Good day to you all. It is time for "Hey, Science," our splendidly scientific weekly feature in which we have your most provocative scientific questions answered by real live scientists (or related experts). No question is too intelligent for our legion of learned persons, and the real winner is you, the public. This week, scientists answer the question: Why is there no male contraceptive pill?

THE QUESTION: This week's question comes from discerning reader JRL, who wonders: Why the heck isn't there a male birth control pill, already? What's the major malfunction, after all these years? Are there really huge scientific stumbling blocks—or is it a social or political problem, rooted in the reluctance of men to take a pill?

John Amory, professor of medicine at the University of Washington:

More science and biology than social. Before the pill was available, men were the biggest focus of contraception through the use of condoms.

There are two main differences between men and women that make contracepting men more challenging:
1) Men make 1,000 sperm every second from puberty to death whereas women make one egg a month. Suppressing ovulation has proven easier than suppressing sperm production
2) Women have a period during their reproductive life when they are not fertile, —pregnancy. During pregnancy, high levels of progesterone suppress ovulation preventing a competing pregnancy. The female pill mimics pregnancy by administered progesterone to women, thereby preventing ovulation. Men don't have an analogous period of temporary infertility.

Joseph Tash, professor of molecular and integrative physiology at the University of Kansas Medical Center:

The absence of a male pill is both a science and a business story. The technical challenges stem from the fact that men produce sperm at a rate of more than 1,000 per second, while women produce one egg a month. We are working with other researchers, thanks to support by the Contraceptive Discovery and Development Branch of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health, to develop compounds that target sperm production and activity without affecting men's hormones. In terms of the economic aspect, any new contraceptive, be it male or female, will need to be at least as safe, effective and easy to use as the female pill. This is a high standard, and as a result, pharmaceutical companies are not putting significant resources into discovering new contraceptive methods for use by either gender.

To the extent that social reluctance was an obstacle in the past, it's less so today. In surveys, men indicate an increasing willingness to participate in family planning and to share the responsibility of contraceptive use. Developing a new contraceptive method would help couples in which the female partner may be limited in her choices (side effects from the pill, for instance). In addition, many couples find it desirable that both partners use contraceptives for "double protection" to increase effectiveness. Finally, the male partner could have control over contraception, especially when the female partner's contraceptive status is unclear. Of course, a barrier method would still be required for protection against potential sexually transmitted infections.

David Handelsman, medical professor at the University of Sydney and director of the ANZAC Research Institute:

The scientific basis and proof of principle for male contraception using hormones to suppress sperm production is now well established by academic researchers in various studies mostly supported by the WHO (and also CONRAD and Population Council) over the last 3 decades. The efficacy issues are very clear - it is highly effective, comparable to any hormonal contraceptive in women.
The safety issues are OK so far but would require large scale studies to fully evaluate (a catch-22 as long as there is no commercial product).

The goal would be primarily for men in stable relationships (like a reversible vasectomy) but to a lesser extent for use by single (or even married) men who wish to control their fertility. However academic researchers cannot produce a commercial product and that requires pharmaceutical company involvement.
It is now clear that no pharma are interested to do this. The last companies departed the field in the last few years. Whether the growing pharma industry in India and China may think differently is one hope...

The reasons are primarily commercial and, to at most a minor extent, political. At various times companies have said any one of the following — frankly I don't know which is the real reason, but Boards of pharma companies are not in favour even when there are a few proponent scientists in the companies—
too high commercial risk (too low cost and income to compete with low cost oral contraceptives; high litigation risk to treat healthy men, especially in the USA); there is no interest or demand from men (company and independent surveys dispute this); women may not trust their men to use contraceptives (this has been disproven by the companies and by women in stable relationships who rely on vasectomy - why would men trust women who say they take pills?)

THE VERDICT: It is more scientifically challenging to make a contraceptive pill for men than for women—but not impossible. The biological mechanism for such a contraceptive is well established. The lack of an actual product that you can buy seems to be due to a lack of investment from pharmaceutical companies, who have not thus far been willing to spend the huge amounts of money that would be necessary to create, test, and market a male pill, when a perfectly good female pill already exists. A male birth control may certainly come one day, but that day is years away. When it does come, lots of men will probably give it a try.

Previously
The criminally informative archives of "Hey, Science" can be found here.

[Do you have a question for "Hey, Science?" Email me. Image via Shutterstock]

Harry Reems, a former adult film star who is best remembered for his leading role in the seminal porn film Deep Throat, passed away yesterday at the age of 65.

The news was first reported by Don Schenk, a close friend of Reems, who was by his side yesterday afternoon when he succumbed to organ failure at the Salt Lake City VA Hospital.

Gawker has since received confirmation of Reems' passing from a representative of the hospital.

According to Schenk, Reems was first diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last summer, compounding his existing health problems, which included peripheral neuropathy and emphysema.

