Roundup – “Celebrity” Christmas

Line O’ the Day:

“You go to a Cosi, and the fuckers give you one scoop of buffalo chicken in your sandwich for eight bucks. THEY ARE FUCKERS. I’d give anything to waltz into a Cosi my folks owned, grab the scoop, and start eating the chicken right out of the fucking hotel pan in full view of the customers. Nothing would make me feel more powerful, because I am a very small man.” – Big Daddy Drew, “Has The President Ever Had Anal?” [Deadspin XY]

Best of the Best:

Weekend Winner: 70 Football Schools Not Named Temple [Barry Petchesky on Deadspin]

And therein is the best argument against the BCS. The defense that “one team would still be left out” in a playoff is ludicrous. No one’s going to weep for the school that just misses out on an eight-team playoff, just as no one’s weeping for the school that just missed out on a 70-team bowl system. But TCU, or whoever the undefeateds happen to be each year that don’t make the BCS Title Game? That’s very different.  So I’m quite cool with Temple not making a bowl, and not just because last year I froze my dick off in DC just to watch them lose to a .500 UCLA team. I said it last night, but it bears repeating: if you live and die with Temple football, you likely killed yourself long ago.

WikiLeaks cables: Saudi princes throw parties boasting drink, drugs and sex [The Guardian]

In what may prove a particularly incendiary cable, US diplomats describe a world of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll behind the official pieties of Saudi Arabian royalty.

Man Accidentally Shoots Self in Line at Mickey D’s [NBC Miami]

Ubeda was hospitalized Tuesday after he inadvertently shot himself in the leg as he was ordering breakfast at a McDonald’s in the Florida Keys.  Police said the 44-year-old from Tavernier didn’t realize he was shot, and left the fast food restaurant after the manager asked him to leave.

Report: Wikileaks cables show Texas company “helped pimp little boys to stoned Afghan cops” [The Houston Press via BoingBoing]

In the Houston Press, an extensive blog post untangling an alarming story from the state department cables: “another horrific taxpayer-funded sex scandal for DynCorp, the private security contractor tasked with training the Afghan police,” and apparent proof that the company procured male children for bacha bazi (“boy-play”) parties.

An Ex-General Drops a Bombshell: We Were Willing to Kill a U.S. Soldier to Start the Iraq War (VIDEO) [TV Squad]

General Shelton alleges that a cabinet member in the Clinton administration was willing to kill a U.S. pilot to provoke war with Saddam Hussein and Iraq.

WikiLeaks cable: Hollywood helping to stop the spread of terrorism [Yahoo!]

A cable dated May of 2009 states that American film and television programs are doing more to dissuade young Muslims from becoming jihadists than virtually anything else.

CNN Inexplicably Airs Dumb And Dumber Diarrhea Scene [Deadspin]

Right after a report on London student protests, there it was: Jeff Daniels loudly evacuating the contents of his bowels. Your move, FOX News.

H1N1 didn’t kill people. People killed people. [Nature Science via io9]

To be more specific, people’s immune response killed them. The virus was especially deadly to young and middle-aged adults because their immune systems were primed to kick into a fatal, antiviral overdrive.

Poisson’s Spot: The Greatest Burn in Physics [Multiple Sources via io9]

Poisson’s Spot is proof that even if you’re right about things, you can be humiliated forever. Find out why this physics concept has caused the name Siméon Poisson to live in infamy for almost 200 years.

White Guy Becomes Black Bank Robber With Super Realistic Hollywood Mask [Los Angeles Times via Gizmodo]

Last spring, a white Polish immigrant robbed several Ohio banks wearing a hyper-realistic Hollywood mask. To security cameras and witnesses, he looked like an undisguised black man. Which is why an innocent black guy was arrested for the crimes.

Is this the strangest, sexiest scientific paper ever written? [NCBI ROFL via io9]

If electrovaginogram isn’t the 2010 word of the year – hell, if it doesn’t become the official word of the 21st century – then there’s something deeply wrong with all of us.

Conan O’Brien’s list of DC superheroes that suck [Conan O’Brien via io9]

While on a tour of Warner Brother’s animation studios, Conan O’Brien took it upon himself to point out to the DC Comics animators which DC superheroes truly suck — with hilarious results. Sorry Bat Lash, Conan’s coming for you.

Nassim Taleb Imitates Kanye West [Eric Falkenstein on Falkenblog]

As to its flaws, it reminded me of one of my favorite aphorisms: “the man who early on regards himself as genius is lost.” He inverts the observation that geniuses are often misunderstood to the insight that misunderstood people are geniuses, and critics of such people are imbeciles who don’t even have the taste to appreciate genius. My criticisms are therefore consistent with him being right or wrong, but falsification is not symptomatic of punditry in general or Taleb in particular.

Ron Paul, Author of ‘End the Fed,’ to Lead Fed Panel [Bloomberg]

Representative Ron Paul, Texas Republican and author of “End the Fed,” will take control of the House subcommittee that oversees the Federal Reserve.

