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Joe Coscarelli introduces the above video:

With NSA leaker Edward Snowden’s asylum in Russia still technically temporary, he’s doing his best to fit in. [Yesterday], that included a special appearance — or bizarre PR stunt — during a televised Q&A with Vladimir Putin, in which Snowden served up a chance for Putin to tell the world that Russia doesn’t spy on its citizens like the big bad U.S. does. “I’ve seen little public discussion of Russia’s policy of mass surveillance,” said Snowden. “So I’d like to ask you: Does Russia intercept, store, or analyze the communication of millions?”

Putin, it’s safe to say, was not caught off guard by the line of inquiry.

For Allahpundit, this proves that Snowden is a tool of the Kremlin:

Only two possibilities here. One: There’s an FSB agent out of frame with a gun pointed at Snowden’s head, just to make sure that he reads the cue card as written. In that case, decide for yourself how likely it is that Snowden’s refused to share any U.S. state secrets with Russian intel. Two: He’s doing this cheerfully, either at Putin’s request as a condition of his asylum or at his own request, to exploit a Putin press conference as a way to further needle the NSA.

Whatever the answer, the stark fact is that he’s asking a question here which he knows — absolutely knows — will generate a self-serving lie told by a guy who embodies the type of fascism that Snowden claims to abhor. For your information, the name of Russia’s mass surveillance program, a.k.a. “PRISM on steroids,” is the System of Operative-Investigative Measures, or SORM. Via Joshua Foust, they’ve been using it for years but lately, as in so many other ways, they’ve gotten more aggressive with it.

But Elias Groll points out that nobody was talking about SORM yesterday:

Putin’s answer was comical on its face — and that should give us doubts about the extent to which Snowden is a really a “pawn” in some grand propaganda scheme. Does anyone actually think that Putin doesn’t aggressively use surveillance to go after his opponents and that Russian surveillance is strictly governed by the law? After all, the Russian intelligence services have spent the last few weeks leaking intercepted phone calls between Western officials.

So thanks to Snowden, here we are talking about how Putin is a liar and a skilled user of aggressive surveillance tactics. That probably isn’t the response the Russian strongman was hoping for.

Adam Taylor fact-checks Putin:

[Agentara.ru editor Andrei] Soldatov argues that there were three key points made by Putin, each of which was a half-truth or a lie. First, Soldatov says, Putin argued that the FSB, the successor agency to the Soviet era’s KGB, needs to get a warrant from a court before surveillance can begin. This is true in theory, Soldatov admits, but in practice the warrants are not required to be shown: Telecoms agencies and Internet providers do not have the necessary security clearance to view the warrants, in any case.

Secondly, Putin seemed to suggest that the Russian legislature, the Duma, has oversight over the FSB. This is not true, Soldatov says, arguing that while the State Duma does have a Special Committee for Security, it has no actual oversight for secret services.

Finally, Putin argued that Russia doesn’t have the “hardware and money the United States has.” Soldatov says this is “not entirely correct.”

Snowden quickly came out with an op-ed claiming he was actually trying to catch Putin in a lie and start a debate over surveillance in Russia:

I expected that some would object to my participation in an annual forum that is largely comprised of softball questions to a leader unaccustomed to being challenged. But to me, the rare opportunity to lift a taboo on discussion of state surveillance before an audience that primarily views state media outweighed that risk. Moreover, I hoped that Putin’s answer – whatever it was – would provide opportunities for serious journalists and civil society to push the discussion further.

When this event comes around next year, I hope we’ll see more questions on surveillance programs and other controversial policies. But we don’t have to wait until then. For example, journalists might ask for clarification as to how millions of individuals’ communications are not being intercepted, analysed or stored, when, at least on a technical level, the systems that are in place must do precisely that in order to function. They might ask whether the social media companies reporting that they have received bulk collection requests from the Russian government are telling the truth.

Mike Masnick buys that explanation:

[T]his latest response suggests that Snowden is (once again) playing a game where he’s several moves ahead of many folks. The question may have set up a propaganda answer, but it appears there was a bigger strategy behind it — and one that remains entirely consistent with what Snowden has claimed his position has been since the beginning. Frankly, while this possibility was raised about his original question to Putin, many people (myself included) thought it was unlikely that Snowden would so directly go after his current hosts (who only became his hosts thanks to the US pulling his passport). Putin is not known for gracefully handling those who directly challenge him, and I don’t think it would be surprise anyone if Snowden had continued to stay out of the question of Russian surveillance, simply out of basic necessity.

