Abu Dhabi Bails Out Citigroup

The Abu Dhabi Investment Fund, the sovereign fund of that oil-rich member of the UAE, has invested $7.5 billion into Citigroup; the huge stock purchase will help the bank to offset its huge expected losses.

In other financial news, S&P says that US home prices fell 1.7% this quarter, and are down 4.5% from a year ago; although the meaning of these declines (the sharpest since S&P began keeping the index in 1987) is not completely clear, Robert Shiller, Chief Economist of MacroMarkets LLC now puts the odds of the US going into recession at 50%.

Tuesday Timewaster

23/6.com has "Democratic Campaign Slogans I'd Like to See".

My personal favorites include:
"Hillary Clinton: Secretly Gay, But Isn't Everyone?"
"John Edwards: Beating A Dead Horse Since 1998"
"Vote For Kucinich: Oh, That's Right, Because Hippies Can Vote"
"Vote For Obama: It's As Close As You'll Ever Get To Making A Black Friend"

Enjoy!

"Coach" Is Code for "Clown Car Seating"

The New York Times states the obvious: you have less space in "economy" seating on an airplane than you do in this telephone booth.

However, the NYT explains the decreasing quality of cheap air travel in terms of class conflict and diminishing returns for airlines. With the price of gas going up, the overhead costs for airlines has (no pun intended) skyrocketed. Hence, amenities for the more frugal traveler have been cut: pillows, peanuts, meals, and that precious inch and a half of space that distinguishes between elbowing your neighbor and being in your neighbor's lap. By contrast, first class service has remained luxurious, with on the ground drink service, food options, massive pillows for all, and noise-cancelling headphones. Any thoughts, anyone? Will the decreasing quality of service for the majority of customers in coach class cause travelers to change their habits? Or will people just put up with it, go home, and complain on sites like flightsfromhell.com?

Somewhere, A Publicist Just Lost Her Wings

So you're Dr. Jan Adams, the cosmetic surgeon who performed the operation that allegedly killed Dr. Donda West, better known as Kanye's mom.

There's at least one man I can name who probably wants you dead.
You're being investigated by the cops.
You may lose your medical license.
Everyone now knows your name, but likely not in the way you might have wanted.
Your work has inspired dozens of stories across the world about medical malpractice.

But there's a light in the distance. You have the opportunity to go on "Larry King Live."

What happens? Check out What Would Tyler Durden Do for the answer. I think it's the shortest interview in "Larry King" history.

Californians on the way to purifying sewage water to drink

Hopefully people haven't forgotten that we're still running out of water since we finally have had some substantial rain in the last week, which we all pray will continue and get us back to a healthy level. However, if we do get enough rain to substantiate us for a longer time, we need to keep in mind that this is where we're headed if we don't continue conserving. In California (and I'm sure in other Western states where drought is a continuous problem), sewer water is being purified for drinking.

Though it is conceivable that we could get enough rain to substantiate Atlanta's appetite for water, that seems ultimately unlikely. The traditional levels of rainfall supported the traditional population, which has exploded and is rising. So, even if we don't run out of water, this has been the wake-up call to do something to address the needs of the 5 million people that now live in the Atlanta area.

My main concern, though, is how we’re going to get people in Georgia to pay enough taxes to afford an appropriate solution. Prayer can only go so far. . .

More news from the wide world of sports, or football

Keeping the light news separated from the heavy, here are a couple news items of the weird from the last couple days in the sports nation.

- Due to a rain delay last night, The NFL decided to forego the National Anthem before last night's game between Pittsburgh and Miami. This is just an interesting oversight of a time-honored tradition. Though I'm sure whatever C-list celebrity they had to sing before the Steelers played the 0-10 Dolphins was happy he or she did not have to be out there in the cold rain, how long does the Anthem really take? Three, maybe four minutes?

