Link Banana

Finally back on the air, the show has no one to play the most popular politician in America.

So far, the only time SNL has featured Obama in a skit was a cameo performance by the man himself, just before the writers’ strike began. Now that the strike is settled, the show, three days from airing, finds itself with no clear candidate to play the Democratic front-runner. … Which is why Kenan Thompson, SNL’s only black cast member at the moment, was often mentioned as a possibility. But apparently producers have wisely decided that would be like asking William Hung to play Chiyo in Memoirs of a Geisha, and, yesterday, the Post announced that Lorne Michaels was holding auditions outside the cast for the role.

Virginia Morrell’s article about how animals can learn and create was much more interesting than I expected. But then the last time I read National Geographic was when I was forced to in the sixth grade.

But if animals are simply machines, how can the appearance of human intelligence be explained? Without Darwin’s evolutionary perspective, the greater cognitive skills of people did not make sense biologically. Slowly the pendulum has swung away from the animal-as-machine model and back toward Darwin. A whole range of animal studies now suggest that the roots of cognition are deep, widespread, and highly malleable.

(via brijit)

At Slate, teacher David Ramsey gives a great summary of the city’s luke-warm relationship with it’s suprisingly stellar NBA basketball team.

While there is no question that the Saints are the “city’s team,” it’s the Hornets who are more emblematic of New Orleans. There was no sudden miracle. The team was slow to return and hasn’t been given enough attention by the nation at large. Rooting for them is marked by a spirit of unvanquished optimism (these guys could win a championship) and realist doubts (these guys could be in Oklahoma in two years). They are thriving despite it all, but the future seems grave.

This is probably moderately more interesting to me a (fraternal) twin, but it’s still unexpected.

“The presumption has always been that identical twins are identical down to their DNA,” said Carl Bruder, Ph.D. and Jan Dumanski, Ph.D., of UAB’s Department of Genetics and the study’s lead authors. “That’s mostly true, but our findings suggest that there are small, subtle differences due to [copy number variation]. Those differences may point the way to better understanding of genetic diseases when we study so-called discordant monozygotic twins….a pair of twins where one twin has a disorder and the other does not.”

(via Slashdot)

The Economist’s Europe.view column takes a stance that sounds nearly pro-Serbian or pro-Russian on the issue of Kosovo’s independence. Regardless (or perhaps because) of that fact, it makes a number of worthy points.

What the EU will not say, but thinks privately, is this: We are supporting Kosovo’s independence because of the chance that it will become more like us, and hence a better neighbour. We oppose independence for Transdniestria et al because it would make them more like Russia, and therefore worse for Europe.

Just as I tell you nothing interesting’s online, this pops up in my feed reader (via Boing Boing): WWI draft registration cards for famous people. Unsurprisingly, they look a lot like my great-grandfather’s registration card from that period which I found last year. As you may expect, the latter has more personal significance but is less interesting to most people.

If you were wondering — as I was — why there’s been little worth reading online, I think this is part of the answer. The punditocracy, and by extension at least half the “reporters” in this country are wasting time on topics like McCain’s maybe possibly affair and possible favoritism for a lobbyist. This is nearly as bad as the plagiarism row that has gotten far too many words this week.

I don’t usually like things like this, but this one’s surprisingly funny and it’s been a day surprisingly devoid of other things worth posting here.

(via kottke)

The Sharper Image filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection today, and the inimitable Mr. Johnson took the opportunity to praise its death (which I think is premature, but then I don’t know that much about business):

The company has long hawked substandard, unimaginative products, like a cut-rate Sky Mall without all the whimsy (nor the captive audience).

And let’s not even mention the retail stores, staffed by inept floor walkers and clogged with fake leather cases, ionic air lung scorchers and fake chromed plastic as far as the eye could see. Despite fond memories of fireside flips through its exotic pages, I am not upset to see the company go. It had long outlived its usefulness.

I just found this too hilarious not to share. This AP story’s groundbreaking headline — “Clinton says Obama relies on ‘words’” — made me stop, think of the title of this post, and then laugh more than I did all day. Other options:

• Clinton relies on ‘words’ to say that Obama relies on ‘words’
• BREAKING NEWS: John McCain also relies on ‘words’
• Clinton says all communication relies on ‘words’
• The AP relies on ‘words’ to share Clinton’s ‘words’ condemning Obama’s ‘words’

PS: I would not be surprised to learn that you don’t think this is funny. I had to share it anyway.