He was admitted to the VA hospital earlier this month with jaundice, and his health deteriorated quickly thereafter. Reems became comatose over the weekend, and passed away yesterday around 2 PM local time.

In his heartfelt obit for Reems, Schenk writes in part:

Harry, whose given name was Herbert Streicher, was thrust into infamy in 1972 when he stared in "Deep Throat," the first adult film made for wide screen, but because he was a union actor with a Screen Actors Guild card, the film's producers had to create a new name for him.

The funny thing is Harry was not even supposed to be in the film. He was hired to handle the lighting. Writer/Director Gerard Damiano ran into a casting issue when the fellow hired to play the lead part didn't show up. Harry was thrust into the job, for which he was paid only $250.

Sadly, Reems continued to be battered around by the life he never chose.

In 1974, Reems famously became the first and, to date, only actor to have charges brought against him by the federal government for appearing in a movie.

Though he was initially convicted of conspiracy to distribute obscenity across state lines, the charges were eventually dropped following a retrial. Many mainstream celebrities who were outraged by the potential precedent supported Reems both verbally and financially during the trial.

Reems paved the way from other porn stars to practice their profession without fear of prosecution, but Rnever got to enjoy the fruits of his harrowing ordeal himself.

In the 2005 documentary Inside Deep Throat, Reems recounts his descent into alcohol addiction, recalling entire days spent in an inebriated haze.

Reems did eventually sober up, taking his last drink in the summer of 1989, and turning his life around completely. Along with sobriety, Reems also found faith, a wife, and a prosperous career as a real estate broker in Park City, Utah.

"I'm 16 and a half years clean and sober and as happy as I could ever want to be," he said in a 2005 interview shortly before the release of Inside Deep Throat on DVD. "In fact, my life today is better than anything I could've thought it would be when I was younger."

[H/T: Dangerous Minds, photo left via AP]

If ever there was a reason to call for a mistrial.

A 56-year-old British man named Barton "Bart" Simpson appeared in court yesterday to answer to allegations that he brought a prohibited firearm with him to Birmingham airport last Spring.

The existence of a man who shares his name with a beloved cartoon troublemaker would have been funny enough — until the court list revealed that Simpson's trial would be presided over by a judge named Mr. Burns.

Recorder Burns of the Warwick Crown Court in Warwickshire, um, recorded Simpsons' not guilty plea before the trial commenced.

"It's a bizarre coincidence that Bart Simpson is actually on trial in front of Mr Burns but it'll proceed as any other criminal case would," a court employee told the SWNS. "There were some eyebrows raised when the court list was published."

[H/T: Arbroath, screengrab via YouTube]

Esquire magazine's editorial philosophy can be summed up as "Booze, Bacon, Bourbon, Books, Broads, Boobs, and Bros Talking About Fashion But Uh, Not in a Gay Way." Actually, we're just giving them a hard time. The real editorial philosophy of Esquire, as stated by Esquire's UK editor, is simply: "Women are objects."

Here is what Alex Bilmes, the editor of Esquire UK, said at a panel discussion on feminism in the media (LOL) yesterday: "The women that we feature in the magazine are ornamental. That is how we see them."

Alex Bilmes keeps it so very, very real.

"I could lie to you and say they're interested in their brains as well, but on the whole, we're not," he said. "They're there to be beautiful objects. They're objectified."

Esquire editor Alex Bilmes is too honest for weak people to handle.

"There are certain times when we just want to look at them cause they're sexy," he said. "One of the things men like is picture of pretty girls. So we provide them with pictures of pretty girls. And those pretty girls, for that purpose, they are ornamental. We also provide them with pictures of cool cars, or whatever. It's a thing that you might want to look at."

Alex Bilmes is telling the deep truths that only an Esquire man is secure enough to share.

"We're at least, or possibly more, ethnically diverse [than other magazines]. More shape-diverse," he said. "We also have older women. Not really old, but in their 40s... Cameron Diaz was on the cover three issues ago. She's in her 40s."

Esquire Magazine UK is a staunch ally to feminists. You might consider blowing Alex Bilmes, ladies. Or at least sending him some pretty pictures. He's on your side.

[Guardian UK (featuring video) via Poynter. Photo of elderly woman via.]

A man in Kalamazoo was surprised to learn that the deer he hit with his car and put in his trunk wasn't so much dead as very much alive.

A local Public Safety Officer on patrol around 2 AM yesterday morning spotted a suspicious-looking person sitting in a vehicle parked behind a hotel and approached the scene to check it out.

The driver informed officer David Miller that he had recently struck a whitetail deer, and, assuming the deer was dead, had "intended on utilizing the meat from the road kill to feed his family," according to WOOD-TV.

The officer told the driver he wanted to check on the deer to ensure that it was properly tagged "with a kill permit or accident permit," and the man consented.

