Huffington (Issue #41)

THE FAT-FREE FALLACY | HAMAS, HAGEL & HOOKERS | NBA NAPS

THE HUFFINGTON POST MAGAZINE

MARCH 24, 2013

DEADLY CONNECTION How the iPhone Became an Object Worth Killing For

03.24.13 #41 CONTENTS

Enter POINTERS: Hillary 2012? ... 10 Years in Iraq JASON LINKINS: The One-Day Story That Ate the World Q&A: Sheryl Sandberg Talks Leaning In HEADLINES MOVING IMAGE

SWIPE

Voices DR. MARK HYMAN: Diet Soda Makes You Fat

APPLE PICKING The modern-day crime wave sweeping the country.

BY GERRY SMITH

STACEY KRAMER: The Gift Cancer Leaves Its Survivors QUOTED

FROM TOP: ILLUSTRATION BY MARTIN GEE; CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES

Exit 25Q: James ‘Alien’ Franco in Spring Breakers STRESS LESS: NBA Napping TASTE TEST: The Best Budget Cheddar in the East TFU

BEYOND HOOKERS, HAMAS & HAGEL Conservative media’s quest for credibility.

BY MICHAEL CALDERONE

FROM THE EDITOR: Crime Waves and Echo Chambers ON THE COVER: Illustration for

Huffington by Troy Dunham

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

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Crime Waves and Echo Chambers N THIS WEEK’S issue of Huffington, Gerry Smith gives us an indepth report on how smartphones and tablets, especially Apple products, have created an entirely new — and very dangerous — criminal ecosystem. Smith shines a light on each part of this new global phenomenon, and shows how the story continues — for both the phones and the victims — long after the original crime.

He introduces us to Hwangbum Yang, a 26-year-old Korean immigrant who was just starting to realize his dreams. Having worked his way up as a cook at the Museum of Modern Art’s restaurant, he carried a notepad to write down the dishes he was going to serve in his own restaurant one day. He also carried his iPhone, which his sister Sunah gave to him two years ago. In April of last year, he was killed for it as he returned home from work.

“Yang’s murder stands as a chill-

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ing example of a modern-day crime wave sweeping the country,” writes Smith. “The spike in robberies has grown so pronounced that police have coined a term for such crimes: Apple picking.”

It’s a global market worth $30 billion a year, attracting criminal gangs from all over the world: from Mexican drug cartels to organized crime rings to the militant group Hezbollah.

And as Smith shows, stopping the robberies is not easy, requiring unprecedented and never-ending joint efforts between phone

Join the conversation on Twitter and Facebook

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

makers, carriers and governments.

“It’s a bit like squeezing a balloon,” Jack Wraith, chairman of the UK’s Mobile Industry Crime Action Forum, tells Smith. “You squeeze it in one place and it pops out somewhere else.”

Meanwhile, there’s also a painful trail of human grief. Hwangbum’s father still sleeps in his son’s bed, and his mother prayed at the scene of his shooting each day for four weeks. “It’s like he’s always beside me,” she told Smith, fighting back tears. “I miss him so much.”

Elsewhere in the issue, Michael Calderone shows us how another story has continued after the election. As he reports, it’s not just the Republican Party that’s struggling to regain its footing, but conservative media as well.

“While outlets like The Daily Caller, Breitbart News and the Washington Free Beacon have sprouted and, in some cases, prospered during President Barack Obama’s administration,” writes Calderone, “concern is mounting that they and others in the conservative media universe are shedding their credibility by focusing more on supposed scandals than report-

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ing the basics of who, what, when, where, why and how.”

Calderone takes us inside the conservative media world, introducing us to those who are trying to reform it, along with those being blamed for turning it into an echo chamber with diminThe spike ishing influence in in robberies the mainstream has grown so media. pronounced Robert Costa is one that police of the former. As the have coined a newly-minted Washterm for such ington editor of the crimes: Apple National Review, the picking.”

27-year-old rising star wants to focus on reporting. “Conservative journalists are recognizing that they have to offer more to readers beyond talking points and columns,” he tells Calderone. “I think that’s the evolution right now — moving toward narrative journalism, investigative journalism. It’s a growing process. There will be some growing pains.”

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HILLARY CLINTON 1 ENDORSES GAY MARRIAGE Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced on Monday that

she supports gay marriage, fueling speculation that she may run for president in 2016. In a six-minute video released by the Human Rights Campaign, Clinton said: “I believe America is at its best when we champion the freedom and dignity of every human being. That’s who we are. It’s in our DNA.” She added that LGBT Americans “are full and equal citizens and deserve the rights of citizenship. That includes marriage.”

A record 58 percent of Americans believe gay marriage should be legal, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll released this week.

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RNC REPORT SHOWS VOTERS SEE PARTY AS ‘OUT OF TOUCH’

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The Republican National Committee released a report this week titled the Growth and Opportunity Project, which showed voters view the party as “narrow minded” and “out of touch.”

RNC Chair Reince Priebus called it an “autopsy” report that shows the GOP’s 2012 failures and lays out the ways the party needs to change. “If we don’t start now we’re not going to have any more success in four years, eight years, or 12 years,” he said on CBS’ Face the Nation.

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NEWTOWN KILLER REPORTEDLY KEPT SPREADSHEET OF MURDERERS

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10 YEARS AFTER IRAQ, POLL FINDS LOW SUPPORT FOR WAR

Adam Lanza, who killed 26 people in December at Sandy Hook Elementary School, reportedly kept records on mass murderers for years. Investigators found a “chilling spreadsheet 7 feet long and 4 feet wide that required a special printer, a document that contained Lanza’s obsessive, extensive research — in nine-point font — about mass murders of the past, and even attempted murders,” the New York Daily News reports.

Despite the large number of casualties from the Iraq War, most Americans don’t know anyone who was injured or killed there, a new HuffPost/YouGov poll found.

Only 6 percent said they know someone who was killed in the war, while 12 percent said they know someone who was wounded. The poll also found low support for the war, with 54 percent of Americans saying it was not worth fighting and only 24 percent saying it was worthwhile.

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GLOBAL WARMING HAS DOUBLED RISK OF KATRINA-LIKE SURGE

A new study reveals that global warming has doubled the risk of storm surges like the one brought on by Hurricane Katrina, Climate Central reports. “Our study shows that extreme (storm) surges become more frequent in a warmer climate, and that the relative change in frequency is much more pronounced for the most extreme events,” the study’s lead author Aslak Grimsted told Climate Central. Storm surges are responsible for the most deaths during hurricanes, the organization reports.

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WESTBORO BAPTIST CHURCH GETS A RAINBOW SURPRISE

THAT’S VIRAL ‘AFTER EVER AFTER’ WILL BLOW YOUR MIND

Aaron Jackson, a founder of the charity Planting Piece, recently bought a house across from the Westboro Baptist Church’s compound in Topeka, Kan. — and this week painted it rainbow to match the gay pride flag. The project is the first in a planned campaign against the church, which is known for its anti-gay agenda.

“We want this house to be a message that where there’s hate, there’s also love,” Jackson said. “But we also want to raise awareness and capital, and we want to put all that money into creating and sustaining anti-bullying programs.”

A selection of the week’s most talked-about stories.

HEADLINES TO VIEW FULL STORIES

PORN STARS GO WITHOUT MAKEUP

JUST TRY NOT TO CRY AFTER READING THIS

WOULD THE MINIMUM WAGE BE $22 IF IT KEPT UP WITH PRODUCTIVITY?

WHAT MAKES A SHAMROCK SHAKE GREEN, ANYWAY?

LOOKING FORWARD IN ANGST

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JASON LINKINS

WHITE HOUSE TOURS: THE ONE-DAY STORY THAT ATE THE WORLD

IFE ISN’T EASY. It’s filled with many inconveniences. The train doesn’t run on time.

You shelled out a few hundred bucks to see a Broadway show and you got the understudy. There’s raay-ayy-ayyn, on your wedding day. Bummer, dude. I feel for you.

Of course, life is also filled with what I would call “problems.” You get furloughed from your job at a time when money’s tight. You lose

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the housing assistance that’s helping keep you and your family in your apartment when you’re unemployed. It’s real pain that forces some harrowing choices.

So, where on the inconvenienceto-problem spectrum would you put “a bunch of White House tours have been canceled”? Well, the media has decided it’s the most dire crisis the country is facing, during this time of sequestration.

The White House tours situation is the one-day story that ate the world. Aggrieved members of Congress, bereft of one of their

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Enter go-to options to keep cronies and constituents happy, have inflamed the Beltway media into a cyclical bout of elite whining. The White House press corps buffeted Jay Carney with eight questions about the tours at his March 13 briefing.

Keep in mind all members of the White House press corps are ostensibly real-live human beings with free will and the tacit permission to ask Carney just about any question they want in the world. Also keep in mind it’s long been established that the reason the tours were canceled indefinitely is because it’s keeping the Secret Service from having to furlough more employees during sequestration than they would have otherwise been required to.

In a perfect world, we could have a fully staffed Secret Service and White House tours. But given the choice between making tourists in D.C. participate in any one of thousands of alternative local attractions, and furloughing those who support the best security force in the history of the Western World, what would you choose?

The answer is somehow not as obvious to Beltway reporters as it should be. In a twist I can only describe as deeply strange, the press has decided that pursuing the

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White House tours story is something approaching journalistic heroism. The galactically useless Washington Post editorial board says the coverage of this event in the lives of Beltway elites has earned the White House a “proper comeuppance” for sequestration “hostage taking,” the idea being that Washington’s shrewd reporters have seen through Obama’s attempts to manufacture pain through automatic spending

... The press has decided that pursuing the White House tours story is something approaching journalistic heroism.” cuts and — by golly! — they are not falling for it.

