Krulwich Wonders… : “…Very short stories can get very, very short and still be good. The most famous example (supposedly written by Ernest Hemingway) draws a little sigh with only six words; it’s a sales ad.

‘For sale:

baby shoes,

never worn.’

Nobody has been able to beat that one, at least nobody I’ve read,…

But I’ve seen stories that are way richer, and much, much shorter, if we’re counting words. They use no words at all…” (via NPR).

After nine years, the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives, the near bankruptcy of the US economy, the squandering of the goodwill of most of the world and the fueling of rabid anti-Americanism, Bush-Cheney’s American occupation of the Iranian province that was formerly the nation of Iraq finally ends. Mission accomplished!

For a stroll down memory lane, here is a Google search that should point you to all the posts I wrote about Iraq over the years of the war.

Related:

• American Mission In Iraq Formally Ended; Will Iraq Enter Iranian Sphere? (crazyjew.wordpress.com)
• Ravaged and Remade, Iraq Is on Its Own – New York Times (nytimes.com)
• Panetta formally shuts down US war in Iraq (sfgate.com)
• US formally draws curtain on the unpopular war in Iraq (video) (csmonitor.com)

 

Use of Chimps Halted in New U.S.-Funded Research: “The National Institutes of Health on Thursday suspended all new grants for biomedical and behavioral research on chimpanzees and accepted the first uniform criteria for assessing the necessity of such research. Those criteria require that the research be necessary for human health, and that there be no other way to accomplish it.

In making the announcement, Dr. Francis S. Collins, the director of the N.I.H., said the agency was accepting the recommendations released earlier in the day by an expert committee of the Institute of Medicine and would establish a working group to decide how to carry out those recommendations. The decision by the N.I.H. and the recomentions from the Institute of Medicine, a expert advisory group, do not put an end to research on chimps, but were claimed as victories by animal rights groups that have been fighting for ban on such research for decades, arguing that research on chimpanzees was unneeded and cruel to the animal that is human’s closest relative. They said that the move was a step toward eventually ending chimp research, already a tiny segment of federal research.” (via  NYTimes).

“

A jury has acquitted a Hoquiam, Wash., man accused of breaking into a home in June and throwing a dead mink at another man. Police said Jobie J. Watkins, 33, went to the other man’s apartment looking for his ex-girlfriend. The other man was struck after he asked Watkins why he had a dead weasel and Watkins reportedly insisted that it was a marten.” (via SFGATE).

Thanks to rich, who wonders if this is a problem of “infidelity or taxonomy.”

“Photographs by Charlotte Dumas of privately owned dogs who were mobilized, with their owners, to search for victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. They are now retired.” (slide show via NYTimes.com).

This, from Robert Krulwich, is so good it deserves to be excerpted in full:

‘Here’s something you should know about yourself. Vowels control your brain. “I”s make you see things differently than “O”s. Here’s how. Say these words out loud:

• Bean
• Mint
• Slim

These “I” and “E” vowels are formed by putting your tongue forward in the mouth. That’s why they’re called “front” vowels.

Now, say:

• Large
• Pod
• Or
• Ought

With these words, your tongue depresses and folds back a bit. So “O”, “A” and “U” are called “back” of the throat vowels.

OK, here’s the weird part.When comparing words across language groups, says Stanford linguistics professor Dan Jurafsky, a curious pattern shows up: Words with front vowels (“I” and “E”) tend to represent small, thin, light things.Back vowels (“O” “U” and some “A”s ) show up in fat, heavy things.

It’s not always true, but it’s a tendency that you can see in any of the stressed vowels in words like little, teeny or itsy-bitsy (all front vowels) versus humongous or gargantuan (back vowels). Or the i vowel in Spanish chico (front vowel meaning small) versus gordo (back vowel meaning fat). Or French petit (front vowel) versus grand (back vowel).

Try this yourself. If I make up two words, “Frish” and “Frosh” and tell you each is about to become a new ice cream, which of the two seems richer, heavier?

For me, “Frosh,” (with the back vowel “o”) seems creamier. I don’t know why. Just feels that way. And not just to me. A study in the Journal of Consumer Research found most people imagined Frosh creamier than Frish.