Slowly opening the trunk, Miller was shocked to discovered that the deer wasn't as deceased as previously claimed.

"Oh, he's still alive," the startled Miller said as the deer stumbled out of the car and onto the street in dramatic fashion reminiscent of the classic scene from cult comedy Tommy Boy.

After taking a second to reorient itself, the deer took off into the woods. Police believe the animal was merely stunned, and didn't sustain any serious injuries.

"You just never know what you're going to encounter," said KDPS Lt. Stacey Geik. "You never know. There could be worse things in trunks."

[H/T: HyperVocal, screengrab via MyFoxDetroit, video via WZZM]

A man who began selling ad space on his face back in 2007 now says he want the tattoos gone.

After auctioning off real estate on his forehead, cheeks, and chin for hundreds of dollars, Billy Gibby of Anchorage, Alaska, soon found himself with over 20 facial tats, a few of which were purchased by porn sites.

Gibby later upped the ante by trading in his own name in exchange for cash, legally changing it to Hostgator Dotcom in 2010.

The move garnered "the Human Billboard" plenty of publicity, but after a while it became harder and harder to sell his body to interested parties, and his prices, once as high as $10,000, dropped below $100 a tat.

Now, two years later, Gibby admits that he may have been a bit rash in getting porn site names inked on his face forever but blames the decision on his bipolar disorder.

"I'm trying to get rid of the ones on my face," Gibby told the Huffington Post. "I regret them because I only did them because of my mental illness."

To help him raise the $4,000 he needs to laser the facial tats off, Gibby is once again offering to sell the skin off his back. And front. And sides.

"I have space on my arms, hands, chest and the legs," he said. "I won't take ads from companies that are racist and I won't do political ads either."

His penis and buttocks are also off limits — that is, unless the price is right. "I'd need $1 million to do that," he said.

[photos via Facebook, YouTube]

Pennsylvania. The very name conjures up powerful scent-memories of desultory juvenile delinquents soaked in the stench of cheap wine and cheaper cologne. At long last, the issue has come to a head:

Freedom High School in Bethlehem says one of its students was recently taken to a hospital after being exposed to Axe Body Spray. Now, officials are asking students to stop using it as a cologne or fragrance while attending the school.

Unilever, which makes Axe, says it is looking into the report.

This is the area of the country Caity Weaver comes from.

[AP. Photo: FB]

At age 26, Lindsay Lohan has been taken into police custody a grand total of six times. Assuming this pattern holds for the rest of her life (and that she lives as long as the average American woman), she will have been admitted to jail roughly 19 times by the time she dies at age 81 (in jail).

Her newest mug shot was released yesterday, when she was booked into custody for a 90-day rehab sentence.

As you can see, girlfriend looks pretty great. More like a cheerleader who was caught drinking under the bleachers than America's number one threat to vehicular safety.

How does it stack up against her others?

September 2010: A Model Prisoner

Booked for: Violating probation after a drug test detected cocaine in her system.
Rating: Damn, girl!
Analysis: This is the gold standard of Lindsay Lohan mug shots. With three booking photos already under belt, she was, at age 24, a seasoned mug shot pro. And yet the experience had not yet lost its novelty. In 2010, she was still getting a little dolled up for her mugshots; why don't people dress up to go to the opera nowadays? Most importantly, by this time, she'd learned what does work (keeping your face level; looking up at the camera through your eyelashes) and what doesn't (open-mouthed gapes). She looks great.

March 2013: I'm Sexy and I Know It'm Over It

Booked for: Misdemeanor reckless driving and providing false information to police
Rating: Me-ow!
Analysis Once again, Lindsay's light-red hair tint prevents her face from becoming washed out under the harsh prison lights. She's going for glamour with a soft cat-eye and contoured blush. The doe eyes of her September 2010 mugshot have been replaced with a bored look of contempt. She mad. She sexy. She's working it.

July 2010: Jailhouse Barbie

Booked for: Violating probation by failing to attend court-ordered weekly alcohol education classes and submit to random drug tests
Rating: ...Alright. Sure!
Analysis: Maybe it's just the low-quality digital photo, but Lindsay's skin appears to be positively glowing in this shot. We've got a slight chiaroscuro affect framing the bottom half of her face, almost as if she's wearing earrings made out of shadows. Her hair is a little lifeless, but relatively sleek. She could be a hostess at a three dollar-signs out of four ($$$/$$$$) restaurant. Weekday shift.

November 2007: A Clink Clunker

Booked for: Misdemeanor cocaine use and driving under the influence
Rating: Yeesh.
Analysis: Lindsay Lohan's hair has got quite a bit of body in this mug shot, which is the one nice point you can make about it. Her lips are pursed like she's about to say something, but not in an alluring "I've got a secret" Mona Lisa way. More a "Is this where I'm supposed to loo—" *SNAP* way. She definitely looks old for 24, which is hyper-bad considering she was 21 when this was taken.

