Line O’ the Day:
“If PFC Bradley Manning did what he is accused of, he is a hero of mine; not because he’s perfect or because he never struggled with personal or family relationships — most of us do — but because in the midst of it all he had the courage to act on his conscience.”
– former Specialist Ethan McCord, Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment, United States Army, Iraq War veteran on Manning, the media and the military [via Glenn Greenwald on Salon]
Best of the Best:
Bill Simmons Is God Of Hollywood [Big Daddy Drew on KSK]
When Green Lantern badly underperformed last weekend, it shouldn’t have been surprising, because Reynolds isn’t a movie star (despite Hollywood’s best efforts to convince us otherwise).
I’m pretty sure the movie tanked because it was awful.
You know how I know this?
BECAUSE I LIVE IN LOS ANGELES NOW AND I UNDERSTAND “THE INDUSTRY,” WHICH IS WHAT WE IN THE INDUSTRY CALL THE INDUSTRY.
We just spent the past 10 years compiling evidence that said, emphatically, “Ryan Reynolds can’t carry a bad movie.” Or, really, any movie.
Okay. Cool. Thank God we’ve established that. I can finally rest now that I know Ryan Reynolds isn’t a 40% legit movie star. Now to move on to our next pressing issue: DO BEAVERS HAVE DREAMS?!
Chasing Jose [Pat Jordan on Deadspin]
At 10 a.m., L.A. time, Rob called to tell me the interview was off. Jose had changed his mind yet again. I was apoplectic. Rob tried to calm me down with these reassuring words, “Pat,” he said, “why are you so upset? You and I both know Jose’s a piece of shit.”
The Silent Season of a Hero [Gay Talese on Esquire (July 1966) via Deadspin]
[H]igh in the grandstands, billowing in the breeze of early autumn, were white banners that read: “Don’t Quit, Mick,” “We Love the Mick.” The banner had been held by hundreds of young boys whose dreams had been fulfilled so often by Mantle, but also seated in the grandstands were older men, paunchy and balding, in whose middle-aged minds DiMaggio was still vivid and invincible, and some of them remembered how one month before, during a pregame exhibition at Old-Timers’ Day in Yankee Stadium, DiMaggio had hit a pitch into the left-field seats, and suddenly thousands of people had jumped wildly to their feet, joyously screaming – the great DiMaggio had returned, they were young again, it was yesterday.
Female Soccer Players Don’t Fake It Like The Men, Science Says [New York Times via Deasdpin]
Apparent injuries were divided into two categories. They were considered “definite” if a player was replaced within five minutes or was visibly bleeding. Otherwise, the injuries were considered “questionable.” Researchers found that an average of 11.26 apparent injuries occurred in men’s matches, compared with 5.74 in women’s matches. Those considered “definite” involved 13.7 percent of injuries for women and 7.2 percent for men. “We can say that men writhe on the ground looking like they’re injured more than women, almost twice as often,” said Dr. Daryl Rosenbaum, the lead author of the study, which was published in the July issue of the journal Research in Sports Medicine. “And when players are apparently injured, the percentage when it was authentic by our criteria was twice as high with women. You could trust more that they were injured.”
Bill Simmons Is Commissioner Of Fictional Presidents [Big Daddy Drew on KSK]
Maybe any NBA franchise that allows an ex-player, a coach, a former scout, or basically anyone without genuine business and/or legal training to negotiate with some of the smartest legal/business minds in the entire world should be fined $10 million by the commissioner’s office.
So true. You NBA shitheads have spent way too long giving out basketball jobs to people who have a background in the game of basketball and often hire a lawyer to assist them with the actual negotiating process. You should be listening to the guy who’s imitating a fictional President from a Kevin Kline film. WHY AM I THE ONLY ONE SENSIBLE ENOUGH TO KNOW THIS SHIT?
Do you realize that agents laugh about this behind closed doors?
