Was it the turkey? More specifically, was it the tryptophan in the turkey?
Well, yes and no. Turkey does contain a large amino acid called tryptophan. So eating turkey puts some tryptophan into your bloodstream. But there are lots of other large amino acids riding around in there too. And, of course, turkey isn't all you gobble up at Thanksgiving. There's a lot of other stuff on the Thanksgiving plate, and a lot of it is carbohydrates.
When you eat carbohydrates, the pancreas releases insulin, and one effect of that is to lower the levels of all the large amino acids in your blood -- except for tryptophan. The upshot? You have relatively high levels of tryptophan in your blood, and in your brain that's converted into the neurotransmitter serotonin, and that can make you sleepy.
More food art for Thanksgiving. Carl Warner explains this shoot:
Although there is a fair amount of waste, there is a lot of food left over which is always shared out with the team, though most of the food used in the sets have either been superglued or pinned, and neither of these makes for good eating.” This fishscape features rocks made of oyster shells and crab claws, boats made of marrows and asparagus, and a shining, silvery, slippery sea of fish
Of the 770 detainees grabbed here and there and flown to Guantánamo,
only 23 have ever been charged with a crime. Of the more than 500 so
far released, many traumatized by those “enhanced” techniques, not one
has received an apology or compensation for their season in hell.
What they got on release was a single piece of paper from the
American government. A U.S. official met one of the dozens of Afghans
now released from Guantánamo and was so appalled by this document that
he forwarded me a copy.
Dated Oct. 7, 2006, it reads as follows:
“An Administrative Review Board has reviewed the information about
you that was talked about at the meeting on 02 December 2005 and the
deciding official in the United States has made a decision about what
will happen to you. You will be sent to the country of Afghanistan.
Your departure will occur as soon as possible.”
That’s it, the one and only record on paper of protracted U.S.
incarceration: three sentences for four years of a young Afghan’s life,
written in language Orwell would have recognized.
We have “the deciding official,” not an officer, general or judge.
We have “the information about you,” not allegations, or accusations,
let alone charges. We have “a decision about what will happen to you,”
not a judgment, ruling or verdict. This is the lexicon of
totalitarianism. It is acutely embarrassing to the United States.
That is why I am thankful above all that the next U.S. commander in
chief is a constitutional lawyer. Nothing has been more damaging to the
United States than the violation of the legal principles at the heart
of the American idea.
I realize that a great deal of the relief I feel at this Thanksgiving is the knowledge that the rule of law has a chance of being restored in America. Thanks for doing your part.
Most people don't enjoy pricey wine more than the cheap stuff:
Individuals who are unaware of the price do not derive more enjoyment from more expensive wine. In a sample of more than 6,000 blind tastings, we find that the correlation between price and overall rating is small and negative, suggesting that individuals on average enjoy more expensive wines slightly less. For individuals with wine training, however, we find indications of a positive relationship between price and enjoyment. Our results are robust to the inclusion of individual fixed effects, and are not driven by outliers: when omitting the top and bottom deciles of the price distribution, our qualitative results are strengthened, and the statistical significance is improved further. Our results indicate that both the prices of wines and wine recommendations by experts may be poor guides for non-expert wine consumer.
When he hears the jingle of my keys as I come into the house, Isaiah
drops whatever he is doing and comes thumping along on his stubby feet,
half crying and half laughing his name for me, which is “Daa.” I pick
him up, he wraps his short arms around my neck, rests his head on my
shoulder, and goes, “Mmmmm.” He makes this noise over and over, like I
am a warm bath, or a piece of candy, or maybe just a song with which he
is harmonizing. Then the other boys crowd around, stepping on my toes,
snuggling up close, grabbing hold like I am the tree of life. They have
this completely backwards, because it is they who are life, but when
this happens I wonder how heaven can be any better.
I have a very explicit reason for wanting to use the word "God." It's the most powerful symbol humanity has created. We have been worshiping God or gods at least since the sacred earth mother 10,000 years ago in Europe. In the Abrahamic tradition, our sense of God has evolved. For example, the Israelites, 4,500 years ago, had Yahweh, who was a ferocious warrior, a law-giving God. That's a very different god than the one that Jesus spoke of, a God of love. So our sense of God just in the Abrahamic tradition has evolved.
