TIME News

See a Comet’s Close Encounter With Mars

2014-10-23T11:33:00.001-07:00

See a Comet’s Close Encounter With Mars

See a Comet’s Close Encounter With Mars
This Pumpkin Spice Rap Video Confirms That We All Need to Just Cool It With the PSL Jokes
Treasury Department’s Anti-Terrorism Chief Says Cutting Off ISIS Funds Of High Importance
Young Iranians Stay Home in Fear of Acid Attacks
Facebook Launches Anonymous Chat App Called ‘Rooms’
Surreal Scene of Migrants Atop Spanish Border Fence
Here’s How Well Your Genes Can Predict Your Breast Cancer Risk
The Best Browser Privacy Tools (That Don’t Make Life More Difficult)
‘Law & Order: SVU’ Ripped an Episode From My Headline
A Belgian Chocolate Company Called ISIS Has Decided to Change Its Name

Posted: 23 Oct 2014 11:21 AM PDT

The comet known as “Siding Spring” had a too-close-for-comfort encounter with the Red Planet this week.

Traveling at around 125,000mph, the comet missed colliding with Mars by a mere 87,000 miles. That’s about one-third of the distance between the Earth and the Moon — in astronomical terms, a very close encounter.

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope captured the encounter in this composite image. Sadly, it will be another million years before we see comet Siding Spring again, after it completes its orbit around the sun.

See an artist’s rendition of the encounter in the video below:

This Pumpkin Spice Rap Video Confirms That We All Need to Just Cool It With the PSL Jokes

Posted: 23 Oct 2014 11:16 AM PDT

Look, we get it. For whatever reason, it’s fun to mock the seasonal beverage/cultural craze known as the pumpkin spice latte.

So now that there’s a rap video dedicated to the beverage — which you can watch above — it’s time for everybody to just cool it. Girls love to wear sweaters and drink pumpkin spice lattes. Okay. Whatever. Can we just stop?

Man, as great as autumn is, now I’m kind of excited for winter, when the PSL jokes will finally slow down. But then, before we know it, Starbucks’ “chestnut praline” latte will be the new thing and everyone will start making raps about that. Time really is a flat circle. A flat, green, mermaid-filled circle.

Treasury Department’s Anti-Terrorism Chief Says Cutting Off ISIS Funds Of High Importance

Posted: 23 Oct 2014 10:58 AM PDT

The Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) is the “best-funded” terrorist organization the U.S. has ever confronted, the Treasury Department’s top official for combating terrorist financing said Thursday.

Speaking at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on Thursday David Cohen, the under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence at Treasury, outlined a multi-pronged strategy for cutting off ISIS’s access to resources — including as much as $1 million per day in oil sales.

Touching on a topic of heated international debate, Cohen also called on foreign governments to refuse ransom payments to free their kidnapped citizens from terrorist groups.

Because ISIS “poses a different terrorist financing strategy,” than other terror groups, the strategy against it has to look different, Cohen said. Unlike other major terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda, which are primarily reliant on wealthy donors, ISIS gets most of its funding not from the illegal market sale of oil, as well as from ransoms and extortion.

Although ISIS conducts most of its business on the black market, Cohen said the Treasury Department can disrupt the group’s finances by identifying and targeting people who operate within the legitimate economy but who also trade illegally with ISIS.

“The middlemen, traders, refiners, transport companies, and anyone else that handles [ISIS]’s oil should know that we are hard at work identifying them, and that we have tools at hand to stop them,” Cohen said during prepared remarks.

The U.S. government is prepared to impose financial sanctions on both ISIS’s leadership and its financial donors. Cohen said Thursday that two individuals were sanctioned in late September, including a military commander and a person who arranged a $2 million donation to the organization. But the effort will take time, Cohen noted, and will require “cooperation and collaboration with partners in the region,” including private sector banks in Iraq and Syria that might be used to store ISIS cash.

He also urged more countries to refuse ransom payments when their citizens are kidnapped. “If we are to protect our citizens and avoid bankrolling our adversary, every country must adopt and implement a no-ransoms policy,” Cohen said. The U.S. does not pay ransoms for kidnapped citizens, even in cases of threatened execution. Some European governments have reportedly paid millions to free hostages from ISIS and al Qaeda.

“[ISIS] has a fair amount of money today, but what’s important is that we do everything we can to make sure it’s not recurring revenue,” Cohen said. He added that, although ISIS generates an estimated $1 million per day from illegal oil sales, even that figure isn’t enough to meet the needs of the people living in the vast territory the group controls. In areas where ISIS now operates, he said, the Iraqi government’s budget surpassed $2 billion this year.

But he counseled patience as the financial prong of the war on ISIS unfolds in tandem with U.S.-led air strikes against the Sunni radical group.

“This is not going to be an exercise where we can at the end of every month produce a balance sheet,” Cohen said. “This is going to be a steady effort to degrade financing over time.”

Young Iranians Stay Home in Fear of Acid Attacks

Posted: 23 Oct 2014 10:45 AM PDT

Nazar Street is one of the most liberal streets in Isfahan, a historic city 340 kilometers south of Tehran. Young men and women mix more freely than elsewhere and women wear their hijabs more loosely, revealing more hair than the law allows.

But this week, the street was quiet and its restaurants empty as people avoided public places in the wake of a series of acid attacks on young women. Eight women have been badly injured after having acid thrown in their faces by unidentified men in recent weeks causing fear and anger in the city.

Thousands protested Wednesday in Isfahan to demand security for women, according to the semiofficial Fars News Agency. Demonstrators, including many mothers, worried for the safety of their daughters. “Security and freedom are our indisputable rights!” they shouted. “Down with Iran’s Daesh,” refererring to the Arabic acronym for the militant group Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria.

Soheila Joerkesh, 26, was driving back from an afternoon out swimming with her friends on Oct. 13 when she pulled over to speak with her mother on the phone. Just as she had started to speak, a motorcycle stopped beside her car and a passenger got off with a glass canister in his hand. “Suddenly Soheila started screaming, I could hear her scream for more than 5 minutes before the call got cut,” her mother told local media. “By the time we found her at a hospital she was blind. Her cellphone had been melted by the acid that the motorcyclist had thrown onto her face.”

All of the victims have been young women who were attacked on busy main streets by male motorcyclists or passengers throwing acid on their faces. The women have suffered third-degree burns on their faces, necks, chests and hands, and will require cosmetic surgery.

Many women in Isfahan now fear going out. “One of my colleagues has her husband drive her to and back from work. Another says she nearly dies from fear whenever a motorcycle passes her car. I myself take the bus now as it seems safer,” Fatemeh, a female resident of Isfahan said on Wednesday, asking for her surname not to be published. “We are all worried, we only leave home when it is absolutely necessary.”

Women in Iran have been required by law, since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, to dress modestly and not wear cosmetics. The enforcement of morals is one of the duties of the Basij militia. Many women, however, have resisted and flaunt the rules by leaving parts of their hair exposed. Members of hardline religious groups have staged demonstrations protesting what they call the decadent clothing of women. This has led to rumors that some members of these groups are behind these attacks.

“People are saying it’s a group called Ansar trying to force women to have proper hijab. I don’t know if that’s true, but many are now using masks to cover their faces to escape possible attacks, which is ironic, as the attacker didn’t even feel the need to cover his face,” Fatemeh said, pointing to reports that the culprits had not gone to any trouble to hide their identities.

Most of Iranian society has reacted angrily to the attacks.

“Throwing acid is an ugly, heinous and disgusting act, maybe murder is more acceptable, this crime is despicable,” General Esmaeel Ahmadi-Moghadam, head of the Iranian police, told the Fars News Agency on Wednesday. And the deputy head of the Judiciary, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejei, told state television two days earlier that those responsible would receive “such a punishment for the culprits when they are arrested that no one would ever dare commit such crimes again.”

Others said the attacks were carried out by people linked to Western intelligence agencies in a bid to damage Iran. “Today we are seeing the foreign media network trying to link this crime to promotion of virtue and prevention of vice,” said General Mohammad Reza Naghdi, head of the Basij paramilitary force, according to news website Mashreghnews.ir.

With none of the assailants arrested yet, many Iranians are posting comments on websites and social media that criticize the police force. Some compared the swift arrests of the makers of the Pharrell Williams’ Happy video in Tehran, “within hours” in May, to the fact that weeks have passed since the first acid attack.

Soheila’s mother struck a similar chord. “We asked them can we look at footage from surveillance cameras in Soheila’s route, but they refused,” she said. “Why are they not showing us the footage?”

Facebook Launches Anonymous Chat App Called ‘Rooms’

Posted: 23 Oct 2014 10:43 AM PDT

Facebook launched Thursday an anonymous chat room app called Rooms, the latest creation to emerge from the company’s initiative to design more apps connecting people in different ways.

The free app, now available in the App Store, allows users to create chat rooms for shared interests, from makeup mastery to city gardens, according to the app’s website. The app is entirely separate from Facebook and doesn’t require you to provide any revealing details like your name or your location.

Chat rooms are invite-only and require a special code that can be scanned with your phone’s camera, according to Facebook. Codes can be shared on social media, e-mail or even posted on paper in public spaces. Chat room creators or other specified moderators can customize the look, ban people from the room or set the room to be 18+.

Rooms’ development was first reported by the New York Times in early October as an alternative way to connect online aside from the many social media networks, like Facebook, which value or require authentic identities as a means of combating spammers, trolls and cyberbullies. However, Facebook’s real name policy has forced out some users, notably members of the LGBT community who prefer to stay anonymous online. A recent flight of transgender users from Facebook to alternative networks like Ello drew headlines several weeks ago.

Rooms joins a host of other secondary apps recently created by Facebook, including Mentions, a Facebook for celebrities and other public figures released in July; Slingshot, a Snapchat-like service released in June; and Paper, a Facebook app simplified for a mobile device released in February.

Surreal Scene of Migrants Atop Spanish Border Fence

Posted: 23 Oct 2014 10:39 AM PDT

Among the top issues this year for European countries along the Mediterranean has been how to handle the flow of migrants from Africa and the Middle East who seek a better life within their borders. Tens of thousands of refugees and migrants journeyed across perilous routes throughout the year, and in thousands of cases met death before land. Others have attempted to cross into one of the two Spanish enclaves, Melilla and Ceuta, that border Morocco.

The latter scene played out again on Oct. 22, and was captured in a picture at the border fence surrounding Melilla that later went viral online. Eleven men are seen sitting atop the fence as a police officer approaches — and as two women play golf below. One is in mid-swing while the other is turned toward the group.

José Palazón, an activist with a migrant-rights group, spotted the men above the golf course and thought it was “a good moment to take a photo that was a bit more symbolic,” he told El Pais. “The photo reflects the situation really well — the differences that exist here and all the ugliness that is happening here.”

Spain’s interior ministry said about 200 people tried to scale the fence that day, according to the Associated Press. About 20 successfully crossed, while another 70 stayed on top of the fence for hours.

Here’s How Well Your Genes Can Predict Your Breast Cancer Risk

Posted: 23 Oct 2014 10:36 AM PDT

Your genes have a lot to say about who you are and how healthy you are. But for certain diseases, including cancer, so many genes are likely involved that it’s hard for doctors to come up with a useful, reliable way to turn your DNA information into a precise risk score.

But in a paper published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, researchers say that combining the known genetic players in breast cancer can predict with much higher accuracy a newborn girl’s theoretical risk of developing the disease.

MORE: Angelina Jolie’s Surgery May Have Doubled Genetic Testing Rates at One Clinic

Alice Whittemore, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at Stanford University School and Medicine, and her colleagues included 86 known genetic variants that have been associated with breast cancer—including BRCA1 and BRCA2, which are relatively rare but confer a very high risk of disease compared to those that have a smaller contribution—and created a computer model that took into account the rates of breast cancer among 120,000 women who had these genetic variants.

This model served as a predictor for breast cancer based on womens’ genetic makeup. When researchers looked at the top 25% of risk scores, they found that these would account for about half of breast cancer cases in the future. Using previous models, genetic variants could account for only 35% of future cancer cases.

“Our results are more optimistic than those that have been previously published,” says Whittemore, “because we took 86 known genetic variants associated with breast cancer, and took what was in the world’s literature about how common those variants are, and by how much a factor they increase risk. And the more genetic variants that are identified, the better we will get at this.”

MORE: BRCA Gene Can Be A Cancer Triple Whammy, Study Finds

Since the paper was submitted, at least two dozen new genetic variants have been linked to breast cancer, and adding those to the model, says Whittemore, could make it more accurate.

But just because a woman may have been born with a high genetic risk for breast cancer doesn’t mean that she can’t change that risk. The study also found that lifestyle factors, which are in a woman’s control, can generally lower the genetic risk by half. And the higher a woman’s genetic risk, the more she can reduce it with healthy behaviors. So avoiding excessive amounts of alcohol and smoking, or maintaining a healthy weight, for example, can bring a genetic risk of 30% down to around 15%, while a woman with a 4% genetic risk of developing breast cancer can reduce her risk by 2%.

“The news is that even if you are at high genetic risk of developing breast cancer, it’s all the more reason to do what you can to modify your lifestyle to lower your risk by changeable factors even if your genes aren’t changeable,” says Whittemore.

The Best Browser Privacy Tools (That Don’t Make Life More Difficult)

Posted: 23 Oct 2014 10:29 AM PDT

In a year when social media giants and governments alike have made headlines for tracking users online without their consent, battening down the virtual hatches has become a vital part of Internet hygiene.

Blocking tracking technologies, however, also disables those handy auto-fill log-ins and web personalization features, preventing you from easily shopping online and making your web experience feel as if you’re back in 1999.

So we went in search of privacy tools that don’t impact your browsing experience. We tested browser tools ranging from the basic Private Mode on all browsers to full-featured ad blockers. We looked at the four most-used browsers in the United States: Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer. Here’s what we found to be most helpful for safeguarding your privacy and anonymity — and what measures of convenience you might have to give up if you use them.

The lowdown on cookies

Cookies are small text files that contain one or more bits of information about your computer, most commonly a user ID a website assigns you in order to keep track of your movements through the site. Cookies are often essential to using a site successfully, enabling you to check out from shopping sites or click around Facebook without having to repeatedly re-enter your password.

These first-party cookies come from the website you’re on and exist mostly to offer you a personalized web experience. Benefits include greeting you by name, giving you weather data relevant to your home location and keeping track of your achievements in a game.

It’s the third-party cookies from ads on the websites you visit that track you as you move between websites. Advertisers place these cookies in their advertisements, allowing them to follow your movements among the network of sites where they advertise.

Information about your surfing patterns goes toward compiling a profile of preferences and basic personal data — things like location, age and gender — that is used to create targeted advertising. If you’ve clicked on a lot of gardening sites, for example, targeted ad placements could even show you ads for tools or plants on non-gardening sites. If that bothers you, you can disable third-party cookies in your browser settings.

Browse in private mode

Seeing targeted advertising probably doesn’t bother most people if all they’re surfing for is news, cute cat pictures or a new iPhone. But for looking up information about something like health concerns, privacy mode allows you to browse without associating the search with your existing profile.

To open a private window in your browser:

Firefox: Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+P
Chrome: Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+N
Safari: Safari/Private Browsing
Internet Explorer: Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+P

This turns off your web history and enables the cookies necessary for the site to work but blocks third-party cookies. At the end of the session, all cookies are deleted.

The downside

Browsing in private mode does not stop the website from recording that you were there based on your IP address, which can still be tracked. And, crucially, private mode doesn’t stop social networks from tracking you. It’s best used for hiding activity on a shared computer rather than actually remaining invisible online.

Block third-party cookies

Third-party cookies aren’t the only way to track people around the Internet, but disabling them in your browser’s settings means advertisers can no longer store files on your browser to track your web surfing.

Here’s how to block third-party cookies, assuming you’re running the most recent versions of the browsers (a good idea from a security point of view):

Chrome: Preferences > Show Advanced Options (at the bottom) > Privacy > Content settings > Check “block third party cookies and site data.”
Internet Explorer: Tools > Internet Options > Privacy > Move the slider to the level of cookies you want blocked
Firefox: Preferences > Privacy > History > Select “Use custom settings for history,” then set “Accept third-party cookies” to Never.
Safari: Preferences > Privacy > Select to block cookies “from third parties and advertisers.”

The downside

Some websites require third-party cookies to work; for example, Microsoft asks you to accept cookies when downloading an update. In these cases, head into your browser settings and add the sites as exceptions.

Block the Flash super cookie

Sites may store Flash cookies on your computer regardless of whether you have allowed third-party cookies. Flash cookies can’t be easily deleted, and they may be downloaded to your computer from any website running Adobe Flash (such as sites with video or an interactive application). Designed to locally store your settings for the rich web apps that Flash enables, the capability for the Flash plug-in to allow other sites to store files in a user’s computer can also be hijacked by advertisers wanting a new way to track Internet users.

Flash cookies can identify you across different browsers on the same device and, in some cases, have been found to regenerate deleted browser cookies. Because they have far more storage (up to 100KB) than other cookies, they can contain more complex information about your habits. Like browser cookies, Flash cookies are used by websites to deliver a customized experience as well as give advertisers extra data.

Cookie cleaners and Flash player settings

Blocking Flash entirely could be an option with script-blockers such as NoScript (Firefox) or ScriptNo (Chrome). However, such plug-ins stop all Flash and Java on all pages, breaking the sites in many cases, until you can customize the settings so that trusted objects and pages can run freely. This can take a long time and represent a pain for the less technically minded.

If you use Firefox, you can download the BetterPrivacy, which automatically deletes Flash cookies as they crop up (as well as clearing cookies already there). You can also whitelist necessary Flash cookies, such as cookies used when playing a game.

If you’re not on Firefox, you’ll have to dig into your computer. First, disable future Flash cookies from being left on the machine. If you’re on a PC, open Control Panel and click on Flash player > Local Storage settings by site. You’ll find the default is “Allow All Websites to Store Data”; change it to “Block All Websites from Storing Data.” Then you can easily delete the Flash cookies by hitting the neighboring Delete All button, followed by “Delete All Site Data and Settings.”

If you’re on a Mac, change your Flash settings online at Macromedia by clicking on Global Storage Settings in the (pretty clunky) Flash-based settings manager. Uncheck the box for allowing third-party Flash content to store data on your computer. Then pull the slider for how much data third-party companies can store on your machine to None (far left).

Finally, to delete sites that have already left cookies on your computer, grab the free download CCleaner (Mac/PC), which deletes both Flash and browser cookies.

The downside

Sites including eBay use Flash cookies to verify your identity, so deleting them across the board can mean needing to re-enter passwords more frequently.

Dodge tracking you never signed up for

Microsoft recently announced it would not scan any of the content in its Outlook.com inboxes to use in targeted advertising, but Google makes no such promise with Gmail — quite the opposite.

As for the social networks, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn track users even after they’ve signed out — and even if you don’t click on a social media sharing button. The very act of landing on a page with a social-share button means it relays back to the social network. Sophos’ security blog has a straightforward account of how Twitter does it and how you can opt out. (Remember that opting out doesn’t stop ads or the collecting of information.)

In addition, Facebook uses an alternative to tracking cookies called a conversion pixel, which advertisers affix to their ads to see how many clicks they get. So a website doesn’t need a Facebook button to let Facebook know you’ve been there.

Anti-tracker plug-in Do Not Track Me (Chrome/Firefox/Safari/Internet Explorer) stops a website from sending information back to Facebook or Google unless you actually click one of the +1 or Like buttons. It also blocks other trackers and boasts a clean, intuitive interface for customizing blocking options. The Mask My Email and Make Me A Strong Password features help deter spam and hackers. When you’re signing up for a new account, masking your email address stops potentially dodgy sites from selling your real email address, while the password option creates a hard-to-guess password (that, crucially, isn’t the same as one you already use), then saves it in the plug-in’s encrypted password manager.

On the toolbar, clicking the Do Not Track Me icon shows how many trackers it has blocked — for me, 666 in under 24 hours.

Disconnect (Chrome/Firefox/Safari/Opera) is a similar plug-in that offers the additional benefit of dividing trackers into social, analytic and advertising categories. A graph shows the time and bandwidth saved by blocking trackers requesting information, and you get the option of adding trusted sites (and their cookies) to a whitelist.

The downside

There’s little downside to taking any of these anti-tracking measures. The only thing these scrappy little guys don’t do is block ads; you’ll still see them, but they won’t be targeted based on your previous clicks.

Kill most ads

Many companies (including Facebook, Twitter and Amazon) promise to honor opt-outs for “interest-based” advertising. But while opting out stops companies from delivering targeted ads based on what you’ve clicked on, it does not stop ads based on general information such as your location or other details you may have volunteered while signing up for the account. Crucially, it doesn’t stop companies tracking you and collecting your data.

To prevent ads from showing at all, thus thwarting the purpose of tracking via third-party cookies or other means, try a plug-in such as AdBlock Plus (for Chrome/Firefox/Safari/Internet Explorer), which blocks “annoying” ads: video ads, Facebook ads, pop-ups and the like. By default, a whitelist of ads that fall under the developer’s guidelines for acceptability is allowed, but you can change this setting to disable all ads.

You can also add different filters to block more or different types of ads. For example, the anti-social filter blocks social media buttons from transmitting back to the mother ship that you were there, neatly avoiding the all-seeing Facebook eye.

AdBlock Plus also blocks trackers and websites known to deliver malware.

The downside

Blocking ads deprives sites of revenue, and many websites rely on ad revenue to stay afloat. Unless you tinker with the settings for which ads should be allowed at different sites (a process that may take a long time to complete), you may end up depriving your favorite sites of those caching clicks.

Search securely

Two-thirds of U.S. search traffic is made through Google, distantly followed by Microsoft’s Bing (19%) and Yahoo (10%). While Google’s search algorithms turn up highly relevant results for most of us (in May, 31% of all Internet traffic came from Google, versus less than 2% for Bing and Yahoo combined), there’s an additional trade-off: Search results are also personalized based on what you’ve clicked on in the past.

That may not seem like such a big deal until you consider that Google also combines your search history with other information from your Google accounts, such as YouTube and Gmail, for use in targeted ad campaigns. Search histories can reveal highly personal information such as your interests, religion or health issues, substantially filling out the information already compiled from your YouTube clicks and Gmail messages.

Instead of switching to another Big Three search engine, try DuckDuckGo, which doesn’t log your searches so that all users get the same results. In our test, searches for subjects including current events (“Hong Kong protests”), general knowledge (“why is the sky blue”) and straightforward subjects (Halloween costumes), helpful links turned up in the first half of the page. However, when we typed the more ambiguous phrase “Tuscany fall cuisine,” only Google noted that we wanted autumnal food in Italy, not the town called Tuscany Falls.

DuckDuckGo also offers many of the same convenience features as Google, including a good range of “zero-click info.” For example, type “weather in California,” “650 USD in EUR” or any calculator function such as “square root of 60,” and the answer is displayed above a list of link results.

Similarly privacy-centric search providers include Ixquick, which doesn’t store your IP address or search data (and consequently doesn’t sell any of your information), delivering results based on what the five major search engines are saying. Two or more stars indicate multiple search engines have relayed the same result. However, Ixquick lacks the uber-convenient zero-click search.

Finally, the Disconnect anti-tracker plug-in also has a separate search extension that anonymizes your searches in any of the Big Three search engines as well as DuckDuckGo itself.

The downside

Auto-complete in Google Search has been a godsend when it comes to typing searches for news and factoids you can’t quite recall. Not having a search history also means not having those purpled-out links that indicate at a glance which sites you’ve previously visited (handy when you’ve forgotten to bookmark a great source).

The all-in-one option

Not up to fine-tuning settings, cherry-picking plug-ins and switching to a new search engine?

Get a whole new browser. The Epic Browser offers privacy mode as the default and only option. Epic doesn’t store web histories, search queries or cookies. Clicking on a plug icon in the URL bar turns on a proxy feature that anonymizes your computer by routing your traffic through a U.S.-based proxy network.

Epic also blocks trackers with a handy pop-up telling you exactly how many it’s blocked — and just to rub its success in competitors’ noses, it shows how many trackers exist on the other browsers you’re using. On my computer, Firefox had 143 data-collecting trackers (including Amazon, Experian, all the social networks and a ton of ad providers); Safari had 56 (including BuzzFeed, LinkedIn and Tumblr); and my Chrome browser with Do Not Track Me Plus running let through just two (eBay and ad provider Double Click).

The downside

It’s back to the caveman days of manually typing everything in, from passwords to URLs. There’s no auto-fill feature for log-ins or website addresses, because Epic doesn’t store any history. Nor does Epic save passwords, and it doesn’t yet work with password managers, so you’ll either have to remember all your log-ins or save them on your hard drive.

Browsing completely anonymously (mostly)

All of the options we’ve discussed prevent third parties from tracking you within and across websites. However, the website can still see where you came from through your IP address, and that address could be used as an alternate means of tracking your activities. For example, a person or company who disagreed with your comments on a site could use your IP information to track you down and sue you for libel.

To hide your IP address from being uncovered, you will need to use either an anonymous web proxy or virtual private network (VPN) service. Both not only mask your IP address from the website you’re visiting, but will also prevent anyone who monitors your network (e.g., your employer) from monitoring the sites you’re visiting.

The downside

Some of these services have stronger privacy options than others, and many are still susceptible to disclosure if they receive a legal subpoena from the jurisdiction where they’re located. Read our article on VPNs and web proxies for more details.

Future tracking options

What we do online has value to companies now because of what we may buy if we’re shown the relevant advertising. Down the line, we might be the ones negotiating the worth of our web habits.

Encrypt your own web behavior

The Meeco app for iOS recently launched with the ability to log your web visits — where you visited and for how long — and save the traffic into an encrypted cloud accessible only by you. Websites can only see what you click on while you’re on them, not what you do after and before, preventing the site from building a profile of you. The software also analyzes your usage patterns so you can glean insight into your habits — the same insight brands buy from data brokers now. Eventually, the idea is to create a data framework where users can offer such data to brands in exchange for loyalty points, discounts or other incentives.

Founder and CEO Katryna Dow says an aim is to help people understand that the value of their data is invaluable — and, at the moment, immeasurable.

A Meeco browser extension for Chrome and Firefox is available in beta; currently, users must manually add favorite sites to the dashboard, then click them in order to launch the site in the browser’s (natively available) private window.

The downside

Right now, the browser extension does not save the traffic to your Meeco encrypted account (as the iOS app does), but Dow says the company is looking at including the feature in future updates.

Where to draw the privacy line

Being tracked and advertised to by the websites we use is the trade-off for a free Internet. In fact, there are some really good reasons for why you may want to be tracked online,

But not drawing our own line at how much privacy we are willing to give up could mean some companies will cross that line when it comes to where they scrape information about us. Your likes, dislikes and identifying details taken from email, private messages or personal notes could then be linked (as Google already does) to information from other facets of your online life, and companies or the government may eventually make assumptions about who you are before offering you a service. Whether you find that convenient or creepy, it’s something everyone should have control over, not default into.

What do you think? Have you downloaded browser plug-ins to control your privacy, or do you believe that targeted advertising is what makes the Internet go?

This article was written by Natasha Stokes and originally appeared on Techlicious.

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‘Law & Order: SVU’ Ripped an Episode From My Headline

Posted: 23 Oct 2014 10:27 AM PDT

This story originally appeared on xoJane.com.

I’m obsessed with “Law & Order: SVU.” But that obsession is reaching a whole new level of absurdity.

You know that whole “ripped from the headlines” tagline? They just ripped mine, and it’s incredibly hard — but insanely riveting — to watch.

Warren Leight, the executive producer of the show was nice enough to let me see an advance copy of “Pornstar’s Requiem” and he agreed to answer my questions about how this entire episode came to be.

When I asked Leight (who used to be executive producer on HBO’s “In Treatment”) why he chose to dramatize my story, he explained, “As usual, we tried to distill several stories and headlines into one character’s journey. You, and others, have made the case that sex work is legitimate professional work, a potentially empowering choice individuals should be able to make without repercussions or stigmatization. Other students who’ve done pornography have not survived the harassment that followed. We wanted to tell their stories, too.”

From the very beginning scene of the episode, which shows “Evie Barnes” (played by actress Hannah Marks), a college freshman at “Hudson University” nervously doing her first porn scene on the day of her 18 birthday, my jaw dropped. Not only is Marks a slim brunette who could be my sister, she is also eerily semi-recreating one of my earliest scenes which was for a rough sex website (I will not give the company any more publicity than they’ve already received). The entire sequence soon after of a frat guy uncovering my secret through watching porn himself was all too real. I’ve never made so much noise watching an episode of “SVU” before as I did watching this, and there were certain instances where all I could say was “Oh my God, oh my God.”

Not unlike how I created the alterego of “Belle Knox,” Evie Barnes takes on the stage name of “Roxxxanne Demay” in the world of hard-core pornography.

She is eloquent but naïve, delivering many speeches during the episode with a few lines cutting me to the core. At one point she says something that felt like hearing my heart speak: “I knew I would be opening myself and my family to judgment and humiliation. But I chose to send a message that people who work in adult entertainment are still people, just like everyone else.”

Since March, when I was outed by a fellow student at Duke, I’ve felt like I was sleepwalking through a David Lynch-style dream that has included everything from hugging Whoopi Goldberg on “The View” to facing a crowd of screaming paparazzi and flashing lights to being asked to trademark a replica of my vagina. This episode of “SVU” flips that dream into a nightmare of how things could just as easily have gone very horribly terribly wrong for me.

I don’t write or discuss my rape often, because I don’t want to be viewed as a porn star cliché, nor do I want people telling me that this is why I’ve made the choices I’ve made, but I know well the chilling rape culture entitlement that comes along with men discovering that I’m a porn star. This is the scenario that plays out on the episode. One of the frat boys accused in “Pornstar’s Requiem” even goes so far as to say to the police the following jaw-dropping line: “I didn’t think you could rape a girl like that.”

Have I heard this before?

Not in those exact words, but in actions and in snide remarks, in the assumptions people make with my body and my livelihood because they have watched me in porn or heard that this is my profession. One man I was associated with professionally actually lent his key card to his friend, and at 2 in the morning, this large and loud, older and incredibly drunk stranger wandered into my hotel room — with his own key. I was terrified. Did he think that because I was a porn star he could just come in? Did he think he could do something with me? And this came from someone I thought I trusted.

Since my outing, when I’ve gone on dates, there have been times when a man has told me quickly, easily and creepily, “You like this [sexual act], right?” without asking for consent or having any discussion to imply that we might make the decision to be intimate together later on. I shut things down, but as occurred in my rape earlier in my life, this has not always been the case.

And this sexual entitlement and double standards (how could a girl who plays out a rape fantasy ever be given the privilege of consent; doesn’t she relinquish that forever if she ever engages in rough play?) is the crux of the episode. Similar to the rough scene I filmed that was my entrée into porn, Evie is smacked — hard — in the course of her filming and the appearance could be interpreted as rape fantasy. While I do not consider what I did to be that, I have heard from others that they do consider it within this purview, and I respect their right to feel that way.

Because Evie does not appear to be giving consent in her rough sex porn film, these frat boys decide that is what she likes. They don’t need her to say yes! Even when she is crying and saying no, it doesn’t count! Why, they have the other film of her as proof.

It makes me want to barf.

I won’t get into the spoilers of the episode (you should watch on NBC), but I’ll share with you what the executive producer told me about the writers’ room and the process for putting the script together.

“The writers’ room had been hashing out a number of overlapping issues lately,” Leight told me. “The increasing number of students who’ve turned to pornography to pay their tuition. How for some of those students, it’s been empowering, but for others, it’s led to horrific slut-shaming. And how a few students have been so stigmatized when their sex work becomes public, they felt driven to suicide. We also had long wanted to do an episode about how hard it is for sex workers to get justice when they are victims of sexual assault. The more we talked about these issues, the more we felt they’d combine well into one episode.”

Evie says at one point during the episode what could be the anthem of anyone who has ever done sex work: “I’m not a slut. They think just because I do porn they can do anything they want to me.”

And then she explains something that many people refuse to accept no matter how many times I try to delineate real life versus porn life. Describing her alterego of “Roxxxanne Demay,” Evie says: “I followed a script. I created a character that was different from myself. I followed an act.”

Because that’s what it is. Porn is an act. Porn stars are acting. In our personal lives we are often still sexual and flirtatious and there might be some crossover, but to categorize porn stars and sex workers as being this lesser-status breed of women who are “unrapeable” is so offensive and mind-boggling, it physically makes my head hurt.

As soon as I heard that my story was being “ripped” for an episode, my gut assured me that “SVU” would give a fair and balanced account “inspired by” what happened and have a strong feminist message against slut shaming. But soon after that, my gut turned nauseous. Happily, all of that nervous energy turned to excitement when I realized what was really happening, bottom line, through the show tackling this important topic: “SVU” was accepting the challenge of viewing consent through the lens of pornography and sex workers, a multifaceted and very necessary dialogue.

Because while Evie is brutally gangraped in a bathroom at a college party, the video evidence taken by her rapists is in no way the slam-dunk that it should be for the prosecution. Instead, it forces a question so insane, so absurd, so enraging I can barely type it without screaming.

Assistant District Attorney Rafael Barba (played by Raúl Esparza) actually has to ask, “Do you believe any woman, even a porn star, can deny sex?”

I also found myself cheering whenever Sgt. Olivia Benson (played by the inimitable Mariska Hargitay) said something profound (which was like, all the time), and covering my face when things felt too real. At several points, my cheeks burned hot with rage listening to the evil defense attorney (played by Delaney Williams) who mocks and shames and aims to discredit Evie. It is brutal. It is condescending. And it brought back painful memories of the betting pools started online as to when I would kill myself, the detailed and dedicated websites all devoted to telling the world what a slut and whore I am, and why I deserved to be punched and kicked and hit and destroyed.

Then there was Judge Briggs (played by Richard T. Jones), who says something I have heard so many times from my friends, family and peers it practically feels like my first name: “I hope going forward you find a way to respect your body and yourself.”

Yeah, thanks. I wish the same for you. I also hope you going forward you find a way to be less of a passive-aggressive sanctimonious concern troll — but you know, we can’t all have everything we want, can we?

After viewing the episode, I didn’t get much that sleep that night.

Memories of last semester came rushing back to me.

My public outing and the subsequent media storm that put every private, painful detail of my life on display seemed to play over and over in my mind. The most excruciating line from the episode was from Evie, who said, “They think just because I do porn they can do whatever they want to me.”

There is this sense of ownership of porn stars from strangers, which is, quite frankly, chilling.

I’ve found this to be exceedingly true in these past months, as strangers behind their computer screens have threatened me with rape, murder, and public humiliation. And then there are the students who have done pornography who have not lived to survive the harassment that follows, like the beautiful young woman Alyssa Funke, which is nothing short of a Shakespearean tragedy. This is a narrative that “SVU” confronts compassionately in the episode.

The episode hit close to home to say the least.

“SVU” has showed us time and time again that we should never take a character at face value, and there is so much more to a person than a tabloid headline (which in the case of this episode is: “From Straight As to XXX”) will ever reveal.

I am happy that “my” character was not portrayed as a caricature of the porn industry, but as an imperfect young woman who made some controversial choices that did not define her. Watching the episode was an emotional, at times nausea-inducing experience, and one line in particular I will never forget, as Evie tells the detectives why she will not stop doing porn. Because, she says: “At least here when I say ‘no,’ they stop.”

I asked the executive producer about what he thought about this haunting moment in particular. Leight said, “The sadness comes from Evie’s desperation, her absence of alternate options outside of porn, the confiscation of her choice. It wasn’t porn that brought her to a place of isolation and depression, but rather her sexual assault, her support system, and of course the academic system — the very one she was attempting to pay for.”

In other words, the sex industry wasn’t the problem. Society was.

Belle Knox is an adult film star and student at Duke University.

A Belgian Chocolate Company Called ISIS Has Decided to Change Its Name

Posted: 23 Oct 2014 10:25 AM PDT

Customers have gone from sweet to sour on a Belgian chocolatier because it has the same name as an Islamist militant group.

The Belgian chocolate maker’s name ISIS is supposed to stand for Italy and Switzerland, where the founder learned how to make chocolate, Reuters reports. Its website—URL “www.isischocolates.be”—says, “Ever since 1923, we at ISIS have been making premium Belgian chocolate with the utmost dedication” and talks about how the company’s chocolates create “unforgettable moments.”

But customers have been calling to say they don’t want to buy the chocolates anymore because the brand, which dates back to 1923, now makes them think of the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS), the chocolatier’s marketing manager Desiree Libeert told Reuters. “We chose ISIS as that was the brand name of our pralines and tablets,” Libeert said. “Had we known there was a terrorist organization with the same name, we would have never chosen that.”

The company will now be known as “Libeert,” the owners’ family name. Hopefully that will make the outrage melt away.

Your Supplements Might Contain Recalled Ingredients

2014-10-22T11:12:00.001-07:00

Your Supplements Might Contain Recalled Ingredients

Your Supplements Might Contain Recalled Ingredients
Ebola Survivor Speaks Out: ‘Blessed to Be Alive’
30-Second Tech Trick: Share Your Location From an iPhone Text Message
Here’s the Trailer for That Drumline Sequel You’ve Been Waiting For Since 2002
This Graph Shows Women Are More Likely To Be Stalked Online
Five Best Ideas of the Day: October 22
Apple’s Big Week Continues As Stock Price Hits a New High
Apple’s New iPads Are Great, But Not Essential
Yes, Jennifer Lopez Should Do a Las Vegas Residency
Dog Belonging to Nurse With Ebola Tests Negative for the Virus

Your Supplements Might Contain Recalled Ingredients

Posted: 22 Oct 2014 10:47 AM PDT

Dietary supplements with recalled ingredients often remain on the shelves despite a health warning from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), according to a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Looking at 27 supplements recalled between 2009 and 2012, researchers found that two thirds of those supplements what were still being sold contained the substance banned by the FDA. The other supplements either remained on the shelf with the recalled ingredient removed or were pulled completely.

The study also found that some types of supplements were more likely to contain recalled ingredients than others. Sports supplements stayed on the shelf despite containing recalled ingredients 85% of the time, higher than any other type of supplement. Only 20% of sexual enhancement supplements that had faced a recall continued to be sold with the recalled element still included, the study found.

Supplement manufacturers make varying levels of effort to ensure that their recalled product is taken off the shelves, says Pieter Cohen, a Harvard researcher who helped conduct the study.

“These companies…were so unabashedly willing to continue to sell exactly the same product that they had recalled with banned drugs in them,” he says. “It shows that the FDA is not … double checking.”

Ebola Survivor Speaks Out: ‘Blessed to Be Alive’

Posted: 22 Oct 2014 10:45 AM PDT

Ebola survivor and NBC freelancer Ashoka Mukpo says “today is a joyful day,” in a statement he released Wednesday about his recovery.

Mukpo, who was infected with Ebola while working in Liberia, was evacuated to Nebraska Medical Center for treatment. “I owe this staff a debt I can’t ever repay,” said Mukpo in a statement.

The fact that Mukpo was able to be treated in America is a circumstance that weighs on him, he writes: “I feel profoundly blessed to be alive, and in the same breath aware of the global inequalities that allowed me to be flown to an American hospital when so many Liberians die alone with minimal care.” He thanked everyone from the United States State Department, to Doctors Without Borders to NBC.

He paid a special thanks to fellow survivor Dr. Kent Brantly, who donated blood to Mukpo. “May his health flourish and his compassion be known to all,” said Mukpo.

Mukpo was declared free of Ebola and released from the hospital on Oct. 21. It’s unclear how exactly he was infected with the disease. Mukpo says he plans to discuss his experience in writing, and will talk to media, but for now he is spending time with his family and asks for privacy.

You can read his full statement here.

30-Second Tech Trick: Share Your Location From an iPhone Text Message

Posted: 22 Oct 2014 10:30 AM PDT

More Tech Tricks:

Here’s the Trailer for That Drumline Sequel You’ve Been Waiting For Since 2002

Posted: 22 Oct 2014 10:28 AM PDT

Twelve long years later, they’re making a sequel to Drumline, and it’s called —what else? — Drumline: A New Beat. After two teasers, we finally have an official full-length trailer.

In the sequel, a Brooklyn girl named Danielle disobeys her parents in order to attend Atlanta A&T and pursue her dream of becoming the first female section leader of the once-great drumline. There will be romance. There will be rivalries. There will be Nick Cannon returning in some sort of mentor capacity. (Sadly, Zoe Saldana was presumably too busy to do the same.)

This Graph Shows Women Are More Likely To Be Stalked Online

Posted: 22 Oct 2014 10:23 AM PDT

Four out of 10 adults have experienced some form of online harassment, but some of the most alarming variants — stalking and sexual harassment — disproportionately affect upon young women, according to a Pew survey released Wednesday.

The survey breaks down online harassment into six categories, from name calling and humiliation to physical and sexual threats. The milder attacks crossed gender lines and occurred so pervasively that many respondents said they chose to ignore their attacker rather than engage or withdraw from the forum.

But beneath the white noise of insults, experiences varied dramatically depending on the respondents’ age and gender. Roughly one-quarter of women aged 18 to 24 said they have been stalked or sexually harassed online, making them visible stand-outs from an otherwise level field of insults.

The Pew survey also exposes deeper divides that can exact a greater emotional toll on Internet users. “Those who exclusively experience less severe forms of harassment report fewer emotional or personal impacts,” the study authors write, “while those with more severe harassment experiences often report more serious emotional tolls.” It lends empirical weight to the argument that there’s no comparing male and female harassment online.

Five Best Ideas of the Day: October 22

Posted: 22 Oct 2014 10:03 AM PDT

1. Don’t conflate a cause with its celebrity.

By Kriss Dieglmeier at the Tides Foundation

2. Handwashing and Ebola: Understanding the power of a proven public health intervention.

By Hanna Woodburn in Ebola Deeply

3. President Obama has remade the federal courts by appointing more women and non-white judges than ever before. The impact will far outlast his administration.

By Jeffrey Toobin in the New Yorker

4. It’s vital that new pre-K initiatives are designed to build a high-quality foundation for learning.

By Beverly Falk in Hechinger Report

5. Trafficked workers — who often enter the country legally before being exploited — power many American cities.

By Tanvi Misra in Citylab

The Aspen Institute is an educational and policy studies organization based in Washington, D.C.

Apple’s Big Week Continues As Stock Price Hits a New High

Posted: 22 Oct 2014 09:59 AM PDT

Shares of Apple passed their all-time high point during morning trading Wednesday, putting an exclamation point on an already strong week for the tech giant.

Apple gained steadily to start the day and eventually touched a high-water mark of $104.11 per share, wiping out the company’s previous all-time high of $103.74 from early September. (In June, the company announced a 7 to 1 stock split.) While Apple’s shares have come back down a bit more recently, they are still up about 1% on the day and they have gained almost 6% in value so far this week. The company’s market cap is around $607 billion.

The uptick in share price follows in the wake of Apple reporting strong earnings on Monday that included a 12% third-quarter sales bump and record profits thanks to better-than-expected iPhone sales. The company also launched its new mobile payments system, Apple Pay, on Monday and the much-hyped Apple Watch is set to hit customers’ wrists early next year.

Investors will surely be keeping their eyes on Apple’s stock throughout the day today. The company’s record closing high is $103.30.

Of course, even the all-time high price for Apple stock likely won’t be high enough for Carl Icahn. The activist investor sent an open letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook earlier this month asserting his belief that Apple’s shares should be worth more than $200 each and that the company should dramatically increase its share buyback program. Icahn owns almost a 1% stake in Apple.

This article originally appeared on Fortune.com

Apple’s New iPads Are Great, But Not Essential

Posted: 22 Oct 2014 09:48 AM PDT

Apple’s latest iPads, the iPad Air 2 and the iPad Mini 3, are being released to relatively muted fanfare compared to the excitement that surrounded the launch of the company’s latest iPhones. It makes sense—while the latest iPhones sported larger screens, much-improved cameras and the ability to be used as mobile wallets in stores, the improvements to the iPad line are subtle by comparison.

The new iPads are great, reviewers say, but they may not warrant running out for an immediate upgrade. Here’s a rundown:

Over at The Verge, Nilay Patel praises the iPad Air 2’s unprecedented thinness (6.1 millimeters), improved A8X processor, TouchID fingerprint scanner and battery life. However, at $499 for the cheapest model with 16 GB of storage, he says the product doesn’t differentiate itself enough from the slightly smaller iPhone 6 Plus or a full-fledged Macbook:

iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite are designed to make the transition from iPhone to Mac easier than ever with features like Handoff and Continuity; there’s hardly any reason to take a pitstop at the iPad along the way . . . For better or worse, Apple’s allowed the iPad to become the giant iPhone its critics have always insisted that it is, and in a world with giant iPhones that’s a tough spot to be in.

The iPad Air 2 is “pretty close to perfection,” according to CNET, but it also “doesn’t do anything startling or new.” As Scott Stein explains:

The iPad Air 2 is undoubtedly better than any other current iPad, but its advantages might matter less than last year’s dramatically-redesigned iPad Air: screen quality, size, and battery life are close enough, effectively, to feel the same. Processor power and camera quality — and Touch ID — are welcome additions, but not needle-movers for the typical iPad user. Year-old iPads have never seemed like better bets.

The original iPad Air is now retailing for $399 for its cheapest model. Critics say that may be a better choice for iPad newcomers or those with even older tablets looking for an upgrade.

Apple’s new pint-sized tablet, the iPad Mini 3, probably isn’t worth its price, according to the New York Times’ Farhad Manjoo. It doesn’t sport the super-fast processor in the iPad Air 2 and it has the same weight and dimensions as its predecessor, the iPad Mini 2. The newly-added Touch ID is the main differentiating factor, along with a new gold model, but Manjoo says that’s not enough. “Unless you’re going to be doing a lot of Apple Pay shopping or you’re gaga for gold, it’s best to save the $100 and go with the Mini 2,” he writes.

The final verdict: Apple’s latest products are well-designed and probably the most advanced in their respective markets, but they still don’t quite warrant their high price tags, especially if you’re looking for more storage than the basic models provide.

Yes, Jennifer Lopez Should Do a Las Vegas Residency

Posted: 22 Oct 2014 09:40 AM PDT

Jenny from the Block may soon be Jenny on the Strip. TMZ reports that the flygirl-cum-actress-cum-diva was spotted over the weekend with her manager at Britney Spears’ Piece of Me show and Shania Twain’s Still the One performance — possibly doing research for her own iteration of the Vegas residency.

Though there’s no word yet from J.Lo herself, a stint in Sin City wouldn’t be an altogether surprising move at this stage in her career. Where a Las Vegas residency once spelled doom for fading musicians’ careers, today it’s a normal — not to mention enormously lucrative — gig in the rotation for megastars like Madonna, Elton John, and the ever-in-love Faith Hill and Tim McGraw. And while performers certainly skew middle-aged and older, Vegas dealmakers appear to be consciously appealing to younger crowds, opening up residencies to DJs like Deadmau5 and Tiesto. (Though Lopez is middle-aged herself at 45, her fan base tends to skew younger than that of the Dions and the Meatloafs and the Chers.)

A sojourn in Las Vegas spells a few things for an artist like J.Lo: stability, breathing room, and major cash. Residencies are essentially like a tour, minus the grueling travel schedule. They often consist of a handful of shows each week for four or five months, which would leave time for the other projects in Lopez’s multi-hyphenate career: judging American Idol, managing her lifestyle brand, and overseeing the foundation she started with her sister Lydia to improve health care access in under-served communities.

It would also allow Lopez some time to regroup from her 2014 album A.K.A., which disappointed with the lowest sales of her eight studio albums, selling just 60,000 copies in the U.S. She could — and likely would — return to some of the more crowd-pleasing hits from her earlier career as she mulls over where to go next.

And if none of these reasons is enough, then the six-figure nightly intake stands a solid chance at sealing the deal. Even after a tumultuous decade for Britney Spears and a rough run with her most recent album, Britney Jean, the onetime chart-topper is now raking in more than $300,000 per show, on track to gross more than $30 million over two years. Her love may not cost a thing, but J. Lo’s turn on the Vegas stage most certainly would.

Dog Belonging to Nurse With Ebola Tests Negative for the Virus

Posted: 22 Oct 2014 09:40 AM PDT

Bentley, a dog belonging to Dallas nurse and Ebola patient Nina Pham, has tested negative for the virus, the City of Dallas said Wednesday.

The dog was tested amid fears that he might have contracted Ebola from his owner, who was infected at the Dallas hospital where she cared for Thomas Eric Duncan, the only person to die of Ebola in the United States. Duncan died Oct. 8 at Dallas’ Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital.

UPDATE: Dallas says dog of nurse #NinaPham has tested negative for #Ebola. pic.twitter.com/z6YQqtbelI

— Jason Whitely (@JasonWhitely) October 22, 2014

Bentley’s samples were sent to a lab on Monday and the results show that he tested negative for the virus. The dog is being isolated and more specimens will be conducted again at the end of a 21-quarantine period.

Pham is in the care of the National Institutes of Health in Maryland.

[Jason Whitely]

Jessie Ware’s Tough Love: Why the Singer’s New Album Sounds So Bold

2014-10-21T11:26:00.001-07:00

Jessie Ware’s Tough Love: Why the Singer’s New Album Sounds So Bold

Jessie Ware’s Tough Love: Why the Singer’s New Album Sounds So Bold
U.S. Will Restrict Travel From Ebola-Hit West African Countries to 5 Airports
New York Subway Performers Rally for Arrested Musician
Supplier of Faulty Air Bags Sees Stock Plummet
North Korea Releases One of Three U.S. Detainees
Watch a Soldier Coming Back From Afghanistan Surprise His Daughter at a Pumpkin Patch
What John Grisham Got Right About Child Pornography
These Are the 5 Coolest Features of OS X Yosemite
CNN and Other Turner Stations Pulled From Dish Network
U.S.: 1 American Released From North Korea

Jessie Ware’s Tough Love: Why the Singer’s New Album Sounds So Bold

Posted: 21 Oct 2014 10:58 AM PDT

When Jessie Ware broke through with “Wildest Moments,” two things were immediately clear to anyone who followed the song’s muffled, echoing instructions to “Listen listen listen!” First, that volatile couples everywhere had a new anthem — but second, that Jessie Ware had a voice: elegant and intentionally unflashy, but still plainly capable of holding its own alongside her contemporaries. That’s part of why it’s a little shocking to hear the 30-year-old Brit admit she only recently stopped feeling self-conscious about it.

“I was scared about showing more of my voice,” Ware says of her sophomore effort, Tough Love, out now. “I couldn’t have written this album before. I didn’t feel confident enough.” What a difference a few years makes. Nearly everything about Tough Love is bolder than her 2012 debut, Devotion, from the edgier production (courtesy of one of pop’s biggest producers) to her vocals (whose power is no secret this time around) to her collaborators (hungover sessions with “Adore” crooner Miguel and a spontaneous Ed Sheeran collaboration dot the credits). Just listen to the soaring “Say You Love Me,” and it’s clear fans are dealing with a new and improved Jessie Ware. Finally, the singer jokes, she’s “letting it all hang out.”

The turning point, she says, occurred while working with “Stay With Me” songwriter James Napier, who co-wrote the album’s blistering torch song, “Pieces”; he begged the singer not to hold back for a change. “I remember Jimmy being like, ‘I want to hear you Jessie, I want to hear you sing,’” she recalls. “‘You let it rip in shows! Why can’t I hear that?’” Ware worried she was screaming bloody murder until Romy Madley Croft, the xx’s whisperer-in-chief, gave her an unlikely confidence boost. “I was like, ‘Oh God, how is this going to go down with the queen of subtlety and understated vocals?’” Ware says. “She was like, ‘I’ve been waiting for you to have a song like this.’ It really reassured me.”

Just like her debut, Tough Love drew some inspiration from a wedding. Ware wrote “Wildest Moments” after she and her best friend got into a fight at one and didn’t speak for weeks. (“I wrote a pretty good song out of it, so I’m glad we had that fight!” she says. “We’re still best friends.”) The slick electro thump of Tough Love‘s “You & I (Forever),” meanwhile, was inspired by how long it took Ware’s high school sweetheart, whom she married in August, to pop the question. (Ware herself walked down the aisle to Sade’s “Your Love Is King”; fans have gotten in touch to say they play her song “Valentine” at their weddings, which Ware notes is actually a terrible choice — the very first line is “So you will never be my lover or my valentine.”)

Part of the album’s electronic heft comes from Katy Perry and Kesha hitmaker Benny Blanco, who co-executive produced Tough Love with Sam Smith producer Two Inch Punch under the name BenZel. Word of their collaboration left fans wondering if Ware was pursuing a more club-friendly sound, which wasn’t totally out of the question, given her early work with electronic act SBTRKT and “Imagine It Was Us,” a dancefloor workout that was tacked on to the U.S. release of Devotion. Though Ware says she was inspired by Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky” when recording the Dev Hynes disco jam “Want Your Feeling,” making dance songs was never the plan. Part of the reason Blanco and Two Inch Punch work under the name BenZel — and pretended for a long time that the project was actually a group of Japanese school girls — was to put some distance between the duo’s work and Blanco’s Top 40 success. “Everyone was like, ‘She’s trying to crack America! She’s going to have a big ol’ hit!’” Ware laughs. “Benny was never that for me. He knows what kind of artist I am.”

Still, Ware says she and Blanco fought often in the studio about the direction of the new songs. She balked whenever the material veered too far into pop territory; Blanco told her to “f-ck off” and pushed her to stop hiding in her own songs. Listening to the album, it’s clear Blanco’s influence rubbed off — and that Ware is still adjusting to the change.

“I think what Benny wanted was for more people to hear me, and if that meant having more of a direct chorus, then so bloody be it!” she says. “I don’t feel like a pop star.” With Tough Love, she may not have a choice for much longer.

U.S. Will Restrict Travel From Ebola-Hit West African Countries to 5 Airports

Posted: 21 Oct 2014 10:32 AM PDT

The Department of Homeland Security announced Tuesday that airline passengers traveling to the United States from the the countries most affected by the Ebola outbreak must travel through one of five U.S. airports, where they will undergo screening.

The new restrictions take effect Wednesday and expand on a previous requirement that passengers whose travel plans originate in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone must undergo screening if they arrive at airports in New York, Newark, Washington, Atlanta or Chicago. Now, passengers must modify their itinerary to ensure they arrive at one of the five airports where they can be screened.

Though the tighter security measure is symbolically significant, it will likely only impact a small minority of travelers who arrive in the U.S. from West Africa. More than 9o% of passengers from the affected countries already arrive at those five airports via air connections in Europe or elsewhere in Africa. There are currently no direct flights from Liberia, Guinea or Sierra Leone to the U.S.

In a statement, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said that the agency would continue monitoring the situation to determine whether additional restrictions are necessary.

New York Subway Performers Rally for Arrested Musician

Posted: 21 Oct 2014 10:26 AM PDT

Buskers in New York City planned a demonstration Tuesday on behalf of a fellow subway performer whose arrest for serenading commuters was recorded by protesting bystanders and turned into a viral video, the AP reports.

Adam Kalleen was arrested in an underground station in Brooklyn Friday after he refused a police offer’s request to put down the guitar and go. While the officer said that the 30-year-old needed permission to play, Kalleen and on-lookers said that the MTA does not issue permits.

The video, which has been viewed almost half a million times on YouTube, shows people protesting Kalleen’s arrest for loitering. “You don’t have something better to do? There are people breaking real laws,” someone shouts.

The fedora-wearing busker can be seen singing Neil Young’s “Ohio,” a song written in 1970 by Neil Young about the Kent State shootings, to the chants “F*** the police” from the crowd.

The MTA guidelines state that “artistic performances, including the acceptance of donations” are permitted, although that does appear to conflict with state law that prohibits subway station loitering “for the purpose of soliciting or engaging in business.” Busker advocacy organizations exist to fight for street performers’ rights.

An NYPD spokesperson told the AP that the department is looking into the arrest.

[AP]

Supplier of Faulty Air Bags Sees Stock Plummet

Posted: 21 Oct 2014 10:19 AM PDT

Shares of the Takata Corporation dropped 23% on Tuesday following news that the airbag manufacturer had supplied potentially defective parts to a range of automakers, including Toyota, Honda and General Motors.

The market reaction was swift and decisive, the Wall Street Journal reports, after U.S. regulators issued an unusually urgent public warning to “act immediately” to resolve the defect.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating two deaths and a number of other incidents that indicate the airbags might explode under conditions of high humidity, potentially sending scraps of metal flying into passengers.

The warning prompted Toyota to recall 247,000 vehicles on Monday and warn passengers to avoid sitting in the passenger seat.

[WSJ]

North Korea Releases One of Three U.S. Detainees

Posted: 21 Oct 2014 10:19 AM PDT

North Korea has released Jeffrey Fowle, one of three Americans who have been detained by the reclusive country, the White House confirmed Tuesday.

“I am in a position to confirm that Jeffrey Fowle has been allowed to depart the DPRK and is on his way home to his family as we speak,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said in a briefing.

The U.S. negotiated Fowle’s release through the government of Sweden, which handles consular cases for American citizens in North Korea.

Fowle, who was visiting the country as a tourist, was arrested earlier this year for leaving a bible in the restroom of a club. Two other Americans, Kenneth Bae and Matthew Miller, continue to be held.

North Korea requested that the U.S. provide transportation for Fowle out of the country, and Earnest said the Department of Defense arranged transport for his trip back to the U.S.

Watch a Soldier Coming Back From Afghanistan Surprise His Daughter at a Pumpkin Patch

Posted: 21 Oct 2014 10:16 AM PDT

North Carolina mom Meg Kaplan filmed the moment when her husband surprised his daughter at a pumpkin patch. He was deployed to Afghanistan for 10 months, and the family is stationed at Fort Bragg, The TODAY Show reports. In the video, he sneaks up behind her as she’s posing for the camera and exclaims “Pumpkin Day!” Then she turns around and starts to sob. We dare you to watch this clip and not get at least a little choked up as well.

MORE: #TIMEVets: Exploring the Profound Effects of War on Those Who Serve and Their Families

PHOTOS: 12 Portraits That Illustrate the Pain and Joy of Returning to Civilian Life

What John Grisham Got Right About Child Pornography

Posted: 21 Oct 2014 10:14 AM PDT

Last week John Grisham, the best-selling author of legal thrillers, triggered a storm of online criticism by arguing in an interview with The Telegraph that criminal penalties for possessing child pornography are unreasonably harsh. Grisham, who has since apologized, spoke rather loosely, overstating the extent to which honest mistakes account for child porn convictions and the extent to which those convictions expand the prison population.

But he was right on two important points: People who download child pornography are not necessarily child molesters, and whatever harm they cause by looking at forbidden pictures does not justify the penalties they often receive.

Under federal law, receiving child pornography, which could mean downloading a single image, triggers a mandatory minimum sentence of five years—the same as the penalty for distributing it. Merely looking at a picture can qualify someone for the same charge, assuming he does so deliberately and is aware that web browsers automatically make copies of visited sites. In practice, since the Internet nowadays is almost always the source of child pornography, this means that viewing and possession can be treated the same as trafficking.

The maximum penalty for receiving or distributing child porn is 20 years, and federal sentencing guidelines recommend stiff enhancements based on very common factors, such as using a computer, possessing more than 600 images (with each video clip counted as 75 images) and exchanging photos for something of value, including other photos. In a 2009 analysis, federal public defender Troy Stabenow showed that a defendant with no prior criminal record and no history of abusing children would qualify for a sentence of 15 to 20 years based on a small collection of child pornography and one photo swap, while a 50-year-old man who encountered a 13-year-old girl online and lured her into a sexual relationship would get no more than 4 years.

Nine out of 10 federal child-porn prosecutions involve “non-production offenses”: downloading or passing along images of sexual abuse, as opposed to perpetrating or recording it. As a result of congressional edicts, the average sentence in such cases rose from 54 months in 2004 to 95 months in 2010, according to a 2012 report from the U.S. Sentencing Commission. The penalties have become so severe, the commission noted, that judges frequently find ways to dodge them, resulting in wildly inconsistent sentences for people guilty of essentially the same conduct. In a 2010 survey, 71% of federal judges said mandatory minimums for receiving child pornography are too long.

State sentences can be even harsher. Dissenting from a 2006 decision in which the Arizona Supreme Court upheld a 200-year sentence for a former high school teacher caught with child pornography, Vice Chief Justice Rebecca Berch noted that the penalties for such offenses were more severe than the penalties for rape, second-degree murder, and sexual assault of a child younger than 12.

These draconian sentences seem to be driven largely by the assumption that people who look at child pornography are all undiscovered or would-be child molesters. But that is not true.

The sentencing commission found, based on criminal records and additional information in presentencing reports, that one in three federal defendants convicted of non-production offenses in the previous decade had known histories of “criminal sexually dangerous behavior” (including prior child pornography offenses). Tracking 610 defendants sentenced in fiscal years 1999 and 2000 for 8.5 years after they were released, the USSC found that 7% were arrested for a new sexual offense.

Even allowing for the fact that many cases of sexual abuse go unreported (as indicated by victim surveys), it seems clear that some consumers of child pornography never abuse children. “There does exist a distinct group of offenders who are Internet-only and do not present a significant risk for hands-on sex offending,” says Karl Hanson, a senior research officer at Public Safety Canada who has co-authored several recidivism studies.

Another argument for sending people who look at child pornography to prison, emphasized by the Supreme Court in its 1990 decision upholding criminal penalties for mere possession, is that consumers create a demand that encourages production. Yet any given consumer’s contribution to that demand is likely insignificant, and this argument carries much less weight now that people typically obtain child pornography online for free.

Defenders of harsh penalties for looking at child pornography also argue that viewing such images imposes extra suffering on victims of sexual abuse, who must live with the knowledge that strangers around the world can see evidence of the horrifying crimes committed against them. But again, any single defendant’s contribution to that suffering is apt to be very small.

Tellingly, people who possess “sexually obscene images of children,” such as “a drawing, cartoon, sculpture, or painting”—production of which need not entail abuse of any actual children—face the same heavy penalties under federal law as people caught with actual child pornography. That provision, like the reaction to John Grisham’s comments, suggests these policies are driven by outrage and disgust rather than reason. There is clearly something wrong with a justice system in which people who look at images of child rape can be punished more severely than people who rape children.

Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason magazine and a syndicated columnist.

These Are the 5 Coolest Features of OS X Yosemite

Posted: 21 Oct 2014 10:11 AM PDT

From Apple Pay to Apple Watch — and with new iPhones and iPads launched in between — the tech world has been awash with innovations flowing from Cupertino over the past few months. Less publicized but just as game-changing, OS X Yosemite, Apple’s new Mac operating system, was released last Thursday as a free upgrade.

A major release with an array of features, Yosemite has a lot more than just new graphics and typefaces: the operating system unites Apple’s desktop and mobile devices in ways they’ve never worked together before, for instance. So while you were eyeing that oversized iPhone 6 Plus and ogling that svelte iPad Air 2, here are the five coolest, new OS X features that you missed.

1. Handoff

As fun as it is to say phablets are killing tablets or tablets are killing laptops, the reality is that most computer users are carrying around more than one machine. Yosemite’s new Handoff feature gets these multiple devices thinking like one intuitive supercomputer. For example, imagine reading about the World Series in Safari on a Mac Mini, and then turning to check the weather with an iPad. With OS X Yosemite and iOS 8 installed, you’ll find a Safari icon at the bottom left of your iPad’s lock screen, ready to be swiped and take you to the same baseball story in Safari on the tablet. It’s a fantastically fluid feature that works with an array of apps, from productivity software like Numbers and Pages to personal apps like Reminders and Contacts.

2. Desktop Macs Can Make Phone Calls

It’s almost 2015 — shouldn’t this new feature be old hat? In a way it is; Skype and Google Voice users have been yapping away for years on Macs. But Yosemite uses a new technology called “Continuity” that uses Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to link iDevices and Macs owned by the same user in order to push phone calls from iPhones to Apple computers and even iPads.

The feature is enabled by default, so it may be a bit jarring the first time your iMac rings. But with all the standard calling features like call waiting, conference calling, and even custom ringtones, it’s a welcome addition to a multi-tasker’s workflow. SMS text messages, not just iMessages, even get displayed in the Messages app, turning your MacBook into a full-fledged smartphone. Still, beware deploying this new feature in an office environment: with computers ringing and people conducting conversations via speakers and microphones, this new feature could get very old, very fast.

3. Safari Gets Private and Secure

Prior to Yosemite, Safari’s Private Browsing mode was the best way to ensure Apple’s web browser would keep your secrets. But this operating system release saw an overhaul of the browser, introducing more security features like a custom history clearing option that lets users clear history, cookies, and other data from the previous hour, day, or two days. In addition, Apple has added DuckDuckGo, a non-tracking search engine that doesn’t store users’ data, to its search offerings. And with Continuity features of its own, a Safari browser running on an Apple computer can not only share its history with browsers on associated iPhones and iPads, but it can also close tabs left open on the iOS devices—a great way to ensure people don’t view the browsing habits on your mobile devices.

4. Edit Attachments Directly In the Mail App

Little bloats a computer’s hard drive more than email attachments, especially when you need to edit them. Consider this workflow: Save the attachment, edit the saved data, and reattach the updated document — that simple exchange turns one file into three, at least tripling the space it occupies on a hard drive. Yosemite’s Mail app lets users make edits to attachments within the email window through tools that allow text to be inserted, signatures to be doodled with the touchpad, and diagrams to be drawn. It’s a small but necessary feature that is much overdue, and offers a convenience that could finally (hopefully?) spell the end of the fax machine.

5. AirDrop with iOS

Speaking of Mail, Yosemite’s Mac to iDevice diplomacy marks the end of another painstaking workaround: emailing files from your mobile device to your desktop. AirDrop is nothing new — introduced in iOS 7, it previously allowed two nearby iDevices to transfer files between each other, wirelessly. But for reasons that only Apple engineers can explain, these handhelds couldn’t send files to Macs — until now. It’s such a simple feature that it hardly feels like magic, but Yosemite’s AirDrop is representative of the overhaul Apple made with this operating system build: Finally, all your machines can interact with each other and it just works.

CNN and Other Turner Stations Pulled From Dish Network

Posted: 21 Oct 2014 10:06 AM PDT

CNN, Cartoon Network and other stations owned by Turner Broadcasting were pulled from the Dish Network lineup late Monday after negotiations between the two companies stalled. The incident is the latest flare-up in the pay-TV industry as television distributors balk at paying increasingly high programming costs to networks.

“In the past year, DISH has successfully renewed agreements with many large content providers,” Warren Schlichting, DISH’s senior vice president of programming, said in a statement. “As a result, we are confident that we have offered a deal to Turner that reflects an appropriate value for our customers.”

Turner fired back by claiming that Dish was the one who had led to the blackout. “Turner has worked diligently for months to come to a fair agreement including multiple extensions and compromises, and it’s unfortunate that Dish is once again operating in a disruptive manner that takes away networks and programming from their customers,” the company, a subsidiary of Time Warner, said in a statement.

Dish Network has about 14 million pay-TV subscribers, making it one of the largest providers in the U.S.

Spats between pay-TV operators and network owners have gotten increasingly contentious as operators have begun to shed video subscribers in recent years. A blackout of CBS on Time Warner Cable last summer lasted about a month, and the cable operator Suddenlink dropped Viacom channels indefinitely at the start of October. In their statements, both Dish and Turner indicated that they are trying to come to an agreement soon.

With HBO and CBS having just announced that they will offer their channels directly to consumers who don’t have cable, negotiations over programming costs may grow even more heated in the future. The growing discord in the pay-TV industry indicates that massive, expensive bundle of one-hundred-plus channels that we’ve all grown accustomed to may not be long for this world.

U.S.: 1 American Released From North Korea

Posted: 21 Oct 2014 10:03 AM PDT

(WASHINGTON) — Jeffrey Fowle, one of three Americans being held in North Korea, has been released, the State Department said Tuesday.

State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf said Fowle was on his way home Tuesday after negotiators left Pyongyang. Fowle is from Miamisburg, Ohio. Harf said the U.S. is still trying to free Americans Matthew Miller and Kenneth Bae.

Associated Press journalists in Pyongyang spotted the U.S. government plane at the capital’s international on Tuesday.

Washington has tried for months to send a high-level envoy to North Korea to seek release of the three men.

Analysts say North Korea has previously used detained Americans as leverage in its standoff with the U.S. over its nuclear and missile programs, a charge that Pyongyang denies.

Woman Gets Trapped in Chimney Allegedly Stalking Her Online Date

2014-10-20T11:51:00.000-07:00

Woman Gets Trapped in Chimney Allegedly Stalking Her Online Date

Woman Gets Trapped in Chimney Allegedly Stalking Her Online Date
Amazon’s Kindles Compared: Voyage vs Paperwhite vs Standard
Indiana Authorities ID Suspected Serial Killer in Custody
New Ryan Murphy Anthology Scream Queens Coming to Fox
Before We Embrace Gwen Stefani’s Comeback, She Owes Us An Apology
What Hurricane Sandy Teaches Us About the Warnings We Can’t Hear
Why So Many Women Are Crying at the Gym
Let’s Fix It: The H-1B Visa Process Needs Improvement
Planned Parenthood Thinks It Found a Way to Stop Middle Schoolers from Having Sex
Death Toll Linked to GM Ignition Switch Defect Rises to 29

Woman Gets Trapped in Chimney Allegedly Stalking Her Online Date

Posted: 20 Oct 2014 11:30 AM PDT

A woman rescued from a chimney was arrested and charged with allegedly using the chimney to try and break into the home of a man she had met online.

The Ventura County Fire Department was called to a Thousand Oaks, California, home early Sunday morning, when it was reported that a woman was stuck in a chimney.

Firefighters used a jackhammer to break apart the chimney and lubricated the flue with dish soap in order to lift the woman out of the chimney. She was then placed in a basket and lifted off the roof by a ladder truck, according to Ventura County Fire Department Capt. Mike Lindbery’s tweets regarding the incident.

#entrapment patient was lifted out of chimney and hoisted from roof using ladder truck and stokes basket pic.twitter.com/SlUITCmXpU

— Capt Mike Lindbery (@VCFD_PIO) October 19, 2014

#ThousandOaks #entrapment FFs have reached the conscious victim. Extrication expected soon. pic.twitter.com/W2O1EGX73u

— Capt Mike Lindbery (@VCFD_PIO) October 19, 2014

The woman, who remained conscious during the misadventure, was taken to the hospital for examination. Her condition was not immediately known, according to KTLA.

The so-called “entrapment patient” was later identified as Genoveva Nunez-Figueroa, 30, and the home’s resident, who did not wish to be identified, said he met Nunez-Figueroa online and had gone on several dates with her, but had recently ended the relationship, according to the local ABC news affiliate.

The woman’s “intent was unclear,” according to police, but as Christmas is still months away, she was probably not playing Santa Claus or chimney sweep, as this is the second time Nunez-Figueroa was found on the man’s roof. Two weeks ago, she was spotted, but disappeared when police were called.

Nunez-Figueroa was arrested for allegedly illegally entering a residence and providing false information to a peace officer, the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department stated in a news release.

The home’s resident wanted other online daters to learn from his cautionary tale. “Before you have somebody come in your house really check them out … really give it some time before you let somebody in, because they might want to stay,” he told KTLA.

Amazon’s Kindles Compared: Voyage vs Paperwhite vs Standard

Posted: 20 Oct 2014 11:29 AM PDT

Amazon’s Kindle e-book readers are generally hot holiday items, so let’s explore the various differences between the three available models.

There’s the new $199+ Kindle Voyage, the $119+ Kindle Paperwhite and the $79+ standard Kindle to choose from. Here’s a closer look at what you’re getting.

Screen

Size

Choosing by screen size is easy since they’re all six inches diagonally. Things change once we dig into resolutions and lighting technology.

Resolution

The Kindle Voyage has the best screen, with a 300 pixels-per-inch resolution. The more pixels smooshed into an inch of screen, the better everything looks. The Kindle Paperwhite smooshes 212 pixels into an inch; the standard Kindle smooshes 167 pixels into an inch.

The big question is whether your eyes can discern the differences. I can tell you that when looking at the Paperwhite and the Voyage side by side, the difference is noticeable when looking at graphics and slightly less noticeable when looking at text. The standard Kindle looks… I wouldn’t say “the worst” because it doesn’t look bad. It just looks least good — let’s say that. I’d say the $40 jump from the standard Kindle to the Kindle Paperwhite is a much better value than the $80 jump from the Paperwhite to the Voyage, though.

Reading Light

The standard Kindle has no light; the Paperwhite and Voyage both have built-in lights. They both max out at nearly the same brightness, although the Voyage looks a little cleaner and whiter, and can automatically adjust its screen brightness to match your environment.

Touchscreen

All three devices feature touchscreens, though the Kindle Voyage features squeeze-able side bezels that allow you to turn pages back and forth as well. There’s a nice little vibration feedback with each press when using the Voyage.

Video: Kindle Paperwhite vs Kindle Voyage

Here’s a closer look at the $119 Paperwhite up against the $199 Voyage:

Storage

Wondering which Kindle can hold the most books? The answer is yes. Yes to any of them: They all have four gigabytes of storage, good for over a thousand books.

Size

The Kindle Voyage is the smallest, measuring 6.4″ long by 4.5″ wide by 0.3″ thick and starting at 6.3 ounces (the 3G version weighs 6.6 ounces).

The Kindle Paperwhite measures 6.7″ long by 4.5″ wide by 0.36″ thick and starts at 7.3 ounces (the 3G version weighs 7.6 ounces). The standard Kindle measures 6.7″ long by 4.7″ wide by 0.4″ thick and weighs 6.7 ounces (there’s no 3G version).

They’re all incredibly portable. I’m not sure buying one over the other based on a tenth of an inch here or an ounce there makes a whole lot of sense, but those are the measurements.

Battery Life

The standard Kindle lasts up to four weeks on a single charge, assuming a half hour of reading each day with the wireless connection turned off. It fully charges within four hours.

The Kindle Voyage lasts up to six weeks on a single charge, assuming a half hour of reading each day with the wireless connection turned off and the light set at 10 (the max is 24). It fully charges within three hours.

The Kindle Paperwhite lasts up to eight weeks on a single charge, assuming a half hour of reading each day with the wireless connection turned off and the light set at 10 (the max is 24). It fully charges within four hours.

So as we see here, the Paperwhite actually has the best battery life. That’s probably a factor of its screen not having to push as many pixels around as the Voyage’s screen. The Paperwhite being ever so slightly thicker than the Voyage might make for a slightly higher-capacity battery as well.

3G or Not 3G?

That is the question. Adding a 3G cellular connection to your Kindle Paperwhite or Kindle Voyage adds $70 to the price tag, but results in being able to download books anywhere you have an AT&T signal — over 100 countries and territories are covered (see this map). There are no monthly service charges for downloading books, though you might incur added charges for downloading magazines and other periodicals.

If you read a lot of books and want to be able to download new ones frequently — especially while you’re on the move — the 3G version of whichever Kindle you’re considering is a no-brainer. If you’re going to be using the Kindle at home a lot or you’ll be around accessible Wi-Fi networks, save the $70.

Best Bet

To be clear, the new Kindle Voyage is an amazing e-book reader. It’s super portable, its screen is gorgeous and the added haptic-feedback page turns are a nice touch. However, the $119 Kindle Paperwhite is still a dynamite e-book reader and is a very worthy upgrade for $40 over the standard Kindle because of its higher-resolution screen and its built-in light. Making the $80 jump from the $119 Paperwhite to the $199 Voyage is a much tougher sell.

Indiana Authorities ID Suspected Serial Killer in Custody

Posted: 20 Oct 2014 11:27 AM PDT

Authorities on Monday identified the suspect held in connection with seven bodies that were found across northwest Indiana over the weekend.

