Asking the tough questions

Sarah Palin, Inc.

always about the money

Classics

This is why I won't buy a reader like the Kindle until it is really open - open platform - lets me load on what i want, different file types, and no company should have control over what gets deleted...

This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for—thought they owned.

But no, apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their accounts for the price.

Palin to resign as governor

I wonder what the heck this is all about?

Her statement says she doesn't want to be a lame duck because she isn't running for a second term.



and if you made it through all that, here is part II:

60

Wow, didn't think it would happen. Now, just it will only be the Dems fault when they don't stand up to the monopolistic health insurance industry to institute health reform with a public option...

Coup

in Honduras

In the first military coup in Central America since the end of the cold war, soldiers stormed the presidential palace in the capital, Tegucigalpa, early in the morning, disarming the presidential guard, waking Mr. Zelaya and putting him on a plane to Costa Rica.

The Four Iran Scenarios and "Basiji Hunting"

what might happen in Iran?

Traditional Marriage

ninja in chief

Iran protests: live

Here

Catch the wave

pretty cool stuff.

I like the live concurrent editing:

Fish Spa

(not my feet)

The other day I tried this.

The fish are called Garra rufa... The experience was actually quite nice. I graduated up to the biggest fish they had, probably 4 inches or so long.

Just for kicks

1993

Creating the open city

Cities 2.0

Tweeting Body Counts

Apparently the military has started doing that in Afghanistan...

Young Conservative Rap

Can a machine change your mind?

The mind is not the brain. Confusing the two, as much neuro-social-science does, leads to a dehumanised world and a controlling politics

Love me some Cheney

Precision hacking

the wisdom of crowds

story of stuff

story of stuff

more here

Omama speech at the WH Correspondence

Hurtling space junk

Sounds like we need to move towards a sustainable astronautics

MONTREAL - Man-made space particles as small as a cornflake could take out a spacecraft in the skies or anybody on the ground who strays into its path, cosmic experts from around the globe warned on Thursday.

Hurtling space junk has been deemed a growing extraterrestrial threat to humankind, prompting a group of space gurus to descend on Montreal this week to consider what to do about the potentially dangerous debris.

"They travel at the speed of about eight or nine kilometres per second - that's almost 10 times the speed of a bullet from a gun," said Ram Jakhu, a professor at McGill University, which is hosting the three-day congress on the high-flying hazards.

"So, they are naturally very dangerous."

A public service announcement

Socialism Gone Wild

Going Dutch

The Irony of Satire

Political Ideology and the Motivation to See What You Want to See in The Colbert Report

This study investigated biased message processing of political satire in The Colbert Report and the influence of political ideology on perceptions of Stephen Colbert. Results indicate that political ideology influences biased processing of ambiguous political messages and source in late-night comedy. Using data from an experiment (N = 332), we found that individual-level political ideology significantly predicted perceptions of Colbert's political ideology. Additionally, there was no significant difference between the groups in thinking Colbert was funny, but conservatives were more likely to report that Colbert only pretends to be joking and genuinely meant what he said while liberals were more likely to report that Colbert used satire and was not serious when offering political statements. Conservatism also significantly predicted perceptions that Colbert disliked liberalism. Finally, a post hoc analysis revealed that perceptions of Colbert's political opinions fully mediated the relationship between political ideology and individual-level opinion.

My explanation is that strong conservatives are incapable of recognizing satire - just too subtle. I'm curious -- have there ever been a famous conservative satirist comedian?

The Database State

and database tyranny

Fear is all they know

If the swine flu doesn't get you

red meat will

Now a new study of more than 500,000 Americans has provided the best evidence yet that our affinity for red meat has exacted a hefty price on our health and limited our longevity.

The study found that, other things being equal, the men and women who consumed the most red and processed meat were likely to die sooner, especially from one of our two leading killers, heart disease and cancer, than people who consumed much smaller amounts of these foods.

Penn. Sen. Arlen Specter to Switch to Democratic Party

Looks like it really has happened...