All of which would be really neat-o, if it weren’t for the fact that sequestration is causing normal human Americans actual, life-altering pain. Beyond this cloistered Capitol Hill redoubt, local news teams have picked up on these stories. We have, ourselves, endeavored to hand the reporters who cover the White House a litany of scoops about the effects sequestration is already having. If the goal here is simply to give

Enter the Obama administration a “comeuppance” for “bureaucratic hostage taking,” I daresay there’s plenty of examples of furloughed employees and airport closures and canceled tuition assistance and forestalled corruption trial work that will help in that effort. And unlike the White House tours story, coverage of these stories would actually have some measure of journalistic merit.

The argument for covering the White House tours non-story in this all-in, claws-out approach is that it catches the Obama administration out in a gamble, that’s now been ferreted out by Beltway reporters. And really, that’s terrific. Bully for them. Gold stars all around. You guys found yourselves a real, live political stunt.

But I’ve got news for you guys!

The sequestration itself is a political stunt. The super committee was a political stunt. The SimpsonBowles commission was a political stunt. The round of debt-ceiling hostage-taking that put us on the path to the sequestration in the first place was a political stunt.

Heck, the entire frenzy over deficit “grand bargaining” at a time when we are experiencing mortal peril in the form of a massive unemployment crisis is a political stunt.

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And the hilarious thing about the cancellation of the White House tours is that maybe the gamble worked. I can’t say whether it was an administration priority to engineer a sequestration-related inconvenience that would demonstrate that the hopelessly cosseted Washington media was incapable of evincing any concern beyond the purely parochial. But if that was the intention, mission accomplished.

[The White House press corps are] human beings with free will and the tacit permission to ask Carney just about any question they want in the world.”

If there’s good news, it’s that your Congresscritters, having gotten what mileage they can out of the tours story, have now taken to NIMBY-ish whining about how the sequestration is affecting life in their districts, and the trajectory of the story is finally headed into the world of real problems. Perhaps the White House press corps will now graduate to adult concerns, like the thousands of hard-working Americans who will lose their housing assistance.

Q&A

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Sheryl Sandberg on Women’s ‘Likeability’ Problem in the Office

“Make people aware of that, because if we understand it, the next time someone says, ‘she’s too aggressive,’ we can say, wait a minute — is she?”

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg released a book this month — Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead — that opened up a heated discussion on women in leadership positions.

FOR THE FULL INTERVIEW, VISIT HUFFPOST LIVE

HEADLINES

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The Week That Was TAP IMAGE TO ENLARGE, TAP EACH DATE FOR FULL ARTICLE ON THE HUFFINGTON POST

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Minamisanriku, Japan 03.12.2013 Reiko Takahashi, 78, who lost her house and two fishing boats in the 9.0 magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami two years ago, prepares seaweed that she collects at the Tomari port.

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Brno, Czech Republic 03.12.2013 A member of the dancing club Filigran performs in the special floor dance during the Week of Fine Art. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK

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Caracas, Venezuela 03.15.2013 The coffin of late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is taken from the Military Academy to the former “4 de Febrero” barracks in a final march to honor the leftist leader a month before elections are held to pick his successor.

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Mbare, Zimbabwe 03.17.2013 A man makes a basket with packaging straps, which are sold in the U.S. for $10 or less.

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Olga Vilukhina of Russia leaves her first shooting range after placing fourth during the women’s 12.5 km. mass start at the IBU World Cup Biathlon.

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Hamar Weyne District, Mogadishu 03.16.2013 A Somali man carries a large sailfish to a fish market.

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Muscat, Oman 03.18.2013 A man stands with a pink horse ahead of its appearance in a cavalry event in honor of the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall’s visit, on the eighth day of their tour of the Middle East.

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03.18.2013 In this photo taken with a fisheye lens, Boston Bruins’ Nathan Horton (left) celebrates a goal by Andrew Ference against Washington Capitals’ goalie Michal Neuvirth during the second period of an NHL hockey game.

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Beijing, China 03.14.2013 A delegate uses a smartphone to take pictures before a plenary session of the National People’s Congress held at the Great Hall of the People.

Tap here for a more extensive look at the week on The Huffington Post.

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Voices

MARK HYMAN

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Diet Soda Makes You Fat (and Other Food Industry Secrets) HOW DO YOU LOSE WEIGHT? Substitute diet drinks for sugary drinks. Eat low-fat foods. Just eat less of the bad foods — it’s all about the calories. We are told, “Just have more willpower.”

These ideas are false. They are food and diet industry propaganda that make and keep us fat and sick. Lies by the food industry combined with bad government policy based on food industry lobbying are the major cause of our obesity and diabetes epidemic.

Now, more than 35 percent of Americans are obese, and almost 70 percent are overweight. This is not an accident but the result of careful marketing and money in politics.

We are told it is all about making better choices. If we all took more personal responsibility, we could stop this obesity and diabetes epidemic. We have been told there are no good or bad foods, that the key to weight loss is moderation. And, of course, if we all just exercised more, all of us would lose weight. These ideas hold us hostage.

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Voices What the Food and Diet Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know Diet Soda and Diet Drinks Make You Fat and Cause Type 2 Diabetes If losing weight were all about the calories, then consuming diet drinks would seem like a good idea. That’s certainly what CocaCola wants us to believe in their new ad highlighting their efforts to fight obesity. They proudly promote the fact that they have 180 low- or no-calorie drinks and that they cut sugared drinks in schools by 90 percent.

Is that a good thing? In fact, it may be worse than having us all drink regular Coke (and the other food giants making diet drinks also push the same propaganda).

A new 14-year study of 66,118 women (supported by many other previous studies) found that the opposite seems to be true. Diet drinks may be worse than sugar-sweetened drinks, which are worse than fruit juices (but only fresh-squeezed fruit juices).

The study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, discovered some frightening facts that should make us all

MARK HYMAN

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swear off diet drinks and products.

Diet sodas raised the risk of diabetes more than sugar-sweetened sodas!

Women who drank one 12-ounce diet soda had a 33 percent increased risk of Type 2 diabetes, and women who drank one 20-ounce soda had a 66 percent increased risk.

The average diet soda drinker consumes three diet drinks a day.

Artificial sweeteners are hundreds to thousands of times sweeter than regular sugar, activating our genetically-programmed preference for sweet taste more than any other substance.”

Diet drinks may be even worse than regular sugar-sweetened sodas! How does that happen?

Artificial sweeteners are hundreds to thousands of times sweeter than regular sugar, activating our genetically-programmed preference for sweet taste more than any other substance.

They trick your metabolism into thinking sugar is on its way. This causes your body to pump out in-

Voices sulin, the fat storage hormone, which lays down more belly fat.

It also confuses and slows your metabolism down, so you burn fewer calories every day.

It makes you hungrier and crave even more sugar and starchy carbs like bread and pasta.

Eating Fat Does Not Make You Fat The diet and food industry has brainwashed us to eat fat-free foods, which seems like common sense. Eating fats makes you fat.

Right? But the science tells us otherwise — not all calories are created equal. And even though fat has more calories per gram (9 calories vs. 4 calories of carbs and protein), eating fat can help you lose weight.

Science has proven that eating fat doesn’t make you fat — sugar does. And it is sugar, not fat, that raises your cholesterol despite what people and most doctors still believe.

A 20-ounce soda is fat-free, but that doesn’t make it a health food.

If cookies were fat-free, then you can eat the whole bag, right?

But the fat is replaced with flour and sugar, and the result we now have is one in two adults with diabesity — that’s pre-dia-

MARK HYMAN

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betes or Type 2 diabetes — and almost one in four teenagers with pre-diabetes or Type 2 diabetes.

So why does eating fat-free make you fat and diabetic?

In a recent Harvard study, Dr. David Ludwig found that in two groups eating exactly the same calories, the group that had the low-fat diet (which means higher in sugars and starches) burned 300 calories less per day. Their

The diet and food industry has brainwashed us to eat fat-free foods, which seems like common sense. Eating fats makes you fat. Right? But the science tells us otherwise.” metabolism was slower than the group eating the higher fat and higher protein diet.

If you ate the higher-fat, higher-protein diet (of exactly the same calories), it is the equivalent of running for one hour a day. In other words, if you just swap out sugars and starches for good quality fats and protein, it will be like you added an hour of free exer-

Voices cise a day to your life without any change in calorie intake!

Bottom Line: The key point here is that all calories are not the same. Swap out sugar and starch for good fats such as nuts, avocados, olive oil, and grass-fed animal products or wild fish. Be a “qualitarian.” Focus on quality, on real food, and the rest takes care of itself.

Exercise Your Way to Weight Loss The food industry and diet industry push exercise. Even Michelle Obama’s childhood obesity initiative focuses on exercise in its name, Let’s Move. But it should be really called Let’s Eat Real Food.

Here’s why. Sugar-sweetened drinks make up about 15 percent of our calorie intake every day. But you have to walk 4.5 miles to burn off one 20-ounce soda, which contains 15 teaspoons of sugar.

You have to run four miles a day for one week to burn off one supersize meal. If you have one supersize meal everyday you would have to run a marathon every day!

Drinking 32 ounces of Gatorade after a workout is a dumb idea, unless you run around like Kobe Bryant on the basketball

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court for 48 minutes. There are better ways to replenish your energy and electrolytes than colored sugar water with a few minerals sprinkled in.

Bottom Line: Exercise is critical to long-term health and weight loss, but you can’t exercise your way out of a bad diet.

Thankfully, science is shedding

Drinking 32 ounces of Gatorade after a workout is a dumb idea, unless you run around like Kobe Bryant on the basketball court for 48 minutes.” light on the ideas that keep us fat and sick. Unfortunately, scientists don’t have billion-dollar marketing budgets. But we as a community of thinking people wanting real information can speak out, can spread the word and turn the tide of obesity and chronic disease together.

Mark Hyman, M.D. is a practicing physician and founder of The UltraWellness Center.

Voices

STACEY KRAMER

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HEALTHY LIVING

COURTESY OF TED

How My Brain Tumor Was the Most Unexpected Gift I Received RECENTLY, I SPOKE to a class of at-risk high school kids. These kids, mostly non-white, have faced many different types of challenges. Some come from abu-

sive parents. Some don’t have parents. Some don’t have a bed.

