Archive for 2013
June 8, 2013
FOR ONCE, MAXINE WATERS MAY HAVE BEEN AHEAD OF THE CURVE: Maxine Waters: ‘Obama Has Put In Place’ Secret Database With ‘Everything On Everyone.’
COFFEE: Is There Anything It Can’t Do?
For hundreds of years, coffee has been one of the two or three most popular beverages on earth. But it’s only recently that scientists are figuring out that the drink has notable health benefits. In one large-scale epidemiological study from last year, researchers primarily at the National Cancer Institute parsed health information from more than 400,000 volunteers, ages 50 to 71, who were free of major diseases at the study’s start in 1995. By 2008, more than 50,000 of the participants had died. But men who reported drinking two or three cups of coffee a day were 10 percent less likely to have died than those who didn’t drink coffee, while women drinking the same amount had 13 percent less risk of dying during the study. It’s not clear exactly what coffee had to do with their longevity, but the correlation is striking.
Other recent studies have linked moderate coffee drinking — the equivalent of three or four 5-ounce cups of coffee a day or a single venti-size Starbucks — with more specific advantages: a reduction in the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, basal cell carcinoma (the most common skin cancer), prostate cancer, oral cancer and breast cancer recurrence.
Perhaps most consequential, animal experiments show that caffeine may reshape the biochemical environment inside our brains in ways that could stave off dementia. In a 2012 experiment at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, mice were briefly starved of oxygen, causing them to lose the ability to form memories. Half of the mice received a dose of caffeine that was the equivalent of several cups of coffee. After they were reoxygenated, the caffeinated mice regained their ability to form new memories 33 percent faster than the uncaffeinated.
So if you drink coffee, drink red wine, and have lots of sex, you should live a longer, healthier life. Luckily, these are some of my favorite things to do anyway.
THE TELEGRAPH: Not superhuman Barack Obama, just a very naughty boy.
This, so Barack Obama used to say in his stump speech of 2008, “is not who we are”, and the thousands who ecstatically cheered that slightly glib line instinctively knew what he meant. “This” was shorthand for George W Bush, and for those oppressively dark and fetid corners of government activity with which his name was synonymous: Guantanamo Bay, drones, the surveillance powers granted to the state by the Patriot Act, and the other measures taken in response to the atrocities of 9/11.
As for the “we”, in its royal or imperial usage that of course meant “I, Obama”, but it also referred to the wide-eyed disciples who worshipped him as a deus ex machina, floating down from his Illinois Olympus to cast healing sunlight on all those dirty little nooks and crevices, and allow America to call herself the land of the free without inviting sardonic smirks.
Five years on, Guantanamo Bay survives, the teenage computer gamers of the US military guide ever more drones to deliver remote control destruction, and we now learn that the government’s use of electronic surveillance is so wide-ranging that the default adjective of Orwellian barely seems adequate.
There is no form of communication or online activity – phone calls, emails, web page visits, Skype, social networks, and so on – that the National Security Agency, under its Prism programme, may not follow as and when the fancy takes. It can track users’ activities in real time. Assuming it has the technical capability remotely to activate lap top cameras, the age of the telescreen has arrived.
Hey, rube!
June 7, 2013
ANALYZE THE BODY LANGUAGE: “I watched the video at the link 3 times because I was fascinated by the hesitations and the facial expressions. I can’t tell when/whether he’s lying, but I can tell when he’s pleased with himself.” Well yeah. Isn’t that pretty much all the time?
ZOMBIE REPORTS: Obama in Palo Alto: Fundraising with the rich radicals. “Millionaires sweltering in the hot sun, waiting to be patted down and searched by men in military uniforms; welcome to the 21st century. They must have appreciated the pep talk from their host. . . . Now, if you’re locked into believing certain stereotypes about American political categories and class divisions and regional allegiances, you might be confused about all this. Are McCue’s neighbors and fundraiser attendees all rich elitist lily-white patriotic capitalist 1%ers — or are they hippy-dippy socialism-sympathizing liberal California Obama-worshippers? Ah, but you see, this is Palo Alto, where the answer is: Both.”
PRIVACY: Google bans Glass from its own shareholder meeting. “Google shareholders and other individuals were in for a surprise when they arrived at the company’s annual shareholder meeting on Thursday. Google, ironically, banned attendees from wearing the company’s own wearable computing device at the meeting. The company forbade people from using electronic devices such as smartphones, cameras and recording devices. The restriction infuriated the nonprofit watchdog organization Consumer Watchdog, which called out Google executives as hypocrites.”