- And now for something completely different, but awesome nonetheless. I have the video of yet ANOTHER Auburn player being bitten by a dog during a game. Auburn head coach Tommy Tuberville claims this is the first instance he's seen of a dog bite in a game, but, obviously he doesn't remember Uga going after an Auburn player back in 1996, which, luckily, is also shown in the video. Oh, and the dog bite is listed on the injury report. Enjoy!

NFL Player dies from gunshot wound

In a bit of disheartening news from the sports world, Washington Redskins defensive back Sean Taylor died overnight from a gunshot wound inflicted on him in his home in Miami.

This is the kind of news that makes sports journalism difficult, I think. For example, how else to segue from this back to halftime of a meaningless and boring Monday Night Football game that ESPN had to hype up ridiculously to get any ratings?

I make fun of ESPN constantly for over-dramatizing stories that are not really all that serious, and there is a difference when they make things serious when they should not be. It’s easy to blast sportswriters for sensationalizing, but do they do this because the rest of the content is light, and to make a smoother transition to reporting this kind of news?

Either way, I wish Mr. Taylor a peaceful rest, and it’s a sad way to see such a talented young man go.

The Pasty Quail Travels Again: Thanksgiving in Chicago

For my Thanksgiving Holiday, I made a twelve-hour road trip with my sister, her fiancé and my lovely girlfriend Lindsey to visit my parents in Chicago — or more appropriately, where they live in the suburb of Geneva, which is pictured below.


We had a great holiday spending some time with the family, and we were able to trek into Chicago (which lies about 40 miles to the east of Geneva - about a one hour drive) for a couple visits.

Though this photo essay will be much more photo than essay, here's shot of the downtown cityscape from Millennium Park.


What you're seeing in this picture is the Cloud Gate sculpture (affectionately known as "The Bean," due to its shape), which sits at the center of the park to reflect the surrounding architecture of downtown Chicago.

Following the jumps, I've included some of the highlights of our several trips into the city. Wikipedia links abound!! Enjoy!

- The Cityscape

- The Museum Tour

Facebook has access to users' information; No one cares

So, as the title suggests, this is not really news, since most people don't know or don't care that Facebook "uses their data." To be fair, I'm not even sure what this means, but if you're one of those people that puts up your information freely on the Internet and expects some right to privacy, feel free to post your complaints here.

Back to the grind: Religion drinks too much egg nog with Politics, has nasty hangover

I've been away for a couple weeks, and there is no doubt too much news occurring the political race for me to catch up on fully. Therefore, just for goodness' sake, here's the 17th of the approximately 1 million reiterations I'll make that the Religious Right stands to sway the 2008 election.

In short, Frederick Clarkston, the article's author, dissects yet another proposition that says "No matter who becomes the next president of the United States, the American people have already won a great victory - with the total disintegration of the once all-powerful religious right." Clarkston knocks this assertion out of the park by explaining that the "Religious Right" is as strong as its ever been; namely, it has never really been unified totally, and that it still holds a strong special interest vote.

Anyway, I found the article a riveting read, so enjoy, and we'll have you back on track with all the Religion and Election 2008 you can handle over the next year.

Holiday-themed News Dump!

Returning from a pleasurable autumn holiday and heading toward the oh-so-lovely winter holiday stretch, here's a couple pieces of news in relation to said celebrations.

- From Slate, here's what (not) to do with Thanksgiving leftovers.

- Next, here's an article about the Christians vs. Christmas (sorry, but you have to click through the "Continue Gallery" button to read it). The best part of this series of columns is the illustrations. Enjoy!

- Finally, this is what happens when you shop at SkyMall for all your holiday needs.

Megachurches play key role in local economic development

Like this is any surprise. . .

This New York Times article from last Friday explains something that is not terribly shocking to any of us here at the Quail and abroad, as we've been covering the vast depths of American Christianity's bottom line for several weeks running now.

In this context, the story leads with an inspiring anecdote from Anchorage, Alaska, where a megachurch is supporting strong development in the community.

I think this can be wholly positive, and there's no question that a church's place — according to Christian belief — is to support the community. However, as we've been discussing here previously, where is the line drawn between Church and State, and more importantly, between God and Mammon?