The tidiness of Harvey Milk's martyrdom gave the Gus van Sant movie a shape and a narrative. And within that tight frame, he let this life breathe a little with its contradictions and complexities. I remembered that Milk understood two things: that organizing a gay community from the ground up was essential if homosexuals were ever to be free of threat, persecution and violence; and that such a ghetto would never be enough - because the most vulnerable gays and lesbians and transgenders are destined to be born every day in the great heartland between the coasts.
This is the paradox of gay existence that is often the source of so much misunderstanding. The outside world sometimes puts us in a box of cultural otherness - "San Francisco values" - while we are also, simultaneously, as integrated into normality as any heterosexual. Because we are your kids. We grew up in your homes. We can never be totally other when we are also totally mainstream.
And so this movie was really about two gay men and the journey between them. The two gay men are Harvey Milk and Dan White. The two gay men are Barney Frank and Ted Haggard. The two gay men are Tony Kushner and Larry Craig. The two gay men are Frank Kameny and Roy Cohn. And as the years have passed by and HIV churned the gay world as powerfully as plagues and wars often do, these polarities were complemented by any number of variations in between.
What I've tried to express in my life is that there is a part of both these traditions within me and within most gay people.
In view of the historical context, precedents and latest analysis, the most likely groups that may be behind these attacks are the Lashkar e Toiba/SIMI (they now call themselves Indian Mujahideen). These groups are Jihadists, have links to the other organizations in Kashmir but also inside Pakistan with pro-Taliban elements and eventually Al Qaeda. The ideological identification is most likely Jihadist although the group almost surely will issue a more than one release to claim the attack and put it in context.
The Mumbai carnage (AP video above) is distrubing enough. Asia blogger Chris Devonshire-Ellis's analysis of the consequences arguably more so:
If Pakistan truly wishes to turn back the tide of fundamentalism in its country, and stop exporting violence overseas, then it must have proper support and assistance from India. Yet the concern is that if last night's atrocities in Mumbai turn out to be Islamic backed, violence and retribution could ignite across India. The nation possesses a larger Muslim population than Pakistan, and much of the area around the Crawford Bazaar in the heart of Mumbai remains steadfastly Muslim – Mosques and Minarets abound, as do bushy beards, skull caps and women wearing burkhas. Anti-Muslim feelings here if uncontrolled in the wake of these terrorist attacks would be devastating. Tens of thousands could die.
The SOFA in Iraq has passed. Last minute haggling from nervous Sunnis managed to come to some resolution, although the details of that negotiation are not yet clear. Perhaps of concern: the voting did not convey a sense of unanimity, as Sistani wanted, with only 198 deputies showing up out of 275, meaning a 149 out of 275 margin. The good news is that the US gets to leave the plave by 2011, as the Iraqis insist. The key test will be the stability of the place, if any, as US troops withdraw. We may have a fragile national consensus to get rid of the occupiers, but we do not have a serious reason to believe that the deepest issues between Kurds, Sunni and Shia have been resolved.
Alexis Madrigal applauds science for super-sizing your turkey dinner:
The traditional Thanksgiving dinner reflects the enormous amount of change that foods and the food systems that produce them have undergone, particularly over the last 50 years. Nearly all varieties of crops have experienced large genetic changes as big agriculture companies hacked their DNA to provide greater hardiness and greater yields. The average pig, turkey, cow and chicken have gotten larger at an astounding rate, and they grow with unprecedented speed. A modern turkey can mature to a given weight at twice the pace of its predecessors.
In comparison with old-school agriculture or single-gene genetic modification, these changes border on breathtaking. Imagine your children reaching full maturity at 10 years old.
"So, Kathleen Parker has determined that getting rid of social conservatives and shelving the values they fight for is the solution to what ails the Republican Party (“Giving Up on God,” Nov. 19). Isn’t that a little like Benedict Arnold handing George Washington a battle plan to win the Revolution?
