Month: January 2013

After her brother died of Huntington’s disease, Mona Gable confronted the fact that she might also have the disease:

One night I sat down at my computer and did a Google search. Huntington’s is all about the numbers; I learned I had a 50 percent chance of getting the disease. There is no cure. Then I saw the unthinkable: not only might I carry the lethal HD gene, but my children might too. … My choice was excruciating: Should I get tested? The disease can’t be treated, so what good would it do? But what about my children? At 18 and 20, they certainly had the right to know if they were confronting a fatal illness.

Early studies suggested that fish oil has major health benefits, but later research found little effect. Keith Humphreys explains how this happens:

For a small study (such as Sacks’ and Leng’s early work in the top two rows of the table) to get published, it needs to show a big effect — no one is interested in a small study that found nothing. It is likely that many other small studies of fish oil pills were conducted at the same time of Sacks’ and Leng’s, found no benefit and were therefore not published. But by the play of chance, it was only a matter of time before a small study found what looked like a big enough effect to warrant publication in a journal editor’s eyes.

At that point in the scientific discovery process, people start to believe the finding, and null effects thus become publishable because they overturn “what we know”. And the new studies are larger, because now the area seems promising and big research grants become attainable for researchers. Much of the time, these larger and hence more reliable studies cut the “miracle cure” down to size.

(Chart from the JAMA modified by Drum)

Nilofer Merchant thinks sitting is the new smoking:

As we work, we sit more than we do anything else. We’re averaging 9.3 hours a day, compared to 7.7 hours of sleeping Sitting is so prevalent and so pervasive that we don’t even question how much we’re doing it. And, everyone else is doing it also, so it doesn’t even occur to us that it’s not okay.

She’s made a small change to her daily routine to fight back:

I switched one meeting from a coffee meeting to a walking-meeting. I liked it so much it became a regular addition to my calendar; I now average four such meetings, and 20 to 30 miles each week. Today it’s life-changing, but it happened almost by accident.

Today on the Dish, Andrew tried to make sense of last night’s Daily Show segment on Zero Dark Thirty, expressed his disgust with the double standards of the DOJ, and called out the MSM for not quizzing McChrystal on his alleged involvement in torture. Andrew kept pushing Dreher on the normalization of pot and stood by Goldblog as he faced slander from left and right. He also answered more reader emails about Jodie Foster’s speech, assured heterosexual readers that they understand more about gay love than they know, and nodded in approval at a sexy gallery of beards.

In political coverage, we gathered a stack of reader emails about the NRA’s latest ad and rounded up reax on Obama’s ideas for sensible gun reform. We then charted the recent rightward drift of the GOP, traced the decline of cap-and-trade, and looked ahead at the future of the abortion debate. Douthat issued a word of wisdom to both Democrats and Republicans comfortable with the ongoing brinkmanship, offered a two-part reality check on both Obama’s favorables and party alignment since the election, assessed the current gains and losses for labor in a world of runaway technology, and cringed at a WSJ cartoon feeling sorry for wealthy people paying a little bit more in taxes.

We also surveyed a horrifying week’s worth of grinding violence in Syria, poked a hole in the logic behind persecuting Bradley Manning, and Jonnie Freedland expertly analyzed the disconnect between American and European understanding of anti-Semitism.

In assorted coverage, we wondered how the media botched the Manti Te’o story and tried to size up Te’o’s own role in the mess. James Wolcott suited up with digital trackers during exercise, Alex Klein chronicled Scientology’s latest shameful scheme, and readers voiced strong thoughts regarding Jon Brodkin’s piece on the future of broadband. We aired the dispute over Amazon’s trickle-down partnerships, discovered a non-boozy use for the breathalyzer, and spotted heavy fracking activity from space. Later we fleshed out a reader’s story about his war hero father, got lost in a purple trance during the MHB, and spent a crisp moment in Burlington, Vermont for today’s VFYW. Finally, we continued our direct discussion with readers about the future pay-meter of the new Dish, which you can still become a part of here.

– B.J.

(Photo of Carmen Grasso’s Flight Crew V2. He’s on the far left, back row.)

