Sunday, January 20, 2013
Be Ready To Mint That Coin
Paul Krugman
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/07/be-ready-to-mint-that-coin
January 7, 2013
Should President Obama be willing to print a $1 trillion platinum coin if Republicans try to force America into default? Yes, absolutely. He will, after all, be faced with a choice between two alternatives: one that’s silly but benign, the other that’s equally silly but both vile and disastrous. The decision should be obvious.
For those new to this, here’s the story. First of all, we have the weird and destructive institution of the debt ceiling; this lets Congress approve tax and spending bills that imply a large budget deficit — tax and spending bills the president is legally required to implement — and then lets Congress refuse to grant the president authority to borrow, preventing him from carrying out his legal duties and provoking a possibly catastrophic default.
And Republicans are openly threatening to use that potential for catastrophe to blackmail the president into implementing policies they can’t pass through normal constitutional processes.
Enter the platinum coin. There’s a legal loophole allowing the Treasury to mint platinum coins in any denomination the secretary chooses. Yes, it was intended to allow commemorative collector’s items — but that’s not what the letter of the law says. And by minting a $1 trillion coin, then depositing it at the Fed, the Treasury could acquire enough cash to sidestep the debt ceiling — while doing no economic harm at all.
So why not?
It’s easy to make sententious remarks to the effect that we shouldn’t look for gimmicks, we should sit down like serious people and deal with our problems realistically. That may sound reasonable — if you’ve been living in a cave for the past four years.Given the realities of our political situation, and in particular the mixture of ruthlessness and craziness that now characterizes House Republicans, it’s just ridiculous — far more ridiculous than the notion of the coin.
So if the 14th amendment solution — simply declaring that the debt ceiling is unconstitutional — isn’t workable, go with the coin.
This still leaves the question of whose face goes on the coin — but that’s easy: John Boehner. Because without him and his colleagues, this wouldn’t be necessary.
Man Challenges Citizens United
Man Challenges Citizens United – From The Carpool Lane
Wendy Gittleson
2013/01/05
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/01/05/man-challenges-citizens-united-from-the-carpool-lane/
For most, getting caught alone in the carpool lane is an expensive nuisance. For Jonathan Frieman of San Rafael, CA, it’s a chance to change American politics.
The designated carpool lane on Highway 101 near Frieman’s northern California home is specified to be for “two people or more” during rush hour. The police say Frieman was driving alone, but rather than pay the $478 fine, he plans to head to court on Monday to challenge the ticket. His reasoning? He had his papers of incorporation with him and since the Supreme Court has ruled that corporations are people, there were two people in the car.
It’s doubtful that a traffic court judge is going to take a bold stance against a Supreme Court ruling, but that’s the point. Should Frieman lose Monday, which he plans on doing, he wants to take the challenge all the way to the top court. From the Pacific Sun:
According to a press release from Kathleen Russell Consulting, the Mill Valley-based firm handling publicity for Frieman’s quest for justice, state vehicle code 470’s definition of a person includes “natural persons and corporations.”
If he loses in court on Monday, continues the press release, Frieman says he is prepared to appeal the case all the way to the Supreme Court “in an effort to expose the impracticality of corporate personhood.”
“Corporations are imaginary entities, and we’ve let them run wild,” says Frieman. “Their original intent 200 years ago at the dawn of our nation was to serve human beings. So I’m wresting back that power by making their personhood serve me.”
While this might be the first time Frieman has made national headlines, he is a long-time political activist in Marin County, CA. He writes a blog for the San Rafael Patch, where he rails against local issues and our country’s growing income and tax discrepancy. He seems unafraid of offending the wealthy, many of whom are his neighbors in the upscale Bay Area city.
Frieman’s traffic protest wasn’t the first time he went outside the lines of politics. In May of 2012, he impersonated a Assembly candidate, Marc Levine, in protest of that candidate. He even considered starting a write-in campaign under the name of “Mark” (with a “k”) Levine to siphon votes from the original Levine.
If Frieman’s fight makes it to the Supreme Court, there’s no guarantee they will hear it. In June of last year, they turned down a more conventional case, one in which state law conflicted with the federal ruling.
Brennan chosen by Barack Obama as CIA head
John Brennan chosen by Barack Obama as new CIA head
The mastermind of Barack Obama's secret drone war was chosen on Monday to lead the CIA and "relentlessly" extend its controversial campaign against al-Qaeda into the president's second term.
Jon Swaine, Washington
07 Jan 2013
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/9786434/John-Brennan-chosen-by-Barack-Obama-as-new-CIA-head.html
John Brennan, Mr Obama's counter-terrorism adviser, was nominated as the intelligence agency's next director two months after David Petraeus resigned over an extramarital affair with his biographer.
He has played a key role in expanding a programme of air strikes by unmanned drones on suspected terrorists in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, which has killed more than 2,000 people.
Accepting the nomination in a speech at the White House, Mr Brennan, 57, said: "I will make it my mission to ensure the CIA has the tools it needs to keep our country safe."
He paid tribute to CIA successes that would never be known outside the "hallowed halls of Langley and the White House". Many human rights campaigners say that the drone campaign is illegal.
Mr Obama said Mr Brennan would "remain relentless" in pursuing al-Qaeda.
Praising him as a tireless public servant who obsesses about US security, he added: "I'm not sure he has slept in four years".
White House colleagues have described him as "a priest whose blessing has become indispensable" to the president in their selection of targets for drone strikes from a so-called "kill list".
A career spy who served as CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia, Mr Brennan was also accused of being complicit in the agency's torture of terror suspects under former president George W. Bush.
Controversy over his involvement in the so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" is believed to have prevented Mr Obama from nominating Mr Brennan to lead the CIA after his 2008 election win.
He promised to ensure the work of the CIA "always reflects the liberties, the freedoms, and the values that we all hold dear".
Mr Obama also confirmed his nomination of Chuck Hagel, a former Republican senator whose foreign policy stances have attracted criticism from former colleagues, as his next defence secretary.
If confirmed by the Senate, the 66-year-old would be the first combat veteran of the Vietnam War, and the first veteran of enlisted rank, to head the defence department.
Hailing him as an "American patriot" who "bears the scars and the shrapnel of battles fought in our name", Mr Obama said: "Chuck knows that war is not an abstraction".
The selection of Mr Hagel, who once criticised intimidation of US politicians by "the Jewish lobby" has been sharply criticised as an insult to Israel that could jeopardise a key alliance.
Mr Obama on Monday praised Mr Hagel's "willingness to speak his mind", stating that he "understands that America stands strongest when we stand with allies and with friends".
Lindsey Graham, a Republican Senator for South Carolina, has said Mr Hagel "would be the most antagonistic secretary of defence towards the state of Israel in our nation's history".
Mr Hagel has also been criticised for opposing additional unilateral sanctions on Iran and for urging Israel's government to engage in direct talks with Hamas, the militant Islamic group.
He pledged yesterday to give Mr Obama his "honest and most informed counsel".
Both nominees must be confirmed in votes by the US Senate, where Mr Obama's Democrats hold a majority. So far Ted Cruz, a Texas senator, has promised to vote against Mr Hagel's appointment.
Coming soon after the selection of Senator John Kerry to replace Hillary Clinton as US Secretary of State, the nominations also prompted accusations that Mr Obama had failed to make his Cabinet diverse.
Tim Miller, a Republican spokesman, said Mr Obama's promotion of "three old white guys" who backed the war in Iraq made a mockery of his re-election campaign slogan, which he restyled as "Forward-ish".
Mr Brennan was also blamed for a series of erroneous briefings to the media following the death of Osama bin Laden in May 2011, which angered the then-defence secretary Robert Gates.
After Mr Brennan said bin Laden had been killed while using one of his wives as a shield, officials later said that this was untrue.
Awesome Quotes: Economist Lambert Strether
"A 'sacrifice' where some give up luxuries and others give up necessities is in no way 'shared'. A marginal sacrifice for the rich is not commensurate to core sacrifices for the rest of us.”
A letter to Kathryn Bigelow on Zero Dark Thirty
A letter to Kathryn Bigelow on Zero Dark Thirty's apology for torture
By peddling the lie that CIA detentions led to Bin Laden's killing, you have become a Leni Riefenstahl-like propagandist of torture
Naomi Wolf
Friday 4 January 2013
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/04/letter-kathryn-bigelow-zero-dark-thirty
The Hurt Locker was a beautiful, brave film; many young women in film were inspired as they watched you become the first woman ever to win an Oscar for directing. But with Zero Dark Thirty, you have attained a different kind of distinction.
Your film Zero Dark Thirty is a huge hit here. But in falsely justifying, in scene after scene, the torture of detainees in "the global war on terror", Zero Dark Thirty is a gorgeously-shot, two-hour ad for keeping intelligence agents who committed crimes against Guantánamo prisoners out of jail. It makes heroes and heroines out of people who committed violent crimes against other people based on their race – something that has historical precedent.
Your film claims, in many scenes, that CIA torture was redeemed by the "information" it "secured", information that, according to your script, led to Bin Laden's capture. This narrative is a form of manufacture of innocence to mask a great crime: what your script blithely calls "the detainee program".
What led to this amoral compromising of your film-making?
Could some of the seduction be financing? It is very hard to get a film without a pro-military message, such as The Hurt Locker, funded and financed. But according to sources in the film industry, the more pro-military your message is, the more kinds of help you currently can get: from personnel, to sets, to technology – a point I made in my argument about the recent militarized Katy Perry video.
It seems implausible that scenes such as those involving two top-secret, futuristic helicopters could be made without Pentagon help, for example. If the film received that kind of undisclosed, in-kind support from the defense department, then that would free up million of dollars for the gigantic ad campaign that a film like this needs to compete to win audience.
This also sets a dangerous precedent: we can be sure, with the "propaganda amendment" of the 2013 NDAA, just signed into law by the president, that the future will hold much more overt corruption of Hollywood and the rest of US pop culture. This amendment legalizes something that has been illegal for decades: the direct funding of pro-government or pro-military messaging in media, without disclosure, aimed at American citizens.
Then, there is the James Frey factor. You claim that your film is "based on real events", and in interviews, you insist that it is a mixture of fact and fiction, "part documentary". "Real", "true", and even "documentary", are big and important words. By claiming such terms, you generate media and sales traction – on a mendacious basis. There are filmmakers who work very hard to produce films that are actually "based on real events": they are called documentarians. Alex Gibney, in Taxi to the Dark Side, and Rory Kennedy, in Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, have both produced true and sourceable documentary films about what your script blithely calls "the detainee program" – that is, the regime of torture to generate false confessions at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib – which your script claims led straight to Bin Laden.
Fine, fellow reporter: produce your sources. Provide your evidence that torture produced lifesaving – or any – worthwhile intelligence.
But you can't present evidence for this claim. Because it does not exist.
Five decades of research, cited in the 2008 documentary The End of America, confirm that torture does not work. Robert Fisk provides another summary of that categorical conclusion. And this 2011 account from Human Rights First rebuts the very premise of Zero Dark Thirty.
