Antonio Astray lleva 25 años pateando escenarios con Los Eskizos, Bummer o Los Espirituosos. Al frente de Los Impasibles lanza ahora su proyecto más personal. Con su disco se abre un episodio especial de RocknRoll en castellano. Playlist; Astray y los Imposibles (Condenada mujer, Como es que hay que ser, Qué hace una chica como tú en un sitio como este), Siniestro Total (Todopoderoso), Oscar Avendaño y los Profesionales (Poster central), Los Enemigos (Vida inteligente), The Filos (Soy un anormal), Plástico (Patinete homicida), Patada Voladora (John McLane), Poronosurf (Soy un desastre nena), F.A.N.T.A. (Yo no toco el casiotone), Cretins (El sol de Barcelona), Motosierras (Tiburón XIII), Nasti de Plasti (Gora anacoreta), Bye Bye Pedro (Cómete una vaca) y Rosendo (Masculino singular).
Tinder is a great app for scanning through and meeting singles in your area. It offers limited space to put your best self forward, but that’s part of the charm. Despite it’s simple format, many men post profiles shots that not only destroy their chances of finding a mate, but also send the lady swipers of Tinder into a dark spiral of fear and celibacy.
1. The Playgirl Audition
We live in a world where women get all of the cool sexy poses. Whether it’s gyrating under a waterfall or rolling around half naked on a sandy beach, women have taken a claim on the sassiest and most sensual of poses. While I appreciate social revolts, the fact remains that 99% of men cannot successfully mimic a sexy pose. While you may feel like a man-vixen rubbing yourself under that waterfall, the reaction it elicits in women is one of fear and unrelenting despair.
2. The Glamour Shot
If your profile picture required a non-ironic use of a backdrop, concealer, and velour of any kind, you’ve probably crossed over into a glamour shot. Sure, glamour shots were all the rage with rotund aunts in the 90’s, but when it comes to finding a date nowadays it’s not going to help you out, no matter how fabulous you look.
3. Dat Bass
Fishing is a fun activity that many men enjoy. However, never once has a woman described her crush in terms of “the size of his bass”. Nothing about a man holding a slimy trout stirs up any sexual feelings within our loins. We aren’t your uncle Rick and therefore, we aren’t going to base our approval of you on the size of your rainbow trout.
4. The Ladies Man
If Tinder was an app used to recruit “cool dudes who can stand next to hot ladies in bikinis” there would certainly be a need for you to post images of you standing next to hot girls in bikinis. However, the fact that you attended a Budweiser sponsored summer bash and a few of the models let your sloppy drunk ass stand next to them for a picture does not increase your ranking in the Tinder bachelor circle.
5. The Constipated Killer
It’s great that you care about your body. We can be ok with the fact that you have a PhD in broscience. In fact, we even tolerate your fitted tank top and that every one of your profile pictures was taken in the weight room. However, the picture in which you are flexing every muscle with such force that you look like a severely constipated man who is pumped to murder his next victim and stuff her dead body into a truck tire that you will hand flip for miles down a dirt road to dispose of in a bog, is unacceptable.
6. The Animal Carcass
A highly successful formula for Tinder is to pose with a pet. In fact, women will swipe right on a profile just to meet your dog. In contrast to the cutesy love feelings elicited by a man snuggling his adorable pet, is the image of a Tinder man proudly posing with a dead animal carcass. Your camo attire and the blood seeping from the freshly wounded animal on the ground beside is a dark cloud of sexless sorrow.
7. Mr. Dress-Up
Dressing up is pretty cool at Halloween. Sometimes people dress up at theme parties. My Uncle Gene dressed up as a lady on occasion. However, unless we know you and the context of the picture, seeing you full-out in costume sends creepy vibes through our bodies with such force that we are unable to even have a sex thought for up to 6 hours after the exposure.
8. The Sympathy Card
With the exception of the .009-3% of women who are immensely aroused by funerals and dying relatives, the majority of women are not getting all horned up at the sight of you embracing your feeble hospital gowned grandma on her deathbed. Save those pictures for the mantle where sweet grammy’s ashes are resting.
9. Weapons Man
It’s nice to have a man that protects us. However, in day to day life the majority of protecting needed is to divert us from stepping on a piece of chewing gum or a rogue chunk of dog crap. I would guesstimate that the most women have required a man to attack her enemies with a sword almost zero times in their lives. In fact, your profile pictures of you posing with swords, nunchucks, and bo staffs are more of an indicator of your pride in your Guild Master status than your ability to protect your lady.
10. Mr. Zany Fun Guy
If you want to show us your sense of humor the best way is to just be funny. A picture of you laughing might even suffice. However, many guys embrace their “zany guy” status with such reckless abandon that their profiles become a series of kooky faces and crazy costumes. Unless your goal is to find a small child in need of entertainment, the wild and wacky pics are going to keep you celibate.
When the countdown on the “Emma You Are Next” website ended, predictably it did not end with any nude photos. Instead it redirected to the website of a company called Rantic Marketing, whose website is plastered with a giant “#Shutdown4chan” logo and whose CEO, “Brad Cockingham” (I think you can see where this is going) claims in an open letter to President Barack Obama that they’ve been hired by “Celebrity publicists” to bring attention to the privacy-invading actions of 4chan.
