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by Tom Laskawy

Some fries with that? Once you’ve been super-sized, it’s hard to go backPolitical reporter Marc Ambinder of the Atlantic has a new must-read piece on the obesity epidemic. Ambinder comes at the issue from the perspective of a former obese person, though he himself notes that his “cure” of bariatic surgery is risky, expensive, and one that can’t be considered a blanket solution for the general population.

He also raises the chilling but very real possibility that the current generation of the medically obese (i.e. those with a body-mass index reading of over 30) may never succeed in returning to a more normal weight. Scientists have learned how tenaciously the body guards its resources, even when body weight far exceeds what’s needed for survival.

But Ambinder is not without hope. In fact, he also wrote an accompanying blog post summarizing his priority list for tackling the problem. And two of his elements refreshingly face the often overlooked issues of class and stigma head on:

Recognize that what separates skinny people from fat people is luck, and not willpower. Either your genes or your unchosen social environment, will provide a shield against the pressures of the default obesogenic environment. If you’re part of a chronically stressed population, have little or no access to quality public infrastructure, find yourself growing up in a dysfunctional family, and have limited social mobility, the chances that you’ll be able to summon some magical reserve of willpower is slim to none. If you’re white, upper middle class, tend to be hopeful about improving your lot in life, and have the time and resources to diet and exercise, you might be able to find a weight loss regimen that works for you. Either way, don’t give yourself credit, and don’t blame other people who aren’t as lucky.

Deal with stigma on its own terms: so long as there are fat people, there will be fat stigma. Fat stigma is a dangerous health problem in an of itself. Since we collectively perpetuate it, we ought to collectively be more aware of how harmful it is, and channel that energy into stigmatizing those specific institutions and entities that actually make us fat and profit from doing so.

This issue of luck is crucial. The food industry and others who hate regulation want the debate to revolve around personal responsibility. But if just doing the “right thing” isn’t enough, i.e. if obesity could happen to anyone, then it’s harder to argue against universal policies to address it. It’s easy to get caught up in the science and forget these larger, more psychological factors. Indeed, anti-obesity stigma and the cult of personal responsibility interact in pernicious ways. It’s hard to have much desire to help those you stigmatize. Understanding the amplifying nature of these two trends is crucial.

Meanwhile, the article itself includes some of the first indications that Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move anti-obesity initiative may turn out to be a velvet glove over an iron fist:

A few weeks after Obama announced her plan, I asked Susan Sher, her chief of staff, whether the first lady was trying to encourage cooperation, rather than attacking the industry for, say, advertising. “It is clear that this is just a first step, and for example, the totally voluntary commitment that the beverage industry made is a terrific first step,” Sher told me, referring to a recent agreement that would put calorie counts on the front of soda bottles and cans and on vending machines. “But the FDA may have more-stringent requirements in the future, so I think that everything that’s happened so far shouldn’t be viewed as the end of the game in any respect. We didn’t make demands, and I think that the first lady is very clear that that is not her role, that you have a lot of federal agencies involved in regulations — the FTC will probably have a say about this as well, in terms of advertising. So this was really a lot of industry deciding, at least at some level, ‘We want to be part of the solution, not just part of the problem.’” A few weeks later, the FDA—led by Margaret Hamburg, another New York City veteran with a strong nanny streak—warned 17 food manufacturers that their food labeling made misleading health claims that needed to be corrected. This was the most significant FDA enforcement action on such matters in more than a decade.

Perhaps the Obama administration’s strategy for this policy will mirror the health care negotiations—make the effort to cooperate, even coopt the other sides issues (like the need to show some amount of personal responsibility) and when that all proves insufficient, tax, regulate and otherwise act decisively. Ambinder ends with the same question we all have about obesity and the White house: Is Michelle Obama willing to take the gloves, velvet or not, off?

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Filed under: Performance, SUV, Porsche, Earnings/Financials, Luxury

If there’s one thing the Porsche Cayenne has historically been good at, it’s making money for the German automaker. That trend looks to continue with the new version of the ‘ute that Porsche just began assembling at its Leipzig plant in Germany as company CEO Michael Macht indicates that orders for the new Cayenne are “clearly exceeding” expectations.

The news couldn’t come at a better time for Porsche, which reportedly saw its sales decline an alarming 40 percent in the first quarter of the year. The previous-generation Cayenne, which is Porsche’s best-selling vehicle, had seen its sales figures reduced by about 25 percent over the fiscal year that ended last July.