So why did he do it? Electability, apparently. Now if they can only seat Franken...

Specter statement

... Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans. ...

Feds Declare Health Emergency

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Drugs in Portugal: Did Legalization Work?

Looks like it has so far...

At the recommendation of a national commission charged with addressing Portugal's drug problem, jail time was replaced with the offer of therapy. The argument was that the fear of prison drives addicts underground and that incarceration is more expensive than treatment — so why not give drug addicts health services instead? Under Portugal's new regime, people found guilty of possessing small amounts of drugs are sent to a panel consisting of a psychologist, social worker and legal adviser for appropriate treatment (which may be refused without criminal punishment), instead of jail.

The question is, does the new policy work? At the time, critics in the poor, socially conservative and largely Catholic nation said decriminalizing drug possession would open the country to "drug tourists" and exacerbate Portugal's drug problem; the country had some of the highest levels of hard-drug use in Europe. But the recently released results of a report commissioned by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, suggest otherwise.

The paper, published by Cato in April, found that in the five years after personal possession was decriminalized, illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped, while the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled.

"Judging by every metric, decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success," says Glenn Greenwald, an attorney, author and fluent Portuguese speaker, who conducted the research. "It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country does."

Swine Flu

Follow news about it here

WHO warns of a possible pandemic.

Looks like it has jumped to New Zealand

torture? eh, whatever...

disappointment to the 1st degree

Chile's Old Testament economics

Sometimes unpopular policy is good policy

Dani Rodrik points us to a fascinating Bloomberg story detailing the saga of Chile's Minister of Finance, Andres Velasco. Last November, Velasco was being burned in effigy by marching protesters. Today, he is the most popular minister in the Chilean government.

What happened? Chile's primary export is copper, and its biggest mining company is state-run. During the extended commodity price boom that sent copper prices booming, Velasco played it safe, squirreling away a huge proportion of the copper windfall, investing the proceeds abroad, and building up Chile's Treasury holdings from $5.9 billion to $48.6 billion -- equivalent to a whopping thirty percent of Chile's GDP -- during his three year tenure. Then: Pop-went-the-global-economy! But Chile was ready.

Another case of paranoia over reason

Supreme Court Debates Strip Search of Student

My thought process,” Justice Souter said, “is I would rather have the kid embarrassed by a strip search, if we can’t find anything short of that, than to have some other kids dead because the stuff is distributed at lunchtime and things go awry.”

This will go wrong way more times than it will be useful.

not even through torture could they squeeze-out a link between al qaida and iraq

knowledge as empowerment

How to Raise Our I.Q.

Another proven intervention is to tell junior-high-school students that I.Q. is expandable, and that their intelligence is something they can help shape. Students exposed to that idea work harder and get better grades. That’s particularly true of girls and math, apparently because some girls assume that they are genetically disadvantaged at numbers; deprived of an excuse for failure, they excel.

Tides are turning...

The Bigots’ Last Hurrah

Some change?

U.S. declares warming gases are health threat

Obama's Bad Bank Plan

Could Destroy His Promising Presidency -- How Do We Push Him in the Right Direction?

...
The economists whom (I) most respect, such as Joseph Stiglitz, Jeff Sachs, Simon Johnson, and Paul Krugman, all have grave doubts about whether the Geithner-Summers plan can work.
...
The administration's approach to the auto rescue suggests the more robust strategy needed for the banks: take a hard look at the company's books; fire incumbent management; make all stakeholders take some sacrifices; and involve government directly in the design of a leaner and more efficient successor firm. But nothing of the sort is being done with the banks.

