Lily Salter's Blog, page 967
October 29, 2015
Beyond a three-way in 3-D: The awkward delights of “Love,” Gaspar Noé’s gorgeous real-sex movie
Gaspar Noé is a French filmmaker (although he’s originally from Argentina) who very much belongs to the ambitious, pretentious, self-reflective art-cinema tradition of his country. He also perceives that tradition as a trap, as did Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, two earlier America-obsessed French directors that Noé has carefully avoided emulating, but who are his obvious forebears. He has deliberately pursued controversy and confrontation and extreme storytelling modes in all four of his features, in an effort to tear down the walls of the “art film” ghetto and restore some of the transgressive sizzle that adventurous cinema carried in his youth (and mine, and quite likely yours too). If you’ve heard of Noé and his films, it’s almost certainly because of these confrontational tactics: He made his big international splash in 2002 with “Irreversible,” a story told backward (in far more disorienting fashion than “Memento”) that featured a brutal rape scene, set in a pedestrian underpass and shot in one nine-minute take. More recently he made “Enter the Void,” which is, among other things, an overt homage to Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” and a hallucinatory journey through the afterlife of a recently deceased Tokyo drug dealer, balanced between the debauched and painful world he has left behind and the unknown infinity ahead. If you’ve heard anything about Noé’s new film, “Love,” which premiered at Cannes last spring and is now reaching American theaters, you know two things: It was shot in 3-D and it features actors having actual sex, rather than the simulated action that is customary for even the most explicit Euro-sexy films (e.g., “Blue Is the Warmest Color,” whose young female stars were not lesbians and did not have sex with each other). It would be worse than useless for me to pretend, movie-critic style, that the 3-D three-way in “Love” – or the POV shot of an impressive male orgasm, almost literally in your face -- is somehow secondary or irrelevant to its cinematic quality. The sex scenes in “Love” are the principal reason why I’m writing about it and you’re reading about it, and why a 3-D film by a little-known foreign director will play in every major American city. To be fair, most of the film takes place before and after and in between the hot sexual escapades of Murphy (Karl Glusman), an American film student in Paris, and Electra (Aomi Muyock), his on-again, off-again Parisian girlfriend. But the sex is literally and figuratively the action of “Love.” It is central to the visual craft and identity of the film, to its plot, its central narrative theme, its everything. Why should you pay money to watch people fucking, if you’ll pardon my French? (Ha! But since we’re on the subject, such dialogue as there is in “Love” is almost entirely in English.) I can’t answer that in the abstract, but Noé and his cinematographer, the endlessly inventive Benoît Debie, have captured some of the most gorgeous sex scenes in film history, largely in a series of fixed-camera overhead shots that allow us to see the protagonists from a slightly detached or semi-divine perspective. Students of Noé’s work will find innumerable references to “Enter the Void” here, and one way of understanding the sex scenes is the possibility that the characters are viewing them from the future, or the afterlife. (Murphy insists at one point that there is nothing after death, but Noé’s metaphysics, we might say, involve an elaborate conception of nothingness.) Glusman and Muyock are unquestionably beautiful specimens of the human physique (and, ahem, well suited for this activity in various notable respects). But “Love” bears no resemblance to pornography, and not just because it depicts a naked female body with ample pubic hair. I never found it even borderline arousing, or at least not in the “prurient interest” sense. When Murphy tells a girl at a party that he wants to make a sentimental, emotional movie about sex (right before he accompanies her into the bathroom, for some sex of a more perfunctory variety), he is serving as an overly obvious directorial stand-in, not for the first or last time. But it’s a perfect description of the movie he’s in, which possesses a raw, naked, gauche honesty that has always been embedded within Noé’s work but is fully exposed here, sometimes with hazardous results. Despite all the screwing Murphy and Electra do – sometimes with the erotic, chaotic and ultimately destructive addition of their neighbor, a petite Nordic gamine named Omi (Klara Kristin) – “Love” is by far the least confrontational or overtly challenging of Noé’s four features. This movie is overloaded with film-school gamesmanship: Electra’s older, richer ex-boyfriend is named Noé, and the infant son Murphy doesn’t want is named Gaspar. There are numerous in-joke references to Pasolini’s “Salò” and D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation” and “Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein,” three controversial and divisive spectacles, the last of which (not actually made by Andy Warhol) was also a 3-D sex movie. But “Love” will surely strike some viewers as not nearly subversive or “progressive” enough, at least in sexual-political terms. Murphy is an overly possessive alpha-male hothead, who is eager to sleep with Electra and Omi at the same time, but refuses to do it with Electra and another guy. When she hires a trans sex worker, as a “compromise,” Murphy gets so wasted that he doesn’t remember what happens – and Noé doesn’t show us. I think it’s obvious in context, and from the multiple points of similarity between Noé and Murphy, that “Love” is more like an Augustine-style confession – “Here’s how I screwed up my relationship, maybe there’s a lesson there for you” – than a sexual or moral prescription for how to live and whom to love. But our culture has great difficulty figuring out how to value honesty, in case you hadn’t noticed, and to a certain extent I get it. Gaspar Noé is entitled to his own degree of misogyny and homophobia and sexual narcissism – although transfigured or embodied here as a virile young American, in life Noé is a bald French dude in his 50s – and is at liberty to tell us the truth about it. Whether people actually want to share that experience, along with the peculiar combination of artful, spectacular sexuality and artless, painful emotional exploration in “Love,” is quite another matter. I might be the guy this movie was made for, pretty much – I’m not far away from Noé in terms of age or artistic temperament or life experience – but I don’t question anyone’s right to find “Love” massively exasperating, and perhaps a step backward after “Irreversible” and “Enter the Void.” It exasperated me too, with its scenes of overly direct, searching and sophomoric dialogue, especially as delivered by Glusman (who was, I’m just saying, perhaps not hired for his acting chops). But the level of risk here – the risk of saying what you really feel, of not being cool -- goes way beyond the expected limits of movies, or the expected limits, period. “Love” is as bewildering and contradictory as its subject, which Electra repeatedly assures Murphy he will never understand. Neither will I, but even with its abundant flaws and its willingness to embarrass itself this strange and extraordinary film never lost me and never let me go; it wrapped me in a dreamlike rapture and then in a sense of profound and nearly universal personal tragedy. “Love” is now playing at the Angelika Film Center and the Village East Cinema in New York, and opens Nov. 6 at the Aero Theatre in Los Angeles, with a national rollout to follow.Gaspar Noé is a French filmmaker (although he’s originally from Argentina) who very much belongs to the ambitious, pretentious, self-reflective art-cinema tradition of his country. He also perceives that tradition as a trap, as did Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, two earlier America-obsessed French directors that Noé has carefully avoided emulating, but who are his obvious forebears. He has deliberately pursued controversy and confrontation and extreme storytelling modes in all four of his features, in an effort to tear down the walls of the “art film” ghetto and restore some of the transgressive sizzle that adventurous cinema carried in his youth (and mine, and quite likely yours too). If you’ve heard of Noé and his films, it’s almost certainly because of these confrontational tactics: He made his big international splash in 2002 with “Irreversible,” a story told backward (in far more disorienting fashion than “Memento”) that featured a brutal rape scene, set in a pedestrian underpass and shot in one nine-minute take. More recently he made “Enter the Void,” which is, among other things, an overt homage to Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” and a hallucinatory journey through the afterlife of a recently deceased Tokyo drug dealer, balanced between the debauched and painful world he has left behind and the unknown infinity ahead. If you’ve heard anything about Noé’s new film, “Love,” which premiered at Cannes last spring and is now reaching American theaters, you know two things: It was shot in 3-D and it features actors having actual sex, rather than the simulated action that is customary for even the most explicit Euro-sexy films (e.g., “Blue Is the Warmest Color,” whose young female stars were not lesbians and did not have sex with each other). It would be worse than useless for me to pretend, movie-critic style, that the 3-D three-way in “Love” – or the POV shot of an impressive male orgasm, almost literally in your face -- is somehow secondary or irrelevant to its cinematic quality. The sex scenes in “Love” are the principal reason why I’m writing about it and you’re reading about it, and why a 3-D film by a little-known foreign director will play in every major American city. To be fair, most of the film takes place before and after and in between the hot sexual escapades of Murphy (Karl Glusman), an American film student in Paris, and Electra (Aomi Muyock), his on-again, off-again Parisian girlfriend. But the sex is literally and figuratively the action of “Love.” It is central to the visual craft and identity of the film, to its plot, its central narrative theme, its everything. Why should you pay money to watch people fucking, if you’ll pardon my French? (Ha! But since we’re on the subject, such dialogue as there is in “Love” is almost entirely in English.) I can’t answer that in the abstract, but Noé and his cinematographer, the endlessly inventive Benoît Debie, have captured some of the most gorgeous sex scenes in film history, largely in a series of fixed-camera overhead shots that allow us to see the protagonists from a slightly detached or semi-divine perspective. Students of Noé’s work will find innumerable references to “Enter the Void” here, and one way of understanding the sex scenes is the possibility that the characters