A good election night for marijuana legalization [Updated with a discussion of California Proposition] 47

The 2014 election was a successful one for marijuana legalization. Referendum initiatives legalizing recreational marijuana passed in Alaska, Oregon, and the District of Columbia. Florida’s legalization amendment (which was limited to medical marijuana) failed, but only because victory required a 60% supermajority (it got just over 57% percent). A medical marijuana initiative did pass in the Pacific island territory of Guam. Coming on the heels of the legalization of marijuana in Colorado and Washington in 2012, this is a further sign of pro-legalization momentum, and perhaps of dissatisfaction with the War on Drugs more generally – even among some conservatives. For the moment, marijuana is still illegal under federal law. Legally speaking, state referenda cannot change that. The Obama administration’s response to legalization in Colorado and Washington was not as aggressive as it could have been, but falls far short of abjuring federal marijuana prosecutions in those states. But as more states legalize, there will be further pressure on the federal government to cut back on its own War on Drugs, and possibly repeal the federal law criminalizing the sale and distribution of marijuana. UPDATE: While it is not a legalization initiative as such, it important to note that California voters adopted Proposition 47, an referendum question that lowers the penalty for most types of drug possession to a misdemeanor. As Lauren Galik of the Reason Foundation emphasizes, it is significant that this measure passed by a large majority, with little organized opposition, and considerable support from conservatives, including former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Obviously, the federal government can still prosecute such cases under federal drug laws, which provide for much higher penalties. But doing so would require a substantial commitment of federal resources that Washington may be unwilling to commit, especially given the looming federal budget crisis. At the very least, the lopsided success of Proposition 47 is a further indication that public and elite opinion is gradually turning against the War on Drugs. UPDATE #2: It is perhaps only a minor milestone. But Guam’s legalization of medical marijuana is the first such reform adopted by a US territory.


Voters in Arizona just overwhelmingly backed a ‘Dallas Buyers Club’ law. Will it help patients?

New laws providing access to experimental treatments have drawn comparisons to the 2013 movie "Dallas Buyers Club." (Anne Marie Fox / Focus Features) Arizona voters on Tuesday became the latest state to approve a law providing terminally ill patients with greater access to unproven medical treatments, following in the footsteps of four states enacting similar measures this year. Arizona's new law marks the first time a so-called "Right to Try" measure was approved by ballot initiative — and did so convincingly — after Colorado, Louisiana, Missouri and Michigan all passed laws in the past six months. Interestingly, there's a pop culture peg that seems to be providing momentum to this movement. These laws are drawing comparisons to the 2013 movie "Dallas Buyers Club," in which Matthew McConaughey portrays an AIDS patient in the mid-1980s who smuggles in unregulated pharmaceutical drugs from across the border. These laws are supposed to open up access to drugs that passed through just the first stage of clinical trials and are part of ongoing trials. They've been backed by families of sick patients, who say the current FDA approval process for experimental treatments, despite having a 99 percent approval rate, is just too cumbersome. Here's how the FDA's current system for approving the use of experimental treatments works, according to a USA Today editorial supporting these "Right to Try" laws. Food and Drug Administration rules require patients to clear a series of hurdles. First, they and their doctors must find a company to provide its drug. Many drug makers — worried that a patient's death will spur a lawsuit or harm their chances for final FDA approval — refuse. Even then, patients still need a hospital review board to sign off, a contract between the hospital and the drug maker, and FDA approval. The FDA application process, according to its own estimates, can take up to 100 hours. That's time that dying patients feel they might not have. Under these new state laws, patients would only need approval from the drug company and a doctor's prescription. Critics of the "Right to Try" laws say these unproven treatments could hurt patients and the drug development process. Further, the drugmakers don't have to provide these treatments, and there are reasons why they might not want to, including liability concerns and a lack of supply early into a drug's development. And insurers don't have to cover the drugs.


Creating a character

the word “character” tells us a lot about how it came to mean the qualities that define a person, which meaning, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, it didn’t acquire until the 1640s. It’s from the Middle French word carecter which meant a “symbol marked on the body.” From there it traces, with slight modifications along the way, back through Old French, Latin, and Greek, to the Proto Indo-European verb for “to scrape.” So character is composed of the metaphorical mark(s) scraped on a person that distinguishes her from everyone else. With that in mind, it’s easy to see how fictional characters in an historical context are informed by the scrapes and marks they acquire bumping along in the fictional reality they inhabit. These characters can be marked internally or externally, overtly or subtly, and those marks can impair or empower them, but they’re all marked, just like the rest of us. So when I created a lawyer protagonist called Hring, I had to cover him with the scrapes he’d get brushing up against the Law. Now, as far as I can tell, there were no lawyers in Anglo-Saxon England. Legal procedure was primitive and Germanic. There was no “common law” because every one of the individual Anglo-Saxon kingdoms had an individual law code, not to mention Canon Law and local custom. There were no jails so punishment took the form of fines, enslavement, mutilation, or death (unless it went to the Ordeal and God intervened). For an understanding of just how alien Anglo-Saxon law was you can download a free copy of “Essays in Anglo-Saxon Law,” edited by Henry Adams. But there was law, and even though it was recorded and influenced by the Church it originated in the secular minds of the kings and their advisors, and (bureaucracies being what they are) I imagined that there must have been a fraternity of men who helped the largely illiterate political elite of the time interpret and administer that law. So I grafted the position of advocate (thanks, Sister Fidelma) from 7th century Ireland onto 8th century Anglo-Saxon England. I’ll cop to it: I made it up, but I made it up within the context of the period. The advocate in my fictional 8th century doesn’t advocate for a defendant or for the prosecuting state, he advocates for the Law — he makes sure that all ritual and procedure are


Mid-morning links: Pot wins

- Marijuana legalization passed in Oregon, D.C. and Alaska last night. Medical marijuana won 57 percent of the vote in Florida, including a majority in every county, but fell short of the 60 percent required for a ballot initiative to pass. Also, medical marijuana passed in Guam. It seems safe to say that the tide has turned. - Charlotte police are fighting to keep details about cellphone tracking programs secret. Fortunately, at least two state judges haven’t been persuaded. - Judge finds that for 17 years, Toledo police, prosecutors and judges have engaged in “flagrant” violations of the Fourth Amendment when it comes to issuing arrest warrants. But no warrants will be overturned because it was all in “good faith.” - Good cops: Houston police disarm violent woman attempting “suicide by cop” without shooting her. California Highway Patrol officer returns $120,000 he found on the road — much to the relief of the man who had temporarily lost his life’s savings. - How wrongful convictions impact the victims of the original crime. - The Ferguson Police Department charged Vice $1,200, plus a $2,000 deposit, to fulfill an open records request. The department then turned over seven e-mails.


It’s official: Marijuana has gone mainstream

Washington D.C. joined Oregon and Alaska to legalize marijuana in the 2014 midterms. (Photo by Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post) Voters in Alaska, Oregon and the District approved marijuana legalization measures by comfortable margins on Tuesday. The votes signal that Americans are ready to expand upon the legalization experiments already ongoing in Colorado and Washington state, which opened up recreational marijuana markets this year. A medical marijuana amendment also received majority support in Florida, but it fell two percentage points short of the 60 percent supermajority required for passage. The victories are significant because they come despite a midterm election holding huge structural advantages for Republicans. Support for marijuana reform is concentrated among the young, but 18 to 29-year-olds made up only 13 percent of the 2014 electorate, compared to 19 percent in 2012. "Now that it's been shown that putting marijuana legalization on the ballot can succeed even in midterms, we can expect to see a huge surge of additional states voting to end prohibition during the 2016 presidential election," Tom Angell of the advocacy group Marijuana Majority said in an email. Alaska's vote made it the first red state to create a fully legal recreational marijuana market. It will eliminate the confusion over Alaska's often contradictory marijuana regulations. Exit polls there show that the measure, which passed 52-48, garnered majority support among every age group except those aged 65+. There was, however, a sharp partisan divide, with 74 percent of Democrats supporting the bill compared to only 30 percent of Republicans. A majority (58 percent) of Alaska independents favored the bill. The partisan breakdown behind Oregon's vote was similar. But national-level exit polls show that marijuana legalization has the potential to draw on a broad, bipartisan base of support: Republicans made up nearly 40 percent of legalization supporters nationwide. This shows that there's broader cross-party agreement on marijuana legalization than on gay marriage, an issue where Republicans make up only 31 percent of supporters nationally. "Reform of marijuana and criminal justice policies is no longer just a liberal cause but a conservative and bipartisan one as well," said Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance in a statement. He also noted that several drug policy reform measures passed the House this congressional term. "The fact that John Boehner would allow two votes on marijuana to go to the floor and win – that suggests a significant measure of


The ‘glass half full’ National Weather Service

current contract with IBM that would have significantly increased its computing capacity and allowed the NWS to meet the goals communicated publicly in 2013,” says a NWS white paper on the status of its supercomputing. “However, IBM’s decision to leave the x86 server business by selling the line to Lenovo caught NOAA, and everyone else, by surprise and prevented us from moving forward with this procurement.” Both Andrew Freedman at Mashable and Cliff Mass on his personal blog reported the possible procurement of a supercomputer from Lenovo, a Chinese company, raised red flags in Congress. There is no question that the NWS is making a legitimate effort to advance its supercomputing and forecasting abilities, and that progress is being made. But two important realities emerge from the current state of affairs: 1) Bureaucratic and policy obstacles have slowed the NWS effort to obtain more supercomputing power 2) Europe is — as of this moment — investing vastly more resources in supercomputing technology (per my post last week: Congress authorized approximately $24 million in forecasting equipment and supercomputer infrastructure following Superstorm Sandy, whereas the NWS’ European counterparts the ECMWF and UKMet Office, recently invested $64 million and $128 million, respectively). NWS admits more funding is required to keep pace with the Europeans in its white paper: “Despite the ongoing and planned increases to the US operational weather compute capacity, due to these more recent announcements from our UK and European partners, the US computer capacity will not surpass the European infrastructure without additional investment.” In email correspondence, Cliff Mass, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Washington, described the situation at the NWS as a glass half full (or empty, depending on ones perspective). On the one hand, it is making strides in its forecasting abilities. On the other hand, to keep up with the Europeans, a pitcher of water, i.e. a large investment in computer capacity, is needed to fill the glass. In its supercomputing white paper, the NWS equivocates some on urgency of obtaining more computing resources. It speaks of having a broader mission and more responsibilities than the Europeans – suggesting it cannot as easily focus its investments in supercomputing. “[U]nlike the European Center, we must invest in the people – the forecasters – so essential to the U.S. weather prediction capability, who work hand in hand with local emergency managers, communities and state decision makers