Robert Krulwich points out a new patch of light in the satellite photo seen above:

What we have here is an immense and startlingly new oil and gas field — nighttime evidence of an oil boom created by a technology called fracking. Those lights are rigs, hundreds of them, lit at night, or fiery flares of natural gas. … Altogether, they are now producing 660,000 barrels a day, double the output two years ago, so that in no time at all, North Dakota is now the second largest oil producing state in America. Only Texas produces more, and those lights are a sign that this region is now on fire … to a disturbing degree — literally.

Recent Dish on fracking here.

(Photo: NASA, with illustration by NPR)

https://twitter.com/MattZeitlin/statuses/291910927882809344

Perhaps the most amazing part of the Manti Te’o story is the extent to which it went unchallenged for so long. Timothy Burke and Jack Dickey, who broke the story,point out the discrepancies that failed to raise red flags. Spencer Hall compiles a “short list of those who never checked to see if she actually existed.” Hampton Stevens summarizes:

Incredible, isn’t it? Not one of the highly-paid, well-respected journalists at SI or ESPN even bothered to check the most basic facts of their stories. Charlie Rose and CBS, with all that staff, with all that preaching about “original reporting,” yet nobody at the whole network even so much as bothered to pick up a phone to find out if the girl actually existed.

Reeves Wiedeman zooms out:

The reporters who traced Te’o’s story saw what they wanted to see and had little incentive to question it. In fairness to them, it was nearly impossible to imagine such a thing being made up. Regardless of how much he knew about his imaginary girlfriend, Te’o and his family repeatedly offered new layers of the story when talking with reporters. (He now says their relationship was only online and over the phone, though earlier there had been descriptions of in-person meeting.) It was a human-interest story of the kind that most major sports media outlets specialize in. There are ESPN’s endless segments with athletes doing good works. There was every story ever written about the greatness and infallibility of Joe Paterno. Creating figures whose aura expands beyond the field offers import to games that line up one after the other, the next not all that different from the last. Te’o’s story was fresh literary material for the reporters who covered him. If only they had taken the time to find out how eventful the real story was.

And Travis Waldron reflects on the implications for sports journalism more broadly:

Sports journalists — and I am not painting myself as an exception, since though I never wrote about Te’o, I can’t say definitively I would have verified every detail of his story had I chosen to — too often forget that we too are gatekeepers, that amid the games, the drama, and the hoopla, we too have an obligation to the truth not just on the field but off it as well. We too often forget that our heroes are still human and turn them instead into flawless role models worthy of admiration not just for their inhuman feats but for their stories, the odds they have overcome and the lives they lead. When our heroes fail as humans always do, when the heroic stories turn out to be lies, it becomes a mad scramble to demolish the images we helped build. The athletes failed you, we tell the world, excusing no one but ourselves.

 

Amy Davidson is troubled by the implications of the prosecution’s claims against Bradley Manning:

According to the AP, prosecutors singled out an 1863 case in which a soldier named Henry Vanderwater was convicted of giving a command roster to a Virginia newspaper, which printed the information. “Publishing information in a newspaper [can] indirectly convey information to the enemy,” a prosecutor quoted by Politico argued. Can anyone aid the enemy by giving information to a reporter? Are reporters aiding the enemy if they publish it—and who, by the way, is “the enemy”?

[A]iding the enemy is a charge of a different degree than simply exposing classified information. It involves intent and carries heavier penalties. It is also the sort of charge that, in wartime, or anytime, almost invites overreach.

Greenwald asks why “Bob Woodward’s [White House] sources” aren’t on trial under this reasoning:

Bob Woodward [has] become one of America’s richest reporters, if not the richest, by obtaining and publishing classified information far more sensitive than anything WikiLeaks has ever published. For that reason, one of Woodward’s most enthusiastic readers was Osama bin Laden asthis 2011 report from AFP demonstrates…

If bin Laden’s interest in the WikiLeaks cables proves that Manning aided al-Qaida, why isn’t bin Laden’s enthusaism for Woodward’s book proof that Woodwood’s leakers – and Woodward himself – are guilty of the same capital offense? This question is even more compelling given that Woodward has repeatedly published some of the nation’s most sensitive secrets, including information designated “Top Secret” – unlike WikiLeaks and Manning, which never did.