Iran’s Women: Canaries in the Coal Mine [Azar Nafisi via The Huffington Post]

Perhaps most intolerable for the regime was the huge presence of youth, the children of the revolution. The main difference between this generation and their parents was that young people have been jailed, flogged and tortured or, in the case of the 23-year-old Neda Agha Soltan, murdered, for their desire for freedom. Another example among many is Shiva Nazar Ahari, now 26, who has been protesting against the regime since she was 17, whose story is told below.

As Juarez Falls [The Nation]

These are the desolate remains of Riberas del Bravo, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Ciudad Juárez. The city, opposite El Paso, Texas, is the fulcrum of the US-Mexico borderline and the kernel of the war that rages throughout Mexico. Some 28,000 people have been killed—many of them with perverse cruelty—since President Felipe Calderón mobilized the Mexican military in December 2006.

Social media shapes new investment strategy [USA Today]

That’s the idea behind “mirrored investing,” an invention that could be one of the most dramatic experiments in the world of online investing since the ability to place trades over the Internet shook up the brokerage industry more than a decade ago.

The Best, Most Deranged Story About Gwar You’ll Ever Read [J. Bennett on Decibel Magazine via Deadspin XY]

Don’t ask how it came to this. It’s a long and painful story. But the bottom line is this: It’s 2pm on a Thursday, and Decibel is in Richmond, VA, smoking crack behind a Dumpster with GWAR front-cretin Oderus Urungus. [ed note – it only gets more NSFW from there]

The Great Recession vs. The Great Depression [The Atlantic]

According to a trove of early Gallup surveys compiled by the Roper Center, Americans in the 1930s were not nearly as down on government as we are today. They wanted more, not less, from Washington in the way of services and protection from the private market. Incredibly, despite their much deeper recession, Americans were more optimistic than we are today.

Richard Holbrooke dies: Veteran U.S. diplomat brokered Dayton peace accords [Rajiv Chandrasekaran on The Washington Post]

He underwent a 21-hour operation that ended on Saturday to repair his aorta.  As Mr. Holbrooke was sedated for surgery, family members said, his final words were to his Pakistani surgeon: “You’ve got to stop this war in Afghanistan.”

The physics experiment that will one day let you walk through walls [Physics World and Physics Review Letters via io9]

This isn’t a hologram or a projection. It’s not a way to trick the eye, or the way the brain processes images. It’s a way to manipulate incoming electromagnetic waves into not ‘seeing’ a gap in a physical barrier. That’s something new.

Cultural genome project mines Google Books for the secret history of humanity [Abundance Tapestry via io9]

The sheer scale of the enterprise is hard to imagine. This cultural genome is many thousands time larger than any previous corpus or database, including 4% of everything ever published. There’s a thousand times more letters in the cultural genome than there are DNA base pairs in the human genome. Writing the entire corpus out in a single line would reach to the Moon and back ten times over. It would take eighty years to read just the works from the year 2000, and that’s assuming you never stopped to eat, drink, or sleep.

Not Really “Made in China” [The Wall Street Journal]

Trade statistics in both countries consider the iPhone a Chinese export to the U.S., even though it is entirely designed and owned by a U.S. company, and is made largely of parts produced in several Asian and European countries. China’s contribution is the last step—assembling and shipping the phones.  So the entire $178.96 estimated wholesale cost of the shipped phone is credited to China, even though the value of the work performed by the Chinese workers at Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. accounts for just 3.6%, or $6.50, of the total, the researchers calculated in a report published this month.

Detroit paramedics fear they’re losing the battle to save lives [The Detroit News via Yahoo!]

Smith made his way to a man slumped in a chair in the back of the center. After a few furious moments trying to resuscitate him, Smith’s eyes wandered up and settled on the victim’s face. “Uncle Alvin?” he asked.  “I was lost and bewildered,” Smith recalled. “It’s bad out here. Real bad.”

Rock Bottoms and Bach [The Wall Street Journal]

The ultimate list comes from Connie Hamzy, of Little Rock, Ark., immortalized in song as “Sweet Connie.” She not only recalls who got away, like Grand Funk Railroad’s Mark Farner, who “became a Christian.” She also knows where she scored: e.g. Eddie Van Halen, “Suite 301 at the Ritz-Carlton in St. Louis.”

The Santa Claus of Christmas Songs [The Wall Street Journal]

What drives Mr. Gorodetsky most is his zeal for musical archeology—and evangelizing. “I’m not a musician. I don’t play an instrument. I can’t carry a tune. But I love music and I love sharing it,” he says. Longtime rocker Peter Wolf of the J. Geils Band, who has known Mr. Gorodetsky more than 30 years, describes the impulse: “For people who are beyond obsessed about music, the need to share it is almost like an emergency medical assist—it’s your duty to turn the other person on. If you don’t, they’ll die.”

The Doctor’s Dog Will See You Now [The Wall Street Journal]

Research shows that a few minutes of stroking a pet dog decreases cortisol, the stress hormone, in both the human and the dog. It also increases prolactin and oxytocin, hormones that govern nurturing and security, as well as serotonin and norepinephrine, neurotransmitters that boost mood. One study found that five minutes with a dog was as relaxing as a 20-minute break for hospital staffers.

