It is said that if Americans ran their cars with proper tire pressure, we’d save 3%-4% of our gasoline consumption. The government says that “lifting the bans might boost the nation’s oil production by 1 or 2 million barrels a day by sometime next decade.”

So let’s see. Say that America uses 140 billion gallons of gas per year and that 1 barrel of crude oil yields 20 gallons of gasoline. The 3%-4% saved by tire inflation looks to save 280 million barrels of oil per year, or $160 – $200 billion at the pump.  For drilling option, that translates into either 365 million barrels or 730 million barrels per year - 10 years from now! If we start both plans today, assuming the 1 million barrels per day for the new drilling, it would take 39 years for new drilling to have produced more cumulative barrels than the barrels saved by tire inflation. Assuming the 2 million barrel per day number, it would take 15 years for drilling to produce more oil than the oil saved from tire inflation.

I’m not saying that inflating our tires is a sound national energy policy, but neither is Barack Obama. Obama said it was one thing we could all start doing today to save energy. It is clear, however, that if both alternatives were initiated today, proper tire inflation would save far more barrels than new drilling would produce in before the end of the hypothetical 8 years of the next president’s term. 

Also add to the fun this John McCain quote:

Obama said a couple of days ago says we all should inflate our tires. I don’t disagree with that. The American Automobile Association strongly recommends it…

And this Obama-like assertion from April 12:

And I’m sorry to tell you that the price of oil, as far as I can tell, is not gonna go down any time soon, until we eliminate our dependency on it. We can do that as a nation, we can turn off the lights five minutes earlier, we don’t have to drive the extra block.

So McCain mocks Barack for tire inflation, but thinks we’re going to eliminate our dependancy on foreign oil by shutting our lights out 5 minutes earlier? Ha! To quote Senator Obama, “It’s like these people take pride in being ignorant”.

John McCain sounds like the whiny high school kid that’s bitter that he isn’t the one invited to sit at the cool kids’ table during lunch.  Or Jan Brady.

First he cries “Barack is such a big shot celebrity”, which is hilarious because the messiah of the Republican Party is Hollywood actor Ronald Reagan, a man who had political success because of celebrity. One of McCain’s biggest supporters is California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a guy whose sole reason for holding office is his celebrity. Additionally, McCain called himself a celebrity, a mention that has since been erased from McCain’s campaign website:

The 2006 midterm campaign had just ended when McCain took the first formal step toward a presidential run in November. He formed an exploratory committee and gave a speech casting himself as a “common-sense conservative” in the vein of Ronald Reagan who could lead the party back to dominance after a dreadful election season by returning to the GOP’s core principles.

A political celebrity, McCain is considered a top contender for the nomination.

It’s like the Republicans who eat this meme up are tragically oblivious to the irony. Or mentally handicapped. 

Then, to further channel Jan Brady (Jan McCain?), McCain comes out with his Moses ad. Lets’ ignore the fact that John McCain probably still has smear ads from his own campaign against Moses, it’s interesting that McCain chose to compare Obama to a leader people actually liked and has a strong record of leadership and accomplishment. Juxtapose Moses with Bush, and I vote Moses every single time (although, I hope Moses will respect people’s Constitutional right to worship a Golden Calf).

What’s so bad about popularity? I mean, isn’t the whole point of democracy to install leaders who win the most popularity contests? God forbid America have a President that is popular and actually liked! And it’s not like John McCain or his GOP supporters would reject such popularity if it was visited upon him instead of Obama; John McCain would do anything to win.

John McCain is Jan Brady, the ugly step sister, and the high school kid that’s bitter because he can’t sit at the cool lunch table;  but, if he had the chance to trade places and be the Home Coming King, he’d sell his own mother to get there.

Poor Johnny You had your time as a “political celebrity”; don’t hate – everyone gets old.  There’s always someone prettier chasing behind or a better athlete that comes through and breaks your school records. This whining is very unbecoming of a macho war hero. So sad.