Hammond Police Chief John Doughty said in a press conference on Monday that Darren Vann, 43, of Gary, was detained after officers discovered the strangled body of a 19-year-old woman in a motel on Friday evening. Vann, who Doughty said was a convicted sex offender in Texas, had solicited Afrika Hardy in a “pay-for-service prostitution scheme” through a website.

“He admitted his involvement in the Hammond incident and had expressed an interest in notifying police of other criminal incidents he was involved with,” Doughty said, specifically about six more female victims in Gary.

One of those victims was Anith Jones, 35, who had been missing since Oct. 8 and whose body was discovered Saturday night. Five more bodies were discovered on Sunday, according to NBC Chicago, with two victims identified as Teairra Batey, 28, and Christine Williams, 36.

Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr. posted on Facebook before the press conference that the suspect was an “admitted serial killer” and “convicted sexual offender,” who “admitted to a couple of homicides in Hammond back in 94 or 95.”

New Ryan Murphy Anthology Scream Queens Coming to Fox

Posted: 20 Oct 2014 11:13 AM PDT

Ryan Murphy really loves his anthologies.

Fox has announced a straight-to-series order for Scream Queens, a new anthology series with hour-long episodes from Murphy and his Glee and American Horror Story co-creator Brad Falchuk, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The 15-episode series will premiere next fall and focus on a college campus that becomes the site of several murders.

“We hope to create a whole new genre — comedy-horror — and the idea is for every season to revolve around two female leads,” Murphy said in a statement. “We’ve already begun a nationwide search for those women, as well as 10 other supporting roles.”

It’s the second new anthology series from Murphy coming to television soon. Earlier this month, FX, the home of American Horror Story, announced American Crime Story, which will devote its first 10-episode season to the O.J. Simpson trial.

[THR]

Before We Embrace Gwen Stefani’s Comeback, She Owes Us An Apology

Posted: 20 Oct 2014 11:11 AM PDT

Gwen Stefani dropped her comeback song, “Baby Don’t Lie” today, and according to Pharrell (the unofficial arbiter of hits du jour), the follow-up album is on “another level.” And that’s all well and good, but before we embrace Stefani as a comeback queen, we should pause to remember that she perpetuated some extremely racist stereotypes when she debuted her first solo album Love. Angel. Music. Baby. 10 years ago.

Remember the Harajuku Girls? No? Here’s a refresher:

After dropping the album, Stefani used four backup dancers known as the “Harajuku girls” in all her performances and as an entourage offstage. They followed her everywhere and were reportedly contractually obligated to only speak Japanese in public. She renamed them — as if they were pets — “Love,” “Angel,” “Music” and “Baby” after her album title. As you can see in the video for the song “Harajuku Girls” above, the women are basically puppets. The lyrics of her actual songs aren’t much better. In “Harajuku Girls,” Stefani calls their culture, “A Ping-Pong match between Eastern and Western.”

At the time, comedian Margaret Cho compared the Harajuku girls to blackface and lamented how few portrayals of Asian culture there are in popular culture:

Even though to me, a Japanese schoolgirl uniform is kind of like blackface, I am just in acceptance over it, because something is better than nothing. An ugly picture is better than a blank space, and it means that one day, we will have another display at the Museum of Asian Invisibility, that groups of children will crowd around in disbelief, because once upon a time, we weren’t there.

MadTV even mocked Stefani’s racism with a skit:

But other than those critiques, the pop culture world wasn’t vocal enough on Stefani’s appropriation of Asian culture for personal gain. Sure, 2004 was a different time — but it isn’t localized to that era: Stefani has a Harajuku Lovers line of fragrances and a Harajuku Mini fashion line for Target. Her obsession with the culture walks a very thin line between admiration and appropriation. It’s easy to wonder if Stefani had a hand in inciting what has now become a common cultural practice of white female pop stars using other races as props.

Last year, Miley Cyrus’ use of twerking black backup dancers at the Video Music Awards launched 1,000 think pieces on whether Cyrus was playing on black stereotypes to prove that she was now a rebel. Critics have also blasted Katy Perry for dressing up like a geisha with makeup that made her eyes look slanted during the 2013 American Music Awards. Earlier this year, Avril Lavigne released an extremely racist music video for “Hello Kitty.” Stefani’s behavior a decade ago set the precedent.

And it doesn’t look like Stefani learned her lesson: just two years ago, her band No Doubt had to pull the music video for their song “Looking Hot,” which featured band members playing a game of Cowboys and Indians. (In it, the very white Stefani dressed up like a Native American.) When Native American groups predictably called the video racist, the band apologized, saying, “Our intention with our new video was never to offend, hurt or trivialize Native American people, their culture or their history. Although we consulted with Native American friends and Native American studies experts at the University of California, we realize now that we have offended people.”

Stefani has not issued any such apology for her Harajuku girls. Maybe it’s time she does.

What Hurricane Sandy Teaches Us About the Warnings We Can’t Hear

Posted: 20 Oct 2014 10:58 AM PDT

8:40 a.m.

National Weather Service Forecast Office

Mt. Holly, New Jersey

52°F

Barometer: 30.13 inches (rising) Winds: Calm

Skies: Overcast

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Meteorologist Gary Szatkowski was reconsidering. He hadn’t slept well that night, and when he walked into the forecasting room that morning, he could tell his staff hadn’t, either. Even from his office, he could hear the ceaseless ringing of the phones at the public affairs desk. Calls to the office were increasing, and they weren’t just from concerned residents anymore. Some of the state’s emergency management teams had begun to phone as well, wondering if they needed to start initiating storm plans. “Something was definitely cooking,” says Szatkowski. “Things were beginning to spin up.”

And with that spin-up would come an inevitable pile of growing rumors that would turn into extreme or even ridiculous stories of Armageddon. That’s the last thing Szatkowski wanted. But he didn’t want an erroneous forecast, either. If there’s anything that gets the general public distrustful, it’s telling them about a storm that never manifests. Any effect Sandy might have on the mid-Atlantic was still seven days out—further than had ever been forecast before. Still, the ECMWF was remaining constant in its prediction. And the meteorologists on his listserv were inclined to believe it.

It’d be a big risk to make any kind of definitive statement so early in the game. He quizzed his staff: What did they feel confident about? What could be said in a storm briefing at this point? What was too big a risk?

“We have a way of forgetting what storms can do,” says Szatkowski. And that makes him really frustrated. “People lose sight of the damage tropical systems have already done to this region.” A massive hurricane hit New York in 1821, bringing with it flooding so high that the Hudson and East Rivers converged across much of lower Manhattan. Since then, a series of storms have wreaked havoc on the Big Apple. In 1954, not a single hurricane struck Florida, Georgia, or the Gulf states. But an unprecedented three hurricanes swept across New York and other North Atlantic states, collectively resulting in more than $500 million dollars in damage (about $4.8 billion dollars today) and the deaths of 229 people, most of whom drowned. Carol, the worst of the three storms to hit the New York region, brought storm tides of fifteen feet; many parts of Providence, Rhode Island, were left with ten feet of standing water. “Considering past experience, which indicates normal expectancy of only five to ten hurricanes per century in New England, two in one year is extraordinary,” wrote Walter R. Davis of the Miami Weather Bureau office.

Less than a year later, Davis and other hurricane specialists watched, dumbstruck, as Hurricanes Connie and Diane battered southern New England and flooded large portions of Connecticut and New York. With just days between the two storms, the hurricanes not only called into question just how unlikely an appearance they were in northern latitudes, but also how prepared the region was to deal with them. Diane soon earned what Davis called “the unenviable distinction of ‘the first billion-dollar hurricane.’ ” In the year-end report he authored with other meteorologists from the Weather Bureau, Davis also deemed the storm “undoubtedly the greatest natural catastrophe in the history of the United States.”

It was a distinction that would soon be eclipsed by more than a dozen other storms. And, like Diane, several of them would leave a path of destruction across the North Atlantic region. In 1960, Hurricane Donna flushed New York Harbor with eleven feet of storm tide. Nearly forty years later, Tropical Storm Floyd forced massive evacuations as 60-mile-per-hour winds battered New York City, bringing with them more than a foot of rain. The Great Atlantic Storm of 1962, quite possibly the worst storm to hit the region, brought forty-foot waves off the coast of New York and New Jersey, along with torrential rain and flooding for much of the region. More than forty-five thousand homes were destroyed in New Jersey alone.

Most Americans either don’t remember these storms or never heard about them in the first place. That makes it next to impossible to learn any lessons from them. And that makes the otherwise unflappble Gary Szatkowski mad.

“When it comes to dealing with risk, we need a lot of improvement as a society. I get passionate about that.” True to his Midwestern upbringing, Szatkowski gets passionate by tapping his hand on his desk and smiling. That, and putting down his head and getting to work.

The best solution he had at his disposal was the creation of a storm briefing. But no one had ever made one of those for a hurricane that might make landfall seven days later.

“A week out, you can’t be talking in any level of detail,” says Szatkowski. “The best you can say at that point is, ‘Yes, there’s a storm out there. It might be impacting us.’ ”

Maybe, he thought, that will be enough—enough to at least get people thinking.

“It takes a while to get people to the right place to make the right decision,” he says. And even then we tend to make the wrong decision when staring a natural disaster in the face. Szatkowski didn’t want to see that happen.

An hour later, he was pretty sure he had a plan. So, sitting at his computer desk, he began to write what would soon become a historic report. “Tropical Storm Sandy is expected to reach hurricane strength on Wednesday,” he began. “It will continue to move northward. This storm system will bring multiple potential threats to the region.”

Szatkowski paused. This was the kind of statement that ratcheted up panic levels. It’d be all the emergency management teams needed to shift into high gear. Yet, for all he knew, it could be totally wrong:

With days to go before landfall, the storm could just as easily peter out or make a beeline for Europe. He looked at the data again. He thought about the worst-case scenario. And then he decided that he didn’t want to be responsible for anyone living that scenario. He included the map of the computer model tracks—twenty of them, in fact. He pointed out that there was still an enormous spread—thousands of miles, actually—between them. But the European model, while still in the minority, was no longer alone in its prediction that Sandy was destined for the Eastern Seaboard. The effects of that track, he said, could be disastrous. The entire region could be assaulted by very strong winds. The slow, lumbering pace of the storm meant that total rainfall amounts would cause major flooding. “The takeaway message is that our region could be close to the path of a very dangerous storm. Our region is clearly at risk.”

Szatkowski printed out the draft and returned to the forecast room. He handed out copies to all the meteorologists there and then sat down, waiting for his staff to read it. He watched them carefully.

“Does this make you uncomfortable?” They shook their heads.

“Is the emphasis right?”

They said it was. So their supervisor went back into his office. But he didn’t publish the briefing right away. Instead, he sat for a while, his hands resting on the keyboard. He thought again about the consequences of this briefing—the way it would undoubtedly turn the country’s biggest metropolitan area into a bluster of storm preparations. This storm could turn out to be nothing, a voice said somewhere inside his head. And that statement of doubt held sway—but just for a few moments.

“Our job at the NWS is to make sure people know what they need to know when they need to know it,” says Szatkowski. That time, he decided, was right now. He took a deep breath and hit send.

Kathryn Miles, author of Superstorm: Nine Days Inside Hurricane Sandy, is an award-winning science writer whose work has appeared in Best American Essays. She is currently writer-in-residence for Green Mountain College and a faculty member in Chatham University’s MFA program.

Why So Many Women Are Crying at the Gym

Posted: 20 Oct 2014 10:53 AM PDT

“Let it out! Let out the sludge!”

It’s 7am on a Tuesday, at a small dance studio in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood, and Taryn Toomey is stomping her feet into the floor like thunder. “Get rid of the bullsh*t!” she shouts. “Get rid of the drama!”

Two dozen women in yoga pants and sports bras sprint in place behind her, eyes closed, arms flailing. Sweat is flying. The Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” is blaring in the background. There are grunts and screams. “Hell yes!” a woman bellows.

When the song ends, Toomey directs the group into child’s pose, torso folded over the knees, forehead on the floor, arms spread forward. Coldplay comes on, and there is a moment of rest. “Inhale. Exhale. Feel your center,” Toomey says. Heads slowly come up, and suddenly, tears are streaming down the faces of half the room. A woman in front of me is physically trembling. “I just let it all out,” a middle-aged woman in leggings and a tank top whispers.

This is “The Class”—one part yoga, two parts bootcamp, three parts emotional release, packaged into an almost spiritual… no, tribal… 75 minutes. It is the creation of fashion exec turned yoga instructor Toomey, and it is where New York’s high-flying women go for emotional release (if, that is, they can get a spot).

“During my first class I didn’t just cry, I sobbed,” says McKenzie Hayes, a 22-year-old New Yorker who has become a regular in the class. “Whether it’s your job or your relationships, I literally picture my emotional problems being slowly unstuck from my body and moved out.”

Toomey calls that “sludge”: it’s the emotional baggage we carry in our muscles that has nowhere else to go. She’s not a doctor. But week after week, she encourages participants to sweat, scream and cry out those emotions, in the company of a group of mostly women who are doing the same. “I’ve had classes where people are literally on all fours sobbing,” Toomey says. “But it’s not just my class, it’s happening everywhere. Emotional release in public can feel very uncomfortable. But I think there’s a growing movement of people who want to find a space for it.”

Indeed, the message to women has long been to hide your tears lest you look weak. (Among the tactics: jutting out your jaw. Breathing exercises. Chewing gum. Drinking water.) Yet while crying in the office may remain a feminine faux pas, tears at the gym seem to have lost their stigma — to the extent that there are a bevy of fitness courses that even encourage it.

For Asie Mohtarez, a Brooklyn makeup artist, it began in hot yoga. The music was on, the floor was warm, the instructor was standing over her encouraging her to let go. “I was in child’s pose and I just lost it,” she says. Then, two weeks later, it happened again – this time at Physique 57. The Dirty Dancing soundtrack came on and it was waterworks again. “There’s something about these classes that feel safe,” says the 33-year-old. “I can’t cry at work. I’m not emotionally distraught enough to cry in the shower. I can’t just burst into tears in front of my husband. So, what does that leave you with?”

You could go to therapy – or you could hit the gym. Women are getting teary in SoulCycle, and misty-eyed at Pure Barre. They are letting out wails in yoga and rubbing the shoulder of the weepy woman next to them at CrossFit. “I think people have started to notice that their clients are just showing up to class and just unloading, and so they’re tailoring their classes to create space for this,” says Hayes, who is a pilates instructor by day. “When I take private clients I end up feeling like a therapist for them.”

These fitness instructors aren’t trained in that, of course. But they’ve probably been there.

“I usually just go over to the student after class and quietly ask how they’re feeling,” says Kristin Esposito, a yoga instructor in Los Angeles who sees criers often. “My classes are focused on release so it feels pretty natural.”

Physiologically, it is: Exercise releases endorphins, which interact with serotonin and dopamine, the chemicals that impact mood. In yoga, deep hip openers – like the “pigeon pose” – are meant to stir emotions (yogis believe our emotional baggage lives in our hips).

But many of the newer courses are specifically choreographed to release emotion, too – making it all that much more intense. The lights are dim, candles flicker in the background. It’s not an accident that just as you’re starting to relax, coming down from the adrenaline, you’re blasted with a throaty ballad. Those playlists are meticulously constructed. “I’ve been teaching for almost 20 years, so I’ve basically seen it all: crying, laughing, throwing up, overheating,” says Stacey Griffith, a Soul Cycle instructor. “There are moments in the class that are directly programmed for that reason – but it’s not like we’re trying to get people to cry. We’re giving them the space to step outside of themselves.”

And indeed, that may be necessary. We’re busier, more stressed and more connected than we’ve ever been. Simply finding the time to have that “space” can be near impossible, making the release that these courses offer – packaged neatly into an hour – a kind of fix. “The night before, I can’t wait,” says Hayes of Toomey’s class. “I already know what will be the flood that I’m working through. And sometimes conversations with friends just don’t cut it.”

Getting those emotions out is a good thing – at least in moderation. Emotional tears contain manganese, potassium, and a hormone called prolactin, which help lower cholesterol, control high blood and boost the immune system. Crying reduces stress, and, according to one study, from the University of Minnesota, actually improves the mood of nearly 90 percent of people who do it. “You really do feel lighter after,” says Hayes.

“To me, it’s a sign of being present, it’s a sign of feeling your feelings, of being in the moment,” says Toomey, just after “the class” has ended. Plus, shoulder to shoulder in a hot room, there is almost a sense of communal release. Of high-charged emotional camaraderie. “I so needed this,” a woman tells her on the way out, with a hug. And, of course, with that much sweat, the tears are almost hidden anyway.

Let’s Fix It: The H-1B Visa Process Needs Improvement

Posted: 20 Oct 2014 10:28 AM PDT

This Influencer post originally appeared on LinkedIn. Kevin Chou shares his thoughts as part of LinkedIn’s Influencer series, “Let’s Fix It” in which the brightest minds in business blog on LinkedIn about how they would fix what’s broken in this world. LinkedIn Editor Amy Chen provides an overview of the 60+ Influencers that tackled this subject as part of the package. Follow Kevin Chou and insights from other top minds in business on LinkedIn.

Sometimes, when trying to make a point, it’s better to tell a story than rattle off a series of statistics. This approach is useful for me when talking about why our current H-1B visa process is something I’d fix.

I’ve written before about how, as the son of immigrants, immigration reform is personal to me. We know that the number of H-1B petitioners far surpasses the number of visas available. I don’t want to rekindle a debate about how many H-1B visas should be given, or whether ornot there is a STEM worker shortage in the U.S.

I’m here to tell a story about one of my employees that illustrates why we at my company, Kabam, likes to hire foreign workers to augment our talented U.S. workforce.

Always be learning
Jill is originally from Taiwan, where she had already graduated from college and held a master’s degree. She came to America on a student visa to study computer science at Carnegie Mellon where she earned her second master’s degree.

At Kabam, we place a high value on education and feel it’s important to always consider yourself a student, even after school. Through her extended education, Jill showed the desire to continually expand and deepen her skills, even if that meant doing so in a second language in a completely different country.

The Nitty-Gritty
Foreigners that want to work in the U.S. display another attribute that we value at Kabam — grit, or the ability to make it happen. Nothing was handed to Jill on her journey; all that she’s done was achieved through her own force of will.

Each step of the way from student to intern to full-time student had its own level of regulatory paperwork, including documentation (and more documentation) that had to be perfect in its presentation every time. Yet, she always met the bureaucratic criteria while still studying and working full-time.

Sweating the Small Stuff
Navigating the visa process also shows a remarkable ability to pay attention to detail, another trait highly valued at Kabam. As you can imagine, there is little margin for error with Jill’s paperwork when it came to government regulators.

Additionally, Jill had to time things just right. She had to balance looking for and accepting any kind of internship or job offer with the timing constraints of her visa, as well as obtaining the necessary paperwork.

These are skills that serve her well in her current role at Kabam.

Perseverance
Luck — both good and bad — also plays a role Jill’s story. She was fortunate enough to have graduated in 2009, a time when H-1B visas were still plentiful, so getting one was not as much an issue back then.

But she encountered her share of bad luck, like the Friday when she was told, out of the blue, that her H-1B visa transfer had been denied (because of an external clerical error) and she had to leave the U.S. that day and return to Taiwan.

Rather than succumb to defeat at this shocking development and give up, Jill returned to Taiwan, kept her cool and was able to legally get back in the country in a decent amount of time, get a new visa and rejoin us at work.

Worldly Wise
To be truly successful in this always-on, interconnected world, companies need to be globallysuccessful. Employees from other parts of the world bring with them an international view that is indispensable when looking to expand into new markets.

For Kabam in particular, we are looking to grow dramatically in Asia. Jill brings with her knowledge of the region and is fluent in both Chinese and English, making her a valuable asset in that expansion plan.

To be clear, I don’t see H-1B visa workers as replacements for American workers, nor am I saying that American workers don’t have these skills. As we become more of a global company, H-1B visa workers have the characteristics we look for and that can help the company grow and produce even more jobs for more American workers.

We’d like to tell more success stories like J’s, but with the H-1B visa process being a lottery, we can’t go after qualified non-U.S. citizen candidates because it’s too risky for us to make them an offer, make plans for their arrival and then be denied the ability to actually on-board them because of a lack of visa availability.

That’s something I’d like to fix.

In this series of posts, Influencers explain what they wish they could fix — and how. Read all the stories here and write your own (please include the hashtag #FixIt in the body of your post).

Planned Parenthood Thinks It Found a Way to Stop Middle Schoolers from Having Sex

Posted: 20 Oct 2014 10:24 AM PDT

Planned Parenthood is touting a new study that found its middle school sex education program successfully delays sex for both boys and girls by the end of 8th grade by encouraging more talk about the subject between students and their parents outside the classroom.

The study, conducted by the Wellesley Centers for Women in partnership with Planned Parenthood, evaluated the Get Real program in 24 schools in the Boston area over the course of three years. The curriculum spans sixth through eighth grade and has students pair lessons in school with take-home assignments designed to start dialogues between them and their parents or caregivers. Of the 24 schools in the study, half used Get Real and half used their usual sexual education curriculum; 16% fewer boys and 15% fewer girls had sex in the schools using the Get Real curriculum. The study was published in the Journal of School Health.

“Awkward as this might be for some, Get Real makes it a little less awkward and easier to have these conversations,” said Lisa Grace, a parent in a Massachusetts school district using Get Real.

Along with highlighting parents as the primary sexual educators for their children, Get Real also focuses on relationship skills as an avenue for sexual health.

“If kids are able to negotiate relationships, they will be better able to negotiate sexual relationships,” said Jennifer Slonaker, a vice president of education and training for the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts.

Get Real is currently taught in 150 schools in Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island and Texas. Planned Parenthood representatives hope the program’s success can be replicated on a larger national scale, even in more conservative states.

“The curriculum does not espouse values,” said Grace, the mother in Massachusetts. “It makes it very clear that the parents should continue to be the primary sexual educators for their kids. So that reassured a lot of folks.”

“This is a program for older elementary and early middle school students that helps young people to delay having sex,” said Leslie Cantor, a vice president for education at Planned Parenthood. “So even states that stress abstinence… might be very interested in this type of program since it actually gets to these abstinence kind of outcomes.”

Death Toll Linked to GM Ignition Switch Defect Rises to 29

Posted: 20 Oct 2014 10:21 AM PDT

The number of deaths linked to a faulty ignition switch in General Motors vehicles rose to 29 on Monday, according to a new report, after two new death claims were approved by the program that will compensate victims and their families.

The fund has received more than 1,500 claims since its establishment on Aug. 1, including 184 submissions for death claims, Reuters reports. All 29 deaths, and another 27 injuries, have been determined to be eligible for compensation so far, finds the report released by the office of Kenneth Feinberg, who is heading the compensation effort.

GM launched the fund amid withering criticism for its failure to address the defect after several employees within the company noted the problem at least 11 years before any action was taken to resolve it.

[Reuters]

Military Prepares 30-Person Ebola Team For U.S.

2014-10-19T11:27:00.001-07:00

Military Prepares 30-Person Ebola Team For U.S.

Military Prepares 30-Person Ebola Team For U.S.
Fury Seizes No. 1 From Gone Girl at Box Offices
Watch a Giant, 4.6 Billion-Year-Old Comet Fly By Mars
Gamblers Get Less Of a Buzz From Pleasure, Study Finds
Police May Have Found Body of Missing UVA Student
Buffy the Vampire Slayer Star Nicholas Brendon Arrested
Annual Pumpkin Festival Goes Horribly Wrong
10 Recipes That Prove Bacon Makes Everything Better
12 Superfoods That Warm You Up
10 Ways to Stop Feeling Overworked and Overwhelmed

Military Prepares 30-Person Ebola Team For U.S.

Posted: 19 Oct 2014 11:19 AM PDT

The U.S. military is forming a 30-person medical team to prepare to respond to additional cases of Ebola in the United States, the Pentagon announced Sunday.

The “expeditionary medical support team” will consist of 20 critical care nurses, five doctors trained in infectious disease, and five trainers in infectious disease protocols, Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby said in a statement.

“In response to a request from the Department of Health and Human Services—and as an added prudent measure to ensure our nation is ready to respond quickly, effectively, and safely in the event of additional Ebola cases in the United States—Secretary Hagel today ordered his Northern Command Commander, Gen. Chuck Jacoby, to prepare and train a 30-person expeditionary medical support team that could, if required, provide short-notice assistance to civilian medical professionals in the United States,” Kirby said.

The team will begin specialized training in infection control and the use of personal protective equipment within the next week, at Fort Sam Houston.

“Upon conclusion of training, team members will remain in a ‘prepare to deploy’ status for 30 days, available to be sent to other [contiguous United States] locations as required,” Kirby said. “They will not be sent to West Africa or elsewhere overseas and will be called upon domestically only if deemed prudent by our public health professionals.”

Up to 4,000 American troops are being deployed to assist in responding to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, but they are not involved in direct patient care.

The Pentagon team formation follows last week’s Ebola diagnosis of a second health care professional in Dallas, the third confirmed case of the virus in the United States, causing public concern about the spread of the disease to reach new heights.

The virus is only spread through direct contact with the bodily fluids of those who are symptomatic with the disease.

U.S. officials say they are confident they can stop the spread of the disease in the U.S. In an appearance on Fox News Sunday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health reiterated that the risk of an outbreak in the U.S. is minimal.

“There aren’t absolutes. Nothing is completely risk-free,” he said. “But the relative risk of things, people need to understand, is very, very small.”

Fury Seizes No. 1 From Gone Girl at Box Offices

Posted: 19 Oct 2014 10:01 AM PDT

The reign of Gone Girl is over. After two weeks at No. 1 across North American box offices, David Fincher’s marital thriller ceded to the World War II movie Fury, which stars Brad Pitt.

The David Ayer-directed film took in $23.5 million in one of the best openings ever for a World War II movie, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Gone Girl didn’t go down without a fight, though: its domestic gross just crossed $100 million and it also beat out the new animated film The Book of Life (featuring the voices of Zoe Saldana and Channing Tatum) for the No. 2 spot.

The Best of Me, starring James Marsden and Michelle Monaghan, became the worst-ever opening for a Nicholas Sparks novel adaptation, coming in fifth place with $10.2 million.

[THR]

Watch a Giant, 4.6 Billion-Year-Old Comet Fly By Mars

Posted: 19 Oct 2014 09:23 AM PDT

Stargazers can tune into this livestream Sunday and watch Comet Siding Spring zoom past Mars and get roughly within 87,000 miles of the red planet — the closest any comet has gotten to it in a long, long time.

The livestream from the Slooh Community Observatory will be hosted by expert astrobiologist David Grinspoon and feature special guests.

“We’re going to observe an event that happens maybe once every million years,” Jim Green, planetary science division director at NASA, said this month at a press conference. “This is an absolutely spectacular event.”

Siding Spring is estimated to be 4.6 billion years old with a core somewhere between half a mile and 5 miles wide. Looking the comet’s close brush with Mars could teach scientists a lot about the planet’s atmosphere, writes Mike Wall at Space.com. Studying the comet could also provide insight into how planets are formed: Siding Spring is believed to have been created in an area of our solar system between Jupiter and Neptune, but unlike most objects in that part of space at the time, it never was incorporated into a planet.

The live stream starts at 11:15 a.m. PT and 2:15 p.m. ET.

Gamblers Get Less Of a Buzz From Pleasure, Study Finds

Posted: 19 Oct 2014 08:46 AM PDT

New research presented at the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology Congress in Berlin sheds light on what happens in the brains of gamblers.

Pathological gambling is a difficult condition to classify. Though the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) formerly classified it as an impulse control disorder, the most recent version, the DSM-5, made the switch to defining it as an addictive disorder because of the growing research finding that “gambling disorder is similar to substance-related disorders in clinical expression, brain origin, comorbidity, physiology, and treatment,” the DSM website says.

But this new small study shows that it might be unique in some neurologic ways, too. Researchers performed Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scans on 14 male pathological gamblers and 15 non-gambling volunteers to measure their levels of opioid receptors, the parts of the brain activated by pleasure-inducing endorphins. People with addictions like alcoholism or drug addiction have been found to have more opioid receptors. In problem gamblers, however, the researchers saw no difference from healthy volunteers, a finding that surprised them.

Then, participants took an amphetamine capsule, which unleashes endorphins with similar effects to the rush you get from exercise or alcohol, the study says. An additional PET scan revealed that pathological gamblers responded differently to the drug. They released fewer endorphins than those who didn’t gamble, and they also reported lower levels of euphoria on a questionnaire afterward. This might help explain the addictive part of pathological gambling: to get pleasure from the act, problem gamblers might need more of it or to work harder for it.

“These findings suggest the involvement of the opioid system in pathological gambling and that it may differ from addiction to substances such as alcohol,” says lead researcher Dr. Inge Mick of the Imperial College London in a press release. “We hope that in the long run this can help us to develop new approaches to treat pathological gambling.”

Police May Have Found Body of Missing UVA Student

Posted: 19 Oct 2014 08:25 AM PDT

Police may have found the body of Hannah Graham, the University of Virginia student who has been missing for several weeks.

Charlottesville Police Chief Timothy Longo announced Saturday evening that a body had been discovered at an abandoned property, though he said an official identification was pending, USA Today reports.

“Countless hours, thousands of hours have been spent by law enforcement and volunteers in an effort to find Hannah,” said Longo, who added that he made a “difficult” phone call to Graham’s parents to tell them about the “preliminary discovery.” “We think they have proved their worth.”

Graham, a straight-A student and college sophomore, went missing in the early hours of Sept. 13 after attending a party.

Last month, police arrested Jesse Leroy Matthew Jr. and charged him with abducting the 18-year-old with intent to defile. Police say the capture of this suspect was also a “significant break” in the unsolved case of another murdered college student.

[USA Today]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Star Nicholas Brendon Arrested

Posted: 19 Oct 2014 07:34 AM PDT

Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Nicholas Brendon showed signs of intoxication when he was arrested in Boise, Idaho on Friday following a hotel disturbance, police announced.

The actor, best known for his role as Xander Harris on the Joss Whedon TV that show ran from 1997 to 2003, was charged with resisting or obstructing officers and malicious injury to property while in town to attend Tree City Comic Con, CNN reports.

Brendon had damaged a decorative dish, according to the staff at hotel, who said they wanted to press charges.

“When officers arrived, they found the suspect who showed signs of intoxication and repeatedly refused officers commands to stay seated while officers tried to speak with witnesses,” the police statement said about the actor, who has entered rehab before for alcohol dependence. “When the suspect continued to try and walk away, officers took him into custody for resisting and obstructing.”

On Saturday a Twitter account associated with the actor said Brendon was “doing well” and thanked fans for their “love, support and positive vibes.”

Annual Pumpkin Festival Goes Horribly Wrong

Posted: 19 Oct 2014 07:07 AM PDT

At least 30 people were injured and 20 taken to the hospital as police used riot gear and tear gas to break up an annual pumpkin festival that went awry near Keene State College in New Hampshire early Sunday morning.

“People were just throwing everything they could find — rocks, skateboards, buckets, pumpkins,” student Ellery Murray told the Boston Globe about a party Saturday night that got out of control. “People just got too drunk.”

At the annual Keene Pumpkin Festival, locals usually try and set a world record for the greatest number of jack-o-lanterns in a single spot, USA Today reports. This year, people overturned cars, ripped down street signs and ran from tear gas clouds as riot-gear-clad police tried to halt the disturbances. At least 12 arrests had been made.

“We deplore the actions of those whose only purpose was to cause mayhem,” Anne Huot, the college president, said in a statement. According to the college officials, both out-of-town guests and students were involved in the incident.

[USA Today]

10 Recipes That Prove Bacon Makes Everything Better

Posted: 19 Oct 2014 05:10 AM PDT

This article originally appeared on RealSimple.com.

Read the full list HERE.

12 Superfoods That Warm You Up

Posted: 19 Oct 2014 05:00 AM PDT

As the temperature drops, don’t be tempted to warm your belly with rich macaroni and cheese and creamy soup. Instead, get that toasty feeling from superfoods: healthy eats that are loaded with nutrients, antioxidants, and immune-boosting powers that your body needs to power itself through cold weather. Read on to find the best hot foods to eat on chilly days and a few healthy tidbits to prepare them for ultimate nutrition.

Oatmeal

When it gets cooler, it’s the perfect time to break out the oatmeal. Oats are a whole grain, so you’ll get a dose of fiber and plant-based protein to stop hunger with just one bowl. Plus, oatmeal contains a powerful starch called beta-glucan. Research in Nutrition Reviews found that just 3 grams a day of the beta-glucan in oats may reduce your bad cholesterol levels by 5 to 10%, whether they start out normal or high. You can get extra nutrition if you choose the right toppings too. “To get some healthy fat mixed in, I add almond butter and chia seeds,” says Keri Gans, RD, a dietitian in New York City and author of The Small Change Diet.

Try this recipe: Chai Oatmeal

Hot chocolate

Curling up with a cup of hot cocoa is one way to feel snug—just nix the sugary powdered mix with marshmallow bits. “When I make it, I like to melt two squares of dark chocolate and stir it into regular or almond milk,” says Cynthia Sass, MPH, RD, Health‘s contributing nutrition editor. Adding a little dark chocolate to your diet is a great health booster too. The sweet contains flavonoids, a type of antioxidant thought to reduce the damage caused by free radicals, potential instigators of cancer and cardiovascular disease. A study in the Journal of Immunology Researchfound that red blood cells were less susceptible to free radicals after people consumed a drink with flavonoid-rich cocoa.

Try this recipe: Parisian Hot Chocolate

Black bean soup

There’s nothing like a soup with cumin and chili pepper to heat you up when things get cold. The nutrition star of this dish, though, is the beans. Black beans are a good source of iron and copper. So sipping on this soup will help your muscles use more oxygen and boost your immune system, Gans says. A typical serving of soup would include nearly a cup of black beans, which provides 15 grams each of protein and fiber. Unlike animal protein sources, black beans contain almost no saturated fat. Research from the American Chemical Society also shows their black skins contain higher levels of the disease-fighting antioxidants flavonoids than any other type of bean.

Try this recipe: Black Bean Soup

Brussels sprouts

Eating these mini cabbages may just help you fight a cold this fall. In addition to being packed with fiber and cancer-fighting phytonutrients, Brussels sprouts run high in vitamin C at 74.8 milligrams a cup. It won’t prevent the sniffles completely, but vitamin C has been shown to reduce the length of cold symptoms. Though the bitter taste of Brussels sprouts tends to scare some people away, heating them up can make a huge difference in flavor. “I would roast them with olive oil,” Gans says. That will help bring out the sweetness. (You can make these 12 other veggies taste better too.)

Try this recipe: Sautéed Brussels Sprouts with Parmesan and Pine Nuts

Pumpkin soup

If you’re lacking vitamin A, the nutrient critical for promoting vision, a dose of pumpkin will do you good, Gans says. Most adult women should be getting 700 micrograms a day, according to the National Institutes of Health. In a serving of soup, you would use a third to a half cup of pumpkin puree, Gans says. So you could be getting more than a day’s worth of this vitamin in most recipes. Be mindful of a recipe with cream, though, if you’re looking to cut back on calories. Pumpkin also has antioxidant properties thanks to beta-carotene, Gans says. It’s a pigment usually found in bright-colored produce, and it’s thought to have cancer-fighting powers. A study in Anticancer Research treated human breast cells using carotenoids, including beta-carotene and lycopene, and found they can prevent their growth.

Try this recipe: Curried Pumpkin Soup

Chili

The peppers in your stew contain a compound called capsaicin, which gives them their spicy kick. It’s also thought to boost metabolism and fight the buildup of fat. When paired with a high-fat diet, capsaicin was found to decrease body weight by 8%, according to an animal study conducted by Korean researchers. No matter the variety, the beans in chili also pack protein to help you build muscle. That’s not all. Tomato paste is rich in lycopene, and the onions provide unique antioxidants, Sass says. Think about cutting back on the meat in your chili from time to time though. A National Institutes of Health study found that men and women who consumed the most red meat were at increased risk for death from cancer and cardiovascular disease.

Try this recipe: All-American Chili

Avocado

There’s a way to enjoy this creamy fruit when it’s chilly. “Oven roasting avocado makes it even creamier,” Sass says. “Chop it up warm and put on top of another vegetable.” Bonus: about half of the fat of avocado comes from monounsaturated fat, which helps lower your bad cholesterol levels and provide nutrients for cells to function, according to the American Heart Association. They might also help you stay full. A study in Nutrition Journal found that eating a meal with avocado increased satisfaction by 23% over a five-hour period. Just watch your portion size: a serving is just one-fifth of an avocado.

Try this recipe: Chilled Avocado Soup

Walnuts

Walnuts are good any time of year, but they make a lovely roasted snack in the fall. “Walnuts toast awesome on a cookie sheet at 350 degrees for 5 minutes,” Sass says. Lightly misting with oil and adding seasonings like pepper can up the flavor in a healthy way. Even better, walnuts are rich in alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), one omega-3 fat thought to boost heart health. In the Journal of the American College of Nutrition, a study found that people who ate a diet of walnuts, walnut oil, and flax oil had reduced resting blood pressure and blood flow resistance in their arteries than those who ate a diet lower in ALA.

Try this recipe: Walnut Coffee Cake

Apples

Baked apples make the perfect sweet treat for fall. The fruit packs soluble and insoluble fiber. One slows digestion and the other helps food pass through your system more smoothly. That means less hunger and tummy troubles. Just make sure you leave the skins on—they’re a more concentrated source of fiber than the flesh, says Melissa Rifkin, RD, a bariatric dietitian at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City. An unpeeled medium-sized apple contains 4.4 grams offiber. “If you sprinkle some cinnamon on top you get more antioxidants,” Rifkin says. Plus, apples are made up of nearly 86% water, so munching on the fruit will help you stay hydrated as you bundle up.

Try this recipe: Baked Apple Fritters

Sweet potatoes

Like pumpkin, sweet potatoes are particularly high in vitamin A. One baked, medium-sized spud contains 438% of your daily value. Plus, you’ll get nearly 4 grams of fiber—mostly found in the skin—to fill your tummy. Sweet potatoes are also rich in vitamin C, calcium, potassium, and a bit of iron. “If you bake the sweet potato by itself, it’s generally a low-calorie food,” Rifkin says. Just try to avoid slathering fatty butter or margarine on top. A better bet: rosemary. It has B vitamins and cancer-fighting phytochemicals, Rifkin says. The compounds are thought to block carcinogens from acting on your body’s tissues, according to the American Cancer Society. Bonus: a little rosemary will give your sweet potatoes amazing flavor.

Try this recipe: Twice-Baked Sweet Potatoes With Bacon and Sour Cream

Squash

In addition to having some calcium and vitamin C, most varieties of squash are high in potassium. A study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology found a diet high in potassium (while also curbing sodium) could reduce risk of stroke by 21% and lower odds of developing heart disease. Squash is also rich in vitamin A and contains hunger-busting fiber. Take one of Rifkin’s favorites, butternut squash. A cup of baked cubes has 457% of your daily vitamin A, 7 grams of fiber, and just 82 calories. Even better, you can warm up all its parts. Bake the insides and season with garlic salt, pepper, even cumin or turmeric, Rifkin suggests. “You could also take out the seeds and bake them like pumpkin seeds,” Rifkin says.

Try this recipe: Gingery Butternut Squash and Tofu Curry

Ginger tea

If you’re thinking of reaching for a cup of tea, opt for a brew with ginger. “Ginger has thermogenic properties that can keep you warm,” Rifkin says. Because of its heating powers, ginger may also boost metabolism and promote blood flow. A study in Metabolism had one group of men consume 2 grams of ginger powder in a hot drink with their breakfast. Researchers found the men who drank the ginger beverage reported less hunger and greater fullness a few hours later than those who didn’t consume the ginger. Adding the spice to your tea could also help relieve body aches, like the ones you get after an intense workout. In a study for theInternational Journal of Preventative Medicine, one group of female athletes took three grams of ginger daily and reported less muscle soreness after six weeks than those who didn’t receive ginger.

Try this recipe: Honey-Ginger Tea

Memorial Service Held for First U.S. Ebola Victim

2014-10-18T11:07:00.001-07:00

Memorial Service Held for First U.S. Ebola Victim

Memorial Service Held for First U.S. Ebola Victim
Canada Shipping Experimental Ebola Vaccine to Curb Outbreak
See 34 Actors Who Dressed Up In Fabulous Drag
Flickr Finally Made an iPad App
How to Get Respect: 5 Points Backed by Science
It’s Time to Seriously Start Expecting an Apple TV Again
Bermuda Faces ‘Extensive’ Damage From Gonzalo
This Is What Hurricane Gonzalo Looks Like From Space
5 Huge Resume Mistakes That Will Ruin You
10 States Where Life Is Just the Best Right Now

Memorial Service Held for First U.S. Ebola Victim

Posted: 18 Oct 2014 10:55 AM PDT

Family and friends of Thomas Eric Duncan, the first and so far only person to die of Ebola in the U.S., gathered Saturday for an emotional memorial service in North Carolina. Mourners celebrated the 42-year-old’s life at Rowan International Church in Salisbury, where his sister, mother and nephew worship, according to NBC affiliate WCNC.

Duncan died in Dallas on Oct. 8, and had started showing symptoms of the virus on Sept. 24 after travelling to Texas from Liberia. He wasn’t admitted to a Dallas hospital until Sept. 28 — two days after he first visited the hospital…

Read the rest of the story on NBC News.

Canada Shipping Experimental Ebola Vaccine to Curb Outbreak

Posted: 18 Oct 2014 09:38 AM PDT

Canada will begin shipping an experimental Ebola vaccine to the World Health Organization in Geneva on Monday, the government announced Saturday, with the hope of addressing the current outbreak of the deadly virus.

The effects of the vaccine in animals have been “promising,” Canadian authorities said. The vaccine is just beginning to be tested on human subjects in order to determine the safety of the vaccine and the dosage required to stimulate a person’s immune system into producing the proper antibodies.

Canada is sending 800 vials of experimental Ebola vaccine contained at -80 degrees celsius in three separate shipments via aircraft to the WHO in Geneva. Canada’s Public Health Agency is supplying it to the WHO so it can be used as an “international resource.”

“This vaccine, the product of many years of scientific research and innovation, could be an important tool in curbing the outbreak,” said Dr. Gregory Taylor, Chief Public Health Officer of Canada.

See 34 Actors Who Dressed Up In Fabulous Drag

Posted: 18 Oct 2014 09:21 AM PDT

Dexter star Michael C. Hall is dressing up in drag as he takes the stage on Broadway as Hedwig in Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Take a look at other actors throughout the years who’ve dressed in drag for their roles.

Flickr Finally Made an iPad App

Posted: 18 Oct 2014 09:15 AM PDT

Flickr is now offering an app for iPad, parent company Yahoo announced Saturday.

Flickr on the Apple iPad Flickr/App Store

The first iPad-ready app fir the photo sharing service, it offers iPad-optimized layouts and live filters to improve photos and videos. Designed for Apple’s new iOS 8, the app also has a new search function that Flickr says makes it easier for users to search through their library.

Previously, iPad users had to use Flickr’s mobile website, which offered an often less than stellar photo-browsing experience. Flickr already has an iPhone-specific app.

The Flickr for iPad app is available for a free download in the App Store.

How to Get Respect: 5 Points Backed by Science

Posted: 18 Oct 2014 09:03 AM PDT

We all want to know how to get respect.

Research shows respect is key to both your love life and your career.

But it’s difficult. Others size you up very quickly. For instance, people evaluate how attractive you are in 13 milliseconds. Yes, milliseconds.

And first impressions matter more than you think. They’re the most important part of any job interview. And once set, they’re hard to change.

So how do you get respect? Let’s look at the research and see what works — and what doesn’t.

1) Power Is Respected… But There’s A Catch.

What makes us happier: money or power? Power. Do we prefer money or status? Status.

What do children say they want more than anything when they grow up? Fame.

Paraphrasing Machiavelli: if you have to choose between being loved or feared, pick feared.

Yeah, power gets you respect. So if you can make a billion dollars or become an international sensation by Thursday I highly recommend it.

But powerful people often behave badly. Power reduces empathy and often causes us to dehumanize others.

In fact, one of the most recognizable signs that someone is powerful is that they break rules. Why? They can get away with it.

And often this works in reverse — when we see someone who has the gall to break rules we assume they must be powerful.

Anger conveys competence. Narcissists are more likely to get promotions. Jerks earn more money:

…men who measured below average on agreeableness earned about 18% more—or $9,772 more annually in their sample—than nicer guys. Ruder women, meanwhile, earned about 5% or $1,828 more than their agreeable counterparts… “Nice guys are getting the shaft,” says study co-author Beth A. Livingston, an assistant professor of human resource studies at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations.

And these negative characteristics are valuable in some roles:

Several of the 12 “dark side” traits – such as those associated with narcissism, being overly dramatic, being critical of others and being extremely focused on complying with rules – actually had a positive effect on a number of facets of the cadets’ leadership development over time… “it appears that even negative characteristics can be adaptive in particular settings or job roles.”

In fact, research shows feeling powerless makes you dumber.

But respect gained through power and bad behavior comes at a cost.

Not laughing at other people’s jokes does make you seem more powerful. It also reduces social bonding.

Refuse to be impressed by others’ achievements? Definitely powerful. And in relationship research it’s classified as “destructive” behavior.

Congratulations, you’re killing your relationships and alienating the people closest to you.

What about the workplace? Do you need to strut around the office to show people who’s boss?

Research from Harvard shows people would rather work with a lovable fool than a competent jerk — even if they won’t admit it:

Powerful people don’t listen. And doctors who don’t listen get sued more often. Intimidating leaders actually reduce team performance.

(To learn what the most successful people have in common, click here.)

Appearing powerful definitely gets you respect — but potentially at a very high cost. Is it better to just be nice?

2) We Love Mr. Nice Guy… Sometimes.

Can you be nice and get respect? Many people immediately think “nice guys finish last.” You’ll get walked on.

But research from Wharton professor Adam Grant shows “givers” are disproportionately represented at the top of success metrics.

But in some professions, like the military, you have to be tough… right?

Shawn Achor, author of the excellent book The Happiness Advantage, points out that top leaders in the Navy are supportive:

In the U.S. Navy, researchers found, annual prizes for efficiency and preparedness are far more frequently awarded to squadrons whose commanding officers are openly encouraging. On the other hand, the squadrons receiving the lowest marks in performance are generally led by commanders with a negative, controlling, and aloof demeanor.

Stanford’s Bob Sutton shows that when bosses say “thank you,” employees work 50% harder.

Powerful people won’t admit they don’t know something and don’t ask for help. They might look weak. But they also don’t learn anything.

The best way to learn also turns out to be a powerful influence tactic: just ask for advice.

How do expert FBI hostage negotiators get what they want? Listening and empathy.

Studies show nice guys have higher quality friendships, are better parents, have better academic and career performance, as well as better health:

…agreeableness, one of the Big Five personality dimensions, is linked with higher-quality friendships, successful parenting, better academic and career performance, and health… Based on the review of the literature, it is postulated that being agreeable may be the path to enduring interpersonal relationships, happiness, success, and well-being.

So is it just that simple? Be nice all the time? Sadly, no.

While givers do make the top of success metrics, they are also disproportionately found at the bottom:

What I find across various industries, and various studies is the Givers are most likely to end up at the bottom. That’s primarily because they end up putting other people first in ways that either burn them out, or will allow them to get taken advantage of and exploited by Takers.

While we have a great deal to learn from total altruists, it’s a dangerous path. In some cases, yes, “Nice guys do finish last.”

(For Adam Grant’s tips on how you can be nice while protecting yourself from being taken advantage of, click here.)

Research shows not being aggressive limits goal achievement but being very aggressive hurts relationships. So what should we do?

3) It’s A Balance

We don’t merely respect people because of power… or just because of kindness.

Research shows we judge people on the qualities of competence and warmth:

Social psychologist Cuddy, an assistant professor of business administration, investigates how people perceive and categorize others. Warmth and competence, she finds, are the two critical variables. They account for about 80 percent of our overall evaluations of people…

But the tricky part is we always assume a trade-off between the two: more competent means less warm, more warm means less competent.

This idea of balance is pervasive. What happens when you see that uber-perfect person screw up a bit?

You actually like them more because it makes them human.

The best leaders are a balance. Not too assertive, but not too passive. They must juggle kindness and toughness:

“If you’re too soft—no matter how competent and able you are—people may not respect your authority. But if you only have dominance and you don’t have great ideas, and you use force to stay in power, then people will resent you,” he concludes. “Being successful as a leader requires one to have both dominance and prestige.”

Harvard leadership professor Gautam Mukunda explains great leaders have supreme confidence — and humility. (Skip to 4:15.)

Of course, riding that line is extremely difficult. And there are biases that make it even harder.

When men show anger they’re seen as competent. But women displaying the exact same behavior are perceived negatively.

And on the flip side, society tells men it’s okay to be vulnerable and open up — but then punishes them for it. (Skip to 16:15.)

(For more on what the best leaders have in common, click here.)

Becoming someone who truly embodies all these qualities sounds impossible, right? Can’t we just fake it?

You can… but that’s tricky too.

4) Don’t Be A Method Actor

“Fake it until you make it.” A little of that is only natural. But I’m seeing it reach a whole new level: out-and-out acting and utter manipulation.

And it’s a mistake. People think they’re going to act powerful and tough get a reaction like this:

What they end up doing is losing friends and gaining allies who will only be allies as long as there’s something to be gained.

And those who show Machiavellian kindness often suffer a worse fate —trust is easy to lose and hard to regain.

But perhaps that sounds pious. Here’s a more concrete reason: it doesn’t work — or at least not for long.

In five minutes people can size you up with about 70% accuracy:

Across a wide range of studies, Ambady and Rosenthal found that observations lasting up to five minutes had an average correlation of r = .39 with subsequent behavior, which corresponds to 70 percent accuracy at predicting outcomes…

Maybe you enjoy gambling but I don’t like those odds — especially over the long haul.

Unless you have an Oscar for acting, faking for big stretches of time is hard. In fact, research shows acting smart makes you look stupid.

The only way to convincingly change how you’re perceived is to do it from the inside. (We often call this “being delusional.”)

And what’s even more insidious is that over time, we can become what we imitate.

Harvard leadership expert Gautam Mukunda, author of Indispensable, spoke about the limitations of impression management:

You’re performing. If you perform for long enough you can begin to inhabit the role. You can begin to change who you are… When you’re acting out these roles, what you’ve got to remember is you are changing yourself. Over time you will change yourself into that person, so it had better be the person you genuinely want to be.

(For more on the techniques of FBI hostage negotiators, click here.)

Being a powerful jerk is a risky tradeoff — but so is being a total nice guy. And balancing is really, really hard.

So when we pull all this together what really is the best way to get respect?

5) How To Get Respect

You don’t need to strut around like a jerk but we can learn something from powerful people: confidence is vital.

People love confidence so much that we sometimes prefer those who talk a good game over those who produce quantifiable results.

So be moderately overconfident. See the world accurately but have belief in your abilities.

And what’s the best route to this? Work hard and become an expert at your job. Competence breeds real confidence. A feeling of control kills fear.

But be warm.

This is what we can learn from the nice guys. And don’t fake it. You can learn to be more compassionate. Karma works and kindness scales.

It all starts with self-knowledge. Gautam Mukunda explains:

Changing yourself is not inauthentic. Part of what people do is they change. They evolve, they can grow, and they can change themselves.

So what it is to be authentic? It doesn’t mean you can’t change, but it does mean that the changes that you make, again, have to be aligned with the sense of who you really are, and who you want to be.

In fact, research shows that when you try to be your best self, you end up presenting your true self:

In sum, positive self-presentation facilitates more accurate impressions, indicating that putting one’s best self forward helps reveal one’s true self.

Don’t be a total jerk and don’t be an utter pushover. And don’t be a method actor.

Be the best version of who you are.

This piece originally appeared on Barking Up the Wrong Tree.

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It’s Time to Seriously Start Expecting an Apple TV Again

Posted: 18 Oct 2014 08:52 AM PDT

Apple’s Oct. 16 “It’s been way too long” event was supposed to be all about updating products that hadn’t been refreshed in a while. And it was. The Cupertino, Calif. company unveiled svelte new iPads, an ultra-high-resolution version of the iMac, an updated Mac mini, and a slew of software and service updates. CEO Tim Cook also said that a software development kit to help programmers make applications for the company’s upcoming smartwatch would be available in November, ahead of the much-anticipated device’s 2015 debut.

About ten minutes into his opening remarks, Cook put up an evolution of man-style slide showing Apple’s line of products, from the Watch through iPhone and iPad, laptops and desktops. (Scrub to 10:00 here to see it.) One could easily imagine the same slide with an additional product on the far right: a television. That is a rumor that has been around for so long, that it’s frankly grown tedious to think or talk about. Steve Jobs told biographer Walter Isaacson before he died that he’d long wanted to make a TV and had “finally cracked” the difficulty of creating a simple user interface. And, earlier this year, Cook told Charlie Rose that television “is one of those things that if we’re really honest is stuck back in the 70s…this is an area we continue to look at.” (It’s also a product Apple already made, sort of, in the early 1990s.)

What’s changed is that television is more ripe for disruption as the ecosystem of companies around it—cable providers, content creators—try to position themselves for the future. And, arguably, Apple’s clout and ability to disrupt TV is greater than ever. A number of developments in the last couple of weeks have given the idea of an Apple television set renewed luster. Consider that:

Apple has the display. The television-making business is no picnic; just ask Sony, which has lost nearly $8 billion in the last decade on TV’s alone. But the new iMac’s display—which has an extremely high resolution—is the kind of game-changer that consumers might be willing to spend more for.

Apple is calling the display a Retina 5K screen. The high-end 27‑inch iMac has four times as many pixels as the regular 27‑inch iMac display, some 14.7 million pixels. The company created its own timing controller to drive all those pixels and is using a new type of screen technology, an oxide TFT-based panel, to deliver extra brightness.

Cable companies are starting to unravel. Two back-to-back announcements this week suggest the television content business is starting to change. This had been Apple’s biggest obstacle to creating a television device with a radically better way of watching stuff. As my colleague Victor Luckerson put it earlier this week:

By making these channels available for purchase individually, CBS and HBO are embracing the “a la carte” TV model, in which viewers would be able to select the individual channels they want to pay for and ignore the rest. It’s a concept that makes intuitive sense in a world where songs, movies, books and news can be consumed individually, on the go and at little cost. But the model poses a huge threat to cable operators, network owners and even subscribers. If every network did what CBS and HBO are doing, cable and satellite operators would have the core part of their businesses wiped out.

HomeKit is the new “digital hub.” In 2001, Jobs organized the then-struggling company around a new strategy. The computer would become the hub for consumers’ various devices, cameras, music players, video recorders, et cetera. It worked. Today, Apple is working on HomeKit, a framework that lets the company’s devices control smart gadgets around your house. (For more on the smart home, read all of this special TIME issue.) One of a future Apple television’s killer features could be acting as a central nervous system for all the wired lightbulbs, thermostats and so on in your house.

Consumers want it. The current product called Apple TV, a $99 set-top box that can pipe in streaming content from iTunes, Netflix, Hulu and other digital service providers, was denigrated as a “hobby” product by Steve Jobs in 2007. Last month, Cook said the device had gone far beyond that status and has some 20 million users.

And finally, Tim Cook’s Apple is ready. The company has shown it is willing to sign the death warrant for technologies it no longer finds useful. Not to mention place big bets in brand new areas where its success is far from guaranteed. Cook said this was “the strongest lineup of products Apple has ever had and soon you can wear that technology right on your wrist.” I wouldn’t be surprised to find that amended to add the center of the living room.

Bermuda Faces ‘Extensive’ Damage From Gonzalo

Posted: 18 Oct 2014 08:45 AM PDT

Tens of thousands in Bermuda were without power early Saturday after Hurricane Gonzalo ripped across the island with 110 mph winds, downing trees and causing untold damage. Weather improved as dawn broke and Gonzalo moved away from the island.

Damage from Gonzalo — the strongest Atlantic hurricane since Igor in 2010 — was believed to be widespread but authorities were waiting for daylight to assess the full extent of it, a spokeswoman from Bermuda’s Emergency Measures Organization told Reuters…

Read the rest of the story at NBC News

This Is What Hurricane Gonzalo Looks Like From Space

Posted: 18 Oct 2014 07:38 AM PDT

Hurricane Gonzalo smashed into Bermuda Friday, with winds reaching 110mph and waves approaching heights of 40 feet as the Category 2 storm swept northward, according to USA Today. Approximately 30,600 customers of Bermuda’s power company were without power as of late Friday night, while the National Hurricane Center warned of “a life-threatening storm surge.”

The storm is headed for the North Atlantic this weekend.

From space, Gonzalo is a massive, white vortex—but despite its size, it really looks quite serene. This photo comes care of Alexander Gerst, a European astronaut currently aboard the International Space Station.

#Hurricane #Gonzalo over the Caribbean Sea http://t.co/4ufDIiAA61—
Alexander Gerst (@Astro_Alex) October 17, 2014

5 Huge Resume Mistakes That Will Ruin You

Posted: 18 Oct 2014 07:10 AM PDT

This post is in partnership with The Muse. The article below was originally published on The Muse.

Laszlo Bock, Google’s senior vice president of people operations, estimates that he’s personally reviewed more than 20,000 resumes over the course of his career.

First of all, we’re sorry for him.

But secondly, we’re pretty sure he knows a thing or two about what makes a resume shine and—perhaps more importantly—get tossed in the trash.

In fact, he shared his insights earlier this week in a LinkedIn Influencer post. Here’s what he had to say about the five biggest mistakes he sees candidates making, plus our expert tips for making sure your resume doesn’t include any of these blunders.

Mistake #1: Typos

We know—you’ve heard it. But while “this one seems obvious,” Bock writes, “…it happens again and again. A 2013 CareerBuilder survey found that 58% of resumes have typos.”

The Fix

Have someone else read your resume—often, other people can more easily spot errors because they haven’t been staring at the page for hours. If that’s really not possible, use Muse editor-in-chief Adrian Granzella Larssen’s tips for proofreading your own resume: “It’s helpful to temporarily change the font, or to read your resume from the bottom up—your eyes get used to reading a page one way and can often catch new errors when you mix the format up.”

Finally, once you’ve reviewed it, stop making those final tiny changes. “People who tweak their resumes the most carefully can be especially vulnerable to this kind of error,” explains Bock, “because they often result from going back again and again to fine tune your resume just one last time. And in doing so, a subject and verb suddenly don’t match up, or a period is left in the wrong place, or a set of dates gets knocked out of alignment.”

Mistake #2: Length

Thinking about letting your resume creep onto the next page? Think again. “A good rule of thumb is one page of resume for every 10 years of work experience,” says Bock. “A crisp, focused resume demonstrates an ability to synthesize, prioritize, and convey the most important information about you.”

The Fix

For most of us, Bock’s rule of thumb means one page—two, tops. If you’re having trouble squeezing all of your experience onto one page, remember that a resume doesn’t have to (in fact, shouldn’t) be a chronicle of your entire career history—it should be a marketing document that uses your relevant skills and experiences to illustrate to the hiring manager why you’re the one for the job. To hone in on what really matters and cut the fluff accordingly, try Liz Elfman’s tips for getting everything on one page.

Mistake #3: “Creative” Formatting

When it comes to resumes, Bock says, substance definitely matters more than style. He’d definitely prefer to see a simple, traditional, perfectly formatted resume than something creative that’s tough to read. “Unless you’re applying for a job such as a designer or artist, your focus should be on making your resume clean and legible,” he writes.

The Fix

When in doubt, go simple and spend most of your time sharpening your bullet points rather than making them look great. (In fact, make your life really easy and download one of these resume templates.) Then, make sure the formatting looks great no matter what program it’s opened in. As Bock recommends, “If you can, look at it in both Google Docs and Word, and then attach it to an email and open it as a preview.” Saving your resume as a PDF rather than a .doc file should help alleviate any formatting problems in different programs.

Mistake #4: Confidential Information

In his post, Bock shares a story of candidate who worked for a top consulting firm with a strict confidentiality policy. So, when the candidate wrote on his resume that he “consulted to a major software company in Redmond, Washington”—a.k.a. Microsoft—he was immediately rejected. Sure, the candidate didn’t break the policy, per se—but he definitely didn’t inspire trust in his potential employer.

The Fix

For anything you put on your resume (or say in an interview, or publish on a blog, you get the picture, follow the New York Times test, says Bock: “if you wouldn’t want to see it on the home page of the NYT with your name attached (or if your boss wouldn’t!), don’t put it on your resume.”

Mistake #5: Lies

As Bock explains: “People lie about their degrees (three credits shy of a college degree is not a degree), GPAs (I’ve seen hundreds of people “accidentally” round their GPAs up)… and where they went to school (sorry, but employers don’t view a degree granted online for “life experience” as the same as UCLA or Seton Hall). People lie about how long they were at companies, how big their teams were, and their sales results, always goofing in their favor.”

And we probably don’t have to tell you what hiring managers think about that.

The Fix

Just remember what your mama told you: Honesty is always the best policy. If you feel like there’s part of your background that’s not quite up to snuff, your best bet is creative—but truthful—positioning. Career expert Kari Reston shares smart strategies to applying for a job you’re underqualified for, and Jenny Foss of jobjenny.com shares tips for crafting your education section when you don’t think your degree (or lack thereof) will impress.
These mistakes seem pretty basic, but if Google sees them all the time? You can bet every other employer does, too. The good news is, they’re all totally avoidable. Make sure your (one- to two-page) resume is squeaky clean, and you’re already ahead of the game.

10 States Where Life Is Just the Best Right Now

Posted: 18 Oct 2014 06:53 AM PDT

This post is in partnership with 24/7 Wall Street. The article below was originally published on 247WallSt.com.

The United States is one of the world’s most prosperous economies, with a gross domestic product that exceeded that of any other country last year. However, a vibrant economy alone does not ensure all residents are well off. In a recent study from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), U.S. states underperformed their regional counterparts in other countries in a number of important metrics that gauge well-being.

The OECD’s newly released study, “How’s Life in Your Region?: Measuring Regional and Local Well-Being for Policy Making,” compares nine important factors that contribute to well-being. Applying an equal weight to each of these factors, 24/7 Wall St. rated New Hampshire as the best state for quality of life.

Click here to see the 10 states with the best quality of life.

Click here to see the 10 states with the worst quality of life.

Monica Brezzi, author of the report and head of regional statistics at the OECD, told 24/7 Wall St. considering different dimensions of well-being at the regional level provides a way to identify “where are the major needs where policies can intervene.” Brezzi said that, in some cases, correcting one truly deficient measure can, in turn, lead to better results in others.

In order to review well-being at the regional level, the OECD used only objective data in its report, rather than existing survey data. Brezzi noted that current international studies that ask people for their opinion on important measures of well-being often do not have enough data to be broken down by region.

For example, one of the nine measures, health, is based on the mortality rate and life expectancy in each region, rather than on asking people if they feel well. Similarly, another determinant of well-being, safety, is measured by the homicide rate rather than personal responses as to whether people feel safe where they live.

Based on her analysis, Brezzi identified one area where American states are exceptionally strong. “All the American states rank in the top 20% of OECD regions in income,” Brezzi said. Massachusetts — one of 24/7 Wall St.’s highest-rated states — had the second-highest per capita disposable household income in the nation, at $38,620. This also placed the state among the top 4% of regions in all OECD countries.

However, the 50 states are also deficient in a number of key metrics for well-being. “With the exception of Hawaii, none of the American states are in the top 20% for health or for safety across the OECD regions,” Brezzi said. Minnesota, for instance, was rated as the third best state for health, with a mortality rate of 7.5 deaths per 1,000 residents and a life expectancy of 81.1 years. However, this only barely placed Minnesota among the top third of all regions in the OECD. Similarly, New Hampshire — which was rated as the safest state in the country, and was 24/7 Wall St.’s top state for quality of life — was outside the top third of all regions for safety.

Across most metrics the 50 states have improved considerably over time. Only one of the nine determinants of well-being, jobs, had worsened in most states between 2000 and 2013. Brezzi added that not only was the national unemployment rate higher in 2013 than in 2000, but “this worsening of unemployment has also come together with an increase in the disparities across states.”

Based on the OECD’s study, “How’s Life in Your Region?: Measuring Regional and Local Well-being for Policy Making,” 24/7 Wall St. identified the 10 states with the best quality of life. We applied an equal weight to each of the nine determinants of well-being — education, jobs, income, safety, health, environment, civic engagement, accessibility to services and housing. Each determinant is constituted by one or more variables. Additional data on state GDP are from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), and are current as of 2013. Further figures on industry composition, poverty, income inequality and health insurance coverage are from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2013 American Community Survey. Data on energy production come from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) and represent 2012 totals.

These are the 10 states with the best quality of life.

10. Wisconsin
> Employment rate: 74.8% (9th highest)
> Household disposable income per capita: $29,536 (23rd highest)
> Homicide rate: 2.72 per 100,000 people (15th lowest)
> Voter turnout: 73.6% (2nd highest)

Based on nine distinct well-being measures, Wisconsin is one of the top states in the nation for quality of life. Like nearly all top-ranked states, Wisconsin’s housing score was quite high. A typical home had 2.7 rooms per person. Additionally, nearly three-quarters of households had broadband Internet access, both among the higher rates nationwide. Residents are also more politically active than people in a majority of states. The state reported a 74% voter turnout rate, better than almost every other state.

9. Washington
> Employment rate: 67.8% (21st lowest)
> Household disposable income per capita: $31,307 (16th highest)
> Homicide rate: 2.55 per 100,000 people (11th lowest)
> Voter turnout: 65.6% (16th highest)

Nearly four in five Washington residents had broadband Internet access last year, tied with New Hampshire for the highest rate in the country. Washingtonians also enjoy exceptional air quality and a relatively healthy environment. Just 4.1 mg of airborne dangerous particulate matter per cubic meter was recorded in the state, nearly the lowest level of pollution measured. Washington also leads the nation for renewable energy production, with more than 1,012 trillion BTUs produced in 2012, far more than any other state.

ALSO READ: America’s 50 Best Cities to Live

8. Maine
> Employment rate: 72.7% (11th highest)
> Household disposable income per capita: $28,333 (22nd lowest)
> Homicide rate: 1.88 per 100,000 people (8th lowest)
> Voter turnout: 68.6% (9th highest)

Based on OECD metrics, Maine — which advertises itself as “Vacationland” — is far more than merely a tourist destination. Like more than half of the best states for quality of life, Maine received a nearly perfect score for its housing. Maine homes had an average of nearly three rooms per person, more than all but one other state. Spacious households are likely favored by Maine residents as the state’s long winter can keep people indoors for long periods. And while heating costs can be a burden, falling U.S. crude oil prices have considerably reduced the financial strain of buying home heating oil, which is more-widely used in Maine than in any other state.

For the rest of the list, please go to 24/7WallStreet.com.

Nigeria Says Boko Haram Cease-Fire May Lead to Release of Kidnapped Girls

2014-10-17T11:14:00.001-07:00

Nigeria Says Boko Haram Cease-Fire May Lead to Release of Kidnapped Girls

Nigeria Says Boko Haram Cease-Fire May Lead to Release of Kidnapped Girls
Sixpence None The Richer’s ‘Kiss Me’ Sounds Even Better In Klingon
Why Airlines and the CDC Oppose Ebola Flight Bans
Syrian Women Know How To Defeat ISIS
The CDC Has Less Power Than You Think, and Likes it That Way
Scandal Teaches You How to Handle It When Your Kid Makes a Sex Tape
#AskTIME Subscriber Q and A: Michael Scherer
Saturday Will Be the Best Day Ever if You Love Pizza (But Only if You Live in Chicago)
Nurse Infected With Ebola in Dallas Now Being Treated in Maryland
The Last Days of WD~50

Nigeria Says Boko Haram Cease-Fire May Lead to Release of Kidnapped Girls

Posted: 17 Oct 2014 10:44 AM PDT

A top military official in Nigeria was reported Friday to have announced a cease-fire between the government and the military group Boko Haram, igniting both skepticism and hopes that more than 200 schoolgirls who were kidnapped in April would be released.

The truce was said to be announced by Air Marshall Alex Badeh, Nigeria’s chief of defense, the Associated Press reports. The release of the girls is still being negotiated, Maj. Gen. Chris Olukolade added, but the cease-fire would begin immediately and could take take several days to reach the groups of militants.

“Already, the terrorists have announced a cease-fire in furtherance of their desire for peace. In this regard, the government of Nigeria has, in similar vein, declared a cease-fire,” said Mike Omeri, a government spokesman on Boko Haram, at a news conference. The AP adds that Omeri confirmed negotiations about the girls’ potential release were held throughout the week.

Reports of the deal were met with hesitation by those who have followed the saga since the girls were abducted from their school in Chibok on April 14. There was neither an official statement quickly released by the government, nor an announcement made by the insurgent group, the New York Times reports.

Boko Haram, which released a video in May that claimed responsibility for the girls’ abductions and vowed to “sell them on the market, by Allah,” has previously demanded the release of rebel prisoners in exchange for their freedom. But Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, who has faced intense global pressure to free the students, said that’s a trade he will not make. The Nigerian government has in the past misled the public about the girls’ status; its fight against Boko Haram has been fraught with challenges since the militant group rose up in 2009, from inefficiency and corruption in the military to lax local support in the northern communities that are threatened most.

In August, the Wall Street Journal reported that American surveillance planes spotted groups that appeared to be the missing girls, suggesting that not all of them had been sold into marriage or slavery — as feared — and that some were perhaps being kept as a bargaining tactic.

Sixpence None The Richer’s ‘Kiss Me’ Sounds Even Better In Klingon

Posted: 17 Oct 2014 10:41 AM PDT

Space may be the final frontier, but this Klingon cover of Sixpence None the Richer’s “Kiss Me” makes getting to first base in your dad’s barley field sound out of this world .

Back in 1998, Texas Christian pop band Sixpence None the Richer hit the mainstream with their sweetly schmaltzy track. Last year, the song was (finally!) translated into Klingon. Of course, “kiss me” isn’t a phrase that is particularly common in the Klingon tongue, so they substituted something equally romantic for a Klingon — Dah Hlchop, or bite me.

While the moving musical tribute came out last year, it’s one trip down memory lane you’ll want to walk down again and again. Luckily, it’s Flashback Friday, so you can spend the day watching this video over and over again and if anyone dares complain, tell them Dah Hlchop.

Why Airlines and the CDC Oppose Ebola Flight Bans

Posted: 17 Oct 2014 10:20 AM PDT

The debate surrounding travel bans as a way to curb the spread of Ebola has intensified after Thursday’s congressional hearing, unleashing a flurry of impassioned arguments on both sides.

The stakes are high: those for a flight ban believe it’s a necessary protection against a deadly epidemic that has already reached American soil, but those against it say a ban would make the U.S. even more vulnerable to the virus.

Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.), who ran the hearing, wants to prohibit all non-essential commercial travel from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, as well as institute a mandatory 21-day quarantine order for any American who has traveled to the stricken African nations. This quarantine would include a ban on domestic travel.

Murphy explained his position at the opening of Thursday’s hearing: “A determined, infected traveler can evade the screening by masking the fever with ibuprofen… Further, it is nearly impossible to perform contact tracing of all people on multiple international flights across the globe, when contact tracing and treatment just within the United States will strain public health resources.” Murphy is not alone; other lawmakers such as House Speaker John Boehner and Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) agree.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), however, maintains that these congressmen have it backwards. While they think a travel ban would secure the U.S. border from Ebola and shrink the potential spheres of contact, CDC director Tom Frieden says instituting a flight ban would forfeit what little control we currently have over the virus.

“Right now we know who’s coming in,” Frieden said at the hearing. “If we try to eliminate travel… we won’t be able to check them for fever when they leave, we won’t be able to check them for fever when they arrive, we won’t be able—as we do currently—to see a detailed history to see if they’ve been exposed.” The White House has sided with Frieden. White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Thursday that a travel ban is “not something we’re considering.”

Even if Republican lawmakers are correct that a travel ban could curb the spread of Ebola in the U.S., it would also curb the movement of American health workers to the West African countries that are already desperate for more aid.

“If we do things that unintentionally make it harder to get that response in, to get supplies in, that make it harder for those governments to manage, to get everything from economic activity to travel going, it’s going to become much harder to stop the outbreak at the source,” Frieden said this week. “If that were to happen, it would spread for more months and potentially to other countries, and that would increase rather than decrease the risk to Americans.”

There’s also a practical concern surrounding the bans. Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in the United States and who later died from the disease, took three flights and flew on two airlines on his trip from Monrovia, Liberia to Dallas, TX, stopping in Belgium on the way. Prohibiting travel from West Africa to the United States quickly falls down the rabbit hole of connecting flights in Europe, especially since there currently aren’t any direct flights between the U.S. and the primary Ebola hot zones.

A spokesperson for Airlines for America, the industry trade organization for leading U.S. airlines, told TIME, “We agree with the White House that discussions of flight bans are not necessary and actually impede efforts to stop the disease in its tracks in West Africa.”

And if domestic or international travel bans were to be instituted, others familiar with the airline industry warn of unintended consequences. Greg Winton, founder of The Aviation Law Firm outside Washington, D.C., told TIME that mass flight restrictions “will have a huge impact financially, certainly on the whole economy, not just the aviation sector.”

But at this point Winton says anything is possible, citing the Federal Aviation Administration’s shut down of air travel following 9/11 as an extreme precedent. “As far as FAA aviation law, none of that really takes precedence over disease control at this point,” he said.

Syrian Women Know How To Defeat ISIS

Posted: 17 Oct 2014 10:12 AM PDT

To the Islamic State, Syrian women are slaves. To much of the rest of the world, they are victims.

It’s time we expose their real identity: an untapped resource for creating lasting peace. Listening to and implementing the ideas of women still living in Syria is key to weakening ISIS and stabilizing the region at large because, in many ways, they have a better track record laying the foundations for peace and democracy than any other group.

Over the last two years, we’ve worked side-by-side with Syrian women leaders as they propose concrete steps to end the war. Most recently, we brought several women representing large civil society networks to Washington, D.C., where they cautioned against the current approach of the international community – and proposed a very different blueprint for the region’s future.

More arms and more bombs, they said, are not the answer.

They insisted that the only way to fight this extremist threat is to return to the negotiating table and hash out a peaceful political transition to heal the divisions ripping Syria apart.

“Oppression is the incubator of terrorism,” one woman told us as the group prepped for meetings with high-level officials in D.C. and New York. Her participation in peaceful protests during the early days of the revolution led to her two-month imprisonment in a four square meter room shared with 30 other women—yet she was adamant: “We cannot fight ISIS except through a political approach.”

That women who’ve been hunted and tortured for their nonviolent activism still say “no more bombs” is remarkable. That their solutions are forward-looking and inclusive is unsurprising; we’ve seen similar approaches from women in conflicts all over the world. In Colombia, Northern Ireland, Uganda, and dozens of other places, women have been catalysts for sustainable, inclusive peace.

During three-plus years of war, Syrian women have consistently led efforts to end the violence and mitigate suffering. They’ve worked under the direst circumstances: dodging sniper bullets, evading arrest, surviving without adequate food or medicine. They’ve retained hope and determination in ways that most of us would find impossible.

That’s precisely why we must listen to them.

So what do they recommend? To create stability (which is kryptonite to extremists), Syrian women say three things must happen.

First, humanitarian aid must get to the millions in grave need. Almost three million people are registered as refugees in neighboring countries and over six million are displaced inside Syria. That’s in a country with a pre-war population of just under 18 million. Approximately half of the remaining inhabitants live in extreme poverty.