The growing popularity of organics is both good and bad news for Whole Foods

A customer shops at the Whole Foods Market in Woodmere Village, Ohio. (AP Photo/Tony Dejak) The organic grocery business is expected to explode as Americans become increasingly focused on healthy diets and fresh ingredients. And that’s both good and bad news for Whole Foods Market, which has long reigned as the nation’s largest organic grocery chain. While there’s increasing demand for the free-range meat, sustainable seafood and locally-grown fruits and vegetables the Austin, Tex.-based grocer is peddling, Whole Foods is also facing more competition than ever from the likes of Sprouts and Fresh Market and major retailers such as Kroger and Wal-Mart that are taking note of the category’s big growth opportunities. “They were for the longest time the only game in town for a natural, organic experience, and that’s not really the case anymore,” said Jim Hertel, managing partner at food retail consultancy Willard Bishop. So far, the company has struggled to fend off these newcomers. Sales growth has slowed, and investors have taken it out on the company’s stock, dragging it down about 30 percent this year. Whole Foods reported Wednesday that sales grew 3.1 percent at stores open at least a year during its most recent quarter, right in line with analysts’ expectations. For many retailers, that kind of growth would be satisfying to investors. But for Whole Foods, it marks a slowdown from the impressive 7.5 percent uptick in same-store sales the company saw last year and which investors have come to expect. Whole Foods is fighting back with an aggressive expansion plan. It opened 13 stores in the last quarter alone, including in small cities such as Palm Desert, Calif., bringing its store count in the United States to 401. It has 116 more stores in its development pipeline and believes there is long-term demand for about 1,200 stores nationwide. The company launched its first national advertising campaign in October, a $15 million to $20 million effort to build brand recognition in new markets where the company can’t count on word-of-mouth buzz. The campaign includes commercials during TV programs such as “Modern Family” and “Scandal” and print ads in the New York Times and other major news outlets. Whole Foods also plans to renovate about 70 percent of its older stores over the next year, which it believes will boost sales in those locations. For example, the company told investors on Wednesday that a recently


The GOP has a legislative plan for Washington. It has some problems.

talking a big game today but we’re confident that we’ll be able to defend President Obama’s ability to lead the way,” said Tiernan Sittenfeld, senior vice president of government affairs at the League of Conservation Voters. The group is also determined to block any effort to limit the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Trade authority Fast track authority also faces obstacles. The Obama administration would use it to try to complete negotiations over the Trans Pacific Partnership, which it says is crucial for maintaining U.S. leadership over the rules of global trade for decades to come. At a meeting at the Brookings Institution on Wednesday, former Obama national security adviser Tom Donilon said the proposed pact “is the most important trade negotiation underway in the world today” and that it “is about U.S. leadership in Asia.” But many critics in both parties say Congress shouldn’t give the administration a blank check in talks. And while the terms of the agreement are not officially public, details have leaked out and many people aren’t happy. Other countries, including Japan, as well as some U.S. industries, are balking at joining the agreement. U.S. car companies don’t want the deal to be signed unless it makes it easier for them to sell cars in Japan; the United States exported fewer than 50,000 cars to Japan during Obama's first term. U.S. farmers are unhappy because they want Japan to lower the high tariffs it imposes on imports of wheat and rice. Other controversial provisions are said to extend monopoly privileges to pharmaceutical companies. And other analysts have argued that the administration is ready to agree to intellectual property and piracy provisions that would never be adopted in a democratic, congressional process. And if a deal got done, who would get credit? “Passing fast track would show that the Republicans are ready to lead,” Christopher Cloutier, a partner at the law firm King and Spalding, said in an e-mail. “While some Republican members might be loathe to offer the president any semblance of a victory, I think there are enough pro-business, pragmatic Republicans to make fast track a reality.” Others aren’t so sure. “I’m not all that optimistic about fast track,” said Clyde Prestowitz, president of the Economic Strategy Institute and a former Commerce Department official under President Ronald Reagan. “All Republicans are not for it, but more importantly, the Republicans won’t


Planetary birth revealed in best image yet from world’s most powerful telescope

ESOcast 69 presents the result of the latest ALMA observations, which reveal extraordinarily fine detail that has never been seen before in the planet-forming disc around the young star HL Tauri. Protoplanetary disks are the source of planet formation, but until now we've only seen them as fuzzy blobs, or in artistic renderings. But in a new image from ALMA (the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array), we see the disk left behind after a star birth in stunning new clarity. Stars form when gas and dust are crushed together by gravity. The leftover particles gather around the new star, forming the concentric disks you can see in the image above. Over time, these tiny particles group together to form rocks, and eventually asteroids — and even planets — can be born from the dust. Observing protoplanetary disks is important for obvious reasons: The closer we get to watching a planet actually being born, the better we'll understand our own planet's origins. This particular disk surrounds a young star named HL Tau, located around 450 light years from Earth in the constellation Taurus. The incredible resolution of the image is impressive, but we could see ALMA's images get even more focused. This video takes you 450 light-years away to HL Tauri in the constellation of Taurus and reveals the astonishing depth and detail that ALMA can now attain. The start of the sequence shows a wide view, including the Pleiades and Hyades naked eye star clusters. Zooming reveals detailed visible-light image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and the final part shows the new ALMA image at millimeter wavelengths. ALMA But while ALMA is close to its final configuration, it's not quite running at its maximum resolution yet. Researchers spaced the antennas as much as 15 kilometers apart to get the image above. In earthly terms, this configuration would allow the telescope to take a shot of a penny from 110 kilometers away. In the near future, the satellites will be moved another full kilometer apart — further increasing the resolution. For once, it's not an illustration. (ALMA/ESO/NAOJ/NRAO) Here's the new image nestled into a shot that the Hubble took of its neighborhood, showing the improvement in resolution. (ALMA/ESO/NAOJ/NRAO, ESA/Hubble and NASA) This image shows the region in which HL Tauri is situated. HL Tauri is part of one of the closest star-forming regions to Earth and there are many young stars,


Veterans Choice Cards are in the mail today. So what are they?

which involved nationwide coverups of treatment delays at the agency’s medical centers. The items allow eligible veterans to obtain care outside the VA hospital network if they have waited too long for an appointment or live far away from the nearest agency clinic. The government picks up the tab, with Congress allocating $10 billion for that purpose earlier this year in response to the scandal. But former service members who have experienced long delays will have to wait several more weeks their cards are mailed, since the VA is implementing the program in phases. The department mailed the first round on Wednesday for veterans who live more than 40 miles from the nearest VA health center. Phase two is scheduled to begin by Nov. 17, with the agency sending cards to veterans who have waited more than 30 days beyond their preferred date, or a date that a doctor has determined to be medically necessary. The first two rounds will involve about 700,000 former troops. The VA plans to issue more cards in December to 8 million veterans enrolled in the agency’s health network, in case they qualify to use them in the future. The program came about through the Veterans Access, Choice and Acountability Act, which President Obama signed into law exactly three months ago. Congress crafted the legislation to help deal with the root causes of the record-keeping scandal, which was partly due to unrealistic scheduling expectations, according to government reviews of the matter. The law required the VA to issue the Choice Cards no later than Thursday, but the agency officials have said that meeting the goal would have overwhelmed the program and potentially led to further problems. Between June and October, the VA authorized more than 1 million veterans to receive care at non-agency medical centers through previously existing programs, providing relief for some of the former service members who have experienced delays. The veterans bill included other provisions to help the VA overcome its scheduling problems, such as funding to expand capacity by leasing 27 new facilities. It also requires the agency to post appointment data publicly at its medical centers and gives the department greater authority to fire senior executives for wrongdoing and performance issues. RELATED: VA removes first official under new firing rules, after two months of paid leave MORE: VA contracting official Susan Taylor resigns amid agency’s attempt to fire her CORRECTION


Doing your research

images. If the laptop has a DVD/CD burner even better: you can back up your images. You want all those images because then you don’t have to remember everything; you can display an image and just describe it. There’s no excuse for not coming back with thousands of images: wide shots, close-ups, medium shots, and detail shots of just a few square inches of furniture or a farm tool or a horse’s harness. Revisiting those pictures will trigger the memory of smells and textures and other sensations that can go into your fiction. The images you find online are okay, but you’ll discover pretty quickly that the picture someone else takes never quite records the details you need to know. The downside of this research is that you end up reading fiction set in your period much more critically. I started reading a book last week about Vikings in Ireland. Lots of people like this book. About three or four pages into the first chapter, though, one of the Vikings is wearing a horned helmet. That was it for me; I couldn’t read any more. This is the fundamental mistake when writing a Viking story, the mistake that you can’t recover from. Vikings didn’t wear horned helmets until they wandered across the stage in Victorian productions of Wagnerian operas. Nothing will yank a knowledgeable reader faster out of a Viking story than a horned helmet. Suspension of disbelief is impossible after a Viking puts on a horned helmet. You show up at the big reenactment event in Moesgård or Trelleborg or Ribe wearing a horned helmet and you’ll be laughed out of Denmark. Don’t be the guy who equips his Vikings with horned helmets: do your research. Look, ma, no horns. The easiest way to begin your research is by using the net, but if you only use the net you’re being lazy. There’s also a lot of garbage on the net so verifying a fact or detail from multiple sources is essential. Now unless you’re setting your story in a period that’s well covered by popular historians, a lot of the books you might need are probably expensive academic publications. They’re written by specialists for a specialist audience and they have to be expensive to break even. A book on inhumation grave goods in Wessex in the 6th Century isn’t going to be a runaway best seller on Amazon.