October 2011: The Swedish Ghost

Booked for: Failing to perform community service (Probation revoked)
Rating: Oh, no.
Analysis: In this booking photo, Lindsay Lohan appears wide-eyed and fearful; a true prison "n00b." This is surprising, considering she already had four mugshots under her belt by the time this was taken. The lack of bronzer should work in her favor, but paired with Malfoy-white hair, the overall affect is a little ghastly.

July 2007: A Haggard Hazard

Booked for: Suspicion of driving under the influence, driving on a suspended license and possession of cocaine
Rating: Ooh, child...
Analysis: Understandably, Lohan's first mugshot, taken at age 20, was also her weakest effort. When this picture was taken, she probably still believed that getting arrested was kind of a big deal. (A glance at her newest mugshot confirms she's since revised her position on that.) Her eyes are bloodshot. She looks dazed and bewildered. Her mouth positioning is the worst it's been to date. Luckily she's since had plenty of opportunities to improve her technique.

[Art by Jim Cooke]

As the Smoking Gun and others have reported, a hacker calling himself (or herself) "Guccifer" claims to have compromised the email account of former Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal, revealing memos that Blumenthal purportedly wrote to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about Benghazi and other matters. What seems to have escaped notice is that Blumenthal, a fierce Clinton partisan in the 1990s, was the orchestrator of a subterranean smear campaign against Obama during the Democratic primary and was specifically spiked by the White House as a potential staffer for Clinton when she became Secretary of State. And he was sending notes to Clinton at a private, non-governmental email address. Did Obama know Clinton was consulting with the guy who tried to kneecap him?

Blumenthal has long been a fomenter of dark whisper campaigns against Clinton enemies. He was famously accused in the 1990s by his former friend Christopher Hitchens of spreading the lie that Monica Lewinsky was a mere "stalker" who shouldn't be taken seriously. More recently, as Gawker reported, he was busy compiling scurrilous opposition research dossiers about Barack Obama's purported ties to unwholesome black preachers that ended up in Fox News chief Roger Ailes' inbox. That sort of behavior is, presumably, why the Obama White House put the kibosh on Clinton's attempt to hire Blumenthal at the State Department in 2009.

But that apparently didn't stop Clinton from using him in an unofficial capacity. As screenshots provided by Guccifer to Gawker and other news outlets make clear, Blumenthal was a prodigious emailer to an address that appears to be Clinton's, for instance sending 13 messages—with subject headings like "H: Libya, latest Benghazi intel. Sid"— to the address in December 2012. In one memo dated September 2012—which should be taken with a grain of salt, since Guccifer apparently copied and pasted the text into a new document before taking a screengrab—Blumenthal reports the findings of a "sensitive source" with direct access to Libyan president Mohammed Magarief's thinking on Benghazi. The screengrabs released thus far don't include any indication that Clinton wrote back to Blumenthal.

If the screengrabs are genuine, they indicate that late last year Clinton was relying on—or at least receiving—the advice of a man that the White House had explicitly nixed as an advisor on one of the most pressing and urgent matters facing the State Department. They also raise a host of questions about Blumenthal and Clinton's relationship. Did he have a security clearance? (If so, was it affected by his 2008 arrest for "aggravated DWI"?) Where was he getting "sensitive source" information about internal Libyan politics?

And why was Clinton apparently receiving emails at a non-governmental email account? The address Blumenthal was writing to was hosted at the domain "clintonemail.com" (we're not going to publish everybody's email address!), which is privately registered via Network Solutions. It is most certainly not a governmental account.

Staffers in the Bush White House famously used private email accounts to conduct government business as a way to circumvent the Presidential Records Act, which mandates that all official communications be archived. Republicans are suspicious that the Obama White House is continuing the practice; Rep. Darrell Issa is currently investigating it. Clinton's emails are also subject to the Freedom of Information Act. While it's not strictly a violation of the PRA and FOIA for Clinton to conduct official business on a non-government account, the law requires that those emails be archived along with her @state.gov communications. And there seems to be little reason to use a different account other than an attempt to shield her communications with Blumenthal from the prying eyes of FOIA requesters. Neither the State Department nor the White House would immediately comment on whether the White House knew that Blumenthal was digitally whispering in Clinton's ear, or if the emails were preserved as the law requires.

And if, as it appears, Blumenthal's emails contained information that was classified, or ought to have been treated as such, it could be a major security breach for Clinton to have allowed it to be sent to her on an open account, rather than through networks the government has specifically established for the transmission of classified material. Why, someone could hack into it. You never know.

Through his son Max, Blumenthal declined to comment.

