Clip of the Week (4th of July edition)

Alright, so obviously I didn't make any real progress on working down my backlog of posts this week. So sue me. I enjoyed my 4th of July, and I hope you all did too.

In the spirit of the week, your Clip of the Week is coming from the beautiful city of San Diego, where a technical malfunction last night caused a full 18 minutes worth of fireworks to be fired off all at the same time. That resulted in what is simultaneously the greatest and worst 25-second fireworks display of all time. Congratulations, San Diego. And Happy Birthday, America.

Animal for President

I've stealthily accumulated a whole bunch of half-finished drafts in my queue, and I'm trying my best to avoid resorting to a link dump. Therefore, I'm going to try to work through the backlog starting this week, but since it's a holiday week (and we just got power back after being without it all weekend), I promise nothing.

While I work on those drafts, here's an amusing take on the Muppet universe, and what it might say about human societies.

Every once in a while, an idea comes along that changes the way we all look at ourselves forever. Before Descartes, nobody knew they were thinking. They all believed they were just mulling. Until Karl Marx, everyone totally hated one another but nobody knew quite why. And before Freud, nobody understood that all of humanity could be classified into one of two simple types: people who don’t yet know they want to sleep with their mothers, and people who already know they want to sleep with their mothers. These dialectics can change and shape who we are so profoundly, it’s hard to imagine life before the paradigm at all. 

The same thing is true of Muppet Theory, a little-known, poorly understood philosophy that holds that every living human can be classified according to one simple metric: Every one of us is either a Chaos Muppet or an Order Muppet. 

Chaos Muppets are out-of-control, emotional, volatile. They tend toward the blue and fuzzy. They make their way through life in a swirling maelstrom of food crumbs, small flaming objects, and the letter C. Cookie Monster, Ernie, Grover, Gonzo, Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and—paradigmatically—Animal, are all Chaos Muppets. Zelda Fitzgerald was a Chaos Muppet. So, I must tell you, is Justice Stephen Breyer. 

Order Muppets—and I’m thinking about Bert, Scooter, Sam the Eagle, Kermit the Frog, and the blue guy who is perennially harassed by Grover at restaurants (the Order Muppet Everyman)—tend to be neurotic, highly regimented, averse to surprises and may sport monstrously large eyebrows. They sometimes resent the responsibility of the world weighing on their felt shoulders, but they secretly revel in the knowledge that they keep the show running. 

Your first grade teacher was probably an Order Muppet. So is Chief Justice John Roberts. It’s not that any one type of Muppet is inherently better than the other. (Order Muppets do seem to attract the ladies, but then Chaos Muppets collect the chicken harems.) It’s simply the case that the key to a happy marriage, a well-functioning family, and a productive place of work lies in carefully calibrating the ratio of Chaos Muppets to Order Muppets within any closed system. That, and always letting the Chaos Muppets do the driving... 

One possible explanation for the blossoming dysfunctionality of the current Supreme Court is that the Order Muppets have all but taken over. With exception of Justices Breyer and Antonin Scalia, the Order Muppets are running the show completely. (The jury is still out on whether Elena Kagan may prove a Chaos Muppet.) Remember the old rule of thumb: Too many Order Muppets means no cookies for anyone.

Yes. We need more Chaos Muppets in Washington. Why didn't I think of that? I'm pretty excited about the potential for an Animal/Cookie Monster ticket on the 2012 Presidential ballot. We can do this, America. The Chaos Muppets' day has come.

[Slate]

Marathon badassery, revisited (Things that are awesome)

People who (regularly) run marathons amaze me, and always have. I've run exactly one marathon, and the training for it alone nearly drove me insane. It also took me a very long time to recover. That's why I'm always more than willing to give a shout out to the crazy people who do crazy things at marathons--the Chilean miner, the pregnant lady and the 100-year old man, the Marine who ran with a gas mask on, and the guys who destroy course records on brutal courses.

In that tradition, I introduce you all to Julie Weiss.

A Santa Monica, California woman who lost her dad to cancer says she will stop at nothing to raise money for research -- so other families won't have to endure what she's endured. 

Julie Weiss is on a mission to run 52 marathons in 52 weeks. 

"My body's getting used to this. I'm changing my diet, becoming more healthy and learning to run more efficiently," Weiss said. 

Her father died of pancreatic cancer in 2010, just one week before the biggest moment in Weiss' running career: qualifying for the Boston Marathon. 