Here’s another example. Richard Klink, a marketing professor at Loyola College in Maryland created a test using two sets of names. They were nonsense names, chosen at random:

Nidax vs. Nodax and Detal vs. Dutal

And then, slapping these names on various imaginary products, he asked a group of people:

• Which brand of laptop seems bigger; Detal or Dutal?
• Which brand of vacuum cleaner seems heavier, Keffi or Kuffi?
• Which brand of ketchup seems thicker, Nellen or Nullen?
• Which brand of beer seems darker, Esab or Usab?

“In each case,” reports Professor Jurasky, “the participants in the study tended to choose the product named by back vowels (dutal, nodax) as the larger, heavier, thicker, darker product. Similar studies have been conducted in various other languages.”

Jurasky then wondered, Do businesses know this about vowels? For example, would an ice cream company (looking to create a rich, creamy and satisfying product,) and a cracker manufacturer, (looking to make something, thin, light and crackily) use different vowels?  He thought they might, so, on his blog, he writes:

To test the hypothesis I downloaded two lists of food names from the web. One was a list of 81 ice cream flavors that I constructed by including every flavor sold by either Haagen Dazs or Ben & Jerry’s. The second was a list of 592 cracker brands from a dieting website. For each list, I counted the total number of front vowels and the total number of back vowels (details of the study are here). The result, shown in the table [below], is that ice creams names indeed have more back vowels and cracker names have more front vowels. (Language of Food)

Ice cream companies mix in lots of “O”s and “A”s, says Jurasky, like…

Rocky Road, Jamoca Almond Fudge, Chocolate, Caramel, Cookie Dough, Coconut

But the cracker people stick pretty much to “E”s and “I”s.

Cheese Nips, Cheez It, Wheat Thins, Pretzel thins, Ritz, Krispy, Triscuit, Thin Crisps, Cheese Crisps, Chicken in a Biskit, Snack sticks, Toasted chips, Ritz bits

But Why? Why do we associate “front” vowels with small, thin light things and “back” vowels with big, solid, heavy things?

Two linguists, John Ohala and Eugene Morton proposed that over evolutionary time, humans instinctively associate pitch with size. Lions, bears, seals make low sounds, canaries, mice, rabbits higher sounds. Not always, but enough of the time that when we hear a low frequency (even in an “O” or a “U”) we may think big and heavy, whereas higher frequencies (even in “I’s and “E”s) suggest small and light.

The Origin Of The Smile? Dan Jurasky goes even further. Scholars have noticed, he says, that when people say “Boo!”, they form an o-shape with their lips and mouth, and look aggressive and a little dangerous.

But use the “front” vowels, like “I” and “E”, your mouth and lips will widen into a kind of smile. Why do we say “cheese” when it’s time to take the picture? Why does the word smile contain an “I”? These front vowels, he says, are the “smile” vowels. One day they may even explain why we smile, but in the meantime, the big news is that it’s old fashioned to think of vowels as just sounds.

They are more than that: they are little strings that pull on our brains and it turns out, “I”s pull us to different places than “O”s.

Who knew?  (via NPR).

“A lot has been written recently about the recent militarization of US police forces. The impression is inescapable in an atmosphere saturated with imagery of Occupy protesters being bullied by domestic police who wield militarized weaponry, clad in what used to be thought of as riot gear, but is now a de rigueur feature of official responses to things that do not resemble nor threaten to become riots. It appears this militarization comes partly courtesy unprecedented and legally dubious collaboration between civilian police and the CIA…” (via Truthout, with thanks to hal).

Related:

• Occupy Ourselves | Truthout (indigenist.blogspot.com)
• Indefinite Military Detention: Revised Defense Bill Still Gives President Authority To Lock Up Citizens (huffingtonpost.com)
• | A Dangerous Woman: Indefinite Detention at Carswell Air Force Base! (truthaholics.wordpress.com)

Senator Al Franken, speaking to AFL-CIO on Monday, points out the glaringly contradictory schools of thought that define the Republican economic theory. (via progressivetoo; thanks to  hal).

“Lists are created, and have been for many centuries, for all manner of reasons. It’s my aim to feature some of the most notable examples right here. Updated as often as possible; usually on weekdays. Edited by me, Shaun Usher. I also run Letters of Note.”  (Lists of Note).