Porsche is banking on updated styling, improved performance and reduced emissions – an effort that is spearheaded by the automaker’s first-ever production hybrid model – to stop the sales skid of its Cayenne nameplate. Moreover, the new Cayenne and Panamera sedan are seen as the main ingredients to put Porsche back on an upward sales trajectory.

[Source: BusinessWeek]

Porsche CEO says new Cayenne orders “clearly exceeding” expectations originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 14 Apr 2010 15:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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“Food used to be really important to me. I loved steak, I loved hamburgers, I loved all that stuff. I can’t believe how irresponsible I was, eating what I ate….”

Emmy-winning talk show host and American Idol judge Ellen DeGeneres may be the first Shape cover model to not don a two piece for her guest sport on the health & wellness mag — but the comedienne does share some helpful tips for how she keeps her body in tip-top condition.

El — a yoga fanatic — adheres to a strict diet that excludes all meats, diary, and sugar.

“No animals, no dairy, nothing processed; a lot of soup, veggies, rice, beans, legumes. I want to be on my toes; I want to have energy. And as much as the diet seems like a sacrifice, it’s helping me.”

David Goldman states the obvious, but it’s worth being reminded of it:

Give banks unlimited access to financing at close to 0% and a steep yield curve, exempt them from marking their worst assets to market, and they will earn money, even when their combined commercial loan book is shrinking at an annual rate of 20% –

Obviously the awesome performance of Wall Street isn’t due to any kind of lending pickup.

Join the conversation about this story »

One lingering question from today’s Senate hearing with Attorney General Eric Holder is just how the Justice Department determines which terror suspects get tried in a criminal court and which get tried in a military commission. It’s a persistent uncertainty: David Kris and Jeh Johnson, the two senior-most officials at Justice and the Pentagon for determining this question, didn’t have a coherent or clear answer when they testified about revisions to the military commissions system last summer. Holder’s answer today, to the extent he gave one, was that those decisions are made on a case-by-case basis, which is an elision. And elisions just raise the cynical suspicion that the real criterion is whether there’s a strong case against someone — if there is, he’ll be tried in criminal court; if not, he’ll be tried according to the more lax process rules of the commissions; and if there’s really no evidence to be brought in court, he’ll be held indefinitely without charge.

Ari Shapiro had a piece for NPR this morning quoting Jamie Gorelick, the former deputy attorney general and 9/11 Commissioner, saying she heard from unnamed Justice Department sources that the department does have a more rigorous formula for making that determination. But she didn’t know what it was. And she didn’t know why the Justice Department hadn’t released it already.

Luke Timmerman wrote:

PerkinElmer (NYSE: PKI), the maker of scientific instruments based in Waltham, MA, said today it has agreed to acquire Spokane, WA-based Signature Genomic Laboratories for about $90 million in cash, according to a regulatory filing. The move will enable PerkinElmer to strengthen its genetic testing services and expand into molecular diagnostics, particularly cancer diagnostics, according to a statement. Signature has about 120 employees.

UNDERWRITERS AND PARTNERS

At its first-ever developers conference — known as Chirp — which is being held in San Francisco today, Twitter co-founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams provided some hard numbers behind the growth and size of the social network. Here are some of the most important ones we’ve collected so far:

• 105,779,710 registered users

• 3 billion API calls a day

• 175 employees

• 600 million searches per day

• 300,000 new users per day

• 180 million unique visitors per month

• 37 percent of active users use Twitter on their phones

• 75 percent of traffic comes from outside Twitter.com

• 100,000 registered applications

Thumbnail photo courtesy of Flickr user lrargerich

Reader Ariel writes in after Delta refused to let her check her bags curbside because one was 5lbs too heavy, despite the fact that her other one 10lbs under. She says she was told it was Delta’s policy that she couldn’t move 5lbs of her crap to the other bag. This set off a chain of events that cost her $1500.

Ariel writes (to Delta):

On March 22, 2010 I was scheduled to fly from Los Angeles to New York City for a business trip. I had confirmed reservations on Delta Flight [redacted] departing LAX at 7:00 am. I left my home at 5:30 am and arrived at the airport at 5:50 am. I had already checked in online to receive my boarding pass and pay for my 2 checked bags.