[Images via Getty]

Earlier this week, we saw reports that someone completely irrelevant (folk singer Michelle Shocked) said something stupid, oh wow. The news was sparse and hazy, something along the lines of "Michelle Shocked told her audience to tweet that she said that God hates fags." Was she being straightforward? Was she being sarcastic? She couldn't possibly be aligning herself with the kooks of the Westboro Baptist Church by invoking one of their dearest slogans, right?

Well, now via the San Francisco Bay Guardian Online, we have her full, 23-minute set second from Yoshi's San Francisco and after listening to her words within context, I still have no clue what this woman is talking about. The meat of her argument is excerpted above. Here is what the born-again singer told the increasingly hostile crowd:

It's not too late. You can jump into this Jesus gang anytime you want. But, um, I was in a prayer meeting yesterday and you gotta appreciate how scared, how scared, folks on that side of the equation are. I mean, from their vantage point, and I really shouldn't say ‘their,' ‘cause it's mine, too, we are nearly at the end of time and from our vantage point, we're gonna be, uh, I think maybe Chinese water torture is gonna be the means, the method, once Prop 8 gets instated and once preachers are held at gunpoint and forced to marry the homosexuals, I'm pretty sure that that will be the signal for Jesus to come on back. You said you wanted reality. If someone would be so gracious as to tweet out that Michelle Shocked just said from stage, ‘God hates faggots.' Would you do it now?

...They're confounded. Matt, you might need to come back up here. (Male voice: There's gonna be a lot of talking about that.) I ain't scared. I ain't scared. This is not a tribunal. This is one woman's opinion, and it's fun. It's a lot of fun. I am so committed to loving each and every soul in this room tonight that I could not come here and ignore you. I could not come here and pretend that I was above the conversation and I could not pretend that I was beneath it, either. I had to join it. Thank you for that one hand clap.

Prop 8 was, in fact, instated in California in 2008 it's the reason why gay people in California can't get married. The word she meant was "overturned," I think, but who knows what she meant. And doesn't she want Jesus to come back? Isn't that her point? So gay marriage is a good thing, right? Or no, it means the end of time. But maybe that's gonna be one big gay wedding reception, which can't all be bad because you know the music will be great.

Michelle Shocked's words are words of nonsense. Take solace in them — this is what homophobia looks like today. It looks insane.

Shocked goes on to share an anecdote about being a white girl in a black church and irritating people. Imagine. People in the audience respond with dissent to what sounded like anti-gay words but were maybe just a weird pagan spell she performed to cloud everyone's brains and make them buy her sheet music. And then she goes off-mic to scream, "I am sick of Christians filled with hypocrisy hiding behind the symbol of the cross...I believe that the word of God is just what it says it is: the truth." K.

Then she quotes John 3:16 ("For God so loved the world...") in Spanish. Then she plays her song "Wanted Man." She continues to play the role of babbling zealot until the venue turns off her mic and she still keeps going. When she finishes singing a second time, she begins panhandling (how very Amanda Palmer of her), passing her hat and asking for a dollar "the folk singer, for the busker, for the street performer...and if that's too kind, maybe you'll support my initiative: a songbook with sheet music in it."

The last thing she says to the crowd is, "All I'm trying to say is god bless us, every one!" Don't try to convince us that you're Tiny Tim after getting all Ghost of Christmas Future on our asses, lady.

Here's the full audio. It is squirmy and morbidly fascinating.

Even before the full context of Shocked's words were available, the fallout from this display was severe: Her tour has basically been canceled because 10 out of the 11 venues she was to play have banned her. The criticism has been widespread, including from "fan, mentee," collaborator and fellow folk singer Erin McKeown, who tweeted "this is no surprise and not the 1st time." Indeed, take a look at this 2008 article, in which Shocked disavows her status as an honorary lesbian and indulges in that being-gay-is-a-sin-but-we-all-sin half-condemnation.

Buzzfeed ran a purported apology from Shocked, which reads in part:

I do not, nor have I ever, said or believed that God hates homosexuals (or anyone else). I said that some of His followers believe that. I believe intolerance comes from fear, and these folks are genuinely scared. When I said "Twitter that Michelle Shocked says "God hates faggots," I was predicting the absurd way my description of, my apology for, the intolerant would no doubt be misinterpreted. The show was all music, and the audience tweets said they enjoyed it. The commentary came about ten minutes later, in the encore.

And to those fans who are disappointed by what they've heard or think I said, I'm very sorry: I don't always express myself as clearly as I should. But don't believe everything you read on facebook or twitter. My view of homosexualty has changed not one iota. I judge not. And my statement equating repeal of Prop 8 with the coming of the End Times was neither literal nor ironic: it was a description of how some folks - not me - feel about gay marriage.

Of course, she did implicate herself in this line of thinking when she said, "I really shouldn't say ‘their,' ‘cause it's mine, too."

