). But if the citizens don't care, who is it helping? Forget the lobbyists people love to complain about – While they're enjoying their eggs benedict, have tech elites stealthily become the newest powerful special interest group in Washington, DC?

Posted via email from Mark’s Cheeky Posterous

Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife

The world’s most popular hybrid, the Toyota Prius, will soon be recalled to fix problems relating to its braking system.  The problem specifically affects the car on bumpy and slippery road surfaces, where there is a noticeable delay between pressing the brake pedal and brake actuation.   In other words: the brakes don’t brake for a split second. According to several reports, this has led to hundreds of consumer complaints and several accidents in the U.S. and Japan.

Unlike the car’s vaunted gasoline-electric drivetrain – which saves fuel by switching from a gas-powered engine to an electric motor – the Prius recall has been anything but seamless.  Millions of confused and concerned Toyota owners (upwards of 7 million) have already been subjected to two previous recalls, one for sticking gas pedals and another for faulty floor-mats.  The Prius recall will affect only the 2010 model year (built from last spring until late January, 2010, which is when Toyota says it fixed the Prius’ brake problem with a software change at the factory).

Toyota will likely announce this week that it plans to recall at least 311,000 of its 2010 Prius hybrids around the world to fix the brakes, reports Japanese media and the New York Times.

It will become Toyota’s third major recall at present, following two for unintended acceleration. But at least on this one, at least the numbers are fairly paltry compared to the eight million cars under recall around the world, more than five million of them in the U.S.

(via Toyota Prius recall could come this week, reports say – USA Today)

Image via CrunchBase

I’m also looking forward to the many sessions, and to meeting other WordPress developers. If you’re in South Florida, I hope to see you there. Get your tickets via EventBrite. Other speakers include Jane Wells, and WordPress core developer Mark Jaquith.

The one day conference is being held on the campus of the University of Miami.

Americans have not cornered the market on awful parenting.

Do you just love Toddlers & Tiaras? Can’t get enough of garbage people pushing their children onto shoddy stages, dressed like whores and instructed to dance accordingly? Then you can’t miss this year’s Carnival parade in Rio, where seven-year-old Julia Lira is set to perform as her samba school’s drum corps queen. Surely you’re familiar with Carnival: the costumes, the dancing, the tits.

From the Daily Mail (emphasis mine):

A row has broken out in Brazil over plans to make a seven-year-old girl the ‘queen’ of a samba school in this year’s Rio de Janeiro carnival.

The role of ‘drum corps queen’ is normally given to a barely-clad model or soap opera star.

The decision to appoint Julia Lira to the coveted role has caused such controversy that a judge is considering blocking her participation.

A state agency that defends children’s rights has also said she’s too young to take on the role.

But the child’s father, who happens to be the president of the Viradouro group, says Julia is a natural who can easily samba through the 80-minute parade route in Rio’s sweltering summer heat.

‘Any man who looks at a seven-year-old child and feels any sort of excitement should go see a doctor,’ Marco Lira said before rehearsal this week…

Brazil has long had a problem with sexual exploitation of children, especially in the lawless Amazon region. Allowing Julia to be a drum corps queen ‘would increase the treatment of children as sexual objects in Brazilian society,’ said Carlos Nicodemos, director of the Rio de Janeiro state Council for the Defense of Children and Adolescents.

‘We’re not against kids participating in Carnival; it’s part of Brazilian culture,” Nicodemos said. ‘What we can’t allow is putting a seven-year-old girl in a role that traditionally for carnival has a very sexual focus.’

I haven’t experienced Carnival in Rio, but I’ve been to Trinidad for the insanely fun — and highly sexualized — multiday bacchnalia. It’s run differently there, but the core idea is the same: Thousands of people don costumes, dance in the street, drink all day and fuck all night. (My goodie bag included a Red Bull and a condom.)

According to the Daily Mail, judge Ivone Ferreira Caetano has taken an interest in the case and is considering what, if any, action should be taken to protect the girl. According to the father, judge Caetano has asked for more information about Julia’s function and costume — and what time she would be dancing. At present, her team is scheduled for midnight on February 14.

By the way, this particular samba school is no stranger to controversy. A few years ago, they attempted to stage a performance with a dancer dressed like Hitler — on a float decorated with naked mannequins and dolls representing dead Jews. Then, as now, a judge intervened.

Row over girl’s Rio carnival role as samba queen | Mail Online.

Your ex has nothing nice to say about you.

Scott Lee Cohen won’t be lieutenant governor of Illinois, and his latest move proves why.

Cohen, a pawnbroker, already had done a lot of dumb things before he won the Democratic primary for the position last week. He is an admitted steroid user who was the subject of numerous complaints for not paying taxes or bills on businesses he owned. His ex-wife said that he abused her, cheated on her and didn’t pay child support even as he spent millions of his own money on his campaign. He had trouble paying his mortgage and has been sued for a number of building code violations.

Despite his background, candidates for lieutenant governor get little scrutiny, largely because the position is so unimportant in Illinois — though there are the occasional notable exceptions, such as when the governor gets removed from office for trying to sell a Senate seat — and Cohen was largely unknown when voters elected him. A day later, though, more of his history came to light and everyone from voters to politicians called on him to quit the race.

He refused and in apparent attempt to prove he was worthy, he called on his ex-girlfriend to speak out on his behalf. Would you want any of your former flames to serve as a job reference for you? No matter how amicably a relationship ends, obviously there are some reasons a pair calls it quits. No one ever breaks up with someone by saying their ex was just too perfect, too wonderful, too giving, too kind or too responsible.

Turns out the Scott’s ex-girlfriend, Amanda Eneman, is a convicted prostitute who told police that Cohen had held a knife to her throat during an argument. Ooopsie. What did he think she was going to say? As if all his other past actions weren’t bad enough, asking an ex to serve as a character witness — even if she isn’t still mad at you for threatening her with a deadly weapon — is just plain dumb. He was charged with domestic battery (he denied the allegations) but the charges were dropped when Eneman didn’t show up in court.

In addition to his other character flaws, Cohen must also be delusional to think his ex was going to say nice things about him. Instead, Eneman came out with a statement that Cohen was unfit for office. Yesterday night, he dropped out of the race, saying the Democrats might not win in the general election if he remained on the ticket. It’s hard to say how much of a role Eneman’s condemnation hurt Cohen, but it certainly didn’t help.

No one should expect their ex to give them a good review. True, some former couples do manage to overcome whatever tore them apart, let the bad feelings fade and manage to get along beautifully. Even so, it’s risky to let them serve as a character witness. If the questioning goes deep enough, pretty soon your ex is blabbing about how you never took out the garbage, kicked the dog, didn’t floss, forced you to go to sex clubs, or some other equally unflattering portrayal.

Still want that job? Then try to make sure your ex is either living on a remote island, dead, or best of all, your spouse. That marital communications privilege can come in quite handy.

How do the movie studios follow the humongous, year-after-year success of the Harry Potter movies?

That is, where do you find a character and situation that will grab the imagination of everyone from elementary school students on through your grandmother? And craft tales that will make audiences come back for more? Again. And again. And again.

The answer wasn’t Lemony Snicket, although a lot of people thought it would be.

Maybe Rick Riordan’s got it. Riordan created a young adult novel series called Percy Jackson & The Olympians about the mythological gods and monsters coming to life in modern day circumstances with only a trio of unusual high school students standing between us and them.

CRAIG TITLEY AUDIO EXCERPT: “The Lightning Thief is rich with imaginative material. But from day one, you know things have to go. It’s honing in ont things that move the story frorward, that are the most exciting. It’s always hard; it’s the hard cold reality of adapting that not everything can make it into the movie. But it still feels true to the spirit of the book.”

I smell a formula, but the kids love the series. Now a movie based on the first book, Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief, opens in theatres on Friday, February 12. The trailers look very cool and any resemblance to Harry Potter, the Hogwarts School and all the rest is surely intentional—and who could blame the producers?

Joining me today is one of the poor bastards upon whom the cinematic weight of the world is apparently resting, one week out from the picture’s debut. But I suspect screenwriter Craig Titley, who adapted Rick Riordan’s story for the silver screen, can handle the pressure. Maybe you’ve seen some of his previous films, including the original Scooby-Doo live-action film—it grossed more than $100 million. He also co-wrote the Steve Martin movie, Cheaper By the Dozen—which also grossed a hundred mil.

Hear it now!

You can LISTEN to this interview with CRAIG TITLEY, screenwriter of PERCY JACKSON & THE OLYMPIANS: THE LIGHTNING THIEF, by clicking HERE!
• • •
Order Percy Jackson and the Olympians Paperback Boxed Set (Books 1-3)
Order Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief Movie (Holding Lightning) Poster

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The public’s recent embrace of all things zombie has put the factory in overtime mode, churning out a steady stream of undead ghouls who can make a bounty of a single intestine, will crawl if they have to, walk if they can, and run when required by the script, and, let’s face it, know a good brain stem when they smell one.

