Current Events: The Spotlight Now Shines on Italy

by James B. Stewart, NY Times

It finally dawned on me this week that the value of my retirement account might depend on Silvio Berlusconi.

You know Mr. Berlusconi. He is the billionaire prime minister of Italy who not only owns much of the Italian media but also provides them with ample material through his escapades. By his count, Mr. Berlusconi has survived 577 police interrogations and 2,500 court appearances related to innumerable legal and political scandals, not to mention enough suspected sexual adventures to top Hugh Hefner.  (...)

This might have remained diverting tabloid fodder for most people outside of Italy, but this week the country moved to center stage in the European debt crisis, pushing Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain at least temporarily into the wings and allowing Mr. Berlusconi to assume what seems to be his natural place, which is in the spotlight. On his 75-year-old shoulders rests the task of shoring up Italy’s finances so that the European Central Bank buys more Italian sovereign debt, to gain French and German support for a larger bailout fund to protect Italy’s banks, and to keep Italy from becoming another Greece and plunging the world into an even more devastating financial crisis.

This remains the case even after the latest effort by European heads of state to put the crisis behind it. Nothing they said could change the fact that Italy has $2.6 trillion in sovereign debt outstanding, the fourth-largest debt in the world after the United States, Japan and Germany. Much of this has to be rolled over — $54 billion in February 2012 alone, according to a Goldman Sachs report. Italy is the world’s eighth-largest economy. Both Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s recently downgraded Italy’s debt ratings and warned of more to come, pushing up borrowing costs and widening credit spreads.

Greece’s debt is modest by comparison, and the fierce effort waged by European banks to avoid a huge write-down on the value of their Greek loans was less about Greece then about setting a precedent that could extend to Italy and other heavily indebted countries. Outside of Italy, French banks have the biggest exposure to Italian sovereign debt — over $500 billion, according to Goldman Sachs. And who knows what institutions (including American ones) insured all that debt?  (...)

In August, Mr. Berlusconi promised ambitious reforms to get the European Central Bank to buy Italian debt. Among them were raising the retirement age, raising taxes on the wealthy and opening up the professions to more competition. By last Sunday, as European leaders prepared for a critical meeting on the debt crisis scheduled for Wednesday, Mr. Berlusconi had accomplished none of that.

Read more:

Painting by Kenton Nelson
via:

Eels

When the Words Don’t Fit

[ed. Love, fate, persistence.  Nice story.]

by Sarah Healy, NY Times

Shortly after I turned 21, a boy handed me a poem. It was folded and folded until the words were concentrated and tucked away, handwritten black letters turned and flipped inside a small square.

We had been on a plane from Burlington, Vt., to Newark, seated a few rows away from each other. I had noticed him before we boarded: the way he sat with his feet resting on his carry-on, his gaze focused on the open pages of a book.

During the flight, I felt his eyes trying to catch mine as I turned and pretended to look for something behind me. The voice we used when ordering drinks, the way we stood to pull this or that from the overhead compartment: everything was choreographed for the benefit of the stranger across the aisle.

And then the plane landed and made its way to the gate. In my memory, it was evening and the rain had just subsided. Somewhere between the gate and my parents’ waiting car, he handed me the poem.

That was almost 13 years ago. I had been flying home from college for the weekend for my sister’s wedding — or rather, the celebration of her marriage. My family wasn’t big on weddings in the save-the-date, banquet-hall sense. So this was the small, elegant party held after she and her husband had eloped. Our tradition wasn’t to have weddings but to have elopements.

My parents had eloped. They had known each other for less than three months and had been on only a handful of dates before they went to a justice of the peace and took vows they meant and kept. My mother had been working at a welcome station in Florida. She handed my father a glass of free orange juice. That’s how they met: my mother with her thick dark hair and crystal-blue eyes, my father in his naval uniform.

I was proud of that, the story of my parents’ beginning. It was a glass of free orange juice, but it could have been a poem.

“Did you hear that a boy gave Sarah a poem?” my older sisters whispered. They were enamored with the idea, and I passed around the white sheet of paper with its pale blue lines so they could read it.

Read more:
Illustration: Brian Rea

George Booth, 1985.

The Black Keys

[ed.  Cool moves.]

via:

The Power of Red

by Anna Luerssen

Like most teenagers in suburbia I took a driver’s education class shortly after I earned my learner’s permit. Though I picked up critical driving tips, and got plenty of practice in the driver’s seat, one of the most interesting facts I learned concerned car insurance and the color red. According to my teacher, drivers with red cars had to pay higher insurance rates. Apparently this was due to the fact that people in red cars were more likely to speed. I’ve since learned that the relationship between red and speeding is actually a pervasive urban legend. Nevertheless, it piqued my interest in the association between color and behavior. Though red might not be associated with speeding, it has been found to relate to a variety of psychological processes and outcomes in both humans and non-human primates including dominance, competitive sports outcomes, achievement, and sexual attraction.

