Author: Andrew Sullivan

Wired explains the science:

Bornaviruses, a type of RNA virus that causes disease in horses and sheep, can insert their genetic material into human DNA and first did so at least 40 million years ago, the study shows. The findings, published January 7 in Nature, provide the first evidence that RNA viruses other than retroviruses (such as HIV) can stably integrate genes into host DNA…

Retroviruses make up about 8 percent of the human genome. When these viruses insert into the genome, the result is usually bad for the host. But not always: Some retrovirus proteins can help fight off infection with other retroviruses. And at least twice in primate evolution retrovirus insertions have added genes to the host genome that aid in making the placenta. Now those proteins are essential for placenta development, says Cédric Feschotte, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Texas at Arlington.

And as I did, I became less afraid of it. And I believe that lack of fear and sometimes over-dedication to my work helped me survive it, or, rather, survive with it. I think this is wiser than some modern conceptions of our bodies as somehow alien to illness rather than as part of the web of virology and bacteria and life that exists on this planet. So you tend to your illness as part of your body rather than seeing it as an invader to be conquered. I don't mean some new agey idea that modern medicine is irrelevant. Au contraire. HIV kills you if left untreated and aggressive medicine is vital. I mean a psychological resistance to the war metaphor, an ownership of your own cells, and the spiritual calm that accepts our physical embeddedness and is often the reward of a close call with mortality.

The calm fades so easily so often. But without it, we die.

A reader writes:

I'm disappointed in your Clinton quote of the day. Might you not have also indicated that this "quote" was according to a new book by Mark Halperin?  Not crediting the quote to this potentially biased book gives the illusion that it is an authenticated, perhaps written or recorded utterance from a former president.  This is not gospel, and utterly lacks context.  The context in which it was passed along is one thing you could have, and should have provided.

I sometimes presume readers can click links. But I'll try and ensure more context in future for quotes merely reported by others and not unequivocally in the public record.

A reader writes:

I was glad to note that someone wrote in to clarify the Getty information concerning the Orthodox Patriarchate and the Feast of Epiphany. BUT (you knew that word was coming, didn't you?) your writer failed to correct a minor error made by many people in Western Christendom.  The Orthodox church does not ever celebrate a 'mass'.  It is a liturgy. The word 'mass' derives from the Latin uttered by Western (i.e. Roman Catholic) priests at the end of a service, Ita, missa est,  meaning "Go, it is completed". Since Eastern liturgies are always celebrated in the language of the area or in Greek, the term 'mass' never applies and should not be used as it conflates the Eastern and Western churches.  Please use the term liturgy.

As a religious studies major, I was compelled to correct this for you.

Begin scene:

WALTER
Nay! I do protest, and draw my sword;
It shall teach thee to disobey my word.
Mark none but none into that bowler’s frame,
Else thou shalt enter into a world of pain.
A world of pain, think upon’t; unhappy world!
A lake of fire, rich with damnèd souls,
Gulfs of anguish ‘twixt vales of agonies.
Mark me; we stand at twisted, jealous gates
Of cast-iron, above which, in vulgar tongue, reads
“Here is a world of pain, thou enterest thus.”

My steel before thee, ‘tis the last of keys
That might could lock these doors, and keep thee
From this world of pain, or with one flick
Ope its mashing maw, and summon winds
To cast thee down within; an excellent key!
Farewell to earthly delights, farewell to friends,
To fellowships and follies and amends.
The choice to spare thy passage through these trials
Is thine alone; take heed, I entreat thee,
And turn thy back upon this world of pain!

Un-embeddable original scene here.

Dan Buettner has some advice: eat less, and more vegetables, have a spiritual or religious faith that is affirmed in a community, integrate moderate exercize into your everyday life (walking is cool), and respect the old. But he puts it so much more persuasively than a summary:

Fallow’s cover story, “How America Can Rise Again,” is well worth reading. A couple early paragraphs to whet your appetites:

Today’s fears combine relative decline—what will happen when China has all the jobs? and all the money?—with domestic concerns about a polarized society of haves and have-nots that has lost its connective core. They include concerns about the institutions that have made America strong: widespread education, a financially viable press, religion that can coexist with secularism, government that expresses the nation’s divisions while also addressing its long-term interests and needs. They are topped by the most broadly held alarm about the future of the natural environment since the era of Silent Spring and the original Earth Day movement.

How should we feel? I spoke with historians and politicians, soldiers and ministers, civil engineers and broadcast executives and high-tech researchers. Overall, the news they gave was heartening—and alarming, too. Most of the things that worry Americans aren’t really that serious, especially those that involve “falling behind” anyone else. But there is a deeper problem almost too alarming to worry about, since it is so hard to see a solution.

(Hat tip: TDW)

If Liz Cheney were not her father's daughter, why would she be on the Sunday talk shows? Why is she added to ABC news' roster? What experience does she have in journalism or government? Why is she brought on to spout the kind of extremist, partisan paranoia that alone can make her father's incompetence and failure to defeat Jihadist terror admirable?

Jonah Lehrer enjoyed Avatar:

At its core, movies are about dissolution: we forget about ourselves and become one with the giant projected characters on the screen. In other words, they become our temporary avatars, so that we're inseparable from their story. (This is one of the reasons why the Avatar plot is so effective: it's really a metaphor for the act of movie-watching.*) And for a mind that's so relentlessly self-aware, I'd argue that 100 minutes of self-forgetting (as indicated by a quieting of the prefrontal cortex) is a pretty nice cognitive vacation. And Avatar, through a variety of technical mechanisms – from the astonishing special effects to the straightforward story to the use of 3-D imagery – manages to induce those "synchronized spatiotemporal patterns" to an unprecedented degree. That is what the movies are all about, and that is what Avatar delivers.

The movie gave Caleb Crain a headache:

Some might protest: But what about Avatar's anti-imperialism and anti-corporate attitudinizing? They're red herrings, in my opinion, planted by Cameron with the cynical intention of distracting the viewer from the movie's more serious ideological work: convincing you to love your simulation—convincing you to surrender your queasiness. The audacity of Cameron's movie is to make believe that the artificial world of computer-generated graphics offers a truer realm of nature than our own. The compromised, damaged world we live in—the one with wars, wounds, and price-benefit calculations—can and should be abandoned. All you need is a big heart, like Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), the movie's war-veteran hero, and the luck of being given a chance to fall in love.