MARCH 31, 2013
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“ WHEN YOU SIT AROUND AND MOPE, IT’S A VERY DESTRUCTIVE EXERCISE.” JOHN McCAIN Gets Back in the Ring
WHERE PHONES SLEEP DAVID LEE ROTH ARE MOVIE STARS DEAD?
03.31.13 #42 CONTENTS
Enter POINTERS: Let the Gay Marriage Trials Begin ... Tiger Woods Back on Top JASON LINKINS: Looking Forward in Angst DATA: What’s Really in Your Easter Basket Q&A: David Lee Roth on Insuring ‘Little Elvis’ HEADLINES MOVING IMAGE
FROM TOP: ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES; MARK CROSSE/FRESNO BEE/MCT VIA GETTY IMAGES
Voices KIM SIMON: Whatever Happened to Kindness?
AGING BULL The maverick is back. Get ready to duck. BY JON WARD
JOSHUA FOER: The Secret to Superpower Memory QUOTED
Exit BEHIND THE SCENES: Are Movie Stars Dead? STRESS LESS: Where Our Phones Sleep EAT THIS: Leek & Arugula Tart TFU
POLICING, MILITARY-STYLE How did virtually every city in America end up with a SWAT team? BY RADLEY BALKO
FROM THE EDITOR: The Lion in Winter ON THE COVER: Jeff Riedel/
Contour by Getty Images
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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
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The Lion in Winter N THIS WEEK’S issue, Jon Ward puts the spotlight on John McCain and finds the longtime senator both pursuing new fights with characteristic grit and reflecting on his legacy. “McCain knows he is living out the closing chapters of a storied career,” Jon writes, in a story that sweeps from McCain’s youth as
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a Navy fighter pilot and Vietnam prisoner of war to his 2008 presidential nomination and subsequent loss to Barack Obama. At 76, the man who once wrote that earning the respect of his father and grandfather — who cast long shadows as four-star admirals in the U.S. Navy — was “the most lasting ambition of my life,” is still raring for a fight, from his proposals for immigration reform to his cross-examination of Hillary Clinton on the Benghazi attacks.
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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
In an interview with Jon, McCain speaks about points of tension with newcomers in the GOP Senate, including Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, and opens up about his future prospects. “I do think that I have seen individuals, men, who were at the top of their game and stayed to the point where they were not only not at the top of their game, but they were kind of objects of our sympathy,” he says. “I don’t want to be one of those.” Elsewhere in the issue, Radley Balko writes about the increasing militarization of our police forces, as the American Civil Liberties Union is now looking into the ways police are using weapons that were once used only for war. The numbers tell the story of a rapid rise in this troubling trend, starting in the late 1960s when the first SWAT team formed in Los Angeles. By 1982, 60 percent of cities with 50,000 or more people had a SWAT team, rising to nearly 90 percent of cities by 1995. Radley points to a powerful factor driving this trend: the ability of politicians to appear “tough on crime” by securing large grants for their hometown police depart-
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ments. But fewer people are asking whether these grants, and the high-powered weapons they bring to communities across the country, are good for the people they’re designed to protect. Radley introduces us to Keene, a small New Hampshire town where residents
At 76, the man who once wrote that earning the respect of his father and grandfather was ‘the most lasting ambition of my life’ is still raring for a fight.” protested the proposed purchase of an armored personnel carrier that would be parked outside City Hall. As one resident put it, “Keene is a beautiful place. It’s gorgeous, and it’s safe, and we love it here. We just don’t want to live in the kind of place where there’s an armored personnel carrier parked outside of City Hall ... It’s just not who we are.”
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SUPREME 1 COURT TAKES ON GAY MARRIAGE
POINTERS
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The Supreme Court held two days of hearings this week in cases involving same-sex marriage, as a slew of politicians announced their support and polls showed public backing has hit a record high. On Tuesday, the court heard a case from two couples challenging Proposition 8, a 2008 voter-approved ban on gay marriage in California. The focus turned Wednesday to the Defense of Marriage Act, which prevents legally married gay couples from receiving the same federal benefits as married straight ones. A majority of justices appeared to question the constitutionality of the 1996 law. The court is not expected to issue rulings on either case until June.
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OBAMA ON IMMIGRATION REFORM: ‘LET’S GET THIS DONE’
Pres. Obama pressured Congress on immigration reform this week, saying he wants a bill passed “as soon as possible.” During a naturalization ceremony Monday at the White House he said, “We’ve just got ... to work up the political courage to do what’s required to be done.” Sixty-three percent of Americans support a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants currently living in the U.S., according to a Public Religion Research Institute poll.
3 AMANDA KNOX GETS SHOCKING NEWS
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Amanda Knox, who was accused of killing her roommate in 2007 while she was an exchange student in Italy, is once again dominating headlines after Italy’s highest court ruled that her case would be tried again. Knox’s conviction was overturned in 2011, and she is now a student at the University of Washington in Seattle. In a statement issued after the latest ruling, Knox said, “No matter what happens, my family and I will face this continuing legal battle as we always have, confident in the truth and with our heads held high in the face of wrongful accusations and unreasonable adversity.”
NBC SLAMMED FOR SANDUSKY INTERVIEW
NBC News is facing a backlash for airing controversial filmmaker John Zeigler’s interview with convicted child molester Jerry Sandusky. Ziegler, who has written on his blog that parts of the case against the former Penn State assistant football coach were “remarkably weak,” recorded the interview as part of a film called The Framing of Joe Paterno. Ziegler defended himself in a blog post last week: “I made it very clear to everyone here, including Sandusky, that I am not supportive of him and some of my questions of him were actually much tougher than any he has ever faced.”
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POINTERS
LONDON TEENAGER MAKES A KILLING AT YAHOO
A 17-year-old sold an app to Yahoo for a reported $30 million, and will now become the company’s youngest employee. Nick D’Aloisio’s app, Summly, automatically shortens news stories to make them easier to read on smartphones. It has already been downloaded nearly 1 million times since launching last year. The acquisition is yet another sign that Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is focused on the mobile platform as part of her strategy to revive the struggling company.
TIGER WOODS BACK IN THE GAME
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Tiger Woods still has it! The disgraced golfer reclaimed his spot as the world’s No. 1 after winning the Arnold Palmer Invitational, his third victory of this PGA Tour season. “It was one of my goals to get back to that position after being out of the top 50 there for a while, being hurt and having all my points come off when I couldn’t play,” said Woods, who had dropped to as low as No. 58 while dealing with a leg injury and the scandal surrounding his extramarital affairs.
THAT’S VIRAL MATT LAUER ‘SIMPLY DIDN’T LIKE’ ANN CURRY
A selection of the week’s most talked-about stories. HEADLINES TO VIEW FULL STORIES
BEWARE OF SINKHOLES
YOUR DAILY DOSE OF HAPPY
IS THIS WHAT THE ROYAL BABY WILL LOOK LIKE?
JIM CARREY: GUN CONTROL OPPONENTS ARE ‘HEARTLESS MOTHERF--KERS’
JASON LINKINS
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LOOKING FORWARD IN ANGST
COME OUT, LOBBYISTS, WHEREVER YOU ARE
F YOU’RE THE sort of person who spends their evenings poring over research and financial filings pertaining to lobbying activities, you may have noticed that in recent years, “both spending on lobbying and the number of active lobbyists has declined.” Good news, right? Influence
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Enter peddling is on the wane! Hooray for good government! Alas, this is not the case, for if you click on that link above, you’ll be taken to the executive summary of the recent report from the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), which — while noting that “the lackluster economy” and “a gridlocked Congress” play a role in the decline — makes the case that these seeming declines are actually attributable to rule changes that essentially allow lobbyists to hide in plain sight as “not-lobbyists.” “The decline in lobbying activity is not a decline at all,” states the report, “but rather the side effect of lobbyists and lobbying firms taking advantage of a feature of the law which allows them to continue influencing policy from ‘behind the scenes.’” At issue here are lobbyists who have “deactivated,” or as the CRP puts it, lobbying that has “simply gone underground and is being done by individuals who are able to avoid the federal threshold for disclosure” under the prevailing law: “To test this theory, CRP looked at lobbyists who were active in 2011 but not in 2012 and de-
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termined where they worked as of early 2013. Our research found 1,732 lobbyists who “deactivated” in 2012. This drop is considerably smaller than the recent peak of deactivated lobbyists in 2008. That year, following the passage of HLOGA in 2007, more than 3,400 lobbyists stopped reporting activity.”