In response to this disaster, the UN made an urgent appeal for $2.28 billion just to meet the critical requirements of the internally displaced. So far, Member States have committed only $864 million—a little over one-third of the total. Last month, the UN was forced to cut the delivery of food aid by 40 percent.

Violent extremism thrives in areas where social services have all but disappeared. A woman who serves on the local council of an opposition-held town told us that she fears more of her neighbors may become radicalized because there’s no work, no education, and no other opportunities.

Women have been deeply involved in distributing and monitoring humanitarian aid in communities across Syria. Typically perceived as less of a threat, they’re able to smuggle supplies through checkpoints without being searched. This affords them first-hand witness of the different needs of zones under government, opposition, Islamic State, or other control. They’ve seen, for instance, that food baskets can’t get into areas blockaded by the regime; in these circumstances, cash transfers are more effective. To reach the greatest number of people, relief agencies should coordinate with civil society and devise humanitarian strategies that reflect these differences.

Second, international actors must encourage local pockets of stability. Beyond funding, a key barrier to humanitarian access is the ongoing violence. Besieged areas are the hardest to reach and most in need.

Here too, women have a solution. Though missing from most news reports, a number of local ceasefire arrangements have proliferated throughout the country, often negotiated by civil society actors. In the Damascus suburbs, a women’s group brokered a ceasefire between regime and opposition forces. For 40 days before fighting resumed, they were able to get essential supplies into the city.

Syrian women are now calling on the UN to not only track these local arrangements, but assign international monitors to ensure parties stick to them. Beyond opening channels for the passage of humanitarian aid, this may also help the parties come closer to an agreement to cease hostilities on the national level. This will require accountability, as these negotiations are all too often used as a tool of political manipulation.

Which brings us to the third, and potentially most important, step: The parties must return to internationally-mediated negotiations and agree on a political solution to the conflict. The last round of talks in Geneva failed, it’s true. But this is still the best solution to the burgeoning civil war and the opportunistic extremism that has followed it. Only a unified Syria can beat back the ISIS threat.

Convincing both parties to come back to the table won’t be easy. But Syrian women have identified concrete ideas that could help unite disparate factions by encouraging them to cooperate on mutually beneficial activities. For instance, the regime and opposition could coordinate the safe passage of university students between government- and nongovernment-controlled areas to allow them to resume their studies. The women also call on parties to prioritize construction of temporary housing for those displaced by the conflict on both sides. These actions could help cultivate trust between the regime and opposition and encourage popular support on all sides for renewed negotiations.

As important is the construction of an inclusive peace process. One that engages women, but also others who have thus far been missing from the conversation: the Kurds, Druze, youth, independent civil society networks, tribal leaders, and, yes, more radical elements like Jabhat al-Nusra, who can otherwise spoil the talks from the outside. Without this, no agreement stands a chance.

These three priorities—humanitarian relief, support for local ceasefires, and resumption of negotiations—are not the result of idealistic or wishful thinking. This is not an abstract call by Syrian women to “give peace a chance.” It’s a plea for policy approaches that are grounded in the lived experiences and long-term goals of the vast majority of the Syrian people.

Regional and global stability depend on the international community getting this right. Luckily for us, Syrian women—and civil society more broadly—know exactly what it will take to rebuild their country and undermine the ambitions of the Islamic State. Will we listen?

Kristin Williams is Senior Writer and Program Officer at The Institute for Inclusive Security, where she calls attention to the most powerful, untapped resource for peace: women.

Michelle Barsa is Senior Manager for Policy at Inclusive Security Action, where she focuses on expanding the role for women in peace and security processes, particularly in Afghanistan and Syria.

This piece was originally published in New America’s digital magazine, The Weekly Wonk. Sign up to get it delivered to your inbox each Thursday here, and follow @New America on Twitter.

The CDC Has Less Power Than You Think, and Likes it That Way

Posted: 17 Oct 2014 10:12 AM PDT

Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Tom Frieden has come under fire in recent days for what some charge is the agency’s stumbling response to the appearance of Ebola in America. This week, reporters and lawmakers alike grilled Frieden over how two nurses in Texas contracted the virus and how one of them was able to board an airplane even after she reported a raised temperature.

Breakdowns in good practice notwithstanding, it’s important to remember that Ebola in the U.S. is largely contained and very unlikely to lead to any kind of significant outbreak. Still, the charges leveled against Frieden raise a question that leads to a surprisingly complicated answer: just what, exactly, can—and should—the CDC do?

Since time immemorial, public health officials’ main weapon against the outbreak of a disease as been to restrict the ability of people to interact with one another, also known as a quarantine. The term comes from the Latin “quadraginta,” meaning 40, and is derived from the 40-day period ships traveling from plague-stricken regions were kept at bay before being allowed to dock in medieval European ports.

Imposing a quarantine—effectively stripping innocent people of the most basic right to move freely in the world—is one of the most serious actions a government can take against its own citizenry. Partly for this reason, in the American federal system (designed from the outset to check the power of the national government) the power to quarantine resides largely with state and local authorities. Should Texas, or any other state, someday face the threat of a true epidemic, the states have broad authority to restrict the movement of people within their own borders. Public health codes granting the state power to impose quarantine orders vary from state to state, of course. Violating a quarantine order in Louisiana is punishable by a fine of up to $100 and up to a year in prison; in Mississippi the same infraction could cost a violator up to $5000 and up to five years in prison.

The federal government does have its own powers. The CDC, as the U.S.’s primary agency for taking action to stop the spread of disease, has broad authority under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution to restrict travel into the country and between states of an infected person or a person who has come in contact with an infected person, according to Laura Donohue, director of the Center on National Security and the Law at Georgetown Law School. Federal quarantine can be imposed, too, on federal property, like a military base or National Forest land. And as the preeminent employer of experts on public health crises, the CDC is always likely to get involved within any affected state in the event of a looming pandemic.

But its power to act is extremely restricted. The agency traditionally acts in an advisory role and can only take control from local authorities under two circumstances: if local authorities invite them to do so or under the authority outlined in the Insurrection Act in the event of a total breakdown of law and order.

And here the picture becomes murkier yet because authority does not always beget power.

“It’s not a massive regulatory agency,” said Wendy Parmet, a professor in public health law at Northeastern University in Boston. “They don’t have ground troops. They don’t have tons of regulators. They’re scientists. Even if the states asked them to do it it’s not clear how they would do it.”

Even in the highly unlikely event that the CDC were called to respond to a—let’s reiterate: extremely-unlikely-to-occur—pandemic, quarantine and isolation would be imposed not by bespeckled CDC scientists but by local or federal law enforcement or troops. Most importantly, the CDC is extremely reluctant to be seen as a coercive government agency because it depends as much as any agency on the good will and acquiescence of citizens in order to respond effectively to a public health emergency. When the bright lights of the Ebola crisis are not on it, the CDC will still need people to get vaccinated, to go to the doctor when they get sick, and to call the authorities if they see trouble.

“Our public health system is built on voluntary compliance,” Donohue tells TIME. “If the CDC starts to become the enemy holding a gun to [someone’s] head and keeping them in their house, they lose insight.”

Scandal Teaches You How to Handle It When Your Kid Makes a Sex Tape

Posted: 17 Oct 2014 10:07 AM PDT

This post includes spoilers for Thursday night’s episode of Scandal.

With all the nude selfies getting leaked on the Internet and hacks of the supposedly self-destructing pictures and videos on Snapchat, parents have a reason to be worried about what their teens are recording and sharing. Our private lives aren’t so private anymore. That’s even true for the President’s kids — or, well, a fictional president’s kids.

Last night on Scandal the president’s daughter Karen filmed what D.C. fixer protagonist Olivia Pope called “the dirtiest sex tape I’ve ever seen in my life.” I know, it sounds like a problem you’ll never have to deal with in your life. But if a teen can slip her secret service detail to attend a party and “Eiffel Tower” with some guys (look up at your own risk), then parents should be in full-blown panic mode about what their non-guarded kids are doing.

Olivia’s job is to manage crises, and Karen’s dad Fitz is the damn president of the United States. Surely we can learn a little something from them about what to do if your kid makes a sex tape. Here’s the step-by-step list:

1. Be outraged

The mean parent, in Scandal‘s case President Fitz, should yell things like, “Start talking, now,” to get a clear idea of how bad the situation is. You may uncover information like that your daughter hitched a ride on “someone’s father’s jet” to get to the party in question. (N.B. Apparently if your kid does not attend the most expensive boarding school in the country, you’re already ahead of the game.)

2. Flirt with the “fixer” handling your child’s case

Oh, you didn’t hire Olivia Pope to handle this? Good luck.

3. Lie to other parent about why child is home

Because there’s no way she’s going to find out about this eventually, right?

4. Use hyper-advanced computer software to locate the other people in the sex tape

Apparently typing in a lot of code with the words “tattoo” and “arm” can determine whether a guy in a blurry party pictures tagged #swaggapalooza has a tattoo or not, give you all his information and thus help you track down the tape. Sure.

5. Be forced to admit that there’s a sex tape to your spouse because she thinks you’re having an affair with the fixer who is suddenly hanging around the house all the time (which you are…but whatever)

In defense of yourself, you should probably accuse your spouse of being a bad mother and thus being ultimately responsible for the sex tape. When tempers are high, it’s always best to blame someone else. Expect a response from your spouse like, “She takes after her daddy, then, doesn’t she?”

6. Have one of the fixer’s assistants intimidate the guy in the sex tape

May I suggest saying things like, “I know who you are, Bobby,” and then listing off a bunch of personal factoids about the person in a fast, staccato voice. That tends to scare to crap out of people. Oh, grabbing them by the throat and threatening to destroy their lives works, too.

7. Once that person has coughed up the name of the third person in the sex tape who actually has the video (scandalous, right?), bring in that teen’s parents for a negotiation

These parents will probably blackmail you for a lot of money because people are the worst.

8. Kiss the fixer

This will take your mind off of the whole blackmail thing.

9. Deal with the parents

When the parents ask for another $500,000 (again, people are the worst), photograph them with the check and say that you will send it to the tabloids, who will write that they are child pornographers. See, this is why you hire a fixer.

10. Talk to your kid

Actually, the best parenting advice comes from a surprising source in this episode: First Lady Mellie Grant.

Mellie doesn’t slut-shame her daughter. She tells her that if she felt empowered and happy by her sex act she would “have a tiny seizure inside,” but still be supportive of Karen and happy for her. “But I don’t think that’s why you did it,” Mellie says. And the two talk about how Karen has been depressed since her brother died in front of her, “which means you get one free pass. This was it. You do not get another.”

Mellie also teaches Karen the life lesson that the world sucks: “It’s definitely sexist. If you were a boy, they’d be giving you high fives.” Well played, Mellie.

So there you have it: hire a fixer if you can, turn the tables on anyone who tries to blackmail you and don’t slut-shame your kid. As Olivia Pope would say: “It’s handled.”

#AskTIME Subscriber Q and A: Michael Scherer

Posted: 17 Oct 2014 10:00 AM PDT

Welcome to TIME Subscriber Q&A, with Time Washington bureau chief, Michael Scherer. He wrote this week’s cover story on the most interesting man in politics, Rand Paul.

To read the full post, you need to be a subscriber. It's not too late to sign up.

DonQuixotic asks, Michael, assuming by some long shot that Rand Paul gets the party nomination to be on the ticket for 2016, do you think he'll look for a more level-headed Republican as his running mate or perhaps someone more divergent from the party line like himself? The past two VP picks - Palin and Ryan - seemed to both be reactionary to circumstances surrounding the Democrats. Do you think Paul would do the same?

Saturday Will Be the Best Day Ever if You Love Pizza (But Only if You Live in Chicago)

Posted: 17 Oct 2014 09:59 AM PDT

Great news: on Saturday, you can get a whole lot of Domino’s pizza for super-duper cheap. Sadly, though, this comes with a few caveats. First, this only applies if you will be in the Chicago area, and second, the deal only lasts from noon to 1:40 p.m.

The chain is offering one-topping medium pies for $1 to celebrate the grand opening of its 100th Chicago location, the Chicago Tribune reports. (That means each pizza costs 100 cents and the deal is available for just 100 minutes. Get it?) Oh, another caveat: there’s a limit of five per customer, but that feels pretty reasonable.

Nurse Infected With Ebola in Dallas Now Being Treated in Maryland

Posted: 17 Oct 2014 09:46 AM PDT

Nina Pham, the first person to be infected with Ebola in the U.S., arrived at the National Institutes of Health Special Clinical Studies Unit in Maryland just before midnight Thursday evening, the NIH said Friday.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and Dr. Rick Davey, deputy director of NIAID’s division of clinical research, said Pham was in fair condition and resting comfortably. Davey will be the physician overseeing Pham’s care.

Fauci said that from the time when Liberian Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan became the first person diagnosed with the disease in the U.S., “we made very clear that we could make the highly specialized facility available if called upon. We were called upon to accept Nina and we did.”

The seven-bed NIAID unit in Rockville, Maryland was created in 2011 as part of the U.S.’s bio-terror preparedness efforts. It’s designed and equipped to care for patients with the most dangerous infectious diseases. The unit has a dedicated staff of 50 to 60 personnel who are specially trained in infection control for biohazards, and, said Fauci, retained continuously to keep their education up to date. The unit’s isolation unit has a separate ventilation system that directs air into specialized filters, and the unit has a dedicated system for removing patient waste and other biohazardous materials.

The center is not just a hospital, but also a research facility. Every patient treated there is also a research subject, and Pham will be no exception. Dr. H. Clifford Lane, clinical director of NIAID, said that Pham’s virus and her immune system’s response to it will be studied extensively. The researchers at the unit are also part of vaccine studies and are working on ways to intervene earlier in the disease’s course with better treatments. Such treatments may help not just Pham, but also the thousands in West Africa currently battling Ebola.

As far as what therapies Pham will receive, Fauci would only reveal that Pham has so far received, while in Dallas, plasma donated from Dr. Kent Brantly, the first American patient successfully treated for Ebola — Brantly was diagnosed while in Liberia before being flown to the U.S. for treatment. Pham is at all times being cared for by four to five nurses working 12 hour shifts; two of these nurses are allowed into her room at one time, with the remaining nurses serving support duties. One full-time infectious disease doctor and one critical care intensive care physician is also assigned to her care in rotating shifts.

The Last Days of WD~50

Posted: 17 Oct 2014 09:46 AM PDT

“I’m just gonna go downstairs and put on my prom dress,” Wylie Dufrense says one afternoon in September at his restaurant on New York’s Lower East Side. He’s wearing a hoodie and he’s changing into a chef’s jacket. Nothing fancy, but there is an air of ceremony in the kitchen. After 11 years of service, wd~50 will close in November, ending an era for modern cuisine.

Over the last decade, Dufresne made a reputation for himself as the mad scientist of New York’s kitchens, putting out brain-teasing dishes like shrimp noodles (that’s noodles made from shrimp), cylindrical quail, fried hollandaise cubes and edible eggshells. Such inventions left some scratching their heads—why fix an egg that ain’t broken? But others embraced his creativity, and over time, his reputation congealed.

Tasting those shrimp noodles never came all that cheap. Today, the restaurant offers two tasting menus: 12 courses for $155, or five courses “from the vault” (a sort of greatest-hits selection) for $90.

And like so many New York stories, price is what has brought this institution to an end: a new building is being developed on the site. This development is driving Dufresne out of the address that gave his restaurant a name: 50 Clinton Street.

Dufresne was on the American avant-garde in using many of the chemical and mechanical innovations (see that WD-40 joke) that define “modernist cuisine” or “molecular gastronomy”—immersion circulators, sous vide precision cooking, foams and the rest. Such methods are often associated with the name Ferran Adrià, the chef behind the now-closed elBulli in Spain, which Dufresne says “blew the doors open” for imaginative cooking.

Dufresne’s enthusiasm for chemicals and high-tech gadgets came as many American chefs ran in the opposite direction, embracing the farm-to-table ethos of whole foods prepared simply. The laboratory of culinary magic tricks at wd~50 couldn’t have seemed more different.

When Dufresne perfected his condiment-frying technique, he thought it would be his big break: “You know, I can fry hollandaise, I can fry ketchup, I can fry mustard,” he says, “I thought, ‘This is gonna be my meal ticket.’ I bought a red and yellow phone because I thought McDonald’s would call, and it was just going to ring. And they were going to say, ‘Please come to us. Show us how we can fry our condiments. We’ll give you the key to the city, and Ronald McDonald will be at every one of your kids’ birthdays until they’re 28.’ Of course that didn’t happen.”

It is hard to think of any other top-tier chef who would get so excited at the prospect of partnering with the Golden Arches. But Dufresne has no qualms about mixing fancy thinking with mass production. He’s explored the idea of patenting some of his inventions. And he says he takes inspiration from the supermarket aisles. “Whether it be cereal technology or candy technology or snack technology, puff snacks,” he says, “I’m always curious to know how those things are made and how we can take that technology, those ingredients, and apply it to a stand-alone restaurant.”

As much as he seizes these methods himself, Dufresne does wish they didn’t have such a bad rap. He wants people to know that his selection of chemical ingredients is just as discriminating as his selection of the meat or fish he serves based on their source. He wishes scientists had done better PR for themselves in developing the new ingredients he uses.

And as much fun as these tricks are, Dufresne maintains that he owes much more to his mentor, culinary superpower Jean-Georges Vongerichten (who is a co-owner of wd~50), than anyone else. He praises Vongerichten’s dedication to lightening and simplifying traditional French cuisine. “For me,” he says, “it begins and ends with the French.”

For all Dufresne’s flash, he does stay true to this ethos. While his dishes are surprising, they’re seldom overwhelming. Take a hanger steak tartare he recently served accompanied by Asian pear, an amaro sauce and a scoop of Béarnaise ice cream. That last ingredient had the intrigue of invention: it didn’t even hint at melting until it was eaten. But the flavors were subtle, complicated only by the bitter sauce smeared on the plate. As Dufresne likes, there was nowhere to hide any imperfection.

Dufresne has flourished in this intersection of old and new. “Clarence Birdseye knew more about frozen foods in 1920 than you and I do today,” he says. That overlooked trust of the past shows in his kitchen’s enthusiasm for trying new techniques with ancient roots. On a recent visit, one line cook was stomping on plastic bags of dough with clean sneakers, a method for making udon noodles easier to form that Dufresne says Japanese housewives were doing centuries ago (sans the plastic or sneakers).

Most of the wd~50 has agreed to stay on until the restaurant closes in November. Malcolm Livingston II, the pastry chef, has a job lined up at Noma in Copenhagen, voted the world’s best restaurant. Dufresne says that he’s on the lookout for a new space and would be open to trying a new neighborhood, but nothing has stuck yet. In 2013, he opened Alder, which offers a more affordable but similarly playful menu, not far from the restaurant he’s now closing.

Dufresne has a lot of history on the Lower East Side, and especially at 50 Clinton Street. He met his wife, Food Network Magazine editor-in-chief Maile Carpenter, in the restaurant when she came to interview him about its opening when she was a food editor for Time Out New York.

Dufresne is a cookbook obsessive (he estimates he has about 1,400 or 1,500 at home) and he’s working on adding his own to the canon. It will be the story of wd~50, co-written with Lucky Peach editor Peter Meehan. “We’re trying to figure out how to capture 11 years, and we have a lot of dishes to choose from,” he says. “Some people might not have enough recipes for a book. We probably have too many.”

For now, though, Dufresne says he’s focused on the restaurant that bears his initials: “We’re gonna try and really make it very special to the very end, because it’s still special to us.”

Vongerichten, for his part, said he’ll mourn the passing of his student’s restaurant. “For those who have been lucky enough to eat there, [it] will never be forgotten.”

At 44, Dufresne is too young for his legacy to be complete. But the legacy of wd~50 will be its invitation to young chefs to think different, to ask why certain standards are followed and dare to break them.

“Our hope is that when it’s all said and done, we have left the industry a little bit better off,” he says. “Not that we found it in disrepair or anything like that, but that we’ve contributed to the body of knowledge…That we’re helping people understand things a little bit better, and that we’re making ourselves smarter, we’re making cooks smarter, we’re making diners smarter.”

Lawmakers Grill Obama Administration Over Ebola Outbreak

2014-10-16T11:41:00.001-07:00

Lawmakers Grill Obama Administration Over Ebola Outbreak

Lawmakers Grill Obama Administration Over Ebola Outbreak
#TheBrief: Watch How the CDC Is Changing Its Ebola Protocol
Apple’s New OS X Yosemite Available Today for Free
Deputies Shot, Suspect on the Loose Near Chicago
Apple iOS 8.1 Will Bring the Camera Roll Back on Monday
More of America’s Foreign College Students Should Come From Mexico
Here Is Who Is Being Monitored For Ebola
Apple Pay Starts Monday for iPhone 6 Users
Watch Jimmy Fallon and Brad Pitt Communicate Entirely Through the Art of Breakdance
Stop What You’re Doing And Watch This Live Rescue Mission of a Baby Bear

Lawmakers Grill Obama Administration Over Ebola Outbreak

Posted: 16 Oct 2014 11:14 AM PDT

Republican lawmakers pushed for stricter travel restrictions Thursday, firing questions at Obama Administration officials after revelations that a health care worker infected with the disease flew on a plane shortly after treating a patient who had died of the virus.

Amber Joy Vinson worked to help treat Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian man who died on Oct. 8, at Texas Presbyterian Hospital but rode on an airplane on Oct. 13, just a day before she developed a fever. It was revealed late Wednesday night that the CDC had actually cleared Vinson to fly; she was diagnosed with Ebola on Tuesday.

“None of us can understand how a nurse who treated an Ebola-infected patient, and who herself had developed a fever, was permitted to board a commercial airline and fly across the country,” said Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), the House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman. “It’s no wonder the public’s confidence is shaken.”

Upton joined other lawmakers, who include Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.) and House Speaker John Boehner, want the Administration to consider travel restrictions between the U.S. and West African countries, where the outbreak has killed almost 4,500 people. “It needs to be solved in Africa but until it is, we should not be allowing these folks in, period,” Upton said at the hearing.

Embattled Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Thomas Frieden countered that the Administration can better track people from the most vulnerable countries in West Africa without restrictions on travel.

“Right now we know who’s coming in,” said Frieden. If we try to eliminate travel… we won’t be able to check them for fever when they leave, we won’t be able to check them for fever when they arrive, we won’t be able—as we do currently—to see a detailed [medical] history to see if they’ve been exposed.”

When pressed by Murphy if the Administration would ever consider changing its mind, Frieden said it would “consider any option to better protect Americans.”

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) said that he didn’t believe travel restrictions would be an effective protection measure, since people will find other avenues of travel. Waxman shifted blame from the CDC and the Obama Administration, instead focusing ire on Congress for “irrational budget cuts” that have dropped CDC’s funding by 12% when adjusted for inflation since 2006.

“We have our share of responsibility,” he said.

#TheBrief: Watch How the CDC Is Changing Its Ebola Protocol

Posted: 16 Oct 2014 11:14 AM PDT

As the Ebola virus continues to ravage parts of West Africa and two American health care workers begin to receive specialized care, we have to wonder: Are hospitals in the U.S. well-equipped to contain any further spread at home?

Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, assured Americans in September that the country’s hospitals could control and curb any threat. But after two nurses contracted the virus while helping to treat the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the U.S., who died in Dallas last week, criticism is piling on and answers to this question and more are in high demand.

Apple’s New OS X Yosemite Available Today for Free

Posted: 16 Oct 2014 10:51 AM PDT

Apple’s OS X Yosemite, its latest operating system for Mac computers, will available Thursday for free download, Apple said during an event at its Cupertino, California headquarters.

OS X Yosemite, available in beta since July, offers among other new features an updated design, a Notification Center that links to third party content, a powerful Spotlight search, and improved Safari functions including a new tab view and sharing functions on third party websites.

Apple emphasized that Yosemite will also work in conjunction with iOS 8, Apple’s latest operating system for mobile devices. Yosemite will use iCloud to provide a seamless cross-device experience, an initiative Apple calls Continuity.

While Apple already uses iCloud to sync the Calendar and Notes apps across devices, users will now have additional features with the Handoff feature. Users will be able to work on presentations or documents on one device, then pick up where they left off on another device. Additionally, SMS text messages—not just iMessages—will appear across Macs, iPads and iPhones. With OS X Yosemite, Macs will also be able to serve as a speakerphone for telephone calls.

And Apple Watch isn’t left out of the Continuity project either. Craig Federighi, Apple’s SVP of software engineering, showed how the Apple Watch can be used as a remote to control presentations on a Mac.

Deputies Shot, Suspect on the Loose Near Chicago

Posted: 16 Oct 2014 10:40 AM PDT

(HOLIDAY HILLS, Ill.) — Authorities were searching for a man suspected of shooting two sheriff’s deputies in suburban Chicago early Thursday, warning that he should be considered “armed and extremely dangerous.”

Investigators believe that 52-year-old Scott Peters fled after opening fire with a rifle as deputies responded to a domestic dispute around 1:30 a.m. at a home in Holiday Hills, McHenry County Sheriff Keith Nygren said. He said deputies are going door-to-door in the small village to make sure everyone is safe.

“We simply don’t know his whereabouts at this time,” Nygren said, adding that “many, many” deputies are involved with the search.

The sheriff said Peters, a military veteran, is being sought on two counts of attempted murder and should be considered “armed and extremely dangerous.”

Nygren said the two deputies who were shot are in stable condition, but no other details about their injuries were provided. The suspect’s wife and child, who were in the home, weren’t injured, he said.

Holiday Hills is about 45 miles northwest of downtown Chicago.

Nygren said he had little information about the circumstances surrounding the incident. He said Peters was a military veteran, and that local police didn’t have “much of a past history” with him.

Apple iOS 8.1 Will Bring the Camera Roll Back on Monday

Posted: 16 Oct 2014 10:40 AM PDT

Apple announced Thursday that the camera roll feature, which was removed with the launch of iOS 8, will return with the launch of iOS 8.1, to be released Monday.

The updated operating system will bring back the “beloved” feature as well as debut a beta version of the iCloud photo library, said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering, at an event at Apple’s Cupertino, California headquarters. The new library will enable photos taken and edited on one device, like an iPhone, to be “instantly reflected on all devices,” like an iPad. The library will also share photos across devices in their original format and resolution.

More of America’s Foreign College Students Should Come From Mexico

Posted: 16 Oct 2014 10:29 AM PDT

My Mexican father applied to colleges in the United States in the late 1940s, and was offered scholarships by the University of Arizona and Western Reserve (now Case Western Reserve) in Cleveland. His father sat him down and drew a line from west to east across a map of the United States and said: “Below this line, they don’t like Mexicans.” It was a fateful moment, all but ensuring Dad would return to Mexico upon graduation. He did not like the cold. He would have loved Tucson.

Dad did enjoy his studies in Cleveland, and got a lot out of the experience, notwithstanding his nearly flunking music composition (not long ago I stumbled across a copy of his transcript). His was a classic liberal arts education, blending economics, history, and literature. Upon graduation, he returned to Mexico, got a job, and enrolled in an evening law school. He went on to have a successful business career, much of which involved connecting Mexico to the United States and (though not as a conscious matter) spreading American values to those who worked with him.

A fascinating new Brookings report on the foreign student population of the United States made me think of Dad’s experience, and what he and the United States got out of the deal. As Neil G. Ruiz, the author of the report, put it over the phone, migrant students build bridges between societies, and over time those bridges carry a lot of economic activity. This means that the United States is, in many cases, educating the future leaders of the world, particularly the future leaders of emerging nations. We currently take in about a fifth of all students worldwide who cross borders to study, though these students still make up less than 4 percent of the entire student population in the U.S.

Ruiz and his team looked not only at countries of origin for the 1,153,459 foreign students enrolled in higher education programs between 2008 and 2012, but their cities of origin and the metropolitan areas they cluster in within the U.S. So, for instance, the data compiled by Brookings shows there were 7,109 students (F-1 visa holders) from Seoul studying in the Los Angeles area during that four-year period. Looking into the future, it’s hard to imagine a more binding tie between the two cities than the presence of all those Korean students in Los Angeles, and their connection to the city long after they graduate.

It isn’t surprising that Asia dominates the census of foreign students in the United States, although I was stunned by just how much. China alone sent 284,173 students in that period. The top 20 hometowns of all foreign students in the United States are in Asia. Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich Gulf states boast the fastest-growing contingent of students. Shockingly, the city of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, alone sent more students (17,361) than did the entire country of Mexico (17,171).

Mexico, ranked ninth among countries sending students here, is vastly underrepresented among foreign students when you consider that it is our neighbor, our second-largest trading partner, and home to almost 120 million people. The fact that the country lags behind cities like Riyadh and Taipei in the numbers of students it sends to American universities shows that Mexico and the United States remain “distant neighbors” in some ways, as Alan Riding termed the relationship in his book of that title three decades ago.

It also shows that money talks. In addition to having many families able to pay the high cost of tuition abroad, countries like China and Saudi Arabia offer lavish scholarships to promising kids. The U.S. has a strategic need to attract more students from Mexico and other countries who don’t have this kind of financial backing. But American universities prefer to see foreign students as a profit center. Texas has long been a welcome exception to the rule, offering Mexican nationals with financial need in-state tuition at public universities as a matter of policy. Meanwhile, the Obama administration and its Mexican counterpart have announced initiatives to increase the flow of students across the border to 100,000 in coming years, but the question of who pays for all those students remains an open one.

Our policy discussions about foreign students in this country also disproportionately focus on students focusing on science and technology. Lawmakers, analysts, and businesses are all advocating the creation of an easier path for those pursuing advanced STEM degrees to stay and work here once they obtain their degrees. There is widespread support, echoed by the Brookings report, for a law that would automatically grant these graduates a green card.

That makes a great deal of sense, but we shouldn’t take too utilitarian a view of foreign students in this country, writing off those incapable of writing code or finding their way around a lab. Yes, we want to be the world’s innovation hub, attracting the best and brightest to our great research universities. But we also benefit from having students come here from all over the world to learn our history, as well as our democratic and capitalist values.

And that’s true even—maybe especially so—if they go back home because it was too cold in Cleveland.

Here Is Who Is Being Monitored For Ebola

Posted: 16 Oct 2014 10:24 AM PDT

The key to containing spread of a virus like Ebola, public health experts tell us, is tracking down every person with whom an infected person had direct contact. Such contact tracing includes people in their family who might have shared hugs or kisses, or health care workers who handled any specimens.

Who is currently being traced in this way? Here’s what we know.

How many people are being monitored?

48 people who had direct contact with Thomas Eric Duncan

For now, officials at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) say that 48 people had direct contact with Thomas Eric Duncan before he was isolated on Sept. 28 and diagnosed on Sept. 30. CDC has not clarified where those people might have had contact with Duncan. Four members of his immediate family who were staying in the same apartment as Duncan since he arrived in the U.S. have been quarantined for 21 days, the incubation period for the Ebola virus. But it’s not clear whether the remaining 44 include public citizens in the same apartment building or whether it also includes others in the community.

76 health care workers who cared for Duncan

Between Sept. 28, when Duncan was put into isolation at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, and Oct. 8, when he died, 76 health care workers participated in his care, performing duties that potentially exposed them to his infectious body fluids. All are being monitored, according to the CDC. At the minimum, that involves having the health care workers take their own temperature twice daily, and report any fever above 100.4F or any other symptoms of Ebola, including nausea, headache, vomiting and diarrhea.

It’s not clear how many, if any, are being actively monitored, which involves public health officials performing the temperature checks twice daily and asking detailed questions about any other possible symptoms.

Can contacts travel?

According to CDC director Tom Frieden, people who are part of contact tracing are advised not to use public transport. They are limited to so-called controlled movement, such as a personal car.

Amber Vinson, the second nurse to test positive, however, traveled by plane from Dallas to Cleveland on Oct. 10, two days after Duncan’s death. Vinson had apparently been intimately involved in Duncan’s care while he was alive, including drawing his blood and inserting catheters. Even if she did not have a fever before she boarded the plane, Frieden said, “because she was in a group of individuals known to have exposure to Ebola, she should not have traveled on a commercial airline.”

While in Cleveland, Vinson reported a temperature of 99.5F. That is below the CDC threshold of 100.4F for Ebola isolation, but because of her direct contact with Duncan’s body fluids, Vinson was told by CDC to return to Dallas, according to a CDC spokesperson. She did, on Oct. 13, on a commercial flight.

Frieden said on Oct. 15 that Vinson reported no symptoms of Ebola; Ebola patients can only spread their disease when they are symptomatic and through direct contact with their body fluids, including vomit, diarrhea or blood.

Why isn’t every contact of Duncan’s under quarantine?

Because Ebola only spreads through contact with body fluids when the patient is symptomatic, the risk of contracting Ebola through casual interactions is very low. Passengers on the plane that brought Duncan into the U.S., for example, are not at risk because he was not symptomatic during this trip.

Passengers on Vinson’s flight from Cleveland to Dallas, however, are being monitored out of an abundance of caution. Because she had a fever, the CDC notified Frontier Airlines, the carrier, that Vinson “may have been symptomatic earlier than initially suspected, including the possibility of possessing symptoms while on board the flight,” according to Reuters. Those passengers are now being monitored for Ebola symptoms.

Duncan’s family members are under quarantine because they were in direct contact with Duncan when he first became ill, and have a high chance of having touched his infectious body fluids.

Health care workers are also at high risk, since they handled Duncan’s body fluids as he became more and more symptomatic in the hospital. They are supposed to be protected from exposure by personal protective equipment, but Frieden acknowledged that the gear used by health workers in the Duncan’s early hospitalization was “variable” and that both Vinson and Nina Pham, the first nurse to test positive for Ebola, might have been infected during this time.

Apple Pay Starts Monday for iPhone 6 Users

Posted: 16 Oct 2014 10:23 AM PDT

Apple Pay, Apple’s mobile payment platform, will start on Monday, allowing customers to make purchases in retail stores using only their iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus. Apple CEO Tim Cook made the announcement Thursday at a live event at Apple’s Cupertino, California headquarters.

The program allows users to pay for items by holding their iPhone 6 or 6 Plus near a contactless reader in a participating stores. Major retailers and restaurants like Walgreen, Duane Reade, Subway and McDonald’s have signed on. Apple also partnered with American Express, MasterCard and Visa on the project. Apple Pay includes an online component as well, making it easier to partake in e-commerce.

“It’s going to change the way we pay for things,” said Cook.

Watch Jimmy Fallon and Brad Pitt Communicate Entirely Through the Art of Breakdance

Posted: 16 Oct 2014 10:06 AM PDT

Last night, Brad Pitt dropped by The Tonight Show to chat with Jimmy Fallon, catch up on life, talk about his current movie Fury, etc. They did all of this — but instead of using words, they used their dance moves.

Luckily, this segment included subtitles for those of us who are not fluent in breakdance. Fallon and Pitt both do a great job, but the true star here is clearly Brad’s mustache.

Stop What You’re Doing And Watch This Live Rescue Mission of a Baby Bear

Posted: 16 Oct 2014 10:06 AM PDT

You need to stop what you’re doing and watch this live-streaming video of a small baby bear who escaped from a dumpster in Pasadena, Calif. and is now being pursued—along with its mother—by animal rescue officers, and a helicopter news crew:

You’re welcome.

Why Protective Gear is Sometimes Not Enough in the Fight Against Ebola

2014-10-15T11:35:00.001-07:00

Why Protective Gear is Sometimes Not Enough in the Fight Against Ebola

Why Protective Gear is Sometimes Not Enough in the Fight Against Ebola
You Can Now Watch Vines on Your Xbox
Can Low-T Therapy Promote Prostate Cancer?
Meet the Lumbering, Quarter-Ton, Extinct Kangaroo
Apple Accidentally Releases Images of New iPads
Darby Stanchfield on “Scandal” and Women’s Limitations in Hollywood
Five Best Ideas of the Day: October 15
The Best Small Android Tablet
The Ethics of Wearing an Ebola Costume for Halloween
Warner Bros Unveils Plans for 10 DC Superhero Movies

Why Protective Gear is Sometimes Not Enough in the Fight Against Ebola

Posted: 15 Oct 2014 11:22 AM PDT

When it comes to Ebola, the full-body Personal Protective Equipment [PPE] suit is probably the best way to prevent infection. But a PPE can also be one of the easiest ways to get Ebola. A PPE is usually made up of a full-body, impermeable suit with a hood, rubber boots covered by Tyvek booties, multiple pairs of surgical gloves, a surgical mask over the nose and mouth, a plastic bib, goggles, a plastic apron and a lot of duct tape. There is a reason why they are nicknamed moon suits: worn properly, they shouldn’t show an inch of skin. Putting them on right requires two people and about 10 minutes. Taking them off, in even the best of circumstances, is a clumsy, arduous process with multiple opportunities to make a lethal mistake.

It is not yet clear how, exactly, two health care workers at a Dallas hospital tending Thomas Eric Duncan, the first man to be diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, caught the disease, but health authorities are looking closely at the protective measures used at the hospital, and whether or not they were sufficient. Meanwhile, in Spain, where a nurse, Teresa Romero Ramos, is being treated for Ebola that she caught from a patient recently returned from Sierra Leone, officials are questioning whether or not she wore her PPE properly. On a Spanish television program quoted by the New York Times, Madrid’s regional health minister, Javier Rodríguez, questioned the need for extensive training on using the PPEs. “You don’t need a master’s degree to explain to someone how you should put on or take off” a protective suit, he said.

Maybe not, but no matter how experienced and qualified you are in putting on and taking off a PPE there is always room for error. I recently spent two weeks in Monrovia, Liberia, reporting on Ebola, and climbing into, and out of, PPEs on a regular basis, and I am still not sure I ever got it right. I was trained by the best, too: the Red Cross Dead Body Management teams, the guys responsible for picking up deceased Ebola victims and transporting them to the crematorium for safe disposal. An Ebola patient is at his most infective in the hours and days after death, when the virus swarms the skin and bodily fluids.

When the Dead Body Management team workers finish zipping a corpse into a double-sealed body bag they undergo an extensive decontamination process that best resembles a military drill in its precision and attention to detail. Each worker is paired with a sanitizer, a man wearing a backpack sprayer filled with a chlorine and water solution. The process is initiated with a good dousing of chlorine solution and a vigorous washing of the gloved hands. The worker removes his goggles, which are sprayed thoroughly and then discarded. His hands are sprayed again. Then the hood goes down, and the zipper is sprayed, as are the hands for another time. He unzips, and his hands are sprayed yet again. Then he has to shrug out of the suit without allowing any of the external surfaces to come into contact with his hands or the clothing underneath. And so it goes, layer after layer until the worker is left standing in boots, medical scrubs, and the last pair of gloves. Again he is liberally sprayed down with the chlorine solution, at which point he has to jigger off his gloves in a way that ensures that the surface does not come into contact with the skin.

Each organization, be it the Red Cross or Médecins Sans Frontières [MSF], has a similar ritual, even if small details vary. Still, mistakes are made. Even MSF, which has spearheaded the Ebola response in west Africa since day one, and probably knows more than any other organization about how to prevent infection, has seen two international health workers sickened with the disease. A United Nations medical worker infected in Liberia and transported to Germany for care died on Oct. 13. A doctor working for an Italian medical charity contracted Ebola last month, and is still receiving treatment in Germany.

The gear works, but the possibility of human error is still high, especially when working in a high-stress environment, when fatigue and fear stalk every move. PPEs can also provide a dangerously false sense of security. When they are not put on right, or if they are taken off incorrectly, they may as well not be there at all.

If you are lucky the droplet of sweat dropping into your eye as you remove your goggles without bending over first didn’t pass over some Ebola-contaminated material on your hood. I met one health care worker who thinks he caught Ebola when a young patient vomited on him, and the vomit passed through a chink in his Tyvek armor, where his suit didn’t entirely zip up over his mask. Both he and the patient survived. Which is why having the right kind of protection is only the beginning. There needs to be training, and it has to be drilled in daily. There needs to be a buddy system, in which one health care worker is always watching the other, to ensure that the protective gear is on correctly, and that it is taken off correctly. But there will always be mistakes. Ebola will get through. The important thing is to be ready when it does.

You Can Now Watch Vines on Your Xbox

Posted: 15 Oct 2014 11:19 AM PDT

The Xbox marketplace launched a new app Wednesday that brings Vine’s hypnotically looping 6-second videos to a bigger screen: the living room TV. The Vine app, now available for download, displays the most popular clips in channels such as Art, Music & Dance and Comedy. Users can swipe through clips by making air gestures at Kinect’s motion sensor or giving voice commands from the couch.

They can also reduce the viewing screen to a panel that “snaps” alongside gaming or TV apps for a full-blown sensory overload, or they could just quietly watch the leaves turn.

Can Low-T Therapy Promote Prostate Cancer?

Posted: 15 Oct 2014 11:18 AM PDT

“Low T” therapy is a fast-growing trend for men who want to jack up testosterone—which declines naturally with age but which can also be clinically low in some people—and the testosterone therapy industry is predicted to reach $5 billion by 2017. The long-term safety effects of supplementing with the hormone is still in question, however—especially in light of a study earlier this year that found double the heart attack risk in certain men after starting testosterone treatments. Other research suggested there was no meaningful increase in heart risk, adding to the confusion. But a new rat study published in the journal Endocrinology raises some alarming questions about the increasingly popular drugs.

Maarten Bosland, PhD, study author and professor of pathology at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s College of Medicine, devised an animal model to test the tumor-promoting effects of testosterone in rats. He exposed a group of rats to a carcinogen, which would put them at risk of developing cancer. He also gave some of the rats testosterone, but no carcinogen. In a third group, he administered both the carcinogen and the testosterone. Then, he measured tumor growth among the two groups.

None of the rats developed prostate cancer when they were just exposed to the carcinogen, but 10-18% of them did when they were just given testosterone. When the rats were exposed to the carcinogen and then given testosterone—even at very low doses—50-71% developed prostate cancer. “I was totally amazed about how strong testosterone can work to promote the formation of prostate cancer in these animals,” he says.

Of course, an animal model can’t determine what will happen in men, but Bosland thinks a similar effect is possible. “Absent of having solid human studies, we won’t be able to say that—it’s just an extra warning signal,” he says. “But I think it’s a clear indication that there is risk.”

Meet the Lumbering, Quarter-Ton, Extinct Kangaroo

Posted: 15 Oct 2014 11:01 AM PDT

Birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim, kangaroos gotta hop—unless you’re talking about the eight-foot-tall, quarter-ton, kangaroos known as sthenurines (and no, that is not a typo). These distant cousins of modern red and gray kangaroos went extinct about 30,000 years ago, and their fossils weren’t discovered until the 1800s. When the species at last came to light, it was not easy to take seriously, resembling nothing so much as cartoon versions of its modern cousins. “They were short faced,” says Brown University biologist Christine Janis, “not long-faced like modern kangaroos, and the smallest of them were as big as the largest modern kangaroos. It wasn’t clear,” she adds, “how they could hop at that size.”

And according to a new paper Janis just published in the journal PLoS ONE, they probably couldn’t. Instead, she and two co-authors conclude after several years of investigation involving more than 140 skeletons from kangaroos and related species such as wallabees, the sthenurines walked upright on two legs.

The evidence comes from virtually everywhere across the creatures’ anatomy. Their teeth, the scientists observe, look more suited to browsing on trees and bushes than nibbling on grass as modern ‘roos do. That implies the ability to stand upright on two legs to reach the branches.

“They also had flared hipbones,” says Janis, with ample room for large gluteal muscles that would have permitted them to put weight on one leg at a time, something today’s kangaroos never do. Modern kangaroos amble around on all fours—or fives, if you count the tail, which they use for balance—when they’re browsing. When they want to go fast, they hop.

That’s possible only because they have flexible backs and stiff, substantial tails, which sthenurines lacked. The sthenurine hands, moreover, were unsuitable for bearing their weight. “They would have had trouble walking on all fours,” says Janis. The animals’ very bulk would have put terrible strains on their tendons if they even tried to hop.

“Some have argued that the sthenurines might have had thicker tendons to compensate,” Janis says, “but that would have made the tendons less elastic. It just seems biomechanically unlikely.” Any arguments about tendons and other soft tissues are somewhat speculative in ancient specimens, of course. “Imagine that we only knew elephants as fossils,” says Janis. “How would we know for sure they had trunks?”

The other evidence all points in one direction, however. As Janis straightforwardly puts, “just about everything we looked at made us go, ‘oh, that fits in.'” In the often elegant study of anatomy, the answer that fits is usually the answer that’s right.

Apple Accidentally Releases Images of New iPads

Posted: 15 Oct 2014 10:54 AM PDT

Apple appears to have accidentally revealed images of both its new iPads, the iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3 ahead of its Thursday event, an unusual mistake for a company known for being obsessively secretive before official announcements.

An official iPad user guide for iOS 8 could be viewed Wednesday in the iTunes store with screenshots of the new devices showing “everything you need to know about iPad, in a handy format.” The page was still live as of 1:45 p.m. ET. Apple blog 9to5Mac first spotted the user guide.

The guide shows that besides the addition of Touch ID, the latest iPads look essentially the same as their predecessors. The computing power of each is expected to improve, but design-wise, these screenshots reveal devices similar to their earlier incantations.

Darby Stanchfield on “Scandal” and Women’s Limitations in Hollywood

Posted: 15 Oct 2014 10:52 AM PDT

Answer by Darby Stanchfield, actress in the ABC drama “Scandal,” on Quora.

I find this question to be deceptively tricky. It is all too easy to cry ‘victim’ in the entertainment industry and fall prey to believing all sorts of limitations (about oneself) that the industry is known for. Examples of these multifarious limited ways of thinking are as follows:

An actor has to be physically beautiful in order to be a leading actor…
A woman will not work over the age of 40…
If you are not born into the business or aren’t related to someone established in the business, you can’t break into it and have the same opportunities as those who are…
A person of color has a much smaller chance of getting a lead role than a caucasian person…
A blonde woman can only play a ditzy role and not one of intelligence…

…and the list goes on and on. This question—”What are the main struggles women face when building a career?”—alerts me that this is one of those limited ways of thinking. I don’t think of myself as limited in this business as a woman or in any other way. In fact, I often look to men’s career paths in the television and film business as inspiration. I don’t see myself as different than they are.

This is not to say that challenges don’t exist within the television and film industry for women. Or that there isn’t a history of limitations (for most individuals) within the industry. I don’t say this lightly, but I find the most effective way to empower oneself beyond limitations is to spend as little time dwelling on them as possible. This in turn is the best way out of them. Here’s an example: if I walk into an audition room, thinking that as a woman, or a woman over 40, or a woman who grew up in the middle of no-where (Alaska) and not in Hollywood, that I am destined to be at a disadvantage, then that’s exactly what I’ll project. I’ll project a defeated attitude and that’s what the director and producers will read. But, if I go in believing I have just as much of a chance as anyone else — or even a better chance, if I go in embracing my womanhood, my age, my background, and my originality — I will only project a wonderful message of originality and confidence and peace within myself. I believe THAT state of mind, and how it informs the way in which one carries themselves, is irresistible.

The leading women of “Scandal” (Kerry Washington, Bellamy Young, Katie Lowes) and I have had many conversations about this notion. We’ve all had defining moments in our careers where we drew a line in the sand and have took a stand to say ‘no’ to a stereotyped role. This directly rejects the notion of limiting ourselves because of our unique circumstances of age, race, gender, etc.

There will be a lot of people who disagree with me. But I don’t know how to be in this business any other way than embracing each person’s unique characteristics, and seeing them as full of unlimited possibilities in how they might utilize those talents. In fact, if I were to think any other way, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t work nearly as much as I do and have worked in the entertainment industry. I also think that by committing to and embracing a larger, more unlimited way of thinking about oneself and others in the industry we will, in turn, create more progress in breaking limited stereotypes, rather than if one were to dwell on and operate from those limited beliefs.

This question originally appeared on Quora: What are the main struggles women face when building a career in film and television?

Five Best Ideas of the Day: October 15

Posted: 15 Oct 2014 10:23 AM PDT

1. Americans are often oblivious to the role of farming in their lives. To get the smart policies needed to feed our nation and the world, we must reconnect people to agriculture.

By Ian Pigott in the Des Moines Register

2. Even employer-paid health insurance can worsen poverty and increase inequality.

By David Blumenthal in Commonwealth Fund

3. Is “feminist marketing” an oxymoron?

By Chandra Johnson in the Deseret News

4. Helsinki has a plan cities everywhere could try: Combine the sharing economy, transit and mobile technology to eliminate cars.

By Randy Rieland in Smithsonian

5. America’s best bet in Africa is a strong relationship with Nigeria.

By Daniel Donovan in Foreign Policy Blogs

The Aspen Institute is an educational and policy studies organization based in Washington, D.C.

The Best Small Android Tablet

Posted: 15 Oct 2014 10:19 AM PDT

Shopping for a smaller tablet can be daunting, thanks to the sea of 7- to 8-inch Android devices available. It would be simple if most of the low-cost models were easily dismissed, but Android tablets are getting lighter, slimmer, faster and more powerful while simultaneously getting less expensive.

To find the very best tablets, I looked for four key elements: a bright, vivid, pixel-dense display that looks great at any angle; a lightweight design that’s comfortable to hold in one hand for long stretches; a powerful CPU coupled with a good amount of RAM for smooth, speedy multitasking; and an interface that’s easy to understand and navigate even if you’re not tech-savvy. Price was also a consideration — a great small tablet shouldn’t break the bank.

That narrowed the field down to three standout tablets: the Asus Memo Pad 8 ($129 on Amazon), the Samsung Galaxy Tab S 8.4 ($389 on Amazon) and the Nvidia SHIELD Tablet ($299 on Amazon). In the end, the Shield Tablet is my ultimate pick for best small tablet based on its balance of price point and feature set.

Made for Gamers, Great for Everyone

Nvidia designed the Shield Tablet primarily for gamers, so its long list of impressive features includes things like superfast gaming performance and the ability to wirelessly stream PC games from the computer to the tablet. The same elements that make this a great gaming tablet make it a great all-around tablet as well.

The Tegra K1 processor inside isn’t just quad-core; like most tablets, it has 192 graphics cores. That translates into a smooth experience no matter which app or game you’re running, and it ensures the tablet will be able to keep up with Android apps well into the future as they grow more complex and resource-hungry.

The Shield Tablet’s 8-inch, 1920 x 1200 resolution display creates deep colors and crisp details that don’t wash out or distort when you hold the tablet at an angle. Whether you use the Shield to read an e-book or a web page, its high pixel density means that small fonts stay sharp.

The Shield’s display doesn’t pop as much as the display on the Galaxy Tab S 8.4 (2560 x 1600 Super AMOLED), and if you look closely, the difference in resolution is noticeable. If you want the very best display, the Tab S has it. But side by side, the Shield Tablet stands up quite well to this competition — especially impressive since it costs about $100 less.

Another notable difference between the two tablets is weight. The Tab S 8.4 is incredibly thin and light for its size, weighing 10.4 ounces versus the Shield’s 13.7 ounces. The Shield is still light enough to hold with one hand during long reading sessions or with two for longer gaming sessions without making your wrists ache.

Bonus: Stylus

On top of its sweet gaming features, the Shield Tablet offers one more extra that makes it enticing: a stylus. Just like the stylus for Nvidia’s last tablet, the Tegra Note 2, the Shield’s stylus is a step above the kind of capacitive styluses that work on any tablet, but it’s not the same technology used in active digitizer pens like those with the Galaxy Note series. Active pens are more desirable because they’re accurate and precise, making it easy to reject input from a palm or finger. They achieve this through wireless communication between the pen and the display, which makes the tablets more expensive.

Coupled with the processing power of the Tegra K1, the Nvidia DirectStylus 2 software emulates this functionality in the Shield’s pen, even though it’s not an active digitizer. You still get a very thin, precise tip, and there’s even some pressure sensitivity and (even more impressive) palm rejection — all without expensive hardware.

Nvidia has included a handful of note-taking and writing apps that take advantage of the pen, including Evernote, Write and a handwriting recognition keyboard. The company also developed a neat drawing app called Dabbler that emulates several different types of drawing and painting environments, including wet watercolors.

Outside of last year’s Galaxy Note 8, this is the best stylus experience available in the 8-inch tablet range.

Android and Interface

Most popular Android tablets come with an interface skin over the base operating system that changes the look and some of the functionality of the operating system. Google Nexus tablets and, now, the Shield tablet are major exceptions to this rule. Although Nvidia did a ton of work on the back end to give the tablet some gaming chops, the company didn’t mess much with how Android 4.4 KitKat operates, preserving the stock look and feel.

I’ve praised well-designed skins on tablets from Samsung, ASUS and other companies in previous reviews, and in truth, I prefer them since they smooth over some of Android’s rough edges and make executing some actions more efficient. However, KitKat is Google’s most polished version of Android to date, and if you prefer to take customization into your own hands, the Shield Tablet offers the same blank canvas that Nexus devices do.

You’ll find a few Shield-specific tweaks, such as the Shield Hub interface/menu for easy navigation while connected to a TV and using the game controller. (More on this later.) There’s also Console Mode for streaming full HD video or games to an HDTV. Otherwise, it’s Android business as usual.

Media

The same hardware that makes the Shield Tablet a gaming beast also makes it a great little machine for watching video, showing off pictures and listening to music. Between the beautiful display and the high-end graphics, you’ll enjoy smooth playback of full HD and 4K movies from the device or via streaming. The latter is possible thanks to a dual-band, 2×2 MIMO wireless antenna that connects to the strongest signal available to receive and send data at super-fast speeds.

The Shield sports a pair of speakers on the front, flanking the display. It’s no surprise, then, that the Shield’s audio quality is well above average — and not just because the sound blasts directly toward you. The sound quality is the best I’ve heard on a tablet, well rounded in the mid-range with actual bass. It bests the Galaxy Tab S 8.4’s sound without trying (although it doesn’t take much to earn that distinction, since most tablet speakers aren’t great). Still, it’s still a nice touch that means that you won’t need headphones to get a good audio experience.

Aside from Shield-optimized games in the Shield Hub, you won’t get any special or exclusive content sources beyond what you can find in the Google Play store.

Cameras

The Shield is singular in that it has 5-megapixel cameras on the back and the front. Both take above-average pictures for tablet cameras and are supported by a robust camera app that makes it possible to tweak settings for better images. The high-quality front camera is a bonus not only for people who love selfies but anyone who likes to video chat.

Gaming

Nvidia

As I said at the start, you don’t need to be a gamer to appreciate all the great things about the Shield Tablet. But since it is designed for gamers, you’ll appreciate several features and accessories that only add to this device’s value.

First and foremost is the optional game controller ($60 at Amazon), designed to be just as comfortable and robust as an Xbox or PS4 controller. It communicates with the tablet wirelessly over Wi-Fi, not Bluetooth, managing lag so minuscule you’ll never notice it when playing. All of the games available via Nvidia’s Hub work with the controller out of the virtual box; for others, a mapping app lets you use it with almost any game.

The most impressive software feature is GameStream, a technology that makes it possible to play the high-end games stored on your PC using the tablet. Currently, GameStream only works when the computer and tablet are on the same wireless network — so just in the home — and with specific hardware on the PC side (not to mention some suggested routers). That said, being able to play a game meant for a computer on a tablet is really cool. And when you’re in console mode and connected via HDMI, you can play those same games on a big-screen HDTV without having to move the computer away from your desk.

Gamers love sharing gameplay with friends (bragging rights are important), so Nvidia has built in a sharing option that allows you to record game play for sharing or streaming to gaming video site Twitch.

The only drawback for gamers is that the $299 model only includes 16GB of internal storage. There’s a microSD card slot to hold media and some app data; however, this version of Android severely restricts moving and running apps from SD cards.

Games tend to take up more space than other apps, so you’ll need to keep a close eye on available space.

A 32GB model is available, although it comes with an additional element: LTE. The extra storage and antenna make for a $100 price bump.

Good Reviews Across the Board

At release, the Shield impressed pretty much every reviewer who got their hands on one.

PCMag praised it as “one of the most powerful mobile devices available right now,” calling Nvidia’s success at fitting so much power and flexibility into an 8-inch tablet “genuinely impressive.”

CNET sums it up nicely: “Even if you don’t take advantage of its gaming prowess, the Nvidia Shield Tablet is one of the most versatile — and affordable — high-performance 8-inch Android slates you can buy.”

The Best Small Tablet: Nvidia Shield Tablet

The Shield Tablet has all the elements of a great tablet: a beautiful display, blistering performance, a light, comfortable and good-looking design and a clean interface. It adds some sweet gaming features and a surprisingly excellent stylus on top of that, all for the relatively low price of $299.

Even if you don’t care about gaming, this tablet’s closest competition is the Samsung Galaxy Tab S 8.4, which costs almost $100 more. While the Galaxy Tab does have a lighter design and a brilliant display, the Shield is more than competitive on both fronts. That’s why it’s my top pick.

Runner-up: ASUS Memo Pad 8

The $129 ASUS Memo Pad 8 is the tablet you want if you’re looking for something under $200. It used to be that tablets in this price range were either very limited in functionality or poorly built. That’s no longer true, and the Memo Pad line in particular has exemplified how low cost can be done right.

The 8-inch IPS display has a relatively low resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels, but the quality of the screen itself is quite good. No matter what angle you hold it at, the vivid colors stay true and don’t wash out or distort. The screen gets pretty bright too, although it’s a bit reflective even at 100 percent brightness.

The Memo Pad is lightweight yet feels well-built and sturdy, not cheap. It runs on a quad-core Intel Atom processor, a decently powerful and speedy CPU for an Android 4.4 device, able to handle any basic app with ease. However, the Memo Pad’s relatively small amount of RAM (1GB) means that resource-hungry apps may choke. If your needs are simple — email, browsing, a few casual games — then you won’t have problems.

Asus has created a custom UI skin to go over Android called ZenUI. While it does add some functionality and change up the operating system’s menus a bit, this skin is mostly a light touch.

The closest competition in this price range is the Amazon Fire 6 ($99 on Amazon) and Fire 7 ($139 on Amazon) as well as the ASUS Memo Pad 7 ($125 on Amazon), the 7-inch version.

The Fire 6 is the most tempting of the bunch due to its $99 price. However, Amazon’s newest tablets continue to suffer the same challenge as always: a limited Android experience. With the Fire, you can only run apps from Amazon’s store. The company has a vast library, but it’s not as deep as Google Play.

The 7-inch Memo Pad is almost identical to the larger version both inside and out, and it’s the next generation of the very impressive Memo Pad HD 7 from last year.

Unfortunately, this year’s model doesn’t have as nice a display or as good a set of cameras. Unless you really want a 7-inch tablet instead of an 8-inch one, the larger version is worth the extra money.

This article was written by K.T. Bradford and originally appeared on Techlicious.

More from Techlicious:

The Ethics of Wearing an Ebola Costume for Halloween

Posted: 15 Oct 2014 10:17 AM PDT

It’s that time of year again. Those last few weeks in October when everyone frantically tries to come up with a winning Halloween costume—some magical combination of topical yet funny, sexy but not desperate, and clever without being opaque. A costume that promises to be a conversation starter at any party, making you impossibly alluring by displaying both your charming wit and your physical attractiveness.

So what is the must-have getup this season, along with Elsa from Frozen and the superhero mainstays?

Ebola.

As in, Ebola doctors, Ebola patients and Ebola zombies. The New York Post’s Oct. 15 cover declared Ebola disease suits the “hot” costume this year, begging the question of what a “sexy” Ebola doc might look like. And then begging the question of if we even want to know the answer.

The prospect of this costume going viral, shall we say, has some people crying ‘too soon.’ “Normally I think that irony and humor is funny, but this thing with the costumes, is it really that funny?” Maria Mckenna, a physician’s assistant in Philadelphia, asked the Associated Press. “I mean, Ebola’s not even under control yet.”

On the other hand, Jonathan Weeks, chief executive of BrandsOnSale, which is selling a full Ebola containment suit costume for $79.99, told the Associated Press that he doesn’t want to “stray away from anything that’s current or controversial.” That, after all, is what generates buzz. The Ebola suit was the most shared item on his site.

So how do you navigate the treacherous waters of the Ebola Halloween costume? (Or, rather, the treacherous contagious bodily fluids?) Is dressing up like this tacky, tasteless, too soon – offensive to the thousands who have died from the disease and the thousands more who stand to? Is it ethical?

Or instead is it actually the perfect costume? A seamless mixture of contemporary, provocative, sexy (if you decide to go that route) and genuinely terrifying in a way that the usual cast of Halloween ghosts and witches can never hope to be?

I decided to ask an expert to weigh in.

Kathryn Getek Soltis, Director of the Center for Peace and Justice Education and Assistant Professor of Christian Ethics at Villanova University, said she finds the Ebola costumes “rather disturbing.”

“It allows people to stay far from the situation and not to imagine the human suffering that’s actually occurring,” she said. “The issue isn’t that you’re a bad person because you have an insensitive costume, it’s that actually you’re closing yourself and the people around you off from trying to understand how you might be able to participate in this issue in a way that affects people’s lives.”

She clarified, “I don’t want folks to think being ethical means you can’t be fun. I think there are lots of things to laugh about. But… this isn’t funny.”

With the resounding ‘no’ of the expert ethical opinion in hand, I took to the Twittersphere to look for reactions on the other side.

*sips Pumpkin-Spice Latté* *Googles 'slutty Ebola patient costume ideas'*

— raj (@law_shark_) October 15, 2014

My Halloween costume is either slutty Ebola or slutty Kim Jong-Un, I can't decide.

— Patrick-or-Tweet (@Pat_Bren) October 15, 2014

ebola halloween costume is good for me because everyone avoids me on non-holidays too so it'll be like nothing's different

— ??jordan?? (@jordanisbeer) October 13, 2014

“my costume is that I have ebola and am quarantined.“ -how I’m planning to avoid going to a Halloween party

— not dark jon hendren (@fart) October 4, 2014

Good points, all.

Weeks, of BrandsOnSale, recently told the Atlantic, “You can go on any website for a zombie mask for an eight-year-old with cuts and scars all over their face. It’s Halloween, it’s one day, if people are that serious about it, they don’t know what Halloween is about.”

But Soltis thinks this commercialized spookiness is part of the issue. “I always am nervous of ways that we use ghoulishness and horror as a way to distance ourselves from humanity,” she said. “And certainly the images we see from the Ebola crisis look like something out of this world, otherworldly, when you see some of the protective gear people are wearing. But that’s exactly the problem. It’s just about creating more barriers from being able to empathize.”

So here we’ve reached an impasse. Of course wearing an Ebola protective suit on Halloween is in some sense trivializing the work of the real Ebola doctors, cheapening their life-saving uniform to a kitschy costume. But on the other hand, to say this trivialization is truly damaging in a moral sense may be giving too much weight to a frivolous, self-consciously provocative holiday. In the end, of course, it’s up to you to decide whether it’s worth the potential backlash to dance to Monster Mash in your Hazmat suit on October 31^st.

But I will say this: if all these passions are ignited by the thought of dressing as an Ebola health worker, maybe think twice about being a sexy Ebola zombie. There’s a line here somewhere, and I’m pretty sure it’s around “dead” and “slutty.”

Writing that last sentence made me very happy that Halloween only comes once a year.

Warner Bros Unveils Plans for 10 DC Superhero Movies

Posted: 15 Oct 2014 10:14 AM PDT

A baby born today will be spending its 6th birthday money on Green Lantern action figures, at least according to Warner Bros.’ announcement today of its new slate of movies, leading through 2020.

The list of projects includes ten DC Comics-branded movies, beginning with 2016’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2015), starring Henry Cavill and Ben Affleck and leading through 2020’s Green Lantern, with The Flash starring Ezra Miller (We Need to Talk About Kevin) and Aquaman starring Jason Momoa (Game of Thrones) both coming in 2018.

There will also be a stand-alone Wonder Woman movie starring the Israeli actress Gal Gadot, who is to make her debut in the Batman-Superman crossover film. A full list is available via The Hollywood Reporter.

As for other Warner Bros. projects, the studio is to produce three movies taking place within the Harry Potter universe, a trilogy based on J.K. Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, as well as three new Lego movies, including The Lego Batman Movie. Don’t rush out to buy tickets, though; in keeping with the long-range nature of the studio’s plans, the first Potter and Lego sequels will be coming in 2016.

Macy’s Says Black Friday Will Actually Start on Thanksgiving Day at 6PM

2014-10-14T11:03:00.001-07:00

Macy’s Says Black Friday Will Actually Start on Thanksgiving Day at 6PM

Macy’s Says Black Friday Will Actually Start on Thanksgiving Day at 6PM
I Taught Fitness and Failed a Fat Test
Cities Have Found a New Way to Take Your Money
Nurses ‘Infuriated’ By Suggestion of Dallas Ebola Protocol Breach
The Rosetta Spacecraft Took an Epic Selfie With a Comet
A Million Peeping Toms: When Hacking Is Also a Hate Crime
Nurse Infected With Ebola Says She’s ‘Doing Well’
Bill Murray: Winning an Oscar Can Hurt Your Career
How Pulp Fiction Went from Cannes Surprise to Movie of the Year
Obama to Wait Until After Election to Nominate Next Attorney General

Macy’s Says Black Friday Will Actually Start on Thanksgiving Day at 6PM

Posted: 14 Oct 2014 10:47 AM PDT

Black Friday is starting early this holiday shopping season.

Macy’s fired the first shots of the Thanksgiving shopping wars Tuesday, announcing that its doors will open at 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day, a Thursday. That’s two hours earlier than last year, NBC reports, when Macy’s opened at 8 P.M. Thursday. Back in 2012, it opened at midnight on Black Friday.

Macy’s said in a statement that Black, well, Thursday was appealing to both consumers and employees who volunteer to work the Thanksgiving Day shift. “We also heard last year from many associates who appreciated the opportunity to work on Thanksgiving so they could have time off on Black Friday,” Macy’s said, according to the Star Tribune. “Additionally, associates who work an opening shift on Thanksgiving will be compensated with incentive pay.”

You can take that Thanksgiving dinner to go, right?

I Taught Fitness and Failed a Fat Test

Posted: 14 Oct 2014 10:46 AM PDT

This story originally appeared on xoJane.com.

After years of teaching yoga and exercise, I signed up to take a fitness test. I wanted to test my chops and be a guinea pig for my boss to learn the test protocol. I pedaled on the spin bike: stellar cardio. I easily touched my toes: excellent flexibility. I bench pressed for max reps: my strength was off the chart. Then in a private office, I took my clothes off for body fat testing.

The spiky caliper pinched my belly, hip, triceps, and thigh. I played off the discomfort with jokes about “plenty of cushion for the pushin’.” The results determined that I was 13% over the recommended body fat. Not what I wanted to hear.

It felt like a slap in the face, another reminder of being last picked for the dodge ball team and the “why bother if you’re fat” attitude.

Growing up a chubby kid, I learned this attitude. By junior high, I quit sports and dance, opting for watching reruns on the couch after school. When I found yoga in my 20s, it was the first time exercise actually felt good. I eventually started to teach and ended up losing 30 pounds.

But after all those times I chose salad and dragged my least-stinky sports bra out of the hamper, this test said I was overweight. With these results I had three choices:

1) Pursue the test’s standard. Restrict my eating, amp up my workouts, or find more extreme means of weight loss.

2) Throw in the towel and accept that I would never get “in shape.”

3) Realize that the test might be bogus.

At the time of the assessment, I was studying nutrition in a graduate program, shopping at the farmers’ market, and relishing the Bay Area foodie scene. My diet didn’t need an overhaul. I’ve never been willing to count calories or jump on trendy dietary bandwagons. Between yoga, cardio and strength training, I exercised with consistency, variability and enthusiasm. As I walked out of the gym, I realized that I rocked all the actual measures of fitness.

I didn’t fail a fitness test. I failed at being thin. Luckily, my grad school curriculum also included a course on the “Health at Every Size” philosophy that questions measures like the Body Mass Index and our relentless pursuit of skinny. HAES advocates for intuitive eating and pleasurable movement — exactly how I lost weight. But according to the test, where my body had settled wasn’t low enough.

HAES made me question the test and the self-loathing landmine of the fitness industry. Every day during gym orientations I heard about fitness goals and the promised land of thin. Women pinched their “trouble zones” and insulted their “flabby arms,” “muffin tops” and “thunder thighs.” Would the caliper testing lacquer on more self-hatred? The test ignores an important reality: self-loathing thwarts our every move.

Now teaching for over 11 years, I focus on movement instead of body shape or weight loss. I finished my graduate degree, have a pile of certifications, and can hurl a 50 pound kettlebell overhead. I’m proud that I never went overboard. I never careened into disordered eating, overuse injuries, or adrenal fatigue. This is actually rare in my field.

The caliper would have less of me to pinch these days but it would probably still consider me fat. With round thighs, belly, and arms, I stand in front of classes and model what I believe: we can be fit without fitting the norm. Learning powerful actions like warrior poses and squats free us from all the pinching and self-loathing.

Sadie Chanlett-Avery is a yoga teacher living in California.

Cities Have Found a New Way to Take Your Money

Posted: 14 Oct 2014 10:42 AM PDT

All yellow traffic lights are not created equal, it seems. Especially in Chicago.

With little notice at the time, this spring the city shortened the duration of its yellow lights by a fraction of a second. The change was slight: the yellow lights lasted 2.9 seconds before turning red instead of the previous city-required minimum of three seconds. But the effect for the cash-starved city was real: nearly $8 million from an additional 77,000 tickets, according to the city’s inspector general.

All of those $100 tickets were issued after cameras installed at intersections caught the drivers as they passed through. These systems, known as red light cameras, are an increasingly controversial tactic for policing roadways. Established in the name of public safety, critics contend the cameras have become little more than a way for municipalities to funnel money into their coffers.

“If the machine is set to catch more people and generate more revenue, then it does not really seem to be about safety but about revenue,” says Joseph Schofer, a professor of transportation at Northwestern University.

Chicago isn’t the first municipality to benefit from shaving time off of yellow traffic lights. In 2011, the Florida Department of Transportation secretly reduced its policy on the length of yellow lights, likely bringing millions of dollars in additional revenue to the state.

There is no federal rule for how long a yellow light should be illuminated, but the U.S. Department of Transportation recommends three to six seconds. Nationwide, a minimum of three seconds is generally considered standard. John Bowman, a spokesperson for the National Motorists Association, which opposes the cameras, says the organization routinely gets calls from people saying they received a red light camera ticket, believing the yellow light was too short.

“I don’t think you’re ever going to get a public official on the record saying, ‘We shortened them to make more money,’” Bowman says. “But I think that clearly goes on.”

Red light cameras gained popularity in the 1990s after New York became the first U.S. city to install a network. The initial motivation was safety, says Hani Mahmassani, the director of the Northwestern University Transportation Center. The hope was that cameras would deter drivers from running red lights if they knew it would lead to a ticket. But in the 200os, as the popularity of the cameras grew, cities and the companies that manufactured, installed and helped operate the cameras adopted a revenue-sharing model. The more violations caught by the cameras, the more money the city and the businesses stood to make.

“That’s when it became a greed thing,” Mahmassani says.

By the end of the decade, red light camera networks were in hundreds of municipalities. Today, 499 towns and cities have adopted them, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

While the potential for profit is clear, the public safety value of red light cameras is fuzzy. Studies on whether red light cameras actually enhance safety are mixed. Several studies conducted by IIHS, which supports the cameras, show that crashes have not only decreased in intersections that utilize the cameras but that vehicle-related deaths have declined in those cities as well. But other research has shown that the cameras actually increase rear-end collisions because they force drivers to stop more quickly over fear that they’ll run the light and get ticketed, causing tailing motorists to smack into them.

And many of the systems have had other problems. In New Jersey, 17,000 motorists never received tickets for running a red light, while in Chicago, a former city official and the former CEO of Redflex Traffic Systems have been indicted as part of an alleged bribery scheme. There have also been reports of unexplained spikes in tickets given out by the system.

All of which has led to a growing backlash against the cameras. Red light cameras are currently banned in seven states, and others are considering outlawing them. In New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie says it’s unlikely he’ll extend the state’s red light cameras beyond their expiration date at the end of the year. In Ohio, state lawmakers are looking at banning them by requiring speeding or red light tickets to be handed out in person by officers. And in Chicago, the city said it will no longer ticket motorists who breeze through the shorter yellow. But it’s keeping the money from the ones it already issued.

Nurses ‘Infuriated’ By Suggestion of Dallas Ebola Protocol Breach

Posted: 14 Oct 2014 10:29 AM PDT

When Thomas Duncan, the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in the U.S. was admitted to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, the nurses and doctors who took over his care became the frontline in the battle with the virus. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), proper infection control procedures should have protected those health care workers from getting infected, and should have stopped the virus from spreading any further than Duncan and anyone he may have had direct contact with before falling ill.

But they didn’t. Nina Pham, one of the nurses assigned to care for Duncan before he died, tested positive for Ebola on Oct 13. Initially, CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden attributed the infection to a “breach in protocol.”

“That infuriated me,” says Karen Higgins, co-president of National Nurses United (NNU) and a nurse at Boston Medical Center. “What it should have been attributed to was a breakdown in the system. It never should have been stated. Instead, we should figure out what the problem was and fix it, not say that it was her fault that she didn’t follow protocol and that’s why it happened.”

MORE: 5 Ways U.S. Hospitals Need to Get Ready For Ebola

CDC has since acknowledged that they and the Texas health department are still investigating how the infection occurred, but according to the nurses’ group, there are serious gaps in the country’s preparedness for treating Ebola patients. For one, there is no standard protocol for what a hospital needs to have in place and how a hospital should handle an Ebola case. The CDC has published guidelines on its website, but it’s up to each hospital to decide how to implement those recommendations. And according to a recent survey of more than 2,200 nurses in 46 states, those policies vary widely and are haphazard. Eighty five percent of the nurses questioned felt their hospitals had not provided education about Ebola in a format in which they could ask questions and learn more about best practices for protecting themselves, the patient and their communities. Most were directed to a video or website or handed a piece of paper informing them of Ebola’s symptoms and urging them to ask patients with fevers about their recent travel history. Some were provided a Hazmat suit in the breakroom and told to try it on if they had time. Most said their hospitals did not have Hazmat suits for the nurses. Forty percent of them said their hospitals did not have enough protective equipment, including face shields or the fluid-barrier gowns that are required when treating infectious patients. “Are we prepared for infectious diseases? Yes we are. Are we prepared for Ebola? No we are not,” says Higgins.

The fact that two hospitals in the U.S.—Emory University Hospital and Nebraska Medical Center—successfully treated Ebola patients without any spread of the virus supports Frieden’s conviction that it’s possible to contain Ebola and protect health care workers.

MORE: Ebola Health Care Workers Face Hard Choices

But in order to do that, the NNU says a strong mandate is needed from the CDC and public health departments that specifies exactly what type of equipment health care providers should be wearing, how they should put the equipment on and take it off, and how they should dispose of them once they have been contaminated. That’s especially important if the CDC expects every hospital to be able to properly care for Ebola patients, something that Frieden says is possible. “We are challenging the CDC and saying we are past the time of guidelines and recommendations,” says Higgins. “What we need are standards, high standards of care. Say that this is now what is expected of your equipment, the right gloves, the right outfits, masks and covers.”

Specifically, the nurses want Hazmat suits for anyone who will be treating an Ebola patient. Health departments and the CDC have been reluctant to mandate these, since putting them on or taking them off improperly may put health care workers at greater risk of contamination. But with training, the nurses say, the suits could prevent further spread of the virus, like what happened in Dallas. “The equipment is one thing, but training has to be the second part,” says Higgins. “And not just a web site or a video, but people working with people one on one to make sure everyone understands what they are doing, how to get in and out of the equipment, and how to do it right.”