AGENT: God, wait until they actually let Simmons run the Nets… (jizzes in pants)
Financial Crisis Panel Commissioners Leaked Confidential Information To Lobbyists, Report Alleges [Shahien Nasiripour on The Huffington Post]
The 400,000 emails and documents obtained by the investigative committee show that Republican commissioner Peter Wallison broke confidentiality rules by leaking documents to Ed Pinto, a colleague of his at the American Enterprise Institute, a prominent right-leaning Washington-based research and policy organization. The misconduct did not stop there, according to the report. The assistant of Bill Thomas, the panel’s vice chairman and another of the four Republican commissioners, shared information about the commission’s hearings, targets and investigative direction with one of Thomas’s colleagues at law firm Buchanan, Ingersoll, and Rooney, one of Washington’s top lobbying shops.
Naughty by Nature [Jesse Bering on Slate]
Dramatic case studies illustrating the devastating effects of Klüver-Bucy Syndrome abound in the clinical literature, and they raise intriguing philosophical questions for us to consider. That some patients so stricken are overcome with excessive carnal urges and are not simply using the disorder as a convenient excuse to become freely promiscuous, lewd, and lascivious is perhaps best demonstrated by a 1998 Clinical Neurology and Neurosurgery study by Indian neurologist Sunil Pradhan and his colleagues. In this report, a group of boys between the ages of 2.5 and 6 began to exhibit hypersexualized behaviors after partially recovering from comas induced by herpes encephalitis.
Why Some Home Sellers are More Delusional than Others [Stan Humphries Chief Economist at Zillow via Moneyland on Time]
We analyzed over a million homes currently for sale on Zillow, compared the listing price to an estimate of the current market value, and examined how the difference between those two numbers relates to when each home was purchased. We found that homes that had been last purchased prior to 2005 are now listed about 10% higher than their estimated market value. Homes last purchased between 2005 and mid-2007 – the period right around the national peak in home values – are priced lower, just 6.4% above their estimated market value. Strikingly, however, homes last purchased after 2007 are priced much higher relative to market value than homes bought previously. And the premium of listing price relative to market value reaches its maximum – 22.7% – for homes bought in 2009.
Why Netflix Raised Its Prices [David Pogue on The New York Times]
“I’ve had this conversation over and over again for the last 24 hours,” said Mr. Swasey. “Yes, 60 percent is a big number. But that increase is only $6 a month more. That’s a latté a month. We’ve gone from an extreme terrific value to a terrific value.” Want to know the worst part? He’s right.
New Research Suggests Everybody’s Less Satisfied [Tom Jacobs on Miller-McCune]
Herbst refined the data by looking at various subgroups, in such categories as age, race, marital status and employment status. He found consistent declines in life satisfaction for each such group, with one exception: black men, “who experienced a statistically significant increase in well-being between 1985 and 2005.”
Medical marijuana: A science-free zone at the White House [Stephen Gutwillig and Bill Piper on The Los Angeles Times]
Two weeks ago, the U.S. Department of Justice issued medical marijuana guidelines to U.S. attorneys that are at best confusing and at worst a flip-flop on administration policy. The department’s much-heralded 2009 memo on the subject fulfilled candidate Obama’s campaign promise and established a principle that federal resources would not be wasted prosecuting medical marijuana patients and providers who are in “clear and unambiguous compliance” with state medical marijuana laws. The department’s update reiterates that the feds won’t target individual medical marijuana patients but might bust large-scale, commercial medical marijuana providers. The memo unequivocally threatens federal prosecution of large-scale medical marijuana providers even if they are in compliance with state law, a significant step away from the principle at the heart of the 2009 policy. Disturbingly, the new “clarification” doesn’t explain what the federal government considers to be the line between small and large-scale production — likely an attempt to slow state-sponsored medical marijuana distribution programs while sowing anxiety and confusion for patients.
See also: Christie Plans to Lift New Jersey Suspension on Medical Marijuana Program [Bloomberg]
The Graceful, Oversized Legacy of Yao Ming [Emma Carmichael on Deadspin]
Yao was great for the game because he was a great player who happened to be very tall and who happened to be from China. It’s for that reason — not that he was a demographically useful, unnaturally tall It Guy — that it would have been a pleasure to see him play a few more years.