‘These seeming declines are actually attributable to rule changes that essentially allow lobbyists to hide in plain sight as ‘not-lobbyists.’” And what did they find? “In the first analysis of this kind, CRP finds that 46 percent of the active 2011 lobbyists who did not report any activity in 2012 are still working for the same employers for whom they lobbied in 2011 — supporting the theory that many previously registered lobbyists are not meeting the technical requirement to report or have altered their activities just enough to escape filing.
Enter It’s possible that some individuals are being less-thancandid about how much time they spend lobbying, which is difficult to judge from the outside, as it is hard to determine the degree to which an employee’s duties have changed. But the fact that a near majority of deactivated lobbyists are still with the same organizations suggests that many of the changes we see in the filings may be due to technicalities or minor tweaks in their responsibilities, with the result being decreased reporting.” Roll Call’s Kate Ackley was examining the “total lobbying tab for 2011 and 2012” about a month and a half ago, and she concluded at the time that much “of the work influencing government takes place in the shadows, outside of the view of public disclosures.” Here’s one choice example she elucidated: “In some cases, lobbyists have remained on the job, even with the same firms, but have deregistered, keeping their clients and their work secret. One prominent example is Steve
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Ricchetti, who stayed with his Ricchetti Inc., although no longer as a registered lobbyist, before joining the Obama administration last year. Lobbyists, of course, can’t work for the executive branch — President Barack Obama banned them — unless granted a waiver.”
46 percent of the active 2011 lobbyists who did not report any activity in 2012 are still working for the same employers for whom they lobbied in 2011.” (As you may be aware, that “ban” provides for a lot of exceptions!) The CRP’s work brings Ackley some confirmation of her February thesis, and her new piece on the CRP report is a lot of fun to read. Here’s my favorite part: “One lobbyist, Mark Smith of the Da Vinci Group, did not appear on 2012 filings but continued to describe himself on Twitter as a ‘proud lobbyist.’” Well, not that proud, I guess.
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DATA
What’s Really in Your Easter Basket
WENDY GEORGE
Putting together an Easter basket this season? Beware of a pretty massive sugar hit. Even this modest basket has more than 250 grams of sugar, which amounts to nearly 1,000 calories from sugar alone. That’s on top of 64 grams of fat — an entire day’s limit, according to the DGAs. And while it’s a yearly indulgence, many of these candies are holiday versions of the treats we eat year-round. They can look like straight-forward foods — solid chocolate, for example — and still contain unrecognizable additives we might think twice about. From a preservative derived from petroleum to a candy-coating made from the excretions of insects, Easter candy isn’t so pretty on the inside. — Meredith Melnick
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Q&A
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David Lee Roth Wears Overalls, Talks Insuring ‘Little Elvis’ “Somebody said well, we’ll have to insure Edward’s fingers, because he’s gonna be using those a lot … I said what about ‘Little Elvis’? We’re gonna be using him a lot.”
Above: Van Halen vocalist David Lee Roth performs at the Staples Center in 2012. Below: Roth visits The Opie & Anthony Show at SiriusXM studios earlier this month.
FOR THE FULL INTERVIEW, VISIT HUFFPOST LIVE
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The Week That Was
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Penitents from La Paz brotherhood wait outside the church before taking part in a procession, one of the many for the Christian Easter Holy Week.
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Valencia, Spain 03.18.2013 Bullfighter Juan Jose Padilla pauses for a moment before a bullfight during the Las Fallas Festival, which celebrates the arrival of spring. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Sydney, Australia 03.22.2013 A diving pig performs at the Davidson Plaza during the Sydney Royal Easter Show, an annual agricultural event that is marking its 190th show since its inception in 1823. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Noida, India 03.21.2013 Students at Design and Innovation Academy (DIA) celebrate Holi, a festival that marks the end of winter and beginning of spring. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Beijing, China 03.23.2013 A man poses for a photo with solar lights during the Earth Hour 2013 power switchoff at Sanlitun Village. Earth Hour calls on people, organizations and cities to turn off their non-essential lights for one hour starting at 8:30 p.m. local time. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Beijing, China 03.25.2013 Models showcase designs on the catwalk during the 21st China International Young Fashion Designers Contest on the second day of Mercedes-Benz China Fashion Week. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Mae Hong Son Province, Thailand 03.24.2013 Myanmar refugees cover their mouths as a Thai army helicopter (not pictured) takes off at the Mae Surin camp, after a ferocious blaze swept through a camp in northern Thailand, killing 35 people. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Nicosia, Cyprus 03.24.2013 Protesters hold a banner that reads “Hands off Cyprus” during an antibailout rally outside the European Union house. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Allahabad, India 03.18.2013 An Indian man walks past burning piles of garbage set afire at the end of the Maha Kumbh Mela festival at Sangam. The festival, one of the world’s largest religious gatherings, concluded earlier this month. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Katmandu, Nepal 03.19.2013 A Nepalese Buddhist woman feeds pigeons near the Boudhanath Stupa, an important pilgrimage site for Buddhists where a Tibetan monk selfimmolated last month. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Mandra, Pakistan 03.20.2013 Pakistani men work at a brick factory in Mandra, near Rawalpindi. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Badolatosa, Spain 03.25.2013 A road sign is seen in a flooded street in Badolatosa, a village in the southern province of Sevilla, where around 30 families have been affected by floods. Tap here for a more extensive look at the week on The Huffington Post. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Voices
KIM SIMON
GETTY IMAGES/FLICKR RF
Whatever Happened to Kindness? WHEN MAX was just a few months old, I sat cross-legged on the floor with him in a circle of other mothers. The facilitator for our “Mommy and Me” playgroup would throw a question out to the group, and we would each volley back an answer. “What quality do you want to instill in your child? What personality characteristic would you most like for your son to be known for?” she asked.
One by one, the mothers answered. “Athletic,” “good sense of humor,” “brave,” “smart,” “strong.” The answers blended together until it was my turn to speak. I looked down at the tiny human wiggling around on the blanket in front of me with his perfectly round nose and his full lips that mirrored mine. I stroked the top of his very bald head and said with confidence: “kind.” I want my son to grow up to be kind. The eyes of the other mothers turned towards me. “That’s
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Voices not always a word that you hear used for boys,” one said. “But yes, you’re right ... so I guess, me too.” At the end of the day, we wanted our tiny, fragile, helpless baby boys to grow up to be kind. Strong, resilient, athletic, funny ... but above all else, kind. Max is almost 4-years-old. He knows nothing about the horrific things that young men did to a young woman on the saddest night that Steubenville has ever seen. He doesn’t know, but I sure do. I know that someone’s daughter was violated in the most violent way possible, by someone’s son. By many sons. The blame for that night falls squarely on the shoulders of the young men who made terrible choices, but it also falls in the laps of their parents. Sexual assault is about power and control. But it is also about so much more. While it’s true that big scary monster men sometimes jump out of bushes to rape unsuspecting women, most rapists look like the men who we see every day. Acquaintance rape (or date rape) accounts for the majority of sexual assaults that we see among young people. In colleges, in high schools, at parties, in the cars and bedrooms that belong to the men
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who women trust. These men are your fraternity brothers, your athletes, your church-going friends, the young neighbor who mows your lawn. They are somebody’s son. Date rape is often saturated with entitlement. It feeds off of the hero worship that grows rampant like weeds on school campuses and in locker rooms. Young men are taught to be strong, to be athletes, to be feared. Young women are
At the end of the day, we wanted our tiny, fragile, helpless baby boys to grow up to be kind. Strong, resilient, athletic, funny ... but above all else, kind.” taught to be meek, to be feminine, to be small. As our young people begin to sort out relationships with each other and relationships with alcohol, they encounter an endless menu of ways to hurt each other. As a community, we give our athletes free reign. Young men are filled with the heavy power of triumph, their heroism illuminated by the bright lights of a brisk Friday night football game. Young cheerleaders spend hours painting
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signs for them, adorning hallways with fluorescent notes of encouragement. Young men are known by their football number, their last touchdown pass, their ability to get any girl they choose. Young women fill the stands with hopeful smiles, dying to be noticed. We have created this. We have allowed this. We choose not to demand more from our young men, because we see how big they grow in the spotlight. We give them adult power, without instilling in them an adult sense of responsibility and ethics. Moms, it is time. Now is the time
KIM SIMON
to make this stop. If you are the mother of a son, you can prevent the next Steubenville. We must teach our boys to be kind. Teaching empathy, compassion and awareness needs to begin as early as possible. A toddler can learn how to use words of kindness: “Friend, are you OK?” “I’m sorry friend, did you get a boo-boo?” Encourage tiny boys to be aware of how others are feeling. Name what they see. “Mommy is sad right now, honey. Our friend G is sick, and I want her to feel better.” Give children tasks that they can do to help someone in need. Write letters of gratitude to take to the local firehouse. Bring dinner to a mother on bedrest. Choose a toy to share with
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Left to right: Defense attorney Adam Nemann, his client, Trent Mays, Ma’lik Richmond and his attorney, Walter Madison.
