Deep in the basement of Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health sit more than a hundred vault-like freezers. Inside them... the toenail clippings from more than 100,000 people.... Because your toenails grow at different speeds, each one represents a different period in time. A clipping from your little toe captures substances that have been in your body for roughly a month. A clipping from your big toe gives a snapshot of a year’s worth of exposure.“When you take the edge of the nail of all five toes, you have a measure that stretches over the past year,” Tworoger said.....
“You - you alone will have the stars as no one else has them... In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the sky at night... You - only you - will have stars that can laugh.”
He suffers not a little shame, yet tells Irina he can’t live without her. He even hints that he will leave Véra—given time. And, in letters that might have made a fascinating appendix, he extolls his and Irina’s uncanny compatibility in suspiciously familiar prose. “For the more mortal among us,” Schiff observes, “there is cold comfort in the idea that even Nabokov could not coax two entire vocabularies out of reckless passion.”
[M]ocking someone’s weight cuts at the core of personal appearance, societal prejudices and a fraught sense of insecurity that by all rights should not exist but stubbornly does.By all rights? Really? Isn't there at least a smidgen of justification for observing that the federal government spends our money on a program that feeds people who are, demonstrably, eating too much? Trump used a fairly respectful expression. He said:
You know, it’s amazing. I mentioned food stamps and that guy who is seriously overweight went crazy. He went crazy. . . That’s an amazing sight.It's not like he said I mentioned food stamps and that fat pig — huuuge pig — went crazy....
Easily the worst part of Wilson's record as president was his overseeing of the resegregation of multiple agencies of the federal government, which had been surprisingly integrated as a result of Reconstruction decades earlier....Much more at the link.
Outright dismissals were also common. Upon taking office, Wilson himself fired 15 out of 17 black supervisors in the federal service and replaced them with white people....
In 1914, a group of black professionals led by newspaper editor and Harvard alumnus Monroe Trotter met with Wilson to protest the segregation. Wilson informed Trotter, "Segregation is not humiliating, but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen."
Never once in his two-year tenure did CIA director James Woolsey ever have a one-on-one meeting with Clinton. Even semi-private meetings were rare. They only happened twice. Woolsey told me: "It wasn't that I had a bad relationship with the president. It just didn't exist."Woolsey once made this joke: "Remember the guy who in 1994 crashed his plane onto the White House lawn? That was me trying to get an appointment to see President Clinton."
Shortly after noon, hundreds of students — as well as faculty members and administrators, including Ms. Minow — gathered for what the law school called a community meeting, filling one large room and much of another. Ms. Minow acknowledged that racism was an issue at Harvard as it was around the country. “Racism exists in America and in the United States and in Harvard and in Harvard Law School,” said Ms. Minow, who has written extensively on topics like school desegregation.I'd like to see more detail about what the "array of concerns" was (other than the ratio of black to nonblack professors). As to the way law is taught, that's a perennial subject of complaints among law students, but the argument that it's a racial problem needs some explication. The Times quotes a student claiming that Harvard lawprofs have "just forced [students] to regurgitate" the cases, but I find that extremely hard to believe.
But some students said the administration had not done enough to make the school fully inclusive of minority students and faculty members and voiced an array of concerns that ranged from the relatively low number of black professors — there are 12 black permanent full-time faculty members out of 125 — to the way the school taught law.
University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 agreed to the modified demands of student protestors on Thursday evening.... The final list addressed all three initial demands of the protestors, which included cultural competency training for faculty and staff and a diversity distribution requirement, a special space for black students, and the removal of the name of Woodrow Wilson, Class of 1879, from the Wilson School and Wilson College. According to the agreement, Eisgruber will write to chair of the University Board of Trustees Katie Hall ’80 to initiate conversations on removing Wilson’s name from campus buildings. He will also write to Head of Wilson College Eduardo Cadava to request that he consider removing Wilson’s mural from Wilcox dining hall.Whoa! The protesters (I'm spelling the word right) got played. Just 2 days ago, The Daily Princetonian had this:
Asanni York ’17, one of the organizers of the protest, explained the group would not leave until Eisgruber signed the document listing the demands.You didn't want more conversation. He had to sign the paper, but the paper he signed was about how there would be more conversation. It’s conversation, conversation, conversation. Conversation all the way down at Princeton. Well played, Eisgruber!