What’s next for the marijuana movement

pursuing a ballot measure there. The measures there will likely mimic the Colorado model, as the measures in Oregon and Alaska did. (The measure passed by voters in Washington in 2012 is typically viewed by advocates as more restrictive than Colorado’s.) But the group also plans to work to help shepherd legalization through a state legislature for the first time, with a particular focus on Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, Delaware, Hawaii, and Maryland. New Hampshire’s state House in January became the first legislative body in the country to approve legalization, though the effort ultimately reached a dead end. That state, Rhode Island and Vermont may see action soonest among that group. Lessons learned Taylor Bickford, right, spokesman for the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, Chris Rempert, center, the campaign’s political director, and Bruce Schulte, of the Coalition for Responsible Cannabis Legislation, talk to reporters on Wednesday in Anchorage. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren) The upcoming push to legalize in those nearly dozen states will no doubt draw heavily on lessons learned during the successful campaigns so far, which fall roughly into two categories, Tvert said. Advocates in Alaska and Colorado felt they needed to focus on disarming fears about the harm of marijuana early by drawing the comparison to alcohol, while Oregon and Washington played it safer by arguing that legalization is safer than prohibition. “Our goal from the beginning was to get this message across that marijuana is less harmful than alcohol so that when that last month comes around, and the opponents are trying to scare people away from marijuana by saying it’s so dangerous, their reaction will be to say ‘yeah, but it’s less harmful than alcohol,'” he said. In Oregon, the campaign tended to focus on the ills of prohibition, offering legalization as a safer alternative. What worked? Peter Zuckerman, communications director of the successful Yes on 91 campaign, said legalization advocates were smart to avoid marijuana leaf imagery, wear suits when appearing on TV, and pursue endorsements from unusual or unexpected individuals and groups. His group aired ads featuring Washington’s King County Sheriff John Urquhart, local mothers, and a former top state official in charge of mental health and addiction services. Support from the Oregon League of Conservation Voters and the social media-savvy group of moms backing the measure helped, too, he said. The campaign might have seen more success by starting earlier and


Maryland casinos generate $86.8 million in revenue in October

Slot machines at Horseshoe Baltimore a week before it opened on Aug. 26, 2014. (Annys Shin/The Washington Post) Maryland casinos raked in $86.8 million in gaming revenue in October, the Maryland Lottery and Gaming Control Agency reported Wednesday. Excluding Horseshoe Baltimore, which opened in August, state casino revenue is down modestly by 3 percent, compared with October 2013. Despite dire predictions that Horseshoe would steal a chunk of revenue from Maryland Live, the Arundel Mills casino held its own in October, reporting $50.3 million in revenue. That represents a decrease of about 3 percent compared with the same period a year earlier. Perhaps with an eye to silencing any doubters, Maryland Live president and general manager Rob Norton trumpeted the routine data drop, calling October’s results “incredibly strong” and “showing only a slight deviation to the previous year and greatly exceeding the State’s projections despite new competition.” Maryland Live officials also said the suburban casino has been the top performer in the entire mid-Atlantic gaming market for the past year. October marked Horseshoe Baltimore’s second full month of operation. It generated $22.5 million in gaming revenue. The casino by M&T Bank Stadium may be having a bigger impact on Hollywood Casino Perryville than on Maryland Live. Perryville took the biggest hit of the Free State’s five casinos in October and saw its revenue drop 11 percent, year over year, to $6.1 million. Casino at Ocean Downs generated $4.1 million, down 2.7 percent compared with October 2013. Rocky Gap reported $3.8 million in revenue, an 11 percent increase compared with the same period last year.


FBI arrests man for allegedly creating “Silk Road 2.0” to sell drugs on the Dark Web

enable criminal activity. Silk Road 2.0, the bureau said in its news release, generated $8 million in profits each month serving about 150,000 active users. “Following a very close business model to the first, as alleged, Blake Benthall ran a website on the Tor network facilitating supposedly anonymous deals of drugs and illegal services generating millions of dollars in monthly sales,” said George Venizelos, the FBI's assistant director-in-charge of its New York office, according to the news release. “Benthall should have known that those who hide behind the keyboard will ultimately be found.” The original Silk Road, part of what’s known as the Dark Web because it’s not easily accessible to all Internet users, was notorious for offering a wide range of drugs, weapons and other illicit goods for anonymous sales, with transactions made in Bitcoins, an online currency that’s more difficult for authorities to trace than traditional currencies issued by governments. The FBI arrested founder of the original Silk Road, Ross William Ulbricht, in October 2013 and seized the site's assets, including Bitcoins valued at $3.6 million. He allegedly went by the alias "Dread Pirate Roberts." Federal officials said on Thursday that Silk Road 2.0 began operation in November 2013, the month after the original one was closed. The site had more than 13,000 listings for illegal drugs, including Ecstasy, cannabis and psychedelics. Also available were fraudulent documents and tools for computer hacking, according to the news release, though it made no mention of weaponry, which was available on the original Silk Road. The Tor network, though sometimes used by criminals, also is used by a wide range of people seeking to evade government monitoring of their Internet traffic. It was developed by U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and still receives substantial federal government funding. The Tor Project, a non-profit group, now operates Tor. The arrest and charging of Benthall was a joint operation involving the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, Homeland Security Investigations and several other law enforcement agencies in the United States and around the world. The arrest took place in San Francisco and he was expected to make an initial appearance before a federal magistrate judge there on Thursday. Have more to say on this topic? Join us today for our weekly live chat, Switchback. We'll kick things off at 11 a.m. Eastern time. You can submit your questions now, right here.


Half the stars in the universe could be stuck between galaxies

wide view of the sky, and ends on a CIBER image. It's possible that galaxies just aren't all they're cracked up to be: According to a study published in Science, as many as half the stars in the sky have actually gone rogue. Scientists observing the diffused light glow of our universe -- representing all the light produced over its entire history -- found that it couldn't be explained by the number of known galaxies, past and present. There's nearly twice as much infrared light out there as they expected to find. Their best guess is that the extra glow comes from stars sitting between these known galaxies. “There might be people living out there, out in the middle of cold dark space, that don't have a Milky Way,” Harvey Moseley, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, told Nature. Instead, there may be planets orbiting stars that sit all by their lonesome. You can see how those stars come to live on their own in the video above. When galaxies collide, they usually combine -- but it's possible that some stars get tossed out from the mix-up. These individual stars, previously unseen to us, may fill in the gaps between galaxies as we know them. The researcher comes from NASA's Cosmic Infrared Background Experiment (CIBER), which uses telescopes specially designed to look at this background light. CIBER was launched into space in 2010 and 2012, riding on one of NASA's small sounding rockets. The astronomers involved in the study believe that the light they're seeing almost certainly come from modern-day sources, with the most plausible explanation being inter-galactic smatterings of individual stars. They'll need further tests to confirm that theory, and they've already sent out other sounding rockets to collect more data. “If this is true, then there is an entire population of stars that's been sitting out there, but because they are individually so faint we can really only see them in ensemble,” Moseley told Nature. This artist's concept shows a view of a number of galaxies sitting in huge halos of stars. (NASA/JPL and Caltech) A time-lapse photograph of the CIBER rocket launch. (T. Arai/University of Tokyo) The massive galaxy cluster Abell 2744, nicknamed Pandora's Cluster, takes on a ghostly look in this Hubble Space Telescope view where the total starlight from the cluster has been artificially colored blue. (NASA/ESA/M. Montes/IAC/J. Lotz/M. Mountain/A. Koekemoer/HFF Team, STScI)


Manned commercial space flight: The final unregulated frontier

post-, and in-flight processes. The investigation into the SpaceShipTwo accident is being handled by the National Transportation Safety Board. The roughly 400 NTSB employees split between its headquarters in Washington and four regional field offices investigate every civil aviation accident in the U.S., along with major accidents in other modes of transportation such as railways or even natural gas pipelines. But the agency has no formal authority to regulate the transportation industry -- instead, it is charged with conducting independent investigations and making safety recommendations. The agency did its first investigation into a commercial rocket launch in the early 90s and assisted the investigation of the Challenger and Columbia disasters, but the crash of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo is the first time it is leading an investigation into a manned spacecraft accident. "Up until last weekend it was something we knew was coming and had been working to ensure we were ready for -- and now it is upon us," said John DeLisi, the Director of NTSB's Office of Aviation Safety. While this is a new arena for the agency, DeLisi is confident that their work providing support for the investigations into the previous manned space travel disasters and commercial rocket anomalies has prepared the agency to provide a thorough investigation into the SpaceShipTwo crash. "Performing a reconstruction of the wreckage is really something we're very familiar with," he said, adding that the agency is already familiar with Virgin Galactic's program. As Virgin Galactic began to get going, NTSB got to know the company, he explained. "They've sent people to our training facility out in Ashburn, and we'd already made visits out to Mojave to understand where they were in their program." There's also vast amounts of data about the accident, he said, including telemetry data about hundreds if not thousands of parameters and real-time video from the cockpit as well as video of the the vehicle breaking up in flight. "It has given us an insight that we never have had before in an aircraft accident," he said. Tragic as the SpaceShipTwo accident was, DeLisi notes that such accidents are the exact reason that there is real world testing of experimental transportation methods. "The crew on board were experienced, and the test pilot who died knowingly was a pioneer in commercial space." The first space tourists, too, might be considered pioneers. Under the current regulatory scheme, they would not be