Morphogenetic fields

and the science of collective consciousness

In 1981 British biologist Rupert Sheldrake published A New Science of Life. The book argued that genes alone were not enough to account for life’s intricate patterns of form and behaviour. There must be, Sheldrake suggested, some sort of form-giving field that holds the memory of each thing’s proper shape – he called it a morphogenetic field. This intriguing idea was widely discussed in the months after the book’s publication. Then the editor of the prestigious scientific journal Nature, Sir John Maddox, wrote an editorial in which violently denounced Sheldrake’s work and called it “the best candidate for burning there has been for many years.” Years later in an interview with the BBC, he defended his denunciation on the grounds that Sheldrake’s view was scientific “heresy.” Maddox’s attack stuck Sheldrake a reputation for flakiness that still lingers. A few years ago Nobel physicist Steven Weinberg was still referring to the theory as “a crackpot fantasy.” But, for Rupert Sheldrake, this zealous policing of the boundaries of science only proved that scientific materialism had hardened into a rigid and inhibiting dogmatism. He carried on with the research programme he had put forward in A New Science of Life. Today on Ideas he shares the story of his journey with Ideas producer David Cayley.

obama on aid

Hearts

Apparently you don't die with the same one you were born with. Here is how they figured it out:

Tests of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, which lasted until 1963, generated a radioactive form of carbon, carbon-14. The carbon-14 in carbon dioxide is breathed in by plants, turned into glucose (see equation) and enters the human diet. In the body, the carbon-14 is incorporated into new DNA, and once a new cell is made, its DNA does not change. The level of carbon-14 in the atmosphere has dropped each year since 1963 (see graph), so the exact amount in a cell marks the year the cell was born. From a cell's birth date, researchers can calculate how quickly different tissues such as the intestine, brain and heart are renewed.

Ghost Net Busters

Exposing world's largest cyberspy ring

More sunlight like this, please...

Bush's Torture Rationale Debunked

Death Star Canteen

How to get dumber

They must be stoned...

From documents to data...

Credit crisis visualised

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

26 other visualizations here

Sixth Sense

Patty Maes unveiling the "Sixth Sense," game-changing wearable tech

DARPA to Explore Geoengineering

Hopefully only as a last resort.

Thomas Frank

Steward v. Cramer

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Jim Cramer Interview Outtake Pt. 1

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things w/ Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Jim Cramer

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Jim Cramer Interview Outtake Pt. 2

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things w/ Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Jim Cramer

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Jim Cramer Interview Outtake Pt. 3

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things w/ Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Jim Cramer

To a Greener Home

Five Beginners’ Steps

Capitalism Beyond the Crisis

according to Sen

Mash ups to the max

Thru-you

Belligerent chimp proves animals make plans

According to a report in the journal Current Biology, the 31-year-old alpha male started building his weapons cache in the morning before the zoo opened, collecting rocks and knocking out disks from concrete boulders inside his enclosure. He waited until around midday before he unleashed a "hailstorm" of rocks against visitors, the study said.

Meanwhile, Bush's lack of planning proves some primates don't.

Keeping it real

MoveOn from a greed to a green economy?

Obama addresses congress and focuses on a green economy

Full speech here

Looks like MoveOn wants to help out:

MoveOn members voted overwhelmingly that we should hire more organizers, run ads, and launch a huge volunteer campaign to create a clean-energy economy and create millions of green jobs. Now, we need to know we'll have the resources to pull it off. Can you make a monthly contribution to support our massive campaign? We'll bill your credit card today and on the 3rd of every month going forward. You can stop at any time. You can also make a one-time contribution but your monthly gift will make a big difference.

EPA to Issue Carbon Dioxide Rule, Obama Climate Czar Says

That would start the ball rolling...

"The next step is a notice of proposed rulemaking," for new regulations on CO2 emissions, Ms. Browner said one the sidelines of the National Governors Association meeting, one of her first public appearances since inauguration.

Ms. Browner declined to say exactly when the EPA would issue the finding or rulemaking, but EPA chief Lisa Jackson has indicated it could be on April 2, the anniversary of Mass Vs. EPA.

Officially recognizing that carbon dioxide is a danger to the public sets would trigger regulation of the greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants, refineries, chemical plants, cement firms, vehicles and any other emitting sectors across the economy.