Whatever she once was, Ms. Parker is certainly not a conservative anymore, having apparently realized it’s a lot easier to be popular among your journalistic peers when your keyboard tilts to the left," - James Dobson.
Tell it to these guys, buddy. Notice the reflexive equation of dissent with treason. It gives you an idea of how fundamentalist patriarchs view political movements.
"Sen. Obama cannot possibly believe, and doesn't even act as if he
believes, that he can be elected president of the United States next
year," - Hitch, September 24, 2007.
"[P]olarizing the contest into whites versus blacks will work just fine for Hillary," - Dick Morris, preaching what he once practised, January 23, 2008.
One big worry stifling activity in the markets is that if the government is doing so much lending and backstopping now, it's going
to need to do a lot of borrowing, too, to finance those efforts. And if
the government is seeking lenders to buy its debt, what is going to
happen to other borrowers looking for lenders?
As the Federal Reserve and Treasury act to rescue borrowers, Simons said, ''they're starving other private sector borrowers.''
And so the attempt to resolve the credit crunch also crunches credit.
Tim Butcher says mineral wealth is behind the violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo:
Those who try to explain the current fighting in terms of tribal differences, between the Tutsi-associated Banyamulenge of eastern Congo and some Hutu-linked groups, are missing the point. Yes, the spillover from the Rwandan genocide of 1994 affected this region. But, in a state as failed as the Congo, relatively small tribal frictions can be turned into a national crises. And the current crisis needs to be understood, as it was in King Leopold's day, as a battle over Congo's rich natural resources.
That was the cry that went up from the crowd at the Federalist Society dinner where attorney general Mukasey fainted. It came from a Washington state Supreme Court judge who, unlike so many now on the "right", still believes in liberty:
In his speech, Mukasey offered a defense against criticisms about the Bush administration's policies in the war on terrorism. Sanders
said he "passionately" disagrees with those policies and felt compelled
to say so. Sanders, who is a Federalist Society member, said that he
wasn't heckling Mukasey, and left shortly after his outburst. "I believe we must speak our conscience in
moments that demand it, even if we are but one voice," he said in a
statement Tuesday.
"If Israel is to be browbeaten into committing suicide, however, it is
essential that the fingerprints of the Israel-haters are not found at the
scene of the crime and that it is carried out instead by someone with
impeccable credentials as an Israel supporter. That person may well be
Hillary Clinton who, if appointed Secretary of State, will be expected to
finish the job her husband failed to do and force a Palestine state into
being," - Melanie Phillips, who appears to have gone off her rocker.
"When he is forced to fight, Sen. Obama's inexperience shows. His record, slight as it is, is tough to defend.
He's got a glass jaw, and he will fall into the trap of identity politics.
In fact, he already has. The "could we beat Obama?" conversation is purely academic. It's over. The Clintons have defeated him already, because he is leaving South Carolina as "the black candidate."
He won't win another state. Even worse, in November Hillary will carry 90 percent of the black vote, despite their cynical, race-based campaign against the first viable black presidential candidate," - Michael Graham, January 26, 2008, revealing why NRO had such a good year.
I was reading your post about
George Weigel's view of Catholics who voted for Obama, and it reminded
me of something. Weigel and people like him seem to think that
ideology defines who is good and who is evil in our world. It would be
helpful for people who think this way to remember that the worst spy in
American history was a conservative, devout Catholic family man who was
a member of Opus Dei (Robert Hanssen) and that one of the heroes of the
Cold War was an alcoholic, womanizing, pro-choice, liberal congressman
from Texas who was accused of recreational drug use (Charlie Wilson).
History shows us repeatedly that ideology is meaningless when it comes
to determining good and evil in the world.
'Pumpkin', one of two turkeys pardoned by US President George W. Bush watches as the annual turkey pardoning ceremony on November 26, 2008, at the White House in Washington, DC. By Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty.
As a nonsmoker, I always figured cigarettes were an indulgence run amok. But there is something tangible about need, even when it's self-created. It feels good to need. There's the moral confusion -- do I need or do I want?