Here’s the thing, though: Rantic Marketing doesn’t exist. It’s a front for a small team of hoaxers who once called themselves SocialVEVO and create these fake stories and websites in order to capitalize on page views before the general public figures out the truth. Previous known pranks include spreading rumors that the GTAV PC version would not be cancelled and then pretending that their own website had been hacked by 4chan; creating another fake countdown that promised to reveal a special message from Family Guy’s Brian shortly after the character’s death on the show; pretending to be NASA during the government shutdown; and running a fake Fox vertical known as “Fox Weekly,” on which the first article about the Emma Watson countdown was written. That article has since been deleted, but you can still view the cached version.
While it’s a relief that nobody was legitimately planning retaliation against the actress for her UN speech (although if Death and Taxes is to be believed, some 4Chan users also took the bait and were more than willing to revel in Watson’s public shaming), considering how terrible the past few months have been for women who use the Internet—enduring the trolls in #GamerGate, the theft and proliferation of hundreds of female celebrity nudes, that YouTube celebrity who claims he pretended to grope women on the street as a way to fight domestic violence—that someone would choose to capitalize on the widespread online harassment of women to make money is much more upsetting than the fact that it actually worked. Which is precisely why they chose it, of course.
Hey, guys? You can go back to making pranks about Family Guy characters that don’t contribute to a pervasive culture of sexism and anti-woman rhetoric on the Internet, thanks. We’d really appreciate it.
If you don’t remember Popples I’ll let the wonderful Dan Van Winkle explain them to you succinctly: “They fold up inside of themselves. They are like kangaroos but ones that ride in their own pouches.”
That about covers it, right? Though to be fair, I had to hit Wikipedia up for these details as I was just a wee lass when these were popular and I didn’t consider things like greeting card companies owning my favorite characters. Popples are “characters created by Those Characters From Cleveland (TCFC), a subsidiary company of American Greetings,” according to Wikipedia. “Susan Trentel, who worked for TCFC and had created the first prototypes on Strawberry Shortcake and Care Bears, was the plush designer who invented the method for transforming the Popple.”
They were just cute and fun, OK? Anyway, toys were made by Mattel, and there was a television series with a live-action pilot from Shelley Duvall (of Faerie Tale Theater fame, natch), followed by an animated show. I can’t recall if I watched it.
Fast forward to today: “Netflix said Wednesday that it’s partnered with Saban Brands on a new original show about the 1980s toy line, ordering 26 half-hour episodes that will be available for streaming in 2015,” writes The Hollywood Reporter.
Haim Saban, chairman and CEO of Saban Capital Group said, “We look forward to debuting this new Popples series to children around the world. Netflix continues to be a great strategic partner, delivering compelling content that kids can enjoy anywhere and everywhere. With the global reach of Netflix, we know Popples will reach a whole new generation of kids that will love it as much as their parents.”
THR doesn’t specify if it will be animated, but I think that’s a good bet. What do you think of the Popples making a comeback?
As the bulk of the global population gets progressively older, most of us worry about the potential problems it'll create. But a new study suggests that aging and the social changes that go along with it may introduce many positive benefits.
Terry looked at me. He said: "Do not underestimate this anger. This anger was the engine that powered Good Omens." I thought of the driven way that Terry wrote, and of the way that he drove the rest of us with him, and I knew that he was right. Neil Gaiman on Terry Pratchett.
¿Qué come Alejandro Jodorowsky? No lo sé pero tiene 85 años y habla como si no tuviese edad. Llevaba sin rodar más de 20 años, se ha hecho de rogar, pero el pasado martes 23 presentó en Madrid, en los cines Palafox, su última película, La danza de la realidad. Un ejercicio autobiográfico terapéutico en el que visitamos, con el Jodorowsky actual, al Jodorowsky niño para compartir sus miedos, inseguridades y traumas. Los personajes, sus padres; los lugares, Tocopilla y los hechos, esos atropellos, son verdaderos. Lo que vemos, sin embargo, es un desfile colorido y rocambolesco lleno de simbolismo y pensado para ser esa mano tendida que invita a nuestro inconsciente a bailar con la realidad.
«Todo lo que temes es lo que quieres», parafrasea Alejandro en el coloquio posterior a la proyección. Anteriormente, durante la película, el niño Jodorowsky se ha desvivido por una pizca de amor de su padre a quien obviamente teme. Ese niño enclenque y afeminado todavía vive en Jodorowsky adulto, en su memoria, sobre todo en esa memoria-programación de identidad que tiene lugar cuando somos muy pequeños. Ese niño vive en él y sus traumas le condicionan ahora porque según el artista replicamos afectivamente lo que experimentamos cuando chicos.
Si tuvimos un padre violento, buscaremos la violencia en nuestra relación. Si tuvimos una madre sobreprotectora, buscaremos la sobreprotección en las otras personas. Este programa se encuentra en nuestro inconsciente que no entiende de tiempo. Por eso, el niñito Jodorowsky sigue dentro del adulto Jodorowsky y por eso es posible viajar para ayudarlo. Para ayudarte a ti mismo.
Color vivo. Imágenes megalíticas y oníricas. Color vivo. Tullidos y enanos: representación física de nuestra condición interior. Iniciación. Incomprensión y risa. Color vivo. Niño, tienes que ser un hombre, no seas marica. Violencia, sexo y exageración. Impotencia. Mano agarrotada: existencia agarrotada. Amenaza, vulnerabilidad y dolor. Fuego, redención. La película habla en bruto.
