Good news for athletic winos

Major newspapers (The Washington Post and The New York Times) report on a French study saying that resveratrol, a minor component of red wine, not only helps counter obesity and diabetes, but improves endurance.

An ordinary laboratory mouse will run one kilometer on a treadmill before collapsing from exhaustion. But mice given resveratrol, a minor component of red wine and other foods, run twice as far. They also have energy-charged muscles and a reduced heart rate, just as trained athletes do,

(NY Times)

Unfortunately, your dosage might need to increase a bit.

Humans would have to take hundreds of resveratrol pills sold in health food stores or drink hundreds of glasses of wine a day to get equivalent levels of the substance tested on the mice, neither of which would be safe.

(Wash. Post)

However, I'm willing to do my part for science. (test--to see if the date changes.)

Who owns the Crimson Tide?

There's this guy, Daniel A. Moore, in Alabama. Been a fan for all his life, and has this thing he does which combines his football enthusiasm and his profession. He paints. He paints idealized versions of sports photos of big moments in the Crimson Tide's history, e.g., the Sack, when in '68 Notre Dame QB Steve Beuerlein (later to be Troy Aikman's backup in Dallas) was pretty nearly destroyed by Bama's Cornelius Bennett, in Alabama's first victory over the Irish.

Big moment. So Moore paints it, and other such, and sells his paintings to other Tide fans, for up to $65K (that is, before this Sunday New York Times article gives him more publicity. Only the University of Alabama is now asserting its--get this--intellectual property rights. They believe they have the right to any and all marketing of their product (i.e., the trademarked Crimson and White color scheme), and want Moore to cease-and-desist making his paintings.

Now, here's the issue: at what point do we say that the artist has transformed his subject from a sports-news photo into an original work of art? Courts in California have decided that a straight-forward charcoal of the images of the Three Stooges, silkscreened onto T-shirts, does not constitute art. But watercolors and oil paintings are artistic media which have been around much longer than sports photography or any university, and certainly longer than the university marketing practices which have inspired this lawsuit. If Moore were painting images of, say, Hofstra's football team, he wouldn't be able to sell them as he does--so obviously Alabama football is part of whatever aura runs up the commercial and aesthetic value of his paintings. However, there is a considerable transmediation involved in the adaptation of newspaper images to canvas. And the university used to support his work, to the extent of allowing him sideline passes to football games. No more. He can buy his ticket, sit in the stands, and give them their cut.

Art receives its value from the culture--as do sports and intellectual property and universities. If the public wants to pay $65K for big oil paintings of the most significant events in post-Civil-War Alabama history, that's because that's the amount some people are willing to pay. If the public wants to pay millions in ticket fees, merchandise, and associated activities such as tailgate parties around Saturday afternoon sports events, that's a matter of culturally assigned value. If the public wants to acknowledge diplomas from the University of Alabama as actually teaching its citizens anything of value, that's also a matter of value assigned by the culture. The university is responsible for the latter, in terms of monitoring what is going on--but does not itself create that cultural value. We do.

Negative campaign advertising

Jacob Weisberg of Slate magazine has what seems to me a pretty good post on electoral mudslinging. One hears, so often, that "both sides do it," that it's worth seeing a corrective on this topic.

The practice is very old, of course, but attained some modern highpoints with the infamous LBJ ad linking Goldwater to a nuclear explosion, to Dick Nixon's dirty tricks squads (culminating in the Watergate break-in, which was intended to dig up dirt on a whistleblower from the Rand Corp., Daniel Ellsberg), one of Reagan's goons, Lee Atwater, and perhaps the most famous, the Willie Horton ad which sank Dukakis' campaign.

Weisberg's summary of an ad running in Arizona:

In a voice rancid with contempt, the announcer declared:

Over 100 Democratic elected officials are opposing Democrat trial lawyer Ellen Simon. Liberal Ellen Simon served as the president of the ACLU, a radical organization that defends hard-core criminals at the man/boy love association, a national group that preys on our children. One Democratic mayor called Simon's actions "utterly disgusting." He's right. Ellen Simon: radical, liberal and wrong for Arizona.

While hearing this, the viewer sees just key terms superimposed on the Democrat's face: "LIBERAL" … "Served as the President of the ACLU" … "Radical Organization defends hard core criminals Man/Boy Love Association" … "ACLU Defends Child Molester Group" … "Preys on our children" … "utterly disgusting" … "radical, liberal."

Not a single claim in the ad is true.

It can be hard to shut out this name-calling (provided you haven't changed channels first). There's a place for negative advertising: many, many politicians up for election have done things they deserve to be called on, from keeping $90K in their freezer (William Jefferson, D-La) to hitting on congressional pages (Mark Foley, R-Fl). The vast majority are Republicans, because they are the party in power and have long sucked up to the rich--which doesn't mean that Democrats are likely to forego their own opportunities when they come, only you can make a case for dealing with the present occupants of Congress first. There's a place for pointing out factual-based wrongs. But making sh*t up out of thin air--how does that do anything but make responsible politics impossible, and keep less motivated people (i.e., the center) away from voting?