Whimsical Remains:

• China’s credit bubble on borrowed time as inflation bites [Ambrose Evans-Pritchard on The Telegraph]
• BERNANKE EXPLAINS WHY QE2 IS NOT MONEY PRINTING….AGAIN [Pragmatic Capitalism]
• Wikileaks: Top Chinese official doesn’t believe GDP figures [The Telegraph]
• WikiLeaks’ Marketing Strategy: A Stroke of Genius [Gary North]
• Macroeconomic Booms and Busts: Deja Vu Once Again [Robert Higgs via The Independent Institute]
• Price Stability Is An Economically Dangerous Fad [John Tamny via Forbes]
• The Internet Survives, and Thrives, For Now [Bret Swanson on RealClearMarkets]
• Scroogenomics [Jason Zasky interviews Joel Waldfogel on Failure Magazine]
• Government proposes to scrap need for scientific advice on drugs policy [The Guardian]
• Wisconsin Student Paper Names, Shames Students Re-Selling Rose Bowl Tickets [Badger Herald via Deadspin]
• Heat Strokes, Game 21: The Meeting Is The Message [Bethlehem Shoals on Free Darko via Deadspin]
• Computer Glitch, Meaningless FCS Game Mean The BCS Standings Are Wrong [CBS Sports via Deadspin]
• The New Orleans Hornets’ Sad Financial Documents [Deadspin]
• Joe Posnanski Is The Salt Of The Earth, Peter King Is A Leech [Deadspin]
• The Great Columbia Frat Boy Drug-Dealing Ring [Gawker]
• Banks That Failed Despite Fed’s Cash [New York Times’ Dealbook]
• Don’t shoot messenger for revealing uncomfortable truths [Julian Assange via The Australian]
• Charting Foreclosure Basics [Zero Hedge]
• G.E. Goes With What It Knows: Making Stuff [New York Times]
• Count Our Holiday Blessings: At Least We’re Not Starving [C.J. Maloney via LRC]
• The Scarlet Pimpernel of Cyberspace [Eric Margolis via LRC]
• In praise of envy [Gregory Rodriguez on The Los Angeles Times]
• The 10 Highest-Earning Reality Stars [The Daily Beast]
• 5 athletes who blew their endorsements [CNN Money]
• The Tale Of The Drunken PK Claus [Big Daddy Drew on KSK]
• What It Really Means To Be Pussywhipped [Big Daddy Drew on Deadspin]
• That’s blown it: Angry boss walks through police cordon and grabs ‘bomb’ to prove it’s just bag of old clothes (and is arrested under the Terrorism Act) [The Daily Mail]
• The Hipster Bible [Godless Girl]
• In Foreclosure for 25 Years [Jim the Realtor via bubbleinfo]
• Combined sales of smartphones and tablets to surpass the humble PC in 18 months, says IDC [Engadget]
• When the state paid, people stopped smoking: study [Reuters]
• Working past 65: Boomers face job challenges in senior years [USA Today]
• 9 Most Awkward Crime Fighting Partnerships [Screen Junkies]
• Cash Cab is totally fake [The Onion A.V. Club]
• Rex Ryan Takes His Butt-Whupping [Sports Radio Interviews via Deadspin]
• This Is How Captain Awesome Signs His Name [Deadspin XY]
• Don Cherry Hates “Left-Wing Pinkos,” Is Completely Insane [The Torontoist via Deadspin]
• Not-Actual Boxer Inducted Into Boxing Hall Of Fame [Deadspin]
• DO GLOBAL IMBALANCES LEAD TO FINANCIAL CRISES? [NBER via Pragmatic Capitalism]
• Does Preserving the Bush Tax Rates Doom Us to Massive Deficits? Nope! [Nick Gillespie on Reason]
• In Wake of Glover Verdicts, What’s Next for New Orleans’ Troubled Police Force? [Pro Publica]
• The Inexhaustible Brilliance of Christine O’Donnell [Reason]
• Julian Assange Fired From IT Job At Pentagon [The Onion]
• Please Do Not Call This Government-Run Health Insurance Plan A Government-Run Health Insurance Plan [Reason]
• Thrashers/Islanders Game Targeted For Quebec Relocation Rally [Barry Petchesky via Deadspin]
• The NBA Was Silly With Game-Winners Last Night [Deadspin]
• Heat Strokes, Game 23: The Splendors Of Boredom [Deadspin]
• Wrestling Confronts The “Finger Up The Ass” MeThnace [Deadspin]
• Man says he was attacked while jogging [Sudbury Star]
• And Here’s An 11-Year-Old Dunking [Deadspin]
• The Unreal Genius Of Football Manager, Greatest Video Game Ever [Brian Phillips]
• Why Are Germans Taxing Sex? [Dan Seitz on Uproxx]
• The Top 100 Videos of 2010 in 170 Seconds [Gawker]
• Brazil’s Largest Newspaper Sues Parody Blog For Making Fun Of It [TechDirt]
• UK PM seeks action against violent protesters [Associated Press via SF Gate]
• 5,000 years of cosmology, in pictures [Ptak Science Books via io9]
• Gigantic loop of solar plasma is half a million miles long [io9]
• See a tiny squid’s amazing natural cloaking device [Live Science via io9]
• Make your very own atom-thick graphene sheet with just a pencil and tape [The Vega Science Trust via io9]
• Apocalypse-ready bunker made of shipping pallets [io9]
• Study: Daily Aspirin Can Reduce Your Chances of Dying From Cancer Up to 60% [The Lancet via io9]
• In the future, all our food will be carried in underground tubes [io9]