A reader can relate to this story:

As I found out when my 98-year-old mother died in May 2012, obituaries are billed like classified ads. My mother was very frugal and would have been outraged if we spent hundreds of dollars her obituary. We did want all of her friends to know that she had died, so I spent hours editing and re-editing until everything we wanted to say had been deleted and we were left with little more than the relevant names and dates. A large city paper was totally unhelpful, but the obituary sales person at the smaller paper was a sympathetic, helpful editor. Since then I read long obituaries quite differently.

Another:

My parents passed in 2010, three months apart. My dad’s obit was $1,100 and my mom’s $900. And this was in a small coastal New England city of about 30K. We also placed the obits online. It was free and there was a comment option. You had the choice of keeping the comments up for free for 90 days, or longer for a price.

The online option was amazing. Hundreds of comments were written. The outpouring of kindness and memories was wonderful. The number of comments from far away was interesting as well. People who had moved away and heard from friends or family regarding our loss, and many who simply still followed the local news online.

Another asks:

How about posting that war hero’s obituary on the Dish so it’s read by hundreds of thousands of people? That would bless the socks off that reader of yours – and probably the old man, too, wherever he is.

Well, I contacted the reader and asked permission (including the photograph of a member of the greatest generation’s flight crew). Below is the obit in full. It reminds me why I love America:

Carmen Grasso, 90, passed away on Friday December 28 at Veterans Hospital in Syracuse, NY after a brief illness, surrounded by his family. He was born on April 13, 1922 in Rome, NY, one of eight children of Joseph and Antonina Grasso. After graduating from Rome Free Academy, he volunteered for the U.S. Army Air Corp. He served as a B-24 pilot in World War II and flew 35 missions over Germany, France and North Africa. He earned the rank of Captain and was awarded a Service Medal with three bronze stars and an Air Medal with Silver Oak Leaf Clusters. He resigned from reserve duty with a rank of Major.

He earned a B.A. from Syracuse University and a J.D. from New York Law School. Upon graduation, he established a successful law practice in Syracuse, NY and was a partner of the firm Rizzo, Aloi, Grasso and Urchioli. Throughout his career, he served on numerous boards and committees, including the Onondaga County Bar Association Grievance Committee. In 1961, he and a group of friends founded the Pompey Hills Golf and Country Club, where he established the annual Father Charles Borgognoni Golf Tournament, a charity fundraiser. Later, he became a member of the Cavalry Club.

He was active in local Syracuse politics and was a member of the Lincoln Republican Club and Young Republicans Club, where he met his wife, Ida Antonazzi, in 1957. He served on the Town of DeWitt Zoning Board and belonged to the Rotary Club. He sang with the Berlitz Choral Group and a local barbershop quartet; served on the boards of Civic Morning Musicals and the Syracuse Opera Club; and was a long-time supporter of the Syracuse Symphony.

He raised his family in Manlius, NY, then, in 1997, retired to Annapolis, MD and later Lexington, VA in order to be close to his sons and grandchildren. In 2008, he returned to Fayetteville, NY with his wife.

His family and friends will remember Carmen for his sense of humor, charm, creativity and always-optimistic outlook on life. He is survived by his wife, Ida; sister Natalie Malone; sons Joseph, Thomas and Christopher; and four grandchildren. A family memorial stone will be placed at Immaculate Conception Cemetery in Fayetteville, NY. A memorial mass will be held in the spring.

(Photo: Carmen Grasso’s Flight Crew V2. He’s on the far left, back row.)

Gary Marcus imagines the future of search:

As machines come to better comprehend the pages they read, their utility to us will increase by orders of magnitude. It won’t be just “find me a recipe for chicken noodle soup,” it will be “analyze one hundred recipes for chicken soup and give me the ones with best taste rating among a subset that uses less added salt, and tell me which nearby shops stock the ingredients I don’t already have.” Instead of search being a hit-or-miss proposition, the best search engines will find what you need, when you need it.