Industry fears it could shut down the economy, not only preventing plants to operate and a drastic retooling of the energy sector but also pushing costs up uncompetitively, while environmentalists say that Administration action is required by law and to pressure lawmakers to act.

But Ms. Browner said the Administration would prefer that Congress would draft legislation rather than co2 to be regulation under the Clean Air Act because lawmakers could develop a bill that could more deftly regulate the greenhouse gas through a cap-and-trade system.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) said Friday he aimed to pass a climate change bill by the end of the summer, and Rep. Henry Waxman (D., Calif.) head of the panel responsible for drafting a co2 bill, said he wanted a bill approved by Memorial Day.

The Weekly O-ddress

What would the poor say?

Recently NYU held a conference entitled "What Would the Poor Say? Debates in Aid Evaluation". You can find many of the ppts of the talks here at William Easterly's new blog "Aid Watch".

I've only looked at a few of them, but I thought I'd highlight two of them who take fairly (although not entirely) contrasting positions. First is Esther Duflo's talk that focuses on the benefits of experimental design for improving aid interventions. The other is William Duggan's short piece arguing against just using statistical evaluation. He suggest two other methodological techniques: historical political economy and qualitative investigation. What I find interesting about both of these is that ultimately they are both asking the same question: what works? but with a very important difference in terms of what the explanation looks like. In other words, they are both looking to test and generate theory, but theory of very different types.

I think Chris Blattman's notion of Evaluation 2.0* nicely captures the means that these two seemingly contrasting approaches can be combined, namely by defining explanation as the identification of the working causal mechanisms. The answer to what works? is the itetification of the active causal mechanism (ideally the intervention), its structure, what its causal tendency is, and how it interacts with particular aspects of the context. In other words, relevant research question is: what works (or not), how, for whom, and in what contexts? From that we can move to the methodological design that provides the best possible answer given the research opportunities the intervention affords. 

* This notion of a causal mechanism has been around a while in the phil. of social science, but Blattman's example is nice and clear.  This type of theory is applicable at both the macro and micro level.

obama buys canadian cookies

video

Apparently he loves Canada

unfortunately i had to work.

"Off the hook"

The GOP looking to go beyond cutting edge.

Dr. Doom and the Black Swan

They argue that the financial system needs restructuring and they still want to know stock tips.

Classic.

how to be evil

Do we need a new internet?

Depends on your level of fear

Ricard could use a bottle of Despondex

Change your Mind Change your Brain: The Inner Conditions...

Mindfulness Stress Reduction And Healing

http://www.mediafly.com/Podcasts/Episodes/BodyScan_Meditation

Foreign Aid and Bad Government

Help entrepreneurs not governments:

During the Cold War, the U.S. instituted a policy of sending money to governments in poor countries to buy their political loyalty. While studies show that sending aid to foreign governments creates allegiance, it does not lead to economic progress. Instead, it makes governments in poor countries dependent on the U.S. rather than their citizens' taxes.

Pakistan has been one of the key recipients of U.S. aid over the last six decades, but there has been no real progress as a result. Pakistan is riddled with problems that are rooted in the disproportionate power of the state. Aid has only boosted that power.

In contrast, Malaysia saw its economy grow at twice the rate of Pakistan's over the same period of time. Fueled by trade rather than aid, Malaysian economic prosperity is decentralized, and its reliability as an ally much greater.

Tragically, the Cold War aid approach actually preserves suffering in poor countries. Aid empowers bureaucracies, promotes statism, and weakens government incentives to boost tax revenues through growth. Economic assets are often kept in the hands of the state, leading to monopolies, stagnation and extortion. All of this hurts entrepreneurs, who have the potential to create wealth and promote governmental accountability.

...

President Obama now has the opportunity to adopt a new aid approach that will actually help citizens. Such an approach would demonstrate our faith in democracy and serve long-term American interests.

What should this plan look like?

First, America must remove trade barriers on exports from the poorest countries, regardless of trade policies in those countries. With global market access, poor countries would automatically attract private investment, despite their institutional weaknesses. These institutions would become stronger over time as businesses flourish. Private investments capitalizing on access to global markets would necessarily employ low-cost labor, thus creating jobs.

