by Adrian Chen

There’s a way in which science can be viewed as the business of publishing very serious and boring magazines. Every discipline has dozens of scientific journals filled with the latest research alongside ads for cool equipment that scientists will tear out and pester their university administrations to buy for them. A scientist’s career depends on publishing research papers in these journals. And like anything having to do with media, there’s a hierarchy: The average scientist wouldn’t dream of submitting her paper to Nature any more than the average freelance writer would pitch The New Yorker. Chances are she’ll be realistic and aim low: maybe submitting to the Canadian Journal of Pure and Applied Sciences.

But even the jankiest scientific journal puts applicants through the sacred winnowing of peer review. Papers get rejected. And what do people do if they can’t get their stuff published? They start a blog. In October 2009, a group of eccentric scientists launched the online-only Journal of Cosmology. Simply put, the JOC publishes research that, in all likelihood, would never be accepted by more “mainstream” journals. In 14 volumes, covering everything from colonizing Mars to mass extinctions on Earth, this fringe publication has kicked up outsized scandal and hand-wringing in the usually staid realm of knowledge production.

The most recent controversy was over aliens. Earlier this month, the JOC published a paper by NASA engineer Richard B. Hoover, in which he claimed to have discovered fossilized alien microbes in a meteorite. If true, this discovery would have huge implications: Not only would it prove alien life existed on other planets, it would also strongly support the hypothesis of Panspermia, which suggests life initially came to Earth riding a meteorite. (The JOC is a champion of the theory.)

Predictably, the alien microbe story blew up on the Internet over a slow weekend. That Fox News was the first to report the “discovery” should have been a warning to the many other outlets that picked it up. The Journal of Cosmology’s own website should have been another. With its dizzying background of tiled deep-space imagery and faux-beveled menus, it’s a looping Star Trek .midi file away from your 1997 Geocities page. Its front page boasts: “14 million hits in March.” As one charitable observer put it, the website “does not inspire confidence.”

Sure enough, the alien microbe paper was met with pained howls from other scientists and sparked a full-on blog smackdown — or, as it’s called in science, a “debate.” Biologist PZ Myers called out obvious methodological errors in Hoover’s research but saved his most scathing words for the Journal of Cosmology:

“It isn’t a real science journal at all, but… the ginned-up website of a small group of crank academics obsessed with the idea of Hoyle and Wickramasinghe that life originated in outer space and simply rained down on Earth.”

Even NASA distanced itself from Hoover’s work with a curt statement.

The journal hit back at its critics through a series of bombastic open letters with titles like, “Have the terrorists won?” If this means that Hoover’s paper is bullshit, then, yes, the terrorists have won in this case. Hoover didn’t discover aliens.

The JOC isn’t a “real” journal, but it’s not a fraud, either. It’s the National Enquirer of scientific journals. There’s a peer-review process — but just barely, so weird stuff gets through. In its pages, the JOC sneakily bestows doctorates on contributors who haven’t earned them, yet it boasts an editorial board full of real Ph.D.s who work for NASA, Harvard, Oxford. The JOC’s editor-in-chief, Harvard astrophysicist Rudolph M. Schild, has “authored or contributed to over two hundred and fifty papers,” as his Wikipedia page is at pains to points out. Schild’s bona fides are solid.

But Schild, like the JOC, isn’t afraid to let his freak flag fly. His Harvard website features an entire page devoted to his green 1960 Morgan roadster. In one photo we see a bearded, bandanna-ed Schild headed along a country road in the thing looking like he’s on the way to an all-night acid party hosted by the Hell’s Angels. Schild entertains the idea of UFOs and openly complains that his Harvard colleagues won’t too. As he told the blog De Void, “We’ve got 300 scientists here studying everything you can think of. Everything but UFOs. I’ve developed a schizoid personality. There’s Rudolph M. Schild, and then there’s the UFO Rudy Schild.”

UFO Rudy Schild publishes The Journal of Cosmology with its far-out alien research. Rudolph M. Schild, Ph.D. convinces journalists that they’re safe in picking up the story.

Even the Journal of Cosmology’s name teeters on the edge of science: The scientific study of “cosmology” usually refers to that heady branch of physics dealing with string theory, the big bang and all the Big Questions of how the universe started and what it’s made of. But the JOC uses a looser (or stricter, depending on how you look at it) definition of “cosmology.” According to its “About” page, the Journal of Cosmology is devoted to the study of “existence in its totality.” It’s a journal of everything.