And then she supposedly followed it up with another statement that ended:

I know the fear many in the evangelical community feel about homosexual marriage, as I understand the fear many in the gay community feel toward the self-appointed faithful. I have and will continue speaking to both. Everything else – facebook, twitter, whatever – is commentary.

At this point, it's like blah blah blah, why the fuck are we still paying attention to what this person has to say about anything, other than for the derisive entertainment value in watching a public communicator utterly sabotage herself with her own words? Her internal conflict seems to be of biblical proportions.

[Image via Getty]

While speaking to fans inside a store in Bogotá, Natalia Paris — Colombia's best known model, according to her website — was caught on camera claiming that chickens injected with female hormones were turning children gay.

"The boys that are eating [that kind of] chicken, because they are injecting female hormones, are starting to turn into homosexuals," the controversial animal rights activist could be heard saying.

The comments drew immediate criticism, with many taking to Paris's Facebook page to express their disgust.

The National Federation for Colombian Poultry Farmers put out an official statement calling Paris's remarks outrageous, and referring to her claim that chickens are injected with hormones to accelerate their growth an "urban myth."

Sadly, Paris is far from alone in her belief that hormonal chickens lead to homosexual kids.

Three years ago, Bolivian President Evo Morales made the exact same claim while speaking at a climate change conference.

Comunidad Homosexual Argentina president Cesar Cigliutti blasted Morales's "absurd" assertion, adding that "by following that reasoning, if we put male hormones in a chicken and we make a homosexual eat it he will transform into a heterosexual."

[H/T: Huffington Post via Dlisted, photo via Facebook]

Life is tough for white people in America. A few hundred years of presumed superiority have left many of them psychologically unable to deal with failure, trapped in a cycle of victimhood where their own shortcomings can only be understood as evidence of persecution against them. So we have Abigail Fisher, 23 years old, and the plaintiff in Fisher v. University of Texas, which is currently being weighed by the Supreme Court.

Fisher, who is white, is suing the university because—well, because the full-time crusaders against affirmative action asked her to. But her ostensible complaint is that she applied to go to the University of Texas at Austin but didn't get in, while some students who are not white did get in, under the university's system of weighing "personal circumstances," including poverty and race, in some of its admissions. Ergo, under the logic of anti-reverse racism, some undeserving minority student took her spot.

But this week, Pro Publica published a look into the actual circumstances surrounding University of Texas admissions when Fisher applied. And that the reason Fisher didn't get in was that she wasn't qualified.

In response to earlier restrictions on affirmative action, Texas was already using a system under which, before it considered anyone's "personal circumstances," any student in the top 10 percent of his or her high school class was automatically admitted. Ninety-two percent of the slots at Austin were given out that way in Fisher's year. Fisher didn't get one of those spots. That means at least 10 percent of the students in her own high school had performed better than her, head to head.

This is the thing about anti-affirmative-action plaintiffs: They are drawn from the pool of white people who find themselves right around or below the cutoff point for admissions, despite the widely documented bias in favor of white people in the American system of educating, credentialing, and testing students. They are by definition mediocre. The good students get into the good schools.

But the white plaintiffs never complain about all the admissions spots that went to white people with higher grade-point averages and better SAT scores than theirs—spots that were just as available to them, if they had been able to earn the right credentials. So the issue in Fisher v. Texas is not the 92 percent of admission slots that Abigail Fisher could have gotten by being a better student in high school. It's the eight percent of slots that were left over.

Yet even for those, Pro Publica reports, Fisher and her backer Edward Blum can't say she was cheated because of her race:

[U]niversity officials claim in court filings that even if Fisher received points for her race and every other personal achievement factor, the letter she received in the mail still would have said no.

It's true that the university, for whatever reason, offered provisional admission to some students with lower test scores and grades than Fisher. Five of those students were black or Latino. Forty-two were white.

Neither Fisher nor Blum mentioned those 42 applicants in interviews. Nor did they acknowledge the 168 black and Latino students with grades as good as or better than Fisher's who were also denied entry into the university that year. Also left unsaid is the fact that Fisher turned down a standard UT offer under which she could have gone to the university her sophomore year if she earned a 3.2 GPA at another Texas university school in her freshman year.

So having failed to work hard enough in high school to get into the University of Texas directly, Fisher was unwilling to do the work to win a transfer slot there. When will white people stop wallowing in their victim status and put some effort into improving themselves, like regular Americans do? It will be a shame if the Supreme Court chooses to reward this kind of dysfunctional identity politics.

Where Are They Now? is kind of like OWN's version of a TLC freak show except the freaks who detail their lives in inevitably fascinating babble are people whose notoriety Oprah Winfrey helped facilitate. (Never forget that OWN is owned by O.) Or at least, they are people formerly of note. Such was the case on last night's episode featuring Gennifer Flowers, the woman who claimed to have an affair with Bill Clinton during his first run for office in 1992. She claims that Star magazine came to her with knowledge of her involvement, which caused her to announce it to the public.