Next, small entrepreneurs can be bolstered with seed money in the range of $25,000. Small entrepreneurs create jobs, products and services that form the bedrock of flourishing democracies. With some tangible changes in its operation, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) within the World Bank Group could promote development through entrepreneurs. The World Bank should stop lending to governments and be absorbed into the reformed IFC.

Third, America could give $1 million to match any grass-roots group capable of raising $1 million to establish a health clinic. These clinics -- one thousand could be built with $1 billion -- could provide crucial services to poor citizens and generate goodwill towards America.

Google Ocean

Google Earth goes underwater

Finally!

Ottawa transit strike over, after 51 days

Obama's first interview

Non believers!

Rove issued subpoena

"Change has come to Washington, and I hope Karl Rove is ready for it. After two years of stonewalling, it's time for him to talk," Conyers said.

The Firewall Chats?

Snap

Me likey.

I guess not everything has changed

This guy is so pre-Jan 20, 2009

A US citizen caused delays to a Turkish Airlines flight between Istanbul and New York after complaining that there were “Arab-types” on board.

In a headline that claimed ‘Racism on flight’, Milliyet newspaper reported that police were called after United States national Daniel Sussman Pincus started to shout complaints about “Arab- types” on board Monday’s Istanbul to New York flight.

After escorting Pincus off the plane, all other passengers were forced off the flight to undergo security checks in accordance with international practice.

The flight eventually took off after a delay of about two hours.

NSA happiness

Change days 1 & 2: Civil liberties

SO FAR, SO GOOD.... It's obviously folly to judge a president after 50 hours on the job. ("He's had two good days; make room on Rushmore!") But it's not too early to acknowledge the fact that Barack Obama is off to a very encouraging start.

Glenn Greenwald had some compelling praise in an item this morning.

Barack Obama will have spent his first several days in office issuing a series of executive orders which, some quibbling and important caveats aside, meet or actually exceed even the most optimistic expectations of civil libertarians -- everything from ordering the closing of Guantanamo to suspending military commissions to compelling CIA interrogators to adhere to the Army Field Manual to banning CIA "black sites" and, perhaps most encouragingly (in my view): severely restricting his own power and the power of former Presidents to withhold documents on the basis of secrecy, which has been the prime corrosive agent of the Bush era.

Agreed. Like everyone else, I've been curious about what Obama would do early on. I expected him to hit the ground running, but it was less clear what he'd be running towards. But consider what we saw on the first day -- the new president not only created stricter lobbying rules than any administration in history, but he also issued sweeping orders to boost accountability and transparency. He not only took steps to halt the military tribunal process at Gitmo, but he also reached out to leaders in the Middle East to recommit the United States to the peace process.

Day Two, as Glenn explained, has included a fairly dramatic overhaul of U.S. detention policies and facilities.

Spencer Ackerman added, "For all the talk about Obama not governing as a progressive, take a look at his first not-even-48 hours in office. He's suspended the Guantanamo Bay military commissions, a first step toward shuttering the entire detention complex. He's assembled his military commanders to discuss troop withdrawals from Iraq. He's issued a far-reaching order on transparency in his administration that mandates, among other things, a two-year ban on any ex-lobbyists working on issues they lobbied for. And now he's shutting down the CIA's off-the-books detention complexes in the war on terrorism.... [F]or progressives, that's a pretty robust first two days."

White House Blog

Change has come

Just like your new government, WhiteHouse.gov and the rest of the Administration's online programs will put citizens first. Our initial new media efforts will center around three priorities:

Communication -- Americans are eager for information about the state of the economy, national security and a host of other issues. This site will feature timely and in-depth content meant to keep everyone up-to-date and educated. Check out the briefing room, keep tabs on the blog (RSS feed) and take a moment to sign up for e-mail updates from the President and his administration so you can be sure to know about major announcements and decisions.

