A Clip An App An Ad And A Stat July 31, 2015July 30, 2015 SOME LANGUAGES . . . . . . are more melifluous than others. Have you seen this clip? (No offense meant; it’s just funny.) ACLU APP And what if you see some police action in progress that doesn’t conform to the high standards most officers strive to uphold? And you start filming with your iPhone, and he sees you doing that and grabs your iPhone and stomps on it. There’s an app for that! REXONA AD I don’t know whether this stuff is even sold in America — oh wait, it is (not cheap) — but take a minute to see the sweat they obviously put into making this commercial. EATING FREE Joel Grow: “[Speaking of food and water waste], have you seen the FABulous documentary Just Eat It? A couple decides to eat only what they can get free, mostly by going out back at the grocery store. They get more than they can use of food that’s only a bit past the ‘best by’ dates and so is thrown out. That, and carrots that aren’t straight, or squash that’s not perfectly green, etc. The film says that . . . wait for it . . . just the water used to grow the food we throw away in the U.S. would be enough to meet the water needs of 500 million people. I re-wound it a couple of times to make sure I was hearing it accurately. (And really? YOUR FRIENDS TAKE ONE SIP OF BEER BUT DON’T FINISH IT!!!??? ARE THEY CRAZY???!!!)” ☞ They’re not crazy; they just get distracted, put it down, forget which is theirs, and crack a new one. SIGA Mark L.: “Any updated thoughts on SIGA, now SIGAQ? I see it trading today to fresh 10-year lows and am contemplating taking the loss (from $2.86 I paid in July 2013) mostly just so I don’t have to watch it any more.” ☞ My only thought is that it’s been bid up out of irrational enthusiasm. So possibly — possibly! — the reverse is true . . . witness your rationale for selling (“mostly just so I don’t have to watch it any more”) . . . and possibly — possibly! — patience will triumph in the end. So I hang on — with pretty enormous paper losses by now — and have even bought a little more at these prices, albeit only with money I can truly afford to lose. Have a great weekend!
Corn July 30, 2015July 30, 2015 Every summer I try to improve on my recipe. (It’s for the perennially-forthcoming best-seller, Cooking Like A Guy™.) I thought I had peaked at: “The easiest way to cook corn — if it’s really sweet and fresh — is not to. Just shuck and eat. No cooking at all!” How do you improve on that? It’s delicious! And quick! Why heat things up in the summer?! (And who eats corn on the cob any time but the summer?) Why waste money on fuel of one sort or another to cook? And have a pot and utensils to clean? Yet — without meaning to sound triumphal — I think I have just topped myself. Minutes ago, I had shucked my ear of corn and was inches away from first chomp (I start from the right and chomp left, as if dining in Arabic or Hebrew) when . . . informed by a bolt of insight that comes rarely and from who-knows-where . . . I realized how to solve the salt problem. (Salt just bounces off raw corn and guys don’t have time to melt butter.) But wait!!! (Do you see where I’m going here?) I poured a little olive oil on my ear of corn, which necessarily dripped off onto the wood cutting board I was using as my plate . . . then sprinkled on some sea salt, some of which did bounce onto the cutting board but much of which stuck . . . then rolled the corn around on the salty-olive-oily cutting board (if there is anything better than salty oil, it is not yet known to man) . . . and then chomped right to left. The extra time, effort, and expense were completely trivial — seconds and a penny or two — but oh was it good. Enjoy the rest of your summer.