Given such freedom, it’s not really surprising The Journal of Cosmology published the definitive paper on sex in space in October 2010. (Wouldn’t you?) Dr. Rhawn Joseph’s “Sex on Mars: Pregnancy, Fetal Development, and Sex In Outer Space” covers all the salacious challenges presented by a long, lonely mission to Mars. (Dr. Joseph hails from the “Brain Research Laboratory,” a mysterious institution of which I could find no other mention online.)

“Humans are sexual beings,” writes Joseph. “The likelihood is male and female astronauts, traveling in the same space craft, will have sex during the long duration space-flight to Mars even if substantial rules and steps are taken to prevent it.”

Joseph’s astronauts aren’t just horny — they’re sort of kinky:

Performance of the sex act during a journey to Mars may require potentially complex sexual gymnastics. On the other hand, any difficulties associated with sexual intercourse in space may turn out to be an easily solved problem of docking and entry as humans are notorious for inventing ways of having sex despite all manner of logistical impediments.

Joseph’s paper was part of a special issue on the colonization of Mars, which featured another “sex in space” study by a NASA scientist, and a proposal for a one-way Mars mission commanded by the elderly, the rationale being that they’ve already lived out their best years here on Earth. (Maybe this is the solution to the “sex in space” problem, too.)

Like the alien microbes, the sex in space studies were Internet “weird science” sensations. “Forget the mile-high club, who’s joined the million-mile high club?” yucked Fox News. The Telegraph blared, “Sex In Space Tough, Says NASA”. When NASA pointed out that they weren’t actually investigating space sex, the Journal of Cosmology’s executive director, Dr. Lana Tao, mocked their prudishness: “It’s like TV shows from the 1970s where married couples sleep in separate twin beds, and women have babies but never show any signs of pregnancy.”

This combativeness may spell the end of the Journal of Cosmology. On Valentine’s Day, the JOC announced in a press release that it would publish its last volume in May because it had been “killed by thieves and crooks.” It blamed its demise on a conspiracy of more established journals:

JOC’s success posed a direct threat to traditional subscription based science periodicals, such as Science magazine; just as online news killed many newspapers. Not surprisingly, JOC was targeted by Science magazine and others who engaged in illegal, criminal, anti-competitive acts to prevent JOC from distributing news about its online editions and books.

It would be too bad if the journal shut down. Scientific progress probably wouldn’t be hindered, but the JOC and the noise it’s made show off the messier side of science. Scientists squabble, snark and strive. They are people who sometimes have strange obsessions and really cool cars. They are human. And like all humans, they dream of making wild, weightless love in the vacuum of space, hurtling toward Mars.

Adrian Chen is a staff writer at Gawker. Here is his Twitter.

by Abe Sauer

“Now maybe the Liberals know how the Conservatives felt last year when the Democrat Congress rammed Obamacare through (without even reading it).”

That comment, by “JamVee” on a Reuters story about last Saturday’s near-100,000-strong protest crowd in Madison, perfectly sums up what has become the predominant arguing position of pro-Walker conservatives. This “shoe on the other foot” defense of Governor Scott Walker’s budget bill stinks of revenge, not reason. But while there are many more solid reasons that the two bills are different, there really are ways in which the two pieces of legislation are the same — and, in one sense, they’re exactly the same.

Let’s dorm-room brainstorm the similarities between health care reform and Wisconsin’s budget repair:

• Both bills were signed despite (legitimate) polling data showing a majority of Americans opposed the legislation.

• Both bills were signed with a pen labeled “Elections Have Consequences,” the kind of “water is wet” dystopian buffoonery that will soon give way to “Recall Elections Have Consequences,” and, inevitably, “Consequences Have Consequences.”

• Both bills will see court challenges, and in both instances those challenges will be dismissed as the last-ditch effort of “sore losers.”

• Both bills ostensibly address honest problems with the American economy, though neither one honestly addresses those problems.

• Both bills are works of political patronage and their respective passages were more about building the foundations of future fund-raising than about solving the average American’s problems.