• Stars so weird that they make black holes look boring [io9]
• Train yourself to see impossible colors [Scientific American via io9]
• 35,000 plant specimens gathered over the past 200 years remain unclassified [BBC News via io9]
• A map of relationships between British citizens, measured in telephone calls [PLoS One via io9]
• Forests might be detectable on extrasolar planets [Astrobiology Journal via io9]
• A 75,000-year-old human settlement may lurk beneath the Persian Gulf [io9]
• The Coriolis Effect: It Sinks Ships [io9]
• The Coriolis Effect Part II: As the Hurricane Turns [io9]
• KISS vs. Doctor Doom is the best and/or worst comic you’ll read today [io9]
• John Salley Story Corner: What It’s Like When A Shitty Coach Gets Fired [John Salley via Deadspin]
• Pandas are vegetarians because they lost the meat-eating gene [New Scientist via io9]
• Anti-WikiLeaks lies and propaganda – from TNR, Lauer, Feinstein and more [Glenn Greenwald via Salon]
• Scariest thing you’ll see all day: What is this mutant man monster? [NBC 33 Baton Rouge via io9]
• Housing Project Goes Dark: Final Resident Found Stability at Troubled Cabrini-Green [Wall Street Journal]
• How America will collapse (by 2025) [Salon]
• The Deal on Dealbook [Nick Summers on The New York Observer]
• The Glory of the Rails [Tony Judt on The New York Review of Books]
• Beyond C.S.I.: The Rise of Computational Forensics [Sagur N. Srihari via IEEE Spectrum]
• Daniel Ellsberg praises WikiLeaks [SF Gate]
• Exclusive: Sarah Palin Under Cyber-Attack from Wikileaks Supporters in ‘Operation Payback’* [ABC News]
• Pearl Harbor in Retrospect [Sherman Miles, July 1948 via The Atlantic]
• You Have The Right To Remain Silent: Fifth Amendment Explained [Bill Rounds via LRC]
• Why Don’t Conservatives Oppose the War on Drugs? [Laurence Vance on LRC]
• Is New Zealand on your radar? Maybe it should be. [Sovereign Man]
• Bid to repeal military gays policy fails in Senate [Reuters]
• A New Nursing Home Population: The Young [NPR]
• On Christmas Shopping Lists, No Credit Slips [New York Times]
• Google ‘Xooglers’ Storm Start-Ups [The Street]
• The Colossus of Wall Street [Bloomberg BusinessWeek]
• Why Japan Keeps Whaling [Anthony Fensom on The Diplomat]
• The returning issue of Palestine’s refugees [The Guardian]
• PM tanks at home [Sydney Morning Herald]
• What I found in North Korea [Siegfried S. Hacker on Foreign Affairs]
• The ‘Real Jew’ Debate [Roger Cohen in The New York Times]
• Banana Republic Finance: Why Keynes Is Rolling in His Grave [David Stockman via Minyanville]
• China is hot. But is it too hot? [CNN Money]
• Israel’s religious extremists send the peace process up in smoke [Con Coughlin via The Telegraph]
• Adding Up the Differences between Boys and Girls [Mark Perry on The American]
• Would You Ride This Crazy Student-Made Roller Coaster? [Gizmodo]
• Indiana Man Selling “Racist Soaps” Doesn’t Have Time For “You Politically Correct People” [Deadspin XY]
• Heat Strokes, Games 24 & 25: Showtime [Bethlehem Shoals on Free Darko via Deadspin]
• The Ponzi Scheme That Changed My Life [Michael Kubin via the New York Times]
• Building the Train to Nowhere [Wendell Cox via New Geography]
• Wall Street Without Parties [Kevin Roose on New York Magazine]
• TSJ Investigates: Will i-Dosing Get You High? [The Smoking Jacket]
• The Year in TV [Emily Nusbaum on New York Magazine]
• Help! My Wife Won’t Stop Flashing Her Boobs! [Deadspin XY]
• Heat Strokes, Game 26: LeBron James And The End Times [Bethlehem Shoals on Free Darko via Deadspin]
• Nun’s New Hymn: “Been Caught Stealing” [Dan Seitz on Uproxx]
• ‘Temporary’ Tax Code Puts Nation in a Lasting Bind [Wall Street Journal]
• Silver Thursday [Wikipedia]
• Philly Fed Research Paper Concludes Loan Modifications Counterproductive and “May Increase Strategic Defaults” [Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis]
• Chicago Cupcake Crackdown [Reason]
• NC teen stowaway breaches US airport security, hides in plane wheel well, dies, falls in Boston [Boing Boing]
• The Run-Up to World War One [Pater Tenebrarum’s Acting Man]
• Who’s Done More Damage, Bernard Madoff or Alan Greenspan? [John Robbins via The Huffington Post]
• Obama, You’re No Ike [Eric Margolis via LRC]
• The Fed: The Chicago School’s Achilles Heel [Robert Murphy via The Mises Institute]
• Pixie Dust Loses Magic as Foreclosures Slam Utopian Disney Town [Bloomberg]
• Seeking the Number That Explains It All: Four economists discuss their favorite indicators as they try to gauge where the U.S. economy is headed [Bloomberg  BusinessWeek
• The Clinton Economy: Good Luck, Good Policy, or Both? [John Tamny on RealClearMarkets]