Your actors complain about detainees' representation by lawyers – suggesting that these do-gooders in suits endanger the rest of us. I have been to see your "detainee program" firsthand. The prisoners, whom your film describes as being "lawyered up", meet with those lawyers in rooms that are wired for sound; yet, those lawyers can't tell the world what happened to their clients – because the descriptions of the very torture these men endured are classified.
I have seen the room where the military tribunal takes the "testimony" from people swept up in a program that gave $5,000 bounties to desperately poor Afghanis to incentivize their turning-in innocent neighbors. The chairs have shackles to the floor, and are placed in twos, so that one prisoner can be threatened to make him falsely condemn the second.
I have seen the expensive video system in the courtroom where – though Guantánamo spokesmen have told the world's press since its opening that witnesses' accounts are brought in "whenever reasonable" – the monitor on the system has never been turned on once: a monitor that could actually let someone in Pakistan testify to say, "hey, that is the wrong guy". (By the way, you left out the scene where the CIA dude sodomizes the wrong guy: Khaled el-Masri, "the German citizen unfortunate enough to have a similar name to a militant named Khaled al-Masri.")
In a time of darkness in America, you are being feted by Hollywood, and hailed by major media. But to me, the path your career has now taken reminds of no one so much as that other female film pioneer who became, eventually, an apologist for evil: Leni Riefenstahl. Riefenstahl's 1935 Triumph of the Will, which glorified Nazi military power, was a massive hit in Germany. Riefenstahl was the first female film director to be hailed worldwide.
It may seem extreme to make comparison with this other great, but profoundly compromised film-maker, but there are real echoes. When Riefenstahl began to glamorize the National Socialists, in the early 1930s, the Nazis' worst atrocities had not yet begun; yet abusive detention camps had already been opened to house political dissidents beyond the rule of law – the equivalent of today's Guantánamo, Bagram base, and other unnameable CIA "black sites". And Riefenstahl was lionised by the German elites and acclaimed for her propaganda on behalf of Hitler's regime.
But the world changed. The ugliness of what she did could not, over time, be hidden. Americans, too, will wake up and see through Zero Dark Thirty's apologia for the regime's standard lies that this brutality is somehow necessary. When that happens, the same community that now applauds you will recoil.
Like Riefenstahl, you are a great artist. But now you will be remembered forever as torture's handmaiden.
Alex Jones: Best Night of Television Ever
Jon Rappoport
NoMoreFakeNews.com
January 8, 2013
Piers Morgan (CNN) thought he might pump up his horrendous ratings and avoid having to go back to England. So he invited Alex Jones to come east and appear on his show.
They would discuss gun control and the petition to have Morgan deported. It would be good television. An interesting conversation. Perhaps things would get contentious.
But Morgan’s producers and bookers had made a fatal error of judgment.
To say Alex was loaded for bear is a vast understatement.
He crashed the television party in a way it’s never happened before.
You could call it: the internet invades mainstream media. But that doesn’t begin to do it justice.
This was one man attacking the whole rotting corpse of major media, attacking the fascists of the federal government, attacking the psychiatric/pharmaceutical cartel for dispensing drugs that cause people to kill other people, attacking the host of the show for daring to come to these shores with his putrid put-on Brit arrogance, attacking the brain-dead premise that fewer gun murders equals a far, far better nation (England), swearing an oath that the US government will not disarm the citizenry…and Alex made all this happen in just the first seven minutes of the interview.
You could go back in the archives and comb through the history of television in this country and never find seven minutes like this. Never.
It broke through the fake civility of moronic, pundit-driven, stacked-to-the-ceiling-with-utter-bullshit news programs like a car driving through a showroom window at 80mph.
Go to Infowars and watch it.
Then tell yourself you’re not dreaming, because you’re not. It happened.
If you were, by chance, tuned to the BCS championship game between Alabama and Notre Dame and missed the real slaughter on CNN, catch it.
According to Alex, one of Pier’s producers broke down and cried during the interview. Oh dear. Horrid. I hope the producer had friends to console her in their little mutually constructed elite bubble. Cocktails, tranqs, perhaps a visit to a shrink might be in order. No doubt, this is a case of PTSD, and might necessitate a long recovery.
No, the idiots at CNN were definitely not ready for this. They were blindsided. Piers tried to remain calm. That was his only strategy. He would be the voice of reason. Stiff upper lip and all that.
It worked about as well as waving a feather in front of a typhoon.
Which, when you think about it, is how the people of England handle their fascist government and their falling-apart society. “Look at us, we’re clueless with feathers.”
No doubt Piers is telling himself he stood up to the cave man from Texas, revealing to the American people how pernicious gun owners are. But that wasn’t it. That wasn’t it all.
Instead, this was cardboard television reality taking a dozen torpedoes amidships.
Alex did it exactly the way you’re supposed to do it when you want to destroy the whole stinking mess all at once. You give no quarter. You go on the attack from the first moment. You don’t let up.
You ignore the nicey-nice stuff.
I’m sure there are some boomer gun advocates out there who think Alex “presented an unfortunate face of the responsible gun-owner community.” They’re dead wrong. They don’t understand what an attack against tyranny requires. They never have.
You put the fascists on the defensive. That’s rule number one. You put them through the wall into the next county. You hit them with the truth so hard they never recover. That’s the goal.
It happened last night.
I watched the whole curtain of the television Matrix explode. I watched it with a joy that comes from knowing, for a long time, what such a moment would look like if it ever came to pass.
Then it did.
Thank you, CNN. This was your finest moment, your only authentic moment in all your years of building an insane consensus about reality.
Thanks, Alex. You came through like a champion.
The author of an explosive collection, THE MATRIX REVEALED, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at:
http://www.nomorefakenews.com
Alex Jones Meets Piers Morgan
YouTube URL:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWQPZ-taYBs
Robalini's Note:
Boy, the Alex Jones on CNN story is sure becoming big. Which is why whether or not he won the battle, he definitely won the war. I watched it again, and the question of if he was "right" or "wrong" seems obtuse. This was an over-the-top Andy Kaufman-like performance that will not go away.
But here's a little quote from his performance, cited in an MSNBC article that was of course dismissing him:
“The megabanks that control the planet brag that they’ve taken over… They’ve taken everybody’s guns but the Swiss and the American people, and when they get our guns, they can have their world tyranny while the government buys 1.6 billion bullets, armored vehicles, tanks, helicopters, predator drones–armed now in U.S. skies being used to arrest people in North Dakota. The Second Amendment isn’t there for duck hunting; it’s there to protect us from tyrannical government and street thugs.”
Now, I'm not saying I agree with everything he says, but it does show beneath the genius buffoonery, there is some substantial thoughts and some serious, provocative ideas. There does seem a method to his madness.
Robalini's Week 20 NFL Picks
Here's my results for Week 19
W-L-T record: 1-3
Regular season record: 72-64
Playoff record: 4-4
Total record: 76-68
San Francisco 49ers - Atlanta Falcons
The Graduate Factor:
The Falcons should feel lucky for barely escaping with a win last week against the Seahawks, which isn't a good outlook in the playoffs. The luck should not continue. Jim Harbaugh took a huge gamble by making Colin Kaepernick the starting QB over Alex Smith mid-season, and I was obviously dubious of the move. But last week, the gamble paid off big time, with Kaepernick having a superstar performance in his playoff debut. Against the Falcons, who have big trouble against running QBs, his success should continue, and the 49ers defense looks as solid as ever. Expect them to take the trip to the Super Bowl they barely missed last year.
San Francisco 49ers (-3 1/2) over Atlanta Falcons
Baltimore Ravens - New England Patriots
The Graduate Factor:
In theory, the Ravens should be exhausted after playing a six quarter game in Mile High Stadium last week (though thankfully, it was an early Saturday game and this one is a late Sunday game, giving them maximum rest.) The problem with this theory is Ray Lewis, even with one arm, is the equivalence of a shot of bull testosterone. He's playing on fire, as is the entire defense, which may also lose Ed Reed after this season as well to retirement. If there's one team that can beat the Pats in January in New England, it's the Ravens. Gamblers pretty much agree: when I placed my bet Monday, the Ravens were getting 9 1/2 points, and now it's down to 7 1/2. Will they be able to stop Tom Brady's sixth trip to the Super Bowl? Maybe not, but it should be a lot closer than the spread would predict.
Baltimore Ravens (+9 1/2) over New England Patriots
All bets are placed at Station Casinos:
http://www.stationcasinos.com
To check Las Vegas odds, The Konformist recommends VegasInsider.com:
http://www.vegasinsider.com
W-L-T record: 1-3
Regular season record: 72-64
Playoff record: 4-4
Total record: 76-68
San Francisco 49ers - Atlanta Falcons
The Graduate Factor:
The Falcons should feel lucky for barely escaping with a win last week against the Seahawks, which isn't a good outlook in the playoffs. The luck should not continue. Jim Harbaugh took a huge gamble by making Colin Kaepernick the starting QB over Alex Smith mid-season, and I was obviously dubious of the move. But last week, the gamble paid off big time, with Kaepernick having a superstar performance in his playoff debut. Against the Falcons, who have big trouble against running QBs, his success should continue, and the 49ers defense looks as solid as ever. Expect them to take the trip to the Super Bowl they barely missed last year.
San Francisco 49ers (-3 1/2) over Atlanta Falcons
Baltimore Ravens - New England Patriots
The Graduate Factor:
In theory, the Ravens should be exhausted after playing a six quarter game in Mile High Stadium last week (though thankfully, it was an early Saturday game and this one is a late Sunday game, giving them maximum rest.) The problem with this theory is Ray Lewis, even with one arm, is the equivalence of a shot of bull testosterone. He's playing on fire, as is the entire defense, which may also lose Ed Reed after this season as well to retirement. If there's one team that can beat the Pats in January in New England, it's the Ravens. Gamblers pretty much agree: when I placed my bet Monday, the Ravens were getting 9 1/2 points, and now it's down to 7 1/2. Will they be able to stop Tom Brady's sixth trip to the Super Bowl? Maybe not, but it should be a lot closer than the spread would predict.
Baltimore Ravens (+9 1/2) over New England Patriots
All bets are placed at Station Casinos:
http://www.stationcasinos.com
To check Las Vegas odds, The Konformist recommends VegasInsider.com:
http://www.vegasinsider.com
Sunday, January 13, 2013
ZERO CONSCIENCE IN “ZERO DARK THIRTY”
Jane Mayer
December 14, 2012
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/12/torture-in-kathryn-bigelows-zero-dark-thirty.html
At the same time that the European Court of Human Rights has issued a historic ruling condemning the C.I.A.’s treatment of a terror suspect during the Bush years as “torture,” a Hollywood movie about the agency’s hunt for Osama bin Laden, “Zero Dark Thirty”—whose creators say that they didn’t want to “judge” the interrogation program—appears headed for Oscar nominations. Can torture really be turned into morally neutral entertainment?