Un lenguaje sin pulir, ajeno a muchos convencionalismos de la representación tradicional. Algo sí que concede para que sea inteligible y para que atrape al espectador, aunque a veces no lo consiga y te escupa durante momentos del hechizo cinematográfico, al menos en mi caso. Pero bueno, Jodorowsky hace lo que quiere y lo que quiere gusta. Ya lo dice él bien claro, «el cine industrial está enfermo porque su propósito principal es hacer dinero».
A él el dinero le da igual, si lo pierde no le importa. Y no lo dudo, aunque también quiera ganarlo, al menos para hacer otra película. Para expresarse. Quizás no sea tan diferente de otros creadores. Pero sí que lo es. Su arte tiene un cartel de neón bien encendido en el que pone: terapéutico. Y pienso: ¿no es el arte en sí mismo terapéutico? ¿No agita y expande nuestras consciencias? Sí, pero esto no es una colleja de consciencia, es una hostia bien dada. Como las que le propina el padre al niño en la película. También su lenguaje artístico le hace muy diferente. Y la integración de muchas corrientes de pensamiento y expresión en lo que conforma su cóctel personal de vida.
Tiene sello de autenticidad y no de ese bien diseñado por el marketing, sino de uno que no se ve pero se siente. Se siente fuerte. Como si a lo largo de su vida no hubiese parado hasta liberarse de sus cadenas para ahora volver y mostrarse desnudo: mira, esta es la jaula del tigre, yo me meto y juego con él y no pasa nada. Vosotros también podéis. ¿Por qué su arte es tan generoso y llega tan puro, si habla todo el rato de sí mismo?
Cuando termina la proyección, aparece la estrella del show. La gente, adormecida por los créditos a oscuras tras más de dos horas de peli, revive en su butaca a base de aplausos y expectación. A mí me da la impresión de que la mayoría de gente está aquí para verle. Siendo sincero, yo también. Al principio todo resulta raro, forzado. Qué dice el interlocutor. Por Dios, es Jodorowsky, que no hable de su película, que nos cuente su vida, es la corriente que se respira en la sala.
El tipo se apoya en la butaca como una gamba con resaca. A ver, tiene 85 años, dejemos que entre en calor su motor. En seguida coge el trance ese que llama, se levanta y le gana 30 años al crono y comienza a hablar con el corazón. «¿Saben lo que me pasó cuando…? Este ¿quién era ese?». Le pregunta al interlocutor despreocupado, como si estuviese en el salón de su hogar con su familia. «Ah sí, este Kanye West, que yo no sabía que era tan famoso y que quería verme. […] Y, ¿saben?, ahora me siento como un gorila al que la gente quiere ver tras el escaparate».
Ahí hacemos todos clic y miramos todavía mejor. «Yo trato de sembrar consciencia, porque es lo único que puede cambiar el mundo… La verdad, la belleza». Asistimos todos juntos, los 200 y pico, a la encarnación de la suma de todos nuestros abuelos que nos habla con ternura y nos cuenta los secretos del mundo, de nuestro mundo. Nos muestra la puerta de un sendero de futuro-aventura que vive ahora mismo en nosotros, igual que aquel niñito enclenque y afeminado. Y aceptamos la invitación y salimos a la pista y nos ponemos todos juntos a bailar con ese abuelo sin edad que sigue bailando con paso firme y ligero la danza de la realidad.
La historia del origen de Batman ha sido llevado en muchas ocasiones a la gran y pequeña pantalla, tanto en imagen real como en animación. Ahora tras el estreno de ‘Gotham’, la nueva serie de Fox (cuya crítica hemos publicado ayer mismo en La Casa de EL) que recrea de nuevo la muerte de los padres de Batman antes de convertirse en Batman (es decir, los padres de Bruce Wayne), el canal de Youtube de New York Magazine ha publicado un video de dos minutos en el que podemos ver simultáneamente todas ellas en una muy lograda edición de video.