• Everyone At Real Madrid Hates Cristiano Ronaldo [The Spoiler via Deadspin]
• How “Tripgate” Went Down, And How It’s Practiced Around The League [Barry Petchesky via Deadspin]
• Yes, Cam Newton Wrote His Name On His Stolen Computer [Deadspin]
• Last Night’s Winner: The Indefensible Albert Haynesworth [Deadspin]
• This Is Your Mall, Peter King [Christmas Ape on KSK]
• Will the Fed be able to survive Ron Paul? [Nin-Hai Tseng Interviews Ron Paul on Forbes]
• Milton Friedman Unraveled [Murray Rothbard via The Individualist, 1971 via LRC]
• Getting to Assange through Manning [Glenn Greenwald via Salon]
• The inhumane conditions of Bradley Manning’s detention [Glenn Greenwald via Salon]
• Time To Bust Out Ol’ Hickory [Big Daddy Drew via KSK]
• Chinese Hurdler Just Doesn’t Give A Fuck [Deadspin]
• The Coolest Marching Band Routine You’ll See This Football Season [Gawker]
• Heat Strokes, Game 27: Heat-Knicks, The Best Kind Of Rancor [Bethlehem Shoals on Free Darko via Deadspin]
• Last Night’s Winner: WEC Goes Out With Some Matrix-Style Shit [Deadspin]
• Coda to a Killing: No Justice for Derek Hale [Pro Libertate]
• “V” for Vigilante [Pro Libertate]
• You will soon be able to visit beautiful, breezy Chernobyl [BBC and Live Science via io9]
• String theory fails first major experimental test [CERN via Slashdot via io9]
• New research shows fighter pilots have super-brains [io9]
• This is the material that future sunglasses will be made of [Scripps Institute of Oceanography via io9]
• The solar system’s weirdest moon once had a moon all its own [Astrobiology Magazine via io9]
• NASA envisions neighborhood micro-airports to let travelers bypass pesky streets [io9]
• Galleries / The 100 Top Science Stories of 2010 [Discover Magazine]
• The strange case of a woman who felt no fear [io9]
• Shut Up And Stop Being Humble, Devin Hester [Barry Petchesky on Deadspin]
• Heat Strokes, Games 28-30: The Heat Go Mainstream [Bethlehem Shoals on Free Darko via Deadspin]
• How ‘Friend’ Became a Verb [Orson Scott Card via The Wall Street Journal]
• Protection Rolls On [Philip Levy on The American]
• The Different Shades of Crony Capitalism [Macroeconomic Resilience]
• Rural America gets even more sparsely populated [The Los Angeles Times]
• The Latest New York Times Nonsense About Lincoln [Thomas DiLorenzo via LRC]
• A Green Detroit? No, a Guzzling One [Edward Niedermeyer on The Truth About Cars via The New York Times]
• Violence Flares in Ivory Coast [The Wall Street Journal]
• Start-Up Scoops Up Unsold Tickets [The Wall Street Journal]
• Blazing Pitcher Broke Records: Hall of Famer Bob Feller, Dead at 92  [The Wall Street Journal]
• Phone-Wielding Shoppers Strike Fear Into Retailers [The Wall Street Journal]
• Less Than a Full-Service City [The Wall Street Journal]
• Special Report: Is America the sick man of the globe? [Nick Carey on Reuters]
• Has rising inequality been bad for the poor? [Lane Kenworthy on Consider the Evidence]
• Most Driven Into Debt by Medical Bills HAVE Health Insurance [Washington’s Blog]
• McDonald’s suit over Happy Meal toys by California mom Monet Parham new low in responsible parenting [New York Daily News]
• Dear Santa Letters Ask For Clothes, Shoes, Not Toys [Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis]
• The Oil Hysteria [Robert H. Nelson, Professor of Environmental Policy at the University of Maryland via The Weekly Standard]
• Canadian Borrowing Gone Mad: A Look at BMO’s Misguided Balance Sheet Theory and the Keep on Dancin’ Market Share Theory of Toronto-Dominion [Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis]
• Brad Manning has Rights! [Karen Kwiatkowski via LRC]
• WikiLeaks: The Touchstone [Justin Raimondo on AntiWar]
• THE WORLD’S INCREASING DEPENDENCE ON CHINA [Pragmatic Capitalism]
• Boom-bust era leaves architectural scars across valley [The Las Vegas Sun]
• Hong Kong’s Most Expensive Homes [The Wall Street Journal]
• Newly Built Ghost Towns Haunt Banks in Spain [The New York Times]
• Awaiting the Storm [Fred Reed on Fred on Everything]
• America’s Longest War Gets Worse [Eric Margolis via LRC]
• The government’s one-way mirror [Glenn Greenwald on Salon]
• African Gold Rush Kills Children as Miners Discover Lead Dust [Bloomberg]
• India’s Toilet Shortage Costs More Than $50 Billion [Bloomberg]
• Fatally Flawed “End the Fed” Proposal from Rep. Kucinich would Allow Congress to Print Money into Existence for Essentially Anything [Mish’s Global Economic Analysis]
• WTF? OMG, LOL! CIA gives WikiLeaks taskforce naughty name [The Guardian]
• Coming This January From Fox Searchlight Pictures [Big Daddy Drew via KSK]