We may love all the nutty, misunderstood blood suckers among us, ridiculously handsome all (I suppose, if you’re self-selecting, why not?), but it’s the zombies that we fear. And zombie movies, when made by someone with what the undead most desire – brains – can act as a platform for all sorts of things that vampire movies just can’t. Because after all, we get it, right? Blood lust is about well, lust. Sex. Having sex, not having sex, and sometimes men having sex or not having sex with other men despite the proximity of all those tasty Adams Apples bobbing about. Ooh-la-la. Anything beyond sky blue balls in your average vampire flick? Not so much.

And while a good zombie flick can be about almost anything, what they most often are about – like ray-eee-ain on your weddinggggg day – is irony, my friends. Eat your heart out, Alanis, and I mean that literally. Here’s a look at where the best of them stand on the ol’ zombie-tron irony index.

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Night of the Living Dead. The father, if not the grandfather, of all zombie flicks, George Romero’s cult classic haunts us every single Halloween, and probably will continue to do so until a real apocalypse destroys all our TVs and traps us in a house with a bunch of strangers fighting over who gets to shoot the encroaching dead-eyed groaners. Since this was way back in ‘68, man, long before the blooming of irony as the groovy way to react to, like, totally everything, Romero played it pretty straight, with one major exception: the bleak-ass ending, which is really the thing that makes the movie.

The torch-bearing townies surround the house in which the one single solitary poor bastard left living, the closest thing this film has to a hero, and a guy who, oh I don’t know, just happens to be black has survived the night of the long moans. Our black hero makes the mistake of parting the drapes on yonder window, and the townies – oops – shoot him dead. Bummer.

Romero scores an 8 on the irony index. Though Alanis might not recognize it as such, Romero’s third act move is the very definition of dramatic irony: when the audience is given information that at least one of the characters is unaware of themselves. Listen dude, these honkies are gonna mistake you for a zombie because, as far as they’re concerned, all zombies look alike. While you might look out that window at a sea of angry white faces and mistakenly assume you’re safe, they come to a very different conclusion. Point. Click. Shoot. Roll credits.

Cover of Shaun of the Dead

Edgar Wright & Simon Pegg’s 2004 rom-zom-com, Shaun of the Dead, took advantage of the audience’s (over) familiarity with the FAQs of all things zombie. Not only did they play with tropes for great comedic effect (Shaun’s spot-on undead wake-up groan, the zombifiction of the neighbors), they played with them for pretty good dramatic effect as well.

But is it ironic? Is using a cricket bat, pints of lager, and a record collection to beat off the approaching undead horde an ironic move, or just, you know, funny?

While I think Shuan is a fantastic film, on the irony index I think it rates pretty low. 2.

Shuan’s success primed us dumb Americans for a zom-com of our own. Zombieland, arriving last last year, killed the competition and chewed, crawled, and clawed its way to the top of the reeking zombie flick heap, raking in about fifteen million more than number two, Zack Snyder’s remake of George Romero’s sequel to his own original recipe zomster. If you wanna make a lot of money, start a religion. Oh wait, wrong quote (sorry, L. Ron!). If you want to make a lot of money, make it funny. We love to laugh, even when what we’re laughing at it a zombie being chainsawed in half and the other zombies like totally going smorgasbord on his ass. Stop! You’re killing me!

Let me ax you.

Funny, clever, and fun, Zombieland turned the irony to 11 when the survivors of the apocalypse finally arrived at Bill Murray’s house in Hollywood. The story goes that Murray has survived the apocalypse and its zombie-licious aftermath by cleverly wearing undead makeup to blend in. As you might expect, this little gag leads to a textbook moment of tragic irony. A solid 7 on the irony index.

Finally, Zack Snyder’s zombies-on-crank remake of Romero’s Dawn of the Dead cemented Snyder’s post-modern auteur status by being better than its source. Seriously. Snyder’s visual panache, his wicked sense of humor, and a hellishly playful attention to detail snag his Dawn a 10 on the irony index.

Something bad happens (probably the government’s fault), a lot of peeps turn into brain-munchers, and survivors flee to the mall (as you would). With the undead gathering in the parking lot, the survivors play out their own little microcosmic societal struggle inside. It’s great stuff.

Them zombies can run!

And the irony starts early, with Snyder’s choice of names. The mall they reach? “Crossroads.” The coffee shop where they gather? “Hallowed Grounds.” But it’s really the music, or rather, muzak that shoots Dawn to the top of the irony index. When the survivors get to the mall, the first song they hear is “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” Then they get “All By Myself,” “You Light Up My Life,” and even “What The World Needs Now is Love,” and because it’s always that soulless muzak, we tune it out, but it was a genius move. There’s also a bit of irony to be found in the attention to detail. Once or twice, for just a moment, the camera holds on one of those mall kiosks. It’s easy to miss. But long before the survivors decide that their salvation lies in a boat trip to an island (a threeeee hourrrrrr tourrrrr), Ving Rhames stands in front of a travel ad framing… that’s right, an island surrounded by blue sea. “Wild Planet Travel” it reads. Indeed.

I can hardly wait for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife

Just one more reason to re-consider drinking soda. Researchers in Singapore followed 60,542 people over the course of 14 years. They found that of those who drank two or more sodas per week had double the risk of developing pancreatic cancer than those who did not. If you drank fruit juice instead of soda, you showed no sign of elevated risk.

That’s the correlation. The cause? It could be the elevated sugar level in soda.

…the higher levels of sugar found in soft drinks may be resulting in the raised level of insulin in the body, which is believed to contribute to the cell growth in pancreatic cancer.

Getting pancreatic cancer is no walk in the park. Only five percent of those diagnosed with the disease live more than five years.

For years now, we’ve known that drinking lots of soda poses an increased risk for developing diabetes. And we know that soda consumption is directly linked with higher obesity rates. We also know that soda cans are lined with BPA, which acts as an endocrine inhibitor that may help cause both diabetes and higher levels of obesity. High soda consumption for children can lead to a host of problems, including an allergy to penicillin, lower calcium levels that leads to deformed bone growth in the short term, and osteoporosis in the long.  Add a greater risk for developing pancreatic cancer, and, at this point, you’d have to be a little crazy not to wonder whether cracking open that next Coke or Pepsi is really worth it.

If people really start paying attention, it could be that soda will be the cigarettes of the future, and we’ll look back and say, really, we drank that stuff?

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It appears Random House is not eager to go to an agency model or to delay e-book releases.

A poster on the MobileRead forums reported on comments at the American Bookseller Association meeting on Friday:

The only bright spot for Amazon, and Kindle owners, came from Madeline McIntosh, the President of Sales, Operations, and Digital for Random House. She pointed out that publishers “have no real experience at setting retail prices.” She also revealed that one of the reasons Random House had not been party to the iBook Store at launch was because of the pricing issues.

In regards to delayed releasing of ebooks, McIntosh said, “Our current policy is we release e-books at the same time as physical books,” followed by “I haven’t been convinced that it’s good for the author or consumer to delay the release. My fear is that the consumer who has fully embraced the technology will buy another e-book that is available or lose interest altogether. What if I train the consumer that the best scenario is to get it free?”

via MobileRead Forums

For all the shiny new toys on display at last month’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas—from apps for everything, to TV everywhere, to e-readers that make breakfast—the scene was stolen by the one that wasn’t there: Apple’s breathlessly anticipated whatchamacallit. By the time you read this, it should have a name, the anticlimax will have passed and we will be on with life, which is a good thing. There is a lot of work to do.

All that speculation was actually never really about the device: It was a symptom of general media upheaval, which has been especially acute in publishing. All the new devices provide hard evidence that was once just a vague possibility and has now become manifest destiny for publishers: the obsolescence of an old model—requiring an elaborately manufactured product to be carried by truckers to newsstands and postal workers to mailboxes—in favor of a more elegant and environmentally-friendlier form of composed communication that is more robust in every way than the one Gutenberg built.

Most Likely To Succeed

We don’t know much yet about what digital broadband publications will look like, or even what functions they will serve. The one certainty about early prototypes from Time Inc. and Conde Nast is that they will be quickly dated. Major publishers will very likely be the last to exploit the full potential of broadband multimedia “publications,” focused as they must be on their core businesses. Large property holders do not make good revolutionaries.

More likely to succeed as pioneers in this new frontier are future journalism and multimedia stars now in high school or j-school. The next Henry Luce is probably in his bedroom playing World of Warcraft right now.

Second most likely are publishers whose brands are at the brink of extinction already, victims more of recession than systemic change. Nothing focuses the mind quite like the threat of dispossession.

Of these, the titles most likely to succeed at the print-to-digital migration are those with clear editorial missions. In this respect, Gourmet, Vibe and Southern Accents come to mind as last year’s most unworthy deaths—and as object lessons for brands on the brink.

