MOE: also have you seen the new newsweek "what bush got right"??????
PAREENE: uggh yeah
MOE: i feel like we should do something but
PAREENE: i mean just saw the cover
would like to see "What Fareed Zakaria got wrong" feature instead but what can you do
MOE: yeah i'm going to smoke will check it out
i feel like it is the newsstand equivalent of a "neg"
PAREENE: haa
10 minutes
MOE: ok just skimmed
6 minutes
MOE: it is like, "Ha ha ha, just kidding, actually everything he has done has been a colossal fucking nightmare but thanks to that spyplane thing and our dependence on Chinese sweatshop workers he had to sell out Taiwan and thanks to our dependence on Pakistan's torture spies he couldn't very well object to India having nukes and thanks to the global disaster wrought by his first six and a half years in office some of the most superevil people in his administration finally quit their jobs. Also he admitted AIDS was bad.
PAREENE: haaa
right
i mean based on zakaria's own writings i feel like we could've written this piece on our own. like: they fucked up but then half-heartedly corrected themselves sometimes later on
MOE: exactly! oh also he says it's nice that Bush isn't pretending like he wants to go to war with Iran anymore even though as that pretty homewrecker CBS lady pointed out in the recent Men's Vogue we are already fighting a de facto war with Iran in Iraq so…
MOE: When you think about it, nearly all of the most mendacious ideologues to ever harbor sinister ambitions to rule civilization have gotten their chance to fuck everything up, and because they did, most of them will never work again!
For the next few years anyway
Oh oh yes AND
PAREENE: hahaha
MOE: he has drastically lowered his expectations for what can be achieved in the iraq.
see he's a pragmatist!
PAREENE: hahahaha
pragmatism is so handy once you have made a huge fucking error
MOE: (Too bad we can't say the same for John McCAin!)
haha did you just see our tip re megan asha??
PAREENE: hahahaha
yes

What Bush Got Right

McMullan's new "magazine" will be strictly iPhone-only, I guess to keep it out of the hands of the wrong crowd. The "magazine" will be called PMc and feature his own photos, a double shot of self-promotion.

Calling it “the first of its kind,” the bimonthly will be distributed via iTunes for 99 cents per issue. Content will be refreshed daily in order to give readers “an inside look into the glamorous world of Patrick McMullan and his peers.”

Ahem. McMullan's self-described "peers" are presumably actual celebrities, or it's hard to see what attraction this "magazine" would have over, I don't know, ANY OF 1000 (free) WEBSITES. But it's doubtful a little venture like this will help the photographer escape what some who know him say is his intractable problem: the more the celebrities and socialites he shoots treat him as just another photog, the more frustrated he becomes. And McMullan's nerves aren't made for that; he once punched an assistant in the face because his camera wasn't ready, we hear.

This "magazine" may prove dangerous.

[pic via NY Mag]

From the website of Hypnosis Focus Groups, complete with disturbingly literal illustrations!

[via Fine on Media]

The actual, scientific study found that "ads featuring thin models made women feel worse about themselves but better about the brands featured." They make you despise your own "normal" body, and subconsciously try to correct the situation with therapy consisting of shopping. Oh, the pretty girls have all the pretty brands!

A Villanova professor who ran the study ferreted out just what advertisers bank on: masochism. ""The really interesting result we're seeing across multiple studies is that these thin models make women feel bad, but they like it," he said.

The advertising industry always knew you were a bad, bad girl.

And in the most entertaining twist to this whole thing, the study also found that images of skinny models make women stop eating. Surprise!:

Seeing thin models also made college-age women far more likely to turn down a snack pack of Oreo cookies offered as thanks for their participation in the study, or to opt for a reduced-fat version. Women who had just seen thin models were nearly four times more likely to say no to Oreos than women who hadn't, and 42% more likely to opt for reduced-fat cookies if they did indulge.

No telling what this means for Spanx.

[Ad Age]

Jackson Hewitt says: Taxes make you break things.

Southwest: God damn airlines and their fees!

But anger only goes so far:

Among the ads in the Southwest campaign was one featuring a mock coupon that read, “Don’t #$*!% me over,” which appeared above a declaration that “Southwest is the only airline that accepts this coupon.” That ad, however, was withdrawn.

Assholes! God!

[NYT]

According to a recent study detailed in Psychology Today, anything that can push men's minds into the realm of sex will turn them into impulsive, acquisitive beasts:

Given the choice of 15 euros now or a larger chunk of change later, men who had just handled bras valued an immediate payoff more highly than did guys who'd been stuck fondling T-shirts. The research showed the same lingerie-induced myopia when the currency was sodas or candy bars. "Sexual desire leads to a desire to consume anything rewarding," Van den Bergh hypothesizes.

Because appetites for sex, money, and food appear to mingle in the brain, it could be that shopping with any craving will send you on a spending spree.

So, would these types of things plastered on the front of a condom tin be enough to make you give up your Trojans?

[Hazel Dooney]

The experiment took place in a bathroom with three urinals in a line. They tested both how long it took men to start peeing, and the duration of their peeing under three separate conditions: alone in the bathroom; with another man there, separated by a urinal; or with another man standing right next to them. But they ran into a little problem:

The authors' intentions were to use auditory cues (i.e., splash) to capture the dependent measures, but they quickly realized that this wasn't the most reliable measure since some people were aiming at the ceramic basin and the sounds couldn't be made out. So, what else could they do? Here's what: "The observer [the guy in the stall] used a periscopic prism imbedded in a stack of books lying on the floor of the toilet stall. An 11-inch (28-cm) space between the floor and the wall of the toilet stall provided a view, through the periscope, of the user's lower torso and made possible direct visual sightings of the stream of urine."