Voices the new child that just joined your preschool class. Teach your child to go towards a child who is upset, instead of walking away. We must teach our boys what it truly means to be brave. How many of those young men in Steubenville knew in their sweet boy hearts that what was happening was wrong, but still remained silent? Teach your boys that bravery can be terrifying. Courage can be demanded of you at the most inopportune times. Let them know that your expectation is that they are brave enough to rise to the occasion. And show them how. We must not shy away from telling our sons the truth about sex. As parents, we need to worry about our sons being respectful of their sexual partners, not just about them getting someone pregnant. Our boys need to know that they will find themselves at a crossroads one night, or on multiple nights. Their body will be telling them one thing, and their partner may be telling them another. It is a young man’s responsibility to listen to his partner. Explain to your son what consent looks like (and doesn’t look like). Teach them to check in as they take the next step with someone. Teach them to
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stop if they don’t think they’re getting a clear answer. When I found out that I was having a son, I was relieved at first. I thought I had dodged a bullet, not having a daughter who I would have to protect from the big, scary, violent world that is still so unkind to women. This will be so much easier, I thought. But it’s not. It’s harder. I am now pregnant with my
While it’s true that big scary monster men sometimes jump out of bushes to rape unsuspecting women, most rapists look like the men who we see every day.” second son. As a feminist and a mother, a survivor and an activist, a human and a writer, I have discovered that my job in preventing sexual assault is even bigger than it would be if I had a daughter. Because every rapist is someone’s son. We have the chance to fix that, one little boy at a time. Kim Simon is a writer and runs the blog Mama by the Bay.
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JOSHUA FOER
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SCIENCE
COURTESY OF TED
The Secret to Superpower Memory EARLIER THIS MONTH in New York City, Ram Kolli defeated the reigning USA Memory Championship Nelson Dellis to win the 16th annual USA Memory Championship. Readers of my book
Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything will remember Kolli as the ‘mental athlete’ I went toeto-toe with when I won that same contest in 2006. Here’s the thing: Despite being U.S. memory champions, Kolli, Dellis and I occasionally misplace our
JOSHUA FOER EXPLAINS “memory palaces” in his 2012 TEDTalk.
Voices car keys, just like everyone else. We don’t actually have great memories. Rather, we know how to use the memories we’ve got more effectively in certain contexts, thanks to a set of mnemonic techniques invented in antiquity. One of those techniques, known as the memory palace, was supposedly invented by a Greek poet 2,500 years ago. It involves converting information into wild, wacky and strange (and therefore memorable) images, and then visualizing those images in your mind’s eye, inside of a building you know well. Cicero used the memory palace to memorize the speeches he delivered on the floor of the Roman senate. Medieval scholars used the technique to memorize entire books. Two weekends ago, Dellis, the championship runner-up, employed memory palaces to memorize 302 random numbers in just five minutes, and the order of a shuffled pack of playing in one minute and seven seconds. He used a related technique to memorize 162 first and last names of total strangers. It’s nice (and occasionally handy) to be able to memorize lists of information, and numbers, and
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people’s names, but it’s important to remember that memory athletes are just using tricks to perform these feats. They’re tricks that take
How much of our lives … are we comfortable losing because we’re buried in our smartphones, or not paying attention to the human being across from us?” advantage of some very basic principles of how our minds work. The most important of those principles is that we remember when we pay attention. We remember when we engage deeply,
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!
Voices when information is made meaningful, when it’s colorful, when we’re able to integrate it into the web of all the other things we know. Memory techniques, like the memory palace, may sound like miraculous shortcuts. But in fact they work precisely because they make you work. They take effort. They force a kind of depth of processing and a kind of mindfulness that many of us don’t normally walk around exercising. But that’s what it takes to remember — and to live a memorable life. For example, if you want to remember someone’s name, the first and most important thing you can do is pay attention — real attention — when a person introduces herself. Most of the time, we forget a person’s name because we never properly encode it in our memories. Our minds are elsewhere, or we’re too busy thinking of the first clever thing we’re going to say back. To make a name memorable, try creating a visual association in your imagination between the person’s name and face. If it’s a woman named Abby, imagine a bee stinging her eye. If it’s a guy called Bill, imagine him with a duckbill for a mouth. If it’s someone named Barbara, picture a crown of barbed
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We remember when we engage deeply, when information is made meaningful, when it’s colorful, when we’re able to integrate it into the web of all the other things we know.” wire around her head. Create these images in your mind’s eye with as much color, action, and meaning as possible. For example, don’t just picture a bee stinging Abby’s eye. Hear the bee buzzing, imagine her
Foer’s book, which was released last year, details his year-long journey to sharpen his memory.
eye swelling, and try to feel how painful it would be. The more senses you can use, the better. That simple exercise creates a set of links between your memory of the person’s face and name. The technique works because it forces you to engage more deeply with the person’s name than you’re used to. The more you think about something — the more you can engage in what psychologists refer to as “elaborative encoding” — the more memorable a piece of information is likely to be. If attention and engagement are the secret to remembering, then that raises an interesting question. How much of our lives — our already short lives — are we comfortable losing because we’re buried in our smartphones, or not paying attention to the human being across from us, or because we’re simply too lazy to try to engage deeply with the world around us? The
MORE ON TED WEEKENDS HOW FLAWED MEMORIES TEACH US
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JOSHUA FOER
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DECORATING A BARREN MEMORY PALACE
feats of memory champions prove that there are incredible memory capacities latent in all of us, but if you are going to live a memorable life, it takes effort. You have to con-
If it’s a woman named Abby, imagine a bee stinging her eye. If it’s a guy called Bill, imagine him with a duckbill for a mouth.” stantly force yourself to pay attention, to make information meaningful, to engage deeply. You have to be the kind of person who remembers to remember.
Joshua Foer is a science writer and author of Moonwalking with Einstein.
A selection of the week’s related blogs HEADLINES TO VIEW BLOGS ABOUT THIS WEEK’S THEME
YOUR DIABOLICALLY LAZY BRAIN
THE SKINNY ON REMEMBERING
THE CREATIVE POWER OF MEMORY
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QUOTED “Too Big To Fail is not solved and gone. It’s still here.”
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: ANDREW HARRER/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES; GETTY IMAGES; PETER FOLEY/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES; BENJAMIN NORMAN/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES
— Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said during a press conference
“ The only way to test for the problem is to put the pants on and bend over.”
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“ Cats are arrogant and self centered... and that’s only two of their great qualities.”
— HuffPost commenter CtJean,
on “Cat Shaming Is the New Dog Shaming”
— Lululemon CEO Christine Day
said on an earnings call, according to the WSJ, on the decision to pull its popular black yoga pants off the shelves because the fabric showed off too much
“ I’m not gay. So I’m not going to marry one.”
— Retiring Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.)
said he won’t be following Sen. Rob Portman’s (R-Ohio) recent support for gay marriage in an interview with Politico
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QUOTED
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“ Which is more ignorant? Not knowing what it meant or saying you didn’t know what it meant.”
— HuffPost commenter lawj,
on Giorgos Katidis’ ban from the Greek National Soccer team for life for giving the Nazi salute
“ Who here actually thinks I would do 50 Shades of Grey as a movie? Like really. For real. In real life.”
— Emma Watson
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on Twitter, addressing rumors that she had been cast in the big-screen adaptation of the erotic novel
She could be drunk, passed out naked on a city park bench with a sign on her back that says ‘rape me.’ This still would not give anyone the right to touch her.
— HuffPost commenter SmarterThanTheAverageBea,
on the Steubenville rape trial verdict finding Trent Mays and Ma’lik Richmond guilty
“ If only the DOJ put this effort going after bankers.”
— HuffPost commenter NoHayChabo, on the DOJ’s investigation into journalist Matthew Keys
03.31.13 #42 FEATURES AGING BULL
DANIEL ACKER/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES
THE SWAT-IFICATION OF AMERICA
AGING BULL John McCain Gets Back in the Ring
PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
By JON WARD
L PREVIOUS PAGE: SPENCER PLATT/GETTY IMAGES
LAST AUGUST, a few minutes before GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan took the stage at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., I was hurrying down a flight of stairs to get to the floor to watch. I stopped short when I saw a cluster of people on the landing of the stairwell. John McCain was at the center, taking questions from what appeared to be mostly foreign reporters. Rather than getting into the hall to hear Ryan’s speech, McCain, who turned 76 that day, was lingering with a group of journalists who were asking him whatever popped into their heads.