When I arrived at the airport, I used the curbside sky cap to check my bags. I did not have to wait for his assistance as there was no one else in line so I had plenty of time when I got there.

He determined I had one bag that was 55 lbs (5 lbs over weight) and one at was 40 lbs (10 lbs under weight). My first response was to ask if I could step aside and repack my bags so that both bags would be under the 50 lb weight limit. In fact I have gone through this maneuver twice before when I’ve flown on Delta in the past.

He said in no uncertain terms that I was NOT allowed to do this. I asked him why and he said that it would be against company policy. He said that he would be fired if he allowed me to do that. He then said that he would have to go talk to his manager, at which point he left me standing at the curbside for over 5 minutes. When he returned he confirmed that I would not be allowed to repack my bags.

At this point I said I would be happy to pay the overweight bag penalty since I was getting very close to the 45 minute cutoff to check bags. He threw his hands up and said, “Well that’s not something I can help you with. You’re going to have to go stand in that line for special circumstances.”

As my frustration grew, I grabbed my bags and sprinted over to the front of the line. By the time I got over to the Special Circumstances line it was 6:18 am (42 minutes before my departure) and they said they were unable to check my bags. Because I was upset and late I did not get the sky cap’s name or id number.

Delta Customer Service attempted to rebook me on a later flight but all flights to JFK were overbooked and the best they could do was to offer me a seat on the red eye that would arrive in New York at 8 am on March 23. This wasn’t going to work for me since I had a 9 am meeting on March 23 that I couldn’t miss.

My only option at this point was to schedule another flight with another airline. I asked if I could keep my returning flight but Delta Customer Service told me that if I changed my round trip ticket to a one-way ticket, the price would be well over $1100. Plus I would incur additional penalties for altering my reservations. I was left with no other choice then to book an entirely new, same day, round trip reservation with another airline for over $1200! Not only that, but I was told that I would be charged $150 for canceling my reservations.

The obstructive behavior by the sky cap resulted in my having a total of $1500 in unnecessary and exorbitant out of pocket expenses. I am a young, small business owner and this is an expense that I cannot afford to incur. I am shocked and disgusted at the lack of customer service or human compassion that the Delta employees exhibited, especially in these hard economic times.

Is this an actual policy? You can’t move 5lbs of crap from one bag to another?

Has this ever happened to you, Internet?

Forget vagazzling, Kathy Griffin is giving America an up close and personal look at her lady parts: The comedienne wants us to watch as she gets her annual pap smear. Griffin, the Emmy-winning star of Bravo’s My Life on the D-List, will get a pap smear on television this Friday.

A network presser reads: “On Friday, April 16th, she will receive this important test in hopes that every woman will see how easy it is to get this done. She will receive this test poolside at the Palomar Hotel, located at 10740 Wilshire Blvd. in Westwood by a veteran medical physician at 12pm. This is will be taped for her hit reality show “My life on the D- List.” Kathy feels that this cause is so important that she has bedazzled her “va-jay-jay,” so it can be as ‘va-beautiful’ as it ‘va-can.’”

The pap smear, or Papanicolau test, is a gynecological examination that screens for early signs of cervical cancer. The redhead hopes the episode will promote women’s health.

There’s a rumor running ’round (started at Android-France) that the Nexus One could be in line for an over-the-air update in the coming days that would bring a few bug fixes. Here’s how Google Translate, erm, translates them:

• Better memory management with a new version of the Linux kernel to operate in short, all the device memory which is not the case today.
• Fixed problem of MultiTouch when fingers are too close.
• Activating the FM radio feature of the camera!

A new kernel’s not that big a deal. OK, it’s a big deal if you’re the one tweaking the thing, but it ain’t FroYo (yet). As for the multitouch thing (and someone sing out if we still have this wrong), it’s our understanding (and we’ve talked to developers and HTC about this after our initial confusion) that the screen itself is the limiting factor in this equation, and that it simply can’t register a pair of points if they’re closer than 15mm. (If there’s some weird software trick for this, cool.) And as for the FM radio? In the camera? Um, OK. (Update: Ah ha! Translation error. It’s just talking about turning on the FM capability in the chipset. We’ll see. Thanks, MoFo)

Anyhoo, there are plenty of improvements we’d like to see in Android, and some specifically for the Nexus One. There’s an official list going here, if you want to check it out, that runs the gamut from the FM radio to WiFi to just about any Android issue you can think of.