Note To Music Lovers July 29, 2015July 28, 2015 BRAIN APP I spend way too much time on my iPhone playing Words With Friends. If I were smart — and wanted to get smarter (or at least sharper, as verified by numerous peer-reviewed studies) — I would use at least part of that time to exercise my brain instead. (Turns out, crossword puzzles and stuff like that, presumably including WWF, don’t improve acuity.) Just go to the App Store and search for BrainHQ. It’s free. [Full disclosure: as long-term readers know, I own a sliver (more like a shard, really) of the company.] BEETHOVEN Thanks, Mel! A tourist in Vienna is going through a graveyard and all of a sudden he hears music. No one is around, so he starts searching for the source. He finally locates the origin and finds it is coming from a grave with a headstone that reads: “Ludwig van Beethoven, 1770- 1827.” Then he realizes that the music is Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and it is being played backward! Puzzled, he leaves the graveyard and persuades a friend to return with him. By the time they arrive back at the grave, the music has changed. This time it is the Seventh Symphony, but like the previous piece, it is being played backwards. Curious, the men agree to consult a music scholar. When they return with the expert, the Fifth Symphony is playing, again backwards. By the next day the word has spread, and a crowd has gathered around the grave. They are all listening to the Second Symphony being played backward. Just then the graveyard’s caretaker ambles up to the group. Someone in the group asks him if he has an explanation for the music. “I would have thought it was obvious,” the caretaker says: “He’s decomposing.” WASTE NOT, WANT NOT Chris Anderson: “I wonder about what you wrote Friday: ‘I… top the bowl of leftovers with … the plastic bags my shirts come in from the cleaner.’ Do you not have a problem with the chemicals used to dry-clean clothing or the cost per shirt vs. washing and ironing your own? Do you really *need* shirts which can’t be laundered with your 20-year old Costco rags? Does the income and economy-stimulation/job-creation generated by your wearing said shirts actually offset the cost to the environment and your budget? (Some of that last question was possibly slightly sarcastic…) :)” ☞ And someone else wondered whether I wasn’t worried about those chemicals gradually poisoning me. But the bags have no dry-cleaning chemical smell, and, yes, I haven’t bought a Zip-Lock or other commercial baggie in years. As to the drycleaning itself, well, when I have to be a grown-up in a suit and tie, I do wear dry-cleaned shirts. Fortunately, especially in the summer, I can generally get away with being 12. Gray Chang: “I reuse paper towels from the restroom at work. After all, since I’ve just washed my hands, the paper towel is damp with clean water, right? So I take it back to my desk and leave it out to dry, then put it in my pocket to reuse again, and so on. At lunch it becomes my napkin, and later, a spill cleaner. Even when I reuse it just once, I’m cutting my consumption by 50%.”
If You Support Israel . . . July 28, 2015 . . . you should think the “Iran deal” through a lot better than critics like Mike Huckabee or Marco Rubio have. (E.g., “Marco Rubio says Iran deal means we have to help defend Iran from Israel or other allies” — except, as the article makes clear, no, it doesn’t.) The best way to think it through, as suggested at the time, may be to watch the President’s news conference. He lays it all out and addresses the objections. See what you think of his answers. They made sense to me. But here’s another little piece for your consideration, issued by the White House last week: Why U.S. and Israeli security leaders and experts support the Iran deal: Last week, President Obama announced that the U.S. and our international partners reached a historic deal that will verifiably prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. It demonstrates that America’s diplomatic leadership can bring about meaningful and lasting change that makes America and the world safer by protecting our national security as well as the security of our key allies, especially Israel. Within hours of the deal’s announcement, President Obama phoned Prime Minister Netanyahu to emphasize the United States’ unwavering commitment to Israel’s security — a commitment that the agreement furthers by removing the specter of a nuclear-armed Iran. Here’s a readout of