It was a stark contrast to the convention four years earlier, when the Arizona senator had been the Republican Party’s nominee for president, and had been the focus of attention all week long. He had gone from center stage to concrete floors and cinder block walls. An aide tried to end the questions and hurry McCain along, but the 5-foot-7 bulldog of a man was in his element. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” he said, talking over her. He turned back to the reporters: “What?” One of the reporters
tried to bait him with a series of questions about whether foreign policy was a form of wealth redistribution, and McCain went back and forth until he’d had enough. “I think I have explained it to you as well as I can. All right?” McCain said. No matter the location, McCain has always run toward a fight. He likes to mix it up. It’s why he was a Navy fighter pilot. It’s why he takes questions from reporters in Senate hallways. It’s why during the 2000 presidential campaign he let reporters sit on his bus and ask him questions until they
McCain has always run toward a fight.
KEITH BEDFORD/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES
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had run out of them. It’s why he hosts regular town hall meetings, and it’s why they are lively affairs. It is also why, four years after his loss to President Barack Obama, McCain is back at the center of Washington politics. The GOP is currently in a period of self-examination and soul-searching, and — being out of power in the White House — lacks a clear national leader. As a multitude of Republicans
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compete for the spotlight, McCain has managed to shine just as bright as many of them. That’s despite the fact that he has less influence, as he himself admitted during an hour-long interview, than he did during the days when he was a senator who still harbored presidential ambitions. From his involvement in the immigration reform effort, to the nomination fight over Obama’s defense secretary, former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), McCain is more relevant now than he has been since he carried his party’s
McCain and Sarah Palin during the Republican National Convention in 2008.
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banner in 2008. And his reemergence gives the war hero and former Vietnam prisoner of war an opportunity to be remembered at the end of his career for things other than a disappointing presidential run that associated him indelibly with former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who he chose as his running mate. McCain knows he is living out the closing chapters of a storied career. During our interview, he spoke frankly about his current role in politics, and his clashes
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with the Obama administration and members of his own party. And he expressed concern that he not overstay his welcome in the Senate, raising questions about whether he intends to run for reelection in 2016 at age 80. But he is also a restless soul, who cannot stand still for long. McCain wrote in his 2002 book, Worth the Fighting For, that one of his favorite quotes came from his mentor, former Sen. John Tower (R-Texas). “Son, don’t let your shirttail hit you in the ass. Keep running,” Tower used to say. McCain told me it was this sort of mindset that helped keep him
McCain addresses Chuck Hagel (center) during the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Hagel’s Secretary of Defense nomination.
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from despair in the months following the 2008 election. “After I lost in 2008, I really, I knew the best cure and the only cure is to get busy, and put it behind you. When you sit around and mope, I mean, it’s a very destructive exercise,” McCain said, his left leg propped up on the coffee table in his Senate office. “So I tried to stay in the game.”
‘THAT ANGRY OLD WHITE GUY’ To many, McCain’s reputation as a maverick, willing to cross party lines on issues such as immigration reform and campaign finance, took a hit after his contortions during his presidential run, and then two years later in his Senate reelection campaign. In 2008, McCain veered to the right with his selection of Palin as his running mate. He was made unavailable to the press, and the image of him as a happy-go-lucky
McCain and his adviser Mark Salter during a walk-through at the RNC in 2008.
“ ‘Ah, that angry old white guy. He, you know what, he’s just bitter about losing.’” AGING BULL
maverick morphed into that of an angry old man. In 2010, McCain again ran to the right again in his primary against former Rep. J.D. Hayworth, taking a hardline stance on immigration and the need for a border fence. Since winning his sixth term, he has been an outspoken critic of the Obama administration over what to do in Syria and the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, and he’s had a series of high-profile exchanges with Obama cabinet officials. “I must say you’ve been making more news as a questioner than I have,” Fox News’ Chris Wallace said when the senator appeared on Fox News Sunday in February, citing McCain’s interrogation of outgoing defense secretary Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey on Syria. At Hillary Clinton’s last hearing as secretary of state before the Senate Armed Services Committee, McCain opened with heartfelt and effusive praise and gratitude for her service, and then proceeded to rip into her answers on
Benghazi. McCain and Clinton are friends, going back to her days in the Senate. But that didn’t stop him from blasting her in public. And after McCain’s sharp questioning of Hagel at his Senate confirmation hearing last month, MSNBC host Chris Matthews accused McCain of being “angrier than ever” and suggested his queries for Hagel were caused by a “flashback” to his days in combat and as a POW. McCain did misstep in midNovember, when he called a press conference to complain about the lack of answers from the White House about the terrorist attacks on the Benghazi consulate, only to have it emerge later that he was missing a nearly two-hour classified briefing on the subject that occurred at the same time as his press conference. A spokesman said it was a “scheduling error,” but McCain snapped at a reporter and grew agitated when asked about it. Nonetheless, stories asking different variations of the same question — “Who is the real John McCain?” — have exasperated McCain’s friends, supporters and staff. Mark Salter,
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McCain’s longtime confidant, adviser and co-author on many of his books, referred to it as “amateur psychoanalysis.” “Circumstances have changed, but he really hasn’t,” Salter said. Salter said that when McCain was a flight instructor at a Mississippi air station in the mid-1960s, the pilots in training would be afraid to go up with him. McCain would sit in the seat behind them, berating them when they messed up and banging them on the back of their helmets with his clipboard. McCain laughed off the idea that he had ever stopped being himself. “Just remember,” he said, “that when it’s a Republican administration and I call for the resignation of the secretary of defense, and I say that this Medicare Part D is a bad deal because it’s not paid for and vote against it, Bush’s signature: ‘Hey, well there he is! The old maverick! God bless him for standing up for what he believes in!’” When he has opposed Obama, McCain said, the media depiction of him has changed. “‘Ah, that angry old white guy. He, you know what, he’s just bitter about losing,’” he said, summarizing
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the portrayal. McCain acknowledged his combative nature. It’s why, he said, he has never spoken with journalist Bob Woodward for one of his books. He’d prefer to be out in the open, on the record, because when he has something tough to say to someone, he usually just says it to their face. “I just do everything on the record, because it’s on the record anyway,” he said. “McCain may stab you, but he’ll always do it in the chest,” Salter said.
Sen. Ted Cruz at the 2012 Republican National Convention. Cruz is part of a new crop of Republican lawmakers McCain has found himself at odds with.
“ ... it’s always the wacko birds on right and left that get the media megaphone.” AGING BULL
TAKING ON ‘THE WACKO BIRDS’ While McCain has been a fierce critic of the Obama administration, he has also tangled with members of his own party, particularly the new crop of lawmakers including Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), and Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.), darlings of the conservative grassroots. When I asked him if “these guys” — having just mentioned Amash, Cruz and Paul by name — are a “positive force” in the GOP, McCain paused for a full six seconds. “They were elected, nobody believes that there was a corrupt election, anything else,” McCain said. “But I also think that when, you know, it’s always the wacko birds on right and left that get the media megaphone.” “I think it can be harmful if there is a belief among the American people that those people are reflective of the views of the majority of Republicans. They’re not,” he continued. I asked McCain to clarify who, specifically, he was talking about.
“Rand Paul, Cruz, Amash, whoever,” McCain said. When asked about Amash’s recent accusation that a joke McCain made on Twitter about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was “racist,” McCain had a long belly laugh. “Yeah he defended, he defended Ahmadinejad,” McCain said, barely getting his words out. “I thought, ‘Wow, wow! That’s interesting.’ I thought it was a pretty funny line, and all of a sudden this Amash, or whatever his name is, is defending me making a joke about Ahmadinejad.” McCain also criticized Cruz over his suggestion during Hagel’s confirmation hearing that Hagel had accepted money from terrorist groups. “He was making a presentation that said that Chuck Hagel might have taken money from Palestinian organizations, people connected with all that,” McCain said. “Look, you can’t, without any basis in fact — you just don’t go around saying that kind of stuff.” A Cruz spokeswoman said in an e-mail that the Texas senator “has great respect for Sen. McCain and is honored to work with
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him in the U.S. Senate.” McCain’s relationship with Paul appears to be warmer than the one he has with Cruz and Amash. While he and Paul have clashed publicly on numerous occasions, they have also worked together on legislation, and according to a Paul adviser, they have a “decent relationship.” “On some issues [McCain] sees him as a fellow maverick, but on some issues I think that pisses [McCain] off, having a maverick
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against John McCain,” said the Paul adviser, who asked to speak frankly in exchange that he not be identified. “I think he thinks Rand wants his way too much, like on [National Defense Authorization Act] ... but I don’t think he thinks he’s doing it just to do it.” McCain made probably his most public and dramatic break with Paul this month, when he strode to the Senate floor where Paul had the night before waged a 13-hour filibuster over Obama’s drone policy, and ridiculed Paul’s concerns as “ridiculous.” Many Republican senators had joined
Sen. Rand Paul with McCain during a news conference discussing a potential Republican alternative jobs bill.