Chevy Chase approves $25,000 to search for endangered species DNA near Purple Line

The Town of Chevy Chase will contribute $25,338 for a study to detect whether seeps and wetlands in Montgomery County, near the planned route for a light-rail Purple Line, contain DNA of endangered shrimp-like creatures. The town council voted 3 to 1 Wednesday evening to approve a grant request from the nonprofit Friends of the Capital Crescent Trail. The trail advocacy group sued four federal agencies in August, alleging that they improperly approved a Maryland Transit Administration environmental study of the Purple Line without adequately considering the project’s potential impacts on two crustaceans. The trail group says the extremely rare Kenk’s and Hay’s Spring amphipods could be harmed by the line’s construction and additional stormwater runoff that would result from increased development after the line is built. The Hay’s Spring amphipod has been a federally protected endangered species since 1982, and the Kenk’s amphipod is a candidate for federal listing. Because the amphipods are so tiny and difficult to find — they live in shallow pools, often beneath leaves and rocks — the trail group has said it needs a study that would detect the amphipods’ DNA, signaling their presence. Federal officials have said the Purple Line’s construction would have no impact on either crustacean, saying their habitat is too far away or would be unaffected by the watershed’s groundwater. Some of the grant money also will be used to study whether increased development planned for Chevy Chase Lake and other communities along the proposed Purple Line route would increase storm water runoff and erosion, and whether construction would pollute nearby water. The Town of Chevy Chase has fought the Purple Line’s proposed alignment for years, saying it would destroy the wooded Georgetown Branch Trail that runs along the town’s northern border and would bring train noise and vibrations to nearby homes. In addition to funding the DNA study, the town has spent $272,000 on a Washington law firm to lobby against the project, the town manager said. Whether the $2.45-billion Purple Line will be built anytime soon remains uncertain. Maryland Gov.-elect Larry Hogan (R) has said he believes the project is too expensive. However, Hogan has not said whether he will cancel its construction, which is now scheduled to begin next year.


Prosecutors drop murder-for-hire charge against former AC/DC drummer Phil Rudd one day after filing it

Apparently it was a big mistake, a very big mistake. Twenty-four hours after police in New Zealand charged Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Phil Rudd with the serious crime of attempting to hire a hitman to kill two people, the charge has been dropped. The former AC/DC drummer is still accused of threatening to kill a complainant against him and with possession of methamphetamine and cannibis. But, according to Rudd’s lawyer, Paul Mabey, the most serious charge–which drew worldwide publicityo– has been withdrawn, a decision the Sydney Morning Herald said was confirmed by the prosecutor in Tauranga District Court in New Zealand. The legal system in New Zealand–and all those based on English law–is notoriously opaque. No details of the crimes allegedly committed by Rudd have been released and there was no explanation of why the “attempting to procure murder” charge was either brought in the first place or why it was then dropped. According to the New Zealand Herald, police first brought the charges on their own. But when the case was sent over to the prosecutor, called the Crown Solicitor, he decided there was insufficient evidence. According to the Herald: When asked by the Herald about the U-turn, Crown spokeswoman Jan Fulstow said: “It is a matter for the police. The police do not have to come to the Crown to seek permission to lay charges. The police make decisions on charges etc having regard for the evidence that they have….Police said this afternoon: “After a first appearance in court (Rudd) was bailed to reappear on 27 November. In matters of this nature the Crown Solicitor then becomes responsible for the prosecution. “Today the Crown reviewed the charges and made the decision to withdraw the charge of attempting to procure murder. Other charges remain before the court.” In a statement, Mabey, Rudd’s lawyer, said: I was advised by the Crown Solicitor, Mr Hollister-Jones, that he had reviewed the Police file and the available evidence to support the charge of Attempting to Procure Murder. He had formed the view that there was insufficient evidence to justify that charge. He has now withdrawn the charge. Mr Rudd will defend the charge of Threatening to Kill. Charges relating to any personal possession of drugs are minor. The charge alleging an Attempt to Procure Murder should never have been laid. The Crown Solicitors opinion was not sought. The charge is now


Bookstore celebrates opening in D.C.

Upshur Street Books in Washington, D.C., opened on Nov. 1. (Courtesy of Upshur Street Books) This is turning into an exciting month for booksellers — and their customers — in the nation’s capital. On Thursday, Politics and Prose announced plans to stock and manage the retail book sections of five Busboys and Poets restaurants. That innovative arrangement will greatly expand the reach of the venerable Chevy Chase bookstore. And an all-new spot for book buyers just sprouted up, too. Upshur Street Books in Northwest Washington has completed its first week of business. The 800-square-foot store is the latest labor of love from Paul Ruppert. The native Washingtonian owns two restaurants facing each other on opposite sides of Upshur Street: Petworth Citizen and Crane & Turtle. When a nearby storefront became available, he decided to take his first jump into retail. “I’ve never worked in a bookstore,” Ruppert says, “but I’ve always loved them. I’ve always thought of them as the focus of the cultural life in Washington and other cities.” But Ruppert knew that a bookstore would be a different enterprise with its own challenges. He spent a year working on the concept, a process that included assembling an ad hoc committee of local writers, bibliophiles and former bookstore employees. Then he put up $100,000 of his own money and turned to the community for additional support. His project won a Great Streets Small Business Capital Improvement grant for $80,000 in May. In September, he raised $20,000 on Kickstarter by promising “the first new independent bookstore to open in Washington, DC in 10 years.” On opening day, Nov. 1, customers showed their enthusiasm by lining up in front of the store. “We had 40 percent higher sales than we had expected,” Ruppert says. “We had customers all day long.” Anna Thorn, the general manager of Upshur Street Books, was formerly the programs manager at Politics and Prose. She describes the store as a general bookstore with about 3,300 titles that offers a little of everything. “The goal of the stock is to have the best of the big titles — the books that people are coming in for — next to lesser-known but worthy titles that you might not find elsewhere.” One of the store’s central aims is to serve as a community gathering space. “We’re having a great time planning all sorts of events,” Thorn says. “Some of the


Snapdeal — the flourishing company America passed on — offers a lesson about immigration reform

Now that Republicans have won the U.S. Senate, it’s time to end immigration gridlock. (Cliff Owen/AP) After graduating from Wharton in 2007, Kunal Bahl wanted to become an entrepreneur. He couldn’t get a visa, so he had to return home to India. He started Snapdeal in February 2010 with the ambition of building India’s Groupon. Then he saw an even greater opportunity — to turn Snapdeal into India’s Amazon.com. Snapdeal already has more than 25 million customers and sells goods from 50,000 merchants. With the $625 million that Japan’s Softbank has just invested in it, it is surely on its way. The sad part for America is that instead of creating jobs here — where he really wanted to be — Bahl created thousands of jobs in India. Bahl is no longer looking to U.S. companies as his model. His new goal is to build the Indian version of Alibaba, the innovative Chinese ecommerce marketplace, which enjoys market capitalization of $275 billion. As Alibaba’s founder, Jack Ma, is doing, Bahl is pondering which Silicon Valley companies to acquire. Over drinks at the INK India conference in Mumbai last weekend, Bahl and I discussed the pros and cons of Snapdeal’s acquiring Groupon, which has market capitalization of around $5 billion. We agreed that there were better Silicon Valley companies to acquire — and that he should think bigger. Gone are the days when the United States was the only land of opportunity and when entrepreneurs dreamed of being acquired by a Silicon Valley company. The bigger opportunities now lie in countries such as India, China, and Brazil, and their entrepreneurs are becoming confident that they can take on Silicon Valley. The world’s best and brightest students once came to study in the United States with the expectation of starting their careers and settling here. Now, upon graduation, they buy one-way tickets home. The immigration gridlock has already hurt U.S. competitiveness and will worsen the damage if our political leaders don’t soon reach a compromise. The good news is that with the Republican Senate victory, immigration reform may finally have a chance. Contrary to popular belief, it isn’t the Republicans who have been the barrier to skilled immigration, it is the Democrats—because they demanded all or nothing, without compromise. Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Ill.), chairman of the Immigration Task Force of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, confirmed this to me in an online


Support for legalizing marijuana fell in the past year, though a majority are still on board, Gallup finds

After reaching a 44-year high last year, support for legalizing pot dropped seven points, according to a new Gallup poll. A majority still supports the idea, with 51 percent of Americans in favor of legalization. That level of support is right around the 50 percent recorded in 2011 and 2012, but down from the record 58 percent recorded last year. The Gallup results are in line with a similar seven-point drop recorded by a Public Religion Research Institute poll in September and suggest that the legalization movement may be relegated to the coasts unless and until it can muster more support. The big divides in support for legalization by ideology and region suggest that, for now at least, the prospects of Southern and Midwestern states legalizing pot are dim, though the long-term trend is on the side of advocates, Gallup notes: As long as support hovers around the 50% mark, it will be difficult for proponents to promote legalization beyond the more Democratic and liberal-oriented states. The South and Midwest are likely to remain less hospitable, at least for the time being. But with a super-majority of younger Americans supportive – 64% of those aged 18 to 34, contrasted with 41% of those 55 and older — it seems inevitable that this will eventually change. More than 1 million voters — most of them in Oregon — approved legalization in Alaska, Oregon and D.C. on Tuesday. Support for legalization by region. (Gallup) The poll was conducted in mid-October, in the run-up to the successful votes for legalization in Alaska, Oregon and D.C. and could have been affected by the related debate. Also, last year’s vote came before Colorado or Washington had implemented their legalization laws. Resulting concerns — particularly related to edibles in Colorado — may have affected support for those on the edge. Voters in Oregon, Alaska and the District of Columbia voted to legalize marijuana in the 2014 midterm elections. They joined Colorado and Washington, which did so in 2012. So could other states follow suit in 2016? The Washington Post's Niraj Chokshi breaks down the possibilities.