So is an update on the way? Dunno. But we’re willing to bet Google’s not just resting on its laurels.

The good news: By combining the DNA of parents with genetic material from a third person, scientists might have developed a way for women with rare genetic disorders to have healthy children. The bad news: The ethical complications involved are so messy that it might be a long time coming.

The researchers outline their work in a study in this week’s Nature. On the surface, the idea is fairly simple. They took the nuclei out of the father’s sperm and the mother’s egg, and transplanted them into a donor’s egg cell that had its nucleus removed, but whose mitochondria remained in the cell’s cytoplasm. What you get is the genetics of both parents, plus the mitochondrial DNA of the host. This technique was pioneered in monkeys last summer, but researchers have now done a proof-of-principle study with human cells.

Mitochondria are often called cellular power plants, because they provide most of the cell’s energy. They also contain their own batch of so-called mitochondrial DNA that can, when mutated, give rise to disease. “What we’ve done is like changing the battery on a laptop,” said lead author Professor Doug Turnbull. “The energy supply now works properly, but none of the information on the hard drive has been changed. A child born using this method would have correctly functioning mitochondria, but in every other respect would get all their genetic information from their father and mother” [BBC News].

In the study, which used eggs that had been fertilized abnormally and so were not usable for in-vitro fertilization, Turnbull transferred 80 nuclei and found that 18 continued to grow beyond the eight-cell stage of division, suggesting that the manipulated embryos were viable.

Only 2 percent of mitochondrial DNA transferred over to the new host, which is a big deal. People need about half of their mitochondrial DNA to be mutated to see the sorts of muscle and heart diseases the researchers are worried about. About one in 250 live births see some kind of pathogenic mutation in the mitochondrial DNA, which is passed from mother to child (that’s why scientists often use it to trace back the maternal line). “We’ve proved in principle that this sort of technique can be used to prevent transmission of mitochondrial diseases in humans,” says Turnbull [Nature News].

This Nature paper is just that, though: proof of principle. IVF clinic are not authorized to perform the procedure, and some scientists aren’t as optimistic as Turnbull, saying the procedure may never be approved. The resulting embryo would carry DNA from three parents, and to prove the technique could work in the clinic, scientists would have to try the technique in healthy human embryos — a task that would be “impossible” due to the associated ethical issues [The Scientist], argues researcher Jun-Ichi Hayashi, who wasn’t part of the project.

Related Content:
80beats: DNA Swap Could Make Healthier Babies–With Three Genetic Parents
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80beats: Is It Ethical To Pay Women To Donate Eggs For Medical Research?
80beats: Genetics Study: Will IVF Babies Face Health Problems Later in Life?
DISCOVER: Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Baby
DISCOVER: IVM: A Fertility Treatment That Could Mean Pregnancy at Half the Cost

Image: Turnbull et. al./ Nature

Last week marked the 75th anniversary of the Works Progress Administration, the New Deal program which puts millions of people to work during the Great Depression, creating such landmarks as the Blue Ridge Parkway. Below, Duke economist Prof. William “Sandy” Darity, Jr. argues that a similar public jobs program could be just as successful today.

It is stunning how cautious the response has been to the nation’s greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Apart from the implementation of a $787 billion stimulus package that meets the conventional norms of counter-recessionary practices, the most dramatic action taken by the federal government has been the rapid transfer of more than $1 trillion in public monies to the same investment banking community whose actions brought us the crisis in the first place.

There has been a failure to undertake or even to consider more daring and imaginative policies to produce a healthy and equitable economy. The powerful transformative policy proposed here is a federal job guarantee that would insure that all persons willing to work would be able to obtain work.

The national government should establish the equivalent of a Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) similar to the type that employed 3.5 million citizens in 1936, one of the worst years of the Great Depression. But, unlike the CCC, the new public employment service (it could be named the National Investment Employment Corps) would assure every American seeking work that a job is available in either good times or bad.

The guarantee would be of special significance in bad times — like those we are now encountering — when the national unemployment rate is over 10 percent and the unemployment rate for black Americans is nearly twice as high.

Under a federal job guarantee, the national government would function as an employer of the last resort, providing basic job security for all Americans. What type of socially useful work could the members of a new CCC perform?