that call. The President made clear that he wouldn’t settle for anything less than a deal that blocks every pathway Iran could use to build a nuclear weapon. We got that and more. That is why several key Israeli security experts, including former generals and former heads of the Mossad and the Shin Bet, have come it in support of this deal. They include Efraim Halevy, who formerly headed both the Mossad and Israel’s National Security Council, who wrote that, “Without an agreement, Iran will be free to act as it wishes, whereas the sanctions regime against it will crumble in any case.” They include Ami Ayalon, the former head of the Shin Bet and former Navy commander-in-chief, who wrote that the that the deal “is the best possible alternative from Israel’s point of view, given the other available alternative… In the Middle East, 10 to 15 years is an eternity, and I don’t believe that 10 or 15 years from now the world will stand by and watch Iran acquire nuclear weapons.” That also is why 60 bipartisan U.S. national security experts came out in support of the agreement, recognizing that: “No agreement between multiple parties can be a perfect agreement without risks. We believe without this agreement, the risks to the security of the U.S. and its friends would be far greater. We have also not heard any viable alternatives from those who oppose the implementation of the JCPOA.” Building a bomb requires either uranium or plutonium. This deal not only redesigns Iran’s Arak reactor so it cannot produce weapons-grade plutonium, it also drastically reduces the number of centrifuges and the stockpile of uranium that Iran would need. Here’s a quick look at the difference this deal makes: Equally important is the fact that this deal puts in place extraordinary and robust monitoring, verification, and inspection to ensure that Iran complies with their commitments. From the minute the materials that could be used for a weapon comes out of the ground to the minute it is shipped out of Iran, international inspectors will have eyes on it and anywhere Iran could try and take it. Check back in at WhiteHouse.gov/Iran-Deal to get regular updates and info that outline the key components of the deal, and follow the new White House Twitter handle @TheIranDeal, which will ensure that folks get the facts on the deal. Thanks. More soon — Matt Matt Nosanchuk Associate Director, Office of Public Engagement The White House
Like Painting Your Bald Spot, But Better July 27, 2015July 26, 2015 Well, I suppose it’s actually more like coloring your grey hair. But it’s still way better because it saves so much water. Lawn painting! With 100% organic green paint! (Even longer-term solutions can be found here: 24 Inspiring Lawn-Free Yards.) Seriously: between not wasting 30% of the water-guzzling foods we grow (Friday’s post) . . . and not watering lawns (my neighbor has an astroturf croquet field; buy your astroturf lawn recycled) . . . we could really make a dent in this thing. (And save all that mowing.) Should water consumption — above basic per capita needs — be heavily taxed, with all that tax revenue going to reduce property taxes? So the overall tax burden would be about the same, but shifted especially onto people who waste water, to give everyone an incentive not to?
Food Waste July 24, 2015July 24, 2015 You may recall my recent ingestion of creamed spinach “best bought by” October 27, 2007. When it comes to wasting not in order to want not (and live light on the land) I defer to no one. It makes me crazy when friends use too much coffee (a couple of teaspoonsful per mug, boys!) to make too much coffee that they then eventually pour down the drain. And the cans of beer sipped once and then abandoned? Paper towels aren’t food, but they come from trees. Why use them? I am still using Costco rags I bought 20 years ago. Etc., etc. Aluminum foil? Are you crazy? If you top the bowl of leftovers with aluminum foil, you are destroying the planet — and can’t even see what’s inside the bowl! I use the plastic bags my shirts come in from the cleaner. Also, as I’ve told you repeatedly, I don’t eat a whole lot. Saves time, saves money, makes what you do eat taste better, lengthens your life, and saves the planet. (A lot of water and oil and coal and pesticide and packaging go into getting that slice of pizza into your stomach; more still if it’s pepperoni.) But as brightly as I try to make the case against waste, I am but a candle to John Oliver’s klieg light. Enjoy!