Transparency -- President Obama has committed to making his administration the most open and transparent in history, and WhiteHouse.gov will play a major role in delivering on that promise. The President's executive orders and proclamations will be published for everyone to review, and that’s just the beginning of our efforts to provide a window for all Americans into the business of the government. You can also learn about some of the senior leadership in the new administration and about the President’s policy priorities.

Participation -- President Obama started his career as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago, where he saw firsthand what people can do when they come together for a common cause. Citizen participation will be a priority for the Administration, and the internet will play an important role in that. One significant addition to WhiteHouse.gov reflects a campaign promise from the President: we will publish all non-emergency legislation to the website for five days, and allow the public to review and comment before the President signs it.

Is it really bad to be sad?

Discuss...

Hard evidence for the importance of sadness in humans is difficult to come by, but there are lots of ideas about why our propensity to feel sad might have evolved. It may be a self-protection strategy, as it seems to be among other primates that show signs of sadness. An ape that doesn't obviously slink off after it loses status may be seen as continuing to challenge the dominant ape - and that could be fatal.

Wakefield believes that in humans sadness has a further function: it helps us learn from our mistakes. "I think that one of the functions of intense negative emotions is to stop our normal functioning, to make us focus on something else for a while," he says. It might act as a psychological deterrent to prevent us from making those mistakes in the first place. The risk of sadness may deter us from being too cavalier in relationships or with other things we value, for example.

On the other side of the coin...

There is also evidence that too much happiness can be bad for your career. Ed Diener, a psychologist at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, and his colleagues found that people who scored 8 out of 10 on a happiness scale were more successful in terms of income and education than 9s or 10s - although the 9s and 10s seemed to have more successful close relationships

Obama 2.0

Retooling Obama's campaign machine for the long haul

As Barack Obama builds his administration and prepares to take office next week, his political team is quietly planning for a nationwide hiring binge that would marshal an army of full-time organizers to press the new president's agenda and lay the foundation for his reelection.

The organization, known internally as "Barack Obama 2.0," is being designed to sustain a grass-roots network of millions that was mobilized last year to elect Obama and now is widely considered the country's most potent political machine.

Organizers and even Republicans say the scope of this permanent campaign structure is unprecedented for a president. People familiar with the plan say Obama's team would use the network in part to pressure lawmakers -- particularly wavering Democrats -- to help him pass complex legislation on the economy, healthcare and energy.

Extreme cold grips much of Canada

Brrrrr

Canadians were being told to bundle up Wednesday morning as extreme cold weather alerts were issued for central and eastern parts of the country.

It could feel like between –30 to –50 with the wind chill in a frigid swath stretching from Saskatchewan to Quebec, according to Environment Canada.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan

discuss here

The 11 Best Foods You Aren’t Eating

Beets: Think of beets as red spinach, Dr. Bowden said, because they are a rich source of folate as well as natural red pigments that may be cancer fighters.
How to eat: Fresh, raw and grated to make a salad. Heating decreases the antioxidant power.
Cabbage: Loaded with nutrients like sulforaphane, a chemical said to boost cancer-fighting enzymes.
How to eat: Asian-style slaw or as a crunchy topping on burgers and sandwiches.
Swiss chard: A leafy green vegetable packed with carotenoids that protect aging eyes.
How to eat it: Chop and saute in olive oil.
Cinnamon: May help control blood sugar and cholesterol.
How to eat it: Sprinkle on coffee or oatmeal.
Pomegranate juice: Appears to lower blood pressure and loaded with antioxidants.
How to eat: Just drink it.
Dried plums: Okay, so they are really prunes, but they are packed with antioxidants.
How to eat: Wrapped in prosciutto and baked.
Pumpkin seeds: The most nutritious part of the pumpkin and packed with magnesium; high levels of the mineral are associated with lower risk for early death.
How to eat: Roasted as a snack, or sprinkled on salad.
Sardines: Dr. Bowden calls them “health food in a can.” They are high in omega-3’s, contain virtually no mercury and are loaded with calcium. They also contain iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, zinc, copper and manganese as well as a full complement of B vitamins.
How to eat: Choose sardines packed in olive or sardine oil. Eat plain, mixed with salad, on toast, or mashed with dijon mustard and onions as a spread.
Turmeric: The “superstar of spices,” it may have anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer properties.
How to eat: Mix with scrambled eggs or in any vegetable dish.
Frozen blueberries: Even though freezing can degrade some of the nutrients in fruits and vegetables, frozen blueberries are available year-round and don’t spoil; associated with better memory in animal studies.
How to eat: Blended with yogurt or chocolate soy milk and sprinkled with crushed almonds.
Canned pumpkin: A low-calorie vegetable that is high in fiber and immune-stimulating vitamin A; fills you up on very few calories.
How to eat: Mix with a little butter, cinnamon and nutmeg.

