March 3, 2016

The Morning After The Night Before

THIS DAY IN HISTORY: MARCH 3RD- KELLER AND SULLIVAN

This Day In History: March 3, 1887

On March 3, 1887, the lives of two extraordinary women were changed forever when Anne Sullivan, an impoverished graduate of the Perkins Institute for the Blind, arrived at the home of the well-heeled Kellers to work with their daughter Helen. Obviously bright but over-indulged by her parents, Helen was unable to see, hear or speak due to an illness as a baby.

Anne Sullivan’s journey from Boston to rural Alabama was set in motion on the suggestion of Alexander Graham Bell, a leading authority on deafness. Helen’s parents, Arthur Keller, a newspaper publisher and former Confederate soldier, and his wife Kate had sought his advice on how to best assist their daughter. He recommended they contact the Perkins Institute, who in turn suggested the services of Anne Sullivan. …

In new letter, Republican foreign policy experts declare war on Trump

In a last-ditch effort to stop Donald Trump’s likely nomination as the Republican Party’s candidate for president, more than 50 conservative foreign policy experts have signed an open letter condemning the real estate magnate as unfit for the office.

From stating that he’ll make Japan — a close U.S. ally — pay for its longstanding American support, to vowing to kill the families of terrorists, Trump’s rhetoric appears to have finally crossed a line for those conservatives who have made their careers in foreign policy.

The letter’s signatories include former homeland security secretary Michael Chertoff, former deputy secretary of state Robert Zoellick, former homeland security adviser Frances Townsend and former undersecretary of defense Dov Zakheim — all of whom served under President George W. Bush. The letter was published Wednesday night on the foreign policy site War on the Rocks. …

The Violence to Come

With Donald Trump on the brink of the GOP nomination, America is hurtling toward a schism unlike anything since the 1960s.

What will happen to American politics if, as now appears likely, the Republican Party nominates Donald Trump? Here’s one bet: It will get more violent.

The United States is headed toward a confrontation, the likes of which it has not seen since 1968, between leftist activists, who believe in physical disruption as a means of drawing attention to injustice, and a candidate eager to forcibly put down that disruption in order to make himself look tough. The new culture of physical disruption on the activist left stems partly from disillusionment with Barack Obama. In 2008, Obama’s election sparked unprecedented excitement among young progressives. But that excitement was followed by deep disillusionment as it became clear that even a liberal black president could not remedy the structural injustices afflicting people of color.

So Millennial activists began challenging politicians directly. …

What Mitt Romney Really Thinks of Donald Trump

The GOP presidential nominee in 2012 is expected to call the Republican front-runner in 2016 a “phony and a fraud.”

Mitt Romney is letting Donald Trump know what he really thinks.

The Republican presidential nominee in 2012 is expected to call the GOP presidential front-runner in 2016 a “phony and a fraud.” The remarks are the strongest by the Republican establishment, and an apparent attempt to slow Trump’s momentum, after his sweeping victories on Super Tuesday in which he won seven states and put himself on a course to secure the party’s nomination.

Romney had been teasing his sentiments about Trump on Twitter for days, calling on the billionaire to first release his tax returns and then repudiating Trump’s non-answer on support from a KKK leader. Excerpts from a speech Romney is scheduled to deliver later Thursday were obtained by Bloomberg News.

BREAKING NOW: 1st excerpts from Thursday @MittRomney speech on @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/FREhAFiTLs

— Mark Halperin (@MarkHalperin) March 3, 2016

…

10 Totally Weird Vehicles From The 20th Century

Over the years, carmakers have tinkered with the design of cars to come up with the perfect motor vehicle. This often results in totally bizarre vehicles that would leave the average person more surprised than ever.

10. Cybernetic Anthropomorphous Machine

Back in the 1960s, the US Army launched a project to create an all-terrain vehicle that could transport men and equipment over extreme terrains. The result was the pedipulator, a bizarre four-legged vehicle that walked rather than drove.

Further work on the pedipulator led to the creation of a similar walking vehicle called the Cybernetic Anthropomorphous Machine (CAM). A driver inside the CAM controlled the four legs, each of which was 4 meters (12 ft) long. The CAM’s back legs mimicked the movements of the driver’s legs while its front legs mimicked the movement of the driver’s hands.