DOUBLE STANDARDS: Tea Party Groups May Be Too Political For IRS Comfort, But Here’s How OFA Defines Itself. “The video was sent out by OFA today and posted on BarackObama.com, which is operated by OFA. But 501(c)4’s aren’t supposed to be about politicians, theoretically, but about issues. Yet there’s not much in the video in the way of substance.”
FLASHBACK: What I wrote about Patriot Act talk just after September 11. It holds up pretty well, I think . . . .
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A FOLLOWUP TO MY EARLIER POST ON THIS STORY: Teen Arrested for Posting Rap Lyrics on Facebook, But Grand Jury Refuses to Indict. The kid seems to be something of a schmuck, but what he posted wasn’t a true threat.
MARK STEYN: No Cop / Bad Cop:
How did all these Tsarnaevs-in-waiting wind up living in the United States? They were let in by the government, and many of them were let in in the years since 9/11, when we were supposedly on permanent “orange alert.” The same bureaucracy that takes the terror threat so seriously that it needs the phone and Internet records of hundreds of millions of law-abiding persons would never dream of doing a little more pre-screening in its immigration system — by, say, according a graduate of a Yemeni madrassah a little more scrutiny than a Slovene or Fijian. The president has unilaterally suspended the immigration laws of the United States, and his attorney general prosecutes those states such as Arizona who remain quaintly attached to them. . . .
As for Major Hasan, who needs surveillance? He put “Soldier of Allah” on his business card and gave a PowerPoint presentation to his military colleagues on what he’d like to do to infidels — and nobody said a word, lest they got tied up in sensitivity-training hell for six months.
Jack will forgive me when I say this is less good cop/bad cop than no cop/bad cop. Because the formal, visible state has been neutered by political correctness, the dark, furtive shadow state has to expand massively to make, in secret, the judgment calls that can no longer be made in public. That’s not an arrangement that is likely to end well.
No.
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Public Peace, Secret War: The Snooping Scandals and The President’s War Strategy.
As if the Tea Party/IRS mess isn’t enough, the White House has been shaken to its foundations by a series of dramatic and devastating revelations about the unsuspected reach of the government’s surveillance of the telephone records, email and other activities of US citizens without their knowledge. The President’s liberal base is stunned and appalled, with the New York Times editorial board hanging out the black crepe of official mourning. Al Gore twittered his disappointment and fear. . . .
The context was terrible; one chicken after another has been coming home to the White House roost: the AP subpoenas, the Fox investigation, the IRS Tea Party scandal. As the latest round of surveillance revelations exploded in the press like land mines under an armored truck, the White House visibly lost its poise and momentum. The reaction to reports that telephone carriers were providing the government with call logs was a tornado; when the Washington Post then reported that leading tech companies (reportedly including Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple) were participating in a secret surveillance program known as PRISM, the Obama White House was facing a potential collapse in public trust. . . .
President Obama is now caught in a trap of his own making. By downplaying the threat and trying to create an atmosphere of peace and normality in the country, he has delegitimated the measures he believes that our safety requires. Having tried and failed to keep these secrets dark and hidden, he must now try to explain what many Americans will find inexplicable. If the terrorists are really on the run, and we can finally go back to a 9/10 state of mind, why are you assembling and wielding the most powerful and intrusive systems of surveillance ever conceived?
In a 9/12 world, these measures can be understood, though there are legitimate questions to be asked about oversight and slippery slopes. In a 9/10 world, they are much harder to justify. And so, Mr. President, the ball is in your court. Where exactly do we stand, and what kind of world are we living in today?
The truth has a way of coming out. But read the whole thing.
READER BOOK PLUG: From Joe Pappalardo, who covers defense and science for Popular Mechanics, a new story, Struck. $1.50 on Kindle. “A man suffers a strange mental awakening after being struck by lightning. A short story, based on actual scientific studies.”
DRINK THE REST TOMORROW: 5 WINE PRESERVATION SYSTEMS TESTED.
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NEWS YOU CAN USE: Your Computer Is Bugging Your House. “The computer you are sitting at right now probably has a microphone. It probably also has a camera looking at you this moment. Is it sending sound and pictures from inside your house to the Prism program at NSA?”
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LEGAL EDUCATION UPDATE: ABA Vote Today Pits Interests of Law Schools v. Interests of Law Students.
PHIL BOWERMASTER: What’s The Missing Word?