Saturday, March 10, 2012
What's at the Heart of Black Cool?
What is soul? I don't know! Soul is a ham hock in your corn flakes. What is soul? I don't know! Soul is ashy ankles and rusty kneecaps! What is soul? I don't know! Soul is the ring around your bathtub! What is soul? Soul is you, baby. Soul is you!
-- Funkadelic
The generation before me was defined by soul. Soul was a virtue born out of the spirituality of gospel, the pain of blues, and the progressive pride of being the standard-bearers of civil rights. They were stylish like Shaft, but noble like Martin. They sang on Sunday mornings, after "sangin'" on Saturday nights. They pressed their thrift store suits with so much starch that the bare-threaded knees were as stiff as if they'd just bought them new at Brooks Brothers. Almost everyone was poor, so there wasn't any shame in it.
Not my generation. We were defined by "cool," an emotionally detached word that provokes a cold response to the world with a narrowly focused ambition for its ice, its bling, and its things. We heard stories of our parents and grandparents fighting for the right to be fully recognized Americans. We saw some folks from the neighborhood come up -- way up. They became ballers, rappers, hustlers, actors -- even a few doctors and lawyers. On TV we saw it happening right before our eyes: the Jeffersons, the Cosbys, Jesse Jackson running for president, and Michael Jackson, Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and Whitney Houston dominating the airwaves.
But the majority of us saw the dreams, passions, and hopes of our parents dashed by the regression of a Black community linked to the welfare system, project housing, rising unemployment, deteriorating education, addiction, and an increase in Black men in the penal system. Good Times and What's Happening!! were funny in the 1970s, but by the eighties they were in reruns and the joke seemed to be on us.
Something broke in the community spirit of my generation. "Easy credit rip-offs" and "scratchin' and survivin'"1 didn't add up to "good times" anymore, so we rejected soul and turned back to cool. But not that Miles Davis, John Coltrane kind of cool. That was too old school. We became fully legitimate Americans -- capitalists -- more concerned with getting that money and "My Adidas" than being "Kind of Blue" and singing "We Shall Overcome." Nobody was makin' it talking about "we" -- it was all about "me." Civil rights slogans like "I am a man" were adapted for the hip-hop audience to say, "I am the man." Our community focus shifted inward -- everyone was out for self. We were primed, and corporate America was prepared for our long-awaited integration into mainstream American commerce.
In 1981, I got my first pair of Nike shoes. It was around this same time I learned that I was "Black." At the time, I saw no connection between the two. I was only five years old, and statistically more likely to be dead or in jail by twenty-one than to be in college. But I didn't know anything about that; I just knew that I liked the color blue. So when my mom got me blue canvas shoes with blue suede patches at the toe and heel and white leather Swooshes on both sides, I just stared at them in amazement. Something about them was special.
One night, as we rode on a graffiti-covered New York City subway train, I asked my mother, "What does the word on the back mean? Nike?" She didn't know. I asked, "What does the white design on the sides of the shoes mean?" She didn't know the answer to that, either.2
Though I asked a lot of questions in those days, I never asked my mother what being "Black" meant, even though I was becoming more aware daily that I was branded with that label, too. In retrospect, I doubt she could have explained that, either. At that age, I didn't yet see the connection between getting my first label and discovering my racial label. I was unaware of advertising, semiotics, peer pressure, cool, or even racism. Now I marvel at the depth of the significance of my childhood fascination with a simple visual symbol, so cool that it motivated a generation to be its flag bearers.
There's no way to prove it, but I would argue that almost every urban American child from the 1980s remembers the first time he or she heard of Michael Jordan or his shoes. I will never forget when I first saw them: Nike's Air Jordans. It was 1985, and my mother and I were at a Foot Locker in a New Jersey mall. All I can remember thinking was, Wha ... ?! How could they make such a shoe?
They were high-top sneakers with a drawing of a winged basketball on the back and Nike Swooshes on each side. As if the style were not cool enough, the store display rocked my nine-year-old world with a giant poster of a Black man wearing the red shoes, frozen in midair! With echoes of Michael Jackson's moonwalk in my mind, I marveled, They can make you fly! Just like that, I'd been indoctrinated into the cult of cool.
by Hank Willis Thomas, The Root | Read more:
-- Funkadelic
The generation before me was defined by soul. Soul was a virtue born out of the spirituality of gospel, the pain of blues, and the progressive pride of being the standard-bearers of civil rights. They were stylish like Shaft, but noble like Martin. They sang on Sunday mornings, after "sangin'" on Saturday nights. They pressed their thrift store suits with so much starch that the bare-threaded knees were as stiff as if they'd just bought them new at Brooks Brothers. Almost everyone was poor, so there wasn't any shame in it.
Not my generation. We were defined by "cool," an emotionally detached word that provokes a cold response to the world with a narrowly focused ambition for its ice, its bling, and its things. We heard stories of our parents and grandparents fighting for the right to be fully recognized Americans. We saw some folks from the neighborhood come up -- way up. They became ballers, rappers, hustlers, actors -- even a few doctors and lawyers. On TV we saw it happening right before our eyes: the Jeffersons, the Cosbys, Jesse Jackson running for president, and Michael Jackson, Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and Whitney Houston dominating the airwaves.
But the majority of us saw the dreams, passions, and hopes of our parents dashed by the regression of a Black community linked to the welfare system, project housing, rising unemployment, deteriorating education, addiction, and an increase in Black men in the penal system. Good Times and What's Happening!! were funny in the 1970s, but by the eighties they were in reruns and the joke seemed to be on us.
Something broke in the community spirit of my generation. "Easy credit rip-offs" and "scratchin' and survivin'"1 didn't add up to "good times" anymore, so we rejected soul and turned back to cool. But not that Miles Davis, John Coltrane kind of cool. That was too old school. We became fully legitimate Americans -- capitalists -- more concerned with getting that money and "My Adidas" than being "Kind of Blue" and singing "We Shall Overcome." Nobody was makin' it talking about "we" -- it was all about "me." Civil rights slogans like "I am a man" were adapted for the hip-hop audience to say, "I am the man." Our community focus shifted inward -- everyone was out for self. We were primed, and corporate America was prepared for our long-awaited integration into mainstream American commerce.
In 1981, I got my first pair of Nike shoes. It was around this same time I learned that I was "Black." At the time, I saw no connection between the two. I was only five years old, and statistically more likely to be dead or in jail by twenty-one than to be in college. But I didn't know anything about that; I just knew that I liked the color blue. So when my mom got me blue canvas shoes with blue suede patches at the toe and heel and white leather Swooshes on both sides, I just stared at them in amazement. Something about them was special.