Dominance, Aggression, and Sports

There is a large body of animal research showing that red coloration is related to testosterone levels and by extension to dominance and aggressive behavior – a signal that members of the species use to guide their actions. In one recent study, for example, researchers evaluated whether wild male rhesus macaques (monkeys) would be less likely to steal food from a human researcher if the researcher was wearing red. According to their hypothesis, red clothing signals that the human is dominant and aggressive, and therefore the monkey would be more hesitant to steal from or challenge them. The study was conducted on Cayo Santiago – a small island in Puerto Rico that is home to a large population of free-ranging rhesus macaques. Two experimenters would locate a male monkey, approach him together, take out a plate with a slice of apple on it, and then step away once it was clear the monkey saw them. The monkey could then approach and steal the apple from one of the experimenters. One experimenter wore a red shirt, and the other wore either a green or blue shirt. Across conditions the monkeys disproportionately stole from the experimenter NOT wearing red – even if the “red” experimenter was female (~70% of the time).

This research followed from a wildly publicized study in 2005 evaluating a somewhat similar process in humans. The researchers followed contestants in combative sports, including boxing, tae kwon do, and two types of wrestling, in the 2004 Olympics. These contestants were randomly assigned to either wear red or blue uniforms during the games. The researchers found that contestants wearing red were significantly more likely to win their matches. This was especially the case when the two competitors were relatively equal in ability (red gave them an extra nudge). Similar results were found with teams assigned to wear red in an international soccer tournament in 2005. The researchers argued these results are due to an evolutionary history – in which red coloration was related to testosterone levels and by extension dominance. In this way, it became a cue regarding which male would win a competition – a cue still used by humans today. How exactly this process operates, however, is still unclear. Is the competitor wearing red more confident or their opponent more intimidated? Other researchers have argued that the effect has to do with the referees’ biases. For example, referees were found to give more points to tae kwon do competitors wearing red than to those wearing blue, even when the performances were identical. Whatever the reason, the effect is there, and should be considered in high stakes competitive sports. 

via:

Deep Intellect

[ed. Excellent article on one of the most fascinating creatures on the planet.  Inside the mind of the octopus.]

by Sy Montgomery, Orion

Octopuses are classified within the invertebrates in the mollusk family, and many mollusks, like clams, have no brain.

Only recently have scientists accorded chimpanzees, so closely related to humans we can share blood transfusions, the dignity of having a mind. But now, increasingly, researchers who study octopuses are convinced that these boneless, alien animals—creatures whose ancestors diverged from the lineage that would lead to ours roughly 500 to 700 million years ago—have developed intelligence, emotions, and individual personalities. Their findings are challenging our understanding of consciousness itself. (…)

Another measure of intelligence: you can count neurons. The common octopus has about 130 million of them in its brain. A human has 100 billion. But this is where things get weird. Three-fifths of an octopus’s neurons are not in the brain; they’re in its arms.

“It is as if each arm has a mind of its own,” says Peter Godfrey-Smith, a diver, professor of philosophy at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and an admirer of octopuses. For example, researchers who cut off an octopus’s arm (which the octopus can regrow) discovered that not only does the arm crawl away on its own, but if the arm meets a food item, it seizes it—and tries to pass it to where the mouth would be if the arm were still connected to its body.

Read more:

Artwork: Hokusai, The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife, 1814
h/t:

DIY Minimal Business Cards on the Go

The ever-clever Mikey Burton has come up with a fun idea that I just may try out. He was asked to participate in the “Designer Challenge” for the October issue of Computer Arts Projects and was tasked to put a new spin on traditional business cards. So his idea was to pare down a card to the absolute essentials: name, website and possibly a stylized bear illustration, and print it in a unique way.

What’s really neat about the cards that Burton made was the tool he used: a 3/4″ inspection stamp. Not exactly a paragon of style and modern design, but it works great for this purpose. Plus, it’s self-inking and it’s small enough to carry around in your pocket or on a keyring, so you can turn any scrap of paper into a minimal DIY business card.

via:

Emotions

Million Dollar Divers

by Michael Behar, Wired

Not long ago, the toy of choice for the nautically inclined with a few million dollars to spare was an opulent megayacht. Today, it’s a personal submarine.

The dive to the deep is a thrill in itself, but subs also have another advantage over above-water crafts: the ability to just duck out of sight. “Nobody knows where you are or what you are doing,” says Bruce Jones, founder of both US Submarines and Triton Submarines. “You come into port, register with customs, and then disappear.”

