You're Fat Because Kellogg's Hasn't Been Doing The Math For You
First of all, if you're eating carbohydrates as a way to be thin, you're making the biggest mistake of all (see Taubes and Eades below, and go read them, too, for the actual evidence-based science on how to eat, as opposed to the hearsay-based version you get from so many doctors and "authorities"). And, by the way, carbohydrates are binge material -- the stuff that keeps you munching until you "can't believe (you) ate the whole thing."
But, forget the science and the Oreos lite for a moment. William Neuman writes in The New York Times of the FDA's wanting to bring serving sizes in line with how Americans really eat:
So to get ready for front-of-package nutrition labeling, the F.D.A. is now looking at bringing serving sizes for foods like chips, cookies, breakfast cereals and ice cream into line with how Americans really eat. Combined with more prominent labeling, the result could be a greater sense of public caution about unhealthy foods."If you put on a meaningful portion size, it would scare a lot of people," said Barry Popkin, a nutrition professor at the University of North Carolina. "They would see, 'I'm going to get 300 calories from that, or 500 calories.' "
The problem is important because the standard serving size shown on a package determines all the other nutritional values on the label, including calorie counts. If the serving size is smaller than what people really eat, unless they study the label carefully they may think they are getting fewer calories or other nutrients than they are.
And if manufacturers increasingly push key nutrition facts to the front of packages -- as many have begun doing -- the confusion could be magnified. Rather than helping fight obesity, it may simply add to the perplexity over what makes a healthful diet.
"If people don't understand the serving, whatever number they get for fat or calories is misleading," said William K. Hubbard, a former F.D.A. official who consulted with the agency last year.
Consider the humble chip: most potato or corn chip bags today show a one-ounce serving size, containing a tolerable 150 calories, or thereabouts. But only the most disciplined snacker will stop at an ounce. For some brands, like Tostitos Hint of Lime, that can be just six chips.
Here's a little assistance: If it says "Tostitos" anywhere on the package, it's bad for you.
Loved this bit:
When it comes to cereal, she said, many children probably eat two cups or more.Parents who glance at a box of Frosted Flakes and see that it contains 110 calories per serving may not realize that their children may be getting several times that amount each morning at breakfast.
If you send your children off to school on a breakfast of Frosted Flakes, you and your children have more problems than accurate serving size.
I've been rereading Gary Taubes
That's the first problem. But there is a problem much greater than that. One that AC isn't aware of because he doesn't really have any real-world experience in doing nutritional studies in a hospital.When subjects are studied in 'metabolic wards' they aren't locked away and under constant observation. In fact, often enough, they aren't even in a hospital at all. A 'metabolic ward' is simply a part of the hospital set aside to do nutritional studies. And often it isn't even a specific part of the hospital. Subjects can be scattered about among the other patients. Subjects can have visitors, can roam through the hospital, can even go to the cafeteria. A 'metabolic ward' study can mean anything from: careful observation; to check into the hospital for a couple of days; to get trained on the diet then follow it at home; to check in, go to work all day, then come stay in the hospital all night. They are definitely not the strictly-controlled studies AC thinks they are. He confuses them with 'metabolic chamber' studies, which are a horse of a different color.
The opportunities to cheat in a 'metabolic ward' study are, for the most part, as great as the opportunities to cheat in an outpatient study, especially since many of the subjects are outpatients most of the time. There is a difference though. When people are on outpatient studies they are more likely to at least admit their cheating and record what they cheat with than they are in 'metabolic ward' studies. Some of the studies AC sites are formula diet studies in which shakes made of specific caloric and macronutrient composition are provided to subjects throughout the day. (Or are given to them to consume outside the hospital at work or wherever.) These are the kinds of programs you wouldn't want to report cheating on. And these subjects do without question cheat. The fact that the data is reported as coming from a 'metabolic ward' study gives it a veneer of accuracy that it doesn't really deserve.
How About Some Identity Theft With That Catheter Change?
Government clearly can't run the health care they're already in charge of, so...let's have government run even more!
The latest? California health officials have accidentally disclosed the Social Security numbers of 50,000 people. From the LA Times' L.A. Now blog:
The numbers were printed on the outside of envelopes sent to elderly patients of the Adult Day Health Care program, many of whom are blind or have Alzheimer's disease or other cognitive disabilities. The Department of Health Care Services sent the envelopes, which contained change-of-benefit notices, Feb. 1.Officials have since sent follow-up letters advising recipients to destroy the envelopes and are advising patients to contact credit agencies to put a freeze on new accounts.
Um, many of these people have dementia, and can't recognize the person they've been married to for 50 years, let alone recalling where they lived 10 years ago and writing it down for Experian.
Can we please have our health care managed by the least incompetent people possible -- which means leaving it in the private sector?
