Month: June 2012

NASA nerds channel their inner Michael Bay to show how ridiculously hard it is to land a rover on the Red Planet:

(Hat tip: Alex Knapp)

The evidence mounts.

Just remember, as Bruce Bartlett noted on his Facebook page,

A government with the power to force us to buy health insurance can also force restaurants to serve black people.

Be afraid.

Jack Shafer forgives the network for wrongly reporting yesterday's SCOTUS decision:

Up-to-the-second news has a way of crumbling in your hands if you don’t handle it carefully – and sometimes even if you do. This is one of the reasons an Associated Press editor told his troops to stop "taunting" the competition for its goof on social-media sites: Stop smirking, it could happen to you, buster. And the right thing to do when it happens to you (or you happen to it, which is a better description) is to do what CNN did: Publish a prompt and unequivocal correction. Fox, on the other hand, issued a statement claiming that its rolling, on-air update sufficed to correct the record, even if the error appeared in a Chyron.

Drudge also never issued a correction. Paul Waldman, meanwhile, pleads with CNN to prize accuracy over speed.

Laura Seay gives Obama's strategy for the continent low marks:

[Africa policy is] generally a very low priority for most administrations, but this too will have to change. It is not a coincidence that the Obama administration’s Africa strategy was released halfway through the last year of his term in office, a sure signal that Africa is far from being high atop the administration’s priority list—this is an unwise stance. Africa is on the move and, whether it is a priority or not, will be far more important to policy makers of the future than it has been in the past, if for no other reason than that the U.S. now imports about the same amount of oil per year from the continent as from the Persian Gulf states.

A reader writes:

I want to share another anecdote, echoing what a reader removing a strip of hair from the rear of the head (where virtually no one balds), splicing the follicles, and implanting them elsewhere in the head where loss has occurred. I'm lucky in that I've only had very mild recession at my temples, and three doctors predicted that my hairline wouldn't advance backwards much. However, my vanity being what it is, I wanted a lower hairline. Virtually all men develop what's called a mature hairline that is not due to genetic hair loss. A mature hairline is about 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch higher then our teenage hairline, and is just a fact of life (though not for everyone – look at Ronald Reagan for an example of an elderly man with a juvenile hairline). 

My procedure not only eliminated the temple recession, but aggressively restored my juvenile hairline. The result is astonishing – I'm nearly 30, looked a bit young for my age to begin with, but the hairline change peeled off years from my appearance.

I work in a corporate environment, and it's had an impact on my interactions with clients. I wouldn't trade the results for anything, but the surgery created a certain boyishness that doesn't convey the gravitas that's ideal for my job. (Look at Paul Ryan's hairline for an example of what I'm talking about.) It's been an interesting social experiment, and it says something about the trade-off between youthfulness and the ability to command confidence.

A side note: When these procedures are performed, the implanted grafts have small hairs sticking out of them in the new location. Those hairs fall out within a couple weeks, and the grafts regrow over the course of 18 months. So the picture I've attached doesn't even represent the full result, which has pushed in from the temples even more; I'll see even more change over the next six months. At 29, I have long, thick bangs that I can sweep across my forehead Bieber-style (which I refrain from doing at the office, lest I look too ridiculous). If this topic takes a life of its own on the Dish, you might want to direct readers to this example, achieved at the New Hair Institute in L.A. (I have no affiliation with them). The change in hairline is pretty astounding.

A very different view:

While it's great to hear that men can often times enjoy the advantages that premature balding gives them (appearing more mature and wise, yukking it up with the big bosses, etc), it's complete hell for women. I just turned 26, and my hair started thinning a few years ago. My formerly thick head of flowing black locks is starting to look more like the wispy cranium of a Disney-fied evil witch. And it's horrible. There is nothing good about it whatsoever. It doesn't make me look mature; it makes me look old. It keeps me awake at night and I've spent many hours crying about it. This might all sound hysterical, but it's just another piece to add to the giant pile of things that are advantageous to men and a death knell for women.