Didn't know about this story...

Chuckie Taylor, the son of former Liberian warlord-turned-president Charles Taylor, was sentenced to 97 years in prison today for convictions of conspiracy, torture, and firearm possession by a federal judge in Miami. He was "lucky" to get just 97 -- prosecutors were seeking 147 years.

Name doesn't ring a bell? The case of Chuckie Taylor was one of our "Top Ten Stories You Missed in 2008", and his trial is important for two reasons. First, Taylor's trial is the first conviction from a 1994 law allowing the U.S. to prosecute American citizens and anyone on U.S. soil for torture committed abroad. Taylor is a U.S. citizen, (he was born while his father lived in the United States) and tortured hundreds of Liberians during as commander of the so-called "Demon Forces," a special security unit meant to protect his father, the President, from 1999 to 2003. The precedent is now set for more cases to follow

Weeeee!

Something is changing...

First the music industry abandons mass lawsuits and now Apple negotiates to remove copyright protection from downloaded songs... Looks like the music industry is going to take a new tack...

Year in review

From here

tidbits

Franken is currently up by 50 votes

The housing market crash keeping marriages together?

An oral history of the Bush White House

Drugs, money, and bias

Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption

Many drugs that are assumed to be effective are probably little better than placebos, but there is no way to know because negative results are hidden. One clue was provided six years ago by four researchers who, using the Freedom of Information Act, obtained FDA reviews of every placebo-controlled clinical trial submitted for initial approval of the six most widely used antidepressant drugs approved between 1987 and 1999—Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Celexa, Serzone, and Effexor.[10] They found that on average, placebos were 80 percent as effective as the drugs. The difference between drug and placebo was so small that it was unlikely to be of any clinical significance. The results were much the same for all six drugs: all were equally ineffective. But because favorable results were published and unfavorable results buried (in this case, within the FDA), the public and the medical profession believed these drugs were potent antidepressants.
...
Conflicts of interest affect more than research. They also directly shape the way medicine is practiced, through their influence on practice guidelines issued by professional and governmental bodies, and through their effects on FDA decisions. A few examples: in a survey of two hundred expert panels that issued practice guidelines, one third of the panel members acknowledged that they had some financial interest in the drugs they considered.[11] In 2004, after the National Cholesterol Education Program called for sharply lowering the desired levels of "bad" cholesterol, it was revealed that eight of nine members of the panel writing the recommendations had financial ties to the makers of cholesterol-lowering drugs.[12] Of the 170 contributors to the most recent edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), ninety-five had financial ties to drug companies, including all of the contributors to the sections on mood disorders and schizophrenia.[13] Perhaps most important, many members of the standing committees of experts that advise the FDA on drug approvals also have financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry.[14]

The rest of the piece is even more depressing ... but here is the money quote:

The problems I've discussed are not limited to psychiatry, although they reach their most florid form there. Similar conflicts of interest and biases exist in virtually every field of medicine, particularly those that rely heavily on drugs or devices. It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.

2008

best of the web 2008, in one video

Video games may do the aging brain good

The study included 40 older adults who were randomly assigned to either the video-game group or a comparison group that received no training in the game. Over 1 month, the gamer group spent about 23 hours training in "Rise of Nations," an off-the-shelf video game where players seek world domination.

