Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 170

At Elon last

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Tesla solar products are coming to a store near you.

Shoppers will be able to purchase the tech company’s solar panels and Powerwall batteries (home electricity storage units) at all 800 Home Depot locations across the United States.

Kiosks that sell the products are already up and running in some Southern California Home Depot locations, and more will launch in Las Vegas and Orlando next week. Tesla is also in talks with Lowe’s about carrying its solar products, sources told Bloomberg News.

The Tesla-Home Depot partnership will test solar’s performance on the mainstream market. It comes less than two weeks after Trump slapped a hefty import tax on solar panels, which is expected to make solar installation less affordable across the U.S.

Installing a solar panel system in your home can cost between $10,000 to $25,000 before rebates, plus another $7,000 for a battery. But once it’s up, you start saving on electricity bills. Type your address into Google’s Project Sunroof for an estimate of how much you’d save in the long run.

Gulf crisis: is Qatar really the “region’s Israel?”

In this Saturday June 4, 2016 photo released by the Qatar Agency, QNA, Qatari Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al -Thani, front right, receives Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Doha, Qatar. (Qatar News Agency via AP) (Credit: AP)

Prominent U.S. constitutional lawyer and scholar Alan M. Dershowitz raised eyebrows recently when he described Qatar as “the Israel of the Gulf states.”

Known for his hard-line pro-Israel views, Mr. Dershowitz drew his conclusion following an all-expenses paid trip to the Gulf state. Mr. Dershowitz argued that Qatar, like Israel, was “surrounded by enemies, subject to boycotts and unrealistic demands, and struggling for its survival.”

The sports issue

He also noted that while he was in Qatar, an Israeli tennis player had been granted entry to compete in an international tournament in which the Israeli flag was allowed to fly alongside of those of other participants.

In response, Saudi Arabia took Qatar to task for accommodating the tennis player and almost at the same time refused Israelis visas to take part in an international chess tournament.

“This episode made clear to me that the Saudis were not necessarily the good guys in their dispute with Qatar. The Saudis have led a campaign to blockade, boycott and isolate their tiny neighboring state. They have gotten other states to join them in this illegal activity,” Mr. Dershowitz said.

His remarks were likely to have surprised Arabs and Jews as well as pro-Israeli circles. Israel, like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, sees Qatar as a state that supports militant entities.

These include Hamas, the Islamist Palestinian group that controls the Gaza Strip, and Islamists such as the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been designated a terrorist organization by Qatar’s detractors.

Mr. Dershowitz’s similarities notwithstanding, the differences between Qatar and Israel are multiple. Most importantly, Qatar does not occupy foreign territory, nor does it deny the rights of others or employ its military to achieve geopolitical objectives.

It is Qatar’s soft power approach and idiosyncratic policies that provoked the ire of its Gulf brethren and accusations that it supports violent and non-violent militants.

Nonetheless, the trappings of the eight-month-old Gulf crisis, sparked by the imposition last June of a UAE-Saudi-led diplomatic and economic boycott, would seemingly to some degree bear out Mr. Dershowitz’s view.

The map issue

Much like Arab maps of the Middle East that for the longest period of time, and often still do, failed to identify Israel, a map of the southern Gulf in the children’s section of Abu Dhabi’s recently inaugurated flagship Louvre Museum omits Qatar.

The map would seemingly turn the Gulf dispute into an existential one in which the perceived basic principle of recognition, existence and right to chart out one’s own course is at stake.

Yet, protagonists in the Gulf crisis, much like those on the pro-Palestinians side of the Arab-Israeli divide, ensure that some degree of crucial business can be conducted, albeit often surreptitiously. In that process, common or crucial national interests are not jeopardized.

Money exchangers in the UAE still buy and sell Qatari riyals. Natural gas continues to flow. Neither Qatar nor the UAE have tinkered with the sale of Qatari gas that is supplied through a partially Abu Dhabi-owned pipeline that accounts for up to 40% of Dubai’s needs.

The aviation issue

A similar picture emerges with aviation. Like Israel, which does not bar Arab nationals entry, Qatar has not closed its airspace to Bahraini, Emirati and Saudi aircraft even though the three states force it to bypass their airspace by overflying Iran.

This has nevertheless not stopped aviation from becoming the latest flashpoint in the Gulf, signaling that the region’s new normal is fragile at best.

Tension rose this month when Qatar twice charged that military aircraft had violated its airspace. Qatar used the alleged violations to file a complaint with the international aviation authority. The UAE, beyond denying the allegations, asserted that Qatari fighters had twice intercepted an Emirati airliner as it was landing in Bahrain.

The regime change issue

In what may be a significant difference, Israel, unlike Qatar, is not really in the business of fostering opposition, if not regime change, in the region. Israel largely feels that autocratic rulers are more reliable partners and less susceptible to the whims of public opinion.

By contrast, regime change figures prominently in the UAE and Saudi Arabia’s toolkit, at least in the public diplomacy part of it, albeit with mixed results.

Emirati and Saudi efforts to foster opposition from within the ruling family to Qatari emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani appeared to have backfired.

Conclusion

Mr. Dershowitz no doubt did Qatar a favor by visiting the country and by coming out in its defense. Comparing Qatar to Israel, however, may not go down well with significant segments of Arab and Qatari public opinion as well as pro-Israel groups. In doing so, he may have dampened the impact of his comments.

Navy doctor’s comment raises concerns about Trump’s behavior

(Credit: AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

Does Trump have a drug problem?

An overlooked footnote to Trump’s highly publicized health checkup in January was a passing reference at a news conference to his use of the widely abused sleep aid, Ambien.