What kind of deluded idiot thinks government does much of anything well, if you don't count "screwing things up, but good," as somebody's granny would say.
A Kinder, Cuddlier President
Matt Welch writes in reason of how it was supposed to be in the Obama years, and how it's actually turning out:
Obama's approach was supposed to produce a more cooperative Tehran and Moscow, fewer terrorists in the Muslim world, and vast new initiatives to fight global poverty. Instead, Iran has murdered dissenters while speeding up its nuclear program, Russia hasn't discernibly budged even after the U.S. abandoned its missile shield in the Czech Republic and Poland, a Muslim suicide bomber was stopped at the last minute from blowing up a plane over Detroit on Christmas, and global gatherings have produced even less concrete action than usual....The Copenhagen crackup was a dream killer in more ways than one. Not only did the breakdown give the lie to the notion that a cranky Texas oilman was the single greatest impediment to international cooperation and enlightened environmental policy; it laid waste to the argument that yoking the developing world to a "do as we say, not as we did" policy of energy consumption will somehow prove to be an economic and environmental "win-win."
...In the truer-believing regions of the progressive political world, the broad agenda of carbon price hikes, centralized health care, greater regulation, increased taxes, and government-mandated diversity in boardrooms are not just sound and moral policy. They are inherently popular, if only the usual obstacles to justice and reform can be neutralized or removed. Back when he was still considered a plausible stand-in for "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party" (enough to win 2.7 percent of the presidential vote in 2000, much of it from progressives disgruntled at New Democrat policies), Ralph Nader insisted on a daily basis that his agenda was essentially "majoritarian."
Such fantasies can serve as a salve when you live on the margins of the policy debate. And as long as you remain on the sidelines, the underlying proposals tend to go largely unchallenged. But now that progressive economic thought has its first real foothold in Washington since the 1970s, many long-marginalized ideas are being dusted off for real-world testing, from taxing stock transactions to "getting people out of their cars." If we're lucky, those debates will take place before the ideas are cemented into law. Better yet, maybe the growing unpopularity of central planning will dissuade the enthusiasts from inflicting their experiments on the rest of us in the first place.
Whoops, it seems "not George Bush" is not enough to qualify one for the office of president. My hope? For as little change as possible. For about as much as Senator Obama effected during his time in the Senate.
Watch Out For That Pete Townshend!
A Florida group called "Protect Our Children" sent out postcards to residents close to Dolphins stadium to warn them that The Who's Pete Townshend would be in their hood to perform at the Superbowl.
Townshend admitted to visiting child porn sites, but said he was doing research for a book. Lame, yes, but he doesn't seem to have any history of being a kiddie diddler, and, in fact, wrote essays about protecting kids from Internet porn that he posted on his personal website. He wasn't convicted of anything, but he was placed on a UK sex offender list for five years.
For every "sex offender" there's a trumped-up furor about (like all those sexting teens who have their prospects shot because they sent around a cell phone self-portrait of some girl's titties), we water down what it means to be a sex offender who's actually a danger to others, and maybe give those people and their whereabouts less attention, to boot.
Of course, it's obvious what this organization was after -- attention -- and not for the internationally famous supposed pedophile who came to town.
via Palm Beach Post
Even Keynes Would've Rolled Over In His Grave
Carnegie-Mellon economist Allan Meltzer weighs in on how the Obama administration is neglecting a key part of Keynes' plan -- that you can't run up a debt without a way to cover it. An excerpt from his conversation with CNN's Shawn Tully:
If Keynes were alive today, what would he think of President Obama's fiscal policies?He would roll over in his grave if he could see the things being done in his name. Keynes was opposed to large structural deficits. He thought that they chilled rather than stimulated the economy. It's true that we're stuck with large deficits now. The goal should be to reduce them, not to take on new spending that makes them worse.
Today, deficits are getting bigger and bigger with no plan to significantly lower them. Keynes understood what the current administration doesn't understand that the proper policy in a democracy recognizes that today's increase in debt must be paid in the future.
We paid down wartime deficits. Now we have continuous deficits. We used to have a rule people believed in, balanced budgets. And now that's gone.
Welcome To Soft Jihad
Heidi Blake writes in the Telegraph that a Muslim bus driver in the UK locked passengers on the bus after he stopped it, took off his shoes, knelt on a prayer mat, faced Mecca and started to pray:
Passengers said they looked on in stunned silence, fearing the driver may be preparing for a terrorist attack on the bus. No one was able to get on or off the vehicle during the five-minute prayer session....TfL has apologised to all the passengers for the delay to their journey and the driver has been reprimanded.
A spokesman said: "A route 24 bus was delayed following a decision by the driver to stop the bus to pray.
"The bus company - London General - has had a word with the driver as this is not something that should be happening."