But Benjamin Wittes doesn’t buy it:

I’m not sure why this grotesque display does not move Snowden’s many admirers. Perhaps people may rationalize what he did and say that he’s posing the same question to the Russian leader about which he forced a debate in this country—and that he is thus being consistent. But they can’t actually believe that. These are sophisticated people, after all, many of whom are journalists. They must know the difference between a scripted set-piece appearance with an authoritarian strong man on state controlled television and asking the tough questions in the context of democratic dialog. They must know that Snowden either played that role willingly or was, in one way or another, encouraged to do by authorities who have enormous leverage and control over him. They must know, in other words, that at this point at least, Snowden—by his own volition or against his will—is very clearly working for the Russians.

Douthat declares that “the most striking thing about the public polling on the 2016 Republican nomination isn’t just the absence of a clear frontrunner: It’s the absence of a clear pair or trio or even a quartet of frontrunners.” He wonders if we are deviating from “the path that every post-1970s Republican primary campaign has ultimately taken, in which a candidate who seems reasonably electable, performs well with “moderate conservative” primary voters … and wins the blessing of the party’s donor class successfully fends off a more right-wing challenger”:

Right now, most of the arguments that people are having about specific candidates — the debate over whether Rand Paul has the legs and the protean appeal required to go the distance, or whether his attempted hostile takeover will be almost-inevitably crushed; the argument about whether Jeb Bush’s potential candidacy is “a fantasy nourished by the people who used to run the Republican Party” or a perfectly plausible idea — are really arguments about whether this pattern this likely to hold, or whether the unprecedented unsettledness it’s likely produce a nearly unprecedented, not-since-Goldwater outcome instead. …

I believe that the party decides, and I know that party establishments basically exist to keep figures like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee from the nomination. But sometimes the party can’t make up it’s mind, and sometimes, just sometimes, the establishment fractures, fails, loses. Because of history I don’t look at Paul and Cruz and Huckabee and see likely Republican presidential nominees. But history is what’s happening now as well as what’s happened back then, and with where the field is at the moment, it seems like a mistake to look at any of them and just say, “no, they can’t.”

German Lopez charts the latest enrollment figures:

Cohn looks at the demographics:

As for the age mix, you may have heard that about 40 percent of the population eligible for coverage in the marketplaces is between the ages of 18 and 34. That’s true and, obviously, 28 percent is a lot less than 40 percent. The worry has always been that older and sicker people would sign up in unusually high numbers, forcing insurers to raise their prices next year and beyond.

But insurance companies didn’t expect young people to sign up in proportion to their numbers in the population. They knew participation would be a bit lower and they set premiums accordingly. Only company officials know exactly what they were projecting—that’s proprietary information—but one good metric is the signup rate in Massachusetts, in 2007, when that state had open enrollment for its version of the same reforms. According to information provided by Jonathan Gruber, the MIT economist and reform architect, 28.3 percent of Massachusetts enrollees were ages 19 to 34, a comparable age group.

Suderman puts those numbers is a less favorable light:

The administration’s goal, based on Congressional Budget Office estimates, was for 39 percent of the final tally to be between the ages of 18 and 34. The “worst-case scenario,” according to a Kaiser Foundation analysis cited by the administration was if only 25 percent of the final tally was in that age cohort. As it turns out, we do have information about sign-ups in that age group, and the demographic mix is much closer to the worst-case scenario than it is to the administration’s target.

David Nather lets a little more air out of the big enrollment number:

There are still key details that the White House hasn’t included in past enrollment announcements, and it didn’t this time either. The numbers still don’t say how many of the 8 million people have paid their premiums, because they’re not officially enrolled until they’ve paid. The best estimates from the insurance industry have suggested that anywhere from 15 percent to 20 percent haven’t paid yet, though at least some of those have been trying and some will likely settle their bills. And the numbers still don’t tell us how many of the new customers were uninsured before, and how many were just swapping out one health insurance plan for another.

Meanwhile, Sarah Kliff explains why so many pundits underestimated enrollment:

Being uninsured is horrible. But the political conversation over Obamacare was driven almost entirely by people who had, and knew they would be able to keep, their health insurance. It was filled with a lot of assumptions, theories, and speculations about what people who didn’t have good insurance, or any insurance, would do. And after Obamacare’s disastrous launch, the theory took hold that these people wouldn’t find this untested program worth the trouble. It was the permanently insured speculating about the uninsured and the barely insured – and, unsurprisingly, they got it wrong.

Alex Knapp summarizes the news:

NASA has announced that its Kepler telescope has uncovered a new solar system about 500 light years away, currently dubbed Kepler 186. Circling that star are five planets, and the outermost planet, Kepler-186f, is about the size of Earth and within the star’s habitable zone. “The discovery of Kepler-186f is a significant step toward finding worlds like our planet Earth,” NASA’s Paul Hertz said in a statement. The star Kepler 186 is a “red dwarf” star, about half the size and mass of our own Sun. It’s about 500 light years away from Earth, near the constellation Cygnus in the night sky. The planet itself orbits its sun once every 130 days.