Nearly all rely on the donated food they get at school as their daily sustenance. Every one faces economic challenges of varying proportions. For a few, it takes several buses and nearly two

Stacy Kramer during her presentation at the 2013 TED conference.

Voices hours to get to school.

These kids are barely making it through high school — at a time when many of my peers’ kids are celebrating acceptances to upperechelon colleges. This school is their last chance. Simply getting to school on a daily basis is a hardship when you don’t have any money or any food. Or anyone to motivate you to do so.

When I asked which of these students had experienced some adversity in their lives, all of them raised their hands. When I asked whether they felt these challenges had made them a better person, they nearly all raised their hands again.

I didn’t grow up like they did.

I’ve had a relatively privileged life. School was easy for me. I never had to worry about having a family who loved me, or food to eat, clothes or a bed. I attended one of those top-tier colleges. I’ve always been lucky.

But I now believe that most of us, if we live long enough, will experience one of those unexpected events in life that creates a seismic shift in perspective. This happened to me recently, and is the subject of my TEDTalk. I was 43, about to celebrate my first wedding anni-

STACEY KRAMER

versary with a wonderful guy. We had successfully negotiated a second marriage and a blending of two families. I was the happiest and healthiest that I had ever been.

The source of my cataclysm is better revealed in the short three-minute TEDTalk above, as I don’t want to spoil the story for you. I’m guessing if you’ve made it this far into this post, you might be willing to invest the time to watch the video clip.

Sharing my story at TED was a remarkable opportunity. The very thought of being on stage gave me sweaty heart palpitations — and that is why I knew I had to do it. I was so nervous the teleprompter wouldn’t work that I bribed the AV techs with good chocolate, hoping they would pay extra attention to

TED and The Huffington Post are excited to bring you TEDWeekends, a curated weekend program that introduces a powerful “idea worth spreading” every Friday, anchored in an exceptional TEDTalk. This week’s TEDTalk is accompanied by an original blog post from the featured speaker, along with new op-eds, thoughts and responses from the HuffPost community. Watch the talk above, read the blog post and tell us your thoughts below. Become part of the conversation!

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COURTESY OF STACEY KRAMER

the prep for my insignificant short talk. When I walked onto the stage, the screens were blank, and they remained that way.

I wanted to share the positive side of a tough ordeal, and maybe inspire others to be able to see bad experiences as growth opportunities. I am very aware that not every cloud has a silver lining. I get it. I don’t even know anyone who has experienced what I went through without some lingering physical disability, at best. I lost a friend and colleague last spring. His diagnosis was way worse than mine.

He was not so lucky. He left behind a beautiful wife and two young children. I doubt they feel that losing him was a growth opportunity.

But maybe, too, there are some unexpected and unwanted things in life that will bring you down if you let them, and instead it’s possible to shift your perspective and see the positives. I still feel lucky, even more so, and I wouldn’t now

MORE ON TED WEEKENDS LIFE LESSONS FROM A CAT SCAN

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STACEY KRAMER

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THE COST OF MY CATASTROPHE

A CAT scan of Kramer’s brain tumor.

choose to not have the experience that I did. I know that the next time I may not be so lucky, but until that time comes I will strive to embrace all the positives in my life and try not to dwell on the negatives.

Stacey Kramer is the founder of BrandPlay, a boutique naming firm in Boulder, Colo.

A selection of the week’s related blogs HEADLINES TO VIEW BLOGS ABOUT THIS WEEK’S THEME

CAN TRAUMA REALLY BE A GIFT?

TO HELL AND BACK WITH GIFTS

‘THE SILENT ARTILLERY OF TIME’

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“ If only those groups could be as lucky as Adam to make a career out of standing next to funnier people.”

— HuffPost commenter SilverShrimp0,

“ We can talk behind his back.

I cannot wait!”

on Adam Carolla asking Gavin Newsom, what’s wrong with blacks and Latinos?

— Hilaria Thomas Baldwin

told Us Weekly about teaching her baby-girl-to-be to speak Spanish, even though her husband Alec doesn’t speak it

“ I’m not a sixth-grader. I’m reasonably well-educated, and thank you for the lecture.”

— Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.),

visibly upset, to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) during a heated Senate Judiciary Committee debate over assault weapons ban legislation

“ I for one refuse to have kids if I have to work. I’m not interested in being superwoman.”

— HuffPost commenter Sue_She, on a U.S. study stating that women’s lifespan is declining for some

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I laughed, believe me. Thirty years on television ...

I really laughed.

— Diane Sawyer,

on the mockery she received on Election Night during an interview with Harper’s Bazaar

“ These things right here are worth $5 million!”

— Jennifer Love Hewitt told Us Weekly as she pointed to her chest

“ Treason wrapped in a flag.”

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SWIPE

How the iPhone Became an Object Worth Killing For

By GERRY SMITH

MARTIN GEE

WHEN SUNAH YANG BOUGHT AN iPHONE

for her brother two years ago, she warned him about the white earbuds. ¶ Never wear them at night, she told him. They make you a target for thieves. ¶ “Obviously, he didn’t listen,” she said in a recent interview. ¶ Around midnight on April 19, 2012, Hwangbum Yang, a 26-year-old Korean immigrant and aspiring chef, finished work as a cook at an upscale Manhattan restaurant. He rode the No. 1 train uptown to the Bronx and started walking home in the rain.

COURTESY OF SUNAH YANG

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He was two blocks from his house when a man holding a gun approached him, according to police. The man — whom police would later identify as Dominick Davis — demanded Yang’s iPhone. When he refused, Davis shot him once in the chest. Yang died on the sidewalk.

Yang was still wearing the iPhone’s white earbuds when paramedics arrived, investigators told

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his sister. Davis had left his wallet untouched, but had taken his iPhone. Police later found the phone for sale on Craigslist for $400.

Prosecutors charged Davis and an alleged accomplice, Alejandro Campos, with murder. They have pleaded not guilty and are awaiting trial in jail on Rikers Island.

Nearly a year after Yang’s death, a cloud of grief still hangs over his family. His father sleeps in his son’s bed. His mother prayed at the scene of the shooting every day for four weeks until her husband

26-year-old aspiring chef Hwangbum Yang was shot and killed for his iPhone.

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asked her to stop. “It will only cause you heartbreak,” he told her.

Hyun Sup Yang attributed her son’s death to the insatiable demand for the world’s most popular phone. “If my son never had an iPhone,” she said in an interview, “he would be alive now.”

Yang’s murder stands as a chilling example of a modern-day crime wave sweeping the country, sometimes with deadly consequences. From New York to San Francisco to Washington, D.C., police have reported a surge in thefts of smartphones and tablet computers — iPhones and iPads in particular. The spike in robberies has grown so pronounced that police have coined a term for such crimes: Apple picking.

Every day, criminals snatch phones on crowded streets, inside restaurants, and on subways, reselling their stolen wares on the internet, on street corners and inside local convenience stores. Phone thefts tend to rise right after the release of new Apple products, according to police in New York City.

Apple declined to comment for this story.

The growing street crime is the most visible example of what law

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enforcement authorities describe as a well-orchestrated underground global industry: Many stolen phones are shipped to distant points on the globe, sold to consumers in Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America. It is a market now worth some $30 billion a year, according to Lookout, a San Francisco-based mobile security firm.

The global nature of this illicit trade stems in part from measures American wireless carriers have

“ I T’S EASY TO BLAME STREET CRIMINALS. BUT SOMEBODY IS CREATING A MARKET FOR THESE PHONES IN THE NAME OF PROFIT.” imposed to make it harder to resell stolen phones in the United States, prompting criminals to seek new markets overseas. But it also results from the unique business model used to sell smartphones to American consumers. In the United States, cell phone carriers subsidize the costs of the phones, while in most other countries customers pay full retail price.

The same iPhone that Americans can obtain for $250 can fetch as much as $800 on the streets of

COURTESY OF PAUL BOKEN

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Hong Kong or Rio de Janeiro. The trade has grown so vast and lucrative that it’s attracted organized crime and alleged terrorist organizations, from Mexican drug cartels to the militant group Hezbollah.

About 40 percent of thefts in major American cities now involve cell phones, according to the Federal Communications Commission, which collects statistics from police departments.

Washington, D.C., reported 54

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percent more cell phone robberies in 2011 than in 2007. In New York City, Apple’s iPhone has become “by far” the most popular target, said police spokesman Paul Browne. The city’s overall crime rate increased last year due to a spike in stolen Apple devices.

“Thieves nowadays don’t care about the money in your wallet,” Albie Esparza, a spokesman for the San Francisco Police Department, said in an interview.

“They care about your phone because they can turn around and sell it for a quick profit.”

Megan Boken, 23, was killed in St. Louis for her phone a month after her father had purchased it for her.

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A FINANCIAL INCENTIVE The street-level cell phone thieves tend to be young men in their teens and early 20s. Some work in teams, handing off stolen phones to partners so they aren’t caught holding hot property. One group of thieves in D.C., who called themselves the “Swisha Splash Boys,” worked by swiping iPhones from Metro riders and running off just as the train doors closed.

D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier first noticed the problem two years ago. At the time, robberies were rising and thieves were making specific demands. “It was just odd,” she recalled in an interview.

“They were passing up other valuables and just asking for phones.”

Last March, Lanier connected this street crime to a distribution network: District police arrested employees at 13 local businesses for allegedly selling stolen iPhones and other electronics. Two years ago, New York police arrested 141 employees of barber shops, newsstands, convenience stores and other businesses for allegedly selling stolen iPhones and iPads.

Around the country, thefts of Apple products have become so commonplace that law enforcement has developed new methods

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of luring and apprehending criminals. In D.C., undercover officers ride subways and pretend to be homeless, drunk or asleep while holding out cell phones, pouncing when thieves take the bait.

New York police officers have collected serial numbers of newlypurchased iPhones outside Apple

“ T HIEVES NOWADAYS DON’T CARE ABOUT THE MONEY IN YOUR WALLET. THEY CARE ABOUT YOUR PHONE … ” stores so they are able to track stolen devices and return them to their rightful owners.