And, most importantly, the core details of both bills were drowned out by campaigns of passionate resistance and misinformation. (No, Walker’s bill does not sell puppies for $1 to medical research.) Sure, the Tea Party-oriented people were pretty damn quiet when George Bush was in the global strip club making it rain with our children’s financial future, but then, the currently incensed public employee unions weren’t so incensed when their brothers and sisters in private unions were being snuffed out one after one. One International Brotherhood of Electric Workers member I spoke to at the Capitol, on the day the bill passed, put is like this: “They may not have been there for us, but we’re here for them.”

What JamVee’s argument speaks to is not the bills themselves but to the perceived legislative process in an era of political sport. The content of the bills is beside the point, and the only thing that matters is “We won. They lost.” And why not? Because the only legitimate way in which President Obama’s heath care reform bill and Governor Walker’s budget repair bill are similar is that, in the end, both are huge paydays for corporations. Both the health care reform bill and Wisconsin’s budget bill serve one main purpose, to grind everyday Americans together like rocks, until the gold inside can be extracted.

It’s noteworthy that Walker himself has been quietly goosing this throwback to the heath care outrages as a way to energize his base. On March 14, Governor Walker put the jumper cables on the @scottwalker Twitter account, not used since Dec. 27, to warn his thousands of followers “Obama pol org is active in WI. We need ur help. Sign up @ www.scottwalker.org 2 vol or donate now. Pass it on.” (Since the inauguration, Walker has used @GovWalker for all communication). It’s a lazy spin move Walker has used before. During the primary election, his mailers were less directly related to his challenger than to Nancy Pelosi.

Much has been made of Walker busting up the unions as both a personal vendetta and a way to choke the Democratic party. But the true goal of dismantling the unions is removing the roadblock to privatization. Much like the CEO of Twitter, Walker and Republican leaders are asking themselves: Here we have something a lot of people use. How the hell can it be monetized?

Removing union strength, capping property taxes and defunding schools while upping support for charter schools, privately-supplied online education and the voucher system (all of which Walker’s first three months of legislation has done) creates an environment where an untapped resource (education) can be capitalized. A philosophical side benefit of privatized education for Walker is the elimination of sex education. Walker has long opposed anything beyond abstinence-only sex ed, including treatment of teens with STDs.

(Sidenote: One of the heretofore unexamined reasons Walker’s recall might stumble is his vicious anti-abortion stance, including opposing it even in instances where it would save the life of the mother. Wisconsin currently has a standing law outlawing abortion that is just waiting for the feds to allow it to be constitutional.)

It is already well known that Walker has proposed the sale of the state’s power plants to private industry, guaranteeing some lucky (no-bid) investor nearly 40 facilities with a built-in population of monthly payments. Those facilities service Wisconsin’s prisons, a population that won’t be getting any smaller after Walker committed himself to ending one of the state’s early release programs and upping funding to find all those dirty old men at one of the 20,000-plus IP addresses preying on “our children.”

Walker proposes to break the University of Wisconsin-Madison off from the state system and more or less privatize it. Such privatization will cause tuition to soar. It’s a transition many at California’s UC-Berkeley, often cited in conversation as Madison’s philosophical sibling, are already regretting. “Enhanced autonomy for this unique institution” is the call of a confederacy of front organizations like Badger Advocates which lead to out-of-state funders like the foundation of Harry Bradley, who, along with the Koch brothers’ multimillionaire father Fred, was one of the founding members of the John Birch Society. (Yes, today’s Koch brothers did not organically grow into their extreme right activism any more than Jaden Smith got the lead in Karate Kid from a casting call… or any more than the two Kochs pulled themselves up by any bootstraps. Wingtips have no straps.)

While the hullaballoo over the union measures was going on, the Wisconsin senate voted 18 to 0 on March 2 to confirm former one-term Republican state senator and treasurer of the state Republican Party, Cathy Stepp, as the head of the Department of Natural Resources. Appointing Stepp to oversee the DNR is a little like appointing Fox News head Roger Ailes to oversee National Public Radio. Stepp, a real estate developer and critic of the DNR before the appointment, once mocked the agency as being “pro garter snakes.” She was given a basement-dwelling rating by the Sierra Club for her environmental action while a senator. Stepp does not have a college degree in anything related to natural resource management because she does not have a college degree. Stepp and Walker have said the DNR under Stepp will become more business-friendly and the agency has already moved to streamline processes for investors to find a way to monetize Wisconsin’s natural resources.