Weiss is part of the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network's TEAMHOPE. 

Pancreatic cancer is the fourth leading cause of cancer death in the United States and one of the least funded for research, according to TEAMHOPE. 

"My goal is a million dollars," Weiss said. 

Her website, marathongoddess.com, has already raised more than $100,000 towards that goal. 

"When people tell me I'm crazy or nuts, it means I'm on the right track and doing something good."

After watching the video in the link, it seems like she's got an awesome attitude and a really healthy approach to her (completely insane) goal. And given the demands she's putting on her body, she's also pretty much cruising--she's been running anywhere between a 4:40 and a 5:30 marathon, which is impressive by any measure, especially without real recovery time.

Of course, since she's qualified for Boston before, she's obviously a skilled runner, which she would have to be in order to think that something like this is a good idea. So send this woman some good vibes, because she certainly deserves them. And if you're into that sort of thing, throw a little donation her way via her website.

[KSDK]

Clip of the Week

Is it a thin week for clips? Yeah, it is, but I did give you a nice little Rick Santelli rant yesterday, so that has to count for something, right?

At any rate, here's this week's animal-related clip, which will teach you not to mess with killer whales. Honestly, I sorta feel bad for the seal in this clip. Poor guy never had a chance. And if you're into making and eating unnecessarily complicated and intricate breakfasts (like, for example, these), you can check out this video for the world's most ridiculous bagel.

But this week, we're going the baseball route. This year is pretty unique in that there are two impossibly young kids in MLB doing some pretty impressive things. In the world of baseball with the minor league system and all that, that's incredibly rare.

I already featured the Nationals' 19-year-old outfielder Bryce Harper in this post, but I haven't said anything yet about the Angels' 20-year-old outfielder Mike Trout. That changes now. This kid is putting up incredible numbers so far this year, and he's also making plays like this. So this is your Clip of the Week, because I can't do that.

The lipstick effect

Remember when I told you that all studies were B.S.? Forget everything I said. This series of studies is awesome, and I absolutely love that the result has been replicated in multiple experiments. Brought to my attention by Tyler Cowen:

In 2008, when many companies reported record declines in sales amidst a global economic recession, L’Oréal, one of the world’s largest cosmetic manufacturers, was somehow immune to the downturn. In fact, L’Oréal enjoyed a sales growth of 5.3% that year—why? Why was L’Oréal the apparent beneficiary of a worldwide economic crisis? 

Dating back to the Great Depression, times of recession have consistently yielded anomalous gains for the beauty products industry, even while consumers reign in spending on household goods and recreational products. Journalists have dubbed this curiosity the “lipstick effect.” I recently sought to test the lipstick effect in a series of studies, the results of which were published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Our findings confirmed that the lipstick effect is not only real, but deeply rooted in women’s mating psychology... 

Four separate experiments, along with real-world data... consistently supported the lipstick effect, as college-age women, when primed with news of economic instability, reported an increased desire to buy attractiveness-enhancing goods, along with a decreased desire to purchase goods that do not enhance one’s physical appearance. Our experiments also found that this increased desire for beauty products, clothing and accessories was fully mediated by a heightened preference for mates with resources. 

While many journalists who have written about the lipstick effect have theorized that it represents women’s therapeutic spending on cheap indulgences, we found that the lipstick effect applies specifically to products that enhance beauty, even when those products are more expensive. Recession cues increased women’s desire to buy high-end cosmetics and designer clothing, but not to buy budget-line beauty products, which were rated less effective at improving one’s appearance. 

Furthermore, we discovered that the lipstick effect and a woman’s desire to attract a mate with resources are unrelated to her independent resource access. Women of both higher and lower socioeconomic status expressed an increased desire to buy luxury beauty products when primed with recession cues. This suggests that an uncertain economic climate leads women to heighten mate attraction effort irrespective of their own resource need.

This cracks me up. What's funny about these studies is that I'm absolutely certain that what's going on is completely subconscious--the women probably don't even realize what they're doing, but do it anyway. Such is the wonder of our amazing brains, and the strange cross-wirings that generations of evolution have created.

As much as we all like to think that we are agents of our own destiny, making rational decisions based on complete information, consumer psychology studies consistently find the opposite. We are in fact subject to and guided by a strange mix of psychological motivations, many of which we don't even realize or recognize. Intelligent marketers take advantage of these psychological neuroses, consistently advertising to us in ways that we don't even notice. Good stuff.