“ When you sit around and mope, I mean, it’s a very destructive exercise.” AGING BULL
Paul on the floor the night before, Politico hailed him as having become, overnight, a “unifying leader” inside the GOP, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) lauded Paul for an “extraordinary effort.” McCain couldn’t have cared less about the hoopla. He read a Wall Street Journal editorial that said Paul was pulling “political stunts that fire up impressionable libertarian kids in their college dorms.” “We’ve done, I think, a disservice to a lot of Americans by making them believe that somehow they’re in danger from their government. They’re not,” McCain said. “But we are in danger from a dedicated ... enemy that is hell bent on our destruction.” During our interview, McCain was frank about his current role in politics and within the Republican Party. “In some ways, it has been diminished,” he admitted, “because I am no longer ever going to run for president of the United States, the nomination of my party.” But he noted that he is also freer to make deals inside Wash-
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ington, since he is “nobody’s competitor anymore.” McCain made clear that he relishes the opportunity to be a power broker when Washington is badly in need of them, even if his deal-making influence hasn’t so far extended to the biggest fights over the size and scope of the federal government. Despite being a consistent critic of the Obama administration, that didn’t stop the president from having McCain and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) over to the White House to talk immigration, sequestration and other topics at the end of February. McCain was also part of the group of GOP senators who dined with Obama on earlier this month at the Jefferson Hotel. “Because of knowledge and expertise and background, ability in establishing relations on the other side of the aisle … I’m kind of the go-to guy,” McCain said. “I can’t tell you, two or three times a week, some Democrat comes up to me and says, ‘Hey, I think we really need to work on health care,’ or, ‘We want to work with you on—’ you know? And a lot of times, about 90 percent of the time, I say no because I don’t have the knowledge, expertise, background, desire, whatever it is. But on oth-
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ers, obviously, I say yeah.” Many conservatives will see McCain’s eagerness to work with Democrats as more evidence that he is not really one of them. Others will think he is just trying to get back in the good graces of establishment Washington after a few years in the wilderness. “We’re misreading John McCain,” said Steve Clemons, Washington editor-at-large for The Atlantic. “He is not out there trying to relaunch himself and become a warmer and fuzzier version of a John McCain that became cranky and difficult. “I think he is just someone who is complex,” Clemons said. It’s most likely that McCain’s obvious distaste for being thought of as a partisan stems from his view that it is less honorable than being a principled and independent actor. McCain wrote in his 2000 book, Faith of My Fathers that his father and grandfather — both of them fourstar admirals in the U.S. Navy — “were not men of spotless virtue, but they were honest, brave and loyal all their lives.” Earning their respect, he wrote, was “the most lasting ambition of my life.”
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SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R-D.C.) Nowhere is McCain’s unique political role more clearly illustrated than in the current immigration fight. He may not be able to win over grassroots voters in the same way as Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the 41-year-old star politician who has wowed fans and critics with his successful outreach to the GOP base on the issue. McCain, by contrast, is likely to turn off more conservatives than he brings on board, and his 2008 run has made him a more partisan figure in the eyes of many
Sen. Marco Rubio at a news conference for a balanced budget proposal in 2011.
DOUGLAS GRAHAM/CQ ROLL CALL/GETTY IMAGES
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Democrats and independents. But because Washington is more polarized than ever, McCain is in some ways more indispensable than ever inside the very place he called the “city of Satan” during an Arizona town hall meeting in February. He is willing to work across the aisle and use his sizable clout to get things done, and he has less to lose than younger lawmakers
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and can take greater risks. A senior Democratic Senate aide involved in the process said that any immigration effort would have been suspect without McCain’s involvement, since he was a leader on the issue in 2007. “From a perception point of view, the seriousness of the group would be questioned if he weren’t involved. But because he is, they know this is the real effort,” said the aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Nobody is expecting other efforts to spring up.”
McCain addresses the media after the Senate Select Intelligence Committee Hearing on the Benghazi attacks.
“ McCain may stab you, but he’ll always do it in the chest.” AGING BULL
His constituency, in other words, is Washington: the press, pundits, elected officials, bureaucrats, consultants, lobbyists and others who make up the political class. At a forum with McCain hosted by The Atlantic in early February, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) lauded McCain’s involvement in the immigration reform fight. “Senator McCain standing up with us on immigration is going to make all the difference,” she said. McCain’s relationship with Rubio, the current frontrunner to be the GOP’s 2016 presidential nominee, is collegial and cordial. But there seems some potential for discord. Rubio aides have not appreciated McCain’s statements that there is “very little difference” between the current proposal and McCain’s 2007 plan, as he said at their first press conference in late January. And McCain’s comments about Rubio have had a touch of condescension. During his appearance on ABC’s This Week the day before the Senate’s current immigration proposal was announced, McCain did not mention Rubio’s
name when listing the lawmakers involved. And during the press conference to unveil the plan, he said Rubio “obviously is a new but incredibly important voice in this whole issue.” In 2010, Rubio criticized Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, his opponent in the Senate primary, because he said Crist “would have voted for the McCain plan.” “I think that plan is wrong,” Rubio said at the time. McCain looked surprised when I read that quote back to him, and paused. “I think that Marco Rubio has a keen political antennae, and I think he realizes that this issue’s time has come. I really do,” McCain said. “And I also believe that he has a certain empathy for people who are here illegally. I just, I’ve watched him talk and I’ve watched him behave, and I think he’s, I think he’s genuine. “Now I think he’s got a lot to learn, I think he’s new in the Senate, don’t get me wrong,” McCain continued. “But I think he’s done a good job, particularly outreach to conservative talk show hosts and others.” Rubio spokesman Alex Conant didn’t back down from Rubio’s characterization of the 2007 pro-
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posal as “wrong.” “It created a special pathway to citizenship and lacked sufficient security and enforcement triggers,” Conant said in an email. “The bipartisan proposal this year is more conservative than what’s been proposed in the past.” SPARE ME YOUR SYMPATHY It is clear that McCain has begun to consider how he will be remembered. He claimed he hasn’t thought much about his legacy. But a year ago, he started The McCain Institute for International Leadership, using $9 million in funds left from his 2008 campaign that many Republicans expected him to donate to the Republican National Committee, as President George W. Bush did with $12 million in leftover donations in 2006. When I asked him whether he’d taken any flak from inside his party over that decision, McCain laughed and said, “Not directly.” He was forthcoming about how long he intends to stay in the Senate. McCain mentioned former Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), who died in 2010 at age 92, while still in office.
“Unfortunately, we remember people as they are rather than the way they were,” he said. “I revered Sen. Robert Byrd. Sen. Robert Byrd, when I first came to the Senate, he knew the Senate, he was the toughest guy, he was — I mean, he was fair, he was incredible. You know, the last I remember of Robert Byrd is he’s sitting there in his seat in the Senate, in a very unfortunate physical condition. “I think two years from now is the time to think whether I would want to run for office again,” McCain said. “I do think that I
Rep. Justin Amash at a House Foreign Affairs hearing last May. Amash called McCain “racist” for a joke he made on Twitter about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
“ ... I am no longer ever going to run for president of the United States … ” AGING BULL
have seen individuals, men, who were at the top of their game and stayed to the point where they were not only not at the top of their game, but they were kind of objects of our sympathy. I don’t want to be one of those.” Still, it’s difficult to imagine McCain stopping. After speaking in his office, we got into a green four-door Ford Fusion being driven by one of McCain’s young staffers, and rode away from the Capitol toward downtown. We got out in front of the Grand Army of the Republic statue at 7th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue as dusk was settling among the gray buildings. “Where are we going?” McCain asked one of his aides, who was on her cell phone getting directions. We stood there for a few minutes in the cold, McCain without a coat, turning around and around, as a homeless man on a bench about 30 feet away looked at us in mild surprise. McCain chuckled. “Where are we?” he said. He appeared to be enjoying the moment of levity, and laughing quietly at his own situation: a U.S. senator lost for
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a few seconds on the streets of D.C. But there was a slight hint of displeasure. McCain has always been in a hurry. He is a man of action who cannot abide a lack of movement. He kept his impatience in check, and we figured out where we were headed. McCain made his way across 7th Street to the Navy Memorial, through a crowd in the lobby of the visitors center, and into a back room to greet the panelists. Once on stage, he made introductory remarks, and thanked the four panelists. He also mentioned the moderator, Jenna Lee of Fox News. “Jenna, I would thank you for your participation. I never watch Fox, so, thank you very much,” McCain said, drawing laughter from the crowd of about 300 in the auditorium. It wasn’t clear whether he was joking.