“We are tired of talking to people. It’s conversation, conversation, conversation. We try and protest; we meet with the administration every other week,” York said. “We’re done talking. We’re going to be here until he signs this paper. We’re going to be here until things are met.”
"There are no more escapes. If you want to find out anything that’s happening now, you have to listen to the music. I don’t mean the words. Though Eve of Destruction will tell you something about it."I don't think that's the quote Mickey was talking about. Interesting concept though, that you could find out what's happening now by listening to the sound of the instruments — not the words — of the music of today. Dylan said that in 1965, interviewed by Nora Ephron. I went looking for the completion of the concept. It's:
The words are not really gonna tell it, not really. You gotta listen to the Staples Singers, Smokey and the Miracles, Martha and the Vandellas. That's scary to a lot of people. It's sex that's involved. it's not hidden. It's real. You can overdo it. It's not only sex, it's a whole beautiful feeling.But when did Bob Dylan insult his son?
As part of a study of 2,412 people (50pc men and 50pc women), male participants were asked if they frequently suffered the same common side effects of premenstrual syndrome (PMS) that women experience during their menstrual cycle, including tiredness, cramps and increased sensitivity.Did the female partners of men who think they have man periods believe their man? 58% said yes, and 43% said they tried to help. How? 44% of the believers said they tried to "cheer him up" and 39% said they "walk around on egg shells." How about the women who did not believe their male partner got his period? 33% told him to "man up."
[C]onstant hunger... general irritability. Increased cravings, tiredness and a "bloated" feeling were also reported, with 12 pc confessing that they were "more sensitive about personal weight". 5pc of respondents even reported suffering from "menstrual cramps".That last link — on the "read this," about the transmen — goes to Forbes, but I'm afraid it might be sponsored content. You know, the ads are getting smarter, reacting to human efforts at ad blocking, and we're getting perilously close to the point when humans will not be able to discern what is editorial content and what is an ad. I mean, look:
Nine children is the average family size for Tsimane women in Bolivia. And about 70% of the population has a parasitic worm infection. Up to a third of the world's population also lives with such infections....
Masada told me that on Nov. 11, he got a call from a man named John—he doesn’t remember the last name—who sounded “distinguished, like an attorney.” John said he represented the Clinton campaign. He asked Masada “who had put him up” to posting the video. In a menacing voice, he told Masada, “This is not good for your business.” John then asked for the email or phone numbers of the five comedians who were featured in the video. “I told him, ‘Eff you,’ and I hung up,” says Masada.This answers the main question I had. Was there a real threat? The words were not a threat and could be understood as an attempt to persuade. And, on the substance, it is persuasive: Don't brand Laugh Factory with a montage that seems put together to attack one political candidate whom a lot of potential customers like and, especially, don't attack a female with low-aiming jokes about how she's not a proper women within a sexist template that denigrates women who are not young, feminine, chaste, and heterosexual.
How does Masada know that John was actually from the Clinton camp? He doesn’t. “I’m glad I’m not in politics or any of that stuff; you might know more than I do,” he says. “Maybe it was a prank, I have no idea. Was it real? Not real? I have no idea. He didn’t call back, that’s all I can say.”
Students staged a protest Wednesday inside the office of Princeton University's president, demanding the school remove the name of former school president and U.S. President Woodrow Wilson from programs and buildings over what they said was his racist legacy....This is an intra-liberal dispute. Hating Woodrow Wilson used be a conservative thing. Here's a Slate article from 2011: "Hating Woodrow Wilson/The new and confused attacks on progressivism."
Wilson was president of Princeton from 1902 to 1910 and served as New Jersey's governor from 1911 to 1913, when he entered the White House. The Democrat was a leading progressive but supported segregation, including appointing Cabinet members who segregated federal departments....