The Economist’s got a rather interesting infographic today, about the continued strength of conspiracy theories. Unsurprisingly, the “9/11 conspiracy” was the most often found by Google, but I was rather surprised that Area 51 and Elvis are more popular than the more salacious stories of JFK or Diana.

The good-as-always Green Lantern column tackles an interesting question this week: what’s the least-harmful way to buy orange juice. The answer:

In the end, not-from-concentrate orange juice sold by the carton comes out slightly ahead of frozen OJ sold by the canister in terms of energy use. As a green consumer, your worst choice would be to buy juice that’s been rehydrated by the supplier, then placed in cartons (such as Minute Maid Original). If you prefer juice from concentrate, whether for the lower price or more Tang-y taste, it’s better to rehydrate it yourself.

The Economist has an odd story about a conspicuously popular television documentary in Russia.

The film’s usage of modern words and imagery is so conspicuous that the moral cannot escape a Russian viewer. Instead of sticking to its traditions, Byzantium tried to reform and modernise, as the West demanded, and it paid the price. Worst of all, the West infiltrated Byzantium with harmful, individualistic ideas, which destroyed the core values of the empire—so the people lost faith in their rulers.

In Pakistan (title link):

Pakistan appeared to be heading for a transition to an elected civilian government Tuesday after President Pervez Musharraf told visiting United States senators that he accepted the resounding defeat of his party in elections, and would work with a new Parliament.

Less surprisingly, in Cuba:

Fidel Castro stepped down Tuesday morning as the president of Cuba after a long illness. … The resignation ends one of the longest tenures as one of the most all-powerful communist heads of state in the world.

The American has compiled some interesting data about the way we live today. What if found especially interesting, however, is this: in 1950 29% reported bathing once a day, 63% said less than that. In 1999, 75% reported bathing once a day, and on 21% said “less frequently.”

Elizabeth Kolbert offers a solid review of two recent books in the fascinating field of behavioral economics. I thought this anectdote, among others, was interesting:

This effect is called “anchoring,” and, as Ariely points out, it punches a pretty big hole in microeconomics. When you walk into Starbucks, the prices on the board are supposed to have been determined by the supply of, say, Double Chocolaty Frappuccinos, on the one hand, and the demand for them, on the other. But what if the numbers on the board are influencing your sense of what a Double Chocolaty Frappuccino is worth? In that case, price is not being determined by the interplay of supply and demand; price is, in a sense, determining itself.

Joseph Corincione’s essay on nuclear proliferation gives a good introduction to the topic, and offers this upbeat note at the end.

For the first time since the initial efforts of the Truman administration in the 1940s, a movement to eliminate nuclear weapons has developed not from the political left but from the “realist” center of the security elite. This promises to give the cause of arms reduction a political plausibility and importance that previous efforts, including the broad-based Nuclear Freeze Movement of the 1980s, have lacked. Whether these efforts will succeed in their ultimate goal is far from clear; but if the movement can be sustained and gather wider support, this could dramatically reduce threats of nuclear war and nuclear terrorism—the greatest security threats now facing the United States.

Though the headline result of Gallup’s survey about what former presidents should be our new president isn’t too surprising, I was surprised that Mr. Clinton placed third overall. Also surprising: Mr. Kennedy was the second favorite among Republicans. Showing our short collective memory, anyone president before 1940 did rather poorly — with Mr. Lincoln doing the best among those more historic candidates.

(via The Page)

I thought this was odd enough to be notable. It seems that Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell are all slated to share Keith Ledger’s final role with him. I don’t know anything about The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus but given this summary, the new casting seems like it could turn out well.

The fantasy film follows a travelling theatre troupe which offers audience members the chance to pass through a magical mirror to alternate dimensions.

Presidents’ Day may seem like a strange day to call Mr. Washington “Our Founding Lame Duck,” but William Hogeland offers some interesting insight into the man’s temperament:

Not that Washington was ever exactly chipper about being president. He’d fervently hoped to resign at the end of his first term. By then, his hearing and memory had started to fail. He complained of the burden of endless duty. His cultural status as a demigod made it impossible for anyone to criticize him publicly, but he interpreted every attack on a subordinate as meant for him. According to Thomas Jefferson, then secretary of state, Washington bitterly disbelieved the gushing reverence the press accorded him. Yet feeling that he was needed to referee the battles between Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, secretary of the Treasury, and to shore up national unity, he agreed to serve a second term.