The media aren’t holding female candidates back

analyzed thousands of articles in local newspapers – the place where voters get most of their information about congressional races – about hundreds of U.S. House candidates. We found virtually no differences in the content of coverage for men and women. In those races, women were just as likely to receive coverage as men. We found that male and female candidates were associated with the same issues and traits. And not only were mentions of the candidates’ gender – references to physical appearance, clothes, family roles and so forth – quite rare, they occurred with the same frequency for men and women. If cleavage is a popular topic in campaign coverage, we couldn’t find it. Even in cases where research has identified differences in the way men and women are covered, those differences tend to be very subtle. Nothing suggests that the media trivialize female candidates. This might seem surprising, especially when we see stories like those about Sen. Tom Harkin’s comments comparing Ernst to Taylor Swift. But the reality is that those kinds of episodes are rare. They are hardly representative of the media coverage that women experience on the campaign trail. Although the rare instance of gendered coverage could pose challenges for women, men are not immune from it. Conway wondered, “Where are the comparable stories about paunchy beer bellies and bad comb-overs?” Just for the record: Here, here, here and here. I won’t bother linking to articles about Chris Christie. Stories about pantsuits and waistlines are swamped by more mundane political news – coverage of candidates’ campaign activities, their standing in the polls and the occasional analysis of their policy ideas. And that’s one reason that research suggests voters don’t appear to discriminate against female candidates. Of course, the barriers to getting more women into positions of political leadership are real, significant and stubborn. As the Times story noted, the gender gap in political ambition – men are more likely than women to run for office – is a major reason for women’s underrepresentation. According to data from the Center for American Women and Politics, 15 women this year ran for the Senate and 159 ran for the House. With those numbers, how could their gains have been anything but incremental? And because most women run as Democrats, a “good night” for Republicans, to borrow a phrase, means a tough cycle for female candidates. Expanding the number


How China’s ivory addiction explains the new world economy

that bags of ivory were loaded onto Xi Jinping’s own plane during a visit to Tanzania in March 2013, presumably without the Chinese president’s knowledge. 3. Gift-giving and corruption. One United Nations report suggests that Chinese demand for ivory might be driven, counterintuitively, by the high price of ivory -- just like other expensive status symbols like watches and diamonds. The chart below shows the price and quantity of imports into China and Hong Kong have increased as the price has gone up. The report offers two explanations: that mammoth ivory is subject to some kind of speculative price bubble, or that it is what economists call a “Veblen good.” (A Veblen good refers to any product for which demand rises as its price goes up -- contrary to the law of supply and demand.) If this is true, the Chinese government’s current crackdown on corrupt government officials might help to dampen sales of ivory as it chills questionable behavior -- as it has done for watches and luxury cars. 2014 report by the U.N. Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora 4. The suppression of the Chinese environmental movement Environmental organizations and activists are subject to government surveillance and hampered by restrictive laws; some have been arrested or detained for inciting social unrest. 5. Lack of knowledge about the ivory industry. This is changing, slowly. Both dog ownership and Buddhism, which values animals and often involves vegetarianism, are increasingly in vogue among Chinese urbanites. And public education about endangered animals is on the rise. Yao Ming, the Chinese former star of the Houston Rockets, joined with WildAid, a San Francisco-based charity, to make a series of successful commercials in 2011 that urged Chinese to stop eating shark fin soup. Yao and WildAid partnered again on a documentary that was screened in China in August about the mass slaughter of the ivory trade. Former NBA star Yao Ming has helped to launch an international public awareness campaign targeting ivory and rhino horn consumption in Asia, in partnership with African Wildlife Foundation, WildAid and Save the Elephants. In the long run, this kind of education is probably the most effective way to reduce China’s massive purchases of ivory, since it pushes down the demand for the good. This may be far more effective than just attacking supply, since limiting ivory imports will only push the value


What do your local shopping options say about your area’s politics?

(Courtesy: TIME) Shoppers at Nordstrom or American Apparel are more likely to live in an area that votes Democratic. Buy your clothes at Dillard’s or Belk? You’re probably represented in Congress by a Republican. But if you get your new duds at Macy’s or J. Crew, your congressional district could just as equally be red or blue. Friend of the Loop, Chris Wilson, and his interactive graphics team at TIME located every store in America (nearly 2 million total) for 2,700 popular chains and for each brand determined what percentage of them are in congressional districts that went Republican or Democrat on Tuesday. The geography of a particular brand is telling. Dunkin’ Donuts, for example, is a primarily northeast brand, which explains why of its more than 7,000 brick and mortar stores, two-thirds are in Democratic districts. Meanwhile Kroger’s is a Midwest-based chain, with stores also in the South, and 78 percent of them are located in Republican districts. It also makes sense that stores found in urban downtowns as well as in suburban shopping malls, like Macy’s, or Victoria Secret’s, or J. Crew, are the most split. They have locations in almost every state in America. Macy’s is in tons of red states, for example, but there is also one in almost every district in Democratic California and New York. Some brands and the politics of their locations won’t surprise you. Hobby Lobby and Chick-fil-A, which both have associations with conservative ideology, have significantly more stores in Republican districts. Meanwhile shoppers at Whole Foods “means ‘liberal elite’ in the minds of many,” said David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report in an editorial he wrote for The Washington Post entitled “Will the 2012 election be a contest of Whole Foods vs. Cracker Barrel shoppers?” Whole Foods, as well as Trader Joe’s, are found in more Democratic areas than Republican ones, which aligns with a different data set The Post wrote about a year-ago that paired grocery stores to party voters. Of course your own personal shopping habits may not be an indicator of your politics, but, as Wilson and his team note, the presence of a certain store in your town could very well be an indicator of which party is most likely to represent you on Capitol Hill. Beyond that, it’s also just a super fun search tool to play with, which you can do by clicking here.


Conservatives don’t hate climate science. They hate the left’s climate solutions

words, the authors argue, this "solution aversion" feeds back into conservatives' perception of science itself. The paper shows the significance of “solution aversion” through a series of four experiments -- the final of which also catches liberals engaging in the behavior. But first, let's look at this phenomenon as it manifests on the right. In one of the paper's experiments, politically diverse research subjects were separated into two groups, one of whose members read about a climate change solution that involved regulatory action to reduce emissions (much like the EPA's approach), while the other group read about "how the United States could help stop climate change and profit from leading the world in green technology." Afterwards, subjects were asked how much they agreed that humans are causing climate change. The result was that whether or not they'd read about a "free market" climate solution or a "government regulatory" climate solution, Democrats believed in the science of climate change about equally. But for Republicans, which solution they'd read about seemed to have a very big effect on their feelings about the science: From Campbell and Kay, "Solution Aversion: On the Relation Between Ideology and Motivated Disbelief," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2014, Vol. 107, No. 5, 809–824. Published by the American Psychological Association, reprinted with permission. A similar result, incidentally, has been found by Yale researcher Dan Kahan and his colleagues: Framing climate solutions around either nuclear power or geoengineering (artificial interference with the climate system in order to slow the rate of warming, a technological fix) also seems to make conservatives more accepting of climate science. This is presumably because these solutions are also perceived as being based on the free market and individual ingenuity, rather than a command and control government regulatory approach. Thus, the new paper definitely adds to the mountain of evidence suggesting that conservatives reject modern climate science because they think that it implies a series of policies that they find unacceptable. But interestingly, Duke's Campbell and Kay also show in the final study of their paper that liberals, too, can change their views of the facts because they don't like what those facts seem to imply. In this last experiment, individuals were first asked for their opinions about gun control, and then either read 1) an essay arguing that the availability of weapons helps citizens fight off home intruders (an anti-gun control view) or


One in every 8 arrests was for a drug offense last year

it means that states spent more than $450 million on these arrests in 2013 alone. These numbers come from FBI tallies of state and local police department arrest reports. Because participation in the program is voluntary and some states don't participate in it at all, these figures are a floor - not a ceiling. With four states plus D.C. having legalized marijuana since 2012, the cognitive dissonance underlying our nation's drug policies is becoming more stark. Certain states are spending millions of dollars annually to arrest and incarcerate people for a behavior that may be completely legal just across the border. That may help explain why calls for full federal decriminalization and legalization of marijuana have grown louder this year. According to ACLU's estimate, in 2010 the states spent a total of $3.6 billion on marijuana possession enforcement, from arrests to court costs to incarceration. As I noted earlier back in August, state-level discrepancies in marijuana enforcement, even between states with ostensibly similar regulation regimes, can be striking. In New York, an astonishing one out of every eight arrests - 12.7 percent - are for simple marijuana possession. But across the state line in Massachusetts, fewer than one out of every 100 arrests are for marijuana possession. Marijuana possession arrests by state, 2012 However, New York's marijuana arrest numbers are set for a big drop. The New York Times reports that the NYPD will stop arresting people for pot possession and instead simply issue them a ticket - putting the department in compliance with the state's decriminalization law that was passed nearly 40 years ago. Overall, the decriminalization of marijuana is notable for the unity of public opinion behind it and the resistance of most legislators to even talk about it.. According to the Pew Research Center, 76 percent of Americans say people caught with small amounts of marijuana should not be subject to jail time. Even groups that fiercely oppose the full legalization of marijuana, like Project SAM, agree that possession of small amounts should be a civil offense, not a criminal one. But most of our national-level lawmakers cut their teeth during the "tough on crime" days of the '80s and early '90s. Legislative change, particularly at the federal level, will be slow in coming. Which is why voters in many states have simply taken the issue in their own hands and passed drug reform measures via ballot.