The must-read from Salon’s Glenn Greenwald [emphasis Greenwald's]:

The FBI’s lead suspect in the September, 2001 anthrax attacks — Bruce E. Ivins — died Tuesday night, apparently by suicide, just as the Justice Department was about to charge him with responsibility for the attacks. For the last 18 years, Ivins was a top anthrax researcher at the U.S. Government’s biological weapons research laboratories at Ft. Detrick, Maryland, where he was one of the most elite government anthrax scientists on the research team at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease (USAMRIID)…

During the last week of October, 2001, ABC News, led by Brian Ross, continuously trumpeted the claim as their top news story that government tests conducted on the anthrax — tests conducted at Ft. Detrick — revealed that the anthrax sent to Daschele contained the chemical additive known as bentonite. ABC News, including Peter Jennings, repeatedly claimed that the presence of bentonite in the anthrax was compelling evidence that Iraq was responsible for the attacks, since — as ABC variously claimed — bentonite “is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s biological weapons program” and “only one country, Iraq, has used bentonite to produce biological weapons.”…

Clearly, Ross’ allegedly four separate sources had to have some specific knowledge of the tests conducted and, if they were really “well-placed,” one would presume that meant they had some connection to the laboratory where the tests were conducted — Ft. Detrick. That means that the same Government lab where the anthrax attacks themselves came from was the same place where the false reports originated that blamed those attacks on Iraq.

Awk-ward. Talk about a conflict of interest! It might be a good idea to get all the facts out so conspiracy theories can be put to rest – or validated.  Who sourced the information that linked the anthrax to Iraq?

It looks like “we’re fighting them in Iraq so we don’t have to fight them here” – except when they are home grown religious zealots like Bruce Ivins and Jim Adkisson.

Also check Diplo’s treatment of Marlena Shaw’s fantastic California Soul.

Or, if you’re busy, Slate suggests:

And if all else fails, fall back on this golden rule of wrongdoing in the White House: All roads lead to Gonzales.

All week long we’ve been following ‘Barry Magicseed’s Summer Abroad’.

That’s how Jon Stewart introduced a brilliant Daily Show Thursday night, which was followed by a hilarious mashup of our heroic Senator slaying seven-headed dragons and a cyclops from that old-school Sinbad movie that used to constantly play on UHF TV.

In Part 2, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asks, “Is the mainstream media in love with Barack Obama?” Stewart answers that question more effectively, and more humorously, than the videos attempted by the McCain campaign.

I post this today because this is one of the funniest Daily Shows I’ve seen in a while I think there’s a laugh in there for everyone, even Republicans.

It’s worth just watching the Sinbad intro and the first 1:20 of jokes. Perhaps the GOP should just pay liberal comedians a boatload of cash to write humorous material attacking the left, since it’s obvious that no one satirizes the left better than the left?

(Stupid WordPress doesn’t allow Daily Show embeds, so you’ll just have to follow the links)

[ Part 1 ] [ Part 2 ]

The third segment with Senior Black Correspondent Larry Wilmore was funny as well.

Idea courtesy of my sister and cake courtesey of my brother's girlfriend.

I just finished the 5th and final season – it has has been the most satisfying thing I’ve ever watched.  I’d commend this series more fervently then any crime flick, Scorsese included. And rest assured, this is the only television drama I’d ever urge you to consider.

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

The show is about Baltimore, a bleak, largely African American, impoverished rust belt city ravaged by drugs and failed institutions.  You’ll hear “The Wire” described as a crime drama, but creator David Simon says it’s “really about the American city, and about how we live together. It’s about how institutions have an effect on individuals, and how…whether you’re a cop, a longshoreman, a drug dealer, a politician, a judge [or] lawyer, you are ultimately compromised and must contend with whatever institution you’ve committed to.”

Season 1 is introduces the audience to two institutions – The Baltimore Police Department and the Barksdale Drug Syndicate.  The show is a serial, and the season 1 arc presents the investigation of the Barksdale organization by a cop who games the system to coerce his department to support an investigation that higher-ups want to ignore.