The CAM had no passenger seat or boot. Instead, men and equipment were transported on a bridge attached to two CAMs. The CAM project was canceled after the US Army switched to using helicopters over rough terrain. …

More Bad News for Marco Rubio: He Just Lost the Support of Fox News

In his role as the donor class’s darling, Marco Rubio has enjoyed support from the Republicans’ media arm, Fox News. Throughout the primary, Fox provided Rubio with friendly interviews and key bookings, including the first prime-time response to Barack Obama’s Oval Office address on ISIS. Many of the network’s top pundits, including Stephen Hayes and Charles Krauthammer, have been enthusiastic boosters. Bill Sammon, Fox’s Washington managing editor, is the father of Rubio’s communications director, Brooke Sammon.

But this alliance now seems to be over. According to three Fox sources, Fox chief Roger Ailes has told people he’s lost confidence in Rubio’s ability to win. “We’re finished with Rubio,” Ailes recently told a Fox host. “We can’t do the Rubio thing anymore.” …

DEGREE OF DIFFICULTY: “Roger hates seeing his name in print.”

Carson sees no ‘path forward’ for presidential bid

Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon who briefly led the Republican presidential race before his campaign began an extended public implosion, told his supporters in a statement Wednesday afternoon that he does not see a “path forward” and will not attend Thursday’s debate in Detroit.

But Carson did not formally suspend his campaign. Instead, he said in the statement that he has decided to make a speech about his political future on Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland, just outside Washington.

“I do not see a political path forward in light of last evening’s Super Tuesday primary results,” the Wednesday statement said. “However, this grassroots movement on behalf of ‘We the People’ will continue. Along with millions of patriots who have supported my campaign for President, I remain committed to Saving America for Future Generations.” …

10 Of History’s Most Terrifying And Brutal Pirates

Commonly known pirates like Blackbeard and Calico Jack tend to take the spotlight. However, some of these lesser-known but equally terrifying masters of the sea made their permanent mark in maritime history and deserve recognition as well.

10. Sadie The Goat

Sadie Farrell was a gang leader from New York who was known for headbutting male victims in the stomach and then robbing them blind. Although she began her life of crime with petty thievery, she was inspired to become a pirate while witnessing the botched robbery of a sloop by the Charlton Street Gang. Farrell jumped to the aid of the gang and successfully led the takeover of a much larger ship within a few days.

Farrell’s crew was known for their vulgarity and recklessness—openly sailing up and down the Hudson and Harlem Rivers to rob other ships, raid villages, and kidnap people for ransom. Along with reputedly making prisoners “walk the plank,” Sadie the Goat was known for wearing an ear around her neck, a trophy that had been bitten off a rival gangster during a fight. …

The Big-Data Quest to Treat Every Disease

When Sonia Vallabh and Eric Minikel discovered that Sonia had inherited the gene for a fatal neurodegenerative disease, they quit their jobs to dedicate themselves to finding a treatment. President Obama believes that the American people may be able to help. It cost $400 million to sequence a person’s genome in 2003. Now, the cost has plummeted to around $1,000. These maps of all of the genes in our bodies are now easily and quickly attainable, along with enormous amounts of other medical data. The singular question of modern medicine is what to do with this data, and how to use it effectively, efficiently, democratically, and responsibly to improve human health.

In 2015, President Obama announced the Precision Medicine Initiative. Much of that is centered on using the droves of newly attainable information to better understand all the ways in which people and diseases are unique, and to deliver individualized diagnoses and treatments. The 2016 federal budget includes more than $200 million for the initiative. In this episode of If Our Bodies Could Talk, senior editor James Hamblin talks with the president about what to expect from this new approach to health–and with Vallabh and Minikel, who are racing against the clock in search of a cure. …

Me! Me! Me! Are we living through a narcissism epidemic?

From attention-seeking celebrities to digital oversharing and the boom in cosmetic surgery, narcissistic behaviour is all around us. How worried should we be about our growing self-obsession?