At Boston Medical Center, hospital staff have recognized that current procedures aren’t enough, and in the past week have increased hands-on training and drills to make sure health care workers are prepared to properly handle an Ebola patient, should one walk through the door. Those procedures include making sure that anyone gowning to go into an infectious patient’s room has a buddy to observe or gown with them, and point out any missed steps or improperly worn protective gear.

MORE: Ebola Lessons We Need To Learn From Dallas

Waste from a potential Ebola patient is also getting the same stepped-up vigilance. Previously, the waste wasn’t given any additional care beyond the usual treatment for hazardous materials—a separate bin and a separate removal process that generally ended in incineration. But now, the hospital is requiring any Ebola material to be double or triple bagged and put in a separate box to be removed by a properly trained hazardous waste management team who will dispose of it in the right way to prevent further contamination.

For now, the nurses aren’t confident that they are able to properly protect themselves and their community from Ebola, but they’re convinced that with the proper equipment and training, they can be. “This is our test and we need to do it right,” says Higgins. “We feel extremely upset that any [healthcare worker] got infected. Hopefully she will be fine, but we don’t want to have to face another person or family that ends up getting infected because we are not as good as we should be in treating patients.”

The Rosetta Spacecraft Took an Epic Selfie With a Comet

Posted: 14 Oct 2014 10:28 AM PDT

Europe’s Rosetta spacecraft took a selfie published Tuesday that is, quite literally, out of this world.

Rosetta’s mission is to land on comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. The spacecraft is very close to its target, enough that the comet appears in the background of this image only 16km away.

Rosetta, dubbed Europe’s “comet chaser,” went into space in 2004. It had many things on its to-do list, including eventually landing on 67P. But for now, Mission Selfie accomplished.

A Million Peeping Toms: When Hacking Is Also a Hate Crime

Posted: 14 Oct 2014 10:14 AM PDT

In her first public statements about the theft and distribution of her private nude photographs, Jennifer Lawrence called the act “a sex crime.” There are differences of opinion about using those words to characterize what happened. What is not debatable however is that, of the reportedly more than 100 celebrities targeted in this episode involving Lawrence, the overwhelming majority have been women. So, why aren’t we seriously discussing this in terms of gender-based hate? That’s also a serious charge.

The nonconsensual distribution of intimate photos is similar to offline voyeurism in many ways. We call these voyeurs Peeping Toms, a classic linguistic minimization of a sex crime that, like revenge porn, is gendered. Peeping Thomasinas aren’t really a thing. (The crime is treated differently state by state. In some states, but not all, voyeurs must register as sex offenders. Revenge porn is a non-registry offense.)

“There is no principled way to argue that this is any less serious than voyeurism,” explains Mary Anne Franks, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Miami School of Law and Vice-President of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative. “There is no denying the blunt truth of [Lawrence’s] words: she alone has the right to control access to her naked body, and anyone who violates that right has committed a profound and inexcusable wrong. That means that laws against hacking are insufficient to address this violation.” Danielle Citron, author of Hate Crimes in Cyber Space, has also argued that these crimes clearly infringe on women’s civil rights.

However, what happens when there are millions of Peeping Toms? Given the scope and number of people who participated, and the time and effort the hackers took to gather the photographs and carefully plan their release, it’s clear that technology isn’t just mirroring offline crimes but amplifying them in ways that qualitatively change their impact and should prompt serious debate about gender-based hatred and bias crimes.

Federal hate crime legislation does not actually require that perpetrators of crimes express explicit hatred for the people they target. Instead, the salient information is that hate crimes are those in which a person is targeted because of, in this case, his or her gender. In addition, a “prominent characteristic of a violent crime motivated by bias is that it devastates not just the actual victim and the family and friends of the victim, but frequently savages the community sharing the traits that caused the victim to be selected.” While men are also the victims of revenge porn, as with the threat that a serial rapist of women poses to a community, how can anyone doubt that girls and women experienced the theft and sharing of these photos, which overwhelming involved women, in ways that men did not?

This wasn’t a privately executed sex crime, but a public one infused with gender bias. As the systematic theft, accumulation and mass sharing of these photos shows, we live in a culture in which violations of women’s privacy are normalized, where harms to women are routinely trivialized, where our sexual objectification is the norm and where society resists legitimate and reasonable consideration of the role gender and status play in what happened. (There have been at least four waves of photo released, the last of which included the first man.)

It’s not just that photographs like Lawrence’s violated women’s rights to privacy and constituted theft, or that they might be considered pornographic or offensive. It’s that the perpetrators sought to attack the women, humiliate them, assault their dignity, and interfere with their lives and well being because they are women. Revenge porn is overwhelmingly perpetrated against women by men, and is rooted in displaying male dominance. There is nothing new in this type of female dehumanization. What’s new is its digitized and scalable industrialization. The attack on female celebrities sends a clear message that even the most admired and powerful women can be treated this way.

We have a national predisposition to downplay gender as consequential. This November marks the fifth anniversary of the Matthew Shepard & James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, in which sexual orientation, gender, gender identity and disability were finally added to federal hate crimes law.

The purpose of the 2009 act was largely to ensure that people have the chance to pursue justice if they feel that their state courts have failed. Only some states have hate crime statutes and, of those, a sub-segment include gender as a category for consideration. The battle to include gender at the federal level was long and hard fought. Either way, social recognition of gender-based hate, as post Elliot Rodger’s public discussions showed, remains controversial.

Bias and hate crime laws exists so that members of groups that were historically discriminated against know that the societies they live in support their equal right to live their lives, raise their children, travel in public, and pursue their work, free of fear and discrimination. They are a challenge to social norms that would perpetuate violence and subjugation, an old-fashioned word no one likes to use in the United States, on the basis of immutable characteristics. Like being female.

If there is one silver lining in this, it’s that the women who were targeted are not being stigmatized or punished and that the trajectory of traditional shame seems to be reversing in a way that accrues to the perpetrator, and not the victims, of these assaults.

Nurse Infected With Ebola Says She’s ‘Doing Well’

Posted: 14 Oct 2014 10:05 AM PDT

(DALLAS) — The Texas nurse infected with Ebola says in a statement that she’s “doing well,” and her hospital remains optimistic about her recovery.

Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas released a statement on Nina Pham’s behalf Tuesday as she is treated for Ebola that she contracted while caring for a Liberian man who died from the disease.

In the statement, Pham says she wants “to thank everyone for their kind wishes and prayers.”

Texas Health Resources CEO Barclay Berdan says the doctors and nurses involved with Pham’s treatment “remain hopeful” about her recovery.

Bill Murray: Winning an Oscar Can Hurt Your Career

Posted: 14 Oct 2014 10:00 AM PDT

Bill Murray has no intention of catching Oscar fever.

In a recent interview with Variety, Murray said that he will not be campaigning for his new film St Vincent, even if producer Harvey Weinstein wishes he would. “I’m not that way,” Murray said. “If you want an award so much, it’s like a virus. It’s an illness.”

Although Murray has yet to receive an Oscar, he said he “had been infected” with the virus surrounding his 2004 Best Actor nomination for Lost in Translation (Sean Penn’s performance in Mystic River won instead).

But his loss may have turned out for the best.

“People have this post-Oscar blowback,” he said. “They start thinking, ‘I can’t do a movie unless it’s Oscar-worthy.’ It just seems people have difficulty making the right choices after that.”

[Variety]

How Pulp Fiction Went from Cannes Surprise to Movie of the Year

Posted: 14 Oct 2014 10:00 AM PDT

For the four stories in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, which had its theatrical release 20 years ago on Oct. 14, 1994, here are four TIME articles tracing the movie’s progress from Cannes surprise to best movie of the year.

When it debuted at the Cannes Film Festival, the movie seemed to come out of nowhere, which I’ve reflected on in the past. As I wrote at the time, it was a shock to the festival’s system:

For a while, everything was so quiet. The first week or so of the 12-day Cannes Film Festival proceeded as sedately as a Riviera quilting bee. … Then BLAM!, the Wild Bunch hit town. … Pulp Fiction brought some big-time, macho-and- mayhem, Uzi-in-your-gut star quality to Cannes. … It was as if Tarantino were telling Cannes, “O.K., nap time is over. Now, pay attention, and I’ll show you how it’s done. Here’s why they’re called moving pictures.”

Miramax Films’ Harvey Weinstein — who picked up the movie when TriStar, the original distributor, balked at John Travolta character’s being a heroin dealer and user — hosted a press luncheon on May 23, 1994, at le plus posh Eden Roc restaurant. At outdoor tables in the blissful Riviera sunlight, Travolta, Bruce Willis, Uma Thurman and Samuel L. Jackson joined the 31-year-old writer-director to charm the critics. They knew, as we did, that they had a winner, at Cannes and beyond. And though the smart money for the Palme d’Or was on Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Red, the Cannes Jury chaired by Clint Eastwood did the right thing and gave Pulp Fiction the festival’s top prize.

By the time the movie made it to theaters that fall, the signs were clear that the world had a phenomenon on its hands:

Onscreen, John Travolta had just raised an Adrenalin-filled hypodermic needle above the comatose body of Uma Thurman and, with desperate force, plunged it straight into her heart. In the audience at New York City’s Lincoln Center, where Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction was being shown, a young man watched this scene and passed out. “Is there a doctor in the house?” someone actually asked. The film was stopped for nine anxious minutes before the announcement came: “The victim is just fine.”

The intensity of the Pulp Fiction experience for that one viewer indicates how Tarantino’s movie polarized audiences; tepid reactions were simply not allowed. Filmgoers who thought they’d seen everything hadn’t seen anything with quite this scope, nerve and kick. In a totally ’90s way, it went medieval on the ass of the Zeitgeist. So everyone had to see it. Made for a frugal $8 million, the film grossed $108 million in North America and another $106 million abroad, back when that was real money. “I wanted it to look like an epic,” QT said of this, his second feature. “It’s an epic in everything – in invention, in ambition, in length, in scope, in everything except the price tag.”

Read TIME’s Oct. 1994 review of Pulp Fiction, free of charge, here in the archives: A Blast to the Heart

Pulp Fiction — a great title, by the way — perched proudly and deservedly atop the 10-best Cinema list that Richard Schickel and I compiled for TIME’s 1994 year-end issue.

No. 1: Pulp Fiction. Now here’s a movie. … Quentin Tarantino’s adrenaline rush of a melodrama is a brash dare to timid Hollywood filmmakers. Let’s see, he says, if you can be this smart about going this far.

But more than a few movie professionals were pretty f—in’ far from O.K. with it. At the New York Film Critics Circle, where some members took an anything-but-Pulp-Fiction stance, Robert Redford’s Quiz Show was named Best Film, though Tarantino got the Director and Screenplay prizes.

At the Oscars, Pulp Fiction’s rivals for Best Picture included Quiz Show, Four Weddings and a Funeral and The Shawshank Redemption (which had opened the same day as QT’s film). None of those won. The top prize went to Forrest Gump, whose broader, more genial appeal also made it the No. 1 box-office hit of 1994. Robert Zemeckis’s box of chocolates beat out Tarantino’s 200-proof Valentine sampler of cool old movies in a post-modern box.

About a decade later, Schickel and I would wrangle over many titles in our joint selection of the all-TIME 100 Movies, published in May 2005 — but Pulp Fiction was one of our easiest picks.

The (approximately) 46th, and most recent, film noir on this list, Tarantino’s multipart murder comedy is (unquestionably) the most influential American movie of the ’90s. … Yeah yeah, but Pulp Fiction is still fresh—in fact, astonishingly impudent—and fully up to matching its cocksure ambition with its care for framing a scene and its love for the actors within them. The joy of filmmaking is evident and infectious. The film still has the impact of an adrenalin shot to the heart. Seen today, 20 years after its premiere, the film impresses even more for its density, daring and precision — for fiddling with chronology (so that Travolta’s character, killed in the third story, is alive in the fourth), for out-of-nowhere scenes that later prove their resonance (Christopher Walken’s monologue about the watch), for dreaming up fake commercial brands (Red Apple cigarettes, McCleary blended Scotch whiskey, Sam’s Toaster Pastries).

A trivia bonus track on the 2003 DVD release, which chats away in subtitles for almost the entirety of the movie’s 2 hours and 34 minutes — as if Tarantino were sitting with you offering a frame-by-frame analysis — explains how certain “mistakes” (the bullet holes behind Jackson and Travolta in the first story) might have been intentional. At the moment of Travolta’s needle resuscitation of Thurman, we get a “Reality Check” from the Trivia track: “Don’t try this at home, because it wouldn’t work.” (The needle would break, and so would the patient’s sternum.)

Tarantino has made other terrific movies before and after Pulp Fiction. Our favorite is the double feature Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, which is sprawling where Pulp Fiction was svelte. We also love large swatches of Reservoir Dogs, Jackie Brown, Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained. And we drool in anticipation at The Hateful Eight, whose screenplay promises a Western showdown of comic or cosmic proportions.

But no film of the now middle-aged auteur can match the Shock of the New that Pulp Fiction administered in 1994. We envy those who see it now for the first time — a movie that remains young, smart, vivacious and extraordinarily, indeed coronarily, entertaining.

Obama to Wait Until After Election to Nominate Next Attorney General

Posted: 14 Oct 2014 09:59 AM PDT

President Barack Obama will wait until after the midterm elections to nominate his next Attorney General, a White House official confirmed Tuesday.

Obama has been weighing whether to nominate a replacement for departing Attorney General Eric Holder before November’s election, after the White House announced last month that Obama’s longtime confidant decided to step down. But nominating a candidate before the midterm elections would have complicated the reelection campaigns of vulnerable Senate Democrats who are trying to separate themselves from the unpopular president, with lawmakers being called to state their support for or opposition to Obama’s selection before voters determine the balance of control in the Senate.

Obama is expected to unveil his selection shortly after the election. Among those up for consideration for the post, according to Democrats, are White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler and Secretary of Labor Tom Perez.

The Good Wife Watch: The So-Bad-She’s-Good Wife

2014-10-13T11:46:00.001-07:00

The Good Wife Watch: The So-Bad-She’s-Good Wife

The Good Wife Watch: The So-Bad-She’s-Good Wife
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Why Gourmet Food and a Table Full of Kids Don’t Mix
Liberal Group Blames Republicans for Ebola in New ad
Flight Attendants Sue to Bring Back Electronic Device Ban
CDC Chief Urges U.S. Hospitals to ‘Think Ebola’
Why Does Pizza Taste So Delicious? Allow Science to Explain
What the Vatican Really Said About Homosexuality
Barbara Bush: Why Malala Gives Me Hope
The Best Sites for Booking Last-Minute Travel

The Good Wife Watch: The So-Bad-She’s-Good Wife

Posted: 13 Oct 2014 11:21 AM PDT

Brief spoilers for Sunday’s The Good Wife follow:

The Good Wife began its run, just over five years ago, as a political legal drama that dealt heavily with the “Wife” half of its title: would Alicia Florrick stand by her ambitious politician husband, about to mount a return run for state’s attorney, after he’d been disgraced in a sex scandal? The show has covered a lot of ground since then, but with “Oppo Research,” the best episode yet of the young new season, it’s come around to being a different kind of political drama, concerned with whether Alicia can stand her own run for state’s attorney.

And even more fascinating, it’s increasingly interested in investigating the “Good” half of its title.

The Good Wife has long been a morally complex series, dealing with the ethical gymnastics of characters we identify with but can’t always completely support. But the spectacular opening act of “Oppo,” with Alicia’s known and unknown secrets laid out by Steven Pasquale’s consultant, framed this in a new way. First, it asked, going point by point: how would Alicia’s personal and professional life look as viewed, not by sympathetic fans who have followed her story for years, but by an outside audience of voters?

Paced at the show’s typical double-time–with Grace’s friends singing Jesus hymns in the background–the interrogation crisply ran down Alicia’s political vulnerabilities, some she knew about (but maybe underestimated), some she was clueless of. (Say, Zach’s girlfriend’s abortion. Oh, that’s right: The Good Wife just dropped a teen-abortion storyline right into a primetime network drama, like it wasn’t even a thing.) And then of course there are the many professional conflicts we’re aware of, starting with Lemond Bishop, still very much a factor in this season.

The public, we’re told, sees her as “Saint Alicia.” And we the audience–maybe “Saint” is too strong a word, but the perspective of the show pushes us to empathize with her, to see her decisions in a better light. The first thing the oppo scene did was to shock us into a sense of perspective, to remind us that, all along, we’ve been watching the story of a complicated woman who’s motivated by power and security at least as much as by ideals.

The second thing it does is set in motion the rest of the episode, in which Alicia, now taking her potential run seriously, looks to set her house in order. It’s not pretty: her phone call with Zach goes from understandable anger to a brutal cutting-off, and her managing the situation with her brother may be practical, but it’s also callous. None of her actions are totally without justification, nor are they out of character; we’ve seen Alicia turn cold and massage the truth when she needs to in her legal work.

But “Oppo Research” suggests that politics may push her to be even more baldly Machiavellian–to do ugly things for the right reasons, or kinda-ugly things for the kinda-right reasons. To preserve the viability of Saint Alicia, she may need to unleash Sinner Alicia, even if we know that neither is the full picture of her.

A show that started out saying that it’s no easy thing to be a wife is now exploring how it’s no simple thing to be good. And that could just make it better than ever.

Now a quick hail of bullets:

* It’s hard to discuss the antiheroine aspects of The Good Wife without mentioning the return of the Darkness at Noon parody show-within-a-show. I’m probably in a minority among Good Wife fans, but I’ve never been a fan of them. The parody of the widely panned Low Winter Sun by one of TV’s best dramas is punching down, and like most Emperor’s New Clothes arguments–here, the Emperor’s New Dark Antihero Cable Drama–it feels self-congratulatory. But I can’t lie: I laughed at the Talking Dead parody (complete with cameo from The Americans‘ producer Joe Weisberg) and especially the Mystical Elk. Sometimes funny is its own best argument.

* The oppo-research opening scene was so structurally playful and captivating that I originally thought it would take up the entire hour, bottle-episode style–and not to knock the rest of the episode, but I kind of wish it was.

* Mrs. Tuned In and I know the casting patterns of The Good Wife well enough by now that, before Eli opened the door to introduce Alicia’s potential campaign manager, we played a quick round of: “What NYC stage actor will it be?” Sure enough, though you and I might know Pasquale better from Rescue Me (or, sadly, Do No Harm), he’s a Broadway veteran, most recently of The Bridges of Madison County.

* With Homeland and The Good Wife both on the air is fall, both the white- and red-wine protagonist contingents are well-represented. If Madame Secretary wants to stand out, it should give Tea Leoni’s character a taste for rosé.

This Alzheimer’s Breakthrough Could Be a Game Changer

Posted: 13 Oct 2014 11:01 AM PDT

Researchers have overcome a major barrier in the study of Alzheimer’s that could pave the way for breakthroughs in our understanding of the disease, a new report shows—and that new understanding could, in turn, pave the way for drugs that treat or interrupt the progression of the neurodegenerative condition.

For decades, animals have been the stand-ins for studying human disease, and for good reason. Their shorter lifespans mean they can model human conditions in weeks or months, and their cells can be useful for testing promising new drug treatments.

But they haven’t been so helpful in studying Alzheimer’s disease. Two factors contribute to the neurodegenerative condition — the buildup of sticky plaques of the protein amyloid, and the toxic web of another protein, tau, which strangles healthy nerve cells and leaves behind a tangled mess of dead and dying neurons. Despite attempts by scientists to engineer mice who exhibit both factors, they haven’t been able to generate the tau tangles that contribute to the disease.

Now, Dr. Rudolph Tanzi and Dr. Doo Kim at the Mass General Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital, have devised a work-around that doesn’t involve animals. They have developed a way to watch the disease progress in a lab dish.

“In this new system that we call ‘Alzheimer’s-in-a-dish,’ we’ve been able to show for the first time that amyloid deposition is sufficient to lead to tangles and subsequent cell death,” said Tanzi in a statement.

MORE: Blood Test for Alzheimer’s

While autopsies showed evidence of both amyloid and tau in the brain, Alzheimer’s experts have been debating for years which came first — do amyloid plaques trigger the formation of tau tangles, or does the presence of tau cause amyloid to get stickier and bunch together in the brain? Tanzi and his colleagues showed definitively for the first time that amyloid is the first step in the Alzheimer’s process, followed by tau tangles. When he blocked the formation of amyloid in the culture with a known amyloid inhibitor, tau tangles never formed.

The disease-in-a-dish model is an emerging way of understanding conditions that either can’t be recapitulated accurately in animals, or diseases that make it difficult to study and test in human patients. In recent years, for example, scientists have successfully recreated the process behind amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig’s disease, using stem cells from patients and allowing them to develop into the motor neurons that are affected by the disease. The technique led to a breakthrough in understanding that a certain population of nerve cells known as glial cells poison the motor neurons and impede their normal function. Now experts are focusing on finding ways to control the glial cell activity as possible treatment for ALS.

MORE: How Moodiness and Jealousy May Lead to Alzheimer’s

Tanzi and his team are hoping that something similar will come from their model of Alzheimer’s.

While the genes responsible for the inherited form of Alzheimer’s differ slightly from those involved in the more common form that affects people as they age, the end result — the build up of amyloid plaques and tau tangles — are the same. So now that they can see both the clumps of amyloid and the tau tangles, form, they can start to tease apart the processes that link the two processes together.

That will open the way toward finding drugs or other ways of interrupting the process more quickly than they could working with animals. It took six to eight weeks for the cells in the dish to form plaques and then tangles, compared to a year or so in mice. “We can now screen hundreds of thousands of drugs in this system that recapitulates both plaques and tangles…in a matter of months,” Tanzi said. “This was not possible in mouse models.” The system also makes it possible to test these drug compounds at one-tenth the cost of evaluating them in mice, he said. And that means that finding a way to prevent Alzheimer’s may come both faster and cheaper than scientists had expected.

Why Gourmet Food and a Table Full of Kids Don’t Mix

Posted: 13 Oct 2014 10:48 AM PDT

Fine dining with children. It’s a pairing most of us don’t normally like to see together. But the New York Times and Daniel Boulud decided to give it a go by filming six second graders eating a seven-course chef’s tasting menu at Daniel, Boulud’s famed, two-Michelin-starred restaurant. “The basic goal today for the children,” said head chef Boulud, is “to really discover a lot of flavor, a lot of layers, a lot of texture” and to “experience something maybe very unique for them.”

The video is enchanting, as the children take culinary risks, trying out fish eggs and Wagyu steak and adventurously taking bites of new foods while politely exclaiming, “Ooh, this is strange.”

Aspirational parents eager to have a gourmet dining experience with their kids too shared the video all over Facebook.

Since my 7-year-old son is a noted foodie, six different people sent me this video saying something to the effect of “Let’s do this!” But there was one unifying characteristic among the people who enthusiastically sent me the video: None of them had children.

Building a child’s palate, getting him or her ready for a lifetime of culinary education, expanding his horizons beyond organic, gluten-free chicken nuggets and baby carrot sticks are all lofty goals and worthy ambitions in a first-world way. But there was one important part of the video that non-parents may have overlooked: There were no other patrons in the restaurant. It was completely empty aside from the exuberant and loquacious kids and the very attentive wait staff, chef and camera crew. I’m guessing that was no accident.

Why? Because no other person in her right mind wants to shell out $220 per person for a once-in-a-lifetime luxurious meal while listening to a table full of seven and eight-year olds squeal about caviar, “That’s disgusting!” Nor do they want to hear anyone point at her plate and holler, “WHAT IS THAT?!” The most realistic moment of the video came when one little girl nudged her pasta dish and asked, “Why am I eating soap right now?” Even children on their absolute best behavior, like the kids in this video, are still children who are going to get bored, get antsy or get hungry while waiting for the next course.

Here are a few other things notably absent from the video: There were no loud declarations of “Oops!”, no glasses knocked over, no gagging noises heard and no bites taken with the food immediately spit back onto the plate. No one was kicking anyone under the table, nor were any kids sitting sideways in their chairs. No one was whining and no one insisted on washing his hands after each course in order to spend 12 minutes playing with the sink like it was the latest attraction at Dave & Buster’s. It was dining with children in the white-washed bubble of really good editing.

In short: Don’t try this yourselves, fellow parents.

I’m not saying don’t take your children to five-star restaurants. I’m saying don’t take six children (or even two for that matter) to a five-star restaurant, because that’s a recipe for a headache for you, other diners and the wait staff. Remember, there’s no editing in real life and you’re going to be the one Googling how to remove Kobe-beef-in-port-reduction-sauce stains from cashmere when someone’s fork “accidentally” flies across the room.

(I know what kind of table manner horrors my second grader can exhibit. Although, I’m sure your child is a perfect angel, who would never accidentally spill a glass of red wine across four entrees or test out his fork-catapult skills at the table like mine did.)

That said, I’ve taken my son to white table cloth establishments and might even do it again with some parameters detailed below. My son loves food and after his school focused an entire lunch year on “risk taking” at the table, a generous friend invited him to a swanky five-star restaurant for the five-course tasting menu. One kid, one restaurant. That’s doable, right? Well, sort of.

My son was thrilled at the invitation and arrived at the upscale French seafood restaurant’s first seating in a suit and tie, quickly charming the entire staff while ordering a Shirley Temple at the bar and waiting politely for his seat.

He dutifully studied the menu, picking some safe-yet-adventurous variations on the most unobtrusive items such as salmon and steak. The “amuse bouche” was suitably amusing, but as the minutes ticked past, the excitement dimmed. After the first course he was already ogling my phone hoping for a Minecraft fix while waiting for his entree. He lasted a few courses before a few words (read: threats) were necessary to coax him out from under the table where he had retreated after sitting nicely at the table for 90 minutes (roughly a vast eternity of nothingness in 7-year old time.) The arrival of dessert at the two-hour mark got him back on track, but waiting for the check proved too much and he collapsed on the bench seat, exhausted, whining and ready to be carried out of the dining room. I felt exactly the same way.

Would I do it again with one child? Sure, as long as I got the wine pairing and got rid of the whole no-cell-phones-at-the-table rule.

Would I take more than one child to an upscale restaurant? Not for all the wine pairings in the world.

Liberal Group Blames Republicans for Ebola in New ad

Posted: 13 Oct 2014 10:44 AM PDT

A liberal political group just played the Ebola card in the midterm elections.

A new ad by the Agenda Project Action Fund, a liberal outside group, opens with a line uttered by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell—”Washington, actually, can cut spending”—and ends with the statement, “Republican cuts kill.”

The rest of the one-minute ad is peppered with clips of Republicans asking for cuts, interspersed with top officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health saying the Ebola outbreak in West Africa could have been better handled if their agencies had more funding. NIH head Francis Collins said in an interview published Sunday that an Ebola vaccine might have been developed by now if it were not for a “10-year slide in research support.”

Erica Payne, the producer of the ad and president of the Agenda Project Action Fund, blamed the Ebola crisis wholly on the Republican Party.

“I think any Republican who attempts to chalk this ad up to politics is a Republican who is too afraid to examine the results of his of her actions and the very real consequences that they have,” she said. “They have developed a governing philosophy that is so fanatically anti-investment that they literally have at their doorstop death. There is no exaggeration in this.

“I think that the blame for the situation that we’re in now with the Ebola crisis is 100% the fault of Republicans and their fanatical anti-government philosophy,” she added. “They did this.”

Conservatives quickly bashed the ad. Erick Erickson, the editor of the conservative website RedState, wrote that the ad “reeks of desperation.”

“It’s a defensive ad that reeks of desperation,” he wrote. “At a time when more and more Americans, including millennials, are concluding government just doesn’t work, it probably won’t be effective.”

The Agenda Project Action Fund says it will spend six figures to run the ad on TV in Kentucky—where McConnell is locked in a tight reelection race—with other potential ad-buys planned in South Dakota, Alaska and North Carolina.

Flight Attendants Sue to Bring Back Electronic Device Ban

Posted: 13 Oct 2014 10:37 AM PDT

The nation’s largest union of flight attendants took the Federal Aviation Administration to court on Friday, arguing that the agency should have upheld a ban on the use of smartphones and tablets during takeoff and landing.

Lawyers for the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA argued that the devices distracted passengers from safety instructions and could fly out of their hands, becoming dangerous projectiles, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The FAA relaxed its ban on personal devices in 2013, enabling passengers to use devices such as iPhones and Kindles at all times of the flight so long as they were switched to “airplane mode.”

“Essentially we want to set the reset button to the way personal electronic devices were handled prior to October 2013,” said attorney Amanda Duré.

Lawyers for the union argue that the FAA violated an existing regulation to stow away all luggage during takeoff and landing. The defense team argues that the regulation only applies to larger items, such as laptops, and never was intended for handheld devices.

[WSJ]

CDC Chief Urges U.S. Hospitals to ‘Think Ebola’

Posted: 13 Oct 2014 10:23 AM PDT

Hospitals across the United States need to increasingly “think Ebola” while the outbreak in West Africa is ongoing, a top health official said Monday, one day after a second diagnosis in the U.S. was confirmed.

“Stopping Ebola is hard, but we are working together to make it easier,” Tom Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said during a news conference. “Even a single infection is unacceptable.”

Frieden said the health agency has doubled down in Dallas with an even larger team on the ground, helping to track down all health care workers who cared for the first Ebola patient and reiterating the importance of meticulousness in processes like getting in and out of personal protective equipment. Thomas Eric Duncan, who arrived from Liberia on Sept. 20, died last week. A nurse who treated him, identified as Nina Pham, 26, was confirmed Sunday to have Ebola.

Frieden insisted his words were misunderstood on Sunday, when he said there was a “breach in protocol,” and that he wasn’t pointing fingers. “People on the frontlines are protecting us. The enemy here is Ebola, not a person, not a hospital,” he said. “We need to all take responsibility for improving the safety on the front lines. I feel awful a health care worker was infected.”

The CDC told TIME that it will continue over the next days and weeks to press importance of its recommendations for hospitals to be prepared for Ebola, and maintain its offering of webinars and trainings for health workers as well as support for hospitals. One new recommendation is that hospitals have a lead person in charge of making sure procedures are followed carefully.

Why Does Pizza Taste So Delicious? Allow Science to Explain

Posted: 13 Oct 2014 10:18 AM PDT

A few months back, an intrepid team of scientists declared that mozzarella is the best cheese for pizza because it melts, bubbles and browns better than any other varieties. Now, some other scientists from the American Chemical Society have taken an even closer look at the chemistry of everybody’s favorite cheesy food with this new video, part of the organization’s Reactions series.

“Whether it’s a plain cheese, a deep-dish stacked with meats or a thin-crust veggie delight, there’s just something about pizza that makes it delicious,” the video description explains. “There’s a lot of chemistry that goes into everything from dough to sauce to toppings to, of course, cheese.”

In particular, as the video explains, there’s something called the Maillard Reaction at work — and that’s what we all have to thank for the magical taste we encounter in every bite.

What the Vatican Really Said About Homosexuality

Posted: 13 Oct 2014 10:11 AM PDT

The Catholic world and the media were riled Monday by a Vatican document interpreted by many as signaling a softer church stance toward homosexuality, but the inclusive tone of the document is a long way from actual policy change.

At issue are three words most people have never heard of: Relatio post disceptationem. That’s the name of the document the Catholic Church’s Extraordinary Synod of the Bishops released Monday, one week into the Synod’s gathering to discuss the state of the family in the modern world. It translates, “Report After Debate,” and it was read aloud in the Synod hall to kick off the Synod’s second week. One of the report’s 58 sections—the one causing the biggest stir—is titled, “Welcoming homosexual persons.”

“Homosexuals have gifts and qualities to offer to the Christian community,” the passage begins. “Are we capable of welcoming these people, guaranteeing to them a fraternal space in our communities? Often they wish to encounter a Church that offers them a welcoming home. Are our communities capable of providing that, accepting and valuing their sexual orientation, without compromising Catholic doctrine on the family and matrimony?”

For a Church that has historically linked the word “homosexual” with the word “sin,” the idea of welcoming gays in any capacity can appear to be a significant move. Headlines immediately spoke of a “dramatic shift” and a “more tolerant” stance from the church.

But before rushing to conclusions, everyone, on all sides, should calm down.

First, here’s what the document actually is:

The relatio is a mid-Synod snapshot of 200+ Catholic leaders’ conversations that happened in the Synod hall last week. It is a starting point for conversations as the Synod fathers start small group discussions this week. It is a working text that identifies where bishops need to “deepen or clarify our understanding,” as Cardinal Luis Antonia Tagle put it in Monday’s press briefing. That means that the topic of gays and Catholic life came up in the Synod conversations so far and that it is a topic for continued reflection.

Second, here’s what the document is not:

The relatio is not a proscriptive text. It is not a decree. It is not doctrine, and certainly not a doctrinal shift. It is also not final. “These are not decisions that have been made nor simply points of view,” the document concludes. “The reflections put forward, the fruit of the Synodal dialogue that took place in great freedom and a spirit of reciprocal listening, are intended to raise questions and indicate perspectives that will have to be matured and made clearer by the reflection of the local Churches in the year that separates us from the Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of bishops planned for October 2015.”

So, what does all of that mean? Cardinal Tagle perhaps said it best when he said at Monday’s press briefing, with a smile, “The drama continues.”

The relatio reaffirms at several points that marriage is between a man and a woman. Substance on that point is not changing. The Vatican has been repeatedly clear that this Synod will bring no changes to doctrine, or even a final document with new rites. To “welcome gays” does not mean the Church is no longer equating “gay” with “sin.”

Instead, tone—as it has always been with the Francis papacy—is what is on the table. The style that Pope Francis lives is one that starts with a spirit of embrace, of mercy, and not with sin. It begins with figuring out at what points embrace is possible before determining the points at which it is not. That may be one reason why people like top Vatican watcher John Thavis are calling this mid-synod report “an earthquake.”

But it is also important to remember that the Synod on the Family is almost a two-year-long process, and this snapshot is just that, a snapshot of one week in that process. There will be more such snapshot documents in the coming months. The conversation started earlier this year when bishops around the world surveyed their congregations about family life, it kicked off more formally last week with the gathering in Rome, next the bishops will take the conversations back to their communities, next summer there’s the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia (a traditionally conservative American diocese), and then finally next fall there will be the second Synod with even more bishops from around the world with even more discussion.

Looking for revolution can be misleading. It can mar the actual story of what is and what is not happening. Casual Vatican observers—especially those in the United States, where conversations about sexuality have a different trajectory than in the Vatican or in many developing countries—should be careful to not read into the conversation what they want to hear. The interest in a relatio, a relatively obscure document, does however point to another shift: people actually care about what a group of bishops is doing.

That itself, for many, may be a revolution.

Barbara Bush: Why Malala Gives Me Hope

Posted: 13 Oct 2014 09:57 AM PDT

Five years ago, Malala Yousafzai was a twelve-year-old schoolgirl reporting about life under the Taliban after they took control of her home region in Pakistan’s Swat Valley. She described her longing for an education after the Taliban closed her school and commanded women and girls to stay home. “The extremists are afraid of books and pens. The power of education frightens them,” she wrote. “That is why they are blasting schools every day—because they were and they are afraid of change.”

Malala, who on Friday became the youngest recipient ever of the Nobel Peace Prize, has said what many older, more privileged, and far more powerful people haven’t: education gives power to the powerless. It speaks to the importance and strength of her message that the worst her critics in Pakistan can say is that she’s become a “tool” of the “evil” West.

We are used to international crises dominating the news, but most of them are acute, accompanied by dramatic images of dying or suffering. It’s hard to stir up activism with images of empty classrooms. Nonetheless, the lack of education is among the world’s greatest crises today—especially the lack of education for girls. Though it may not make the news, people die every day from ignorance: without education, basic healthcare can become unobtainable, as can food or work, or basic human rights.

It is well documented that when societies educate girls—as well as boys—and value educated women, all citizens are healthier and more prosperous; indeed, communities with educated women have lower incidence of disease and stronger economies. Even so, much is still left to do to make the importance of education a universally accepted truth. That Malala was shot in the head two years ago by a member of the Taliban as she left school evidences this. She will likely spend the foreseeable future living not in her home nation of Pakistan but in exile in Great Britain.

The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Malala has given me hope. I am hopeful because I know that there are many more Malalas out there—young women and men doing everything they can to build better lives for themselves, their families, their communities, and their nations.

I work every day with “rational dreamers”—the passionate, idealistic and educated young people at Global Health Corps. They work “rationally” to foster hope in a dark world, knowing that they must have not only dreams, but also the skills and persistence to accomplish those dreams. People ask me why I’ve focused on giving young people a stake in improving healthcare in Africa and parts of urban America. In my experience with Global Health Corps, I’ve learned that everyone—the old and the young—has something to teach.

The one time I was in Malala Yousafzai’s presence she accepted an award at The Skoll World Forum. Her words echoed those she’s spoken before, wise ones of commitment, dedication and truth. Yet after she climbed the stage, she had to adjust the microphone from that of an adult’s height to her own—that of a teenager.

Malala reminds us that even a teenager can be a teacher, and I hope Malala’s message will be embraced and spread across the globe: that no matter who you are, it is possible to change the world.

Barbara Bush is the CEO and co-founder of Global Health Corps, an organization committed to building the next generation of global health leaders.

The Best Sites for Booking Last-Minute Travel

Posted: 13 Oct 2014 09:55 AM PDT

Many great travel deals can be found by carefully planning in advance. But spur-of-the-moment trips can also be had for cheap if you know where to look.

That’s because hotels, airlines, resorts and more are looking to fill vacant spots at the last minute.

Here are our picks for the best sites to book a great trip on short notice without blowing a crazy amount of money.

Best all around last-minute booking site: Expedia.com

Expedia

Expedia.com’s last-minute booking page wins for layout as well as price and convenience. Three columns of deals under the headers of Tonight, This Weekend and Next Weekend show you top deals for the destination you select. You can further filter your results to see just flight, just hotels or package deals for both. Destinations include both major U.S. cities and foreign vacation spots.

Clicking on a deal will give you a page showing you pictures plus ratings, reviews and amenities. You will also see, in the case of a hotel, what other rooms are available and their prices as well. Flights work in a similar fashion. Find the destination and deal that appeal to you and you will be shown other flights leading to that destination in case you’re looking for alternatives.

Of course, the best deal is flight + hotel. Just mousing over the options will show you how much money you’ll be saving by booking them together. Just remember that the stated price doesn’t include baggage fees.

Best last-minute hotel: Hotel Tonight

Hotel Tonight

This isn’t a site, but an app — and it’s a life saver. Need an extra night’s stay but your hotel has no more vacancy? Score a last-minute flight and need a place to stay? The Hotel Tonight app detects your location and shows you all the hotels in your area with vacancy. You can also set it to show you a city you haven’t arrived in yet.

The display shows you pictures of the property, the price, the quality of the hotel and how much you’ll save. Tapping on a specific hotel on the list will give you more images, user reviews and, most importantly, a Need to Know section under the Info tab. This lists the restrictions of that particular deal. Pay attention to limitations like the inability to book a specific type of bed until arrival or warnings about the neighborhood around the hotel.

Price: Free on iTunes and Google Play.

Best last-minute flight: Kayak

Kayak

Kayak pulls in data on more than 400 airlines and lets you compare multiple travel sites at once. Not only can it direct you to other travel deal sites, but it also shows you the current prices directly from the major airlines’ websites.

The sliders on the sidebar is what makes Kayak really shine. Adjusting the sliders and checking off the options you want will quickly show you the exact deals you’re looking for. You can upgrade or downgrade your seat, choose a different airline or select a new take-off/landing time.

Don’t forget to click on the “More Filters” button in the sidebar to narrow down the price range, layover options and, most importantly, planes with built-in Wi-Fi. Seriously, what did we do on planes before Wi-Fi?

Best last-minute room rental: Airbnb

Airbnb

Though there’s no explicit LAST MINUTE DEALS CLICK HERE! button on the front of the site, Airbnb is still a great service for finding a last-minute room at a fraction of the cost of even a deeply discounted hotel room. Simply enter your destination and dates (even if it’s tonight) and the site will display all the rooms, apartments and houses that are available to rent by the day. (Note: There is a “Help! I need a place, tonight” search feature in the app for iOS and Android.)

Concerned about the safety of spending the night in someone else’s home? Every listing includes actual user reviews. There’s also a 24/7 hotline if you have any issues with your stay. It’s one of the best ways to find a place quickly and cheaply and to make a new friend along the way courtesy of your gracious hosts.

Pro tip: The best way to save money on last-minute travel plans is to have some flexibility. Can you take a plane with a layover instead of a direct flight? Are you willing to stay in a hotel in a new part of the city? Comfortable sleeping in an extra room of a welcoming host’s house? A little adventure can go a long way in saving you a lot of cash.

This article was written by Dan O’Halloran and originally appeared on Techlicious.

More from Techlicious:

5 Ways U.S. Hospitals Need to Get Ready For Ebola

2014-10-12T11:18:00.001-07:00

5 Ways U.S. Hospitals Need to Get Ready For Ebola

5 Ways U.S. Hospitals Need to Get Ready For Ebola
Stem-Cell Researchers Make Breakthrough in Type 1 Diabetes Treatment
Washington Man Killed by Bus at Idaho Corn Maze
Lena Dunham to Adapt YA Novel Catherine, Called Birdy
Thunder Star Kevin Durant Has Foot Fracture
Kerry Pledges $212M in U.S. Aid to Gaza
CDC: Protocol Breach in Treating Ebola Patient
Health Worker in Texas Tests Positive for Ebola
The Salty Food That’s Shockingly Healthy
Texas Healthcare Worker Tests Positive for Ebola

5 Ways U.S. Hospitals Need to Get Ready For Ebola

Posted: 12 Oct 2014 11:13 AM PDT

A health care worker who had “extensive” contact with Dallas Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan has been infected with Ebola.

“We don’t know what occurred, but at some point there was a breach in protocol,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Dr. Tom Frieden said in a meeting with the press Sunday. The Dallas hospital worker is the second health care worker in the Western world to be infected with the disease, which begs the question: Are all hospitals really capable of caring for a patient with Ebola, as Americans have been repeatedly told?

The CDC is still insisting yes, but hospitals need to start listening very carefully to their guidance. The CDC has long been advising hospitals on how to take care of a potential patient, but the agency is kicking it up a notch this week given the new patient and Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital’s blunders, including not admitting Duncan the first time he arrived at the hospital with a 103-degree fever.

The CDC is sending in a team of six to eight disease specialists to Dallas to help with infection control, a CDC spokesperson told TIME. A couple of those members just returned from Dallas on Friday, but given the new infection, they’re hopping back on the plane to help the hospital. “As that team continues to investigate what happened [at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital], it will be used as a lesson learned experience,” says CDC. President Obama also directed the CDC on Oct. 12 to investigate.

Every hospital in the U.S. has the equipment and isolation areas needed to treat someone with Ebola, but there’s no denying that the physicians at Emory University hospital, for example, have more experience and training. TIME visited the infectious disease team at Emory in August, and the team had been training for a situation like Ebola for 12 years, undergoing drills at least twice a year. That’s not the case at most medical facilities.

“You’re going to see us really making even more clear what hospitals need to be doing,” says the CDC spokesperson. “We are really trying to help health care workers understand the principles [they] need to follow and why, and how to do them.” The CDC received a 10-fold increase in calls from hospitals after a nurse in Spain was infected with Ebola.

1. Have a lead manager. Frieden said the CDC is recommending that hospitals have someone’s whose role it is to monitor the protocols that physicians and nurses are taking for protection. Taking on and off the protective equipment is one of the most high-risk scenarios and has to be done meticulously. “[Treating Ebola] can be done safely, but it’s hard to do safely,” Dr. Frieden said in the press conference, adding that even a single slip can result in contamination.

2. Learn from the country’s best. On Oct. 14, doctors at Emory and Nebraska—both best-in-class facilities when it comes to treating something like Ebola—will host a conference call for health care workers. On Oct. 21, the CDC and the Partnership for Quality Care will be hosting a live educational meeting in New York to show health care workers how to prepare their facilities and themselves. The CDC says the goal is to get 5,000 front-line health care workers there in person, and to also live stream it for those who cannot attend in person. The CDC has long been running a Health Alert Network that hospitals and individuals can subscribe to for notifications and advice on caring for diseases.

3. Get a patient’s travel history. The CDC says health workers should consider the possibility of Ebola if a patient exhibits fever, severe headache, abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea, or unexplained bleeding or bruising. If a patient has been to Ebola-affect countries, “immediate action should be taken.”

4. Isolate immediately. If a patient might have Ebola, they should be “isolated in a single room (with a private bathroom), and healthcare personnel should follow standard, contact, and droplet precautions, including the use of appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE).”

5. Be protected. PPE should consist of gloves, gown, eye protection (goggles or face shield), and a face mask. In situations where there may be copious amounts of bodily fluids like blood, vomit and feces, health workers should consider double gloving, wearing disposable shoe covers and leg coverings. Some hospitals may choose hazmat suits, since those suits are made up of fewer pieces—which means it’s less for doctors to take on and off.

You can read more of the CDC’s recommendations here.

Stem-Cell Researchers Make Breakthrough in Type 1 Diabetes Treatment

Posted: 12 Oct 2014 10:13 AM PDT

Researchers have made a major breakthrough in finding a treatment for type 1 diabetes, Harvard University announced Thursday.

For the first time, scientists were able to create insulin-producing beta cells using human embryonic stem cells, at a volume required for cell transplantation and pharmaceutical use. Type 1 is the variety of the metabolic disease that one is born with–an autoimmune condition in which the body destroys the beta cells that produce insulin, a hormone that regulates glucose and helps the body process sugar.

“We are now just one pre-clinical step away from the finish line,” said Doug Melton, who led the research and who has worked toward finding a cure for diabetes since his son was diagnosed as an infant 23 years ago.

That final step is finding a way to protect the 150 million beta cells needed to for transplant in the treatment of each patient from their immune systems, which automatically attack those cells. Melton is working with other researchers to develop a device for such protection. Tests of a device in mice have so far protected insulin-producing beta cells for several months.

Washington Man Killed by Bus at Idaho Corn Maze

Posted: 12 Oct 2014 09:44 AM PDT

HAUSER, Idaho — A bus carrying paintball players struck and killed a Washington state man inside a zombie attraction at a corn maze in northern Idaho, authorities said Saturday.

Jeremy T. McSpadden Jr., 18, of Spokane Valley, Washington, was a role player in the “Zombie Slayer Paintball Bus” attraction at the Incredible Corn Maze in Hauser on Friday night, the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office said. Dressed as a zombie, he emerged from his hiding place and ran toward the modified school bus, but he tripped and fell in front of the rear passenger-side tires, witnesses reported.

He was run over and apparently killed instantly. Because of the uneven terrain of the corn maze, the bus frequently rocks, and the occupants did not immediately notice what had happened, investigators said.

“It was not until the bus had traveled away from the victim’s location and the role players began to reset for the next bus to come along that anyone realized something was wrong,” the sheriff’s office said in a news release.

The attraction is new this season, according to the corn maze’s website. For $15, customers ride the bus, which has paintball guns mounted outside the windows, and shoot at the zombies as the vehicle drives through the corn maze.

The bus was going forward, and neither speed nor alcohol was a factor, Sgt. Ward Crawford said.

“The focus of the attraction is the bus creeps forward so the customers have plenty of opportunity to blast away at the zombies,” Crawford said. “This looks like it was just a horrific confluence of events.”

A recording on the corn maze’s information line Saturday morning said, “We are sad to announce that all of the attractions, including the free drive-in movie, will be canceled for the remainder of the weekend.”

A message left seeking further comment was not immediately returned.

Hauser is near the Washington border east of Spokane.

Lena Dunham to Adapt YA Novel Catherine, Called Birdy

Posted: 12 Oct 2014 09:15 AM PDT

Corpus bones! Girls creator and author Lena Dunham is working on a film adaptation of Karen Cushman’s award-winning 1994 young-adult novel Catherine, Called Birdy.

Dunham, who just released her debut essay collection Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She’s “Learned”, announced the project on Friday at the New Yorker Festival, the Huffington Post reports.

“This is actually my first time talking about it publicly,” Dunham said at the event. “I’m very excited about it. I’m not sure when it’ll happen, but I’m in the process of [working on it].”

The book follows a thirteenth-century teenager who finds clever ways to scare off the unsuitable suitors her father tries to marry her off to.

[Huffington Post]

Thunder Star Kevin Durant Has Foot Fracture

Posted: 12 Oct 2014 08:39 AM PDT

OKLAHOMA CITY — Kevin Durant has a fractured foot and the Oklahoma City Thunder say they are not sure how long the NBA’s MVP will be sidelined.

General Manager Sam Presti said in a statement Sunday that Durant informed the team of “discomfort” in his right foot after practice a day earlier.

He underwent tests and the team says he was diagnosed with a “Jones” fracture. The team says traditional treatment requires surgery, and recent NBA cases have resulted in a return to play in six to eight weeks.

The team says it is “collaboratively evaluating the most appropriate next steps with Kevin, his representatives and Thunder medical personnel.” It adds, that until a course of action is set “we are unable to provide a timeline specific to Kevin’s case.”

Kerry Pledges $212M in U.S. Aid to Gaza

Posted: 12 Oct 2014 07:37 AM PDT

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has pledged $212 million in new aid to help rebuild Gaza after the region accumulated heavy damage during this summer’s 50-day war between Israel and Hamas.

Kerry made the announcement on Sunday as diplomats from more than 40 countries gathered in Cairo to pledge humanitarian aid, the New York Times reports. The U.S. previously provided $118 million in aid to Gaza earlier in 2014.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said that approximately one-third of Gaza’s population was displaced by the violence and that the parts of the region are still plagued by blackouts and lack of access to water.

Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas has said that Gaza will need $4 billion to rebuild, and Qatar has already promised $1 billion toward that goal. U.S. officials suggest concerns for the region’s stability may hinder aid commitments among donors.

“There is the third time in less than six years that we have seen war break out and Gaza left in rubble,” Kerry said. “As long as there is a possibility that Hamas can fire rockets on Israeli civilians at any time, the people of Gaza will remain at risk of future conflict.”

[NYT]

CDC: Protocol Breach in Treating Ebola Patient

Posted: 12 Oct 2014 07:11 AM PDT

WASHINGTON — A top federal health official says the Ebola diagnosis in a health care worker who treated Thomas Eric Duncan at a Texas hospital shows there was a clear breach of safety protocol.

Dr. Tom Frieden, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, says the worker had treated Duncan multiple times after the Liberian man was diagnosed.

Frieden tells CBS’ “Face the Nation” that all those who treated Duncan are now considered to be potentially exposed. Frieden couldn’t give an exact number.

Health care workers treating Duncan were to follow CDC protocol that included wearing protective gear.

Among the things CDC will investigate is how the workers took off that gear — because removing it incorrectly can lead to a contamination.

Duncan died of the disease last Wednesday.

Health Worker in Texas Tests Positive for Ebola

Posted: 12 Oct 2014 06:23 AM PDT

Updated 1:30 p.m. EST

A Texas health worker has tested positive for Ebola after caring for an Ebola patient who died this week, the Texas Department of State Health Services announced Sunday.

“We don’t know what occurred, but at some point there was a breach in protocol,” said Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention Director Tom Frieden at a Sunday press conference, noting that “there is a need to enhance the protocol to make sure that they are followed.”

The CDC will do further testing to confirm the preliminary diagnosis. If the CDC tests confirm the results, the patient will be the first known case of someone contracting the deadly Ebola virus in the U.S.

The patient reported a fever on Friday after following the CDC’s self-monitoring procedures, which include twice-daily temperature checks. The patient was admitted into isolation within 90 minutes of the temperature check.

“We knew a second case could be a reality, and we’ve been preparing for this possibility,” Dr. David Lakey, commissioner of the TDSHS, said in a statement. “We are broadening our team in Dallas and working with extreme diligence to prevent further spread.”

The worker, who is in stable condition and whose identity has not been made public, reportedly wore protective gear while caring for Thomas Eric Duncan at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, according to chief clinical officer Dr. Daniel Varga, the Associated Press reports. Duncan, the first individual in the U.S. to be diagnosed with Ebola, died on Wednesday.

Varga said the hospital is “very concerned” about the spread of the virus despite the worker’s safety precautions, which he said included “gown, glove, mask and shield.”

Frieden said that treatment of Ebola “can be done safely but it’s hard to do safely. Even a single inadvertent slip can result in contamination.”

The White House said in a statement Sunday afternoon that President Obama had been briefed on the new patient’s condition, and had directed that the CDC’s breach investigation move quickly and that “Federal authorities take immediate additional steps to ensure hospitals and healthcare providers nationwide are prepared to follow protocols should they encounter an Ebola patient.”

Due to staffing limitations, the emergency department at the hospital is currently on “diversion” and is not allowing ambulances to deliver patients to the emergency room, the hospital said in a statement. Texas Health Resources is also monitoring all staff who cared for Duncan and “triple-checking” its safety measures and compliance with CDC guidelines.

“Breaking the links in the chains of transmission is key is the key to preventing further spread,” Frieden said.

–with additional reporting by Zeke Miller.

The Salty Food That’s Shockingly Healthy

Posted: 12 Oct 2014 05:00 AM PDT

Pop quiz: What do pickles, vinegar, tempeh, chocolate and wine have in common? Yes, they’re all delicious—and they’re all fermented. And that means they all have major health perks.

Cultures around the world have enjoyed fermented foods for millennia; they devour kimchi in Korea, sauerkraut in Germany and cheese—everywhere. Now fermenting is appealing to consumers eager to return to naturally healthy ways of eating. Top chefs are embracing it too; Momofuku’s David Chang has a culinary lab dedicated to food science, including fermentation, which he calls the “machinery of flavor.” Fermentation is what happens “when rotten goes right,” Chang says. It may sound kind of gross, but fermentation involves “good” micro-organisms breaking down or partially digesting food, which makes nutrients easier for your body to absorb. Research suggests that fermented foods can also strengthen immunity.

HEALTH.COM: 12 Foods That Control Your Appetite

Fermentation helps extend shelf life (think how much longer a block of Cheddar lasts than a carton of milk) and can make food safer, since foodborne pathogens are less likely to survive in the acidic environment fermentation creates.

You’re probably already enjoying many of these foods. Here are some of my favorites.

Miso
This paste, made from fermented soybeans, is the essential ingredient in the Japanese soup of the same name. The darker the miso, the longer it has been fermented, and the saltier and stronger the flavor will be. I keep a container in my fridge and use it in marinades and glazes for chicken or fish. I also make salad dressing out of it: I mix 1 tablespoon of miso with a little chopped garlic and ginger, 1 tablespoon of rice vinegar and 1 or 2 teaspoons of honey. Then I whisk in 2 to 4 tablespoons of a neutral oil, like grapeseed.

HEALTH.COM: 11 Foods that Make You Hungrier

Sourdough bread
It’s lower on the glycemic index, so it’s less likely to wreak havoc on your blood sugar and leave you hungry and craving more carbs. Try it as French toast, croutons, bread crumbs and stuffing.

Pickles
Be sure the label says “fermented.” Commercially made pickles and capers aren’t always made using good bacteria; often they’re just soaked in brine.

Wine and beer
They’re both fermented (yay!). You don’t need me to tell you how to enjoy them.

HEALTH.COM: The 18 Best Snacks for Weight Loss

Other delicious ideas: Swap tempeh for tofu in a stir-fry, pile sauerkraut on a turkey sandwich or marinate chicken in buttermilk overnight. With so many great choices, you’ll be in a pickle in no time (but in a good way).

Snack On This: If you love sriracha, the super flavorful Southeast Asian hot sauce, like I do, grab a bag of Indiana Sriracha Popcorn ($4 for a 6-oz. bag; at Whole Foods Market). Seasoned with red chili pepper, it brings the heat. And studies suggest that chiles boost metabolism.

Gotta Have It: When I see something I don’t recognize on a food label, I turn to the Chemical Cuisine app (free; iTunes and Google Play) from the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Search the alphabetical list of 130-plus food additives; color-coded icons indicate whether the ingredient you’re curious about is safe, OK for some people or to be avoided completely.

HEALTH.COM: 16 Ways to Lose Weight Fast

This article originally appeared on Health.com.

Texas Healthcare Worker Tests Positive for Ebola

Posted: 12 Oct 2014 04:55 AM PDT

DALLAS — A Texas health care worker who provided hospital care for an Ebola patient who later died has tested positive for the virus, health officials said Sunday in a statement. If the preliminary diagnosis is confirmed, it would be the first known case of the disease being contracted or transmitted in the U.S.

A statement posted on the Texas Department of State Health Service’s website said “confirmatory testing will be conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.”

Officials said the health care worker reported a low grade fever Friday night and was isolated and referred for testing. Preliminary test results were received late Saturday.

Hospital and state health officials did not identify the health care worker or provide their job description.

“We knew a second case could be a reality, and we’ve been preparing for this possibility,” said Dr. David Lakey, commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services. “We are broadening our team in Dallas and working with extreme diligence to prevent further spread.”

Health officials have interviewed the patient and are identifying any contacts or potential exposures. They said people who had contact with the health care worker after symptoms emerged will be monitored based on the nature of their interactions and the potential they were exposed to the virus.

Ebola spreads through close contact with a symptomatic person’s bodily fluids, such as blood, sweat, vomit, feces, urine, saliva or semen. Those fluids must have an entry point, like a cut or scrape or someone touching the nose, mouth or eyes with contaminated hands, or being splashed. The World Health Organization says blood, feces and vomit are the most infectious fluids, while the virus is found in saliva mostly once patients are severely ill and the whole live virus has never been culled from sweat.

Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the U.S., died Wednesday in Dallas. Duncan, 42, grew up next to a leper colony in Liberia and fled years of war before later returning to his country to find it ravaged by the disease that ultimately took his life.

Duncan arrived in Dallas in late September, realizing a long-held ambition to join relatives. He came to attend the high-school graduation of his son, who was born in a refugee camp in Ivory Coast and was brought to the U.S. as a toddler when the boy’s mother successfully applied for resettlement.

The trip was the culmination of decades of effort, friends and family members said. But when Duncan arrived in Dallas, though he showed no symptoms, he had already been exposed to Ebola. His neighbors in Liberia believe Duncan become infected when he helped a pregnant neighbor who later died from it. It was unclear if he knew about her diagnosis before traveling.

Duncan had arrived at a friend’s Dallas apartment on Sept. 20 — less than a week after helping his sick neighbor. For the nine days before he was taken to a hospital in an ambulance, Duncan shared the apartment with several people.

Work-Life Balance Is Having a Moment—But for the Wrong Reasons

2014-10-11T11:18:00.001-07:00

Work-Life Balance Is Having a Moment—But for the Wrong Reasons

Work-Life Balance Is Having a Moment—But for the Wrong Reasons
Second Day of Protests Take Shape in St. Louis
JFK Begins Screening Airline Passengers for Ebola
Watch This Amazing Fan-Made Remake of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
Supreme Court Lifts Block on Idaho Gay Marriage
Nobel Co-Winner Kailash Satyarthi: The Whole World Should Protect Children’s Rights
7 New Jersey High School Students Charged in Sexual Assaults
Snowden’s Girlfriend Is Living With Him in Russia
Watch Viola Davis’ Emotional Speech About Childhood Poverty
How Words Can Kill in the Vaccine Fight

Work-Life Balance Is Having a Moment—But for the Wrong Reasons

Posted: 11 Oct 2014 09:01 AM PDT

Work-life balance is having a moment, but for the wrong reasons. Although scholars have been researching work-life fit for more than 50 years, the 2008 recession changed the nature of the beast: Lacking job security, workers became afraid to take advantage of company flexible working options, instead seeking to show hardcore commitment to hang on to a job.

This strategy has had devastating effects. A recent study found that 70 percent of workers suffer from work-family tension, which manifests itself in sleep-deprivation, marital conflict, parent-child tension, alcohol and tobacco use, and other problems.

Things have improved since 2008, sure. But now, the trick is to harness the energy of this moment into a cultural shift — a movement that sparks lasting change.

So, where do we go from here? To the data! Yeah, yeah, it’s 2014, the data. Got it. But, from the data, the big question is whether we can solve the problem with one good policy, or some fear in the marketplace, a combination of both that changes the ecosystem of the workplace.

The first step to making any change, of course, is acknowledging the problem. Denial can be destructive. Let’s take, for example, the work of Robin Ely of Harvard Business School. She studied a professional service firm to find out why 90 percent of the employees at the top level were men. Most of her 107 interviewees attributed it to women’s family responsibilities, claiming that greater work-family conflict caused them to slow down or quit. But when data showed similar dropout rates for men and women, the true culprit appeared: overwork. But instead of addressing the organization’s culture of overwork — prompted by over-selling and over-promising deliverables — the firm chose to depict it within a “work-family narrative” that shifted the blame away from company culture. Naming the true problem would require altering some things, including some supervisor, management, and promotion practices — which need not be as daunting as it sounds.

So, where do we find solutions? In a “best of the best” workplaces study, awarded the 2014 Kanter Award (an honor bestowed to the work-family field’s most influential research), researchers found that when European governments enacted public childcare and paid leave statutes, they often inspired companies to change their policies and implement additional flexible work arrangements, above and beyond what the law required. Using data from 19,000 organizations in 19 countries (the survey didn’t include the U.S.), the authors found that the presence of a federal context of family-friendliness mattered: their statistical analysis showed that 15 percent of the variability in companies’ adoption of flexible work arrangements was explained by institutional pressures such as state support.

But government can’t do it alone. And if you’ve been following the latest work-family legislation news out of the U.S. government, you know that it’s not doing much of anything, let alone changing work-life rules. Luckily, governments aren’t the only organizations that can initiate societal ripple effects. Other big companies can do that, too. It’s all based on a somewhat wonky theory known as organizational isomorphism — companies’ tendency to mimic each other to gain social legitimacy, and to remain competitive in the war for talent, customers, and profit.

More and more, companies are eager to make “Best Places to Work” or “Best Places for Working Mothers” lists — it’s good for their brands and supports the bottom line. Such lists nudge organizations into thinking about shifting their policies and culture toward more family-friendliness. But after a nudge, the real drivers of change are threefold, according to scholars. First is labor supply. According to Ellen Galinsky of the Families and Work Institute (FWI), companies move toward becoming more family-supportive when they lose valued employees whom they want to retain. In FWI’s recent report, only 11 percent said they did so because of legal mandates. Second is leadership, especially the human resources (HR) manager’s stance: if he or she supports a work-life innovation as a way for the organization to adapt to change (especially global competition), that’s a plus, says Ellen Kossek of Purdue University. The HR executive is a critical driver, according to Kossek’s research. If he or she has a global orientation, and thinks other executives will be favorable to a work-life innovation, change is likely.

Another way to change an organization’s culture: give employees greater control over where and when they work, and train managers to be more supportive of family commitments. Research from the University of Minnesota found that these changes resulted in a significant reduction in employees’ chronic work-life stress and feeling of insufficient time with their families. Implementing more schedule and location flexibility, and supervisor support for family responsibilities, meant system-wide change could relieve work-family pressure for those who needed it. In particular, employees who were parents or had supervisors who were initially suspect of greater freedom were helped the most by these changes. Unfortunately, according to the Families and Work Institute report, fewer employers are providing supervisor training for support and evaluation of a diverse, flexible workforce. That trend needs to reverse. But the report also showed that flexibility in where and when work gets done has increased since 2008, from 50 percent to 67 percent of the companies it surveyed. That’s good news.

The data are clear. Change can happen inside organizations to ease work-family tension for all who need it… and increasingly, that means not just mothers. And change can happen across organizations, in response to public policy prodding companies toward family-friendly practices; as well as companies replicating one another’s programs in response to social, economic, and leadership pushes. And most importantly, change is needed when 70 percent of working Americans feel stressed and 70-hour workweeks beckon. We want that type of virus to spread, instead of an epidemic of people’s stress-filled work-life imbalance creating a national health crisis.

Nanette Fondas, co-author of The Custom-Fit Workplace, writes about business, economics, and family. Her work has been published in The Atlantic, Harvard Business Review, Psychology Today, Slate, Ms., Quartz, as well as academic journals. This piece was originally published in New America’s digital magazine, The Weekly Wonk. Sign up to get it delivered to your inbox each Thursday here, and follow @New America on Twitter.

Second Day of Protests Take Shape in St. Louis

Posted: 11 Oct 2014 08:54 AM PDT

FERGUSON, Mo. (AP) — Hundreds are gathered in downtown St. Louis for a second day of organized rallies to protest Michael Brown’s death and other fatal police shootings in the area and elsewhere.

The crowd appeared larger than the ones seen at Friday’s protests. While the main the focus is on recent police shootings, marchers embraced other causes such as gay rights and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Police officers were stationed around downtown St. Louis in anticipation of a march that was scheduled to wind through city streets for several hours.

The four-day event called Ferguson October began Friday afternoon with a march outside the St. Louis county prosecutor’s office.

Eighteen-year-old Michael Brown, who was black and unarmed, was shot and killed Aug. 9 by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, who is white.

JFK Begins Screening Airline Passengers for Ebola

Posted: 11 Oct 2014 08:24 AM PDT

Enhanced Ebola screenings began Saturday at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport as authorities moved to ensure passengers potentially carrying the virus don’t make it into the United States.

Anyone traveling from Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone will be singled out by Customs and Border Protection, who will take their temperature with a non-contact thermometer and ask them a series of questions, the New York Times reports.

Kennedy is the first of five American airports planning to tighten screening protocols in an effort to protect the U.S. from the disease’s possible spread. But health officials warned that the only way to stop Ebola is to defeat it in West Africa.

Still, experts say the state of medical care in the U.S. and the current precautions mean that the likelihood of widespread infection here is very low.

“The chances of seeing anything like the calamity in western Africa is profoundly remote,” said Dr. Irwin Redlener, the director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University and a special adviser to Mayor Bill de Blasio.

[NYT]

Watch This Amazing Fan-Made Remake of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

Posted: 11 Oct 2014 08:01 AM PDT

Star Wars devotees are about as dedicated as aficionados can be, probably somewhere between preteen One Direction obsessives and oenophiles. But except for some dreamy sketches and Edward Hopper still lifes, One Direction and wine haven’t produced the kind of adoring fan art that Star Wars: Episode V — The Empire Strikes Back has yielded in this two-hour version of the movie.

More than 480 fans sent out 1,500 submissions contributed sections to this shot-for-shot recreation of the film. It’s unbelievably varied and really fun to watch, if you’re a Star Wars person. It’s “a testament to the talent, imagination, and dedication of Star Wars fans,” says Star Wars’ official description of the film.

Supreme Court Lifts Block on Idaho Gay Marriage

Posted: 11 Oct 2014 07:47 AM PDT

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court says same-sex marriage can go ahead in Idaho.

The court issued an order Friday that appears to remove the last legal obstacle keeping gay and lesbian couples from getting married in the conservative state.

The federal appeals court in San Francisco on Tuesday declared gay marriage bans illegal in Idaho and Nevada.

Justice Anthony Kennedy temporarily blocked same-sex weddings in Idaho a day later after the state asked for a delay. Idaho officials said county clerks would be forced to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples almost immediately without the high court’s intervention.

Kennedy offered no explanation for his order, but indicated it would not be lasting. The court issued no explanation for its order Friday, either.

Nobel Co-Winner Kailash Satyarthi: The Whole World Should Protect Children’s Rights

Posted: 11 Oct 2014 07:19 AM PDT

Kailash Satyarthi, a relatively unknown child rights activist from India, is sharing this year’s Nobel Peace Prize with Malala Yousafzai, a teen campaigner from Pakistan who was shot in the head by the Taliban while going to school in 2012. The reclusive Satyarthi, admittedly nowhere near as famous as his co-recipient, is, however, a messiah for India’s close to 50 million child workers. Satyarthi’s Bachpan Bachao Andolan (loosely translated as Movement to Save Childhood) has to date rescued and rehabilitated more than 80,000 child laborers. Just last month, it rescued 24 child workers between the ages of eight and 15 from a bag and shoe making plant in New Delhi.

Apart from freeing children from forced labor, Satyarthi has also successfully created international awareness about child workers issue by organizing global marches. The international social tag “Rugmark,” created by Satyarthi, is a widely recognized guarantee that a rug or carpet was made in a child labor-free factory. India is the world’s largest exporter of handmade carpets, and a recent report by Harvard University’s FXB Center for Health and Human rights estimates that out of around two million carpet workers in India, approximately 400,000 are underage laborers. The attention his prize has created around the issue of child labor just in the last few hours, Satyarthi says, is overwhelming.

TIME spoke to Satyarthi Saturday about winning the Nobel Peace Prize. This interview has been edited and condensed for space.

TIME: For probably the first time, the entire world and India especially is talking about child rights and child labor, which was a fringe issue. How does that make you feel?

Satyarthi: It’s the biggest-ever recognition for the plight, struggle and issue of child labor worldwide. It will give tremendous impetus to our fight and will undoubtedly inspire hundreds and thousands of social activists and non-profits on the ground, all over the world. The amount of conversations it has created around child labor in the last 6 to 7 hours has not been seen in the last 600 years.

You received the award jointly with Malala Yousafzai from Pakistan. Both India and Pakistan are struggling to ensure child rights. Can they work together towards solutions?

I spoke to Malala yesterday after the prize was announced, and invited her to join an additional dimension in the fight for child rights, and that is the right to be free. No child should be born or grow [up] into violence and conflict in any part of the world. Saying that, why just India and Pakistan? The whole world should work together to protect child rights. This is the 25^th year of U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child and to celebrate this, there is a need on the part of all stakeholders — the civil society, the masses, governments, corporates and even religious institutions — to accept collective responsibility [and stand up to this social evil].

Not many in India knew Kailash Satyarthi before Friday – did you deliberately keep yourself away from the public eye?

I don’t believe in personality cults; I don’t believe in personal image building exercises. Bachpan Bachao Andolan is not merely a non-profit or social or political movement for me – it is my life’s mission. We work in thousands of villages in India and over 140 countries, with limited reach, manpower and resources. The choice was either to invest in image building or in building the movement.

What has been your biggest challenge in the last three decades?

My biggest challenge was, and still is, changing social mindsets and working around political priorities. Child labor is a non-issue in India. It is a social evil and a development disaster. Indians treat poor children either as beggars, giving them food and clothes in charity or employ them as child laborers. There is nothing in between. And when it comes to the notion of child rights, there is zero awareness. I have been fighting to establish that notion, concept and eventually culture that teaches one to respect childhood and treat children with the dignity and respect they deserve.

How is your work different from that of other child rights organizations?

We believe in direct action. We want to free children from modern day slavery and ensure they receive proper rehabilitation. We avoid taking the overall responsibilities of the overall rehabilitation of hundreds and thousands of children as we have limited resources and manpower. What we have instead tried doing is to build a social movement around the issue rather than being a conventional non-profit.

Despite your limited resources, you did not keep your movement confined to India. Instead, you took it to the world stage through your global marches against child labor.

Child labor is not an isolated problem. There are geopolitical issues. There are transnational corporations and industries; there are globalized markets and economies and all these cumulatively create and perpetuate child labor globally. The issues are globally interlinked and that is why it is critical that we build a worldwide movement.

7 New Jersey High School Students Charged in Sexual Assaults

Posted: 11 Oct 2014 07:15 AM PDT

Seven New Jersey teenagers were charged Friday in connection with sexual assaults that were allegedly part of a football hazing ritual which prompted the local school to cut the season short.

Some of the seven teens at Parlin, New Jersey’s Sayreville War Memorial High School are accused of holding victims agains their will while others “improperly” touched them “in a sexual manner,” prosecutors said. The accused range in age from 15 to 17, the New York Times reports.

The charges include aggravated sexual assault, aggravated criminal sexual contact, assault, conspiracy and hazing, among others.

Sayreville was scheduled to play its homecoming football game on Friday night against Monroe High School, but school officials canceled the game after complaints about bullying. Richard Labbe, the superintendent of Sayreville Public Schools said the board of education, said the school would continue to cooperate with authorities.

Gov. Chris Christie on Thursday said as a father of four, he found the allegations disgraceful.

“The facts as reported currently are extraordinarily disturbing and, as the father of a number of teenage athletes, the idea that that kind of conduct could be permitted — if it’s true — in a high school athletics program, or anywhere else in our state for that matter, is absolutely unacceptable,” Christie said.

[NYT]

Snowden’s Girlfriend Is Living With Him in Russia

Posted: 11 Oct 2014 06:45 AM PDT

National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden is living with his girlfriend in Russia, it’s revealed in a documentary by filmmaker Laura Poitras that premiered Friday at the New York Film Festival.

Lindsay Mills, Snowden’s girlfriend of 10 years, has been living with Snowden for some time, according to the film. Poitras filmed Mills and Snowden cooking dinner together in July for the documentary, titled Citizenfour, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The revelation of Mills’ life in Russia counters the widely-held belief that Snowden abandoned her as he leaked troves of classified intelligence documents revealing the existence of massive secret surveillance programs on American citizens.

“The fact that he is now living in domestic bliss as well, with his long-term girlfriend whom he loves, should forever put to rest the absurd campaign to depict his life as grim and dank,” wrote Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who along with Poitras helped publish the Snowden revelations.

Mills is a ballerina and dancer who lived with Snowden in Hawaii when he was an NSA contractor there. Snowden has largely eschewed speaking about his personal life, and Mills has never given any interviews.

Snowden has been living in exile in Russia since June 2013 and has been granted asylum for a second year. You can watch the trailer for Citizenfour above.

[THR]

Watch Viola Davis’ Emotional Speech About Childhood Poverty

Posted: 11 Oct 2014 06:08 AM PDT

Viola Davis, the star of the new ABC drama How to Get Away With Murder, delivered a powerful speech Friday at Variety’s 2014 Power of Women luncheon, telling an audience that she’s driven to end childhood hunger by memories of “abject poverty” in her own life.

“I stole for food, I jumped in huge garbage bins with maggots for food,” said Davis. “I didn’t join the hunger is campaign to save the world. I set out to save myself.”

She was recognized at a luncheon along with Jane Fonda, Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Lopez for humanitarian efforts, the Associated Press reports.

How Words Can Kill in the Vaccine Fight

Posted: 11 Oct 2014 06:00 AM PDT

Chances are you wouldn’t sit down to a plate of sautéed thymus glands, to say nothing of a poached patagonian tooth fish; and the odds are you’d be reluctant to tuck into a monkey peach too. But sweetbreads, Chilean sea bass and kiwifruit? They’re a different matter—except they’re not. All of those scrumptious foods once went by those less scrumptious names—but few people went near them until there was something pleasant to call them. Words have that kind of power.

That’s true in advertising, in politics and in business too. And it’s true when it comes to vaccines as well—but in this case those words can have a lethal power. The bad news is that in the vaccine word game, the good guys (they would be the ones who know that vaccines are safe, effective and save from two to three million lives per year) are being caught flat-footed by the bad guys (those would be the ones whose beliefs are precisely opposite—and therefore precisely wrong).

The battle plays out on Twitter, with the handy—and uninformed—handle #CDCWhistleBlower repeatedly invoked by virtually every fevered anti-vax tweet like a solemn incantation. The term refers to Dr. William Thompson of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who supposedly blew the lid off of the great vaccine conspiracy by confessing to irregularities in a 2004 study that deliberately excluded data suggesting a higher rate of autism in African-American boys who had been vaccinated. Scary stuff alright, except that the study was poorly conducted, the data was left out for purely statistical and methodological reasons, and the paper itself has now been withdrawn. But the hashtag stain remains all the same—with the usually noble whistleblower label being put to low purpose.

Something similar is true with the widely cited Vaccine Injury Court, another frightening term, except that no such thing exists—at least not by that name. It’s true there is an Office of Special Masters which, under a smart 1986 law, hears the claims of parents who believe their children have been injured by vaccines. The panel was created to provide no-fault compensation in all such cases, since drugs that are as vital and are administered as widely as vaccines could never be manufactured or sold affordably if the companies themselves had to pour millions and even billions of dollars into defending themselves against claims.