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Evidence is mounting that the first human civilization outside of Africa probably evolved in what is now the Persian Gulf. Recent discoveries suggest that we’re about to find a fairly advanced civilization sunk beneath the waters of the Gulf.

Archaeologist Jeffrey Rose has published a paper in Current Anthropology where he argues that we’ll find some of the earliest human civilizations on Earth in what was once a fertile basin fed by clear streams and lush with greenery.

According to Live Science:

The Gulf Oasis would have been a shallow inland basin exposed from about 75,000 years ago until 8,000 years ago, forming the southern tip of the Fertile Crescent, according to historical sea-level records.

And it would have been an ideal refuge from the harsh deserts surrounding it, with fresh water supplied by the Tigris, Euphrates, Karun and Wadi Baton Rivers, as well as by upwelling springs, Rose said. And during the last ice age when conditions were at their driest, this basin would’ve been at its largest.

Then, about 8,000 years ago, melting ice sheets eventually led to a wetter climate that flooded the Persian Gulf basin. That is also the time when we begin to find incredibly well-developed civilizations on the Gulf shoreline – civilizations that seem to have sprung fully-formed, with advanced seafaring technologies, out of nowhere. Unless, of course, they came from sunken cities hidden beneath the Gulf waters.

Live Science continues:

The most definitive evidence of these human camps in the Gulf comes from a new archaeological site called Jebel Faya 1 within the Gulf basin that was discovered four years ago. There, Hans-Peter Uerpmann of the University of Tubingen in Germany found three different Paleolithic settlements occurring from about 125,000 to 25,000 years ago. That and other archaeological sites, Rose said, indicate “that early human groups were living around the Gulf basin throughout the Late Pleistocene.”

We’ll need underwater archaeologists to examine the Gulf more thoroughly to be sure that Rose’s theory is correct,

via Live Science and Current Anthropology

Send an email to Annalee Newitz, the author of this post, at annalee@io9.com.

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By Annalee Newitz  

Dec 10, 2010 08:00 AM 28,757 196

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OBR – The Ballad of Rio T and Fat Elvis

Truth time in the trust tree: I just realized these trades happened this past week.  Why?  Because I am heavily disinterested in the baseball off-season until the Cardinals decide whether or not they’re signing Albert Pujols.  In any event, the team acquired two players of note, who likewise have histories with the team, albeit playing for rivals in the National League Central.

During the Astros-Cardinals rivalry of a few years ago, I personally never disliked Lance Berkman as much as say, Jeff Kent, Mike Lamb, Morgan HGH Endsberg and of course the diabolical Carlos Beltran.  Additionally in his favor, the nickname is “Fat Elvis”.  Writers seem to be going with “Big Puma” instead;  that’s bullshit.  You don’t kick a sobriquet like that to the curb anymore that you get rid of the best Halloween costume ever (NSFW language and implication in the clip below).

Vodpod videos no longer available.

But as for the other trade.  It’s solid to get something of value for the Blake Hawksworth experience, as Viva El Birdos pointed out (see below for articles), but I mean, come on…it’s Cubs douchehelmet Ryan Theriot!  Guhhhhh…

Enervating but not world-ending.  I’m less than happy that it displaces Brendan Ryan, who, while an atrocious hitter, provided some quality entertainment in the field.  It’s entirely possible he’s bipolar, making for dramatic television at times.  Better than Dan McLaughlin and Al Hrabowsky’s passive-aggression theater.

Whether it helps the team remains to be seen, but I find the El Birdos analysis sound on the deal, inasmuch as it probably doesn’t hurt the team.  I’m also finding it difficult to get behind this from an emotional standpoint, as I am a fragile teacup of anti-Cubs bitterness.  Because when the Cards were playing the Cubs, Theriot’s just the type who causes your eyes to narrow while muttering “fucking Theriot”.

Noted: it’s a very long way from Zambrano.

Viva El Birdos on the trades:

• Puma eats Fat Elvis and everyone Riots [azruavatar]
• Ryan Theriot: Know Your Scrappy Middle Infielder [DanUpBaby]
• Just One More Thing [the red baron]

Also, should the Cubs by some act of Satan sign Albert Pujols, there’s a 99% chance I never watch baseball again.  That will be the day we know that our God has failed us.