Muslim drivers have been reminded that they should pray during rest periods between journeys to avoid delays, TfL said.
Note how coopted and PC British society it that the driver has simply been reprimanded and allowed to continue in his job. Jihadists everywhere are laughing -- and coming up with their next trick.
Air Space
As annoying and hellish as flying's been lately, I'd really rather take off in one of these -- well, except that it's actually a restaurant at LAX, called Encounter. (Pretty groovy, too -- right out of the Jetsons, inside and out.)
photo by Gregg Sutter
A Dad And His Daughter Are Soon Parted
Tragic and horrible story of a guy accused of abuse by his wife of 20 years. On iFeminist. A few excerpts:
As many know, my wife of 20 years filed false claims against me of violent abuse against her one unforgetable day in August of this year.Molly, my wife, did this in order to acquire a tactical advantage in a divorce she clearly wants that I was completely unaware of until she filed a retraining order against me that prevents me from having any contact whatsoever with my daughter as well, whose name is Hayley.
My wife told her free army of legal professionals that she suspects that child abuse was happening by me against Hayley. This particular claim is far more absurd than the abuse claims Molly made about me, which included a claim by Molly that I tried to kill her one night.
So of course, I ended up in jail in the first time of my 43 years soon after these false allegations were made against me by Molly. The second night I was in jail, I decided to write Hayley a letter.
Now, writing Hayley fractures the restraining order falsely issued against me, since this is contacting Hayley in this manner. But since I was already in jail, I really was not concerned about breaking this abusive enforcement of psychotic laws now against me.
As I wrote her that night, I was not the fun dad I usually am with Hayley due to my state of mind. However, I never wrote anything to Hayley indicating hatred or anger towards her mother, Molly. Nor did I, in my words to Hayley, debate her mother's false accusations against me.
My undergrad is in child psychology, and I learned with my education that it is never a good idea to attack a parent in any way during a split of the parents, which is what is happening with our family right now. So I wrote to Hayley that I will always love her mother because her mother gave Hayley to me almost 12 years ago. This is the woman who put me in jail.
I also wrote to Hayley that the destruction happening to our family right now is difficult to understand for both of us, but we should try and grasp this situation together in time. I told Hayley with my writing to her that I loved and missed her, and that I hoped she would write me back soon.
I mailed this letter to her grandparent's house. These are Molly's parents, and are very wonderful people who have been married for more than 60 years. They understand the importance of a father in a child's life.
I only mailed this letter to Hayley after trading my breakfast the next day in order to get a stamped envelope from another inmate.
...As I was released from jail, I was told never to write my daughter again. This violates the restraining order, the judge told me. I'm still in shock by this order to me by the judge via my wife's free prosecutor. I create joy in the middle of great pain, and I'm told to discontinue creating such joy.
This is unacceptable, this order against me with such acts. I'm being punished for loving my daughter. I'm being punished for assuring the well being of Hayley mentally and emotionally.
These are the laws that exist in our country, and they must be discontinued.
Obamacare, North
From a 2007 CBC story, headlined, "Wait times for surgery, medical treatments at all-time high. Compared to 1993, wait times in 2007 are 97 percent longer, report finds":
Ontario recorded the shortest wait time overall (the wait between visiting a general practitioner and receiving treatment) at 15.0 weeks, followed by British Columbia (19.0 weeks) and Quebec (19.4 weeks). Saskatchewan (27.2 weeks), New Brunswick (25.2 weeks) and Nova Scotia (24.8 weeks) recorded the longest waits in Canada.Despite have one of the shorter waits among the provinces, Quebec's 19.4-week wait shows that despite more money directed at fixing the problem, there hasn't been any improvement, Tasha Kheiriddin, the Quebec director of the Fraser Institute, told CBC News Monday.
She says Quebec has invested millions of dollars over the past few years in efforts to reduce wait times, but that inefficiencies in the public system are proving to be obstacles.
Really? There's a surprise.
Maybe that's why the premier of Newfoundland is choosing to have his heart surgery in the USA.
Life Is A Formal Occasion
Met Gregg at the Farmer's Market for a drink and a snack, then went on through the pouring rain to the Apple store at The Grove (where we first met) and Barnes & Noble, where he took this picture. 