The newest subs can go deeper, faster, and farther than their predecessors, thanks to advances in microprocessor design, composite materials, and communications technology. “Electronics and batteries are being adapted for submersibles from more rapidly developing and better-funded communities,” says marine consultant and undersea explorer Don Walsh, an oceanographer who has been plumbing the depths since the days when private submarines were just a figment of the future.

Perhaps the greatest leap forward has been in the glass: Precision molding systems can now fashion massive, flawless spheres thick enough to withstand 16,000 pounds of pressure per square inch—the crushing weight of water at 35,000 feet deep. “Glass gives you an incredible immersive experience,” Jones says. “The refractive index closely approximates seawater, so when you’re inside the sub the boundaries disappear.” And what you’ll encounter below trumps anything you’ll see from the deck of your yacht.

Read more:

Cashing In on Your Hit YouTube Video

by Claire Cain Miller, NY Times

Katie Clem posted a video on YouTube this month of her daughter Lily’s poignant and funny reaction to her sixth birthday present, a trip to Disneyland, for her friends and family. Then it went viral.

In three weeks it has been watched more than five million times, and Lily has become a minor Internet celebrity. Of far more importance, at least to Lily’s parents, the video is poised to make enough money from advertisements to send Lily to college.

Creating a video that attracts millions of viewers and becomes a pop culture phenomenon involves an unpredictable cocktail of luck and timing. A dash of cute babies or people acting like idiots can only help. But once a video goes viral, making some cold cash depends on quick action.

Here is some advice on how to take advantage of your 15 minutes of Internet fame from people who did just that.

Read more:

via:

Triticum Fever

by Dr. William Davis, Boing Boing

Quick: Name a common food, consumed every day by most people, that:

• Increases overall calorie consumption by 400 calories per day
• Affects the human brain in much the same way as morphine
• Has a greater impact on blood sugar levels than a candy bar
• Is consumed at the rate of 133 pounds per person per year
• Has been associated with increased Type 1 Diabetes
• Increases both insulin resistance and leptin resistance, conditions that lead to obesity
• Is the only common food with its own mortality rate

If you guessed sugar or high-fructose corn syrup, you're on the right track, but, no, that's not the correct answer.

The true culprit: Triticum aestivum, or modern wheat.

Note that I said "modern" wheat, because I would argue that what we are being sold today in the form of whole grain bread, raisin bagels, blueberry muffins, pizza, ciabatta, bruschetta, and so on is not the same grain our grandparents grew up on. It's not even close.

Modern wheat is the altered offspring of thousands of genetic manipulations, crude and sometimes bizarre techniques that pre-date the age of genetic modification. The result: a high-yield, 2-foot tall "semi-dwarf" plant that no more resembles the wheat consumed by our ancestors than a chimpanzee (which shares 99% of the same genes that we do) resembles a human. I trust that you can tell the difference that 1% makes.

The obvious outward differences are accompanied by biochemical differences. The gluten proteins in modern wheat, for instance, differ from the gluten proteins found in wheat as recently as 1960. This likely explains why the incidence of celiac disease, the devastating intestinal condition caused by gluten, has quadrupled in the past 40 years. Furthermore, a whole range of inflammatory diseases, from rheumatoid arthritis to inflammatory bowel disease, are also on the rise. Humans haven't changed -- but the wheat we consume has changed considerably.

Read more:

[ed. Cute.  But I suspect many might think the location of the perforation is a bit more fluid than this - unless you're talking about attorney fees, of course.]

h/t: TYWKIWDBI via snuh

via:

Lawren Harris: Clouds, Lake Superior, 1923 - Oil on canvas (Winnipeg Art Gallery)
via:

One Google Books To Rule Them All?

by Maria Bustillos, The Awl

Hellzapoppin' in the world of intellectual property rights these days. Lawsuits, corporate flim-flamming, the claims of far-sighted academics and developers, furious authors and artists and the conflicting demands of a sprawling Internet culture have created a gargantuan, multi-directional tug-of-war that will inevitably affect what and how we will be able to read online in the future. Recent developments indicate, amazingly, that there are grounds for hope that the public will in time benefit from the results of this epic tussle.

In 2002, Google began scanning the world's 130 million or so books in preparation for the "secret 'books' project" that eventually became Google Books. In 2004, they began offering access to these scans, displaying the irritatingly-named "snippets" of books in their search results. And in no time at all, they were getting sued by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers for copyright infringement. These lawsuits, plus two more that were filed subsequently against Google, resulted in a six-year rollercoaster ride that, like all good roller coasters, exhilarated, terrified and rattled all the participants, and ended by thumping their quaking bods to a halt, last March, in very nearly the same place from which they'd started out. But during that time the world had changed, and an altogether new way of bringing printed books into the digital commons had emerged. Enter the nonprofit alternative for bringing the world's books online for all readers: the newly-funded Digital Public Library of America.

Read more: