“A new study finds that those who believe they can multitask effectively are wrong and, in fact, they are often bad at it.”

While the Republicans in Congress were distracted by Benghazi and tax cuts and being crazy old men, Barack Obama stealthily created a new national park in California. Is this the beginning of the Obama Administration’s bold action on the environment and climate change, which until now hasn’t been bold at all? Maybe.

Pinnacles National Park was also signed into existence over the lines of an existing national monument dating back to 1908, when Republicans were the environmentalists. The ragged volcanic landscape and habitat for the humongous (and critically endangered) California Condor runs along the San Andreas Fault, 80 miles southeast of San Francisco. But because you can’t even drive all the way through it, some wonder if it is truly an American national park.

The new Pinnacles National Park becomes the 59th full national park in the United States, joining Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, the Everglades and the other most storied parts of America’s national heritage. The park, a 26,000-acre expanse featuring rocky spires, caves and California condors that was first set aside as a monument in 1908 by President Theodore Roosevelt, also becomes the closest national park to the Bay Area now, supplanting Yosemite National Park.

Republicans in Congress have blocked any expansion or creation of national parks since Obama took office, because they hate both nature and especially hate Barack Obama. Why didn’t they block this bill, which was sponsored by a California Democrat in the House and backed by Democratic senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein? Maybe because Republican Rep. Jeff Denham joined Carmel Democrat Sam Farr on the bill? Anyway, now Pinnacles is a national park, the Central California region around the new attraction hopes to get tourist money from rich hikers from the Bay Area, and the condor will continue to have a safe place where the BLM won’t be selling fracking permits to oil companies.

Photo by Vlad & Marina Butsky.

“If Kerouac were alive now, he’d be a filmmaker.” [Previously]

“The German Herald reports that men serving in the elite Wachbataillon unit of the German army are developing breasts on their left pectorals. A doctor who is treating the men says that their trademark close-order drill is at fault, as it has the men repeatedly, violently slamming their guns into the left side of their chest, stimulating mammary growth.”

Would you like to read something weird? Here is a Goldman Sachs press release headlined “OP-ED, THE HUFFINGTON POST — ARIANNA HUFFINGTON AND LLOYD C. BLANKFEIN DISCUSS OUR COMMON GOAL: EMPOWERING ENTREPRENEURS AND CREATING JOBS.”

I mean, some of it is true! Goldman Sachs does indeed mentor women all over the world in creating small businesses, and their 10,000 Women project is actually one of the most interesting programs in the world. And then there’s this:

This past summer, The Huffington Post broke new ground in the way the media commonly report economic news. Frustrated by the relentless coverage of disaster, tragedy and scandal in traditional media sources, The Huffington Post launched “What is Working,” dedicated to covering stories of progress and success, particularly when it comes to creating jobs in the United States, and brought 100 startup entrepreneurs together at both political conventions to showcase all the different ways they’re creating jobs.

That’s great and all. But haha, yes, the Huffington Post just must be so frustrated by the “relentless coverage of disaster, tragedy and scandal in traditional media sources,” I can hardly imagine their feelings of helplessness before it.

Anyway, also.

#Davos in a nutshell: Tonight’s Sean Parker party, featuring John Legend, is calling itself a “future of philanthropy nightcap”.

— felix salmon (@felixsalmon) January 25, 2013

A little late to this, but James Wood’s recent praise in the New Yorker for Italian author Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend is absolutely correct, and you should run out and buy the book immediately. DO NOT allow the scary and off-putting fact that it opens with an index of characters to intimidate you. I should also mention, even though it is pretty superficial, that the book (and all of Ferrante’s English translations thus far; I think she was their inaugural author) is published by Europa Editions, who are putting out some of the most interesting titles around in one of the most elegant and simply-designed formats. (Yes, I still read book books; I cannot vouch for their e-whatevers, but these paperbacks are gorgeous. You’re, like, happy to have them in your hand.) Anyway, are you looking for something that you can only put down when you have to look away in the shame and horror of recognition? Elena Ferrante’s for you! It’s going to be such a shame when we find out she’s actually Roberto Calasso or someone.

Oh now this looks like a weekend, OH YES, LET’S DO THIS THING. SHAKE IT. Plus: a tiny bit of snow. Eh.

The Terrible Truth About Cats & Dogs

I think it’s good to have a pet animal. I know there are people starving and war and stuff and we should probably focus on humans, but pets are highly therapeutic for a lot of people who are lonely or don’t relate to other humans very well, and while I am not exactly a huge fan of those depressing abused-animal commercials with the Wendie Malick voiceover on TV, there are lots of abandoned animals that would make good pets for people. Mostly dogs, I think? Dogs are the most popular pet, yes? I mean, maybe fish could outnumber ’em on a pet-to-owner ratio, but if you did it on a pounds-of-animal per human pet-enthusiast basis, I bet dogs are numero uno, eh? The unique thing about the dog, I believe (canis familianus, if you will) is that it is sort of allowed to defecate and urinate on city streets, and in our parks, and on the front steps of our domiciles. The only other animal I ever see out on the street shitting and pissing are those police horses, and I’m not really in favor of that either, but they are Police Officers, you know? Cops don’t like me.

I would like to control a dog some day, but right now I have a cat, and the cat craps in a box full of stuff for cats to crap on, I don’t know what it’s made out of, but it’s probably just dirt or earth or clay dug out of someplace, right? So that’s pretty cool, just bring the ground inside for the animal to relieve itself on; perfect, tidy.

Look, I’m not trying to say I’m better than dog owners who walk doggies in the park across from my house every day and let these foamy-mouthed mutts gambol around without a leash and chase other dogs while all the so-called dog walkers stand around jaw-jacking and not watching where their four-legged charges are pooping, purposefully, I swear to the BasedGod, purposefully not-watching to see where the animal they are responsible for is egesting yesterday’s IAMS or shoe they found in the closet or whatever, poo-poo-pooing all over the park where people and children run around and lie down and play softball and throw footballs and stuff. The dog walkers all come with a thing to throw for their dog to go run and catch, usually a disgusting unravelling baseball or greasy slobbery tennis ball with no pressure in it, and they all come with a highly visible little plastic bag, with which to pick up the freshly-minted dogpile of their animal companion, so as not to befoul the public park, which is not a Dog Park, which, have you seen some of these dog parks? They are basically giant sandboxes for shitting in by dogs, I wouldn’t go in there if I had a dog or if I was a dog. I get that a dog needs to shit someplace, and it should be just off the curb, and you should goddamn pick it up, dog owner. All of it, all the shit that came out of your furry friend’s shit-hole, no kidding, even the little parts. I think I’m gonna gag, I’m sorry. Gross.

Meanwhile, I have a wonderful low-maintenance highly-trained-by-instinct animal that lives in my house, poops in a box, inside my house, and I’m in charge of it, and when I fuck up and don’t keep the box clean, or the goddamn motherfucking cat fucks up, it’s on me, or more specifically, it’s on my valued rug, always on the rug, dammit, you know, don’t you? Somehow you are aware the rug has Value, you spiteful, walnut-sized-brain creature that lives between Earth and the Netherworld, why can’t you go down into the basement to have an oopsie, why you gotta do it in the living room? Damn you, animal. Is it that hairball food we been feeding you? Are you angry about that? Why do I expect an answer? Maybe I am not a “Pet Person.”

But look, getting back to dogs in the control of civilians — since I do not consider an uncontrolled dog responsible for where it decides to handle its business and have never witnessed a Police K-9 canine copping a squat out on the street — you guys also do this trick where you pick up the dog poop, with the plastic bag, and then you tie up the little bag and sling it into the bushes! What the fuck? There’s like a hundred bags of wrapped-up dog shit in the little wilderness area along the edge of the park! Not cool.

Again, I am not comparing the public filth emitted by dogs to whatever my cat does three feet away from me in a plastic bin while I’m trying to watch TV, and holy cow, they are not kidding about how if you switch up your cat’s food it will affect their movements, bowel-wise? Jeepers, was there red wine vinegar in that inexpensive new cat food I bought? Good lord. But that’s the price I pay to have an animal that doesn’t mess up the public places, you know? All I gotta do is keep that litter box topped off with Kitty Litter, and I dunno know if it’s exactly Eco-Friendly, I mean, digging up stuff outta the ground is digging up stuff outta the ground, but it’s not like there’s some kitty litter strip mine in West Virginia or somewhere where somebody’s groundwater is getting contaminated and stuff because my cat needs to shit in a box of something, is there?

Are you fucking kidding me?

Sodium Bentonite, perhaps the most popular constituent of clump cat litter, is obtained through strip mining.

There is obviously an environmental impact. Sodium Bentonite mining makes business sense only when it is found close to the surface. Therefore, it is strip mined for cat litter. The top layer of the earth (the overburden) is removed, when strip mining, to take out the clay. Even though there are laws that the land must be left as it was and filled and flattened, how scrupulously such laws can be followed is anyone’s guess.

This was from an article called “Cat Litter, Strip Mining, and Environmental Issues.” Is there a Kitty Litter Lobby that kept this buttoned up? How come people aren’t bitching about this? I know you’re not supposed to flush cat turds down the toilet on account of the disease-mind-altering Toxoplasms or whatever, but you are telling me cat litter isn’t even biodegradable? Jesus Christ. Has anybody had any success training their cat to shit outside?

Previously: Blergh: A Golden Globes Wrap-up

Mr. Wrong can converse with you via many medias. Photo by jovino.

★★★ Breath came out as white as cigarette smoke, and inhaling felt dangerous. The breeze was gentle if you were an anemometer, but unbearable by fleshly standards. Had someone maliciously added an extra block of walking between the subway and the office, somehow? Late clouds were soft-edged and buff-colored, like gentle illustrations in a children’s book. Actual children, the younger ones, were confined to their strollers, sheeted over with plastic, like air-conditioner vents or screen porches or some other thing outside its useful season.

Having trouble with iCloud? Confused by CrashPlan? Today’s smart tech consumers are getting ready to purchase the sturdiest backup media of all: human DNA. The mad scientists behind a weird new study say that the double helix of genetic code has been successfully used to store all kinds of documents, including audio files and text of Shakespeare’s sonnets and “a picture of their office,” because most of what we digitally save is silly garbage. (Future archeologists will likely be baffled by the discovery of, say, a flash drive holding nothing but hundreds of weirdly filtered pictures of somebody’s entrée with a glass of wine in the background. “These early humans apparently worshiped platters of ornately arranged kale and pork loin in a sea urchin-cream sauce,” they’ll say, in Binary iOS Korean-Farsi.)

DNA is a great system for holding garbage information forever. Our own DNA is 97% “junk,” which is exactly the percentage of useless information stored on the average computer or phone.

DNA is nature’s hard drive, a permanent record of genetic information written in a chemical language. There are just four letters in DNA’s alphabet — the four nucleotides commonly abbreviated as A, C, G and T. When these letters are arranged in different ways, they spell out different instructions for our cells. Some 3 billion of those letters make up the human genome — the entire instruction manual for our existence. And all that information is stuffed into each cell in our bodies. DNA is millions of times more compact than the hard drive in your computer.

The scientists transferred digital files to DNA and sent the test tubes to a biotech company, where the information was extracted and found to be “100 percent intact and accurate.” Within the decade, the price for such storage and retrieval is expected to plummet from the current $12,000 per megabyte. By then, the researchers claim, people will begin storing all kinds of life events on strands of DNA, including “wedding videos.” Perhaps the most terrifying idea of all is that the “junk DNA” that makes up 97% of our genetic code is actually wedding videos from a long-dead race of insectoid alien monsters who sent billions of their own DNA storage modules floating through space to inseminate the universe.

Also, “George Church, a geneticist at Harvard who helped start the Human Genome Project, encoded an HTML file of his latest book into DNA earlier this year.” Congratulations, George, you’re a Kindle!