"Having to walk by buildings that (have Wilson's name), having to walk by his mural, having to live in residential colleges that didn't want our presence on campus, that's marginalizing," said Asanni York, a black junior who is majoring in public policy. "People are hurt by that. All this matters because, at the end of the day, black people's feelings matter just as much as any other people's feelings matter."
“This so-called leader of ISIS – he’s not a mastermind, he’s a punk.... They ought to call him what he is... He’s garbage. The press should not be referring to these guys as masterminds... Then they wonder how all these kids are going and joining ISIS. They’re building these people up so much [and] we have to tear them down. These are not masterminds. These people are animals."I said it 3 days ago:
It troubles me to see press reports that inflate the ingeniousness of terrorist attacks.... Today, I'm seeing a NYT banner headline: "FRANCE SEEKS BELGIAN MILITANT AS MASTERMIND OF PARIS ATTACKS." Whoever participated in the attacks is despicable. Why glorify him as a "mastermind"? A "mastermind" is — I'm quoting the OED — "An outstanding or commanding mind or intellect; a person with such a mind" or — and this is most relevant here — "A person who plans and directs a complex and ingenious enterprise."
I don't see complexity and ingeniousness. The attackers didn't invent the communications systems or the modes of encryption that must have made it possible to say today's the day. They didn't assemble the crowds in the restaurants or concert hall or stadium. And they didn't figure out how to get anywhere near President François Hollande.
Why inflate the reputation of these people? Even if you respect the value of propaganda, how does it serve our interests more than theirs?
There is no right to emigrate to the United States. And the fact that one comes from a country or territory ravaged by war does not, by itself, make one an asylum candidate. War, regrettably, is a staple of the human condition. Civil wars are generally about power. That often makes them violent and, for many, tragic; but it does not necessarily make them wars in which one side is persecuting the other side. In the case of this war, the Islamic State is undeniably persecuting Christians. It is doing so, moreover, as a matter of doctrine. Even those Christians the Islamic State does not kill, it otherwise persecutes as called for by its construction of sharia (observe, for example, the ongoing rape jihad and sexual slavery). To the contrary, the Islamic State seeks to rule Muslims, not kill or persecute them.... While there is no question that ISIS will kill and persecute Muslims whom it regards as apostates for refusing to adhere to its construction of Islam, it is abject idiocy to suggest that Muslims are facing the same ubiquity and intensity of persecution as Christians....So, there is a basis for making the process different for Christians and Muslims: They are differently situated with respect to their exposure to persecution. There is still, however, a serious question about whether the U.S. government should openly adopt a policy of sorting the refugees into Christian and Muslim and treating them radically differently. Obama has articulated his position in terms of what it means to be an American:
When I hear political leaders suggesting that there would be a religious test for which a person who’s fleeing from a war-torn country is admitted … that’s shameful…. That’s not American. That’s not who we are. We don’t have religious tests to our compassion.Obama calls us to what he portrays as a higher standard of compassion and nondiscrimination. We are — perhaps you've noticed — always in the middle of a debate about what America means. McCarthy's side of the debate reminds us of a statutory choice to provide refuge for those who face religious persecution and of the factual differences in the persecution experienced by the Christians and Muslims who are fleeing Syria.
"Decisions about family and children often are difficult, and can be wrenching when they become disputes," the judge wrote. "The policy best suited to ensuring that these disputes are resolved in a clear-eyed manner ... is to give effect to the intentions of the parties at the time of the decision at issue."...Choice.
The embryos were being held at the University of California, San Francisco, which in accordance with state law gave Lee and Findley a consent agreement before fertility treatments in which both said they would like the embryos thawed and discarded in case they divorced, according to court documents.
"This showed a linear association between sex and happiness up to a frequency of once a week, but at higher frequencies there is no longer an association," Amy Muise, a social psychologist at the University of Toronto Mississauga who led the research, said in an email. "Therefore it is not necessary, on average, for couples to aim to engage in sex as frequently as possible."I find the word "necessary" funny.
