Asawin Suebsaeng

Interactive Writing Fellow

Asawin Suebsaeng is the interactive writing fellow at the Washington, DC, bureau of Mother Jones. He has also written for The American Prospect, the Bangkok Post, and Shoecomics.com.

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A graduate of Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Penn., Asawin came back to DC with hopes of putting his flimsy Creative Writing major, student newspaper tenure, and interest in human rights and political chicanery to some use. He started cutting his teeth at F&M's student-run weekly, The College Reporter, serving as editor in chief. He has interned at The American Prospect, been a reporter for the Bangkok Post, and scribbled for ShoeComics.com. His favorite movie is either Apocalypse Now or Pirahna 3D, depending on the day or mood.

UK Crematorium to Generate, Sell Energy Made From Dead People

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Thu Dec. 1, 2011 8:08 AM PST

"Elmo now sustainable energy."

If there was ever a reason for everything in the United Kingdom to suddenly become haunted, this is it:

This week, Durham Crematorium announced plans to install turbines in two of its burners, which, using heat generated during cremation, could produce enough electricity to power "1,500 televisions," the Telegraph reports. The turbines—part of the crematorium's £2.3 million (US $3,611,920) furnace replacement project—would run on the steam that comes from cooling the intensely hot gasses used for cremation. Durham could then sell off the electricity to the UK's National Grid and receive compensation from energy companies under the "feed-in tariffs" program, while using a third burner to heat the offices and chapel. Crematoria across the country are expected to follow Durham's efficient lead.

Just to be clear, cremation is that thing you do when you want to burn dead people to crispy, funeral-ready ash. This means that all that harnessed energy—for the chapel, the offices, the interconnected power stations—would technically be made from corpses. You could think of this as Sweeney Todd, but for alternative-energy enthusiasts. It might even sound eerily reminiscent of a 2001 Japanese cult film where poltergeists destroy human civilization after entering our world via modern technology.

Dark stuff, huh?

Actually, once you get over the macabre elements, it's kind of a good idea that sponsors promise will be carried out with utmost transparency. Durham Crematorium, run by the county council, will host several "open days" in an attempt to drum up broad public support for the plan. (Similar projects have enjoyed community support in areas such as the city of Halmstad in Sweden.)

"If there is genuine spare capacity to generate electricity then we are certainly interested in investigating that [and] if it was thought to be acceptable in the eyes of the public we would almost certainly pursue that," Alan José, superintendent at Durham Crematorium, said in an interview with the Telegraph. "Apart from it being common sense for us to try to conserve energy, it also enables us to keep the fees down...We don't want to become known as a power station rather than a crematorium because we try to provide a reverend and decent place for people to have a cremation service."

Due to the UK's ever-rising electricity costs—plus the fact that over 70 percent of the country's dead end up getting cremated, anyway—it's probably safe to assume that this trend will continue picking up steam. But the success of this type of program ultimately depends on how uneasy people get when faced with the possibility that their electric foot massager might be powered by recently departed grandpa.

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Florida Rep. Loses It Over Reporter's Chuckle

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Wed Nov. 30, 2011 10:13 AM PST

It's displays of rude advocacy like this that Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart finds so heinous.

On Tuesday, Miami Herald political reporter Marc Caputo asked Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) what he thought about President Obama's foreign policy accomplishments, such as the killing of Osama bin Laden and the NATO Libya mission. The Cuban-American congressman—who had just thrown Mitt Romney his glowing endorsement—responded with the following: "I applaud President Obama for doing two things: for keeping the policies of the Bush administration..."

And that's as far as he got before Caputo started chuckling. The Republican congressman wasn't terribly pleased with that, thus commencing a weird philosophical debate between the two over the nature of political "advocacy."

The laugh, Caputo writes, came out of his "surprise [that] Diaz-Balart wasn't giving any credit to Obama without strings attached." Caputo has since posted audio of the spat online. After reading the transcript of their lively disagreement, it's exceedingly difficult not to imagine it as a long-lost Abbott and Costello routine:

Diaz-Balart: "You laugh, are you a reporter or a debater?...It's funny because—and I'm not giving you a hard time here, but usually reporters are reporters, not advocates."

Caputo: "I am not."

Diaz-Balart: "Oh, yes, you are."

Caputo: "Give me an example of advocacy."

Diaz-Balart: "Right now! You're laughing about my position...You're an advocate! By the way, you have the right to be. I love advocacy."

Caputo: "I disagree with your characterization of advocacy."

Diaz-Balart: "You're in advocacy. You're an advocate."

Caputo: "I completely disagree."

Diaz-Balart: "And I completely respect your advocacy, I do. I respect your advocacy."