Stepp’s confirmation came a month and a half after Walker “reorganized” the Department of Commerce in a public-private “hybrid” called the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation. The new Corporation will have no ability to regulate commerce and will have a 12 member board consisting of Walker and 11 of his appointees. Walker said the move meant that the state was “sending a very clear message that we’re going to merge the public and private sector together, pushing for economic development” and that the new “sole focus” of the agency “will be on promoting commerce, not in regulating it, not on confusing it.”

The uncreative pol looks at the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (aka “food stamps”) and sees just poor people. Walker and his supporters looks at this group and see profit. Walker will move the administration for the program from the county to the state level, closing regional centers, where people could visit in person to get aid and ask questions, in exchange for a program run by a computer and phone center, because if there is one thing people having difficulty accessing food do have, it’s high speed internet. (In all fairness, former Democratic Gov. Doyle pushed for this too.)

But that’s just saving money. What about making money?

Walker will also move to privatize whatever part of the assistance program is not nailed down by the feds. While federal law mandates state employees determine medical assistance and food stamp program eligibility, it says nothing about administering those programs. Walker’s plan makes room for over 1,200 private “vendors” to administer the programs. This privatization was also something the Doyle administration toyed with. How did that go? The Cap Times:

“The state is under a corrective action plan from the U.S. Department of Agriculture because of the wait times for servicing food stamp applications at the Enrollment Services Center… A recent state study also found the vendor run [i.e., privatized] center has a higher incidence of errors in handling applications… The Enrollment Services Center had an error rate of more than 3.2 percent, compared to 2.4 percent at the state-run Milwaukee County center, and 1.3 percent in the offices handled by the counties.”

Essentially, what Walker is doing is peeing in the soup at the state-run restaurant to make its offerings so unpalatable that residents will rightly decide to go and eat at the private dive, paying extra for the privilege of getting urine-less broth.

The privatization of food stamps makes for good walking-around money, but pensions are where Bahama vacation home money is. Despite the overwhelming evidence of the health of the Wisconsin Retirement System (WRS) pension (in 2010 the Pew Center rated Wisconsin a “solid performer,” one of only four states with pensions funded at over 95 percent), Walker’s bill quietly directs state agencies to examine the benefits of shifting the current WRS system to a 401k-like free market system. It has been pointed out that there are laws protecting plans like the WRS from tinkering. Of course, Walker’s bill has already addressed similar roadblocks with state Medicaid programs by granting himself and the joint finance committee unprecedented powers to enact legislation superseding existing laws (essentially blazing a path to lawmaking minus the legislative process). Liberal crybabies at One Wisconsin Now described the move as “turning the governor’s office into the state’s largest lobbyist waiting room.” Meanwhile, this switch to a 401k-style system for Wisconsin’s pension was shrugged off as “one of those fiscal inevitabilities” by the head of the Madison-based Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, Todd Berry.

(Reader Note: Todd Berry has been an abominable media slut during the Wisconsin debate, with hardly any reporter questioning the motives of the “non-partisan” Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, despite the organization’s hate for an apostrophe and fact that its board of directors is made up of well known Republican supporters, including Gov. Tommy Thompson’s former administration secretary, Mark Bugher. Despite that every media institution from left to right unhinges its jaw and writes “non-partisan” before repeating the latest end times-sounding statistic from Todd Berry, the current WTA board of directors has donated over $385,000 to political candidates, $358,000 of which went to Republicans. Calling that bipartisan is a little like calling yourself bisexual because you once saw somebody of the same sex naked in the shower.

It’s a shame because the WTA has been around since the 1930s and was, for many decades, a respectable organization of concerned, if jackass, tightwads — in 1958, for example, the WTA came out against the use of tax dollars at Wisconsin vocational schools for those seeking not strictly-vocational skills like home economics. But that has all fallen apart as it became a water carrier not for individual Wisconsin taxpayers, but for corporate taxpayers. The WTA routinely cites how abominable the state is for taxes, while ignoring the absence of all the fees (not “taxes”) paid in other states. In reality, Wisconsin was ranked in the middle of all American for tax burden in 2010, a year before Walker took office. That the WTA’s opinions are reported as “nonpartisan” today is one of the top five exhibits of journalism failure in the state. Tragically, even PolitiFact has used Berry as a source without questioning WTA’s motives.)