are viewing them from the future, or the afterlife. (Murphy insists at one point that there is nothing after death, but Noé’s metaphysics, we might say, involve an elaborate conception of nothingness.) Glusman and Muyock are unquestionably beautiful specimens of the human physique (and, ahem, well suited for this activity in various notable respects). But “Love” bears no resemblance to pornography, and not just because it depicts a naked female body with ample pubic hair. I never found it even borderline arousing, or at least not in the “prurient interest” sense. When Murphy tells a girl at a party that he wants to make a sentimental, emotional movie about sex (right before he accompanies her into the bathroom, for some sex of a more perfunctory variety), he is serving as an overly obvious directorial stand-in, not for the first or last time. But it’s a perfect description of the movie he’s in, which possesses a raw, naked, gauche honesty that has always been embedded within Noé’s work but is fully exposed here, sometimes with hazardous results. Despite all the screwing Murphy and Electra do – sometimes with the erotic, chaotic and ultimately destructive addition of their neighbor, a petite Nordic gamine named Omi (Klara Kristin) – “Love” is by far the least confrontational or overtly challenging of Noé’s four features. This movie is overloaded with film-school gamesmanship: Electra’s older, richer ex-boyfriend is named Noé, and the infant son Murphy doesn’t want is named Gaspar. There are numerous in-joke references to Pasolini’s “Salò” and D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation” and “Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein,” three controversial and divisive spectacles, the last of which (not actually made by Andy Warhol) was also a 3-D sex movie. But “Love” will surely strike some viewers as not nearly subversive or “progressive” enough, at least in sexual-political terms. Murphy is an overly possessive alpha-male hothead, who is eager to sleep with Electra and Omi at the same time, but refuses to do it with Electra and another guy. When she hires a trans sex worker, as a “compromise,” Murphy gets so wasted that he doesn’t remember what happens – and Noé doesn’t show us. I think it’s obvious in context, and from the multiple points of similarity between Noé and Murphy, that “Love” is more like an Augustine-style confession – “Here’s how I screwed up my relationship, maybe there’s a lesson there for you” – than a sexual or moral prescription for how to live and whom to love. But our culture has great difficulty figuring out how to value honesty, in case you hadn’t noticed, and to a certain extent I get it. Gaspar Noé is entitled to his own degree of misogyny and homophobia and sexual narcissism – although transfigured or embodied here as a virile young American, in life Noé is a bald French dude in his 50s – and is at liberty to tell us the truth about it. Whether people actually want to share that experience, along with the peculiar combination of artful, spectacular sexuality and artless, painful emotional exploration in “Love,” is quite another matter. I might be the guy this movie was made for, pretty much – I’m not far away from Noé in terms of age or artistic temperament or life experience – but I don’t question anyone’s right to find “Love” massively exasperating, and perhaps a step backward after “Irreversible” and “Enter the Void.” It exasperated me too, with its scenes of overly direct, searching and sophomoric dialogue, especially as delivered by Glusman (who was, I’m just saying, perhaps not hired for his acting chops). But the level of risk here – the risk of saying what you really feel, of not being cool -- goes way beyond the expected limits of movies, or the expected limits, period. “Love” is as bewildering and contradictory as its subject, which Electra repeatedly assures Murphy he will never understand. Neither will I, but even with its abundant flaws and its willingness to embarrass itself this strange and extraordinary film never lost me and never let me go; it wrapped me in a dreamlike rapture and then in a sense of profound and nearly universal personal tragedy. “Love” is now playing at the Angelika Film Center and the Village East Cinema in New York, and opens Nov. 6 at the Aero Theatre in Los Angeles, with a national rollout to follow.
Toke or treat: Another Halloween, another erroneous wave of panic over drug-laced candies
Halloween is just around the corner, and that means it's time for the annual unsubstantiated freak-out about twisted druggies dropping dope in little kids' trick-or-treat bags. Never mind that there's no evidence of such things happening (and no one questions why drug users would give away valuable drugs to strangers), just be afraid, very afraid. The cops are. "If your kids get these for Halloween candy, they ARE NOT CANDY!!!" the Jackson, Mississippi, Police Department warned on Facebook below a photo of MDMA (ecstasy) tablets shaped like skulls, dominos, and the Nintendo logo. "These are the new shapes of 'Ecstasy' and can kill kids through overdoses!!!" Ohio cops quickly got on the bandwagon, telling CBS Cleveland affiliate WOIO that giving ecstasy to trick-or-treaters would be bad news. "They'd be in the emergency room without a doubt. The ecstasy, amongst other things, it causes you to grind your teeth and you hallucinate. That would be extremely frightening for the child, the parents as well," Capt. Guy Turner of the Westlake, Ohio, police told the station. The tablets pictured in the photo are indeed ecstasy tablets and ecstasy can kill, but there are no reported cases of any Halloween trick-or-treaters being given ecstasy, let alone dying from it. The rumor-debunking website Snopes.com has addressed the Halloween ecstasy threat: The "ecstasy in Halloween candy" warning looked to be a variant of age-old rumors about poison (and other dangerous substances) being randomly handed out to children in trick-or-treat loot, a persistent but largely baseless fear that's dogged Halloween celebrations for decades. Despite long-held beliefs that Halloween candy tampering is both commonplace and regularly results in harm to children, reports of actual attempts to do so are virtually non-existent (or based on half-truths).Snopes isn't alone in scoffing at the tainted Halloween candy bogeyman. Joel Best, who is on the criminal justice faculty at the University of Delaware, has been studying the frightening phenomenon of passing contaminated goodies to trick-or-treaters for the past 30 years. He's found that the phenomenon is the fear, not the kiddie poisoning. He's placed a number on the verified reports of kids killed or injured by poisoned candy handed out by strangers: zero. “It’s a great thing to worry about, because it happens one day a year,” Best said. “People are imagining this terrible person, who lives down the block, is so crazy that he poisons little children at random. But he’s so tightly wrapped that he only does it one day a year.” Despite all the fearmongering around Halloween candy, only two deaths in the past 45 years have been linked to poisoned candy. One was a 5-year-old Detroit boy thought to have died from ingesting heroin hidden in his candy in 1970. But the boy actually found the drug in a relative's home, and his familyput heroin in the rest of his candy in an attempt to shift blame. The other case, from 1974, was an 8-year-old Houston boy who died fromcyanide-laced Pixie Stix. But it was not a deranged neighbor who did it, but the boy's father, who wanted a $20,000 life insurance pay-out. Dear dad was later found guilty and executed. If you want to worry about something in your kids' Halloween candy, it's probably more productive to worry about sugar and chocolate than dangerous drugs.
Halloween is just around the corner, and that means it's time for the annual unsubstantiated freak-out about twisted druggies dropping dope in little kids' trick-or-treat bags. Never mind that there's no evidence of such things happening (and no one questions why drug users would give away valuable drugs to strangers), just be afraid, very afraid. The cops are. "If your kids get these for Halloween candy, they ARE NOT CANDY!!!" the Jackson, Mississippi, Police Department warned on Facebook below a photo of MDMA (ecstasy) tablets shaped like skulls, dominos, and the Nintendo logo. "These are the new shapes of 'Ecstasy' and can kill kids through overdoses!!!" Ohio cops quickly got on the bandwagon, telling CBS Cleveland affiliate WOIO that giving ecstasy to trick-or-treaters would be bad news. "They'd be in the emergency room without a doubt. The ecstasy, amongst other things, it causes you to grind your teeth and you hallucinate. That would be extremely frightening for the child, the parents as well," Capt. Guy Turner of the Westlake, Ohio, police told the station. The tablets pictured in the photo are indeed ecstasy tablets and ecstasy can kill, but there are no reported cases of any Halloween trick-or-treaters being given ecstasy, let alone dying from it. The rumor-debunking website Snopes.com has addressed the Halloween ecstasy threat: The "ecstasy in Halloween candy" warning looked to be a variant of age-old rumors about poison (and other dangerous substances) being randomly handed out to children in trick-or-treat loot, a persistent but largely baseless fear that's dogged Halloween celebrations for decades. Despite long-held beliefs that Halloween candy tampering is both commonplace and regularly results in harm to children, reports of actual attempts to do so are virtually non-existent (or based on half-truths).Snopes isn't alone in scoffing at the tainted Halloween candy bogeyman. Joel Best, who is on the criminal justice faculty at the University of Delaware, has been studying the frightening phenomenon of passing contaminated goodies to trick-or-treaters for the past 30 years. He's found that the phenomenon is the fear, not the kiddie poisoning. He's placed a number on the verified reports of kids killed or injured by poisoned candy handed out by strangers: zero. “It’s a great thing to worry about, because it happens one day a year,” Best said. “People are imagining this terrible person, who lives down the block, is so crazy that he poisons little children at random. But he’s so tightly wrapped that he only does it one day a year.” Despite all the fearmongering around Halloween candy, only two deaths in the past 45 years have been linked to poisoned candy. One was a 5-year-old Detroit boy thought to have died from ingesting heroin hidden in his candy in 1970. But the boy actually found the drug in a relative's home, and his familyput heroin in the rest of his candy in an attempt to shift blame. The other case, from 1974, was an 8-year-old Houston boy who died fromcyanide-laced Pixie Stix. But it was not a deranged neighbor who did it, but the boy's father, who wanted a $20,000 life insurance pay-out. Dear dad was later found guilty and executed. If you want to worry about something in your kids' Halloween candy, it's probably more productive to worry about sugar and chocolate than dangerous drugs.