“They unconsciously deny an unstated and intolerably poor self-image through inflation. They turn themselves into glittering figures of immense grandeur surrounded by psychologically impenetrable walls. The goal of this self-deception is to be impervious to greatly feared external criticism and to their own rolling sea of doubts.” This is how Elan Golomb describes narcissistic personality disorder in her seminal book Trapped in the Mirror. She goes on to describe the central symptom of the disorder – the narcissist’s failure to achieve intimacy with anyone – as the result of them seeing other people like items in a vending machine, using them to service their own needs, never being able to acknowledge that others might have needs of their own, still less guess what they might be. “Full-bodied narcissistic personality disorder remains a fairly unusual diagnosis,” Pat MacDonald, author of the paper Narcissism in the Modern World, tells me. “Traditionally, it is very difficult to reverse narcissistic personality disorder. It would take a long time and a lot of work.”

What we talk about when we describe an explosion of modern narcissism is not the disorder but the rise in narcissistic traits. Examples are everywhere. Donald Trump epitomises the lack of empathy, the self-regard and, critically, the radical overestimation of his own talents and likability. Katie Hopkins personifies the perverse pride the narcissist takes in not caring for others. (“No,” she wrote in the Sun about the refugee crisis. “I don’t care. Show me pictures of coffins, show me bodies floating in water, play violins and show me skinny people looking sad. I still don’t care.”) Those are the loudest examples, blaring like sirens; there is a general hubbub of narcissism beneath, which is conveniently – for observation purposes, at least – broadcast on social media. Terrible tragedies, such as the attacks on Paris, are appropriated by people thousands of miles away and used as a backdrop to showcase their sensitivity. The death of David Bowie is mediated through its “relevance” to voluble strangers. …

WHAT HAPPENS AFTER YOU FLUSH?

READY, SET, GO!

For you, the trip has ended. You’ve “done your business,” (hopefully you’ve also had a few minutes of quality reading time), you’ve flushed the toilet, and you’ve moved onto the next thing.

But for your “business,” a.k.a. organic solid waste, a.k.a. “Number Two,” the trip is just beginning. Here’s a general idea of what happens next.

CONNECTIONS

If you live in a rural area, your house is probably hooked up to a septic tank. We’ll get to that later.

Before the 20th century, “sanitary systems” typically dumped raw sewage directly into rivers, streams, and oceans. …

Migrant crisis: Russia and Syria ‘weaponising’ migration

^{As pressure mounts on Europe’s borders, many now closed, the US has suggested this outcome has been deliberately sought by Syria and its key backer, Russia}

Russia and Syria are deliberately using migration as an aggressive strategy towards Europe, the senior Nato commander in Europe has said.

US Gen Philip Breedlove said they were “weaponising” migration to destabilise and undermine the continent.

He also suggested that criminals, extremists and fighters were hiding in the flow of migrants.

Migrants are continuing to accumulate in Greece, after Macedonia stopped allowing more than a trickle through. …

Chinese Newspaper Editor Fired Over ‘Hidden’ Headline Message

At first glance, the front-page headlines in China’s Southern Metropolis Daily on Feb. 20 looked like normal fare: coverage of a speech by President Xi Jinping and a politician’s funeral.

But read vertically, and there’s a message that seems to criticize a government crackdown on the media.

NPR’s Anthony Kuhn in Beijing reports that an editor at the major tabloid has been fired for allegedly sneaking in the subversive message, and walks us through what it says.

The top headline can be literally translated: “Party and government-run media are propaganda battlefronts, and must be surnamed ‘Party.’ In other words, they must be part of the same family,” Anthony says. …

Shale Oil Isn’t Saudi Arabia’s Only Nemesis

► Even when glut stops growing, market might shrug: SocGen
► History shows oil rebound will hinge on stockpiles: Goldman

Even if Saudi Arabia wins its struggle with U.S. shale producers over market share, it will face a new billion-barrel adversary.

It won’t be regional nemesis Iran, a resurgent Iraq or long-standing competitor Russia. The answer will be more prosaic: Even when overproduction ends, a stockpile surplus of more than 1 billion barrels built up since 2014 will remain, weighing on prices. Inventories will keep accumulating until the end of 2017, the International Energy Agency forecasts, and clearing the glut could take years.