Dr. Ronny Jackson, the White House doctor, then said Trump takes Ambien when he goes on long flights. The drug, approved by the Food and Drug administration in 1992, was meant for short-term use to treat insomnia.

“The President does take some Ambien on occasion” when he travels overseas, Jackson said. “Only during travel.”

Since sleeping pills come with a range of dangerous side effects that can linger into the following day, experts suggest using them sporadically and only in specific instances to avoid health risks. The drug is known to sometimes turn people into “Ambien zombies” who have fixed meals, had sex or gotten in their cars and driven away with no memory of the activities the next day.

Attorney Susan Chana Lask, who has represented people in lawsuits against the manufacturer of Ambien, said the drug could explain some of Trump’s long history of erratic behavior, tweets and slurred speech.

“Ambien may be the reason he has at times been unable to recall names and events, and had to later correct himself,” Lask said.

Trump slurred his words toward the end of a speech in December announcing that the United States would recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Three weeks before that incident, Trump had spent a busy 10 days traveling in Asia. He also flew to Florida, Missouri, New York and Utah in the days prior to the speech. A spokesman later said Trump had a dry throat.

He appeared to forget the words to the national anthem in January at the college national football championship in Atlanta.

Daniel Kripke, an emeritus professor of psychiatry at University of California San Diego, said he couldn’t speak about Trump’s taking Ambien but that in general a person who habitually wakes up after less than eight hours of sleep or who wakes up in the middle of the night would have increased risk of impaired alertness, confusion and impairments of memory and judgment.

Jackson said Trump typically gets 4 to 5 hours of sleep a night. He usually is up by 5 a.m. and has tweeted at 3 a.m.

Conservative commentator Michael Levy has speculated that Trump’s insomnia could be the result of a dangerous mixing of Ambien with an amphetamine.

“Amphetamines cause lack of impulse control, irritability, inability to control temper, and unbalanced hyper-focus on certain subjects which borders on obsession,” Levy opined on the social media network Quora. “A person on amphetamines can exhibit exactly the type of bizarre behavior we see in Trump.”

Former President Barack Obama took an undisclosed medication to help with jet lag while traveling.

Ambien is manufactured by Sanofi Aventis. The generic versions of zolpidem were released in 2007. In 2014, Kerry Kennedy, who said she mistakenly took Ambien, was acquitted of drugged-driving in Westchester County in New York. Kennedy, the daughter of Robert F. Kennedy, had swerved her Lexus SUV into a tractor-trailer. Lask questioned why Trump is taking Ambien.

“There are safer and healthier alternatives to Ambien, such as exercise, meditation, yoga and melatonin that the leader of our country should be promoting,” she said. “Quick big pharma fixes like Ambien are exactly the reason we have so many confused people and problems in this country.”

“The Ambien actually helps matters,” said Levy. “When Trump isn’t sleeping, he really goes off the rails… You can actually see it coming. Just look at the bags under his eyes. When they get really puffy, boom! Trumpocalypse!”

Your mobile phone can give away your location, even if you tell it not to

(Credit: Getty/Justin Sullivan)

U.S. military officials were recently caught off guard by revelations that servicemembers’ digital fitness trackers were storing the locations of their workouts — including at or near military bases and clandestine sites around the world. But this threat is not limited to Fitbits and similar devices. My group’s recent research has shown how mobile phones can also track their users through stores and cities and around the world — even when users turn off their phones’ location-tracking services.

The vulnerability comes from the wide range of sensors phones are equipped with — not just GPS and communications interfaces, but gyroscopes and accelerometers that can tell whether a phone is being held upright or on its side and can measure other movements too. Apps on the phone can use those sensors to perform tasks users aren’t expecting — like following a user’s movements turn by turn along city streets.

Most people expect that turning their phone’s location services off disables this sort of mobile surveillance. But the research I conduct with my colleagues Sashank Narain, Triet Vo-Huu, Ken Block and Amirali Sanatinia at Northeastern University, in a field called “side-channel attacks,” uncovers ways that apps can avoid or escape those restrictions. We have revealed how a phone can listen in on a user’s finger-typing to discover a secret password — and how simply carrying a phone in your pocket can tell data companies where you are and where you’re going.

Making assumptions about attacks

When designing protection for a device or a system, people make assumptions about what threats will occur. Cars, for instance, are designed to protect their occupants from crashes with other cars, buildings, guardrails, telephone poles and other objects commonly found in or near roads. They’re not designed to keep people safe in cars driven off a cliff or smashed by huge rocks dropped on them. It’s just not cost-effective to engineer defenses against those threats, because they’re assumed to be extremely uncommon.

Similarly, people designing software and hardware make assumptions about what hackers might do. But that doesn’t mean devices are safe. One of the first side-channel attacks was identified back in 1996 by cryptographer Paul Kocher, who showed he could break popular and supposedly secure cryptosystems by carefully timing how long it took a computer to decrypt an encrypted message. The cryptosystem designers hadn’t imagined that an attacker would take that approach, so their system was vulnerable to it.

There have been many other attacks through the years using all sorts of different approaches. The recent Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities that exploit design flaws in computer processors, are also side-channel attacks. They enable malicious applications to snoop on other applications’ data in the computer memory.

Monitoring on the go

Mobile devices are perfect targets for this sort of attack from an unexpected direction. They are stuffed with sensors, usually including at least one accelerometer, a gyroscope, a magnetometer, a barometer, up to four microphones, one or two cameras, a thermometer, a pedometer, a light sensor and a humidity sensor.