My perpetual torment will not resurrect her.... Prison as it presently stands is an inherently evil place that insidiously and systematically works to destroy imprisoned persons.... The '71 Attica rebellion profoundly affected me... Now I have earned a B.A. degree in sociology.... I've made reasonable suggestions to state officials about prison reform.... I tried and succeeded in doing something good.... The man who killed Kitty Genovese is no more.... Another vastly different individual has emerged, a Winston Moseley intent and determined to do constructive, not destructive things....UPDATE: Moseley died in prison on March 28, 2016.
The ad is already resonating with other male Barbie fans. One of the top comments on Moschino Barbie’s YouTube video comes from RuPaul’s Drag Race star Pandora Boxx, who wrote: “This almost made me cry! I used to play with my sister’s Barbies and felt such shame afterward. I’m so glad we can just let kids be kids. Thank you for this! Boys like dolls too!”Here's what Jeremy Scott looks like, in case you don't know, which I think is a good bet.
CALIFORNIA (218): Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown says he'll work closely with President Barack Obama to ensure any Syrian refugees coming to California are "fully vetted in a sophisticated and utterly reliable way." He says the state can help uphold America's traditional role as a place of asylum while also protecting California residents.
COLORADO (5): Colorado's governor isn't ruling out Syrian refugees. But Gov. John Hickenlooper says the federal government needs to make sure the verification process for refugees is "as stringent as possible."
The restaurant serves dinner five days a week to a single table of ten diners. In eighteen months, then, it has entertained at most thirty-six hundred people. In order to appear on the list at No. 24, Ultraviolet would have to have garnered at least seventy-five votes, meaning that a 50 Best judge would have had to eat there practically one night out of every five.The "multi-sensorial technology" may sound ridiculous to you, but it means a lot to me. I have almost no sense of smell, and therefore, in real effect, I have almost none of what normal people regard as taste. And here's another article, "Accounting for Taste/How packaging can make food more flavorful," which describes some studies that show how other senses enhance the experience of taste, which is, of course, in your mind:
[Charles Spence, a professor of experimental psychology at Oxford University] asked people to sample a dark Welsh ale: one sip while listening to a light, tinkling xylophone composition, and the second to the sound of a deep, mellifluous organ. When the second piece of music stopped, the audience had fallen silent.Maybe I could regain my experience of a sense of taste and smell if I set up some strategic music and visual "pairings."
“Wow,” a girl near me in a vintage houndstooth dress said. I knew this particular trick of Spence’s—I had watched him perform it multiple times—but it still worked on me. With only a change in the background music, the deep-brown beer had gone from creamy and sweet to mouth-dryingly bitter....
Was Brooks shilling for the travel firm, and, did he accept offer of free trip for 6 days or did he pay his own way for the 25 percent of the trip fare? Like US$30,000 Fact checkers? Or was this a paid junket by the travel firm and therefore unethical for NYT reporter to accept this? Can anyone answer?I hadn't thought of that question because I assumed the NYT paid for it, which was correct. I'm more interested in knowing whether he was able to hide his identity as an important reviewer, like a NYT restaurant reviewer. I remember NYT restaraunt reviewer Ruth Reichl talking about that:
"I have a really strong belief that I am there to be your eyes and ears when you're at the restaurant. I'm supposed to tell you what's going to happen to you, not what happens to the restaurant critic of The New York Times who is getting the best table and the chef is cooking the food specially and the portions are getting bigger and so forth. I think it's really important for you to know what's going to happen to you. And you can't do that if you're sashaying in as someone who's going to have a big economic impact on the restaurant."But when you travel around the world in a small chartered plane with a group of people, you are having a much more intimate relationship with them than when you eat in a restaurant and the other people are at other tables. So I also wonder whether the people Brooks traveled with and wrote about (wrote about disparagingly!) knew they were under observation by a NYT writer. If they knew, did they consent? These people had shelled out $125,000 apiece for what, I assume, was, for them, their dream vacation. Were they put into the position of needing to account for what this powerful man might think and say about them? Was that fair? Or did they not know who he was, in which case the Four Seasons allowed them to be used as specimens from what Brooks ended up sniffing at as the "lower end of the upper class"?