It’s Not Just Sharks We Have To Worry About July 23, 2015July 22, 2015 Kiss many of the world’s most populous cities good-bye. In what may prove to be a turning point for political action on climate change, a breathtaking new study casts extreme doubt about the near-term stability of global sea levels. The study—written by James Hansen, NASA’s former lead climate scientist, and 16 co-authors, many of whom are considered among the top in their fields—concludes that glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica will melt 10 times faster than previous consensus estimates, resulting in sea level rise of at least 10 feet in as little as 50 years. The study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, brings new importance to a feedback loop in the ocean near Antarctica that results in cooler freshwater from melting glaciers forcing warmer, saltier water underneath the ice sheets, speeding up the melting rate. Hansen, who is known for being alarmist and also right, acknowledges that his study implies change far beyond previous consensus estimates. In a conference call with reporters, he said he hoped the new findings would be “substantially more persuasive than anything previously published.” I certainly find them to be. . . . . . . The implications are mindboggling: In the study’s likely scenario, New York City—and every other coastal city on the planet—may only have a few more decades of habitability left. [Perhaps rendering the world ungovernable.] That dire prediction, in Hansen’s view, requires “emergency cooperation among nations.” Read the rest at Slate.com. Some take comfort in assurances from the Republicans chosen to chair the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works and the House Committee On Science, Space, and Technology that this is all a hoax. But NASA actually sent a spaceship to Pluto — with precision equivalent to getting a hole-in-one when the tee is in New York and the hole is in Los Angeles — which is considerably more compelling, I think, than anything James Inhofe and Lamar Smith have ever done — so when NASA’s former lead climate scientist weighs in, perhaps mankind should listen. At least until we hear what Donald Trump and Dick Cheney have to say. Read the rest at Slate.com.
Keeping Perspective: Do The Math July 22, 2015July 21, 2015 STEVE JOBS IS A GENIUS How much we all owe him, and the brilliant folks he inspired. My friend Aaron Scott Kirsten writes: I misplaced my iPhone this weekend. Misplaced it on the roof of the car and drove away. The music was playing via Bluetooth so I didn’t notice it wasn’t more secure. When the music stopped playing I thought it was just one of the dark spots on eastern Long Island. Later I used someone else’s iPhone and Find My iPhone to see that it was moving at a slow pace through town. I caught up to it and put it into Lost Mode with the phone number of the borrowed phone I was carrying. About 5 seconds later the phone rang and it was my phone calling me and a fellow not 10 feet from me calling me to say he’d found my phone by the side of the road playing music. The case had protected it from its fall at 45 mph. I had my phone back, intact after what should have been a total loss. A perfect storm of excellent software, great product design, social cooperation, decent honest neighbors all saving me from myself. Thanks everybody! YESTERDAY’S COLUMN Patrick Johnson: “Why focus on Senate representation only? California has 55 total senators and congress people to 3 for Wyoming.” I focus on the Senate, because (a) that’s where the grossest iniquity lies; (b) the Senate has a major say over the composition of the Supreme Court, where the House has none; (c) the Senate alone can block an awful lot of stuff, often with just a single Senator — not as true of the House. Thanks for asking! DO THE MATH Aristides’ Chris Brown: On average, over each of the last five years, homegrown “Islamic-inspired” killings have resulted in the deaths of about five Americans. There are about 2.7 million Muslims living in the United States. So there was one death partially attributable to Islam for every 540,000 Muslims in the U.S. Meanwhile, there are about 15,000 homicides as a whole, among about 300 million people. So roughly one homicide death attributable to every 20,000 Americans. On a per capita basis, just being an American makes you 27 times as likely to kill someone as being a Muslim in America makes you likely to kill someone for religious reasons. On the whole, American violence kills 3,000-fold more Americans each year than does “Islamic-inspired” American violence. Do you still want to ban the Koran, keep the mosque out of your town, and shun your neighbors? Even traveling abroad, says the CDC, it’s car crashes, not terrorism, you need worry about. (And no, obviously, this does not mean we should in any way fail to do everything we can to keep these numbers low, defeat ISIS, and all the rest. Obviously. But Chris’s point, it seems to me, is an important one.)