While it might seem that the current battle in Wisconsin is just an extension of a now three-decades long piffle between liberals and conservatives, it’s more than that. Current Wisconsin events, even if many of the players don’t realize it, is a core fight over what America is. It’s the latest battle in a protracted fight in maybe the most important ideological state in America’s post-Revolution political history. It’s the fight for the “Wisconsin Idea,” which in part called for the states “laboratory of democracy” to create “well-constructed legislation aimed at benefiting the greatest number of people.” One of the primary movers of the Wisconsin Idea was state icon and progressive architect “Fighting” Bob La Follette. La Follette was the politician kids dream about being before they meet their first lobbyist with a wad of cash. As governor, he backed a workers’ comp program, women’s suffrage and a minimum wage. If you are a wage earner today in America, you owe Bob La Follette. As Wisconsin governor he “repaired” the state budget deficit with a moderate tax on corporations.

For all Walker’s hate of government and taxes, his only job since he was 26 has been in government and his father was a baptist preacher in Delavan and likely paid few taxes, income, property or otherwise. The interesting thing is that Walker is just a proxy for a century-long state battle. The John Birch society, co-founded by the father of the Koch brothers, who bequeathed the wealth to his sons who used it to underwrite Governor Walker’s administration, is headquartered in Grand Chute, 100 miles from Madison. The Heritage Foundation, that gave Walker the ideological speaking points, was founded by Racine, WI native and UW-Madison (and Milwaukee Sentinel alum), Paul Weyrich. Eric O’Keefe, who founded the Koch-funded intelligence arm of the Tea Party, the Sam Adams Alliance, and launched the CIA black ops-like free-market local candidate training program American Majority, lives in Spring Green, WI.

Meanwhile, Wisconsin’s secretary of state has announced that he will not honor Walker’s request to publish the new union-destroying bill until the last possible day, March 25. And who is the secretary of state? He is Doug La Follette, the great-grandnephew of Bob La Follette.

And in the current climate, all Wisconsinites, including Walker, must thank La Follette. During his first appearance in New York City, 99 years ago, La Follette began his national campaign to maximize the power of the populace. From La Follette’s address to Carnegie Hall, January 1912, as reported by The New York Times:

“Propositions favored by the progressive are the initiative, the referendum, and the recall.”

Abe Sauer can be reached at abesauer at gmail dot com.

This graph about the work life of a “social media manager” is horse pucky. “Social media managers” don’t go out to lunch — they con an acquaintance at another business into bringing over their own lunch, then they tell all their friends and enemies about how they got the lunch for free, then they live-cast themselves throwing it up later, because puking’s just another word for “free viral video.” But other than that, it’s totally on the money. And also THE WORST. UGH. (via)

This is actually not a bad idea at all. Californian robot-making company Adept Technology has programmed their top-of-the-line Quattro robot to play the iPhone app video game 1to50, a speed test in which the player finds and touches the numbers 1 to 50 arranged randomly on the screen pad. To no one’s surprise, the robot quickly set a new record with a time of 6.67 seconds (besting the current human record of 7.85.) Distracting the robots with iPhone video games might give us enough of a window to make a run for it. Here’s a video with a wider-angle view, so you can see the whole robot machine. (Don’t bother trying to get his attention, though.)

If you want to see U.S. military intervention on behalf of the rebels in Libya, you should probably pick a more sympathetic group of advocates than the geniuses who thought our invasion of Iraq was such a good idea.

by Joshua Heller

At a desk in the press suite, I told everyone that I was going to observe the transition of technology nerds into punk rock party animals. A film critic said he was happy to be leaving because he hates “all those hipster douchebags.” Another critic said there should be a booth for loosening tight pants. I felt uncomfortable, as I was wearing a pair of Pacific Sunwear “Skinniest” jeans.

I am also wearing a button-front light blue striped shirt and very tight jeans. I chose to wear sandals this morning, because I couldn’t find my shoes. I am wearing the exact outfit that I wore out last night.

* * *

We waited for Jeff by a school bus that had been converted into a wagon, used to cart around Phish-heads. A man with a bible asked if he could read us a scripture. We said “no” and jumped aboard. We took the submarine party bus to the “LOL Reblog” party.

The ship had Lonestars on ice and a digital jukebox. I jokingly requested UB40’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love.” As a digital marketer from Minneapolis booed, I realized I actually like that song. It’s ripe for a dubstep remix club banger.

The bus was all guys. Someone said it was like we were in the Marines waiting to drop down on enemies. Do the Marines also pound three beers in transit?

We got to the Tumblr/FunnyOrDie party at the Highline, a bowling alley/karaoke parlor in a strip mall adjacent to a movie theater that serves beer.

We got inside; the Black Label and Cokes were refreshingly free. I ate some apple and manchego canapes, which is a glorified term for quesadillas. I ate little crusty flaky pastry balls full of cheddar and bacon, and some mushroom paté.

People introduced themselves by their Internet handles.

In a karaoke booth with furry walls Amir and I reprised our performance of Smash Mouth’s “All Star.” Our version consists of screaming “SOMEBODY ONCE TOLD ME, THE WORLD WAS GONNA ROLL ME” for the duration of the song.

People wanted to go somewhere for more dance-type partying. I wanted to stay but by the time I had built my argument we were walking north on Lamar. I convinced them we should walk to the power plant we’d partied at the night before.

The previous night we went to Nikon and Vimeo’s party at a reformed power plant. Diplo performed to a crowd of hundreds. It was the most impressive party I’d ever been to in the USA. (I once went a similar party at a dock in Buenos Aires; coincidentally Diplo also deejayed.)

En route to the powerplant we stopped at a “California-style” Mexican restaurant. I hoped it’d be like La Salsa or Baja Fresh, but it wasn’t. They’d made a mockery of my region’s cuisine by turning it Tex-Mex.

Tex-Mex food is the worse. It’s like:

“You like Mexican food?”

“Yeah.”

“You like like American food?”

“Nah.”

“Well here’s your hotdog wrapped in a tortilla.”

* * *

We got to the power plant as crowds were leaving. Jeff knew of a party sponsored by Durex and Thrillist. We danced to a techno remix of a Weezer song, then a Jewish rapper named Kosha Dillz handed me a CD. I told him I’d go see him perform. I lied.

Our hand-held devices told us about an after-party at the Vimeo estate.

* * *

Later I was sitting in the lobby on the first floor of the convention center.

PR guys, digital strategists, marketers and people wearing mass-produced nylon flannel shirts were filing out. Stylish older women and hip hop professionals wearing Phat Farm jeans and collared shirts began to enter. A guy with sparrow tattoos has an asymmetrical haircut to pretend that he isn’t balding. A girl with an English accent who’s flying off through Dallas said, “I couldn’t do another day of this.”

Previously: A Temporary and Equitable Technocracy: SxSW’s Hunter-Gatherers

Joshua Heller has a fake startup called Logjammr.

“The whole print model allows me to have 30 women who trawl the market who find the best espadrilles for spring.”
 — That’s Lucky editor Brandon Holley. Girlfriend? Don’t do that!

Try to attach a file that’s 25 megabytes or bigger to an outgoing Gmail message and what do you get? I have no idea, because I would never attempt such a stunt, but I’m guessing it’s a friendly error message informing you that the raw video trailer for your documentary about paperclips is the digital equivalent of a wide-load trailer and unfit for this particular mode of travel. What now? You’ve tried everything! Except no, you haven’t.

For starters, if you’re teaming up on this groundbreaking documentary of yours, and need to share the material with a partner 3000 miles away so they can edit and play around with it on their own, then might I suggest taking a look at the menu atop of the Gmail screen called “Documents”? This is a nifty little tool that allows you to upload files to a cloud (not literally a cloud, relax), from which they can be plucked by anyone you want to grant access.

Read the rest here.

(Sponsored posts are purely editorial content that we are pleased to have presented by a participating sponsor, in this case Intel: My Life Scoop; advertisers do not produce the content.)

“The US drank more wine than any other country in 2010! That includes France, which previously held the record. A record-breaking 330 million cases of wine were shipped within or to America last year; that’s $30 billion worth of wine!”

by Dan Shanoff

Let’s start with this sobering but necessary caveat: Barack Obama is perfectly capable of applying his attention on the country’s economic problems and the world’s massively scary issues right now and taking 20 minutes to fill out an NCAA bracket.

With that out of the way, let’s parse Obama’s bracket — published earlier today on ESPN.com — with all of the attention of a 24/7 political pundit parsing the latest daily message from the White House. Forget Politico’s “Win the morning.” Let’s “Win the March Madness.”