“Zero Dark Thirty,” which opens across the country next month, is a pulse-quickening film that spends its first half hour or so depicting a fictionalized version of the Bush Administration’s secret U.S. interrogation program. In reality, the C.I.A.’s program of calibrated cruelty was deemed so illegal, and so immoral, that the director of the F.B.I. withdrew his personnel rather than have them collaborate with it, and the top lawyer at the Pentagon laid his career on the line in an effort to stop a version of the program from spreading to the armed forces. The C.I.A.’s actions convulsed the national-security community, leading to a crisis of conscience inside the top ranks of the U.S. government. The debate echoed the moral seriousness of the political dilemma once posed by slavery, a subject that is brilliantly evoked in Steven Spielberg’s new film, “Lincoln”; by contrast, the director of “Zero Dark Thirty,” Kathryn Bigelow, milks the U.S. torture program for drama while sidestepping the political and ethical debate that it provoked. In her hands, the hunt for bin Laden is essentially a police procedural, devoid of moral context. If she were making a film about slavery in antebellum America, it seems, the story would focus on whether the cotton crops were successful.
After some critics called Bigelow a torture apologist, she defended the fairness and historical accuracy of her movie. “The film doesn’t have an agenda, and it doesn’t judge. I wanted a boots-on-the-ground experience,” she told my New Yorker colleague Dexter Filkins, who interviewed her for a Talk of the Town piece. At a Los Angeles press junket, the film’s screenwriter, Mark Boal, complained that critics were “mischaracterizing” the torture sequences: “I understand that those scenes are graphic and unsparing and unsentimental. But I think that what the film does over the course of two hours is show the complexity of the debate.” His point was that because the film shows multiple approaches to intelligence gathering, of which torture is only one tactic, and because the torture isn’t shown as always producing correct or instant leads, it offers a nuanced answer to the question of whether torture works.
But whether torture “worked” was far from the most important question about its use. I’ve seen the film and, as much as I admired Bigelow’s Oscar-winning picture “The Hurt Locker,” I think that this time, by ignoring the full weight of the dark history of torture, her work falls disturbingly short. To begin with, despite Boal’s contentions, “Zero Dark Thirty” does not capture the complexity of the debate about America’s brutal detention program. It doesn’t include a single scene in which torture is questioned, even though the Bush years were racked by internal strife over just that issue—again, not just among human-rights and civil-liberties lawyers, but inside the F.B.I., the military, the Justice Department, and the C.I.A. itself, which eventually abandoned waterboarding because it feared, correctly, that the act constituted a war crime. None of this ethical drama seems to interest Bigelow.
To establish a baseline of moral awareness, she shows her heroine—a C.I.A. counterterrorism officer called Maya, played by Jessica Chastain—delicately wincing as she hands the more muscled interrogators a pitcher of water with which to waterboard a detainee. Maya is also shown standing mutely by when the detainee is strung up by ropes, stripped naked, and forced to crawl in a dog collar. In reality, when the C.I.A. first subjected a detainee to incarceration in a coffin-size “confinement box,” as is shown in the movie, an F.B.I. agent present at the scene threw a fit, warned the C.I.A. contractor proposing the plan that it was illegal, counterproductive, and reprehensible. The fight went all the way to the top of the Bush Administration. Bigelow airbrushes out this showdown, as she does virtually the entire debate during the Bush years about the treatment of detainees.
The lone anti-torture voice shown in the film is a split-second news clip of President Barack Obama, taken from a “60 Minutes” interview, in which he condemns torture. It flashes on a television screen that’s in the background of a scene set in Pakistan; the movie’s terrorist-hunters, who are holding a meeting, barely look up, letting Obama’s pronouncement pass without comment. “By this point in the film,” as the CNN national-security analyst Peter Bergen wrote recently, “the audience has already seen that the C.I.A. has employed coercive interrogation techniques on an al Qaeda detainee that produced a key lead in the hunt for bin Laden. In the film, Obama’s opposition to torture comes off as wrongheaded and prissy.”
Bigelow has portrayed herself as a reluctant truth-teller. She recently described the film’s torture scenes as “difficult to shoot.” She said, “I wish it was not part of our history. But it was.”
Yet what is so unsettling about “Zero Dark Thirty” is not that it tells this difficult history but, rather, that it distorts it. In addition to excising the moral debate that raged over the interrogation program during the Bush years, the film also seems to accept almost without question that the C.I.A.’s “enhanced interrogation techniques” played a key role in enabling the agency to identify the courier who unwittingly led them to bin Laden. But this claim has been debunked, repeatedly, by reliable sources with access to the facts. As the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent first reported, shortly after bin Laden was killed, Leon Panetta, then the director of the C.I.A., sent a letter to Arizona Senator John McCain, clearly stating that “we first learned about ‘the facilitator / courier’s nom de guerre’ from a detainee not in the C.I.A.’s custody.” Panetta wrote that “no detainee in C.I.A. custody revealed the facilitator / courier’s full true name or specific whereabouts.”
The Senators Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat and the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat and the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, have undermined the film’s version of events further still. “The original lead information had no connection to C.I.A. detainees,” they wrote in their own letter, revealed by the Post last year. Feinstein and Levin noted that a third detainee in C.I.A. custody did provide information on the courier, but, importantly, they stressed that “he did so the day before he was interrogated by the C.I.A. using their coercive interrogation techniques.” In other words, contrary to the plotline of “Zero Dark Thirty,” and contrary to self-serving accounts of C.I.A. officers implicated in the interrogation program, senators with access to the record say that torture did not produce the leads that led to finding and killing bin Laden.
Top senators on the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee have amplified that position in additional interviews this week. Speaking with the Huffington Post, Feinstein said of the movie’s narrative, “Based on what I know, I don’t believe it is true.” Republicans, too, criticized the movie’s plot. “It’s wrong. It’s wrong. I know for a fact, not because of this report—my own knowledge—that waterboarding, torture, does not lead to reliable information … in any case—not this specific case—in any case,” said John McCain, the top Republican on the Armed Services Committee, who was himself tortured during the Vietnam War. The Huffington Post also quoted South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, another Republican member of the Armed Services Committee, saying, “I would argue that it’s not waterboarding that led to bin Laden’s demise. It was a lot of good intelligence-gathering from the Obama and Bush administrations, continuity of effort, holding people at Gitmo, putting the puzzle together over a long period of time—not torture.”
As Scott Shane wrote in the Times on Thursday, so little is publicly known about the C.I.A.’s erstwhile interrogation program that it is nearly impossible for outsiders to assess the facts with total confidence. But for the past three years, Democratic staffers at the Senate Intelligence Committee have been compiling six thousand pages of records related to the secret program, and in doing so they have found little to celebrate. It is hard to understand, then, why the creators of “Zero Dark Thirty” so confidently credit the program.
In addition to providing false advertising for waterboarding, “Zero Dark Thirty” endorses torture in several other subtle ways. At one point, the film’s chief C.I.A. interrogator claims, without being challenged, that “everyone breaks in the end,” adding, “it’s biology.” Maybe that’s what they think in Hollywood, but experts on the history of torture disagree. Indeed, many prisoners have been tortured to death without ever revealing secrets, while many others—including some of those who were brutalized during the Bush years—have fabricated disinformation while being tortured. Some of the disinformation provided under duress during those years, in fact, helped to lead the U.S. into the war in Iraq under false premises.
At another point in the film, an elderly detainee explains that he wants to coöperate with the U.S. because he “doesn’t want to be tortured again.” The clear implication is that brutalization brings breakthroughs. Other ways of getting intelligence, such as bribing sources with expensive race cars, are shown to work, too. But while those scenes last only a few minutes, the torture scenes seem to go on and on.
The filmmakers subtly put their thumb on the pro-torture scale, as Emily Bazelon put it, in another scene, too. A C.I.A. officer complains that there is no way for him to corroborate a lead on bin Laden’s whereabouts now that the detainees in Guantánamo all have lawyers. The suggestion is that if they are given due process rather than black eyes, there will be no way to get the necessary evidence. This is a canard, given that virtually all suspects in the American criminal-justice system have lawyers, yet their cases proceed smoothly and fairly every day.
Bigelow has stressed that she had “no agenda” when she made “Zero Dark Thirty.” Unsurprisingly, though, those who have defended the brutalization of detainees have already begun embracing the film as evidence that they are right. Joe Scarborough, the conservative host of MSNBC’s show “Morning Joe,” said recently that the film’s narrative, “whether you find it repugnant or not,” shows that the C.I.A. program was effective and “led to the couriers, that led, eventually, years later, to the killing of Osama bin Laden.” My guess is that this is just the beginning, and that by the time millions of Americans have seen this movie, they will believe that, as Frank Bruni put it in a recent Times column, “No waterboarding, no bin Laden.”
Perhaps it’s unfair to expect the entertainment industry to convey history accurately. Clearly, the creators of “Zero Dark Thirty” are storytellers who really know how to make a thriller. And it’s true that there are no rules when it comes to fiction. As Boal, the screenwriter, has protested in recent interviews, “It’s a movie, not a documentary.” But in the very first minutes of “Zero Dark Thirty,” before its narrative begins to unspool, the audience is told that the story it is about to see is “based on first-hand accounts of actual events.” If there is an expectation of accuracy, it is set up by the filmmakers themselves. It seems they want it both ways: they want the thrill that comes from revealing what happened behind the scenes as history was being made and the creative license of fiction, which frees them from the responsibility to stick to the truth.
Knowing the real facts—the ones that led the European Court of Human Rights to condemn America for torture this week—I had trouble enjoying the movie. I’ve interviewed Khaled El-Masri, the German citizen whose suit the E.C.H.R. adjudicated. He turned out to be a case of mistaken identity, an innocent car salesman whom the C.I.A. kidnapped and held in a black-site prison for four months, and who was “severely beaten, sodomized, shackled, and hooded.” What Masri lived through was so harrowing that, when I had a cup of coffee with him, a few years ago, he couldn’t describe it to me without crying. Maybe I care too much about all of this to enjoy it with popcorn. But maybe the creators of “Zero Dark Thirty” should care a little bit more.
The top 10 tech 'fails' of 2012
Doug Gross
Fri December 28, 2012
http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/28/tech/web/tech-fails-2012/index.html
Well, you can't win 'em all.
In 2012, we saw big tech advances. Smartphones got bigger. Tablets got smaller. Social media played a role in everything from a presidential election to disaster relief.
But with advances come clunkers.
When you're in a field that demands near-constant innovation and unprecedented levels of creativity, sometimes even the most successful players are going to shoot and miss.
So, at the risk of playing Scrooge in this season of good will, here we come to wallow in it. Because, let's face it: The Internet loves a good fail.
Behold the top 10 tech "fails" of 2012, with wishes for happier days ahead to all involved.
Apple Maps
Apple's unofficial slogan, "It Just Works," took a beating on this one.
Along with the rollout of the much anticipated iPhone 5 in September, Apple overhauled iOS, the operating system that runs the phone, its iPad and other mobile devices. A much-hyped feature of the change was Apple's first effort at its own mapping app -- after dumping rival Google's map software.
The result was so bad that a few days later Apple's CEO was essentially telling customers to use Google Maps.
