Nothing suspicious or odd about that. Nope. Nothing at all.

Update: Just to expound on my thinking, she didn’t offer any details, and this was announced at the perfect time to bury a major news story: on the Friday before a federal holiday. If she was trying to stir up news and 2012 speculation, she should have waited three days and done it next Tuesday. No, everything here is indicative of either A) her trying to bury the news of her resignation, or B) her throwing this together very hastily. Probably both.

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_Mississippi had the highest rate of adult obesity, 32.5 percent, for the fifth year in a row.

_Three additional states now have adult obesity rates above 30 percent, including Alabama, 31.2 percent; West Virginia, 31.1 percent; and Tennessee, 30.2 percent.

_In 1991, no state had more than a 20 percent obesity rate. Today, the only state that doesn’t is Colorado, at 18.9 percent.

_The South is the fattest region. The Northeast and West are slightly slimmer than the rest of the country.

_Mississippi also had the highest rate of overweight and obese children, at 44.4 percent in total. It’s followed by Arkansas, 37.5 percent; and Georgia, 37.3 percent.

_Following Alabama, Michigan ranks No. 2 with fat boomers; 36 percent of its 55- to 64-year-olds are obese. Colorado has the lowest rate, 21.8 percent.

Phew, who would have believed 100 years ago that there would be a place on earth where one in three adults was obese?

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There are plenty of veterans who are gay.

This is the gay and lesbian Chicago Police float. Plenty of police officers were in attendance, both marching and serving as security for the parade (some of those not marching decorated the motorized tricycles they drove with rainbow flags).

Gay and lesbian Chicago librarians.

A small but loud contingent of gay Chicago firefighters drove down the street with their sirens blaring at one point.

This one was pretty fun to watch: a little motorized train of gay and lesbian Chicago Transit Authority employees hummed down the street. No word on whether they were the cause of the parade’s late start (heh, Chicagoans will get that one).

This happens to be the Puerto Rican float, but there were plenty of ethnic minorities represented, including the very impressive all-African American South Shore Drill Team.

There were more churches than I could count at the parade, but float happens to belong to a Jewish GLBT organization.

The Google trolly had a rainbow logo. The corporate presence at the parade was very interesting to see, and it ranged from displays of support from OfficeMax (whose banner read “Come Out, Come Out Wherever You Work!”) to not-so-subtle pandering from Southwest (whose banner read “Southwest dot com slash gay travel”).

Supportive parents of gays and lesbians (one sign in the background reads “God blessed me with a gay son”).

… And, okay, some stereotypes were confirmed. But what’s so wrong with that?

Oh, and lastly, this is a photo of IL Senator Roland Burris being driven around in a convertible. As he drove by, he was the only person clapping and cheering (though there were a few loud boos, not the least of which was my own). Geez, what is it with me taking blurry cell phone pictures of Roland Burris these days?

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The latest example of this has to be a record in terms of how much the offending company is willing to pay for a fake review: a whopping $25! (A commenter at another website discussing this story jokes, “At least Elsevier was a little more respectful of their potential reviewers - Belkin only paid people 65 cents per review.”) The email I reprint below, forwarded to me by an academic source, was sent by a medical textbook publisher to a list of contributors whose work was featured in the book. The publisher, Elsevier, is according to Wikipedia, “world’s largest publisher of medical and scientific literature.” Here’s what they, quite shamelessly, write:

—– Original Message —–
Dear Clinical Psychology,

Congratulations and thank you for your contribution to Clinical Psychology. Now that the book is published, we need your help to get some 5 star reviews posted to both Amazon and Barnes & Noble to help support and promote it. As you know, these online reviews are extremely persuasive when customers are considering a purchase. For your time, we would like to compensate you with a copy of the book under review as well as a $25 Amazon gift card. If you have colleagues or students who would be willing to post positive reviews, please feel free to forward this e-mail to them to participate.

We share the common goal of wanting Clinical Psychology to sell and succeed. The tactics defined above have proven to dramatically increase exposure and boost sales. I hope we can work together to make a strong and profitable impact through our online bookselling channels.

We look forward to hearing from you, and once again thank you for your hard work and dedication to this process

Sincerely,
[redacted]

On behalf of
Elsevier Marketing
Editorial/Administrative Assistant

Elsevier
525 B Street, Suite 1900
San Diego, CA 92101 USA
Tel. 619-699-6308/
Fax. 619-699-6715
[redacted]@elsevier.com

________________________________
*** Confidentiality Statement ***
This e-mail is intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed and may contain information that is privileged and confidential. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately by replying to this message and then delete it from your system. Any review, dissemination, distribution, or reproduction of this message by unintended recipients is strictly prohibited and may be subject to legal restriction.

Thank you for your cooperation.