Es sin duda uno de los sucesos más trágicos en todo el universo DC. Thomas y Martha Wayne salen del teatro con su joven hijo Bruce pero al entrar en un callejón un atracador armado con un revolver sale a su paso para robar lo que pueda. La cosa no acaba bien, sino todo lo contrario. Con un par de disparos el atracador acaba con la vida de la aristocrática pareja, y deja allí al joven Wayne para llorar su muerte. Un recuerdo imborrable en la mente de un niño que moldeará su personalidad y definirá su futuro, y que ahora nosotros podemos ver una y otra vez en varios marcos de la pantalla, muy al estilo ’24′…
The artists on this compilation are believers of that lesser known maxim "If at first you DO succeed, may as well try again." Each of these songs represents an attempt at a shameless cash-in on a formula that, well, worked once. Most were an artist's immediate follow-up to a chart hit while others were later stabs at jumpstarting stalled careers. Either way, send in the clones.trax:
1. Like Columbus Did - THE REFLECTIONS 2. Lost In My World - THE OUTSIDERS 3. I Make a Fool Of Myself - FRANKIE VALLI 4. Why Do Kids Grow Up - RANDY & THE RAINBOWS 5. Daylight Savings Time - KEITH 6. Explosion In Your Soul - THE SOUL SURVIVORS 7. Come Along - MAURICE WILLIAMS & THE ZODIACS 8. Kiss Me Quick - TERRY STAFFORD 9. Can't Do 60 No More - BILLY WARD & THE DOMINOS 10. No Escape - THE SEEDS 11. The Bluebird, The Buzzard and The Oriole - BOBBY DAY 12. Can You Do It - THE CONTOURS 13. Chickasaw County Child - BOBBIE GENTRY 14. Bird Dance Beat - THE TRASHMEN 15. Mo' Onions - BOOKER T & THE MG's 16. Little Marie - CHUCK BERRY 17. Get Out Of My House - ERNIE K-DOE 18. Nau Ninny Nau - CANNIBAL & THE HEADHUNTERS 19. I've Got Sand In My Shoes - THE DRIFTERS 20. Jaybirds - CHARLIE & INEZ FOXX 21. She's All Mine - DAVE CLARK FIVE 22. Mama-Oom-Mow-Mow - THE RIVINGTONS 23. Come On - TOMMY ROE 24. I'm Hangin' Up My Rifle - BOBBY BARE (Bill Parsons) 25. Gravy (For My Mashed Potatoes) - DEE DEE SHARP 26. Gotta New Girl - BOBBY DAY 27. See You At the Go-Go - DOBIE GRAY 28. Beyond - THE CHANTAYS 29. Forgive Me, Clawdy - LLOYD PRICE & HIS BAND 30. There Oughta Be A Law - MICKEY & SYLVIA 31. I Know a Place Where the Nuts Hunt the Squirrels - NAPOLEON XIV
You could read the entire Game of Thrones collection in 155 days. (269 days faster than the average person!) Yay!
It takes the average person 424 days to read the all five Game of Thrones books. Do you think you could do any better?
There are basically two ways to check this. One would be to go ahead and read all fivebooks. The other would be to take this quiz and find out the answer before you actually start the reading. (The test is also found at this link.)
The average person could read Game of Thrones in 484 days. Click the image to find out if you could read it faster. (via BlinkBox Books).
The quiz is designed by Blinkbox Books. Here's how it works. Once you hit "start," you'll be shown a portion of a text from Madame Bovary. The quiz will time how long it takes you to read and comprehend this text, which will be determined by a series of three multiple choice questions stemming from the reading. If you answer any incorrectly, you'll be prompted to read the paragraph again. You'll then be asked how many minutes per day you'd like to read. (The site suggests selecting 10 minutes if you are not currently an avid reader.)
Based on the length of time it takes you to read and comprehend the selection and how many minutes each day you can commit to reading, the quiz will generate its personalized estimate for how long it will take you to read Game of Thrones. Your estimate will also be compared to that of the "average person."
The quiz will also tell you how long it will take you to get through some other popular works of literature, including dense novels like War and Peace and Ulysses.
Sure, it might seem daunting to think about reading Les Miserables — but this quiz helps you think about it differently. Rather than thinking of the entire book as one monotonous read, you can, instead, think of it as 54 tiny, 20-minute excerpts.
And just in case you want it, here's an article with an infographic showing the national averages for how long it takes to read 64 popular books.
Major advocates on both sides of the marijuana legalization debate agree that teens shouldn't use marijuana, but exactly why they shouldn't — and how much of an effect marijuana has on teens in the first place — is a subject of much dispute in the research world.
Over the decades, public figures have associated teen marijuana use with all sorts of bad outcomes. Some groups claim it leads to lower IQ scores. Others have compared pot to more dangerous opiates. Newscoverage of recent studies seems to support the concern that marijuana is very dangerous for adolescents. But while the available research may at times seem conclusive, experts haven't been able to prove that marijuana directly causes these issues.
But questions surrounding teen pot use are becoming increasingly important as the nation adopts an increasingly favorable look toward marijuana legalization. And with much of the research still in its infancy, this developing field of study could provide ammo for both sides of the legal pot movement as the topic moves to the mainstream.
There are reasons to believe marijuana is bad for teens
The research on teen marijuana use is close to unanimous in at least one sense: More frequent marijuana use appears to correlate with various detrimental effects, including worse education outcomes and cognitive deficiencies. These are correlations, though, and researchers have yet to prove a causal relationship. But that doesn't mean there isn't one.
Some experts caution that there's some reason to believe that the relationship between frequent marijuana use and bad outcomes is causal. Researchers know, for instance, that marijuana interacts with receptors in the brain that peak during adolescence and are particularly sensitive to outside exposure. Some of this development continues into the mid-20s, which means even young adults may be at risk to the detriments of pot use.
"There are converging lines of evidence that regular (at least weekly [to] daily) cannabis use during the teenage and young adult years is associated with poorer cognitive function (verbal memory, processing speed, cognitive inhibition, sustained attention)," Krista Lisdahl, director of the brain imaging and neuropsychology lab at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, wrote in an email. "We also see subtle abnormalities in brain structure and function, as well as poorer self-reported mood and sleep quality. The effects are greatest in teens, then young adults, and less so in adults over 25."
Not everyone is as convinced as Lisdahl, and the debate has sometimes played out quite publicly in the research world. For example, one study published in PNAS in 2012 found that people who use marijuana as adolescents tend to have lower IQ scores. But another study, published in the same journal, subsequently concluded the findings could be nearly eliminated by controlling for socioeconomic variables.