Phone companies have joined the effort by closing a gap that has facilitated the black market for stolen phones. For years, wireless carriers blocked stolen phones from being used on their own systems by shutting down their SIM cards, the tiny removable chips that connect each device to a particular network. But thieves simply replaced blocked SIM cards with new ones and resold phones for use on other networks.

Last April, under pressure from the Federal Communications Commission and police chiefs,

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AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint and T-Mobile agreed to join forces and share a list of serial numbers linked to stolen phones. Once the policy goes into effect by the end of this year, a phone reported stolen will no longer work on any major U.S. wireless network.

“With the press of a button, carriers will be able to disable phones and turn highly prized stolen property into worthless chunks of plastic,” New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said when the stolen phone blacklist was announced last year.

But in the meantime, phone thefts have not stopped. If anything, they have become more brazen. Last month, masked men robbed an AT&T store in Hamilton, N.J., at gunpoint and made off with $15,000 worth of new iPhones, the latest in a string of recent armed robberies at smartphone retailers.

And thieves are finding new ways to get paid. Lanier said some filched phones have been dropped in recycling machines manufactured by a company called ecoATM. Customers who recycle old phones in ecoATM’s machines — which resemble bank ATMs — receive as much as $300 for each

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one, depending on their value on the global market.

Ryan Kuder, a spokesman for ecoATM, said the company has installed more than 300 recycling machines at shopping malls in 23 states, including several outside New York City and Washington, D.C., and collected “hundreds of thousands” of used phones last year. About 60 percent were re-

EcoATM machines dispense cash for old phones, and are a frequent dropoff point for stolen phones.

AP PHOTO/J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE

D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier first noticed the trend of stolen-phone crime two years ago.

“They were passing up other valuables and just asking for phones,” she said.

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furbished and resold, mostly back to the U.S. wireless carriers.

About 20 percent of those phones were shipped overseas.

Kuder said the company tries to prevent thieves from receiving cash for stolen phones by checking IDs and holding phones for 30 days or longer, to give police time to see if any are stolen. “We have tried to make ecoATMs the worst place for thieves to get rid of stolen phones,” he said in an interview.

But the company does not check in real-time whether a phone dropped in an ecoATM has been stolen. Kuder said that is because the company does not have access to the stolen phone blacklist shared between wireless carriers and law enforcement.

Lanier has assigned a team of detectives to investigate the extent of the problem in D.C. Police there recently arrested a man who deposited 22 stolen phones in an ecoATM kiosk over a 30day period and was awarded more than $2,200 in cash.

“It’s easy to blame street criminals,” Lanier said. “But somebody is creating a market for these phones in the name of profit.

Businesses like ecoATM are creating an incentive for street crime.”

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A GLOBAL MARKET The stolen phone blacklist being developed by American wireless carriers is modeled after a similar effort launched in the United Kingdom a decade ago after police noticed a sharp increase in phone thefts.

But that effort has not stopped

“ I F MY SON NEVER HAD AN iPHONE, HE WOULD BE ALIVE NOW.” phone robberies, which continue in Britain at a pace of more than 200 per day, according to Jack Wraith, chairman of the Mobile Industry Crime Action Forum, an organization created by the British wireless industry.

Instead, the blacklist appears to have simply driven the stolen phone market overseas. British police have apprehended thieves at airports carrying stolen phones in their luggage bound for points around the globe.

“It’s a bit like squeezing a balloon,” Wraith said of the stolen phone market. “You squeeze it in one place and it pops out somewhere else.”

On eBay, a quick search for smartphones under the Verizon network turns up thousands of

ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES

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listings that include the term “Bad ESN” — shorthand for a phone that can’t be used on a particular wireless network because its serial number has been reported lost or stolen.

James Person, chief operating officer of CDG, an international wireless industry group, said he has counted more than 30,000 sales of smartphones with tainted serial numbers on the auction site. Since these phones can’t be used on Verizon’s network, he believes most are trafficked to other countries.

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Many phones that are stolen on the West Coast of the United States are subsequently smuggled across the border to Mexico, he said. Mexican drug dealers use phones stolen in the U.S. to communicate with relatives of kidnapping victims, according to Hector Olavarria Tapia, Mexico’s former under-secretary of communications. “The easiest way to communicate with the families is to use a mobile device that is not tracked,” he said at a press conference last fall.

In response, the U.S. and Mexican governments agreed in November to deactivate stolen phones in both countries to pre-

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) speaks at a news conference in 2012, held to announce initiatives to combat the growing number of robberies targeting cell phones.

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vent cross-border trafficking — the first deal of its kind between the U.S. and another country.

“This, we believe, will be another major blow to the smartphone black market,” FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said at the time.

But Mexico is far from the only foreign market for stolen phones.

British police have tracked stolen phones to 16 countries across Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia, where they can be reactivated on foreign wireless networks.

In 2009, federal agents arrested alleged Hezbollah operatives in Philadelphia for attempting to buy thousands of stolen cell phones and other electronics from an undercover officer and ship them to Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates. Authorities said the traffickers planned to use the profits to finance the Lebanese arm of the Shiite militant organization, which the United States considers to be a terrorist group.

Industry experts say dozens of other phone trafficking rings transport phones around the world.

They involve “runners” who buy or steal phones in large quantities, hackers who “unlock” their software for use on other wireless networks, and warehouse employees

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who repackage them in new boxes with instruction manuals in the native language of their destinations.

“The uptick in street crime can be attributed to these large operations,” said James Baldinger, an attorney who has sued more than 200 phone traffickers on behalf of wireless companies.

“ W HY WOULD APPLE WANT CONSUMERS TO BE A MOVING TARGET FOR THEFT?” “Ultimately, a consumer in some country will walk into a cell phone store and when the clerk pulls a box out from under the counter, they’ll have no way of knowing that phone began its life in San Francisco,” Baldinger said.

Phone trafficking to other countries is not only a way to avoid detection by the new stolen-phone database in the United States. It also beckons as a more rewarding business model, with the stark retail price differences between the United States and foreign markets making for massive profit margins on goods stolen from Americans and sold abroad.

Moreover, many popular smartphone models — Apple products

CHRISTOF STACHE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

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in particular — tend to be abundant in the United States, but in limited supply in foreign markets, reinforcing their cachet there.

“There’s tremendous demand,” said Israel Ganot, president of Gazelle, an electronics recycler, adding that his company checks stolen phone databases before shipping recycled phones overseas. “People will pay almost anything.”

PRESSURE ON APPLE Apple products are not the only brand at the center of soaring rates of gadget-related crime, but iPhones — and increasingly iPads

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— appear to be in highest demand, according to police. Two years ago, a thief who robbed Columbia University students in New York City demanded their iPhones. When the students handed over BlackBerry smartphones instead, the mugger didn’t want them and gave them back, according to DNAinfo, a local news site.

The iPhone is just the latest Apple product to be targeted for theft.

In 2005, New York police warned commuters about an increase in iPod thefts on city subways. That year, two teenagers were charged with stabbing 15-year-old Christopher Rose to death in Brooklyn during a fight over an iPod. After Rose’s slaying made headlines,

About 40 percent of thefts in major U.S. cities now involve cell phones.

Apple’s iPhone is the most popular target.

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former Apple chief executive Steve Jobs called the teen’s father to offer his condolences.

On its website, Apple directs victims to report thefts to police and use the company’s “Find My iPhone” feature, which helps them locate a phone on a map, display a message on its screen, remotely set a passcode lock and delete data from the device.

Police have used the feature to catch several iPhone thieves.

In recent months, the company has also helped a team of New York police officers locate stolen iPhones and iPads by tracking the devices’ locations using their serial numbers. While about threefourths of Apple devices stolen in New York City have been found within city limits, some have turned up as far away as the Dominican Republic, according to Browne, the police spokesman.

But some industry experts say Apple could do more to make stolen iPhones harder to resell.

For example, they say the company’s warranty policy links customer service plans to devices, not their owners. If a stolen iPhone is under warranty, a thief can replace the device at an Apple store with a new iPhone that has not

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been reported stolen and avoid detection. Thieves in Britain have exploited this policy by placing stolen iPhones in the microwave to render them inoperable and prove to Apple employees they should be replaced, Wraith said.

Stolen smartphones are still valuable — even when wireless companies block them from their networks — because they’re more than just phones: They’re mobile computers. A blacklisted smartphone can still connect to Wi-Fi hotspots to download games and music, browse the Web, make Skype calls and send text messages using WhatsApp, a popular Internet-based texting application. Stolen phones can also hold sensitive personal data such as social security and credit card numbers, a veritable treasure trove for criminals intent on identity theft.

Apple could limit many of those features — and make its products less valuable to thieves — by preventing stolen iPhones from updating software or accessing its App store or iTunes store, according David Rogers, who teaches mobile security at Oxford University. “Everybody knows the iPhone is the hot product to be stolen,” Rogers said. “Why would Apple want consumers to be a moving target for theft?”

GERRY SMITH

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‘I’M GOING TO DIE’ For Paul Boken, any effort to deter iPhone thieves will come far too late.

For years, his daughter Megan owned a BlackBerry, but wanted an iPhone because she thought it would make it easier to use social media and take photos, he said.

Last July, he bought her a white iPhone at a retail store near the family’s home outside Chicago.

One month later, Megan, then

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23, was in St. Louis for job interviews as well as an alumni volleyball game at St. Louis University.

Tall, thin and athletic, Megan had been captain of the volleyball team the previous year.

As she got into her car that afternoon, a man whom police later identified as Keith Esters allegedly opened the passenger-side door and demanded her iPhone. According to police, Esters shot Megan twice in the chest and neck.

She died in the car. Esters fled the scene, dropping the stolen iPhone nearby, prosecutors say. He later

Alex Herald, 20, was stabbed for his iPhone in the Bronx last year.

The attack left him paralyzed from the neck down.

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told police he targeted Megan after seeing her talking on the phone, according to court documents. Police say they connected Esters to another phone robbery in the area that day.