It turns out, Elsevier is no stranger to this sort of thing. Also, according to The Scientist magazine, they were allegedly caught publishing a fake medical journal with the sole purpose of basically giving the pharmaceutical corporation Merck quotes to use in their drug commercials:

Merck paid an undisclosed sum to Elsevier to produce several volumes of [Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine], a publication that had the look of a peer-reviewed medical journal, but contained only reprinted or summarized articles—most of which presented data favorable to Merck products—that appeared to act solely as marketing tools with no disclosure of company sponsorship.

Elsevier yesterday issued something of a non-apology after a textbook trade publication also published the above email:

Cindy Minor, marketing manager for science and technology at Elsevier, said that the e-mail did not reflect Elsevier policy. She called the request for five star reviews “a poorly written e-mail” by “an overzealous employee.” Minor said that the concerns over the marketing pitch have been discussed “at the highest levels” in the company and that nobody favors paying for good reviews. The situation “is not being taken lightly,” she said.

“We want unbiased, honest reviews,” she said.

Tom Reller, director of corporate relations for Elsevier, issued a statement distinguishing between what was and was not acceptable under company policy. “Encouraging interested parties to post book reviews isn’t outside the norm in scholarly publishing, nor is it wrong to offer to nominally compensate people for their time, some of these books are quite large,” he said. “But in all instances the request should be unbiased, with no incentives for a positive review, and that’s where this particular e-mail went too far.”

Err, with a statement like that, coupled with the above claim from Elsevier’s employee that “The tactics defined above have proven to dramatically increase exposure and boost sales,” one has to wonder exactly how prevalent these fake reviews are in scholarly publishing. Further, while Mr Reller doesn’t seem to like paying for reviews, he also doesn’t acknowledge understanding that authors reviewing their own work as if they were merely consumers is wrong.

Naturally, the company is blaming this email on the underling who sent it– but in my experience, administrative assistants aren’t the ones who put their butt out on the line, bu a bunch of $25 Amazon gift cards, and go to all this length to contact dozens of people and ask them to write phony reviews so their bosses will profit more. No, the individual who sent the above email was almost certainly ordered to do so by higher-ups who don’t waste their time getting their hands dirty like this.

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Now, a series of images and video digitally smuggled out of Iran debunks this notion, and proves that the Iranian riot police are actually the ones destroying property– only to blame it on the legitimate protesters in an attempt to marginalize them in the eyes of the world (and in the eyes of other Iranians). Let’s spread these images as far as possible so nobody will be fooled by the regime’s lies.

Riot police break the windows of a white sedan:

[Source]

Two photos, one taken right after the other, of another white sedan being destroyed by hardline cops:

[Source]

[Source]

In the lower left hand corner of this picture, an Iranian police officer smashes another car’s window:

In the following video, more riot police intentionally try to break a storefront’s glass:

Video shows riot police first destroying a car, then spray-painting on a wall:

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The second reason that this video is somewhat remarkable is the story behind what it took for you to be able to see this video. It was originally filmed, likely on a cell phone, in Tehran, and digitally smuggled out of the country, like so many other hundreds of videos showing government oppression are now seeping out. That does not make it unique. BBC Persian found the video online, aired it, and also uploaded it to their YouTube account here.

The BBC has, stupidly, chosen to prevent us from embedding their YouTube videos, essentially restricting their own content from the larger traffic that it would enjoy should it be allowed to go viral and get embedded in blogs and the like. So I downloaded the video and uploaded it to my YouTube account (my embed is what you see above). It’s stupid that I should even have to take this step to allow this video to be seen by others, but what happened next is what is even stupider.

Upon uploading it, I got a notice on the video saying that YouTube’s automatic content detection system has flagged my video for infringing the BBC’s copyright:

Hence, my video was automatically quarantined with nobody allowed to see it. Through YouTube’s automated system, the BBC was literally claiming that I had infringed their copyright– when they didn’t even own the copyright to the video themselves that they were claiming copyright over!

The truth is, I have exactly as much right to upload the video as the Beeb did: we were both uploading it under the fair use doctrine.

This is an instance where the old rules of copyright have collided with the new realities that technology brings, and suddenly the old rules don’t apply. The Islamic Regime has effectively put all foreign journalists under house arrest and some say they have arrested domestic journalists by the dozens. Iranian opposition leaders and citizen journalists (the people running around with their cell phone cameras making these videos and taking these pictures) have repeatedly asked internet users all over the world to syndicate their content wherever possible. The BBC has no right to deny to me a fair use privilege that they themselves have taken advantage of.

Anyway, the video is now under review, and because I submitted a challenge to the automated copyright takedown notice, it has been temporarily reinstated so you should be able to watch it. I’ll post updates if the situation changes and the BBC wants to press forward with taking it down permanently.

For now, I’ll end this post on a quote from the man who probably won Iran’s recent fraudulent election, Mir Hossein Mousavi:

“Today you are the media, it is your duty to report and keep the hope alive.”

Update: Looks like I’m not the only one to have this happen to one of their Youtube videos.

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– The Fatemiyeh Hospital in Tehran has recorded 200 injured and between 30 and 40 people dead today in state-instigated violence that has surpassed all the violence in the past week combined.