Sara Goldsmith studies it: 

[T]he fork was commonly viewed with skepticism or even outright hostility. In a historical overview of cutlery in Feeding Desire, the catalog for a 2005 exhibition on the tools of the table, Sarah Coffin speculates that the fork's image problem could be connected to its resemblance to the devil's pitchfork (a word from which it derives its name).

Michael Totten foresees a fight:

I’ve been half-expecting a less bloody version of the Algeria crisis in the 1990s where the secular police state voided the election after the Islamists won, precipitating civil war. It’s still too soon to rule that out, but let’s assume for now that it won’t happen, that the Muslim Brotherhood has some (albeit limited) power right now and will use as much of it as possible to transform Egypt in its own image. … Sorry to be grim here, but I see no possibility whatsoever of a happy outcome in this country. Egypt is by far the most Islamist place I’ve ever seen. That volcano can only stay plugged for so long.

Steven Cook casts doubt on the idea that the Brothers will cooperate heavily with Washington:

The sky is not falling and the sun will rise tomorrow, but this emphasis on the pragmatism of the Brotherhood may be leading to false expectation.  After all, for more than 30 years the Brothers have run against the U.S.-Egypt relationship and they used those ties to discredit both Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak.  Cairo’s relationship with Washington is also deeply unpopular with Egyptians; it developed precisely because Sadat and Mubarak were authoritarians who, to varying degrees, could disregard public sentiment. It would thus be amazingly unpragmatic for the Brotherhood, alleged agents of democratic change, to continue close ties with the United States.

(Photo: Egyptians remained camped in Cairo's Tahrir Square on Monday, June 25, 2012, the first day following the victory of the nation's first popularly elected president, Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood. Crowds continue their sit-in at the square in protest of the military's efforts to consolidate power ahead of the president-elect's inauguration. By James Lawler Duggan/MCT via Getty Images.)

Are getting poorer: 

Consider this: in 2010, 6.7 percent of Americans were among the extreme poor, as compared to 5.2 percent in 2007 and 4.5 percent in 2000. That's a 50 percent increase in the fraction of extremely poor individuals — the greatest increase, by far, of any income group relative to the poverty threshold. The unambiguous statistical trend since 2000 has been large increases in the fraction of Americans at the extreme end of poverty, with little to no change in the fraction of Americans considered "near poor." The poor, in other words, are getting poorer — or more precisely, poverty in America is becoming an increasingly extreme and unequal phenomenon.

In a follow-up post, Evan Soltas adds: 

The mean real income of Americans below the federal poverty threshold is at a historical low, $5957 in 2010, after stagnating since the 1980s. It is important to explain here that the Census determines the threshold by calculating the minimum income needed for a minimally adequate standard of living, not in comparison to the income distribution — poverty here is absolute, not relative — and so the drop in incomes of the poor means that they can provide a lesser and lesser fraction of the goods and services seen as necessary for themselves and/or their families. The current level represents a 4.1 percent drop since 2000. More disturbingly, the mean individual below the federal poverty threshold makes 13.3 percent less in real terms than what he or she did in 1976. The poor haven't felt any sort of rising tide lifting all boats, so to speak. Instead, they are the worst off they've been in decades.

Today on the Dish, we live-blogged the SCOTUS ruling and weighed the electoral impact of the decision. Blogger reax here and reader reax here (meep meep watch here). Romney promised a full repeal (whether or not that is likely or possible here and here), a reader speculated that Scalia's overreaching did him in, and cable news officially jumped the shark. Some claimed they would "flee" to Canada, the House voted to hold Holder in contempt, anti-mandate conservatives renounced a settled body of law, and national security became divorced from democracy. JP Morgan actually lost $9 billion, and the uninsured continued to suffer. 

We wondered if Facebook has reached saturation, studied the Buzzfeed model, and examined the dental care crisis. Readers elaborated on home birth, a new film reinvented Hollywood aging, and pharmaceutical reps preyed on the cognitive dissonance of doctors. Slugs chewed penises after sex, our local police departments became pointlessly militarized, and connectivity immunized.  

Chart of the day here, Malkin award nominee here, quote for the day here, FOTD here, VFYW here, and MHB here. Ad war update here. 

—M.A.