Esters and a cousin who police say drove him from the crime scene have since been charged with Megan’s murder. They are being held at the St. Louis City Justice Center.

Their attorneys said their clients were unavailable for interviews and declined to comment.

Paul Boken lays blame for his daughter’s death not just on her killers, but also on an industry that he says has been slow to reduce the street value of stolen phones.

“Phone manufacturers, including Apple, should have addressed this problem three or four years ago,” he said. “I don’t think they realized someone as special as Megan can lose her life over this.”

Police later returned Megan’s iPhone to her father. He said he keeps it in a box at his home.

Like everything that belonged to his daughter, he said he can’t bring himself to get rid of it. He keeps her bedroom the same way she left it. Last month, Megan’s former volleyball teammates at St. Louis University named

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an award after her, citing “her fun-loving attitude, contagious laugh, servant leadership and humble demeanor.” When they gave Boken one of her jerseys, “I almost fell apart,” he said.

Now, when Boken sees Megan’s friends and watches their lives

“ I T’S HARD, TO BE LIKE THIS FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE OVER A DAMN CELL PHONE.” unfold, he wonders what might have been. “As a father, you invest all of this time in your children,” he said. “You show them how to walk and throw a baseball and hit a volleyball. You watch them develop and take on life’s challenges. Then, all of a sudden, it’s over. That’s the hardest part.

You don’t get to see the next 10 chapters of that book.”

Megan’s story is not unique. As police and wireless providers have searched for solutions to phone thefts, the human toll exacted by often-violent robberies is rising.

Last month, three people were stabbed on a subway platform in Queens in a fight over an iPhone, according to local news reports.

Many victims “either have lost

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their lives or had their lives significantly changed because of a very senseless act of violence by somebody who wanted to take a phone and then resell that phone on the black market,” Lanier, the D.C. police chief, said last fall.

Alex Herald considers himself lucky to be alive.

Last April 28, Herald, 20, and his friend, Miguel Gonzalez, were riding the subway in New York City, headed home to the Bronx after a night out. It was 4 a.m. and they both fell asleep.

When Herald woke up, he recounted in an interview, he found a hole in the front right pocket of his pants — the place where he always kept his smartphone. He looked around the train and spotted a man holding a knife in one hand and his phone in the other.

The man, whom police later identified as 22-year-old Victor Montalvo, got off at the train at the Fordham Road station. Herald says he confronted Montalvo on the train platform and demanded his phone. Montalvo held onto it, so Herald punched him, prompting Montalvo to pull out a knife.

He stabbed Herald five times in the face, once in the neck and once in the back, according to a

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police report. Herald lay on the train platform in a pool of blood while his friend ran to get help.

“I thought to myself, ‘I’m going to die,’ “ Herald recalled.

An ambulance arrived and rushed him to the hospital, where he received eight blood transfusions. In the ten months since, he has been in three different hospitals, spending half that time on life support.

On a recent morning, Herald lay in bed at Coler-Goldwater Specialty Hospital and Nursing Facility on Roosevelt Island. Scars from the stabbing marred his face and neck. A red cap inserted in his neck held in place a tracheostomy tube. One stab wound had severed a nerve in his spinal cord, paralyzing him from the neck down.

“It’s hard,” he said, speaking softly in a Brooklyn accent as a hospital machine beeped in the background. “To be like this for the rest of my life, over a damn cell phone.”

Montalvo has been charged with attempted murder. His attorney declined to comment.

Herald’s mother, Benedicta, said her son was no stranger to crime or violence. Herald dropped out of high school, had been in several fights and had been arrested for marijuana possession and jumping subway turnstiles, she said.

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His phone was one of his most prized possessions, she said.

He fought to get it back because he didn’t want to lose the music and photos it contained. “It was his own little world on that phone,” she said.

Looking back on that night, however, Herald wishes he had kept sleeping. “I would have woken up and the phone would have been gone and I could have replaced it,” he said. “It’s not worth a life.”

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A FAMILY’S GRIEF Hwangbum Yang’s life began in South Korea. In 1999, his parents moved him and his younger sister, Sunah, to New York City. His father, Kyung Sik Yang, works at a dry cleaner in Westchester. His mother, Hyun Sup Yang, works at an elder-care facility. They live in a modest two-story house behind the family’s dry cleaners in the Riverdale section of the Bronx.

Hwangbum taught Sunday school at his church. While his parents worked late, he took care of his younger sister. He worked with a private tutor to learn English,

Hwangbum Yang’s parents hold up photos of their son.

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memorizing 10 new words a day, but he struggled with the language. To earn extra money, he waited tables on weekends at Eden, a nightclub in Manhattan’s Koreatown. He dreamed of opening his own restaurant in Korea and carried a notepad to write down ideas for dishes he would someday serve, his sister said.

By last April, Hwangbum’s life was starting to come together.

He had graduated from culinary school, received his green card and found a job as a cook at The Modern, a restaurant at the Museum of Modern Art owned by famed restaurateur Danny Meyer.

“He was working very hard to get what he wanted,” Sunah said.

“I was really proud of him.”

But around 1:30 a.m. on April 19, police knocked on Hwangbum’s father’s door. Kyung Sik Yang, who doesn’t speak English, called his brother to help translate. Then he called his daughter.

“He said my brother had passed away,” Sunah said. “I said, ‘Don’t joke around.’ He was crying. My whole body was shaking.”

After Hwangbum’s death, neighbors placed carnations on the sidewalk near where he was shot — a steep one-way street bordered by a park and brick

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homes. Sunah avoids the spot because it causes her to imagine her brother’s shooting. “Instead, I try to imagine that my brother is traveling around the world, and I’ll see him again soon,” she said.

On a recent Sunday afternoon, Hwangbum’s parents sat in a quiet room on the second floor of their church. His mother held in her hand a wallet-sized photo of her son. In it, Hwangbum wore a white button-down shirt and a straw hat and stared intently into the camera.

“It’s like he’s always beside me,” Hyun Sup said, speaking in Korean and fighting back tears. “I miss him so much.”

Hwangbum’s father said his friends often encourage him to buy an iPhone because they say it’s more convenient than his older-model cell phone. But he tells them he never will. It would be too hard. “If I bought an iPhone,” he said, “I’d think of my son whenever I see it.”

HuffPost reporter Gerry Smith discusses why the iPhone black market has gone global.

Tap here to watch the full video on HuffPost Live.

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By MICHAEL CALDERONE

Conservative Media’s Quest for Credibility

PREVIOUS PAGE: JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES (TRAYVON MARTIN); AP PHOTO/STEVE HELBER (OBAMA); ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES (MURNO, CLINTON); ANDREW HARRER/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES (BOEHNER); AP PHOTO/CHARLES DHARAPAK (HOLDER)

WASHINGTON —

ON FEB. 28, atop the capital city’s posh W hotel, National Review editor Rich Lowry toasted Robert Costa on becoming the magazine’s Washington editor. The 27-year-old journalist, Lowry declared, deserved praise for moving the long-running conservative outlet into a future that depended on original, online reporting. ¶ “When National Review Online first started down here in Washington under the tutelage of Jonah Goldberg, working the phones meant Jonah calling the local Chinese restaurant to inquire about what had happened to his order of General Tso’s Chicken,” Lowry joked before the crowd of prominent National Review writers — including Goldberg and Ramesh Ponnuru — and attendees such as columnist George Will and former Dick Cheney aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby.

National Review, a leading voice in the conservative movement since 1955, isn’t cutting back on opinion writing or strong editorial stands.

But Costa and his team of three reporters are gaining recognition inside Republican circles and among the Washington media establishment for actually making calls, staking out the Capitol and breaking news. Costa recently reported

the inside story of the attempted House GOP “coup” against Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and scooped that former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney will speak at this week’s Conservative Political Action Conference.

It’s the type of shoe-leather reporting that many political observers and even some prominent conservatives claim is sorely lacking on the right. Their critiques seemed confirmed in February as several conservative media-driven

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stories fell flat, from speculation that Chuck Hagel wouldn’t be confirmed as defense secretary to reports that he’d spoken to a shadowy (and fictitious) group called “Friends of Hamas.” On March 1, a prominent conservative writer and commentator was found to have been heavily involved in a paid propaganda operation funded by the Malaysian government. And earlier this month, both The Washington Post and ABC News called into question an explosive Daily Caller story alleging that Sen. Robert Meendez (D-N.J.) slept with prostitutes in the Dominican Republic after one woman told authorities she was paid to make up her account and the network revealed having previously passed on the story given doubts about the veracity of the claims.

And so, while outlets like The Daily Caller, Breitbart News and the Washington Free Beacon have sprouted and, in some cases, prospered during President Barack Obama’s administration, concern is mounting that they and others in the conservative media universe are shedding their credibility by focusing more on supposed scandals than reporting the basics of who, what, when, where, why and how.

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“There’s absolutely no pretense from any of these publications of giving a policy a sort of objective hearing,” Daniel McCarthy, editor of The American Conservative, told The Huffington Post. “It’s very clear that it comes from the same mindset as talk radio and Fox News. This is something that’s by and for a particular kind of conservative.” McCarthy hesitated before asking, “It’s a circle jerk, isn’t it?”

RedState editor Erick Erickson argued last week that conservative outlets have been “failing to advance ideas and stories” beyond their ideological borders. “The echo in the chamber has gotten so loud it is not well understood outside the

Robert Costa, the 27-year-old Washington editor of National Review magazine.

CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES

BEYOND HOOKERS, HAMAS AND HAGEL

echo chamber in the mainstream press and in the public,” Erickson wrote. “It translates only as anger and noise, neither of which are conducive to the art of persuasion.”

It was, in many respects, a remarkable admission. Erickson, whose site is known more for conservative activism than reporting, is not seen as someone with deep journalistic roots. But he’s hardly the only one who has concluded that one of the Republican Party’s major failures in the past election cycle was the inability of the conservative press

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to shape the conversation.

Conservative media made noise during the 2012 election but had little impact on the news cycle.