A Religion Of Hate
Text about this at Militant Islam Monitor, where Emerson Vermaat writes:
It was in 2007 that Patrick Pouw joined a group of young Salafists in the Dutch city of Utrecht and followed a yearlong Salafist course given by Suhayb Salaam, son of the radical Salafist cleric Ahmed Salaam. Pouw managed to win Suhayb's trust and the trust of his Salafist fellow students, and they usually did not conceal their real views. Pouw recently published a shocking book about what he heard from Suhayb and his students. There is, for example, a wide gap between what they say in public and what they say and believe in private or when they are among themselves. Publicly, Suhayb condemned violence preaching tolerance and "multiculturalism" but when he was lecturing to his pupils in that small classroom in the city of Utrecht he said that those who "betray" Muslims must be beheaded. Such people are "spies" and decapitation is the only proper punishment for them, Pouw heard Salaam say. "I saw how his eyes were cold and full of hatred, just like they were on that other occasion when he called on his students to burn Bibles."In another lesson Suhayb told his students that Allah had declared war on the infidels. All infidels are enemies of Allah. Muslims must hate the enemies of Allah, they must see them as their own enemies. That is an obligation, Suhayb emphasized. Those unbelievers who oppose Allah and Islam must be utterly detested. And those unbelievers who do not fight against Allah and his prophet, must be hated, too, yet they must be treated with respect. It is up to Islamic scholars to decide on the question who opposes and who does not oppose Allah and Islam. "We must follow their opinion on this issue," Suhayb told his students. After Patrick Pouw had written a summary of what Suhayb had said and handed this text over to him, he (Suhayb) just commented: "Very good." Suhayb was opposed to any attempt to organize a "dialogue" between Muslims and non-Muslims. That is "Haram", forbidden, and dangerous, he said. Do not discuss private matters with unbelievers, Suhayb advised his students. Select your friends with care, create more distance between you and your non-believing friends. Suhayb also said more than once that he distanced himself from any Muslim who lives among the infidels. He advised his students to leave Holland and go to a Muslim country. Yet, he and his father refuse to do so themselves. His father once refused to pay taxes, yet he did not object to receiving Dutch welfare money. Both father and son fled to peaceful and tolerant Holland after they felt persecuted in their home country Syria, and now they advise others to leave the very country that sheltered and protected them. This attitude is typical for the kind of hypocrisy among many Salafist Muslim clerics. They are quick to advise others to do or not to do certain things, yet they rarely set the example themselves.
Concealing your real feelings and views, or "takiyya," is also typical for the behavior and tactics of these fanatics. When Ahmed and his son Suhayb were interviewed on Dutch television, they said quite different things than what Pouw had heard from them privately. On TV they were not talking about hating the infidels or the obligation for Muslims to leave Holland. Instead, they suddenly emphasized "unity in diversity" and "integration."
The same thing happened when Salaam was interviewed by Dutch TV for the second time. The reporter asked him critical questions about Patrick Pouw's new book. "Did you say all these things (to your students)?" the reporter wanted to know. "No, I did not," Salaam said. The reporter then quoted from Salaam's written teaching material which he had used in his own classroom. Salaam quickly and lamely said that this material was not for public consumption.
...In another lecture Suhayb said that unbelievers who are living in an Islamic state have only three options: become a Muslim themselves, pay protection money or leave for another country. If they do not make a choice, the only option left for them is persecution by the Islamic state. When a student asked Suhayb: "Isn't there freedom of religion?" he resolutely replied: "No, there is not." This is the totalitarian mind of Muslim fanatics who publicly preach peace and harmony in the West where they are being sheltered but what they really want is nothing else but to abolish our democracy and freedom replacing it by a Taliban like state.
Oops, We Did It Again!
TSA in San Diego, in a really weird story, lets through a fake marshal who "deports" a real woman to the Philippines. Jose Arballo writes for San Diego News Network:
A Hemet man who passed himself off as a U.S. Marshal was able to enter the international airport in San Diego with a "prisoner" after convincing airport security officers he was a federal agent, a TSA spokeswoman confirmed Tuesday.Suzanne Trevino, spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration, said in a telephone interview that an investigation has revealed that someone who presented "falsified law enforcement documents" was able to get past security and eventually make it to a gate with a prisoner. The individual presented himself as a law enforcement officer and followed the proper procedures, including logging in, she said.
The agency learned about the incident after being contacted by "local law enforcement" about the potential breach in security.
Apparently, the woman's family called them in the wake of his coming to her home and making off with her, under the pretense that he was law enforcement. He drove her to a border patrol office and tried to get them to take her into custody, telling them she was in the country illegally. And they did confirm she was illegal, and then refused to take her into custody. Nice!
Hemet investigators were then told that the suspect ultimately drove the female victim to the International Airport, where he escorted the handcuffed victim through the airport and to the gate of a departing flight, Wisehart said. At this point he un-handcuffed the victim and she boarded the plane that was headed to the Philippines.Wisehart identified the woman as Cherriebelle Hibbard and anshe apparently has remained in the Philippines. Wisehart said the victim's family, believing the woman was being deported by federal officials, paid for the airline ticket.