FUCK YOU! THE LOCKOUT’S OVER! [Big Daddy Drew on Deadspin]
Oh, God. Holy shit. Oh, man. Someone bring me a helmet so I can bang the earhole. I’m so horny for football right now that I’m ejaculating pure Gatorade.
US more unpopular in the Arab world than under Bush [Glenn Greenwald on Salon]
I’ve written numerous times over the last year about rapidly worsening perceptions of the U.S. in the Muslim world, including a Pew poll from April finding that Egyptians view the U.S. more unfavorably now than they did during the Bush presidency. A new poll released today of six Arab nations — Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco — contains even worse news on this front: In most countries surveyed, favorable attitudes toward the United States dropped to levels lower than they were during the last year of the Bush administration . . . Pollsters began their work shortly after a major speech Obama gave on the Middle East . . . Fewer than 10 percent of respondents described themselves as having a favorable view of Obama. What’s striking is that none of these is among the growing list of countries we’re occupying and bombing. Indeed, several are considered among the more moderate and U.S.-friendly nations in that region, at least relatively speaking. Yet even in this group of nations, anti-U.S. sentiment is at dangerously (even unprecedentedly) high levels.
Peter King Knows There’s No Coffee Like Hitler’s Coffee [Big Daddy Drew on KSK]
This gem came from Andrew Goldman’s interview with Judge Judy in the June 26 New York Times Sunday magazine…
You know, one of the great things about being an NFL reporter and not covering the NFL is that it gives me time to read up on important matters, LIKE HOW JUDGE FUCKING JUDY IS DOING.
Judge Judy works five days per month … and makes $45 million a year.
Oh, so you and she have a lot in common. Except for her far more rigorous work schedule.
Judge Judy Factoid II:
WHAT THE FUCK? Why are there two Judge Judy factoids in here? The NFL is about to start again. Free agency is set to take place DURING training camp. The NFL world is about to shift in ways so unpredictable that no one can really say what’s going to happen. It’s perhaps the most exciting time ever to be a football fan, and this is after one of the worst times to be a football fan. Hey, you know what we should be talking about? JUDGE FUCKING JUDY. Perfect. Beautiful. Just the kind of hard-hitting factoid I come to this column for. FUCK.
Incredible Joe Posnanski/Yogi Berra Factoid of the Week
HOLY FUCK ARE YOU SHITTING ME?! We go from Judge Judy to Yogi Berra? Is there some third geriatric asshole we haven’t touched on yet? What about Martha Raye? Any Martha Raye factoids in your back pocket, Peter? I MUST KNOW.
- “Hey, It Was The Seventies”: Mark Cuban Narrates A Gallery Of His Debaucherous College Rugby Years [Mark Cuban via Deadspin]
- We’re Going To Live Forever By Killing Ourselves And Going To Digital Heaven [Deadspin]
- Rutgers lab studies female orgasm through brain imaging [Inside Jersey via io9]
-
The Lizard Man is terrorizing South Carolina again [WLTX via io9]
-
Sex evolved to prevent parasite infections, say scientists [Alasdair Wilkins on io9]
- A medieval monument to religious pluralism, hidden in the mountains of Afghanistan [Annalee Newitz on io9]
- Pigeons are completely incapable of forgetting a human face [Society for Experimental Biology via io9]
-
Peer pressure can actually change your memories [Science via io9]
- The Next Big Boom Towns In The U.S. [Joel Kotkin on The New Geographer via Forbes]
- Pacific rare-earth discovery: Actually just gigatonnes of dirt [Tim Worstall on The Register]
- ‘Hub fans bid Kid Adieu’ [John Updike on The New Yorker (October 22, 1960) via The Boston Globe via Deadspin]