All three of these magazines had clear market positioning, loyal readers and remnant, if not robust, ad franchises. Take away the cost of paper, ink and distribution, add the vibrancy of video, audio, information graphics, animation and reader collaboration, and think about the changes that were possible: Southern Accents interiors come to life with virtual tours, Gourmet’s recipes are prepared before your eyes, Vibe goes live with the music itself (click to buy), readers enter into a back-and-forth with their ever-more-favorite “magazines” in real time, and advertising in their “pages” is transformed from passive still-life into an engagement with sight, sound and motion. The brand delivers more to readers and to advertisers: What’s not to like?

Don’t Swap Service for Bells and Whistles

This virtuous cycle only works, however, when the mission for the existing brand does not change, and when multimedia technologies and broadband delivery serve that mission clearly and directly. Before attempting the print-to-digital migration, nothing is more important than understanding precisely what that mission is, at its most basic level, to the publication’s most avid customers.

Publications whose mission is less than entirely clear are likely to confuse their readers and themselves as they attempt such a transition. General-interest titles in particular are going to have a tough time pulling it off, and if “cool” or “hip” have any place in the mission, watch out: Nothing says the opposite like geolocational and augmented-reality hijinx undertaken just to be edgy, as we have already seen.

It’s a curious irony of this new world that it may just make those publishers lucky enough to have special-interest publications more likely to “stick to their knitting,” as one of my favorite bosses used to say. As transformative as publishing technology may become, the new forms of communication it makes possible must still be yoked to the real needs and practical desires of customers. Those who will succeed in deploying that new technology will be those who listen to those needs and desires, not to bells and whistles.

Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife

The results are in, which means it’s time to get that Acme Wound Salt out.

Yulia Tymoshenko, the Joan-of-Arc-cum-Cruella-Deville of the Ukrainian Orange Revolution, is looking shit out of luck. At this writing, the Ukrainian Central Election Committee has counted 97.56% of the votes and she’s still behind to ex-con-villain-cum-comeback-kid Viktor Yanukovich. Not only is his 2.56% lead unlikely to turn inside-out and put Yulia in the president’s chair, but, with European observers reporting that the voting has been largely clean, it’s unlikely that she can contest the vote and look anywhere near sane — an image she has, of late, continued to undermine.

The many delicious layers of crazy have been thoroughly covered in this election, but the framework that makes the most sense anywhere other than Ukraine — and conveniently overlooks any, erm, nuance — is the West-versus-Russia one, and it goes something like this: In 2004, Russia rather overtly backed Viktor Yanukovich; he won in a rigged election until Victor Yushchenko and his braided sidekick Tymoshenko — the two darlings of the West — summoned thousands onto Kiev’s Independence Square (the Maidan) and won the day, wrenching Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit, validating democratic ideals, and, the West hoped, putting it squarely into the stiff-armed embrace of the Europeans. But! Yushchenko sucked as a president, Tymoshenko proved expert at making herself odious to just about everyone, and now Yanukovich is back, this time as a fairly-elected president — right? — promising warmer relations with its historical neighbor, Russia.

And because it’s not a geopolitical victory until you gloat and gloat some more we have this:

Today, the domain Maidan.ru is for sale on the Russian e-Bay analog, molotok.ru.

It is, let me emphasize, a Russian domain name, advertised as “a good address to start a revolutionary web portal.” Over the course of the day, a dozen bidders have driven the price up from $30 to almost $1,500.

But who, pray tell, is selling this thing? One Jason Foris, who has not sold or bought anything on molotok.ru in the last seven days or, probably, ever.

Because, you see, Foris is none other than a nom de guerre for Russian internet wunderkind Konstantin Rykov, who long ago got in bed with the Kremlin and never got out. Now he’s leaking this apparently spontaneous — and painfully obvious — Ukrainian-bound bird-flippage to Vesti, a Russian-owned TV channel, and hawking it up and down Twitter where, luckily, few seem to be buying the schtick. (That, or the schtick that proceeds from the sale should benefit the Yeltsin Fund, a lame attempt to join the 90’s-bashing so commonplace in official media these days.)

So, as if the Ukrainian elections weren’t crazy enough, Rykov arrives to pummel you over the head with his dance in the end zone: we won, he seems to be saying ever so subtly; we won and you, Ukraine, you and your Western ass-kissing and Orange Revolutions, YOU. LOST. “Eat it,” you can hear him saying, wiggling hither and thiter. “Eat. It.”

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Dan Ariely (of Predictably Irrational fame) is writing a new column in Wired UK. His first looks at the truth behind bonuses:

More than anything, argue the bankers, pay should motivate: huge bonus cheques are to ensure superior performance from superior talent.

On this point, the bankers are wrong. We’ve recently gathered evidence suggesting that dangling exorbitant sums of money in front of workers doesn’t improve performance. If anything, it negatively affects it.

…

To see the effect of bonuses on performance, Nina Mazar (assistant professor of marketing, Toronto University), Uri Gneezy (professor of economics and strategy, University of California, San Diego), George Loewenstein (professor of economics, Carnegie Mellon, Pennsylvania) and I conducted three experiments. In one we gave subjects tasks that demanded attention, memory, concentration and creativity. We asked them, for example, to assemble puzzles and to play memory games while throwing tennis balls at a target. We promised about a third of them one day’s pay if they performed well. Another third were promised two weeks’ pay. The last third could earn a full five months’ pay. (Before you ask where you can participate in our experiments, I should tell you that we ran this study in India, where the cost of living is relatively low.)

What happened? The low-and medium-bonus groups performed the same. The big-bonus group performed worst of all.

Why this happens isn’t entirely clear — though, nervousness brought on by high stakes could be involved. An experiment on public scrutiny showed similar results: a little improved performance, a lot hurt performance.

As the anchors and frozen reporters repeated ad nauseum what we already knew…that it sucked outside…it would not have been much of a surprise to see a crawl at the top or bottom of the screen informing that the meeting of the Global Warming Action Group had been cancelled.  But the weather coverage was just one of the highlights.

Obviously the best television of all was provided by that entertainment superstar In Nashville.  Of course that would be Sarah Palin, who brought her song-and-dance act to the Tea Party Departed-From Reality show. How fitting it was that she was at Opryland to perform her version of “Achy Breaky Heart.  She called  it”Hopey Changey Stuff”

Besides her relentless criticism of President Obama, she also made it clear she’s after his job, telling Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday “It would be absurd to not consider what it is that I can potentially do to help our country”.

An absurd idea? Not at all? A possible Palin presidency? You betcha. Scary.  Happily there was more escapism on the telly.

There was this football thing, the Super Bowl. It was a terrific one at that…complete with the big upset win by the underdog Saints that came with such symbolism.  We could all share in the “Laissez les bon temps roulez” post celebration by those who still struggle with the hard times in Katrina-ravaged New Orleans.

The inspiring “Who Dat” team even made the embarrassing Who group bearable at halftime.  Besides, the Super Bowl is way more than what we see on the field. There are the many contests within the contest, where the competition is brutal. Sponsors, for instance,  pay ridiculous amounts of money in the fierce battle for attention between their commercials. It’s  hard to declare a winner this year, difficult to choose between the surprise of Tim Tebow’s mother being tackled in that insipid anti-abortion ad or the astonishment of Leno and Letterman sitting there kvetching with Oprah in a big promotional coup.

There there was the inevitable appearance by President Obama, with Katie Couric, both in need of their own promos.  The big news from that was the President’s idea for even more “Must See TV” (I know, wrong network).  He declared he was inviting the Republicans down to the White House.  Not for a beer, but for a bi-partisan conversation about health care reform.  And this one would also be on television.

Some might consider this a poll-driven gimmick.  He was was responding to all the criticism that he had failed to live up to his campaign promise to invite C-Span in to show the health care deliberations and the crazy complaint he had shut out the “Just Say No” Republicans.  So now, just like another game show host,  he was shouting to everyone “C’MON DOWN!!”  GOP leaders weren’t saying so in so many words, but they obviously smelled a setup.  And well they should.

Still, here’s hoping it really happens.  And why not spice up that Super Bowl with some of its own commercials?  Sponsors could rip off that Oprah/Leno/Letterman spot featuring maybe Obama, who does such great live shots with Mr. Announcer Boehner.  Sitting between them?  Sarah Palin.  Of course.

Obviously, the insurance companies would make big ad buys, so would the pharmaceutical giants.  It would just be another way for them to use their massive wealth to control the outcome.  The banks could do the same thing and run their Visa and Mastercard commercials.  There  could be Public Service Announcements too, on behalf of government entities like AIG and GM.

There’s no hurry, plenty of time before the plows finally get to our streets so we can emerge from our winter bunkers to get back to work.  At least those who have jobs can.  As for the program, it could have a catchily appropriate title: “The Snow Job”.

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Left your heart in San Francisco? According to Amazon.com, you might be able to find it in Alexandria, Va. Or, if you prefer someplace a bit warmer, Miami, Gainesville, or Berkeley.