And three weeks in, on a day when I smoked fourteen cigarettes, I realized that I could finally enjoy one following sex.
"This year's primary results show no sign that Obama will reverse this
trend should he win the nomination. In West Virginia and Kentucky, as
well as Ohio and Pennsylvania, blue collar white voters sent him down
to defeat by overwhelming margins. A recent Gallup poll report has
argued that claims about Obama's weaknesses among white voters and
blue collar voters have been exaggerated - yet its indisputable
figures showed Obama running four percentage points below Kerry's
anemic support among whites four years ago... Given that Obama's vote in the primaries, apart from
African-Americans, has generally come from affluent white suburbs and
university towns, the Gallup figures presage a Democratic disaster
among working-class white voters in November should Obama be the
nominee," - Sean Wilentz, Clinton tool, May 23, 2008.
Yesterday I called a woman’s spouse her boyfriend.
She says, correcting me, “He’s my husband,” “Oh,” I say, “I no longer recognize marriage.”
The impact is obvious. I tried it on a man who has been in a relationship for years,
“How’s your longtime companion, Jill?” “She’s my wife!” “Yeah, well, my beliefs don’t recognize marriage.”
Fun.
And instant, eyebrow-raising recognition. Suddenly the majority gets to
feel what the minority feels. In a moment they feel what it’s like to
have their relationship downgraded, and to have a much
taken-for-granted right called into question because of another’s
beliefs.
I don't think any heterosexual in America has really ever questioned his or her right to marry - or the expectation of social status it brings with it. This thought experiment helps jolt the mind into seeing the world through the other's eyes. Which is rarely a bad thing.
Gilks and colleagues used data from South Africa and Malawi. In their model, people were voluntarily tested each year and immediately given drugs if they tested positive for HIV, regardless of whether they were sick.
Within 10 years, HIV infections dropped by 95 percent. Other initiatives like safe-sex education and male circumcision were also used. The strategy would cut the estimated number of AIDS deaths between 2008 and 2050 by about half, from about 8.7 million to 3.9 million, leaving only sporadic HIV cases.
I must say that I’ve been disturbed by the gay community’s approach in reproving the Mormon Church’s for its financial role in the “Yes on 8” campaign. Though I have little sympathy for the actions undertaken by the church to thwart marriage equality in California, I do not believe that picketing in front of its temples or boycotting the entire state of Utah will do much to combat its promotion of intolerance. If anything, these sorts of actions will only escalate tension between conservative religious groups and our embattled community. Yes, we must fight back, but we must also fight smart. Too often, our actions as a community have been motivated by a desire for mass personal catharsis, rather than by an intelligent evaluation of what means would best further our cause.
As someone who was skeptical of Obama’s moderate posturing during the campaign, I have to admit that I am gobsmacked by these appointments, most of which could just as easily have come from a President McCain.
Global reactions to Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri's controversial condemnation of U.S. President-Elect Barack Obama as a "House Slave" (or, alternatively, "House Negro") have begun to pour in -- including via the top jihad web forums used by Al-Qaida to disseminate its propaganda. Though hardcore Al-Qaida supporters have predictably dismissed any criticism of Dr. al-Zawahiri and are fiercely backing his choice of words, there is a rather ironic (if not entirely unfamiliar) twist to this issue. After observing international press reporting on the incident, these same supporters are now bitterly attacking the media for its "unfair" pro-Obama bias and for deliberately "confusing" the meaning of al-Zawahiri's message.
Isn't it great that we are finally winning the p.r. war against these murderous loons?
And the relevance to me
With that issue,
As we spoke
About Africa and some
Of the countries
There that were
Kind of the people succumbing
To the dictators
And the corruption
Of some collapsed governments
On the
Continent,
The relevance
Was Alaska’s.
A number of people think that my post was meant as a defense of the Iraq war. I have long criticized the idea of humanitarian intervention and have never defended the Iraq war, which was certainly a mistake on the basis of national-interest considerations. But many people, including likely members of the Obama administration (such as Susan Rice, who has advocated a military intervention in Sudan), believe that humanitarian wars are justified. The humanitarian effect of a particular war is an empirical question. The answer in the Iraq case will help determine the Obama administration’s ability and willingness to launch humanitarian interventions in places like Sudan.