- What Is Rickey Henderson Doing In Newark? [Tom Verducci on Sports Illustrated (June 23, 2003) via Deadspin]
- The Taming of the Fans [Wall Street Journal]
- A Home Is a Lousy Investment [Robert Bridges, professor of clinical finance and business economics at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business via The Wall Street Journal]
- To Cut Budget, Concentrate on Growth, History Shows [Amity Shlaes on Bloomberg]
- Half of US social program recipients believe they “have not used a government social program” [Suzanne Metler via BoingBoing]
- Is The Middle Class Really Carrying The Tax Burden? A Contrarian View On “No Shared Sacrifice” [Zero Hedge]
- When Life Gave An Elderly Pervert A Lemonade Stand, He “Repeatedly Rubbed His Breast And Groin” [Press of Atlantic City via Deadspin]
- Hey, The American Football World Cup Is Going On Right Now, And We’re About To Kill Mexico [Deadspin]
- Minor League Involving Kevin Costner, Jose Canseco, and Pete LaCock Devolves Into Extreme Chaos [Chicago Sun-Times via Deadspin]
- The 100 Worst Baseball Players Of All Time: A Celebration (Part 1) [Eric Nusbaum via Deadspin]
- Three bombs kill at least 21 in India’s Mumbai [Reuters]
- Aerialist Performs Stunt from Williamsburg Bridge Tower [Metropolis on The Wall Street Journal]
- Dave Chappelle’s Secret Shows [Toure on The Daily Beast]
- Crowds in Syria Attack U.S. and French Embassies [The New York Times]
- How Greece’s Political Elite Ruined the Country [Der Spiegel]
- Ten Frighteningly Prophetic Parodies from ‘The Critic’ [Warming Glow]
- UN torture official accuses US of rule violations [Glenn Greenwald on Salon]
- Hacker Who Turned in Bradley Manning Is a Bigger Scumbag Than We Imagined [Adrien Chen on Gizmodo]
- The Pentagon Suffered One of the Most Damaging Cyberattacks in US Military History This Past Spring [The Washington Post via Gizmodo]
- World’s Strongest Crawler Crane Can Raise the Roof—off a Stadium [Gizmodo]
- Everyone’s Welcome To An Opinion, But Quite Often They’re “Wrong” [Kat Hannaford on Gizmodo]
- Man Dies Trying to Flee Cuba Inside Airplane’s Landing Gear (WARNING: STRONG IMAGE) [Gizmodo]
- China New Loans, Money Supply Growth Rebound Even After Cooling Measures [Bloomberg]
- Where Have America’s Jobs Gone? [The Wall Street Journal]
- Realty trade group overreported Chicago home prices [Chicago Tribune]
- Five North Koreans Tested Positive For Steroids Because They Were Struck By Lightning, Says North Korea [Deadspin]
- Rejoice: ESPYs Ratings Hit Their Lowest Point In Sixteen Years [Jack Dickey on Deadspin]
- Ravenous Reed [Vanna Le via The New Yorker]
- This Is War: Watch the Libyan Revolution Explode through the Lens of a Helmet Cam — Part 1 [Humphrey Cheung on Gizmodo]
- The Soulful Paintings Of Brittney Palmer, UFC Octagon Girl [Luke O’Brien on Deadspin]
- Stop Everything and Look at This [Matt Ufford on Warming Glow]
- Monkeys Don’t Do Fair Use; News Agency Tells Techdirt To Remove Photos [Mike Masnick on TechDirt]
- The Abby Wambach Show [The Wall Street Journal]
- Too Much Debt Means the Economy Can’t Grow [Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff via Bloomberg]
- Egypt Revolt Halts U.S. Bid to Push Israel Ties Using Trade [Bloomberg]
- How Twitter tracked the News of the World scandal [The Guardian]
- Paralyzed bride to marry one year after accident [Claudine Zap on The Upshot on Yahoo News]
- 6 Mind-Blowing Discoveries Made Using Google Earth [Scott Santens on Cracked]
- China Blasts Dalai Lama’s Visit to White House [Wall Street Journal]
- Yemenis Organize Shadow Government [New York Times]
- Income Distribution Across the World’s 7Billion [National Geographic via The Big Picture]
- The new “Let them eat cake!” – 10 shocking, illuminating moments that prove just how out of touch the powerful really are [David Sirota on Salon]