Ole Rogeberg, who authored the study that controlled for socioeconomic variables, elaborated on his findings in an email: "The data tells us that kids from difficult backgrounds and kids with social and behavioral problems tend to start smoking marijuana earlier and more heavily. The data also tells us that early and heavy marijuana users on average go on to do worse in various ways than teens who abstain. What we are less sure of is why."
A similar debate took off when a big study published in The Lancet found daily marijuana users ended up having a range of bad outcomes, including a 62 percent reduced chance of finishing college. The study was held up as credible for two reasons: It employed a lot of rigorous controls that ranged from the economic to the social, and the bad outcomes worsened as teens reported more marijuana use. Combined, the controls and trajectory of the findings suggest a strong relationship between pot and some bad outcomes.
Joseph Palamar, a professor at New York University's Langone Medical Center who has conducted his own research into teen pot use and the stigma surrounding it, isn't so sure. While he praised the Lancet study for its strong controls, he said there could still be unaccounted variables, particularly any stigma surrounding pot use, influencing the results.
It's possible, for instance, that teachers are biased against students who use marijuana and, as a result, complicate pot users' education. "Since marijuana use is an illegal behavior, it may be that teachers pinpoint users and start getting on their cases," Palamar explained.
Edmund Silins, one of the authors of the Lancet study, called Palamar's suggestion "plausible" and acknowledged the difficulty in this field of study. "You have highlighted a good example of how complex this area of study is," he wrote in an email. "It is not possible to control for every factor that might explain the association between cannabis use and harms. I wish we could."
But Silins added, "My view is that including an additional control factor [such as stigma] over and above 53 other factors that had already been included in the analysis is probably unlikely to make much difference. But that hypothesis remains to be tested through research."
The research on mental health issues is even less conclusive. Somestudies linked the use of marijuana to psychotic disorders, but otherresearch suggests people with psychotic disorders may be predisposed to pot use. Working through these types of contradictions makes evaluating the research — and conducting it — complicated.
At the same time, there's general agreement that teens shouldn't use marijuana. Part of that goes beyond the research on pot's effects on the brain: Regardless of how bad the drug is for someone's mental health, teens are at risk of losing control of their marijuana use at a particularly important point in their lives.
Teen marijuana abuse could have lifelong effects
A less tangible impact of marijuana isn't its effect on physical or mental health, but rather its effect on productivity. If a teenager gets caught up in using pot every day, she might spend so much of her time impaired that she'll never, for example, be able to concentrate on her schoolwork, falling into a potentially bad habit and career path for the rest of her life.
"The main risk of cannabis is losing control of your cannabis intake," Mark Kleiman, a drug policy expert at New York University's Marron Institute, said. "That's going to have consequences in terms of the amount of time you spend not fully functional. When that's hours per day times years, that's bad."
Jon Caulkins, a drug policy expert at Carnegie Mellon University, put it another way: "At some level, we know that spending more than half of your waking hours intoxicated for years and years on end is not increasing the likelihood that you'll win a Pulitzer Prize or discover the cure for cancer."
This could explain some of the poor educational outcomes associated with teen marijuana use. It's not that pot permanently makes teens dumber, but these kids may be high so often that they simply can't apply themselves in school. As more research comes out, we should get a clearer answer to this question: Is pot actually damaging a teen's brain, or does the high only make someone temporarily impaired?
More research is coming
As the debate continues, more research is sure to come on the full effects of marijuana. As with other developing fields of research, one can expect that many, many studies will come out in the next few years — and some will contradict each other, while others will concur. Over time, a clearer consensus should appear on the drug's effects.
"[W]e do need additional research following young teens over time to ensure some of these findings are not there before the drug use," the University of Wisconsin's Lisdahl wrote in an email. "The scientific community, led by the National Institutes of Health, is in the process of designing a large, multi-site, longitudinal study that will measure the impact of cannabis, nicotine, alcohol use, and other drugs on the developing brain before drug use starts and into early adulthood."
This type of longitudinal research requires years and even decades of follow-up to fully flesh out. And researchers can't rely on old data to conduct longitudinal analyses: Since marijuana has gotten more potent over the decades — and potentially more harmful to the teen brain — researchers will need to launch new analyses with the modern, more powerful drug to gauge its full effects.
"[T]he key problem with all of these studies is that they are looking at the impacts of low-potency [marijuana], not the 15- to 20-percent THC potency stuff people are smoking today," Rosalie Pacula, a co-director at the RAND Drug Policy Research Center, wrote in an email. "The mental health effects of 5-percent THC (and some CBD) are expected to be quite different than the mental health effects of high-THC, low-CBD cannabis."
But with the nation already in majority support of legalization, voters may end up moving more quickly than the science on this issue. Still, for that to matter, full legalization would need to increase teen pot use, therefore exposing more teens to a potentially dangerous drug — and whether legalization increases teen use is unclear.
Marijuana legalization might not increase teen pot use
Marijuana's potential risks to teenagers don't necessarily justify keeping pot illegal. Even in states with legal marijuana, buying and possessing the drug remains illegal for anyone under 21. And there's no conclusive evidence so far that legalizing marijuana increases teen pot use.
Silins, of the Lancet study, pointed to previous research that found teen pot use didn't increase in states that legalized medical marijuana — which can often look a lot like legalization, since regulations are so weak that practically anyone can get a medical card and buy pot.