‘Melting ice is beginning to transform the world’s shipping routes. But will it launch a new Cold War?’ (via Salon).

‘…a nuclear explosion from the Tumbler-Snapper tests performed in Nevada during 1952. It looks different from all nuclear explosions you’ve seen because it’s what it looks like one millisecond after detonation. It looks like a skull by Tim Burton.

The face of atomic death just one second away from unleashing its absolute destruction.

Only one millisecond after the bomb explodes, this 65.6-foot (20 meters) ball of fire appears in midair, with spikes that look like rotten teeth or stalactites of fire (called the rope trick effect).

The explosion was captured by a Rapid Action Electronic camera—a high speed device designed to photograph nuclear explosions just milliseconds after ignition. The rapatronic camera, as it is called, was created by Harold Edgerton in the 1940s using two polarizing filters and Kerr cell instead of a shutter, which is too slow for this job. A Kerr cell is a panel that changes its polarization depending on the voltage applied. This acts as a very high speed shutter, which allows the perfect exposition to capture this moment.’ (via Gizmodo).

“…[G]rowing excitement that the first signs of the ultra-elusive Higgs boson particle have been detected by teams working at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC).’ (via Mail Online).

Free Trapped Friends, Hint at Universal Empathy: ‘With a few liberating swipes of their paws, a group of research rats freed trapped labmates and raised anew the possibility that empathy isn’t unique to humans and a few extra-smart animals, but is widespread in the animal world.

Though more studies are needed on the rats’ motivations, it’s at least plausible they demonstrated “empathically motivated pro-social behavior.” People would generally call that helpfulness, or even kindness.

“Rats help other rats in distress. That means it’s a biological inheritance,” said neurobiologist Peggy Mason of the University of Chicago. “That’s the biological program we have.” ‘ (via Wired.com).

“We want to rebrand the US Dollar, rebuild financial confidence and revive our failing economy.” (via richardsmith.posterous.com).

Ted Kaptchuk’s Quest to Understand the Placebo Effect: ‘It boils down to one question, Kaptchuk asserts: “Do you think this entire field is based on a foundation of magical thinking, or do you not?” ‘ (via The New Yorker).

‘Is the idea that the End is near a recent phenomenon? Far from it. Indeed, Chicken Littles have crying doom since ancient times. The aim of this page is to debunk end-time prophecy by listing hundreds of failed doomsday predictions, allay the fears spread by end-time preachers, anddemonstrate that doomcrying is nothing new. I also hope you will derive amusement from some of the more bizarre prophecies.

I have strived for accuracy through careful cross-referencing amongsource materials. I’m constantly adding new information and correcting mistakes, yet there may still be some errors.

Please journey with me through the wild, wacky and wonderful world of failed doomsday prophecy!’ (via Abhota).

Related:

• And Just When I was Getting Prepared for the Apocalypse… (outsidethebeltway.com)
• Mayan Doomsday Prophecy of 2012 apocalypse ‘wrongly translated’ (news.bioscholar.com)
• Catholics Agree With Prophecies Contained in The ’2012′ Mayan Prophecy and New Hollywood Movie (prweb.com)
• Author Presents Enlightening, Analytical Interpretation of the Book of Revelation (prweb.com)
• Apocalypse Predictions Are Nothing New: A Look Back At Doomsday Theories (newyork.cbslocal.com)
• Preacher apologizes for failed apocalypse prediction (abclocal.go.com)
• Why the World Will End (Again) on Friday (livescience.com)

‘The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has resumed at the Allen Telescope Array in northern California. The ATA was in hibernation for months due to a lack of funding. But new cash came in from the public (yay, public support of science!) and also the US Air Force “as part of a formal assessment of the instrument’s utility for Space Situational Awareness.” Exoplanet candidates found via NASA’s Kepler space telescope will be one focus of the resumed effort.’ (via Boing Boing).

“James & Other Apes: While watching a nature program on primates I was struck by their facial similarity to our own. Humans are clearly different to animals, but the great apes inhabit that grey area between man and animal. I thought it would be interesting to try to photograph gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans using the aesthetic of the passport photograph- its ubiquitous style inferring the idea of identity.