Ruling the world, the game group learned, requires a complex set of tasks, including military strategy, building cities, managing economies and feeding people.

Study participants who trained in the game ended up improving their scores in several areas of a battery of cognitive tests, Kramer and his colleagues found.

Obama on US' major scientific deptartments

Music Industry to Abandon Mass Suits

I always thought that it was a bad idea to sue 13 year old kids. It's bad press and an ineffective deterrent... At least now the music industry will give it up.

The decision represents an abrupt shift of strategy for the industry, which has opened legal proceedings against about 35,000 people since 2003. Critics say the legal offensive ultimately did little to stem the tide of illegally downloaded music. And it created a public-relations disaster for the industry, whose lawsuits targeted, among others, several single mothers, a dead person and a 13-year-old girl.

However, now they might tamper with the network, which scares me more

Instead, the Recording Industry Association of America said it plans to try an approach that relies on the cooperation of Internet-service providers. The trade group said it has hashed out preliminary agreements with major ISPs under which it will send an email to the provider when it finds a provider's customers making music available online for others to take.

Depending on the agreement, the ISP will either forward the note to customers, or alert customers that they appear to be uploading music illegally, and ask them to stop. If the customers continue the file-sharing, they will get one or two more emails, perhaps accompanied by slower service from the provider. Finally, the ISP may cut off their access altogether.

Of course, people can switch providers, in theory, so they have to cut deals with everyone. They are going to have to get more creative than that...

Lessig argues for citizens' funding of the nation's elections

You can vote at change.org

Arrested Development

Making Foreign Aid a More Effective Tool

Summary: USAID has become ineffective because it is underfunded, understaffed, and losing influence. The next president should revive it by either making it autonomous or elevating it to a cabinet-level department

I always thought that foreign aid that was too tied to national and political interests would not be effective. Not that giving USAID more autonomy guarantees effectiveness, but it sure enables a lot more creative thinking and empirically based priorities...

The Top 10 quotes of 2008

as compiled by the editor of the Yale Book of Quotations:

1. "I can see Russia from my house!" — Comedian Tina Fey, while impersonating Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin on the TV comedy show "Saturday Night Live," broadcast Sept. 13.

2. "All of them, any of them that have been in front of me over all these years." — Palin, responding to a request by CBS anchor Katie Couric to name the newspapers or magazines she reads, broadcast Oct. 1.

3. "We have sort of become a nation of whiners." — former Sen. Phil Gramm, an economic adviser to Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, quoted in The Washington Times, July 10.

4. "It's not based on any particular data point, we just wanted to choose a really large number." — a Treasury Department spokeswoman explaining how the $700 billion number was chosen for the initial bailout, quoted on Forbes.com Sept. 23.

5. "The fundamentals of America's economy are strong." — McCain, in an interview with Bloomberg TV, April 17.

6. "Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency." — the Treasury Department's proposed Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, September 2008.

7. "Maybe 100." — McCain, discussing in a town hall meeting in Derry, New Hampshire, how many years U.S. troops could remain in Iraq, Jan. 3.

8. "I'll see you at the debates, b------." — Paris Hilton in a video responding to a McCain television campaign ad, August 2008.

9. "Barack, he's talking down to black people. ... I want to cut his ... off." — Rev. Jesse Jackson, overheard over a live microphone before a Fox News interview, July 6.

10. (tie) "Cash for trash." — Paul Krugman discussing the financial bailout, New York Times, Sept. 22.

10. (tie) "There are no atheists in foxholes and there are no libertarians in financial crises." — Krugman, in an interview with Bill Maher on HBO's "Real Time," broadcast Sept. 19.

10. (tie) "Anyone who says we're in a recession, or heading into one — especially the worst one since the Great Depression — is making up his own private definition of "`recession.'" — commentator Donald Luskin, the day before Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, The Washington Post, Sept. 14.