From the article:

"Indeed, some huge churches, already politically influential, are becoming catalysts for local economic development, challenging a conventional view that churches drain a town financially by generating lower-paid jobs, taking land off the property-tax rolls and increasing traffic.

But the entrepreneurial activities of churches pose questions for their communities that do not arise with secular development.

These enterprises, whose sponsoring churches benefit from a variety of tax breaks and regulatory exemptions given to religious organizations in this country, sometimes provoke complaints from for-profit businesses with which they compete — as ChangePoint’s new sports center has in Anchorage.

Mixed-use projects, like shopping centers that also include church buildings, can make it difficult to determine what constitutes tax-exempt ministry work, which is granted exemptions from property and unemployment taxes, and what is taxable commerce."

In any case, this is not necessarily problematic from a business standpoint. The "for-profit" companies can be pissed all they want, but the name of the game is competition, and the churches have a leg up on them from a tax-break standpoint. From this perspective — and I don't think anyone would deny this — these churches are capitalistic geniuses.

However, is that the message these Christians want to send?

"The church’s leaders say they hope to draw people to faith by publicly demonstrating their commitment to meeting their community’s economic needs.

'We want to turn people on to Jesus Christ through this process,' said Karl Clauson, who has led the church for more than eight years."

Looking at this statement, it appears that there's cut-throat competition in the spiritual market as well. Again, there has been a longstanding relationship between American Protestantism and the capitalist economics — numbers of saved souls and accumulation of (rapidly decreasing in value) paper being the abstract indicators of wealth, respectively — and these kind of endeavors only seem to be merge the two realms further.

"The Choking Game" and other disturbing images

As I was watching "Football Night in America" on NBC last night, a commercial for tomorrow’s Today Show came on (side note: I've always loved the "Tomorrow, on Today" commercials; the unintended wordplay just cracks me up).

Anyhow, the top story planned to cover “The Choking Game,” a way in which young kids are asphyxiating each other in order to get high. My first instinct was to dismiss it after I got hosed by Jenkem, the not-real drug made from sewage gas. However, it turns out that The Choking Game is not a hoax, as this original report from Today in August 2005 reports, and to top that off, as this Q&A from ABC News around the same time shows, this practice is relatively horrifying.

In short, many children have died or been seriously injured from choking each other in order to get a quick high, which seems preposterous to me — I mean, whatever happened to whippits? There are plenty of good ol' fashioned inhalants around the house (markers, glue, etc.) that kids can get their hands on; why are they resorting to hurting each other?


Though the articles above are very quick to quell the idea that this is in any way sexual — similar to the way adults asphyxiate each other during sex — Freud might disagree. I'm not saying this is the case, but it might show early signs of masochism.

However, I'm not a psychoanalyst, no matter how much I may want to be, and my chosen path is simply to identify things as they are. In this context, my question is:

Should we be encouraging our kids to smoke pot and drink?

Of course not, but at the same time, demonizing these much, much safer drugs very well could be leading to people resorting to this kind of activity. Though this may or may not be true, I think The Choking Game simply proves that trying to get high is a natural human inclination (please agree or disagree at will). Would it be better, no matter what our kids are doing, just to teach them responsibility with regards to getting high? Clearly, having a sip of whiskey with their friends out back of the house is nowhere near so dangerous as momentarily killing themselves.

On that note, Happy Post-Holiday Monday!!

Georgia's #3!

Looks like the Fighting Irish can be #1 in something this year. Forbes made a list of the Top 20 most valuable college football teams in the country. There's also a link to a slideshow here.

To save you the energy of making the jump, the top five are:
1. Notre Dame Irish (Value: $101M)
2. U. Texas Longhorns (Value: $92M)
3. UGA Bulldogs ($90M)
4. U. Michigan Wolverines ($85M)
5. U. Florida Gators ($84M)

Today in Douchebags

Just when you thought online-dating was safe for normal, healthy human beings, John Fitzgerald Page, "Ivy League Grad," is on the scene.