HuffPost reporter Jon Ward discusses McCain’s status on the “fringe of his party.” Tap here to watch the full video on HuffPost Live.
SWAT THE
IFICA TION Y By RADLE
BALKO
OF AM
ERICA
THE SWAT-IFICATION OF AMERICA
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TIM SLOAN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
BATTLEFIELD TACTICS AT YOUR FRONT DOOR
A U.S. Capitol Police SWAT team storms into the House Canon Office building after reports of a gun getting through security. It turned out to be a toy gun on a Halloween costume.
HE AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION (ACLU) has launched a nationwide campaign to assess police militarization in the United States. ACLU affiliates in 23 states are sending open records requests to hundreds of state and local police agencies requesting information about their SWAT teams, such as how often and for what reasons they’re deployed, what types of weapons they use, how often citizens are injured during SWAT raids, and how they’re funded. More affiliates may join the effort in the coming weeks.
AP PHOTO/WALLY FONG
THE SWAT-IFICATION OF AMERICA
Additionally, the affiliates will ask for information about drones, GPS tracking devices, how much military equipment the police agencies have obtained through programs run through the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security, and how often and for what purpose state National Guards are participating in enforcement of drug laws. “We’ve known for a while now that American neighborhoods are increasingly being policed by cops armed with the weapons and tac-
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tics of war,” said Kara Dansky, senior counsel at the ACLU’s Center for Justice, which is coordinating the investigation. “The aim of this investigation is to find out just how pervasive this is, and to what extent federal funding is incentivizing this trend.” The militarization of America’s police forces has been going on for about a generation now. Former Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates first conceived the idea of the SWAT team in the late 1960s, in response to the Watts riots and a few mass shooting incidents for which he thought the police were unprepared. Gates
Former L.A. Police Chief Daryl Gates — the brains behind SWAT — at a press conference in 1978.
THE SWAT-IFICATION OF AMERICA
wanted an elite team of specialized cops similar to groups like the Army Rangers or Navy SEALs that could respond to riots, barricades, shootouts, or hostage-takings with more skill and precision than everyday patrol officers. The concept caught on, particularly after a couple of high-profile, televised confrontations between Gates’ SWAT team and a Black Panther holdout in 1969, and then with the Symbionese Liberation Army in 1973. Given the rioting, protests, and general social unrest of the time, Gates’ idea quickly grew popular in law enforcement circles, particularly in cities worried about rioting and domestic terrorism. From Gates’ lone team in LA, according to a New York Times investigation, the number of SWAT teams in the U.S. grew to 500 by 1975. By 1982, nearly 60 percent of American cities with 50,000 or more people had a SWAT team. Throughout those early years, SWAT teams were generally used as Gates had intended. They deployed when there was a suspect, gunman or escaped fugitive who posed an immediate threat to the public, using force to defuse an already violent situation. By 1995, however, nearly 90
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percent of cities with 50,000 or more people had a SWAT team — and many had several, according to Peter Kraska, a criminologist at Eastern Kentucky University, who in the late 1990s conducted two highly publicized surveys of police departments across the country,
“ WE’VE KNOWN FOR A WHILE NOW THAT AMERICAN NEIGHBORHOODS ARE INCREASINGLY BEING POLICED BY COPS ARMED WITH THE WEAPONS AND TACTICS OF WAR.” and a follow-up survey several years later. Even in smaller towns — municipalities with 25,000 to 50,000 people — Kraska found that the number of SWAT teams increased by more than 300 percent between 1984 and 1995. By 2000, 75 percent of those towns also had their own SWAT team. Kraska estimates that total number of SWAT raids in America jumped from just a few hundred per year in the 1970s, to a few thousand by the early 1980s, to around 50,000 by the mid-2000s. The vast majority of those raids are to serve warrants on people suspected of nonviolent
COURTESY OF KARA DANSKY
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drug crimes. Police forces were no longer reserving SWAT teams and paramilitary tactics for events that presented an immediate threat to the public. They were now using them mostly as an investigative tool in drug cases, creating violent confrontations with people suspected of nonviolent, consensual crimes. It was during the Reagan administration that the SWATification of America really began to accelerate. Reagan (and a compliant Congress) passed policies encouraging cooperation and mutual training between the military and police agencies. The president set up joint task forces in which domestic cops and soldiers worked together on antidrug operations. And, with some help from Congress, he nudged the Pentagon to start loaning or even giving surplus military gear to law enforcement agencies. Subsequent administrations continued all of these policies — and a number of new ones. After Reagan, new federal policies provided yet more incentive for militarization. In 1988, Congress created the Byrne grant program, which gives money to local police departments and
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“ WE’RE ALSO CONCERNED THAT THESE TACTICS ARE DISPROPORTIONATELY USED AGAINST POOR PEOPLE, AND IN COMMUNITIES OF COLOR.” prosecutors for a number of different criminal justice purposes. But a large portion of Byrne grant money over the years has been earmarked for anti-drug policing. Competition among police agencies for the pool of cash has made anti-drug policing a high priority. And once there was federal cash available for drug busts, drug raids became more common. Byrne grants also created and funded anti-narcotics multi-jurisdictional task forces. These roving teams of drug cops are often entirely funded with grants and through asset forfeiture, and usually don’t report to any single police agency. The poor incentives and lack of real accountability
Kara Dansky, senior counsel at the ACLU’s Center for Justice.
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have produced some catastrophic results, like the mass drug raid debacles in Tulia and Hearne, Texas, in the late 1990s. But politicians love the Byrne grant program. Congressmen get to put out press releases announcing the new half-million-dollar grant they’ve just helped secure for the hometown police department. And everyone gets to look tough on crime. During the Clinton administration, Congress passed what’s now known as the “1033 Program,” which formalized and streamlined the Reagan administration’s directive to the Pentagon to share surplus military gear with domestic police agencies. Since then, millions of pieces of military equipment designed for use on a battlefield have been transferred to local cops — SWAT teams and others — including machine guns, tanks, armored personnel carriers, helicopters, bayonets, and weapons that shoot .50-caliber ammunition. Clinton also created the “Troops to Cops” program, which offered grants to police departments who hired soldiers returning from battle, contributing even further to the militarization of the police force. Even programs with noble
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aims have gone awry. Clinton also created the Community-Oriented Policing Services program (COPS), the aim of which was to promote a less confrontational
SWAT RAIDS IN AMERICA JUMPED FROM JUST A FEW HUNDRED PER YEAR IN THE 1970S, TO A FEW THOUSAND BY THE EARLY 1980S, TO AROUND 50,000 BY THE MID-2000S. style of policing. But subsequent investigations by publications in Portland, Ore., and Madison, Wis., showed that those grants often went to start or fund SWAT teams. In fact, in interviews with police chiefs as part of his study, Kraska found that many of them believed SWAT raids and militarized policing were perfectly consistent with a community policing approach to crime control. There hasn’t been a major effort to quantify the militarization trend since Kraska’s studies in the late 1990s. That’s what the ACLU is hoping to do with this investigation. “You may remember the story from late last year about Pargould, Arkansas, where the mayor and police chief announced that they
RJ SANGOSTI/THE DENVER POST VIA GETTY IMAGES
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were going to send the SWAT team out on routine patrols in ‘problem neighborhoods’ to stop and harass the people who lived in them. After the story made national news, they changed that policy. But how many places is this happening where it isn’t making news? That’s one of the things we’re hoping to find out,” Dansky said. One problem the ACLU may run into is a lack of cooperation from the police agencies it’s investigating. Kraska said that when he conducted his surveys in the 1990s, police departments were forthcoming, and even boastful
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about their SWAT teams. “We had a really high response rate,” he said. “But when the reports came out and were critical, and the press coverage was critical, they stopped cooperating.” Kraska said the response rate for his follow-up survey dropped off, and that police agencies haven’t cooperated with subsequent similar efforts by other criminologists. In 2009, Maryland passed a SWAT transparency law. It requires every police agency in the state with a SWAT team to provide data twice per year on the number of times the SWAT team is deployed, the reason for the deployment, whether any shots were fired, and whether the raid
A SWAT team made a forcible entry into the home of David Lee Rothe (left), who had barricaded himself in his home in his upscale neighborhood after facing foreclosure in 2010.