By Monday afternoon, governors from Texas, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Arizona, Maine, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Indiana, Mississippi, Illinois, Ohio, Louisiana, Arkansas, New Jersey, Idaho, Kansas, New Hampshire and Montana had joined Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley and Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, who on Sunday led the charge in refusing to accept refugees from Syria. Kentucky Governor-elect Matt Bevin, who won't take his oath of office until next month, also said on Monday that he is opposed.ADDED: New Hampshire and Montana have Democratic governors.
"[My tweet] was poorly worded and did not convey my intent... I am very sorry for ‘spreading ick’ on other candidates and the DFL party. I will do everything I can to help resolve the issue: most likely the best thing for me to do is shut up. The tweet was stupid. I’m sorry."(The DFL Party is the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party: "It is affiliated with the United States Democratic Party. [It was f]ormed by a merger of the Minnesota Democratic Party and the social democratic Minnesota Farmer–Labor Party in 1944...")
I think with this kind of barbarism and nihilism-- it's very hard to understand other than the lust for power, the rejection of (UNINTEL), the total disregard for human life-- freedom or any other value that we know and-- respect. Historically it is important to try to understand your adversary in order to figure out how they are thinking, what they will be doing, how they will react. I-- I plead (?)-- that it's very difficult when you deal with-- ISIS and organizations like that whose-- whose behavior is so barbaric and so vicious-- that it doesn't seem to have any purpose other than lust for killing and power. And that's very difficult to put ourselves in other shoes.She would never say that from their perspective they're "doing what they think is best for their community." And she will never say "Most likely the best thing for me to do is shut up." And she will never do what that Minnesota DFL candidate did: Up and drop out of the race because she said something wrong.
1) A large majority of [focus] group members were undecided and felt no rush to decide anything....I'll sum that up: If Jeb can just keep standing there, smart, mature and dull, he may be the last man standing as all the others collapse on their own.
2) After all that has happened, the New Hampshire voters still had a positive, or mostly positive, impression of Bush. They see him as smart, mature and dull.
3) They like Donald Trump, think he’s fun, but are concerned about giving Trump the vast powers of the presidency.
4) They love Ben Carson as a non-politician with a gentle bedside manner, but are a little discomfited by his offbeat views on a number of topics.
5) They see Marco Rubio as a perfect vice president and wonder if he is too young, and has too few accomplishments, for the top job.
Sitting in the presidential suite at the Des Lux Hotel earlier Friday, Dickerson's eyes were fixed on his binder of queries, looking up to ask whether a change in wording or a well-crafted follow-up would work to push the candidates off their stump speeches and away from the answers that had become pat over a number of interviews....I was tempted to say that Sanders isn't ready for his 3 a.m. phone call in the White House, but that's what whoever leaked that reaction to the press wants you to think, "went nuts" is a characterization that's practically meaningless, and it wasn't Sanders himself doing the nuts-going, but one of his people.
As Dickerson took in the news from Paris, he had an expression that indicated he knew that there would be a long night ahead and a different tone Saturday. "It's going to be heavier — and a lot more complicated," he said....
Not everyone was happy about the course change for the evening. Isham called the campaigns Saturday morning to alert them that foreign policy was moving to the front burner. A representative for the Sanders camp "went nuts," he said. Naturally, the reaction was leaked to the press by one of Sanders' rivals.
Philip Galanes: Let’s start with a glaring inequity. Only one of you has a rap name.Imagine getting your rap name from Ruth Bader Ginsburg and not laughing or saying something positive. What goes on in Gloria Steinem's mind? Nothing with "stick" or anything that could be construed as phallic? Or, just, nobody's going to be assigning names to me — I and I alone define myself?
Ruth Bader Ginsburg: I like the way mine began. A second-year law student at N.Y.U. was outraged by the court’s decision in the voting rights case. But instead of just venting her anger, she took up my dissent.
PG: Happily, there are rap-name generators online.
Gloria Steinem: They have those?
PG: Yours, if you want it, is GlowStick.
GS: We may need to work on that.
This is a politically tricky question, but she gives a clever response: she first says it's "very difficult to put ourselves in their shoes," but then proceeds to do just that by describing ISIS's worldview as one of "nihilism," "a lust for power," and "rejection of modernity and human rights"....