“We may get to the end of the year, and even though supply and demand are in balance, the market shrugs and says ‘So what?’ because it’s waiting for proof of inventory draw-downs,” said Mike Wittner, head of oil markets at Societe Generale SA in New York. “Moving from stock-builds to balance might not be enough.” …

My Parents Paid A Rehab Camp To Abuse Me: 5 Dark Realities

It’s not easy being a teenager: the social cliques, the homework, the hormones, the family-sanctioned kidnappings forcing you to attend a combination of rehab, boot camp, and prison. We’ve told you before about the “troubled-teen” industry, wherein frustrated parents pay sketchy boarding schools exorbitant amounts of money to apply “tough love” that occasionally kills the recipient. Hey, that’s the toughest love you can get! Sarah lived in one of these facilities for two years, while journalist Maia Szalavitz literally wrote the book on how they do more harm than good. They told us that …

#5. You Don’t Need Them, And They Don’t Help

Sarah was 15, diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and couldn’t get out of bed to attend class. Her parents were at the end of their rope, and she wanted to get better. The troubled-teen industry thrives on the stigma that comes with having a child with addiction or mental health issues. Unlike a cancer diagnosis, these are struggles that parents feel both responsible for and ashamed of. As Maia explained, “They terrorize the parents; they make them think, ‘If you don’t put your kid in tomorrow, they’re going to die!'”

But the truth is, very, very few kids ever die from drugs and alcohol. The total number of teen deaths from all causes, per year is roughly 20,000. There are about 41 million teens. Even if these deaths were exclusively from drugs and alcohol and occurred only in the 4 million teens who have severe behavioral and mental disorders, that’s still only a risk of death of roughly four in 1,000.

^{Apparently, “We teach your teen not to drive like idiots” camp didn’t have any takers.}

…

Russian atheist faces year in jail for denying existence of God during webchat

Viktor Krasnov being prosecuted under a controversial law after being accused of ‘offending the sentiments of Orthodox believers’

A man in southern Russia faces a potential jail sentence after he was charged with insulting the feelings of religious believers over an internet exchange in which he wrote that “there is no God”.

Viktor Krasnov, 38, who appeared in court Wednesday, is being prosecuted under a controversial 2013 law that was introduced after punk art group Pussy Riots was jailed for a performance in Moscow’s main cathedral, his lawyer Andrei Sabinin told AFP.

The charges – which carry a maximum one-year jail sentence – centre on an internet exchange that Krasnov was involved in in 2014 on a humorous local website in his hometown of Stavropol.

“If I say that the collection of Jewish fairytales entitled the Bible is complete bullshit, that is that. At least for me,” Krasnov wrote, adding later “there is no God!” …

Archaeology’s Information Revolution

In the near future, every archaeological artifact could be digitally connected to every other artifact.

Archaeology, as a way of examining the material world, has always required a certain deftness in scale. You have to be able to zoom in very close—at the level of, say, a single dirt-encrusted button—then zoom out again to appreciate why that one ancient button is meaningful.

Any given artifact is simultaneously at the center of its own history, and representative of a much larger story, too.

“Chipped-stone hand axes made hundreds of thousands of years ago and porcelain teacups from the 18th century carry messages from their makers and users,” wrote the archaeologist and historian James Deetz in his book, In Small Things Forgotten. “It is the archaeologist’s task to decode those messages and apply them to our understanding of the human experience.” …

10 Dark Facts About America’s First Modern Mass Shooting

Mass shootings are a fact of life in the United States. In the first two months of 2016 alone, there were two major ones in Hesston, Kansas, and in Kalamazoo, plus many smaller incidents that went mostly unreported. Given their frequency, you’d be forgiven for thinking that random mass killings are hardwired into American DNA. Yet all of these attacks, from Columbine to Sandy Hook to Umpqua Community College, all stem from a single day—Tuesday, September 6, 1949.

That was the day that World War II veteran Howard Unruh picked up his gun, strolled out into his neighborhood, and ended 13 lives. The incident became known as the Walk of Death, and it changed our understanding of mass violence forever. Although the US had suffered mass shootings as early as the 18th century, none had ever been so meticulous, deranged, or senseless as Unruh’s walk. It was the first truly modern mass shooting, and it set the template for every horrific crime that was to come.

10. A Premeditated Massacre

Mass shootings frequently occur during moments of hot temper. The Waco biker shootout of 2015, which killed nine people and injured 18, started over a parking dispute. However, when most of us think of mass shootings as a phenomenon, we picture premeditated affairs, like Columbine and Aurora. It was in this area that Howard Unruh had a modern outlook. He knew exactly who he wanted to kill.