It’s true too that the court has paid out about $2.8 billion to parents and families since 1989, but those awards are overwhelmingly for relatively minor side effects that are fully disclosed by the ostensibly secretive CDC for any parents caring to look on the agency’s website. And to put that $2.8 billion in perspective: The money went to 3,727 claimants over an approximate generation-long period during which 78 million American children were safely vaccinated, preventing an estimated 322 million illnesses and 732,000 deaths. If you’re crunching the numbers (and it’s not hard to do) that factors out to a .0048% risk of developing what is overwhelmingly likely to be a transient problem—in exchange for a lifetime of immunity from multiple lethal diseases.

But brace for more anyway because October is, yes, Vaccine Injury Awareness Month. Because really, what does a dangerous campaign of misinformation need more than 31 catchily named days devoted to itself?

Still, there’s no denying that catchiness works, and on this one the doctors and other smart folks are going to have to get off the dime. MSNBC’s Ronan Farrow—who either is or isn’t to your liking depending in part on whether MSNBC itself is—has emerged as a smart, persuasive, often brilliantly cutting advocate for the vaccine cause. And on his Oct. 10 show he deftly filleted the arguments of a vocal anti-vax mother whose child is undeniably suffering from a number of illnesses, but who wrong-headedly blames them on vaccines. In this show as in others he invites his audience to learn the truth about vaccines and to connect with him and one another via the handle #VaccineDebate.

And right there he tripped up. For the billionth time (as Farrow knows) there is no debate. Just as there is no climate change debate. Just as there is no moon-landings-were-faked debate. And just as there was nothing to the tobacco company’s disingenuous invention of a “cigarette controversy,” a fallback position they assumed when even they knew that cigarettes were killers and that they couldn’t straight-facedly say otherwise, so the best they could do was sow doubt and hope people stayed hooked.

Little more than 30 seconds spent listening to Farrow talk about vaccines makes it unmistakably clear where he stands—but the very fact that we now live in a hashtag culture means that it’s by no means certain he’s going to get that 30 seconds. So step up your game, smart people. You want to get the vaccine message out, do it in a way that works in the 21st century. And if that means a hashtag, why not #VaccinesWork or #VaccinesAreSafe or #VaccinesSaveLives. Of course, there’s also the more thorough and satisfying #AntivaxxersDon’tKnowWhatThey’reTalkingAboutSoPleaseStopListeningToThem, but that gets you exactly halfway to your 140-character limit. So keep it brief folks—and make it stick.

5 Unique Desk Gadgets for Under $40

2014-10-10T11:46:00.001-07:00

5 Unique Desk Gadgets for Under $40

5 Unique Desk Gadgets for Under $40
Ebola Death Toll Tops 4,000
Ebola Patient’s Temperature Spiked to 103 Degrees Before Initial Release
A Marketing Firm Could Be Looking at Your Selfies
Quiz: How Long Will You Live?
#AskTIME Subscriber Q and A: Alex Altman, Zeke Miller and Jay Newton-Small
Take a Look at History’s Worst Contraceptives for Women
Watch Taylor Swift’s Amazing Cover of Vance Joy’s “Riptide”
Why Ben Affleck Still Can’t Win
Why Showtime’s The Affair Will Be as Intense as Game of Thrones

5 Unique Desk Gadgets for Under $40

Posted: 10 Oct 2014 11:35 AM PDT

Coffee Warmer USB Hub ($16.99)

Vat19

Two questions: Do you like drinking lukewarm coffee? Do you like crawling under your desk to plug in all your gadgets? No, no, a thousand times no to both questions. This is the greatest country in the world. Why shouldn’t you own a device that keeps your coffee warm and lets you plug four USB gadgets into it? It’s called convergence, and you’re the new Convergence Sheriff in this office. Carl Andrews from Biz Dev was the former sheriff but he quit when he bought a B&B up in Kennebunkport in order to make a go of it in the burgeoning hospitality industry. Greatest country in the world, and all: you’ve gotta take advantage of those business opportunities.

[Vat19.com]

Bulletproof Clipboard ($39.99)

ThinkGeek

Look, you could spend a few bucks on a clipboard that doesn’t stop bullets. But why not spend $40 on a clipboard that does stop bullets. For starters, it’s quite a conversation piece. I don’t know about you, but in my line of work, we talk about clipboards on a daily basis. Having a bulletproof clipboard adds a certain je-ne-sais-quoi to just about any clipboard-related conversation. If you’re in a clipboard-related conversation and the other person isn’t interested in your bulletproof clipboard, walk away. It’s not worth pursuing, personally or professionally.

[ThinkGeek]

Heated Lotion Dispenser ($39.95)

Hammacher Schlemmer

Your reputation at work is that of a normal, down-to-earth, model employee. Let’s shake things up a bit. Bring this dispenser into the office and you could be known as the creepy, hot-lotion person. Someone stops by your desk to chat about clipboards? Send them on their way with a handful of hot, greasy lotion. People in a meeting need a little perking up? “Hey, you guys are more than welcome to some of my hot lotion,” you’ll say. Your boss wants to talk about your performance? Make sure that initial handshake is firm and hot, yet baby-skin soft.

[Hammacher Schlemmer]

Zamboni Desk Vacuum ($14.94)

Amazon

It’s come to my attention that some of you didn’t grow up in Minnesota like I did. But where I come from, the Zamboni is more highly-revered than the sportiest of sports cars. All kids want one, but only one kid in your high school grows up to drive one on a daily basis (Hi, Rob!). Thankfully, the mighty Zamboni has been shrunken down and outfitted with some potent suction, perfect for snorting up all those unsightly Cheez-It bits you have a habit of dropping. Just as your body is a temple, so too is your desk a hockey rink of productivity. Keep it clean.

[Amazon]

Mousing-Hand Garage ($38.98)

Thanko

Other than stepping in a puddle while wearing socks, there’s not much worse than saddling up to a cold desk surface first thing in the morning in the dead of winter. How are you supposed to gracefully tab through those mountainous spreadsheets when your dexterity’s been compromised by sub-optimal hand and wrist temperatures?! This USB-powered hand garage keeps your digits nice and toasty while you’re clicking and scrolling during even the most blustery of nor’easters.

[eBay]

Past Nonsense:

Ebola Death Toll Tops 4,000

Posted: 10 Oct 2014 10:45 AM PDT

At least 4,033 people have died of Ebola in seven countries, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Friday. More than 8,300 total cases have been confirmed.

The new statistics, which include deaths in five West African countries as well as the United States and Spain, come just days after the death of the first patient to be diagnosed in the U.S. The current Ebola outbreak is the worst in history.

Numbers released last month warned that under worst-case-scenario circumstances, as many as 1.4 million people may be infected with Ebola by the end of January. And U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Tom Frieden warned Thursday that action was need to prevent Ebola from becoming “the world’s next AIDs.”

Ebola Patient’s Temperature Spiked to 103 Degrees Before Initial Release

Posted: 10 Oct 2014 10:20 AM PDT

DALLAS — Thomas Eric Duncan’s temperature spiked to 103 degrees during the hours of his initial visit to an emergency room — a fever that was flagged with an exclamation point in the hospital’s record-keeping system, his medical records show.

Despite telling a nurse that he had recently been in Africa and displaying other symptoms that could indicate Ebola, the man who would become the only person to die from the disease in the U.S. underwent a battery of tests and was eventually sent home.

Duncan’s family provided his medical records to The Associated Press — more than 1,400 pages in all. They encompass his time in the ER, his urgent return to the hospital two days later and chronicle his steep decline as his organs began to fail.

Duncan carried the deadly virus with him from his home in Liberia, though he showed no symptoms when he left for the United States. He arrived in Dallas on Sept. 20 and fell ill several days later.

When he first showed up at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, the man complained of abdominal pain, dizziness, a headache and decreased urination. He reported severe pain — rating it an eight on a scale of 10. Doctors gave him CT scans to rule out appendicitis, stroke and numerous other serious ailments. Ultimately, he was prescribed antibiotics and told to take Tylenol, then returned to the apartment where he was staying with a Dallas woman and three other people.

After his condition worsened, someone in the apartment called 911, and paramedics took him back to the hospital on Sept. 28. That’s when he was admitted and swiftly put in isolation.

The documents also show that a nurse recorded early in Duncan’s first hospital visit that he recently came to the U.S. from Africa, though he denied having been in contact with anyone sick.

Hospital spokesman Wendell Watson did not immediately respond to phone, email and text messages left by AP on Friday. A doctor who evaluated Duncan did not respond to a message left at his office.

A Marketing Firm Could Be Looking at Your Selfies

Posted: 10 Oct 2014 10:16 AM PDT

That picture you posted on Instagram from the beach last week might have more useful data in it than you think.

Where are you? What do you have in your hand? Do you look happy or sad? What are you wearing? These are all questions that can help advertisers target their marketing to consumers, so a crop of new digital marketing companies has begun analyzing photos posted on Instagram, Flickr, Pinterest and other photo-sharing sites to look for these trends and insights.

Ditto Labs Inc. uses photo-scanning software to locate logos in these personal photos (is the subject wearing a North Face jacket? Or holding a can of Coca-Cola?) and look at the context in which these brands are being used.

For example, according to the Wall Street Journal, Kraft Food Groups Inc. pays Ditto Labs to find their logos on Instagram and Tumblr. Ditto Labs then analyzes trends like what people drink when they’re eating Kraft products and how happy they appear to be. They are then placed into categories like “foodie” and “sports fan” based on how they’re eating their Kraft food.

Digital marketing firms use personal photos in other ways, too; Piquora Inc. stores massive amounts of these images over a few months to look at trends over time.

This new brand of marketing research serves as a fresh reminder that the photos we put online are public, and once we click ‘post’ we lose control over who sees them and what they’re used for. “This is an area that could be ripe for commercial exploitation and predatory marketing,” Joni Lupovitz, vice president at children’s privacy advocacy group Common Sense Media, told the Journal. “Just because you happen to be in a certain place or captured an image, you might not understand that could be used to build a profile of you online.”

Quiz: How Long Will You Live?

Posted: 10 Oct 2014 10:05 AM PDT

Americans can now expect to live longer than ever, a new government report finds. That’s largely because death rates are declining for the leading causes of death, like heart disease, cancer and stroke.

How long will you live? These eight basic questions, calculated by two researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, are some of the most predictive of American life expectancy. “Those are the most important risk factors that we have solid evidence for,” Lyle Ungar, professor of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania, tells TIME.

The one missing factor? “If you’re in a happy marriage, you will tend to live longer,” he says. “That’s perhaps as important as not smoking, which is to say: huge.” So feel free to give yourself a little bump if you’ve got a happy relationship.

Find out yours in the quiz below (and if you’re on your phone, turn your device sideways):

via Life Expectancy Calculator from Lyle Ungar and Dean Foster

#AskTIME Subscriber Q and A: Alex Altman, Zeke Miller and Jay Newton-Small

Posted: 10 Oct 2014 10:00 AM PDT

Welcome to TIME Subscriber Q&A, with TIME political reporters Alex Altman, Zeke Miller and Jay Newton-Small. They have been reporting on next month’s midterm elections and will answer your questions about who’s up, who’s down, and why it matters.

To read the full post, you need to be a subscriber. It's not too late to sign up.

PaulDirks asks, Everyone now seems to be agreeing that Obamacare is fading in its utility as a bludgeon with which to beat Democrats. But since polling suggests that the opposition to Obamacare is based mostly on its name and not on its actual effects, doesn't that mean that some Democrats are actually missing the opportunity to campaign on its benefits?

Take a Look at History’s Worst Contraceptives for Women

Posted: 10 Oct 2014 09:59 AM PDT

This article originally appeared on Lost at E Minor.

While the pill has been around for over 50 years, it took quite a long time to come up with a fuss-free method of contraception. Before the pill’s creation, there were some really awful ways to prevent pregnancy, and non-profit organization EngenderHealth has come up with a video to show us of all those methods. We’re talking crocodile dung mixed with honey, beaver testicles with moonshine, pig intestines, and even glass bottles.

The video was made to raise awareness of family planning through EngenderHealth’s WTFP?! initiative, which aims to give a voice to the more than 220 million women around the world who don’t have access to contraception.

(via Design Taxi)

Watch Taylor Swift’s Amazing Cover of Vance Joy’s “Riptide”

Posted: 10 Oct 2014 09:49 AM PDT

There’s no doubt that “Riptide” was a break-out hit for Australian singer-songwriter Vance Joy. Now that Taylor Swift has covered the heart-tugging track, it could be even bigger.

Vance Joy (real name James Keogh) released his debut album, Dream Your Life Away, last month on Atlantic Records. He spent the summer making the rounds of the festival circuit, performing well-received sets at Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza and Outside Lands. But despite the success of “Riptide,” Keogh has been operating just outside the spotlight, still an up-and-comer. No more. It’s hard to stay under the radar when one of the biggest pop stars in the world covers your song.

“I had a special feeling about [the song],” Keogh told TIME last year. “I didn’t know if it was going to necessarily be a really popular song, but I knew that it was catchy and it had a definite spark to it.”

Swift covered “Riptide” for BBC1’s “Live Lounge” singing while accompanying herself at the piano and losing herself in the song’s emotions. It is a beautiful version of the song and should be enough to tide fans over until Swift releases her fifth album, 1989, on Oct. 27.

Why Ben Affleck Still Can’t Win

Posted: 10 Oct 2014 09:40 AM PDT

Everyone’s so worried about spoilers surrounding the big twist in Gone Girl but there is one twist that David Fincher might not have planned for with his latest blockbuster: how much everyone hates Ben Affleck. It’s even keeping some people from seeing the movie. Yes, with a $38 million opening weekend, plenty of people are going to see the movie, but many in spite of it starring Affleck, not because of him. I bet no one saw that twist coming!

There are plenty of people with specific reasons that they hate Ben Affleck that are superficial and easily dismissed. There are people that don’t like his liberal politics (especially in light of his recent kerfuffle with Bill Maher). Then there is the legion of comic fans who are upset that he’s going to be playing Batman.

However, there are other people with more vague grievances that are harder to dispute, like his perceived shortcomings as an actor. “I’ve hated Ben Affleck since I saw Good Will Hunting, which is really terrible. And I don’t think he’s ever been good in anything,” says Sam Stecklow, a 19-year-old student from Chicago. Well, at least that’s a little bit more concrete than people who just hate his chin.

Another common theme of Affleck animosity seems to be his attitude or some sort of implied douchiness. “There are a multitude of reasons why I hate Ben Affleck,” says Alexandra Snyder, a 25-year-old community relations manager from Washington, D.C. “First is his naturally douchey demeanor…He is so goddamn pretentious…He is like an ugly frat guy.”

It’s funny that people hate Anne Hathaway because they say she has some sort of false humility but they hate Ben Affleck because he has no humility whatsoever.

But I think all this hatred goes all the way back to 2001 during his Bennifer days (it was more than a decade ago, don’t you feel old?) when he and Jennifer Lopez were canoodling on the cover of every tabloid and giving each other outrageous gifts. Not only did that enter us into the age of the ubiquitous relationship portmanteau, but also ushered in the current state of the celebrity gossip industrial complex, which has lead from Bennifer to Britney with her head shaved to countless pictures of Kaley Cuoco and her pink wedding cake chandelier.

Affleck and Lopez’s relationship, which was covered more than climate change and Ebola combined, came at a time when Affleck was vying for leading-man status in the wake of his 1998 Oscar win for Good Will Hunting, which he costarred in and cowrote with his BFF Matt Damon. His bid for Hollywood A-list didn’t go so hot. Affleck fizzled in Reindeer Games, which was followed by high profile bombs Pearl Harbor, Changing Lanes, The Sum of All Fears, and Paycheck. Then there was his much hyped and much hated turns with Jennifer Lopez: Jersey Girl and Gigli. Ugh, Gigli. It’s still an easy punch line after all these years.

This combination of attention and failure is what caused so many to sour on Affleck permanently. We were seeing him on the cover of Us Weekly looking like the biggest star in Hollywood, but we all knew that no one wanted to go see him. It was like he was being foisted on us needlessly no matter where we looked, and every time we saw him he looked rich and smug and horrible. It was almost impossible to escape the feeling that he was being needlessly foisted upon us by Hollywood, a product whose supply far outpaced his demand, a syndrome known in some quarters as the Colin Farrell Paradox.

“He made some horrible film choices while trying to convince the audience he was The One: the actor, writer, action star, humanitarian playboy the world was waiting for,” says Kay Wigs, 31, a government employee who lives in Washington, D.C. “He wasn’t The One, he’s That Dude. That dude you always think would be fun to invite to a party but quickly realize ‘Nope.’ Not only did he break into the good booze without asking, he stole your iPod and drove your mom’s car into a lake.”

It didn’t help that Matt Damon, his constant foil, seemed to take the opposite track. His bet on franchise success, the Bourne movies, was a runaway critical and commercial smash, and even his smaller movies were praised and well attended. He also decided to shun the spotlight and marry a woman no one had heard of instead of getting engaged to the world’s biggest pop star.

But Affleck didn’t marry Jenny from the Block; he ended up marrying another Jennifer and Ms. Garner is just as famous as his last Jennifer. The thing about Affleck is that people don’t see that he’s changed at all. He still married someone who can easily secure the cover of People. He is making better movies now, but mostly as a director. He appears to regard himself so highly that he thinks he should be the one helming the entire film.

His switch to the director’s chair only gives his haters more ammunition since he can find only one actor good enough to cast in the lead role in his films: himself. His movie Argo won Best Picture at the Oscars, but has the dubious distinction of being only the fourth movie to win that award without its director being nominated and the first one of its kind since Driving Miss Daisy in 1990. His career seemed to be back on track, but he still couldn’t get any love from the Academy. Because people don’t think Affleck has changed or been humbled at all, they will never forgive him for his past.

Even with all the praise he’s getting for Gone Girl, many of Affleck’s detractors say that he does so well in the role because the not-as-good-as-he-thinks character he plays is really just Affleck in disguise. After all, Fincher even cops to casting the actor after seeing countless photos of his insincere lob-sided grin. Actors never get any credit for playing a role that is close to who they really are. Just look at Courtney Love’s underappreciated turn as a destructive druggie in The People vs. Larry Flynt.

If we haven’t forgiven Affleck in the almost 15 years since Bennifer, is it ever going to happen? It’s doubtful, but there could be a slow erosion over time. If he keeps making enough good movies, eventually people might start to hate him less, or see the hate as futile and let it go, moving on to a new target. It wouldn’t hurt, though, if he pulled a Woody Allen and started getting some other leading men in front of his camera. Or maybe he can borrow some of Angelina Jolie’s juju and dedicate himself to humanitarian efforts for a bit. After all, she pulled off the great magic trick of making the public forget that she is a former bisexual who wore Billy Bob Thornton’s blood around her neck and made out with her brother on the red carpet at the Oscars. (Fun fact: that sibling kiss happened in 2000, the year before Bennifer was born, so complete image turnaround was possible in that time span if Affleck had dedicated himself to it.)

Maybe his turnaround could start with Gone Girl. Kay, one of the Affleck afflicted who talked to me for this story, says the movie changed her mind about him. “He was spot on – indifferent, uncomfortable to watch, yet funny,” she says. “Maybe he is The One. Oh god, maybe we are all wrong about Ryan Reynolds too. Ryan Reynolds, future Oscar winner for The Benazir Bhutto Story.”

Brian Moylan is a writer and pop culture junkie who lives in New York. His work has appeared in Gawker, VICE, New York magazine, and a few other safe-for-work publications.

Why Showtime’s The Affair Will Be as Intense as Game of Thrones

Posted: 10 Oct 2014 09:38 AM PDT

“Welcome to the end of the world,” Alison tells Noah on the first episode of Showtime’s new drama, The Affair, starring Dominic West (The Wire) and Ruth Wilson (Luther). As you can guess from the title, the two leads will engage in an illicit relationship. And though The Affair is far from the first show to trace a secret liaison, the stakes have never felt so high: it really may be the end of the world.

The show unfolds in two parts: first from Noah’s perspective and then from Alison’s. The differences between their two narratives—told to police officers investigating a still-unknown crime—elucidate the differences between how men and women view the world and especially romantic relationships.

Show co-creator Sarah Treem wrote for HBO’s In Treatment for three years and the first season of Netflix’s House of Cards before pitching Showtime a drama about the psychological effects of an extramarital affair. She also penned a play, When We Were Young and Unafraid, which ran off Broadway this summer. You can either stream the first episode on YouTube or catch it on Showtime when it premieres this Sunday after Homeland.

Treem spoke to TIME about why people cheat and how we’re all unreliable narrators of our own lives.

There were a lot of differences between the two narratives in the first episode. Were there any particular things you wanted to communicate as we’re first meeting these characters about how they see themselves or want to be seen by others?

What’s interesting about love affairs is that when people are recounting the story, they remember themselves as somewhat neutral. We remember ourselves as witnesses in our own lives, and we remember other people as actors.

As a writer, and especially when I was a younger writer and I was inserting my own voice into a script or a play, I would find that the character I had somewhat based on myself was often the most uninteresting character in the story because I didn’t have a good perspective on who I was. Most people don’t, really. It’s really hard to see yourself as you actually are.

So that’s kind of what we were trying to say in that first episode: That we are all unreliable narrators when it comes to telling the story of our own lives.

It seems like the two characters each try to make themselves the hero as well.

They both believe that they’re good people. I was interviewing people to prepare to write this show, and I was thinking this is a show about memory. So I was asking everybody how they wanted to be remembered when they died. An overwhelming majority of people said that they wanted to be remembered as kind, which I thought was really significant given how hurtful people can be to each other. Most people are trying to be kind but because communication is really difficult on a fundamental level, we end up hurting each other unintentionally. That was something I was keeping in mind as I started writing these characters: They’re trying hard to be kind. But they f*ck up, like everybody does.

I couldn’t help but think of Gone Girl when I watched the show. Obviously the two are very different, but they both have these competing narratives from a man and a woman in a relationship. In Gone Girl, it’s a battle of the sexes where each character is vying for the audience’s sympathy. Do you think Noah and Alison are competing for our sympathies?

In my mind, they’re both right. But I think the show’s a bit of a Rorschach Test when it comes to what people believe. I do think which character feels the most truthful to you does tell you lot about yourself because we were trying very hard as writers not to judge one side or the other, to tell both narratives as truthfully as we could. So I think when the balance gets tipped, it has to do with the audience member’s own personality.

When people go looking for affairs, it’s not because they’re unhappy with their spouse but because they’re unsatisfied with who they’ve become.That could have to do with gender. I think that men and women have very different experiences as human beings in their lives, and we were excited about telling a story from two different perspectives that were gendered.

Can you give an example of how the gender of the storyteller changed the narrative?

This is a literary thing, but I think that male narrative tends to be more linear. There’s an ascension: starting in one place and ending someplace else. It can be an upward ascension or a fall into darkness, but there is a linearity to the way men tell their stories. When women tell their stories sometimes there’s more of a circular narrative. You sort of end up in the same place that you start.

The way one of our directors described it was like a spiral: you move forward and then you come back a little bit; and then you move a little farther forward and then you come back halfway. When he talked about Alison’s narrative, he talked about her cycling through herself. And I think that’s very true, especially as Alison’s narrative keeps going. She’s getting somewhere, but it’s not as linear [as Noah's story]. She keeps circling back to the beginning. There’s something about the way women experience their lives that feels more circuitous to me. Maybe it has something to do with childbirth or these cycles that we’re in.

Craig Blankenhorn/Showtime

You mentioned interviewing people earlier. How did you do research for this script?

I didn’t interview anybody specifically because of who they were. I was just talking to anybody who would talk to me about their experience with being married or having an affair. We did have a consultant on the show. Her name’s Esther Perel, and she wrote a book called Mating in Captivity. She has spent her whole life talking to couples about infidelity and affairs—that’s her bread and butter. And she has this great quote from Mating in Captivity where she says something like when people go looking for affairs, it’s not because they’re unhappy with their spouse but because they’re unsatisfied with who they’ve become.

We really used that as an operating principle when we were trying to think about why these characters were cheating: it wasn’t because there was something significantly wrong with their marriages. Their marriages were flawed like any marriage. But we didn’t want it to be his wife is a shrew, so he has to cheat. Instead, it has something to do with who Noah is, who Alison is.

If anything, it seems like the characters idealize their spouses and cast the other person’s spouse in a worse light.

Yeah, in the beginning that’s exactly what it seems like. But that will change. I think the strength of the series is that the relationships among all four of them keep shifting. So as the series goes on, nobody looks great the whole time and nobody looks evil the whole time. Your sympathies are constantly realigning with all four of these characters. And the Helen and Cole characters [Noah and Alison's spouses] become much more significant players as the series moves along. They both sort of take over in the second part of the series.

I think the show’s a bit of a Rorschach Test when it comes to what people believe.I really do believe that Walt Whitman quote—I think it’s from Song of Myself—where he says, “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.” We were really trying to show in the series that most people are capable of almost anything. It’s just about the circumstances that you find yourself in. You construct a character for yourself, but then sometimes the circumstances change in such a significant way that we are acting in a way that we never would have predicted. But it’s not that we’re different: that behavior was always part of us. So we’ve applied that concept to all four of our characters over the course of a season.

As you know, there are not enough women working behind the camera. So why do you think it’s important we get more women writing stories for TV and especially for prestige dramas?

What’s great about TV is that you have a lot more women working in television just percentage-wise and a lot more opportunities here that are not necessarily there in screenwriting, which is why I personally feel really comfortable in television.

But it’s sort of obvious: If you want to tell complicated, true stories about women then you need women in charge of storytelling. It’s hard for any of us to really get into the heads of other people and understand what makes them tick. I’m not saying that’s impossible at all: I think there are plenty of men in television who write really complicated and really truthful women. But I think having more female voices in charge of these shows can only augment what they already have. And I think the networks are realizing that now.

What lessons did you learn from In Treatment and House of Cards that you have carried over to this show?

They were very different shows. With In Treatment, it was just two people in a room with a camera and nothing else. When somebody got up and walked to the door, we were like, “Oh, that’s an action shot.” So on In Treatment I really learned how to invest in character with no pyrotechnics and understand how a scene can turn on an emotional revelation or a breakdown. That is all you need to create incredibly compelling, white knuckle television.

And House of Cards was huge. It was definitely the biggest show that I’ve ever been on. The budget was enormous; the scope of the show was enormous; and the ambition of the show was enormous. So having those two tent poles of experience was helpful for me because I learned to go small and I learned to go large, and I could decide for myself which impulse was appropriate at which moment in this show.

In When We Were Young and Unafraid off-Broadway and in The Affair, characters are forced to contend with other world views that conflict with their own. Were you thinking about the script for one when you were writing the other?

My theory as a writer in terms of how you create drama is that you figure out the question you’re obsessed with—what’s the fear that is gnawing at your existential soul? What’s your fundamental anxiety at this moment of your existence? You figure out how to ask it in the form of a question, and then you dramatize it from multiple perspectives. You basically create characters who have different answers to that question, and then you put them in a room or a situation together, and you don’t let them leave. That’s how I think you build drama.

I was definitely working on that idea in When We Were Young and Unafraid, and I’m doing it again here. Here, the multiple perspective thing is woven into the experience of the show in a really exciting way, but that’s always been my idea as a dramatic writer. That’s how I learned to write.

So now I have to ask, what is your fundamental anxiety that you are dealing with on this show?

How does marriage work? Does marriage work? Is long-term fidelity possible? Is it natural?

I just got married this summer. I don’t think I was engaged when I started writing the show. I had a kid two years ago, so I just sort of entered that phase of my own life. So that’s what I’ve been thinking about a lot.

Is your exploration of that question causing any anxiety among your family members?

The stakes are as high as they are on ‘Game of Thrones.’I have to be totally honest: the experience of making this show and spending 10 episodes thinking about the consequences of infidelity has only made me want to double down on my own marriage. It’s only made me want to be good to my husband as possible and work as hard on my marriage as I can because I think this show does not sugar coat what it’s like to have an affair. This is not an escapist fantasy. The stakes are incredibly high here. I think if you’d asked my husband at the beginning of the experience if he was nervous about it, he might have said yes, but I feel like he thinks it’s the best thing that ever happened to our marriage now. Like, “I hope you write this show for years.” [Laughs]

[SPOILER ALERT: The final question contains a spoiler for the first episode.]

The stakes are definitely high on this show. Just in the first episode, Noah has to confront the possible mortality of his children twice and that’s all before we even learn about Alison’s backstory. It was very intense, and I didn’t necessarily expect that from this show. Why pack so much drama into the first episode?

When we pitched the show, we said that we were going to do a show about infidelity and about two marriages. It was going to be a very intimate show. But we said we think that the intimacy in normal people’s lives—in a marriage, in an affair—the stakes are as high as they are on Game of Thrones. There is as much emotional depth to dig through as there are on the shows that have the greatest scope. Virginia Woolf has this great quote in Mrs. Dalloway, “She always had this feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live for even one day.” And I believe that about my characters’ lives and all of our lives.

It was definitely a choice to put these dangerous situations at the beginning of the pilot to alert the audience the stakes are high here. This man cares about his children more than anything in the world. He has a lot to lose. Life is dangerous. You don’t have to necessarily go to war for certain days of our lives to feel completely treacherous.

Why You Haven’t Heard of Patrick Modiano, Winner of the Nobel in Literature

2014-10-09T11:40:00.001-07:00

Why You Haven’t Heard of Patrick Modiano, Winner of the Nobel in Literature

Why You Haven’t Heard of Patrick Modiano, Winner of the Nobel in Literature
World’s Creepiest Attractions
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Why You Haven’t Heard of Patrick Modiano, Winner of the Nobel in Literature

Posted: 09 Oct 2014 11:03 AM PDT

Once again, the Swedish Academy has awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature and left many Americans scratching their heads. French novelist Patrick Modiano won this year’s prestigious award, which is not only a serious literary feat, but also a lucrative one, as it comes with a $1.1 million prize.

According to the academy’s Permanent Secretary Peter Englund, Modiano was selected “for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies.” The 69-year-old writer made his debut in 1968 with the novel La Place de l’Etoile. Since then, he has gone on to write dozens of books, frequently touching on the Nazi occupation of France, and has drawn comparisons to renowned countryman Marcel Proust.

So why does it seem that so few in the English-speaking world have actually read his work? Though the Swedish Academy has always seemed to swing between wildly popular writers (William Golding, Gabriel García Márquez and Toni Morrison) and those who are more niche (Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson), this year’s choice seemed to have confused even the most well-read. Soon after Modiano’s name was announced, much of the literary world — including critics — took to social media in order to ask, essentially, “Who?”

The puzzlement could have to do with the fact that despite Modiano’s prolific output — with more than 30 books and screenplays to his name — less than a dozen of his works have been translated into English, and even several of those are now out of print. Even Englund noted that many people outside of France would likely be unfamiliar with Modiano and his work. “He is well-known in France, but not anywhere else,” he said in an interview on Thursday, before recommending that newcomers should start with the English-translated novel Missing Person.

This is not the first time that the Swedish Academy has left scores of readers in the English-speaking world puzzling over the winner or, perhaps, even privately worrying about their own literary credentials. In 2009, when the Romanian-born German novelist and essayist Herta Müller was awarded the prize, many people were unfamiliar with both her work and her name. Literary critic and Yale professor Harold Bloom told the Washington Post, “[I have] nothing to talk about because I have never heard of this writer” when he was asked to comment on Müller’s win. And, like Modiano, only a fraction of her work had been translated into English, though the New York Times also noted at the time, that “[e]ven in Germany, Ms. Müller is not well known.”

The scene was something of an echo of 2004, when Austrian novelist and playwright Elfriede Jelinek was named the Nobel winner in recognition for her “musical flow of voices and countervoices in novels and plays that with extraordinary linguistic zeal reveal the absurdity of society’s clichés and their subjugating power.” Yet many state-side announcements of her win made sure to note her low-profile outside the German-speaking world.

Of course, the Swedish Academy — currently made up of 16 men and women who pick the winner each year — has long been criticised of Eurocentrism in its selection. In 2009, shortly after being named Permanent Secretary, Englund admitted that there was some truth to the accusations, telling the Associated Press, “I think that is a problem. We tend to relate more easily to literature written in Europe and in the European tradition.” He did, however, go on to acknowledge that there were many writers outside of Europe who deserved the award and, since then, winners have included Peruvian-born writer Mario Vargas Llosa (2010), Chinese novelist Mo Yan (2012) and Canadian short-story writer Alice Munro (2013).

But it’s important to keep in mind that while foreign translations from most literary writers can be hard to come by, there really isn’t reason to complain about Nobel winners being inaccessible. After all, the vast majority of winners since the prize’s debut in 1901 had written in English.

What’s more, awarding the honor to little-known writers — at least, from an English-reader’s perspective — can help introduce authors to a wider audience. Shortly after Jelinek won the prize in 2004, the American distributor of her book The Piano Teacher ran out of copies because demand was so unusually high. That was famously one of the goals of the Swedish Academy’s previous Permanent Secretary, Horace Engdahl, who once responded to criticism saying, “The purpose of the prize is to make them famous, not to tap them when they are famous.”

That prospect has already excited fans of Modiano’s in France. Anne Ghisoli, the director of the Parisian bookstore Librairie Gallimard, told the Times she had long been a Modiano fan, “but this prize will help raise the global profile of one of our consummate writers.”

World’s Creepiest Attractions

Posted: 09 Oct 2014 11:00 AM PDT

Capelados Ossos, Evora, Portugal

From the outside, the Royal Church of St. Francis, located in the picturesque Portuguese town of Evora, seems like any other shrine to piety. But looks can be deceiving. Inside is the Capela dos Ossos, or the Chapel of Bones. Short on space to bury the dead, enterprising monks in the 16th century moved the remains of 5,000 corpses into a consecrated chapel—and, like medieval Martha Stewarts, decorated the space with their bones.

Truly Creepy: Two rotted corpses, of an unknown man and a young child, dangle precariously from nooses.

Torture Museum, Amsterdam

This small and unabashedly lowbrow museum chronicles historical torture methods in displays that are not for the squeamish. Fans of Middle Age brutality can admire the agonizing “skull cracker,” the limb-dislocating rack, and that most efficient of killing machines, the guillotine.

Truly Creepy: The disturbing illustrations include one of a naked man hung from his ankles like a wishbone and being sawed in half lengthwise.

Port Arthur Historic Sites, Tasmania

This 19th-century Australian penal colony was once home to thousands of violent convicts sentenced to “hell on earth,” and the dissection rooms here are evidence to that. Awful conditions, vicious floggings and isolation in dark, dank cells led to as many as 2,000 deaths. Tragedy made its comeback in April 1996 when a deranged gunman killed 35 workers and visitors in the country’s worst mass murder to date.

Truly Creepy: The most-often reported ghost sightings are not of convicts but of a crying woman and young child.

The Museum of Death, Hollywood

This stomach-churning homage to murder, dismemberment, and rigor mortis houses (among other things) a collection of serial killer artwork, photos of horrific accidents and famous crime scenes, and the guillotine-severed head of the murderous Bluebeard of Paris.

Truly Creepy: The self-guided tour takes only an hour, but the truly gore-obsessed can linger over videos of autopsies and actual death footage.

Museo delas Momias, Mexico

This Guanajuato museum’s 111 remarkably preserved mummies were exhumed from the Santa Paula Pantheon between 1865 and 1989. Their facial expressions are especially scary—many seem to be shouting “No!”—and clenched fists protrude from the tattered clothes. It’s like the prop room for a zombie movie—only real.

Truly Creepy: The tiny baby mummies, dressed in local tradition as “Little Angels.”

Read the full list HERE.

More from Travel + Leisure:

Damian From Mean Girls Made a Hilarious Parody of ‘Stay With Me’

Posted: 09 Oct 2014 10:44 AM PDT

Mean Girls star Daniel Franzese is once again showing off his singing skills — this time with a parody of Sam Smith’s hit “Stay With Me.” It’s called “Please Go Home” and pretty much conveys the opposite message of the original tune. The spoof features Franzese and fellow actor Adrian Anchondo, who also wrote and directed it. Members of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus get in on the fun too.

If you want more Daniel Franzese in your life, the actor will appear in the next season of HBO’s Looking. Maybe then we’ll finally find out whether or not he got his pink shirt back.

The Humble GIF Is Getting a Big Upgrade

Posted: 09 Oct 2014 10:20 AM PDT

The once-lowly GIF, which has risen to become the dominant format for visual communication on the Web, is getting an upgrade. The photo-sharing website Imgur is introducing a new short-clip format called GIFV that it says is both higher in quality and smaller in size than traditional GIFs.

“The culture is way bigger than any specific file format,” Imgur CEO Alan Schaaf said about GIFs in a press release. “With Project GIFV, we wanted to preserve the experience of the GIF while optimizing it for all the changes that have happened on the Internet since the format was first introduced in 1987.”

GIFs posted to Imgur will now be automatically converted to the MP4 format, which the company is branding as the “GIFV” file extension. The new videos will loop just like regular GIFs, but they’ll have a higher image quality while boasting a smaller file size. The change should help Imgur images load faster on mobile devices. It will also allow the company to raise the file size limit for GIF uploads from 5 MB to 50 MB (here’s a regular 5MB GIF compared to a 5o MB GIF converted to the new GIFV format).

Even web users that don’t frequent Imgur.com will benefit from the change. 1.5 million images are uploaded to Imgur each day, and many of them rapidly spread to blogs, social media platforms and news websites.

CDC Director Compares Ebola Outbreak to AIDS Epidemic

Posted: 09 Oct 2014 10:08 AM PDT

The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Thursday that the world must act to prevent the current Ebola outbreak from becoming “the world’s next AIDs.”

CDC Director Tom Frieden made the remark while speaking at a conference at the World Bank in Washington, D.C. with representatives from around the world Thursday, including United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon and International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde, the Washington Post reports.

“In my 30 years in public health, the only thing that has been like this is AIDS,” Frieden said. “We have to work now so that this is not the world’s next AIDS.”

More than 8,000 people in Western Africa have been infected with the Ebola virus, according to the WHO, and 3,857 people have died. Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola inside the United States, died on Wednesday.

The CDC has projected that, without any intervention measures in West Africa, some 1.4 million people will be infected with Ebola by January. But the international community is stepping up efforts to contain the virus in the region, with the U.S. alone committing more than $500 million and approving the deployment of 4,000 troops to help fight the disease.

[Washington Post]

Suspicious Prison Deaths Put a Spotlight on Florida

Posted: 09 Oct 2014 10:05 AM PDT

On Oct. 1, Latandra Ellington was found dead inside the Lowell Correction Institution in Ocala, Fla., apparently from repeated blows to her stomach. About a week and a half before, the 36-year-old inmate had written a letter to her aunt, saying she was concerned for her safety in prison and claimed that an officer named “Sgt. Q” was threatening to kill her.

According to attorneys representing Ellington’s family, an independent autopsy shows blunt force trauma and hemorrhaging to her body from what appeared to be punches or kicks. The attorneys, along with several organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union and Amnesty International, are calling for a federal investigation into her death.

The Ellington case is one of several suspicious deaths in state prisons that have made headlines in Florida, including a deadly incident in 2010 involving Randall Jordan-Aparo, who reportedly died while being gassed in his cell, and Darren Rainey, who died in 2012 after being forced to take a scalding hot shower that caused his skin to separate from his body.

Ellington’s death is the third fatality in custody at Lowell this year. Two others at the prison are under review by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

While the inmate mortality rate in Florida and across the country has remained relatively steady over the last decade, Florida outpaces most states in terms of mortality rate per 100,000 inmates, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the Florida Department of Corrections. In 2001, 182 prisoners died in Florida compared with 297 in 2011, but the population also grew at a similar rate over that same time period. The mortality rate per 100,000 prisoners slightly increased from 253 in 2001 to 294 in 2011.

Part of that may be due to the rapidly aging prison population in Florida, which mirrors the state’s population generally. From 2001 to 2008, the number of Florida inmates who were 55 and older increased by 161%, says Bill Bales, a criminology professor at Florida State University. And the number of federal and state prisoners in the U.S. who were 55 and older increased 94% in the same time period, according to Pew Research.

Overall and nationwide, the largest share of prisoner deaths—almost 90%—are due to illness. But the share of state prisoner deaths due to homicide—which includes homicide committed by other inmates, prison staff or those resulting from assaults prior to incarceration—have increased from 1.4% in 2001 to 2.1% in 2011 around the country, according to BJS.

This year in Florida, there have been three homicides and one suicide in state prisons. Investigations into 99 other deaths are currently pending.

Dan Mears, a criminal justice professor at the University of Florida, says prisons with increases in suspicious inmate deaths often have problems that start at the top and work their way down. Florida’s Department of Corrections, for example, has gone through four leadership changes in the last five years.

“At the end of the day, when you’re asking why some prisons have higher rates of suicide or higher rates of suspicious deaths and why they increase over time, it’s often because they’re being poorly administered—and oftentimes they’ve hired new officers who aren’t as highly trained,” Mears says. “That could potentially fuel those deaths.”

Mears adds that badly run prisons often have inadequate training for officers and don’t properly teach them how to handle conflicts with inmates, which can often lead to fatal consequences.

In September, the Florida DOC fired dozens of employees, many of whom have been involved in deaths that are currently under investigation, including that of Jordan-Aparo, who was gassed in his cell. Their dismissal letters said they were fired for participating “in a force incident that resulted in the death of an inmate.”

A Lowell prison official, Sgt. Patrick Quercioli, is now being investigated in Ellington’s death, according to the Miami Herald, and has been arrested twice while tallying 22 use-of-force filings while working for the DOC.

“Our department should be held to the highest standards, and I have zero tolerance for anything,” DOC Secretary Michael Crews said in a statement.

As the state reviews the case, attorneys for Ellington’s family, who also represent the family of Trayvon Martin, the Florida teen shot and killed by George Zimmerman in February 2012, are calling for the Department of Justice to investigate.

“She was not sentenced to the death sentence,” said civil rights attorney Daryl Parks, according to the Herald. “The Department of Corrections certainly owed her far greater protection.”

Poll: About Half of Millennials Will Vote for Democrats in the Midterms

Posted: 09 Oct 2014 10:03 AM PDT

About 47% of likely millennial voters are going with Democrats in this year’s midterm elections, compared to 32% who say they’re voting Republican, according to a Fusion poll released Thursday.

Fusion has called its poll the largest survey on Millennials’ voting habits from this election cycle after polling some 1,200 likely 18-to-34 year-old voters. The poll’s authors are pretty adamant about the use of “likely,” too, seeing as less than a quarter of millennials are expected to actually turn out this November, according to a Harvard University poll.

Fusion’s poll also provides insight into the party leanings of millennial demographic groups. Hispanic and black voters, it shows, are more likely to vote for Democrats, as are women. White voters, meanwhile, are more likely to support Republicans.

According to the data, the economy is a top issue driving young voters to the polls this November—which is good news for the White House, which just launched a emoji-laced social media campaign about the economy aimed at millennials. Other issues that are getting young voters riled up include terrorism and national security as well as education.

The millennials surveyed by Fusion also hint at who they would like to see on the ballot in 2016—for Democrats, the favorite is Hillary Clinton, and for Republicans the largest chunk of likely voters don’t know, but more would vote for Congressman Paul Ryan than anyone else.

The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.83 percentage points. It was conducted via phone interviews Sept. 12 through Sept. 22.

In Georgia, Perdue Counterpunches on Outsourcing

Posted: 09 Oct 2014 10:03 AM PDT

Facing a new and damaging attack on his jobs record a month before election day, Georgia GOP Senate candidate David Perdue and his allies have settled on a hard-knuckle strategy: accept the hit and strike back by talking about Obama.

Perdue defended recently unearthed comments he made during a 2005 court case that he spent “most” of his career outsourcing, saying this week that he was “proud” of his work as a businessman and politician. When his opponent, Democrat Michelle Nunn, bashed him in a new ad titled “In His Words” Tuesday, Perdue released one of his own soon thereafter saying that Nunn has been “hiding” her support of President Barack Obama’s “job-killing, big government policies.” That night in a rowdy debate, Perdue labeled Nunn’s moves on the outsourcing issue a “false attack” and said the government had “decimated entire industries.” On Thursday, the Nunn campaign created a new website and video dedicated to hammering Perdue over the outsourcing comments.

Georgia Republican strategists have provided Perdue cover, echoing the refrain that Nunn, if elected to the Senate, would be a proxy for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and President Barack Obama. In a race that could determine who controls the Senate majority, that just might work.

“David Perdue is focused on making this election a choice about what direction the Senate and thus the country is going,” says Georgia GOP strategist Joel McElhannon. “With a Perdue vote, one opposes Obama and Reid’s agenda. With a Nunn vote, one supports it. That’s a very simple, focused choice he is presenting to the voters. It’s powerful and it works.”

“President Obama is about as popular as Ebola in Georgia right now,” he adds.

“The whole campaign is not going to focus on this particular [outsourcing] issue; I think you have to look at the whole picture,” says Eric J. Tanenblatt, who has helped raise money for Perdue, but also worked for Hands on Atlanta, a volunteer service organization, with Nunn. “I did think that David really drove home [in Tuesday's debate] what I believe is the key issue in this campaign—that we don’t need to continue down the path of Harry Reid and Barack Obama. Electing Michelle Nunn, while she claims to be independent…she is still a Democrat and will be a part of the Democratic caucus.”

Nunn’s campaign for its part sees that the tie-in to Reid and Obama is problematic. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney won Georgia by nearly 8 points in 2012; Nunn has been around 3 points behind Perdue for months, according to Real Clear Politics. (Although, as the New York Times‘ Nate Cohen pointed out Wednesday, those polls could be underestimating black Democrats.) Gordon Giffin, the Nunn campaign chairman, calls the tactic “arrogant and dismissive,” but still recognizes the threat.

“I think that the only argument that the Perdue campaign seems to present is the notion that somehow Michelle is associated with President Obama and Harry Reid,” says Giffin. “They don’t address what she has to say about her own views, and that is in some ways arrogant and dismissive. She’s her own person; she’s got her own mind and thoughts.”

“That’s got to be responded to because she, like her father [former Georgia Democratic Senator Sam Nunn] was, is an independent thinker on behalf of Georgia,” he adds. “So that is an issue that has to be dealt with because it is distracting. It really doesn’t go to who she is or what she stands for.”

To counter the Obama drag, the campaign is pushing Nunn as a bridge between the two major parties, someone who understands that the president’s eponymous health care law, for example, needs to be reformed. Of course, they’re willing to use Perdue’s outsourcing comment to help her win.

“Mr. Perdue has made his business record the central qualification that he argues he has to be elected to the Senate,” says Giffin. “The more he’s out there saying you should elect me because of my business record and because I know how to create jobs the more you’ve got to say, ‘Yeah, you know how to create jobs in China and Singapore but not in the United States.’”

Independent analysts and even some Republicans agree that the outsourcing comments could pose a problem for Perdue. Andra Gillespie, an associate political science professor at Emory, says that Nunn’s attacks, in addition to the fact that Nunn and Perdue are “novices” running for an open seat, are “helping to keep the race competitive,” even though the historic voting trends give Republicans “the edge.” Todd Rehm, a GOP Georgia-based consultant, says that Nunn’s populist message has challenged Perdue to “connect his policies with the day-to-day lives of voters.” In such a tight race, Jennifer Duffy, a Senate election expert at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, says Democrats “have to hope” the outsourcing comments make Perdue look like “Romney 2.0—elitist and out for himself” to help fire up the base.

“In 2012, voters in Georgia decided that they disliked President Obama’s policies more than Romney’s shortcomings,” says Duffy. “In 2014, their choice is between Nunn, who Republicans have worked to portray as a proxy for the President and a less-than-ideal alternative in Perdue.”

Flight MH370 Spiraled Into Sea When Fuel Ran Out: ATSB Report

Posted: 09 Oct 2014 09:47 AM PDT

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 went into a slow left turn and spiraled into the Indian Ocean when its fuel ran out, an interim report concluded Wednesday, pointing investigators towards the southern section the current search zone. Flight simulations recreating the final moments of the aircraft, which vanished March 8 en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur, suggest it entered “a descending spiraling low bank angle left turn” and hit the ocean “a relatively short distance after the last engine flameout,” the Australian Transportation Safety Bureau (ATSB) said in an update [PDF link].

The analysis confirms the jet crashed…

Read the rest of the story from our partners at NBC News

My Mother Died Three Months Ago and I’m Still Figuring Out How To Grieve for Her

Posted: 09 Oct 2014 09:39 AM PDT

This story originally appeared on xoJane.com.

This has been, to date, the most difficult essay I’ve ever written. Usually, I can bang one out in a day or two. A week, even. But writing about the death of my mother has been a series of stops and starts, deletions and revisions. How do you write about something that feels as if it happened yesterday and not three months ago? How do you distill grief and heartache in a few paragraphs?

It’s hard to get out of bed, most days. There’s a heaviness in the air, and it’s hard to breathe. Sometimes the grief paralyzes me. I’ll lay in bed and stare at the ceiling, silently willing myself to get up and start the day.

“Mommy, I wanna see grandma.” The toddler always makes this demand casually, usually as I’m picking him up from school or fixing him dinner. Sometimes he’ll ask looking up from his tablet while watching one of his favorite shows. Three months later and I still can’t find the words to tell him she’s gone for good. “We can’t see her right now,” I’ll say, knowing that in a few minutes he’ll forget he asked.

For two months, I’ve been staring at a cardboard box. It is roughly 5×7, and it’s blue. It contains what is left of the woman who taught me everything from tying my shoes to picking greens. Her last name is misspelled on the side. The blue box sits on a shelf in my bedroom, amid books and clothes. Boxes filled with her personal effects crowd the hallway of my apartment. Furniture from her oversized studio take up my dining room. Pictures from her photo albums are strewn across a table in the living room, the same table where I ate dinner until I went away to college. The “Thank You” cards I bought a week after her memorial are in a bag on my desk, untouched.

Every morning I’m greeted by these reminders, and I summon the strength to navigate around them. I will occasionally glance at the blown-up picture of her, perched on a barstool wearing a black dress and a demure smile. It’s tucked in the corner of my living room, near the window. I replay our last conversations while I’m working on an assignment, or look at the blue box as I’m brushing my teeth.

I am drowning in her.

Last month, at the suggestion of my sister-in-law, my husband bought me a copy of Hope Edelman’s Motherless Daughters. Edelman, a mother-loss survivor herself, interviewed hundreds of other women who had lost their mothers at various points in their lives. While the book is geared towards women whose mothers died when they were young, it has helped me a great deal. I no longer try to suffocate Grief with a pillow, or stab it with a fork; I hold on tight and ride the wave until the tide settles, until the calm returns. This isn’t a process, Edelman says, but a life-altering event.

“Expecting grief to run a quick, predictable course leads us to over-pathologize the process, making us think of grief as something that, with proper treatment, can and should be fixed. As a result, we begin to view normal responses as indicators of serious distress,” Edelman writes. “The woman who cries every Christmas when she thinks of her mother—is she really a woman who can’t let go of the past, or just a woman who continues to miss her mother’s warmth and cheer at holiday time?”

One of the last hospital visits, days before she passed in mid-June, taunts me. We’re sitting on the couch and it seems like she’s back to her old self. I am brimming with hope. I’m telling her of the plan to move her into our apartment, to take care of her the way she took care of grandma years ago. She’s excited at the prospect of living with her grandson, of us being under the same roof again. I wondered if I could handle caring for her and a four year-old boy. I had support, but those people had lives and responsibilities of their own. If she fell while my husband was at work, I’d have to find a way to pick her up. I’d be responsible for her diet, her health, her overall well-being. The enormity of what lay ahead frightened me, but this is what I wanted, for her to live out the last years of her life surrounded by love and family, not in a place I no longer trusted. In the Nicholas Sparks’ version of her last days, she quietly slips away as she sits in her favorite chair, catching a final view of the lakefront from our highrise as she goes.

She asked me to stay a little longer. I couldn’t. An appointment to enroll her grandson in Pre-K had been scheduled for weeks. I remember the feeling of relief I had as I left her room, the feeling that everything was going to be okay. Three days later I’d be standing over her body, clasping her hand as the warmth evaporated from her body, as blood spilled from her nose. The third attempt to revive her after another cardiac arrest had done the most damage. In my head, I’d had years to prepare for that moment, years of hospital visits and grave diagnoses. But no amount of preparation will ever soften the blow.

Even as I watched my mother’s health deteriorate in recent years, I still held fast to a glimmer of hope that somehow, someway things would turn around. Maybe she’d get bitten by a radioactive spider, regain full mobility, and take up crime-fighting. It didn’t hit me until hours before she passed, as I sat in the hospital chapel after visiting her, that she was literally in the process of dying. But that’s how denial works. Though it’s taken some time to accept, I realize now that she left when she was ready, and that I knew my mother well enough to know that when she was ready to go, there was nothing you could do to stop her.

Edelman says that most motherless daughters my age process the loss differently than our younger counterparts because we’re able to confront it with a relatively intact personality and more mature coping skills than a teen or a child. “Losing a parent at this time violates fewer assumptions she has about her future,” she explains. “A motherless woman continues to renegotiate her relationship with her mother throughout her life, changing her perceptions and trying to fnd a place for each new image as it develops.”

In my case, my mother’s death has forced to reexamine choices made and opportunities given. That she died in my 37th year, the same age she gave birth to me, is not lost on me. It signifies rebirth. Renewal. A chance to accomplish the things she wanted for me, all the hopes and dreams she’d share throughout the course of my life. It is her legacy that I carry with me wherever I go, and I am grateful that I was loved by such a remarkable woman.

Jamie Nesbitt Golden is a journalist originally from Chicago.

Shonda Rhimes Doesn’t Want to Talk About Her Race

2014-10-08T11:05:00.001-07:00

Shonda Rhimes Doesn’t Want to Talk About Her Race

Shonda Rhimes Doesn’t Want to Talk About Her Race
Ebola Should Change How We Fund Drugs for Emerging Disease
Vikings’ Adrian Peterson Disputes Claims About His Charity
U.S. to Screen Passengers From West Africa for Ebola at 5 Airports
360,000 Sign Petition to Spare Ebola Patient’s Dog
Don’t Bother Betting on the Nobel Prize for Literature
30-Second Tech Trick: Download All Your Tweets at Once
Pentagon to Brief Obama on Grim Battle Against Jihadists
Report: Federal Budget Deficit Falls to $486B
Watch Sarah Silverman’s Risqué Equal Pay Ad

Shonda Rhimes Doesn’t Want to Talk About Her Race

Posted: 08 Oct 2014 10:42 AM PDT

Shonda Rhimes is sick of talking about her race and her gender.

In a new Hollywood Reporter profile of the Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal mastermind, Rhimes said that when she was sent draft text indicating she would be introduced at an event as “the most powerful black female showrunner in Hollywood,” she crossed out “black” and “female” before sending it back.

“I find race and gender to be terribly important; they’re terribly important to who I am,” Rhimes said. “But there’s something about the need for everybody else to spend time talking about it… that pisses me off.”

Rhimes found herself at the center of a conversation about race and gender last month when the New York Times began a review of a show she’s producing called How to Get Away With Murder like this: “When Shonda Rhimes writes her autobiography, it should be called ‘How to Get Away With Being an Angry Black Woman.'”

Despite friends calling for the piece to be retracted, Rhimes said she wants the Times to keep it on its site: “In this world in which we all feel we’re so full of gender equality and we’re a postracial [society] and Obama is president, it’s a very good reminder to see the casual racial bias and odd misogyny from a woman written in a paper that we all think of as being so liberal.”

[THR]

Ebola Should Change How We Fund Drugs for Emerging Disease

Posted: 08 Oct 2014 10:25 AM PDT

Emerging and infectious diseases are having a moment for all the worst reasons, with credit due to the Ebola outbreak. But scientists studying other emerging diseases beyond Ebola are hopeful that the attention on the disease—and what can happen without available therapeutics—is here to stay.

The fact that there are no drugs or vaccines approved for Ebola isn’t for a dearth of research, but rather because there’s scant financial incentive for pharmaceutical companies to take on the treatments. “We’ve been studying Ebola for almost a decade and we’ve always been interested in Ebola. It’s like the rockstar of viruses,” says Michael Katze, a professor of microbiology at the University of Washington. His team studies the responses of hosts (like animals) to viruses from Ebola to SARS to hepatitis C. “All the major players in Ebola have had vaccines tested in non-human primates”—and they work, he says.

But we lack vaccines or cures for many other emerging and infectious diseases, including bird flu and the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), which was first reported in Saudi Arabia in 2012. Two people brought the disease to the United States in May 2014.

Viruses, though lumped together as infectious agents, are very different. A bird flu virus is quite different from an Ebola virus in a variety of ways, from how they attack their hosts to how they are transmitted to how virulent they are. The science behind the viruses isn’t uniformly advanced, either. But the outbreak of widespread infection from diseases like Ebola, bird flu, SARS and MERS can look quite alike.

Dr. Robert Belshe is a professor of infectious diseases, allergy and immunology at Saint Louis University and published a study in JAMA on Oct. 7 on his most up-to-date work on bird flu. “Ebola is a very different virus [from bird flu], but if you take a step back and ask ‘what are the public health consequences of these two viruses,’ they are sort of similar,” says Belshe. “If bird flu develops the ability to transfer person to person, it would be a disaster much greater than the Ebola disaster happening right now. It’s a very different virus, but has similar lessons for us. We need tools to protect against contagions—vaccines and antivirals.”

Matthew Frieman of the University of Maryland School of Medicine has been looking at repurposing FDA-approved drugs for diseases like SARS and MERS. He says that MERS researchers have been building their knowledge about how to treat and prevent the disease by using their history with SARS. That doesn’t mean that MERS has an economic backing beyond funding for research, however.

“I don’t think anyone thinks they are going to make a billion dollars off of a MERS drug,” says Frieman. “If you’re a company, that matters. As a researcher, I don’t care. I think the current Ebola outbreak may give a bump to the idea that having things stockpiled or at least the knowledge base there is important.”

Katze agrees. “The big pharma companies are not in the business of charity, so unless they have the money, they aren’t going to bother with a vaccine that isn’t important in this country,” he says. “The inadequacy of international response had nothing to do with research.”

Funding for diseases that largely affect low-income countries will depend mainly on funding from the government sector, according to IBISWorld healthcare analyst Sarah Turk. “The limited number of individuals that have Ebola, which is a significantly smaller market than many common illnesses like high blood pressure, has limited the number of pharmaceutical companies that are willing to invest in Ebola drugs,” she says in an email to TIME. “Once individuals take Ebola drugs, they will no longer make repeat purchases of Ebola medications, thus demonstrating the limited revenue potential for Ebola drugs.”

Turk says there’s a chance that the Ebola epidemic will lead to more organizations awarding prizes to drug manufacturers that can develop innovative drugs, and that the global nature of epidemics could incite international governments to share research and development subsidy costs. Those are hopeful scenarios for scientists working on treatments for the next big outbreaks of diseases.

“It’s a different world now. All these people who don’t want vaccines and don’t believe in global warming are going to be very surprised,” says Katze citing the rise of dengue fever, West Nile and chikungunya in southern U.S. states. “You can’t stop people or mosquitos from traveling, so you have to come up with a better response and be better prepared.”

Vikings’ Adrian Peterson Disputes Claims About His Charity

Posted: 08 Oct 2014 10:22 AM PDT

Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson went on Twitter late Tuesday night to defend himself after an article was published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune on Sunday detailing some improprieties with his charity and claims of a wild sex party that was paid for with the charity’s credit card.

Peterson says his charity, the All Day Foundation, sent donations to two different charities, despite what the newspaper reported and that the foundation fired an accounting firm that listed recipients on the charity’s 2009 tax returns.

As for the sex party claims, Peterson says his foundation never owner a credit card. Prosecutors looked into an alleged sexual assault from that night but did not pursue charges against anyone.

Peterson also mentioned a story from ESPN.com in August, saying he had changed his way after being promiscuous in the past. The Star-Tribune said Peterson, who got married earlier this year, has fathered at least six children out of wedlock.

“Do not repost the ESPN story from August when I admit I was promiscuous, made mistakes and had to change my ways,” Peterson said in the Twitter post. “Instead repost the story about fathering children out of wedlock…create more buzz and retweets.”

Peterson is expected to plead not guilty on Wednesday to charges of reckless or negligent injury to a child after authorities said he hit his 4-year-old son with a switch. He faces up to two years in prison and a $10,000 fine if convicted on the charges.

Peterson is currently on the exempt/commissioner’s permission list until his court case is resolved. He will continue to collect his $11.75 million salary this season while he is inactive.

This article originally appeared on SI.com

U.S. to Screen Passengers From West Africa for Ebola at 5 Airports

Posted: 08 Oct 2014 10:20 AM PDT

Border control agents at five airports will screen the temperatures of airline passengers trying to enter the United States from three West African countries heavily hit by the Ebola epidemic, the White House confirmed Wednesday.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said the extra layer of screening will apply to travelers at John F Kennedy Airport in New York, Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, Chicago O’Hare International Airport, Washington Dulles International Airport, and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Tests would be conducted by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the U.S. Coast Guard, Earnest said, while “[Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] officials will also be on hand if a response is necessary.”

“We think that the risk of an outbreak here in the United States is incredibly low,” Earnest said, just hours after the first patient to be diagnosed with the deadly disease in the U.S. died.

Earnest said about 150 people fly through those airports from affected West African countries every day, accounting for “94% of individuals who travel to the U.S. from the three countries currently affected by Ebola right now.” Earnest said existing screening procedures on the ground in West Africa had prevented “dozens” of would-be travelers who displayed Ebola-like symptoms.

360,000 Sign Petition to Spare Ebola Patient’s Dog

Posted: 08 Oct 2014 10:18 AM PDT

Animal lovers have protested, tweeted and petitioned by the tens of thousands to stop Spanish officials from euthanizing an Ebola patient’s dog.

The outcry began shortly after the patient’s husband, Javier Limon, posted a YouTube plea to animal lovers to help spare the life of “Excalibur”. NBC News reports that Limon has been placed in isolation in a Madrid hospital ever since his wife, nurse-aide Teresa Romero Ramos, became the first person to contract the virus outside of west Africa while caring for a Spanish priest who had returned from the region.

Limon said in the recorded appeal, “I’m in the hospital and I’m sending a call to all the population for them to help me save my dog, Excalibur, who they just want to kill just like that without following any proper procedures.”

There have been no documented cases of dogs spreading Ebola to humans, or vice-versa, though other animals may become carriers.

Animal lovers protested outside the couple’s apartment in a southern suburb of Madrid on Wednesday, where Excalibur had been holed up alone with a bathtub full of drinking water and 33 pounds of dog food, Limon told Spanish daily El Mundo. “Murderer,” several shouted at health workers who had arrived to disinfect the apartment.

Protesters also launched a petition to spare Excalibur which has gathered more than 360,000 signatures to date and flooded Twitter with pictures of their own pet dogs signs reading, “#SalvemosaExcalibur.”

The campaign has intensified amid conflicting reports of the dog’s fate in local media, best summed up by the El Mundo headline “¿Dónde está Excalibur?” The most recent update posted by Limon on Facebook says the dog has not yet been taken away by authorities.

Is he still alive? Anyone? Conflicting reports everywhere. #SalvemosaExcalibur #SaveExcalibur #dogs pic.twitter.com/lLoBo9g8PJ

— Melanie Monteiro (@MelanieMonteiro) October 8, 2014

#salvemosaexcalibur Its a human #fail pic.twitter.com/UuL7RAGowK

— Nicky4x4 (@nicky4maal4) October 8, 2014

And here's our contribution: #SalvemosaExcalibur pic.twitter.com/a2Q3PGvtoY

— Noelle Acheson (@NoelleInMadrid) October 8, 2014

Don’t Bother Betting on the Nobel Prize for Literature

Posted: 08 Oct 2014 10:10 AM PDT

Maybe it’s because there are way more people who read books than there are people who follow developments in chemistry. Maybe it’s that people like betting, and betting on literature feels more edifying than going to the racetrack. Either way, this week brings the culmination of the speculation around the Nobel Prize in Literature, to be awarded tomorrow. As ever, the chatter is focused around betting on British site Ladbrokes, where, as of this writing, Kenyan writer Ngugi Wa Thiong’o is the odds-on favorite, with Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami pulling a close second. This despite the fact that, speculation aside, the winner is a closely held secret — and the fact that, in recent years, the winner has been someone entirely unexpected.

This speculation is nothing new for Murakami, in fact; he was a favorite among bettors last year, followed by Canadian short-story writer Alice Munro and American scribe Joyce Carol Oates. Munro ended up beating odds only slightly stacked against her and picking up the prize, as did Chinese writer Mo Yan in 2012, when Murakami was, again, the frontrunner. This compilation of bettors’ favorites compared to actual winners by The New Republic indicates just how rare it is for the odds to favor actual winners. The predicted winner is, with some consistency, more famous and more traditionally “awardable” (less experimental, say) than the actual winner. The widely-honored Syrian poet Adonis is often the predicted winner, but Nobels often go to writers that thrive on controversy, like Harold Pinter, or write shockingly explicit books, like Elfreide Jelinek, or work in obscurity, like Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio.

There are names that consistently appear, year after year, in Nobel speculation — Murakami, Adonis, Oates, Thomas Pynchon, Philip Roth, Bob Dylan. And their recurrence, as well as the very act of Nobel Prize betting, demeans both the winners and the losers. The Nobel Prize for Literature has for decades now been peculiar and idiosyncratic, as likely to go to a radical playwright or little-read poet as to a more renowned writer. But bettors engage, year after year, in magical thinking, that this will be the year that Murakami or Adonis, about as successful and respected as a novelist and a poet can be, will get an award. When they lose, it becomes a disappointment, and the winner, whoever that is, looks like an interloper.

The Literature Nobel is more fun to speculate upon because literature itself is so subjective; unless prizes for chemistry or physics, with their empirical evidence, one person’s great leap forward for writing is another’s failed experiment. But excitable coverage of the Ladbrokes betting should be taken both with a grain of salt, as it’s usually wrong, and a sense that the real fun of the Nobel is its serendipity. The real frontrunner for the prize, if history is guide, is someone we’re not thinking of — an exciting twist ending.

30-Second Tech Trick: Download All Your Tweets at Once

Posted: 08 Oct 2014 10:10 AM PDT

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Pentagon to Brief Obama on Grim Battle Against Jihadists

Posted: 08 Oct 2014 10:05 AM PDT

President Barack Obama is heading to the Pentagon Wednesday afternoon for an update on the battle against the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS), and he’s not going to like what he hears. The key Syrian town of Kobani is likely to fall to ISIS fighters in coming days, senior U.S. military officials will tell Obama—and there’s not a whole lot the U.S. and its allies can do to halt the ISIS victory or the expected bloodbath following its collapse.

“We’re not expecting any change to our strategy as a result of today’s meeting,” Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby said Wednesday afternoon shortly before the 3 p.m. ET session. “This is going to be a long, difficult struggle.”

An air offensive to protect Kobani from being overrun by ISIS totters on the verge of failure. Stepped-up allied air strikes and Kurdish defenders, armed with only small arms, are fighting up to 9,000 jihadists outfitted with tanks and rockets. But it seems to be too little, too late as ISIS’s black flags rose above an eastern neighborhood Monday and remained flying Wednesday. Kurdish officials have warned that ISIS militants would kill thousands if they prevail.

The fight for Kobani is a key test of a U.S. military strategy limited to air strikes, while its local allies on the ground in Iraq and Syria are proving ineffective or non-existent. Turkish troops with tanks are simply watching from across the border as the battle for nearby Kobani rages. Nearly half of the area’s 400,000 residents have fled to Turkey. U.S. officials are angry that Turkey, a NATO ally, has refused to do more to avert a slaughter, they say largely because of its bloody history with the Kurds. American officials are heading to Ankara to urge Turkish officials to do more.

The second piece of the U.S. strategy is training up to 5,000 moderate Syrian rebels a year to fight ISIS on the ground. But that’s a long-term gambit with no guarantee of success, because many of the rebels are more interested in fighting their three-year old civil war against Syrian strongman Bashar Assad than ISIS.

For now, the jihadists are doing their best to frustrate air strikes by abandoning key outposts and breaking into smaller units. They have given up little ground. The terrorist fighters are moving into civilian areas where they know the U.S. and its allies will not bomb—especially without hard intelligence from on-the-ground scouts they trust. Obama has refused to dispatch such spotters as part of his ban on U.S. ground troops in the conflict.

Obama will be meeting with Army General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who has told Congress he will ask Obama to dispatch U.S. ground troops—especially forward air controllers to call in air strikes—if Dempsey thinks it’s required. Kirby said the Pentagon would not be making such a request of Obama during Wednesday’s meeting.

The growing U.S. frustration has been evident as the U.S. ordered AH-64 Apache helicopters into action beginning Oct. 5 against militant targets in western Iraq. The low-and-slow gunship is better than a jet bomber for attacking moving targets. But that capability also makes its two crewmembers more vulnerable to ground fire. ISIS has shot down a pair of Iraqi choppers in recent days, killing all four pilots aboard.

Report: Federal Budget Deficit Falls to $486B

Posted: 08 Oct 2014 10:01 AM PDT

(WASHINGTON) — The federal government’s budget deficit has fallen to $486 billion, the smallest pool of red ink of President Barack Obama’s six-year span in office, a new report said Wednesday.

The Congressional Budget Office’s latest estimate shows better results than earlier projections by both CBO and the White House budget office.

It comes as Congress has mostly paused in its wrangling over the deficit in the run-up to the midterm elections next month.

Obama inherited a trillion-dollar-plus deficit after the 2008 financial crisis but that red-ink figure has improved in recent years as the economy has recovered. Last year’s deficit registered at $680 billion.

The government registered deficits exceeding $1 trillion during Obama’s first term, but the recovering economy has boosted revenues while Republican-imposed curbs on agency operating budgets have combined to shrink the deficit.

The Treasury Department and the White House budget office will issue an official report on the budget in the next week or so, but their findings are likely to mirror CBO’s data, which is based on the daily cash flow that Treasury reports.

The good news may be temporary. CBO and budget hawks warn that the retirement of the Baby Boom generation will balloon deficits in coming years unless Washington can bridge its divides and curb the growth of expensive programs like Medicare.

The deficit hit a record $1.4 trillion in 2009 but fell to $680 billion last year. The government’s budget year ended Sept. 30.

While the numbers are large, economists agree that the truest measure of the deficit is to compare it to the size of the economy. By that measure, the 2014 deficit was less than 3 percent of gross domestic product, which economists say is sustainable.

But CBO and other budget officials warn that long-term projections are unsustainable as more and more people claim Social Security and Medicare benefits. The growth in health care spending, however, is down and long-term estimates have proven unreliable.

Obama and his GOP rivals combined to curb agency budgets in 2011 and the president won a tax increase on upper-rate taxpayers last year, but any future action on the government’s budget woes will likely have to wait until after this year’s mid-term elections or beyond.

Watch Sarah Silverman’s Risqué Equal Pay Ad

Posted: 08 Oct 2014 09:58 AM PDT

Sarah Silverman wants to fix the wage gap and pay back every woman for the money she has lost simply because of the genitalia she happens to have. But until that happens, she figures it’s easier to just get a penis.

In a new ad for the Equal Payback Project, Silverman says women are paid only 78 cents to ever dollar a man earns. She has set the impossible goal of raising $30 trillion to make up that gap. The money she and the Equal Payback Project do raise on Tilt, a crowd-funding platform, will go to the nonprofit the National Women’s Law Center to fight for equal pay legislation. See the ad below.

The ad comes shortly before the midterm elections, in which Democrats have sought to make pay equity a key issue.

Facebook Reportedly Building a New App Where Everyone’s Anonymous

2014-10-07T11:31:00.001-07:00

Facebook Reportedly Building a New App Where Everyone’s Anonymous

Facebook Reportedly Building a New App Where Everyone’s Anonymous
#WAKEUPCALL Might Be The Next ALS Ice Bucket Challenge
North West Looks Just as Stylish as Her Mom
FX to Produce Ryan Murphy Miniseries About O.J. Simpson, American Crime Story
Colorado Allows Clerks to Issue Same-Sex Marriage Licenses
Harry Potter Fans Think This Is The Answer to J.K. Rowling’s Riddle
GOP Ad Claims ISIS Plot to Attack U.S. Via ‘Arizona’s Backyard’
Watch Every Simpsons Couch Gag at the Same Time in One Video
The Link Between Asthma and This Chemical
How Nudity Became the New Normal

Facebook Reportedly Building a New App Where Everyone’s Anonymous

Posted: 07 Oct 2014 11:22 AM PDT

Facebook plans to launch a standalone app that will allow users to mask their online identity, according to two anonymous company insiders speaking to the New York Times.

The two insiders, who divulged the plans to the Times on the condition of anonymity, said that the yet-unnamed app will allow users to sign up under a pseudonym, letting them engage in more candid discussions than they might otherwise have in public.

The report comes amid fallout from Facebook’s decision to boot several drag queens from the network for violating its naming policies by identifying themselves by their alter-egos rather than their birth names. Facebook quickly apologized for that move following intense backlash from several LGBT groups and other advocates.

Facebook’s anonymous app project is reportedly being spearheaded by Josh Miller, who heads the company’s “Conversations” group. Miller’s previous startup, Branch, attempted to foster intimate online discussions around shared interests. Facebook acquired Branch in January.

[NYT]

#WAKEUPCALL Might Be The Next ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

Posted: 07 Oct 2014 11:08 AM PDT

Since the unequivocal success of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge’s viral campaign—which sparked $100 million in donations in just two months—people have speculated what charitable cause would capture our hearts and wallets next.

Would it be a testicular cancer awareness group’s #FeelingNuts “crotch grab challenge“? While it picked up steam after Hugh Jackman, um, grabbed his crotch, it didn’t fully catch.

But now there’s another contender that might stand a chance at picking up the Ice Bucket Challenge’s baton. #WAKEUPCALL is the latest uber-sharable charity craze, and it consists of celebrities—primarily based in the UK—taking pictures of themselves waking up first thing in the morning.

But the hashtag isn’t only a medium for “I woke up like this” narcissism. Rather it is a call for people to “wake up” and donate to Unicef UK’s efforts to help Syrian children.

And, you know, show off a negligee.

#WAKEUPCALL has some elements working for it that might make it stick. First of all, it already has been adopted by celebrities, meaning that it will reach millions of fans wanting to replicate the trend. It is along the same lines of #NoMakeupSelfie, which raised money for cancer research in the UK. And, like the ice bucket challenge, it is seasonally appropriate. As the temperature drops, we’d much rather lull in bed than dump a bucket of ice water over our heads.

Let’s just hope that people lean towards the humorous rather than duckface.

#WAKEUPCALL I nominate @JohnCleese, @KP24, @JohnBishop. pic.twitter.com/pickqjLFhF

— Hugh Grant (@HackedOffHugh) October 7, 2014

Text SYRIA to 70007 (& give £5) or http://t.co/JyA7dUL8PN #UNICEF @mariamcerlane @sturdyAlex @lenadunham pic.twitter.com/NovErR2ydx

— Nigella Lawson (@Nigella_Lawson) October 7, 2014

North West Looks Just as Stylish as Her Mom

Posted: 07 Oct 2014 11:02 AM PDT

This toddler has her own stylist, apparently, who doubles as a tailor. Which is fitting, because North West often dresses like mom, Kim Kardashian. From matching black lace outfits at the Givenchy show in Paris to coordinated grey tops for an overnight flight, Nori tends to sport miniature versions of her mom’s wardrobe, whether it be dresses, handbags or shoes. The tot’s outfits are a reportedly planned months in advance so that she and mom can look alike for most public appearances.