- China to Dive for Buried Treasures [Wall Street Journal]
- On the Chinese house-price bubble [Christian Dreger and Yanqun Zhang]
- Either the Fed Goes, or I Do: Ron Paul retires from Congress, leaving behind a GOP that finally learned to love him. [David Weigel on Slate]
- The Geography of How We Get to Work [The Atlantic]
- Migrants Fall Prey to Mexican Gangs on Way to the U.S. [Wall Street Journal]
- As ethanol’s ravages grow, phony ‘reform’ emerges [The Washington Examiner]
- Protester attacks Rupert Murdoch in UK parliament [Reuters]
- Popular Kauai swimming hole gets deadly reputation [Associated Press via Yahoo! News]
- Attack of the Urban Mosquitoes [The Wall Street Journal]
- Stranger moves into foreclosed home, citing little-known Texas law [KHOU]
- Prostitution ring for Wall Street clients busted [Reuters]
- Fantasy Island: The Strange Tale of Alleged Fraudster Pearlasia Gamboa [Peter Jamison on The Stranger]
- Wanna See The Worst Paragraph In The History Of The Universe? [Big Daddy Drew on KSK]
- A Look Inside An Owners Meeting [Unsilent Majority on KSK]
- The growth of atheism [Evolving Economics]
- Great, It’s Gotten To The Point That Great White Sharks Are Jumping Into Our Boats [BBC via Deadspin]
- Then And Now With The Pirates In First Place In July [Dom Cosentino on Deadspin]
- Frivolous Lawsuit Theater: Court Bitchslaps Wannabe Cheerleader [Barry Petchesky on Deadspin]
- UAE Soccer Player May Be Punished For “Disrespectful”-But-Also-Awesome Backheel Penalty Kick [Deadspin]
- Dear Chris Kluwe: When We Want The Punter’s Opinion, We’ll Ask For It (We Won’t) [Nate Jackson via Deadspin] Chris Kluwe Responds: Can I Kick It? (Yes, I Can) [Chris Kluwe on Deadspin]
- Is Going Commando In Gym Shorts OK? [Drew Magary on Deadspin]
- What The NFL Could Learn From A Soccer Match Played At One Of Its Stadiums Last Night [Brian Hickey on Deadspin]
- The omnipotence of Al Qaeda and meaninglessness of “Terrorism” [Glenn Greenwald on Salon]
- New study proves falsity of John Brennan’s drone claims [Glenn Greenwald on Salon]
- The War on Terror, now starring Yemen and Somalia [Glenn Greenwald on Salon]
- Wired publishes the full Manning-Lamo chat logs [Glenn Greenwald on Salon]
- Dog Feces Vs. Human Feces: WHO YA GOT?! [Big Daddy Drew on Deadspin]
- Meth Addict With Flame Thrower Spared Prison [Bloomberg]
- Current account dilemma [Michael Pettis on China Financial Markets]
- 5 Reasons Borders Went Out of Business (and What Will Take Its Place) [Josh Sanburn on Moneyland on Time]
- Cancer Risk Increases With Height [Wall Street Journal]
- Family Loses Coins Worth Millions in Dispute With U.S. [Wall Street Journal]
- Beijing Details Ethnic Violence [Wall Street Journal]
- Hair Club: A Lifeline For the Balding Man [Sarah Needleman Interviews Sy Sperling on The Wall Street Journal]
- Millennials Make Millions [The Wall Street Journal]
- Hour-Long Special: The Folly of Prediction [Freakonomics Radio]
- Exclusive: Inside Darpa’s Secret Afghan Spy Machine [Noah Shachtman on Danger Room on Wired]
- Fake Apple store cuts to core of China risk to brands [Reuters]
- Africa could be the bread basket of the world [Ozwald Boateng on The Telegraph]
- The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in Afghanistan [Michael O’Hanlon on The National Interest]
- Lulismo v Chávismo [The Economist]
- When Daylight Loses Its Luster [Kelly Eggers on FINS]
- Ron Paul Rides on Private Jet as Money Flows Into 2012 Campaign [Bloomberg]
- Strauss-Kahn accuser’s media blitz carries risks [Reuters]
- Directives from the Ministry of Truth: Wenzhou High-speed Train Crash [China Digital Times]
- When Gray Days Signal a Problem [Wall Street Journal]
- France, U.S. Have Highest Depression Rates in World, Study Suggests [Bloomberg]
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The Heat Death Hour 