“Lights out for Jeb”: The most brutal responses to Jeb Bush’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad debate
"I'm pretty damn glum tonight," vocal Jeb Bush advocate and CNN political commentator Ana Navarro lamented on-air immediately after the debate. Her favored candidate not only failed to steal the spotlight for a much needed momentum boost, but managed to open himself up to the biggest slap down of the night via his one-time protégé, Marco Rubio. Troubled by his disastrous performance, Navarro implored Bush to "take the next 10 days ... to really figure out how to dominate in debates." "It's a long haul. Ana, hang in there, girl," Bush said in a post-debate interview, responding to his longtime friend. "It's a long haul, baby. A few more debates to go. I'm out-campaigning everybody. I'm working hard and we're raising the resources." But others in Jeb's orbit and the political punditry at-large don't seem to agree with Jeb's rosy assessment of his chances following last night's dreary performance. Former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum broke down Jeb's debate stage demise: "Jeb Bush is chronically unstrategic ... Jeb Bush does not improvise ... Bush does not improvise because he dreads confrontation ... When Bush fails, he discourages easily ... When discouraged, Bush—although a physically big man—psychically shrinks into his own feelings of hurt and rejection." Top Jeb fundraiser David Beightol conceded that the "format was tough" but shrugged off Jeb's poor performance. "Jeb is a doer, not a debater," he told CNN. But one family friend suggested to Politico that Jeb schedule another family huddle to discuss his campaign's future soon. “He has some tough decisions to make over Thanksgiving.” Another nameless Republican who has reportedly endorsed Bush told Politico “Jeb tried too hard" during the CNBC debate, while another said he has a hard time imagining how Jeb recovers from his flailing performance. Conservative columnist Ramesh Ponnuru, whose wife still works for Jeb having apparently survived last week's massive campaign layoffs, wrote that "Bush needed a good debate after having to make staff cutbacks last week, and this wasn't it."' Fox News contributor Guy Benson said Jeb "fizzled," deeming Rubio's slap down "lights out for Jeb." "Bush was MIA. Rubio won," Republican strategist Liz Mair told Business Insider. Former senior John McCain adviser Steve Schmidt called Wednesday the worst day of Jeb's campaign on MSNBC. "Marco Rubio knocked Jeb Bush out tonight, flat on his butt." MSNBC's Joe Scarborough laughed that Jeb's "donors are running for the exit.” Matt Drudge predicted Jeb's impending doom and return to life off the Paleo diet with this Twitter quip: https://twitter.com/DRUDGE/status/659... Daily Caller's Matt Lewis called on Jeb to quit the race for the sake of the Republican establishment:
At this point, it seems the likelihood of Bush a) tarnishing his reputation and b) inadvertently helping Donald Trump win the GOP nomination greatly exceeds the chance that he could turn things around. His body language betrays a guy who doesn’t really want to do what it takes to win today — and who is out of step with the current Republican Party. [...] Thoughtful conservatives, if they are to stop Donald Trump and Ben Carson, must — at some point — coalesce around an alternative. Marco Rubio seems the most likely choice. Unless Jeb Bush destroys him. Does Bush really want that to be his legacy?And it's not just conservatives piling on the Jeb's dead bandwagon. CNN's Alisyn Camerota criticized Bush for not appearing on "New Day" Thursday to recap his debate performance the night before, noting that various other candidates made the time to appear post-debate. Nate Silver said "Jeb Bush is toast,” noting that FiveThirtyEight's staff straw poll gave "Bush’s average grade was a C-, putting him at the bottom of the 10-candidate group." “Bush needed to appear as the strongest establishment candidate,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute. “He didn’t achieve that.” As for Rubio, who delivered the knockout punch to Jeb on the debate stage, his nomination prospects have surged to more than one-in-three in the wake of the CNBC debate, according to the prediction markets.
We were not wired for scary things : Adventures in the spooky science of thrills, chills and Halloween fear
Walking through the gates at Fuji-Q, I instantly felt my heart rate increase. I heard the telltale click-click-click as the coasters climbed the track, the screams growing louder and then fading as riders twisted and turned through loops and inversions, and finally the ground-shaking thunder as they sped around through the web of rails. I immediately ran to the Takabisha and got in line. Usually waiting in line is filled with growing anticipation, and all around me I watched as friends and couples jumped up and down with excitement, struggling to control their nerves as they talked and laughed. Amusement parks are made for friends and family, and they prove the truth of the saying “A happiness shared is a happiness doubled.” Indeed, research from Arthur Aron and colleagues found that participants reported an increase in relationship quality after participating in something novel and exciting together. Recent research by Garriy Shteynberg at the University of Tennessee found through a series of social experiments that “simultaneous co-attention,” or participating in something with others, leads to a more intense emotional experience. He and his colleagues showed that scary advertisements felt scarier, negative images made people feel sadder, and happy images made people feel happier when people knew they weren’t experiencing them alone. We enjoy experiences with others not only because of our own emotional responses, but because when we watch someone experience something, we experience it ourselves—it’s how we empathize and connect to each other. Kyung Hwa Lee and Greg Siegle from the University of Pittsburgh conducted a meta-analysis of existing studies that used neuroimaging to measure emotional evaluation of the self and others. They found similar or overlapping patterns of brain activity when we experience an emotion and when we evaluate others’ emotions. For example, the part of our insular cortex (a brain structure located in the left and right hemispheres inside the cerebral cortex—more on that later) that processes pain is active when we experience pain ourselves and when we are simply observing something that causes pain, as in “I could feel my teeth hurt watching that dentist drill into her tooth!” This could be why you scream when your friend is startled and why you cry when you see your loved one cry. Of course seeing someone else do something, or even imagining doing something ourselves, is not exactly the same as experiencing it directly (as I would repeatedly learn). For example, we mostly only experience the affective part of the physical pain of others; we really don’t have the same intense physical sensations in our body. This means that you’ll suffer along with the character on screen trying to cut off his foot, but won’t be screaming in agony as though your foot really was being sawed from your leg (but it might ache a little). The mechanisms behind this process of creating overlapping layers of representation is still debated, but researchers like neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran and Lindsay Oberman believe it is likely a result of mirror neurons, or what Ramachandran calls the discovery responsible for the great leap forward in human civilization. The mirror neuron was discovered by an Italian research team in the premotor cortex of macaques in 1992. They noticed that this new class of neurons was active not only when the monkey was carrying out a task but when it watched another monkey do the same thing. The media interpreted this as the discovery of the neurological basis of empathy, birthing a tornado of headlines claiming everything from the discovery of God in the brain to the human soul. But as cognitive neuroscientist and science writer Christian Jarrett pointed out in his critical article, “A Calm Look at the Most Hyped Concept in Neuroscience—Mirror Neurons,” the hype was largely just that: a chance to grab attention and headlines. Researchers James Kilner and Roger Lemon, through their careful review of research on the topic, show that there are more questions than answers about mirror neurons. They do work in the motor cortex and likely play a role in our ability to mimic expressions and gestures, but they are not the “soul” source of human empathy (pun intended). * Watching the faces light up around me, I found myself wishing I had someone to share this experience with. Just the night before, on the train to Mount Fuji, I had thought about how amazing it was to be so far away from everything and everyone. No one knew where I was; no one could reach me; no one expected anything from me. I felt free from all responsibilities, as if I had been given a hall pass in life. But as I stood in line, those same thoughts took on new meaning, and instead of smiling like those around me, I felt a wave of sadness. I was alone. All of a sudden I felt heavy and tired. I wanted to go sit in my room and stare at the wall. As my turn approached, the ride attendant walked over, held up one finger, and asked, “One?” Embarrassed at forcing the couples around me to separate, I nodded my head. Sharing a car with three strangers, I felt self-conscious and burdensome—not your typical emotional state before a roller coaster ride. I should have been sweating bullets and feeling anxious and exhilarated, as I had while riding coasters all day with my friends at Cedar Point. I tried to shake it off. Finally, after instructions in Japanese, English, and a few other languages, the car took off—accelerating to sixty-two miles per hour in only two seconds—and then dropped into total darkness. Instantly my whole body came alive, and before I knew it, I was screaming. * Humans have sophisticated systems of prediction, and when our predictions don’t match our experience, it raises a red flag and puts us in a state of uncertainty. Perhaps the most important are the systems that tell us what to expect from changes in gravitational force: namely, our vestibular system and our proprioception (or our awareness of our body in the space around us). Our brain brings together information from these systems to help us determine things like balance, acceleration, and direction. An incorrect prediction is profoundly disorienting at a visceral level—as when we mistakenly think there is one stair left going into the basement. Thrill rides mess with these well-designed internal systems, violating our expectations and thumbing their nose at the work of evolution. They take us to speeds we could never run, launch us in the air as though we could fly, take us around turns faster than we could ever survive on our own, and basically confuse the hell out of our bodies. There are very, very few ways we can achieve these sensations naturally—or without some sort of mechanical manipulation. Prior to the innovative and creative thrill rides of the twentieth century, the only ways to feel the sensations caused by acceleration and direction manipulation were accidental, to say the least: being swung back and forth in the mouth of a lion, for instance, or falling down a steep hill, neither