May 2008

The creator and director’s answers to the question are exactly the reason why I’m rooting for Indiana Jones to win out at the box office this weekend:

The quick answer is no. But “Sex” creator Darren Star has another theory.

“Their girlfriends are going to take them,” Star said. “And they’re going to like it.”

Or at the very least, pretend to like it. Director Michael Patrick King suggests that men who want sex ought to see “Sex.”

“I think if you’re in a relationship with a woman and you take her to this movie, she’ll feel very happy … and open,” King said.

Reviews of the film have been negative, with Daniel M. Kimmel’s my favorite so far:

…it’s like being trapped in a dentist’s office with nothing to read but an old issue of Vogue.

Changes include revisions to automatic term mapping (ATM) and a new citation sensor that will match citations with searches.

UCLA Medical Center and its most accomplished liver surgeon provided a life-saving transplant to one of Japan’s most powerful gang bosses, law enforcement sources told The Times.

In addition, the surgeon performed liver transplants at UCLA on three other men who are now barred from entering the United States because of their criminal records or suspected affiliation with Japanese organized crime groups, said a knowledgeable law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

[...]

There is no evidence that UCLA or Busuttil knew at the time of the transplants that any of the patients had ties to Japanese gangs, commonly called yakuza. Both said in statements that they do not make moral judgments about patients and treat them based on their medical need.

Stem cells are the fountain of youth–or the tools of Satan. It depends on whom you ask. Somewhere in between are pioneering companies making incredible strides in medicine. And while it may be decades before an injection will repair a damaged spine, over the next few years we’ll see stem cells speed drug development, eliminate unsafe medicines and create better diagnostic tests. In this special report, Forbes takes a look at the growing promise of this miraculous science.

Lately, I’ve been running into an annoying trend on mainstream news sites — publishers are sectioning articles into multiple pages. They will tell you that they do so to improve readability, page loading times, etc., but what it boils down is page view counts and advertising impressions. However, I’ve noticed that a lot of these sites will break a relatively short article into 4+ pages, with each page being around 4 paragraphs in length. Give me a break. When I run into these kind of articles, I read the first page and move on. Mike Davidson sums up the situation nicely:

Over the last several years, many publishers have convinced themselves that breaking up stories into sometimes as many as ten pages is an acceptable way to present content on the web. The realistic ones at least admit that it’s a cheap way to boost stats. The disingenuous (or naive) ones actually posit that they are improving readability and usability for their audiences by reducing scrolling. Because scrolling is so hard.

Additionally, I’ve seen a number of sites run top ten list-style articles, with each item in the list getting its own page. This format really breaks down when the list contains a lot of entries, such as the top 100 places to live in America, 2008.

From the hog’s humble beginnings on the cover of Floyd’s 1977 album Animals to its recent unpiloted escape from Coachella, the creature has become a pop-culture icon (it even merited a reference on an episode of The Simpsons). The man who dreamed up the floating swine, Roger Waters, shared the tale behind the pig, from its origins in the late Seventies to its future plans.

Dan Ariely is a behavioral economist at the Massachusetts Intitute of Technology and author of the best-selling book, Predictably Irrational (HarperCollins, 2008). In recent years, he has demonstrated that random digits can influence bids in an auction, that sexual arousal leads to reckless decisions (at least in college males) and that brand-name aspirin is more effective at treating headaches than generic aspirin, even when the pills are identical. Mind Matters editor Jonah Lehrer chats with Ariely about his research.

A major problem is that in many countries, research funding is quite constrained, so it’s getting increasingly difficult for new investigators to secure their first grants. As a result, investigators are older and older when they finally begin independent work. On average, a recipient of a Starting Independent Researcher Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) is 35.6 years old and about 6 years past earning the Ph.D. New investigators supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation are also typically 6 to 7 years post-Ph.D. In the biomedical sciences, the average age at which an investigator first obtains a regular research grant from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) is 42 for a Ph.D. and 44 for MDs. No wonder there is concern about filling the pipeline of scientists. One has to wait until near middle age before getting one’s own research program in full gear.

Monsanto already dominates America’s food chain with its genetically modified seeds. Now it has targeted milk production. Just as frightening as the corporation’s tactics–ruthless legal battles against small farmers–is its decades-long history of toxic contamination.

Uncanny parallels with U/North in Michael Clayton. I think Monsanto’s “Round-Up” is the product they secretly criticize in the film.

The last original Dunkin’ Donuts sign standing anywhere has been dismantled and is now in storage and facing an uncertain fate.

The 1957 neon landmark, which towered over the intersection of Market and North Beacon streets in Brighton, was in poor condition with extensive rust. A backlighted fluorescent plexiglass sign with a modern Dunkin’ Donuts steaming coffee cup logo was erected in its place after the old sign came down on April 3.

The artist who is a member of the Critical Arts Ensemble was cleared of all charges by a judge who ruled that the indictment against him was “insufficient on its face.” Steve Kurtz, who was the subject of the 2006 film Strange Culture, was charged with suspected bioterrorism after police came to his home to investigate the death of his wife and discovered biological specimens he was using for an art project about genetically modified foods.

Now, with conference committee negotiations over the final shape of the Farm Bill at a critical stage, Congress needs to change the foreign food-aid program and help avert this calamity. The Bush administration has urged, rightly, that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) be allowed to buy food locally, particularly in Africa, instead of only American-grown food.

By helping Africa develop a self-sustainable agricultural system, we can work toward curing the disease and not just the symptoms.

UCLA basketball, recently left short-handed by the one-and-done departure of freshman All-America center Kevin Love, may soon get bigger and better.

The Dallas Morning News has reported that J’Mison Morgan, a senior center at South Oak Cliff High in Dallas, has asked out of his letter of intent at Louisiana State and is interested in transferring to UCLA.

LANSING, Mich. (AP) – The Michigan Senate on Thursday voted to prohibit smoking in all bars, restaurants and workplaces.

The 25-12 vote, a major development in efforts to enact a smoking ban in the state, came after a Democratic senator asked to discharge legislation from a committee where bills traditionally have gone to die.

Great news, this is my biggest complaint about Ann Arbor since moving from California.

On July 8, 1965, Otis Redding was a young soul singer of modest renown, less than three months removed from releasing his first Top 10 r&b hit single. By July 10, he had become something else entirely: It took only 24 hours to lay down 10 of the 11 songs that would make up Otis Blue: Otis Redding Sings Soul, arguably the 1960s’ greatest studio-recorded soul LP. (The only track not recorded at that time was the #2 hit, “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long”.) Friends and associates had noticed Redding’s growing confidence as a singer, and once Otis Blue hit shelves it was clear he was poised enough to pick up the mantle of the recently slain legend Sam Cooke, up to that point the greatest soul singer in America. He was also prepared to take on the Temptations and the Rolling Stones and B.B.King on their own turf; the only way to top him would be to give one of his original compositions to Aretha Franklin (“Respect”). In the simplest terms: It’s a hell of a record, the crowning achievement of a man who could sound pained and celebratory and tender and gritty and proud all at once, with a voice that everyone from John Fogerty to Swamp Dogg to Cee-lo owes a debt to.

The 2008-2009 home kit from Adidas, now available in the U.S. from soccer.com.