More importantly, the woman, now at age 63, is ripening into a proper eccentric who says things like, "I thought I was doing us both a favor by going to talk with [Clinton's] people and taking my lawyer and, you know, threatening a lawsuit." Uh, ok. In the clip above, she discusses her post-scandal career as a lounge singer and speaker who reaches women with her stories of "surviving and thriving." Sometimes women ask her for advice on being with married men. Her advice is, "Say no! And go! And tell!" Oh wait, no. That's Webster's advice.

Flowers' appearance has been altered considerably (such compare and contrast is more than half of the point of Where Are They Now?), but her spirit continues to flourish, or something.

A man in Milwaukee who is two years behind on his child support payments is facing multiple felony charges after the Milwaukee County District Attorney's Office discovered Facebook photos of the deadbeat dad waving around large sums of money.

In fact, the DA says Christopher Robinson has yet to make a single child support payment since his child was born two years ago.

Suspecting that Robinson wasn't being truthful about his financial state, the DA asked the court to order Facebook to grant them access to Robinson's Facebook account.

There, investigators found several photos showing Robinson getting intimate with "wads of cash and liquor."

"It's a great investigative tool for us," Milwaukee County Chief Deputy District Attorney Kent Lovern said of Facebook, "because it gives us a glimpse into their real lives that our targets may be living."

Lovern explained that photos enable the DA's office to apply for a search warrant if it appears that "somebody has more money than maybe they are indicating they do."

In addition to Lovern, the DA was also able to use Facebook to determine that a man who was skipping out on child support was not only gainfully employed, but had recently boasted about being about to afford a motorcycle.

[H/T: The Daily Dot, screengrab via CBS58]

In February, a hacker named Guccifer revealed to the world the hidden artistic talents of George W. Bush, releasing to The Smoking Gun a handful of photographs of oil paintings by the former president that had been taken from personal Bush family emails. The images were well-received by critics and laypeople alike, but they represented only a small portion of the budding outsider artist's oeuvre. Little more was being made available: In an interview with an Atlanta television station, his art teacher said he'd painted "over 50 dogs," tantalizingly few of which were actually shown on the broadcast. Otherwise, the Texan Master was silent. The world was crying out for more Bush art, more raw talent, more lush brushstrokes—more dogs—and nothing was forthcoming.

Until now.

Six photographs of paintings by the former president, taken from the private email hack originally reported by The Smoking Gun, have been provided to Gawker, where we're publishing them for the first time.

The new work reveals a wider range of subject matter than previously seen: not just dogs, but also, cats, and shells, and crosses. Nothing as immediately arresting as the nude self-portraits—but the lumpy cats, arranged in landscapes and around plants, and the limbless dogs, trapped in vacuums of varying shades of dun, can be as affecting and revelatory upon meditation as the shower paintings are immediately.

Here, the first cat painting by George W. Bush ever seen by the world (note the bath self-portrait in the bottom of the frame):

Another Bush cat, and a still life of shells:

A nighttime landscape, with a cross in the foreground (this one was titled, by the hacker, "THE.INFAMOUS.WEDDING.NIGHT.WHAT.IS.LAURA.HAS.TO.SAY.ABOUT.THAT"):

Two more of the "over fifty" dogs:

A previously-seen painting of Barney Bush, next to a never-before-seen landscape:

Three years after NBC pulled a hilarious prank on Conan O'Brien by convincing him to move across the country and then, when he got there, promptly setting him on fire, the network has chosen a new fair maiden to sacrifice to the ravenous monster of late night television programming: Jimmy Fallon.

The New York Times reports that the network "has made a commitment" to promote current Late Night host Jimmy Fallon to Jay Leno's position on The Tonight Show. And soon. While the hand-off is expected to happen by the fall 2014 expiration of Leno's contract—at the latest—the Hollywood Reporter writes that it could happen as early as next February, to give Fallon a boost during the Winter Olympics. (If there's one thing people love about the Winter Olympics, it's The Tonight Show.) Even if Fallon took over Tonight in February, Leno would be unable to join a rival network until his contract expired in September.

As a final fuck-you to Conan, NBC is expected to move the program back to New York City, where it made its debut a thousand years ago in 1954. The show moved to Burbank, California in 1972 to give it better access to Hollywood guests. Also, because host Johnny Carson was, as the Times puts it, "looking for […] a different lifestyle," a process that sounds like it involved vast quantities of cocoa butter.

Before Conan briefly borrowed The Tonight Show from its cruel bitch mistress Jay Leno in 2009, there was speculation that the show would be moved back to O'Brien's home base of New York. However, per the Times, "NBC insisted 'Tonight' had become a Hollywood-centric show" and refused to move it back to the East Coast.