One night, as we rode on a graffiti-covered New York City subway train, I asked my mother, "What does the word on the back mean? Nike?" She didn't know. I asked, "What does the white design on the sides of the shoes mean?" She didn't know the answer to that, either.2
Though I asked a lot of questions in those days, I never asked my mother what being "Black" meant, even though I was becoming more aware daily that I was branded with that label, too. In retrospect, I doubt she could have explained that, either. At that age, I didn't yet see the connection between getting my first label and discovering my racial label. I was unaware of advertising, semiotics, peer pressure, cool, or even racism. Now I marvel at the depth of the significance of my childhood fascination with a simple visual symbol, so cool that it motivated a generation to be its flag bearers.
There's no way to prove it, but I would argue that almost every urban American child from the 1980s remembers the first time he or she heard of Michael Jordan or his shoes. I will never forget when I first saw them: Nike's Air Jordans. It was 1985, and my mother and I were at a Foot Locker in a New Jersey mall. All I can remember thinking was, Wha ... ?! How could they make such a shoe?
They were high-top sneakers with a drawing of a winged basketball on the back and Nike Swooshes on each side. As if the style were not cool enough, the store display rocked my nine-year-old world with a giant poster of a Black man wearing the red shoes, frozen in midair! With echoes of Michael Jackson's moonwalk in my mind, I marveled, They can make you fly! Just like that, I'd been indoctrinated into the cult of cool.
by Hank Willis Thomas, The Root | Read more:
Kakonomics: mediocrity sucks, but who cares?
[ed. Gloria Origgi on Kakonomics here:]
Academic philosophers are often legitimately accused of ignoring the questions that matter in the real world, so I was pleased to see how Gloria Origgi, a specialist in the philosophy of mind, writing on Edge.org in answer to its annual challenge to thinkers, phrases the question that motivates her research: "Why does life suck so much?" Her answer, regrettably, goes by the awkward label "kakonomics", from the Greek "kako-", meaning harsh or incorrect (sucky, basically), and the suffix "-nomics", meaning "give me a lucrative book deal". But whatever you call it, it's an illuminating way to reconsider human behaviour, as it suggests – against conventional wisdom – that we often tacitly want the organisations we work for, along with our friends and even partners, to be mediocre and not deliver what they promise.
Few of us, whether cynics or optimists, think of human nature this way. According to game theory, the economic approach Origgi is adapting, people are out for themselves: they'll do whatever they can to maximise personal gain while seizing every opportunity to slack off at others' expense. Critics object that we're not so nasty: in experiments, people stubbornly refuse to act as selfishly as game theory predicts. But both sides agree we want other people to give their best. Suppose you're a manager: whether or not you'd rather be selfishly lazy, you'd surely want your underlings to do a stellar job of briefing you for the big meeting or fetching coffee. Likewise, you'd prefer it if friends or lovers brought their best to your relationship. Wouldn't you?
Kakonomics replies: maybe not.
The reason is guilt: other people not delivering what they'd promised frees us from having to deliver what we'd promised. Mediocre colleagues facilitate our own mediocrity; a friend or partner's half-arsedness towards us makes us feel better about ours. We learn to trust each other's untrustworthiness – to feel confident that promises, whether to strain every sinew for the company or always be there for a friend, won't be insisted upon. Thus emerges a web of silent agreements to do a poor job. Origgi, in a paper co-authored with Diego Gambetta, argues that in Italy the situation has reached an extreme – a "cocktail of confusion, sloppiness and broken promises". (She quotes an American friend renovating a house there: "Italian builders never deliver when they promise, but the good thing is they do not expect you to pay them when you promise, either.") The result is comfortable for both parties, in the short term. But over the long term, and on a macro-level, it causes organisations to sink into underachievement, for friendships and romances to wither and die.
by Oliver Burkeman, The Guardian | Read more:
Illustration: Iro Tsavala
David Chang Talks Honest Cooking, Thoreau, and Failure
There are two things the chef David Chang works very hard at and gets very, very anxious about, and in both cases the hard work and extreme anxiety have paid off. One is, obviously, his food, and the other is not becoming a pretentious idiot. Considering how much deserved acclaim has come his way—for his Momofuku restaurants, for his cookbook, and, most recently, for his magazine, Lucky Peach—it’s amazing that he has not permitted even a scrap of pretentious idiocy to stick to him. He’s not quite as neurotic as he was a few years ago, which is good, but he is still excellent company. If you’ve never seen him talk, you should, and here’s your chance: an interview on Paul Holdengraber’s new TV show (on YouTube’s The Intelligent Channel), in which Chang talks about failure, Thoreau, religion, and the honesty of cooking. Holdengraber is the impresario of the “Live” events at the New York Public Library, and when he thinks someone is worth interviewing, he’s always right.
via: New Yorker
h/t 3quarksdaily
Dennis Kucinich and “wackiness”
[ed. Dennis Kucinich was defeated by Marcy Kaptur in the Ohio Democratic primary last week. We'll miss his voice in Washington.]
It’s not difficult to see why Democrats, including progressives, often took (and continue to take) the lead in demonizing Kucinich as a wacky loser. After his Party leaders decreed that impeachment of Bush was “off the table” — both because they feared it would jeopardize their electoral prospects and because top Democrats were complicit in Bush crimes — Kucinich defied their orders and introduced articles of impeachment against Bush for the Iraq War, his chronic lawbreaking, and his assault on the Constitution: exactly what impeachment was designed to prevent and punish. He was one of the very few people in Congress who vehemently denounced the assaults on the Constitution with equal vigor under the prior GOP President and the current Democratic one. He was one of the very few people in Congress with the courage to deviate from the AIPAC script, opposing the Israeli blockade of Gaza, condemning Israeli wars of aggression, and repeatedly publicizing the oppression of Palestinians with the use of American funds and support. He repeatedly insisted on application of the law to the Executive Branch’s foreign policy when all of Washington agreed to overlook it. He repeatedly opposed bipartisan measures to intensify hostility toward Iran. When the Democrats won Congress in 2006 based on a promise to end the Iraq War, only to turn around and continue to fund it without restrictions (thus ensuring that this politically advantageous war would be raging during the 2008 election), Kucinich continuously demanded that they follow through on their promises.