But the research didn't account for variation in medical marijuana laws — whether the state allows dispensaries that sell pot, home growing, or neither. A comprehensive study of medical marijuana laws from researchers at the RAND Corporation found policies that allow medical marijuana dispensaries correlate with increases in overall marijuana use and dependence for adults 21 and older but only rises in dependence among youth. More research will flesh out the full effects.
In Colorado, teen pot use declined after the state legalized medical marijuana in 2001, dispensaries began opening after 2007, and possession was fully legalized for adults 21 and older in December 2012. But the available data is before retail sales began in 2014, and it's possible the full legalization of sales and the commercialization that comes with it could have a different effect on adolescent pot use.
Opponents of legalization, such as Kevin Sabet of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, argue that the commercialization of legal pot encourages for-profit retailers to market their products to young people — to get them hooked on the drug early. He points to marijuana-infused edibles, which often come in candy form, as products that appeal to youth. "Kids are getting the message that [marijuana use] is okay," Sabet said.
Marijuana legalization advocates, on the other hand, argue that a legalized, regulated model can do more to decrease teen pot use than prohibition. They point to the past few decades of the war on drugs, which didn't significantly reduce and hold down illicit drug use, and contrast it with the decades-long decline of teen alcohol and tobacco use. Public health officials and experts widely attribute the decline of alcohol and tobacco use to more stringent regulations, including the harsher enforcement of age restrictions at vendors, and education campaigns that teach teens the risks of drug use.
"No one wants kids using marijuana. We should be doing everything we can to prevent it," Mason Tvert, spokesperson for the pro-legalization Marijuana Policy Project, said. "I think [prohibition] is utterly failing to prevent it."
There's some reason to believe that carrying out similar regulations and education campaigns against legal marijuana will be more difficult. While it's very easy to tell teens about the clear risks of alcohol and tobacco, it's difficult to establish a campaign line for pot that won't seem hyperbolic or false, since the science on marijuana's health effects isn't settled and the effects of the drug, if they're real, can take years or decades to culminate. It's much easier, then, to point out the dangers of tobacco or alcohol without coming off as sensationalist.
Some states are trying to make anti-marijuana campaigns work. As the first state to fully legalize marijuana for possession and sales, Colorado attached the beginning of legalization to an education campaign that will attempt to warn teens of the potential risks of marijuana while acknowledging the science isn't settled. This balance of embracing legalization while trying to avoid teen pot use, researchers say, could be the right way to adopt reforms.
"[G]iven the findings of the Lancet paper, it would be wise that any cannabis legislative reforms be carefully assessed to make sure they decrease adolescent cannabis use and prevent potentially adverse effects," Silins wrote in an email. "There are likely to be some advantages to decriminalizing or legalizing cannabis, for example, in terms of reduced criminality, but these need to be weighed up alongside evidence of its potential harms."
If you happen to have a surplus of condoms and are too desperately alone and sad to ever need them for sex, good news: You can now use them to cook food.
All you need is the condom cookbook, called “Condom Meals I Want To Make For You.” The book was co-written by manga writer Kyosuke Kagami. It’s sort of a tongue-in-cheek method to raise awareness for safe sex—Japan is apparently not the most adept at using condoms—but still, the recipes themselves seem to be legit.
You can order the book here, and start cooking appetizing things like “Condom Meat Stuffing” and “Condom Push Sushi.” Yum. Note that none of the recipes require you to actually eat the condoms. Still, it’s probably not recommended for those with peanut or latex allergies.
It used to be that the TV series Americans were able to consume were all pretty much produced right here in the US. Acclaimed shows from other shores — even countries that spoke English — rarely showed up in America, and if they did, it was only sporadically on PBS. But in the last several years, that's been changing. More and more British, Canadian, and Australian series arrive here every day, and sites like Hulu bring in shows that aren't in English (like Hatufim, the Israeli show that served as inspiration for Homeland).
And then there's DramaFever, an online video streaming service specializing in TV series and films from Asia. DramaFever has become one of the leading distributors of international content in the United States since its 2009 launch.
"we thought our audience was going to be korean-american — and we couldn't have been more wrong."
DF says its total monthly unique viewers — which includes syndication partners like Hulu and YouTube — quadrupled from 2012 to 2013, growing from 2.5 million to 10 million. And it just keeps growing, currently sitting at 20 million.
Big brands have noted this rapid growth, as Ad Week reports. Toyota, AT&T, Verizon, and Samsung have all purchased ads on DramaFever. The site's content is available in more places than ever and has expanded beyond Asian programming: it's signed deals with Hulu, AMC, and YouTube, and in December 2012, it began streaming programming from Spanish language broadcaster Telemundo.
When DramaFever launched with just four employees, co-founders Suk Park and Seung Bak weren't expecting things to take off quite like they did. "When we started five years ago, we thought our audience was going to be Korean-American," Park told me over the phone. "But we couldn't have been more wrong."
Non-Asians really, really love Korean dramas
Indeed, 85 percent of DramaFever's audience, Park said, is non-Asian, with 45 percent being Caucasian and 25 percent being Latino. "All types of ethnicities," Park told me, "are seeking out foreign content" because it "speaks to them more than … traditional television."