Apps can access most of these sensors without asking for permission from the user. And by combining readings from two or more devices, it’s often possible to do things that users, phone designers and app creators alike may not expect.

In one recent project, we developed an app that could determine what letters a user was typing on a mobile phone’s on-screen keyboard — without reading inputs from the keyboard. Rather, we combined information from the phone’s gyroscope and its microphones.

When a user taps on the screen in different locations, the phone itself rotates slightly in ways that can be measured by the three-axis micromechanical gyroscopes found in most current phones. Further, tapping on a phone screen produces a sound that can be recorded on each of a phone’s multiple microphones. A tap close to the center of the screen will not move the phone much, will reach both microphones at the same time, and will sound roughly the same to all the microphones. However, a tap at the bottom left edge of the screen will rotate the phone left and down; it will reach the left microphone faster; and it will sound louder to microphones near the bottom of the screen and quieter to microphones elsewhere on the device.

Processing the movement and sound data together let us determine what key a user pressed, and we were right over 90 percent of the time. This sort of function could be added secretly to any app and could run unnoticed by a user.

Identifying a location

We then wondered whether a malicious application could infer a user’s whereabouts, including where they lived and worked, and what routes they traveled — information most people consider very private.

We wanted to find out whether a user’s location could be identified using only sensors that don’t require users’ permission. The route taken by a driver, for instance, can be simplified into a series of turns, each in a certain direction and with a certain angle. With another app, we used a phone’s compass to observe the person’s direction of travel. That app also used the phone’s gyroscope, measuring the sequence of turn angles of the route traveled by the user. And the accelerometer showed whether a user was stopped, or moving.

By measuring a sequence of turns, and stringing them together as a person travels, we could make a map of their movements. (In our work, we knew which city we were tracking people through, but a similar approach could be used to figure out what city a person was in.)

Imagine we observe a person in Boston heading southwest, turning 100 degrees to the right, making a sharp U-turn to the left to head southeast, turning slightly to the right, continuing straight, then following a shallow curve to the left, a quick jog to the right, bumping up and down more than usual on a road, turning 55 degrees right, and turning 97 degrees left and then making a slight curve right before stopping.

We developed an algorithm to match those movements up against a digitized map of the streets of the city the user was in, and determined which were the most likely routes a person might take. Those movements could identify a route driving from Fenway Park, along the Back Bay Fens, past the Museum of Fine Arts and arriving at Northeastern University.

We were even able to refine our algorithm to incorporate information about curves in roads and speed limits to help narrow options. We produced our results as a list of possible paths ranked by how likely the algorithm thought they were to match the actual route. About half the time, in most cities we tried, the real path a user followed was in the top 10 items on the list. Further refining the map data, sensor readings and the matching algorithm could substantially improve our accuracy. Again, this type of capability could be added to any app by a malicious developer, letting innocent-appearing apps snoop on their users.

Our research group is continuing to investigate how side-channel attacks can be used to reveal a variety of private information. For instance, measuring how a phone moves when its owner is walking could suggest how old a person is, whether they are male (with the phone in a pocket) or female (typically with the phone in a purse), or even health information about how steady a person is on his feet or how often she stumbles. We assume there is more your phone can tell a snoop — and we hope to find out what, and how, to protect against that sort of spying.

Guevara Noubir, Professor of Computer and Information Science, Northeastern University

Promising male birth control pill originated from an arrow poison

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After decades of research, development of a male birth control may now be one step closer. My colleagues and I are working on a promising lead for a male birth control pill based on ouabain — a plant extract that African warriors and hunters traditionally used as a heart-stopping poison on their arrows.

State of the search

While the birth control pill has been available to women in the United States for nearly six decades — and FDA-approved for contraceptive use since 1960 — an oral contraceptive for men has not yet come to market. The pill has provided women with safe, effective and reversible options for birth control, while options for men have been stuck in a rut.

Today, men have just two choices when it comes to birth control: condoms or a vasectomy. Together, these two methods account for just 30 percent of contraception used, leaving the remaining 70 percent of contraceptive methods to women. An estimated 500,000 American men opt for a vasectomy each year — a small number given the need for contraception. Vasectomy is an invasive procedure to do that’s also difficult and invasive to reverse.

When it comes to birth control options for men, the need is clear. Unplanned pregnancy rates remain high across the globe. It’s time for more options.

Hormonal versus nonhormonal

Researchers are exploring both hormonal and nonhormonal options for male birth control pills. Current hormonal agents under study involve the sex steroids progestins and testosterone.

While the male hormonal birth control pill option is in clinical human trials and likely closer to market, it has several potential side effects: In addition to potentially causing weight gain and changes in libido, it has the ability to lower the levels of good cholesterol (HDL-C) in men, which could negatively affect the heart health of users. The long-term effects of using hormones for male oral contraception are unknown, and it will likely be decades before this information is available.

Here at the University of Minnesota, my colleagues and I have focused on nonhormonal contraception methods that work by targeting sperm motility — biology-speak for the sperms’ ability to move or swim effectively. Good motility is a necessary condition for fertilizing a female egg.

In collaboration with Gustavo Blanco at the University of Kansas, we’ve homed in on ouabain: a toxic substance produced by two types of African plants. Mammals also produce ouabain in their bodies, though at lower nonlethal levels that scientists think can help control blood pressure. In fact, physicians have used ouabain in very small doses to treat patients with heart arrhythmias or suffering from heart attacks.