In the domestic policy area, Kucinich typically defended the values which the Democratic Party claims to support even as it assaults those very values. As Progressive wrote this week, “Kucinich was fearless in standing up to corporate power, in denouncing NAFTA and GATT and the WTO and the fallacy of free trade, in criticizing the Federal Reserve Board for not doing more about unemployment and for bailing out the banks” and he “campaigned mightily for universal single-payer health care” (though, under heavy pressure and threats, he supported Obama’s health care bill at the last moment). Kucinich vocally criticized President Obama for proposing substantial cuts to Social Security. He became an increasingly outspoken critic of the Drug War. The Nation‘s John Nichols this week praised him as “one of [Congress'] steadiest critics of corporate power.” Those noble fights were often waged against his own party’s leadership, with risk to his own political fortunes, and with very few allies. (...)
In sum, Kucinich was one of the those rare people in Washington whose commitment to his beliefs outweighed both his loyalty to his Party and his desperation to cling to political office. He thus often highlighted the severe flaws, deceit and cowardice of his fellow Democrats and their Party as well as the broader political class. That’s why he has to be vilified as crazy and wacky. He’s long been delivering an unpleasant message about the Democratic Party and Washington generally, and like all unwanted messengers, has to be dismissed and marginalized so that this criticism disappears. Thus, those who brought us the Iraq War, Endless War in general, citizen assassinations, the systematic incineration of the Constitution known as the War on Terror, the financial collapse, the destruction of the middle class, and the financial and political supremacy of banker-criminals are sane and respectable. Those who most vehemently opposed those assaults, like Dennis Kucinich, are the “wackiest.”
by Glenn Greenwald, Salon | Read more:
It’s not difficult to see why Democrats, including progressives, often took (and continue to take) the lead in demonizing Kucinich as a wacky loser. After his Party leaders decreed that impeachment of Bush was “off the table” — both because they feared it would jeopardize their electoral prospects and because top Democrats were complicit in Bush crimes — Kucinich defied their orders and introduced articles of impeachment against Bush for the Iraq War, his chronic lawbreaking, and his assault on the Constitution: exactly what impeachment was designed to prevent and punish. He was one of the very few people in Congress who vehemently denounced the assaults on the Constitution with equal vigor under the prior GOP President and the current Democratic one. He was one of the very few people in Congress with the courage to deviate from the AIPAC script, opposing the Israeli blockade of Gaza, condemning Israeli wars of aggression, and repeatedly publicizing the oppression of Palestinians with the use of American funds and support. He repeatedly insisted on application of the law to the Executive Branch’s foreign policy when all of Washington agreed to overlook it. He repeatedly opposed bipartisan measures to intensify hostility toward Iran. When the Democrats won Congress in 2006 based on a promise to end the Iraq War, only to turn around and continue to fund it without restrictions (thus ensuring that this politically advantageous war would be raging during the 2008 election), Kucinich continuously demanded that they follow through on their promises.In the domestic policy area, Kucinich typically defended the values which the Democratic Party claims to support even as it assaults those very values. As Progressive wrote this week, “Kucinich was fearless in standing up to corporate power, in denouncing NAFTA and GATT and the WTO and the fallacy of free trade, in criticizing the Federal Reserve Board for not doing more about unemployment and for bailing out the banks” and he “campaigned mightily for universal single-payer health care” (though, under heavy pressure and threats, he supported Obama’s health care bill at the last moment). Kucinich vocally criticized President Obama for proposing substantial cuts to Social Security. He became an increasingly outspoken critic of the Drug War. The Nation‘s John Nichols this week praised him as “one of [Congress'] steadiest critics of corporate power.” Those noble fights were often waged against his own party’s leadership, with risk to his own political fortunes, and with very few allies. (...)
In sum, Kucinich was one of the those rare people in Washington whose commitment to his beliefs outweighed both his loyalty to his Party and his desperation to cling to political office. He thus often highlighted the severe flaws, deceit and cowardice of his fellow Democrats and their Party as well as the broader political class. That’s why he has to be vilified as crazy and wacky. He’s long been delivering an unpleasant message about the Democratic Party and Washington generally, and like all unwanted messengers, has to be dismissed and marginalized so that this criticism disappears. Thus, those who brought us the Iraq War, Endless War in general, citizen assassinations, the systematic incineration of the Constitution known as the War on Terror, the financial collapse, the destruction of the middle class, and the financial and political supremacy of banker-criminals are sane and respectable. Those who most vehemently opposed those assaults, like Dennis Kucinich, are the “wackiest.”
by Glenn Greenwald, Salon | Read more:
Friday, March 9, 2012
Berkeley-based practice Terry & Terry Architecture (Ivan Terry, Alexander Terry) has completed 'bal house', a single-storey addition to an existing mid-century ranch house in Menlo Park, California, USA. Conceived for a retired couple, the open and accessible design integrates the living space with the rear garden to create a well-lit domestic extension.
More pictures here:
'bal house' by terry & terry architecture in menlo park, california, USA. all images courtesy terry & terry architecture
image © bruce damonte
Michael Nesmith Remembers Davy Jones
'For me David was The Monkees. They were his band. We were his side men.'
What's your first memory of meeting Davy?
I think, not certainly, that I met him on the stage where we were doing the screen tests. He seemed confident and part of the proceedings, charming, outgoing.
It's clear the producers cast each of you for different reasons. Why do you think they selected Davy? What did he bring to the group that was unique?
I think David was the first one selected and they built the show around him. English (all the rage), attractive, and a very accomplished singer and dancer, right off the Broadway stage from a hit musical. None of the other three of us had any of those chops. (...)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the story tends to go that you (and to a slightly lesser extent Peter) got frustrated pretty early on with your lack of control over the Monkees music. Davy had a Broadway background and was pretty used to following orders. Did he share your frustrations at first? If not, explain how his views evolved to the point that he was eager to join your battle against Kirshner and the label.
You are not completely wrong, but "frustrated" is the wrong word. We were confused, especially me. But all of us shared the desire to play the songs we were singing. Everyone was accomplished – the notion I was the only musician is one of those rumors that got started and wont stop – but it was not true. Peter was a more accomplished player than I by an order of magnitude, Micky and Davy played and sang and danced and understood music. Micky had learned to play drums, and we were quite capable of playing the type of songs that were selected for the show. We were also kids with our own taste in music and were happier performing songs we liked – and/or wrote – than songs that were handed to us. It made for a better performance. It was more fun. That this became a bone of contention seemed strange to me, and I think to some extent to each of us – sort of "what's the big deal – why wont you let us play the songs we are singing?" This confusion of course betrayed an ignorance of the powers that were and the struggle that was going on for control between the show's producers in Hollywood and the New York-based publishing company owned by Screen Gems. The producers backed us and David went along. None of us could have fought the battles we did without the explicit support of the show's producers.