FX to Produce Ryan Murphy Miniseries About O.J. Simpson, American Crime Story

Posted: 07 Oct 2014 10:57 AM PDT

Not content with the passel of Emmys already won by Ryan Murphy’s first three seasons of American Horror Story, FX is furthering its investment in the Murphy brand. The cable network has announced its order of an anthology miniseries entitled American Crime Story, the first season of which will focus on the case of O.J. Simpson, to begin production next year.

The series is to be based on Jeffery Toobin’s true-crime book The Run of His Life and focus on both the Simpson legal team and the case’s prosecutors. While the team involved is prestigious (announced writers Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski also wrote The People vs. Larry Flynt), it’s not hard to wonder the degree to which Murphy’s particular touch will inflect the proceedings. Murphy’s American Horror Story is indeed horrific, but it aims for screams of campy delight as often as screams of terror. His series Glee and the departed New Normal also sought to balance genuine emotion with self-consciously arch humor.

But the case of O.J. Simpson, hinging as it does on two senseless deaths, will be harder to turn into entertainment. Murphy’s comment, provided by FX, provides as much reason to hope for insight as it does reason to fear whether he’ll stick the landing:

“This is an exciting project for me, as I’ve been looking for the right property which could serve as an extension of the American Horror Story brand I love so much. The O.J. case was as tragic as it was fascinating—it seemed like everyone had a stake in the outcome. It was really the beginning of the modern tabloid age.”

Meanwhile, Murphy’s American Horror Story: Freak Show — about an entirely different sort of spectacle — is set to begin on Oct. 8.

Colorado Allows Clerks to Issue Same-Sex Marriage Licenses

Posted: 07 Oct 2014 10:32 AM PDT

Colorado county clerks were free to issue same-sex marriage licenses on Tuesday shortly after Colorado’s Supreme Court lifted an injunction against the practice.

The Denver Post reports that three clerks challenged a state-wide ban on gay marriage in June, issuing roughly 350 same-sex marriage licenses despite cease and desist orders from the state’s Attorney General. A Colorado court placed an injunction against the clerks until their case had received a final ruling in the courts. That final decision came Monday, when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear all appeals on same-sex marriage cases, deferring to a lower court’s decision that Colorado’s clerks could rightfully defy the ban.

The removal of the injunction on Tuesday was the last legal hurdle for the clerks, several of whom jumped ahead of the decision and issued licenses as early as Monday afternoon.

[Denver Post]

Harry Potter Fans Think This Is The Answer to J.K. Rowling’s Riddle

Posted: 07 Oct 2014 10:26 AM PDT

Harry Potter fanatics are putting their heads together to try and solve a riddle J.K. Rowling posted to Twitter on Monday that seems to be in the form of an anagram. Rowling is certainly no stranger to anagrams, as they come up often in the Potter series: With Lord Voldemort’s name, the triwizard tournament and the Mirror of Erised.

Cry, foe! Run amok! Fa awry! My wand won’t tolerate this nonsense.

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) October 6, 2014

Speculation swirled, of course, that Rowling was hinting at another Potter novel. Considering July’s short story she posted to fansite Pottermore about Harry and crew in their thirties sparked similar rumors, a new wizarding world book didn’t seem too far off.

Rowling joined in on the fanatic fun by providing a hint, which referenced fictional character Newton Scamander, the author of the book that’s inspiring the film trilogy of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, for which Rowling is penning the screenplay.

#helpfulhint The solution is the first sentence of a synopsis of Newt's story. It isn't part of the script, but sets the scene.

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) October 7, 2014

But fans seem to think the anagram could actually be about the return of Harry himself. Fans posted on Reddit, Twitter and Facebook a solution that reads:

“Harry returns! Wont say any details now. A week off. No comment.”

While this doesn’t quite add up with Rowling’s hint, it does unscramble the words. If Harry made his return to the page, though, the actor who played him in the film series wouldn’t be slipping back into his robes, as he’s repeatedly said he won’t reprise the role. But Emma Watson, who played Hermione, said she’d be up for a cameo in the Fantastic Beasts trilogy.

See if you can solve the anagram yourself with TIME’s interactive solver.

GOP Ad Claims ISIS Plot to Attack U.S. Via ‘Arizona’s Backyard’

Posted: 07 Oct 2014 10:25 AM PDT

The National Republican Congressional Committee ad opens with grainy footage of black flags and fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) holding rifles on military vehicles. “Evil forces around the world want to harm Americans every day,” an ominous voiceover states. “Their entry into our country? Through Arizona’s backyard.” The spot goes on to recount how Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (D-AZ), locked in a close re-election fight with Arizona House Speaker Andy Tobin, has voted against border security legislation, suggesting that she “leaves Arizona vulnerable.”

The claim is clear: The same terrorists targeted by U.S. bombers for destruction in Syria and Iraq are coming to the U.S. to attack the homeland through the Mexican border. Yet federal law enforcement officials have repeatedly stated that there is no active plot against the U.S. from ISIS fighters in Iraq and Syria, and no intelligence to suggest incursions on the Southern border.

To make the claim, the ad relies on a Sept. 10 writeup of a congressional hearing by the conservative Washington Free Beacon in which a Department of Homeland Security official was understood as telling lawmakers that ISIS “supporters are known to be plotting ways to infiltrate the United States through the border.”

But a review of the testimony by DHS Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis Francis Taylor tells another story. Instead, he said, “there have been Twitter, social media exchanges among [ISIS] adherents across the globe speaking about that as a possibility.” But that is a far cry from a direct threat, and light years away from a direct plot against the homeland.

Other national security officials have since offered more detail refuting the claim. “We see no specific intelligence or evidence to suggest at present that [ISIS] is attempting to infiltrate this country though our southern border,” Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson told the House Homeland Security Committee a week after Taylor’s testimony. Matt Olsen, the outgoing director of the National Counterterrorism Center told lawmakers at the same hearing, “There have been a very small number of sympathizers with [ISIS] who have posted messages on social media about this, but we’ve seen nothing to indicate that there is any sort of operational effort or plot to infiltrate or move operatives from [ISIS] into the United States through the southern border.”

When asked about the sourcing for the ad’s claim, a spokesman for the NRCC did not back down. “ISIS presents an imminent and dangerous threat to the United States,” says Daniel Scarpinato, a NRCC spokesperson. “Anyone who doesn’t believe that having a porous border made of chicken wire is leaving our country at risk, should go explain that to people in Arizona who actually have to live with this problem and are upset that politicians like Ann Kirkpatrick are ignoring it.”

By juicing the threat of ISIS, Republicans are hoping to take advantage of global volatility and the understandable fear surrounding it for their own electoral purposes. ISIS has been used as campaign fodder since at least the summer, as the terrorist group took control of major cities in Iraq and started beheading Westerners.

In August, GOP New Mexico Senate candidate Allen Weh, a Marine veteran, attracted criticism when his campaign used a screenshot of the knife-wielding man who killed American journalist James Foley in an ad. Over the past few months, New Hampshire Republican Senate candidate Scott Brown has knocked Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) repeatedly over the spread of ISIS, using the image of a fighter carrying a black ISIS flag in one ad and President Obama’s “we don’t have a strategy yet” quote in another. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell also featured that quote in an ad, saying he was the right choice in these “serious times.”

Watch Every Simpsons Couch Gag at the Same Time in One Video

Posted: 07 Oct 2014 10:16 AM PDT

Great news for people who never want to miss an intro of The Simpsons. This minute-long clip shows the famous couch gag from the cartoon’s opener in 554 episodes playing at the same time. YouTube user Omni Verse says there are many repeats, and that other parts of the intro are included to account for episodes that don’t feature the famous scene. At first glance, you might feel like your eyes are glazing over, but it gets much easier to watch as the clips gradually start to end.

MORE: Simpsons Watch: Heaven, I’m in Jewish Heaven

MORE: Hello, Simpsons World. Goodbye, the Rest of Your Life

MORE: The Simpsons Kills Off Krusty’s Dad in Season Premiere

The Link Between Asthma and This Chemical

Posted: 07 Oct 2014 10:04 AM PDT

Bisphenol A, or BPA, lurks in the plastics of all kinds of consumer goods, from can linings to plastic bottles—but its influence doesn’t end with the product. BPA is an endocrine disruptor that can leach into food and is linked to all kinds of health problems from aggression to obesity. Now, a new study published in JAMA Pediatrics finds that prenatal exposure to BPA is also linked to lower lung capacity in some young children.

MORE: How BPA May Disrupt Brain Development

The study looked at urine samples of 398 mother-infant pairs, both during and after pregnancy. Every 10-fold increase in the BPA concentration of maternal urine—meaning every time that number went up 10 times—was linked to about a 55% increase in the odds of wheezing. Lung capacity was also affected: Higher BPA concentrations during pregnancy were also linked to decreased lung capacity in four-year-olds, but by age 5, that link disappeared. Once a child was born, the BPA levels in their own urine weren’t associated with wheeze at all.

Exposure during pregnancy, not after, appears to be the critical time for BPA, possibly because it’s affecting important pathways that help the lung develop, says study author Adam Spanier, MD, PhD, associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

That link between prenatal BPA exposure and wheeze might be reflective of asthma, Spanier says, which would be consistent with what animal models are finding. “Some animal studies out there suggest that BPA prenatally might affect the development of some of the cells in our airway,” he says. Asthma has been on the rise for the past three decades, and environmental exposures like BPA are thought to be a possible link. A 2013 study also found a link between BPA and asthma, and though the mechanism behind the connection is complex and unclear, Spanier sees a definite association. “If my sister who’s pregnant asked me for advice, I would tell her try to minimize her BPA exposure,” he says. “I wouldn’t say let’s do some more research.”

How Nudity Became the New Normal

Posted: 07 Oct 2014 09:59 AM PDT

In an interview for the November issue of Vanity Fair, Jennifer Lawrence finally revealed how it felt to have her nude photos hacked and distributed on the internet this summer. “Anybody who looked at those pictures, you’re perpetuating a sexual offense,” she says. “I didn’t tell you that you could look at my naked body.”

“It’s my body, and it should be my choice, and the fact that it is not my choice is absolutely disgusting,” she continued.

The photos accompanying the Vanity Fair piece show Lawrence topless, in a swimming pool, wearing only a diamond necklace and holding a cockatoo. Lawrence is certainly not the first actress to sit for a tasteful topless shoot, but the difference between being hacked and choosing to pose for Vanity Fair says something about how millennials think about nudity. Nakedness isn’t about lack of clothing anymore– it’s about lack of control.

When it comes to our birthday suits, young people are more comfortable than ever with seeing and being seen. A 2014 Pew survey found that 44% of people aged 18-24 reported that they received sexts (which Pew defines as “sexually suggestive photos or videos”) while 15% reported sending one. That number is almost double the 2012 sexting rates, where only 26% of that age group reported receiving a sext. A study at Drexel University found that 28% of surveyed undergrads said they had sent photographic sexts while underage.

If these are the photos that young people admit to sending and receiving, imagine how many revealing photos are simply being taken. At this rate, 2028 presidential candidates won’t be trying to bury nude photos– they’ll be debating in nothing but red and blue ties.

Everywhere you look, naked is the new normal. Miley Cyrus’s mostly-naked 2013 “Wrecking Ball” video got over 700 million views on YouTube, and Robin Thicke’s 2013 hit video “Blurred Lines” was viewed over 300 million times despite objections to naked supermodels dancing on leashes. HBO has always been skin-friendly, but the last four years has seen an explosion of casual on-screen nudity everywhere from Brooklyn (in Girls) to Braavos (in Game of Thrones.) There’s even a reality show on VH1 called Dating Naked that features couples courting each other in the buff.

And from the ubiquitous shirtless selfie on Tinder to mayoral candidates’ “dick pics,” sexting works as a vehicle of instant intimacy in a world where genuine intimacy is harder than ever. “It’s our image, it’s not us,” explains sexuality educator Dr. Logan Levkoff. “We’re not engaging with someone face to face, so the perception is that we’re not vulnerable.”

In other words, nakedness can be an expression of strength, as long as you’re in control of the image. That’s the difference between Miley Cyrus’s Instagram of herself wearing ice cream-shaped pasties and Jennifer Lawrence’s selfies distributed against her will. It’s not the clothing that matters, it’s the context.

It’s the difference between posing nude and feeling naked. We use “naked” and “nude” like synonyms, but there have always been differences between bare bodies, even in art history. A naked figure is supposed to have clothes on, but doesn’t (like the naked woman surrounded by clothed men in Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass.) A nude figure doesn’t have to worry about pesky social conventions like pants, because it’s usually some kind of Classical or Biblical hero, like Michelangelo’s David.

The new nudity is even being used for political purposes in some contexts. Some people strip down to defy beauty standards, like the plus-size women who Instagram pictures of themselves in bikinis with the hashtag #fatkini. Others wear their birthday suits to protest censorship, like the Free the Nipple campaign. “We’re in a world where we fight so hard to talk about how how bodies come in all shapes in sizes,” says Dr. Levkoff. “So are there some girls that say ‘this is me, this is beautiful and I own it’ and post it online? Could be!”

But even kids who post nude selfies to prove how secure they are probably still bluffing, Dr. Levkoff says. “The majority of adolescents who are out there naked, its not because they’re necessarily comfortable, it’s because they want to show people they’re comfortable.” And when today’s teenagers are photoshopping out their stretch marks in 20 years… maybe the naked thing won’t be so much fun anymore.

When it comes to naked photos, technology acts as both a fig leaf and an vehicle of humiliation. On the one hand, a nude selfie gives the subject some control over the image—we can use filters, lighting, and specific angles to control how we’re represented. But what feels liberating and empowering at one moment can be mortifying when the photo gets into the wrong hands. And it’s not just risky for celebrities—nude selfies sent to jerk ex-boyfriends could be lurking anywhere on the internet, just waiting to crop up as soon as our future bosses Google our names.

Unless all our future bosses are also naked, holding a cockatoo.

Now You Can Make Cronuts at Home With This Official Recipe

2014-10-06T11:04:00.001-07:00

Now You Can Make Cronuts at Home With This Official Recipe

Now You Can Make Cronuts at Home With This Official Recipe
Indian and Pakistan Clash Over Kashmir After Peace Talks Falter
Every Time I Take My Baby Outside Somebody Yells at Me
This Innovative Flower Pot Moves To Follow the Sun
Bill Clinton Tries to Save Democrats in Arkansas
Tips for Stopping Identity Theft
Hear Cornel West on Obama: ‘A Drone Presidency’
Meet the New Boss of the President’s Protectors
Go Ahead, Get Excited for the New Twin Peaks. Even If It Turns Out Awful.
Jihadist Bullets Are Often Made in the USA

Now You Can Make Cronuts at Home With This Official Recipe

Posted: 06 Oct 2014 10:38 AM PDT

It is notoriously difficult to get your hands on a Cronut, the croissant-doughnut hybrid crafted by chef Dominique Ansel in New York City, unless you’re willing to wake up super early and wait in a super long line. But now you can just cut out the middleman and make one for yourself at home with Dominique Ansel’s official recipe.

Note: this recipe will take you three days, as Good Morning America points out. It has also earned an “extreme” difficulty rating, which is not at all surprising. If you’re still willing to take on the task, basic ingredients for the dough include:

1 large egg white
8 tablespoons unsalted butter (84% butterfat), softened
1 tablespoon heavy cream

While basic ingredients for the “butter block”, an important part of croissant-baking, include:

18 tablespoons unsalted butter (84% butterfat), softened
Grapeseed oil as needed
Glaze of your choice as needed
Decorating sugar of your choice as needed

You’ll also need some special equipment like a stand mixer with dough hook and whisk attachments, a deep-frying thermometer and uncut piping bags. Then, you’ll need three days to complete various prep work. Let us assure you: there are SO. MANY. STEPS. So, so many.

See the full Cronut recipe here. If you’re anything like us, you’ll be so intimidated just glancing at it that waking up at 5 a.m. to get a Cronut made by Ansel won’t seem so bad after all.

Indian and Pakistan Clash Over Kashmir After Peace Talks Falter

Posted: 06 Oct 2014 10:25 AM PDT

Tens of thousands of villagers have fled their homes in Kashmir amid some of the worst violence between India and Pakistan since a 2003 ceasefire agreement.

Shelling from both sides that began on Friday has killed at least nine civilians, Reuters reports. Both sides have accused each other of starting the clashes, which coincide with the Eid al-Adha festival for Muslims in both countries.

Newly-elected Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi raised expectations for a warming of ties between the two countries when he invited Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to his inauguration in May. But Modi called off peace talks last month because Pakistan planned to meet with Kashmiri separatists.

The two countries have fought three wars over the disputed region, and Muslim separatists have targeted Indian forces since 1989.

Thousands of people from Indian villages along the border have been evacuated to government shelters and underground bunkers, the Associated Press reports. Authorities in Pakistan say four civilians, including two children and a woman, have been killed in the clashes. An Indian official said five people were killed by Pakistani shelling.

[Reuters]

Every Time I Take My Baby Outside Somebody Yells at Me

Posted: 06 Oct 2014 10:18 AM PDT

This story originally appeared on xoJane.com.

Have you ever wanted strangers to come up to you, unannounced, on the streets of New York City and strike up a conversation? As a native New Yorker I have to admit that apart from the occasional exchange about delayed trains with another passenger or being asked for directions, total strangers don’t often come over to talk to me. That all changed after I got pregnant and then had a baby.

While I was pregnant I heard a lot of unsolicited scary pregnancy and birth stories that my forgetful “pregnancy brain” was very unaccommodating about deleting from my mind. These days, pushing a baby stroller around apparently gives people the impression that they can walk up to me and just say anything they want. When was the last time someone walked up to you on the sidewalk and judged you? Try having a kid — it’ll happen to you on a daily basis.

When my baby was two weeks old, my husband and I had to take her to a checkup visit with her pediatrician. We were living with his parents because we had only closed on our apartment the week before I gave birth. Our trip entailed taking the subway from Murray Hill to Washington Heights…where we would have been already living if our co-op board hadn’t taken four months to schedule our board approval meeting.

Standing on the platform a pleasant looking woman in her late twenties smiled down at our little baby girl in her car seat stroller said: “I have a six month old…how old is yours?” When I answered “Two weeks,” the woman’s smile dissolved into a gasp of horror. She half-shrieked: “OH MY GOD you can’t have such a little one on the subway it’s so dangerous all the germs and their tiny immune systems I wouldn’t let MY nanny out with her until after three months and then I got the germ net for the stroller. It’s a mesh net that keeps out the germs. You shouldn’t be on the train with her yet or ever! You could take cabs or a car service. That’s what my nanny does.”

My heart started pounding. Was Clara in danger from subway germs? Though I immediately questioned the efficacy of mesh netting in keeping microscopic airborne germs off my baby…did this woman have a point? Why hadn’t my What to Expect book detailed the dangers of public transportation? I certainly didn’t have a nanny or a car service or even own a car, so my options were limited.

Mentally shaken, I smiled and thanked this apparently well-meaning stranger while silently vowing to ask a doctor for advice. Frazzled and already sleep-deprived, we rode the train uptown. I eyeballed the subway atmosphere looking for free-floating germs that might attach themselves to Clara’s tiny face.

When we finally made it to the pediatrician, I unloaded my worries onto her in a garbled stream that ended with: “Is she allowed to ride the subway?!” The doctor’s advice was simple: “As long as your baby isn’t holding onto the handrail in the subway, she should be fine.”

One day after we finally moved uptown to Washington Heights, I decided to try taking a bus downtown to visit my mother. I have a lot of fond memories of riding the bus around with the various kids I babysat in New York City from the time I was 13 until I was about 23. I got a seat on the bus, with car-seated Clara in my lap. I relaxed a little — enjoying the air conditioning and the view as the bus meandered down Broadway. A few stops later, a middle-aged woman gets on and sits next to me. Without preamble, and without acknowledging my presence, she starts talking to Clara in a baby voice:

“Hewooo wittle one…what is your Mommy doing taking you out on a hot day like this? Is she cawazy? She should be inside with such a wittle baby on a hot day. It’s too hot for wittle babies.”

Another round of unasked for advice — this time directed at my baby daughter who hadn’t even learned to focus her eyes yet.

I turned to the woman and said: “She’s on her way to visit her grandmother. And she’s fine.”

The woman said: “I guess New Yorkers do things differently.”

I said: “Yeah — they do.”

The conversation ended there.

Clara was five months old and I decided to try her stroller out for a spin in the neighborhood. It was a brisk but mild day in late November. I planned to walk 10 blocks to my sister’s apartment, take her dog for a brief walk and then head back home. Clara seemed happy in her coat and blanket. Six blocks into my walk, I saw a middle-aged woman walking down the sidewalk.

As she approached me, she started yelling a blue streak. It took a minute for me to realize she was talking to me. She was, in fact, cursing me out for not having a wind/rain protector on my stroller. You know — those clear plastic shields they put over strollers to keep the rain out? As she kept getting closer, her yelling rose in decibels: “WHAT ARE YOU CRAAAAAZY, LADY! YOUR BABY IS GONNA FREEEEEEZE OUT HERE — YOU DON’T HAVE A WINDSHIELD PROTECTOR WHAT’SA MATTER WITH YOU, YOU BITCH!”

The amazing thing was that she didn’t even slow down — she just marched past me, still screaming — her voice fading with the Doppler effect. I was shaken to the core and promptly began crying. Here I was, a new mom trying out a new stroller and I had apparently made a serious, baby-killing mistake. I spun the stroller around, sniffling, and headed home.

As I walked, I called my husband and found some solace in his outrage on my behalf. He assured me Clara would be fine. By the time I got home, Clara had fallen asleep in the stroller. I left her their to nap and started doing some paperwork at my desk.

Not fifteen minutes later the seeds of doubt planted by that crazy woman began to sprout. What if Clara had in fact been freezing? What if…she wasn’t asleep in her stroller but was in fact suffering from extreme hypothermia? What if she wasn’t sleeping but was in fact, in a cold-weather induced coma? I tiptoed over to the stroller and watched Clara breathing…or was she breathing? I gave her a tentative poke. No response. I blew air on her face and her eyelids quivered then stilled.

I tried to convince myself to no avail that Clara was just sleeping. I ended up taking her out of the stroller, trying to say in a happy voice: “Wake up, wake up, wake up.” She did wake up — she was fine, if unhappy and grumpy from being woken from her peaceful baby nap. She was not frozen.

Did that cursing woman on the street or the germ-a-phobe mother on the subway or the middle-aged tourist on the bus envision the ripple effects their yelling and criticism had on me? That it would affect me for hours? That it would make me cry? Did they think for an instant that perhaps I was an inexperienced, sleep-deprived, emotionally fragile first time mom? That maybe a piece of calmly delivered advice would be more effective than harsh criticism? Or that maybe they shouldn’t say anything at all?

Clara is two years old now and I have become largely immune to the slings and arrows of drive-by advice. (No, it hasn’t stopped.) I have become an expert at being a mother to my little girl. Next time, before you roll your eyes and start to say something critical to a parent trying to soothe a crying baby on a crowded subway, try to put yourself in their position for a minute.

Maybe in that instant the harsh words you were going to say will fade from your lips and instead you’ll try making a silly face at the baby, who just might stop crying. Let’s help each other more. Life (with and without children) is hard enough to navigate without random people telling you you’re doing it all wrong.

Jeannine Jones is a writer living in Upper Manhattan.

This Innovative Flower Pot Moves To Follow the Sun

Posted: 06 Oct 2014 10:16 AM PDT

This article originally appeared on Lost at E Minor.

It only took us a few thousand years to create the efficient flower pot design. Inspired by how sunflowers follow the sunlight, Barcelona-based industrial design company, Studio BAG Disseny, created a flower pot that can roll to face the direction of the sun, giving plants a more efficient way to grow.

Handmade in La Bisbal d’Emporda, Spain, the terracotta pots can whirl by simply moving the base. According to its designers, by adding movement to traditional static pots, it allows the plants to “follow the path of the sun, to sway in a breeze or grow at will.”

(via Design Taxi)

Bill Clinton Tries to Save Democrats in Arkansas

Posted: 06 Oct 2014 10:15 AM PDT

Three months into his bid to represent Arkansas’s Fourth District in Congress, James Lee Witt got a call from former President Bill Clinton. Witt was outside a town called Magnolia, and Clinton proceeded to rattle off like baseball stats how much he’d won Magnolia by and who would be good to connect with there.

“He then told me every county he’d won and every county he’d lost and all the percentages,” recalls Witt, who served as head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency for all eight years of Clinton’s presidency. “He still remembers the people who supported him and those that didn’t. But if you supported him, you have no truer friend.”

Witt should know. He’s banking on Clinton’s help to win in November. Clinton’s calls to Witt happened every few months in the beginning of the campaign. Now that the election is just a month away, the calls are more frequent, as are the former President’s visits.

And Witt isn’t the only candidate Clinton has a personal tie to running in Arkansas these days. His former driver during his 1982 gubernatorial campaign, Rep. Mike Ross, is running for governor. Sen. Mark Pryor, whose father was a mentor to Clinton, is in the reelection battle of his career. And Patrick Henry Hays, who was an Arkansas traveler for Clinton’s 1992 presidential bid, is running for Congress in Arkansas’ Second District. All of which is why Clinton is kicking off his midterm sprint in his home state Monday and Tuesday with five events across Arkansas.

For embattled Democrats, Clinton is worth his weight in political gold. “When he was elected President, he never left,” says Patrick Burgwinkle, chair of the Arkansas Democratic Party. “He’s got some wonderful coattails in Arkansas. He’s a giant energizer of the base and he’s able to bring a lot of money out.”

His four candidates will need it in an election trending away from Democrats and President Barack Obama, who is deeply unpopular in Arkansas. The state, largely due to Clinton’s efforts, hasn’t tacked as far in the GOP’s direction as the rest of the south.

Still, Clinton might be Sisyphus this cycle with the races leaning decidedly Republican in recent weeks. Witt’s coveted seat is rated “likely Republican” and the seat Hays is seeking is ranked “lean Republican” by Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan election forecaster. The same group ranks Arkansas’ gubernatorial and Senate races “toss ups,” but GOP Rep. Tom cotton leads Pryor by 3.7 percentage points and former Rep. Asa Hutchinson leads Ross by 5.6 percentage points, according to averages of Arkansas polls by Real Clear Politics.

Republicans downplayed the importance of Clinton’s influence in Arkansas. “I’m not worried about Bill Clinton’s support for Mark Pryor,” Cotton told ABC News on Sunday. “I’m worried about Mark Pryor’s support for Barack Obama.” And banker French Hill, who is running against Witt for the seat Cotton is vacating, told Roll Call this summer that, “President Clinton has a lot of friends in Arkansas. … But I don’t believe it will have a major impact in this race because I believe the electorate is looking for somebody who’s got a business background, that’s a conservative person to help represent the district.”

For Clinton, this isn’t just about politics. Not only is he personally invested in the four Democrats, but Hutchinson served as one of the Republican floor managers of Clinton’s 1998 impeachment trial in the House. Which is why his involvement goes beyond rallies and fundraisers: He calls all four candidates on a regular basis to strategize with them on how to win in a state he prides himself on still knowing intimately. After all, the airport, his Presidential library and a fair number of roads across the state are named for Arkansas’ only son to be elected to the nation’s highest office. “He’s a terrific campaigner, excellent fundraiser and premier strategist,” says Skip Rutherford, dean of the University of Arkansas’s School of Public Affairs. “He is very valuable to Democrats, their biggest and best asset on the trail.”

Tips for Stopping Identity Theft

Posted: 06 Oct 2014 10:00 AM PDT

This has been a good year for hackers. To date, businesses, medical centers, banks and schools have suffered some 578 data breaches, exposing over 76 million records of personal and financial information (Identity Theft Resource Center PDF).

Home Depot recently announced its database had been breached, with hackers making off with around 56 million payment card numbers. Earlier in the year, Neiman Marcus and Michaels revealed similar hacks, exposing 1.1 million and 2.6 million records respectively (PDF).

While some fraudsters might take advantage of stolen information to clear out your bank account or make claims on your insurance policies, a more insidious form of identity fraud has emerged based on scammers who create whole new accounts — bank accounts, store accounts, credit card accounts — in your name.

Identity thieves can use your personal information to open and max out multiple credit cards, apply for loans and place deposits on big-ticket items. This activity all goes onto your credit profile, eventually sinking your credit rating. Yet you might never find out about the unauthorized activity until the debt collectors come calling or you find yourself summarily rejected for a loan or mortgage application.

Many folks have turned to credit monitoring services that will notify you about unusual activity. But that’s the equivalent of closing the door after the horse has already left the barn. At that point, thieves have already opened accounts and compromised your credit.

So what can you do to thwart identity thieves? The major credit bureaus let you freeze your credit or add a fraud alert. Both are free, but each has its limitations.

Is it time for a freeze?

Closing any compromised credit and bank accounts can stem your financial losses, true. But thieves can continue opening false accounts and piling up debt on your credit profile, making it impossible to successfully apply for credit.

To stop thieves in their tracks, put a security freeze on your credit profile, which prohibits lenders and companies that are trying to check your credit from accessing your profile. This prevents thieves from opening new accounts under your name, because creditors are unable to check your credit history.

“The security freeze is a good tool for someone with recurring fraud issues,” says Rod Griffin, director of public education for credit reporting agency Experian. “That’s the insidious nature of fraud. Once an identity has been stolen, more false accounts may pop up again six months or two years later, and we wouldn’t necessarily recognize it as fraud.”

A fraud alert may be more helpful

If you’re planning on getting a mortgage, a car or even a new telephone service, a security freeze can hold up the process by preventing the service providers from checking your credit. “For most people, if you plan to apply for credit or services that need credit checking, a security freeze tends to be more intrusive than it is beneficial,” Griffin says.

Instead, if you believe you’re the victim of fraud, Griffin recommends first requesting a copy of your credit report. At the same time, alert a credit reporting agency that you suspect you may be at risk for fraud. The credit reporting agency will place an initial fraud alert on your profile so that any companies requesting a copy of the profile are told to ask for additional proof of identity. This makes it more difficult for identity thieves to prove they are you. The credit agency you alert will let the other two agencies know to do the same.

Next, comb your credit report for activity that wasn’t generated by you. Common signs of fraud include social security number and address changes or names and accounts you don’t recognize. “If you discover you have been the victim of fraud, file a police report, send it to Experian, and we extend the fraud alert so that it stays on your profile for seven years,” Griffin says.

Set fraud alerts and security freezes

Follow these steps to set a security freeze or a security alert.

1. If you suspect you have been the victim of identity theft, set an initial fraud alert at any of the three credit agencies. You can do this online, and the agency you contact will alert the others to add a fraud message to the profile they hold on you. We also recommend alerting Innovis, a smaller credit agency. Here are the links to their fraud alert pages for quick access:

An initial fraud alert on your profile advises potential creditors to request additional verification of your identity if an account is opened in your name. This alert lasts for 90 days. If you apply for anything requiring a credit check during this period, you should be prepared to provide greater proof of your identity than usual.

2. If you find that you are the victim of identity theft — for example, if your credit profile shows suspicious activity or a debt collector turns up demanding payments for something you know nothing about — you can request an extended fraud alert that lasts for seven years. File a police report and mail a copy to the credit agency along with your request for an extended fraud alert. The credit agency will verify the fraudulent accounts and clear them out of your profile. Potential creditors will continue to receive alerts that your profile is associated with fraud, with instructions to request additional ID verification.

3. If fraudulent activity continues to appear on your credit profile, you may want to consider a security freeze. With a credit freeze, no one can access your credit profile except lenders you specify during a time period you set. You need to set up a freeze individually with each credit agency, either by phone or via each agency’s online form.

When you freeze your credit profile, you’ll receive a PIN to use for temporarily lifting the freeze to allow specific credit checks. Security freezes are free for victims of identity theft, and will run anywhere from $0 to $10 for other applicants, depending on age and state of residence. Fees for lifting and restoring freezes vary by state from free to $5.

How to stay safe

“Knowing when your personal data has been compromised is very difficult, as it could happen from any number of places which hold that data,” says Thomas Labarthe, managing director (Europe) for security firm Lookout. When a security breach occurs at a point-of-sale terminal, as it did in the recent Home Depot breach, consumers are especially powerless and may never find out about the breach until the retailer itself uncovers it. “It’s best to only use credit cards, as there’s an added layer of protection which makes it easier to claim money back in cases of fraud,” Labarthe says.

When you’re shopping online, use encrypted sites with “https” in the URL, and only use credit cards even when using secure online payment services. Offline, make sure your mailbox is secure; fraudsters can get plenty of identifying information from stolen mail.

Most importantly, check your credit profile once a year. You can request an annual free copy from each credit agency at AnnualCreditReport.com.

This article was written by Natasha Stokes and originally appeared on Techlicious.

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Hear Cornel West on Obama: ‘A Drone Presidency’

Posted: 06 Oct 2014 09:49 AM PDT

In an interview with Time for 10 Questions, Cornel West says he didn’t even vote in 2012. “I couldn’t vote for a war criminal,” he said, calling President Obama’s administration “a Wall Street presidency, a drone presidency, a national surveillance presidency, that violates rights and liberties.”

Meet the New Boss of the President’s Protectors

Posted: 06 Oct 2014 09:47 AM PDT

Joe Clancy, the newly appointed interim director of the U.S. Secret Service, has protected three Presidents in his career, but now faces his toughest challenge yet: restoring the public’s—and the commander in chief’s—trust in the agency responsible with his life.

Even before Secret Service Director Julia Pierson submitted her resignation Wednesday, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson had reached out to Clancy, 58, most recently the director of corporate security at telecom-giant Comcast, about taking the job. He retired from the Secret Service in 2011 as head of the Presidential Protective Division (PDD), the corps of presidential bodyguards responsible for the president’s security around the clock.

After several high-profile security incidents, Clancy will be under intense pressure to keep the agency out of the news, as multiple congressional and Department of Homeland Security probes examine where the agency went wrong and where it must go from here. Obama is not expected to select a permanent replacement for Pierson until those reviews are completed later this year.

Clancy will be a familiar face to President Barack Obama and his family, having led the presidential detail during his first years in office.

Go Ahead, Get Excited for the New Twin Peaks. Even If It Turns Out Awful.

Posted: 06 Oct 2014 09:47 AM PDT

Sometimes, as it turns out, the owls are exactly what they seem. Rumors had been percolating (like damn fine coffee) that Twin Peaks might be returning in some form, and they went into overdrive last Friday when the show’s creators, David Lynch and Mark Frost, tweeted the same quote from the show: “That gum you like is going to come back in style.” But it couldn’t mean… They weren’t going to… No one would actually… Would they?

Turns out they would, and they are. Showtime today announced that Twin Peaks is returning, as a nine-episode limited-run series, in 2016, with Frost writing and Lynch directing.

Getting excited? Getting excited? Great! Now it’s time to get disappointed!

Because that’s the way of these things, isn’t it? Someone announces a revival, or a reboot, or in this case a continuation, and the commentary-industrial complex begins imagining reasons why this new Star Trek, or Star Wars, or surreal Northwest mystery cannot possibly turn out well. Remember The Phantom Menace? Remember Fire Walk With Me? That one guy is going to be that one superhero? That guy from Swingers is going to be in True Detective? We’re doomed! (I have done this plenty of times myself, trust me.)

I have no idea, of course, what the new Twin Peaks will be like. It will be good, or it will be bad. But I beg you: let yourself get excited. Be happy about a thing without needing to coat it in prophylactic pessimism. Don’t give in to the defensive reflex to pre-disappoint yourself.

I don’t know, none of us do, what Lynch and Frost will give us in two years, but I know this:

* Two very talented people are returning to TV. This, really, is the bottom line. Frost and Lynch don’t need to make more Twin Peaks. That they are doing so anyway tells me they have ideas they’re excited about, and that’s reason enough for hope.

* TV doesn’t need Twin Peaks anymore. When Twin Peaks premired in 1990, it blew up our notions of what TV could and could not do: it established that TV could be idiosyncratic, could be ambitious, could be art, even, and–at least for a while–could be wildly, commercially successful. Today, the TV business is much different from what it was then. There are far more outlets, a show can survive with a far smaller audience, and it’s much easier (which is not to say easy) to find a place to take a chance wth a risky concept. For years after Twin Peaks went off the air, its dramatic drop in ratings was cited as proof of what you couldn’t do on TV–that it was dangerous to be too weird, or establish mysteries with a tricky payoff, and so on. Now, there’s less riding on a new Twin Peaks: it can succeed or fail on its own, and TV as an art form will carry on.

* We all have an excuse to go back and watch a fantastic work of TV art. Even the second season. If the revival does nothing else but introduce new viewers to the original, evocative, entrancing work, that will be a plus.

* You can’t ruin a good thing retroactively. This, really, is the most important point to me. We’ve developed this sour mindset among some series and franchise fans that an ending, or a continuation, that disappoints them negates everything that came before it. A serial needs to “stick the landing” or else I’ve “wasted” all the time I put into it. This, I’d argue, is such a crabbed and limiting view of art and entertainment. The pleasure you derive from a thing is always worth it, no matter what comes afterward.

There’s no prize for making the right judgment on a work of fiction two years before it exists. If you loved Twin Peaks–or even if you’re just curious–you now have an excuse to go back and look again at one of the greatest things TV ever did.

And in 2016, its creators will do something great again. Or they won’t. In which case there will be plenty of time to hate it then. Why waste two years pre-hating something?

Jihadist Bullets Are Often Made in the USA

Posted: 06 Oct 2014 09:30 AM PDT

Not only are the militants of the Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) tooling around their new “state” in U.S.-built vehicles recently plundered from the Iraqi army, but many of the bullets they’re firing come from the U.S. as well.

The news suggests just how fluid the battlefield straddling Iraq and Syria has become—and how efforts by other nations to help both beleaguered states can boomerang as their ammo often falls into enemy hands.

A private arms-tracing group vacuumed up more than 1,700 ISIS rounds in the Kurdish regions of northern Iraq and Syria from July 22 to Aug. 15. Nearly one of every five examined by experts from the independent Conflict Armament Research was manufactured in the U.S., according to a report released Monday by the group.

ISIS “forces appear to have acquired a large part of their current arsenal from stocks seized from, or abandoned by, Iraqi defence and security forces,” said the London-based CAR, a nonprofit research organization funded by the European Union. “The U.S. gifted much of this materiel to Iraq.”

CAR used stampings on the bottom of the cartridges—almost like fingerprints—to track their source.

Here’s where the cartridges collected by researchers were manufactured. CAR

The variety and age of the ammo used by ISIS fighters shows they have multiple means of supply. “China, the Soviet Union/Russian Federation, and the United States (US) are the top three manufacturing states represented in the sample,” CAR reported. “Ammunition in service with Iraqi and Syrian defence forces is also significant in the sample.”

CAR documented more than 300 U.S.-manufactured cartridges used by ISIS, mostly made between 2000 and 2010. Russian ammo was much newer—“as little as seven months from manufacture in Russia to capture from [ISIS] forces in Syria,” the group says. “Syrian defence forces are a plausible source of this ammunition.” At the other end of the timetable, CAR found a single Soviet cartridge dating back to 1945, the last year of World War II.

Most of the cartridges recovered in Syria were 30 years old and of Chinese and Soviet manufacture. “By contrast, the sample of ammunition recovered in Iraq is mainly U.S.-manufactured and comprises 5.56 x 45 mm cartridges,” CAR’s 16-page field report said. That’s the type “used in U.S.-supplied M16 and M4 assault rifles of the Iraqi defence and security forces.”

Newly Discovered Mass Grave Linked to Missing Mexican Students

2014-10-05T11:06:00.001-07:00

Newly Discovered Mass Grave Linked to Missing Mexican Students

Newly Discovered Mass Grave Linked to Missing Mexican Students
Pope Francis’s Family Synod Forgoes Flash for Spiritual Depth
Sarah Silverman Does Joan Rivers Impression on SNL
Sarah Silverman Hosts SNL: Best, Worst and Weirdest Moments
B.B. King Cancels Tour Dates Due to Exhaustion and Dehydration
Watch Ben Affleck and Bill Maher Argue About Islam
6 Questions You Might Have About Hong Kong’s Umbrella Revolution
Texas Company Recalls Nearly 91,000 Pounds of Beef
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Newly Discovered Mass Grave Linked to Missing Mexican Students

Posted: 05 Oct 2014 10:38 AM PDT

A mass grave with an unconfirmed number of bodies was discovered in a part of Mexico near to where 43 college students were abducted, authorities announced Saturday night.

Guerrero State Attorney General Iñaky Blanco said there was a connection between the burial site and the students’ disappearance from a teachers’ college the previous weekend, the Wall Street Journal reports. However, Blanco said it would be “irresponsible” without DNA tests to confirm that the bodies were the missing students.

Mexico’s Proceso, citing anonymous sources, reported that 20 bodies had been discovered. The Associated Press reports that six pits had been discovered but did not report a body count.

The students disappeared after clashing with police during a protest that turned violent. Officials have detained 30 people, including 22 police officers, in the case. Blanco said that a local criminal organization, Los Guerreros Unidos, was connected with the violence and the disappearances.

Close to 100,000 Mexicans have been killed or gone missing in drug-related violence since 2006, when former President Felipe Calderon ordered the country’s military to reclaim parts of the country under the influence of drug cartels.

[WSJ]

Pope Francis’s Family Synod Forgoes Flash for Spiritual Depth

Posted: 05 Oct 2014 10:26 AM PDT

It can be easy to fixate on the idea that the Extraordinary Synod on the Family beginning in Rome this week is purely about Catholic Church politics. The world clamors for the latest Catholic hubbub about divorce and remarriage policies, annulment reform, and which Cardinal holds which position on what agenda or controversial marital issue. But something more is happening as bishops gather for the first major doctrinal and pastoral summit of the Francis papacy; something quieter, deeper, and less immediately obvious: a spiritual renewal that Pope Francis hopes to foster between church leaders and their people.

This spiritual undercurrent, although quiet, has been powerfully present in the Holy Father’s actions this weekend. On Saturday evening, before the synod officially began and as a pink sun set behind St. Peter’s Basilica, Pope Francis called the people to gather in the piazza to pray for the upcoming two-weeks of Synod conversations. A choir chanted a hymn as tens of thousands of people arrived, each silently, most with their families. When dusk fell and the moon had risen, each person lit a candle, and thousands of drops of light filled the square. Vieni Santo Spirito, vieni, or Come Holy Spirit, come, the people sang with the choir, over and over. “May the Wind of Pentecost blow upon the Synod’s work, on the Church, and on all of humanity,” Francis told to the crowd. “Undo the knots which prevent people from encountering one another, heal the wounds that bleed, rekindle hope.”

This prayer service was more testimony to the conviction that any real change in the Church must start with prayer—and a reminder of the people themselves. They, these people, these families, are the reason Francis called this Extraordinary Synod in the first place. It is only the third such special meeting a Pope has called since the Synod of the Bishops was created in 1965. The crowd was so vast that Francis himself most surely could not see the details—the children playing with their candles and dripping wax in patterns on the pavers, mothers comforting crying babies, a son helping a grandmother to a chair, the teenage couple taking selfies—but these are the people who experience the issues of family and marriage in ways clergy, who are celibate, rarely do. He was telling the people that they were foremost on his mind as the Synod began.

Francis was also reminding the bishops that the people were foremost on his mind. Most of the church leaders present Saturday evening had just arrived in Rome after having prepared for the Synod for a year, surveying their own congregations about modern family life for their peers’ review these coming weeks. Now, Francis stood before them and the first thing he did was to gather them to encounter the people and their sparks of light. Only when the service ended did he turn to greet the cardinals, one by one. The liturgical message about his priorities, and their priorities in turn, was hard to miss.

If the Holy Father’s Saturday prayer service was about the people, his Sunday mass turned to the bishops. Inside St. Peter’s Basilica, standing beneath Michelangelo’s dome and above St. Peter’s tomb, the Holy Father gave a pointed homily about the bishops’ role. The job of leaders, he preached, is to nurture the vineyard—a Biblical image for the people of God. “Synod Assemblies are not meant to discuss beautiful and clever ideas, or to see who is more intelligent,” he preached. “We are all sinners and can also be tempted to ‘take over’ the vineyard, because of that greed which is always present in us human beings. God’s dream always clashes with the hypocrisy of some of his servants. We can ‘thwart’ God’s dream if we fail to let ourselves be guided by the Holy Spirit.”

His meaning was clear. This meeting is not a time for the bishops to each shine with their own debates, Francis was saying, but rather a time to focus on the people and what the people need. It is, as he put it, about developing “plans [that] will correspond to God’s dream: to form a holy people who are his own and produce the fruits of the kingdom of God.”

The next two weeks will be telling. Francis is presiding over the world’s last truly medieval court, which can at times appear to revert to high school drama and power plays. But the spiritual moments that have shaped the Synod’s start are a concrete reminder that Francis the pastor is the one calling the shots. He’s the one walking the incense around the papal altar at mass, he’s the one celebrating Eucharist, and he’s the one determining where the ultimate emphasis is placed. He is the one in St. Peter’s seat. The bishops are there at his request. It’s the tone he sets that matters.

Sarah Silverman Does Joan Rivers Impression on SNL

Posted: 05 Oct 2014 10:00 AM PDT

Comedian Sarah Silverman hosted SNL for the first time Saturday night, and kept the audience entertained with her impression of Joan Rivers in heaven.

As Rivers, Silverman roasted other dearly departed stars Steve Jobs, Ben Franklin and Richard Pryor. The impression of Rivers was spot-on, and the comedic tribute from Silverman was a touching homage to her late friend.

Sarah Silverman Hosts SNL: Best, Worst and Weirdest Moments

Posted: 05 Oct 2014 09:52 AM PDT

Sarah Silverman made a triumphant return to Studio 8H last night–triumphant because Silverman was fired as a featured player on Saturday Night Live after appearing for just one season (1993-1994), but now, thanks to her subsequent success, gets to host the whole evening. That definitely deserves a victory lap.

The opening monologue took full advantage of her history on the show, cutting between old footage of a ’90s bit in which the baby-faced, 20-something Silverman acted as an audience plant to pepper the host with questions, and the current 40-something Silverman onstage answering herself.

The odd questions included “how does a human knee bend?” and “what did dinosaurs eat?” which current-day Silverman answered charmingly.

Last night’s episode of Saturday Night Live was far more consistent than the Chris Pratt’s season opener, with more gems than clunkers. While the writers and cast work on getting their post-hiatus groove back, it seemed like the right move to let a professional comedian host.

The Good, The Bad, The Weird:

The Best Joke: “Adam Levine, we are not stopping at Pizza Hut!” Silverman gets to yell, in a scene about a pick-up from the airport goes that deteriorates after she confesses to cheating on her boyfriend. As for most prolonged joke, the trailer for The Fault in our Stars 2: The Ebola in our Everything was timely, hilarious and strangely moving. You can’t quarantine your heart!

The Best Sketch: Pairing the production values of a political commercial with Train’s “Hey Soul Sister,” SNL‘s white cast members and Silverman gently remind white people that while they’ve had a great run, they are going to be in the minority soon. The ad encourages white people to make the most of their remaining time as a majority by hiking, camping and maybe electing four more white presidents, even if they have to be women. The sketch was especially funny as it seemed to also poke fun of itself, as SNL has continued to come under fire over the years for not casting many people of color.

The Worst Sketch: What was meant to be a funny jab at a woman’s love of her expensive blender just felt like an overt attempt at product placement. Hopefully Vanessa Bayer and Silverman got free blenders for agreeing to this.

The Weirdest Sketch: Silverman donned a fur coat and wig to play Joan Rivers roasting people in heaven. As befits a Joan Rivers tribute sketch, there were some harsh-but-funny zingers, including one aimed at Richard Pryor (“The longest relationship he had was with multiple sclerosis”). Other targets included Steve Jobs, Ava Gardner and Freddie Mercury (played here by Adam Levine), the latter of whom earned the comment, “You’re so gay, even your teeth aren’t straight.” While well-intentioned, the tribute may have fallen into the “too soon” category for the audience, and the dearth of laughs made the sketch uncomfortable to watch even from home.

Other Things:

Maroon 5: As Silverman asked in the cheating sketch, “Why is Adam Levine here?” Oh right: To remind the world to go buy “Animals.”

“Supportive Women”: While the sketch itself was not exactly hilarious —with Silverman, Aidy Bryant and Cecily Strong contradicting soap opera tropes and playing supportive women—Kenan Thompson’s performance as the truly odd host of Forgotten TV Gems is worth watching.

Pete Davidson: The show’s first millennial star made a strong debut last week, but was completely absent this week.

If you DVR’d it:

Skip: Riverboat Sisters. Kenan Thompson played a riverboat emcee who introduced a trio of singers—Silverman, Cecily Strong, and Sasheer Zamata—dressed as Tina Turner in wigs and flapper dresses singing “Proud Mary”. They interrupted their performance for heartfelt personal monologues spoken directly into the camera. The actors seemed to want the sketch to end as much as the audience did.

Do Not Skip: Weekend Update. Michael Che and Colin Jost have hit their stride as the new hosts of Weekend Update. Their easy back-and-forth about what words each of them can say (“in the club” is out for Jost and “toodle-oo” is off-limits to Che) and their quick-witted, straight-faced banter is a good omen for the future of the segment. Highlights include Che’s question about the spread of the Ebola virus into the United States (“Who goes to Texas and Africa?”) and Kenan Thompson’s Al Sharpton’s mispronunciations.

B.B. King Cancels Tour Dates Due to Exhaustion and Dehydration

Posted: 05 Oct 2014 08:59 AM PDT

Celebrities have made “dehydration” and “exhaustion” a cause for suspicion, not concern, in the past several years, but when the icon suffering is blues legend B.B. King, the news is more sobering.

The 89-year-old guitarist has canceled the remaining eight dates on his tour after becoming ill during a Friday evening performance at the House of Blues in Chicago, King’s official website announced Saturday. After the performance, a doctor evaluated King and quickly diagnosed him.

Watch Ben Affleck and Bill Maher Argue About Islam

Posted: 05 Oct 2014 08:42 AM PDT

Gone Girl star Ben Affleck and Real Time host Bill Maher got into a heated argument about Islam on Maher’s HBO talk show Friday.

Maher and author Sam Harris argued that liberals were backing away from criticizing Islam’s stance on women’s and LGBT rights because people “have been sold this meme of Islamophobia, where every criticism gets confused with bigotry toward Muslims as people.” Harris called Islam “the motherlode of bad ideas”; Maher called Islam “the only religion that acts like the mafia — that will f-cking kill you if you say the wrong thing, draw the wrong picture, or write the wrong book.”

Affleck, however, called these characterizations “gross and racist” and argued that Maher and Harris were just conflating the minority views of radical jihadists with the beliefs of the rest of the world’s estimated 1.6 billion Muslims. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof also jumped in on the conversation at points. Watch the full debate above.

6 Questions You Might Have About Hong Kong’s Umbrella Revolution

Posted: 05 Oct 2014 08:32 AM PDT

1. Why the umbrellas?

Hong Kong students are currently protesting for more political freedom and have been using umbrellas to protect themselves from police pepper spray. The umbrellas became a symbol of the movement and gave it its nickname, the Umbrella Revolution. Though protest leaders say their campaign is not a revolution but a civil disobedience movement, the name Umbrella Revolution has stuck.

2. Who are the main players?

The movement was initiated by a group called Occupy Central with Love and Peace, led by Hong Kong University law professor Benny Tai. Tai’s original agenda was to stage a sit-in on Oct. 1 in Central — the city’s financial district — but he decided to begin a few days earlier to capitalize on political momentum after several students were pepper-sprayed and arrested. That heavy handed police action also spurred parallel sit-ins in Causeway Bay and across the water in Kowloon.

There are also student groups separate from Occupy Central but with very similar aims. The two main ones are Scholarism, led by a precocious 17-year-old, Joshua Wong, and the Hong Kong Federation of Students, led by Alex Chow, 24, and his deputy Lester Shum.

3. So what do Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protesters want?

The main demand is full democracy. Protesters want the right to nominate and directly elect the head of the Hong Kong government, known as the Chief Executive.

China, which resumed sovereignty over Hong Kong after it stopped being a British colony in 1997, wants to screen who can stand for office. Beijing insists that candidates for the Chief Executive position must be vetted by an electoral committee of tycoons, oligarchs and pro-Beijing figures.

As a secondary demand, protestors want the current Chief Executive, Leung Chun-ying, to resign, which he has flatly refused to do. Leung is widely disliked because he is seen as prioritizing China’s interests over Hong Kong’s. He was also indirectly elected by an electoral college of just 1,200 voters, of which 689 voted for him. He is mockingly referred to as “689” after this feeble tally.

4. Well, why doesn’t China just let Hong Kong have more freedom?

The Communist Party insists on maintaining political control. It isn’t about to let China’s most international city—which is already highly porous—choose its own leader, in case an opponent of the Communist Party gets elected as Chief Executive and becomes an advertisement to the rest of China of the possibility of democratic change.

At the same time, Beijing is aware that Hong Kong, because of its past as a British territory, is a special case. Hong Kong has an independent judiciary, common law, freedom of information and movement, a reasonably free press, and so on. The Communist Party thinks this semi-autonomy should be enough for Hong Kong, but a well-educated and well-traveled generation of young Hong Kongers wants more. They have always enjoyed Western-style freedoms and want the political enfranchisement that comes with it. They feel little in common with Mainland Chinese and want Hong Kong to become politically autonomous—almost independent. These are the people at the forefront of the Umbrella Revolution.

5. Does everyone in Hong Kong support this movement?

No. Many, especially the older generation, are actively opposed to it because they are afraid of antagonizing China. They remember the bloody suppression of the Tiananmen uprising in Beijing in 1989, and point to the currently harsh political climate in China, and conclude that Hong Kong’s Umbrella Revolution is doomed. They argue that, by challenging the party, the students are only inviting Beijing to withdraw the freedoms that Hong Kong does have.

The older generation is also more concerned about economic stability. It’s already hard enough to make a living in hyper-expensive Hong Kong, they say, without sit-ins bringing the city to a halt, and all in the name of a cause that has no hope of winning anyway.

6. What happens next?

Nobody is really sure. But whether the current occupations end peacefully, with a student withdrawal, or violently, with riot police sent in, one thing is certain: Hong Kong’s democratic movement is only just getting started. It will come out of this with greater skills and experience and it will have groomed young leaders who know how to mobilize hundreds of thousands of people, and who know how to put across their cause in international media. For the party bosses in Beijing, that’s a big headache. Watch this space.

Texas Company Recalls Nearly 91,000 Pounds of Beef

Posted: 05 Oct 2014 08:22 AM PDT

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas (AP) — The U.S. Department of Agriculture says a Texas company is recalling nearly 91,000 pounds of ground beef products that might be contaminated with pieces of metal.

Corpus Christi-based Sam Kane Beef Processors is recalling the beef products after four consumer complaints were received about pieces of metal, approximately 3 mm in size, being found.

Three of the products being recalled — packages of 3, 5 and 10 pounds — were sold by HEB stores and another was a set of 10 pound packages of formed patties made from Sam Kane Beef Processors “Ground Chuck.”

The packages were produced between Sept. 9, 2014 and Sept. 18, 2014, with sell by dates between Sept. 29, 2014 and Oct. 8, 2014. The products were shipped to retail outlets in Texas.

Giants-Nats Game Longest in Postseason History

Posted: 05 Oct 2014 08:10 AM PDT

The San Francisco Giants’ 2-1 victory over the Washington Nationals this weekend was the longest Major League Baseball postseason game in history, going for 18 innings — literally two games’ worth of innings — and lasting for six hours and 23 minutes.

The record-setting event technically spans days: the second game in the National League Division Series began around 5:37 p.m. ET on Saturday, Oct. 4, but finished after midnight on Sunday, which also happens to be the birthday of Nats pitcher Tanner Roark, according to MLB.com.

The previous record for longest postseason game was set in 2005, when the Houston Astros beat the Atlanta Braves 7-6 in game four of the NLDS, which took five hours and 50 minutes.

[MLB]

Three U.S. Airmen Missing After Typhoon Hits Okinawa

Posted: 05 Oct 2014 08:09 AM PDT

Three airmen in Okinawa, Japan, were missing and feared drowned Sunday after being swept away by waves caused by Typhoon Phanfone, the U.S Air Force and local coastguard officials said. “Three airmen were washed out to sea from the northwest coast of Okinawa” at about 3:45 p.m. local time (2.45 a.m. ET), the Kadena Air Base said in a statement.

A coastguard helicopter was deployed to search for the three shortly after 4 p.m. local time (3 a.m. ET) Sunday, officials told NBC News. One body was found at 5.52 p.m. (4.52 a.m. ET), the coastguard said – but this was not confirmed by military officials …

Read the rest of the story from our partners at NBC News

WATCH: Hong Kong Student Leader Joshua Wong Talks Protest Aims

2014-10-04T11:19:00.001-07:00

WATCH: Hong Kong Student Leader Joshua Wong Talks Protest Aims

WATCH: Hong Kong Student Leader Joshua Wong Talks Protest Aims
Howard University Patient Does Not Have Ebola
Family of U.S. Ebola Patient Moved
Ousted Haitian Dictator, Jean-Claude Duvalier Dies
The 13 Biggest Differences Between the Gone Girl Movie and the Book
This iPhone App is Tinder for Deleting Unwanted Photos
Report: Hackers Attacked 9 Other Financial Firms Besides JPMorgan
Dallas Hospital No Longer Blaming Technical Glitch for Sending Ebola Patient Home
Meet the Woman Heading Facebook’s Huge International Growth
I Don’t Have Student Loans and I Don’t Feel Bad for People Who Do

WATCH: Hong Kong Student Leader Joshua Wong Talks Protest Aims

Posted: 04 Oct 2014 10:45 AM PDT

Howard University Patient Does Not Have Ebola

Posted: 04 Oct 2014 10:28 AM PDT

The Howard University Hospital patient being tested for Ebola does not have the disease, according to the Washington, D.C. Department of Health and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Howard University spokeswoman Kerry-Ann Hamilton said health officials “ruled out” a case of Ebola in the patient, who had recently traveled to Nigeria.

In a separate news conference Saturday, CDC officials said that the dozens of people who had direct or indirect contact with a Texas patient currently being treated for Ebola do not themselves show symptoms of the disease. Thomas Duncan, who traveled to Liberia and contracted Ebola, was first sent home from a Dallas hospital despite health staff having access to his travel history. He was later readmitted when his conditioned worsened and diagnosed with Ebola.

“We have identified everyone that may have contact with him and none of those individuals have any symptoms at this time,” said Tom Frieden, director of the CDC. About 5o individuals had some level of contact with Duncan, including health staff, several schoolchildren, and Duncan’s girlfriend and roommates.

Freiden said screening processes at airports in affected African countries had prevented 77 people from boarding a plane to travel internationally through the use of thermometers or by identifying obvious symptoms of Ebola.

The number of individuals calling the CDC out of fear of having Ebola has increased since Duncan was diagnosed, Frieden said.

Family of U.S. Ebola Patient Moved

Posted: 04 Oct 2014 10:21 AM PDT

The partner of Thomas Duncan, the first person to develop Ebola in the United States, and the three young men living with her in the Dallas apartment where Duncan stayed before he became sick have been moved to a temporary residence, health officials said Saturday.

Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, who heads up the city’s emergency response, drove the four individuals to their new home on Friday night. Jenkins said on Friday that he hoped to find them accommodations with appliances that would make the four family members more comfortable during their quarantine, such as their own washer and dryer.

In a Saturday news conference, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Tom Frieden said CDC and local health officials are now monitoring 40 people who had some level of contact with Duncan, including nine who had direct contact with Duncan. It’s not clear how many of those are health care workers or patients at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, where Duncan remains in serious condition, and how many are community members, including those who live in the apartment complex.

Medical waste generated by Duncan during his stay at the hospital, including gowns and personal protective equipment worn by health care providers caring for him, remain at the hospital, said Dr. David Lakey, commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services. The waste removal company has now secured the proper Department of Transportation hazmat permits to transport the waste, and is set to do so on Monday.

Ousted Haitian Dictator, Jean-Claude Duvalier Dies

Posted: 04 Oct 2014 09:47 AM PDT

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Jean-Claude-Duvalier, the self-proclaimed “president for life” of Haiti whose corrupt and brutal regime sparked a popular uprising that sent him into a 25-year exile, died Saturday of a heart attack, his attorney said.

Reynold George said the 63-year-old ex-leader died at his home. He was 63.

Duvalier, looking somewhat frail, made a surprise return to Haiti in 2011, allowing victims of his regime to pursue legal claims against him and prompting some old allies to rally around him. Neither side gained much support, and the once-feared dictator known as “Baby Doc” spent his late years in relative obscurity in the leafy hills above the Haitian capital.

Duvalier was the son of Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier, a medical doctor-turned-dictator who promoted “Noirisme,” a movement that sought to highlight Haiti’s African roots over its European ones while uniting the black majority against a mulatto elite in a country divided by class and color.

The regimes of both leaders tortured and killed political opponents and relied on a dreaded civilian militia known as the Tonton Macoutes.

In 1971, Francois Duvalier suddenly died of an illness and named his son to succeed him. At 19, Jean-Claude Duvalier became the world’s youngest president.

The son was regarded as a lackluster student at a prestigious private Catholic school in the capital but his teachers gave him passing grades anyway to avoid fury from the National Palace, according to “Written in Blood” a history of the country by Robert Debs Heinl and Nancy Gordon Heinl.

Jean-Claude Duvalier ruled for 15 years, his administration seen as less violent and repressive than his father’s. Echoes of press freedom and personal criticism, never tolerated under his father, emerged — sporadically — because of international pressure. Still, human rights groups documented abuses and political persecution. A trio of prisons known as the “Triangle of Death,” which included the much-feared Fort Dimanche for long-term inmates, symbolized the brutality of his regime.

As president, he married the daughter of a wealthy coffee merchant, Michele Bennett, in 1980. The engagement caused a scandal among old Duvalierists, for she was a mulatto and the arrangement ran counter to the Noirisme movement Duvalier’s father espoused. The wedding was a lavish affair, complete with imported champagne, flowers and fireworks. The ceremony, reported to have cost $5 million, was carried live on television to the impoverished nation. After they exchanged vows, Michele ordered her tubby husband to go on a diet.

Under Duvalier’s rule, Haiti saw widespread demographic changes. Peasants moved to the capital in search of work as factories popped up to meet the growing demand for cheap labor. Thousands of professionals fled a climate of repression for cities such as New York, Miami and Montreal.

And aid began to flow from the United States and agencies such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

The tourists followed, some in search of a form of tropical hedonism that included booze, prostitution and Voodoo ceremonies for which the country became legendary. Tourism collapsed in the early 1980s after Florida doctors noted that an unusual number of AIDS cases were coming from Haitian emigres, even though the disease was believed to have been brought from the U.S.

But it was corruption and human rights abuses that defined Duvalier rule.

The National Palace became known for opulent parties as Michele took overseas shopping sprees to decorate and collect fur coats. Duvalier relished taking his presidential yacht out for a spin and racing about in sports cars.

Under mounting pressure from the administration of U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Duvalier made pretenses of improving the country’s human rights record by releasing political prisoners. Still, journalists and activists were jailed or exiled. Haitians without visas or money left by boarding flimsy boats in a desperate effort to reach Florida shores.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch estimated that up to 30,000 Haitians were killed, many by execution, under the regime of the two Duvaliers.

As Haiti’s living conditions deteriorated, Pope John-Paul II made a visit in 1983 and famously declared: “Things must change.”

Three years later, they did. A popular uprising swept across Haiti, and Duvalier and his wife boarded a U.S.-government C-141 for France.

The couple divorced in 1993. Duvalier later became involved with Veronique Roy, who accompanied him on his 2011 return to Haiti.

While in exile in France, Duvalier was never known to hold a job. He occasionally made public statements about his eagerness to return to Haiti. Supporters periodically marched on his behalf in the Haitian capital.

On Jan. 16, 2011, Duvalier made his surprise return. He said he wanted to help in the reconstruction of Haiti, whose capital and outlying cities were heavily damaged in a magnitude-7.0 earthquake the year before. But many suspected he came back in an effort to reclaim money he had allegedly stashed. Others said he merely wanted to die in his homeland.

More than 20 victims of his rule stepped forward to file charges that ranged from false imprisonment to torture. Human Rights Watch issued a report saying that Duvalier may not have directly participated in the torture and killings under his regime, but that there was enough evidence to prosecute him.

Despite the occasional stay in the hospital, Duvalier seemed to enjoy his new life back home and was free to roam the capital. He was spotted attending government ceremonies, dining with friends in several high-end restaurants and avoided jail time. In 2013 he began renovating an old house that Roy said had been destroyed in the wake of his 1986 ouster.

The efforts to prosecute him stumbled along. Duvalier stunned human rights observers and alleged victims of his regime in 2013 when he testified about his rule before an investigating judge. A year later, a judge overturned an earlier court decision and ruled that Duvalier could face crimes against humanity charges.

But in the end the case stalled because officials did little to move it along.

Duvalier and his wife Michele had two children, son Francois Nicolas “Nico” Duvalier and a daughter, Anya.

The 13 Biggest Differences Between the Gone Girl Movie and the Book

Posted: 04 Oct 2014 09:21 AM PDT

The film version of Gone Girl, which hit theaters this weekend, follows the novel closely: both move at a breakneck speed and the plot twists are the same. (And yes, despite rumors to the contrary, the film does having the same ending as the novel.) But there are a few things that author Gillian Flynn altered as she wrote the screenplay version of her New York Times bestselling novel.

Here’s what changed:

(Warning: There are spoilers for both the book and film versions of Gone Girl ahead.)

1. The Eight-Month Gap

In Flynn’s original book version, after Amy and Nick meet for the first time, they don’t see each other for eight months until they meet again (seemingly randomly) on the street. This part is completely cut from the movie, as is the inside joke that reunites them: “Just one olive.” However, Flynn did add in a bit about Nick’s chin being untrustworthy, an inside joke the two share throughout the film.

2. The Proposal

In the movie, Nick proposes to Amy while at a book party for her parents’ latest Amazing Amy book. It’s a charming scene, but it’s not in the book. Though Diary Amy writes a good deal about her and Nick’s early relationship, she never writes about how Nick proposed to her. The movie does, however, skip Amy’s stories of taking care of Nick’s dying mother, of Nick skipping their anniversary to go to a strip club with laid-off coworkers and her suspicions of his cheating.

3. The Mall Investigation

In the book, Nick, some friends and Amy’s father go to the abandoned mall with baseball bats to confront the out-of-work Blue Book Boys about Amy’s disappearance. It’s there that they learn Amy tried to buy a gun. In the movie, it’s the detectives who go to the mall and discover this crucial piece of information.

4. The Number of Clues

Nick only has to travel to three locations to find Amy’s anniversary clues in the movie: his office, his father’s house and the shed behind his sister Margo’s house. Director David Fincher and Flynn cut out a clue from the book that led Nick to Hannibal, Missouri (home of Mark Twain), a place he has visited with both Amy and his mistress Andie. The movie also skips Amy’s loving notes to Nick that make him fall back in love with her during the treasure hunt that say flattering things like “You are WITTY.”

5. Amy’s Fear of Blood

For a year before she fakes her death, Amy pretends to have a fear of blood–even pretending to pass out while watching her mother-in-law donate marrow–in order to throw the police off her trail when she spills her blood all over their floor. But that plot line is completely cut out of the movie. (The way she spills her blood in the movie, using an IV, is also much neater than in the book, where she simply takes a box cutter to her arm.)

6. Nick’s Father

Nick’s father plays a major role in the book: Nick talks about his father’s misogyny and his own struggle against what he says is an inherited impulse to hate women. (Ben Affleck was spared from uttering the many internal “stupid bitch” thoughts Nick has while interacting with investigators, groupies and other women in the book.) Early in the book, some readers may have even thought Nick’s father was involved in Amy’s disappearance, since he escapes from his assisted living center the same morning that Amy goes missing. It turns out that Amy secretly visited Nick’s father and encouraged him to visit the house, drawing suspicion towards Nick. But in the film, Nick’s dad only shows up once, at the police station.

7. Amy’s Parents

Amy’s parents have a much smaller role in the movie than in the book. In the book, Nick desperately needs them as strategic allies to win public favor. Amy also writes extensively about her upbringing–her mother had several miscarriages before having Amy, and named all the unborn babies Hope. The Hopes, whose birthdays are remembered every year, hang over Amy’s head all her life, since she will never be able to achieve the perfection of an unborn child. The Hopes are not mentioned in the movie, and Amy’s parents are basically background characters.

8. Andie Attacking Nick

In the book, Nick breaks up with his mistress Andie because his lawyer, Tanner Bolt, tells him to. Andie responds by biting Nick, a confrontation that never takes place in the film.

9. Tommy O’Hara and Hilary Handy

The high school friend that Amy accused of stalking was cut from the movie, even though she’s one of Nick’s first clues as to Amy’s duplicitous behavior in the book. And Tommy’s fate is much grimmer in the movie than in the book. In the movie, after Amy accuses him of rape, he pleads down his sentence. Nick finds him jobless and dateless in New York since he must legally identify himself as a sexual offender. In the book, he and Nick talk on the phone rather than in person and Tommy says Amy dropped the charges against him.

10. The Rebecca Interview

In the book, a young reporter named Rebecca talks Nick in the bar and gets him to say he loves Amy. The interview wins him back some public favor. This scene is missing from the movie.

11. Desi’s Death

Leave it to David Fincher to make an already-gruesome scene even more disturbing. In the book, Amy drugs Desi before cutting his throat and murdering him. In the movie, she does it mid-sex with blood spilling all over her, her white bra and the white bed. (Amy’s fake story to win Desi’s trust in the first place–that her father sexually abused her–is also missing, as is Desi’s mother.)

12. Amy’s Safeguard

In the book, Amy poisons herself with anti-freeze and then vomits it up and saves it. She threatens to use it as evidence that Nick tried to kill her if she ever tried to leave. Nick discovers the vomit and disposes of it. The refrigerated vomit is thankfully missing from the film.

13. The “Cool Girl” Speech

The famous “Cool Girl” speech was partially rewritten for the movie.

This iPhone App is Tinder for Deleting Unwanted Photos

Posted: 04 Oct 2014 08:46 AM PDT

Finally, there’s an app that makes it as easy to dismiss photos from your iPhone picture library as it is to dismiss human beings who you could potentially meet in real life.

Flic is an app that allows users to delete photos with a Tinder-like flick of the finger, and it’s particularly useful for trigger-happy photographers who tend to have multiple shots of the same scene. Users swipe left to delete a photo and swipe right to keep it.

Flic/iTunes

From Lifehack Labs, Flic is currently available on the iOS App Store for Apple iPhones.

Report: Hackers Attacked 9 Other Financial Firms Besides JPMorgan

Posted: 04 Oct 2014 08:22 AM PDT

JPMorgan Chase, which was hit by a massive hack disclosed in August, was just one of 10 financial institutions infiltrated by a group of overseas hackers that may have connections to officials in the Russian government, according to a new report.

Unnamed sources told the New York Times that the hackers who stole addresses, names, email addresses and phone numbers from 76 million households and 7 million small businesses by attacking JPMorgan’s systems appeared to have at least loose connections with officials of the Russian government.

Officials said it was unclear whether the hackers were politically motivated. “It could be in retaliation for the sanctions” placed on Russia, one senior official briefed on the intelligence told the Times. “But it could be mixed motives — to steal if they can, or to sell whatever information they could glean.”

Besides attacking JPMorgan, the group of hackers also hacked nine other financial institutions whose identities have yet to be disclosed.

The security team at JPMorgan, the country’s largest bank by assets, was able to block hackers from compromising the most sensitive information about tens of millions of customers, security experts told the Times.

The bank was only able to halt the attack by the middle of August, and in recent days discovered the full extent of the attack.

[NYT]

Dallas Hospital No Longer Blaming Technical Glitch for Sending Ebola Patient Home

Posted: 04 Oct 2014 07:07 AM PDT

The Texas hospital that initially released the first Ebola patient diagnosed in the United States acknowledged Friday evening that medical staff had access to the fact that he had just arrived from Liberia, one of the countries worst hit by the outbreak, raising questions about the hospital’s procedures.

Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas first admitted Liberian national Thomas E. Duncan in its emergency room on Sept. 25. Duncan was then sent away on the mistaken belief that he had a low-grade fever from a viral infection, allowing him to come in potential contact with dozens of people, some of whom are now being monitored for the virus. A nurse initially failed to tell a doctor that Duncan had just come from Liberia, and a physician didn’t ask. Duncan was readmitted to the hospital three days later when his symptoms worsened.

Initially, on Thursday, Texas Health blamed a technical flaw in its electronic health records system for its decision to send Duncan home. But on Friday evening, the hospital took back that statement and said “there was no flaw” in its records, the New York Times reports, and that hospital staff could see Duncan had been in Liberia.

The “patient’s travel history was documented and available to the full care team in the electronic health record (E.H.R.), including within the physician’s workflow,” acknowledged the hospital.

“In a well-functioning emergency department, doctors and nurses talk to each other,” Dr. Ashish Jha, a professor at Harvard University’s School of Public Health, told the Times. “Also, why didn’t the physician think to ask the question separately? Anyone who comes in with a febrile illness, a travel history, that’s a fundamental part of understanding what might be going on.”

More than 3,000 people have already died of Ebola in Africa. In the U.S., health officials have narrowed down the list of people considered most at risk of contracting Ebola to 10 while moving the four people with whom Duncan shared an apartment from their potentially contaminated quarters.

[NYT]

Meet the Woman Heading Facebook’s Huge International Growth

Posted: 04 Oct 2014 06:05 AM PDT

Like many of the U.S. tech giants, Facebook is increasingly betting its financial future overseas. The company, whose social network has already achieved widespread adoption in North America and Western Europe, is focusing more of its resources on fast-developing markets like Africa, the Middle East and India. In April Facebook announced that it had 100 million users in India, and it reached the same milestone in Africa in September.

The company is trying to get more people in these regions online through its Internet.org initiative, which aims to beam Internet connectivity to remote areas. At the same time Facebook is courting marketers by offering up region-specific advertising units that are tailored to the different ways people communicate around the world.

During New York’s Advertising Week, TIME sat down with Nicola Mendelsohn, Facebook’s Vice President for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, to discuss the growth of Facebook’s business abroad, how privacy concerns differ across cultures and whether Yo isn’t such a crazy app idea after all.

TIME: Obviously Facebook’s mobile transition has been a big story the past couple of years. But here when people think about it, they think of smartphones. Was Facebook’s feature phone business one that happened after smartphones or was it happening concurrently?

Mendelsohn: Two thirds of the world are accessing Facebook through feature phones, so it’s a hugely important part of how people access the platform. What we’re trying to do is make the world more open and connected so people can share more. Mobile means many different things depending on where on the planet you are and how you access Facebook and the Internet.

We’ve made a change in how we go to market in terms of our advertising products. It used to be that we had exactly the same advertising product all around the world. We’ve now started to place more and more resources in the developing markets, like Africa, like India, like Indonesia, to really understand how people are using Facebook, how they’re using mobile and come up with different products that work better there.

One is an insight borne out of what we saw in India. Data is expensive, and for a lot of people it can be prohibitive in terms of how they access Facebook or the Internet. What we saw was a whole “missed calls” phenomenon that was going on. Between us we’d create our own language—one missed call means go pick the kids up, two means let’s meet for a drink, three means I’ll meet you for lunch or whatever it is. We set up the missed call product so that advertisers could have the opportunity to tap into this meme and deliver information to people, some of whom are coming onto the Internet and to Facebook for the very first time and who are actually really excited to get messaging from advertisers. That’s the first place that we’ve done this, and the results are such that we’re going to look to do this in South Africa as well.