Amazon has put together a list of the country’s 20 most romantic cities by looking at the per capita sales of romance novels, sex and relationship books, sexual wellness products, romantic comedy DVDs, and—of course—Barry White CDs. So which cities make the list? Check it out:

1. Alexandria, Va.
2. Miami, Fla.
3. Cambridge, Mass.
4. Ann Arbor, Mi.
5. Berkeley, Ca.
6. Gainesville, Fla.
7. Arlington, Va.
8. Salt Lake City, Utah
9. Pittsburgh, Pa.
10. Orlando, Fl.
11. Washington, D.C.
12. Bellevue, Wash.
13. Seattle, Wash.
14. Richmond, Va.
15. Cincinnati, Ohio
16. Knoxville, Tn.
17. Columbia, Mo.
18. Tallahassee, Fl.
19. Columbia, S.C.
20. Atlanta, Ga.

So people in Virginia and Florida consume a lot of romance-related products from the comfort of the Internet. Does that make their cities more romantic? Hardly. It just means you’re more likely to find someone who’s bought the latest Danielle Steel novel on Amazon in Alexandria, Va., than you are in Chicago and New York.

(Or El Monte, Calif.; Paterson, N.J.; and Miami Gardens, Fla., for that matter. These, according to Amazon, are the least romantic cities in America.)

Since Amazon based its list purely on sales data dating only as far back as January 1, 2010, it may also mean that people in these cities made more love- and sex-related New Years resolutions—”This is the year I’m going to fall in love!” “This is the year I’m going to be a better lover!”

Image by mind on fire via Flickr

A new study that’s sure to stoke political fires about same-sex marriage indicates that children raised by lesbian parents do just as well, or not, as those raised by heterosexual parents. 

Researchers from New York University conducted an analysis of essentially all of the research to-date on same-sex parenting. The bottom line result: kids in both heterosexual and lesbian households had similar levels of academic achievement, number of friends and overall well-being. (You can view the study online here in the Journal of Marriage and Family.)

Kids benefit most from “committed, stable, and responsible parenting,” in the words of lead researcher, Judith Stacey, and whether those parents are a man and woman or two women doesn’t seem to matter very much.

LiveScience summarized the study highlights:

In a study of nearly 90 teens, half living with female same-sex couples and the others with heterosexual couples, both groups fared similarly in school. Teen boys in same-sex households had grade point averages of about 2.9, compared with 2.65 for their counterparts in heterosexual homes. Teen girls showed similar results, with a 2.8 for same-sex households and 2.9 for girls in heterosexual families.

In another study, teens were asked about delinquent activities, such as damaging others’ property, shoplifting and getting into fights, in the previous year. Teens in both same-sex and heterosexual households got essentially the same average scores of about 1.8 on a scale from 1 to 10 (with higher scores meaning more delinquent behaviors).

A 2008 study comparing 78 lesbian families in the United States with their counterparts (lesbian households) in the Netherlands, showed American kids were more than twice as likely as the Dutch to be teased about their mothers’ sexual orientation.

These findings add support to previous research that’s found kids raised by same-sex partners generally do just as well in school as kids raised by heterosexual couples.  One study in particular, which used Census data rather than smaller population samples (often criticized as “convenient samples”), looked at thousands of kids raised by same-sex parents and found no difference in grade retention (when a child gets held back in school) after accounting for demographics, such as income.

Quoting Michael J. Rosenfeld of Stanford University, who conducted the Census study:

Grade retention is a pretty strong predictor of problems later in life including dropping out of high school and mortality.  LiveScience

Will these results convince critics of same-sex parenting to reevaluate their positions in light of the evidence?  Probably not. As politically and religiously entrenched as this issue is, same-sex parenting opponents will likely view these results as another liberal social science volley.

But for everyone else seeking a statistically well-grounded perspective from which to view this issue, these are enlightening results.

HT: LiveScience

Image via Wikipedia

The church of England, whose leadership meets this week, is split over the issue of whether women there ought to become bishops.

It’s hard to believe this issue is still divisive, or an issue. Women have been bishops in the U.S. Episcopal church since 1988 and the church in the United States has been led since 2006 — for a nine-year term — by the Rev. Katherine Jefferts Schori, a former oceanographer and instrument-rated pilot; her only child, a daughter, is a pilot in the Air Force.

Only three domestic dioceses still refuse to ordain women as priests.

I belong to the Episcopal church — “episcope” is Greek for bishop. One of the reasons this denomination feels like the right fit for me is the power of women to lead congregations, local, regional and national. It will be interesting to see how the Church of England grapples with this.

A soldier waterboarded his four-year-old daughter because she was unable to recite her alphabet.

Joshua Tabor admitted to police he had used the CIA torture technique because he was so angry.

As his daughter squirmed to get away, Tabor said he submerged her face three or four times until the water was lapping around her forehead and jawline.

Tabor, 27, who had won custody of his daughter only four weeks earlier, admitted choosing the punishment because the girl was terrified of water.

via Soldier father accused of ‘waterboarding’ daughter, 4, because she can’t recite alphabet | Mail Online.

And this is the parent that got custody. What the hell was going on at her mother’s house?

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Last night’s Super Bowl has all the makings of the most memorable ever. Great subplots — New Orleans finally getting over, doing it to Manning — an upset, a close game, but perhaps what might solidify the memory is a major defensive play. Consider two other candidates:

SB XXXIV Rams vs. Titans — a last-second tackle at the 1-yard line solidifies the win.

SB XVI Bengals vs. 49ers — a monumental goal-line stand by the 49ers shifts the momentum.

Now Scott Ware (a name you won’t remember unless you’re a huge Colts or Saints fan) has done it again. This time to one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time. People will remember.

Why do major defensive plays make such great memory? Because they defy the premise of the game — football rules tilt just slightly in favor of scoring. Not so much that it’s always a shootout, but just enough to ensure action. So when a defensive play drastically effects a game — especially a game that has had great offense — it’s just counter-intuitive enough to stick.

My personal most memorable Super Bowl was XXXII – Broncos vs. Packers. Being from Denver, it was the day my lifelong wish for a victory in the big game came true. Yes, John Elway’s helicopter dive for a first down sticks in my mind. But I think of most was John Mobley deflected Brett Favre’s pass on 4th and 6 to seal the game. Ah, man, that felt good to remember.

I know there are plenty of other recent candidates, especially the previous two. What an amazing shift for the NFL, which for years had one forgettable game after another to end its season.

Getting the millions of people watching the Superbowl to feel all warm and fuzzy toward the company “that does no evil” may have been one of most strategic plays of the evening.

She’s right on all accounts, but the words that jumped out at me  are “warm and fuzzy.”   There aren’t many products people feel warm and fuzzy about these days.   Apple causes gotta-have-it Mac attacks, and the  iPad certainly led to obsessive reporting and was cleverly and very publicly punk’d by Jason Calacanis.    But warm and fuzzy?  Not so much.  In fact, I can’t think of a product that has elicited such emotional ties since Kodak.   Take a look at this Kodak commercial from the 1960s.  If you make it to the end without sobbing you’ll hear “One little girl.  One precious childhood saved for years to come, in pictures.  You can do it too.  All it takes is a camera, Kodak film, and thoughtfulness.”     Yes, that’s right:  Thoughtfulness.

In this commercial from 1985, you’ll hear Barbra Streisand singing ‘Memories” while the hypnotic voiceover urges “When the moment means more, trust it to Kodak video tape.”

George Eastman was an entrepreneur by his mid-twenties, way back in 1880.  He had a simple goal for the Eastman Kodak company:  “to make the camera as convenient as the pencil.”

Eastman’s faith in the importance of advertising, both to the company and to the public, was unbounded. The very first Kodak products were advertised in leading papers and periodicals of the day — with ads written by Eastman himself.

Eastman coined the slogan, “you press the button, we do the rest,” when he introduced the Kodak camera in 1888 and within a year, it became a well-known phrase.

via History of Kodak

Like Google, Kodak was used as a verb.   While Google’s verb-alization came organically, Kodak included it in the advertising headline “Kodak as you go.”   That phrase didn’t stick, but “Kodak Moment” did.   It’s a phrase still used today even though Kodak no longer plays a central role in our lives or our memories.  In fact, I suspect some people use “Kodak Moment” without really knowing where it originated.   Kodak created an emotional connection with its customers, and fed that through its advertising campaigns.   As Kodak struggles to find its place in an increasingly digital world, Chief Marketing Officer Jeff Hayzlett is trying a new approach.

Mr. Hayzlett has abandoned the warm-and-fuzzy branding ads once typical of Kodak. Well-known slogans have included “You push the button — we do the rest” and “Share moments, share life.” Instead, he favors more product-specific ads. “We have to have ads that drive sales,” he says.

As part of Mr. Hayzlett’s effort to give Kodak a hipper image, the company was featured last year in the reality-TV show “The Celebrity Apprentice,” and recently signed on for another season.

via Kodak Ads Get More Aggressive – The Wall Street Journal

The implication here is that “warm and fuzzy” cannot be hip.   Last night, Google blasted that theory to bits.  Google beautifully and simply told the story of boy meets girl, with Google Search helping them every step of the way toward happily ever after.   Google created an emotional connection that only further cements its place in our lives and now, gently,  in our hearts.   That Google commercial?  A Kodak moment, for sure.