What is compelling about “The Wire” is that, as far as the characters are concerned, the labels of good and bad are hard to apply. You’ll like and hate characters on both sides of the “War on Drugs”. And you’ll find your favorite characters behaving reprehensibly, and you’ll have sympathy at times for the most reprehensible characters.  You will not find richer, more profound or more internally complex characters in any movie. At the same time, the actors make their characters utterly human. The Wire, as described by its creators, is novel on film in 12 chapters and, appropriately, some episodes are written by celebrated crime novelists George Pelecanos and Dennis Lehane (Gone Baby Gone, Mystic River).  ”The Wire” runs several intricate, divergent subplots through a season and when they are deftly weaved together at the season’s close, it’s a thing of beauty.

Also, each season of The Wire is a self-contained story arc.  The episodes of each season should be watched in order, but there are no season cliffhangers and only minor subplots that bleed into new seasons. A new season means a new story arc and new sub plots.  In each subsequent season, a new institution is added to the fold and the meta-story gains new layers of intricacy and sophistication. Unionized labor in the form of Baltimore Longshoreman is introduced in season 2, season 3 adds City Hall, season 4 is inner-city schools, and the final season is print journalism manifested as The Baltimore Sun. And as they said in season 4 promos, “it’s all connected”.

Stylistically, the story weaves elements of literary realism, Sisyphean existential misery, Greek tragedy, as well as sharp social commentary on the horrors of inner city poverty and the crushing weight of fundamentally and fatally flawed institutions as it presses on individuals trying to act in their best interests. And it’s often funny as hell, with biting and witty dialogue.

SO WHAT’S THE BIG DEAL?

1.) African American cast: Season two deals with the ports, which employs many of Baltimore’s Polish Americans. Other than that, I can safely say that 80%-85% of the major characters are Black. As I said above, almost all the characters are spectacular. But you will not find another cache of meticulously developed Black characters brought to life by a once-in-a-lifetime convergence of Black acting talent. You wont find it on film or on TV.

2.) Gay characters: So, imagine a gay Black rogue murderous gangsta bad-ass who lives by a code of honor and shows shades of a Robin Hood complex. Yeah, it’s as good on screen as it sounds and is written so excellently written that it’s never contrived. This guy is just one of almost 30 great characters “The Wire” will introduce to you.

This show has had more gay characters than any other show on television or any major film (save for the occasional niche show/movie designed specifically for a gay audience). And it presents homosexuality as just another wrinkle in the complexity of life. There’s no didactic “gays are people, too” moments; the gay characters are treated as judiciously as any other. You get to see gay characters in situations where being gay isn’t a plot device or gimmick – very interesting, when you consider the context is urban street corners and a city police department.

3.) Emphasis on children: There are some great young actors on here, and “The Wire” shows how grown-up gangsters have no problem using, abusing, indoctrinating children into the life. It also shows how material conditions coerce these kids into making horrible, hopeless life choices.

4.) Grit –  I know you love the grittiness of crime flicks, whether it is 70s flicks like “The French Connection” or “Eddie Coyle” or “The Departed”. “The Wire” is unequivocally and unapologetically knee-deep in the nitty-gritty of Baltimore’s urban decay – residential and industrial blight, dangerous bar rooms, dirty lunch counters, grungy urban groceries/bodegas, secret police outposts, and most central, the corners. The sense of place is so palpable and the gritty aesthetic so authentic that I can taste the dirt from the streets on my tongue.

5.) Lucid social critique: Like I said, there are times when you fell horrible about the supposed “bad guys”. They don’t get that way by accident. There’s no smooth distinction between righteousness and evil.

6.) Story over character: It’s cliché to say about an ensemble cast that “there are no stars”. Well, there are stars of certain episodes and certain parts of certain seasons, but you honestly don’t know from season to season who will be featured, who will be killed, and who will fade into obscurity never to see screen time again. David Simon and his writers only care about the overall story and are willing to give new faces heavy dialogue at the expense of who viewers might consider a “star”.