From toxin to contraceptive

Researchers know that ouabain disrupts the passage of sodium and potassium ions through cell membranes; it interferes with the proper function of proteins that transport the ions in and out of cells. Some of the ion-transporting protein subunits targeted by ouabain are found in cardiac tissue — its ability to disrupt proper heart function is what makes ouabain a deadly poison. But ouabain also affects another type of transporter subunit called α4, which is found only in sperm cells. This protein is known to be critical in fertility — at least in male mice.

For 10 years, my colleagues and I have been studying ouabain as a potential breakthrough in our quest for a male birth control pill. However, ouabain by itself isn’t an option as a contraceptive because of the risk of heart damage. So we set out to design ouabain analogs — versions of the molecule that are more likely to bind to the α4 protein in sperm than other subunits in heart tissue.

In the lab, we used the techniques of medicinal chemistry to create a derivative of ouabain that is good at zeroing in on the α4 transporter in sperm cells in rats. Once bound to those cells, it interferes with the sperms’ ability to swim — essential to its role in fertilizing an egg. Our new compound showed no toxicity in rats.

Because the α4 transporter is found only on mature sperm cells, the contraceptive effect should be reversible — sperm cells produced after stopping the treatment presumably won’t be affected. Ouabain may also offer men a birth control pill option with fewer systemic side effects than hormonal options.

Next steps on the road to drug discovery

Our results are promising because our candidate molecule, unlike ouabain, is nontoxic in rats. Our modification is a big step forward in the process of developing a nonhormonal male birth control pill. But there’s a lot left to do before men can buy this contraceptive at the pharmacy.

After our ouabain analog showed promise in rat studies at reducing sperm motility, future studies will focus on the effectiveness of our lead compound as an actual contraceptive in animals. We need to prove that a reduction in sperm movement translates into a drop in egg fertilization.

Then, we’ll begin the standard steps in drug discovery such as toxicology and safety pharmacology studies as we advance toward planning and conducting clinical trials. Our team is already taking the next step to test our compound in animal mating trials. If things continue as planned, we hope to get to human clinical trials within five years.

Reversible, effective male birth control is within sight. World Health Organization numbers suggest that reducing sperm motility by 50 percent or less is sufficient to temporarily make a man infertile. Our ongoing research brings us one step closer to expanding the options for male birth control, providing the world’s 7.6 billion people with a much-needed option for safe and reversible contraception.

Gunda Georg, Professor of Medicinal Chemistry and Director of the Institute for Therapeutics Discovery and Development, University of Minnesota; Jon Hawkinson, Research Professor of Medicinal Chemistry and Associate Program Director of the Institute for Therapeutics Discovery and Development, University of Minnesota, and Shameem Syeda, Principal Scientist at the Institute for Therapeutics Discovery and Development, University of Minnesota

“Queer Eye” and the view from here

Karamo Brown, Jonathan Van Ness, Tan France, Antoni Porowski, Bobby Berk on "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" (Credit: Netflix/Carin Baer)

Arriving to Netflix’s revival of “Queer Eye” without being predisposed to detest it was tough for me. The original Fab Five — Thom Filicia, Jai Rodriguez, Kyan Douglas, Ted Allen and Carson Kressley — holds a special place of those of us who were addicted to the 2003 series, especially those of us who identify somewhat regretfully as sloppy AF.

Remember, this is before Food Network hypnotized millions into becoming foodies, and the Nate Berkus term “house proud” became a . . . thing.  Many adults of the aughts generally lacked schooling in aesthetics, and this is where “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” (and its TLC cousins “What Not to Wear” and “Trading Spaces) stepped in.

The Fab Five stylized their mission to make its image overhauls into a treat as well as a feat. Their quarry, guy slobs, are a lot generally left to their own hopelessness. But in the space of what the magic of production made look like a day, these men would be magically transformed from sasquatches to groomed gentlemen possessing skills such as knowing how to properly cook a steak or apply hair product.

Within the eight episodes of the “Queer Eye” reboot — it’s just “Queer Eye” now, for good reason — a new generation learns similar techniques for better living from a fresh team of gurus tailored to appeal to millennials while consciously and respectfully inviting in the previous series’ audience.

The 2003 series was a cheeky sparkle on Bravo’s schedule, a charming and consciously upbeat counterpoint to a political era in which LGBTQ Americas still struggled for social tolerance and legal standing.  Gay marriage had yet to be legalized and when the original debuted, “The Ellen Show” was not yet a daytime staple.

Plus, the original Fab Five were unknown to the larger television audience when their series became a Bravo hit. The modern crew, meanwhile, steps into a famous title with established brands of their own. Two of the new Fab Five are already familiar to a number of viewers: Karamo Brown, the team’s culture expert, made history as reality television’s the first out gay black man when he appeared on the Philadelphia edition of MTV’s “The Real World” in 2004. Grooming expert Jonathan Van Ness made a name for himself as the star of the Funny or Die recap series “Gay of Thrones.”

Bobby Berk, responsible for bringing his home makeover expertise to the series, has an established interior design company and furniture line, has appeared as an expert on network television as well as on Bravo and HGTV.

Of the remaining two, fashion expert Tan France won his slot on the team due to his social media presence, and culinary honcho Antoni Porowski was recommended by Allen, host of the Food Network series “Chopped.”

This means a lot of people tuning in to the new “Queer Eye,” which began streaming this week, are bound to carry some expectations with them. And this makes its success all the sweeter.

“Queer Eye” isn’t flawless. For instance, the opener of the series feels too earnest, consciously polished and starched. Each of the men introduce themselves and France neatly explains its 2018 directive. The original show, France says, was a fight for tolerance. The battle this time is for acceptance.