I decided against photographing in zoos or using ‘animal actors’ but traveled to Cameroon, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo and Indonesia to meet orphans of the bush meat trade and live pet trade.” (via Hunch).

Related:

• James Mollison’s Where Children Sleep series (lostateminor.com)
• The Disciples: Fans of Rock Concerts by James Mollison (amusingplanet.com)
• Random Excellence: James Mollison (theonlinephotographer.typepad.com)
• An Incredible Look At The Sleeping Conditions Of Children Around The World (businessinsider.com)

Jazz died in 1959.

There maybe cool individuals who say they play Jazz, but ain’t shit cool about Jazz as a whole.

Jazz died when cool stopped being hip.

Jazz was a limited idea to begin with.

Jazz is a label that was forced upon the musicians.

The musicians should’ve never accepted that idea.

Jazz ain’t shit.

Jazz is incestuous.

Jazz separated itself from American popular music.

Big mistake.

The music never recovered.

Ornette tried to save Jazz from itself by taking the music back to its New Orleanian roots, but his efforts were too esoteric.

Jazz died in 1959, that’s why Ornette tried to “Free Jazz” in 1960.

Jazz is only cool if you don’t actually play it for a living.

Jazz musicians have accepted the idea that it’s OK to be poor.

John Coltrane is a bad cat, but Jazz stopped being cool in 1959.

The very fact that so many people are holding on to this idea of what Jazz is supposed to be is exactly what makes it not cool.

People are holding on to an idea that died long ago.

Jazz, like the Buddha, is dead.

Let it go, people, let it go.

Paul Whiteman was the King of Jazz and someday all kings must fall.

Jazz ain’t cool, it’s cold, like necrophilia.

Stop fucking the dead and embrace the living.

Jazz worries way too much about itself for it to be cool.

Jazz died in 1959.

The number one Jazz record is Miles Davis’ Kind Of Blue.

Dave Brubeck’s Time Out was released in 1959.

1959 was the coolest year in Jazz.

Jazz is haunted by its own hungry ghosts.

Let it die.

You can be martyrs for an idea that died over a half a century if y’all want.

Jazz has proven itself to be limited, and therefore, not cool.

Lot’s wife turned to a pillar of salt from looking back.

Jazz is dead.

Miles ahead.

Some may say that I’m no longer the same dude who recorded the album with Doc Cheatham.

Correct: I’m not the same dude I was 14 years ago.

Isn’t that the point?

Our whole purpose on this planet is to evolve.

The Golden Age of Jazz is gone.

Let it go.

Too many necrophiliacs in Jazz.

You’re making my case for me.

Some people may say we are defined by our limitations.

I don’t believe in limitations, but yes, if you believe you are limited that will define you.

Definitions are retrospective.

And if you find yourself getting mad, it’s probably because you know Jazz is dead.

Why get upset if what I’m saying doesn’t ring true?

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I don’t play Jazz.

I play Postmodern New Orleans music.

Louis Armstrong and Danny Barker play Traditional New Orleans Music.

Ellis Marsalis and James Black play Modern New Orleans music.

Kidd Jordan and Clyde Kerr play Avant-garde New Orleans music.

Donald Harrison plays Neoclassical New Orleans music.

I play Postmodern New Orleans music.

I am a part of a lineage.

I am a part of a blood line.

My ancestors didn’t play Jazz, they played Traditional, Modern and Avant-garde New Orleans Music.

I don’t play Jazz.

I don’t let others define who I am.

I am a Postmodern New Orleans musician.

I create music for the heart and the head, for the beauty and the booty.

The man who lets others define him is a dead man.

With all due respect to the masters, they were victims of a colonialist mentality.

Blacks have been conditioned for centuries to be grateful for whatever crumbs thrown to them.

As a postmodern musician, it’s my duty to do better than my predecessors.

To question, reexamine and redefine what it is that we do.

They accepted it because they had to.

Because my ancestors opened the door for me, I don’t have to accept it.

Louis bowed and scraped so Miles could turn his back.

It’s called evolution.

It’s the colonialist mentality that glorifies being treated like a slave.

There is nothing romantic about poor, scuffling Jazz musicians.

Fuck that idea.

It’s not cool.

Jazz is a lie.

America is a lie.

Playing Jazz is like running on a treadmill: you may break a sweat, but ultimately you ain’t going nowhere.