NEW YORK (AP) — John Thain is getting a second chance.

CIT Group Inc. tapped the former Merrill Lynch CEO to become its chairman and chief executive.

Thain brokered Merrill’s sale to Bank of America as the credit crisis peaked in the fall of 2008, but was then pushed out the door after the deal closed as controversy swirled around bonus payments and mounting losses at the investment bank.

via News from The Associated Press.

Man, exactly what do you have to do to become unhirable in this country? Eat Christian babies on CNN?

John Thain is the dope who was buying himself an $87,000 area rug as his company was going bust. He became a symbol for brainless greed on Wall Street just in time to complete a tortured sale of Merrill to Bank of America in which billions in losses were somehow kept hidden from BofA shareholders.

Now he gets another big job, just like every other high-end Wall Street buffoon who wrecks a company in this era. My favorite of course is John Meriwether, the “genius” investor who dreamed up the imploded hedge fund Long Term Capital Management in the late nineties. Meriwether immediately was given another $250 million to play with after LTCM blew up and is now working on his third such venture, a company called JM advisors, which uses LTCM-like investment techniques. Who’s giving guys like this money?

Image by Steve Rhodes via Flickr

Finally. In the words of Modo, our president “came down from the mountaintop,” and has decided to get bipartisan with this whole healthcare dealy.

President Obama said Sunday that he would convene a half-day bipartisan health care session at the White House to be televised live this month, a high-profile gambit that will allow Americans to watch as Democrats and Republicans try to break their political impasse.

If you’re experiencing a strong sense of deja vu, it’s because we’ve been here before.

March, 2009: The president gathered some 120 people representing varying facets of the industry — from doctors to patients to health insurers to the drug industry — along with lawmakers to discuss ways to reform the U.S. health system.

It is true that Republicans are determined to act as obstructionists. They have no plan. Actually, their plan is de-plan. My favorite example of this is the note Sarah Palin wrote on her hand for her big Tea Party speech. Palin originally wrote “budget,” then crossed it out and wrote “cuts.” That pretty much sums up the Republican Party right now. They have no plans for governance, but they do have slogans that are both myopic and superficial like “down with government” and “tax cuts for everybody!” Ask Colorado Springs how that will end.

Or, as Krugs points out today, ask Poland:

In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Polish legislature, the Sejm, operated on the unanimity principle: any member could nullify legislation by shouting “I do not allow!” This made the nation largely ungovernable, and neighboring regimes began hacking off pieces of its territory. By 1795 Poland had disappeared, not to re-emerge for more than a century.

Sound familiar?

However, Republicans are not the only barrier between the American people and reform. The Democrats are acting as obstructionists, too, except corporation donations are preventing the leading party from making real, good change.

Part of the problem is that the president thinks he can talk to Senators like Shelby, who are willing to fuck over the country for a tanker contract and a counterterrorism center, like they’re adults. The other part of the problem is that these bipartisan summits may all be Kabuki theater, since the lion’s share of healthcare negotiations took place behind closed-doors, and the insurance and pharmaceutical industries already won.

Progressives are right to bemoan the state of the Democratic Party, but it’s not as though President Obama is a stupid man, who doesn’t know how to negotiate. It’s that there’s a serious lack of motivation here. The goal was never to fix healthcare. The goal was to preserve corporate cash for the right party, while also throwing enough crumbs to the serfs so they wouldn’t — ya’ know — riot when their children started dying.

What we have in America is an unhealthy combination of corporatism and obstructionism. Yes, Shelby is an asshole, but he’s an asshole on behalf of Northrop-Grumman and the military-industrial complex just as Chris Dodd is an asshole on behalf of Citigroup and Chuck Schumer is an asshole on behalf of Goldman Sachs.

I’m no fan of the Senate. I think Senators (particularly from sparsely populated states) are invested with way, way too much power. However, the House of Representatives is also soaked with corporate cash, so there is plenty of blame to go around. At every level of government, the corporations have complete and total control.

Where I disagree with Krugs is that it’s not specifically Republicans who have paralyzed the system. The fault lies within both parties. Both parties took cash from the private healthcare industry. Actually, the Democrats took more bribes donations.

Progressives have been wondering aloud why Dems (and the president) seem so timid at a time when the country badly needs a FDR. Clearly, Americans wanted the country to move left. That’s why they unequivocally rejected the Bush era by handing over a huge majority to Democrats.

Well, they’re timid (and willing to hold endless Kabuki summits) because the real deals are already done. The corporations won (again). Krugs is right: the system is broken, but the cogs are clogged with corporate cash, and the solution won’t be as easy as handing over power to the other political party.

Punta, which has a local population of only 7,000, hosts over 150,000 tourists between December and March. The week surrounding New Year’s Eve draws thousands of elite tourista; bankers, models and jet-setters crowd into house parties with $200 cover fees, unless you’re on the list. The flight to Punta del Este from Buenos Aires, Jorge Newberry airport is 45 minutes and cost me $287 US dollars. A cheaper route is to take the BuqueBus, which includes a 2-hour ferry ride to Montevideo or Colonia and then a 3-hour bus ride to Punta del Este, for a total cost of about $150.

When I arrived in Punta del Este, I took in the clear blue skies and was surprised by how familiar it all seemed. As we drove past shoddy beach shops selling pool chairs and cheap liquor stores it reminded me of the drive to Dewey Beach. When we passed the rolling beach dunes, Punta looked like Martha’s Vineyard, but with palm trees and sexy Latinas.

The Brava and Mansa are the two types of coasts in Punta, with the end of the Rio de la Plata (Silver River) on one side and the beginning of the Atlantic Ocean on the other. Downtown Punta is built up with high rises, casinos and nightclubs. But as you drive along the coast you pass through several areas of Punta all with their own flavor: La Barra with posh restaurants and windsurfing lessons, El Tesoro, Montoya Beach, Bikini beach with the most beautiful bodies I’ve ever seen in my life and Manantiales beach on the Brava side with rough, big waves, perfect for surfing.

Punta del Este has all of the stores that you would find in Soho, like a glass boxed Converse store with a painted chain link fence on it and several trendy furniture design stores. There is even a MundoMac store where you can buy a power cord for your MacBook for the equivalent of $300 US dollars, about $225 dollars more than in the States. In one of the farthest parts of town, Jose Ignacio, you will find a beautiful seaside restaurant, La Huella, that doubles as a Lacoste store alongside the historic Punta del Este lighthouse.

As familiar as it may have looked, it was just as unfamiliar at the same time. I felt like how a child must feel, looking at road signs with blinking, dumb eyes, listening to people converse in Spanish, and straining to make out simple sentence constructions. When unseen, everything is so beautiful and inspiring. The entire land is covered in dark, violet Morning Glories. Grecian like mansions, thatched churches, and red pueblos line the coast. Dogs of the universe roam the golden sandy beaches along the cold, Atlantic Ocean.

In New York City’s harsh winter, the light fails early. But in Punta del Este, the light is so radiant it can be confusing. “Is it 8pm yet?” I asked my friend. “No, it is 10pm, and it is almost dinnertime,” she smiled.

Visitors can expect New York City prices. The first night I went out to dinner, we ate shrimp and cheese baked in a large winter squash for 1,100 Uruguayan Peos, about $56 American dollars. No where else in the developing country of Uruguay, will you pay $15 American dollars for a drink, like you will for a delicious Pisco Sour at Sipan, one of Punta’s newest spots, a trendy Peruvian restaurant located in Manantiales, where it is a sin to eat rice with ceviche. A Pisco Sour is similar to a whiskey sour but with a hint of key lime pie. It is a Peruvian cocktail (although the Chileans claim it as their own too) containing pisco liquor, lemon juice, egg whites, simple syrup and a splash of bitters. The drink dates back to the 17^th Century when the King of Spain banned wine, forcing locals to experiment and concoct a different kind of alcohol from grapes. National Pisco Sour Day is celebrated on the first Saturday of February in Peru.

On our second night out, we went to Baby Gouda, a lovely restaurant in La Barra. We dined under Moroccan lamps and sat on velvet couches near the beach. A couple sat across from us but they did not speak to each other. I imagined their names to be Maria and Jose and if I didn’t know any better I would assume they had just stepped out for a night in Atlantic City. Maria was short and thick with tanned, leathery skin. She wore a visor and thick gold jewelry like her husband. Jose wore a light blue tank top and loose gym shorts. He chowed down on his heavily Parmesaned pasta in silence. She placed her giant Coach purse between them. She ate her steak and potatoes and drank something blue that matched her heavy eyeliner. He rubbed elbows and laughed with the man next to him. They clinked glasses. But the couple never looked at each other. They only spoke when they agreed to get the check.

How could they not see all the beauty that surrounded them? How does frustration with love harden into such boredom, like a stone wall around their minds?

