Brusqueness

1. They Strangle Cancer

Human cells aren’t the happy go-lucky little fellows we’d like to imagine. In fact, our cells commit suicide on a regular basis, via a process called apoptosis. Unlike the messy deaths that happen when a cell is injured or diseased, apoptosis is a peaceful passing, wherein an otherwise healthy cell reaches the end of its life span, then shuts down, shrinks, and is absorbed by its neighbors. But with certain types of cancer, the natural process of apoptosis doesn’t occur. Unwilling to go quietly into the great night, cancer cells rage on, refusing to die, continuing to multiply, and eventually forming tumors.

That’s where chili peppers come in. New studies have shown that capsaicin—the chemical compound that gives chili peppers their kick—may be the key to controlling cancer cells. During the past few years, research has indicated that capsaicin can induce apoptosis in cancers of the lungs, pancreas, and prostate. In the case of prostate cancer, researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles found that capsaicin also slows the cancer’s ability to grow. This means chili-pepper treatments could be lifesavers for men who’ve survived one bout of cancer but are at risk of another.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that people should start feasting on pepper-only diets just yet. Right now, there’s little evidence that gorging on chilies will prevent healthy males from getting the disease. In fact, thus far, all research tests on capsaicin have been limited to Petri dishes and some very unlucky mice. That said, scientists remain optimistic about the pepper’s potential to help control the disease.

2. They Fight Off Barnacles

Any good sailor knows that barnacles are bad news. If enough of these water-dwelling pests clamp onto a boat’s hull, it becomes less hydrodynamic. In fact, barnacle build-ups can force ships to use as much as 30 percent more fuel. That’s why many seafarers choose to safeguard their vessels by coating them with anti-barnacle paint. The only problem is that these paints are generally filled with toxic chemicals and metals.

Fortunately, in the early 1990s, an American sailor named Ken Fischer came up with a better idea. While chowing down on a Tabasco-laced sandwich, Fischer realized that barnacles might not share his love for spicy food. His hunch was right. Before long, Fischer was making millions off his pepper-based repellant, Barnacle Ban.

Surprisingly, barnacles might not be the only sea creatures averse to chili peppers. The Kuna tribe of Panama reportedly still sails with strings of chilies tied to their boats. The peppers supposedly make the ships (and the Kuna themselves) less appetizing to sharks.

3. They Numb the Pain

In addition to killing cancer and fending off barnacles, capsaicin has the ability to dull pain. When it hits the tongue, the spice activates pain receptors that fire up that burning sensation. But after a while, the same process depletes the body of Substance P, a chemical involved in the perception of pain. The message “ouch” stops getting through to your brain, and your discomfort fades.

Medical science has already turned this trick into over-the-counter creams for arthritis, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Someday, capsaicin could revolutionize anesthesiology. Have you noticed that after a trip to the dentist, you talk funny and can’t move parts of your face? That’s because traditional anesthesia temporarily deadens your senses to the extent that you lose control of those body parts. In October 2007, however, researchers at Harvard Medical School announced that they’d used capsaicin to numb rats without rendering them immobile. The researchers first injected rats with capsaicin and then with a local anesthetic. As the capsaicin flowed through the pain reception pathways, the anesthetic followed in its footsteps, deadening any discomfort while leaving the rats free to scurry about their cages.

In the future, this could mean better painkillers—ones that could make it possible for women in labor to be mobile after an epidural or allow dental patients to move their faces normally after getting a filling.

4. They Make You Forget How Bad They Taste

Although pepper fanatics are always itching for new ways to assault their taste buds, chilies aren’t actually addictive. Numerous scientific studies have shown that chili peppers don’t induce physical cravings, withdrawal, or loss of control—the classic signs of addiction. Yet, there is something about peppers that keeps people coming back for more.

Scientists think that when pain receptors come into contact with capsaicin, it triggers the body to release endorphins—chemicals that bind to the same receptors in the brain as opiates such as heroin and morphine. And while endorphin highs from peppers aren’t like the ones in Trainspotting, they can provide enough of a euphoric kick to keep people engaged in the actions that release them, such as jogging or bungee jumping. This observation may go a long way toward explaining why humans are the only mammals that keep eating chili peppers, even though the sensation burns. Scientists believe that the little high we get from the spice has helped us convince ourselves that we like the taste. The truth is that we do the same thing—for the same sort of pleasurable payout—with other bitter flavors such as coffee, tobacco, and beer.