Big Food’s weird war over the meaning of mayonnaise, America’s top condiment

dominates 45 percent of the mayo market, data from industry researcher Euromonitor shows. But market watchers say it highlights the fears from traditional food conglomerates facing unexpected competition from crafty start-ups. It’s perhaps no coincidence that the biggest battleground is mayonnaise: Americans buy $2 billion of the stuff every year — more even than ketchup, salsa or soy sauce. “It’s not about using the (mayo) word,” said Michele Simon, a public health attorney who wrote about the suit. “It’s about the fact that this company is taking market share away. And now it’s like they’ve awakened the giant.” That the plant-based Just Mayo is a new type of food will lend an interesting dimension to the legal proceedings: Brand disputes typically quibble over words, not the definition of the product itself. But the very modern legal battle will be fought on regulatory territory that is decades old. The FDA’s definition of mayonnaise was set in 1957, decades before the phrase “vegan mayo” ever made sense. (Maintaining that “standard of identity” is important: Kraft Foods’ Miracle Whip, which doesn’t meet the FDA’s standard, is technically a salad dressing.) Unilever doesn’t just call out Just Mayo for what it calls confusing branding — advertisements have called the stuff “mayo,” and its logo resembles an egg — it also says the company has no proof in its claims of beating Hellmann’s in a taste test. So what’s spooking Big Food? Hampton Creek has some big backers, including Bill Gates, and in a matter of months has spread rapidly to more than 20,000 Walmarts, Costcos and other stores across the country. While other organic spreads like Vegenaise play up their place in the vegan niche, Hampton Creek has widely promoted Just Mayo as a mainstream brand: healthy, cheap and good for everybody. (Company ads rarely call it “vegan.”) “We don’t market our product to tree-hugging liberals in San Francisco, even though I’m in the middle of nine of them right now,” said Josh Tetrick, Hampton Creek’s founder and chief executive. “We built the company to try to really penetrate the places where better-for-you food hasn’t gone before, and that means right in the condiment aisle of Walmart.” The fate of Just Mayo, which swapped out eggs for Canadian yellow peas, will be watched closely by other food conglomerates. Hampton Creek also sells Just Cookies, a line of egg- and milk-free cookie dough, and is


30 years later, Bob Geldof is still wondering if Africans know it’s Christmas

Do they Know it's Christmas ~ Band Aid 1984 It's happening again. On Monday, Bob Geldof announced that he was planning to re-record "Do They Know It's Christmas?" for the 30th anniversary of the release of the celebrity-featured song that raised relief funds for the famine in Ethiopia in the early 1980s. The Irish songwriter told reporters that the new Live Aid recording would raise money for West African nations hit by Ebola and would feature a number of big-name musical artists, such as Bono, Ed Sheeren and One Direction. On one level, this seems like good news. The Ebola crisis and the damage it has wrought on the African nations of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone is certainly a worthy cause for fundraising. Former Boomtown Rats singer Geldof and his songwriting partner Midge Ure have had success raising money with this type of project: The original release of "Do They Know It's Christmas?" was the biggest-selling single in British chart history, and with the subsequent re-releases (1989, 2004), plus accompanying concerts, it raised tens of millions for worthy causes. However, the song's newest re-release brings the return of an uncomfortable quandary: Raising funds for African nations is a worthy philanthropic effort, but do we have to do it with such a terrible song? I say terrible not because the song itself is musically terrible (though it is), nor because many of the artists touted for the re-recording are terrible (they are). It's not because the song kick-started a trend of terrible celebrity charity songs, either (see also: "We Are the World" and "Tears Are Not Enough"). No, the problem with "Do They Know It's Christmas?" is worse than that. To understand the big problem with the song, start with the simplest elements. "Do they know it's Christmastime at all?" goes the chorus line from which the song takes its title. The core idea running through the lyrics is that Africans may not know it is Christmastime due to the problems they are facing. That is quite clearly a flawed concept. It not only presumes that Africans wouldn't know it was Christmastime (quite a big presumption); it also assumes that they'd care. The first song, for instance, was inspired by a terrible famine in Ethiopia. In Ethiopia, the majority of Christians are members of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and thus follow the Orthodox calender, meaning that for them Christmas


Neil deGrasse Tyson very politely comments on the science of ‘Interstellar’

their “Interstellar” counterparts. Tyson did say he “enjoyed ‘Gravity’ very much” and later followed up his tweets with a Facebook explanation for those who thought he was needlessly attacking the movie. He also promised to keep talking about science in film — so let’s get to it. There was Tyson’s obvious irritation with “Gravity” shooting a medical doctor into space: Mysteries of #Gravity: Why Bullock, a medical Doctor, is servicing the Hubble Space Telescope. Verus “Interstellar”: In #Interstellar: All leading characters, including McConaughey, Hathaway, Chastain, & Caine play a scientist or engineer. “Interstallar” got the gravity part right: In #Interstellar: And in the real universe, strong gravitational fields measurably slow passage of time relative to others. Whereas “Gravity” wasn’t really about gravity at all. The film #Gravity should be renamed "Angular Momentum" The zero-gravity scenes get an A+: In #Interstellar: The producers knew exactly how, why, & when you’d achieve zero-G in space. Whereas “Gravity” had some hair issues: Mysteries of #Gravity: Why Bullock's hair, in otherwise convincing zero-G scenes, did not float freely on her head. Fun fact: “Interstellar” didn’t employ green screen to convey zero-gravity. In fact, in some scenes, Anne Hathaway in zero-gravity is just Anne Hathaway convincingly floating around on one leg: Anne Hathaway's Interstellar One-Legged Zero Gravity Move - The Graham Norton Show on BBC America This is why Annie has an Oscar and gets paid the big bucks. There were also comparisons to Tyson’s gold standard of space movies, “2001: A Space Odyssey”: In #Interstellar: They reprise the matched-rotation docking maneuver from "2001: A Space Odyssey," but they spin 100x faster. Tyson previously sniffed at the wonderment of zero-gravity in film. It’s so been-there, done that, got the spacesuit. Mysteries of #Gravity: Why anyone is impressed with a zero-G film 45 years after being impressed with "2001:A Space Odyssey" Plus he just noticed little coincidences: In #Interstellar: There’s a robot named KIPP. One of the Executive Producers, a physicist, is named Kip. I’m just saying. And dispensed advice: REMINDER: Never look to me for opinions on new films. All I do is highlight the science one might or might not find in them. In #Interstellar: They explore a planet near a Black Hole. Personally, I’d stay as far the hell away from BlackHoles as I can Someone should congratulate Warner Bros. It appears with “Interstellar,” the studio has turned “Gravity” into an astrophysics mulligan.


The unexplained noxious gas that has engulfed Moscow

action, blasting out an advisory to avoid the poisonous fumes at all costs. “U.S. citizens are strongly advised to remain indoors, to close windows and doors, and, if possible, to turn off heating and cooling systems to reduce the flow of outside air into closed environments,” the statement said. “U.S. citizens who experience adverse symptoms, such as severe pulmonary distress, should seek assistance from local authorities.” As fog cloaked the city, mystery cloaked the fog. Russian authorities originally claimed the alleged source of the noxious gas was a factory operated by Russian gas giant Gazprom. But then, according to the Moscow Times, the refinery’s owner said everything at his factory had been hunky dory. So who’s to blame? Who knows. Local authorities haven’t yet explained what happened, but every report nonetheless agreed on the gas itself: It’s hydrogen sulfide. As such, there are only a handful of potential causes, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The natural and unlikely causes: volcanic activity, sulfur springs, swamps and stagnant bodies of water. The unnatural causes: “Hydrogen sulfide is released by a number of industries [like] pulp and paper mills, natural gas production, swine containment and manure handling, or geothermal power plants,” the document stated. Moscow in 2012. (Anton Golubev/Reuters) If the mystery gas is indeed linked to a refinery in Moscow, it would fit into the larger problem of air pollution that’s long bedeviled the Russian metropolis. Its newspapers are choked by headlines like, “Moscow air is not the worst in the world.” And: “Will Russians die from what they breathe?” Air pollution clogs cities across Russia, but it has been at its most virulent in the capital. City officials have tried to clamp down on the fumes, against which residents have long inveighed in several campaigns, according to an American University report: “From closing down dozens of factories within the city to forbidding trucks from traveling in the city center during certain hours to drafting legislation on auto emissions testing — the Moscow authorities have tried in the past several years to stuff the genie of air pollution back into the battle.” But the genie apparently won’t fit. And now some residents are discerning broader themes in the recent batch of bad air. “Do you [know] what smells in Moscow?” one person asked on Twitter, according to the Moscow Times. “It’s not sulfur, but the ruble dying.”


Youngest veterans struggle most with unemployment, data shows

the bureau’s data. Since then, the rate has generally declined, always staying below the unemployment rate for the overall workforce. Despite those trends, the data shows that post-9/11 veterans in particular have struggled find work more than the general workforce and more than troops who served in previous eras of conflict. About 9 percent of former service members from Iraq and Afghanistan were unemployed in 2013, compared to about 6.6 percent of veterans overall and 7.2 percent of non-veterans. This year, post-9/11 veterans continued to struggle with unemployment relative to veterans overall and the general workforce, even though the jobless rate for that segment has declined. The graph below demonstrates the trends. (Chart by Josh Hicks/The Washington Post. Source: BLS) The bureau published a report on Monday showing that younger veterans struggle considerably more with unemployment than those who are older. The jobless rate for former troops between ages 18 and 25 last year was about 21 percent on average, while the overall rate for veterans was barely above 6 percent during that time. Monster Worldwide, the company that founded the employment Web sites Monster.com and Military.com, conducted a survey this fall that sheds light on what troops are experiencing as they try to find work in today’s job market. Two-thirds of veterans who responded to the survey said their top challenge is communicating their military skills in ways that employers can understand and utilize. Nonetheless, only 13 percent of veteran respondents in the survey said they lacked confidence in finding work, compared to 26 percent last year. Those numbers suggest that former troops have grown increasingly confident in their ability to land jobs despite any communication challenges they may face. Additionally, more than two-thirds of employer respondents said they have unique talent needs that former troops would be more qualified to fill than non-veterans, which may help explain the growing optimism among job-seeking veterans, as well as the relatively low unemployment rates for former service members overall. Employers said the top five skills that veterans bring to civilian jobs include self-discipline, teamwork, attention to detail, respect and leadership, in that order. The survey focused on veterans who have been out of the military for less than five years and active-duty troops who plan to leave the service within the next year. As for employers, the analysis covered those who have hired at least one veteran in the past year.