East: The President stays very conventional, picking the higher seed to win in every match-up except one. He shows a strong commitment to the battleground state of Ohio, picking the Buckeyes to roll through the region.

Audacity of Upsets: Just one, taking 11-seed Marquette over 6-seed Xavier. Otherwise, he is a pragmatist.

National (Bracket) Approval Rating: Strong. When compared to nation — as aggregated through ESPN.com’s “National Bracket” of all picks combined — Obama hews closely to the rest of us, although America likes Xavier more than Marquette.

West: Obama gets a bit bolder. While he likes 1-seed Duke to win the region, he picks Arizona — a sentimental favorite, undoubtedly — ahead of Texas, a state in which he has little chance of ever winning majority approval.

Audacity of Upsets: In addition to Arizona, the President flashes an East Coast — some might smear “elitist” — bias by taking streaking UConn over 2-seed San Diego State in the regional semifinal, despite the fact the game will be played in Anaheim, SDSU’s backyard. Obama clearly doesn’t believe in the trendy one-hit wonders, for which San Diego State is the poster team.

National (Bracket) Approval Rating: America approves! The consensus also predicts UConn will upend San Diego State — although the nation has far less faith that Arizona can beat Texas (by a 2.5-to-1 margin).

Southwest: More conservative thinking, with all four top seeds advancing to the Sweet 16, at which point things get slightly more interesting: Obama picks 3-seed Purdue over 2-seed Notre Dame in the regional semis. This is clearly some kind of pre-emptive political judo against popular Indiana governor and thinking person’s GOP 2012 front-runner Mitch Daniels.

Audacity of Upsets: Slightly more risk taken here than before, picking 12-seed Richmond over 5-seed Vanderbilt (a popular upset pick) and 10-seed Florida State over 7-seed Texas A&M; (it never hurts to try to earn extra points with fans/voters in Florida).

National (Bracket) Approval Rating: Low. The nation rejects the upset picks of Richmond and Florida State, and also picks Notre Dame over Purdue in a nearly 2-to-1 ratio. The Southwest is a mixed experience for Obama. Obviously, despite our political fissure, everyone agrees that Kansas will win the region handily.

Southeast: More up-the-middle conventionality, with the seeding mostly holding and Pitt winning the region. But let’s read into something interesting….

Audacity of Upsets: Perhaps in a tweak to fiscal foil Paul Ryan or governor Scott Walker — if you’re going to make a pick or two informed by irrational reasons, it is not unreasonable to think Obama will make a few with political ones — Obama picks 4-seed Wisconsin to get eliminated even before the Sweet 16. (If it happens in real life, you can’t help but think “karma.”)

Obama also has 11-seed Gonzaga knocking out 6-seed St. John’s on the tournament’s first day — busting New York City will undoubtedly help as a talking point in the more purple states — and 10-seed Michigan State beating 7-seed UCLA.

National (Bracket) Approval Rating: Credit to Obama — not only does the nation match his Pitt-over-Florida prediction for the regional finals, but his K-State pick over Wisconsin is the most evenly split among the country of any of the 16 games in the Round of 32. Conclusion: Many people apparently hate Scott Walker.

Final Four: Obama walks in lockstep with most of the nation, picking all four 1-seeds to reach the Final Four — Ohio State, Duke, Kansas, Pittsburgh. From there, he joins the country in picking Kansas and Ohio State to make the title game. There, they diverge: A plurality have the Buckeyes winning it all; Obama says “Rock Chalk Jayhawk” and picks KU.

Of course, last year, Obama picked Kansas to win it all — and the Jayhawks were bounced out in the first term weekend by pesky Northern Iowa.

With a largely conventional selection, Obama seems poised to return to the form that saw him out-pick 80 percent of the country in 2009, when he correctly called North Carolina as the champ.

Really: Was that such an impossible break to take? Now we can all go back to focusing on Japan and jobs.

Dan Shanoff is the founder of Quickish, a real-time quick-hit sports-news company that helps you keep up with the big things that are happening. Perfect for moments like, you know, 12 straight hours of NCAA Tournament games that start tomorrow afternoon. Oh, you are personally invited to join the Quickish bracket-picking group. (Yes! Another one!) Bonus: Obama’s entry will be a part of it, so you can compare yourself to him as things progress.