DramaFever carries a diverse library of content but is mostly known for its Korean dramas, more popularly known as K-dramas. K-dramas vary in story and setting, of course, but what they have in common is that each series is self-contained — meaning, one season long and telling a complete story — and usually takes as its central plot a chaste romance. In fact, a first kiss usually happens seven or eight episodes into the narrative, which usually contains around 16 to 20 episodes. "What is focused on [in K-dramas] is relationships," Park said. "Not really sex but how true lovers struggle to make romance a reality."
"Entertainment is a gateway to culture."
Take, for example, DF's new drama Blade Man, which tells the love story of a video game executive and a game designer. It sounds pretty much like the setup for your typical meet cute, until you realize that the rich executive, played by Korean star Lee Dong-Wook, has a condition where his anger manifests as actual blades growing from his body. Then there's My Love From The Star — which is being remade by the American network ABC — which is about a famous actress who falls in love with a 400 year-old alien. And in a few weeks, DF will premiere Servant, which the streaming service is billing as a version of Sex and the City set during the time of Korea's Chosun Dynasty.
Park admits that DramaFever's content differs from what Western audiences are used to. But that might be why his service is finding such success. According to Park, Millennials — who make up DF's largest audience — think it's important to explore cultural narratives that differ from their own. As a "machine of empathy," Park thinks television is one way to open up and explore fresh narratives. "Entertainment is a gateway to culture," he says.
Jung Ji-hoon and Krystal Jung in My Lovable Girl. (DramaFever)
The 'Confucian values' of K-dramas
K-dramas differ from American soaps in ways other than their lack of sex. Park told me much of his site's content is "deeply rooted in traditional Confucian values," like responsibility and respect. Most of DF's stories, says Park, explore the tension between loving someone and "the responsibility that character feels to his family, career, and other types of relationships."
Seventy percent of DramaFever's catalogue is from Asia, with more than half of that comprised of Korean titles. The rest is imported from Japan, Taiwan, and other Asian countries. DramaFever also airs the aforementioned Spanish-language content from Telemundo, and its children's channel includes animated programming from France and the United Kingdom. "It's never too early to expose kids to different storytelling from around the world," says Park.
All things K
A writer at Dramabeans, known as Javabeans, was quoted in CNN discussing how pop culture provides a "depoliticized" bridge between two disparate cultures.
Dramas and pop culture bridge a gap that can't be achieved through official policy or political maneuvering. What people respond to is the universality of the themes, coupled with the unique perspective of this one particular culture. It's fresh, without being quite foreign. In cultivating Hallyu abroad, you've exported your cultural perspective in a warm, friendly package.
That K-dramas have bolstered South Korea's cultural capital is quite established. In May 2013, Park was invited to Los Angeles to participate in the Leaders' Meeting for Creative Economy. The meeting brought together South Korean government and entrepreneurs to discuss Korea's economic growth on the world stage. Park was there to discuss how DramaFever and similar initiatives were helping to bolster South Korea's global influence. "We've always believed," he said in a press release, "that through the distribution of Korean content we are increasing Korea's country brand and promoting its culture and global initiatives."
In political terminology, what Park is talking about is called soft power — a term coined by Joseph Nye to refer to "the ability to achieve goals through attraction rather than coercion." Unlike hard power, writes Nye, South Korea's soft power "is not prisoner to … geographical limitations," meaning its cultural influence can easily exceed its borders, so long as a global demand for its products exists. And as DramaFever's numbers show, this demand is already there.
Kim Soo-hyun and Jun Ji-hyun in My Love From Another Star. (DramaFever)
America's fascination with all things K dates back to the 90s, when the Korean Wave — called hallyu — made its way from its East Asian home and suddenly swept over much of the globe, shining a light on South Korea's unique pop culture.
pop culture provides a depoliticized bridge between disparate cultures
There's always talk about diversity in entertainment, and the upshot is usually that we could use more of it. Engaging with viewpoints different from our own is a necessary exercise, and in watching TV series and movies from other countries, we can imagine what it might be like to live there, even as we realize just how universal many of these stories truly are.
For while many of DramaFever's narratives seem to push against Hollywood's most famous tropes, the site's PG stories might be closer to home than we think. As K-drama-obsessed Claire Carusillo notes in Vice, "There's no nationalism in liking to look at attractive people while they look at each other and decide whether or not to make out." And as long as that's true, the US will have plenty of viewing options, beyond just the homegrown.
Where’s Israel? That’s one of the most interesting, and widely ignored, questions to come out of the US bombing campaign against Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq. Two days into the bombing, and there’s near-silence from Israel, a country not known for shyness about military operations on its borders.
The only public reaction from Bibi Netanyahu so far is this vague mumble about helping behind the scenes:
Netanyahu said Israel was also contributing to the international coalition. “Israel is carrying out its part in the struggle against the IS organization,” he said. “Some of the things are better known and some are less known.”
Bibi Netanyahu is not a shy sort of guy. When he talks like this about a bombing campaign targeting Islamic radicals, something odd is going on.
Israel sent a message about how it views the US campaign against IS without using words at all. On the same day that American forces were attacking IS bases in Syria, Israel shot down a MiG-21 from Assad’s Alawite forces over the Golan Heights. Quite a moment in Middle Eastern military history: While the US was intervening to attack the Sunni jihadis, the IDF underlined its view of the real enemy by knocking down one of Assad’s antique fighters out of the sky.
