Author: Andrew Sullivan

Africa. And it's not just since Obama.

Margaret Talbot isn't impressed by fMRI lie detectors:

One conclusion you can draw about lie detection by fMRI from this and less quirky studies is that, as Miller says, “If you sample a population in which you know that there is a ten percent chance that they are lying, then for every 9 hits (correctly identifying someone as lying), you will also get 9 false alarms (saying somebody is lying when they are not.)”

Prior research has suggested that time appears to move faster as one ages. The BPS blog highlights some research pointing the other direction:

Age accounted for four per cent of the variance in how quickly participants said the last ten years had passed and just one per cent of the perception of time's speed in general. By contrast, how busy and rushed people reported feeling accounted for ten per cent of the variance in subjective speed of time. Consistent with this, women reported feeling more rushed than men, on average, and they perceived time to go by more quickly.

Quite why the idea that time speeds up with age is so widely believed requires further study, the researchers said.

Balko pays homage to the vending machine, now entering a new era:

For nearly a century before the Internet put the anonymous consumption of vices literally at the world’s fingertips, vending machines dispensed taboo wares, experiences, and entertainment free from the gaze of prying eyes. Salyers argues that the first vending machines in wide use were the snuff and tobacco boxes in 17th century English taverns, appropriate forerunners to the ubiquitous, plastic-handled cigarette dispensers that populated bars, bowling allies, and restaurants in the second half of the 20th century. Be it the condom machine in the gas station bathroom, the coin-operated peep show, the pinball craze that prompted a moral panic in the 1940s, truant hoods spending afternoons in smoke-blanketed video game arcades in the 1980s, or the rebellious rock ’n’ roll dispensing jukebox, there has always been a subversive element to coin-operated commerce. Even the Norman Rockwell–celebrated Coca-Cola machine has gone rogue, as public health activists now fault soda and candy—and, in particular, the widespread availability of both through vending machines—for the fattening of American children.

(Image from Jake Bronstein's toy vending machine project. Bronstein bought a machine off the internet and "filled the toy capsules with ideas of fun things to do and started placing the machine in various spots around New York.")

Ezra Klein tweaks Friedersdorf's fears about intellectual capture:

The larger danger is not friends but professional contacts. And that's not so much about D.C. as it is about the type, and amount, of reporting you choose to do. Neither Ben Smith nor Joe Klein nor Jonathan Alter live in the District. But all of them are seriously plugged in, with the difficult trade-off that entails: It's hard to know what people in power are thinking if you refuse to talk to them, but it's also harder to make them really upset if you want to continue talking to them. (I should note that I think all the writers I just mentioned handle this problem particularly well, which is why I used them as examples.) And unlike the books-by-acquaintances issue, this one has real consequences for your audience. That's not a D.C. problem, though. It's a consequence of reporting, and one that isn't limited to any particular city.

Today on the Dish, Andrew was cautiously optimistic about the dramatic developments over DADT and wondered why Obama seemed to shift all of a sudden (clues here and here). Fallows also weighed in. Meanwhile, support for ending the ban was as popular as ever – as was acceptance of gay and lesbian couples.

In spill coverage, BP will try to plug the leak, ABC looked down below, Elizabeth Kolbert glanced at our oil future, readers wrung their hands over Obama's response to the crisis, and we worried about hurricane season. In Palin coverage, Joe McGinniss got a little too close, she responded with another flub, Andrew Sprung tried to make sense of her latest narrative on Obama, and Wendy Kaminer wondered how the Kagan response would be different if she looked more like Palin. In other news, the Church kept misleading its followers over HCR, Julian Glover reviewed the Queen's speech, and a plunge in the stock market popped back up.

In other coverage, Jonah Lehrer gave props to parenting and Tablet and Beinart tried to talk to their kids about Zionism. More discussion of Christianity here and here. Conor-led DC talk here and here (bonus suburbia here). Malkin Award here, creepy ad here, Lost's many jumping sharks here, crappy old postcards here, and butched-up rainbows here.

— C.B.

Echoing several Dish readers, Bernstein argues that DADT repeal was in the cards all along:

By keeping a low public profile on issues that were not yet ripe — by which I mean ready for actual meaningful action, such as a mark-up or a floor vote, not in the more abstract sense — Obama is able to see which issues really do have constituencies who care, one way or another. Perhaps if advocates of repeal had put most of their energy into other issues, and perhaps if outcry among pro-ban groups had been louder, Obama might have changed course. But it seems to me pretty obvious that repeal has been his intended course from the beginning.

College Humor compiled a list of questions left unanswered in the Lost finale:

(Hat tip: Kottke)

After a harrowing dip this morning, the market recovered in late trading. Buttonwood's reason for hope:

As a naturally gloomy soul, it is always good to hear the other side of the argument. I talked to a big hedge fund today, with $15 billion under management. It thought the fears were overblown. Companies were generating good profits and cashflow. There was plenty of liquidity sloshing around and where was it likely to go? Not into government bonds at current yields, nor into property where there is excess supply, Equities, now back at levels seen in 1998, were the obvious beneficiary, they believed.

A woman smells a flower in the rose garden at the annual Chelsea flower show on May 25, 2010 in London, England. The Royal Horticultural Society flagship flower show has been held at the Royal Hospital in Chelsea since 1913. Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images.