WHY AM I RECOMMENDING THIS TO YOU?

There’s more to be said about how awesome “The Wire” is, but I’ll spare you. #1, this is a first rate work of cinematic art. It’s a fantastic filmmaking and story telling. Although “The Wire”‘s length makes it apples and oranges, I’d put this series up against any film.

Second, this is your genre and your wheelhouse. But it’s done in a way that we’ve never seen before. It’s dominated by African Americans and gangstas, but it’s not “Boyz in the Hood” or “Menace 2 Society”. It’s gripping like Scorsese, but it makes you work harder and you fight for resolution – I’m still thinking on things I saw three years ago.

Third, not only does it tie into your love of movies, I’d be willing to bet viewing this could tie into your academic pursuits. Some critics have said – and I don’t think it hyperbole – that “The Wire” will be viewed in college studies twenty years from now and be scrutinized for years to come by scholars examining urban culture.  ”The Wire” combines film, social criticism, inner-city street culture, and artistic, dense story telling and will be referenced by those who scrutinize American culture for years to come. “The Wire” could be this century’s “The Jungle”.  If a movie is like a 110 page drama, David Simon’s cultural study is a Tolstoy-length novel.

So, I know 60 episodes/5 seasons seems like a big time commitment. It is. Let me also say I’ve been hyping this show for a few years to a couple dozen people and have not convinced 1 person to commit. So I’m not expecting you to run out and rent this thing. Season 1 is 13 hours long.  If you watch all of Season 1 and you can tell me that I honestly over-hyped this show, I will buy you a movie of your choice to make up for lost time. I’ve been told Season 1 starts slow, but I was hooked from the start.

Seriously man, to put a simple cap on this, I wrote 1,500 words on this topic because I think “The Wire” is a great American piece of art and I think it’s a natural fit for you. Take this information however you see fit.

My Grades: Season 1 A, Season 2 A-, Season 3 A++, Season 4 A+, Season 5 starts B+ finishes A.

Also, a last hint: Don’t read too much about “The Wire” online – spoilers abound. Especially the HBO site.

It was once thought that the brain does not generate new brain cells and once a neuron was gone, it was gone forever. This is what I, like many, was told as a kid. As it turns out, recent science shows that not only do humans continue to generate new brain cells throughout life, aerobic exercise fosters a higher rate of neurogenesis, or the birth of neurons.

Scientists say that, in addition to brain degeneration from aging being curbed by increased neurogenesis, the degeneration can be reversed. Evidence suggests that risks for neurodegenerative problems like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s can be curbed and symptoms alleviated. Additionally, scientists are noticing brain degeneration in illnesses like depression and ADHD and problems like anxiety and stress and say that these ailments can be fought with neurogenesis.

The science is still young and this is not a miracle cure-all. But it’s clear that aerobic exercise grows more brain cells and has an impact on everything from depression to the likelihood one will develop Alzheimer’s. I’ve liked to three articles with excerpts below the flip. Feed your brain and learn about neurogenesis

Lobes of Steel from The New York Times Magazine:

Other recent studies support this theory. At the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign, a group of elderly sedentary people were assigned to either an aerobic exercise program or a regimen of stretching. (The aerobic group walked for at least one hour three times a week.) After six months, their brains were scanned using an M.R.I. Those who had been doing aerobic exercise showed significant growth in several areas of the brain. These results raise the hope that the human brain has the capacity not only to produce new cells but also to add new blood vessels and strengthen neural connections, allowing young neurons to integrate themselves into the wider neural network. “The current findings are the first, to our knowledge, to confirm the benefits of exercise training on brain volume in aging humans,” the authors concluded.

And the benefits aren’t limited to adults. Other University of Illinois scientists have studied school-age children and found that those who have a higher level of aerobic fitness processed information more efficiently; they were quicker on a battery of computerized flashcard tests. The researchers also found that higher levels of aerobic fitness corresponded to better standardized test scores among a set of Illinois public school students. The scientists next plan to study how students’ scores change as their fitness improves.