of which bodes especially well for our survival. Yet today we’ve built machines that allow us to experience physical sensations our ancestors couldn’t even imagine, just to see what it feels like. The outcome—it can feel great, but it can also leave you begging for the comfort of your safe, warm bed or, worse, dead. Thanks in part to the research of a former US Air Force officer named John Stapp, we know that the body’s ability to tolerate changes in g-force (which is essentially the measure of gravity acting on your body: 1 g being normal, 3 g being the force you’d feel if you were three times as heavy) depends on time, direction, and rate of acceleration. You may be able to take a 100 g punch to the gut that’s over in a second, but the longer the duration, the smaller the g-force we can tolerate. Most people start to get uncomfortable past 5 g, which is when some of the real danger kicks in. During rapid changes in acceleration and direction, our blood pressure is significantly affected, which can cause everything from lightheadedness to a “gray-out,” where we lose some visual acuity, to blacking out and losing consciousness completely, or even dying. Over the course of Stapp’s experimental rides (he took several extreme ones in the name of science, peaking at 46 g), he experienced broken bones, a detached retina, burst blood vessels, and permanently impaired vision. Human beings were simply not designed for these unnatural experiences, which is why our body essentially freaks out. Moreover, everyone has different levels of tolerance. For some a Ferris wheel is enough to cause nausea, while others leave the 6.3 g Tower of Terror begging for more. The key for designers is to hit that sweet spot between 4 and 6 g with just the right path, height, speed, and time to trigger the sensations without giving us whiplash, making us sick, or putting us in real danger. * These are the sensations that people talk about the most when they discuss thrill rides: the “dizzy feeling,” the “airtime” or “weightlessness,” and the “stomach drop.” The rides best known for the “dizzy feeling” are the antigravity spinners that confuse our bodies by upsetting our semicircular canal system (part of the vestibular system, it is the intricate and sensitive labyrinth of canals that comprise our inner ear), which is responsible for reporting on our rotational movement. And of course our visual cues are completely disrupted (it’s hard to focus when you’re spinning). A lot of people really love the dizzy feeling—especially kids who are just beginning to understand how their bodies work. For them it’s novel at this time of self-discovery. Who doesn’t remember spinning as a child until collapsing on the grass, giggling as the sky spun above you? As we age, however, so does our vestibular system, making it harder to find our balance and thus making that dizzy feeling not so much fun anymore. The loss of control and disorientation can also be hard to tolerate in adulthood. You have to choose to relax and embrace the dizziness, and then maybe you can recapture some of that childhood delight. I don’t hate spinning rides, but the residual feeling of dizziness leaves me feeling unsteady and drunk for a half hour afterwards—it’s sometimes just impractical. Turns out that I and those who have poor postural control or balance are more sensitive to dizziness—as I would be reminded more than once during my adventures. I felt this intensely after riding the Eejanaika, which has over fourteen inversions and rotating seats—after that I wasn’t sure which way was up for a good five minutes. Next, there is my favorite thrill ride sensation: the feeling of weightlessness. This happens in those brief but treasured seconds when a ride tips over the apex of a steep hill or begins its decent back down to the ground. In that second we feel weightless—though we’re not, of course, since zero g-force is different from zero gravity. On Earth gravity is constant, so it’s only through manipulating downward acceleration that we can approximate the feeling of zero gravity. Thrill rides give us a few seconds at best. The Zero G: Weightless Experience Flight gives you a total of 7.5 minutes (in 30-second intervals) for “just” five thousand dollars. Right before and after the far too fleeting feeling of weightlessness, we experience what everyone calls the “stomach drop” sensation. This is not really a metaphor—it’s the literal feeling of gravity acting on your stomach, which sits loosely inside your body. When you are accelerating toward the ground faster than 1 g—for example, when you are dropped 415 feet at 90 miles per hour from the Zumanjaro: Drop of Doom at Six Flags Great Adventure—your stomach is going to feel as if it’s in your chest (another common description). When you’re being launched forward at 106.9 miles per hour in 1.8 seconds, as on the Dodonpa, it’s going to feel as if you left your stomach at the station. The Dodonpa is especially cruel to our systems of prediction and balance, as I learned later that day. There, I waited in the car as the loudspeaker began the countdown, and with each beat my body tensed up, preparing for takeoff. Finally the clock reached zero. Only, nothing happened except for me lurching forward in anticipation. The designers wisely built in a “false start” and an “accidental start,” leaving me feeling as if I just threw open a door I thought would weigh a hundred pounds but was instead light as a feather. Since gravity is acting on us all the time, our bodies are calibrated to expect to be constantly pulled to the earth at a steady rate. When that rate is radically adjusted, or not what we predicted or prepared for, our system gets confused and sounds the alarm. Getting on a ride that shoots you straight up literally results in your insides “dropping” to the floor, or at least as low as they can get. This leaves you feeling all kinds of sensations, some caused by a drop in blood pressure, but mostly because of the signals being sent to your brain via the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve is a mixed bundle of both afferent nerves (they send messages to the brain) and efferent nerves (they receive messages from the brain) that stretch from your brain all the way to the bottom of your stomach, or lower viscera. The vagus nerve plays a big role in our threat response: it’s an umbrella of nerves that alert us that something is wrong by collecting information—for example, the fact that your organs are “floating” around inside your torso, which they are if you’re riding the Drop of Doom—and sending the messages to the brain’s limbic region, where you process threat. Researchers in Zurich have also found that it plays a central role in our responses to innate fears; when a rat’s vagus nerve is severed, it exhibits a lower level of fear of open spaces and bright lights. The human equivalent of this might be a lack of fear while standing right on the edge of the Grand Canyon. The vagus nerve also works with the parasympathetic system (the rest and digest part of the autonomic nervous system) to lower heart rate and blood pressure. In fact, it also signals changes in the neurotransmitters responsible for making us feel better. (Neurotransmitters are chemicals stored inside of neurons, which process and transmit information in our brain through chemical and electronic signals; different stimuli trigger different neurotransmitter responses.) In fact, current research shows that vagus nerve stimulation through an implant that delivers electric pulses may be an effective intervention for people with treatment-resistant depression. Needless to say, if electric stimulation of the vagus nerve through a surgical implant can help those with depression, just imagine what a roller coaster ride can do for the masses. No wonder people are standing in line four hours for a two-minute thrill. Not everyone likes these sensations. For example, those who fear flying relate these sensations to the anxiety-inducing feelings that occur during takeoff. For others, the intense g-force can feel like a panic attack, which I can empathize with. It feels the same because it essentially is the same physiologically: panic attacks involve the same systems and symptoms of the threat response—sweating, heart racing, chest pounding, dizziness, and basically feeling you’re going to die. It makes sense that someone who has only experienced these sensations in the context of a panic attack wouldn’t like them. Lucky for me, I was riding roller coasters long before I started waking up at three in the morning feeling as if I were being crushed by an invisible anvil. For me, the crushing weight and my racing heart while climbing to the top of a 141-foot hill inside a small car attached to an elaborate metal beast signal not panic but relief. I know that as soon as the car tips over the apex, I’ll feel as if I’m flying, weightless and wonderful. This is just one reason I love thrill rides (we also release dopamine, the “feel good” neurotransmitter, in anticipation of doing something rewarding); I never know how long a panic attack will last, but I know when I get on a roller coaster, in two minutes I’ll return to the station, feet flat on the ground, feeling good and liberated. * My screaming came to an abrupt halt after the Takabisha looped through an “inverted top hat” and over two “airtime” hills and slowed to a crawl around a 180-degree corner. I gasped as I saw the track take a 90-degree turn straight up. As the car latched into place, the chain lift began its click-click-click, and soon I was perpendicular to the ground and beginning the upward climb. Fastened tightly into my seat with my back to the ground, I felt heavy and unmovable, like a sack of potatoes (gravity works on our organs separately—we can’t feel our organs the way we can our skin, but our nerves pick up different, loose sensations inside of us). The car was silent except for the click-click of the chain lift. Gazing up into the open sky in front of me, I felt the whole world drop away, and I was ready for liftoff. The anticipation was excruciating as the car slowly climbed the steep hill to the top—where it paused. And the view was incredible: Mount Fuji in the distance against a clear sky, looking back at me with royal wisdom. But that moment didn’t last long. My attention was quickly diverted back to the disappearing track in front of me. Because the angle is 121 degrees, you cannot see the track as it curves back against itself. This is terrifying; it looks as though the car will unlatch from the track and go plummeting to the ground, scattering its passengers into the air like the sacks of potatoes we were. As the car inched forward over the peak, my legs started shaking uncontrollably, and I kept repeating, “Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.” Suspended in midair, 141 feet high, I could feel every muscle in my body wrap forcefully around my bones as I braced against the restraints, preparing for the eventual drop. Even my teeth were clenched. I forced my tightly curled fists over my head and extended my arms as far as I could (it really does make it more intense!). Finally, the car tipped over the apex and dove toward the ground. I started screaming louder than I ever have before, as tears streamed down my face. Adapted from "SCREAM: Chilling Adventures in the Science of Fear" by Margee Kerr. Reprinted with permission from PublicAffairs. All rights reserved.