Act First, Think Later
Richard Cohen in the New York Daily News on the administration's dimwittery in terrorist prosecution:
Bit by bit, circumstances are forcing President Obama and his aides to come to grips with reality. The original plan to try Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the so-called 9/11 mastermind, in New York City has apparently been aborted. It finally occurred to the Justice Department that cordoning off much of lower Manhattan and placing a security perimeter around the Financial District not only would cost something like $200 million a year, but would destroy the economy of the area. A trial there would give KSM, as he is called, a second shot at devastating downtown New York.It is amazing that no one thought this through. Published reports say that the Justice Department informed Mayor Bloomberg of its plan just about the time it was announced. This alacrity was clearly the product of some excitement down at Justice - yet another chance to show the world that George W. Bush was gone and with him the odious attempts to treat terrorists as if they were, well, terrorists. A civilian trial! Right in the heart of Manhattan! Obama ought ask his friend Attorney General Eric Holder what in the world he was thinking.
In a similar example of poor judgment, an undoubtedly delighted Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was told he had something called Miranda rights and could, if he so chose, cease talking about allegedly attempting to blow up a jetliner as it approached Detroit on Christmas Day. Abdulmutallab was Mirandized after just 50 total minutes of interrogation and he, having probably seen more than his share of "Law & Order" episodes, promptly shut up.
The motive here? I think Cohen is right -- for the Obama administration to prove the Obama administration is not the Bush administration. I didn't like George Bush, but he at least knew better than to treat terrorists like car thieves.
These Tits Are Made For Blowing
Could it be true? Via thereligionofpeace.com, a WND report says Muslim female suicide bombers are going to get surgically implanted explosives:
LONDON - Agents for Britain's MI5 intelligence service have discovered that Muslim doctors trained at some of Britain's leading teaching hospitals have returned to their own countries to fit surgical implants filled with explosives, according to a report from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.Women suicide bombers recruited by al-Qaida are known to have had the explosives inserted in their breasts under techniques similar to breast enhancing surgery. The lethal explosives - usually PETN (pentaerythritol Tetrabitrate) - are inserted during the operation inside the plastic shapes. The breast is then sewn up.
As I said recently, here we are spending big on scanners, while it will soon be necessary to have exploratory surgery before you board a plane. Bye-bye, American airline industry.
(Of course, we could do what the Israelis do, and look for terrorists instead of looking for bombs.)
One Step Forward And Two Steps Barack
George Will tracks the president's habit of saying one thing one day and another thing entirely the next. Does he think we have such a short memory or that nobody's writing this stuff down?
On Day One of his vow to take "meaningful steps to rein in our debt," Barack Obama asked Congress to freeze portions of discretionary domestic spending. This would follow an astonishing permanent expansion: Republicans on the House Budget Committee say appropriations bills Obama has signed, along with his stimulus spending, have increased discretionary domestic spending 84 percent. He almost certainly will not keep his promise to veto spending bills when Congress, as it almost certainly will, largely disregards his request.On Day Two, taking a break from the rigors of austerity, he was in Tampa, promising $8 billion for high-speed rail projects there and in a dozen other places. Four days later, he released a $3.8 trillion fiscal 2011 budget that would add an additional $1.3 trillion to the national debt. The budget reveals that the deficit emergency is not so great as to preclude another stimulus, a.k.a. "jobs bill."
Or to require that middle-class tax cuts enacted under The Great Alibi (George W. Bush) be allowed to expire. Or even to scrub from the budget such filigrees from olden days as $430 million for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which perhaps made some sense 42 years and 500 channels ago, when public television meant for some Americans a 33 percent increase in channels, from three to four.
I Don't Have To Keep My Heterosexuality A Secret
I never had to come out to my parents or my friends or acquaintances as straight. In fact, I don't talk about my sexuality much, although I will, in the course of conversation, sometimes mention my boyfriend. And gays and lesbians I know don't mention they're gay, or talk about it much, except in passing to people they know.
I find it weird and awful that gay people are expected to lie about and hide their sexuality -- running totally contrary to the military's honor code, directing them to be truthful.
We need to repeal the awful "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" that Bill Clinton put in place during his time in the Oval Office. From the WSJ:
Adm. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee he believed the "don't ask" restrictions--which require gay troops to keep their sexual orientation a secret--could be eliminated without harming military morale, recruitment or readiness."It is my personal and professional belief that allowing homosexuals to serve openly would be the right thing to do," Adm. Mullen told the Senate panel. "No matter how I look at the issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens."
This includes all those translators of Arab languages they drop-kicked because they happen to be attracted to people of the same sex.
More from Mullen:
Adm. Mullen expressed confidence that most members of the military would adjust to the change, citing his own experiences serving alongside closeted gay troops throughout his 42-year military career.The officer argued that forcing gay service members to live in fear of being outed and then discharged from the military was "inconsistent" with military values.