[Scientific American]
(h/t Marginal Revolution)

Santelli on Obamacare

I'm going to mostly avoid the discussion on today's Supreme Court ruling regarding the Affordable Care Act,  primarily because the issue has become so politically charged that I believe honest and respectful discourse is essentially impossible right now.

To summarize my own beliefs (which are admittedly based upon partial information, because full information has been hard to come by when it comes to this bear of a law), I think that the law as written is destined to fail regardless of its constitutionality, simply because it fails to address any of the root causes behind ever-increasing healthcare costs--if anything, it perpetuates and expands them. I appreciate the attempt to try to help, but I think the government's mostly-good intentions will go horrifically unrewarded here. Ironically, I think that's actually a good thing long term, because I think that it will eventually force a more complete overhaul of the system, rather than a simple tweaking of it (which is what I believe Obamacare to be). A complete overhaul is necessary, so anything that brings us closer to it is a good thing.

As for today's decision, the best response I've seen yet comes from CNBC's Rick Santelli. I missed watching this live, because I was over on CNN watching that network throw up all over itself by screwing up the scoop --another tough day for a struggling media outlet, although Fox News made the same mistake--but I'm glad my friends at ZeroHedge gave me the heads up. As usual, Santelli has a pretty interesting take on things, and I think he's dead on.

 [ZeroHedge]

Adios, BCS

Given my past rants about college football and how broken things are, I have to at least mention yesterday's major development that promises to reshape the NCAA landscape. Beginning in 2014, Division 1 football (the "FBS", whatever) will have a four-team playoff system, scrapping the badly flawed BCS system.

Let's hand over the analysis to ESPN's Gene Wojciechowski, who is probably working off a champagne-fueled hangover today.

This is a momentous day in the history of college football. And thanks to Tuesday's final ratifying vote by the BCS Presidential Oversight Committee, a manageable, logical and lonnnnnnnng overdue playoff system makes the traveling squad in 2014. 

As recently as the 2011 BCS National Championship Game, a BCS spokesperson gravely predicted: "Don't be fooled -- a playoff would be the end of the bowls as we know them." When the spokesperson wasn't bashing the idea of a playoff, he was constantly reminding us that the BCS "got it right again." 

And just six months ago, that same spokesperson insisted, "the BCS works well and very well," for all players and fans. 

Yes, it worked so well that 11 conference commissioners and Notre Dame's athletic director gutted the BCS and replaced it with a playoff system, a playoff selection committee, a national championship game that can be bid out to a non-traditional playing site and, eventually, a new brand name. And Tuesday in Washington, D.C., the oversight committee approved it all. 

"It's a best-of-both-worlds result," said Charles W. Steger, Virginia Tech president and chair of the committee. "It captures the excitement of a playoff while protecting the best regular season in sports and also the tradition of the bowls. A four-team playoff doesn't go too far. It goes just the right amount." 

The BCS Championship is about to be euthanized -- may it soon rest in peace. Gone are the ridiculous polls, the computer standings and the automatic qualifier status extended to favored conferences. 

The bowl system? Despite the BCS propaganda of 2011, a playoff isn't going to be "the end of the bowls as we know it." That's the beauty of the new agreement. It works within the bowl system, not outside of it.

Of course, there will still be controversy under the new system, and that's fine. Controversy is a big part of sports--there's frankly little entertainment without it. But there's good controversy and there's bad controversy, and it had become abundantly clear that the BCS was engendering the wrong kind of publicity.

Questions about fairness, favoritism, and opaque selection criteria had become more important than the games themselves, and that's a huge problem. With four teams instead of two, it now becomes that much more unlikely that we'll have anyone who gets outright screwed (like Auburn in 2004). More importantly, the new system should avoid the bizarre situations that we saw in 2000, 2001, 2009, and last year, when several teams had a claim at a spot in the title game, and there was no viable way of choosing which team (or teams) should be chosen.

In the four-team playoff, these dilemmas would almost always be avoidable, and all qualified teams would get the chance to play it out on the field. Yes, there could still be exceptions--2004 and 2009 were bizarre years by any measure--but it won't be an inevitable annual result of a deeply flawed system.

The NCAA still has a lot of problems to address, but at least now the competition on the field won't be one of them. That's a good thing.

[ESPN]