AP PHOTO/STEPHEN J. BOITANO
Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo comforts his wife Trinity Tomsic during a news conference after a mistaken county police raid on their home, during which a SWAT team shot and killed their two black Labradors.
COURTESY OF PETER KRASKA
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resulted in criminal charges. The effort to get the law passed was led by Cheye Calvo, the mayor of Berwyn Heights, Md., who was the victim of a highly publicized mistaken raid on his home in which a Prince George’s County SWAT team shot and killed his two black Labradors. The bill puts no restrictions on SWAT teams or how they’re used. Its only purpose is transparency. Still, it was vigorously opposed by every police agency in the state. “This is one of the most intrusive things a government can do,” Calvo said. “These are government agents, breaking down your door, invading your home. And yet it’s all done in secret. In most cases, no one knows what criteria police are using when they decide how to serve a search warrant. There’s no transparency, there’s no oversight.” “After the law was passed,” he continued, “we found out that there are ZIP codes in Maryland where every search warrant is served by a SWAT team. I mean, even if you don’t care about civil liberties, in some places less than half of these raids result in so much as a single arrest. So you’re conducting these dangerous, volatile raids, you’re terrifying people and putting them
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at risk, and you’re serving no law enforcement purpose.” Neither Kraska nor Calvo are optimistic that the ACLU will get much cooperation. “I’d imagine they’ll mostly be declined,” Calvo said. “My experience is that they’ll have a very difficult time getting comprehensive, forthright information,” Kraska said. “If the goal here is to impose some transparency, you have to understand, that’s not what the SWAT industry wants.” Dansky said the ACLU is prepared to go to court to get access to the information it’s seeking. “We don’t expect we’ll need to for information on the equipment these police agencies have received from the Defense Department or Homeland Security,” she said. “But if we need to challenge
Criminologist Peter Kraska conducted two surveys of police departments in the late 1990s in which he found that nearly 90 percent of cities with 50,000 people or more had a SWAT team.
THE SWAT-IFICATION OF AMERICA
these departments on the information about their SWAT teams, we’ll do that. And if these police agencies do refuse to release this public information to our affiliates, that in itself is something the public should know.” The National Sheriffs Association and the National Association of Chiefs of Police did not respond to HuffPost requests for comment. But Mark Lomax, executive director of the National Tactical Officers Association — a trade association and lobbying group for SWAT teams — said he has no problem with releasing the information the ACLU is requesting. “There’s nothing to hide here,” Lomax said. “The only stipulations I’d add is that I’d oppose releasing information about the specific tactics a police department uses. There also might be legal reasons for not releasing information — if cases are in litigation, for example. I’d also be concerned about how the data is used. You can make information like that say whatever you want it to. But in general I wouldn’t have a problem with making it available.” It’s almost certain that if the police agencies cooperate, the ACLU will find that the militarization
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trend has accelerated since Kraska’s studies more than a decade ago. All of the policies, incentives and funding mechanisms that were driving the trend then are still in effect now. And most of them have grown in size and scope. The George W. Bush admin-
MORE THAN $34 BILLION IN GRANTS HAVE BEEN USED TO PURCHASE MILITARY-GRADE GUNS, TANKS, ARMOR AND ARMORED PERSONNEL CARRIERS. istration actually began scaling down the Byrne and COPS programs in the early 2000s, part of a general strategy of leaving law enforcement to states and localities. But the Obama administration has since resurrected both programs. The Byrne program got a $2 billion surge in funding as part of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, by far the largest budget in the program’s 25-year history. Obama also gave the COPS program $1.55 billion that same year, a 250 percent increase over its 2008 budget, and again the largest budget in the program’s history. Vice
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President Joe Biden had championed both programs during his time in the Senate. The Pentagon’s 1033 program has also exploded under Obama. In the program’s monthly newsletter (Motto: “From Warfighter to Crimefighter”), its director announced in October 2011 that his office had given away a record $500 million in military gear in fiscal year 2011, which he noted, “passes the previous mark by sev-
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eral hundred million dollars.” He added, “I believe we can exceed that in FY 12.” Then there are the Department of Homeland Security’s antiterrorism grants. The Center for Investigative Reporting found in a 2011 investigation that since 2001, DHS has given out more than $34 billion in grants to police departments across the country, many of which have been used to purchase military-grade guns, tanks, armor and armored personnel carriers. The grants have gone to such unlikely terrorism targets
A photo of a Bearcat vehicle, like the one citizens protested against in Keene, N.H.
JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES
THE SWAT-IFICATION OF AMERICA
as Fargo, N.D.; Canyon County, Idaho; and Tuscaloosa, Ala. In the tiny town of Keene, N.H., the citizens protested plans to purchase a Lenco Bearcat armored personnel carrier with a DHS grant. One resident told HuffPost last year, “Keene is a beautiful place. It’s gorgeous, and it’s safe, and we love it here. We just don’t want to live in the kind of place where there’s an armored person-
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nel carrier parked outside of City Hall ... It’s just not who we are.” They succeeded only in delaying the purchase by a few months. Keene now has a Bearcat. To town officials, it was a no-brainer. Keene was getting a $400,000 vehicle from the federal government, essentially for free. Why wouldn’t it accept? “From all indications, I would think the DHS grants and increased federal funding could only speed up the militarization process,” Kraska said. “And now you
A Miami SWAT team member stands in front of a home that was raided on Sept. 27, 2006.
THE SWAT-IFICATION OF AMERICA
have an entire industry that has sprung up just to take advantage of those grants — and to lobby to make sure they keep coming.” Like the Maryland law, the ACLU program is really only seeking information. Once it gets the information, Dansky said the organization will analyze the figures and recommend policies to minimize the effects of police militarization on civil liberties. “We’re also concerned that these tactics are disproportionately used against poor people, and in communities of color,” Dansky said. “And SWAT is really only part of it. The effects of militarization also happen beyond and outside of just an increase in SWAT deployments.” Of course, you can always gather information showing a troubling rise in the use of military weapons and tactics among domestic police agencies, make sensible recommendations for reform, and get no interest at all from politicians and policymakers. Kraska’s studies in the late 1990s, and subsequent media reports, did nothing to stem the increased militarization of the police. And in Maryland, the transparency law has shown that police departments in the state are
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using SWAT tactics in precisely the ways critics have claimed: to break into homes to serve warrants on people suspected of lowlevel drug crimes. Many times, they’re not even finding enough contraband to make an arrest. Yet there haven’t been any calls in the state to reform the way SWAT teams are used. “I wish the ACLU success,” Calvo said. “And I suspect that once they force the police agencies to cooperate, they’ll find that this problem is even more dramatic and pronounced than most people know. But then the question is, now what? Even if you can show that people are being victimized and terrorized by these tactics — and to no good end — if no one cares, then what does it matter?” HuffPost investigative reporter Radley Balko is author of the forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces.
HuffPost reporter Radley Balko discusses why SWAT teams are not being used appropriately. Tap here to watch the full video on HuffPost Live.
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BEHIND THE SCENES
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AP PHOTO/JONATHAN SHORT
Director Steven Soderbergh announced his retirement earlier this year.
Are Movie Stars Dead? No, But They Could Use Steven Soderbergh. BY CHRISTOPHER ROSEN
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N THE MARCH ISSUE of GQ, the great Mark Harris debunks one of the most prevalent theories in Hollywood today: that movies stars are dead, replaced by recognizable characters like superheros, YA heroines and even pirates. As Harris writes: “We still need movie stars. And perhaps more surprisingly, we still have movie stars — lots of them, and arguably a more talented and interesting variety than at any time in the
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Magic Mike was the first film that sold Tatum as ‘Channing Tatum, Movie Star.’” past thirty years. But they play by new rules, and they have to navigate an industry that often seems hostile to their very existence.” Harris brings up the shipspassing-in-the-night careers of Channing Tatum and Taylor Kitsch, two nouveau stars who were everywhere in 2012. Last year, Tatum was the focal point of three wildly different genre films — The Vow, 21 Jump Street
Channing Tatum earned critical acclaim when he starred in the Soderberghdirected film Magic Mike.