Some people may say we are limited.

I say, we are as limited as we think.

I am not limited.

Jazz is a marketing ploy that serves an elite few.

The elite make all the money while they tell the true artists it’s cool to be broke.

Occupy Jazz!

I am not speaking of so-called Jazz’s improvisational aspects.

Improvisation by its very nature can never be passé, but mindsets are invariably deadly.

Not knowing is the most you can ever know.

It’s only when you don’t know that “everything” is possible.

Jazz has nothing to do with music or being cool.

It’s a marketing idea.

A glaring example of what’s wrong with Jazz is how people fight over it.

People are too afraid to let go of a name that is killing the spirit of the music.

Life is bigger than music, unless you love and/or play Jazz.

The art, or lack thereof, is just a reflection.

Miles Davis personified cool and he hated Jazz.

What is Jazz anyway?

Life isn’t linear, it’s concentric.

When you’re truly creating you don’t have time to think about what to call it.

Who thinks of what they’ll name the baby while they’re fucking?

Playing Jazz is like using the rear-view mirror to drive your car on the freeway.

If you think Jazz is a style of music, you’ll never begin to understand.

It’s ultimately on the musicians.

People are fickle and follow the pack.

Not enough artists willing to soldier for their shit.

People follow trends and brands.

So do musicians, sadly.

Jazz is a brand.

Jazz ain’t music, it’s marketing, and bad marketing at that.

It has never been, nor will it ever be, music.

Here lies Jazz (1916 – 1959).

Too many musicians and not enough artists.

I believe music to be more of a medium than a brand.

Silence is music, too.

You can’t practice art.

In order for it to be true, one must live it.

Existence is not contingent upon thought.

It’s where you choose to put silence that makes sound music.

Sound and silence equals music.

Sometimes when I’m soloing, I don’t play shit.

I just move blocks of silence around.

The notes are an afterthought.

Silence is what makes music sexy.

Silence is cool.

— Nicholas Payton

“It’s not a frequent topic of discussion, but doctors die, too. And they don’t die like the rest of us. What’s unusual about them is not how much treatment they get compared to most Americans, but how little. For all the time they spend fending off the deaths of others, they tend to be fairly serene when faced with death themselves. They know exactly what is going to happen, they know the choices, and they generally have access to any sort of medical care they could want. But they go gently.” (via Zócalo Public Square).

‘NASA has found a planet outside our solar system that looks to be an awful lot like Earth–or maybe even better, given that its climate is roughly like a balmy day in Key West.

The planet, Kepler-22b, is the first confirmed planet within the “habitable zone,” meaning that liquid water could exist on the surface and support life. It is almost 2.5 times the size of Earth and 600 light years away, so you may want to start saving your frequent flier miles now if you want your great-to-the-29th-power grandchildren to have a shot at vacationing there.’ (via CNET).

“Continuous glucose monitoring using a sensor implanted under the skin has been a recent technological improvement for patients with this illness. But the long-desired diabetes treatment has been an artificial pancreas: an implant that could both sense blood glucose levels and administer the appropriate amount of insulin instantaneously. Prof Toumazou’s innovation is to integrate sensing and treatment in one device, effectively creating a new pancreas outside the body.” (via Elements).

This has been one of the holy grails of medicine. If it works, it will be an incalculable benefit.

“I’ve worked really hard to narrow down this list to five items that no kid should be without. All five should fit easily within any budget, and are appropriate for a wide age range so you get the most play out of each one. These are time-tested and kid-approved! And as a bonus, these five can be combined for extra-super-happy-fun-time.” (via GeekDad). 

“Psychology has a stereotype problem with grief and mourning. Over and over again false assumptions are repeated, not even valid in Western cultures, that there are certain ‘stages’ to grief, that people will reliably react in certain ways with certain key emotions – sadness, anger, resignation and so on.

This leads to both a professional pathologising of grieving people including endless variations on ‘the person hasn’t accepted their loss’, ‘they haven’t elaborated their grief’ and ‘they’re in denial’ applied to anyone who doesn’t mourn within the expected boundaries.

Moreover, it leads to a cultural blindness about how other societies feel and understand the loss of others with the implicit assumption that the experience of grief is somehow universal.” (via Mind Hacks).