TIME: You just mentioned that a lot of people in these markets might be excited about seeing advertising because they haven’t been exposed to the Internet as much. Is the appetite for ads there higher than in America, where people are exposed to ads all the time?

Mendelsohn: People like advertising if it’s relevant and entertaining and useful to them. What we see in some of the high-growth markets is that brands are talking to them for the very first time, and there is an excitement about that because it’s new and it has not happened before. We see behaviors where people actually share the adverts that they see with other people because it’s of interest and it’s new information.

TIME: Out of that 100 million users in Africa, which are the countries you are most focused on?

A: That’s Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa.

TIME: Do you expect, going forward, that the feature phone market is going to increase, or do you see with Android One and these cheaper smartphones that people are going to transition to those devices really quickly?

I think there will be an acceleration of these cheaper smartphones, driven in particular by the price. But I think they’re not going to have all the same features that the ones we have in the U.S. and the U.K. have. There will still be challenges on things like data costs. Actually the challenge becomes greater when you have the smartphone because it has access to so many more bells, gadgets, widgets. If you want to connect the planet, data and cost is something that is prohibitive to that. It’s one of the reasons that Mark Zuckerberg launched Internet.org.

TIME: Facebook’s average revenue generated per user is much lower in these emerging markets than it is in the U.S. What is Facebook’s plan to boost that number in the future?

What is the primary concern in this part of the world is how we connect everyone to the Internet. That’s the primary focus. In terms of the ARPU, that will emerge in different ways.

TIME: You’re dealing with a lot of different types of cultures across a vast number of countries. Do you see different privacy concerns in different areas? How do you deal with that on an individual basis?

For us, privacy is the most important issue and making sure that people know and are in control of the data they share and who they share it with. I think that’s important for people wherever you are the world. One of the nuanced differences that we see in some of these countries is the fact that people like to be friends with lots more people than perhaps they might in mainland Europe. We see people want to have lots of friends, including people that they’ve never never before, and share information with those people. That is a difference that might sit uncomfortably with other people in different parts of the world.

TIME: Are you familiar with the app Yo?

No, I’m not. Tell me about Yo.

TIME: All it does is send the word Yo to other people. It was actually pretty heavily mocked when it came out over the summer. But it sounds like from what you’re saying that’s a logical use case that actually exists, where people would want to send a single word that can provide context about what they’re doing.

I can’t talk to [Yo], but I think people communicate in different ways. The uptake in stickers—people sending emoticons just to express their feelings—is a different way of showing how people communicate. Not necessarily in Africa but in some of the more developed markets. People are becoming much more visual.

We’ve always seen with any new technology that’s come on since the printing press, that it causes people to think about how they communicate in different ways. One of the things that’s been surprising about this technology revolution is that it’s shortened some of the ways that we communicate with each other rather than increasing it. If the printing press meant that we could write canon of books, the mobile phone means I can write “LOL” and we both understand what that means.

I Don’t Have Student Loans and I Don’t Feel Bad for People Who Do

Posted: 04 Oct 2014 06:00 AM PDT

This story originally appeared on xoJane.com.

My father is not a Wall Street banker. I’m not a member of the so-called “1 percent.” My mother isn’t an heiress and I’m not some genius who earned a full scholarship to the institution of my choice.

Yet somehow, by what most of my friends think was the wave of some fairy godmother’s wand, I graduated college without student loans.

Stats from the Department of Education show outstanding student loans total more than $1 trillion. A report from The Institute for College Access in late 2013 revealed the average new graduate starts his or her life with $29,400 in student loan debt. College as we know it is clearly unaffordable.

So my question is: Why do people keep embarking on the “traditional college experience” when they know it’s going to put them tens — sometimes hundreds — of thousands of dollars in debt?

And while some people say these 18-year-old kids don’t know what they’re getting themselves into, let’s not pretend we don’t know better. I distinctly remember asking my friend how he would pay off the roughly $70,000 debt he would incur to obtain a major in Ancient Greek and Latin at a liberal arts college in the Midwest. His answer? A simple shrug and flippant “It’s not something I have to worry about right now — hopefully they’ll be forgiven by the government.” Now that he’s still waiting tables four years after graduation, I’d say it’s well past time to start worrying.

I can’t pretend I completely understand how these people feel after the fun is over and the repayments begin, but I can say that I really don’t feel bad for them.

Why not? Because I worked hard to avoid taking out loans. My wonderful parents and grandmother helped me pay for my education, but in the end, it was a few decisions I made that saved me the burden of borrowing money I would never have been able to pay back. Unlike the majority of my friends who went to schools less than an hour from their parents’ homes and chose to live on campus rather than commute, my college roommates were named Mom and Dad. I chose state schools that were half, sometimes one-quarter, of the cost of the schools my friends were attending and worked a part-time on-campus scholarship job in addition to full-time hours at my retail job. I spent the four years of my life designed for partying essentially reliving my high school years. And yes, it was awful.

Imagine the stereotypical American college experience. You pick some private university in the middle of a cornfield with a tuition price of about $36,000 a year, plus room and board, party it up every night since you’ve finally escaped the teenage hellhole known as your family’s home, and stumble into your Symbolism in Harry Potter seminar at 11 a.m. still half-drunk and probably reeking of Icehouse. You join a sorority, get vomit in your hair more times than you’re willing to admit publicly, and spend half the day on whatever flavor-of-the-week social media site the guy you currently like is active on.

Sounds fun — until you realize all this will probably leave you at least $30,000 in the hole upon receiving that diploma. And guess what? Unless you absolutely needed some highly specialized major that was only offered at a few schools, chances are you probably could have gotten your education/accounting/psychology degree at a much more affordable university closer to home. You might have even been able to — gasp — live with your parents.

My college experience couldn’t have been further from the scenarios most of my friends lived, but I guess that’s what happens when you opt for the cheap route. You thought your college roommates were weird? Try living with a mother who has a disturbing penchant for singing Chris Brown and LMFAO songs and accidentally throws a Sharpie in the dryer with your load of freshly washed (and now ruined) clothes.

Remember that friend you had who went through a different boyfriend each week? This habit of constantly picking up something new applies to my father, but in the form of hobbies, not college-aged jocks. During my time living at home in college, I think it is safe to assume my dad acquired roughly 70 new pastimes. Among them were more traditional leisure activities like drawing, but a few were rather unusual — beekeeping, winemaking, beer brewing, and pretending to make merkins out of the hair the dog was shedding.

Of course, we can’t forget the fact that my younger brothers were also living at home during this period, albeit at separate times. Never underestimate the power of annoyance a brother yields — this is especially true when your youngest sibling loves Mariah Carey and weightlifting and has a tendency to say things like “I’m looking pretty vascular today,” as he downs a protein shake and six chicken breasts. You may find it’s uncomfortable to invite friends over when they’re home on college breaks as your brother, in an effort to show off his muscles, is in a near-constant state of undress, prompting your father to create a rule that forbids shirtlessness in the kitchen.

And the middle brother one of your high school friends thought was so cute? He’s not looking so cute these days when she comes over and he’s passed out on the couch — probably hungover — in his tighty whities with a half-eaten box of Oreos on his chest. When he wakes up from that nap he’s going to drink your apple juice — which, by the way, he doesn’t even like — just to piss you off. And if he’s really feeling like living dangerously, he’ll probably polish off that giant muffin you couldn’t finish and specifically labeled “FOR JES – DO NOT EAT.”

It wasn’t your average sorority house or dorm room, but it saved me tens of thousands of dollars, considering room and board at most universities in Chicago is roughly $9,000 a year. I’m not even going to pretend to feel sorry for my friends who moan about the financial crunch of paying back the money they borrowed to pay for their dorm rooms or off-campus apartments. After all, you get what you pay for — if you wanted your student housing to be free, you probably should have been prepared to listen to your mom singing that song about Apple Bottom jeans whenever you came home from class.

I’m curious about how everyone else went about the ever-growing student loan issue during college. Did anybody live at home to avoid taking out loans or keep their student debt to a minimum? And for the ladies with loans: Do you wish you’d done anything differently during your college years to limit your debt?

Jessica Slizewski is originally from Chicago but currently lives in New Zealand.

Howard University Students ‘Shocked’ By Possible Ebola Case

2014-10-03T11:48:00.001-07:00

Howard University Students ‘Shocked’ By Possible Ebola Case

Howard University Students ‘Shocked’ By Possible Ebola Case
Why People Post Annoying Status Updates on Facebook
This Hotel Allegedly Blocked Your Wi-Fi Hotspot
Five Things We Learned About Lady Gaga From Her Reddit AMA
5 Unique Junk-Food Gadgets for Under $70
Review: Annabelle Conjures Up a Devil Doll
Dog Owner Sentenced to Prison in Fatal Mauling
Everything You Need to Know About the Newest Star Wars Show
8 Ebola Terms You Need to Know
How Justin Bieber Killed the Mustache

Howard University Students ‘Shocked’ By Possible Ebola Case

Posted: 03 Oct 2014 10:58 AM PDT

Typically at the start of October, freshman students like Quencey Hickerson, 18, would be preparing for their first Howard University homecoming. But on Friday, Hickerson and her fellow students were preoccupied with news of a possible case of Ebola virus being treated at the Howard University Hospital, which lies on the southern end of the Washington, D.C. school’s campus.

Hickerson, who heard the news via social media, told TIME she was “shocked” by the news. “I didn’t expect [the virus] to spread so quickly,” Hickerson said.

Though the patient might not actually have Ebola and hospital officials say they have taken the necessary steps to isolate the patient, the virus’ potential spread was on the minds of many students at the historically black college.

“Campus is freaking out and this isn’t even confirmed,” said Blake Newby, 19, who also found out via social media. The sophomore student said the news of the possible case at Howard was a double whammy, as the first person to develop Ebola in the United States during the recent outbreak is being treated in her home state of Texas.

Howard University and its hospital have been reluctant to share further details about the case on Friday afternoon. In a statement, university spokesperson Dr. Kerry Ann Hamilton said the university would “provide periodic updates as information becomes available,” but the hospital is being careful to avoid running afoul of patient privacy laws.

For Newby, the university’s precaution was appreciated. “The second people see Ebola and Howard in the same sentence they assume it means there’s Ebola on Howard’s campus.” And that’s nowhere near accurate.

Why People Post Annoying Status Updates on Facebook

Posted: 03 Oct 2014 10:55 AM PDT

People who aren’t emotionally stable post more frequently in order to regulate their emotions and receive social support.

Low emotionally stable individuals experience emotions more intensely and have difficulty regulating their emotions on their own. Consequently, we suggest that they use the microblogging feature on online social networks (e.g., Tweets or Facebook status updates) to help regulate their emotions. Accordingly, we find that less emotionally stable individuals microblog more frequently and share their emotions more when doing so, a tendency that is not observed offline. Further, such sharing, paired with the potential to receive social support, helps boost their well-being.

Source: “Facebook Therapy: Why People Share Self-Relevant Content Online” by Eva Buechel and Jonah Berger

It might be a good strategy because, overall, Facebook users do get more emotional support than other people. (Here are some great tips by experts for using Facebook to enhance your happiness.)

The potential downside is that on Facebook everyone shows the best and not the worst, leading to portraits of unattainable lives that can make people feel bad by comparison. And the truth is, Facebook promotes mainly weak, low-commitment friendships.

Your Facebook profile probably reveals your true personality. It can tell people whether you have anxiety and even predict your job performance.

Your Facebook profile is as indicative of how extroverted you are as actually sitting down with you for a short meeting. It can predict your openness to experience as well as watching your social behavior.

Via Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You:

(Bigger blob indicates the item at the top is more telling about the characteristic on the left.)

Your Facebook “relationship status” says a lot about how happy you probably are.

What’s a really good sign? Men who listed their partnership status (“In a relationship with…”) and women whose profile picture displayed their partner both had happier relationships.

In fact, Facebook can predict with a 33% accuracy who you’ll be dating next week:

Via The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World:

As the service’s engineers built more and more tools that could uncover such insights, Zuckerberg sometimes amused himself by conducting experiments. For instance, he concluded that by examining friend relationships and communications patterns he could determine with about 33 percent accuracy who a user was going to be in a relationship with a week from now. To deduce this he studied who was looking at which profiles, who your friends were friends with, and who was newly single, among other indicators.

And those people posting all those status updates to regulate their emotions may not be aware of the main reason for un-friending:

Posting too many boring updates.

Join 25K+ readers. Get a free weekly update via email here.

Is Facebook making us lonely?

Does email turn you into an asshole?

5 things you didn’t know about friendship

This piece originally appeared on Barking Up the Wrong Tree.

This Hotel Allegedly Blocked Your Wi-Fi Hotspot

Posted: 03 Oct 2014 10:52 AM PDT

Marriott has agreed to pay a civil penalty of $600,000 to resolve Federal Communications Commission allegations that the chain’s Nashville, Tenn. hotel used Wi-Fi “jammers” to prevent customers from creating hot spots with their smart phones or other devices. According to terms of the settlement, Marriott has agreed to pay the fine without admitting to any specific violation.

By blocking personal hot spots, the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center, operated by Marriott, allegedly raked in thousands of dollars in Wi-Fi fees from hotel patrons who had no other option but to use the hotel’s Wi-Fi for internet access, according to an FCC announcement released Friday. The jammers targeted the hotel’s convention center, where rates for internet access range from $250 to $1,000 per device.

“Consumers who purchase cellular data plans should be able to use them without fear that their personal Internet connection will be blocked by their hotel or conference center,” said Travis LeBlanc, head of the FCC’s enforcement bureau. “It is unacceptable for any hotel to intentionally disable personal hotspots.”

According to the terms of the consent decree, Marriott will also implement procedures to improve its handling of IT issues at the Nashville hotel.

Marriott did not immediately reply to Time’s request for comment on the settlement.

Five Things We Learned About Lady Gaga From Her Reddit AMA

Posted: 03 Oct 2014 10:38 AM PDT

Reddit, the internet clearinghouse for rumors and jokes about horse-sized ducks, is a strange place to promote a jazz album. But never let it be said that Lady Gaga isn’t an innovator.

In an “Ask Me Anything” session today, the pop singer — whose album-length collaboration with Tony Bennett, Cheek to Cheek, recently debuted at number one on the charts — ran through her recent history. Turns out that even one of the most exposed celebrities of the past decade had things left to reveal.

The choice of venue may be a sign that the pop star is learning to pivot. Her 2013 album, Artpop, generated no major hit songs and was a sales disappointment, despite a near-overwhelming publicity blitz; in promoting Cheek to Cheek, the star appears to be taking a lower-fi approach. If Cheek to Cheek continues to perform on the charts, it may help to prove that the classic album-release strategy (big fashion magazine covers, awards-show performances) is less effective than connecting directly with fans.

Not that Gaga was willing to chat about everything. Here are a few of the biggest revelations from her Ask Me Anything session:

She’s not ready to talk about Terry Richardson and R. Kelly: Some commenters on Reddit speculated that the go-between dictating questions to the pop star didn’t even read her this question, about Lady Gaga’s working with Terry Richardson and R. Kelly (both of whom have been accused of sexual assault) on her never-officially-released “Do What U Want” video, which depicted Kelly drugging and violating Gaga. Either way, the pop star remained silent on the issue; after all, enough time has passed without her comment that many people have forgotten the imbroglio entirely.

She’s inspired by botany: Turns out the “Gaga” genus of ferns, discovered by scientists in 2012, could mean anything. Asked about the unique honor, Gaga responded with a deep thought about how plants live without judgment: “its pretty cool, especially since it is a-sexual fern [...] All sexless, judgeless, How cool. How I wish to be.”

The famous “meat dress” was constructed by: “A butcher and some fishing line.”

She’s multifaceted: Lady Gaga is both “really into healing” and likes “to shoot beer cans off the porch in PA with my bf, off our camo 4-wheeler.” The former is exactly what one would expect a contemporary pop star to say. The latter? We’ll believe it if we see a photo.

Her favorite condiment is mayonnaise: You just have to get through a paragraph about how much she loves her fans to learn the most important detail of all.

5 Unique Junk-Food Gadgets for Under $70

Posted: 03 Oct 2014 10:32 AM PDT

Condiment Gun ($9.99)

ThinkGeek

Take a moment right now to reexamine your life. Have you lived it to its fullest? Think long and hard about your past condiment dispersals. Have they all been from easy-open packets and plastic containers?

It’s time to live – LIVE! – thanks to this condiment gun. Load it up with your favorite fatty, sugary slatherables (there are two cartridges), pull the trigger and blast your way to satiety – no concealed-carry permit required.

[ThinkGeek]

Hand-Crank Flan Maker ($49)

Japan Trend Shop

For starters, I was not aware that flan was made simply by jumbling an egg around for a couple minutes, boiling it for 30 seconds and then dumping some caramel sauce on top of it. That seems way too easy, but what do I know? I can’t even make toast, which is supposed to be easy.

This adorable hand-crank apparatus promises “custard flan-style desert” by following the aforementioned steps, and as a bonus, offers this must-see video detailing the process. The somber scene of an egg jovially singing the flan-making song before watching one of his friends being spun to death should not be lost on anyone:

[Japan Trend Shop]

Indoor S’mores Maker ($69.95)

Hammacher Schlemmer

Admit it: You bought this thing without even reading about it. What combination of words could I possibly cobble together with my extremely limited vocabulary in order to do this product justice? It’s an indoor S’mores maker.

Again, this is an indoors S’mores maker. It allows you to make S’mores inside.

Blizzard? No problem. Hurricane? Fine with me. Armageddon? Leave me alone, my chocolate has reached the perfect melting point. There’s even a circumferential tray that holds your marshmallows, graham crackers and chocolate. Come on, now.

[Hammacher Schlemmer]

Car Grill ($50)

12 Volts Plus

You’ve heard the sayings: Work smarter, not harder. Time is money. Madge, I soaked in it.

Maybe strike that last one, but the first two are relevant here. Won’t you just look like a genius using your morning commute to fry up some greasy, crackling pig meat on this 12-volt grill. Hey, throw a hash brown on there while you’re at it. Crack an egg or two.

No need to feel guilty, either. The sloped grill drains grease down into a bottom-mounted receptacle that definitely (probably, maybe, who knows) won’t cause any spillage when you sink your front tire into that pothole or bottom out while going over that speed bump.

[12 Volts Plus]

App-Connected Baking Kit ($69.99)

Perfect Bake

You’re not anal; you’re particular. If a recipe calls for a cup of flour, who are you to eyeball it? Quit playing God!

Thankfully, this app-connected baking kit ensures that everything gets measured out perfectly – right down to the ounce.

Put a bowl on the scale, connect the scale to your phone or tablet and pull up one of the hundreds of included recipes. The app will tell you which ingredients to add and will adjust the measurements on the fly if you overpour. Not that you would ever, ever, ever overpour. Can you imagine? What a nightmare! You’re not anal. You’re not anal.

[Brookstone]

Past Nonsense:

Review: Annabelle Conjures Up a Devil Doll

Posted: 03 Oct 2014 10:28 AM PDT

Nobody says the F word. There’s no nudity or spilled guts. Yet the Motion Picture Association of America has given Annabelle an R rating, “for intense sequences of disturbing violence and terror.” That’s not a warning — that’s a come-on. And yet, the horror-film genre may need it: none of the half-dozen fright-athons released so far this year has grossed as much as $20 million its first weekend or $35 million in its entire domestic run.

So Hollywood is banking on Annabelle, which has a pedigree of sorts, as a prequel to the 2013 hit The Conjuring. Based on the supposedly factual exploits of ghost-hunters Ed and Lorraine Warren, The Conjuring was one of last year’s biggest hits, dollar spent for dollar made: it earned $318 million worldwide on a budget of $20 million. Annabelle, which was produced for even less money ($6.5 million), and which promotes the earlier movie’s spooky doll to star status, is meant to scare up a few bucks until The Conjuring 2 materializes for Halloween 2015.

This one, directed by Conjuring cinematographer John R. Leonetti, is based on nothing truer than memories of Rosemary’s Baby, Roman Polanski’s 1968 horror classic about a young woman impregnated by Satan. To this template, screenwriter Gary Duberman added elements of the Charles Manson “Family,” a gang of Satanic cultists who in 1969 invaded the Benedict Canyon home of Polanski’s wife, Sharon Tate, then eight months pregnant with their child, and slaughtered her and four others.

World’s creepiest movie pitch: What if it’s 1969, and a pregnant blond, but not Sharon Tate, were to survive an attack from a Manson-type gang and give birth to a child, like the baby in the Polanski film, who was stalked by an avatar of the Devil? To make the connection clear, we’ll call the young woman Mia (for Mia Farrow, who played Rosemary) and her husband John (for John Cassavetes, as Rosemary’s spouse). We’ll also invoke the funeral-black baby carriage from the Rosemary’s Baby poster. But we also need a connection to The Conjuring, so we’ll work in the doll as the embodiment of teenaged Annabelle, the woman who stabbed Mia. And, as Mia, we’ll cast a pretty English actress named Annabelle (Wallis). Bases: covered.

The “real” Annabelle doll, which is locked away in the Warrens’ museum and blessed twice a month by a Catholic priest, was a regular Raggedy Ann. The movies’ Annabelle is an elaborate, enormous Victorian creature, about the size of a four-year-old, with gaping eyes, blood-red lips and, later, cracks in the skin. She’s no knife-wielding Chucky, from the Child’s Play series, or Richard Matheson’s great Zuni fetish doll from the 1975 TV movie Trilogy of Terror. Annabelle doesn’t speak and rarely moves. But she has modest telekinetic powers: she can make a chair rock, turn off a TV set, turn on a record player, all in aid of terrifying Mia while her doctor husband John (generically handsome Ward Horton) is away at work.

After the gang attack, the couple moves 30 miles from Santa Monica to Pasadena, yet still attends the same Catholic church to avail themselves of the sympathetic powers of Father Perez (Tony Amendola). Mia, who is oddly bereft of all companionship, strikes up a conversation with Evelyn (a slumming Alfre Woodard), who runs the local occult book store. When Mia says, “I think my family is being haunted by a ghost,” Evelyn calmly replies, “Aisle four.” Of course, Annabelle pops up in both cities. Within 15 mins., the audience is screaming en masse, “Throw out the damn doll!” (And not in your own trash can.) But John and Mia can’t do that. They’re in a horror movie.

Just because a film is a cheap ripoff doesn’t mean it can’t do the scare job. Leonetti occasionally avoids shock cuts to let Mia stand in the image’s foreground as the ghostly Annabelle-woman glides behind her. In one effective scene, Mia sees the Annabelle doll come to life as a four-year-old girl; as it bursts through the door of Mia’s room, it transforms into the adult Annabelle. Another nice sequence: Mia, pursued by a demon in her basement, rushes to the elevator and manages to close the doors; when the doors open, she’s in the same spooky basement.

Quality is often irrelevant in a horror movie; shock is the key. Like volunteers in the notorious Milgram experiments, who thought they were inflicting pain on other people, a movie audience wants to see how much terror they can handle by seeing people on the screen terrorized. I can’t watch; I must watch. With its familiar jolts in a genre that will never die, Annabelle isn’t a must-see. But if you do go, you must watch.

Dog Owner Sentenced to Prison in Fatal Mauling

Posted: 03 Oct 2014 10:24 AM PDT

(LANCASTER, Calif.) — A pit bull owner convicted of second-degree murder after his dogs fatally mauled a woman was sentenced Friday to 15 years to life in prison.

Alex Donald Jackson, 31, was convicted last month in the death of Pamela Devitt. The 63-year-old retiree was taking a morning stroll in the high desert town of Littlerock when four of Jackson’s dogs leaped over a fence and attacked her in the street.

She was alone, didn’t have a phone and no one was nearby. By the time help arrived, she had been bitten 150 to 200 times from head to toe and an arm was severed. She died from blood loss.

Jackson was initially arrested when deputies searching for the dogs discovered a marijuana-growing operation in his house. He was later charged with murder when Devitt’s DNA was found on his dogs’ bloody fur.

A murder conviction for a killing by dogs is rare.

The mauling of Diane Whipple in the hallway outside her San Francisco apartment in 2001 led to her neighbor’s second-degree murder conviction.

A Michigan couple is facing trial on second-degree murder charges for the mauling death of a jogger in July by two cane corsos, an Italian mastiff-type breed, near their home about 45 miles outside Detroit.

The theory behind such cases is that the accused did something so reckless they had to know it was dangerous enough to kill someone — even without intending harm.

“His actions in this case show that he has a nearly psychopathic disregard for the lives and well-being of others,” Deputy District Attorney Ryan Williams said of Jackson in his sentencing memo.

Prosecutors in Los Angeles County Superior Court sought a term of 24 years to life in prison for the murder and convictions on weapon and drug charges. The dogs guarded Jackson’s pot-growing operation and he knew the animals were dangerous, Williams said.

In Jackson’s case and others like it, prosecutors have said neighbors and others complained that the owners’ dogs were vicious or dangerous and that the owners didn’t do enough to control the animals.

The Devitts, who passed through the area during their walking routine, had never had a problem with the dog, Williams said.

But nine other witnesses, including several horse riders and a postal worker, testified about seven frightening encounters. One equestrian had offered to provide free fencing and help Jackson put it up to keep the dogs on his property, but Jackson did not accept the help.

Defense lawyer Al Kim said Thursday that the “nail in the coffin” for Jackson was that the number of other incidents made it hard to argue that he wasn’t aware of the danger the dogs posed.

At trial, Kim conceded Jackson was a drug dealer, but also said he was a dog lover who took in strays that reproduced. While he should have kept closer watch of them, he never intended to hurt someone.

“He’s not the evil dude he’s being made out to be,” Kim said. “He feels horrible about this. He’s contrite.”

Everything You Need to Know About the Newest Star Wars Show

Posted: 03 Oct 2014 10:19 AM PDT

Lucasfilm/Disney XD

With Star Wars: Episode VII more than a year away, the animated television series Star Wars Rebels gives fans their first glimpse at what Star Wars will look like as a Disney property.

Created by Dave Filoni, the supervising director of the animated Star Wars: Clone Wars series, Rebels is set five years before the events of Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope and follows the familiar formula of teacher and apprentice with Kanan (Freddie Prinze Jr.) serving as an initially reluctant Jedi teacher to a hot-headed Ezra (Taylor Gray).

Together with Kanan and Ezra, the motley crew of the starship Ghost traverse the galaxy while giving light to the nascent signs of rebellion rising up against the oppression of the Galactic Empire, setting the stage for the events of Star Wars: Episode IV.

The show further ties back to its Star Wars: Episode IV roots with its art style, which is heavily influenced by the original Star Wars concept art illustrated by Ralph McQuarrie.

See: Original Star Wars Concept Art

Already greenlit for a second season, the franchise is set to premiere with an hour-long television movie debut on Oct. 3 titled Star Wars Rebels: Spark of Rebellion on the Disney Channel, while the series itself will kick off on October 13 on Disney XD.

Meet the key players:

8 Ebola Terms You Need to Know

Posted: 03 Oct 2014 10:17 AM PDT

Incubation period: The time between exposure to a virus and when symptoms start to present, which is two to 21 days in Ebola’s case.

Symptomatic: A patient becomes symptomatic when they present symptoms of Ebola, which include fever, muscle pain, headache, sore throat, vomiting and diarrhea.

Contagious: People with strains of the Ebola virus in their blood are only contagious when they are presenting with symptoms (see above). The virus cannot be transmitted before a person is symptomatic, which means that people on the same airplane as Thomas Eric Duncan could not have caught the virus from him.

R0: Also called R-nought, it refers to the “estimated reproduction number for infectious diseases.” Put more simply, it’s a formula predicting how contagious a virus is. NPR has a handy graphic on their site showing that Ebola has an R0 of 2, meaning the likely number of people infected by one patient. Measles, by comparison, has an R0 of 18. It is relatively difficult, as we have shown, to spread Ebola.

Contact tracing: This involves the laborious process of tracking down anyone whom a patient may have exposed to Ebola. It requires trained public health officials who ask a series of questions about where the patient has been, and how many people he might have interacted with, either face to face or in a room or other contained setting. In West Africa, this is being done by local volunteers who are trained by public health experts.

Direct contact: This includes the people most closely connected to a patient—family members and friends. These people are most likely to have come into contact with a patient’s body fluids, and therefore represented the group most likely exposed to the virus, and at highest risk of developing the disease.

Indirect contact: This group includes those who may have had contact with a patient but in a less direct way—in a workplace or school, for example. These also include contacts of the direct contacts, who are at lower risk of having been exposed to the patient’s body fluids and so are at lower risk of having Ebola.

Quarantine: A legal order for a potentially infected person not to leave a space or have contact with the rest of the population. The Ebola’s patient’s four family members are in quarantine, with a law enforcement official stationed outside their home.

How Justin Bieber Killed the Mustache

Posted: 03 Oct 2014 10:11 AM PDT

RIP, the mustache. Justin Bieber’s decision to sport one in public this week might represent the final nail in the coffin for a facial feature that had already gone from being a symbol of manliness to an ironic punchline. After all, what self-respecting Brooklyn poseur can be proud to comb his lip caterpillar now that the Biebs has one?

The pop icon appeared at Paris Fashion Week Wednesday with a wispy dusting of facial frizz atop his lip. He had previously experimented with one at various points in recent months, but it now seems to have gone beyond overgrown bum fluff to an actual grooming choice. No doubt intended to be a hipsterish affectation, the mustache instead made him look like a ripe pubescent whose father hasn’t bought him a razor yet.

But the fact that the nation’s premier former teen idol apparently thinks it giddily ironic to wear a mustache in public vividly illustrates the decline of a male style choice once proudly sported by film stars, political gods and war heroes.

The early 20th century was the mustache’s prime era, when mustachioed leading men like Errol Flynn and Clark Gable ruled Hollywood, and Teddy Roosevelt could be among the manliest of presidents with a veritable slab of hair resting beneath his nose. It was fashionable for U.S. airmen to wear “bulletproof mustaches” as a superstition in WWII and Vietnam — but none was more impervious to attack than that of “triple ace” Robin Olds, whose non-regulation ‘stache became nothing less than a symbol of rebellion. It was, he said, “ the middle finger I couldn’t raise in the PR photographs. The mustache became my silent last word in the verbal battles…with higher headquarters on rules, targets, and fighting the war.”

The mustache as symbol underwent a kind of metamorphosis in the 1970s, however, when it became a signifier of gay culture and, eventually, of pornography. Although it was arguably the mustache’s masculine potency that attracted it to these subcultures, its association with them watered down its appeal to the mainstream. It had something of a resurgence in the 1980s, thanks to the heroic efforts of Tom Selleck and Burt Reynolds, but almost disappeared from popular visibility towards the end of the century, when goatees and sideburns became more en vogue.

By the early 21st century, the mustache had become little more than a costume accessory to most of America — whether they’re dressing as a porn star, as Saddam Hussein, or as Ron Burgundy. The lingering porniness of the ‘stache has also cemented it as the facial furniture of choice of the stereotypical creepy uncle or teacher.

This wane in popularity is a development some have linked to a general decline in American maleness. Here’s Wesley Morris, writing in the Boston Globe in 2009, on how the newly sensitive men of the 2000s, “afraid of seeming too serious about being male,” relegated the mustache to the vintage store bargain bin:

“To be a guy became a kind of adolescent joke – think Jackass and the G4 network – and to be a man, a grownup, meant shaving your upper lip, and possibly maintaining your eyebrows. There are more college-educated American men now that there have ever been, and while education can create self-confidence, it’s also good at creating self-consciousness. You could say that a huge swath of American men have simply misplaced the self-confidence required to wear a single strip of hair on their lips.”

Today, men who wear a mustache do so with a giant pair of inverted commas on either side of it. So firmly has it become a joke that an annual charitable event (“Movember”) now exists daring men to grow one for an entire month each year — as if the act of wearing a mustache was now so hilariously out of fashion, men need to be challenged to do it.

But now that young Bieber has sported a mustache, no doubt in an attempt to co-opt some hipsterish cool for his increasingly fragile personal brand, the irony is almost entirely washed out. It’s too soon to say, but this could be the final death knell for the hipster mustache. And who would wear one then?

Morris, in his excellent 2009 essay, calls for a hero to bring the mustache back into public esteem — but the negative associations may now run too deep for that. This reporter once shaved a beard off into a mustache for a party, and was greeted with cheers, laughter and selfie invitations. But midway through the night, I caught myself in a mirror and realized my mustache was no longer ironic. To most people I encountered, it was just a mustache. I’ve never worn one again.

Secret Service Has ‘Elevator Manifest’ for Every Presidential Trip

2014-10-02T11:19:00.001-07:00

Secret Service Has ‘Elevator Manifest’ for Every Presidential Trip

Secret Service Has ‘Elevator Manifest’ for Every Presidential Trip
This Is Where All of America’s Employed Bachelors Live
Why Pregnant Women Who Smoke Might Have Kids With Worse Sperm
Luke Wilson: How I Made My Award-Winning Short Film Satellite Beach
Watch the First Trailer for Pixar’s Inside Out
From Eleanor to Michelle: The Inside Scoop on First Lady Fashion
Photographer ‘Harassing’ Prince George, Royals Say
Turkey Approves Military Operations in Iraq, Syria
How to Get Away With Hashtags: When Viewers and Networks Collide on Twitter
3 Categories Where the iPhone 6 Falls Short

Secret Service Has ‘Elevator Manifest’ for Every Presidential Trip

Posted: 02 Oct 2014 11:01 AM PDT

When the President travels nothing is taken for granted, not even the co-occupants of the presidential elevator, raising new questions about how an armed man with a criminal history managed to get within arm’s length of President Barack Obama last month.

A week before every presidential trip—often longer for foreign travel—”advance” teams from the U.S. Secret Service, the White House, and other government agencies trace every step the president will take, as well as alternates for every contingency. Plans are drawn up for who will sit where on Air Force One and which vehicle in the President’s mile-long motorcade aides will occupy, according to multiple individuals familiar with presidential travel, including law enforcement personnel.

Officials said the manifests are largely logistical in nature, devised to clear up which aides will travel with the president and “the shift,” the personal detail assigned to him. “There may be 35 people with him in a freight elevator in a sporting arena, or just a few in a cramped one in an old-school Chicago high rise,” one veteran said. Other aides, members of the press, and additional Secret Service agents will be shuttled in other marked elevators or will take the stairs, depending on the site. Occasionally a space for an “elevator operator” is reserved, especially when the president is set to move in a freight elevator, but often they are not named on the manifest.

“Elevator manifests are a standard procedure,” said a law enforcement official, citing the logistical challenge of moving the president, his aides, his bodyguards, and the traveling press without a hitch. Which is another reason the Secret Service will remain in the sights of Congressional overseers even after Wednesday’s announced resignation by Julia Pierson, the agency’s beleaguered director.

A private contractor at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta boarded the presidential elevator on Sept. 16 and wouldn’t heed orders to stop photographing Obama. Agents pulled the man aside for questioning after Obama left the elevator, at which point the man’s supervisor fired him on the spot for his behavior. It was only then that officers discovered that the man, who was arrested several times, was carrying a firearm, officials said.

The security breach came days before an armed man leaped over the White House fence and charged past an agent at the North Portico door before being arrested near the Green Room, an incident that prompted renewed public scrutiny for the agency.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Wednesday that Obama was not informed of the elevator incident until minutes before it was first reported by the Washington Examiner on Tuesday afternoon. Congressional sources said outgoing Secret Service Director Julia Pierson did not mention the security lapse in her classified testimony to lawmakers Tuesday, despite being asked whether there were any undisclosed security incidents that she was aware of. Pierson tendered her resignation Wednesday after losing the support of Obama and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson. “The President concluded that new leadership of that agency was required,” Earnest said.

Whether the still-unidentified individual was named on the manifest, was unnamed, or had simply managed to enter the elevator with the president is one subject of the ongoing internal probe into the incident. Either way, officials said, the man should not have been able to carry the weapon that close to the President. The Secret Service would not comment on the status of the ongoing investigation.

With reporting by Alex Rogers / Washington

This Is Where All of America’s Employed Bachelors Live

Posted: 02 Oct 2014 10:47 AM PDT

Roughly eight in 10 single women who want to tie the knot one day say it’s “very important” to them that their future spouses hold down a steady job, according to a recent poll by Pew Research. Less than half of the surveyed men felt the same way. In either case, Pew Research has created an interactive map of the marriage market to showcase which parts of the country tend to have a bumper crop of employed bachelors and bachelorettes:

The highest concentration of single men with jobs live in the city of Clarksville, straddling both sides of the Tennessee-Kentucky border. They outnumber the women 145 to 100.

Interestingly, there isn’t a single city in the nation where employed, single women outnumber the men. They live in the highest concentration in Lewiston-Auburn, Maine, at a roughly 1 to 1 ratio with the male population.

But the most intriguing differences emerge depending on the definition of “eligible.” If the goal is to find the highest proportion of bachelors, then large swathes of Arizona, Indiana and Louisiana offer favorable odds, but refine the goal to employed bachelors and suddenly those states appear to be wastelands. It reveals how drastically the marriage market can change depending on what you’re looking for, and how unlikely it is that a map of just one or two preferences will lead to that life-long mate.

Then again, it doesn’t hurt to look.

Why Pregnant Women Who Smoke Might Have Kids With Worse Sperm

Posted: 02 Oct 2014 10:47 AM PDT

Add diminished fertility to the long list of reasons why women should avoid smoking while pregnant or breast feeding. The mice sons—called pups—of mothers exposed to the smoke equivalent of a pack of cigarettes a day during that time wind up with sperm that struggle in the reproduction process, according to a new study in mice published in the journal Human Reproduction.

“Our results show that male pups of ‘smoking’ mothers have fewer sperm, which swim poorly, are abnormally shaped and fail to bind to eggs during in vitro fertilisation studies,” said study leader Eileen McLaughlin, a chemical biology professor at the University of Newcastle in Australia, in a press release. “Consequently, when these pups reach adulthood they are sub fertile or infertile.”

Unlike previous research, the new study looked at pregnancy in mice to try to determine not just the consequences of smoking during pregnancy but also the mechanism behind it. Cigarette toxins affect the stem cells in the testes, McLaughlin says, which results in permanently lowered sperm production—and these results likely apply to humans, she adds. “We also know that oxidative stress induced by these toxins causes damage to the nuclei and mitochondria (the cell’s ‘power’ supply) of cells in the testes and this results in sperm with abnormal heads and tails, that are unable to swim properly or successfully bind and fuse with eggs.”

The knowledge that smoking has devastating long-term implications for the health of children is nothing new. Previous studies have suggested that smoking stems fetus growth, leads to premature delivery and causes birth defects. Nonetheless, 20% of women in the United States continue to smoke during pregnancy. The number is higher in Australia, where the study was conducted.

“We would ask that smoking cessation programmes continue to emphasise that women should avoid smoking in pregnancy and while breast feeding as the male germ line is very susceptible to damage during early development and the resulting sub fertility will not be apparent for several decades,” said McLaughlin.

Luke Wilson: How I Made My Award-Winning Short Film Satellite Beach

Posted: 02 Oct 2014 10:45 AM PDT

In the fall of 2012, the actor Luke Wilson and a small film crew trailed the Space Shuttle Endeavor as it moved through the Los Angeles streets to the California Science Center. Wilson, along with his brother Andrew, shot largely improvised footage of a character named Warren Flowers (played by Wilson) who believes he is in charge of the shuttle’s journey; the footage became a 20-minute evocative short film called Satellite Beach (now available to purchase online). For Wilson, the experience allowed him the chance to make a film in a different way and to explore space travel, a subject he says he finds compelling.

A hit at festivals, where it’s snapped up a string of awards, Satellite Beach is an unusual film, and one that deftly twists the viewer’s expectations while showcasing what it was like to drive a space shuttle through LA’s busy streets.

Wilson spoke with TIME about how this project materialized, how it challenged him as an actor, and why it’s set him and Andrew up to direct an upcoming feature film.

TIME: Where did you get the inspiration for this short film?

Luke Wilson: There was an article on Sunday in the LA Times about the man who was in charge of the moving of the Space Shuttle Endeavor. He said a couple of interesting things, like that he went to bed thinking about it and he woke up thinking about it. He drove the route almost daily. He was obsessed with it. I thought it would be interesting to do a guy that thought he was in charge of it, but turns out not to be.

So did the people moving the shuttle know you were making this movie around them?

We just filmed here and there. There would be people that didn’t notice me; there would people who thought I was an official. And then there would be people that recognized me. If I was going to ask guys to move on a roof or something, I’d say, “We’re doing a little movie. Do you guys mind if I ask you to get down from there?” Everybody was into it. It reminded me of going to the Rose Bowl Parade as a kid, where we were in these parts of the city, and everyone was in a good mood, and there was a going-with-the-flow attitude.

Did you write the story beforehand, or just improvise as you went?

I worked it out all as I did it. I had the idea for a few scenes, and had the idea of how it would start and what would going on — knowing that gradually this guy would unravel, and people would see him unravel. Initially, the ending was supposed to be a gala at the California Science Center, and you think this guy is in charge until the end, when he can’t get into the gala. And then the transporter that moved the space shuttle broke down the first night, and they had to fix it. I always knew there were would be voiceover, and the voiceover would be dictated by the shots that we got.

That’s an interesting way to make a movie.

Yeah, it is. Not that it hasn’t been done, but I certainly hadn’t done it. And I’d always been interested in certain filmmakers or actors like Dennis Hopper, making experimental films. Or even Andy Warhol. I liked the idea of doing something off-the-cuff. When you’ve worked on a bunch of projects that have been stuck in development or waiting you think, “Gosh, someday I’d really like to make a movie my way” — which I still haven’t gotten to do, but we did get to make this short in this way. But it definitely came about from trying to emulate people I’d read about over the years.

You had directed previously, right?

Yeah, I had directed The Wendell Baker Story. It was this movie I’d written about ten years ago. My brother Andrew and I directed it together like we did with Satellite Beach. I’m not one of those actors who’s hell-bent on directing. It just seemed like a way to cut out the middle man. It’s hard enough to make a movie and we had a limited amount of time, so I didn’t want to have to be explaining to a director what I was trying to do.

As an actor, what’s exciting about being in a short film that’s largely improvised?

I found it really nerve-wracking! And I’m surprised we didn’t get arrested, frankly, as close as we were to the shuttle. We were asking people to move and going up to police and jumping over barricades. When they moved it across the Manchester Bridge they were filming a Super Bowl commercial, and I walked right into the middle of that. I went up to the mayor dressed as the character. I was definitely on edge the whole time, which I think helped. I was waiting to be put in the back of a squad car.

Did it feel like you were playing out some childhood fantasy about space travel at all?

It did. Just growing up, The Right Stuff was a big book and then a big movie. For me and the few friends who made [the movie], it was a huge deal to be around the space shuttle. Everybody was incredibly excited to see it and to be that close to it. It was the kind of thing where we were all elbowing each other and high-fiving each other. Also, getting to get to go Kennedy Space Center in Florida. That, too, was incredible. Just getting to be on that land that is so historic and iconic. We saw the Apollo launch pad. It kept changing the project — to think it just started with an idea from the newspaper and then it became this movie.

You’re also in The Skeleton Twins right now. What compelled you about that role?

I was a big fan of both Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader. It was one of those particularly strong SNL classes. I really liked their characters and I knew, having worked with Will Ferrell, that I love working with SNL actors. I watched SNL every Saturday night growing up. My dad would get us revved up when it was coming on in the ‘70s. So I still feel that way about the show and the people on it.

How does that role play into where you want to be in your career overall?

I always admire people that have a set plan. I really don’t. I like to work because I always feel like I’m learning something and I always feel like I’m meeting somebody, whether it’s an actor or a crew member, who I want to work with again. I don’t really have a set plan and I don’t know that you can have a set plan unless you’re Brad Pitt, where you can pick and do exactly what you want.

Do you have more movies upcoming?

I have this movie called Ride, which Helen Hunt directed. And then I have this movie called Prison Love that I wrote. We’re going to be doing it in the next few months, that Owen [Wilson] is going to be in. I will be directing it with Andrew, my brother. That will be fun to try and do that again, obviously on a larger scale than Satellite Beach — although I feel like Satellite Beach was helpful in terms of directing.

Is there a director you’ve worked with who has inspired how you want to do it?

Wes Anderson, for sure. I’ve also always liked what I’ve read about Clint Eastwood as a director. He’s not walking around shouting into a megaphone and wearing an ascot. I like the idea of it being a workmanlike job, and that you are a part of a team. Even though you’re in charge, you want people to feel free to contribute.

Wait — have you worked with a director who wore an ascot on set?

I don’t think so, but I’ve definitely worked with a few directors where I’ve found myself not listening to their direction. I was just imagining them wearing the ascot.

Watch the First Trailer for Pixar’s Inside Out

Posted: 02 Oct 2014 10:39 AM PDT

Pixar movies have ventured under the sea, into the air and through outer space. Now, they’re turning inward.

Its upcoming film Inside Out will delve inside the head of an 11-year-old girl who struggles to understand her emotions as she navigates a new school. Her personified emotions — Joy (Amy Poehler), Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black), Disgust (Mindy Kaling) and Sadness (Phyllis Smith) — operate a mission control center inside her mind.

Inside Out is set to hit theaters on June 19, 2015, almost two years after Pixar’s last film, Monsters University.

From Eleanor to Michelle: The Inside Scoop on First Lady Fashion

Posted: 02 Oct 2014 10:28 AM PDT

It’s hard to imagine a job in which the clothes you wear to work are more closely scrutinized than that of the First Lady of the United States. Not even the President is so meticulously judged. And in any event, choosing between a dark suit or a tan suit (gasp!) doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for error.

The First Lady’s fashion choices are — and always have been — imbued with political power and laden with controversy, as I learned the National Archives’ event “Style and Influence: First Ladies’ Fashions,” a raucous panel discussion—not an oxymoron, turns out—moderated by Project Runway’s Tim Gunn. Fashionistas present included Valerie Steele, museum curator at the Fashion Institute of Technology, Lisa Kathleen Graddy, curator at the Smithsonian’s First Ladies Collection and designer Tracy Reese.

Admirers have praised Michelle Obama’s elegance — Gunn called her “divine” — while her critics have lambasted her informality (remember Shortsgate?). But striking the delicate balance between the need of the First Lady to meet high fashion standards while appealing to America’s populist inclinations has always preoccupied the women who’ve held the office.

Dolly Madison (in the White House 1809 to 1817) was derided for being too flashy for American tastes, even though her most well-known dress, a red, high-waisted, no-corset, “empire style” gown, evokes the republican values of ancient Rome. Dolly’s famous red dress is rumored to have been made out of White House curtains she rescued from British arsonists during the War of 1812 — a legend that is, tragically, almost certainly just that.

By the latter half of the century, Dolly’s sleek gowns were old news and American men were all about that bass, no treble. That fuller look was reflected in the wardrobe of the Harriet Lane, the niece of lifelong bachelor President James Buchanan and the first person to be called “First Lady” by the press (they simply didn’t know what else to call her).

According to one writer in the 1880s, “No man would stay long with a woman whose skinny buttocks he could hold in the palm of one hand,” said FIT’s Valerie Steele. And as Tracy Reese noted, we may have come full circle on the big-bottomed style of the era. “Sounds like Nicki Minaj,” she said.

Through the end of the turn of the century, the Roaring Twenties and into the Depression, some First Ladies wore the fashions of their era better than others. Edith Wilson, wife to President Woodrow Wilson, liked to do her own alterations to her clothes with mixed success—Gunn guessed she’d be the first jettisoned from Project Runway. And the image of Eleanor Roosevelt as intrepid if somewhat unfashionable is not altogether true. The Smithsonian’s Lisa Graddy told of a dress that looks conservative on a mannequin but that Mrs. Roosevelt wore with the sleeves removed and unclasped, giving the gown a “nice, draped, low back.”

“She was a bit of a minx,” added Gunn.

The First Lady’s fashion decisions have always had political impact but never more so than in the era of mass visual media, beginning roughly with Jackie Kennedy’s gilded tenure. Jackie’s famously expensive, quasi-aristocratic taste in clothes was such that GOP politicos deliberately tailored the styles of the next Republican woman to inhabit the White House, Pat Nixon, to strike an everywoman note meant to appeal to the supposedly average Americans in President Nixon’s “silent majority.”

Then in the 1980’s, Valerie Steele from FIT notes that Nancy Reagan “almost single handedly, transformed red from the color of Communist revolution to the color of Republicans.” Not a bad scalp for the better half of Mr. “tear down that wall.”

Not all First Ladies are particularly interested in fashion. Hillary Clinton was surprised by the amount of attention her clothes attracted, Steele said. And Laura Bush was largely uninterested in the kind of high-concept fashion thinking that preoccupied someone like Nancy Reagan, who, we’re told, meticulously labeled every dress with the last occasion on which it was worn.

The fashion pendulum has swung back again with Michelle Obama, who, notwithstanding her taste for affordable middle-brow threads (she’s a J. Crew fan), seems to have a personal stake in the statements she makes with her formal wear. Tracy Reese designed the dress Obama wore to the 2012 Democratic National Convention, a dress that was delivered with sleeves attached, Reese said. Obama, who has a well-known fondness for going sleeveless, personally had the sleeves removed.

Photographer ‘Harassing’ Prince George, Royals Say

Posted: 02 Oct 2014 10:20 AM PDT

Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge began taking legal action against an unnamed photographer they claim is stalking their son Prince George and his nanny, the Kensington Palace office said in a statement Thursday.

According to the announcement, the royal couple has “taken legal steps to ask that an individual ceases harassing and following both Prince George and his nanny as they go about their ordinary daily lives.”

William and Kate are expecting their second child.

According to a royal spokesperson:

An incident last week has prompted Their Royal Highnesses to seek reasonable assurances from the individual about his behaviour. The individual was spotted at a central London Park in the vicinity of Prince George, who was removed from the Park immediately. There is reason to suspect that the individual may have been placing Prince George under surveillance and monitoring his daily routines for a period of time.

The Duke and Duchess understand the particular public role that Prince George will one day inherit but while he is young, he must be permitted to lead as ordinary a life as possible. No parent would tolerate the suspicion of someone pursuing and harassing their child and carer whilst their child is playing in a public park or going about their daily activities

The 1997 death of Princess Diana, William’s mother, occurred after her automobile crashed while trying to escape pursuit by the paparazzi.

Turkey Approves Military Operations in Iraq, Syria

Posted: 02 Oct 2014 10:16 AM PDT

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey’s parliament has approved a motion that gives the government new powers to launch military incursions into Syria and Iraq and to allow foreign forces to use its territory for possible operations against the Islamic State group.

Parliament voted 298-98 in favor of the motion which sets the legal framework for any Turkish military involvement in Iraq or Syria, and for the potential use of Turkish bases by foreign troops.

Turkey has joined a U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State group but has yet to define what role it intends to play.

How to Get Away With Hashtags: When Viewers and Networks Collide on Twitter

Posted: 02 Oct 2014 10:09 AM PDT

While viewers watched the twisty and turny premiere of How to Get Away With Murder last Thursday, iPhones in hand, they had many important thoughts to share with the Twitterverse about the newest Shonda Rhimes-produced show to hit primetime. (Like puns, and the realization that a familiar looking actor was Dean Thomas in Harry Potter). But while carefully crafting 140-character commentary, a wave of social media panic came billowing in:

What hashtag are we using for How to Get Away with Murder? Cus the show title is 6 words

— Patti B (@simplytricia22) September 26, 2014

In case you’re counting, which every live tweeter is, #HowToGetAwayWithMurder is a whopping 23 characters long — leaving significantly less room for commentary. And while the acronym #HTGAWM is less cumbersome, “it looks like a mouthful of gobbledygook,” as author and prolific TV tweeter Jennifer Weiner tells TIME.

Twitter has reinvigorated the act of watching live television, and active social viewers want to make sure they are seeing relevant tweets (and that their relevant tweets are being seen) under one, consistent hashtag conversation. But when multiple hashtags are trending: What do you use? Shonda Rhimes tweeted #HowToGetAwayWithMurder; her production company ShondaLand tweeted #HTGAWM; and writer/creator Peter Nowalk sometimes used both! (31 characters!)

“The official hashtag is #HowToGetAwayWithMurder,” ABC Entertainment executive director of digital strategy Ben Blatt says, clarifying confusion for those tuning in to Thursday’s second episode. “Even knowing that it was on the longer side, we felt that it served the purpose of getting people to understand that this was a new show, and we wanted to brand the actual title.”

And it makes sense. Viewers aren’t familiar enough with the product to have a nickname or abbreviation resonate. While HTGAWM is reminiscent of How I Met Your Mother’s now nostalgic HIMYM — that show’s ascent to popularity predated Twitter, so the acronym was getting typed into text messages long before Twitter text boxes.

Blatt notes that even though promo material touts the longer hashtag, ABC went into its marketing decision with the knowledge that it will “probably end up with an abbreviated version” based on online habits.

ABC gave TIME statistics from Twitter showing that while 141,139 tweets employed #HowToGetAwayWithMurder, almost 50,000 used #HTGAWM — without any official promotion.

“We are going to start testing that more, and if we see that fans are using it, we’re going to pivot,” Blatt says. “That’s going to inform what we start doing for weeks two and three.”

Networks have learned to be malleable when it comes to official hashtags. According to Adam Zeller, VP of social media for Bravo and Oxygen Media, while the social, marketing, and editorial team decide based on consensus what official hashtag “feels right” before a new show airs: “Immediately after the premiere we will look at data and decide if it worked — and if not, we will change it to what the fans want to use.”

One of Zeller’s most surprising hashtag changes was for the show The People’s Couch, a reality show where viewers literally watch strangers watching television. (Yes, really). While Bravo decided to use #PeoplesCouch as a hashtag, displaying it on the screen throughout the broadcast, 95% of the audience independently decided to tweet using #ThePeoplesCouch — foregoing three precious characters.

Obviously, the official hashtag on-air and in promotions changed accordingly. A similar shift occurred when fans preferred #RHOM to the original suggested #RHOMIA for Real Housewives of Miami. With Oxygen’s Tuesday premiere of Nail’d It, a show about nail art, Zeller says, the team has flipped between using the branded #NaildIt versus #NailedIt.

“The pros for #NailedIt is that it’s already a huge hashtag on Twitter,” he says, and so the show might get greater discovery by people who happened to stumble on the popular hashtag. For that reason, Oxygen decided to go with the “e” version, reserving the right to change it when people gain more familiarity with the program.

But even though, according to ABC and Bravo/Oxygen, networks want to work with viewers for consistency, hashtags frequently cause chaos online.

During the SyFy’s premiere of Sharknado 2: The Second One — a television event literally created for Twitter — live tweeters were confused because while the the movie itself touted the #Sharknado2 hashtag onscreen during the broadcast, Sharknado’s official twitter account tweeted using #SharknadoTheSecondOne, creating a conflicting trending topic.

@NolanFeeney @acferrante Unfortunately, @SharknadoSyfy is using the long one.

— LaurieInQueens (@LaurieInQueens) July 31, 2014

As TIME writer Nolan Feeney sarcastically gripes: “It really hurts my #brand.” But seriously, the warring hashtags do prove problematic.

“You want your tweets to be accessible, you want them to be read by people, you want to feel like we’re all watching this together — that’s the whole point,” says Weiner. “But then when you find out that there’s more than one hashtag going on, it’s like, you’re in the club, and you’re having a good time and then you realize that there’s another party going on. And maybe they’re having more fun with it and maybe they’re not. Maybe you should be at that party.”

Weiner primarily faces this dilemma when deciding whether or not to use “The” while livetweeting The Bachelor and The Bachelorette. Although ABC officially pushes #TheBachelor — that’s what’s tweeted by Chris Harrison and written in translucent letters intermittently through broadcasts — a large contingent of #BachelorNation tweets under #Bachelor.

“It’s three characters,” says Weiner, who switches between the two hashtags in spite of the resulting whiplash. “If Michelle Money shows up in a really terrible outfit, you have no room. Sometimes you need every single one of those characters to describe what’s going on and how crazy it is.”

“I think that we do succumb to the reality that fans will sometimes go off on their own,” Blatt says. But even though networks are open to change sometimes, ABC won’t budge on #TheBachelor brand, which has proven successful in spite of discrepancies.

Even if #HowToGetAwayWithMurder shifts to #HTGAWM or something else entirely (ABC probably doesn’t want the #Murder brand), viewers may still face warring trending topics. Official hashtags do not always dictate trends.

“I think that we need to appeal to Twitter,” Weiner says. “Because there is pain going on. People are suffering. People are confused. Let’s fix this. Let’s make it better.”

3 Categories Where the iPhone 6 Falls Short

Posted: 02 Oct 2014 10:04 AM PDT

Last week, we crowned the iPhone 6 the best smartphone on the market…at least for now. With a mix of strong expert reviews, solid benchmark scores and a host of new features, Apple’s latest handset just nudged its way past the LG G3, HTC One (M8) and Galaxy S5 to claim smartphone supremacy.

But the iPhone’s success comes more from the sum of its parts than from any individual category. The phone doesn’t have the best display. It’s not as light as some competitors. And it certainly doesn’t have the best battery life.

So if you care most about a beautiful screen or a full charge, you can do a lot better than the latest iPhone. We looked at three key categories to see how the iPhone 6 stacks up to its closest competitors stat by stat, feature by feature. Let’s take a look, starting with the iPhone’s biggest weakness.

Battery Life

Battery life has always been tricky to measure objectively, particularly in smartphones. The most popular metric is talk time, but these figures are often fudged by the manufacturers, who can manipulate testing conditions to produce the numbers they want for marketing materials.

And even when you consider third-party reviews—which often feature practical battery comparisons based on day-to-day use—they still rely on the reviewer’s hometown cell towers and personal use habits.

A better metric for a fair comparison is battery capacity. Measured in milliamp hours (mAh), it’s the amount of electric charge the device can deliver—or in consumer terms, it defines how much “juice” there is to go around.

There’s just one problem with this measurement: It doesn’t account for screen size. A smartphone’s screen is a giant power hog: the bigger the screen, the more battery capacity it’ll need to get through the day. This means that a 5.5-inch phablet will die a lot faster than a 4-inch iPhone, even if they have an identical battery capacity.

With this in mind, we’ve plotted screen size against battery capacity to account for differences in smartphone screen size. In the plot below, handsets above the blue line will tend to have worse batteries than average, while phones below the blue line will tend to have better batteries than average.

Predictably, the iPhone 6 sits above the line in the worse battery zone: that 1,810 mAh of capacity simply isn’t enough for its 4.7-inch screen. Despite incremental improvements over the 5s, the iPhone 6 still holds less juice than a glass of Sunny D.

The comparison in the chart isn’t perfect. Specifically, a phone’s pixel density will affect battery life as well, where a more crisp display will drain battery faster. Still, using the above plot, we can see that the DROID MAXX, HTC Butterfly S and several Sony phones—not the iPhone 6—have the industry’s best screen size to battery capacity ratio.

Display

In 2010, Apple set the new standard for display sharpness with the “Retina” iPhone 4. For its time, 326 pixels per inch (PPI) was one small step for screen sharpness and one giant leap for blood-shot eyes.

Four years later, Apple hasn’t budged. The iPhone 6’s display is no crisper than its 4-year-old predecessor, while Samsung, HTC and LG have jumped ahead, pushing their PPIs into the 400s and 500s. You might argue that the human eye can’t discern anything over 300 PPI anyway, but take one look at the LG G3 and you might just change your mind. Apple apologists have also pointed to battery life—more pixels means faster battery drain—but it’s a tough argument to buy when phones like the HTC One (M8) both looks sharper and runs longer than the iPhone on a single charge.

The chart below lists the sharpest screens in 2014. Note that the iPhone 6 is on the far right, at #33 overall for the year.

To its credit, the iPhone 6 Plus fares a bit better than its smaller brother in both display sharpness and battery life—it’s tied for the 23rd sharpest display in 2014. Regardless, if you want a world-class display, grab an LG G3 or a Galaxy Note 4 instead.

Weight

So even if the iPhone 6 remains a stubborn 326 PPI and blows through battery life, it’s at least the thinnest, lightest device for its size, right? Not quite. At 129 grams, the iPhone 6 is quite light, but it’s only the 9th lightest 2014 phone (in the 4.6- to 5-inch range), trailing handsets like the LG G2 Mini, LG Optimus L90 and Huawei Ascend P7.

For a fair weight comparison of all 2014 phones, however, we’d want to factor in screen size, just like we did with battery life—in other words, ounces of weight per inch of screen real estate. Using this measurement, the iPhone 6 is only the 22nd lightest phone in 2014, at 27 ounces per inch (the BLU Life Play S leads all 2014 phones, at 23 ounces per inch).

And even if you look at only the best-reviewed phones of the year (i.e. the ones you’d really consider buying), the iPhone 6 is heavier, by the inch, than five other handsets, including the Huawei Ascend P7, LG Optimus L90, LG Lucid 3, Sony Xperia T3 and LG’s latest flagship, the G3. The iPhone 6 may be light, but for now, LG’s top devices are lighter.

This article was written for TIME by Ben Taylor of FindTheBest.

Microsoft Skips Windows 9 and Goes Right to Windows 10

2014-10-01T11:49:00.001-07:00

Microsoft Skips Windows 9 and Goes Right to Windows 10

Microsoft Skips Windows 9 and Goes Right to Windows 10
Mistake Led to Ebola Patient’s Initial Release
Oklahoma Changes Lethal Injection Protocol, But Keeps Controversial Drug
First U.S. Ebola Patient Identified
President Obama, Please Stay out of California
No, Carmaggedon is Not Inevitable
Ebola Co-Discoverer: ‘This Was an Avoidable Catastrophe’
Court Blocks Parts of North Carolina Voting Law
Xi Jinping Could Be China’s Last Communist Ruler
Second Patient Monitored for Ebola in Texas

Microsoft Skips Windows 9 and Goes Right to Windows 10

Posted: 01 Oct 2014 11:35 AM PDT

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Microsoft is trying to soften an unpopular redesign of Windows by reviving features from older versions while still attempting to nudge desktop users into a world of touch screens and mobile devices.

The company on Tuesday gave an early preview of the new Windows 10 software, which it aims to begin selling by the middle of next year. Although the current version is called Windows 8, Microsoft says it’s skipping ahead to Windows 10 to emphasize its effort to move forward.

“Windows 10 represents the first step in a whole new generation of Windows,” said Terry Myerson, executive vice president of Microsoft’s operating systems group.

Windows 8 was introduced two years ago as an answer to the growing demand for mobile devices. But many users hated it because its tablet-like design and controls weren’t a good fit for many devices using keyboards and mice. Sales of personal computers continued to fall.

With Windows 10, Microsoft is trying to regain the loyalty of longtime PC users, while reaching out to consumers and businesses that are increasingly adopting touch-screen smartphones and tablets.

Analysts consider the success of the new Windows crucial for Microsoft and new CEO Satya Nadella, who must show that Microsoft can embrace mobile devices without sacrificing the traditional computing experience.

The new system will be a blend of the old and the new. For instance, it will have various controls that are familiar to users of older Windows systems, such as a start menu to quickly access apps. But this start button will also open a series of tiles that resemble what’s found in Windows 8.

Analysts said that more gradual transition is important if Microsoft wants to persuade users to upgrade.

“This is what Windows 8 should have been,” said Carolina Milanesi, a veteran tech analyst at the research firm Kantar Worldpanel. “Here they are doing the right thing.”

Microsoft executives signaled they got that message on Tuesday. They stressed repeatedly that using the next version of Windows won’t be a challenge for businesses or consumers who have continued to use Windows 7 or even earlier versions.

The new software seeks to offer “the familiarity of Windows 7 with some of the benefits that exist in Windows 8,” said Joe Belfiore, a Microsoft executive who oversees Windows design and evolution.

He compared it to buying a new car with a more powerful engine and a better audio system, without having to “learn a new way to drive.”

Windows 10, for instance, will suggest new ways to use or navigate through files, without forcing users to abandon the old way, Belfiore said.

“We’re designing the experience so that as you use it, the things you already know are familiar and present, but new value is presented to you at a rate that’s easier for you to ingest,” he said.

The effort drew tentative praise from several industry experts.

“They desperately needed to find a way to bridge that experience. I just wish they’d done that with Windows 8,” said Rob Enderle, a tech analyst with the Enderle Group.

Milanesi said that while many businesses resisted upgrading to Windows 8, they can’t avoid touch screens as younger workers are accustomed to using phones or tablets as their primary computing device.

Windows 10 will also be designed to work on a wider range of computing devices.

Microsoft currently has three main systems — Windows 8 for traditional computers and tablets, Windows Phone 8 for cellphones and Xbox for its gaming console. By unifying the underlying systems in Windows 10, software developers will be able to create apps for the various devices more easily. Consumers will also be able to switch devices more easily and avoid having to buy the same apps multiple times.

That doesn’t mean the apps will always look the same. Developers will still be able to adapt apps for the various screen sizes, but won’t have to start from the beginning for each version.

User interfaces on the various devices may also differ, even as they share underlying technologies. For now, Microsoft plans to keep the current Xbox interface on the game console.

Enderle said Microsoft’s effort to create a single platform should help lure more developers to write apps — something the company needs to boost usage of Windows tablets and phones.

Windows is the most widely used PC operating system in the world, but it is steadily losing ground as more people turn to smartphones and tablets, which primarily run on operating systems from Microsoft rivals Apple and Google. That’s why Nadella wants to create one system that will run on all devices.

“It’s certainly an ambitious goal, but it’s also a little early to tell how it will work,” said Michael Silver, a tech analyst at Gartner.

Apple and Google have both rejected Microsoft’s approach of unifying the various systems, preferring to keep systems for PCs and mobile devices separate.

Microsoft also touted new security and management features for business customers, which represent a lucrative market for the company. Almost half of all PCs are used in the workplace, according to Gartner.

While a “technical preview” version of the software is being released this week, Microsoft said it won’t be ready to talk about new consumer features until next year.

Microsoft declined to say how much the new software would cost or how it will be distributed. Analysts have speculated that the company might be considering a subscription model — as it has with Office software — rather than selling each new version of Windows separately.

Mistake Led to Ebola Patient’s Initial Release

Posted: 01 Oct 2014 11:34 AM PDT

The Dallas hospital patient who has tested positive for Ebola virus indicated on his first visit that he had traveled to the city from West Africa, but was released after that information was not communicated to the entire medical team who treated him.

The patient first arrived at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas on Sept. 26, complaining of a fever and abdominal pains, hospital officials said at a news conference. A nurse administered a checklist, on which the patient indicated that he had recently traveled from Liberia. Nevertheless, the hospital sent him home.

“The overall clinic presentation was not typical at that point yet for Ebola,” said Dr. Mark Lester, vice president and zone clinical leader with Texas Health Resources, noting that the patient lacked some traditional hallmarks of the disease, which include vomiting and diarrhea. “Regretfully, that information was not fully communicated throughout the full team.”

The patient, who was confirmed Tuesday as the first direct case of Ebola on U.S. soil, was re-admitted two days later and placed immediately in isolation. On Wednesday, the hospital said he was in serious but stable condition. He is being held in a private ward under round-the-clock care.

The Associated Press, citing the patient’s sister, reported that his name was Thomas Eric Duncan. Local officials would not confirm the report in accordance with patient confidentiality requirements.

The patient’s initial release will raise questions about whether the miscommunication between hospital staff may have increased the chance of additional people becoming infected. Local, state and federal officials have launched a broad effort to trace the contacts made by the patient between the time he began suffering symptoms and his second trip to the hospital, on Sept. 28.

“This is all hands on deck,” Texas Governor Rick Perry said, flanked by a battery of doctors and political officials.

Dr. Christopher Perkins, Dallas County Health and Human Services Medical Director, said 12 to 18 people were being monitored after possibly coming into contact with the sick patient. Of that number, five were members of his immediate household and five were school-aged children.

Mike Miles, the superintendent of the Dallas Independent School District, said the children may have come into contact with the patient over the weekend. The children are being kept out of school, but attended earlier this week, Miles said. None of the potential contacts are currently being quarantined.

The ambulance workers who transported the Ebola patient on his second trip to the hospital are in isolation as a precaution. The hospital is still deciding what precautions to take with the medical staff who had contact with the patient. “Contact and exposure are not the same,” said Dr. Edward Goodman, an epidemiologist at the hospital, who stressed that there was little likelihood that anybody at the hospital has been exposed.

Officials cautioned the public not to panic. While deadly, Ebola is not easy to transmit. It is passed on through contact with bodily fluids, such as blood or vomit, but it cannot be transmitted through the air. Patients carrying Ebola are not contagious unless they are presenting symptoms of the disease.

Oklahoma Changes Lethal Injection Protocol, But Keeps Controversial Drug

Posted: 01 Oct 2014 11:32 AM PDT

The United States’ three executions this year widely considered botched all have at least one thing in common: they’ve all included the use of midazolam, a sedative previously unused in lethal injections.

In January, Ohio executed Dennis McGuire in a 25-minute lethal injection using a two-drug combination of midazolam and hydromorphone. In April, Oklahoma executed Clayton Lockett using midazolam as the first of three drugs in a process that took almost 45 minutes. And in July, Arizona used the same protocol as Ohio to execute Joseph Wood, another lethal injection that took close to two hours.

Late Tuesday, Oklahoma announced new lethal injection procedures requiring more training for executioners and contingency plans if any problems arise. The new protocol also reduces the number of media witnesses from 12 to five. On top of that, it provides the state with four different lethal injection drug combination options, two of which still involve midazolam in a dosage that is five times larger than what was used in Lockett’s execution.

The Oklahoma Department of Corrections released the new guidelines this week without comment. But the move appears to be a way for the state to continue executions while opening the door for more desirable and, possibly, effective drugs that have become difficult to obtain.

“I think this represents a tension between the drugs they would prefer to use and what’s available,” says Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, an anti-capital punishment organization.

In April, Gov. Mary Fallin ordered an investigation into Lockett’s execution, which led to a report released in September by the Department of Public Safety that found that an IV line into Lockett’s groin had become dislodged and wasn’t immediately discovered. The agency made several recommendations for future executions, and the state’s department of corrections pledged to carry out most of them.

“This is in keeping with their position that the botched execution of Lockett was not due to the drugs used, but to the misplacement of the IV,” Dieter says. “To abandon midazolam might contradict this, and possibly leave them with no drugs to carry out the execution.”

Since pharmaceutical companies began denying states drugs like pentobarbital, a sedative that was widely used up until just a few years ago, midazolam has been easier for prison systems to get. And some states may fear that without it, they may not be able to carry out executions at all.

“I think states like Oklahoma are continuing to use midazolam because so far they can and they don’t know what else to do,” says Deborah Denno, a Fordham University professor who studies lethal injection.

First U.S. Ebola Patient Identified

Posted: 01 Oct 2014 11:31 AM PDT

The first patient to be diagnosed with Ebola in the U.S. was identified Wednesday as Thomas Eric Duncan.

Duncan’s sister Mai Wureh told the Associated Press it was her brother who is at the center of the country’s latest Ebola scare. Wureh said her brother went to the emergency room on Friday complaining of fever and a nurse asked about whether he had recently been in Ebola-affected countries. He said yes, but, according to Dr. Mark Lester, a clinical leader for Texas Health Resources, the “information was not fully communicated throughout the whole team.”

Duncan was sent home with antibiotics, and returned two days later in an ambulance with more severe symptoms. He is currently in serious but stable condition at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital.

[AP]

President Obama, Please Stay out of California

Posted: 01 Oct 2014 11:25 AM PDT

Mr. President, I realize such a statement may seem jarring. After all, our state voted for you twice. When you were first running for president, Maria Shriver said, “If Barack Obama were a state, he’d be California.” But these days, I bet I could rally a majority of Californians behind a proposition asking that you never visit again. And I wouldn’t have to talk about your record-low job approval ratings among Californians.

No, our fundamental problem with you is more personal than political. You, sir, have developed a reputation as a very poor houseguest.

You often show up with little warning about your itinerary or schedule. (Your excuse? That the Secret Service can’t disclose your movements for security reasons.) Your massive security cordon routinely causes hours-long traffic jams in a state that already has too many of them. I was once two hours late picking up a child from daycare because you just had to stop for takeout in Los Angeles during the evening rush hour.

So you’ll understand why I felt nothing but dread upon reading multiple news reports that you’re headed to Southern California next week to raise campaign money at the home of actress-turned-insufferable-lifestyle-guru Gwyneth Paltrow.

It isn’t just the traffic-related inconvenience that’s tiresome: It’s that your visits are about you taking, not giving. Almost all of your trips have been driven by political fundraising. You’re disrupting our lives so that millions of dollars rich people might otherwise spend here will instead bludgeon voters in Alaska and North Carolina with President Obama, Please Stay out of Californiamindless TV ads.

While you might be our president, these days other leaders seem to do more presiding than you, engaging with Californians about California. Mexico’s Enrique Peña Nieto addressed a joint session of the legislature on his recent visit. Even the governor of Texas, Rick Perry, is much more of a presence in the civic conversation about California than you are.

Why has the relationship between you and California grown cold? I suspect part of the problem is that you and California are too similar. The fact that we don’t disagree on much can make small differences seem bigger.

We both want to take action against climate change, but your meager policy proposals seem like a drag while we forge ahead with cap-and-trade. We both care a lot about advancing technology and the Internet, but you’re squabbling with Silicon Valley over government surveillance (the Facebook and Google guys like to be doing the surveillance, not getting surveilled) and privacy.

Frankly, it feels like you’ve taken California for granted. Even the biggest things you’ve done for us—Obamacare, the stimulus package when the Great Recession hit—can feel like disappointments.

The Affordable Care Act has covered more than 2 million Californians, which is great, but it also neglects more than 2 million of us – undocumented immigrants. The rest of us end up paying, in money and in our health, for their lack of coverage. Including them would have been a heavy lift politically. But you’ve been suspiciously more interested in deporting our undocumented neighbors than legalizing Californians who are deeply embedded in our communities.

As for the stimulus, that legislation, while providing billions in state aid to California, was not nearly enough to offset the huge budget cuts forced by the recession. The stimulus included very little money to help with our state’s massive infrastructure needs, estimated at $800 billion. State officials begged your administration for loan guarantees to forestall the worst cuts, but you said no. The result: California spending on schools and health remains at historically low levels, even with the economy recovering.

Yes, you and your aides and people in other states might grumble: Why should California get special treatment? Because, Mr. President, we are special. You can’t accomplish your biggest goals when your biggest state is in the shape it’s in. You can’t reduce the national unemployment rate much if California’s own unemployment remains well above the national average. You can’t achieve your goal of making the U.S. number one in the world in percentage of people with college degrees when California’s public universities are turning away thousands of students each year.

Your trips here have come to feel like those political fundraising e-mails that keep arriving this time of year. You’re spamming us, Mr. President. If you can’t do better by California on these trips, then maybe you should stop visiting.

Joe Mathews is California and innovation editor for Zócalo Public Square, for which he writes the Connecting California column.

This article was originally written for Zócalo Public Square.

No, Carmaggedon is Not Inevitable

Posted: 01 Oct 2014 11:23 AM PDT

It makes sense now that the first movie ever filmed in Los Angeles was of nothing but traffic. The 30 seconds of shaky film, shot downtown on Spring Street in 1898, reveal the origin of an enduring issue for the city. L.A. is defined by its traffic, which is universally understood to move very, very slowly.

Today, drivers armed with smartphones use apps like Waze, darting on and off freeways to cut commute times by minutes. And this year, L.A. became the world’s first major city to synchronize all of its traffic lights. Yet in 2013, Angelenos still spent an average of 90 hours stuck in traffic. Could a recent infusion of $32 million for transit improvements in the city help recover this lost time? In advance of the Zócalo/Metro event “What Could Speed Up L.A. Traffic?” we asked transportation experts the following question: What innovations have other cities implemented that could teach L.A. how to speed up traffic?