That ancient MiG wasn’t downed because it was a threat to Israel, or because it was over the line. It was downed as a gesture. Bibi and his Likud allies are sulking, because the way they see it, we’re bombing the wrong Syrians. The Israeli elite has always wanted the US to intervene in the Syrian Civil War—but not against the Sunni jihadists, as we’re doing now. They want American planes and drones to obliterate the other side–the Alawites’ Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its Hezbollah allies.
Nobody ever seems to mention it, but the supposedly fearsome IS now owns the ground right under Israel’s Golan Heights fortifications, after moving in in June 2014 when the weary SAA, tired of being shelled by the IDF, moved out.
So IS has been in place right there on Israel’s border for months now—and there’s been no attack from Israel. Yes, folks, you might actually get the impression that the Israelis—who know a thing or two about threat assessment—just don’t take IS very seriously.
In fact, IS is a convenient little irritant, as seen from Jerusalem, a useful way to annoy the real enemy—the Shia/Alawite/Iran bloc.
And a year ago, when it looked like that might happen, Israel and its stateside proxies weren’t shy at all. They were all for intervention.
Yup, almost exactly one year ago, the US was only a poll or two away from blasting Assad’s bedraggled SAA. Someone in the SAA had given the war party in D.C. all it needed, a perfect provocation, an atrocity so atrocious it seemed like a P.R. man’s fantasy. On August 21, 2013, someone—most likely Assad’s SAA—crossed Obama’s “red line” by using poison gas against Sunni neighborhoods in Ghouta, east of Damascus.
At least 300 people died, most of them women and children. It was the stupid provocation the war party in D.C. had been praying for—and the biggest cheerleaders back then were neocons closely tied to Netanyahu’s Likud Party. There was no silence from Israel or its stateside lobbyists back then. God no. They were weeping TV tears (like crocodile tears but with Nutrasweet) over those dead kids and demanding the USAF start bombing Assad/Hezbollah targets immediately.
The Israeli lobby AIPAC was planning “a major…effort with about 250 activists in Washington to meet with their senators and representatives” and urge them to support air strikes against SAA/Hezbollah.
AIPAC got a big surprise: Its Surge didn’t work. For once, the American people had met a war proposal they didn’t like.
Part of the problem was the difficulty of explaining why the US was going to provide air support for Sunni jihadis who’d already made a few too many snuff videos, and lacked the finesse to soft-pedal their admiration for Al Qaeda. Besides, this was an Obama war, which meant that the right-wing audience, normally suckers for a good bombing campaign, decided they just wouldn’t be able to enjoy it. And Obama’s supporters drew the line at going back into combat in the Arab Middle East—Bush Country.
So after looking like a sure thing, the September 2013 Syrian bombing campaign never happened. And Israel was not happy at all.
Israel decided long ago that only the Shia are what noted Zionist Walter Sobchak would call “a worthy fuckin’ opponent.” If you look at the pattern of Israeli intervention in Syria since the Civil War began there, you find the IDF strikingAssad’sSAAtargetsover and over, especially when the SAA might have been transferring weapons to Hezbollah—but to the best of my knowledge, not once attacking any Sunni jihadi forces like IS.
The Israeli view seems to be that only the Shia forces—the SAA, Hezbollah, and above all their patron Iran—are serious threats. Meanwhile, they’ve been treating Sunni jihadi militias like IS like de facto allies, never once attacking Sunni militias dug in just below the Golan Heights.
Israel considers Sunni militias a useful virus to introduce to the Levantine Shia environment, an organic pesticide that’s effective against Hezbollah and Assad. What that also suggests is that, while most gullible Western news agencies are talking up IS as the reincarnation of Khalid ibn al-Walid’s cavalry, Israel has no fear of IS, or any other Sunni jihadi force in Syria, at all.
Israel fears Hezbollah and its backer, Iran—period. So the next time you hear idiots like Senator Lindsey Graham blithering about IS chopping us all up in our beds one of these days, remind him that his favorite ally is so comfy with IS, so contemptuous of IS’s combat ability, that the IDF has coddled an IS outpost right below its most sensitive strategic position on the Golan Heights.
I remember getting to read the first issue of Garth Ennis’ new series Rover Red Charlie early so I could do up some interview questions for Ennis and artist Michael Dipascale about the series. The story was simple, following three dogs as they try to survive and understand as a worldwide plague destroys mankind. It was brutal and heart-wrenching and like nothing else I’d read before. It comes across differently than any other post-apocalyptic story out there because the lead characters rely on humanity to exist and now there is no humanity left… just violent killers.
It’s a very well written, beautifully drawn book and if you haven’t read it, do yourself the favor and at least look through it at comic shops this week.
Rover Red Charlie TPB
GARTH ENNIS – the creator of Preacher and Crossed – RoverRedCharlie-Vol-1-TPB delivers a story like no other, as an unlikely band of canines set out to survive in a world gone horribly mad. When a worldwide plague wipes out humanity, what happens to man’s best friend? Charlie was a helper dog and he was good at it. Now he and his friends Rover and Red must escape the bloody city and find their way in this strange master-less new world. Ennis applies his incredible talent for shockingly original tales and spot-on dialogue in this fully painted story will change the way you look at pets and takes you on a spiritual journey of rediscovery through the eyes of these canine best friends. Rover Red Charlie Vol 1 TP collects issues #1-6 of the comic book series.
Yes, I still own mine. Shut up.
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Gary Brecher is the War Nerd.