Parallel to the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression, the National Investment Employment Corps could set as a priority repair, maintenance, and construction of the nation’s deteriorating infrastructure. In 2009 the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the country an overall grade of D on infrastructure, reporting that one in four rural bridges are structurally deficient and that the state of Texas alone has only seven engineers and a budget of $435,000 to oversee more than 7,400 dams.

There is plenty of valuable work to be done in addressing the nation’s physical infrastructure needs alone. Indeed, if we also consider the nation’s human infrastructure in a wider sense, the array of jobs that could be performed under the auspices of a public employment service could include work to improve rapid transit service, parks and recreational areas and also, as suggested by M.B. Morrissey in a February 2010 open letter to President Barack Obama:

[C]onstruction of high quality pre-schools, [h]igh quality childcare for working mothers…preceded by in depth training in child care and child development for all child care workers, …[c]omputer repair , upgrades, and maintenance workers, …[s]anitation [w]orkers and [f]ood [s]ervice workers in hospitals and schools, [and] [f]ederal [b]ank workers who would administer small business loans, students loans, and other bank services….

Each state could be canvassed to develop a comprehensive list of jobs that that could be met by the National Infrastructure Service Corps.

Apart from the social benefits associated with meeting the vast infrastructural needs, a number of advantages would accompany the introduction of federal job guarantee:

1. It would eliminate the economic insecurity faced by working Americans whose livelihoods now are contingent upon the whims of Wall Street. A federal job guarantee would insulate American workers from dependence upon the performance of the stock market and the financial sector. We would establish a firewall between the casino like behavior of high finance and national economic well being.

2. It would place a floor on the conditions of employment offered by the private sector. If the minimum salary for employees in the National Investment Employment Corps is $20,000 coupled with approximately $10,000 in benefits, the private sector would need to match that minimum to attract employees. Correspondingly, it would be possible to eliminate minimum wage laws.

3. The program would be no more expensive than the $1.3 trillion handout initially given to the investment banking community. There are approximately 15 million persons currently in the ranks of the officially unemployed. If all were hired at a mean salary of $40,000 plus $10,000 in benefits, the compensation bill would be $750 billion.

4. Continued access to employment would yield far greater benefits to the economy as a whole than the massive handout to the investment bankers. It would produce renewed aggregate consumption demand, reduce the momentum toward homeownership foreclosures, and enable workers to maintain their connection to the labor market and avoid deterioration in their skills and motivation.

5. The benefits package would include the federal health insurance plan that is available to Congressmen and civil servants. Therefore, there no longer would be a need to undertake comprehensive health insurance reform.

6. We could eliminate working poverty. Households that are out of work are three times as likely to be poor as working households. But in the United States, 10 percent of working people have poverty level incomes. The federal job guarantee with the levels of salary and benefits described above would address both the needs of the working and jobless poor.

7. We could provide an assurance of quality employment for acutely stigmatized populations. For example, the ex-convict population — persons who had completed their sentences — could look forward to a guarantee of a job when they exit from imprisonment.

8. We could overcome the adverse health outcomes, both mental and physical, associated with exposure to prolonged unemployment.

9. Finally we could fulfill the promise and the intent of the Humphrey Hawkins Act. A federal job guarantee is a direct avenue to the establishment of permanent full employment for the US economy.

The time has come take action that will constitute a structural transformation of the US economy. A federal job guarantee is a courageous measure that can usher in a new era of national prosperity.

William Darity Jr is Arts and Sciences Professor of Public Policy, African and African American Studies, and Economics at Duke University and Director of the Research Network on Racial and Ethnic Economic Inequality.

Ben Stiller did it at the Academy Awards. Ashley Madison’s commercial did it to a couple of unsuspecting chicks. And now visitors to Los Angeles’ open-air mall, The Grove, can do it, too. Remake themselves, that is, into blue-skinned Avatar creatures. As a promotion for the upcoming Earth Day release of Fox’s $2.7 billion blockbuster Avatar on DVD, the studio will set up a free exhibition with facial-recognition technology to morph shoppers’ faces in real time. Never mind that the pro-environment message of the movie isn’t exactly at home in a consumer mecca where Nordstrom, Baby Gap and Baccarat rule. Whatever. The folks will love their Na’vi makeovers, which they’ll be able to watch again and again if they supply their e-mail addresses at the morphing stations. The state-of-the-art digital stations, via Inwindow Outdoor, will send them a video of the process and info on where to buy the DVD. Trip to Pandora, sadly, not included.

