Sam Ash has a new ad campaign in NYC:

Errol Morris, Oscar-winning documentarian behind The Fog of War and Thin Blue Line, on truth:

If there is one subtext to all of Morris’ subsequent films and writings, it is the private eye’s creed, the anti-postmodernist belief that ‘the truth is out there.’ Truth may be elusive, it may even be unknowable, but that doesn’t mean, as postmodernists aver, that reality is just a matter of subjective perspectives, that one way of seeing things is just as good as another.

‘I’m amazed,’ Morris said when we spoke recently, ‘that you still see this nonsense all over the place, that truth is relative, that truth is subjective. People still cling to it. He calls these ideas ‘repulsive, repugnant. And what’s the other word? False.’(via Smithsonian Magazine)

Morris’s films reveal his obsession with the framing of truth—the idea that the act of documenting cannot ultimately be objective. He joins Werner Herzog in dismissing the naiveté of Cinema Verité’s quest to document reality, and yet his work is deeply concerned with revealing the hidden truths buried within his subject material. For Morris, truth may ultimately be unknowable, but that does not mean truth does not exist. His stance combines modernism’s lofty quest for the right while integrating post-structuralism’s respect for the influence of subjectivity.

To create the space sequences for ‘The Tree of Life’, Cox and her team started with billions of numbers that describe key characteristics of the universe, such the locations of stars and the shapes of galaxies. ‘All of that can be separated out from the numbers,’ said Cox, whose department has spent 15 years figuring out how to do that using specialized computer software developed in house.

One NCSA sequence in ‘The Tree of Life’ depicts some of the first stars in the early universe. ‘They call them Pop III stars,’ Cox said. ‘And from that star that goes supernova, new life is formed in the nebula. And that was important to Terry Malick because that particular scene was all about birthing and very early coming of age. All of the stars that get born out of those supernovae have evolved into what we are today, and in fact we — even our planet and our physical bodies — are all made from this original stardust.’via (Working Hollywood: Latimes.com)

Ta-Nehisi Coates, on Rush Limbaugh:

There is a way of conveniently marginalizing Limbaugh as a "radio host" who doesnt really speak for any aspect of the present conservative movement, or any element of the GOP electorate. Its a strange position given Limbaughs immense popularity, the timidity elected Republicans show when asked about his comments, and the prominent role hes been given in the past at C-PAC. The deference he enjoys stands in stark contrast to his apparent status as an old uncle who just happens to say incredibly cruel things which say nothing about the greater family.Nevertheless, influence or not, it is worth calling this what is is–the normalization of cruelty–and asserting, no matter how redundant, that [it] is wrong and evidence of the lowest aspects of humanity.

The shortage of organs may be solved by three-dimensional printers that produce organs by printing with living cells rather than ink.  Skip to 16:00 to see a kidney printed on stage:

A new study from PPIC confirms what the Proposition 8 Fight brought to light—namely, that California is much more socially conservative than people assume:

The authors of the study point out that this kind of Democratic heterogeneity means there are opportunities for Republicans in California and self-styled moderates… opportunities, perhaps, that will be amplified under the two big electoral changes coming online in 2012: new political districts and the top-two primary system.(via Capital Notes’ John Myers)

The Melbourne Museum is considering an ambitious public relations campaign to soften the image of an endangered, giant insect species named Dryococelus australis. The species, shaped like a stick and nicknamed “tree lobsters” by fishermen in the area, is native to Lord Howe Island just off the coast of Australia.  Scientists presumed the species had been extinct since the early 20th Century:

. . . [O]ne day in 1918, a supply ship, the S.S. Makambo from Britain, ran aground at Lord Howe Island and had to be evacuated. One passenger drowned. The rest were put ashore. It took nine days to repair the Makambo, and during that time, some black rats managed to get from the ship to the island, where they instantly discovered a delicious new rat food: giant stick insects. Two years later, the rats were everywhere and the tree lobsters were gone.(via Krulwich Wonders… : NPR)

But climbers recently found a small population of the species surviving on a rock formation not far from the island. The Museum has plans to reintroduce the species to its original home, but this woud require undergoing an intensive program to rid the island of the black rats who originally laid waste to the species and still reside there.

And thus the need for a truly ambitious public relations campaign: making giant insects more lovable than black rats.

The Republican Party had increasingly found itself confined to white voters, especially those lacking a college degree and rural whites who, as Obama awkwardly put it in 2008, tend to “cling to guns or religion.” Meanwhile, the Democrats had ­increased their standing among whites with graduate degrees, particularly the growing share of secular whites, and remained dominant among racial minorities. As a whole, Judis and Teixeira noted, the electorate was growing both somewhat better educated and dramatically less white, making every successive election less favorable for the GOP. And the trends were even more striking in some key swing states. Judis and Teixeira highlighted Colorado, Nevada, and Arizona, with skyrocketing Latino populations, and Virginia and North Carolina, with their influx of college-educated whites, as the most fertile grounds for the expanding Democratic base.
(via New York Magazine)

Now for a design project straight out of a William S. Burroughs story: The Euthanasia Coaster. The premise is simple: create a thrill on the way out. After the coaster reaches peak momentum on a terrifying and thrilling drop, it enters a series of loops that exert so much g-force on the passengers that they pass out and quickly die. Bonus: it induces euphoria. Painless, and . . . fun?

An interesting study by the Journal Psychological Science studied the well-being and happiness of over 60,000 people in 52 nations and found that progressive taxation is strongly correlated with happiness:

. . . [I]f two nations were equally wealthy and income distribution was the same, people living in the nation with a more progressive taxation policy were more satisfied with their lives in general and had more positive daily experience and fewer negative daily experiences than people living in the nation with the less progressive taxation policy.

The study adjusted for other well-known factors in determining happiness and found the correlation quite strong. Now before liberals point to this study to bolster progressive ideas about government’s role in the republic, the research also found that government spending as a percentage of GDP was negatively correlated with a sense of well-being. That is, government spending doesn’t produce happiness. So, this does little to prove that progressive taxation causes happiness. More likely, progressive taxation is associated with some other factor, ideas about the common good, for instance, which creates the link. But clearly, opposition to progressive taxation seems to be overhyped. At least if all you care about is personal happiness.