As for the argument somebody's going to make about attraction and the showers, here's one from commenter Lee Warren on the WSJ site:
Why don't you ask my father, Bob? 33 years in the Navy as a chaplain, retiring 30 years ago, and agreeing that it is the right thing to do. Why? Because he knew gay men who served back then and knew there was never the problem of "arousing gay peers." It is called professionalism. I'll guess that you're straight, at least outwardly. Tell me, do you ogle every woman with whom you work(ed) and have trouble containing your passions?I have had gay roommates and friends in the past and I never was troubled by the thought of sharing dorm showers with them or having to tinkle in a public bathroom. They knew I was straight and, therefore, it wasn't an issue.
I'll trust the professionalism of gay service members over the passionate pleas of pants-peeing moralists who make excuses for prejudice.
And here's one from limited governmenter Barry Goldwater:
"You don't need to be 'straight' to fight and die for your country. You just need to shoot straight."
Here's Goldwater's 1987 op-ed on the issue. And here's Israel's.
Why They're Going To Be Selling Your Grandchildren To The Chinese
Your tax dollars paid for this nine-page document for CDC employees on how to use Twitter.
How did I learn to use Twitter? I signed up for an account, took about 30 seconds to look at what other people were doing, and tweeted away.
Yes, it's true, I really figured it out without a document from the government including this:
Twitter Terms
The following are common terms related to Twitter activities:
•Tweet: an individual post or update on Twitter
•Follower: a Twitter user who subscribes to follow another user
•@ Reply: A response to a tweet that is sent out. Using the "@" symbol and username creates a direct link to that user's profile
•ReTweet or RT: The act of reposting another user's tweet and giving them credit, usually by using the phrase "RT @username" or "ReTweet @username"
•"#" or Hashtags: A way to categorize posts around a certain topic; individual Twitter users create a hashtag that can be added to posts on a specific topic
And then, as a mark of my unique genius, I figured out Facebook all by myself -- as have millions and millions of 9-year-olds.
Political Commentary From The Heartland
The other McLaughlin Group:
How Should Electronic Books Be Priced?
Well, ideally, so those of us who write books can earn a living doing it instead of working as waitresses and making writing a hobby. Virginia Postrel, in The Atlantic, weighs in on why Amazon wants to charge less than Apple does -- even cater to readers who want books for free:
As many commentators have noted, Amazon is not just selling e-books. It's also selling the Kindle. To encourage sales of its device, the company has even been willing to sell Kindle editions for less than the wholesale price it pays for them. It's presumably maximizing profit on the whole system, not just each individual title.Apple, too, is a system seller, and a device company to boot. But it doesn't have to sell a single book for the iPad to succeed. Books are just one app among many. If you're one of those old-fashioned people who read books without pictures, you can download a novel between watching videos, playing games, visiting websites, or looking at photos--all the things the visually oriented iPad was really designed for. The iPad is exciting not as a way to sell or read books as they currently exist but as a tool for reinventing them as multimedia. The book angle also helps generate good press, since journalists are desperate for any evidence that writing will pay in the future.
Apple doesn't need to maximize book sales. It simply needs to keep publishers happy enough to maintain an impressive sounding inventory of titles while waiting for entirely new forms of publishing to develop. After all, as Steve Jobs famously put it, "people don't read anymore."
On a related note, here's the New York Times article Virginia links to on how most of the best-sellers on Kindle are being given away for free.
"They Just Haven't Had Time To Westernize!"
Mark Steyn reveals what lazythink it is to rationalize Muslim women's wearing of the hijab, pulling out a piece of his writing from a few years back:
The other night at dinner, I found myself sitting next to a Middle Eastern Muslim lady of a certain age. And the conversation went as it often does when you're with Muslim women who were at college in the sixties, seventies or eighties. In this case, my dining companion had just been at a conference on "women's issues," of which there are many in the Muslim world, and she was struck by the phrase used by the "moderate Muslim" chair of the meeting: "authentic women" -- by which she meant women wearing hijabs. And my friend pointed out that when she and her unveiled pals had been in their 20s they were the "authentic women": the covering routine was for old village biddies, the Islamic equivalent of gnarled Russian babushkas. It would never have occurred to her that the assumptions of her generation would prove to be off by 180 degrees -- that in middle age she would see young Muslim women wearing a garb largely alien to their tradition not just in the Middle East but in Brussels and London and Montreal.
He adds:
That's an anecdotal observation. So now look at these two pictures: First, the Cairo University class of 1978, with every woman bare-headed; second, the Cairo University class of 2004, hijabed to the hilt.
Yes, the wheels of progress sometimes go in reverse.
Do You See Rude People?
