Month: May 2009

Chewing Is Passé

Dustycurtain

Tyler Cowen points to a bit of text from David Kessler's The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite:

According to Gail Civille, in the past Americans typically chewed a mouthful of food as many as twenty-five times before it was ready to be swallowed; now the average American chews only ten times.

Drum wants evidence and tests himself. My oldest beagle inhales her food so far as I can tell.

The Case For Childhood Guilt

Jonah Lehrer has a great article on delayed gratification studies – and it reminded me of my own struggles as a kid every Lent avoiding candy or eating vegetables. In a study cited by Lehrer, children were put in a room and given a choice: they could have a treat immediately or, if they waited fifteen minutes, they would get two treats. The children could ring a bell at any time to summon a researcher:

Once Mischel began analyzing the results, he noticed that low delayers, the children who rang the bell quickly, seemed more likely to have behavioral problems, both in school and at home. They got lower S.A.T. scores. They struggled in stressful situations, often had trouble paying attention, and found it difficult to maintain friendships. The child who could wait fifteen minutes had an S.A.T. score that was, on average, two hundred and ten points higher than that of the kid who could wait only thirty seconds.

Vaughan adds:

This and subsequent research has led us to believe that the ability to delay gratification for better rewards in the future is a fundamental skill in success, probably because it looks at how emotions and motivations interact with a more rational appproach to reasoning. We know what's best, but can we keep temptation at bay to reach it?

We all need nuns in childhood. They fuck you up but they make you smart.

79 Cent Nachos

Sarah Hepola samples recession food:

There is something unsettling about the audaciously punctuated "Why Pay More!" Taco Bell value menu. I don't mean health concerns — though those are aplenty — but the confounding question of how a restaurant could possibly profit selling nachos at 79 cents. The nachos come covered in refried beans and goopy fluorescent orange cheese drizzled with red sauce, a wan imitation of Tex-Mex that made me weep for my years spent in Austin, Texas, but still … 79 cents! Even for recession prices, that feels low.

(hat tip: Mary Kane)

Black Lung

A new study helps to reveal why African Americans are more adversely affected by tobacco use:

Researchers found that in African Americans, darker skin — specifically that acquired by sun exposure, not genetics — is directly linked to smoking frequency and dependence. “African Americans are known to have a more difficult time quitting and suffer from more tobacco-related diseases,” said [study author] Gary King…. Melanin pigments, which determine skin color, bind tightly to nicotine. As a consequence, nicotine and tobacco’s cancer-causing agents tend to linger and accumulate in other melanin-containing tissues like the heart, lungs, liver and brain, potentially putting those organs at increased risk for tobacco-related diseases.

Almost Money

NYT economics reporter Edmund Andrews explains how he got trapped in the housing bust. It's a great, if depressing, read:

As I walked out of the settlement office with my loan papers, I couldn’t shake the sense of having just done something bad . . . but also kind of cool. I had just come up with almost a half-million dollars, and I had barely lifted a finger. It had been so easy and fast. Almost fun.

The Daily Wrap

Today on the Dish we delved into the dark and disturbing past surrounding McChrystal – Obama's man in Afghanistan – just as civilian casualties have spiked in that country. Jon Stewart, for his part, delved into the insanity of DADT, while Shep continued to be the lone journalist among his colleagues on torture.

In other news, Obama's drug czar won't go to war, Amazon went into publishing, and Gonzales spouted cant over the rule of law.  Chris Orr and Michael Moynihan chronicled the cannibalizing of a Cornerite. Frum, Phil Levy, and Jonathan Adler wrestled over carbon.

Dish readers provided some insight on pot farming and a view from Pakistan. On the YouTubes, Bambi pretended to be Ricky Gervais and a Bulgarian in drag danced for us.

Also, my interview with the Pet Shop Boys is up. And expect some fireworks on the Chris Matthews show Sunday.

Why Cheney Tortured

The evidence that he did so in part to generate false evidence for the Iraq war is accumulating:

Then-Vice President Dick Cheney, defending the invasion of Iraq, asserted in 2004 that detainees interrogated at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp had revealed that Iraq had trained al Qaida operatives in chemical and biological warfare, an assertion that wasn't true. Cheney's 2004 comments to the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News were largely overlooked at the time.

However, they appear to substantiate recent reports that interrogators at Guantanamo and other prison camps were ordered to find evidence of alleged cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein — despite CIA reports that there were only sporadic, insignificant contacts between the militant Islamic group and the secular Iraqi dictatorship.

The head of the Criminal Investigation Task Force at Guantanamo from 2002-2005 confirmed to McClatchy that in late 2002 and early 2003, intelligence officials were tasked to find, among other things, Iraq-al Qaida ties, which were a central pillar of the Bush administration's case for its March 2003 invasion of Iraq.

"I'm aware of the fact that in late 2002, early 2003, that (the alleged al Qaida-Iraq link) was an interest on the intelligence side," said retired Army Lt. Col. Brittain Mallow, a former military criminal investigator. "That was something they were tasked to look at."

The full McClatchy story is here.