– There are also unconfirmed reports that helicopters are A) delivering guns to Basij troops (the Basij are government-authorized un-uniformed militias) and B) in some cases spraying chemicals on protesters which causes the skin to burn.

– There are also reports that public railway transportation (Metra) has been shut down in an effort to stop people from coming into Tehran to join the protesters. People are still planning to join them by using other ways to get there though.

– Injured protesters are being cautioned in some cases to avoid hospitals which Basij troops are stationed at (they have supposedly been known to arrest people and deny them medical treatment), and instead are told to go to foreign embassies which the Basij cannot attack because it would be a violation of diplomatic code. The Canadian embassy is rumored to be turning injured people away, while the Australian embassy is said to be accepting wounded people and treating them using their own resources.

– Some Basij offices may be being attacked and burned by protesters.

– Mousavi has called for a general strike if he is arrested or killed, and says he is “ready to die for the truth” (this one is confirmed, not just a rumor). Additionally, he is using the slogan “down with the coup d’état,” in reference to theories that he won the election and that Admadinijad is effectively committing a coup against him, although this also invokes the 1953 coup against Iran orchestrated by the CIA.

Here is the White House statement on violence in Iran today:

For Immediate Release, June 20, 2009

Statement from the President on Iran

The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.

As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion.

Martin Luther King once said - “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I believe that. The international community believes that. And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian peoples’ belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness.

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The Islamic regime is also vulnerable socially and culturally. After consolidating power, the Islamic regime relegated women to second-class citizenship and denied them basic social, economic, and personal rights. The regime condemned homosexuals to death and stoned adulterers. The Islamic Republic imposed a set of cultural measures ranging from dress codes to music and dancing that were incompatible with the demands of the majority of the people who had struggled to overthrow the monarchy.

The Islamic fundamentalists and the theocratic clergy have discredited and undermined their own religion by making Islam the underpinning of failed economic and political experiments. Many citizens believe that the clerics have politicized and manipulated Islam to accumulate wealth and power. The ruling clerics have squandered their religious credentials and at times resort to nationalist rhetoric and external threats to stay in power. Not surprisingly, Iranians are among the most secular people in the Middle East today. In a national poll, 83 percent declared that religious teachings were irrelevant to daily life. Seventy-five percent of Iranians do not even say obligatory daily prayers and, in effect, refuse to be coerced into heaven.

My dad, whose most-well known writings concerned the 1979 Iranian revolution, concludes that:

As currently constituted, the opposition movement appears to lack a leadership capable of transforming the protests into a serious revolutionary struggle. For example, as some protestors have been shouting “Death to dictator,” Mousavi has been urging them to shout “Allah Akbar,” that is God is great. To bring about this transformation, the movement would require a strong, secure leadership that can break away from the existing system and present a democratic alternative acceptable to the majority of the protestors who are risking their lives. The leadership must forge a broad coalition of students, women, and the rest of the population to be able to challenge the regime. The coalition must include the major social classes and collectivities in order to disrupt social and economic structures. A strong leadership must be able to mobilize both bazaaris, who have had their own grievances against the state, and workers who have been fighting for better working conditions and independent labor organizations. Such a coalition should be able to disrupt the social structure and press for democratic changes.

(The bazaaris are loosely defined as a group of merchants and businessmen.) Well, let’s hope to see it happen.

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In Tehran Friday night, a different version of One Day More can be heard. The following is a video taken in Tehran in which people chanting from balconies can be heard:

In the background, people can be heard shouting Allahu akbar (God is great), as they have done for several nights now. The chant was used similarly during the Iranian Revolution of 1979, although this time instead of also chanting death to the Shah, they have been supplemented this time apparently with “Death to the dictator,” meaning Ahmadinejad.

On Friday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei all-but threatened that any future protests would be crushed in a brutal manner that would make recent violence pale in comparison. The planned march at 4PM, Iranian time (7:30ish AM EST Saturday) is set to go ahead anyway, and a lot of Iranians on Twitter that I’ve been following are nervous but hopeful. The rest of us can do little more than hope that it turns out better than it did for most of the characters in Les Mis. Already there are signs that it will: for one thing, the movement in Iran right now isn’t solely students like earlier unrest has been (such as in July of 1999); rather reports indicate that it’s cutting across many demographic barriers and gaining steam rather than losing it, especially due to Khamenei’s speech which was widely interpreted as needlessly inflammatory.

Now the ball appears to be in the court of the Iranian army and law enforcement. Tomorrow things will come to a head, and either the police will choose to side with the protesters and Khamenei will have made the biggest mistake of his career, or the police will side with Khamenei against their country and there will be a huge amount of needless bloodshed (which may in turn spark more potent mourning rallies and lead to even more unrest). There were some unconfirmed reports earlier that army officials who opposed Khamenei’s upcoming crackdown were being arrested pre-preemptively, which isn’t a good sign. I suppose we’ll have to wait and see what happens.

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