Marc Lynch brings the news:

Hamas and Fatah have announced that their talks in Cairo on a government of national unity have ended without agreement, to be resumed (perhaps) in three weeks.  While some Egyptian sources are trying to spin this as a simple pause, with no deeper implications, few Arab commentators are buying it. Combined with the failure of the Doha summit and the formation of an extreme right-wing Israeli government, the suspension of Palestinian unity talks signals a rather depressing end to months of feverish diplomacy.

Another relative arrested. And an internal spat between the Palins and the Johnstons makes it onto the talk show circuit:

"We're disappointed that Levi and his family, in a quest for fame, attention and fortune, are engaging in flat-out lies, gross exaggeration, and even distortion of their relationship," [Palin spokesperson] Stapleton said in a statement Friday.

A romantic couple have kept their love alive by spending 19 years building a model based on the town where they first set eyes on each other.

Krauthammer lays out Obama's "Ultimate Agenda":

His goal is to rewrite the American social compact, to recast the relationship between government and citizen. He wants government to narrow the nation’s income and anxiety gaps. Soak the rich for reasons of revenue and justice. Nationalize health care and federalize education to grant all citizens of all classes the freedom from anxiety about health care and college that the rich enjoy. And fund this vast new social safety net through the cash cow of a disguised carbon tax.

Obama is a leveler. He has come to narrow the divide between rich and poor. For him the ultimate social value is fairness. Imposing it upon the American social order is his mission.

My sense is not this, although I agree that Obama has a liberal's core instinct that government can and should take more responsibility for the well-being of its citizens than I'd like. What Charles misses is that Obama is not an ideologue the way Charles is. This is, in other words, classic projection.

Obama wants to use government to balance what he regards as the growing imbalance of the last three decades in which most Americans trod water or sank and, empowered by globalization, a small elite really triumphed. Seen in that context, the shift is less profound. Obama's modest healthcare proposals do not amount to "nationalization". His disguised carbon tax is a mistake in my view, but a response to a felt and urgent need. I see no rush to federalize education - certainly much less so than George W. Bush, whose much more radical involvement of the feds in education somehow escaped Krauthammer's censure.

In so far as conservatives keep reaching for ideological purity to gain their balance in this unsettling time, they will lose against a skilled pragmatist like Obama. They seek clarity by defining an "ultimate agenda" because they are so lost in responding to the actual one.

Obama has an 81 percent favorable rating among the under-30s. The Congressional Republicans get an 8 percent favorable rating.

Multiculturalist pedagogy; the promotion of “cultural diversity” through arts administration, philanthropy, and public policy; academic departments of Women’s Studies and Afro-American Studies; the project of “critical theory”; and in general, the greatly increased weight -- in teaching and research, hiring and funding, programming and grant-making -- given to explicitly political considerations: altogether these things have done more harm than good. They have undoubtedly made possible some valuable work and attracted some people to culture who would otherwise have been lost to it. But they have also generated a really staggering amount of mediocre and tendentious work. And not only do these ideological priorities make for less accomplished artists and scholars; they also make for less effective citizens. Attempting to turn one’s professional enthusiasms and expertise to political account can distract from -- can even serve to rationalize the avoidance of -- everyday democratic activity, with all its tedium and frustration.

“Bailout” was the magic word as Domino’s had to give away thousands of free pizzas because someone stumbled on an online promotion the company scrapped.

Dozens of couples who thought they were divorced have to repeat the process because judges’ signatures were forged.

Dale Carpenter reacts to Iowa:

This is the third pro-SSM state supreme court decision in the past year. In addition to the important marriage result, the decision is notable because it continues a growing trend among state courts to treat sexual-orientation classifications as suspect. If it continues, that trend will have consequences on gay-rights questions well beyond the marriage context. State judiciaries are beginning to follow a familiar pattern of hastening civil-rights progress for a group once that group's cause has achieved a measure of legislative success and cultural acceptance.

No other state in the Midwest even recognizes same-sex domestic partnerships, much less civil unions, or marriages. Same-sex marriages will actually begin in Iowa in about three weeks. The state has no residency requirement for marriage, meaning that gay couples elsewhere in the Midwest can easily travel there and get married, although their relationships will not be recognized when they return to their home states. I can see two simultaneous effects from this: (1) rising expectations among gay couples in the Midwest combined with more political pressure to enact domestic partnerships and civil unions, especially in Illinois, and (2) rising alarm and political organizing among gay-marriage opponents in those same states.

The Des Moines Register has more on how the state is reacting. Among other things, the paper estimates that unless the legislature acts very quickly, the state's demanding constitutional amendment process means there would be no possibility of passing a state constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage until 2012.

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