NBA player details horrific assault by NYPD: “It was an act of police brutality, and I believe it could happen to anyone”
In an exclusive piece for GQ, Atlanta Hawks wingman Thabo Sefolosha details, for the first time, the horrific assault he suffered at the hands of NYPD officers on April 8, 2015, that resulted in the NBA star breaking his leg and missing the playoffs. The basics are this: On April 8, Bucks player Chris Copeland was stabbed outside New York’s 1OAK club in an unrelated incident. In the ensuing aftermath, NYPD officers, seemingly without cause, forced Sefolosha to the ground and broke his leg. The cops charged him with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, and obstruction of governmental administration. Sefolosha was fully exonerated of all charges on October 9. A few days later, he revealed he planned to sue the NYPD and New York City for $50 million, relating to injuries inflicted by police that night. Now he has opened up about the precise details of the assault for the first time. In the GQ piece, Sefolosha explains that police officers hustled him and others out of the club after the stabbing occurred, and acknowledges that he did engage in some verbal sparring with one officer, calling him a “midget" after the officer told him "without a badge, I can fuck you up." He also explains that he felt singled out by officers for no reason. Sefolosha says he tried to get into a livery cab to escape the chaos outside the club, but stopped briefly to give money to a homeless man. It was at this point that police attacked him. A video acquired by TMZ appears to corroborate Sefolosha’s claims. Here's how he explains it:
When I made a few steps toward the guy, an officer said, "You're going to jail." Pero [Antic, another Hawks player] tapped the officer on the shoulder and said, "Relax, he didn't do anything." Another officer pushed him in the chest and he fell. That's what the first YouTube video showed—him on the floor. More officers started grabbing me. I was trying to put the money back in my pocket. Usually I don't carry that much, but I had six or seven hundred dollars in my hand. One officer pulled me from my right arm, another grabbed me on my left, and another grabbed me on the back of my neck. I'm in, like, an on-a-cross type of position. I couldn't even move. It was just chaos. I had never been arrested before. I understood a little bit late that they were trying to put me on the ground, but if somebody grabs your arms and pulls you on your neck, you fall face first. Somebody kicked my leg, more than once, from the back to force me to the ground. I knew something had happened as soon as they did it; I'm an athlete, so I know how my body should feel. They were stepping on my foot, too, I guess to try to keep me there. I didn't feel like there was anything I could do to calm it down. I tried to show them I was cooperating. I tried.Ultimately, Sefolosha discovered that his leg was broken and his ligaments were torn, thus forcing him to sit out the playoffs. Sefolosha goes on to detail the legal battle that ensued, and his exoneration — largely as a result of the TMZ video and other videos his lawyers managed to find — and the emotional distress that occurred. Explaining that hhe felt "defeated and angry that all this had happened, and for no reason," Sefolosha says he lost 15 pounds from the stress of the trial and didn’t get more than six hours of sleep for the month leading up to his trial. Despite Sefolosha saying he doesn’t want to “make it a racial thing,” it’s hard to ignore the parallels between this incident and the many other instances of unprovoked police violence suffered by African Americans on a daily basis. “My wife and dad were outraged and in disbelief,” Sefolosha writes. “He’s from South Africa; he was in a band that was really active in denouncing the old apartheid movement. To think of this happening to his son in the streets of New York City in 2015—and I don't really want to make it as a racial thing. I want to let people make up their own minds.” Sefolosha concludes by saying he feels he was a victim of police brutality.
It was an act of police brutality, and I believe it could happen to anyone. Now I'm a lot more aware of everything that goes on. I've been, I don't want to say disillusioned, but brought back to earth in a harsh way. I look at videos of police brutality on YouTube or CNN.com. The other day I was watching this woman getting punched by the police for recording them arresting her husband. In a situation like this, you are helpless. If there's six people jumping me outside of the club, I scream, "Police, police!" If the police are doing this to me, who you want me to turn to?We suggest you read the full, harrowing account over at GQ.In an exclusive piece for GQ, Atlanta Hawks wingman Thabo Sefolosha details, for the first time, the horrific assault he suffered at the hands of NYPD officers on April 8, 2015, that resulted in the NBA star breaking his leg and missing the playoffs. The basics are this: On April 8, Bucks player Chris Copeland was stabbed outside New York’s 1OAK club in an unrelated incident. In the ensuing aftermath, NYPD officers, seemingly without cause, forced Sefolosha to the ground and broke his leg. The cops charged him with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, and obstruction of governmental administration. Sefolosha was fully exonerated of all charges on October 9. A few days later, he revealed he planned to sue the NYPD and New York City for $50 million, relating to injuries inflicted by police that night. Now he has opened up about the precise details of the assault for the first time. In the GQ piece, Sefolosha explains that police officers hustled him and others out of the club after the stabbing occurred, and acknowledges that he did engage in some verbal sparring with one officer, calling him a “midget" after the officer told him "without a badge, I can fuck you up." He also explains that he felt singled out by officers for no reason. Sefolosha says he tried to get into a livery cab to escape the chaos outside the club, but stopped briefly to give money to a homeless man. It was at this point that police attacked him. A video acquired by TMZ appears to corroborate Sefolosha’s claims. Here's how he explains it:
When I made a few steps toward the guy, an officer said, "You're going to jail." Pero [Antic, another Hawks player] tapped the officer on the shoulder and said, "Relax, he didn't do anything." Another officer pushed him in the chest and he fell. That's what the first YouTube video showed—him on the floor. More officers started grabbing me. I was trying to put the money back in my pocket. Usually I don't carry that much, but I had six or seven hundred dollars in my hand. One officer pulled me from my right arm, another grabbed me on my left, and another grabbed me on the back of my neck. I'm in, like, an on-a-cross type of position. I couldn't even move. It was just chaos. I had never been arrested before. I understood a little bit late that they were trying to put me on the ground, but if somebody grabs your arms and pulls you on your neck, you fall face first. Somebody kicked my leg, more than once, from the back to force me to the ground. I knew something had happened as soon as they did it; I'm an athlete, so I know how my body should feel. They were stepping on my foot, too, I guess to try to keep me there. I didn't feel like there was anything I could do to calm it down. I tried to show them I was cooperating. I tried.Ultimately, Sefolosha discovered that his leg was broken and his ligaments were torn, thus forcing him to sit out the playoffs. Sefolosha goes on to detail the legal battle that ensued, and his exoneration — largely as a result of the TMZ video and other videos his lawyers managed to find — and the emotional distress that occurred. Explaining that hhe felt "defeated and angry that all this had happened, and for no reason," Sefolosha says he lost 15 pounds from the stress of the trial and didn’t get more than six hours of sleep for the month leading up to his trial. Despite Sefolosha saying he doesn’t want to “make it a racial thing,” it’s hard to ignore the parallels between this incident and the many other instances of unprovoked police violence suffered by African Americans on a daily basis. “My wife and dad were outraged and in disbelief,” Sefolosha writes. “He’s from South Africa; he was in a band that was really active in denouncing the old apartheid movement. To think of this happening to his son in the streets of New York City in 2015—and I don't really want to make it as a racial thing. I want to let people make up their own minds.” Sefolosha concludes by saying he feels he was a victim of police brutality.
It was an act of police brutality, and I believe it could happen to anyone. Now I'm a lot more aware of everything that goes on. I've been, I don't want to say disillusioned, but brought back to earth in a harsh way. I look at videos of police brutality on YouTube or CNN.com. The other day I was watching this woman getting punched by the police for recording them arresting her husband. In a situation like this, you are helpless. If there's six people jumping me outside of the club, I scream, "Police, police!" If the police are doing this to me, who you want me to turn to?We suggest you read the full, harrowing account over at GQ.In an exclusive piece for GQ, Atlanta Hawks wingman Thabo Sefolosha details, for the first time, the horrific assault he suffered at the hands of NYPD officers on April 8, 2015, that resulted in the NBA star breaking his leg and missing the playoffs. The basics are this: On April 8, Bucks player Chris Copeland was stabbed outside New York’s 1OAK club in an unrelated incident. In the ensuing aftermath, NYPD officers, seemingly without cause, forced Sefolosha to the ground and broke his leg. The cops charged him with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, and obstruction of governmental administration. Sefolosha was fully exonerated of all charges on October 9. A few days later, he revealed he planned to sue the NYPD and New York City for $50 million, relating to injuries inflicted by police that night. Now he has opened up about the precise details of the assault for the first time. In the GQ piece, Sefolosha explains that police officers hustled him and others out of the club after the stabbing occurred, and acknowledges that he did engage in some verbal sparring with one officer, calling him a “midget" after the officer told him "without a badge, I can fuck you up." He also explains that he felt singled out by officers for no reason. Sefolosha says he tried to get into a livery cab to escape the chaos outside the club, but stopped briefly to give money to a homeless man. It was at this point that police attacked him. A video acquired by TMZ appears to corroborate Sefolosha’s claims. Here's how he explains it:
When I made a few steps toward the guy, an officer said, "You're going to jail." Pero [Antic, another Hawks player] tapped the officer on the shoulder and said, "Relax, he didn't do anything." Another officer pushed him in the chest and he fell. That's what the first YouTube video showed—him on the floor. More officers started grabbing me. I was trying to put the money back in my pocket. Usually I don't carry that much, but I had six or seven hundred dollars in my hand. One officer pulled me from my right arm, another grabbed me on my left, and another grabbed me on the back of my neck. I'm in, like, an on-a-cross type of position. I couldn't even move. It was just chaos. I had never been arrested before. I understood a little bit late that they were trying to put me on the ground, but if somebody grabs your arms and pulls you on your neck, you fall face first. Somebody kicked my leg, more than once, from the back to force me to the ground. I knew something had happened as soon as they did it; I'm an athlete, so I know how my body should feel. They were stepping on my foot, too, I guess to try to keep me there. I didn't feel like there was anything I could do to calm it down. I tried to show them I was cooperating. I tried.Ultimately, Sefolosha discovered that his leg was broken and his ligaments were torn, thus forcing him to sit out the playoffs. Sefolosha goes on to detail the legal battle that ensued, and his exoneration — largely as a result of the TMZ video and other videos his lawyers managed to find — and the emotional distress that occurred. Explaining that hhe felt "defeated and angry that all this had happened, and for no reason," Sefolosha says he lost 15 pounds from the stress of the trial and didn’t get more than six hours of sleep for the month leading up to his trial. Despite Sefolosha saying he doesn’t want to “make it a racial thing,” it’s hard to ignore the parallels between this incident and the many other instances of unprovoked police violence suffered by African Americans on a daily basis. “My wife and dad were outraged and in disbelief,” Sefolosha writes. “He’s from South Africa; he was in a band that was really active in denouncing the old apartheid movement. To think of this happening to his son in the streets of New York City in 2015—and I don't really want to make it as a racial thing. I want to let people make up their own minds.” Sefolosha concludes by saying he feels he was a victim of police brutality.