Activating that premise the show’s move from the liberal enclave of New York City to Georgia, where the guys make their home base in Atlanta and meet a few of their makeover subjects in territories that are decidedly red state. One of them, in fact, has a “Make America Great Again” cap buried in his haphazardly stocked closet, earning a pause but moved aside with lighthearted laughter. Anyone watching can see the team’s main work with this gentleman isn’t on his politics but his style issues.

And in some respects, this is how the new “Queer Eye” circumvents some of the pitfalls of resurrecting a Bush-era reality series that has a specific tone and a format that’s been imitated and rejiggered a number of times during the 15 years that have passed since the original graced the airwaves.

Executive producers David Collins and Michael Williams, part of the first show’s producing team, display an awareness of this by emphasizing lightheartedness and humor foremost while not shying away from the difficult realities of faced by gay men and people of color right now.

At the risk of tossing a bit of shade at the series, though, one element “Queer Eye” doesn’t truly acknowledge is that time has altered the concept of what “queer” means and who the term embraces. The first “Queer Eye” pre-dates many social leaps forward for the LGTBQ population, whose impact on culture extends across television. Notably it joins the series landscape in the wake of “Transparent” and RuPaul’s rise and conquest of the medium, and the subsequent mainstreaming of discussions about gender and sexual identity. A long way of saying, since this is a show loved by men and women alike, I can’t think of a reason that the show wouldn’t have included at least one female or trans expert.

In the food expert field alone, there’s transgender Chris Trapani, featured on “Chopped.” Karen Akunowicz claimed her territory as a queer fierce femme on “Top Chef,” a series has boasted a number of gay and lesbian contestant, and an out winner in season 10’s Kristen Kish. Again, this is just one casting element the producers could have tweaked to root the series in 2018 even more prominently.

Presumably the response to why this didn’t happen is because “Queer Eye” has an established formula that works and dictates that the point is to show men who tend to struggle with concepts of masculinity that don’t fit a heteronormative paradigm embracing advice and encouragement from men who are proudly and unapologetically gay. Is this a completely defensible reason? No. But here we are.

The latest “Queer Eye” does take extraordinary steps that the previous version did not, such as an episode in which the Fab Five guide a gay black man into coming out to his parent, one story we don’t see enough of on television. This episode (and others) open the emotional floodgates, but it earns our tears fair and square. The benefit of viewing these makeovers take place over the course of days, as opposed to the illusion of hours, is that the new Fab Five connects their subject’s sartorial and design overhaul to some unaddressed need of the spirit in ways the first series could only touch upon. (Another lesson taught by numerous reality shows, including “Hoarders”: a disordered environment typically is the result of a disordered soul.)

Contrivance is a standard element of any reality production, but Netflix’s “Queer Eye” manifests and utilizes it in interesting ways. One episode interrupts the band’s merry road trip with a police officer pulling over The Fab Five; naturally Brown is at the wheel, although France, who is British born and half-Pakistani, nervously jokes that the cop must have seen him.

The fact that this moment made it into the series tips its hand to the viewer that everything turns out OK, but in that moment, a terrified Brown certainly doesn’t appear to know what’s going on. But this interaction later instigates a conversation between the episode’s makeover subject, a cop, and Brown about the fear black men have of law enforcement and the frustration that by-the-book officers feel at being tarred by the corrupt cops whose actions make headlines.

And some of the most touching moments aren’t planned, such as an exchange between an older, lonely hermit with a ZZ Top beard who obviously loving being with the Fab Five and is comfortable enough to ask Berk, as he discusses his marriage, which partner is the “wife” and which is the “husband. Rather than scolding their subject, Berk and Van Ness, who happens to be with them, gently correct the man’s uninformed concept of homosexual relationships.

These moments fuel the new “Queer Eye” in a meaningful manner, sparking conversations about acceptance that are predicated upon the ways we’re all alike as opposed to the qualities that make us different. We can’t get to know each other without helping one see our shared obstacles and prevent future stumbles.

“Freed” Is the best Fifty Shades yet, and this film even manages to be a little steamy

Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan in "Fifty Shades Freed" (Credit: Universal Pictures)

It may be damning with faint praise to call “Fifty Shades Freed” the best “Fifty Shades” yet, but this “climax” (in Imax!) to the trilogy of films based on E.L. James’ phenomenally popular bestsellers, is — unlike the previous entries — actually really mostly pretty good.

The previous films, “Fifty Shades of Grey” and “Fifty Shades Darker,” were risible erotic dramas that were barely erotic and over-dramatic. This film, like its blindingly attractive leads, has zero body fat. It’s focused on plot, and lots of it. This entry in the series zooms along like the film’s Audi R8. There is a whole season full of soap operatics in store for viewers here and that is partly what makes it so enjoyable.

“Fifty Shades Freed” opens with the Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) marrying billionaire Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan). She wears something white and lacy to the wedding, and one half expects him to be in black leather (a harness, perhaps?). But he saves that gear for the red playroom.

Cue montage of the newlyweds taking their private jet off to Paris — the most romantic city in the world! — making love in a canopy bed (how traditional!), biking by the Louvre, and running through the rain to a café. It’s so cliché its downright charming.

Don’t worry fans, there still is some “kinky fuckery.” When Ana defies Christian by going topless at a beach against his wishes, he “punishes” her with some handcuffs and legcuffs.

“I should misbehave more often,” she purrs after.

Herein lies the pleasure of “Fifty Shades Freed.” The film seems to have an intentional sense of humor. It takes the romance fiction fantasy of an innocent young woman being wooed by a rich, hunky, but troubled guy to heart and never plays it seriously.