Michael Schlesinger does. He e-mailed me:
File it under Instant Karma. I was walking down Hollywood Blvd. one afternoon and arrived at Highland; the light was red. Two motorcycle cops were in front of the vehicles facing me. Shockingly, there was no traffic on Highland. While I'm waiting for the light to change, some punk kid (death metal T-shirt, ripped jeans, lotsa tats and piercings; you know, a walking cliche) comes up, looks, then steps off the curb and starts to jaywalk. Being a Good Samaritan, I pointed to the officers and said, "Dude, there're cops there." (I don't normally call people "Dude," but I felt it was necessary to speak his lingo.) To my utter amazement, he spat back, "Go fuck yourself," and proceeded to cross. Not to my utter amazement, one of the cops pulled out and nailed him, and the little ringworm ended up with a ticket because he couldn't wait four seconds for the light to change.. By this time, I was in the crosswalk myself, careful not to make eye contact with him as I laughed to myself. Aah, good times.
Just Being Good Isn't Good Enough
I'd wanted to go to grad film school, but my parents found the idea hilarous that they'd pay tens of thousands of dollars for me to watch movies, so I got a job, right out of undergrad, producing commercials, and learned on other people's dime.
I worked with some really good casting directors back then, one of whom happens to be Latino. She got hired by me and lots of other people because she's really good, not because she's Latino. Now, it seems, she has to use the Latino thing. I'm on the list for her company, and I got this today:
[Our company] has worked all these years without minority certification but in the past year many of our clients have asked if we were certified. Since the company fits the criteria for these recognized organizations I applied and now have certification. Hope you enjoy our announcement to inform you of our new status...and maybe to give you a chuckle for the day.I hope you will include us in your vendor diversity list and that we get to work together in the near future.
"Vendor diversity list"?
Gross.
More on "minority certification" here.
Acting Your Age Continues To Be A Felony
I keep posting about this because it keeps happening. From the Chicago Tribune, yet another case of teens being recast as child exploiters and kiddie pornographers. Who are they exploiting? Um...themselves. Kristen Schorsch reports:
Last week, two middle school students in Valparaiso, Ind., were caught sending nude pictures of themselves to each other on their cell phones. The students were caught when the 13-year-old girl's cell phone rang in class, and her teacher confiscated it, according to a police report. The girl cried that she would get in trouble because a 12-year-old boy sent her a "dirty picture."The boy sent the girl a picture of his genitals and requested that she do the same, the report said. The girl then texted him a picture of her naked, police said.
The students have been charged with child exploitation and possession of child pornography, both felonies. They were referred to the county's juvenile probation department, which will determine whether authorities pursue or drop the charges, Gensel said. If convicted, the students could be required to register as sex offenders, he said.
If, increasingly, sex offenders are just teens who got caught goofing off, the label "sex offender" should eventually lose some of its stigma. Uh...don't think that's a good thing, and it's especially not a good thing that a minor violation that should be dealt with with a stern talking-to by parents ends up dogging kids for the rest of their lives.
We're really funny about nudity in this country. As I wrote the other day, a sturdy blonde lady felt me up at the Vegas airport to make sure that it was just boob material in my bra; that I wasn't going to go all exploding breastesses for Allah.
Well, I don't like being touched by people I don't want to be touched by, so I offered to just lift up my sweater and show her my boobs. Declined. Firmly declined. And I got the distinct impression that there might be an arrest in my future if my sweater and I lifted and separated.
Meanwhile, in France, there are exposed nipples on the subway (Relax! They're in posters!), and their society isn't collapsing. Well, not from the exposed nipples, anyway.
Obamaspeak
Obama's doublethink, doubletalk, from reason.tv:
Breakfast With Bin Laden
SFO Sunday morning.
It was bad enough that I had to be on what I now refer to as "Muslim Time" (getting to the airport sickeningly early so they could make sure I wasn't going to blow up the plane for Allah).
I ended up ordering bacon and eggs at an airport restaurant where they took that extra precaution that I wouldn't try to bring down the plane with one of those steel knives that give you a bit of a challenge when you try to slice through a pat of butter. 
Of course, the most absurd version of this knife-a-noia and blind rule-following is "Ask The Pilot" Patrick Smith's experience when the TSA nimrods took away the knife he totes around with him to use at his hotel. The knife from the airplane's First Class section. Taken from...the pilot! Who doesn't need a dull knife to bring down a damn plane, because...he can just steer it straight into the ground!
Central To Islam: Repression, Cruelty, And Fear
That's what the courageous Muslim apostates Nonie Darwish and Wafa Sultan point out in their new books, reports Leslie S. Lebl on City Journal.
Sultan's book: A God Who Hates: The Courageous Woman Who Inflamed the Muslim World Speaks Out Against the Evils of Islam
Darwish's book: Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law
And an excerpt from Lebl's piece, out of Sultan's book:
She describes an incident soon after she arrived in the United States, in which an Arab neighbor took her to the supermarket:We went into a Vons market and, once there, she began to open every packet she could, then she began to make holes in the lids of cartons of milk, Jell-O, and cream.