It was an act of police brutality, and I believe it could happen to anyone. Now I'm a lot more aware of everything that goes on. I've been, I don't want to say disillusioned, but brought back to earth in a harsh way. I look at videos of police brutality on YouTube or CNN.com. The other day I was watching this woman getting punched by the police for recording them arresting her husband. In a situation like this, you are helpless. If there's six people jumping me outside of the club, I scream, "Police, police!" If the police are doing this to me, who you want me to turn to?We suggest you read the full, harrowing account over at GQ.In an exclusive piece for GQ, Atlanta Hawks wingman Thabo Sefolosha details, for the first time, the horrific assault he suffered at the hands of NYPD officers on April 8, 2015, that resulted in the NBA star breaking his leg and missing the playoffs. The basics are this: On April 8, Bucks player Chris Copeland was stabbed outside New York’s 1OAK club in an unrelated incident. In the ensuing aftermath, NYPD officers, seemingly without cause, forced Sefolosha to the ground and broke his leg. The cops charged him with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, and obstruction of governmental administration. Sefolosha was fully exonerated of all charges on October 9. A few days later, he revealed he planned to sue the NYPD and New York City for $50 million, relating to injuries inflicted by police that night. Now he has opened up about the precise details of the assault for the first time. In the GQ piece, Sefolosha explains that police officers hustled him and others out of the club after the stabbing occurred, and acknowledges that he did engage in some verbal sparring with one officer, calling him a “midget" after the officer told him "without a badge, I can fuck you up." He also explains that he felt singled out by officers for no reason. Sefolosha says he tried to get into a livery cab to escape the chaos outside the club, but stopped briefly to give money to a homeless man. It was at this point that police attacked him. A video acquired by TMZ appears to corroborate Sefolosha’s claims. Here's how he explains it:
When I made a few steps toward the guy, an officer said, "You're going to jail." Pero [Antic, another Hawks player] tapped the officer on the shoulder and said, "Relax, he didn't do anything." Another officer pushed him in the chest and he fell. That's what the first YouTube video showed—him on the floor. More officers started grabbing me. I was trying to put the money back in my pocket. Usually I don't carry that much, but I had six or seven hundred dollars in my hand. One officer pulled me from my right arm, another grabbed me on my left, and another grabbed me on the back of my neck. I'm in, like, an on-a-cross type of position. I couldn't even move. It was just chaos. I had never been arrested before. I understood a little bit late that they were trying to put me on the ground, but if somebody grabs your arms and pulls you on your neck, you fall face first. Somebody kicked my leg, more than once, from the back to force me to the ground. I knew something had happened as soon as they did it; I'm an athlete, so I know how my body should feel. They were stepping on my foot, too, I guess to try to keep me there. I didn't feel like there was anything I could do to calm it down. I tried to show them I was cooperating. I tried.Ultimately, Sefolosha discovered that his leg was broken and his ligaments were torn, thus forcing him to sit out the playoffs. Sefolosha goes on to detail the legal battle that ensued, and his exoneration — largely as a result of the TMZ video and other videos his lawyers managed to find — and the emotional distress that occurred. Explaining that hhe felt "defeated and angry that all this had happened, and for no reason," Sefolosha says he lost 15 pounds from the stress of the trial and didn’t get more than six hours of sleep for the month leading up to his trial. Despite Sefolosha saying he doesn’t want to “make it a racial thing,” it’s hard to ignore the parallels between this incident and the many other instances of unprovoked police violence suffered by African Americans on a daily basis. “My wife and dad were outraged and in disbelief,” Sefolosha writes. “He’s from South Africa; he was in a band that was really active in denouncing the old apartheid movement. To think of this happening to his son in the streets of New York City in 2015—and I don't really want to make it as a racial thing. I want to let people make up their own minds.” Sefolosha concludes by saying he feels he was a victim of police brutality.
It was an act of police brutality, and I believe it could happen to anyone. Now I'm a lot more aware of everything that goes on. I've been, I don't want to say disillusioned, but brought back to earth in a harsh way. I look at videos of police brutality on YouTube or CNN.com. The other day I was watching this woman getting punched by the police for recording them arresting her husband. In a situation like this, you are helpless. If there's six people jumping me outside of the club, I scream, "Police, police!" If the police are doing this to me, who you want me to turn to?We suggest you read the full, harrowing account over at GQ.In an exclusive piece for GQ, Atlanta Hawks wingman Thabo Sefolosha details, for the first time, the horrific assault he suffered at the hands of NYPD officers on April 8, 2015, that resulted in the NBA star breaking his leg and missing the playoffs. The basics are this: On April 8, Bucks player Chris Copeland was stabbed outside New York’s 1OAK club in an unrelated incident. In the ensuing aftermath, NYPD officers, seemingly without cause, forced Sefolosha to the ground and broke his leg. The cops charged him with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, and obstruction of governmental administration. Sefolosha was fully exonerated of all charges on October 9. A few days later, he revealed he planned to sue the NYPD and New York City for $50 million, relating to injuries inflicted by police that night. Now he has opened up about the precise details of the assault for the first time. In the GQ piece, Sefolosha explains that police officers hustled him and others out of the club after the stabbing occurred, and acknowledges that he did engage in some verbal sparring with one officer, calling him a “midget" after the officer told him "without a badge, I can fuck you up." He also explains that he felt singled out by officers for no reason. Sefolosha says he tried to get into a livery cab to escape the chaos outside the club, but stopped briefly to give money to a homeless man. It was at this point that police attacked him. A video acquired by TMZ appears to corroborate Sefolosha’s claims. Here's how he explains it:
When I made a few steps toward the guy, an officer said, "You're going to jail." Pero [Antic, another Hawks player] tapped the officer on the shoulder and said, "Relax, he didn't do anything." Another officer pushed him in the chest and he fell. That's what the first YouTube video showed—him on the floor. More officers started grabbing me. I was trying to put the money back in my pocket. Usually I don't carry that much, but I had six or seven hundred dollars in my hand. One officer pulled me from my right arm, another grabbed me on my left, and another grabbed me on the back of my neck. I'm in, like, an on-a-cross type of position. I couldn't even move. It was just chaos. I had never been arrested before. I understood a little bit late that they were trying to put me on the ground, but if somebody grabs your arms and pulls you on your neck, you fall face first. Somebody kicked my leg, more than once, from the back to force me to the ground. I knew something had happened as soon as they did it; I'm an athlete, so I know how my body should feel. They were stepping on my foot, too, I guess to try to keep me there. I didn't feel like there was anything I could do to calm it down. I tried to show them I was cooperating. I tried.Ultimately, Sefolosha discovered that his leg was broken and his ligaments were torn, thus forcing him to sit out the playoffs. Sefolosha goes on to detail the legal battle that ensued, and his exoneration — largely as a result of the TMZ video and other videos his lawyers managed to find — and the emotional distress that occurred. Explaining that hhe felt "defeated and angry that all this had happened, and for no reason," Sefolosha says he lost 15 pounds from the stress of the trial and didn’t get more than six hours of sleep for the month leading up to his trial. Despite Sefolosha saying he doesn’t want to “make it a racial thing,” it’s hard to ignore the parallels between this incident and the many other instances of unprovoked police violence suffered by African Americans on a daily basis. “My wife and dad were outraged and in disbelief,” Sefolosha writes. “He’s from South Africa; he was in a band that was really active in denouncing the old apartheid movement. To think of this happening to his son in the streets of New York City in 2015—and I don't really want to make it as a racial thing. I want to let people make up their own minds.” Sefolosha concludes by saying he feels he was a victim of police brutality.
It was an act of police brutality, and I believe it could happen to anyone. Now I'm a lot more aware of everything that goes on. I've been, I don't want to say disillusioned, but brought back to earth in a harsh way. I look at videos of police brutality on YouTube or CNN.com. The other day I was watching this woman getting punched by the police for recording them arresting her husband. In a situation like this, you are helpless. If there's six people jumping me outside of the club, I scream, "Police, police!" If the police are doing this to me, who you want me to turn to?We suggest you read the full, harrowing account over at GQ.