“No team? No sweat — at least for spaceman Satoshi Furukawa, who pitches, bats, fields, and floats all by his lonesome…” (via The Week).

“China’s national post office is hoping to boost business by allowing customers to send letters postmarked from space. Emails will be sent to a computer aboard Tiangong-1 spacecraft currently orbiting the earth, and rerouted to a special China Space Post Office branch on the ground in Beijing, the country’s space program announced on its website.

The emails will be printed, placed in space-themed envelopes, stamped with a new galactic postmark and sent on in the mail. The service, which features China’s first astronaut, Yang Liwei, as head of the “space post office”, is the latest initiative devised by the postal service to drum up business as more and more Chinese go online.” (via Daily Galaxy).

“Yes, there will be times when to troubleshoot a problem with your smartphone, you’re going to need to let your carrier look deeply into your network traffic. But, as a matter of course to let them snoop on your every click? And, the content of your messages!? I don’t think so!

So what can you do?” (via ZDNet).

I am grateful that you held the door open for me as I walked into the bakery.  I am sorry that I was so preoccupied that I did not acknowledge your kindness quickly enough for your liking.

A great man once told me not to qualify my apologies with extenuation, but simply to take responsibility for my transgression. But, I’m sorry, I’m going to make an exception this time.

I am sorry that, for you, a benevolent act is ruined if it is not given proper recognition by the recipient. Pitiful.

Indeed, I am grateful that you have helped me identify that I am sometimes a pitiful assh*le. I don’t refer so much to times I fail to acknowledge a courtesy but, rather, to when I myself have muttered an epithet under my breath when someone else was not grateful enough for my egotistical kindness.

Sometimes, the contempt of the contemptible is akin to a compliment.

“I believe the time is right for science to reconsider its use of the phrase “shark attack” on humans. Such language creates a one-dimensional perception of these events and makes protecting threatened shark species more difficult. After all, why care about an animal that wants to eat us?

…The argument for change is compelling. Modern research has shown that bites by sharks are often investigatory or defensive, taking place in cloudy water and out of curiosity.” (via New Scientist).

The mystery of anaesthesia: ‘The development of general anaesthesia has transformed surgery from a horrific ordeal into a gentle slumber. It is one of the commonest medical procedures in the world, yet we still don’t know how the drugs work. Perhaps this isn’t surprising: we still don’t understand consciousness, so how can we comprehend its disappearance?

That is starting to change, however, with the development of new techniques for imaging the brain or recording its electrical activity during anaesthesia. “In the past five years there has been an explosion of studies, both in terms of consciousness, but also how anaesthetics might interrupt consciousness and what they teach us about it,” says George Mashour, an anaesthetist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. “We’re at the dawn of a golden era.” ‘ (via New Scientist)

Opium poppy field, Burma

“Technologists will become the next drug dealers, administering narcotics through brain stimulation, according to Rohit Talwar, the founder of Fast Future Research, speaking at Intelligence Squared’s If conference.

Talwar was charged by the government to investigate the drugs landscape over the next 20 years, exploring scenarios going beyond the traditional model of gangs producing and shipping drugs around the world.

He described how the world of genomic sequencing and services such as 23 and Me open up possibilities for tailoring drugs to the individual, delivering effects based on your physiology — which could  pply just as effectively to narcotics as it could medicines.”  (via Wired Science).

Jonah Lehrer: “Chewing without eating seems like such a ridiculous habit, the oral equivalent of running on a treadmill. And yet, people have been chewing gum for thousands of years, ever since the ancient Greeks began popping wads of mastic tree resin in their mouth to sweeten the breath. Socrates probably chewed gum.

It turns out there’s an excellent rationale for this long-standing cultural habit: Gum is an effective booster of mental performance, conferring all sorts of benefits without any side effects. The latest investigation of gum chewing comes from a team of psychologists at St. Lawrence University…” (via The Loom, Wired Science).

‘

Pick up an object that’s close at hand. Throw it at something, or even someone (but gently, of course!) You’ve just reenacted what appears to be a pivotal stage in human evolution, when a propensity for projectiles shaped cognitive powers that later became language and symbolic thought.’ (via Wired Science).