Matthew Turner: The price of fixing congestion

When a bakery in the former Soviet Union opened in the morning, it gave bread to the first person in line, and then the next, until all the bread was gone. Everyone still in line had to wait for the next batch. This meant that if you were going to get your bread for breakfast, you had to get there early. So there were long lines for bread (like this one).

We do something similar to allocate access to roads. The government builds roads and every morning, the people who want to use them line up. If you are early, there is lots of capacity for you, and you have a speedy trip. If you come a bit later, the capacity is all used up, and you need to wait for road capacity to become available (like cars on this on-ramp).

The Soviet bakery had a line-up problem because bread was handed out free to the first in line. But what if we could price access to roads, just like we price access to bread today? If that were the case, queuing would no longer occur.

In a number of cities around the world—London, Singapore, Stockholm, and even a few highways in L.A.—local authorities make drivers pay to access roads at peak times (but not at other times). In response to a peak hour toll, drivers rearrange their travel schedules. As a result, driving speeds increase and travel times decrease. By constructing a system of tolls, or prices, that are higher for congested roads and times than for uncongested roads and times, we can fix the traffic congestion problem.

The price of reducing traffic congestion is pricing access to roads.

Matthew Turner is professor in the department of economics at Brown University. His research focuses on the economics of land use and transportation. Current projects investigate the relationship between public transit and the growth of cities, whether and how smart growth type development affects individual driving behavior.

Francie Stefan: Streets are a limited resource

Our streets are a limited resource, like water or energy. We can use this resource more efficiently by reducing the need for car trips or by making trips on modes that take up less space. To find a few tools that boost streets’ efficiency, Angelenos can follow the lead of the city of Santa Monica.

Since 40 percent of trips in L.A. County are less than two miles, we know that there are opportunities to convert some vehicle trips to walking, biking, and active transportation. In Santa Monica, basic street restriping was able to convert excess lane width (without reducing car lanes) into over 40 miles of new bike facilities. In only two years, biking increased by over 50 percent.

The best transportation plan is a good land use plan. Santa Monica is focusing housing and jobs near bus and rail networks, taking advantage of L.A. County’s historic streetcar routes and the walkable streets that grew from them. And Santa Monica is building strong first-mile/last-mile walking, biking, and transit connections to future Expo Light Rail stops.

Private industry plays an important role too. New businesses, employers, and residential buildings can help sustain trip reduction strategies by providing commuter incentives, facilities for active commuters (like bicycle stations featuring showers and racks), transit pass subsidies, shared parking, and telecommuting options. These amenities reduce household transportation costs as well as demand on the transportation network.

These strategies will provide a more holistic management of our street resources and “speed up traffic” by moving people in more ways, reducing the bottlenecks for everyone.

Francie Stefan is the transportation & strategic planning manager for the city of Santa Monica, which has set a target of no net new trips for evening peak periods to support more sustainable street function, encourage wellness through active living, and reduce GHG emissions.

Donald Shoup: Tax foreigners living abroad

Most people view parking meters as a necessary evil, or perhaps just evil. Meters can manage curb parking efficiently and provide public revenue, but they are a tough sell to voters. A new kind of meter, however, can change the politics of parking–and reduce traffic–by allowing cities to give price discounts for residents.

In Miami Beach, residents pay only $1 an hour at meters in areas where nonresidents pay $1.75 an hour. Some British cities give the first half hour at meters free to residents. Annapolis, Maryland, and Monterey, California, give residents the first two hours free in municipal parking lots and garages.

Pay-by-license-plate technology can automatically give discounts to all cars with license plates registered in a city. Cities link payment information to license plate numbers to show enforcement officers which cars have paid or not paid. Pay-by-plate meters are common in Europe, and several U.S. cities, including Pittsburgh, now use them.

Like hotel taxes, parking meters with resident discounts can generate substantial local revenue without unduly burdening local voters. The price break for city plates should please merchants because it will give residents a new incentive to shop locally. In big cities, the discounts can be limited to each neighborhood’s residents. More shopping closer to home might then reduce total vehicle travel in the region.

Parking meters with resident discounts come close to the most popular way to raise public revenue: tax foreigners living abroad. More money and less traffic will help any city.

Donald Shoup is distinguished professor of urban planning at UCLA, where he has served as chair of the department of urban planning and director of the Institute of Transportation Studies. His book, The High Cost of Free Parking, explains how better parking policies can improve cities, the economy, and the environment.

Doris Tarchópulos: Reimagining the suburbs

Each city has its own urban characteristics. The dimensions of the streets, the block size, the shapes of the lots, and the type of housing all differ depending on the city and its origins. North American cities are very different from Latin American cities, but they also have common features. From the mid-20th century, Americans in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres have left the core of the city and gone to the suburbs, which has caused car dependency and a crisis of mobility.

In Bogotá, Colombia, we are working on research to create a mix between the current suburbs and human-scale neighborhoods that can be traversed by walking and bicycling. We are thinking of repurposing suburbs gradually, introducing commercial strips along the main roads within neighborhoods, using parking lots or streets to foster vibrant community life, and at the same time, moving people back to the old quarters of the city center.

These ideas are easy to write about but difficult to implement. Reshaping cities demands political will and public conscience. But we also need new definitions of a city model based on a reimagined mobility system. Los Angeles has long been a traffic-clogged city, but given enough time and public support, the way people get around it could be transformed.

Doris Tarchópulos is an architect, associate professor, and director of the master in urban and regional planning at the architecture school of Javeriana University. She has published several award-winning books and scientific articles on housing and urban planning.

This discussion originally appeared on Zócalo Public Square.

Ebola Co-Discoverer: ‘This Was an Avoidable Catastrophe’

Posted: 01 Oct 2014 11:23 AM PDT

The news from Dallas that the first Ebola case outside of Africa has been diagnosed on U.S. soil is a stark reminder that epidemics on the other side of the world are a threat to us all. No epidemic is just local.

As long as this still expanding Ebola epidemic in West Africa continues, there is a constant source for it to spread to other countries – in the first place to neighboring African countries. This outbreak is the largest and longest ever, with more than 6,500 cases and 3,083 deaths so far. It is the first outbreak that involves multiple and entire countries, and the first one that affects capital cities.

With increasing global mobility, it was always possible that someone traveling from an infected country would be carrying this deadly virus with them, and it will happen again. Fortunately, the U.S. and other high income countries have robust infection control measures and clinical practices to stop the onward spread of the virus within the country. Health services are well equipped to isolate the patient, to trace everyone he has been in contact with, and to put those contacts under surveillance for signs of fever. Health workers need to be alert for anyone with early symptoms of Ebola by always asking about people’s travel history (which is good practice any way). The risk to citizens is extremely small.

We would need to be far more concerned if someone with Ebola traveled to a country where health services have poor infection control and lack hygiene practices. If an infected traveler enters an environment like this, it will result in new outbreaks. In addition, nursing and medical staff are at high risk of contracting Ebola virus infection as they often lack protective gear. Over 200 health care workers have already died in this epidemic alone.

This confirmed case in the U.S. does not mean we should respond by stopping flights from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, as some are calling for. The current outbreak is already disrupting entire societies because hospitals have stopped functioning and commerce is coming to a halt. Cutting these countries off from the rest of the world will only worsen the social and economic impacts, hamper aid efforts, and increase the panic and fear. In addition it won’t stop the spread of the virus, and is not recommended by the World Health Organization.

Instead, we must bring the humanitarian catastrophe under control by greatly expanding the national and international response. We must build field hospitals and Ebola care centers, send healthcare staff, medical supplies and logistical coordination, as well as supporting governments and NGOs to stop Ebola transmission through community mobilization to avoid risky funeral and care practices. Shortening the time between infection and presentation to treatment and isolation facilities is probably the most critical action today to end this epidemic. At the same time, experimental therapies and vaccines are finally being evaluated for their efficacy, but will come too late for too many. Above all, we must rebuild trust.

The international community initially took too long to react to the outbreak and our response is still far from perfect. But the U.S. commitment last month to send up to 3,000 troops to help tackle Ebola in Liberia was a decisive moment, as is the UK’s massive support to Sierra Leone, including by convening a donor conference on October 2. Other European countries must now join in immediately.

This was an avoidable catastrophe, above all if there had been earlier recognition, and prompter and vaster national and international responses. The world must now put in place mechanisms and means to handle better the next epidemic, which will undoubtedly come.

Professor Peter Piot is Director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and former Executive Director of UNAIDS and Under Secretary-General of the United Nations. He co-discovered Ebola in 1976.

Court Blocks Parts of North Carolina Voting Law

Posted: 01 Oct 2014 11:22 AM PDT

An federal appeals court on Wednesday blocked parts of a sweeping North Carolina voting law from taking hold ahead of this year’s midterm elections.

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court’s decision to allow provisions of the law that eliminate same-day-registration and the casting of out-of-precinct ballots. The appeals court on Wednesday still allowed other portions of the law to stand, including the cut of seven early voting days. But in a 69-page opinion Wednesday, the appeals court said an August decision by the lower district court to allow the full law was flawed.

The decision comes just weeks before the early voting period is set to begin in the Tar Heel State on Oct. 23. “The right to vote is fundamental,” Judge James Wynn wrote in the majority opinion. “And a tight timeframe before an election does not diminish that right.”

It wasn’t immediately clear whether or not the state will appeal. North Carolina’s law has been one of the most criticized by voting rights advocates since the Supreme Court ruled that parts of the landmark Voting Rights Act are unconstitutional, which opened the door for states to enact more voting restrictions.

Xi Jinping Could Be China’s Last Communist Ruler

Posted: 01 Oct 2014 11:00 AM PDT

The mammoth protests that have gripped Hong Kong for the past several days have implications far beyond this Special Administrative Region of more than 7 million people. In rejecting Beijing’s plan to allow only sham elections for the next chief executive of Hong Kong, in mobilizing tens of thousands of people into the streets for several days running, and in fashioning a peaceful symbol of resistance and restraint (the umbrella) in the face of an inflammatory overreaction by the police, the youth-led demonstrators have posed the most serious challenge to the authority of the Chinese Communist Party since the massacre in Tiananmen Square 25 years ago.

China’s Communist rulers have only themselves to blame for the political crisis in Hong Kong. Since it reverted from British colonial rule to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, Hong Kong has enjoyed significant autonomy and civil freedom under the principle of “one country, two systems.” During these last 17 years, Hong Kongers have waited patiently for Beijing to deliver on the Basic Law’s promise of “gradual and orderly progress” toward “the selection of the Chief Executive by universal suffrage upon nomination by a broadly representative nominating committee in accordance with democratic procedures.” When Beijing announced in 2004 that Hong Kong was “not yet ready” to democratically elect its Chief Executive in 2007, or its legislature in 2008, many in Hong Kong were bitterly disappointed. But people waited hopefully for 2012, or 2017 at the latest.

The recent eruption of popular outrage was prompted by Beijing’s decision, announced at the end of August, to defer indefinitely the dream of democratic self-governance in Hong Kong. China’s rulers have now delivered an Iranian-style interpretation of “universal suffrage”: everyone can vote, but only for candidates approved by the real rulers. Instead of “one country, two systems,” Hong Kong is getting “one country, one autocracy,” with increasing concentration of economic power and shrinking media and academic freedom.

Hong Kong’s youthful demonstrators are economically worried, but even more so, they are politically indignant. Many, like the 17-year-old student protest leader Joshua Wong, were born after the handover and raised in a prosperous, civically vibrant, and open society. They grew up tweeting and texting, and they see democratic self-governance as both their natural right and their constitutional promise. Many older Hong Kongers remember colonial rule, and cherish the civil freedoms and rule of law that they now see eroding under the lengthening shadow of economic and political control from Beijing. No one knows what percentage of Hong Kong’s population is willing to risk prosperity to press democratic demands to the limit. But hundreds of thousands of protestors and sympathizers view Beijing’s political intransigence as an existential threat to Hong Kong’s future.

This was an avoidable crisis. Over the years, many creative ideas have been floated to realize “gradual and orderly progress” toward democracy. China’s Communist leaders could have negotiated with moderate Hong Kong democrats to gradually expand the range of candidates permitted to contest Chief Executive elections, and to move in stages to a fully directly elected legislature (30 of the 70 members are now elected by narrow functional constituencies). Political compromise could have fashioned a popular majority accepting patient progress. What Hong Kong got instead was no negotiations and no progress, but rather an authoritarian imposition thinly masquerading as popular sovereignty.

Beijing’s intransigence was never solely about Hong Kong, and neither are the current protests. This is a struggle for the future of China itself. President Xi and his fellow Party bosses are consumed with fear that they will meet the same fate as Mikhail Gorbachev if they do not maintain tight, centralized political control. Xi will pursue economic reform. He will try to purge the party and state of brazen corruption (while also purging his rivals along the way). But political reform is ruled out. So, even, is discussion (or teaching or tweeting) about such concepts as “universal values,” “freedom of speech,” “civil society” and “judicial independence.

China is changing rapidly in the wake of rapid economic growth. A civil society is slowly rising, alongside a pragmatic and more independent-minded business class. People now debate issues through social media, even with state controls. The middle class is traveling and gaining exposure to democratic ideas and freedoms, most dangerously, in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Ironically, during this long holiday week when China celebrates its National Day (and now the 65^th anniversary of the Communist Revolution), many Chinese vacationing in Hong Kong are suddenly watching a very different kind of revolution.

China’s rulers are now stuck in a trap of their own making. If they brutally repress mass demonstrations, as they did a quarter century ago, they will gravely damage their international legitimacy, wreck prospects for closer relations with Taiwan, and destroy the civic fabric of Hong Kong. If they do what they should have done months ago — negotiate — they fear they will look to be capitulating to mass pressure, thereby inviting more of it in a country where hundreds of local-level protests erupt daily. Thus they will probably wait, hoping the protests will ebb, while preserving the option of dumping the current Chief Executive, C.Y. Leung, as a sacrificial lamb.

If the protests persist and grow, China’s Communist rulers will face an awful choice, and they may well repeat the tragic mistake of 1989. But this is not the China of 25 years ago. Xi Jinping can no more will an emergent civil society out of existence than King Canute could command the tides of the sea to recede. But alas, King Canute understood the natural limits to his power. Xi Jinping does not appear to do so, and this is why he could well be China’s last Communist ruler.

Larry Diamond is Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Director of Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.

Second Patient Monitored for Ebola in Texas

Posted: 01 Oct 2014 10:39 AM PDT

Health officials in Texas are monitoring a second patient for Ebola, as they investigate over a dozen individuals who were in contact with the first person diagnosed with the disease in the United States.

“Let me be real frank to the Dallas County residents: The fact that we have one confirmed case, there may be another case that is a close associate with this particular patient,” Zachary Thompson, director of Dallas County Health and Human Services (DCHHS), said in a morning interview with WFAA-TV. “So this is real. There should be a concern, but it’s contained to the specific family members and close friends at this moment.”

The Dallas County bureau later underscored that there had been no confirmation of a second case, as some media outlets had reported:

There is NOT a 2nd confirmed case of #Ebola in Dallas. Everyone who came in contact with the confirmed case is being investigated.

— Dallas County HHS (@DCHHS) October 1, 2014

Officials have said the man came into contact with 12 to 18 people after returning from Liberia, all of whom are being investigated.

The first case of Ebola was confirmed at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas on Tuesday. The patient had flown from Liberia to Texas on Sept. 19 and sought treatment for symptoms on Sept. 26. Health officials say they have contained the virus to the area and are working closely with the Dallas County school district.

[WFAA-TV]

Michael Phelps Tweets Apology After DUI Bust

2014-09-30T14:21:00.001-07:00

Michael Phelps Tweets Apology After DUI Bust

Michael Phelps Tweets Apology After DUI Bust
Review: Men, Women & Children Shows How Sexting Is Ruining America
Holder Says Apple’s iPhone Encryption Will Thwart Child Abuse Investigations
Bobby Jindal to Appear With Hobby Lobby Family
Meet the Woman Who Could Keep Control of the Senate Up for Grabs
Ebola Outbreak Contained in Nigeria, Officials Say
Watch Pee-wee Herman and Karen Gillan in TV On the Radio’s New Video
Love, Not Fear, Will Help Us Fix Climate Change
Reddit Gets $50 Million in Venture Funding
Science Explains Why Men Get Wasted Together

Michael Phelps Tweets Apology After DUI Bust

Posted: 30 Sep 2014 01:45 PM PDT

Olympic champion swimmer Michael Phelps tweeted to his fans Tuesday afternoon after he was arrested and charged with driving under the influence in Maryland early Tuesday morning.

Phelps, who is the most decorated Olympic athlete of all time, was caught driving 84 mph in a tunnel with a 45mph speed limit, Maryland police said. He allegedly crossed double lines in the tunnel, and failed multiple sobriety tests. Authorities told NBC he was cooperative throughout the process. Phelps had been charged with a DUI once before, in 2004, after he ran a stop sign.

The swimmer acknowledged Tuesday’s incident on Twitter, and apologized for letting fans down:

(1/3) Earlier this morning, I was arrested and charged with DUI, excessive speeding and crossing double lane lines.

— Michael Phelps (@MichaelPhelps) September 30, 2014

(2/3) I understand the severity of my actions and take full responsibility.

— Michael Phelps (@MichaelPhelps) September 30, 2014

(3/3) I know these words may not mean much right now but I am deeply sorry to everyone I have let down.

— Michael Phelps (@MichaelPhelps) September 30, 2014

Phelps has 22 Olympic medals to his name, and famously won eight gold medals in eight events at the Beijing Games in 2008. He won four more gold medals at the London Games in 2012, but has not yet confirmed whether he will swim in the Rio Games in 2016.

Review: Men, Women & Children Shows How Sexting Is Ruining America

Posted: 30 Sep 2014 01:00 PM PDT

Adults may think back on the world a decade ago and sigh in nostalgia at its glorious innocence: no Facebook, no Twitter, no carpal tunnel syndrome from spilling every secret to countless online friends and potential predators. The children of those adults may shrug derisively and ask if their parents also miss the wonderful days before cars, phones and indoor plumbing. The luxuries of one generation are the necessities, the addictions of the next. Progress? An omen of the Apocalypse? You decide.

To judge from his new film Men, Women & Children, Jason Reitman expects the fire this time. And social media, which once meant talking and letter-writing, will provide the fuel for the final conflagration. Based on Chad Kultgen’s rather more explicit novel, this off-kilter ensemble dramedy is a plague movie, like Contagion or World War Z: everyone has the same disease but few realize it’s more than a harmless itch. The dread signs — how e-blather can fester into a metaphorical Ebola — are especially rampant among the students in a Texas high school. Some of their parents are infected, too.

Fifteen-year-old Chris Truby (Travis Tope), a connoisseur of online porn since he was 10, has graduated to images so violent and elaborate that he is incapable of sharing an ordinary sex act with a classmate. Allison Doss (Elena Kampouris), pursuing anorexia almost as a religious vocation, gets sideline cheers — “Pretty bitches never eat” — from other girls online with eating disorders. Tim Mooney (Ansel Elgort) has quit as the star of his school’s football team to spend obsessive hours each day in a Guild Wars gaming site. Hannah Clint (Olivia Crocicchia), aiming to translate her blond allure into stardom on a reality show, has posted naughty photos of herself on a “private” site approved by her mom Joan (Judy Greer). They should know that, in the age of an omniscient NSA and a transparent Cloud, nothing is private. Every intimacy is up for grabs.

In this virtual world, the young are the masters (and slaves); parents must learn from their children, or just log onto their kids’ computers. Chris’s dad Don (a paunchy, subdued Adam Sandler) is less appalled than aroused by what he finds there. He and his wife Helen (Rosemarie DeWitt) have fallen out of love and out of sex; they have to schedule it like a rare play date, and when Helen grudgingly notes, “O.K., but it’s gotta be quick,” Don assures her, “It will be.” Restlessness leads him to a call-girl site and her to a dating service. No points for guessing that the married philanderers end up at the same bar.

Another parent, the ramrod Patricia Beltmeyer (Jennifer Garner), has grown suspicious of her daughter Brandy (Kaitlyn Dever) and turned into the hall monitor of the girl’s texts and cell-hone calls. Need we add that Brandy is the movie’s one healthy teen, building a friendship with the disaffected Tim? If Patricia had been the mother of any of the other kids, her snooping might have saved souls. Here, it could end a life.

In his first three features — Thank You for Smoking, Juno and Up in the Air — Reitman proved himself an ace at serious observational comedy. He was too cool to push viewers toward or away from characters whose internal weirdness he figured would be evident to any attentive mind. Then something snapped. Young Adult went wayward as the sketch of a prom queen 20 years past her prime, and Labor Day illuminated a bondage fantasy with Nativity lighting. Here, Reitman enlisted as co-writer Erin Cressida Wilson, whose previous feature films (Secretary, Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus and Chloe) dealt with sexual kinks, to lend authority to a synoptic take on a society drenched in virtual venery.

Men, Women & Children attempts to achieve the tone of Reitman’s early films, pirouetting between behavioral levity and dark melodrama, yet it often falls flat. The director’s choice of Emma Thompson as the veddy English narrator of a very American story suggests that he sees Kurtgen’s novel as Jane Austen time-warped into the 21st century: a comedy of manners in an age of new norms. By citing and showing the Voyager’s interstellar mission, Thompson puts the compulsions of a few little Texans into macroscopic long shot — from outer space to cyberspace. But the movie proceeds as if the NASA craft had returned to a slightly different Earth, where people who share nothing but a zip code are bent, or crippled, in various ways by the same malady.

The dozen or so main actors do their best to breathe nuance into characters that are standing in for social statements. Sandler and DeWitt make a perfectly mismatched couple on a journey that long ago took a wrong turn. (They remember 9/11/01 fondly, since it was practically the last time they had ecstatic unplanned sex.) Elgort, the hunky cancer-teen from The Fault in Our Stars, and Dever, of Short Term 12, provide the respite of normal adolescence in this lineup of teen clichés. Garner tries heroically to make sense of a modern book-burner — daughter’s text-deleter — by painting her face with a wounded smile to hint at the sad past that may have steered Patricia toward her current malevolence. But actors shouldn’t have to do all the work, or to work against the script, in trying to bring their characters to plausible life.

Reitman’s long view, which he may mean to be the diagnosis of a sympathetic doctor, plays like a radio preacher’s rant against sins of the flesh. And for all the snazzy effects of kids walking through a mall or a school corridor madly texting — their messages clogging the film frame like dialogue balloons in a Mad magazine splash panel — this film is defiantly old-fashioned, possibly Luddite, in condemning the appetites nourished by modern technology.

The way we remember it, kids of an earlier era hid salacious stuff from their folks, if only under the mattress (the first place a parent would look). They tortured themselves with diet regimens and sought pleasure in video games, board games or Strip Hearts. Spouses found ways to stray. The world was awash in sexuality, always has been, yet somehow most of us survived.

Men, Women & Children doesn’t clarify complex issues so much as it simplifies and very nearly sullies them. You can sit through the movie dutifully noting its lessons, but at the end, you might want to clear your history.

Holder Says Apple’s iPhone Encryption Will Thwart Child Abuse Investigations

Posted: 30 Sep 2014 12:48 PM PDT

Attorney General Eric Holder ripped technology companies Tuesday that he said are “thwarting” the federal government’s ability to stop child abuse, just days after Apple and Google announced new security measures that would prevent the companies from giving authorities data on users.

“We would hope that technology companies would be willing to work with us to ensure that law enforcement retains the ability, with court-authorization, to lawfully obtain information in the course of an investigation, such as catching kidnappers and sexual predators,” Holder said at a Washington conference of the Global Alliance Conference Against Child Abuse Online. “It is fully possible to permit law enforcement to do its job while still adequately protecting personal privacy. When a child is in danger, law enforcement needs to be able to take every legally available step to quickly find and protect the child and to stop those that abuse children. It is worrisome to see companies thwarting our ability to do so.”

Apple has recently drawn the ire of some law enforcement figures, including FBI Director James Comey, for making it harder for the federal government to access users’ personal information—including emails, photos and contacts—on its new iOS 8 mobile operating system. Apple says it’s “not technically feasible” for the company to respond to government warrants, as it now can’t bypass users’ passcode to access data (though experts say the NSA can still get around this). Earlier this month, Google announced that its next generation Android operating system will have encryption on by default for the first time.

Read Holder’s remarks here.

Bobby Jindal to Appear With Hobby Lobby Family

Posted: 30 Sep 2014 12:43 PM PDT

Lousiana Gov. Bobby Jindal will appear with the billionaire family behind the Hobby Lobby arts and crafts chain Wednesday, as the Republican lawmaker continues to lay the groundwork for a likely presidential bid in 2016.

According to an aide, Jindal will appear at an event at the Hobby Lobby campus in Oklahoma City Wednesday evening with the Green family in support of the Museum of the Bible, a museum backed by the family planned for Washington, D.C.

The Greens’ retail chain became a nationwide household name earlier this year when the Supreme Court ruled that it could not be required to pay for contraceptive coverage as part of employees’ health insurance plans because it would violate their Christian beliefs.

Jindal was among the most vocal Republicans in support of Hobby Lobby before the Supreme Court and one of the loudest celebrants after the decision was handed down. In a commencement address at Liberty University in May, Jindal highlighted the Green family’s fight against the Obama administration, calling the company “nothing less than an all-American success story.”

The event will provide Jindal an opportunity to highlight one of his signature issues, religious freedom, while placing him next to a potential deep-pocketed donor for his likely presidential campaign. In a February address at the Reagan Library in California, Jindal held up the Hobby Lobby as an example of what he terms the Obama administration’s “silent war against religious liberty.”

The conservative GOP lawmaker also supports the efforts by some in the Republican Party to advocate for greater availability of birth control over the counter at pharmacies, instead of the requirement for a doctor’s prescription.

Meet the Woman Who Could Keep Control of the Senate Up for Grabs

Posted: 30 Sep 2014 12:41 PM PDT

There is a nightmare scenario that keeps most politicos working on both sides of the aisle up at night: after the midterm elections, and even through the anticipated Dec. 6 run off in Louisiana, control of the Senate likely won’t be decided until Jan. 6, the date a run-off in Georgia will take place, if any one candidate fails to muster 50% of the vote. It is this scenario that Libertarian candidate Amanda Swafford, who regularly pulls 5% in most polls, relishes.

“In that situation, if we did force a runoff,” Swafford tells TIME, “I’d say that’s a clear mandate from people of Georgia for a small government and less involvement in people’s lives.”

Small government has hardly been a theme in the race between Republican businessman David Perdue and Democrat Michelle Nunn, who are competing to fill retiring Republican Saxby Chambliss’s seat. The two have spent millions firing at one another: Perdue accused Nunn of funding terrorists through her work with the Bush Family Foundation and Nunn said Perdue lost jobs and discriminated against female workers as CEO of Dollar General.

“If that nastiness continues in a run-off, the folks responsible for the run-off will probably just stay home,” Swafford says of her supporters. “And they will have to find new voters in order to win and they will be exceptionally hard.”

Perdue now leads Nunn by 3.4 points, according to an average of Georgia polls by Real Clear Politics. But Perdue has only broken the 50% threshold in one out five of the most recent polls, and he’ll need at least 50% of the vote to avoid a run-off. Swafford’s “mere presence on the ballot creates the potential for a run-off,” says Jennifer Duffy, who follows Senate races at the non-partisan Cook Political Report. “Overall, Libertarians tend to draw more from Republicans, so she is a bigger problem for Perdue than Nunn.”

But Swafford says that may not be the case with her voters, who she maintains are open to whomever makes the best case. Swafford isn’t even sure she’d caucus with the Republicans if, by some miracle, she were to be elected.

And so an unlikely figure could impact national politics. As of the end of June, Swafford had raised $7,683 for her senatorial bid. The single 37-year-old has kept her day job as a paralegal as she has mounted her campaign. “It makes for a lot of late nights and early mornings,” she says, “but I believe electing someone to the Senate like me, who knows what it’s like to work a job, have a boss, and make ends meet on a regular budget, would bring a valuable perspective to the Senate.”

Swafford is pro-choice and for the legalization of marijuana. And, like most Libertarians, she’s deeply suspicious of President Obama’s engagement abroad, particularly in Syria and Iraq. “Last year, the President wanted to bomb Syria for their chemical weapons, now he’s asking for their help to defeat another enemy,” she says. (Obama hasn’t actually asked Syrian strongman Bashar Assad for help in defeating ISIS.)

Swafford benefits from Georgia’s strong Libertarian history. It is home to 2008 Libertarian Presidential candidate Bob Barr, a former Republican congressman. And that same year, John Monds made history by becoming the first Libertarian candidate to draw more than a million votes—statewide or nationally—though he still lost his attempt to become Georgia Public Service Commissioner. Four years later, Libertarian David Staples made another bid for the same office and again broke the one million-vote threshold, though again fell short. But, unlike Swafford, both of those men faced only one rival from a major party, not two.

Swafford says she had no choice but to run statewide: Georgia’s ballot access laws for third party candidates for state races are some of the most restrictive in the country. “So, it’s either run for city council, or statewide,” says Swafford, who was elected to her hometown city council in Fiery Branch in 2010. If they lose this Senate seat, Georgia Republicans who control the state legislature might consider rethinking those restrictive third party laws. Because if politicians like Swafford can’t clinch state office, spoiling a statewide race is the second best—and clearly effective—option to get their ideas out. It turns out, some politics might be better off local.

Ebola Outbreak Contained in Nigeria, Officials Say

Posted: 30 Sep 2014 12:26 PM PDT

The Ebola outbreak in Nigeria appears to be contained, health officials said Tuesday.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that due to a very rapid local and international response, the country may have fully contained its Ebola outbreak. The 21-day incubation period for the disease has passed.

Nigeria saw its first confirmed case of Ebola on July 17 when a Liberian-American man collapsed at a Nigerian airport after traveling from Liberia. The man infected the health workers who treated him, and the country experienced a total of 19 cases and seven deaths. Unlike in other countries like Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, where it took months for Ebola to be recognized, the Nigerian government quickly declared a public health emergency when it discovered the traveler may have come in contact with 72 people at the airport and hospital.

The Nigerian government coordinated the outbreak response with state and national networks and rolled out a massive public education initiative, with trained “social mobilizers” who were deployed to do house to house visits in areas where an Ebola contact resided. Nigeria also recently worked to eradicate polio, and the country tapped into those strategies as part of their response.

Still, if there’s a lesson to be learned from Ebola thus far, it’s not to overestimate containment. As TIME reported last week, there was a period in April when it appeared Guinea’s outbreak had subsided. In actuality, there were several unreported and hidden cases that re-ignited the outbreak with an even greater wave of infections.

Watch Pee-wee Herman and Karen Gillan in TV On the Radio’s New Video

Posted: 30 Sep 2014 12:13 PM PDT

TV on the Radio “Happy Idiot” feat. Paul Reubens and Karen Gillan from Funny Or Die

TV On the Radio have released the video for the single “Happy Idiot” off of their forthcoming Seeds album, and it’s a winner. The clip stars Pee-wee Herman (also known as actor Paul Reubens) as a racecar driver losing his mind in the heat, seeing visions of Doctor Who and Guardians of the Galaxy star Karen Gillan.

As TV On the Radio frontman Tunde Adebimpe explained in a statement, “I had this idea for the video that I thought would never happen, of Paul Reubens as a race car driver who slowly loses his mind. I took it to Funny or Die and they said, ‘That’s great, let’s go for that.’”

Luckily, Reubens was a longtime fan of the band and agreed to star in the video. In the clip, directed by Danny Jelinek and written by Jake Fogelnest, Gillan appears as a cheerleader, chef and balloon-carrying vision in black who may or may not be a hallucination. “Karen Gillan was absolutely great,” said Adebimpe. “We were really psyched to work with her, because she’s basically sci-fi royalty, and a great person. Full on geek fest in the desert.”

“It was really fun to do,” Adebimpe said. “I love how it came out. I think our fans will like it. I hope so. The cool ones will anyway. The rest can suck it.”

TV On the Radio’s new album, Seeds, is due out November 18th via Harvest Records. In support of the album, the band is heading out on tour mid-October. Check dates here.

Love, Not Fear, Will Help Us Fix Climate Change

Posted: 30 Sep 2014 12:13 PM PDT

Superman’s father, Jor-El, was a leading scientist who tried for years to warn his fellow inhabitants that their home planet, Krypton, was about to explode. But they didn’t take the necessary actions until it was too late.

Something similar is happening with global warming on our planet. In some ways, Al Gore is our Jor-El. (Gore-Al?)

At first, people were captivated by his warning about warming. An Inconvenient Truth won an Oscar, Gore won a Nobel Peace Prize, and global warming was on everyone’s mind.

But not for long. It’s been eight years since the documentary came out, but despite accumulating scientific evidence, not much has happened to address global warming, until recently.

The United Nations Climate Summit last week, with more than 120 world leaders, galvanized everyone’s attention again. More than 400,000 people from around the world marched through the streets of Manhattan to raise awareness of global warming.

Why did it take eight years to bring global warming to our awareness again?

Because fear is not a sustainable motivator—in health or in politics. In the short run, fear is powerful, it gets our attention. It activates a primal part of our brain, the amygdyla, that helps us survive a short-term crisis (e.g., the proverbial saber-toothed tiger jumping out in front of us).

In the long run, though, it’s too scary to think that something really bad may happen to us, so we usually don’t, at least not for long. The human mortality rate is still 100%—one per person—but it’s not something most people think about very often. Until something bad happens, but, even then, only for a short while.

Something similar happens on an individual level when a person has a heart attack. The physician has their full attention, and they’ll do just about anything the doctor tells them they need to do—but usually only for about four to six weeks or so. Then, they often go back to their old ways. They tune out.

Preventive medicine is often fear-based. “Don’t smoke that cigarette, you’ll get lung cancer!” “Put down that cheeseburger, you’ll get a heart attack!” And so on. That doesn’t work for very long.

What enables people to make sustainable changes in their lives, both personal and planetary, is not fear of dying; it’s joy of living.

Love is more powerful than fear as a sustainable motivator. We will address tough challenges to help our loved ones that we might not do just for ourselves.

One of the most powerful moments at the recent UN climate summit this week was when Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner from the Marshall Islands received a standing ovation after she recited a poem written for her seven month old daughter, which included:

We are spreading the word

and there are thousands out on the street

marching with signs

hand in hand

chanting for change NOW

they’re marching for you, baby

they’re marching for us

because we deserve to do more than just

survive

we deserve

to thrive…

so just close those eyes, baby

and sleep in peace

because we won’t let you down—

you’ll see.

Recently, I gave the matriculation lecture at the Army War College in Carlisle, PA, to almost 400 future generals from 67 countries representing all four branches of the U.S. military. Since the title of my talk was “The Power of Love,” I asked former four-star General Stan McChrystal to make a short video to provide much more street cred than I would have at a military gathering on why love is more powerful than fear.

“If you think about why people do extraordinary things—why on the battlefield soldiers will sacrifice themselves, why they will make extraordinary efforts not to let down their comrade on the left or right—it’s got nothing to do with fear or coercion from their corporate or sergeant or officers.

“It has everything to do with commitment and wanting to have a relationship with people and with an organization in which they feel like they’ve given part of themselves so that they can, in fact, feel like they are a very important part of that team.

“No matter how much fear we create in subordinates, that’s just not strong enough to force them into actions where they’re more scared of something else, particularly a situation like combat when the chances of being killed or injured by the enemy is great—any fear they have of their chain of command is likely to be very insignificant.

“So, when we talk about the power of love, I think it’s the most powerful force that moves soldiers. You’re not going to stand in the sports bar and talk about how much you love each other, ‘I love you man!’ But when people put on the equipment, when they really have got to do difficult things, that’s what makes people operate, that’s what makes people give, that’s what makes organizations strong.”

If it’s meaningful, then it’s sustainable. In 2010, I consulted with President Clinton after his bypass grafts occluded and encouraged him to make healthy lifestyle changes including a whole foods plant-based diet low in refined carbohydrates. He has been doing so since then, lost more than 20 pounds, and looks and feels great. He’s inspired many others. Although I’ve been consulting with him since 1993, he has talked publicly about why he made these more intensive changes in diet: because he wanted to live long enough to walk his daughter down the aisle and to live to be a grandfather. Those meaningful goals make these dietary changes sustainable.

Almost 70 years ago, Viktor Frankl’s classic book, Man’s Search for Meaning, described what he learned as a concentration camp survivor in World War II. He found that prisoners who were able to find meaning in the midst of extreme suffering—e.g., “I have to survive to be reunited with my loved ones; to bear witness; to complete my life’s work”—were much more likely to survive, even if they were not physically as strong as those without meaningful goals.

If it feels good, then it’s sustainable. There’s no point in giving up something you enjoy unless you get something back that’s even better—and quickly.

The biological mechanisms that control our health and well-being are much more dynamic—for better and for worse—than most people realize. So, when people eat well, move more, love more, stress less, and quit smoking, they generally feel so much better, so quickly, it reframes the reason for making these changes from fear of dying (which is not sustainable) to joy of living (which is).

For example, nicotine in tobacco makes your arteries constrict. So does chronic stress. In your brain, that can cause a stroke; in your heart, a heart attack. But in your face, it makes you wrinkle and age faster. Supermodel Christy Turlington has a wonderful web site, www.smokingisugly.com.

And in your sexual organs, nicotine is the anti-Viagra. Instead of dilating blood flow to your sexual organs, it constricts and reduces it. Men who smoke are 200% more likely to have erectile dysfunction than those who don’t. Fortunately, quitting quickly reverses impotence.

Telling someone that quitting smoking makes you sexy and beautiful is much more motivating and sustainable than telling them that it causes heart attacks and strokes. That puts it into present tense—what is happening, making it much more motivating—rather than fear of what might happen later.

One of the reasons I’m excited by what visionary Elon Musk has done with the Tesla is to show that you can reduce global warming and drive a powerful, fun car. A cool car helps make a cooler planet.

If we are going to find sustainable ways of dealing with global warming, we have to base it on love and feeling good, not fear and loathing. If it’s fun, then it’s sustainable.

Dean Ornish is Founder and President of the non-profit Preventive Medicine Research Institute and Clinical Professor of Medicine at UCSF. He is the author of The Spectrum and five other bestsellers. He was the first to prove that comprehensive lifestyle changes may reverse heart disease and other chronic illnesses without drugs or surgery and may even begin to reverse aging at a cellular level.

Reddit Gets $50 Million in Venture Funding

Posted: 30 Sep 2014 12:10 PM PDT

The popular online message board Reddit has secured $50 million in new venture capital funding, the company announced Tuesday. The website known as the “front page of the Internet” is getting a cash infusion from a long list of investors that includes Y Combinator president Sam Altman, Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz and the rapper Snoop Dogg.

Reddit is well-known for its primitive website design and laissez-faire attitude toward moderating its users. The company is a former subsidiary of Conde Nast that was later spun off into an independent company. CEO Yishan Wong said the new funding will help Reddit grow its relatively small staff of 60 and improve its app and ad products. “An investment like this doesn’t mean we’re rich or successful,” Wong said in a blog post. “Money can become worthless very quickly, value is something that is built over time through hard work.”

Reddit faced criticism earlier this month for allowing users to link to a vast number of stolen nude photos of celebrities. The startup defended the right of its users to post controversial content but ended up banning the page with the nude photos because some of the images were of minors.

With more money may come more pressure for Reddit to both generate profits and conform to the standards of traditional media companies. For now, though, Reddit is still playing by its own rules. The startup, which acknowledged it was still unprofitable earlier this year, has agreed to give 10% of its 2014 ad revenue to charity. The company promised Tuesday that investors involved in the latest funding round will give 10% of their shares back to the Reddit community (details on the practicality and legality of this are still to come, Wong said).

Reddit is no longer a scrappy startup underdog. It’s a company with a valuation pegged as high as a half-a-billion dollars that has hosted a conversation with the President, among other leaders. But Wong remains confident that backers will let the newly-rich Reddit keep being weird.

“We have been entrusted with capital by patient, long-term investors who support our views on difficult issues,” he said. “We believe in free speech, self-governing communities, and the power of voting. We find that this freedom yields more good than bad, and we have chosen investors based on this belief.”

Science Explains Why Men Get Wasted Together

Posted: 30 Sep 2014 12:09 PM PDT

Male bonding over booze is a ritual as old as booze but modern science may have finally shed some light on why getting sloshed with your mates can seem like a particularly male pursuit.

Smiles are contagious in a group of men sitting around drinking alcohol, according to a study announced Tuesday in the journal Clinical Psychological Science. This suggests that booze serves as a social lubricant for men, making them more sensitive to social behaviors, like smiling, and freeing them to connect with one another in a way that a soda can’t.

Lest that strike you as laughably obvious, consider this: the effect does not hold if there are any women in the group, according to the study authors.

Researchers divided 720 “healthy social drinkers” — half men, half women, all ages 21 to 28 — into three groups. Each group received either an alcoholic drink (vodka cranberry, regrettably for any lab rats with refined taste, but so it goes), a placebo or a non-alcoholic drink. They found that, among men, smiles — and associated increases in positive mood and social bonding — tend to catch on, leaping from face to face, as it were, but only in exclusively male groups.

“Many men report that the majority of their social support and social bonding time occurs within the context of alcohol consumption,” said lead researcher Catharine Fairbairn. “We wanted to explore the possibility that social alcohol consumption was more rewarding to men than to women — the idea that alcohol might actually ‘lubricate’ social interaction to a greater extent among men.”

More importantly — get ready to never hear the end of this one, boyfriends and husbands of the world — researchers note that genuine smiles are perfectly contagious among sober women, just not sober men. A cold one merely evens the score for men, allowing them to catch smiles from each other, so long as there are no women present.

The authors don’t posit a guess as to why the presence of a woman keeps drunk men from catching smiles from one another, except to say that booze seems to disrupt “processes that would normally prevent them from responding to another person’s smile.”

Nice work, dudes. There’s nothing a girl likes more than an unsmiling humorless dolt.

Why Women’s Colleges Are Opening the Door for Men

2014-09-29T11:05:00.001-07:00

Why Women’s Colleges Are Opening the Door for Men

Why Women’s Colleges Are Opening the Door for Men
Voting Rights Battles Heat Up Ahead of Midterm Elections
Most Financial Aid Should Go To First-Generation College Students
Fresh Demonstrations Rock Hong Kong as Protest Leader Warns of Backlash
Gov’t to Put Up $52 Million to Help Farmers Market Their Produce
Harley-Davidson Puts the Brakes on 105,000 Hogs
Mobile Payments: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Mandatory Palestine: What It Was and Why It Matters
Lorde Crafts a ‘Yellow Flicker Beat’ For The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Soundtrack
One Direction Say Don’t ‘Steal My Girl’ on New Single

Why Women’s Colleges Are Opening the Door for Men

Posted: 29 Sep 2014 10:45 AM PDT

Wilson College, a small women’s school in Pennsylvania, came close to shutting down once before. But a swell of opposition from staff and students in 1979 and a fundraising effort that raised $1.1 million in less than three months kept the college in businesses. Facing a similarly dire falloff in enrolled students and tuition revenue this year, the school turned to what it said is the only option for survival—admitting men.

One of a few dozen remaining women’s colleges in the U.S., Wilson said it can no longer afford to serve only half the population. While overall college enrollment has gone up by about 32% since 2000, enrollment at women-only colleges has fallen during that time by 29%. As a result, more women’s colleges are going co-ed. There were as many as 200 women’s colleges in 1960, according to the National Institute on Postsecondary Education. Today that number hovers around 44, as schools facing sluggish enrollment are forced to find ways to survive.

In the last two years, at least three other women’s colleges have gone coed or announced plans to. The first male students at William Peace University in Raleigh matriculated in 2012. Georgian Court University in New Jersey went co-ed last year. And Chatham University in Pittsburgh will admit men starting next fall.

At Wilson, undergraduate enrollment has been chronically low for 40 years, according to school spokesman Brian Speer. At its peak, the college enrolled 732 students, but it hasn’t had more than 338 since 1980. Last year, just under 600 applicants were offered admission—but only 100 chose to attend. That prompted the board of trustees to approve President Barbara Mistick’s plan to admit undergraduate men.

The process began last fall with undergraduate male commuter students. Male students who are living on campus arrived this fall. The shift to co-ed is part of a broader revitalization plan that also includes a 17% tuition reduction and a loan buyback program.

“This college has been trying to implement programs for 30 years to address the stagnant enrollment in the undergraduate college,” Speer said.“Those efforts have not gotten us anywhere near where we need to be.”

Not everyone is on board. Students and alumni have formed two groups to protest the change. One, Wilson College Women, is led by lawyer and 1980 graduate Gretchen Van Ness; it has 465 members on its Facebook page. Another, Wild Wilson Women, has more than 1,400 members.

Van Ness, who sat on the commission that made suggestions to Mistick, said it didn’t support coeducation as a way to boost enrollment. She accused the administration of breaking state Department of Education protocol that requires it to propose amendments to the college’s articles of incorporation and wait for approval before making changes. The college filed an application to change its charter with the state last year but didn’t wait for approval before admitting male commuter students that fall. Instead, Van Ness and others said, the college immediately advertised itself as co-ed, hired coaches for male athletic teams, and started preparing dorms for male residential students. Van Ness said this is illegal but Wilson maintains that changes to its charter in 1993 gave it permission to admit men.

“All of a sudden, Wilson’s identity as a women’s college had just disappeared,” Van Ness said.

In June, the women behind Wilson College Women were granted a hearing at the state Department of Education, where they made the case for state intervention that would block any further undergraduate coed operations at the school. The Department has not said it will issue a ruling.

At Chatham University, the decision to admit men was much less controversial.

“It’s been a topic of conversation for 20 years. The idea was to keep the undergraduate women’s college and diversify the graduate programs,” said school spokesman Bill Campbell.

In 1992, men were invited to apply to graduate and other programs. The move led to a temporary boost in enrollment, but it went down again in 2008, at the height of the recession, and still hasn’t recovered.

“Less and less women are interested in women’s colleges today,” Campbell said.“Can we feasibly continue to put this much money to this mission decision?”

At Chatham, Campbell said the decision to admit men was proactive—the school relied on a February report from Standard & Poor’s that predicted the next few years to be especially tough for small, narrowly-focused colleges as an indication of trouble to come. Chatham got a low BBB- rating in the report.

Admitting men can be a financial solution for struggling schools, but it’s important for women to have a range of choices when they pick a college, said Marilyn Hammond, president of the Women’s College Coalition.

“What’s at stake is that there will be limits again to the options women have if women’s colleges don’t exist,” she said.

At Wilson, Van Ness and other opponents said they hope the state will protect that option. Van Ness was a junior and president of the student government at Wilson in 1979, when faculty and students protested the school’s closure, which was eventually blocked by a judge.

“We made history once,” Van Ness said. “As tough as it is out there in the constantly changing world of higher education, there is still a place for women’s colleges.”

This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan education-news outlet based at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Voting Rights Battles Heat Up Ahead of Midterm Elections

Posted: 29 Sep 2014 10:18 AM PDT

Voting rights advocacy groups and Ohio state officials submitted dueling briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court Saturday and Sunday in a fight over early voting in the state.

On Sept. 24, the U.S. Appeals court for the Sixth Circuit upheld a lower court’s decision to block Ohio’s new election rules, which would cut back early voting from 35 to 28 days before the election and limit early voting on weekends. The courts found that Ohio’s new laws if enacted would violate the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause and Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

Ohio officials have asked Justice Elena Kagan to overrule the state courts and prevent voting from starting Sept. 30. She could hand down a decision as early as today.

Ohio is just the latest flashpoint as early voting fights are heating up around the country ahead of midterms. Democrats seek to mobilize lower-income voters who are less likely to turn out for general elections if they have to take time off of work to vote on a Tuesday. Republicans object, claiming the risk of voter fraud and other concerns require tighter voting restrictions.

Here are the three other voting rights laws cases that could work their way up to the Supreme Court before the midterms:

Wisconsin- On September 12, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals put into effect a law requiring most voters to present photo identification at the polls. Proponents of the law say it will discourage voter fraud, while critics say it will deter minorities from voting. On Friday, the entire Seventh Circuit split 5-5 on whether to hear the case, which may send it to the Supreme Court.

North Carolina – North Carolina’s 2013 state voting law, which eliminates same-day registration and out-of-precinct voting and shortens the early voting window by ten days, will be in place for the first time this year in a statewide election. A panel of three judges heard oral arguments about the law on Sept. 25, with one judge pointedly asking, “Why does the state of North Carolina not want people to vote?” The case will likely end up at the Supreme Court, especially if the Fourth Circuit rules against the law.

Texas – Last week, trial ended in a challenge to Texas’s voter identification law requiring voters to display government-issued forms of identification. Under the stringent law, a concealed-carry permit is a valid form of identification, but a student ID is not. The judge is expected to rule soon on whether the law violates the Constitution or the Voting Rights Act, and if the decision comes out against the law, the state could appeal to take the case to the Supreme Court.

Most Financial Aid Should Go To First-Generation College Students

Posted: 29 Sep 2014 10:16 AM PDT

Sometimes, vague can be misleading—and harmful. For years, colleges have identified disadvantaged students based primarily on “diversity” and “need.” But those categories are broad and unspecific, and can be gamed by sophisticated applicants and parents. The result? Schools aren’t helping the students that really need it. And higher education is now perpetuating – rather than alleviating – inequality. We can reverse this pattern by learning from our education history and shifting the focus of that aid effort to first-generation college students.

The key here is this: colleges need to get more specific about who they want to help, and why. Universities’ commitment to “diversity” is important, but it’s a poor substitute for a policy of equal access for the disadvantaged because “diverse” students and disadvantaged students are not necessarily one and the same. Several studies have shown that beneficiaries of diversity-based admissions policies typically hail from the most well-educated and economically successful segments of “diverse” communities. That’s why a diversity strategy will not help universities reclaim their mission of fostering socio-economic mobility.

Focusing on first-generation college students, on the other hand, just might. These are the students whose parents never attained a bachelor’s degree from a U.S. college, and they’re a much better proxy group for those who are truly at a disadvantage in education. First-generation students typically attend secondary schools with fewer academic and financial resources. Yet we don’t have to look hard to find examples of students who demonstrate strong academic potential and have the discipline and perseverance to achieve long-term success. Howard Schultz, Starbucks CEO; Kathleen McCartney, President of Smith College; Colin Powell, former Secretary of State; and Associate Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor, Associate Supreme Court Justice – all first-generation college students – are just a few examples of tremendous academic potential of these students.

So, how do we unlock all that potential? It’s easy to propose an outreach strategy to first-generation students, but harder to implement one. The 250 or so oversubscribed institutions that admit a fraction of thousands of applicants too often crowd out the smart but poorer students. High-ability students born to poor, uneducated parents have the most to gain from higher education and the most to lose as a result of current inequities. We need to remove some of the roadblocks in the present system, especially at selective institutions of higher learning.

Here’s one such roadblock: Many universities—an overwhelming majority, in fact—practice “need-sensitive” admissions and don’t accept academically able but poor students, at least in part because they cannot pay. And then there’s merit-based financial aid, which also gives wealthier students an edge: schools often use it to climb the infamous U.S News & World Report rankings, as Stephen Burd reports in a recent paper. No one is arguing that merit doesn’t matter, but we need to scrutinize merit aid awards more closely. The metrics most colleges use to define “merit” favor affluent students, whose schools have the resources to support standardized testing prep, Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate classes and exams. And it’s not just colleges that are contributing to this problem: Even lower-income students who receive the maximum Pell award may be left with a significant financial burden because the government isn’t holding colleges accountable for rising costs. Too many students face an untenable choice: financing their college educations with costly student loans or forego higher education altogether.

The cumulative impact of these roadblocks is clear. Students from affluent backgrounds graduate from college at six times the rate of children from low-income households. For lower-income students, merely going to college is an achievement. Fewer than 30 percent enroll in a four-year college. Of those poorer students who do matriculate, fewer than half graduate. The most damning statistics concern high-achieving students from low-income households. Even when students from low-income households outscore higher-income peers, they graduate from college at a lower rate. This data belies the notion, once extolled by universal schooling proponent, Horace Mann, that our institutions of higher education are “great equalizers.”

To make good on the past, we need to discuss how data sometimes drives – and misidentifies – our priorities. The Department of Education mandates that colleges report a massive amount of information about their students, including test scores, graduation rates, average net price paid per student, and demographic information such as race and sex. But it neglects to ask colleges about their students’ first-generation status—sending schools the message that this status isn’t a government priority (an impression compounded by the fact no comprehensive database indicates how many such students are admitted to institutions that receive federal funds).

Even if the government were asking for data about first-generation status, universities aren’t likely to happily fork it over. In response to inquiries I made in connection with a forthcoming research paper on first-generation students’ access to higher education, administrators at numerous selective universities claimed to have no idea whether their students hail from Ph.Ds. or from high school drop outs. The data that I did manage to collect indicates that first-generation students constitute a fraction of the student bodies at selective colleges and universities. In 2011, for instance, only five percent of matriculating freshmen at the University of Michigan, and in 2013 just nine percent of matriculating freshman at the University of Virginia—both taxpayer-supported universities that enroll thousands of students—were first-generation college students.

The best way to address the social and economic inequality embedded in higher education policy is to tackle it at its roots. Admissions officials can start by practicing need-blind admissions, asking students whether their parents graduated from a four-year college, and consciously seeking to admit academically competitive first-generation students during the admissions process. Colleges should provide adequate financial support for low-income first-generation college students and the federal government must replace costly loans with grants for a greater number of needy students. The government can also look to its past for precedent to craft a legislative solution. Both the 1944 Servicemen’s Readjustment Act (“GI Bill”) and 1965 Higher Education Act (part of The Great Society) offer models for providing educational benefits and access to those who are most in need.

The inclusion of greater numbers of students from the bottom rungs of society in higher education need not be a zero sum game. This isn’t about displacing wealthier students. It’s about enriching the student body, and making college better for everyone with the potential to attend.

Tomiko Brown-Nagin is the Daniel P.S. Paul Professor of Constitutional Law and a Professor of History at Harvard University, where she is the co-director of the Program in Law and History. This piece was originally published in New America’s digital magazine, The Weekly Wonk. Sign up to get it delivered to your inbox each Thursday here, and follow @New America on Twitter.

Fresh Demonstrations Rock Hong Kong as Protest Leader Warns of Backlash

Posted: 29 Sep 2014 10:04 AM PDT

A co-founder of the Hong Kong pro-democracy organization Occupy Central said late Monday that the group will change tactics because the unprecedented protests it has helped to organize are unsustainable and could backfire.

Sociologist Chan Kin-man, a former professor at Chinese University, told TIME it’s “unrealistic” to expect protesters to continue to occupy key downtown locations for much longer, bringing roads to a standstill and disrupting businesses. He hinted that the barricades should come down and blockades end on Oct. 1—China’s National Day.

His thinking seemed sharply at odds with the mood on the streets Monday, and would shock many of the tens of thousands of mostly young demonstrators who unloaded truckloads of supplies as the night wore on and looked set for a protracted siege in their push for free elections.

Protesters’ ranks appeared to have grown considerably since the weekend, and an almost jubilant air could be felt as demonstrators in Queensway, close to the city’s legislature, passed around chocolate cake, cookies and freshly grilled hotdogs while a student group performed a dance routine. Some played soccer. At one point, thousands held up backlit cell phone screens, forming a stunning ravine of light that stretched into the distance.

Across the harbor in Kowloon, a black-clad DJ flipped open his laptop, set up his mixing console and entertained hundreds of demonstrators at the Nathan Road protest site with an impromptu set. Families with children could be seen among the demonstrators, who chanted and listened to speeches as they sat or reclined along on a broad stretch of road that is normally one of the city’s busiest.

The protest was remarkably peaceful and orderly. Protesters erected signs apologizing to office workers for the inconvenience. At one point, a group of activists began directing traffic along busy Hennessy Road.

Chan said the Occupy Central group wants “the people to stay out until at least Oct. 1.” After that, he says, “we will announce a new stage of the campaign.”

The activist is worried that a prolonged occupation will eventually invite a bloody crackdown from the authorities. He also believes the goal of many on the streets—major electoral concessions from Beijing—is unrealistic, and should be replaced with the more achievable aim of ousting the city’s unpopular leader, C.Y. Leung.

“Once he steps down, we can start over,” Chan told TIME.

Demonstrators occupying the city’s main business district reacted to Chan’s words with skepticism.

“Many adults feel like they cannot do anything to change the situation, but young people have a dream,” said 21-year-old student Nicholas Ng.

Eric Ng (no relation), a 21-year-old event planner who has been on the streets for three days, leaving only to take quick shower breaks, said, “I’ve never seen this many people asking for what we need. We’ll still stay here. If we leave on Oct. 1, it won’t have been here long enough.”

Chan’s moderate stance highlights what many say is a growing generational gap between a protest leadership of middle-aged academics and professionals, and rank-and-file demonstrators, who are mostly students and impatient for the electoral freedoms they have come to regard as their birthright.

Tensions between the two camps emerged over the weekend, when some students participating in a classroom boycott accused Occupy Hong Kong of hijacking their campaign in order to launch the broader protests, bringing forward the widely expected start date by several days.

The police use of tear gas on Sunday evening has also galvanized sections of the public that had previously remained on the sidelines.

“To be honest, I didn’t really support this,” said Raymond Chan, a 38-year-old high school math teacher. “But when the police used tear gas on people last night, that changed my mind. They used tear gas, without any warning. The fact that they did that just makes us stronger and more unified.”

“The police were very harsh firing the tear gas yesterday, and that’s why I’m here,” said Lilian Chung, a young arts student. “If we don’t come here, Hong Kong is going to have a sorry, sorry future.”

Occupy Hong Kong is hoping that people like Chung will leave the streets and find other ways of continuing the protest in two days’ time. Before the week is out, they will know whether or not they are still in control of a sweeping social movement they helped launch.

—Additional reporting by Elizabeth Barber, Charlie Campbell, Rishi Iyengar, Reno Ong, Helen Regan and David Stout

Gov’t to Put Up $52 Million to Help Farmers Market Their Produce

Posted: 29 Sep 2014 09:54 AM PDT

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is to put $52 million toward local and organic farming through farmers markets and organic research.

Local farmers are having difficulty marketing their produce, even though there’s increasingly high consumer demand for it. According to the New York Times, the funding is part of the Farm Bill signed by President Obama in February.

The $52 million is being distributed to the industry through five grant programs that were authorized through the Farm Bill. The grants will be distributed annually.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced the funding at the Virginia State Fair, where farmer and business owner M. James Faison of Milton’s Local Harvest won a grant to help farmers producing pork and beef products market their goods more effectively.

According to the Times, the organic business sector will be getting $125 million over the next five years for research as well as $50 million for conservation. The USDA will also be allocating $30 million each year to marketing for local food and farmer’s markets. Another $70 million will go toward researching fruits and vegetables.

In an interview, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said funding local food systems are good business for the government since they generate new employment.

Harley-Davidson Puts the Brakes on 105,000 Hogs

Posted: 29 Sep 2014 09:50 AM PDT

Hog riders may need to take a look at their bikes, because the recall bug has bitten the motorcycle world in a big way.

Harley-Davidson announced this weekend that it is recalling more than 105,000 motorcycles for issues related to the clutch, plus 1,384 bikes for potential fuel tank issues.

There have been 19 reported crashes as a result of the clutch issue, though no deaths and only three minor injuries have resulted.

This isn’t the first time the American motorcycle brand has been hit by a recall this year. Harley recalled more than 66,000 bikes in July, citing possible problems with the front wheel.

Following the recall scandal that has plagued General Motors for much of this year, auto manufacturers are being extra cautious when it comes to recalls in an effort to avoid any allegations of not taking action fast enough.

This article originally appeared on Fortune.com

Mobile Payments: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Posted: 29 Sep 2014 09:50 AM PDT

We use our smartphones in place of maps, health trackers and cameras, so why not use them to replace our credit cards, too? It’s not like Americans don’t already choose their smartphones when it’s time to shop and bank online.

Yet a 2013 survey from financial services company TSYS (PDF) found that just 6% of Americans want to use their smartphones in lieu of a credit or debit card.

Consumers seem comfortable with credit cards, whether they’re signing a receipt, entering a PIN or waving the card at a contactless payment terminal, and they see little perceived extra value in using smartphones to pay in stores, asserts Rajesh Kandaswamy, an analyst at information technology research and advisory firm Gartner. “Consumers need an incentive to move to mobile payments,” he says. And Softcard mobile payment app (formerly Isis) does that, offering a dollar off every purchase you make with an American Express Serve card (up to 50 transactions).

The upcoming launch of Apple Pay will also help. The app will download automatically in October as part of an update to iOS 8 for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, and it works with American Express, MasterCard and Visa cards.

“Given that Apple already stores millions of customers’ financial info in iTunes, Apple Pay is likely to be a catalyst for higher adoption of the smartphone wallet because it reduces the efforts of millions to even try mobile payments,” Kandaswamy says.

Apple Pay is also supported by major banks, including Bank of America, Chase and Citi. These big banks are unlikely to spike the cost of processing Apple Pay transactions versus credit card transactions, giving more merchants more incentive to make the service available to their customers.

Why switch to a smartphone wallet

A mobile wallet app offers a better way to manage payment cards, from debit and credit cards to discount vouchers and loyalty vouchers, Kandaswamy says. “A mobile wallet app can also offer better control over finances, in the sense that you have a single place to examine and analyze your purchases,” he says.

Paying with your smartphone can speed up the checkout process. Instead of rifling through your wallet (and possibly realizing you forgot to bring a card at all), simply tap your smartphone on a payment terminal to authorize a transaction and simultaneously apply discounts or loyalty points.

How the money moves

Most current smartphone wallet apps with a tap-to-pay feature require a phone with a Near Field Communication (NFC) chip to work. For iPhones, that means the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Most Android phones that run Android 4.0 or newer are NFC-compatible, although some apps require a special, extra-secure SIM for storing financial information. Check with your carrier to see if your Android phone is e-wallet-friendly.

If you use a Windows Phone or BlackBerry device, you’re facing a wait. Microsoft recently announced Wallet for Windows Phone for storing credit cards, loyalty cards, vouchers and tickets, but the app’s tap-to-pay functionality isn’t yet supported by any Windows Phone devices. And although Visa approved the BlackBerry mobile payment framework last year, we have yet to see any official launch of a wallet app.

But the mobile payments game is heating up. Retail giant Wal-Mart has announced that it’s piloting its own mobile payments system, along with several other large brands. Current C, which will work on any smartphone, won’t launch until next year.

The apps to consider

For now, Android and iPhone owners can turn their smartphones into lean, mean paying machines with one of these apps:

Apple

Apple Pay

Apple Pay will be available in October for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus as well as for the Apple Watch when it launches next year. Apple Pay holds credit and debit cards, and iTunes users can automatically link the credit card they already have on file. Once you’ve activated Apple Pay, you can use it for secure one-tap purchases in shopping apps as well as services such as Uber and Panera Bread, without having to fill out billing and shipping information.

Tap to pay: Touch the front of your iPhone 6 or 6 Plus to a contactless payment terminal while holding your finger over the TouchID fingerprint sensor. You get a gentle vibration when the transaction is complete.

Security: Instead of storing and sending credit card numbers, Apple Pay allocates a device-specific account number encrypted on a dedicated chip in the iPhone 6/6 Plus. This number is sent with a one-use transaction ID called a token. “The consumer’s credit card is never exposed during the transaction, and merchants are no longer storing giant databases of credit cards, waiting for some hacker to come along and compromise them,” says Marc Rogers, principal security researcher at mobile security company Lookout. “However, whether [this is more secure] depends on how the token itself is protected and if it is securely stored, neither of which are clear at this point.”

Why you want it: It’s fast. Using the iPhone’s fingerprint scanner to tap and pay beats signing a receipt or entering a PIN code. And with the support of every major U.S. bank, the number of shops that accept Apple Pay could skyrocket very quickly.

Where you can use it: Use it at about 220,000 shops over about a dozen retailer chains, including McDonald’s, Subway, Bloomingdales and Walgreens.

Which phones support it: iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus only.

Google Wallet

Google Wallet holds credit and debit card information as well as loyalty cards and discount coupons. You can transfer money into a prepaid card called the Wallet Balance. If you’re using an NFC-enabled Android 4.4 phone, you can pay for purchases in-store. Tap-to-pay won’t work on iPhones or on Android phones running Android 2.3 or older; however, these can access the Wallet’s other features, such as sending or requesting money, one-click checkout at online retailers and tracking orders made with linked payment cards.

Tap to pay: Open the Google Wallet app on your phone, then enter a PIN before holding it against the terminal.

Security: Google encrypts and stores users’ financial details on its servers, and use of the app is protected by a PIN. If someone should manage to pilfer your phone and guess your PIN, Google claims its fraud protection covers 100% of “verified unauthorized transactions.”

Why you want it: Google Wallet supports dozens of loyalty programs and coupon sites. Adding points and receiving discounts when you purchase something is hassle free, even if you’ve forgotten which vouchers and cards you have.

Where you can use it: Use it at any store where contactless payments are accepted.

Which phones support it: Android 2.3; 4.4 and higher required for tap-to-pay; iOS 6 or newer, but does not support tap-to-pay.

Softcard

Softcard was created by AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon, so (you guessed it) you’ll need to be on one of these carriers to use it. You’ll also need an NFC-compatible Android phone. The app supports American Express, Chase and Wells Fargo credit cards plus a handful of loyalty and discount cards. You can set up an American Express Serve account and use it to make payments with any debit card, credit card or U.S. bank account.

Tap to pay: As with Google Wallet, open the app, enter your PIN, then hold your NFC smartphone against the payment terminal.

Security: To use Softcard, you need a secure SIM card that can store your financial information so that only the Softcard app can access it. (You can request one from your carrier, assuming your phone is Softcard-compatible.) For each transaction, a one-use token is created so that your card details are not sent to the merchant. Like Google Wallet, a PIN protects the use of the app.

Why you want it: Softcard also scans nearby merchants for offers or discounts available to Softcard users, which you can then use at checkout.

Where you can use it: Use it at dozens of chains including Urban Outfitters, Subway and Walgreens. Check the full list at paywiththis.com.

Which phones support it: Android 4.0 and higher.

LoopPay

LoopPay, a Kickstarter success, works via a smartphone app combined with a Loop device — either a fob ($39, pairable with iPhone or Android phones) or a ChargeCase for iPhone 5/5S ($99). Credit and debit cards, loyalty and rewards cards and your driver’s license can be scanned into the Loop app. Most Android phones running Android 4.2 or newer work with Loop, but some have compatibility issues; check to see if yours works at LoopPay’s compatibility page.

Tap to pay: Hold your fob (or ChargeCase-sheathed iPhone) by the credit card terminal, then swipe your phone screen or press the fob button to pay. If you need to show ID (say, for an alcohol purchase), hit the ID icon on the phone screen and display a scan of any identification you’ve loaded.

Security: All payment information is encrypted and stored in a secure chip inside the Loop fob or ChargeCase, and a PIN protects the use of the app.

Why you want it: LoopPay works at 90% of retailers around the world — far more shops than any of the other apps.

Where you can use it: Use it anywhere there’s a credit card reader.

Which phones support it: iPhone, Android 4.2 and up.

More than an app, not quite a wallet

Starbucks

This iPhone app combines your loyalty card and prepaid card balance into one handy app for tap-and-pay, keeping track of rewards you’re due and seeing how much more coffee you need to buy before you hit the next reward. Starbucks got this right — the app is used for $6 million in transactions every week.

PayPal

If you’re in a shop that accepts PayPal, log in to the app (iPhone and Android) and check in to your location. You can then take your purchases to the register, tell the cashier you’re paying by PayPal and simply approve the payment on the phone screen. It’s not quite a wallet replacement, but it is handy if you forget your real-world wallet. The app can scan your vicinity for PayPal-friendly merchants.

Keep your information secure

Using a mobile wallet app can be more secure than using a credit card because wallet apps don’t send as much sensitive information (such as your credit card number and expiration date) in the course of a transaction. To maintain security with a mobile payment app on your phone, follow these suggestions from Lookout’s Rogers:

Set a password on your phone.
Download an app for finding your phone if it’s lost. When your phone becomes your wallet, loss or theft becomes even more inconvenient.
Only download mobile payment apps (or, indeed, any apps) from sites you trust. Check the app’s ratings and permissions and read reviews to make sure they’re widely used and respected before you download.
Turn off your device’s NFC connection when you’re not using it.
Use NFC payment stations with caution; you might end up paying for someone else’s purchases.

Will you be replacing your wallet with an app? If so, which one? Let us know in the comments.

This article was written by Natasha Stokes and originally appeared on Techlicious.

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Mandatory Palestine: What It Was and Why It Matters

Posted: 29 Sep 2014 09:45 AM PDT

TIME

The map above is from a 1929 TIME article titled “Islam vs. Israel”—even though, as the map makes clear, in 1929 there was no country called Israel. (On a desktop, roll over to zoom; on a mobile device, click.)

Instead, there was Mandatory Palestine. The idea of a mandatory nation, using the common definition of the word, is an odd one: a country that’s obligatory, something that can’t be missed without fear of consequence. But the entity known as “Mandatory Palestine” existed for more than two decades—and, despite its strange-sounding name, had geopolitical consequences that can still be felt today.

The word “mandatory,” in this case, refers not to necessity but to the fact that a mandate caused it to exist. That document, the British Mandate for Palestine, was drawn up in 1920 and came into effect on this day in 1923, Sept. 29. Issued by the League of Nations, the Mandate formalized British rule over parts of the Levant (the region that comprises countries to the east of the Mediterranean), as part of the League’s goal of administrating the region’s formerly Ottoman nations “until such time as they are able to stand alone.” The Mandate also gave Britain the responsibility for creating a Jewish national homeland in the region.

The Mandate did not itself redraw borders—following the end of World War I, the European and regional powers had divvied up the former Ottoman Empire, with Britain acquiring what were then known as Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq) and Palestine (modern day Israel, Palestine and Jordan)—nor did it by any means prompt the drive to build a Jewish state in Palestine. Zionism, the movement to create a Jewish homeland, had emerged in the late 19^th century, though it wasn’t exclusively focused on a homeland in Palestine. (Uganda was one of several alternatives proposed over the years.) In 1917, years before the Mandate was issued, the British government had formalized its support for a Jewish state in a public letter from Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour known as the Balfour Declaration.

But by endorsing British control of the region with specific conditions, the League of Nations did help lay the groundwork for the modern Jewish state—and for the tensions between Jews and Arabs in the region that would persist for decades more. Though Israel would not exist for years to come, Jewish migrants flowed from Europe to Mandatory Palestine and formal Jewish institutions began to take shape amid a sometimes violent push to finalize the creation of a Jewish state. Meanwhile, the growing Jewish population exacerbated tensions with the Arab community and fueled conflicting Arab nationalist movements.

TIME reported on some of the tensions in the 1929 article from which the map above is drawn:

The fighting that began between Jews and Arabs at Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall (TIME, Aug. 26) spread last week throughout Palestine, then inflamed fierce tribesmen of the Moslem countries which face the Holy Land (see map)…

…Sporadic clashes continuing at Haifa, Hebron and in Jerusalem itself, rolled up an estimated total of 196 dead for all Palestine. A known total of 305 wounded lay in hospitals. Speeding from England in a battleship the British High Commissioner to Palestine, handsome, brusque Sir John Chancellor, landed at Haifa, hurried to Jerusalem and sought to calm the general alarm by announcing that His Majesty’s Government were rushing more troops by sea from Malta and by land from Egypt, would soon control the situation

The clashes in Mandatory Palestine, which at times targeted the British or forced British intervention, began to take a toll on U.K. support for the Mandate. As early as 1929, some newspapers were declaring “Let Us Get Out of Palestine,” as TIME reported in the article on Jewish-Arab tensions. Though the Mandate persisted through World War II, support in war-weary Britain withered further. The U.K. granted Jordan independence in 1946 and declared that it would terminate its Mandate in Palestine on May 14, 1948. It left the “Question of Palestine” to the newly formed United Nations, which drafted a Plan of Partition that was approved by the U.N. General Assembly—but rejected by most of the Arab world—on Nov. 27, 1947.

As the day of May 14 came to an end, so did Mandatory Palestine. The region was far from settled, but the Mandate did accomplish at least one of its stated goals. Mere hours earlier, a new document had been issued: the Israeli Declaration of Independence.

Read a 1930 cover story about the Zionist movement during the period of Mandatory Palestine: Religion: Zionists

Lorde Crafts a ‘Yellow Flicker Beat’ For The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Soundtrack

Posted: 29 Sep 2014 09:34 AM PDT

Lorde’s contribution to the soundtrack she curated for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1 is here. In a statement posted on Tumblr, the 17-year old singer —Ella Yelich-O’Connor — wrote, “It’s my first offering from what I hope will be a soundtrack you love. It’s my attempt at getting inside her head, Katniss’. I hope you like it.”

In the track, Lorde sings: “I’m a princess cut from marble, smoother than a storm/ And the scars that mark my body, they’re silver and gold.” The lyrics, paired with the dusky and lilting tone of the song, show off Lorde’s skill at crafting a character that combines Katniss Everdeen’s toughness with her own gothic overtones; it’s cut in the same darkly grooving vein as her LP Pure Heroine.

Like so many other teenage girls, Lorde also took to Tumblr to post some thoughts on her journey into the dark heart of superstardom and her work on curating The Hunger Games: Mockingjay —Part 1 soundtrack:

i’m sitting up in bed, moving through desert halfway between utah and las vegas. yesterday was our ninth show in eleven days. every night, after i play, and say hi, and take pictures, and i walk up the stairs and we go on our way, i set up in this little bed office. i work from midnight until late on the soundtrack, singing into my computer, listening to demos and final mixes. my bus sleeps. we are almost at the end, the point where this soundtrack gets taken away from me and becomes something real. i’m reminded of this day last year, when pure heroine came out in this country. the feeling of something very solitary that i had worked on spinning around and around further away from me, becoming someone else’s, everyone’s. the past year of my life has seen everything around me multiply in size and number – the stamps on my passport, the number of people i have to ask before i ride on the ferris wheel after my set at a festival, the decibels that follow me when i walk around in public. the other thing that’s grown is me – my fitness, my mental stamina, my ability to think clearly and make decisions – but most of all, my capacity for love. the thousands upon thousands (wait, millions(?!!)) of you who bought pure heroine truly feel like friends to me – it’s no coincidence i’m posting this note here, where i feel the most happy and safe online, the place where i laugh the most and where every day, i feel like people get me. i never knew i could feel such a warm heart for this many people at once. thankyou for hearing about me all those months ago, and sticking around. thankyou for being here.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1 soundtrack is out 11/18 on Republic. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1 opens in theaters on November 21st.

One Direction Say Don’t ‘Steal My Girl’ on New Single

Posted: 29 Sep 2014 09:28 AM PDT

Attention, dudes of the world: boy-band wonder One Direction, known for stealing the hearts of teenage girls around the world, would prefer if you didn’t try and also steal their lady friends. On “Steal My Girl,” the first official single from their upcoming fourth album, Four, the band reminds male listeners that there are billions of fish in the sea for you to choose from — so long as you keep your hands off the women that “belong” to them. (Come on, fellas, why you gotta be so rude? Don’t you know Harry, Louis, Liam, Zayn and Niall are human, too?)

As for the actual music, 1D appears to be sticking with the “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” philosophy. Co-written by Louis and Liam, “Steal My Girl” takes some cues from the folksy “Story of My Life” and puts a mellow spin on the 1980s-arena-rock worship of their last release, Midnight Memories. Hear the track above, and catch Four in stores on Nov. 17.