Jeb Bush’s stunning, televised implosion: How the former GOP frontrunner became a sad, pathetic joke
“He needed a moment to assuage donor fears and it backfired. As much as people may say the Bush name is a hindrance, the reality is that his last name is the only thing keeping him in the conversation right now.” -- A South Carolina Republican operative Ouch. That pretty much sums up all the reviews of Jeb Bush's performance in last night's CNBC debate. What was billed as a make-or-break night for him didn't turn out very well. He appeared listless and dull on stage and afterwards snapped at a reporter who asked him what he thought of his performance saying: “It’s not a performance. I’m running for president of the United States.” It was not the night he needed to stem the bleeding of his wounded campaign. He'll almost certainly trudge on for a while, but it's clear his heart is not in it anymore, if it ever was. Donald Trump and Ben Carson both did what they had to do -- they delivered for their followers. Trump bragged a bit and called the moderators nasty; Carson smiled and gibbered incoherently and the status quo was maintained. As much as the media wanted them to melt down on stage, it didn't happen. In fact, both of them are actually improving as candidates and debaters, which is rather chilling. John Kasich and Chris Christie both tried to be the "voices of reason" and ended up sounding like dads who are always mad. Christie's pitch all night was as the dude who was eager for an opportunity to smack the uppity Hillary Clinton: "You put me on the stage with her next September and she won't get within 10 miles of the White House." Kasich tried to attack the crazies and just sounded like one himself. Carly Fiorina, meanwhile, lectured pedantically in her trademark staccato style, while Rand Paul blathered about the Fed and Mike Huckabee reiterated his ingenious plan to cure all diseases so we won't need health care anymore. Other than that, they didn't really register. I wrote yesterday about the potential for a Marco Rubio vs Ted Cruz cage match and I think that was shown to good effect. As Washington Post reporter Robert Costa observed, "Cruz continues to run in his own lane on the party’s right." Trump fan Laura Ingraham tweeted, "None of the other candidates attack the GOP elites like @tedcruz. He's right--they meet behind closed doors on how to attack Republicans." There is no higher praise among the righties. Cruz remains the best positioned to seize the outsider mantle should the real outsiders fade. Rubio, on the other hand, went after Bush hard and attacked Clinton with a metaphorical meat ax; he was the only one to bring up the Benghazi hearings and it got huge cheers from the audience. He was better than he's ever been -- confident, articulate and aggressive. The rivalry between these two youthful conservative powerhouses has begun. I still suspect this may be where we end up. Both of these guys are pretty good politicians. In a year when the circus wasn't in town, they would be the frontrunners. But for all that, the big loser last night wasn't any of the candidates. According to the shrieking malcontents in the GOP, led by Ted Cruz, it was that notorious "liberal media" outfit CNBC. That's right, the big-moneyed Wall Street fan club that features the likes of Rick "Tea Party" Santelli and Lawrence Kudlow is nothing more than a mouthpiece for the socialist Democratic party. Who knew? There was plenty to criticize about the CNBC punditry before the debate. Their casual commentary was painfully soporific and politically obtuse, undoubtedly helping the TV audience gain new appreciation for the deep insights of Don Lemon and Gretchen Carlson. But the moderators' questions and adversarial attitude were thoroughly appropriate. They were very pointed in their questions, calling the candidates on past comments and pressing them to explain themselves. The candidates, the party and the right wing media did not like it one bit. Bush's campaign manager complained to CNBC's producer about the amount of time his candidate was allotted. Fox's Bill O'Reilly claimed that he understood the "culture over there" and he was quite sure those moderators were getting a lot of "attaboys" from management. GOP operative Richard Grenell tweeted that "it's obvious that MSNBC has influenced CNBC" and Fox's Steve Doocy wondered if "the CNBC moderators cut off Mrs Clinton the way they're rudely interrupting the GOP candidates." They were all very, very upset. https://twitter.com/toddstarnes/statu... A fit to be tied Brent Bozell of the conservative Media Research Center said:
“The CNBC moderators acted less like journalists and more like Clinton campaign operatives. What was supposed to be a serious debate about the many issues plaguing our economy was given up for one Democratic talking point after another served up by the so-call ‘moderators.’”Even Reagan's Attorney General Ed Meese got in on the act calling the debate a "shooting gallery" set up by CNBC's "biased antagonists." But no one was more overwrought about all those left-wing liberals at CNBC than Republican Party Chairman Reince Preibus, who said, "I think it was one gotcha question, one personal low blow after the other. It’s almost like they tried to design a Rubik’s cube for every question,” before leaving the spin room in a huff. He then issued a scathing indictment of the network in a prepared statement.
"While I was proud of our candidates and the way they handled tonight’s debate, the performance by the CNBC moderators was extremely disappointing and did a disservice to their network, our candidates, and voters. Our diverse field of talented and exceptionally qualified candidates did their best to share ideas for how to reinvigorate the economy and put Americans back to work despite deeply unfortunate questioning from CNBC. "One of the great things about our party is that we are able to have a dynamic exchange about which solutions will secure a prosperous future, and I will fight to ensure future debates allow for a more robust exchange. CNBC should be ashamed of how this debate was handled.”CNBC, for its part, blandly replied that "people who want to be President of the United States should be able to answer tough questions." And indeed they should. They should also be able to assert themselves to claim more time if they have something to say. And they should not whine about the green room they were given or pout that a journalist isn't kissing their ring. Being president is a hard job. The whole party having a tantrum over a debate conducted by a conservative media organization is kind of pathetic and says a lot more about them than it does about the reporters. But there is an upside to this whole unpleasant episode for these very delicate Republicans. It brought them together. Rand Paul even got all warm and fuzzy about the whole thing saying, "One thing that unified all the Republicans tonight was the disdain for the moderators. I felt like we were all together in thinking that maybe the moderators got kind of carried away." Nothing creates Republicans solidarity like their bedrock belief that they are victims of the "liberal media." That they are convinced even the financial network CNBC, which fetishizes tax cuts and unfettered free markets, is now among their hated enemies may say more about where the Republican Party is today than anything those candidates said in the debate. They don't know who they are anymore.“He needed a moment to assuage donor fears and it backfired. As much as people may say the Bush name is a hindrance, the reality is that his last name is the only thing keeping him in the conversation right now.” -- A South Carolina Republican operative Ouch. That pretty much sums up all the reviews of Jeb Bush's performance in last night's CNBC debate. What was billed as a make-or-break night for him didn't turn out very well. He appeared listless and dull on stage and afterwards snapped at a reporter who asked him what he thought of his performance saying: “It’s not a performance. I’m running for president of the United States.” It was not the night he needed to stem the bleeding of his wounded campaign. He'll almost certainly trudge on for a while, but it's clear his heart is not in it anymore, if it ever was. Donald Trump and Ben Carson both did what they had to do -- they delivered for their followers. Trump bragged a bit and called the moderators nasty; Carson smiled and gibbered incoherently and the status quo was maintained. As much as the media wanted them to melt down on stage, it didn't happen. In fact, both of them are actually improving as candidates and debaters, which is rather chilling. John Kasich and Chris Christie both tried to be the "voices of reason" and ended up sounding like dads who are always mad. Christie's pitch all night was as the dude who was eager for an opportunity to smack the uppity Hillary Clinton: "You put me on the stage with her next September and she won't get within 10 miles of the White House." Kasich tried to attack the crazies and just sounded like one himself. Carly Fiorina, meanwhile, lectured pedantically in her trademark staccato style, while Rand Paul blathered about the Fed and Mike Huckabee reiterated his ingenious plan to cure all diseases so we won't need health care anymore. Other than that, they didn't really register. I wrote yesterday about the potential for a Marco Rubio vs Ted Cruz cage match and I think that was shown to good effect. As Washington Post reporter Robert Costa observed, "Cruz continues to run in his own lane on the party’s right." Trump fan Laura Ingraham tweeted, "None of the other candidates attack the GOP elites like @tedcruz. He's right--they meet behind closed doors on how to attack Republicans." There is no higher praise among the righties. Cruz remains the best positioned to seize the outsider mantle should the real outsiders fade. Rubio, on the other hand, went after Bush hard and attacked Clinton with a metaphorical meat ax; he was the only one to bring up the Benghazi hearings and it got huge cheers from the audience. He was better than he's ever been -- confident, articulate and aggressive. The rivalry between these two youthful conservative powerhouses has begun. I still suspect this may be where we end up. Both of these guys are pretty good politicians. In a year when the circus wasn't in town, they would be the frontrunners. But for all that, the big loser last night wasn't any of the candidates. According to the shrieking malcontents in the GOP, led by Ted Cruz, it was that notorious "liberal media" outfit CNBC. That's right, the big-moneyed Wall Street fan club that features the likes of Rick "Tea Party" Santelli and Lawrence Kudlow is nothing more than a mouthpiece for the socialist Democratic party. Who knew? There was plenty to criticize about the CNBC punditry before the debate. Their casual commentary was painfully soporific and politically obtuse, undoubtedly helping the TV audience gain new appreciation for the deep insights of Don Lemon and Gretchen Carlson. But the moderators' questions and adversarial attitude were thoroughly appropriate. They were very pointed in their questions, calling the candidates on past comments and pressing them to explain themselves. The candidates, the party and the right wing media did not like it one bit. Bush's campaign manager complained to CNBC's producer about the amount of time his candidate was allotted. Fox's Bill O'Reilly claimed that he understood the "culture over there" and he was quite sure those moderators were getting a lot of "attaboys" from management. GOP operative Richard Grenell tweeted that "it's obvious that MSNBC has influenced CNBC" and Fox's Steve Doocy wondered if "the CNBC moderators cut off Mrs Clinton the way they're rudely interrupting the GOP candidates." They were all very, very upset. https://twitter.com/toddstarnes/statu... A fit to be tied Brent Bozell of the conservative Media Research Center said:
“The CNBC moderators acted less like journalists and more like Clinton campaign operatives. What was supposed to be a serious debate about the many issues plaguing our economy was given up for one Democratic talking point after another served up by the so-call ‘moderators.’”Even Reagan's Attorney General Ed Meese got in on the act calling the debate a "shooting gallery" set up by CNBC's "biased antagonists." But no one was more overwrought about all those left-wing liberals at CNBC than Republican Party Chairman Reince Preibus, who said, "I think it was one gotcha question, one personal low blow after the other. It’s almost like they tried to design a Rubik’s cube for every question,” before leaving the spin room in a huff. He then issued a scathing indictment of the network in a prepared statement.