Alas, the honeymooners’ fun ends when there is news of a break-in at Grey Enterprises. Forced to return to Seattle, Ana and Christian must deal with the threat posed by her lecherous old boss, Jack Hyde (Eric Johnson). He is out for revenge. Christian is so protective of his new wife, he keeps a gun in a drawer in his desk. Ana finds the weapon, so expect that to go off before the end credits.

Christian also arranges for 24-hour security for Ana. This prompts a laugh-out-loud funny line when Ana’s assistant Hannah (Ashleigh LaThrop) makes a comment regarding Ana’s SAF bodyguard Sawyer (Brant Daugherty).

But back to the point. Apparently, marriage in “Fifty Shades Freed” is more than a bond for Ana and Christian, it is a form of bondage. He continues to keep her on a tight leash, following her every move. It’s almost creepy, and she almost minds, but this, the film explains, is how Christian expresses his love for her. Protection, however, doesn’t extend to the use of condoms, and the spouses soon have to discuss the possibility of kids. He wants them someday, which disappoints her.

“Babies mean no sex,” Christian insists fearing marital bed death. Dornan is so damn irresistible, he can pull lines like that off.

And Christian definitely wants to pull off Ana’s clothes and have sex. Just watch as he teasingly unhooks the top of a fabulously slinky silver dress Ana barely wears (She describes it in a way that produces another genuine laugh).

There are a few scenes in the playroom — one of which actually has Ana using her safe word because Christian is deliberately frustrating her with a sex toy. It becomes a teaching moment that helps the couple communicate better.

And communication is a key in this film. Both Ana and Christian deny the other pleasure as a way of making a point about how they should treat one another. That the characters behave like a couple in an actual, everyday relationship is endearing, however extreme their luxury and lifestyle is.

Moreover, Ana may have been as sexually adventurous as she was naïve, but she has always been very clear about expressing her limits. Her speeches to Christian are justified, and she can be seen as quite the feminist given how much agency she has in the film. Yes, she wants to baby Christian, just as he wants to care for and protect her. But isn’t that what loving one’s partner is all about? “Fifty Shades Freed” is actually touching, and romantic.

But for those viewers who just want to see Ana and Christian shut up and fuck. Well, to its credit, “Fifty Shades Freed” contains arguably the only truly erotic scene in the entire trilogy. It involves Ana smearing and then licking ice cream off Christian’s gorgeous bare torso (Probably vanilla, given that the couple purchased a pint in “Fifty Shades Darker”). When a naked Christian returns the flavor — er, favor — along the inside of her thighs, well, viewers may be melting along with that ice cream. It is an incredibly sexy sequence and redeems the series for all the forgettable softcore S&M porn in the past.

Despite all these worthwhile elements, the film does go over the top in the last few reels, as a series of plot contrivances pile up quickly. They involve a bail hearing, Ana discovering she’s pregnant, a kidnapping, that aforementioned gun going off, and the requisite hospital scene. It’s all too much too fast, but hey, that’s what happens when you race towards a climax.

That the film also features a memory montage of Ana and Christian’s relationship is curious because none of the clips feature the couple’s activities in the playroom, which is kind of the series’ raison d’être.

As Anastasia Steele, Dakota Johnson gives an assured performance — “topping from the bottom” as it were. She alternates between playing tough and being vulnerable and is convincing at both. Johnson also has some palpable chemistry with her co-star, Jamie Dornan here. His performance may be as stiff as his body, but as long as he wears those ripped jeans that hang just so around his hips, displaying that stunning muscled chest and his sacrum, no viewer in the film’s target audience is going to mind.

And if Christian catches anyone rolling their eyes at “Fifty Shades Freed,” well, he will put them in his playroom. For viewers who submit to the distinctive pleasures of these films, that is not such a bad place to be.

Trump wants to get mean with “drug pushers” in opioid crisis — but what about Big Pharma?

(Credit: AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

President Donald Trump has a new idea for how to combat America’s opioid crisis — one that requires us, unsurprisingly, to get “mean” and “tough.” Indeed, in a speech in Cincinnati, Ohio, on Feb. 5, Trump proposed harsher treatment of “drug pushers” and “drug dealers” as a means of fighting the opioid epidemic that killed more than 42,000 Americans in 2016.

Specifically, Trump said:

 Creating good jobs is also an important part of fighting the drug epidemic that has affected millions of Americans, bringing new hope to struggling communities.  And it’s gotten to a point where it’s never been worse.

People form blue ribbon committees, they do everything they can.  And, frankly, I have a different take on it.  My take is, you have to get really, really tough — really mean — with the drug pushers and the drug dealers.  We can do all the blue ribbon committees we want. We have to get a lot tougher than we are.  And we have to stop drugs from pouring across our border.

Trump using the opioid crisis as a way to gain support for the border wall is nothing new, but it’s a slap in the face to the victims and their families who have been hurt by the epidemic. The “drug pushers” and “drug dealers” are merely middlemen, small-time players, compared to the biggest dealers of all: pharmaceutical companies.

According to data by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) prescription opioid sales nearly quadrupled from 1999 to 2014; during this timespan, overdose deaths from prescription opioids increased as well. While opioid prescriptions should only be prescribed to cancer patients, or those with pain-related diagnosis, only an estimated one out of five fit the bill. Overdose deaths from opioid prescriptions were fives times higher in 2016 than they were in 1999, and overall, 40 percent of all U.S. opioid overdose deaths involved prescription drugs. The National Institute on Drug Abuse found that half of young people who inject heroin abused opioid prescriptions first; in other words, opioid prescriptions are often a gateway to heroin. In addition to an increase in opioid-prescription deaths, the number of opioids sold to pharmacies and hospitals nearly quadrupled from 1999 to 2010, according to CDC data. Horrifyingly, large pharmaceutical companies profit off these deaths and addictions.