I drove a car in Punta del Este, and that car was a 1966 blue Ford Falcon devoid of power steering, an exhaust system, seatbelts and reliable brakes. The car is not a car—it is a beast! It was like driving a boat, or how I would imagine riding a buffalo might feel. When I changed gears it screamed and shook. Merely turning it on is a gamble. But I only stalled once.

I had a close encounter of the sexy kind when I pulled into the only gas station in town. “Gas, per favore?” I asked in my Italian accent.

“Si, full?” the station attendant asked.

“Si gracias,” I answered. I was sweating like a melting stick of butter in the sun. The leather car seats burned my bum.

I looked out my window and saw a beautiful, 1980s Italian motorbike with a dark grey Louis Vuitton helmet placed on the seat. The owner of the bike caught me snapping a photo of the beauty, and well, ladies and gentleman; let’s just say I had snapped a photo of the lesser beauty. The bike’s owner had shaggy black hair and a good, strong face with stubble and deep brown eyes. Javier approached my car slowly, put his hand the roof, leaned in and said, “Hola.”

“Hola,” I answered coyly in my grossly obvious American accent.

Javier then said something, that I assume was along the lines of “How are you cutie?” But, my Spanish is so terrible that I was unable to understand or answer him. I just kind of sat there with a dopey smile on my face, shrugged my shoulders and giggled. He seemed to acknowledge my naïveté, so he pulled out his wallet, and withdrew his business card.

Javier Amobura

Web Design and Animation

www.skirdesign.com

Punta del Este

I smiled, took his business card with my left hand and said, “Ah, a designer! Como cool!” I waved goodbye, and cranked the old beast into first gear. I drove off going the wrong way down a one-way street. So como no cool.

South Americans must have swum very quickly in the gene pool. The men have the most unbelievably chiseled bodies. The women have perfect, thin arms and round, luscious buttocks that hang out of the sides of their thong bikini bottoms.

I found a purple crab on the beach one day, and it entertained me like it would a small child. Traveling has a way of doing this to us, because everything is new and we are surrounded by things we cannot understand. But then, there are also things we find we can understand better than our own cultures. In Spanish, an umbrella is a para agua, which makes so much sense to me—for water! Much like a para sol—is an umbrella for the sun. Where did we get the word umbrella anyway?

The day I left Punta, a tremendous storm had passed leaving a clean beach, placid water, and the air was colored light lavender. The ocean is magnetic. One cannot help but feel drawn to it and walk towards it like it’s calling you. But then like all things and people in life, you must leave it at some point, knowing that it will always be there.

Image by James Jordan via Flickr

I missed two days last week, so here are some extras:

* The bank-as-lottery gains momentum in Michigan — a savings nudge — more than 11,000 Michigan residents opened accounts through the contest, saving $8.6 million throughout 2009

* A sarcasm mark — you can pay $1.99 for lifetime use of this new communications tool — yeah, right

* The uselessness of testing kids as gifted — what percentage of 4-year-olds who scored 130 or above would do so again as 17-year-olds? — about 25 percent

* The economics of supermarkets in snowstorms — people are forced to visit the store, more or less — the previous calculations of mass vs. niche goods are no longer appropriate for the new emergency

* Why won’t the University of Washington release its TV data? — the founders of Baby Einstein sue — “If the University stands behind the research, it should be more than happy to release the raw data right down to the last decimal point.”

* Standing in line — the case for our least-favorite activity — our ability to wait in line, to not squabble and bite each other as we approach the desk or counter or velvet rope, is a triumph of what anthropologists call “stable cooperative equilibrium”

* Paul Romer on charter cities — forget aid — people in the poorest countries like Haiti need new cities with different rules, and developed countries should be the ones that build them

* Horizontal evolution — genes are exchanged from other organisms, not from ancestors — not your father’s evolution

* How to make good experiences even better — and bad ones worse — interruption

* To feel good, reach for the sky — upward physical movement inspires positive memories — more embodied cognition

Follow Neuroworld on Twitter: @ryansager

The L.A. Times reported Sunday that the beverage industry, led by Coke and Pepsi, has successfully quashed efforts in Congress to help pay for their contribution to the nation’s obesity epidemic with a tax on the nutrition-free products they sell.

Only months ago, public health advocates thought the tax would be a natural for congressional Democrats looking for revenue to fund expanded health insurance coverage. The soaring costs of treating ailments related to excess weight — including diabetes and heart disease — added urgency to the issue.

But the White House staff reviewing funding options never embraced the idea even after President Obama expressed interest last summer. A key congressional committee, after initially seeming receptive, ended up refusing to consider it. Several minority advocacy groups, including some committed to fighting obesity, lined up against the tax after years of receiving financial support from the industry.

So with the same astroturf strategy employed by the oil industry to sow doubt about climate change–fund a group fronting as a grassroots effort offering bogus science to sow doubt about the life-threatening effects of the product you sell–another big business group kills the public interest so it can go on reaping profits.

If corporations are people too, Coke and Pepsi are laughing all the way to the bank over this one.

In the past couple of decades, groups receiving funding from ExxonMobil and the like have convinced journalists of the need for “balance” in discussion about issues over which there is little or no debate, such as the human contribution to global warming, and consequently appeared in the media to debunk decades of independent research by many of the world’s best scientists. “Climate change” is a term invented by Republican pollster Frank Lutz which the Consumer Energy Alliance–which has nothing to do with consumers–and the Institute for Energy Research–whose research results are pre-oradained by their polluting funders–adopted as a harmless-sounding alternative.

It was a brilliant investment on the oil industry’s part, as the percentage of the American public recognizing the danger of climate…um, whoops, global warming…has diminished as its astroturf groups have grown more prominent, and meaningful legislation to reduce emissions is now stalled in the Senate (to put it optimistically).

This time, in a lobbying and PR effort well detailed by reporters Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger, Coke and Pepsi went one step further. They not only erected the populist-sounding “Americans Against Food Taxes” to speak their case (never mind the only Americans they were representing were corporations, not people; and the tax was to be on drinks, not food) but funded existing groups supposedly acting in the interest of Latinos and placed industry representatives on their boards.

Using the argument that higher food and drink taxes would unfairly burden the poor, the coalition recruited a bevy of Latino groups, among them the Hispanic Alliance for Prosperity Institute, the National Hispana Leadership Institute and the League of United Latin American Citizens…

“Why in the world would a Hispanic health advocacy group do this?” asked Kelly Brownell, the director of Yale University’s Rudd Center on Food Policy and Obesity.

A stunning chart in the Times’ print edition shows a rise from about $4,000,000 in spending by Coke, Pepsi, and their trade group the American Beverage Asssn. on lobbyists in 2008, to $37,500,000–nearly a tenfold rise–in 2009.

It sure paid off. Although Yale estimates

that a penny-an-ounce tax would induce a 23% drop in consumption, and the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that a smaller tax could raise $50 billion over 10 years

the Times reported, industry’s success at misrepresenting available science and attacking some of the most respected nutritionists in the country as biased overcame such facts as what UCLA researchers found:

adults who drink one or more sodas per day are 27% more likely than non-soda drinkers to be overweight or obese.

This is a clear example of why the Supreme Court decision in January, unleashing corporate cash into the political process, is so dangerous: The ones with the most money get what they want, even though it’s bad for the citizens.

Soda is bad for people’s health (see the UCLA study). Taxing stuff that is bad for people discourages people from consuming the bad stuff (see: cigarettes). Fewer bad things happen to people as a result (diabetes, heart disease). What could be a more obvious case of the public interest?

Not in America, though, land of unfettered free speech for pieces of paper.

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Wikipedia

Congrats to the Saints. For Colts fans, one could feel momentum turning on two key moments on either side of halftime.

Just pre-break: the Colts conservatively call three straight run plays to (try and) run out the clock, allowing New Orleans the chance to kick a field goal as the half expires. 10-6 going into The Who.

Just post-break: the Saints call a gutsy onside kick, recovering the ball around their 40 yard line. ‘Aints QB Drew Brees promptly marches down the field and scores his first touchdown of the evening. Just like that, New Orleans takes its first lead on a call that uber-cautious Indianapolis would never have dared.

The common theme for both? Aggression vs. conservatism. Unfortunately for Colts fans, their history of spineless play-calling (See: Seating starters in the final regular season games to “save” their top players but forgo a run at history) came back to bite them in the arse.

So where does Monsieur Carville factor in? Well, a little liberalism from the aptly named “Ragin’ Cajun” from Louisiana might have pushed Indy’s foot harder down on the pedal.

I’m not claiming that their lack of guts solely cost Indianapolis Super Bowl-whatever-the-hell-Roman-numerals-mean. Just that New Orleans seized momentum with qualities that are out of Indy’s nature. Saints coach Sean Payton simply out-coached adversary Jim Caldwell.

And it’s no coincidence Carville, a die-hard Saints fan, was seen fluttering around the field last night during the trophy presentation …

Image by gutter via Flickr

China announced Monday that they’d cracked an alleged hacking ring with some 12,000 subscribers. The site taught people how to launch cyber attacks and supplied malware

But the arrests were reportedly made back in November. Why brag about it now?