The network is reportedly eager to get Fallon into Leno's 11:35 timeslot as quickly as possible because ABC has recently moved Jimmy Kimmel Live! opposite it. Executives are said to be concerned that, if they delay a handoff for too long, Kimmel's younger, hipper show will lock up the next generation of viewers who go to bed late but not THAT late before Fallon has a chance.

It's unclear what will happen to Late Night after Fallon moves up to The Tonight Show slot. Maybe NBC will offer it to Conan and then, when he shows up for his first night hosting, add "by the way, we're not filming this."

[NYT // THR // Images via Getty]

On last night's episode of Inside the Actors Studio, host James Lipton and guest Tina Fey talked about everything: From essential bra advice to Lean Cuisines to Fey's favorite curse word (spoiler: it's "shitballs").

But it was all a dress rehearsal compared to the showstopping moment when Lipton, in signature fashion, asked if he could interview Fey as her most famous character — Sarah Palin.

Fey proceeded to slip seamlessly into Palin's Alaskan drawl, and spent the next few minutes improvising answers to Lipton's questions on same-sex marriage, gender equality, and guns.

And here's a fun fact: Lorne Michaels didn't notice Fey's likeness to Palin until it was pointed out to him by his doorman. Huh!

[video via Mediaite]

In an effort better manage its healthcare costs, the pharmacy brand CVS Caremark is now asking all employees who use company health insurance to have doctors assess their weight and body fat, among other things, measurements that will then be turned over to CVS' insurer. The company is calling the assessment, which it will provide, "a health screening and wellness review so that colleagues know their key health metrics in order to take action to improve their numbers, if necessary." Any employee who chooses to opt out of the screening will have their health coverage jump $50 per month, according to the Boston Herald.

No CVS employee will have access to others' health information, but privacy activists are angry with the plan, nonetheless. A spokesperson for the group Patient Privacy Rights told the Herald that CVS is being "incredibly coercive and invasive." Alas, the Huffington Post reports that health screenings will probably increase in the age of Obama's Affordable Care Act:

Obamacare could make such practices more common. The health care reform law allows employers to levy a higher penalty against workers who don't participate in company wellness programs. In some cases, workers could also have to pay more if they don't meet certain health targets like appropriate body mass index.

Thanks, Obama!

In 2010, Whole Foods attempted to curb employee weight gain by giving thinner staffers a greater employee discount than fatter ones. And in 2008, Japanese health authorities began fining companies that couldn't get their employees' weights down.

[Image via AP]

Here's a good reason to always do your homework on the people renting your East Hampton vacation home, if you're lucky enough to have one: Without the proper background check, your favorite couch might become permanently stained with semen. Such was the case, allegedly, for Brooklyn couple Stuart and Susan Silverman, who rented their vacation home last summer to businessman by the name of Philip Wade. According to the Silvermans, Wade didn't disclose, exactly, what his plans for the home were, aside from saying he would hold a barbecue at the home for friends and family. As it turns out, that barbecue was actually an orgy-like party for a reality show called "pArty of 5," which features five days of partying in five different locations around the world.

As you might expect, the Silvermans were surprised to discover their home described on the internet as the "Vice Hamptons Crib," with accompanying photographs of women "in various stages of undress," as the Silverman's lawyer phrased it in the lawsuit. The pictures were taken during a 100-person party, which filled the couple's yard with 50 cars and featured security guards checking IDs

The pictures online combined with news of the party, the Silvermans claim, led to their being "viewed by the members of the community as running a house of ill repute."

Any hope to repair that image of "ill repute" was probably finished by the lawsuit's descriptions of the damages done to the couples furniture during the party, which have now been reported widely in the press.

"A very expensive couch has to be replaced, because, despite the Silvermans best effort to clean it, there were sperm stains that could not be removed," according to the complaint filed in Long Island Federal.

The couple is seeking $20,000 for various repairs to the home and missing silverware, plus unspecified compensation for damage to the home's lawn.

[via Daily Intelligencer/New York Daily News]

For reasons that remain unclear, an elderly man in North Georgia decided to stand (instead of, you know, sitting) on the rim of an outdoor toilet at Carters Lake, which is managed by the U.S. Corps of Engineers. As a result, he fell inside the toilet, into a five-foot deep, shit-filled area beneath the facility.

"We've had these type of toilet facilities for 10 to 15 years, and he just mis-used the toilet, unfortunately," [U.S. Corps of Engineers spokeswoman Lisa] Parker said.

The man was trapped inside the shit pit for roughly 70 minutes. According to Parker, it took a while for his family to notice he was missing and, once they did, they had to call park officials to unlock the door. The man was found "covered in mess and scraped up," and was taken to a nearby hospital, where his condition remains unknown.

[via Daily Mail/Image via Shutterstock]