Entire cities appeared in the wrong place. Landmarks such as the Washington Monument showed up submerged in bodies of water, and big chunks of the globe appeared as roadless wastelands.
"At Apple, we strive to make world-class products that deliver the best experience possible to our customers," CEO Tim Cook wrote in a rare apology. "With the launch of our new Maps last week, we fell short on this commitment. We are extremely sorry for the frustration this has caused our customers and we are doing everything we can to make Maps better."
It was a little more than a month later when Scott Forstall, vice president in charge of iOS, was ousted from the company, reportedly, in part, for not wanting to apologize for Maps.
The company has been gradually improving Maps, but as recently as this month Australian police complained that an Apple Maps glitch could endanger motorists by mislocating a city of 30,000 people in the middle of the outback.
Facebook's IPO
Everybody uses Facebook. And everybody likes to make money. So everybody's going to gobble up Facebook stock, right?
So went the conventional thinking -- at least among those of us who spend more time thinking about mobile phones than mutual funds. But on Wall Street? Not so much.
It's hard to remember a stock opening more hyped than Facebook's when it hit the market in May. The stock began the day worth about $38. Then, after what everyone predicted to be a dynamic day of trading for the social media superstar, it closed at ... well ... about $38.
It wouldn't take long for the pinstripe-suit types to decide it wasn't even worth that. Facebook's stock bottomed out in September, falling below $18. Since then, it's been steadily rebounding and currently sells for about $28.
Facebook says it has solid financial plans for the future. And the stock may well keep climbing, eventually turning a profit for folks who bought early.
But that fateful day in May will be a reminder that Wall Street and Silicon Valley don't always play well together.
Airtime
When the man who created Napster and helped launch Facebook talks, the tech industry listens.
And when Sean Parker and partner Shawn Fanning tease something new called Airtime, techies fall all over themselves to see what the next great innovation will be.
But then, at a fancy launch event featuring celebrities such as Alicia Keys and Snoop Dogg, Parker announces that it's ... basically, a random Web chat tool.
Cue the collective, "Huh?"
It didn't help that, at that fancy event, Airtime crashed over and over again. Or that folks had a hard time seeing how it would be different than Chatroulette (although Parker promised more users would actually be wearing pants).
In October, Parker admitted that Airtme, launched with more than $33 million in backing, had just 10,000 active users. (That's $3,300 spent per user, if you're scoring along at home.)
"Running a startup is like eating glass," he said at the All Things D conference. "You just start to like the taste of your own blood."
Ouch.
Online coupons
"These aren't your grandma's coupons!" the digital generation so brashly declared.
With their mobile apps and irreverent style, daily-deal offerings such as Groupon and Living Social were all the rage as 2012 dawned.
Now? Um, not so much.
Groupon, perhaps the best-known player in the field, watched its value plummet 79% in 2012. Its stock value dropped about three-quarters since opening in November 2011 as high-profile investors washed their hands of it.
And this is the company Google reportedly tried to buy for $6 billion in 2010.
LivingSocial, meanwhile, announced last month it was laying off 400 people. That's after announcing months of revenue losses.
So what happened? Inbox fatigue made some users stop checking the deals. A glut of offers you don't care about (pottery classes?) can make your eyes glaze over. And some businesses quit making offers, saying they never saw the promised returns on their investment.
Nexus Q
When Google gets something right, they get it really, really right.
Redefining Web search? Yep. World's leading mobile system? Check. A car that drives itself? Vroom!
But some of the Big G's outings in the gadget world have hit with a thud. Enter ... the Nexus Q.
The size and shape of a Magic Eight Ball, the Nexus Q is (or was ... it's hard to say) a media streamer that uses Android to play audio and video. It's also made in the United States, no small thing in a world where virtually all gadgets come from China.
Unfortunately, in the grand tradition of Google Wave, nobody really knew what it was when it was released in June. Its release date was pushed back and, eventually, Google just gave everybody who pre-ordered a free one.
The Q has not officially been canned. But on Google's online store, the never-released gadget is listed as "not available at this time."
Stop Online Piracy Act
The new law was supposed to be about fighting online piracy. Who's going to be against that, right?
Answer: Pretty much the whole Internet.
Members of Congress sponsored the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, and related bills to make it easier to shut down websites that illegally share music, movies and other content.
But opponents argued it went too far and could end up shutting down legitimate sites while stifling free expression in the process.
Unfortunately for backers of SOPA, Web heavyweights such as Google, Facebook, Reddit and Wikipedia joined the fight against the bill. Sites went black on January 18 to raise awareness. Members of communities such as Reddit put intense pressure on lawmakers (including soon-to-be GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan) until they dropped their support or went on record opposing the bill.
The unprecedented backlash eventually caused supporters to shelve SOPA, and quite possibly ushered in a new age of Web activism.
'Social discovery' apps
If the first wave of social networking was about hooking up with friends, the next wave would be about meeting strangers -- or so the thinking went.
Tech-world pundits predicted a new wave of "social discovery" apps that would change the way we meet people. The basic idea was that, by using phones' GPS, users could see who else was nearby and then meet up with other users with shared friends or similar interests.
"If we get this right, I cannot think of a bigger thing to be working on right now," Paul Davison, CEO of the app Highlight, told CNN in June. "We can take billions and billions of dollars."
Significantly, he also chose not to tell a reporter how many users the app had at the time.
Banjo and Glancee were apps that did something similar. Others, such as Skout and Grindr, were even more specific -- they let you hunt down willing partners for a quick hookup.
But here's the thing -- some users, particularly women, found the apps a little creepy.
OK, so you know that somebody sitting in the same bar as you likes the Pixies, "Firefly," the fantasy stylings of George R.R. Martin and the Atlanta Braves. Are you really just going to start waving around your smartphone to get their attention?
Sure, they've got good taste. But they still might be jerks.
Color
It was supposed to be a tech-world slam-dunk. Instead, it became a cautionary tale about what some feel could become a tech "bubble."
Color, a photo-sharing mobile app, stoked excitement in the startup community that was virtually unrivaled. Before it had a single user, Color had raised $41 million from investors. So certain were its Silicon Valley creators that, reportedly, they turned down a $200 million buyout offer from Google.
With much fanfare, Color launched in March 2011. But users soon complained that the app, designed to share photos with the people around you, often didn't find anyone for them to share with. Its creators were forced to announce they were working on a major overhaul on the same day it was released.
Color tallied about 1 million users at its peak and, more recently, was reportedly down to about 100,000. Compare that to the roughly 100 million users of photo app Instagram (it had about 27 million when Facebook bought it last year), and you see the problem.
Color will be shutting down on New Year's Eve.
Zynga
It reads like an old VH1 "Behind the Music" episode.
"Zynga was riding high. Love them or hate them, its games like "Mafia Wars" and "FarmVille" were everywhere, clogging up Facebook pages and spurring millions of bored casual gamers to pay real cash for virtual cows. Then, it all came crumbling down."
OK, maybe "crumbling down" is an overstatement. But things in The 'Ville definitely didn't go Zynga's way in 2012.
In October, Zynga announced it was laying off 5% of its employees, shutting down its studio in Boston and proposing the closure of others in Japan and England.
(It would be entirely cynical to suggest Zynga hoped to bury that news by making the announcement during Apple's much-hyped iPad Mini event. So we won't suggest that here.)
Facebook, which gets a cut when people spend money on games such as "FarmVille," said that income from Zynga was down 20% over last year.
And, like unskilled mafia warriors, Zynga shot itself in the foot again in March when it bought the company that makes mobile game "Draw Something" for an eye-popping $180 million. But fascination with "Draw Something" dropped off fast. When's the last time you played?
Twitter twits
OK, so you can post something stupid anywhere. But there's something about Twitter's rapid-fire, 140-character bursts that brings out the stupid in people.
From companies embarrassing themselves to celebrities behaving badly, it's hard to name just one Twitter doofus. But here are a few nominees:
• Chris Brown, the hip-hop star, consistently used Twitter to make himself look like a foul-mouthed rage monster. Instead of thanking fans after winning a Grammy, he launched a profanity-laced bromide at his "haters." Then there were the misogynistic, scatological insults he hurled at comedian-critic Jenny Johnson before "quitting" Twitter. (He's back.)
• McDonald's thought it would get a little of that social media love it had been hearing about in January when it created the #McDstories hashtag -- asking customers to share their favorite McDonald's memories. Then it found out what happens when you give the Internet open access to your advertising effort. McDonald's yanked the campaign after just two hours and countless food-horror stories about fingernails, insects and bouts of food poisoning.
• Spike Lee was, like many Twitter users, angered by the killing of Florida teen Trayvon Martin. Tweeting the home address of shooter George Zimmerman would have been questionable enough. But Lee mistakenly tweeted out the address of a couple who have a son by that name. They had to leave their home after being besieged by reporters and threats. Lee would later apologize and "reach an agreement" with the aggrieved family.
• Greek triple jumper Paraskevi Papachristou was on her way to the Olympics when she tried a little ill-advised Twitter humor. With so many African Olympians in London, "the West Nile mosquitoes will at least eat homemade food!" she wrote. Her tweet was quickly criticized as racially insensitive, and Greece's Olympic Committee barred her from participating in the Games.
• Oprah Winfrey had been gushing for weeks about how much she loved the new Microsoft Surface tablet, culminating in this tweet: "Gotta say love that SURFACE! Have bought 12 already for Christmas gifts." Unfortunately for her, those words were followed by ... "via Twitter for iPad."
The top 12 tech stories of 2012
Heather Kelly
Fri December 28, 2012
http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/27/tech/web/top-tech-stories-2012/
Facebook struggled with its new life as a publicly traded company, and Instagram, the photo-sharing network it acquired in April, was dragged along for the ride.
There were inspiring stories, such as the Internet coming together to protest anti-piracy legislation. And there was darker news, like the Israeli military live-tweeting its strikes against Gaza.
And as always, the world's dominant and most closely watched tech company was all over the news. Apple did a little bit of everything in 2012, from hit new products (the iPad Mini) to high-profile failures (Apple Maps) to some old-fashioned courtroom drama in its patent war with Samsung.
Here are our picks for the top 12 tech stories of 2012. What did we leave out? Let us know in the comment section below.
Microsoft's big push
This was the year Microsoft took a big, bold and surprisingly fun step with a new version of Windows, an updated mobile operating system and its very own iPad rival.
The company, best known for its efficient but stodgy desktop software, needed to do something fresh to get customers' attention in 2012 and started with its flagship product. Windows 8 is a complete overhaul of the Windows operating system. Microsoft nixed the Start button and mixed a playful touchscreen interface with a more traditional desktop experience that runs on tablets, traditional computers, and hybrid machines.
The company also made a leap into the hardware market, releasing its first tablet, the Microsoft Surface, which ran a truncated version of the new Windows 8 operating system. And finally, there was Windows Phone 8, a major revamp of its smartphone operating system, which Microsoft hopes can compete with Apple's iOS and Google's Android.
It's still too soon to judge any of the new releases as successes or failures, but give Microsoft credit for taking chances.