How TV helped change attitudes about marijuana

My favorite TV show as a kid, “Beverly Hills, 90210,” offers an informative glimpse into just how much of prime-time television’s portrayals of marijuana have changed in only a short period of time. Marijuana was overwhelmingly portrayed in a negative light throughout the teen drama’s 10 years on TV (1990-2000). So much so that cannabis immediately served as the gateway drug to a peripheral character’s heroin overdose death in 1997. The 21st-century remake of “90210” dealt with marijuana use much differently during its 2008-2013 run, though. In fact, marijuana was downright cool on the reincarnated “90210.” The young/hip/brilliant high school teacher smoked it every day back in college; the parents mistakenly ate pot brownies, with good-natured hijinks naturally ensuing; and young love even blossomed at the medical-marijuana dispensary. The evolution of marijuana depictions from the old to the new “90210” is a microcosm of the growing normalization of weed on TV. The Atlantic documented these changes in an article aptly titled, “How TV Fell in Love with Marijuana.” But others have decried them. The socially conservative Parents Television Council concluded its 2008 analysis, “Prime Time Goes to Pot,” by lamenting the fact that “prime-time television has joined the growing enthusiasm for portraying marijuana use as harmless and even beneficial” Television’s new love affair with marijuana, of course, coincides with a remarkable increase in support for legalization over the past 15 years. Recent polls by Gallup, Pew and YouGov found a majority of Americans now favor legal recreational use — up more than 20 percentage points since the late 1990s. Moreover, on Election Day, Oregon, Alaska and Washington, D.C., joined Colorado and Washington state in voting to legalize marijuana for recreational use. This growing support, however, naturally raises the chicken-or-egg question of whether TV is portraying pot more positively because of growing public support or if those benign depictions are liberalizing attitudes about legalization. Fortunately, data from the General Social Survey (GSS) helps shed some light on that question. This venerable resource routinely asks about television consumption and marijuana legalization in its biennial academic surveys. We can, therefore, determine whether Americans who watch more television are actually driving the trend in support for legal weed. We can also control for a whole host of relevant factors (party, ideology, religiosity, age, race, education, news consumption, etc.) to ensure that watching TV, rather than some other variable, is responsible for our findings. These


harmless and even beneficial” Television’s new love affair with marijuana, of course, coincides with a remarkable increase in support for legalization over the past 15 years. Recent polls by Gallup, Pew and YouGov found a majority of Americans now favor legal recreational use — up more than 20 percentage points since the late 1990s. Moreover, on Election Day, Oregon, Alaska and Washington, D.C., joined Colorado and Washington state in voting to legalize marijuana for recreational use. This growing support, however, naturally raises the chicken-or-egg question of whether TV is portraying pot more positively because of growing public support or if those benign depictions are liberalizing attitudes about legalization. Fortunately, data from the General Social Survey (GSS) helps shed some light on that question. This venerable resource routinely asks about television consumption and marijuana legalization in its biennial academic surveys. We can, therefore, determine whether Americans who watch more television are actually driving the trend in support for legal weed. We can also control for a whole host of relevant factors (party, ideology, religiosity, age, race, education, news consumption, etc.) to ensure that watching TV, rather than some other variable, is responsible for our findings. These results, which are presented in the graph below, suggest that television has in fact helped change public opinion about marijuana: (Note: These are predictions from a statistical model that also accounts for party identification, ideology, religious service attendance, education, age, gender, race, marital status and newspaper consumption. Source: GSS Cumulative File). The large increase in support for legalization over the past decade was concentrated among Americans who watch a lot of TV. After accounting for other variables, support for marijuana legalization has increased by almost 20 percentage points among individuals who watch at least four hours of TV a day (nearly one-third of the population). Meanwhile, opinions remained relatively static among Americans who do not watch much television. To be sure, these results are still not definitive proof that television is responsible for the growing trend in support for legalization. Some Americans, for example, may have changed their viewing habits because they approve or disapprove of prime time’s portrayal of pot. Prime-time depictions could have also changed to reflect the views of those who watch the most TV. The much more logical explanation for the pattern in the display above, though, is that TV’s new normalization of marijuana helped change public opinion about its prohibition.


Olympic skier, violinist Vanessa-Mae banned for four years for race-fixing ahead of Sochi Games

in announcing that it was banning Vanessa-Mae from international skiing for four years. The malfeasance involved race-rigging at during four Olympic qualifying events in Slovenia a few weeks before the Games. Here’s the Associated Press with details: FIS detailed several rule-breaking incidents that rigged results to help Vanessa-Mae falsely improve her results near the Olympic entry deadline. Without the cheating orchestrated by her managers, Vanessa-Mae “would not have achieved the necessary FIS point performance level to be eligible to participate in the Olympic Winter Games,” the governing body said. … FIS said the scam involved falsely inflating the quality of four qualifying races to artificially boost Vanessa-Mae’s standing as a potential Olympian. Race rigging included inventing times for skiers who did not race and faking times for lower-quality skiers who did finish. “A previously retired competitor with the best FIS points in the competition took part for the sole purpose of lowering the penalty to the benefit the participants in the races,” FIS said. Race officials also broke rules by not changing the course design between the first and second runs, and allowing skiers to continue in poor weather which required abandonment. “The competitions were organized at the request of the management of Vanessa Vanankorn, through the Thai Olympic Committee in its capacity as the FIS member National Ski Association,” skiing’s governing body said. FIS also banned five officials from Slovenia and Italy for one to two years over their role in the affair. “Those who have been sanctioned have been sanctioned for good reason,” FIS President Gian Franco Kasper told The Associated Press. “At first we were laughing when we heard it. But then we realized it’s quite a serious thing.” Vanessa-Mae — who raced under the name Vanessa Vanakorn at the Sochi Games, using the last name of her Thai father — is described on her Wikipedia page as a former child prodigy in the violin who describes her musical style as “violin techno-acoustic fusion.” She appeared on Janet Jackson’s “The Velvet Rope” album and also performed at the Opening Ceremonies of the Paralympic Games in 2002. She certainly caused a bit of a stir in Sochi. “IOC President Thomas Bach was photographed with the celebrity athlete in Sochi and later appointed her to a working group meeting helping shape future policy for the Olympic movement,” the AP reports. One has to guess that’s now off the table.


The biggest challenge at Veterans Affairs

appointments by veterans. So, until he fixes one of the problems that led staff members to manipulate wait-time records in the first place — that demand for services far outstripped supply — all the terminations and online suggestion boxes in the world will do little to help. Whistle-blowing doctors have, after all, blamed clinical shortages for the mess at the Phoenix hospital, where the fiasco first surfaced. "I had veterans who had survived WWII, who'd survived Pork Chop Hill, who'd survived the Battle of Fallujah, who had gone through so many situations of combat where it's a life and death situation," VA physician Katherine Mitchell told 60 Minutes. "And yet I could not guarantee their safety in the middle of metropolitan Phoenix in my E.R., because we didn't have adequate staffing and training." McDonald's chief deputy, Sloan Gibson, seems to agree. Gibson, who served as acting secretary in the immediate aftermath of former VA head Eric Shinseki's resignation, told 60 Minutes that the problems he's seen in visits to local sites have been "leadership failure, mismanagement, and chronic underinvestment in the system." McDonald is taking on some of this challenge himself, visiting medical school campuses to personally recruit doctors and nurses and even calling them on the phone to encourage them to join. He's given raises to doctors in order to bring their salaries more in line with private-sector opportunities, and seems to understand it is his responsibility to rehabilitate the VA's reputation so more talented clinicians want to work there. Yet all of this comes at a time when there's a projected shortage of doctors in the general population, and when doctors are increasingly seeking jobs with less red tape. Convincing Congress to budget the VA with enough resources to hire that many people will likely be tough. Some legislators are already arguing that VA workers need to be more efficient, and others are floating the idea of expanding the new private voucher program, which allows veterans to use outside medical providers if their wait time is long or they live too far from a VA hospital. There's little doubt a more efficient system is needed, yet some level of greater hiring is needed as well. And given the reputation hit the agency has taken, that won't be easy. McDonald relayed a story to NPR host Robert Siegel on Monday, in which he coincidentally sat in front of an