Dubbed " the worst person in the world"by Gawker and despised the world over by women and other persons with some common sense alike, Mr. Page had a rather heated and now well-publicized exchange with a potential partner using Match.com. When a potential date rejected Mr. Page's messages through Match.com, he sent many a missive back, chronicled here by Gawker. Page has actually gotten so much press because of the incident that he appeared on CBS "Early Show" to explain his behavior.

As an Ivy League grad myself, I'd like to say to Page: Thanks for making us all look bad. See you at the reunion, putz.
EDIT: And ladies, he lives in Atlanta. Watch out.

Violent Femmes

So it's not exactly news to say that women sometimes don't like other women for no apparent reason. I, as the Quail's sole editorial board member lacking a Y chromosome and a recovering "alpha mean girl," can personally vouch for not liking other women for such nonsensical reasons as "she can't seriously think it's okay to wear a scrunchie after 1991" and "well, she just looks like a bitch."

I have never, however, disliked another woman being skinnier than me for fear that she may dominate me. Where am I getting such a wacky proposition? Jezebel.com has a review of an article appearing in December 2007's UK vogue in which British GQ Features Director Alex Bilmes tells us why women worry about their weight: to impress and oppress other women. Bilmes argues that men don't care about women's weights nearly as much as other women (and in fact, find "weight fascism" a turn off), and the real reason why women are so weight-sensitive is because women need to feel better than other women. Weight is merely a stratifying trope that women use to determine the alphas from the betas from the, well, everyone else. Check out the Telegraph's edited version of Bilmes' piece here.

On a personal note, I find it refreshing to hear that men don't care nearly as much about weight as women do. As a lady who lunches with her fellow female students two or three times a week, I find it wholly frustrating to hear "if I get that, I'll really have to work out at the gym this afternoon!" six times before the waitress even gets our drink order. My philosphy, generally speaking, is you only live once, so why not get the Riesling and the Chilean sea bass with the reduction sauce? (This may explain why I'm a spinster, but I really like reduction sauces.) I think women are more weight-conscious because men tend to like skinnier\leaner\smaller women, so women size themselves up to other women as a way of gauging how attractive they are to potential partners. Men may not dig actually hearing that women are super-body conscious, but when it comes down to it, all that body mania is for men--for women to see how hot they are and how they stack up to their potential competition in other women. For example, men may not understand why women get their eyebrows waxed, but they notice a difference between the waxed and arched eyebrow and totally untouched eyebrow.

Getting back to the article, Bilmes seems to be letting men off light in his analysis. Men may not care as much as women, but they do care...otherwise, America Ferrara (bless her heart) and Emily Blunt (to the right-- not her best photo, but she's gorgeous and sadly, had to lose weight to be in "The Devil Wears Prada") would be Googled by straight men as much as Jessica Biel and Megan Fox.*

But I want to hear your thoughts. Boys, girls -- tell me how it is.

* I picked their names at random off Maxim.com. I have no clue how often their images are Googled by straight men.

Today in Booty!

* Maclean's unveils the the "sexiest men alive". Apparently, the newly single septagenarian set--as in, single men in their 70s--is the new hot property. With women living longer than men and a high divorce rate, being an available man in the sunset of your life makes you hotter than a slice of fried gold, since you are (no Viagra joke intended) the last man standing.
* Macleans also has a profile on Faizal Sahukhan, a Canadian sex therapist who specializes in so-called "ethnic sex." Dr. Sahukhan tries to help couples communicate and foster understanding where "Western individualistic and Eastern collectivistic romantic values collide."
* Portolio.com covers how the piracy crisis affects the porn industry, specifically the impact of YouPorn (like YouTube) on Vivid Entertainment, the world's largest porn producer and distributor. Vivid has launched the careers of stars such as Jenna Jameson, Briana Banks, and Savannah Samson. (Relax -- the link is to Vivid's corporate site and is totally safe for work.)
* And Forbes.com has eight hints for healthy sex...you know...for the five people reading Forbes who actually have sex.

