At a deeper level, though, loneliness research forces us to acknowledge our own extraordinary malleability in the face of social forces. This susceptibility is both terrifying and exhilarating. On the terrifying side is the unhappy fact that isolation, especially when it stems from the disenfranchisement of the underprivileged, creates a bodily limitation all too easily reproduced in each successive generation. Given that we have been scaling back the kinds of programs that could help people overcome such disadvantages and that many in Congress, mostly Republicans, have been trying to defund exactly the kind of behavioral science research that could yield even better programs, we have reason to be afraid. But there’s something awe-inspiring about our resilience, too. Put an orphan in foster care, and his brain will repair its missing connections. Teach a lonely person to respond to others without fear and paranoia, and over time, her body will make fewer stress hormones and get less sick from them. Care for a pet or start believing in a supernatural being and your score on the UCLA Loneliness Scale will go down. Even an act as simple as joining an athletic team or a church can lead to what Cole calls “molecular remodeling.” “One message I take away from this is, ‘Hey, it’s not just early life that counts,’ ” he says. “We have to choose our life well.”http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113176/science-loneliness-how-isolation-can-kill-you#

After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.

—Maj. General Antonio M. Taguba (USA-Ret.), preface to Broken Laws, Broken Lives

There are at least three problems.

Coaches don't generate revenue on their own; you could make the exact same case for the student-athletes who actually play the game and score the points and fracture their legs.

It can be tough to attribute this revenue directly to the performance of the head coach. In 2011-2012, Mack Brown was paid $5 million to lead a mediocre 8-5 Texas team to the Holiday Bowl. The team still generated $103.8 million in revenue, the most in college football. You don't have to pay someone $5 million to make college football profitable in Texas.

This revenue rarely makes its way back to the general funds of these universities. Looking at data from 2011-2012, athletic departments at 99 major schools lost an average of $5 million once you take out revenue generated from "student fees" and "university subsidies." If you take out "contributions and donations"—some of which might have gone to the universities had they not been lavished on the athletic departments—this drops to an average loss of $17 million, with just one school (Army) in the black. All this football/basketball revenue is sucked up by coach and AD salaries, by administrative and facility costs, and by the athletic department's non-revenue generating sports; it's not like it's going to microscopes and Bunsen burners.

http://deadspin.com/infographic-is-your-states-highest-paid-employee-a-co-489635228

By David Roberts

The notion of “externalities” has become familiar in environmental circles. It refers to costs imposed by businesses that are not paid for by those businesses. For instance, industrial processes can put pollutants in the air that increase public health costs, but the public, not the polluting businesses, picks up the tab. In this way, businesses privatize profits and publicize costs....

So how much is that costing us? Trucost’s headline results are fairly stunning.

First, the total unpriced natural capital consumed by the more than 1,000 “global primary production and primary processing region-sectors” amounts to $7.3 trillion a year — 13 percent of 2009 global GDP.... Second, surprising no one, coal is the enemy of the human race. Trucost compiled rankings, both of the top environmental impacts and of the top industrial culprits.

Trucost’s third big finding is the coup de grace. Of the top 20 region-sectors ranked by environmental impacts, none would be profitable if environmental costs were fully integrated. Ponder that for a moment: None of the world’s top industrial sectors would be profitable if they were paying their full freight. Zero. That amounts to an global industrial system built on sleight of hand. As Paul Hawken likes to put it, we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it GDP.

http://grist.org/business-technology/none-of-the-worlds-top-industries-would-be-profitable-if-they-paid-for-the-natural-capital-they-use/

On Tuesday, Tim Lambesis, the singer for Christian heavy metal band As I Lay Dying, was arrested for allegedly attempting to hire a hitman to murder his estranged wife.

As it turns out, the “hitman” he tried to hire was actually an undercover detective, according to the San Diego County Sheriff's Department. Police were reportedly tipped off last Thursday.

"The information came to us late last week. We acted quickly on it. I believe that we averted a great tragedy," San Diego County Sheriff's Department spokeswoman Jan Caldwell told Reuters.

Lambesis was taken into custody from an Oceanside, California business without incident and was booked into Vista Jail on suspicion of solicitation of murder.

http://gawker.com/christian-heavy-metal-singer-arrested-for-hiring-hitman-494975195

There is no greater obstacle to progressive change than the idea of austerity. It has dominated economic policy in Europe, resulting in continued slow growth (or outright contraction) and high unemployment. These conditions have produced demoralized electorates that lack faith in all politicians—a cynicism that has only deepened when leftist parties have attained power and failed to revive growth. In such an environment, progressive change is not possible, and the left is reduced to purely defensive actions.

........

How did we get into such a pickle? Does the current mania for austerity make any sense whatsoever? And could the recent discrediting of Carmen Reinhart’s and Kenneth Rogoff’s influential pro-austerity paper provide any hope for the defusing of this mania? Mark Blyth’s timely new book, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea, provides answers to these questions, and they are not necessarily comforting ones.

Keynes’s anti-austerity ideas had their day of course—and a very successful day it was, lasting from the mid-’30s to the mid-’70s. But austerity ideas never went away because, as outlined above, they are rooted in an entire philosophy about the state and public debt that is not subject to disproof, especially among the conservative forces and big economic interests who embrace it. As a result, when Keynesian economics appeared to falter in the 1970s, austerity-based economics came roaring back and dominated economic thinking for decades.

Now, after a brief resurgence of Keynesian economics in 2008-2010, it is back again. (See this paper by Henry Farrell and John Quiggin for a blow-by-blow description of how this happened.) Austerity dominates today’s economic discussions, this time with the chimera of “expansionary fiscal austerity”—the idea that the way out of an economic slump is to cut spending which will lead to rising business confidence, more investment and strong growth.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113073/austerity-and-body-economic-reviewed-ruy-texeira?utm_source=The+New+Republic&utm_campaign=ca6bead3f0-TNR_Daily_050113&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1a39af5ae8-ca6bead3f0-119077293#

In an effort to build support for his second-term agenda, President Obama hit the golf course Monday with two Republican senators – part of what White House spokesman Jay Carney said is a “try anything” approach.The White House acknowledged that the golf excursion was part of its outreach to Republicans in Congress, which also included a dinner with a bipartisan group of women senators and two dinners with Republican senators. The administration is trying to build support for Mr. Obama’s second-term agenda, which includes immigration reform and an agreement to deal with America's fiscal woes......


“He is willing to try anything,” Mr. Carney said at Monday’s press briefing. “And whether it’s a conversation on the phone or a meeting in the Oval Office or a dinner in a restaurant or dinner in the residence, he going to have the same kind of conversations."

...

The press pool accompanying the president was able to only briefly observe the golfing action. On the first green, Obama chipped his first shot past the hole and “later appeared to miss a putt,” said pool reporter Bartholomew Sullivan of Scripps Howard News Service.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2013/0506/Obama-s-try-anything-bid-to-woo-GOP-moves-from-dinner-to-golf-course