SOPA backlash
In January, a pair of anti-piracy bills united the Internet in outrage. The proposed legislation, the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, and the Protect IP Act, or PIPA, would have restricted access to sites associated with pirated content, including the search engines and ad networks that do business with them.
The Internet cried censorship, and on January 18 some of the most popular sites blacked out their pages in protest. Reddit, Craigslist, Boing Boing, The Oatmeal, the English-language version of Wikipedia and thousands of other sites went dark. Even Google put a black censorship box over its logo. There were also petitions and organized boycotts of companies that supported the bills.
The protests worked, as both SOPA and PIPA were shelved. It was an impressive demonstration of the power of an organized Internet community.
Live-tweeting war
Violence and war have long been documented on Twitter and other social networks -- typically by journalists and by regular people on the ground (notably the Pakistani witness to the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden).
But in November, the Israeli military took this concept to a new level. During its conflict with Palestinian forces in Gaza, the Israel Defense Force tweeted updates, including the news it had "eliminated" Hamas leader Ahmed Jabari. The military arm of Hamas responded on Twitter with its own provocations.
The back-and-forth between the warring sides signaled a jarring evolution in how war is broadcast in real time.
iPhone 5 and Apple Maps stumble
Every Apple hardware release is a big news story, starting with rumors months in advance and peaking with a well-oiled Apple press event, followed by usually glowing reviews and huge sales numbers. But in 2012, Apple made a major misstep when it released the iPhone 5 and its new operating system, iOS 6.
The company dropped the Google-powered maps that had come pre-installed on every iPhone since 2007. In its place, Apple introduced its own mapping app. Apple Maps looked stunning, with 3-D graphics and neat features like Flyover and turn-by-turn directions. All it was missing was transit directions and accuracy -- the maps were riddled with mistaken locations and outdated information.
The resulting criticism inspired an apology from CEO Tim Cook and led to an executive shakeup at Apple. Customers turned to third-party map apps until Google finally released an iOS version of its popular maps in December.
Apple vs. Samsung
It was the biggest tech trial of the year. Two of the top phone and tablet manufacturers went to war when Apple accused Samsung of infringing on its iPad and iPhone patents for a variety of tablets and smartphones. The drama culminated in a federal jury trial over the summer that offered a rare peek into how notoriously secretive Apple operates.
The story became huge because of the large amount of money at stake and the implications that its verdict would have on Samsung's business and the Android platform.
The jury decided in Apple's favor, awarding the company just over $1 billion in damages. But the case is far from over. Lawyers for both sides will continue bickering over potential appeals for months and possibly years to come.
Facebook's botched IPO
It was the most anticipated IPO of the year, and one of the largest ever for a tech company. Social-media darling Facebook looked primed for a big public opening: The company was valued at $104 billion, snapped up popular photo-sharing app Instagram and was still growing.
But then an array of problems and misjudgments led to a botched IPO in May, and the company's stock plummeted. The initial offer price of $38 was too high, too many shares were issued, its opening day was marred by Nasdaq's technical glitches, and underwriter Morgan Stanley was fined for improperly influencing share sales.
The stock price dropped significantly, hitting a low of $17.55 on September 4. Facebook is still struggling to recover some of its early-2012 luster.
The Instagram boom
Instagram started out scrappy two years ago as a fun little app for sharing sepia-shaded photos with friends. But when its user base skyrocketed, Facebook bought it for $1 billion in cash and shares of Facebook stock. That amount later dropped to $735 million as the value of Facebook shares plummeted.
By September, Instagram had more than 100 million users. The app capped off its big year with a rite of passage for social networks: a bungled update to its terms of service that sparked user outrage and led to a hasty backtrack by founder Kevin Systrom.
Instagram's challenge for 2013 is to figure out how to grow its free service into a business that makes money so that Facebook can begin to get its money's worth.
Megaupload and Kim Dotcom
The Megaupload case would have been mildly interesting on its own. A popular file-sharing company and its various sites were shut down by the F.B.I for piracy. But when Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom was arrested in January at his lavish New Zealand estate, he went from unknown entrepreneur to a flamboyantly rich cult hero.
Dotcom (he legally changed his last name from Schmitz in 2005) did what any self-respecting boy video-game nerd would do with millions of dollars. He bought a yacht, helicopter, luxury cars and motorcycles. He lived with his model wife in a $24 million rented mansion in New Zealand where he spent hours playing "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3," earning a spot as the top-ranked player in the world.
But after Dotcom was jailed and his assets were seized, he slowly emerged as a leader for Internet freedom activists who thought he was unfairly targeted. He's still fighting the charges and using his newfound fame to launch new projects. His current plans include a new file-sharing site that encrypts all its files, and a streaming music service called Megabox.
Mid-sized tablets take off
It was the rare case of Apple following a trend instead of setting it. Apple introduced its 7.9-inch iPad Mini in October to take on its new rivals in the tablet market: cheaper 7-inch devices from Google and Amazon. While the Kindle Fire and Nexus 7 were only selling modestly compared to the iPad, Apple quickly recognized the growing demand for a smaller, more portable device.
The iPad Mini proved especially notable because Apple's late CEO, Steve Jobs, famously stated a 7-inch tablet would never make it in the market because it was "too big to compete with a smartphone; too small to compete with an iPad." This may have been one of those rare cases in which Jobs was wrong.
Nintendo launches Wii U
In November, Nintendo released a new version of its popular Wii game console, which while groundbreaking when launched in 2006 was badly in need of a refresh.
The Wii U's most novel feature is a touchscreen tablet controller called a GamePad, which communicates with the main console. Inside the tablet are motion control sensors, speakers, a camera, buttons and other bells and whistles -- all of which the gamer uses to interact with what's happening on the larger screen.
It's a bold move for the company and brings a new perspective to console gaming, although the Wii U has received mixed reviews so far.
Yahoo hires Marissa Mayer
Aging Internet giant Yahoo was facing slumping revenues and internal strife in July when it hired Google exec Marissa Mayer as its new chief executive. The hire made headlines for many reasons: Mayer was a bold choice that showed Yahoo was serious about shaking things up. She was also young, a Silicon Valley power player, and a woman who was expecting her first child.
There was much media hand-wringing over her pregnancy, with some pundits wondering aloud whether Mayer could juggle a newborn baby and a demanding new job. Many saw her as a role model for working mothers.
But when the news settled, the real question returned: Could Mayer save the floundering Yahoo? So far she has shaken up Yahoo's executive team, given employee morale a much-needed boost and begun to improve the company's mobile offerings, including a stunning new Flickr app.
It will take a while to properly gauge her impact, but investors seem optimistic. Yahoo's stock price has risen $4 a share since her hiring was announced.
Tech's role in the presidential election
Technology issues such as net neutrality weren't discussed much during the 2012 presidential election, but tech played a huge role in rallying supporters and getting out the vote. President Obama, arguably the most tech-savvy of U.S. presidents, went on Google Plus and Reddit to take questions from voters.
And both his campaign and that of his GOP challenger, Mitt Romney, sent social media messages almost daily in attempts to sway media reports and public opinion.
But the most impressive use of tech took place behind the scenes, where both sides used new and powerful computer databases to target voters. The Romney campaign's get-out-the-vote program, called Orca, suffered technical glitches on Election Day and was perceived to have been outflanked by Obama campaign software which compiled massive amounts of data on voters and dispatched volunteers to pinpoint locations across the country.
Stoner Cooking 1-13-13
U-Mini in Los Angeles Makes the Future of the Fast Food Burger Look Bright
DEC 14, 2012
http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2012/12/first-look-u-mini-umami-burger-adam-fleischman-los-angeles-ca.html
It's amazing to think that it was only four short years ago when I first profiled restaurateur Adam Fleischman and his small, high-end burger spot on La Brea Boulevard. Now his Umami empire has expanded to 14 locations and there are more on the way.
From the beginning Fleischman had a vision of applying unique burger aesthetic to the fast food model. I can remember him telling me about the ins and outs of his version of, well, In-N-Out, and thinking that his dreams were bold—bold and a decade away. Fleischman's idea of a reasonable timeline for starting a fast food chain is much shorter than mine.
Two weeks ago he opened the first outpost of his fast food operation in the Westwood section of Los Angeles. This one is called U-Mini, but there is talk that the chain will expand under the Umami name. Recently, Fleischman gave me a tour of the new operation. It's unquestionably forward thinking in its design and ordering technology, but what impressed me most were the burgers themselves.
The ordering process at U-Mini is designed for maximum efficiency. I put my order through on the in-store iPad system, but Fleischman has designed the operation so that you place your order and pay all through a custom smartphone app. Place your order, pay up, and they'll let you know when your food is ready. It's a straightforward idea that will make the lunch rush about as rational as it can be.
The first burger I tried was the Vintage Burger ($5.85). Fleischman explained that he wanted to evoke the memory of the classic McDonald's cheeseburger, but use his techniques and quality ingredients to bring it to the next level. That's just what he's done.
The basics are as you'd guess: a five-ounce Umami blend patty, topped with bread and butter pickles, minced onion, mustard, Umami Ketchup, and cheddar on the classic Umami bun (a Portuguese roll that is among the best in the business). Fleischman insists on all of his ingredients being made by his team and all of the Umami restuarants (including U-Mini) grind their meat fresh, in-house every day.
The patty itself is cooked on a beautiful cast iron plancha with the smashing technique that Fleischman developed for the Umami truck. This means that your patty will get a prodigious crust with its medium to medium well center.
Fleischman had mine cooked a bit less than they'll be serving to the public, so that's the reason for rich pink center in the cross-section shot. The word is, you can't request a medium rare through the automated ordering process, but you can make a special request in person.
The flavor profile of the burger is immediately familiar. There's no mistaking that classic McDonald's cheeseburger germline is clear, but the U-Mini version is so much more. The patty is juicy and full of flavor and the pickles and onions add a balance of sweetness and bite. The cheese and bun are exemplary. But the flavor that will send you down memory lane is, in this burger reviewer's humble opinion, the mustard. It adds that little extra acidity that I feel is the key to what we know to be the McDonald's cheeseburger difference.
I also tried the veggie burger ($5.85) on Fleischman's recommendation and, despite my cultivated prejudice to the genre, I found myself beguiled by his earthy, full flavored version. Certainly this isn't a burger for those of you not given to the mushroom, but I found myself halfway through the thing before I took a breath. It's no beef substitute, but I don't think it should be thought of as such. It's a sandwich of its own design that will please the vegetarians that you'll want to bring along to your burger lunch.
The fries ($2.50) are fresh-cut Kennebec potatoes that are instantly the best fresh-cut fast food fry around.
The Umami fries ($2.50) get a dusting of "Umami" seasoning and are earthy and tasty, but I found the standard fries to be a distinguished version of the classic.
I also sampled the shakes ($3.50/$5, small/large) at U-Mini. Recently Umami acquired L.A. Creamery and is richer for it. U-Mini serves nearly perfect shakes in two flavors, Salted Caramel and Milk Chocolate. Treat yourself to a sample of one if you're hesitant. If, like me, you're working on your self-discipline, order both and try mixing them yourself. It's a magical pairing.