Yet Trump seems to believe the crisis is purely a result of Mexican drug dealers. Yes, heroin does travel across the border. According to additional CDC data, “increased availability, relatively low price (compared to prescription opioids), and high purity of heroin in the U.S. also have been identified as possible factors in the rising rate of heroin use.” According to data from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the amounts of heroin confiscated at the southwest border quadrupled from 2008 to 2013, but that’s not what’s driving 1,000 people a day to emergency rooms across the country for misusing opioid prescriptions.

Even though Trump declared the opioid crisis a “health emergency,” his actions have spoken louder than words. Per Politico earlier this week, Kellyanne Conway is now in charge of dealing with opioids, and the White House is allegedly telling experts that they’re not welcome on his committee to deal with the crisis.

Now, hope for combatting the crisis lies in state and civic policy —  as it looks like we can’t count on the federal government for help.

Some cities like New York, and states like Missouri, are already taking matters into their own hands and suing the manufacturers and distributors of opioid prescription drugs. Big pharmaceutical companies involved in these various lawsuits include Purdue Pharma LP and Johnson & Johnson.

“More New Yorkers have died from opioid overdoses than car crashes and homicides combined in recent years. Big Pharma helped to fuel this epidemic by deceptively peddling these dangerous drugs and hooking millions of Americans in exchange for profit,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said. “It’s time for hold the companies accountable for what they’ve done to our City, and help save more lives.”

In regards to drug prices, Trump once said the “drug companies, frankly, are getting away with murder.”

Indeed, President Trump, pharmaceutical giants are getting away with actual, non-metaphorical murder when it comes to peddling opioids.

Fox News executive blasts “darker, gayer” U.S. Olympic team in bigoted rant

Team USA (Credit: Getty/Abbie Parr)

John Moody, an executive vice president and executive editor at Fox News, condemned the diversity of the U.S. Olympic team that will be marching in the opening ceremony of 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea in an op-ed published Wednesday on FoxNews.com.

Moody alleges that the U.S. Olympic Committee would like to replace its modus operandi of pursuing victory with pursuing inclusion even at the cost of medals. “Unless it’s changed overnight,” Moody wrote, “the motto of the Olympics, since 1894, has been ‘Faster, Higher, Stronger.'” He continued, “It appears the U.S. Olympic Committee would like to change that to ‘Darker, Gayer, Different.’ If your goal is to win medals, that won’t work.”

Moody noted that a USOC official expressed pride in an interview with the Washington Post “about taking the most diverse U.S. squad ever to the Winter Olympics. That was followed by a, frankly, embarrassing laundry list of how many African-Americans, Asians and openly gay athletes are on this year’s U.S. team.” He added, “No sport that we are aware of awards points – or medals – for skin color or sexual orientation.”

Moody continued, asking if this year’s athletes were “selected because they’re the best at what they do, or because they’re the best publicity for our current obsession with having one each from Column A, B and C?” After mentioning the achievements of Jackie Robinson, Jeremy Lin and the 1993 film “Cool Runnings,” he said that, “Insisting that sports bow to political correctness by assigning teams quotas for race, religion or sexuality is like saying that professional basketball goals will be worth four points if achieved by a minority in that sport – white guys, for instance –  instead of the two or three points awarded to black players, who make up 81 percent of the NBA. Any plans to fix that disparity? Didn’t think so.”

In his opinion, “Faster, Higher, Stronger” is a better slogan than, “We will win because we’re different,” precisely because, “complaining that every team isn’t a rainbow of political correctness defeats the purpose of sports, which is a competition. At the Olympic level, not everyone is a winner.”

Currently, there are no quotas or any race-based selection at play in the formation of any of the U.S. Olympic teams, even if diversity seems to be a goal in many of their development programs and new bulwarks against discrimination have been added. Instead, it appears Moody’s op-ed triggered by the quotes in the Post article alone.

The article begins, “The U.S. Olympic Committee says it’s taking its most diverse team ever to a Winter Games, an impressive and deserved boast that requires a caveat of sorts.” It continues to describe the various programs the USOC has been using to make the team more representative of the nation. Repeatedly, diversity is called “No. 1, it’s a priority, and, No. 2,” but it’s clear that none of it comes at the cost of winning.

The 2018 U.S. winter team includes more African American and Asian American athletes than in previous years, as well as the first two publicly out male athletes to compete four the country in the winter teams. The inclusion of two openly gay male olympians is particularly significant and, perhaps, a direct outcome of the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, after which the Olympic Charter added sexual orientation to Principle 6, the Olympic Charter’s nondiscrimination clause.

That said, Team USA totals 243 athletes, 10 black, 10 Asian and the rest “predominantly white” according to the Post. The largest team any nation has ever sent to the winter event, the U.S. squad  may be historically diverse, but it is also overwhelmingly white and straight.

Even the USOC admits that it has a long way to go to be completely representative of modern-day America. “We’re not quite where we want to be,” Jason Thompson, the USOC’s director of diversity and inclusion, told the Washington Post, “. . .  I think full-on inclusion has always been a priority of Team USA. I think everybody’s always felt it should represent every American.”