A polite, quiet, 28-year-old man, Unruh’s sedate outer appearance masked a mind festering with anger, paranoia, and jealousy. A combat veteran, he’d returned to his hometown of Camden, New Jersey, after the war, convinced that his Cramer Hill acquaintances were out to get him. We know this because by 1949, he’d begun to keep meticulous lists of those who had “wronged” him. A typical entry would list someone like Mrs. Cohen, the wife of the local druggist, telling him to turn down his Wagner records five times. To Unruh’s disturbed mind, these were unforgivable infractions. …

Sleep Munchies: Why It’s Harder To Resist Snacks When We’re Tired

There’s lots of evidence that getting too little sleep is associated with overeating and an increased body weight.

The question is, why? Part of the answer seems to be that skimping on sleep can disrupt our circadian rhythms. Lack of sleep can also alter hunger and satiety hormones.

Now, a new study finds evidence that sleep deprivation (getting less than five hours of sleep per night) produces higher peaks of a lipid in our bloodstream known as an endocannabinoid that may make eating more pleasurable.

So, what’s an endocannabinoid? If you look at the word closely, you may already have a clue. The prefix endo means inner, or within. And cannabinoid looks like … you got it: cannabis. …

Doing a TED Talk: The Full Story

You’ve probably heard this Seinfeld joke:

According to most studies, people’s number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. Does that sound right? This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.

Knowing humans, this shouldn’t be that surprising. I’ve mentioned before that we all have this problem where we’re weirdly obsessed with what other people think of us, so it makes sense that public speaking should be our collective phobia.

But then we also live in a world where public speaking can happen to any of us at any time. Even if you never give an official “talk,” there’ll be some other time when you have to give a big toast at a wedding or present in front of a big group at work or speak at a funeral or some other ceremony. Very few of us are safe.

Over the last couple years, as I’ve done a small amount of Wait But Why-related public speaking, I’ve been able to slowly get over the fear. I’ve learned that if you just be yourself and talk like you normally do, it’s usually received well by the audience, even if you’re clearly nervous.

And that was all fine until August of 2015, when I was invited to do a TED Talk. …

The In-N-Out Burger Diet Is Not the Next Juice Cleanse

You probably won’t lose weight on this diet

College students aren’t generally known for having perfectly balanced diets, probably because they spend all their money on textbooks and Natty Light. But rather than subsisting on the stereotypical all-ramen diet, one student at the University of California, Irvine decided to eat at his favorite fast food chain every day for a month.

Hoping for internet notoriety or perhaps just wanting to leave a record of his life in case 30 days of Animal-style burgers killed him, 20-year-old Dustin Wang blogged about his In-N-Out diet complete with regular Vine updates. His rules were simple: He’d eat In-N-Out at least one meal a day, for 30 days straight with no breaks; each meal would have to consist, at minimum, of a two-patty burger and fries.

On day three, Wang was still the picture of good health and enthusiasm: “Feeling pretty good. Ran two miles this morning,” he wrote. But by day five, it seems the tide had already turned against Double-Doubles: “I think I hit the point where In-N-Out stopped being something I look forward to,” he admitted. …

THE MYSTERY OF THE KENTUCKY MEAT SHOWER

On March 3, 1876, one Mrs. Crouch was working in her yard in Bath County, Kentucky, making soap, when suddenly “meat which looked like beef began to fall all around her. The sky was perfectly clear at the time.” Falling like large snowflakes and settling all around the 5000 square foot yard, pieces of flesh ranging in size from about two inches square to four, dotted the ground and were even stuck on the fences. When it first appeared, the meat was said to be fresh, and, accordingly, two unidentified (but brave) men even sampled it. They claimed it tasted a bit gamey – like mutton or even venison.

The story was published in the New York Times on March 9th, and it caught the attention of Leopold Brandeis who was able to get his hands on a sample that had been preserved in glycerine. After examining it, Brandeis declared that the meat wasn’t a supernatural phenomenon, or in fact, according to him, even meat at all, but a substance called nostoc. …

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JON CONNOR AND KEKE PALMER PERFORM “FRESH WATER FOR FLINT”

Jon Connor and Keke Palmer show solidarity with the victims of Michigan’s ongoing toxic water crisis with a performance of “Fresh Water for Flint.”