I'm so pleased to say I knew Adam when. "When" in this case was over four years ago when he was just building Umami. He reached out to me as a reader of AHT. He asked me to come try out the burger at his new restaurant called Umami Burger. He was, you see, a Serious Eater who had a dream of a different kind of burger served in a different kind of burger restaurant. Now another piece of that dream is a reality—a very tasty reality.
U-Mini
1131 Westwood Blvd., Los Angeles CA 90024
310-943-8626; umami.com
About the author: Damon is one of our roving burger reporters and food writers. When he's not eating more than is warranted or healthful (and then writing about it) he can be found writing and producing for television and film. You can contact him at seriouslydamon@gmail.com.
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Wild Idea Buffalo Company
http://wildideabuffalo.com
1575 Valley Drive
Rapid City, SD 57703
The Wild Idea Buffalo Company is the leading provider of grass-fed, naturally-raised buffalo meat in the United States. All the buffalo (also called bison) meat we sell is antibiotic and hormone free, 100% grass fed, non-confined, free-roaming and humanely, field-harvested. Ours is the best gourmet meat you can buy on-line and have delivered to your home. No other red meat is better tasting, better for you or better for our planet.
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Classic Omelette
SELF | May 1998
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Classic-Omelette-15068
1/4 to 1/3 cup filling
1 teaspoon butter (or 2 teaspoons if sautéing filling)
2 eggs
1 tablespoon milk or water
salt and pepper to taste
herbs (optional)
First, prepare the filling. A basic rule of thumb is that you need one quarter to one third cup of filling for every two eggs. If you are using a filling that needs to be cooked — such as apples, mushrooms, onions, peppers, leeks — quickly sauté in a small frying pan with 1 teaspoon of the butter. If you are making a cheese omelette, either slice the cheese thinly or grate it finely and put aside.
Crack the eggs into a small mixing bowl. Stir gently with a fork until well-beaten. Add the milk or water, salt and pepper, and any herbs, and set aside.
Heat a 6- to 8-inch omelette pan over high heat until very hot (approximately 30 seconds). Add the butter, making sure it coats the bottom of the pan. As soon as the butter stops bubbling and sizzling (and before it starts to brown), slowly pour in the egg mixture.
Tilt the pan to spread the egg mixture evenly. Let eggs firm up a little, and after about ten seconds shake the pan a bit and use a spatula to gently direct the mixture away from the sides and into the middle. Allow the remaining liquid to then flow into the space left at the sides of the pan.
Continue to cook for another minute or so until the egg mixture holds togeth*er. While the middle is still a little runny, add the filling. Put in sautéed vegetables or fruit first, near the center, then sprinkle any cheese on top.
Tilt the pan to one side and use the spatula to fold approximately one third of the omelette over the middle. Shake the pan gently to slide the omelette to the edge of the pan.
Holding the pan above the serving plate, tip it so the omelette rolls off, folding itself onto the plate. The two edges will be tucked underneath.
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Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free Blueberry Cinnamon Scones
MAKES 8 SCONES
http://www.livingwithout.com/recipes/gluten_free_dairy_free_blueberry_cinnamon_scones-2077-1.html
Blueberries and cinnamon are like good friends — they should be together as often as possible. These rich and tasty scones make a special treat.
2 3/4 cups brown rice flour
1 1/2 cups + 1 tablespoon garbanzo bean flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 cup canola oil
1 cup organic whole cane sugar
1 cup rice milk
3/4 cup frozen blueberries
1. Combine the brown rice flour, garbanzo bean flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon in a large bowl. In the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the canola oil and organic whole cane sugar until well mixed. With the mixer on low speed, add the flour mixture and rice milk alternately, a little at a time, until well mixed, about 3 minutes. Chill the dough for at least 3 hours or overnight.
2. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
3. Dust your counter liberally with brown rice flour. Knead the blueberries into the chilled dough and pat the dough into a 2-inch thick disc. Cut the disc into 8 wedges. Place the wedges onto a greased or parchment-line baking sheet, spaced evenly apart. Bake until scones are golden brown and firm to the touch, about 30 minutes.
Reprinted with permission from Flying Apron’s Gluten-Free & Vegan Baking Book (Sasquatch Books), by Jennifer Katzinger.
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KALE SALAD WITH DRIED CRANBERRIES, PINE NUTS AND PARMESAN
http://lovethesecretingredient.net/2012/12/14/kale
Serves 2 – 3
One large bunch of kale, washed well, spun dry, stems removed and very thinly sliced
One handful of dried cranberries, or more to taste
3 – 4 tbs. of toasted pine nuts
1/2 cup hot olive oil
Freshly grated Parmesan cheese
Salt
Pepper
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Toast the pine nuts in a baking pan for 6 – 7 minutes until lightly browned. Toss together the kale, cranberries and pine nuts in a large bowl.
Heat the olive oil in a small pan until very hot and nearly smoking. Carefully pour the oil evenly over the kale. Listen to the sizzle as you are nearly frying the leaves. Grate the parmesan onto the salad to taste. Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve right away.
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Carrot-Mushroom-Barley Stew
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchens/carrot-mushroom-barley-stew-recipe/index.html
Total Time:
40 min
Prep
29 min
Cook
11 min
Yield:
4 servings
2 cups carrot juice
10 ounces shiitake mushrooms, stems removed and reserved, caps sliced
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 cup instant barley
1 medium onion, chopped
1 stalk celery with leaves, finely diced
1/4 teaspoon dried rosemary, crumbled
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
4 medium carrots, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
4 cups kale or mustard greens, stems removed and leaves torn
1 tablespoon grated peeled ginger
Bring the carrot juice, 3 cups water and the mushroom stems to a boil in a saucepan over medium heat. Meanwhile, heat the olive oil and 2 tablespoons butter in a pot over medium-high heat. Add the mushroom caps and barley and cook until the barley is toasted, about 5 minutes.
Add the onion, celery and rosemary to the pot and season with salt and pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion is translucent, about 2 minutes. Add the carrots and cook 2 more minutes.
Increase the heat to high and add half of the carrot juice mixture, leaving the mushroom stems in the pan. Bring to a boil and cook, stirring occasionally, until the liquid is almost absorbed, about 6 minutes.
Add the remaining carrot juice mixture, the kale and ginger and cook, stirring, until the barley and vegetables are tender, about 5 minutes. Stir in the remaining 2 tablespoons butter, then ladle the stew into bowls.
Per serving: Calories 333; Fat 14 g (Saturated 5 g); Cholesterol 15 mg; Sodium 375 mg; Carbohydrate 50 g; Fiber 8 g; Protein 8 g
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Hot Crab Salsa Dip
http://www.campbellskitchen.com/recipes/recipedetails.aspx?recipeid=60754
It couldn't be easier...this stove-top salsa dip is a party favorite. It's loaded with crab and spinach in a creamy salsa sauce. You just know it's going to be good.
Prep 20 min.
Total 25 min.
Serves 30
Servings: about 2 tablespoons dip and 4 cracker
Cook: 5 min.
1/2 of an 8-ounce package cream cheese, softened
1 package (10 ounces) frozen chopped spinach, thawed and well drained
1 cup Pace® Chunky Salsa
1 can (6 ounces) crabmeat, drained
Cut up fresh vegetables
Pepperidge Farm® Golden Butter Distinctive Crackers
Heat the cream cheese, spinach and salsa in a 2-quart saucepan over medium heat until the cheese is melted, stirring often. Stir in the crabmeat. Serve with the vegetables and crackers for dipping.
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Stuffed Avocados
http://fortheloveofdessert.blogspot.com/2012/12/stuffed-avocados.html
Preheat Oven to 425F Degrees
(Ingredients are for two servings-- one avocado)
1 ripe avocado
1/2-1 tomato, diced (or half a can of diced tomatoes, drained)
3/4c. corn (drained or if frozen--warmed)
1/3 c. cream of cheese*
1/3 c. bread crumbs
1/3 c. shredded cheese
1 green onion, diced
Cilantro, salt, pepper, lemon juice for garnish
* You may substitute with another cooking cream
Cut the avocado in half and remove pit. Set on baking sheet lined with Silpat or a parchment paper coated with cooking spray. In a medium bowl, combine tomato, corn, cream of cheese, and bread crumbs. Scoop out about 3-4 tbsp. of the mixture and fill the center of the avocado (where the pit used to be). Shape into a dome and flatten with the palm of your hand. Sprinkle with shredded cheese. Then bake for 5-8 minutes. Remove and garnish with a pinch of cilantro, salt, pepper and lemon juice. Then top with green onions and serve.
Serve avocados with any additional stuffing. Extra stuffing is always yummy! Especially for the parts of the avocado not topped with stuffing!
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HG's Fully Loaded Chi-Dog
http://www.hungry-girl.com/chew/show/2336
Every Hot Dog Has Its Day!
People everywhere can appreciate a delicious frank loaded with goodies. Our guilt-free take on a classic Chicago dog will blow your mind...
1 hot dog with about 40 calories and 1g fat or less (like Hebrew National 97% Fat Free)
1 light hot dog bun (or HG Alternative)
1 slice tomato, halved
1 dill pickle spear
1 tbsp. diced onion
1 1/2 tsp. yellow mustard
1 1/2 tsp. sweet pickle relish
Optional toppings: celery salt, sport peppers
Microwave hot dog on a microwave-safe plate for 45 seconds, or until hot.
Split open the bun, and lay tomato slices on one side. Place hot dog in the center, and top with remaining ingredients. Bite in!
MAKES 1 SERVING
Serving Size: 1 hot dog (entire recipe)
Calories: 150
Fat: 2g
Sodium: 1,057mg
Carbs: 27.5g
Fiber: 6g
Sugars: 6.5g
Protein: 9.5g
PointsPlus® value 4*
HG Alternative: Can’t find 80-calorie light buns? Just get the lowest-calorie buns you see, and adjust the calorie count accordingly.
HG FYI: While our recipe has less than half the amount of sodium as the average Chicago dog, we recognize it's still pretty high in sodium. If you want to reduce the salt content, use only half of a pickle spear or skip it altogether.
Chicago Dog, Average
City of Big Calorie Counts...
Facts are facts: Hot dogs are FUN, and people love them. They're handheld and full of flavor, plus they're often associated with good times -- summer, cookouts, baseball games, etc. Chicago dogs are super-special, thanks to a creative combo of toppings including yellow mustard, white onion, sweet relish, dill pickle, and tomato slices. And since none of these toppings are particularly fattening, you might assume that a Chicago dog is reasonably guilt-free. Guess again! Most frankfurters themselves have far more fat and calories than you might suspect... and those long doughy buns certainly don't help! We recruited our favorite low-cal basics, and then loaded 'em up with all the crazy extras. The results are totally tasty and TOTALLY impressive in the nutritional department. Get ready for the DOG days of summer...