Clinton sounded much like the conservative Charles Krauthammer, writing in the month after the September 11 attacks:
It turns out that the enemy does have recognizable analogues in the Western experience. He is, as President Bush averred in his address to the nation, heir to the malignant ideologies of the 20th century. In its nihilism [the same word used by Clinton], its will to power [similar to the "lust for power" mentioned by Clinton], its celebration of blood and death, its craving for the cleansing purity that comes only from eradicating life and culture, radical Islam is heir, above all, to Nazism. The destruction of the World Trade Center was meant not only to wreak terror. Like the smashing of the Bamiyan Buddhas [in Afghanistan earlier in 2001], it was meant to obliterate greatness and beauty, elegance and grace. These artifacts represented civilization embodied in stone or steel. They had to be destroyed [that would be an example of the "rejection of modernity," as Clinton put it].
Some readers enjoyed my use of the word "bolus" 2 posts down. (A "feminist blog is committed to chewing things into a bolus of feminism.... When the evidence is flimsy, lubricate the bolus with the notion of the subtlety of the oppression. It might be swallowable.") That's not a word that would have come naturally to me if I hadn't read Mary Roach's cool book "Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal," so let me provide you with a reading:
JOHN DICKERSON: Senator Sanders, you said you wanna rid the planet of ISIS. In the previous debate you said the greatest threat to national security was climate change. Do you still believe that?Okay, let's look at that in slow motion. Stand by your former statement boldly and clearly"
BERNIE SANDERS: Absolutely. In fact, climate change is directly related to the growth of terrorism. And if we do not get our act together and listen to what the scientists say you're gonna see countries all over the world-- this is what the C.I.A. says, they're gonna be struggling over limited amounts of water, limited amounts of land to grow their crops. And you're gonna see all kinds of international conflict. But of course international terrorism is a major issue that we've got to address today. And I agree with much of what-- the secretary and-- and the governor have said. Only have one area of-- of disagreement with the secretary. I think she said something like, "The bulk of the responsibility is not ours." Well, in fact, I would argue that the disastrous invasion of Iraq, something that I strongly opposed, has unraveled the region completely. And led to the rise of Al Qaeda-- and to-- ISIS. Now, in fact, what we have got to do-- and I think there is widespread agreement here-- 'cause the United States cannot do it alone. What we need to do is lead an international coalition which includes-- very significantly-- (UNINTEL) nations in that region are gonna have to fight and defend their way of life.
Absolutely.Open an escape path:
In fact, climate change is directly related to the growth of terrorism.The former statement, which now sounds wrong, is that X is the most important thing, but now people have reason to feel, very urgently, that Y is the most important thing. Create a springboard for yourself. Invite the audience to think that X and Y are really the same thing. That's tantalizing. They're looking to see this fascinating connection, so begin to create the feeling that X and Y are connected:
And if we do not get our act together and listen to what the scientists say you're gonna see countries all over the world-- this is what the C.I.A. says, they're gonna be struggling over limited amounts of water, limited amounts of land to grow their crops. And you're gonna see all kinds of international conflict.Climate change isn't just about what the climate does but how people react to it, and there will be struggle and conflict, and that at least vaguely reminds us of the bloodshed associated with ISIS, but ISIS isn't fighting over the temperature. You can't get to that escape path, climate change is directly related to the growth of terrorism.
But of course international terrorism is a major issue that we've got to address today.And then collapse into drivel. You agree with Clinton and you don't agree. What was the part that you disagreed with, that "The bulk of the responsibility is not ours"?
Well, in fact, I would argue that the disastrous invasion of Iraq, something that I strongly opposed, has unraveled the region completely.So you think bulk of the responsibility is ours?!
And led to the rise of Al Qaeda-- and to-- ISIS.The invasion of Iraq led to the rise of al Qaeda?! You're faltering badly, but you know there are magic words — 2 words that if only you can just get to them you've done your trick. Come on, Bernie:
Now, in fact, what we have got to do-- and I think there is widespread agreement here-- 'cause the United States cannot do it alone. What we need to do is lead an international coalition...APPLAUSE!!!!
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