Month: May 2012

"[Allen] West would do himself, his party and his cause a world of good if he decided to jettison the corrosive and insulting rhetoric," – Pete Wehner, Commentary.

James Watson picks POMC, a protein recipe gene:

In the body it gets broken up into different proteins, including melanotropin, which makes the skin darker when you’ve been in the sun, and beta-endorphin, a natural opioid that makes you feel satisfied after eating and also causes the ‘runner’s high.’ It’s the only gene I know whose very structure is an implicit biological message: Happiness is a reward for doing what we should be doing—for being in the sun and making vitamin D, for exercising and for bringing nutrients into our bodies.

But still SFW:

A reminder that the Dish is seeking two interns to help with ransacking the web for smart nuggets, helping out with administrative crap, working on larger projects, and guest-blogging when yours truly takes a vacation. The paid internship will be full time, includes benefits and is for a six-month duration. For the first time, the positions are based in New York City, at the iPod-looking super-cool Gehry-designed IAC building.

We are hoping to hire within the next month or so. Start dates are semi-flexible. We're looking for extremely hardworking self-starters, web-obsessives and Dishheads, who already understand what we do here. We also prefer individuals who can challenge me and my assumptions, find stuff online that we might have missed, and shape the Dish with his or her own personal passions. I want to emphasize that the Beast's "balls-to-the-wall" aspiration is just as relevant to the Dish; these are intense jobs for the intensely motivated. They're also a pretty unbeatable opportunity to learn what online journalism can be. And a sense of humor is an asset.

To apply, please e-mail a (max 500-word) cover letter explaining why you are a good fit for the Dish and a resumé to Dish.Intern@newsweekdailybeast.com. The cut off for applications is Monday, May 21.

Michael Spencer examines geo-engineering:

[Hugh] Hunt [of the Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering project] stood up, walked slowly to the window, and gazed at the manicured Trinity College green. "I know this is all unpleasant," he said. "Nobody wants it, but nobody wants to put high doses of poisonous chemicals into their body, either. That is what chemotherapy is, though, and for people suffering from cancer those poisons are often their only hope. Every day, tens of thousands of people take them willingly—because they are very sick or dying. This is how I prefer to look at the possibility of engineering the climate. It isn’t a cure for anything. But it could very well turn out to be the least bad option we are going to have.’"

Nick Moran, who made the above graph, disses the notion that the planet benefits from iPads:

[M]ost eReaders are used for only two years before being discarded, replaced, lost or broken. That eReader, then, accounts for an initial carbon footprint 200-250% greater than your typical household library, and it increases every time you get a new eReader for Christmas, or every time the latest Apple Keynote lights a fire in your wallet. … If you live in a household with multiple eReaders — say, one for your husband and one for your daughter, too — your family’s carbon emissions are more than 600-750% higher per year than they would be if you invested in a bunch of bookshelves or, better yet, a library card.

NatGeo pushes back:

The amount of paper used for books in one year was estimated at 1.5 million metric tons, and each book produced gave off an estimated 8.85 pounds of carbon dioxide. Study groups have found that the carbon released from eBooks is offset after people read more than 14 eBooks. For the life cycle of a device for reading books, the carbon emitted is offset after the first year. 

Henry Blodget's profile of Mark Zuckerberg is worth reading in full. A taste:

When talking about Zuckerberg’s most valuable personality trait, a colleague jokingly invokes the famous Stanford marshmallow tests, in which researchers found a correlation between a young child’s ability to delay gratification—devour one treat right away, or wait and be rewarded with two—with high achievement later in life. If Zuckerberg had been one of the Stanford scientists’ subjects, the colleague jokes, Facebook would never have been created: He’d still be sitting in a room somewhere, not eating marshmallows.

Cardboard furniture:

SmartDeco furniture is made out of pulp-based "corrugated fiberboard"—a cheap, strong, lightweight material with an unmistakeable resemblance to cardboard. Offering include a customizable array of the stuff you'll need for your room: A desk ($50), a dresser ($54), and a nightstand ($34).

Yes, for many, we are still in a recession.

A reader writes:

My son was patted down by TSA at the age of nine, and it lasted almost a full minute.  He is now a fully functioning twelve year old who appears to have overcome the outrageous assault; getting the window seat over his brother was instrumental in his recovery.

What I find offensive is the outrage level for a two-minute inconvenience (look at the banners on that video: “makes your blood boil”, tyranny, etc) when there is absolutely no outrage that likely innocent people, without any charge, have been sitting in Guantanamo, after being tortured, for nearing a decade.  Those are not cute little white kids; they look like terrorists so they apparently got what they deserve.

Does anyone honestly believe that TSA employees don’t situationally profile suspicious looking people already?  They are human beings, so they do what comes naturally.  Or are people upset that it is not codified into some law or manual to make them feel better?  What is the point – does anyone think that will do away with the random searches that slow down the line?  It won’t. 

Every time there is one of these “Oh my God can you believe they searched a child/old woman/nun” stories, there seems to be the impression that other, more deserving (??) people are not being searched.  Everybody has to stand in line and be inconvenienced; terrorists waving AK-47s are not running past while a four year old is being frisked.  As anyone who has travelled has learned, TSA is not speeding up the process because of a crowd.  Yes, I can point to ten or so people I think I would search more thoroughly while I sit in line for an hour at LaGuardia, but that just makes me a little bigoted and likely somewhat dumb because none of those people blew up a plane.

Today on the Dish, Andrew read the polling evidence that the heinous Amendment 1 would pass in North Carolina (as it did), laid bare the bigoted view that underpins the Amendment, explained why those who support its ban on civil equality are out of step with America, gave an explanation for what made them tick, and compared Obama's record on gay issues to Romney's awful one. A despairing gay reader planned to leave North Carolina if the Amendment passed (responses offering support poured in here and here), Romney might have gained more supporters than current polling suggested, business experience (debatably) helped Mitt, minority voter registration dropped off (follow up here), and Obama embodied an optimistic sort of populism. The Julia Obama ad met with mixed reviews, Wall Streeters disliked the Administration, and Mormonism embraced Zionism. Ad War Update here.

Andrew also defended himself against an attack in Jonah Goldberg's new book and castigated an old-new Israeli policy. We grabbed reax to Netanyahu's spectacular new coalition deal, dug deeper on the implications of a leftist government in Greece, and sampled the exquisitely inauthentic adaptations of "American food" abroad. A reader spoke up for a more moderate atheism, our brains treated God like a person, we all believed in magic, and daydreams popped up all the time. We linked marriage to class, explored the truth about emergency care in the US, cast our iPhone contracts in an (unfavorable) international light, and learned about the nation's biggest company, ExxonMobile. Cities inspired and chairs killed. Ask Maggie Gallagher Anything (with reader comment) here, Hewitt Nominee here, Quote for the Day here, VFYW here, VFYW Contest Winner here, MHB here, and FOTD here.

– Z.B.