Both The Daily Caller and Breitbart News hyped old videos of Obama, which despite being amplified on The Drudge Report and Fox News, received more mockery from the national press than follow-up. In response to Romney’s infamous “47 percent video” — a clearly newsworthy recording — Fox News attempted to equate his remarks with a 14-year-old Obama quote about wealth “redistribution.” The outof-context clip had little resonance beyond those cable viewers still convinced that Obama is a socialist.

Chuck Hagel (left) arrives for his confirmation hearing before the Senate to become the next secretary of defense on Jan. 31, 2013.

WILLIAM B. PLOWMAN/NBC/NBC NEWSWIRE VIA GETTY IMAGES

Rich Lowry, editor of the National Review, makes an appearance on Meet the Press.

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BEYOND HOOKERS, HAMAS AND HAGEL

The conservative media drumbeat did drive attention to the Fast & Furious scandal and the administration’s response to the attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. But while the national media covered those topics, it didn’t obsess over them. In some cases, mainstream reporters poked holes in the scandals.

Perhaps the most defining feature of the conservative media’s election coverage, however, was just how wildly off base it was in predicting the outcome. Paid for their political analysis, several prominent

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conservative pundits predicted a landslide Romney victory. On election night, Karl Rove, speaking as an analyst for Fox News, practically begged the network to hold off on calling Ohio, and therefore the election, for Obama.

The election results should have served as a sobering point of introspection. But in recent weeks, as Obama’s second term got underway, the hits kept coming. Conservative outlets like the Weekly Standard and Washington Free Beacon, along with highprofile writers such as Washing-

Conservative writer Josh Treviño was hired to lead a paid propaganda campaign by the Malaysian government.

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ton Post blogger Jennifer Rubin, failed to derail Hagel’s nomination after producing a flood of stories focusing on the former Republican senator’s past criticism of the pro-Israel lobby and the Iraq war.

The anti-Hagel pile-on also produced notable missteps, such as when Breitbart’s Ben Shapiro relayed word from an anonymous Senate aide that Hagel may have once been paid to speak before the group “Friends of Hamas.” It was an easily debunked rumor that nonetheless got picked up, with some caveats, by the Washington Times, National Review and Fox Business Network. While all news outlets make mistakes, what stood out was Shapiro’s unwillingness to admit that he pushed a bogus rumor.

Conor Friedersdorf, a rightleaning blogger at The Atlantic who previously criticized Rubin’s 2012 coverage for not being fact-based, recently pointed to the Hagel stories as evidence of “conservatism’s information disadvantage.” Writing on the same morning as Erickson’s post, Friedersdorf argued that conservative writers, including Rubin, had willfully ignored the political realities surrounding the likelihood of Hagel’s confirmation.

In an interview with The Huffing-

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“IT’S A CIRCLE JERK, ISN’T IT?” ton Post, Rubin said she wasn’t familiar with Friedersdorf’s writing; nor, she added, was she bothered that Erickson had criticized her for doing Romney’s “dirty work” from her perch at the Post. She defended her work, saying that she regularly breaks news, interviews major candidates and covers foreign policy.

“That I do not adhere to a straight-line, far-right agenda is going to upset some people,” she said, with regard to her conservative detractors.

FROM MALAYSIA TO MENENDEZ Conservative media has suffered more bumps and bruises post-Hagel. BuzzFeed revealed on March 1 that the Malaysian government had paid nearly $400,000 to conservative writer Josh Treviño — who in turn hired other conservative writers — as part of a paid propaganda campaign. Government-funded columns and blog posts ran on several conservative sites and The Huffington Post, which has since removed Treviño’s work.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post

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reported on March 4 that a female escort in the Dominican Republic admitted to lying when she claimed to The Daily Caller that she had had sex with Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.). ABC News joined the chorus the following morning, revealing that Republican operatives had pushed them to cover the Menendez story as well, including helping to “arrange the woman’s appearance, along with two additional women, in back-to-back, online interviews.” ABC News did not publish, the network said, because the three women couldn’t produce

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identity cards and appeared to have been coached. The Huffington Post later reported that three more news organizations — the New York Post, Star-Ledger (N.J.), and Politico — had been approached with the Menedez claims by political operatives and investigated them, but did not find credible evidence to merit a story.

The Caller, nevertheless, stood by its story, saying that the prostitute identified by the Post was not one of the two it had previously tied to Menendez and has since questioned aspects of ABC’s reports. Matthew Boyle, who reported the story for the Caller, also pushed back early Tuesday morning against the Post

Conservative media implicated Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) in a prostitution scandal.

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story in a piece for Breitbart, his current employer.

“As for the Menendez story, my original pieces focused on both the travel and the prostitution allegations,” Boyle told The Huffington Post in an email. “Breitbart News has chosen to focus on the influence peddling, crony capitalism and corruption issues.

Senator Menendez is a Democrat, and he is being protected by what Andrew Breitbart used to call the Democrat Media Complex. If Senator Menendez were a Republican, the mainstream media would have been all over the story day one.”

In addition to discussing the Menendez saga, Boyle also responded to several questions about the place conservative reporters occupy in the broader media universe and why, in his opinion, national media may not follow-up on some of the bigger controversies on the right. HuffPost agreed to include his responses in full, as per his request: “To your first question, yes. I believe you and I had a similar discussion when we talked about Operation Fast and Furious last summer when you interviewed me,” Boyle said. “How many times does new media need to beat the

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“YOU CAN’T JUST STAY IN THE CONSERVATIVE BUBBLE.” mainstream establishment media to stories before they realize that the new media is better than they are? Fast and Furious. Solyndra.

Weinergate. Occupy. Congressional insider trading. Crony Capitalism. Obamacare waivers in Pelosi’s district. JournoList. ACORN. Monica Lewinsky. Shall I go on?”

“As for why, first off, reporters are often lazy,” Boyle continued.

“Second, reporters naturally lean left politically. Which is fine — everyone is entitled to their own opinion. But they should be open about their politics and how it affects their work, rather than hiding it from their readers and their viewers. Everything from story selection to source building to how stories are framed are shaped by reporters’ personal politics. The mainstream media claims to be objective while pushing a liberal agenda as writ.”

As for Erickson’s critique of conservative reporting, Boyle said, “I

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Mitt Romney addresses the audience at CPAC on March 15, 2013.

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think his criticisms do not apply to Breitbart News.” He continued: “More generally, the conservative media’s reporting is like any other media’s reporting — there is good and bad,” Boyle said. “But singling out conservative media for reportorial standards is self-serving at best, especially if and when done by the mainstream media, which has consistently downplayed stories harmful to its political interests, and played up stories that help its favored candidates. Their claims to be the representatives of journalistic integrity are absurd, to say the least.

I do agree with Erickson to the extent that some conservative media have too often kissed the ring of power in the GOP establishment in exchange for access, and quick scoops, rather than focusing on telling the truth,” he continued. “That needs to change, and that’s what we at Breitbart are on the forefront of doing. I can’t think of any place actually doing what Erickson called for better than Breitbart News.”

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“THAT I DO NOT ADHERE TO A STRAIGHT-LINE, FAR-RIGHT AGENDA IS GOING TO UPSET SOME PEOPLE.” “I’m a big fan of Breitbart’s reporting and uncovering stories,” Erickson said in an email to The Huffington Post. “But the right still needs an Associated Press of its own writing about the day to day news.”

‘IT’S A SHIPWRECK’ Some conservatives say the problem isn’t that the national media is covering up for Democrats, but that attention-grabbing, right-leaning outlets aren’t producing credible journalism that can stand up alongside reporting from nonpartisan and left-of-center outlets.

When The Huffington Post vis-

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ited the offices of The American Conservative on the morning of Feb. 28, McCarthy didn’t mince words when describing the current state of conservative media: “It’s a shipwreck.”

McCarthy praised reporting by Costa and the Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney, but had a less positive take on newer outlets that, to him, appear more focused on sensationalism than legitimate scoops. While McCarthy described The Daily Caller as “somewhat qualitatively better” than Breitbart or the Washington Free Beacon, he said all three appear to be trying to mimic the hyper-activity of BuzzFeed while wanting to be “hyper-partisan.”

On Mar. 3, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes brought together four conservative writers and strategists to weigh in the state of conservative media, and more specifically, Erickson’s critique. Bloomberg View columnist Josh Barro, like McCarthy, cited Costa’s “outstanding work,” while saying The Daily Caller does both good and “really bad” journalism and that “everything that Breitbart runs is stupid.”

“Part of the problem though for the right trying to develop

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these media outlets is that they haven’t realized, in some cases, when you do bad reporting, its not just not useful, it’s actually brand damaging,” Barro said.

One Republican communications strategist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, given ongoing dealings with reporters, complained to The Huffington Post that quality reporting on the right often gets overshadowed by work that lacks basic journalistic standards and professionalism. For that reason, the strategist said, Republican sources were inclined to approach mainstream or left-ofcenter news outlets, more trusted for getting facts straight, when trying to move an item.

“It ends up in this echo chamber because of a lack of credibility, perceived or not, when one of these conservative outlets breaks a story,” the strategist said. “It stays in the conservative echo chamber until that information is verified.”

‘I’M NOT HIRING WINE STEWARDS’ The complaints are hardly new.

Four years ago, on stage at CPAC, Tucker Carlson told the conservative faithful that right-leaning journalists need to do reporting that meets the standards of The New York Times. “Conservatives

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need to build institutions that mirror those institutions,” Carlson said. “That’s the truth.”

The truth didn’t go over too well. Some attendees heckled Carlson for suggesting that conservative media, in any way, should follow the Gray Lady’s example.

“I wasn’t talking about thematic accuracy, which the Times lacks,” Carlson said recently at a midtown Manhattan hotel bar, a few hours after finishing guesthosting duties on Fox & Friends Weekend. “I meant, strictly speaking, grammatical accuracy, strictly

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speaking, factual accuracy.”

Reflecting on his remarks four years earlier, Carlson said that the “essential problem remains.”

“It’s really expensive to cover the news and it’s much cheaper to opine on the news,” explained Carlson, who launched The Daily Caller in 2010 and serves as its editor-in-chief. For that reason, he said, “people’s tendency will always be to do the latter, just for economic reasons.”