Adrienne LaFrance provides more details:

Kepler-186f is about 10 percent larger than Earth and it orbits a sun that is cooler, dimmer, and about half the size of our own. The effects of gravity would be “slightly” more apparent there, so “you would feel heavier,” Meadows said. Our cousin avoids many of the problems that reduce the likelihood of life on other Earth-like planets. Some are too big, too cold, too gaseous, or have gravity problems that scorch oceans. So far, Kepler-186f appears almost to be a Goldilocks — not too big, not too far from its star, maybe just right.

Phil Plait calls this “potentially the most Earth-like planet we’ve yet found”

Joseph Stromberg explains what comes next:

This is more of a stepping stone in the search for earth-like planets and extraterrestrial life than a destination. Because the star is so far away, we can’t really tell if it has an atmosphere or learn much more about it, and definitely can’t visit it.

So astronomers like Barclay and the hundreds of others looking for exoplanets will use this as evidence that earth-sized planets can form in their star’s habitable zones, and search for others closer to us. The discovery is particularly exciting because the majority of stars in our galaxy are red dwarves like Kepler-186, so there may be many more exoplanets similar to this one out there.

(Image: Artist’s concept depicts Kepler-186f, the first validated Earth-size planet to orbit a distant star in the habitable zone. By NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-Caltech.)

A group of Democratic lawmakers led by Dick Durbin has issued a report showing that, in the absence of regulations like those imposed on tobacco products, e-cigarettes are being openly marketed to young people:

The Gateway to Addiction report written by the lawmakers’ staff after surveying e-cig makers finds e-cigarette companies are using marketing tactics that appeal to young people, such as handing out samples at events like music festivals, social-media promotion and offering kid-friendly flavors. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate 1.78 million children and teens tried e-cigarettes in 2012. … According to the report, six of the surveyed e-cigarette companies support some regulation.

The report is the opening volley in a campaign to regulate vaping. Jason Koebler expects Congress to act soon:

The FDA, for its part, has moved slowly on the issue. Three years ago, the agency said they were considering regulating e-cigs, but they haven’t done so yet, electing only to regulate the ones specifically marketed for therapeutic purposes (that is, those that are specifically marketed to help you quit smoking). Instead, the agency says it “intents to issue a proposed rule extending FDA’s tobacco product authorities beyond [cigarettes] to include other products like e-cigarettes.”

And German Lopez voxplains how little we know about how bad e-cigs are for you:

One of the major risks of e-cigarettes right now is that we simply don’t have a lot of good information about their health effects. One study from an international group of scientists found e-cigarettes are safer than conventional cigarettes but still toxic. Researchers estimated conventional cigarette smoke contained 9-450 times more toxins than e-cigarette vapor. They also advised more research into the issue.

Another ongoing study indicates e-cigarettes could cause genetic mutations that can lead to cancer. Researchers from UCLA, Boston University, and the University of Texas so far found that certain cells exposed to e-cigarette vapor showed similar genetic changes as cells exposed to conventional cigarette smoke. The changes weren’t identical, but researchers said there were striking similarities — enough to raise concerns that e-cigarettes could, at some level, lead to lung cancer.

Konnikova relays the research:

Boredom, hunger, fatigue: these are all states in which we may find our attention drifting and our focus becoming more and more difficult to maintain. A yawn, then, may serve as a signal for our bodies to perk up, a way of making sure we stay alert. When the psychologist Ronald Baenninger, a professor emeritus at Temple University, tested this theory in a series of laboratory studies coupled with naturalistic observation (he had subjects wear wristbands that monitored physiology and yawning frequency for two weeks straight), he found that yawning is more frequent when stimulation is lacking. In fact, a yawn is usually followed by increased movement and physiological activity, which suggests that some sort of “waking up” has taken place.

“You yawn when you’re obviously not bored,” [Robert Provine, neuroscientist and author of Curious Behavior: Yawning, Laughing, Hiccupping, and Beyond] points out.

“Olympic athletes sometimes yawn before their events; concert violinists may yawn before playing a concerto.” Provine once had a lab member who had been part of the Army Special Forces. As part of his research, he decided to look at soldiers who were preparing to jump from an airplane for the first time. The incidence of yawning went up just before they made their way to the cabin door. A yawn, Provine believes, may simply signal a change of physiological state: a way to help our mind and body transition from one behavioral state to another—“sleep to wakefulness, wakefulness to sleep, anxiety to calm, boredom to alertness.”

So, rather than condemn poor Sasha [who yawned during her father’s 2013 Inaugural Address], we may be better off praising her: in yawning, her body may have been making an effort to reëngage itself rather than succumb to fatigue or hunger.