“Jürgen Habermas has had enough. The philosopher is doing all he can these days to call attention to what he sees as the demise of the European ideal. He hopes he can help save it — from inept politicians and the dark forces of the market.” (via SPIEGEL ONLINE).

‘No matter how fervently Macdonald avowed that he detested middlebrow consumers, he needed them as much as they needed him. Much of the lucid, cutting criticism he wrote was addressed to that “intelligent layman” who might otherwise succumb to Midcult’s temptations; Macdonald, in turn, was the guide who discriminated between the phony gesture and the real thing. He was a predator who required a steady diet of prey to survive, and for all that he was vexed by middlebrow cultural consumption, he was sustained by it too. His panic now seems less prescient than misplaced. At a time when reading up on Kafka is neither more nor less valid than keeping up with the Kardashians, a thriving demographic of middle-class strivers looks to me less ludicrous or menacing than the vacancy it has left behind.’ — Jennifer Szalai (via The Nation).

Related:

• Masscult and Midcult by Dwight Macdonald – review (guardian.co.uk)
• Essay: Dwight Macdonald’s War on Mediocrity (nytimes.com)
• Louis Menand: Dwight Macdonald’s war on Midcult. (newyorker.com)

 

Fox News Food Products: “In my recent post on the poisonous nature of pepper spray, I noted that the name makes it sound more innocuous than it really is. We’re talking, after all, about a chemical agent potent enough that our soldiers are banned by international treaty from using it in other countries:

But we’ve taken to calling it pepper spray, I think, because that makes it sound so much more benign than it really is, like something just a grade or so above what we might mix up in a home kitchen. The description hints maybe at that eye-stinging effect that the cook occasionally experiences when making something like a jalapeno-based salsa, a little burn, nothing too serious.

As it turns out, this is exactly the message that Fox News is promoting to its views. And not subtly either. As Gawker reported, last night News co-hosts Bill O’Reilly and Megyn Kelly mulled over the pepper-spraying of peacefully protesting students at UC-Davis this weekend. Why all the outrage, Kelly wondered. After all “pepper spray is a food product, essentially.”

On Twitter, this has launched some fairly hilarious suggestions from my fellow science writers for potential Fox News Food Products…” — Deborah Blum (via Speakeasy Science).

“A virus with the potential to kill up to half the world’s population has been made in a lab. Now academics and bioterrorism experts are arguing over whether to publish the recipe, and whether the research should have been done in the first place.” (via RT).

Kalliopi Monoyios: ‘I can’t say for certain whether New York based photographer Ted Sabarese had science or evolution in mind when he conceived of this series. But I’m almost glad he never responded to my follow-up questions about his inspiration behind these. Part of the fun of art is its mirror-like quality: everyone sees something different when faced with it because everyone brings a different set of experiences and expectations to the table. When I look at these I see equal parts “you are what you eat,” “your inner fish,” and “United Colors of Benetton.” ‘ (via Symbiartic, Scientific American Blog Network.

“Here’s a superbly-kept secret: You know all those dates you see on food products—sell by, use by, best before? Those dates do not indicate the safety of your food, and generally speaking, they’re not regulated.” (via NRDC).

An interesting way of quantifying the risks we take and their relationship to our life expectancy, with perhaps surprising implications for conceptualizing how fast we live our lives. (via Understanding Uncertainty).

 Daniel Engber: “The dangers of using one lab animal to study every disease.” (via Slate Magazine).

“The violent police assaults across the US are no coincidence. Occupy has touched the third rail of our political class’s venality.” — Naomi Wolf (via guardian.co.uk).

Related:

• Who Coordinated the Raids? (Riverdaughter)
• Glenn Greenwald: OWS-Inspired Activism (Salon)
• No, the Crackdown Against Occupy Wall Street is Not the Work of the Shadowy Elite (forbes.com)
• Feds Helped Coordinate Occupy X Crackdowns (yro.slashdot.org)

‘This article is a list of fictional diseases — nonexistent, named medical conditions which appear in fiction where they have a major plot or thematic importance. They may be fictional psychological disorders, magical, from mythological or fantasy settings, have evolved naturally, been engineered artificially (most often created as biological weapons), or be any illness that came forth from the (ab)use of technology.’ (via boing boing)

‘[Svante] Paabo has changed the way scientists study human evolution. Along with fossils, they can now study genomes that belonged to people who died 40,000 years ago. They can do experiments to see how some of those individual genes helped to make us human. During his talk, Paabo used this new research to sketch out a sweeping vision of how our ancestors evolved uniquely human brains as they swept out across the world.’ (via The Loom | Discover Magazine).