Citizen Ellen July 21, 2015 Everyone may be created equal, but it’s a peculiarity of our democracy that the citizens of Wyoming have WAY more political power per capita than the citizens of California (fewer than 600,000 Wyomingans control two Senate seats, versus the 37 million or so Californians who have to share the same amount of power) — and more still than the 600,000 residents of the District of Columbia, who have zero votes in the Senate and zero votes in the House (when it matters). (That latter inequity might be easily solved, short of statehood, by allowing northern DC residents to vote in Maryland and southern DC residents to vote in Virginia. And by making their Congresswoman’s vote count.) And then you have Florida, a state that leans Democratic — 4.6 million registered Dems to 4.2 million registered Republicans — but whose state Senate and House lean Republican 26-14 and 81-39, respectively . . . and whose 27-member Congressional delegation leans Republican 17-10. Think about that for a minute. (And perhaps think about this: Democracy In Decline: The Collapse of the “Close Race” In State Legislatures.) It’s a function, of course, of the way Florida districts are drawn. Enter a woman I’ve known a long-time, Ellen Freidin — no billionaire or superwoman, just a citizen — who in 2007 decided to do something about this. Which was particularly quixotic, I remember thinking as she was pitching me her plan under the Biltmore Hotel porte-cochere, waiting for our cars (mine, a deeply troubled 1998 aubergine Jeep Grand Cherokee* sure to impress the valet), because the year before, Florida had raised from 50% to 60% the threshold for passing a ballot initiative. And this threshold would have to be met in the face of what was certain to be fierce, moneyed opposition from folks who liked things just the way they were. The same folks who work hard to find ways to suppress the Democratric vote, not to count the “overvotes,” and all the rest. Still . . . admiring her determination and sharing her outrage, I threw caution to the wind and cash to the cause: Fair Districts Now. Considerably more cash, over the years, I might say, than I had spent to buy the Jeep Grand Cherokee. (I am bragging here: the truth is, there are folks who’ve contributed 50 times as much as I have.) But we won. First, in 2010, the ballot intitiative; and then, each year since, the endless and wildly expensive legal challenges mounted to thwart the will of the people. Republican lawmakers spent $8.1 million taxpayer dollars trying to keep the unfair maps. And then, finally, came last week’s game-changing decision from the Florida Supreme Court that basically said, enough. And which is likely to result in fairly redrawn maps. Which in turn is likely to result, over time, in a Florida Congressional delegation, and a Florida legislature, roughly half Democrat, half Republican, as are the voters of the state. What a concept. Ellen Freidin is my hero. *My theory being that a gas-guzzler should be owned by someone like me who drove about 400 miles a year (fewer now that I own no car); freeing up a fuel-efficient vehicle for someone who drives 30 or 50 times as far. I only had to fill the tank twice a year, so even at 16 mpg I was not burning a lot of fossil fuel. And since the car would rarely start . . . and was the color of an eggplant . . . But I digress. Ellen Freidin is my hero.
Love Won July 20, 2015July 17, 2015 Want a six-minute tear-jerker? It’s here: Love Won. A long journey, but the United States Supreme Court ordered it so, 5-4. And for those who rightly worry that you can be married Sunday but fired Monday — once your employer sees it in the paper and realizes you’re gay — the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission last week fixed that, too. It ruled, 3-2, that an employer can’t fire you just because it doesn’t like gay people, any more than it can fire you — or refuse to hire you — just because it doesn’t like black people or white people, Jewish people, Irish people, or the disabled. (Not, of course, that it won’t still happen. But now there is legal recourse if you can prove that it has.) I recognize this is still strange and icky to a lot of people, especially older people . . . including four of the nine sitting Justices and two of the five EEOC commissioners. I don’t relish making them feel uncomfortable. But I have hope. When I told my mother I was gay, it made her deeply uncomfortable. But with time, especially once she saw the stigma begin to lift (and once she met Charles), she became a true believer in equality and — almost — entirely comfortable. When she introduced us to her friends she would unfailingly look just a little panicked at how to explain Charles. You might think that after the second or third time she would have worked this out, and maybe if we had come round to her gatherings more regularly she would have. But each time she would wind up saying something like, “You know my son, Andy. And this is Charles, Andy’s . . . [slight awkward panicked pause] . . . very special friend.” Who knows? If they had lived, maybe she’d now have been inviting her friends to our wedding.