“I think it’s great that I’ve gotten to where I’ve gotten,” Jordan Greenway, America’s first black hockey player at the Olympic level, told the Post. “It kind of feels like an inspiration, trying to get more African Americans like me trying to play hockey, not falling into stereotypes of playing football, basketball. . . . Obviously, there’s not a ton of African Americans playing hockey. It’s worked out great for me. I’ve had a great experience with it. I hope kids see that it’s good to play hockey, too.”

It’s a shame Moody can’t see that for the win that it is.

How rich are the rich? If only you knew

FILE - In this March 18, 2016 file photo, Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, is seen at a tennis tournament in Indian Wells, Calif. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is giving $210 million to the University of Washington to help build a new facility to advance efforts to improve the health and well-being of people around the world. The donation from the largest private foundation in the world is the largest single gift to the university. The contribution was announced Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2016. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill, File) (Credit: AP)

���If poor people knew how rich rich people are, there would be riots in the streets.���

Actor and comedian Chris Rock made this astute statement during a 2014 interview with New York magazine, referring to the yawning gap between rich and poor. In so doing, he stumbled upon a key challenge in the study of inequality.

What���s the best way to measure it?

Most inequality studies have focused on income �����measures of which are widely available. However, being rich is not about a single year of earnings but rather about the accumulation of wealth over time. In the past, quantifying that has been tricky.

The wealthy would probably prefer we stay in the dark about how rich they are, presumably to avoid the aforementioned riots. People like me who study the topic, however, are always looking for more data and better and more accurate ways to measure the rich-poor gap. And while I���m not one to promote violence in the streets, I do believe it���s important for citizens to be fully aware of the levels of disparity in their society.

The most revealing way to do this, in my view, is by looking at wealth inequality.

Measuring the rich-poor gap

There are several ways to measure inequality.

One of the most popular is by income. That���s largely because there���s more data, and it���s a lot easier to measure. But this measure is a snapshot.

Wealth, on the other hand, is an aggregation, affected not only by current income but earnings accumulated in previous years and by previous generations. Only by studying wealth inequality do scholars, policymakers and others get the deepest and broadest measure of the gap between the rich and everyone else.

How much wealth someone has is also a better measure of their quality of life and opportunities. It determines the ability to invest in education, financial assets and the comfort and security of one���s retirement. Wealth also mitigates worries about paycheck variability or unexpected expenses. If you have wealth, the sudden cost of replacing a broken water heater or paying a medical bill doesn���t cause nearly as much stress as if you���re poor.

American ���exceptionalism���

When we do look at the data on wealth inequality in the U.S., it���s stark and dwarfs that of the rest of the developed world.

The conservative Hudson Institute in 2017 reported that the wealthiest 5 percent of American households held 62.5 percent of all assets in the U.S. in 2013, up from 54.1 percent 30 years earlier. As a consequence, the wealth of the other 95 percent declined from 45.9 percent to 37.5 percent.

As a result, the median wealth of upper-income families (earning US$639,400 on average) was nearly seven times that of middle-income households ($96,500) in 2013, the widest gap in at least 30 years.

More notably, inequality scholars Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman found that the top 0.01 percent controlled 22 percent of all wealth in 2012, up from just 7 percent in 1979.

If you only looked at data on income inequality, however, you���d see a different picture. In 2013, for example, the top 5 percent of households earned just 30 percent of all U.S. income (compared with possessing nearly 63 percent of all wealth).

While the U.S. is not the only developed country that has seen wealth inequality rise over the past three decades, it is an outlier. The wealthiest 5 percent of households in the U.S. have almost 91 times more wealth than the median American household, the widest gap among 18 of the world���s most developed countries. The next highest is the Netherlands, which has a ratio less than half that.

Lifting all boats?

The recently passed Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will make this problem a whole lot worse.

The main features of the law include doubling the standard deduction for individual taxpayers, a temporary reduction in the top marginal tax rate from 39.6 percent to 37 percent, a significant reduction of the number of families subject to the estate tax and slashing the top corporate rate from 35 percent to 21 percent.

The main impact, however, is skewed to the wealthy. For example, the bottom 20 percent of households will see a lower tax bill of about $40 on average, compared with $5,420 for those in the top quintile. The richest 0.1 percent, meanwhile, will save $61,920. By 2025, the richest will see their benefit grow to $152,200, while everyone else won���t see much of a change. All the individual cuts are set to expire in 2026.

Wealthier taxpayers will also gain from the other main features of the new law. For example, research shows most benefits of lowering business taxes go to the rich, and fewer estates subject to the inheritance tax means more wealth accumulation across generations.

The tax law���s proponents claim that it won���t increase levels of inequality because the money that the rich will save will ���trickle down��� to other American households and lift their boats too.

Empirical evidence, however, suggests otherwise. Specifically, channeling more money to the rich, via tax cuts, does not improve economic growth, worsens educational opportunities for poorer Americans and even reduces life expectancy, which declined for a second year in a row in 2017.

Let���s learn the facts

So is Chris Rock right that Americans just aren���t aware of the levels of disparity in their society?

Surveys suggest he is. Respondents to a 2011 national survey, for example, ���dramatically underestimated��� levels of wealth inequality in the U.S.

The survey, and other research, also partially affirmed the other half of his quote by showing that by and large Americans do care about wealth inequality and would prefer it to be lower.

Whether existing wealth inequality in the U.S. is socially or morally sustainable ��� or might lead to the riots envisioned by Chris Rock ��� is an open question.

Whatever happens, first things first, we need to know and understand just how bad wealth inequality in the U.S. has become. What we then choose to do about it is up to all of us.

Gil B. Manzon Jr., Associate Professor of Accounting, Boston College