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and Magic Mike — all of which overperformed at the box office and with critics; Kitsch, meanwhile, starred in two blockbusters (Battleship and John Carter), both of which failed to live up to the lofty expectations set by massive budgets (each cost over $200 million). His best effort last year was the already-forgotten Oliver Stone film Savages. Writes Harris: “A star convinces us that he’s filling a void we didn’t know was there; he makes us believe that until he came along, the movie world of which he is now at the center was somehow incomplete. [...] But movies like John Carter and Bat-
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[Movie stars] play by new rules, and they have to navigate an industry that often seems hostile to their very existence.” tleship pull an actor away from the specific and toward the generic.” Which, at least on the surface, is why Kitsch is not a movie star right now, while Tatum is the next great leading man. Perhaps, however, there’s another reason: Tatum worked with Steven Soderbergh and Kitsch did not. Quick, run down the list of biggest male movie stars from the last 20 years: Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Matt Damon, Johnny Depp, Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks,
Leading men Brad Pitt and George Clooney both recieved an extra push in their careers after their roles in Soderbergh’s Ocean’s 11.
Exit Will Smith, Robert Downey Jr. and, now, perhaps Tatum. What do half of the names on that list have in common? They all made films with Soderbergh at key points in their careers. To wit: Before appearing in Soderbergh’s Out of Sight, Clooney was on the cusp of becoming a cautionary tale for TV stars who wanted to make the switch to movies. (Clooney starred in the underwhelming quartet of From Dusk Till Dawn, The Peacemaker, One Fine Day and Batman and Robin between 1996 and 1997.) After Out of Sight, Clooney led box office hits Three Kings and A Perfect Storm. Then — following the well-received O Brother Where Art Thou? — Clooney reunited with Soderbergh to play the title character in Ocean’s 11. The film grossed $450 million worldwide. It remains his biggest hit ever. Speaking of Ocean’s 11, between 1995’s Seven and the 2001 film, Pitt had made nine movies in a row that failed to top even $70 million at the box office (this includes outright flops like Meet Joe Black and The Devil’s Own). After working with Soderbergh, four of Pitt’s next five films crossed $100 million at the domestic box office,
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and the fifth film — Babel — was a Best Picture nominee. Back in November of last year, Damon noted that he had a “couple movies that didn’t work, and some of them had big enough budgets that people care, and so basically my phone just stopped ringing.” The dry spell occurred after the 2000 flops The Legend of Bagger Vance and All the Pretty Horses. Damon’s next film? Ocean’s 11 in 2001, which
If there’s a formula … for becoming a movie star in the last 15 years, at least one portion of it is tied almost symbiotically to Soderbergh.” was immediately followed by The Bourne Identity in 2002. His phone started ringing again. Then there’s Tatum: Soderbergh can’t take all the credit for Tatum’s 2012 — after all, both The Vow and 21 Jump Street hit $100 million before Magic Mike arrived in theaters — but Magic Mike was the first film that sold Tatum as “Channing Tatum, Movie Star.” As Harris notes, if we’re
GLEN WILSON/ ©2012 WARNER BROS. ENTERTAINMENT INC.
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still talking about Tatum in 30 years, it’s Magic Mike that will be remembered; it’s his Saturday Night Fever, his Risky Business. (This is to say nothing of what Soderbergh did for Magic Mike co-star Matthew McConaughey.) If there’s a formula, then, for becoming a movie star in the last 15 years, at least one portion of it is tied almost symbiotically to Soderbergh. (Depp and Downey, for instance, became stars by playing popular characters; Hanks and Cruise were leftovers from the late 1980s; Smith is his own cottage industry altogether.) Which
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is a great tidbit for future leading men hoping to join the A-list, save for one little problem: Steven Soderbergh is now retired. The guy who has been one of the most influential star-makers of the last quarter century is not making any more movies. (At least for now.) So, who will find the next great leading men? Certainly not Peter Berg or Andrew Stanton, the directors, respectively, of Battleship and John Carter. Certainly not whoever directed The Vow. Certainly not the next superhero franchise. (Sorry, Chris Pratt.) Still, Harris is right: Movie stars aren’t dead. Without Soderbergh, however, they just might be harder to find.
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Soderbergh on the set of 2012’s Magic Mike.
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How Mobile Phones Affect Sleep
the phone — “sham” exposure to a phone without radiation failed to produce the same effect. The itch to check in at all hours of the night or wake up to the sound of a text message disrupts our sleep, too. A quarter of young people feel they must be reachable around the clock, according to a Swedish study that linked heavy cell phone use to sleeping problems, stress and depression. Most of us choose not to set limits on our nighttime availability. Nearly three-quarters of people from the age of 18 to 44 sleep with their phones within reach, and only in people 65 and older is leaving the phone in another room as common as sleeping right next to it. — Katy Hall
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HOUSE DESIGN BY: JAMES ATELIER. ILLUSTRATION BY TROY DUNHAM
If your phone is the alarm that wakes you up in the morning, it may also be keeping you up at night. Using a phone just before bed has been shown to reduce length and quality of sleep, and not much good comes from checking work email that one last time. A 2008 study funded by major mobile phone makers themselves showed that people exposed to mobile radiation took longer to fall asleep and spent less time in deep sleep: “... During laboratory exposure to 884 MHz wireless signals components of sleep believed to be important for recovery from daily wear and tear are adversely affected,” the study concluded. And that’s just a physical symptom of sleeping near
A weekly feature that highlights ways to handle the pressures around us.
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Where Winter Meets Spring BY JULIE THOMSON
PHOTOGRAPHS BY NAOMI ROBINSON/ BAKERS ROYALE
EAT THIS
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Exit N ARUGULA-LEEK TART is the perfect marriage between winter and spring. Its rich and hearty filling warms us through these final cold spells that make us feel like winter will never end; and the loads of arugula and leeks taste of the promise of fresh spring produce to come. An added bonus is arugula’s stress-reducing properties — it’s loaded with folate which helps produce the feel-good neurotransmitter dopamine. It just might help us remain calm about the fact that snow is still being forecasted.
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ARUGULA and LEEK TART From BAKERS ROYALE YIELD: one 10 inch tart INGREDIENTS > CRUST ■ 2
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cups of unbleached all-purpose flour tablespoons parmesan, 2 finely grated 1 teaspoon kosher salt teaspoon fresh ¼ cracked pepper cup (1 ½ sticks) ¾ unsalted butter cup ice water ¼
> FILLING ■ 2
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tablespoons of unsalted butter leeks (white part), 4 coarsely chopped 1 tablespoon thyme large eggs and one 4 large egg yolk 1 cup heavy cream cup milk ¾ ¹ /³ cup Fontina cheese, grated cup Parmesan cheese, grated ¼ ½ oz arugula 2
DIRECTIONS 1. Heat oven to 375 degrees F. 2. To make crust: Add flour, parmesan, salt and pepper into a food processor bowl and pulse until well combined. Add in butter and pulse until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs, about 8-12 seconds. With the machine running, add ice water through the feed tube in a slow stream, a little bit at a time until the dough just comes together. The mixture will look like wet sand and still crumbly. Turn the mixture out onto a lightly floured surface and very lightly knead dough into one large piece. Wrap dough in plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator for at least an hour before using. Once chilled, remove dough from refrigerator and roll it out between two pieces of parchment into a 12-inch round. 3. Transfer to 10-inch tart pan with a removable bottom. Press dough onto bottom and sides. Fold overhang in and press to extend dough ½ inch above sides of pan ( the crust will shrink some, so do not skip this). Line pan with foil and pie weights or dried beans.
Bake for about 30 minutes or until dough starts to set. Remove foil lining and bake for about another 20-25 minutes or until crust is pale golden. Remove from oven and transfer to wire to cool while preparing filing. 4. To make filling: Melt butter in a large skillet over medium-low heat. Add in leeks and thyme and then cover and cook until leeks are tender, stirring every so often. Remove from heat and transfer leeks to a bowl to cool. In a separate bowl combine eggs, cream, milk, both cheeses and whisk to combine. Mix in cooled leeks and arugula into mixture. 5. Pour filling into crust and bake at 375 degrees. Bake for about 35-40 minutes or until filling starts to puff, gold spots appear and center is set. Remove from oven and transfer to rack and cool slightly. Serve warm.
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TFU
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The Secret Service Almost Shot Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
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Former Dancer: Bolshoi Ballet Is a Glorified Brothel
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PUBLIC WORKERS FORCED TO BRING OWN TOILET PAPER TO WORK
State Poised to Legalize Roadkill Consumption
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Vocal Coach Uses Sex Toys to Help Singers Reach Higher Notes
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TFU
North Korean Propaganda Video Shows Washington Under Attack
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Sequestration Cuts Programs for Low-Income Children
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44 PERCENT OF BP’S WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE ALLEGEDLY WRITTEN BY EMPLOYEE
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CVS to Charge Workers for Not Revealing Their Weight
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Esquire Editor: Women Are ‘There to Be Beautiful Objects’
Editor-in-Chief:
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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