We Got Your Music News

* David Brooks, your friendly local conservative "New York Times" columnist, tells us how music is: too specialized, too fragmented, with too many artists who don't know their musical roots. While I would do my normal "Baby Boomers Just Don't Get It" rant here and emphasize that all that nostalgia for Hendrix and Zeppelin is a bit revisionist (#1 hits from 1977 include Shaun Cassidy, Mannfred Mann, and Meco's disco cover of the "Star Wars" theme), I'd rather just blame Sasha Frere-Jones. Stupid "New Yorker" article.
* Update on an old story: Greg, the Quail's very own Cassandra, actually scooped this story back in early October. France, per President Sarkozy, is now policing its internet users. If you get caught illegally downloading music three times, the French government reserves the right to cut off your internet access, in addition to the up to three year prison sentence for downloading. How does the government figure out who's been downloading what? By monitoring your web habits through your ISP. And in other news, the French are now at war with Eurasia and have always been at war with Eurasia.
* U.S. District Court Judge Florence-Marie Cooper has "tentatively ruled" that new defendants, including Marion "Suge" Knight, former police officer Rafael Perez, and members of the LAPD, can be added to the Wallace family's wrongful death suit against the city of Los Angeles for events related to the death of Christopher "Biggie" Wallace. Did you know that Biggie was only 24 when he died? (He died when I was in high school, but now that I'm in my mid-twenties, 24 doesn't seem so old.)
* And as long as we're talking about tumbling into irrelevance, John Edwards is hitting the campaign trail with Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt. If you don't know who Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt are, consult your local baby boomer.

Happy Return to the Quail! And News on Joe Francis!

Aloha, all:

As my first post after being back from end-of-year semester project hell and Thanksgiving break, I'd like to give y'all a little update on Mr. Joe Francis.

Mr. Francis, mastermind of the "Girls Gone..." empire, served some time in a Florida jail for contempt of court while facing trial on charges including prostitution and using minors in a sexual performance. At the same time, Francis was indicted in Nevada on federal charges of tax evasion. After his stay in Florida, Francis was transferred to a federal prison in Oklahoma, while awaiting his final transfer to Nevada for trial. Francis now claims that he endured torture and abuse from the guards at the Oklahoma federal facility, including denying him food and threatening to strap him naked to a chair for 48 hours. Is it terrible that I really don't care about what happens to boys like Joe Francis in prison?

EDIT: And I have no idea if that girl that he's holding is conscious.

Archbishop of Canterbury Calls United States Worst Imperial Power Ever

In a wide-ranging and almost comprehensible critique of American foreign policy and the conduct of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Rowan Williams, a cranky lunatic who also happens to be the Archbishop of Canterbury, said that the US is the worst imperial power ever.

As the head of the Church of England, Williams felt compelled to draw this distinction between our foreign policy in Iraq and the British treatment of India:

“It is one thing to take over a territory and then pour energy and resources into administering it and normalising it. Rightly or wrongly, that’s what the British Empire did — in India, for example. It is another thing to go in on the assumption that a quick burst of violent action will somehow clear the decks and that you can move on and other people will put it back together — Iraq, for example.”

Royal English must define some words differently than us Yanks: "administering" and "normalising" apparently have the same meaning as "violently subjugating" and "ruthlessly exploiting" would on this side of the pond; "clear[ing] the decks" and letting "other people ... put it back together" are roughly analogous to "overthrowing a dictator and maintaining a military presence for 4 and a half years."

He closes us out with this candidate for understatement of the century: Williams said the Muslim world must acknowledge that its “political solutions were not the most impressive”.

I am not defending the mistakes we've made in Iraq, or Afghanistan, nor do I want to play down the enlightened rulership the British so gracefully allowed the Indians to flourish under for 340 years, but saying that Islamo-Fascist theocratic governments managed by genocidal maniacs is "not the most impressive" political solution is letting them off a little light, don't you think?