(Photo by Sander van der Wel)

It may be the age at which our cognitive performance peaks:

That’s the conclusion of a new study in PLoS One published last week by psychology researcher Joseph Thompson and his colleagues at Canada’s Simon Fraser University. The team tracked and measured the performance of 3,305 subjects (between the ages of 16 and 44) who played the nerdy “real-time strategy” computer game StarCraft 2. “Using a piecewise regression analysis, we find that age-related slowing of within-game, self-initiated response times begins at 24 years of age,” the authors write. In other words, older players took longer to respond to new visual playing conditions before taking action. And, according to the study, it was “a significant performance deficit,” which likely has consequences even outside abstruse digital space wars.

The paper does not focus on biological causes, but the authors speculate that the shift might have to do with changing brain “ratios of N-acetylaspartate (NAA) to choline (Cho)” that coincide with the early twenties.

Christopher Ingraham explains why measuring brain power with a computer game isn’t as silly as it sounds:

The game provides an excellent real-world laboratory for testing cognitive ability under pressure.

It’s already used in a University of Florida Honors class to teach “critical thinking, problem solving, resource management, and adaptive decision making.” In studying game replays, the researchers at Simon Fraser found that “looking-doing latency” – the delay between when a player looked at a new section of the game field, and when they performed an in-game action – is lowest among 24-year-old players. After age 24, that lag only increases as you get older. The researchers calculate that over an average 15-minute game of Starcraft, a 39-year-old player loses 30 seconds to cognitive lag versus a 24-year-old. In a game where performance is measured in hundreds of actions per minute, this is a huge deficit.

Derek Thompson spotlights the stagnation of retail jobs:

According to data obtained by The Atlantic from EMSI, the retail industry gained about 49,000 jobs between 2001 and 2013, which means it grew by exactly 0.32 percent. Which means it didn’t grow. But the major action is at the bookends of this graph below, which shows employment growth in the largest retail subcategories. Department stores, like JCPenney, lost more than 200,000 jobs this century. But supercenters like Walmart, which operates in more than 3,200 domestic locations, added half a million (often lower-paying) jobs.

Relatedly, Edward McClelland reflects on the decline of Sears:

Sears is dying as a result of two not unrelated phenomena: the shrinking of the middle class and the atomization of American culture.

It’s still an all-things-for-all-shoppers emporium that sells pool tables, gas grills, televisions, beds and power drills, then cleans your teeth, checks your eyes and fills out your taxes. But that niche is disappearing as customers hunt for bargains on the Internet and in specialty stores, and as the retail world is pulled apart into avant-garde department stores and discounters — exactly what Sears promised it would never be. Maybe in 1975, a salesman and his boss both bought their shirts and ties at Sears, but now the boss shops at Barneys, and the salesman goes to Men’s Wearhouse. This divide is a result of the fact that, over the last two decades, the top 5 percent of earners have increased their share of consumption from 28 percent to 38 percent.

“As a retailer or a restaurant chain, if you’re not at the really high level or the low level, that’s a tough place to be,” John G. Maxwell, head of the global retail and consumer practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers told The New York Times in February. “You don’t want to be stuck in the middle.”

Dreher contributes his thoughts:

I don’t think I know anybody who shops at Sears. As McClelland points out, most people today either shop at discount stores like Walmart, or at more specialized retailers. I don’t know about you, but I almost never go to department stores, even the more upscale ones, like Nordstroms. When I do, it feels nostalgic, but not in a pleasant way. It’s like riding around in a 1980s-model Lincoln Continental, but not one old-school enough to be cool. It’s not so much the merchandise as it is the form.

A team of researchers that has been growing red blood cells from pluripotent stem cells has received a grant to trial the cultured cells in humans. Victoria Turk has the details:

The first three volunteers will receive some of the lab-cultured red blood cells before the end of 2016, and the goal is to eventually go mainstream. Think full-scale “blood factories,” according to the Telegraph. I spoke to Jo Mountford, one of the scientists working on producing the cells at the University of Glasgow who also works with the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service. She explained that their aim had been to create red blood cells that were “the closest thing possible to a red cell you would take from a donor,” but made in a dish rather than taken from someone’s arm.

Liat Clark looks at the potential advantages of manufactured blood cells:

The aim is to target smaller markets where the blood is necessary for therapeutic benefits first, in the lead up to mass manufacturing. Once efficacy is proven at that scale, it could be used more universally for trauma in the future. It also means the risk of transmitting infections is extinguished, and we will no longer be faced with the waste of disposing of supplies 35 days after they are donated.

“In the long term we would hope to deliver it to many parts of the world where they don’t have access to blood supplies — if we crack the cost issue, it could be a more global solution.”

This is where perhaps the greatest potential lies. In developing countries up to 150,000 women die each year due to blood loss in childbirth. If the process can be scaled up to beat these problems, the possibilities seem endless.