The Daily Caller has had some successes in its three-year history, including its coverage of the waste and abuse within the Republican National Committee. It also obtained leaked discussions from

Tucker Carlson, the editor-inchief of The Daily Caller.

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Journolist, a private listserv of liberal bloggers, policy wonks and political journalists which this reporter first profiled in 2009.

The Daily Caller reported last year that now former Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) hadn’t lived in the state for more than 30 years and, just last month, that Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) will get a primary challenger.

But such reporting has been overshadowed by The Daily Caller’s more sensational stories over the past year, such as one featuring a cache of tweets from Trayvon Martin, the unarmed Florida teenager shot dead while walking home from a convenience store.

MSNBC host and former Republican Rep. Joe Scarborough blasted conservative media at the time for trolling Martin’s social media history “to find ominous looking pictures” of the dead teenager.

In October, The Daily Caller published a 2007 video of thenSen. Obama giving a rousing speech at Hampton University, a historically black college, in which he criticized the federal response to Hurricane Katrina. The Drudge Report teased the story and Carlson appeared the same night on Fox News’ Hannity to discuss

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“ … FIRST OFF, REPORTERS ARE OFTEN LAZY. SECOND, REPORTERS NATURALLY LEAN LEFT POLITICALLY.” what was promoted as a racially charged speech finally unearthed.

But while the entire speech was never published online or aired in full during the 2008 presidential campaign, numerous media outlets — including Carlson’s former MSNBC program — had covered excerpts of it, which led to ample mockery of The Daily Caller’s story as old news. Andrew Sullivan went a step further, calling Carlson a “racist demagogue” for hyping the speech anew.

“No one had seen it before because it had never aired before.

Period,” Carlson told The Huffington Post. “We were attacked by Sam Feist, the Washington bureau

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chief of CNN, immediately attacked us for running this video.”

“I was kind of surprised by it,” Carlson said of the media’s reaction. “The now-president is calling the Congress racist and saying they’re shafting New Orleans because it’s majority black. That’s a pretty stout claim. No evidence to back it up. I thought that was interesting as hell, talking in a way he doesn’t normally talk. I was denounced as racist for pointing that out. Whatever.”

Carlson said he wouldn’t expect conservative media’s reporting to

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get significant pick-up in the national media, which he considers “liberal.” But he deflected questions about whether a right-wing echo chamber was doing a disservice to conservatives and Republicans.

“I would flip it around and say, what’s the total population of people who read Rick Hertzberg’s editorials in the New Yorker and read The New York Times every day and watch CBS News at night?” Carlson asked. “That’s a smaller universe than watch Fox and read The Daily Caller. It’s not just right-wing world. It’s left-wing world [that] is also talking to itself.”

Carlson argued that The Daily Caller, now profitable and with a

Daily Caller reporter Neil Munro (center) interrupts President Obama during his remarks about the deportation of undocumented immigrants.

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staff around 50, is “practicing traditional journalism,” while other outlets, like The New York Times and Washington Post, are cheerleading for the administration. He insists that Washington reporters are overly defensive of Obama — noting the criticism Daily Caller reporter Neil Munro received for interrupting the president in the Rose Garden last June — and too deferential to the administration.

“I look for aggression,” Carlson said of his hiring process. “I’m not hiring wine stewards. I’m hiring journalists. I’m looking for someone who is single-mindedly focused on getting information.”

Carlson said he wanted drive “more than anything.”

“I want that more than experience,” he added. “I want that more than pedigree. I don’t care if you’ve graduated from college or not. I’ve hired a number of people who didn’t graduate from college. I don’t care. Why would a degree mean anything to me?

It doesn’t. Trust me.”

GROWING PAINS The history of journalism is filled with brilliant reporters who never bothered with college and scoffed at those who hyper-

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“I LOOK FOR AGGRESSION. I’M NOT HIRING WINE STEWARDS. I’M HIRING JOURNALISTS.” professionalized the craft.

Carney and Costa aren’t those reporters. Each received significant training before being thrown into the deep end of political journalism and heading to cable news studios.

Carney headed after college to Human Events, the favorite publication of former President Ronald Reagan, which announced plans to kill its print edition. In an interview with The Huffington Post, he said he received his “graduate school” education while working for three years under the late Robert Novak, a legendary columnist whose conservative views were grounded in shoe-leather reporting.

While some segments of conservative media cling to the notion that Obama is anti-business,

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Carney said he never shared “the view that Obama was waging war on business and lobbyists.” For that reason, he’s aggressively covered lobbying and influence during the Obama years. “Increasingly, conservatives are realizing that Obama’s willingness to play special interest politics in big business is a line of attack, and Solyndra isn’t the only case of crony capitalism that’s ever occurred,” he said.

Carney singled out New York Times reporter Nick Confessore — who recently reported on an arrangement with the group

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Organizing For America that allows individuals giving or raising $500,000 to attend meetings with the president — for doing good work covering money, politics and special interests. More conservative and mainstream media reporters, he argued, need to dig into the topic.

Costa interned in conservative media (The Wall Street Journal editorial page) and establishment media outlets (PBS’s Charlie Rose show and ABC News’ This Week with George Stephanopoulos).

He joined The National Review straight after finishing graduate school at the University of Cambridge, and worked as a magazine

Jonah Goldberg, a National Review Online contributing editor.

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fellow, Capitol Hill correspondent and presidential campaign reporter.

During last year’s CPAC gathering, Costa offered a college-aged audience a piece of advice he had received about the need to learn the basics of reporting, rather than trying to become the next George Will or Charles Krauthammer overnight.

“You can’t just stay in the conservative bubble,” Costa said. “If you want to compete with all kind of journalists — especially the liberal journalists — you’ve got to be able to play their game and do things how they do it.”

Costa certainly gets outside the conservative bubble. His National Review party last month was attended not only by right-of-center scribes, but reporters from The New York Times, Politico, ABC News and USA Today. Costa has made hundreds of appearances on CNBC, for which he is an analyst, and MSNBC, where he regularly appears on Morning Joe, The Daily Rundown and Hardball. Since signing with CNBC in 2011, Costa hasn’t appeared on Fox News. He did, however, stop by NPR’s On Point the morning after the party.

Held up as an example of the conservative reporter with mainstream cred, Costa argues that it’s a

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matter of time and experience before others break through. The 2012 election was “baptism through fire” for the conservative media, he said, especially since some outlets didn’t even exist the first time Obama ran.

“What I took away was, the 2012 campaign was a great learning experience for many conservative media reporters, across the spectrum on the right,” Costa said.

“I think the news judgment in many organizations — a lot of stories that were floated or thought were hot never really stuck. It wasn’t just because of bias on the left or bias in the media.”

“Conservative journalists are recognizing that they have to offer more to readers beyond talking points and columns,” Costa added. “I think that’s the evolution right now — moving toward narrative journalism, investigative journalism. It’s a growing process. There will be some growing pains.”

HuffPost reporter Michael Calderone discusses the conservative media’s fixation on scandals.

Tap here to watch the full video on HuffPost Live.

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25 QUESTIONS

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Is Spring Breakers One of the Most Fascinating ‘Things’ Ever Created?

(AND 24 OTHER URGENT QUESTIONS)

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25 QUESTIONS

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PRING BREAKERS, one of the oddest things (not just movies, “things”) that you will ever see with your own eyes, opens in wide release this weekend. On the surface, it’s about four girls (played by Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson and Rachel Korine) who, while visiting Florida during Spring Break, meet a rapper/drug dealer named Alien (played by James Franco, of course).

Here, we do our best to answer every question that you could possibly have about Spring Breakers. —Mike Ryan

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Is Spring Breakers a comedy?

Oh God, no.

James Franco plays a rapper with cornrows named Alien. How does that not equal “wacky hijinks”? The most jarring thing about Spring Breakers, at least initially, is just how serious it takes itself.

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How can a movie that features James Franco, sporting cornrows, performing Britney Spears’ “Everytime” on a piano (a piano that’s not indoors, I should add) be described as “taking itself seriously”? I wish I could answer that with a better answer than, “I don’t know.”

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Who are the spring breakers?

The spring breakers are Candy (Vanessa Hudgens), Brit (Ashley Benson), Faith (Selena Gomez) and Cotty (Rachel Korine).

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How do we first learn of the girls’ plan to attend spring break? While in class, Brit draws a heart and writes inside of it, “I want penis.”

Is this the general sentiment of the entire group? Well, it certainly is for Brit and Candy, who might as well be the same character (and perhaps that’s the point). It certainly isn’t for Faith (Gomez), who, even though she remains friends with the other three girls, is very religious.

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25 QUESTIONS

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But, for the most part, before the girls get to Florida, they are upstanding citizens? Considering the fact that they (sans Faith) rob a diner at gunpoint to finance their trip, no.

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Are there any repercussions for this robbery? No.

How do the girls meet Alien? After the four girls reach Florida, they are (after many montages of “fun”) arrested for being at a party that has mass amounts of

illegal drugs, and they’re given the choice of a fine or two days in jail. Alien pays their fines.

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Is there a catch? It’s not specifically stated, but the girls seem to spend a lot of time with Alien after his generosity.

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Is Alien dangerous? Alien certainly lives a lifestyle that is dangerous. But, on a personal level, he seems nice.

Left to right: Selena Gomez as Faith, Ashley Benson as Brit, Rachel Korine as Cotty and Vanessa Hudgens as Candy.

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What is the best line that James Franco says during Spring Breakers? Honestly, it’s really hard to choose. But, “I’m fucking made of money, look at my teeth,” is high up on the list.

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25 QUESTIONS

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Will I like Spring Breakers?

Oh, boy ... maybe? What you probably don’t realize about Spring Breakers (at least I didn’t before seeing it) is the way the film is presented.

It has a traditional narrative, I suppose, but it’s presented in almost a series of montages and glimpses into these people’s lives — all the while accompanied by a soundtrack provided

by Skrillex.