—Posted by T.L. Stanley

We always like getting in on good stuff for cheap, and Gameloft is giving us a chance to do that with some sweet PDK action. Their game, Real Tennis, is on sale for 99% of a standard currency unit worldwide, retailing for $0.99 in the US of A and €0.99 across the Atlantic in all European countries currently serviced by Palm. The sale’s only good for a few days, so if you’ve got ninety nine hundredths of your local currency to spend, this is certainly one place we’d certainly recommend looking.

Thanks to Germansurfer for the tip!

While cupcakes can come in any flavor, I think that there are still just two main kinds of cupcakes, judging by the standards that you will see in every bakery, every coffee shop and every market: chocolate with chocolate frosting and vanilla with vanilla frosting. To be honest, I like to mix chocolate and vanilla, but I’ll readily admit that nothing goes better with a big, tall, cold glass of milk than a good chocolate cupcake topped off with chocolate frosting

This is one of my favorite basic chocolate cupcake recipes. These cupcakes use a generous amount of sour cream in them, which makes the cupcakes moist and tender. The tang from the sour cream also seems to ensure that the cupcakes taste chocolaty, without tasting overly sweet. The chocolate flavor comes from a lot of cocoa powder, adding flavor without adding any density, and again not making the cupcakes overly sweet. Adding a little bit of coffee doesn’t add a mocha or coffee flavor to the cake at all, it simply deepens the chocolate notes. This base is perfect for a sweet, chocolaty frosting. In this case, it’s a milk chocolate sour cream frosting that is both smooth and rich. Add the confectioners’ sugar in gradually when you make the frosting so it doesn’t become overly thick and maintains a nice, spreadable consistency.

If you really want to take these over the top, thrown in a big handful of mini chocolate chips. They’re not going to dramatically change these cupcakes for the better, since they’re moist and have a great flavor on their own, but they will still sneak in a little bit of a extra chocolate punch with each bite. You can even sprinkle a few on top of the frosting as a decoration in lieu of regular sprinkles. You might want to have a second glass of milk handy if you take this route or risk chocolate overload!
(more…)

After months of rumors and leaked roadmaps, HTC CEO Peter Chou announced the launch of three exciting new devices (HTC Desire, Legend and HD Mini) at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.  In the same press meeting HTC also claimed that “A record number of mobile operators have confirmed to launch our new devices. HTC Desire has been accepted by almost every key carrier in every key country we work with.”

Many of us presumed that the US qualified as a “key country,” and were expecting to hear news of US release dates and carriers at CTIA 2010.  But CTIA has come and gone, and the only HTC device to officially launch since then has been the EVO 4G on Sprint.  So, where is the Desire and when will I be able to buy one?

According to Phandroid, it may be sooner than you think.  It looks like someone over at Howard Forums has come across a mail-In Rebate form from US Cellular (the sixth largest carrier in the US) which indicates that they will be carrying the HTC Desire and giving a $70 rebate to those who purchase it between April 16th and July 15th.  Logically speaking, that gives us a three month window to work with.  However, it would be hard to believe that a company would give you less than 30 days to return a device, so my guess is that we’ll see the Desire no later than mid-June.

I leave you with this thought: US Cellular is the number six carrier in the US.  If this rebate form is real, you can rest assured that the Desire will be coming to at least one of the Big Four carriers within a similar time frame.  The only other alternative, in my opinion, would be HTC alienating the big four in a major way.

Here’s hoping the Desire comes to a carrier near me very soon!  Express your desires (pun intended) in the comments!

Via Phandroid

Remember that Tweet you wrote about Tiger Woods that seemed hilarious at the time? Or that night you shared your thoughts on your cousin Bob’s lack of personal hygiene? Good news — all of the world’s most trivial 140-character-or-less Tweets will soon be housed forever in the Library of Congress.

The Library of Congress now has its bookish little hands on every public Tweet ever Tweeted in the 4-year history of Twitterdom.

Wrote the LOC on their Facebook page:

Expect to see an emphasis on the scholarly and research implications of the acquisition. I’m no Ph.D., but it boggles my mind to think what we might be able to learn about ourselves and the world around us from this wealth of data.

In a related announcement, Google announced that that they plan to make the entire Twitter archive searchable, and will include a function that will allow you to “zoom to any point in time and ‘replay’ what people were saying publicly about a topic on Twitter.”

Google and Library of Congress archive tweets [CNN]