Some have described the movie Head as "career suicide." How did you feel about it at the time? Did you have concerns that it would alienate and confuse a huge segment of your audience? Looking back, was it a mistake?
Looking back it was inevitable. Don't forget that by the time Head came out the Monkees were a pariah. There was no confusion about this. We were on the cosine of the line of approbation, from acceptance to rejection – the cause for this is another discussion not for here – and it was basically over. Head was a swan song. We wrote it with Jack and Bob – another story not for here – and we liked it. It was an authentic representation of a phenomenon we were a part of that was winding down. It was very far from suicide – even though it may have looked like that. There were some people in power, and not a few critics, who thought there was another decision that could have been made. But I believe the movie was an inevitability – there was no other movie to be made that would not have been ghastly under the circumstances.
In your estimation, why did the Monkees burn out so quickly? The whole thing ended after little more than two years.
That is a long discussion – and I can only offer one perspective of a complex pattern of events. The most I care to generalize at this point is to say there was a type of sibling suppression that was taking place unseen. The older sibling followed the Beatles and Stones and the sophistication of a burgeoning new world order – the younger siblings were still playing on the floor watching television. The older siblings sang and danced and shouted and pointed to a direction they assumed the Monkees were not part of and pushed the younger sibling into silence. The Monkees went into that closet. This is all retrospect, of course – important to focus on the premise that "no one thought the Monkees up." The Monkees happened – the effect of a cause still unseen, and dare I say it, still at work and still overlooked as it applies to present day.
by Andy Greene, Rolling Stone | Read more:
Photo: Courtesy of Michael Nesmith
What's your first memory of meeting Davy?
I think, not certainly, that I met him on the stage where we were doing the screen tests. He seemed confident and part of the proceedings, charming, outgoing.
It's clear the producers cast each of you for different reasons. Why do you think they selected Davy? What did he bring to the group that was unique?I think David was the first one selected and they built the show around him. English (all the rage), attractive, and a very accomplished singer and dancer, right off the Broadway stage from a hit musical. None of the other three of us had any of those chops. (...)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the story tends to go that you (and to a slightly lesser extent Peter) got frustrated pretty early on with your lack of control over the Monkees music. Davy had a Broadway background and was pretty used to following orders. Did he share your frustrations at first? If not, explain how his views evolved to the point that he was eager to join your battle against Kirshner and the label.
You are not completely wrong, but "frustrated" is the wrong word. We were confused, especially me. But all of us shared the desire to play the songs we were singing. Everyone was accomplished – the notion I was the only musician is one of those rumors that got started and wont stop – but it was not true. Peter was a more accomplished player than I by an order of magnitude, Micky and Davy played and sang and danced and understood music. Micky had learned to play drums, and we were quite capable of playing the type of songs that were selected for the show. We were also kids with our own taste in music and were happier performing songs we liked – and/or wrote – than songs that were handed to us. It made for a better performance. It was more fun. That this became a bone of contention seemed strange to me, and I think to some extent to each of us – sort of "what's the big deal – why wont you let us play the songs we are singing?" This confusion of course betrayed an ignorance of the powers that were and the struggle that was going on for control between the show's producers in Hollywood and the New York-based publishing company owned by Screen Gems. The producers backed us and David went along. None of us could have fought the battles we did without the explicit support of the show's producers.
Some have described the movie Head as "career suicide." How did you feel about it at the time? Did you have concerns that it would alienate and confuse a huge segment of your audience? Looking back, was it a mistake?
Looking back it was inevitable. Don't forget that by the time Head came out the Monkees were a pariah. There was no confusion about this. We were on the cosine of the line of approbation, from acceptance to rejection – the cause for this is another discussion not for here – and it was basically over. Head was a swan song. We wrote it with Jack and Bob – another story not for here – and we liked it. It was an authentic representation of a phenomenon we were a part of that was winding down. It was very far from suicide – even though it may have looked like that. There were some people in power, and not a few critics, who thought there was another decision that could have been made. But I believe the movie was an inevitability – there was no other movie to be made that would not have been ghastly under the circumstances.
In your estimation, why did the Monkees burn out so quickly? The whole thing ended after little more than two years.
That is a long discussion – and I can only offer one perspective of a complex pattern of events. The most I care to generalize at this point is to say there was a type of sibling suppression that was taking place unseen. The older sibling followed the Beatles and Stones and the sophistication of a burgeoning new world order – the younger siblings were still playing on the floor watching television. The older siblings sang and danced and shouted and pointed to a direction they assumed the Monkees were not part of and pushed the younger sibling into silence. The Monkees went into that closet. This is all retrospect, of course – important to focus on the premise that "no one thought the Monkees up." The Monkees happened – the effect of a cause still unseen, and dare I say it, still at work and still overlooked as it applies to present day.
by Andy Greene, Rolling Stone | Read more:
Photo: Courtesy of Michael Nesmith
Our Corrupt Politics: It’s Not All Money
Lobbyists build up relationships with politicians they like and, in many cases, agree with. They give those politicians money and they invite them out for dinner, or to their corporate box to watch ball games. They argue for the client’s interests, but they don’t argue too hard, or cross any ethical boundaries. And, over time, the politician comes to see the lobbyist as a friend. After all, the lobbyist is doing all sorts of thing that, in a person’s normal life, would lead to friendship, or at least a warm business relationship: he’s supporting the politician’s work and spending lots of time having interesting conversations with him and showing up at his events. The lobbyists are smart and personable and interesting and connected. They have expertise he needs, and connections that can help him, and information about what other political actors are doing that gives him a leg up. It is a perfect mixture of ideological comradeship, financial perks, and personal affinity. But it is the sense of comradeship and affinity that makes the whole thing work.
In many cases, the lobbyist actually is the politician’s friend. She is his former staffer, or a colleague he used to see three times a week at the congressional gym. After all, there are any number of wealthy, well-connected people who might like to bend a senator’s ear. But senators have limited time and busy schedules. They can’t make space for every supplicant with a thick bill roll and a fat rolodex. And so clever lobbying shops have figured out a way to get to politicians: hire their friends. Hire the people they have already demonstrated an interest in talking to, and accepting counsel from.
Abramoff talks at length about how he would go out of his way to hire the staffers of powerful legislators. “How did we get this access?” He asks rhetorically. “By hiring people who already had access of their own.”