Since last month’s Google-China smackdown, China’s goverment has been busy polishing its image as a responsible cyber-citizen. Now, in what looks to be a refutation of Google’s claims, they’ve gone public with a high-profile hacking case.

My bet is that this is PR, not substantive progress, but we’ll see how tings unfold.

Here is the latest, via WSJ:

Three people were arrested on suspicion of making hacking tools available online, the state-run Xinhua news agency said. Their business, known as Black Hawk Safety Net, operated through the now-shuttered website www.3800cc.com and generated around $1 million in income from its over 12,000 subscribers, the report said.

The arrests took place in late November as part of a police investigation that spanned three Chinese provinces and resulted in part from Black Hawk’s role in domestic hacker attacks, according to Xinhua.

The delay in announcing the case wasn’t explained. But China in recent weeks has waged an aggressive public relations campaign on the issue of hacking, apparently at least in part aimed at discrediting allegations from Google Inc. last month that China was the source of sophisticated cyberattacks against the Internet search giant and numerous other foreign companies. After U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also raised concerns about hacking from China, for instance, Chinese state media said her comments were hypocritical and said Google had become a pawn in an American “ideology war.”

Developing…

Image via Wikipedia

Officials have restored access to the internet 27 Websites in Xinjiang. The province’s 20 million residents were cut off from the Web after violence erupted last July.

There are now a total of 31 sites available. Guess which ones made the list…

AFP reports:

The restored websites included official government services as well as commercial sites such as Taobao and Alibaba, and airlines and online games, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Partial access was also restored to the public discussion forums of official media such as the People’s Daily newspaper and Xinhua itself, Xinhua said.

Authorities in the Xinjiang autonomous region wanted to re-establish communication links “progressively,” following the recent reinstatement of long-distance phone calls and mobile phone text messaging to phones within the country, Xinhua said.

Far West China, an English blog covering the region,  suspects the government’s strategy is to restore Web access slowly, piece by piece, to prevent this from becoming news.

I believe China is strategically opening small parts of the internet and making headline news out of each event knowing full-well that the international media’s attention span won’t keep up. We’re already getting bored. 27 more sites are opened in Xinjiang today, 50 more next week…who cares?

Meanwhile the flow of information is being strictly controlled and authorities still take the opportunity to declare a state of freedom on the internet.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Remember way back at the beginning of Oscar season (circa last September) when everyone was predicting that precocious pixie Carey Mulligan would be Oscar’s latest ingenue princess for her turn as a precocious-pixie high school student involved with an older man in An Education?

Then critical opinion slowly turned in Meryl Streep’s favor, and she became a sure thing to finally pick up her third statue from the Academy for impersonating Julia Child (or as she says, our idea of Julia Child) in Julie & Julia.

Suddenly, there’s no stopping Sandra Bullock. Previously a big box-office star with zero Oscar potential (sort of like Meg Ryan before her), thanks to The Blind Side, Bullock has become the woman most likely to ruin Mulligan’s and Streep’s night and make the trip to the podium on March 7 to accept the prize for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role.

Here’s why:

She’s humble (or shrewdly modest). Bullock has never really seemed to care about silly things like awards and industry accolades. And now that she’s picking up every one in sight, she’s still insisting that her Oscar chances are nil. “I’m so not winning an Oscar,” she recently said at the the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, where she received yet another one of those accolades, the American Riviera Award for her influence on film. “Nine times out of ten, I always pick who’s going to win. And I already know who’s going to win. I’m not going to say, but nine times out of ten, I’m right.” Just in case, Sandy, prep your speech. This is going to be a one-in-10 off year.

She can laugh at herself. Most A-list stars wouldn’t be caught dead anywhere near the Razzie Awards. (Though Halle Berry did drop by several years back to pick up her Worst Actress prize for Catwoman.) This year, Bullock is nominated for Best Actress for All About Steve, her 2009 critically savaged comedy that was sandwiched between The Proposal and The Blind Side. She’s already asked the Razzie organizers to save her a seat. If they bestow the honor upon her, she wouldn’t miss it for the world.

She’s generous (and not afraid to let everyone know it). Not that Bullock wouldn’t have donated money to the earthquake relief efforts in Haiti anyway (and her $15 million-per-film salary will quickly recover the expense), but giving $1 million is not the sort of thing that Oscar can just ignore.

She’s a great kisser. Oscar may feel a little guilty about making Meryl Streep wait another year for Oscar No. 3, but after Streep and Bullock’s ice-breaking onstage kiss at the Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards, it won’t sting so much for Streep this year when she once again has to put on her good-loser face. Who knows? Maybe Bullock will blow her a kiss from the podium or call her onstage for an encore. Who wouldn’t stay up past midnight for that?

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There will be protests. That much, at least, is for sure. When the Winter Olympics begin this Friday in Vancouver, they will be unwelcomed by a visible and vocal percentage of the population who have been waiting for this opportunity as much as any of the athletes. And like those in other western democracies who’ve witnessed the disruption of a high-profile event, Canadian authorities are already attempting to control the situation. But how exactly can they do that? And should they?

The buildup to the Vancouver Games has been as much about the protests as it has almost anything else. With every positive story about the Games, there was a negative one that followed, and as the cost of the Olympics has begun to take shape (both monetarily and socially), the opposition has gained momentum. Much of it has grown online, and because of that, the anti-Olympic movement long ago ceased to be simply a Vancouver-based issue.

This past weekend, Martin Macias Jr., a known Olympic critic from Chicago, was denied entry to Canada when he arrived at the Vancouver international airport. He was held for two hours and questioned about his reasons for visiting the city. When he failed to answer to the satisfaction of officials, he was forced to leave. (His friend, Bob Quellos, another Olympic naysayer was allowed entry.)

From CTV:

“They wanted to know more about the people who are organizing the conference, about who I was staying with, if I could contact them, if I knew what they were wearing,” Macias said. “It was very, very strange.”

Macias said his phone book was confiscated and inspected. One local Vancouver number, listed under “Support,” was of particular interest.

“It is a number to the conference in case you’re in the city, you need food, or you get questioned by police,” Macias said. “They took that as a sign that I was coming here with the intention of getting into some kind of violent rally or protest.”

It’s the endless question for any country hosting an international event: what role can foreign citizens be allowed to play in protesting a global meeting? It was an issue in London at last year’s G20 summit, and again in December at the climate conference in Copenhagen. There are obviously valid security concerns regarding individuals entering a country with the intent to cause a disruption, but that disruption is difficult to avoid. If it’s not a Mr. Macias causing it, then it’ll be someone else, and technically, their voice is as valid as the next.

Mr. Macias was accused of withholding information, which may or may not have been the case – we don’t know. And obviously this situation has been used to his advantage, as the message he wanted to promote has still been heard, most likely much louder than if he’d never been stopped. Despite that, it does highlight an issue with the upcoming protests: that attempting to pre-emptively silence them will only add fuel to the fire.

That’s not to say that the authorities should stand down, because there’s a difference between voicing an opposing opinion and having that opinion manifest itself in a violent act. And that’s what we have laws for. Laws also allow for free speech, and though that makes us vulnerable, we have to allow it in all forms no matter who is saying it, until it becomes unlawful under the conditions of our system.

The organizers for the Olympic protests have promised that they will be peaceful. Let the protesters speak, and then let us decide whether that speech is valid.

Frankly, I am flabbergasted that the practice is as uncontroversial as it seems to be. Over the weekend, I Tweeted back and forth on the subject with Jon Henke, a razor sharp libertarian whose thinking and writing I am always eager to consume. He argued that this is an inherently difficult subject because there are a lot of “problems, subjective judgments and gray areas” at play. I agree to a point. Obviously I don’t think that an American citizen squaring off against the United States Marines on a battlefield need be arrested. So does a heavily armed terrorist cell holed up in a Baghdad apartment occupy a war zone? What if they’re holed up in a Hamburg apartment? An apartment in Charleston, South Carolina?

But I cannot believe that blurring lines makes it constitutionally permissible to assassinate citizens who aren’t on a battlefield, or sitting armed in an apartment that serves as the equivalent.

As Mr. Greenwald puts it:

The people on this “hit list” are likely to be killed while at home, sleeping in their bed, driving in a car with friends or family, or engaged in a whole array of other activities. More critically still, the Obama administration — like the Bush administration before it — defines the “battlefield” as the entire world. So the President claims the power to order U.S. citizens killed anywhere in the world, while engaged even in the most benign activities carried out far away from any actual battlefield, based solely on his say-so and with no judicial oversight or other checks. That’s quite a power for an American President to claim for himself.

In my piece in The Daily Beast, I argue the following: “That this power helps us to eliminate a few dangerous men in the short term hardly justifies the imprudent folly of indulging an unchecked power so extreme it can only end in corruption.” I stand by this position. How many Americans can there possibly be who are a) terrorists who pose an imminent threat; b) impervious to being captured alive; c) capable of being killed.