(Ethnic cleansing in Baquba, Iraq, under US occupation, by Ali Yussef/AFP/Getty.)
He wants to try and push Iran-US relations into a constructive direction. He wants to change the game in Afghanistan -- and the answer will not be a military-dominant strategy. He wants to try and stabilize Iraq in a negotiated, confidence building process that includes Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey and other regional forces. And he wants to support a big push on Israel-Palestine peace and reconfigure relations between much of the Arab League and Israel.
And Obama asked him. And trusts him. There will be more Scowcroft under Obama than under Bush.
"All of these articles about his boyhood in Indonesia and his life in
Hawaii are geared towards showing his background is diverse,
multicultural and putting that in a new light.
Save it for 2050
... I cannot imagine America electing a president during a time of war
who is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and
values.
The right knows Obama is unelectable except against Attila the Hun," - Mark Penn, March 19, 2007.
Keeping Bob Gates as Secretary of Defense was the most dramatic signal
Barack Obama could have sent that he intends to implement major changes
in defense policy. That may sound counterintuitive, but it has the
virtue of being true.
Boris Johnson's novelist sister Rachel has won the prize:
Johnson
was singled out for her novel's slew of animal metaphors, including
comparing her male protagonist's "light fingers" to "a moth caught
inside a lampshade", and his tongue to "a cat lapping up a dish of
cream so as not to miss a single drop". Literary Review deputy editor
Tom Fleming was also disturbed by the heroine's "grab, to put him, now
angrily slapping against both our bellies, inside".
"You sort of
think it might be a typo, but she is actually referring to his penis as
him. It's a mixture of cliché and euphemism, but it's also very
spirited – A plus for effort," he said. "All the entries were equally
awful this year, but Rachel Johnson had the worst metaphors, and the
worst animal metaphors."
I hope Obama's advisers read this excellent and balanced piece by Melinda Henneberger on the need to protect Catholic hospitals from being forced to provide abortion services by the Freedom of Choice Act. It's not clear FOCA has a chance of becoming law, but I share Melinda's worries:
At the very moment when Obama and his party have won the trust of so
many Catholics who favor at least some limits on abortion, I hope he
does not prove them wrong. I hope he does not make a fool out of that
nice Doug Kmiec, who
led the pro-life charge on his behalf. I hope he does not spit on the
rest of us—though I don't take him for the spitting sort—on his way in
the door. I hope that his appointment of Ellen Moran, formerly of
EMILY's List, as his communications director is followed by the
appointment of some equally good Democrats who hold pro-life views. By
supporting and signing the current version of FOCA, Obama would
reignite the culture war he so deftly sidestepped throughout this
campaign. This is a fight he just doesn't need at a moment when there
is no shortage of other crises to manage.
What Obama needs is to find a way to champion an aggressive policy of reducing the number of abortions. Each and every one is a tragedy.
I've long shared your fiscal conservatism. But in the
light of the current troubles, I can't say that I fully agree with the
priorities you set in your post yesterday. There is a point at which the dangers of fiscal
conservatism, in the form of making people suffer fully the
consequences of their actions, outweigh the long-term harms likely to
arise from vigorous government intervention.
You quote Zakaria saying
"All of these tools [of governmental intereference]
have long-term effects that are extremely troublesome, but they are
nothing compared with the potential collapse of the financial system."
Not being an economist, I can't evaluate how serious the risk is of a
complete financial collapse, but let us assume for the moment that it
is non-zero.
Rauch calls for a culturally transformative, non-victim-based federal strategy:
The old civil rights model, with its roots in an era when homosexuals were politically friendless pariahs, focuses on such matters as protection from bigoted employers and hate crimes. In truth, for most gay Americans the civic responsibility agenda, with its focus on service to family (marriage), children (mentoring and adoption), and country (the military), is more relevant and important.
November 23, 2008 - November 29, 2008
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