From the taxpayers’ point of view, it was even worse than that. Abramoff would often extend the opportunity a few years before they were ready to retire. Abramoff relays the upshot of the strategy in almost mafioso terms:
Once I found a congressional office that was vital to our clients—usually because they were incredibly helpful and supportive—I would often become close to the chief of staff of the office. In almost every congressional office, the chief of staff is the center of power. Nothing gets done without the direct or indirect action on his or her part. After a number of meetings with them, possibly including meals or rounds of golf, I would say a few magic words: “When you are done working for the Congressman, you should come work for me at my firm.”
With that, assuming the staffer had any interest in leaving Capitol Hill for K Street—and almost 90 percent of them do, I would own him and, consequently, that entire office. No rules had been broken, at least not yet. No one even knew what was happening, but suddenly, every move that staffer made, he made with his future at my firm in mind. His paycheck may have been signed by the Congress, but he was already working for me, influencing his office for my clients’ best interests. It was a perfect—and perfectly corrupt—arrangement. I hired as many of these staffers as I could, and in return I gained increasing influence on the Hill.But notice how Abramoff says this worked: he would first find a congressional office that was “helpful and supportive” to him, and then he would become personally close with the chief of staff—someone who probably already agreed with Abramoff on most issues, and liked him personally—by going out for good meals and playing golf. Only after years of this would the job offer come. Today, Abramoff admits it was a “corrupt” arrangement. But it probably didn’t feel that way to either side. The job offer only came after years of successful collaboration and, even more importantly, personal friendship. The gifts preceded the cash.
And the gifts are, if anything, better than the cash. Because the gifts do more than the cash. If someone walks up to you with a bag full of money and asks you to vote to make coal companies more profitable, that’s not a very persuasive argument. Even if you take the money, you’re going to feel dirty the next day. And most people don’t like to feel dirty. But if one of your smartest, most persuasive friends, a friend you agree with on almost everything, is explaining to you that those environmentalist nuts are going too far again—they’re always doing that, aren’t they?—and they have sneakily tucked a provision into a bill that would make it more expensive for your constituents to buy electricity, that’s very persuasive. And if it’s also in your self-interest to listen to him—and lobbyists are good at nothing if not making sure it is in a politician’s long-term self-interest to listen to them—then all your incentives are pointing in the same direction. You’ll listen.
The outcome of this is that a disproportionate number of people who have access to politicians, and who are owed favors by politicians, are lobbyists. And so those politicians are listening to a lot of lobbyists—lobbyists who are being paid by a client to invest in their relationships with politicians in order to advance the client’s interest. On some level, the politicians know that. But it doesn’t feel that way to them. It feels like they’re listening to reasonable arguments by people they like and respect on behalf of interests they’re already sympathetic to. And what’s so wrong with that?
The answer, of course, is that players with money are getting a lot more representation than players without money, not in sacks of cash delivered in the middle of the night, but through people a politician listens to and trusts and even likes having lunch with in the bright light of the day. That’s why savvy and well-funded players will contract with a number of different lobbyists at a number of different firms. Every lobbyist will have legislators he’s close to and legislators he isn’t. Some lobbyists, like Abramoff, specialize in conservatives. Others are more connected among liberals. Some firms have the former chief of staff to the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. Others can offer the former legislative director to the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. If all a client needed was the money, all he would need to do is cut a big check to one lobbyist. But what you need isn’t the money. It’s the relationships. And each lobbyist only has so many of those.
Which is why it’s so damn difficult to actually kill off lobbying. Outlawing bribes is easy. Outlawing relationships isn’t. But it’s worth asking another question, one that often goes unasked, perhaps because the answer is assumed to be so obvious. If we got the money out of politics, which problems, exactly, would we have solved?
by Ezra Klein, NY Review of Books | Read more:
Photo: Tom Williams/Roll Call/Getty Image
Keynes, Hayek and Orange Peppers
So the other day I go out to buy some peppers. Like all middle-class twerps in north London, I am now incapable of cooking anything that does not come with the imprimatur of Yotam Ottolenghi—master of the delicious but finicky fusion dish, ambassador for sumac and precise counter of curry leaves. The dish I’m cooking wants three red peppers, so I go to Sainsbury’s and find three peppers. In a pack: one red, one green, one orange.
I look at these peppers, and despair fills my whole heart. They told us—Adam Smith told us; Hayek told us; even Keynes told us—that capitalism, with certain minor adjustments to prevent the bastards ganging up on us, would serve the consumer. That as markets neared frictionless perfection, choice would burgeon and the minutest of our whims would be catered for.No more waiting six months for BT to put in a telephone line and having three shades of brown Bakelite handset to choose from. No more nasty, gherkiny bit in your Whopper: you could “Have It Your Way.” The world would be a giant retail pic ‘n’ mix. Our lives would be bespoke. And yet here—ostensibly for no more profound reason than that it looks cutely like a traffic light—comes their refutation. You cannot acquire a red pepper without also acquiring a green one (which the recipe doesn’t require) and an orange one (which very few if any recipes require.) Take it or leave it.
I stand fuming in the aisle of my local supermarket, while sullen teenagers with earphones going tss-bomp tss-bomp tss-bomp tss-bomp shoulder past me towards the pouches of glutionous pre-fabricated stir-fry sauce, while mothers wheeling gargantuan three-wheeled toddler-wagons bark my shins and trolley-pushers back up and reverse into three-for-two sliced meats to let them past, everyone doing the “scoose, sorry, scoose, sorry” dance and wishing—on balance—that the earth would cease upon the stroke of midnight with no pain. And I look at this packet of peppers, and I think: is this what the long history of human ingenuity has come to?
by Sam Leith, Prospect | Read more:
The Gray Box: An Investigative Look at Solitary Confinement
Among the misperceptions about solitary confinement is that it’s used only on the most violent inmates, and only for a few weeks or months. In fact, an estimated 80,000 Americans — many with no record of violence either inside or outside prison — are living in seclusion. They stay there for years, even decades. What this means, generally, is 23 hours a day in a cell the size of two queen-sized mattresses, with a single hour in an exercise cage, also alone. Some prisoners aren’t allowed visits or phone calls. Some have no TV or radio. Some never lay eyes on each other. And some go years without fresh air or sunlight.
Solitary is a place where the slightest details can mean the world. Things like whether you can see a patch of grass or only sky outside your window – if you’re lucky enough to have a window. Or whether the guy who occupies cells before you in rotation has a habit of smearing feces on the wall. Are the lights on 24/7? Is there a clock or calendar to mark time? If you scream, could anyone hear you? (...)
Plenty of corrections officers might tell you that offenders doing time in solitary don’t deserve the roofs over their heads or the meals shoved through their food slots. To be sure, many of these prisoners have done heinous, unforgivable things for which we lock them up tightly. Just how tightly is no small question. Yet, as a matter of public policy, the question hardly comes up. Compared to how much we as a nation have debated capital punishment, a sentence served by a small fraction of the incarcerated, we barely discuss how severely we’re willing to punish nearly everyone else.
“When the door is locked against the prisoner, we do not think about what is behind it,” Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy once said.
Solitary confinement started in the U.S. as a morally progressive social experiment in the 1820s by Quakers, who wanted lawmakers to replace mutilations, amputations and the death penalty with rehabilitation. The hope was that long periods of introspection would help criminals repent.
After touring a Pennsylvania prison in the 1840s, Charles Dickens described prolonged isolation as a “slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain immeasurably worse than any torture of the body.” He also wrote, “There is a depth of terrible endurance in it which none but the sufferers themselves can fathom.”
Some of his contemporaries shared that view. “It devours the victims incessantly and unmercifully,” Alexis de Tocqueville reported from a prison in New York in the 1820s. “It does not reform, it kills.” (...)
Most prisons suspended the practice in the mid- to late-1800s once it became clear the theory didn’t work. The U.S. Supreme Court punctuated that point in 1890 when it freed a Colorado man who had been sentenced to death for killing his wife, recognizing the psychological harm isolation had caused him.
“This matter of solitary confinement is not … a mere unimportant regulation as to the safe-keeping of the prisoner,” the court ruled in the case of James Medley. “A considerable number of the prisoners fell, after even a short confinement, into a semi-fatuous condition, from which it was next to impossible to arouse them, while those who stood the ordeal better were not generally reformed, and in most cases did not recover sufficient mental activity to be of any subsequent service to the community.”
Solitary confinement was largely unused for about a century until October 1983 when, in separate incidents, inmates killed two guards in one day at the U.S. Penitentiary in Marion, Ill., which had replaced Alcatraz as home to the most dangerous federal convicts. The prison went into lockdown for the next 23 years, setting the model for dozens of state and federal supermaxes – prisons designed specifically for mass isolation — that since have been built in the name of officer safety. “Never again,” promised Reagan-era shock doctrinarians who set out at great cost to crack down on prison violence.
“Whole prisons have been built, people have gotten funding for supermax facilities based on the act of a single (inmate),” says Michael Randle, former director of the Illinois Department of Corrections.
by Susan Greene, Dart Society | Read more:
Image via: Quote/Counterquote
Solitary is a place where the slightest details can mean the world. Things like whether you can see a patch of grass or only sky outside your window – if you’re lucky enough to have a window. Or whether the guy who occupies cells before you in rotation has a habit of smearing feces on the wall. Are the lights on 24/7? Is there a clock or calendar to mark time? If you scream, could anyone hear you? (...)Plenty of corrections officers might tell you that offenders doing time in solitary don’t deserve the roofs over their heads or the meals shoved through their food slots. To be sure, many of these prisoners have done heinous, unforgivable things for which we lock them up tightly. Just how tightly is no small question. Yet, as a matter of public policy, the question hardly comes up. Compared to how much we as a nation have debated capital punishment, a sentence served by a small fraction of the incarcerated, we barely discuss how severely we’re willing to punish nearly everyone else.
“When the door is locked against the prisoner, we do not think about what is behind it,” Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy once said.
Solitary confinement started in the U.S. as a morally progressive social experiment in the 1820s by Quakers, who wanted lawmakers to replace mutilations, amputations and the death penalty with rehabilitation. The hope was that long periods of introspection would help criminals repent.
After touring a Pennsylvania prison in the 1840s, Charles Dickens described prolonged isolation as a “slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain immeasurably worse than any torture of the body.” He also wrote, “There is a depth of terrible endurance in it which none but the sufferers themselves can fathom.”
Some of his contemporaries shared that view. “It devours the victims incessantly and unmercifully,” Alexis de Tocqueville reported from a prison in New York in the 1820s. “It does not reform, it kills.” (...)
Most prisons suspended the practice in the mid- to late-1800s once it became clear the theory didn’t work. The U.S. Supreme Court punctuated that point in 1890 when it freed a Colorado man who had been sentenced to death for killing his wife, recognizing the psychological harm isolation had caused him.
“This matter of solitary confinement is not … a mere unimportant regulation as to the safe-keeping of the prisoner,” the court ruled in the case of James Medley. “A considerable number of the prisoners fell, after even a short confinement, into a semi-fatuous condition, from which it was next to impossible to arouse them, while those who stood the ordeal better were not generally reformed, and in most cases did not recover sufficient mental activity to be of any subsequent service to the community.”
Solitary confinement was largely unused for about a century until October 1983 when, in separate incidents, inmates killed two guards in one day at the U.S. Penitentiary in Marion, Ill., which had replaced Alcatraz as home to the most dangerous federal convicts. The prison went into lockdown for the next 23 years, setting the model for dozens of state and federal supermaxes – prisons designed specifically for mass isolation — that since have been built in the name of officer safety. “Never again,” promised Reagan-era shock doctrinarians who set out at great cost to crack down on prison violence.
“Whole prisons have been built, people have gotten funding for supermax facilities based on the act of a single (inmate),” says Michael Randle, former director of the Illinois Department of Corrections.
by Susan Greene, Dart Society | Read more:
Image via: Quote/Counterquote
IMAX Fighter Pilot
This IMAX film is about fighter pilots and fighter planes and the quality of the video is awesome, so make sure you watch it in full screen, on the 720pHD setting and the sound quality is fantastic too.
h/t: GS
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Smooth Moves
One sticky morning last summer, Sara Blakely, the inventor of Spanx, which over the past decade has become to women’s foundation garments what Scotch is to cellophane tape, was sitting in the Park Avenue offices of her husband, Jesse Itzler, confronting a new challenge: the male anatomy. Red boxes of stretchy Spanx undershirts for men were strewn across a table before the couple. “Sara sent my dad, who is going to be eighty-two years old, a tank top,” Itzler said.
Blakely smiled. “He said it took him half a day to get into it, and half a day to get out,” she said. “My mom said she’d never laughed harder,” Itzler added.
There was also a prototype of black cotton briefs with a sturdy “3D” pouch over the groin, devised by Spanx’s product-development team after several male testers complained to Blakely that they needed more support. “They were, like, ‘It just kind of hangs,’ ” she said.
“And is the hole big enough? To get through?” Blakely went on, fingering the pouch. “It seems like you’d have to really . . . bring it out. Look, I’m in foreign territory here.”
“Yes, yes,” Itzler said, rolling his eyes.
Blakely, who recently turned forty and is a size 6 (“the largest I’ve ever been,” she said), with long blond hair and bright-white teeth, believes that there is no figure problem—saddlebags, upper-arm jiggle, stomach rolls—that can’t be solved with a little judiciously placed Lycra. “Where I get my energy is: ‘How can I make it better?’ ” Blakely said. “I’ll ask my brother, ‘If you could wave your wand and make your boxer shorts better, what would you do?” Her first big idea, in 1998, was to chop the feet off a pair of control-top panty hose so that she could get a svelte, seamless look under white slacks without stockings poking out of her sandals. The resulting product, Footless Pantyhose, has sold nine million pairs since October of 2000, when Blakely, who was then a fax-machine saleswoman and a part-time standup comic, started Spanx, with five thousand dollars of savings. Another Spanx product, a lightweight girdle called Power Panties that retails for around thirty dollars, has sold six million units since it was introduced, in 2002. (...)
Spanx’s popularity repudiates the late-twentieth-century belief, perpetuated by Jane Fonda and Nike, that a firm body can be achieved only through sweaty resolve. “There’s a whole subset of women who don’t relate to that idea,” Blakely said. She is overseeing a new line of activewear, called In It to Slim It, but there is a desultory feel to the enterprise. “I started thinking about joy,” Blakely said. “Everything in our society is so purposeful. Let’s bring joy back to the experience—have fun when you’re doing it,” meaning exercise. She has already expanded into legwear (Tight-End Tights); lacy lingerie (Haute Contour); casual separates (Bod a Bing!); and retro, ruffled swimwear. Spanx now offers more than two hundred different products, and executives at the company, which is privately held, and reported three hundred and fifty million dollars in global retail sales in 2008, worry that customers are having trouble distinguishing among them. Part of the line is manufactured by Acme-McCrary, a century-old firm in the hosiery mecca of Asheboro, North Carolina (the rest is outsourced to other countries). Larry Small, who until recently was Acme-McCrary’s C.E.O., told me that Spanx represents close to a third of his business, and he called Blakely a “rock star” in an industry of good ol’ boys. “I’ve always wondered how the heck men are supposed to sell hosiery,” he said.
Blakely chose the brand’s name partly for what she calls its “virgin-whore tension,” and partly for its “k” sound, which has a good track record in both business and comedy. “I used to hold my breath every time I said it out loud,” she told me. “People were so offended they’d hang up on me.” When the Spanx Web site first went live, Blakely’s mother accidentally directed a tableful of luncheon guests to spanks.com, a porn site. (...)
Blakely has several phobias, but her greatest fear is heights. “When we first got this apartment, I thought I might have to sell it as soon as we moved in,” she said. “And my husband was, like, ‘Why are you telling me this now?’ ” In addition to running his marketing company, Itzler is the co-founder of Marquis Jets, which leases private planes; the couple met at a poker tournament in Las Vegas (Bill Gates and Warren Buffett were among the guests), after Blakely had become a loyal Marquis customer, figuring that if she panicked during a flight she could order the pilot to land. She travels constantly, to give speeches—she is also afraid of public speaking—and to tend to the charitable foundation that she started, with seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars in prize money that she won after appearing on Branson’s show “The Rebel Billionaire”; she has so far donated around ten million dollars to women’s causes, a million to Oprah Winfrey’s Leadership Academy alone. “I took a Fear of Flying class, and I always missed the class, because I was always flying,” she said.
The couple hired a former Navy SEAL to devise emergency escape methods from the New York apartment, which is decorated in a modern rococo style, with ottomans covered in zebra print, ankle-deep rugs, maroon tiled ceilings, sequinned pillows, feminist art, and a silver chandelier in the dining room. Hidden behind the bar are jet packs and an inflatable motorboat. “We can jump out the window if we have to,” she said. Among her tasks as a contestant on “Rebel Billionaire” were nosedives in a 747 (“I also have a fear of puking,” she said) and a long climb up the side of a hot-air balloon on a rope ladder, to have tea with Branson at eight thousand feet. Blakely regarded these not as acts of masochism but as spiritual challenges.
by Alexandria Jacobs, The New Yorker | Read more:
Photograph by Josef Astor
Nimbus
These stunning photos of indoor clouds might look like digital creations, but they're actually of real scenes created by Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde.
The clouds are generated using a smoke machine, but Smilde must carefully monitor a room's humidity and atmosphere in order to get the smoke to hang so elegantly, and with such life-like form. Backlighting is used to bring out shadows from within the cloud, to give it that look of a looming and ominous rain cloud.
"I wanted to make the image of a typical Dutch raincloud inside a space," Smilde told Gizmag. "I'm interested in the ephemeral aspect of the work. It's there for a brief moment and then the cloud falls apart. The work only exists as a photograph."
by Bryan Nelson, MNN | Read more:
Two burger-obsessed Japanese writers tell us their likes, dislikes - and why General MacArthur would be the ideal dining companion.
Metropolis: What makes a good hamburger?
Yoshihide Matsubara: First, a good burger is one that has all the parts assembled with perfect balance and harmony. Many burgers in Japan are served with all the flavorings already included, so before adding ketchup and mustard, try it as it’s served to you first. Secondly, a good hamburger has a dignified appearance and is built up beautifully. In some traditional American diner-style shops, they serve the ingredients side-by-side on a flat plate. But I’m of the opinion that places which serve the hamburger in its complete form think precisely about the proper way to pile ingredients—the size of the patty, bun and vegetables and their order —and this really reflects the sensitive and delicate technique of the Japanese. Especially in downtown Tokyo, hamburgers have crossed over from being “American-style” to being simply a “delicious meal.” Their originality is evolving every day. Lastly, a good hamburger needs to be dynamic and hearty. After all, hamburgers are entertainment!
Metropolis: What makes a good hamburger?
Ken Saito: Of course, the actual taste of the hamburger is crucial, but what happens before you bite into the hamburger is equally important. Mainly, the appearance and the aroma are extremely important factors. In smaller restaurants, you can hear and smell the hamburger patty being cooked. A perfectly assembled hamburger is a work of art. It’s exciting to imagine the taste of the hamburger before you actually take a bite. When I pick up the hamburger and smell the charcoal aroma, I can sense that I’m in for a helluva ride.
Pinterest and the Acquisitive Gaze
But recently Pinterest has entered the mainstream, as a para-retailing apparatus presumed to appeal mainly to women. The site’s supposed femaleness has occasioned a lot of theorizing, some of which Nathan Jurgenson details in this post, as has its anodyne commerciality. Bon Stewart argues that Pinterest, since it discourages self-promotion and relies entirely on the appropriation of someone else’s creative expression, turns curation into passive consumerism; it allows for the construction and circulation of a bland sanitized “Stepford” identity. In other words, it becomes another tool for enhancing our digital brands at the expense of the possibility of an uncommodified self.
Give that emphasis on passive consumption, it’s not surprising that Pinterest has come to be associated with shopping fantasies. Pinterest’s great technological advance seems to be that it lets users shop for images over the sprawl of the internet, turning it into a endless visual shopping mall in which one never runs out of money. Chris Tackett suggests that sites like Pinterest are actually “anti-consumerist” because they allow people the instant gratification of choosing things without actually having to buy them. “Virtual consumerism means a real world reduction in wasteful consumption,” he writes, and that’s all well and good, though I’m not sure that making window shopping more convenient is in any way “anticonsumerist.” If anything that seems to reinforce the consumerist mentality while overcoming one of its main obstacles — people’s financial inability to perpetually shop. With Pinterest, they can at least simulate that experience, acquiring the images of things and associating them with themselves, appropriating the qualities the goods/images are thought to signify at that given moment. Pinterest allows for the purest expression of the Baudrillardian “passion for the code” “It is not the passion (whether of objects or subjects) for substances that speaks in fetishism, it is the passion for the code, which, by governing both objects and subjects, and by subordinating them to itself, delivers them up to abstract manipulation,” Baudrillard wrote in “Fetishism and Ideology“ that we’ve yet seen. We accumulate and sort images, trying to extract their assimilable essences, and in the process reduce ourselves to a similar image, a similar agglomeration of putative qualities that can be read out of a surface.
by Rob Horning, The New Inquiry | Read more:
The Rosetta Stone is an ancient Egyptian granodiorite stele inscribed with a decree issued at Memphis in 196 BC on behalf of King Ptolemy V. The decree appears in three scripts: the upper text is Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the middle portion Demotic script, and the lowest Ancient Greek. Because it presents essentially the same text in all three scripts (with some minor differences between them), it provided the key to the modern understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphs.
via: Wikipedia | Read more:
Shark Cartilage May Contain Toxin
Shark cartilage, which has been hyped as a cancer preventive and joint-health supplement, may contain a neurotoxin that has been linked with Alzheimer’s and Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Scientists at the University of Miami analyzed cartilage samples collected from seven species of sharks off the coast of Florida. The specimens all contained high levels of a compound called beta-methylamino-L-alanine, or BMAA, which has been linked to the development of neurodegenerative diseases. Sharks accumulate the compound because of their status at the top of the oceanic food chain, consuming fish and other sea creatures that feed on BMAA-containing algae. The small tissue samples were obtained from sharks that were caught, tagged and released for tracking research, and no sharks were harmed for the study.
The findings are important because of the growing popularity of supplements that contain cartilage from shark fins. The products are widely sold and remain popular with consumers who view them as cancer fighters or as a remedy for joint and bone problems. The notion that shark cartilage can prevent cancer grew largely from the popularity of the 1992 book “Sharks Don’t Get Cancer.”
Although a number of studies have discredited shark cartilage as a cancer fighter, supplement makers have nonetheless made bold claims. In 2000, two supplement makers settled a federal suit as a result of hyping shark cartilage and paid restitution to customers.
Although the Miami scientists didn’t examine shark cartilage supplements directly, their findings add further cause for concern about the popularity of shark fin supplements. In the study, published in the journal Marine Drugs, the researchers found levels of BMAA ranging from 144 to 1,836 nanograms per milligram of cartilage in seven shark species, including hammerhead, blacknose, nurse and bull sharks. The toxin initially is produced by bacteria in large algae blooms that are brought on by agricultural runoff and sewage pollution.
Earlier studies have suggested that BMAA may be common in the brains of people with degenerative diseases. One in 2009, for example, found that brain samples from people who died of Alzheimer’s or Lou Gehrig’s disease had BMAA levels as high as 256 ng/mg. The brains of control subjects who died of other causes had only trace amounts or none at all. While BMAA has never been definitively cited as a cause of degenerative diseases in humans, some scientists hypothesize that it may be a contributing factor.
Scientists at the University of Miami analyzed cartilage samples collected from seven species of sharks off the coast of Florida. The specimens all contained high levels of a compound called beta-methylamino-L-alanine, or BMAA, which has been linked to the development of neurodegenerative diseases. Sharks accumulate the compound because of their status at the top of the oceanic food chain, consuming fish and other sea creatures that feed on BMAA-containing algae. The small tissue samples were obtained from sharks that were caught, tagged and released for tracking research, and no sharks were harmed for the study.The findings are important because of the growing popularity of supplements that contain cartilage from shark fins. The products are widely sold and remain popular with consumers who view them as cancer fighters or as a remedy for joint and bone problems. The notion that shark cartilage can prevent cancer grew largely from the popularity of the 1992 book “Sharks Don’t Get Cancer.”
Although a number of studies have discredited shark cartilage as a cancer fighter, supplement makers have nonetheless made bold claims. In 2000, two supplement makers settled a federal suit as a result of hyping shark cartilage and paid restitution to customers.
Although the Miami scientists didn’t examine shark cartilage supplements directly, their findings add further cause for concern about the popularity of shark fin supplements. In the study, published in the journal Marine Drugs, the researchers found levels of BMAA ranging from 144 to 1,836 nanograms per milligram of cartilage in seven shark species, including hammerhead, blacknose, nurse and bull sharks. The toxin initially is produced by bacteria in large algae blooms that are brought on by agricultural runoff and sewage pollution.
Earlier studies have suggested that BMAA may be common in the brains of people with degenerative diseases. One in 2009, for example, found that brain samples from people who died of Alzheimer’s or Lou Gehrig’s disease had BMAA levels as high as 256 ng/mg. The brains of control subjects who died of other causes had only trace amounts or none at all. While BMAA has never been definitively cited as a cause of degenerative diseases in humans, some scientists hypothesize that it may be a contributing factor.
by Anahad O'Connor, NY Times | Read more:
Barbara Walton/European Pressphoto Agency
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
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