I’m hedging here because I once stated I would burn my Rams’ jersey if they drafted Sam Bradford instead Ndamakong Suh.  That appears to be turning out well (although Bradford’s glass shoulder terrifies me) and I clearly did not make good on that threat (see teacup description earlier).  So pussywillow escape clauses it is!

As a coda to the Cardinals previous season, I have some stats.  DO NOT DISPUTE MY INFALLIBLE NUMBERS!  CAPITAL LETTERS!

Cardinals record against the four National League playoff teams:

• Atlanta Braves: 6-2 (0.750)
• Cincinatti Reds: 12-6 (0.667)
• Philadelphia Phillies: 4-4 (0.500)
• San Francisco Giants: 3-3 (0.500)
• Combined: 25-15 (0.625)

Record against the five worst National League teams (yes, adding in the Astros skews this lower, as Houston was not among the worst four teams):

• Pittsburgh Pirates: 9-6 (0.600)
• Arizona Diamondbacks: 5-4 (0.556)
• Washington Nationals: 3-3 (0.500)
• Chicago Cubs: 6-9 (0.400)
• Houston Astros: 5-10 (0.333)
• Combined: 28-32 (0.467)

Even removing the Astros only raises the winning percentage to a game over 0.500–against the worst teams in the NL.  Yeesh.

I’ve played around with running even more statistics on the Roman orgy of statistics that is Major League baseball.  For hitters and pitchers, I did a relative comparison based on all qualifying players to make ESPN’s stat charts.  For any given stat, the comparison was the cumulative normal probability–basically all data points are plotted for a particular stat (e.g., batting average) as if the data sample conforms to a normal curve, with the probability of point A representing the chance a random point X would be below it.  This allows not only a ranking, but a magnitude comparison; that is, if a player’s stat is much better than his peers, it will show up as a higher number.  Since this is a probability, numbers will range between 0 and 1 for every stat.  Then the probabilities from every stat would be averaged to come up with a final score, which I multiplied by 100 to make easier to read.  Given higher probabilities mean that the player is above more players (and by a wider margin) in any given stat, a higher number is better.

I compared NL players only to NL players (likewise with the AL), since the comparison would be based on batters facing roughly the same pitching and fielding.  The result stat would also suffer from the assumption that  the data conforms to a normal distribution.  Moreover, it is a relative comparison, meaning a player would look better in any given year if his peers happened to perform poorly–that is, it’s not an absolute measure.  Finally, I also tried to take into account only those stats that the player had control over; for example, I didn’t use Wins for pitchers but rather adjusted them with sabermetric quality starts and tough losses.  In any event, the results are curious because of the number of Cardinals (highlighted in red) involved in some of the higher rankings.

Statistics Used to Compile Batting Score:

ΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩ

Statistics Used to Compile Pitching Score:

Adjusted Win/Loss Percentage: (Wins – Cheap Wins)/[(Wins – Cheap Wins) + (Losses – Tough Losses)]

TLOSS %: Tough Losses/Total Losses

ΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩ

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2B

3B

AB/HR

BA

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H

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SO

Global Warble (part 3)

More on Anthropogenic Global Warming.  These articles begin roughly in the climate data scandal in the first few months of 2010 and run until December 2010:

Turning children into Orwellian eco-spies [Frank Furedi on Spiked]

Marxist Professors Are Gift to Climate Skeptics [Kevin Hassett on Bloomberg]

Where Did the Global Warming Go? The President Explains It For You… [Tim Cavanaugh on Reason]

My Position on Global Warming and Climate Change [David Crowe]

Scientists Considered Pouring Soot Over the Arctic in the 1970s to Help Melt the Ice – In Order to Prevent Another Ice Age [Washington’s Blog via Zero Hedge]

Climategate Update 1: The China Syndrome* [Ronald Bailey on Reason]

Hockey stick observed in NOAA ice core data [Watt’s Up With That?]

Climate Craziness of the Week – Why I’m a Pepsi* tea drinker now [Watt’s Up With That?]

The Climategate Timeline: 30 years visualized [Watt’s Up With That?]

The Rock That Vacuums Up Carbon Dioxide [Miller-McCune via io9]

The Settled Science [James P. Hogan via LRC]

Frozen Britain seen from above [BBC News]

U.N. panel: We erred on glacier warning [Associated Press via MSNBC]

Courts as Battlefields in Climate Fights [The New York Times]

Divide by Zero for Global Warming [Wendy McElroy]

Skeptics Find Fault With U.N. Climate Panel [The New York Times]

Ten reasons why examining climate change policy through an ethical lens is a practical imperative [Climate Progress]

I thought of killing myself, says climate scandal professor Phil Jones [The Sunday Times]

CRU’s Jones: Climate data ‘not well organised’ and MWP debate ‘not settled’ [Watt’s Up With That?]

Another Blizzard: What Happened to Global Warming? [Bryan Walsh on Time]

Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995 [The Daily Mail]

Underground Caves Suggest Climate Change Is Weirder Than We Thought [Science via io9]

Climate-Change Fervor Cools Amid Disputed Science [Bloomberg]

Climate Skepticism [Steven Novella on SkepticBlog]

Head of ‘Climategate’ research unit admits sending ‘pretty awful emails’ to hide data and Climate scientist admits sending ‘awful emails’ but denies perverting peer review

[The Daily Mail and The Guardian]

Ten Things You Can Do to Shrink Your Carbon Footprint [The Nation]

2009: The year climate change and global warming activists would like to forget [The Examiner]

Solar shield on agenda at climate summit [The Telegraph]

Scientists in stolen e-mail scandal hid climate data [Ben Webster and Jonathan Leake on The Sunday Times]

Beck’s Failure To Retract Global Warming Advocacy Provokes Online Firestorm [InfoWars]

Leading Global Warming Crusader: Cap and Trade May INCREASE CO2 Emissions [Washington’s Blog]

Avatar’s James Cameron: “Anybody that is a global-warming denier at this point in time has got their head so deeply up their ass I’m not sure they could hear me” [Climate Progress]

Global Warming Advocates Threaten Blizzard of Lawsuits [Fox News]

NASA Data Worse Than Climate-Gate Data, Space Agency Admits [Fox News]

Inquiry: Climate data not manipulated [MSNBC]

U.S. Issues Limits on Greenhouse Gas Emissions From Cars [The New York Times]

UN says case for saving species ‘more powerful than climate change’ [The Guardian]

Global warming started 15,000 years ago with uncontrolled mammoth hunting [Geophysical Research Letters via io9]

BP and Climate Change: An Inconvenient Non Sequitur [Civil Society Trust]

Climate Fears Turn to Doubts Among Britons [The New York Times]

Climate change: a collective flight from reality [Roger Helmer on The Washington Times]

The Climategate Whitewash Continues [Pat Michaels via The Wall Street Journal]

EcoAlert: “Could the Gulf Oil Spill Trigger a Cataclysmic Global Methane Bubble?” [The Daily Galaxy]

Climategate burned by reality [Gene Lyons on The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette via Slate]

Grantham: Everything You Need to Know About Global Warming in 5 Minutes [Jeremy Grantham via The Big Picture]

The Union of Concerned Propagandists [Alan Caruba’s Warning Signs]

Who Killed the Climate Bill? [Foreign Policy]

Dropping the ball on global warming [Andrew Leonard on Slate]

Climate change: It’s time to talk, and act, tough [Bill McKibben on The Los Angeles Times]

Greenland Glacier 4X Size of Manhattan Breaks Loose [University of Delaware via The Big Picture]

Sun’s Shifts May Cause Global Warming [Discover Magazine Interviews Henrik Svensmark]

Climate myths: Ice cores show CO₂ increases lag behind temperature rises, disproving the link to global warming [The New Scientist]

United States Halts Gravy Train for British Global Warming Unit [The Canada Free Press]

Climate change data dumped [Jonathan Leake on The Sunday Times]

Mars Melt Hints at Solar, Not Human, Cause for Warming, Scientist Says [National Geographic News]

US physics professor: ‘Global warming is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life’ [Harold Lewis via The Telegraph]

University of East Anglia refused to share information on global warming [The Telegraph]

Government Weather Forecasting: A Corrupted Waste Of Time And Money [Dr. Tim Ball via Canada Free Press]

Can Geoengineering Help Slow Global Warming? [Time]

Earth’s climate could naturally jump 10 to 15 degrees – and there’s no way to predict it [Geophysical Research Letters on io9]

Debate sought over merits of Calif. climate law [Associated Press via Yahoo! News]

New climate change mitigation schemes could benefit elites rather than the rural poor [Watt’s Up With That?]

Lomborg Denies Global Warming Conversion – I Told You So [Ronald Bailey on Reason]

Glacier scientist: I knew data hadn’t been verified [The Daily Mail]

Old Farmer’s Almanac: Global cooling to continue [The Associated Press via Yahoo! News]

Rescuing Climate Science From Agenda-Driven Politics [Bill Frezza on Adams Capital Management via RealClearMarkets]

MIT op/ed says do “very little, if anything at all” on global warming [Watt’s Up With That?]

Global warming will kick the crap out of different hemispheres in different ways [Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States via io9]

IPCC Distortion Of Weather And Climate Is Reinforced By Media Hyperbole [Dr. Tim Ball via Canada Free Press]

A North-South Global Climate War? [Informed Comment]

Global warming is actually good for rainforests, say boffins [The Register]

Climate Change Math in Treaties Flawed by Suspect Calculations [Bloomberg]

Global warming could mean a golden age for tropical rain forests [Science via io9]

How to Change the Global Energy Conversation [Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger via The Wall Street Journal]

States Diverting Money From Climate Initiative [The New York Times]

Can the Climate Be Fixed? [Ronald Bailey on Reason]

Some Really Inconvenient Truths [Kurt Loader on Reason]

Cancun and Climate: Government Won’t Act, But Business Will [The Curious Capitalist on Time]

Mountaineer Photographs ‘Alarming’ Ice Loss Near Mt. Everest [Silber Studios]

Let Ethanol Subsidies Die [Ronald Bailey on Reason]