Related:

• Dear Professor, I think my husband may be a Neanderthal (guardian.co.uk)
• Admit it – you totally would have had sex with Neanderthals [Evolution] (io9.com)
• What Happened Between the Neanderthals and Us? : The New Yorker (gcmpacaquaticindustries.wordpress.com)
• Svante Paabo: DNA clues to our inner neanderthal [Greg Laden's Blog] (scienceblogs.com)

‘Though …academic ethnographers have balked at working with the military — the American Anthropological Association issued a report condemning the Human Terrain program as a violation of professional ethics — they have not ignored the country. Noah Coburn’s “Bazaar Politics” is the first extended study of an Afghan community to appear since the Taliban fell. It follows an ambitious history of Afghanistan by the Boston University anthropologist Thomas Barfield, and an impassioned essay by Rory Stewart, the Conservative M.P., author-adventurer and Kabul preservationist, that faults the international .effort in Afghanistan for its neglect of ethnographic insight. Whatever anthropology has to say about America’s longest war, it’s saying it now.’ (via Book Review – NYTimes.com).

‘People with high IQs are more likely to smoke marijuana and take other illegal drugs, compared with those who score lower on intelligence tests, according to a new study from the U.K.’ (via TIME). This finding is universally referred to as ‘counterintuitive’, but I don’t think so. We are not talking about use of tobacco, and we are probably not talking about heroin addiction, but those with higher IQ are generally more open to novel experience, less credulous about anti-drug propaganda and less rigidly moralistic.

‘When our autobiographical memory lets us down, how do we reconstruct the lost chapters?’ (via BPS Research Digest).

“There’s definitely something to be said for first impressions. New research from the University of California, Berkeley, suggests it can take just 20 seconds to detect whether a stranger is genetically inclined to being trustworthy, kind or compassionate. The findings reinforce that healthy humans are wired to recognize strangers who may help them out in a tough situation. They also pave the way for genetic therapies for people who are not innately sympathetic, researchers said.

…Two dozen couples participated in the UC Berkeley study, and each provided DNA samples. Researchers then documented the couples as they talked about times when they had suffered. Video was recorded only of the partners as they took turns listening. A separate group of observers who did not know the couples were shown 20-second video clips of the listeners and asked to rate which seemed most trustworthy, kind and compassionate, based on their facial expressions and body language.

The listeners who got the highest ratings for empathy, it turned out, possess a particular variation of the oxytocin receptor gene known as the GG genotype.” (via e! Science News).

Ummm, okay, so we can recognize people with a particular oxytocin gene variant. and we think they are more empathic. But is there any evidence that truly correlates with greater empathy? (I know  there is some evidence that, at least in animals, oxytocin has a relationship with strength of social affiliation.)

Related:

• The kindness of strangers: Caring and trust linked to genetic variation (eurekalert.org)
• Oxytocin Revisited (psychologytoday.com)
• A Kindness Gene? Researchers Say Caring, Trustworthiness May Be In Our DNA (huffingtonpost.com)
• Body Language Reveals ‘Empathy Gene’ (webmd.com)
• Is empathy in our genes? – CNN (edition.cnn.com)
• Being a jerk could be in your genes (windsorstar.com)

‘With current technology, nothing larger or heavier than [the Mars Science Library, touching down on Mars in August 2012] can be put on the surface of Mars. Anything more massive, including a human mission, which NASA estimates would require landing at least 40 to 80 tons of machinery, is completely out of the question.

“We’ve maxed out our ability to take mass to the surface of Mars,” said engineer Bobby Braun, former NASA chief technologist and co-author of a 2005 research paper highlighting this problem.

The basic obstacle for large-scale missions is Mars’ tenuous atmosphere, which is more than 100 times thinner than that of Earth. The pressure of the Martian atmosphere at its surface is equivalent to what someone would experience flying at 100,000 feet on Earth.’ (via Wired.com).