"While I was proud of our candidates and the way they handled tonight’s debate, the performance by the CNBC moderators was extremely disappointing and did a disservice to their network, our candidates, and voters. Our diverse field of talented and exceptionally qualified candidates did their best to share ideas for how to reinvigorate the economy and put Americans back to work despite deeply unfortunate questioning from CNBC. "One of the great things about our party is that we are able to have a dynamic exchange about which solutions will secure a prosperous future, and I will fight to ensure future debates allow for a more robust exchange. CNBC should be ashamed of how this debate was handled.”CNBC, for its part, blandly replied that "people who want to be President of the United States should be able to answer tough questions." And indeed they should. They should also be able to assert themselves to claim more time if they have something to say. And they should not whine about the green room they were given or pout that a journalist isn't kissing their ring. Being president is a hard job. The whole party having a tantrum over a debate conducted by a conservative media organization is kind of pathetic and says a lot more about them than it does about the reporters. But there is an upside to this whole unpleasant episode for these very delicate Republicans. It brought them together. Rand Paul even got all warm and fuzzy about the whole thing saying, "One thing that unified all the Republicans tonight was the disdain for the moderators. I felt like we were all together in thinking that maybe the moderators got kind of carried away." Nothing creates Republicans solidarity like their bedrock belief that they are victims of the "liberal media." That they are convinced even the financial network CNBC, which fetishizes tax cuts and unfettered free markets, is now among their hated enemies may say more about where the Republican Party is today than anything those candidates said in the debate. They don't know who they are anymore.
October 28, 2015
Brace yourselves, climate change is coming: These 41 areas could be subject to untimely natural disasters
Rising surface temperatures due to climate change could have grave consequences for human life. An international group of scientists has pinpointed 41 specific places around the globe where abrupt temperature changes could trigger natural disasters affecting ocean currents, sea ice, snow cover, tundra permafrost and terrestrial biosphere. The scientists cite environmental neglect and over-exploitation of the Earth's resources as the main contributing factors. These "global warming tipping points" include regions that host critical elements of Earth's planetary system, such as the Amazon forest and the Tibetan plateau. While none of the areas implicated in the study are located near any major cities, the potential impact to the planet could still be grave, as they could cause a domino effect that would intensify the risk of climate change and have dramatic impacts on ecosystems and biodiversity, which in turn could affect human civilization. Published online earlier this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the study is the "first systematic screening of the massive climate model ensemble" that was presented in reports for the 5thIntergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body that supports the ongoing efforts to establish an international treaty on climate change. The research team included meteorologists, oceanographers, climatologists, ecologists, and environmental scientists from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany and France. The researchers report evidence of "forced regional abrupt changes in the ocean, sea ice, snow cover, permafrost and terrestrial biosphere that arise after a certain global temperature increase." Even more worrisome is the fact that their research casts some doubt on the generally accepted goal of keeping the increase of global surface temperature to a maximum of 2° Celsius, as they found that 18 of the potential disaster events occur at global warming levels below the 2° "safe limit" threshold. These abrupt ecosystemic shifts, which are caused by an increasing global mean temperature change, suggest the "potential for a gradual trend of destabilization of the climate." Study co-author Victor Brovkin noted that these abrupt climactic events might lead to natural disasters. “Interestingly, abrupt events could come out as a cascade of different phenomena,” added Brovkin, a meteorologist at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany. “For example, a collapse of permafrost in Arctic is followed by a rapid increase in forest area there. This kind of domino effect should have implications not only for natural systems, but also for society.” We are already witnessing such impacts in the form of droughts, wildfires,more frequent and intense storms and other forms of extreme weather. Specific examples of "climate tipping" include sudden movements of sea ice and changes in ocean circulation, which is Earth's "conveyor belt" that maintains a stable climate. In addition, the scientists detected evidence of sudden alterations in vegetation and marine productivity, which could impact regional and even global food security. With demand for food on target to increase 60 percent by 2050, when the human population is expected to reach 9.6 billion, it is critical to assess the impact of climate change on agricultural production. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has called for "climate-smart" agriculture to maintain global food security through a rapidly changing climate. Sybren Drijfhout, the study's lead author, said that the study "illustrates the high uncertainty in predicting tipping points." Drijfhout, a professor at the National Oceanography Center at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom, added, "More precisely, our results show that the different state-of-the-art models agree that abrupt changes are likely, but that predicting when and where they will occur remains very difficult. Also, our results show that no safe limit exists and that many abrupt shifts already occur for global warming levels much lower than two degrees." “The majority of the detected abrupt shifts are distant from the major population centres of the planet, but their occurrence could have implications over large distances.” says Martin Claussen, director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology and one of the co-authors. “Our work is only a starting point. Now we need to look deeper into mechanisms of tipping points and design an approach to diagnose them during the next round of climate model simulations for IPCC.” 
The Hillary and Katy power alliance: Their savvy blend of pop and politics could be a game-changer for both
On October 18, Katy Perry wrapped up her nearly 18-month Prismatic world tour with a show in Costa Rica. Less than a week later, she was spotted performing at a Hillary Clinton rally in Iowa, where she was introduced by Bill Clinton and made her presidential candidate preferences quite clear. "I stand and I march with Hillary,” Perry said. “I believe in her future, her vision. I believe in her policies. I believe in equal rights for men, women, pay...Thank you for having me, she's my firework." At the rally, Hillary Clinton, in turn, expressed her admiration for the singer: "I have to give a special shout-out to somebody really special, somebody whose birthday is tomorrow, someone who reminds us that sometimes you just have to let them hear you roar. Katy Perry, thank you for being here." The mutual affection didn’t end there, however. The day of the Iowa appearance, Perry took over Clinton’s Instagram, posting snaps of her Hillary-in-2016 decorated nails, her custom-made Hillary-themed dresses, her niece coloring a photo of Hillary and (naturally!) a selfie of them together. The pop star also gave the candidate (a “fellow Scorpio”) an Etsy-worthy gold necklace featuring the acronym POTUS. If that wasn’t enough, Perry celebrated her birthday with a lengthy, heartfelt Instagram note about meeting with Hillary and educating herself about for what she stands. The conversation was apparently convincing: “Next year's election is one of the most important ones in decades, and the choices we make will have a profound effect on women for years to come,” Perry wrote. “So, I stand with her for my daughters and their daughters, and beyond what time gives me. Get informed, get involved and become empowered!” That Perry is swinging Democratic is no surprise: She was a staunch Obama supporter, both vocally and sartorially. And she’s not the only prominent entertainer who’s come out in support of Hillary: So have Lena Dunham, Kate McKinnon, Jennifer Lopez, America Ferrera, Ariana Grande and Ellie Goulding, to name a few. However, the specificity and confidence of Perry’s political support—her Instagram note specifically mentioned issues such as gun control, birth control, health care and equal pay—is impressive. Fans aren’t always thrilled when musicians get political, even in the abstract. For Perry to drill down and take a stance on pivotal, crucial issues is even braver, because it puts her squarely on the hook for resistance and criticism. However, that she’s using her platform and vast social media reach to promote women’s rights, and highlight the areas where equality is lacking or threatened, is significant. For some of her fans, it might be their first exposure to things their friends, older siblings or parents deal with on a daily basis. For others, it might spark their interest in seeking out more information about Clinton, or even politics in general. Either way, Perry is telling her fans that knowledge is powerful and empowering. As Perry herself wrote on Instagram, “I never want to be a puppet, and always want to feel my own purpose and ownership in everything I do.” That’s a mighty message to convey, especially because her assertion that politics are accessible is backed up by high-profile action. In a sense, Perry’s activism is a throwback to the ’90s musical climate, when musicians leveraged their popularity to boost awareness of social issues or injustices, and were almost expected to have a cause to support. High-profile benefit compilations such as “Born To Choose”—which benefitted NARAL (the National Abortion Rights Action League) and WHAM! (Women's Health Action and Mobilization)—and the Red Hot-associated “No Alternative” raised money while educating music fans. Another double album, “Home Alive: Art of Self Defense,” was released to benefit the organization Home Alive. The Seattle-based collective formed after the murder of the Gits’ Mia Zapata, and provided self-defense classes while speaking out and condemning violence. Festivals such as Lollapalooza and Lilith Fair, meanwhile, both had social consciousness baked into their framework. But Perry’s social media-driven support is a very modern kind of political stumping and protest. She’s starting a dialogue in places where her fans congregate, utilizing the communication methods and platforms they use; she’s not doing a glossy television sit-down or a benefit concert to discuss her love for Hillary or her political convictions. Her method is more one-to-one and direct, which makes it feel more personal. The Clinton campaign has adopted a similarly open voice for Hillary’s social media accounts: Her Instagram account features everything from vintage photos to Halloween costume ideas, while her Twitter account is a seamless mix of casual slang and more pointed political notes. Of course, the Obama campaign used social media to great effect in both successful 2008 and 2012 elections, and so it’s logical that Clinton would adopt some of the same tactics. However, it’s a savvy, candid approach that makes the advocacy and campaigning feel more organic and sincere. Of course, there’s no doubt that the Perry-Clinton friendship is mutually beneficial. The Perry association helps Clinton appear more appealing to young female voters, which is an important and increasingly influential demographic: A 2014 U.S. Census analysis of young adult presidential election voting habits found that since 1996, women ages 18 to 29 have voted at higher rates than men. Plus, Perry posting support on her personal Twitter account (or playfully commandeering Clinton’s Instagram account) feels far more casual and genuine than if Hillary herself was trying to court the youth vote on her own. And for Perry, her Clinton friendship draws attention away from the ongoing (and increasingly contentious) fight over her buying a convent in Los Angeles, and keeps her positively in the public eye even though her touring cycle is over. (Which helps, especially because she has a new live DVD looming, not to mention an app on the way.) However, it’s terribly cynical to view Perry’s support as a mere PR move or some token endorsement. She’s become more and more comfortable in her skin as her career’s progressed, effortlessly combining varied (and diverse) facets of her personality in ways that are both playful and serious. Sure, Perry’s musical brand is predicated on bravery, self-empowerment and speaking up—loudly. However, it’s clear that these characteristics aren’t just a posture for the pop star realm, but a belief system by which she’s choosing to live.