Serving Size: 1 hot dog
Calories: 455
Fat: 24.5g
Sodium: 2,317mg
Carbs: 43.5g
Fiber: 2g
Sugars: 12g
Protein: 15g
PointsPlus® value 12*
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Turkey Chili Enchiladas
http://acooksmemoir.blogspot.com/2012/07/enchilades-turkey-chili.html
1 1/2 lbs ground turkey
1 large onion, chopped
2 slices bacon, cooked until crisp and set aside
2 medium tomatoes, chopped roughly
1 1/2 cup tomato sauce
1 tsp cayenne pepper
2 Tbsp chili powder
3 tsp sofritto paste
2 Tbsp cumin powder
1 tsp garlic powder
2 cups chicken broth
1 red bell pepper, roasted and cut into chunks
1 Tbsp ginger garlic paste
1 14 ozs can red kidney beans, wash and drained
Heat olive oil, then add chopped onions, ginger garlic paste and saute until slightly brown. Then add the chopped tomatoes and cook until they are very soft. Now add the ground turkey followed by the cayenne, chili, cumin, garlic powder and the sofritto. Cook for about 15 to 30 minutes. Then add the tomato sauce and chicken stock and the bacon. Let the mixture cook on a low simmer for about 1 hour.
Adjust seasoning, salt, pepper and spiciness. Now add the kidney beans and the red bell pepper.
Use this to fill up your tortillas and make them into enchiladas and topped with buffalo mozzarella and baked for about 15 minutes until bubbly. The top the enchiladas with slice green onions and pickled jalapeno and serve with Mexican crema and salsa verde.
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Classic Fried Chicken
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchens/classic-fried-chicken-recipe/index.html
Recipe courtesy Food Network Magazine
Total Time:
4 hr 0 min
Prep
3 hr 9 min
Cook
51 min
Yield:
4-6 servings
1 3-pound chicken, cut into 10 pieces, or 3 pounds chicken pieces
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 quart buttermilk
2 teaspoons hot sauce
1 bay leaf
3 cloves garlic, smashed
3 sprigs thyme
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 tablespoon sweet paprika
1 tablespoon onion powder
3/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
Peanut or vegetable oil, for frying
Vegetable shortening, for frying
Season the chicken generously with salt and black pepper; place on a baking sheet, cover loosely with plastic wrap and refrigerate 1 hour.
Mix the buttermilk, hot sauce, bay leaf, garlic and thyme in a large resealable plastic bag. Add the chicken, making sure the pieces are submerged. Seal and refrigerate 2 to 4 hours.
Mix the flour, baking powder, paprika, onion powder, cayenne, 3 1/2 teaspoons salt and 1 1/2 teaspoons black pepper in a separate resealable bag.
Fill a deep 12-inch cast-iron skillet halfway with equal parts peanut oil and shortening. Heat over medium heat until a deep-fry thermometer registers 350 degrees F.
Remove about half of the chicken pieces from the buttermilk mixture, letting the excess drip off. Transfer to the bag of seasoned flour; seal and shake to thoroughly coat. Remove from the bag, shake off any excess flour and transfer to a rack.
Carefully lower the coated chicken into the oil. The temperature will drop to 300 degrees F to 325 degrees F; adjust the heat to maintain this temperature so the crust doesn't burn before the meat is cooked. Fry, undisturbed, 2 to 3 minutes to set the crust, then carefully lift with tongs to check the browning; continue to fry, turning as needed, until golden brown and cooked through, 12 to 14 more minutes for smaller pieces and 14 to 16 more minutes for larger ones. (A thermometer should register 160 degrees F in the breasts and 170 degrees F in the thighs and drumsticks.)
Remove the chicken to a clean rack to drain, sprinkle with salt and let rest a few minutes. Repeat with the remaining chicken. Serve hot or at room temperature.
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Caramelized Broccoli and Red Onion Pizza
J. Kenji López-Alt
DEC 13, 2012
http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2012/12/caramelized-broccoli-and-red-onion-pizza.html
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt is the Chief Creative Officer of Serious Eats where he likes to explore the science of home cooking in his weekly column The Food Lab. You can follow him at @thefoodlab on Twitter, or at The Food Lab on Facebook.
Every recipe we publish is tested, tasted, and Serious Eats-approved by our staff. Never miss a recipe again by following @SeriousRecipes on Twitter!
YIELD:
Makes 3 pies, serving 4 to 6
ACTIVE TIME:
15 minutes (plus time to make dough and sauce, if using homemade)
TOTAL TIME:
3 hours
SPECIAL EQUIPMENT:
Baking steel or stone
1 small head broccoli, cut into 1/2-inch florets (about 3 cups florets total)
1 small red onion, thinly sliced
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
Extra-virgin olive oil
Kosher salt
1 recipe pizza sauce, such as our New York Style Pizza Sauce
1 recipe New York Style Pizza Dough, divided into three balls, or three 12-ounce balls store-bought pizza dough
1 pound grated full-fat dry mozzarella cheese (about 4 cups), very cold
Toss broccoli, onion, pepper flakes, and 2 tablespoons olive oil in a large bowl. Season with salt to taste. Set aside.
At least two hours before baking, remove dough from refrigerator and shape into balls by gathering dough towards bottom and pinching shut. Flour well and place each one in a separate medium mixing bowl. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and allow to rise at warm room temperature until roughly doubled in volume.
1 hour before baking, adjust oven rack with pizza steel to top position and preheat oven to 550°F. When ready to bake, turn single dough ball out onto lightly flour surface. Gently press out dough into rough 8-inch circle, leaving outer 1-inch higher than the rest. Gently stretch dough by draping over knuckles into a 12 to 14-inch circle about 1/4-inch thick. Transfer to pizza peel.
Spread approximately 2/3 cup of sauce evenly over surface of crust, leaving 1/2 to 1-inch border along edge. Evenly spread 1/3 of cheese over sauce. Spread 1/3 of broccoli and onion mixture over surface of pizza. Switch oven to broiler, then slide pizza onto baking stone and bake until crust is golden brown and puffed, and broccoli is charred in spots, 4 to 8 minutes. Transfer to cutting board, slice, and serve immediately. Repeat with remaining two dough balls, remaining sauce, and remaining cheese, reheating baking steel in between pies as necessary.
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The Easiest Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies
http://www.recipematcher.com/index.php/recipe/show/The-Easiest-Flourless-Peanut-Butter-Cookies
Servings 6
1 Cup Peanut Butter
1 Cup Sugar - White
1 Eggs
Instructions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C).
Combine ingredients and drop by teaspoonfuls on cookie sheet. Bake for 8 minutes. Let cool. Recipe doesn/'/t make very many, so you could double recipe as you desire.
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Bubba Kush
The Premium Relaxation Supplement for Adults
http://www.bubbakush.com
Unwind after a busy day. Our patent pending Bubba Kush relaxation supplement brownie bar is infused with essential amino acids (tryptophan 1g/serving,tyrosine 100 mg/serving) vitamin B6, Niacin, and B3 to help take the edge off your stress and calm your mind and body. Although safe and natural, Bubba Kush is intended for use by adults.
Scientifically Designed for Maximum Pleasure!
DIRECTIONS: Divide the brownie into four equal parts. Ingest one quarter of the brownie to gauge the results. If the desired results are not achieved within 15 minutes ingest a second quarter. Continue until desired results are achieved or until the all four quarters are ingested.
WARNING: Causes drowsiness. Do not drive or operate machinery. Alcohol may increase this effect. Do not use this product if you are pregnant or breast feeding. Consult with your health care professional before using any dietary supplement. People with known medical conditions and/or taking drugs should consult with a licensed physician and/or pharmacist prior to taking and dietary supplement.
CAUTION!: If you are currently taking, or within the last 90 days have taken, any anti-stress, anti-anxiety, or anti-depression medications. DO NOT TAKE L-Tryptophan without first talking to your prescribing physician.
Bubba Kush – 100% Legal, THC-FREE, Premium Relaxation Brownies and Bars Inspired by the Relaxing Properties of Cannabis
Significa 1-13-13
RIP
Charles Durning: "King of Character Actors":
http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2012/12/25/charles-durning-dies-actor/1790203
Ray Collins, original lead singer of Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention:
http://todayentertainment.today.com/_news/2012/12/27/16194753-mothers-of-invention-founding-singer-ray-collins-dies
Gerry Anderson, Thunderbirds creator:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfIAKj3Gl1E
Lee Dorman of Iron Butterfly:
http://ultimateclassicrock.com/iron-butterfly-lee-dorman-dead-at-70
Philip Coppens, author of numerous books on speculative history, including The Ancient Alien Question and The Lost Civilization Enigma. He was also featured in several documentaries and television programs, including The History Channel’s Ancient Aliens:
http://www.disinfo.com/2012/12/philip-coppens-rip
R&B singer Fontella Bass:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwt3kr0_l6I
John Ford film character actor Harry Carey Jr.:
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Western-character-actor-Harry-Carey-Jr-dies-at-91-4152756.php
Rebecca Tarbotton, head of the Rainforest Action Network:
http://grist.org/climate-energy/remembering-rebecca-tarbotton-head-of-rainforest-action-network-who-died-this-week
Norman Schwarzkopf, Iraq war general:
http://www.salon.com/2012/12/28/norman_schwarzkopf_iraq_war_general_dies_at_78
And last but certainly not least...
Jack Klugman: Late Odd Couple Star's Five Key Roles
Brandi Fowler
http://www.eonline.com/news/373841/jack-klugman-rip-late-odd-couple-star-s-five-key-roles
Best known for his role as Oscar Madison on the Odd Couple, Jack Klugman was also a pioneer on the small screen in the 1950s, and went on to have a lengthy and successful acting career on big screen and small that lasted for nearly 60 years.
Following his death Monday, we take a look back at the Emmy-winning actor's five key roles.
1. The Odd Couple: Klugman starred in this beloved 1970s sitcom playing messy sports writer Oscar Madison opposite compulsive neatnick Felix Unger (Tony Randall). The small-screen adaptation of Neil Simon's The Odd Couple told the tale of two friends separated from their wives, who brought on the laughs when they became roommates and shared a Manhattan apartment in spite of their differences. Klugman played the role in 1965 on Broadway, replacing Walter Matthau on stage. Klugman won two Emmys, in 1971 and 1973, for outstanding actor in a comedy series.
2. Quincy M.E.: Starring in this TV drama about forensic medicine, Klugman played brilliant murder-solving Los Angeles County medical examiner, Quincy, M.E., an expert at his job who always managed to find a missing piece of a murder mystery puzzle that everyone else somehow missed. Long before there were, C.S.I.-type shows everywhere, Quincy was on the case. And Klugman racked up four Emmy nominations for the role.
3. 12 Angry Men: In Sidney Lumet's classic 1957 courtroom thriller, Klugman played a member of the jury who deliberated on a first-degree murder trial. In the film, a young Puerto Rican man is accused of murdering his father, and 12 jurors decide his fate. When their votes are counted, however, 11 of the men ruled that the man was guilty while one—Henry Fonda—stresses the idea of reasonable doubt.