The true-life cannibals and murderers in our midst

the water gurgles by and the bushes gently rustle in the wind. But this idyllic scene masks murders happening just beneath the water’s surface. Baby dragonflies, otherwise known as nymphs, are voracious predators. Measuring from the size of a peppercorn up to an inch and half, these muted brown bugs blend in nicely with the muddy bottom at this part of the L.A. River. When prey swims by – it could be a fish, a tadpole, or a dragonfly sibling — the nymph unleashes its hidden jaws-of-death. Within a microsecond, the jaws snap onto the stunned victim and pull it in to be eaten alive. Nymphs can consume multiple meals a day in the watery depths—they are true cold-blooded serial killers. Off With Their Heads Another of my favorite ghoulish insects was discovered last November in Glendale in the big yards of the big houses sitting snugly up against the Verdugo Mountains. There, a large ant serves as the mansion of tiny Pseudacteon californiensis, or the ant-decapitating fly. These ants, known as velvety tree ants, make for nice homes because they are larger than the usual black ants you find invading your cat’s food bowl or committing suicide in your freezer during a heat wave. And they also have curb appeal: a velvety black abdomen and reddish-orange thorax. Perhaps that’s why P. californiensis has evolved to infect this ant and no other. Ant decapitating a fly. Image courtesy of Kelsey Bailey. Instead of a U-Haul, the female P. californiensis moves into her host by inserting her needle-like egg-laying device (ovipositor) into a weak point between two of the ant’s abdominal plates. She lays one solitary egg and flies away. Inside the ant, the egg hatches, and the maggot journeys to the ant’s head, where it chews its way through various tissues. Eventually, the ant is decapitated and dies—and the adult fly emerges through the oral cavity in a scene reminiscent of a horror film. ‘Zombees’ Zombies are all the rage in Hollywood—but real zombified bees might actually be invading Los Angeles any day now. Since 2011, infected bees have been spotted from Seattle to Santa Barbara. We’re not sure if they’ve arrived here already, but we recently set out traps in the Natural History Museum’s Nature Gardens to find out. “Zombees” begin their lives as normal honey bees, Apis mellifera. But when they meet a tiny honey-colored fly with dark


After more than 15 surgeries, Boston Marathon bombing victim Rebekah DiMartino loses her leg

Runner’s shoes are laid out in a display titled, “Dear Boston: Messages from the Marathon Memorial” in the Boston Public Library to commemorate the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings in 2014. (Andrew Burton/Getty Images) It’s been a year and a half since brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokar Tsarnaev detonated their homemade explosives near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three and injuring more than 260, but 27-year-old Rebekah DiMartino is just now starting a new life. After more than 15 surgeries to save her leg, which was severely injured while she stood on Boylston Street, the site of the bombings, to cheer on her then-fiance’s mother, she had it amputated on Monday. “Today is the day I say goodbye to what is holding me back, and I reclaim my life. And man is it a good feeling” DiMartino wrote to supporters on her Facebook page on Monday before undergoing the hour-long surgery. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You have supported me diligently even though you are probably as tired of hearing about this bum leg as I am seeing it everyday. And I will never be able to quite express how thankful I am to have so many angels lifting me up around the world.” DiMartino also took a lighter look at the serious surgery, posting a break-up letter of sorts with her leg on Facebook accompanied by a photo, which shows the extent of the damage caused by the bombs. Post “It’s not you, it’s me,” she scrolled across her injured leg. That picture juxtaposes DiMartino’s latest post, uploaded to Facebook on Tuesday, which shows the result of her successful surgery accompanied by an essay filled with optimism. Post “As I look down, I see that my leg is really gone, but there is not an ounce of sadness anywhere in my heart,” she wrote on Facebook. “What has been anticipated and stressed about since April 2013 is over and I am moving on to the next chapter.” Orthopedic surgeon Dr. William McGarvey, who performed the hour-long surgery, agrees that the prognosis is great. “There were no hiccups,” McGarvey told the Boston Globe after the surgery. “Having spoken with Rebekah for the last several months, I think she’s going to do well. She’s got a great attitude, and I think for her, this is sort of a reconstructive procedure as opposed to an elimination procedure.” DiMartino, who is


First Hasselblad camera in space to be auctioned

Hassleblad 500c camera, the first Hasselblad camera to ever go into space. On Nov. 13, Boston-based RR auction will auction the Hasselblad. The camera, purchased by Schirra over the counter in Houston in 1962 and used on his nine-hour orbit around the Earth, was later used by astronaut Gordon Cooper on his subsequent flight and final Mercury mission to space aboard the Mercury Atlas-9 (MA-9). To prepare the camera for its journey, the body was painted black to prevent any reflections and had to be fitted with an aiming device to would allow astronauts to ability to maneuver with the gloves and helmets they had to wear. Gordon was able to capture stunning photos of Tibet during his 36-hour trip around the Earth, and later wrote an official letter to NASA authenticating that this very camera was used to “obtain a number of good shots of the earth.” Forensic examination of official NASA photographic evidence confirms this Hasselblad camera body as the one Schirra carried aboard MA-8. Experts have matched the unique identifying marks. Photos provided to In Sight courtesy RR Auction. The auction starts Nov. 13 at 3 p.m. EST. Hand-written letter of authenticity from Gordon Cooper, written in 1995, reads: “This Hasselblad camera was flown on MA-9 and used by me to obtain a number of good shots of the earth.” (Courtesy RR Auction) Wally Schirra looking through the lens of his MA-8 Hasselblad. Roland Williams is at right. (Courtesy RR Auction) The first Zeiss lens in space, flown by Wally Schirra, the Hasselblad 500C camera body, and the film magazine flown on Mercury Atlas 9 by Gordon Cooper. (Courtesy RR Auction) The Hasselblad 500c in 2014, left, and the same camera in 1962. NASA verified the authenticity of the camera by confirming that the markings on the camera being auctioned are identical to markings seen on the camera in 1962. Photograph of Tibet taken by Gordon Cooper on MA-9 on May 16, 1963. First photos taken with the Hasselblad 500c by Wally Schirra during MA-8 in 1962. (Courtesy RR Auction) Photograph of cumulus cloud formation over the West Atlantic Ocean north of South America (NASA S62-06613) taken by Schirra on his fourth orbit pass on MA-8 on Oct. 3, 1962. (Courtesy RR Auction) (Courtesy RR Auction) (Courtesy RR Auction) More In Sight Posts: Spectacular views of the blood moon Mount Sinabung eruptions show nature’s awe and chaos


D.C. Central Kitchen’s chow-chow now available at select Whole Foods

first venture into supermarket aisles, and every cent generated by chow-chow sales will go back into the organization’s efforts to feed the hungry and train the recently addicted or incarcerated in the culinary arts. Whole Foods ” wanted something that they could serve on the olive bar . . .a bulk product but something they didn’t have,” says Michael Curtin, chief executive officer of D.C. Central Kitchen. “It’s bright. It’s colorful. It’s not terribly common. For that reason, it carves a little niche for us.” Kwitowski built his chow-chow from some vegetables purchased from Shenandoah Valley Produce Auction, a bulk wholesale auction in Dayton, Va., where DCCK spends several hundred thousand dollars a year. The chef incorporated a few vegetables — red tomatoes, cauliflower and red peppers —that venture beyond the chow-chow staples and even added green peppers “for color and depth of flavor.” The recipe had to be tweaked as Whole Foods and DCCK’s Nutrition Lab conducted taste tests over the course of several months, Curtin says. The Nutrition Lab, incidentally, is staffed largely with graduates of DCCK’s culinary job training program. “As we moved through the R&D process with Whole Foods, they brought to our attention their desire to have the chow-chow cooked less,” Kwitowski noted in an e-mail. “They seemed pleased with the next test batch, which wasn’t cooked as long and kept the integrity of the individual vegetables recognizable and intact.” The key for DCCK will now be to maintain the product’s consistency, a hallmark for any food sold at grocery stores. “It better be the same next week as it is in March,” Curtin says. “That’s going to be a little new for us, and that’s going to be intense.” As such, Curtin can’t promise the chow-chow will always feature local produce, but he says “as many of the ingredients as possible will be local.” D.C. Central Kitchen’s chow-chow still doesn’t have an official name yet or any official packaging. Both may come in the future as the non-profit moves down this path with Whole Foods. For now, consumers will find it only in bulk or in to-go containers, which Curtin expects to immediately generate between $2,000 and $2,500 per month for DCCK. “That $2,500,” notes Curtin, “will cover the cost of about 1,000 meals.” Correction: The number of meals served for $2,500 has been changed. The original number was provided by D.C. Central Kitchen.


New York Times editor on China visa problem: ‘We’re a little bit hostages’

position: Should they leave their posts, they can be pretty sure at this point that their editor won’t be able to replace them. So several are hanging on past the New York Times’s standard four-to-five year foreign correspondent term, according to New York Times international editor Joe Kahn. “We’re a little bit hostages,” Kahn tells the Erik Wemple Blog, referring to the professional pickle of his people (and not using “hostage” in any literal sense). “Some of our correspondents are okay with staying longer, others are willing to stay for a little longer but are also thinking about other assignments.” The newspaper these days finds itself doing precisely one of the U.S.-China activities it’s seeking to report on — diplomacy, that is. Following the Obama-Xi news conference, the Times issued an official statement from Kahn seizing on the one relatively optimistic note struck by Xi in addressing the journalist-visa issue: “President Xi said today, ‘We need to step down and see what the problem is.’ We are willing to work closely with the Chinese authorities to resolve the issues that have created a backlog of unprocessed journalist visa applications for our correspondents. China is an important country and a big part of our international report. We are enormously proud of our coverage of the country. Allowing us to have a full complement of correspondents there will enhance our ability to tell China’s story fully and fairly.” Times leaders turned into small-scale envoys in late 2012, following a big investigative piece by Barboza on the billions of dollars in “hidden riches” commanded by the family of then-Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao. Flanking the story was a handy graphic — “The Wen Family Empire” — detailing the mess of financial beneficiaries in the Wen group, just the sort of enterprise journalism that despots despise. It’s no secret that Beijing didn’t like the story, which required people like Kahn and his bosses to soften its landing a bit. “There was a lot of misunderstanding about the story that needed to be cleared up,” says Kahn about an effort to assure Beijing that the story was merely journalism and not an attempt to topple the regime. Even as the Times hopes for a loosening of visa processing, it has stayed focused on hard-edged stuff, including more on the super-rich and an expose of the regime’s effectiveness in censoring Bloomberg. It also reported that Chinese