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What does that mean? Put it this way: you’re never going to complain about Spring Breakers being “too wordy.”

We’re given the bare minimum when it comes to dialogue enough to move the story along or to be considered cryptic or odd. And there’s perhaps not one moment that resembles “a real human conversation” anywhere to be found.

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If I am looking forward to Spring Breakers as an “outrageous” comedy, will I hate Spring Breakers? A lot.

Does the Skrillex score ever stop?

No. Spring Breakers, in a way, is one long music video.

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Is Spring Breakers one of the most fascinating things that you’ve ever seen? Yes.

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Does Spring Breakers work?

As a piece of performance art, yes — it’s unbelievably fascinating. It’s also unbelievable that this movie actually exists.

What scene from Spring Breakers should be included in every movie montage ever from this point forward? James Franco jumping around on his bed screaming, “Look at my shit!”

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What’s your favorite thing about Spring Breakers?

High on the list is the way Franco pronounces “shit,” as in, “Look at my sheeaaat.”

James Franco plays “Alien,” a rapper with cornrows.

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25 QUESTIONS

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the, “look at me, I know I’m in a whack job of a movie, so I’m going to act craaaazzzzyyy.” Franco, if anything, is understated in his performance.

Does Alien have a tattoo of the state of Florida on his arm? Yes.

Is Alien one of those people who uses the word “humble” in the wrong way? As in, something really good happens to him, so he then states that he’s been “humbled”? Yes.

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How over-the-top insane is Franco as Alien in Spring Breakers? Perhaps the most surprising thing about Spring Breakers is just how seriously Franco takes his role as Alien. This certainly isn’t Michael Shannon hamming it up as Detective Robert Monday in Premium Rush. There is no sense of Franco going for

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Are you sure you want to go with “understated” there? Shall I remind you of the Britney Spears scene and the fact that at one point Alien performs fellatio on the barrel of a loaded pistol?

My point is, compared to how Franco could have played the role, he’s quite understated here.

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The girls are given a choice between jail time or fines after they are arrested for being at a party with illegal drugs.

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If you’re going to be blurbed in this weekend’s commercials for Spring Breakers, what quote do you think will be used? “As a rapper named Alien, who at one point performs fellatio on the barrel of a gun, James Franco gives an understated performance.”

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STRESS LESS

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SCOTT CUNNINGHAM/NBAE VIA GETTY IMAGES

Theo Ratliff, #42 of the Atlanta Hawks, takes a nap in the team plane on April 16, 2003, en route to New Orleans.

How NBA Players Power Through an 82-Game Season

BY JORDAN SCHULTZ

Exit T IS 3:00 P.M. on a chilly February afternoon in Minneapolis and the Utah Jazz are trying to hang on to the final playoff seed in the Western Conference during a hectic stretch of eight games in 13 days. The Jazz endured a late flight from Salt Lake City following a win over the Thunder. Tip-off with the TWolves is just five hours away.

It’s nap time.

“I think almost everyone does it,” Jazz veteran point guard Earl Watson told The Huffington Post.

The game-day nap is a longstanding NBA tradition among bleary-eyed players during the grueling 82-game season. According to Dr. Margot Putukian, director of sports medicine at Princeton University, the activity may aid the body even more than the players are aware.

“Sleep deprivation has been linked to pain and complaints of muscle and joint pain,” Putukian told The Huffington Post. “We know how helpful restorative sleep is.”

The rigorous schedule for NBA teams often includes late postgame flights and early morning shooting sessions, making a full

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night’s sleep hard to come by. According to an April 2012 ESPN The Magazine article, athletes’ bodies may fail to release a crucial growth hormone — which stimulates the healing of muscle and bone — due to uneven sleep patterns. In turn, napping can become a necessity for peak performance.

According to a 1999 article published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, the ef-

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STRESS LESS A weekly feature that highlights ways to handle the pressures around us.

There is this myth that if you exercise, you can get away with less sleep.

Most studies are now showing that if you exercise, you actually need more sleep.” fects of travel fatigue and jet-lag can begin “reducing dexterity in a technical procedure.”

A Stanford University study, published in the San Francisco Chronicle and conducted from 2005 to 2008, discovered that Cardinal basketball players who slept two to three hours more than they were accustomed to ran faster sprints and improved efficiency in both free-throw and 3-point shooting by 9 percent.

NOAH GRAHAM/NBAE VIA GETTY IMAGES

Steve Nash, whose career has extended well into his thirties, plays against the Sacramento Kings during a pre-season game last year.

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ANDREW D. BERNSTEIN/NBAE VIA GETTY IMAGES

“There is this myth that if you exercise, you can get away with less sleep,” says Dr. David C. Nieman, professor and director of the Appalachian State Human Performance Lab. “Most studies are now showing that if you exercise, you actually need more sleep. It’s pretty much the concept that you need to plug your battery in and restore because the muscles may have been disrupted.”

Two-time NBA MVP Steve Nash is renowned for taking exceptional care of his body as his career has advanced deep into his 30s, and napping is a part of his regimen.

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[Naps] are a must because the emotions from a game can keep you up until 3 in the morning.”

“If you nap every game day, all those hours add up and it allows you to get through the season better,” Nash told The New York Times in 2011 for a piece that named fellow MVP Award winners Bryant and Derrick Rose among those players who rely on napping to stay sharp.

“As soon as you start chopping

Chris Paul, #13 of the U.S. Men’s Senior National Team, takes a nap prior to a game against Lithuania in 2008.

LAYNE MURDOCH/NBAE VIA GETTY IMAGES

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time off of sleep, human error rate goes up,” added Nieman, who wrote the book Exercise Testing and Prescription: A Health-Related Approach. “If you don’t get your sleep, you’re not going to be able to perform physically.”

The average age of an NBA player this season hovers around 27, and rest is even more important to athletes who are still young despite being career professionals.

“We always say that young people need sleep, especially as they’re growing,” Putukian says.

“Without a doubt, there is a link to performance.”

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If you nap every game day, all those hours add up and it allows you to get through the season better.”

While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends seven hours of sleep per night, more than 33 percent of American adults are estimated to receive less than the recommended seven hours.

“Napping is a good way to catch up on rest,” Watson, the Jazz point guard, says. “They are a must because the emotions from a game can keep you up until 3 in the morning.”

Hilton Armstrong, #12 of the New Orleans/ Oklahoma City Hornets, grabs a quick nap on the way to practice in 2006.

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TASTE TEST

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A Quest for the Best Budget Cheddar in the East

BY KRISTEN AIKEN

F YOU EAT a lot of cheese (and we eat a lot of cheese), spending $30 per pound of cheddar isn’t always an option. The key is to save expensive cheeses for special occasions — fondue night or cheese plates, for example — but opt for the supermarket brands when it’s time for a no-fuss grilled cheese (though, truth be told, sometimes we do like to make fancy grilled cheese).

So which brand of supermarket cheddar should you reach for when you want something affordable? We hit the supermarkets and rounded

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PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAMON DAHLEN

up a collection of the most widely available cheeses on the East Coast (though you’ll find many of these nation-wide, as well). Then we conducted a blind taste test of 11 cheeses, judging primarily based on flavor, sharpness and texture.

What’s the lesson we learned from this? Sadly, one very popular brand ended up at the bottom of the barrel, with all three of that brand’s varieties ranking at the tailend of our list. On the brighter side, another brand came out as a clear and dominant winner. Check out the results below to find out who we’re talking about.

As always, this taste test is in no way sponsored or influenced by the brands included.

TASTE TEST

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TAP ON THE CHEESES FOR THE TASTERS’ VERDICTS

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TFU

MARK WILSON/GETTY IMAGES (OBAMA); JEFFREY MAYER/WIREIMAGE/GETTY IMAGES (LAWRENCE); AP PHOTO/MIKE GROLL (VITO); GETTY IMAGES/AFP CREATIVE (GRANNY); GETTY IMAGES/IMAGEBROKER RF (PIG)

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‘ It’s Good Politics to Oppose the Black Guy.’

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71-YEAR-OLD ASSEMBLYMAN CALLS HIS 14-YEAROLD INTERN SEXY

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EVEN THE WESTBORO BAPTIST CHURCH LIKES JENNIFER LAWRENCE

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Who Knew Finland Loved ‘Granny’ Porn So Much?

More Than 8,000 Dead Pigs Pulled From the Shanghai River

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UF/IFAS PHOTO BY MARISOL AMADOR (MOSQUITOS); GETTY IMAGES (FRIES); YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES (HASTAG); TORSTEN BLACKWOOD/AFP/GETTY IMAGES (ICE CAP)

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TFU

Florida Super Mosquitos So Big They ‘Practically Break Your Arm’ When Sucking Blood

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Kids in China Turn To FrenchFry-Eating Battles to Relieve Stress

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11,000 YEARS OF CLIMATE DATA SAYS: WE’RE SCREWED

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10 Horrifyingly, Hashtags Might Make Their Way Onto Facebook

The ePad Femme: A Tablet for Women That Sounds Like a Bad Joke

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Arianna Huffington Editor: John Montorio Managing Editor: Gazelle Emami Senior Editor: Adam J. Rose Editor-at-Large: Katy Hall Senior Politics Editor: Sasha Belenky Senior Voices Editor: Stuart Whatley Pointers Editor: Marla Friedman Quoted Editor: Annemarie Dooling Viral Editor: Dean Praetorius Editorial Assistant: Jenny Macksamie Editorial Intern: Emma Diab Creative Director: Josh Klenert Design Director: Andrea Nasca Photography Director: Anna Dickson Associate Photo Editor: Wendy George Designers: Martin Gee, Troy Dunham Production Director: Peter Niceberg AOL MagCore Head of UX and Design: Jeremy LaCroix Product Managers: Mimmie Huang, Gabriel Giordani Architect: Scott Tury Developers: Mike Levine, Carl Haines, Terence Worley, Ron Anderson, Sudheer Agrawal QA: Joyce Wang, Amy Golliver Sales: Mandar Shinde, Jami Lawrence AOL, Inc. Chairman & CEO:

Tim Armstrong

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