Way to put those pervert skills to good use! And what did the scientists find? That Shy Bladder Syndrome really exists!:

As predicted, when urinating next to the confederate, the micturation delay was significantly greater (8.4 sec) than when the participant was separated by one urinal (6.2 sec) or when (ostensibly) alone (4.9). The duration of micturation also supported the authors' hypotheses, with the participants urinating, on average, for a briefer period in the close condition (17.4 sec) than in either the far condition (23.4 sec) or alone condition (24.8 sec).

So rest easy, you paruresis-having readers; it's not all in your mind. Feel free to pee in front of everybody.

[Psychology Today; pic via Corbis]

[via Adrants; photo via Peter Kreder]

Item one: Let's take a look at the empirical evidence. Brady (Gisele) lost the Super Bowl. Romo (Jessica Simpson) lost in the playoffs. Tony Parker (Eva Longoria) is injured. Matt Leinart (Paris Hilton) also got hurt. Further back, Mike Tyson (Robin Givens) went crazy, David Justice (Halle Berry) got accused of steroid use, and Andre Rison (Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes) got his house burned down.

Or, put another way: Brady had one of the best seasons in history. Romo had a career year. Parker has won three championships. Leinart was a top draft pic, Tyson was a champ, Justice won some rings, and Andre Rison is a five time Pro Bowler. In other words, all these guys did great things, even as they were boning some famous girls.

Item two: This supposed curse really needs to be clarified. Plain old beautiful women are not dangerous to performance, apparently, because damn near every married professional athlete has a beautiful wife. Tiger Woods, the most successful athlete working today, has a famously smoking wife:

So do scrub baseball players like Kris Benson:


Item three, in which we explain the fundamental roots of the error: This "Curse" bullshit is based in three things. One, the old crusty coach's idea that sex before sports can make an athlete worse; that one is a myth. Actually sex raises testosterone levels in men, making them more manly, aggressive, and powerful. Second, there is a simple feedback mechanism most men have that allows us to keep our self esteem high. When we see another man with a beautiful woman, we must assume he is a bitch (David Beckham), or a pretty boy (Don't make me kick your ass, Oscar de la Hoya), or— best of all— cursed! This helps us believe we're still at the front of the line, baby.

Finally, there is a female-driven paradigm of hate that is the psychological flip side of the male desire to undermine our competitors. Females, faced with the prospect of a simplistic boyfriend being bombarded with images of successful athletes (his heroes) being rewarded with famous celebrity women (his poster-bound fantasies), must act to incite a negative response in the man's mind, lest he lose all grip of reality. Knowing that he values his sports even more highly than his sexual desires, the idea of a curse is implanted into the public dialogue, instigating a reaction of fear, rather than lust, towards famous female sexual objects. No single Jessica Simpson blow job is worth a playoff loss to a real Cowboys fan.

The media simply feeds on this triumvirate of underlying influences to perpetuate the myth of a curse, because it's a pretty good story. But really, athletes should feel free to go ahead and scoop all the actresses and super models they want. New England didn't lose to New York because of Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen. They lost because Boston sucks.

Rare among modern "legitimate" journalists, especially TV journalists, Cooper has taken on the Church of Scientology before. Cooper's last investigation into the CSI was in 2005, when he introduced viewers to a New Mexico vault marked with "mysterious symbols." According to a former Scientologist interviewed on the show, the vault was covered with symbols viewable best from "the heavens" designed "to show the location of one of the vaults which Scientology has prepared to safeguard the technology of L. Ron Hubbard." Inside the vault, a creepy survivalist compound filled with livestock, food, and the writings of LRH etched into "titanium plates."

Why investigate Scientology's apocalyptic desert bunker? More importantly, why bother debating a lunatic about the merits of psychology? Here's a hint:

Church founder L. Ron Hubbard's son Quentin was gay. Gay and not all that into Scientology. He killed himself in 1976, a victim of his father's tyrannical crusades against homosexuality and mental health. L. Ron Hubbard hated his dead gay son.

Considering what we know of Anderson's biography (short version: gay, forever changed by brother's suicide), it is perhaps understandable that he might not approve of an organization that "cures" homosexuality and refuses to allow its members access to antidepressants, clinical psychology, or even simple talk therapy.

What? Too soon? It's been ten fucking years. Besides, we have no idea how many more years we're going to have to wait for Little Miss Sunshine to reappear in the news, so we've got to MILK IT.

Anyway, hot on the heels of our unbreaking JonBenet Ramsey coverage, Slate offered up an analysis of just what might have been going through Karr's sick, innocent mind. After the jump.

When the story first broke, Daniel Engber explained that people sometimes make false confessions to gain attention—or because they are obsessed with a case. He wrote, "Someone might make a voluntary false confession if he wanted to be famous. Several hundred people claimed to have abducted the Lindbergh baby, for example, and more than 30 confessed to the Hollywood 'Black Dahlia' murder in the 1940s. ..."

And not that their analysis is wrong, but we find it pretty hard to believe that there haven't been any notable cases of copycat confessions since the 1940s. Still, we do like to imagine Karr in a fedora sitting in front of a fan on his banker's roll-top desk, with his sweat-floppy head in his hands, going "I gotta get a name, see. Coppers think they so smart, see. Wish that Lindbergh baby was still around, see..."

False Confessions 101: Why John Mark Karr Pretended He Killed JonBenet [Slate]

Court-appointed psychiatrist Dr. Jason Hershberger deemed her bipolar, anorexic, depressed and narcissistic. The evaluation helped get Millard her no-jail deal.

As a tipster notes, if being an unbalanced, self-absorbed, opportunist with an eating disorder is all it takes to avoid jail in this city, we're shocked there's anyone left in Rikers.

'Princess' Thief in Psych Slap [NYP]