What is it about exercise that prompts the brain to remake itself? Different scientists have pet theories. One popular hypothesis credits insulin-like growth factor 1, a protein that circulates in the blood and is produced in greater amounts in response to exercise. IGF-1 has trouble entering the brain — it stops at what’s called the “blood-brain barrier” — but exercise is thought to help it to do so, possibly sparking neurogenesis.

Memory: Forgetting Is the New Normal from Time:

Meanwhile, researchers from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm who have been following over 1,500 people for more than 35 years found a significantly lower rate of dementia, including Alzheimer’s, in those who exercised. Another study, this one of 2,000 elderly men living in Hawaii, showed that those who walked two miles or more a day were half as likely to develop dementia as those who walked a quarter-mile or less.

Cerebral blood volume is not the only thing responsible for this brain-boosting. Also at work is the fact that exercise increases what’s known as brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a protein that stimulates the birth of new brain cells and then helps them differentiate and connect. BDNF also enhances neural plasticity, the process by which the brain changes in response to learning. In diseases like Alzheimer’s, depression, Parkinson’s and dementia, BDNF levels are low. In people who exercise, BDNF levels rise.

Head Fake: How Prozac sent the science of depression in the wrong direction from this Sunday’s Boston Globe:

In recent years, scientists have developed a novel theory of what falters in the depressed brain. Instead of seeing the disease as the result of a chemical imbalance, these researchers argue that the brain’s cells are shrinking and dying. This theory has gained momentum in the past few months, with the publication of several high profile scientific papers. The effectiveness of Prozac, these scientists say, has little to do with the amount of serotonin in the brain. Rather, the drug works because it helps heal our neurons, allowing them to grow and thrive again….

“The best way to think about depression is as a mild neurodegenerative disorder,” says Ronald Duman, a professor of psychiatry and pharmacology at Yale. “Your brain cells atrophy, just like in other diseases [such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's]. The only difference with depression is that it’s reversible. The brain can recover”….

Once [mental illness occurs], the brain begins to shut itself down, suppressing all but the most essential upkeep. Not only do neurons stop growing, but the brain seems to stop creating new cells. A 2003 study, led by Columbia University neuroscientist Rene Hen, found that when the birth of new brain cells was blocked with low doses of radiation in “depressed” rats, antidepressants stopped working.

A recent study by Italian researchers, published in the journal Science, helps to reveal another mechanism by which antidepressants reverse the damage of depression. The scientists were interested in seeing if fluoxetine, the active ingredient of Prozac, could increase the potential of brain cells in the adult rat. They studied animals with severe cases of “lazy eye,” a condition characterized by poor vision in one eye due to underdevelopment of the visual cortex. The scientists showed that fluoxetine gave brain cells the ability to take on new roles and form new connections, which erased the symptoms of the disorder.

“The drug appears to make brain cells quite young,” says Jose Vettencourt, a lead author. The scientists are currently repeating the experiment with humans, raising the possibility that fluoxetine will soon be used to treat lazy eye and related conditions.

“Even five years ago, this would have seemed like a very strange idea,” Vettencourt says.

Duman’s lab has demonstrated, in a paper published earlier this year, that physical exercise seems to stimulate the same regenerative pathways. Mice given access to running wheels not only showed reduced anxiety and stress, but also increased levels of the same trophic factors activated by antidepressants. When the activity of these trophic factors was blocked, the benefits of exercise disappeared. The mice stayed stressed, even when they were allowed to run on their wheel.

It is jarring to think of depression in terms of atrophied brain cells, rather than an altered emotional state. It is called “depression,” after all. Yet these scientists argue that the name conceals the fundamental nature of the illness, in which the building blocks of the brain – neurons – start to crumble. This leads, over time, to the shrinking of certain brain structures, like the hippocampus, which the brain needs to function normally.