4. The Twilight Zone: Klugman appeared in four episodes on this creepy television classic.
On one of his last appearances on the program, Klugman played bookie Max Phillips in the segment, In Praise of Pip, who learns his son is dying in a hospital in Vietnam.
5. Days of Wine and Roses: In this Oscar-winning film about an alcoholic who falls in love with a woman and gets her addicted to booze, Klugman played a solid supporting role as Jim Hungerford, the head of a local Alcoholics Anonymous group.
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Here's another underground classic with Klugman, starring a Satanic Sammy Davis Jr.:
Poor Devil (1973)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xw4okTJpE1k
Sammy Davis Jr, during his early 70s Satanist phase, made this unsold tv pilot with a plot that plays like a satanic reversal of 'It's a Wonderful Life', complete with a Christmas-time setting. Sammy is a zany, misfit demon who is on the outs with Lucifer (Christopher Lee) because he hasn't captured a soul in over a thousand years. He gets one last chance when he is assigned a burned-out salesman (Jack Klugman) who is thinking of selling his soul. Sammy scambles to satisfy Jack's desire for wealth and revenge and the usual sitcom merriment ensues. Also starring Gino Conforti as Sammy's demonic rival and Adam West as Klugman's sleazy boss. Originally broadcast by NBC on Valentines Day, 1973.
For more info on Sammy Davis Jr's interest in The Church of Satan, read this article from Vice.com:
http://www.vice.com/read/sammy-devil-jr-v15n5
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2012 National Film Registry
3:10 to Yuma (1957)
Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
The Augustas (1930s-50s)
Born Yesterday (1950)
Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)
A Christmas Story (1983)
The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Title Fight (1897)
Dirty Harry (1971)
Hours for Jerome: Parts 1 and 2 (1980-82)
The Kidnappers Foil (1930s-50s)
Kodachrome Color Motion-Picture Tests (1922)
A League of Their Own (1992)
The Matrix (1999)
The Middleton Family at the New York World's Fair (1939)
One Survivor Remembers (1995)
Parable (1964)
Samsara: Death and Rebirth in Cambodia (1990)
Slacker (1991)
Sons of the Desert (1933)
The Spook Who Sat by the Door (1973)
They Call It Pro Football (1967)
The Times of Harvey Milk (1984)
Two-Lane Blacktop (1971)
Uncle Tom's Cabin (1914)
The Wishing Ring; An Idyll of Old England (1914)
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YouTube Video of the Week:
Time Life Rock Ballads
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFz3fvFQ9Yw
The first of three parts of what may be the best informercial on TV right now, for Time Life's Rock Ballads collection. What makes this a truly great infomercial: Kevin Cronin of REO Speedwagon and his crazy eyes. I'm not talking scary crazy like Ann Coulter or Michelle Malkin while they foam at the mouth as they appear as alleged pundits on Fox News. I'm talking more like "I've just joined the most awesome religious cult in the world, and even though I'll eventually regret my association five years from now when over 50 members die in a grisly mass suicide, it's totally bitching right now" crazy eyes. Kevin, keep on rocking, and whatever you're on, I want some!!!
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Awesome Quote: Jimmy Kimmel
“Leno hasn’t been a good stand-up in 20 years... As a comedian, you can’t not have disdain for what he’s done. He totally sold out.”
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Moon’s crust thinner than expected – NASA
http://banoosh.com/2012/12/18/moons-crust-thinner-than-expected-nasa
The Lunar surface is thinner than previously thought, NASA scientists revealed after a year-long mission to map the moon by two probes ended with a literal bang. The mission was dedicated to uncovering more about the formation of the solar system.
Two probes – nicknamed ‘Ebb’ and ‘Flow’ – completed a programmed crash at the end of their mission, revealing evidence that the Moon’s crust is thinner than expected because of the damage the crash caused beneath the surface, compared to the surface itself.
Scientists were also able to use the distance between the probes to determine more precise measurements of the moon’s crust.
Each probe was the size of a washing machine and flew as low as a few miles above the moon’s tallest mountains. The probes were also tasked with drawing up detailed gravity maps of the moon. They reacted to more intense gravity areas by speeding up, and slowed down in less intense areas.
The probes also took more than 115,000 images of the lunar surface, producing the highest-resolution gravity map of a celestial body in existence.
Once the probes ran out of fuel, they were pulled towards the lunar surface and eventually crashed, as programmed, into a mountain near the moon’s north pole.
The crashes went ahead as planned at 22:28 GMT and 22:29 GMT, and occurred at a speed of 3,760 miles per hour (1.7 kilometers per second).
“We do feel the angst about the end of the mission,” the director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said. “On the other hand, it is a celebration because this mission has accomplished tremendous science.”
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Colorado Camper Van
http://coloradocampervan.com
We are proud to announce our newest line of products, the Top Bunk. The Top Bunk is a fully self contained roof top tent sleeping system. If you are looking for a camping solution that does NOT involve assembly and disassembly to use, this is your answer. Simply open the top and climb in your bed (completely made with pillows and linens or a sleeping bag). You are ready to sleep in all weather conditions. In the nastiest of weather, no rain fly will be needed. When you are ready to pack up camp, simply close the top and hit the trail.
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California's 2012 average gas price was $4.028 a gallon
The 2012 average for a gallon of regular gasoline in California shatters the previous record — set in 2011 — by 21 cents.
Ronald D. White, Los Angeles Times
ron.white@latimes.com
January 1, 2013
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-gas-prices-20130101,0,2326951.story
Californians had a bad year at the pump in 2012, averaging a record $4.028 for a gallon of regular gasoline, according to AAA.
That shattered the previous record, set in 2011, by 21.3 cents a gallon. The jump was so big that it surprised even people who review fuel prices on a daily basis.
"I can remember when the California average for the year in 2008 was $3.525 and we thought we would never see it go that high again," said Marie Montgomery, spokeswoman for the Automobile Club of Southern California.
She noted that $4.028 "over a full year is a lot of money out of our pockets that we can't spend on other things."
California's gas prices in 2012 also helped kick the national average for a gallon of regular up to a record $3.603, which broke the previous record, set in 2011, of $3.510, AAA said.
The increase in California fuel prices in recent years is startling. In 2008, the year oil prices shot above $147 a barrel, the state averaged a then-record $3.525 for a gallon of regular gasoline, according to AAA.
The California average fell to $2.687 a gallon in 2009, then climbed back above the $3 threshold to $3.100 in 2010. In 2011, the state's average for the year jumped to $3.815 a gallon.
Since 2009, the average price that Californians pay for a gallon of regular gasoline has jumped nearly 50%.
California has some fuel factors that are unique. It's an isolated market that does not have access to cheap crude flowing from the oil boom in states such as North Dakota, Texas and Oklahoma.
Its only regular source of domestic crude from outside the state is Alaska's dwindling North Slope oil fields. That means California has to import more and more foreign oil, which is substantially more expensive than U.S. crude.
California's clean-air rules also mandate a special formula of gasoline that is more expensive to make and is produced by few refineries outside the state.
Analysts have cited many reasons for the 2012 prices, including one of the worst years ever for refinery outages in California. A fire in August, for example, knocked out part of Chevron's Richmond facility, one of the state's biggest refineries.
In October, a power failure at an Exxon Mobil refinery helped send California's average price up to a record $4.671 for a gallon of regular.
But a lot of people aren't buying those explanations. Consumer groups and California's U.S. senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, have called on the state attorney general and the Justice Department to investigate California's volatile fuel prices.
California refineries were also exporting fuel in 2012, and an analysis by Oregon-based McCullough Research indicated that some of them may have misled the public about the amount of fuel they were producing.
*
10 Most Popular Stories of 2012
http://ecowatch.org/2012/10-most-popular
It’s certainly been an exciting and busy 12 months for EcoWatch as we’ve worked daily to promote the news of more than 1,000 grassroots environmental organizations, activists and community leaders worldwide. We’re looking forward to 2013, to continue to highlight the efforts of people and organizations working to create a sustainable world.
EcoWatch’s 10 most popular stories of 2012:
10. Fracking—A Bad Bet for the Environment and Economy
Paul Gallay, Riverkeeper
As New York considers new hydrofracking regulations that would allow companies to drill an estimated 48,000 gas wells across the rural countryside, many see the pitched battle over the state’s fracking plan as a tug-of-war …
9. Tests Find Toxics in Broad Array of Consumer Products
Center for Health, Environment and Justice
“These test results show that both conventional and so-called green products contain hidden toxic chemicals that are not on product labels—so consumers have no way of avoiding them,” says Alexandra Scranton from Women’s Voices …
8. Cincinnati Passes Resolution Requiring GE Food Labeling
Food & Water Watch
Cincinnati Council Member and resolution co-sponsor Wendell Young said, “this is about transparency, about ensuring that people can make informed choices about what they feed themselves and their families …
7. BP Covered Up Blow-out Two Years Prior to Deadly Deepwater Horizon Spill
Greg Palast
Two years before the Deepwater Horizon blow-out in the Gulf of Mexico, another BP off-shore rig suffered a nearly identical blow-out, but BP concealed the first blow-out from the U.S. regulators and Congress…
6. Tell Congress to Expedite Renewable Energy
EcoWatch
This petition unites the voices of Americans who demand our leaders take seriously the energy and climate crisis and immediately work to implement the policies to move our country toward a sustainable future.
5. Ohio Governor Halts Four More Fracking Wastewater Injection Wells After Yesterday’s Quake
EcoWatch
The Kasich administration has put a temporary halt to the disposal of toxic wastewater from hydraulic fracturing (better known as fracking—a procedure used to extract oil and gas out of rock formations such as the Marcellus and Utica shale) from oil and natural-gas drilling wells within a 5-mile radius …
4. Hawaii Becomes First State in the U.S. to Ban Plastic Bags
Surfrider Foundation
The City and County of Honolulu is the last of Hawaii’s counties to enact a ban on plastic bags at the point of sale. Maui and Kauai counties already have plastic bag bans in place while Hawaii County passed an ordinance that will take effect next year …
3. Analysts Conclude Fracking Wastewater Poses Substantial Risk to Drinking Water
Society for Risk Analysis
If only 10 percent of the Marcellus Shale region was developed, that could equate to 40,000 wells. Under the best-case median risk calculation that Rozell and Reaven developed, the volume of contaminated wastewater “would equate to several hours flow of the Hudson River or a few thousand Olympic-sized swimming pools …
2. Mining Companies Invade Wisconsin for Frac-Sand
Pilar Gerasimo
And when the sand is gone, when the mining activity moves out, what will be left of this place? Some big empty rail yards, a pockmarked series of “reclaimed” sites no longer suitable for farming, and a bunch of homes nobody wants to live in any more? A post-mining wasteland and an even more depressed economy? …
1. Stomach Contents of Seabirds Show that Marine Plastic Pollution Is out of Control
University of British Columbia
The research group performed necropsies on 67 beached northern fulmars and found that 92.5 percent had plastics—such as twine, Styrofoam and candy wrappers—in their stomachs. An average of 36.8 pieces per bird were found...
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