Then she made holes in a number of bags of potato chips, packets of paper handkerchiefs, and packets of spaghetti.
I shouted at her disapprovingly: "Dina, what are you doing?"
"May God curse them. They stole our land!"
"And are you doing this to try to get it back?"
"I'm trying to hurt them! You're still new here. Don't you know the owner's Jewish?"This hatred of Jews is not peripheral or dependent on Israel or Israeli behavior. Rather, it is deeply rooted in Islam, which divides the world into two parts, Muslim and non-Muslim. As Sultan recalls from her own childhood: "Jew must be one of the words Muslim children hear most frequently before the age of ten. It is also one of the hardest words they hear, as in their imagination it conjures up visions of killing, depravity, lies, and corruption. When one person wishes to express his disdain for another, he will call him a Jew."
With some humor, Sultan describes how, early on, she bolted out of a shoe shop in Hollywood, one foot bare, upon discovering that the shop assistant was an Israeli Jew. "We imbibed with our mother's milk hatred for the Jews," she writes, "and for anyone who supported their cause. We justified this hatred by devising a conspiracy theory, and we called anyone who disagreed with us a Zionist agent. This conspiracy theory helped keep Muslims inside the straitjacket in which Islam had imprisoned their minds."
Darwish agrees. She quotes the Koranic verse, "O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and Christians for your friends and protectors: They are but friends and protectors to each other. And he amongst you that turns to them (for friendship) is of them." She thinks Westerners who dismiss the influence of such passages on Islamic attitudes are deluding themselves: "Don't even think for a second that the above verse does not cause a major divide between Muslims and non-Muslims. Those apologists who claim it has little effect on Muslim society are in denial and are unable to see Muslim society objectively."
"Pamela Anderson If She Had Red Hair And A Brain"
I just love Dr. Satoshi Kanazawa's subhead on his Psych Today blog item with his review of my book. Even better is the headline: "Applied Evolutionary Psychology at its Best." I worked really hard to get the science right, and build a theory of why people are rude out of it, and Satoshi gives me a passing grade, and then some. And included links and pictures, too!
I See Rude People At Bank Of America
Identity theft expert Mari Frank's radio show I taped airs Monday morning, Feb. 1, on KUCI radio, Orange County. That's 8-9 AM, Pacific Time on 88.9 FM in Irvine, with live audio streaming at www.kuci.org.
There should be a link to the show up afterward. Please, somebody, remind me to post it, because I'll be crawling under furniture looking for better verbs (aka on deadline).
A Closet Fit For Helen Keller
Welcome to great moments in design dunderheadedness.
This is the pitch-dark walk-in closet in room 410 of the newly renovated Hotel Durant, right by the UC Berkeley campus, where I stayed for the alternative newspaper conference.
(I turned on the bathroom light, opened the bathroom and closet doors, and brightened this considerably in iPhoto so you could see the flashlight on the shelf.)
Sorry, but how do you spend buttloads of money renovating a hotel, and put in cute school-themed touches like an old-school steel desk and student lamp, and a guest directory that looks like a school notebook, and leave the closet nighttime dark?
I asked the girl at the front desk if the flashlight with "Hotel Durant" magic markered on it is supposed to help you find your clothes. And no -- it's for "disasters." And I don't think she's talking about the small-scale kind where you show up looking like you dressed in the dark.
On a positive note, the staff here are all very nice.
Socialist Security
Another good one from Alex Epstein at Ayn Rand Center, on how virtually no one questions the need for the Social Security program, but...:
"How much, when, and in what form one should provide for retirement is highly individual--and is properly left to the individual's free judgment and action. Social Security deprives the young of this freedom, and thus makes them less able to plan for the future, less able to provide for their retirement, less able to buy homes, less able to enjoy their most vital years, less able to invest in themselves. And yet Social Security's advocates continue to push it as moral. Why?"The answer lies in the program's ideal of 'universal coverage'--the idea that, as a New York Times editorial preached, 'all old people must have the dignity of financial security'--regardless of how irresponsibly they have acted. On this premise, since some would not save adequately on their own, everyone must be forced into some sort of 'guaranteed' collective plan--no matter how irrational.
"Those who wish to devote their wealth to saving the irresponsible from the consequences of their own actions should be free to do so through private charity, but to loot the savings of untold millions of innocent, responsible, hard-working young people in the name of such a goal is a monstrous injustice.
"Social Security in any form is morally irredeemable. We should be debating, not how to save Social Security, but how to end it--how to phase it out so as to best protect both the rights of those who have paid into it, and those who are forced to pay for it today. This will be a painful task. But it will make possible a world in which Americans enjoy far greater freedom to secure their own futures."
It's not going to happen -- but I like his thinking.