But even if you believe that our situation is so dire that American citizens must be killed without having been charged, tried and convicted of anything, shouldn’t you at the very least want this extraordinary, unprecedented power checked by someone in another branch of government? What is the counterargument against that added safety? If these killings are actually free from abuses, surely the president possesses ample evidence that the person targeted actually is a terrorist who poses a grave threat. Is it too much to ask that a three judge panel agrees? And that Congress reviews all killings periodically? Shouldn’t the folks at The Claremont Institute, who champion the wisdom of the Founding Fathers, be arguing that those men would’ve made sure to build checks against such a significant power into other branches of the government?

The balance of my piece is here. As always, I’m eager to hear critiques, and especially curious to hear the argument against oversight from those who insist that this is a necessary practice. Takeaway lesson: no one who rises to the presidency can be trusted to limit himself to powers afforded his office by the Constitution properly understood.

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John Thain, the man who orchestrated Merrill Lynch’s transition from Wall Street star to Supernova to huge drag on Bank of America’s bottom line — all the while making sure his people got $3.6 billion in bonuses for their part in that sorry ride — has been named the new CEO of CIT Group.

Huh?

To hear CIT tell it, it’s almost as though the Merrill debacle is an inconsequential blip on his resume.

Prior to Merrill, Thain served as CEO of the New York Stock Exchange and president and chief operating officer of Goldman Sachs. A CIT spokesman said Thain’s role at the NYSE, where he modernized the exchange and better positioned it to compete in the global marketplace, was one of the accomplishments that most impressed CIT’s board.

I don’t know whether that praise is warranted (wasn’t that one of the things the NYSE board cited in justifying Richard Grasso’s $139 million compensation package?), but maybe it is. But that was several jobs ago.

From what I can tell, he did a masterful job of persuading Bank of America to buy Merrill Lynch, which was going down the tubes, big time.

Actually, I’m not being sarcastic here — Ken Lewis and the other BofA people have been charged with withholding news of Merrill’s huge losses from BofA shareholders, but no one has said Thain lied to them about it. And he sure got a good deal for his people.

But the fact remains, Thain was unable to save Merrill from financial implosion, he’s part of the huge-bonus culture, he’s a member of the Goldman old boys club — and let’s not forget his million-dollar renovation of his office. Does CIT really want to be led by someone who seems to have modeled his spending habits after Tyco’s (now-imprisoned) Dennis Kozlowski?

CIT has cost the taxpayer plenty (with little hope of repayment). But it really seems to have made great strides in solving its own problems. And most important (at least to me) this 100-year-old company seems to be one of the few (only?) bailed out financial firms that really is pumping money back into the economy, rather than just into its executives pockets:

The company moved through bankruptcy in just six weeks because its key bondholders had already approved a reorganization plan. It was able to cut its total debt by $10.5 billion and deferred debt maturities for three years. The same month it emerged from Chapter 11 it made plans to start lending again, committing to fund $500 million in new government-guaranteed loans to small business customers in 2010.

CIT is going back to its roots, which makes hiring a high-profile failure like Thain seem absolutely boneheaded. I’ll bet there are executives at regional banks, people who steered their institutions through the financial storms, who would be honored to run CIT as a conservative, fiscally sound lending institution.

But while I’m baffled at CIT’s choice, I’m not despairing. Thain is getting paid $500,000, with I think a bonus potential of less than $2 million.  For folks like me, that’s a small fortune; for folks like Thain, it’s chump change.  Wall Street pundits say that one of the main reasons he wanted the job was to repair his reputation.  If that is indeed his goal, he has every incentive to manage CIT conservatively and profitably, with an eye toward societal good.

Otherwise, all he’s done is failed upward.  The American way.

Can’t wait to watch the Superbowl tomorrow. Be sure to watch the ads in the 3rd quarter (someone said “Hell has indeed frozen over.”)

Google went all traditional with a real, broadcast ad. And, according to a panel of experts (a.k.a. Kash Hill & associates), the search giant dominated its competition (mainly Coke and Bud Light). Here’s the “Parisian Love” advertisement:

Awwww, so cute, right? It makes you almost forget about that whole “Google-NSA love” thing…

Google has been hammered over the last week for its courtship of the National Security Agency. To sum up: Google has enlisted the help of the NSA in protecting itself against hackers. But “Google” and “NSA” in the same sentence freaked out privacy organizations, who were concerned that, in exchange for offering Google added security, the NSA might want assistance enhancing their surveillance capabilities.

Getting the millions of people watching the Super Bowl to feel all warm and fuzzy toward the company “that does no evil” may have been one of the most strategic plays of the evening.

Well, second most, after the Saints’ onside kick in the second half.

*** P.S. CNET kind of ruined “Parisian Love” for me, by pointing me toward the Slate parody for Tiger Woods:

Definitely less cute than Google’s version.

Earlier that year Roissy got into an online contretemps with Conor Friedersdorf, a frequent guest-blogger for Andrew Sullivan, over the “neg,” a pickup artist tactic that involves teasing an especially attractive woman about her looks instead of complimenting them, on the theory that she probably gets so many compliments that she brushes them off. It’s an updated version of Lord Chesterfield’s dictum to his son that “a decided and conscious beauty looks upon every tribute paid to her beauty only as her due, but wants to shine and to be considered on the side of her understanding.” Friedersdorf, however, declared that the negger’s intention “is to reduce her self-esteem, or even worse to play on her insecurities with the knowledge that some women react to that technique by having sex or hooking up as a coping mechanism.” Roissy responded by making fun of Friedersdorf’s name.

In the Roissy approach, the neg isn’t reserved exclusively for “especially attractive” women. It is a standard ploy used during average pickup attempts. Furthermore, the neg isn’t an updated version of Lord Chesterfield’s dictum! The technique doesn’t consider a woman “on the side of her understanding.” It assumes that regardless of the woman’s intellect, she’ll react to a put down in a manner favorable to the pursuer. Insofar as she is given credit for possessing intelligence at all, it is deemed a non-factor. And I doubt Roissy himself would disagree with my observation that those who use the technique are deliberately trying to reduce the self-esteem of their targets — he talks of taking them off their pedestals — or that “pickup artists” are sometimes coached to target negs at what they perceive to be the particular insecurities of their targets.

My larger objection to Ms. Allen’s piece is how readily she accepts the pseudo-science of the pickup artist community. For example:

If it all sounds cheesy, tedious, manipulative, obvious, condescending to women, maybe kind of gay, it’s because it is. But here’s the rub: This stuff works. If you think men who peacock look ridiculous and unmanly, click onto the photo-website Hot Chicks With Douchebags, where spectacular-looking babes hang on the pecs of preening rednecks and “Jersey Shore”-style guidos sporting chest-baring shirts and product-stiffened fauxhawks. Watch the video “Learn Enough Guitar to Get Laid” on YouTube (three chords, max). In June 2005, Craig Malisow, a reporter for the Houston Press, trailed 24-year-old Bashev, a Bulgarian-born graduate student in engineering at Rice University and self-styled pickup expert, to a series of bars and clubs in Houston. Bashev had no intention of telling the 20-something HBs he met that his day job consisted of working with multivariable calculus. Instead he pointed to his shoes and informed them that he was a “foot model.” Then he launched into his canned opener: Did they think reality shows were “really real”? Sure, two groups of females on whom Bashev tried that line rolled their eyes and smirked, but three bars (and the same routine) later, he was relaxing in a lounge chair reading a shapely brunette’s palm (chick crack plus “kino,” a Mystery-ism that refers to getting a woman to crave your touch), and soon enough “her fingers were gently grasping the backs of his wrists,” Malisow observed. Within minutes, Bashev had not only number-closed but gotten a date for the following Wednesday.

That’s her proof that “this stuff works”: a guy approaches several groups of women at multiple bars, strikes out time after time, and eventually finds someone willing to give him a phone number and a first date. Is anyone else underwhelmed? Show me the control group where a man utterly unaware of the pickup artists spends a night doggedly approaching women at multiple bars. I’ll bet you he gets a phone number and a date by the end of the night too.

Elsewhere in the piece, Ms. Allen notes that some argue “it is actually beta men who are the greatest victims of the current mating chaos: the ones who work hard, act nice, and find themselves searching in vain for potential wives and girlfriends among the hordes of young women besotted by alphas.”

It is an argument she ultimately embraces:

The whole point of the sexual and feminist revolutions was to obliterate the sexual double standard that supposedly stood in the way of ultimate female freedom. The twin revolutions obliterated much more, but the double standard has reemerged in a harsher, crueler form: wreaking havoc on beta men and on beta women, too, who, as the declining marriage rate indicates, have trouble finding and securing long-term mates in a supply-saturated short-term sexual marketplace.

A declining marriage rate alone is partly evidence for the proposition that beta men and women in today’s sexual marketplace are having more trouble than before “finding and securing long-term mates.” Yet it is the only evidence on offer for a proposition central to the article’s thesis, and the worldviews of numerous men in the pickup artist community.