Caputo: "I respect your right to get it wrong that I'm advocating."

Diaz-Balart: "Okay, that's fine."

Caputo: "We'll agree to disagree."

Diaz-Balart: "And I respect you when I give a point of view that you disagree with, laughing about it."

Caputo: "I don't know why you think I disagree with it."

Diaz-Balart: "You laughed about it."

The allegation that Caputo was basically doing George Soros' dirty work is a tad much. He let out a mild giggle over a pretty ridiculous statement.

It is strange, though, that Caputo was so "surprised" by the congressman's answer. It's common nowadays for conservatives—whether they're presidential candidates or talking heads on Fox—to dismiss Obama's foreign policy successes as flukes or simply products of the previous administration. It'd be wishful thinking to expect any more from a GOP congressman, especially on the same day that he announced his endorsement of the president's likely rival in the 2012 election.

As for Diaz-Balart's claim that Obama preserved the Bush-era policies, it's much harder to laugh that one off: When it comes to the Obama White House's position on warrantless wiretaps, the stunning lack of transparency, the hefty price-tag of the administration's clampdown on state secrets, and the aggressiveness and expansion of international counterterrorism measures, there's solid basis for that bit of the Florida Republican's argument.

Is Laptop Wi-Fi Murdering Your Semen?

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Tue Nov. 29, 2011 2:27 PM PST

Ride on, buddy. Ride on.

According to a new study by Argentinian scientists, published in the bluntly named journal Fertility and Sterility, the electromagnetic radiation generated during wireless web-surfing might be completely bulldozing your mojo.

Here's an excerpt from the (actually pretty awkward) Reuters Health report:

The digital age has left men's nether parts in a squeeze, if you believe the latest science on semen, laptops and wireless connections. In a report...scientists describe how they got semen samples from 29 healthy men, placed a few drops under a laptop connected to the Internet via Wi-Fi and then hit download.

Four hours later, the semen was, eh, well-done.

A quarter of the sperm were no longer swimming around, for instance, compared to just 14 percent from semen samples stored at the same temperature away from the computer. And nine percent of the sperm showed DNA damage, three-fold more than the comparison samples..."Our data suggest that the use of a laptop computer wirelessly connected to the internet and positioned near the male reproductive organs may decrease human sperm quality," [Dr. Conrado Avendaño of Nascentis Medicina Reproductiva and his colleagues] write in their report. "At present we do not know whether this effect is induced by all laptop computers connected by Wi-Fi to the internet or what use conditions heighten this effect."

A separate test with a laptop that was on, but not wirelessly connected, found negligible EM radiation from the machine alone.

The study makes it clear early on that none of this—even when taken together with past scientific reports—is conclusive; these cases of MacBook-cooked spermatozoa shouldn't lead avid tech-users to prematurely freak out as if we were talking about cell phones and brain tumors. And although male infertility has been linked to things as diverse as hormone imbalance, some types of medicine, heavy smoking, and conditions that cause abnormally high temparature of the testicles, leading experts in the field are hesitant to embrace the "wireless Internet is frying your junk" narrative.

"This is not real-life biology, this is a completely artificial setting," Dr. Robert Oates, president of the Society for Male Reproduction and Urology, told Reuters. "It is scientifically interesting, but to me it doesn't have any human biological relevance...[A]ll of this angst is created for real-life actual persons that doesn't have to be."

Moreover, there has yet to be a comprehensive study that examines whether laptop use—wireless or Ethernet—has any effect whatsoever on fertility or pregnancy. So rest assured: there's still a good chance watching season four of Parks and Recreation on Hulu with your Dell resting on your lap won't make you sterile.

Some of Barney Frank's Best Lines (and Worst Moments)

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Mon Nov. 28, 2011 1:23 PM PST

Barney Frank, in younger days.

On Monday, Representative Barney Frank (D-Mass.) made the surprise announcement that he will not seek reelection in 2012. A liberal stalwart who was first elected to Congress at the dawn of the Reagan era, Frank rose to become the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee from 2007-11 and was a key author of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the regulatory overhaul signed into law in July 2010.

Admired for his barbed wit and pugilistic approach to politics, Frank was attacked by conservatives for his pre-housing crisis relationship with Fannie and Freddie and his views on taxation and Wall Street regulation. (Frank's departure, however, will not leave the right without a regulatory bogeyman—once he retires, California congresswoman Maxine Waters will be the most-senior Democrat on the Financial Services Committee.)

Here's a collection of both Frank's greatest hits and some of his most cringe-worthy fumbles.

SOME HIGHS

1) Barney hates Newt (mid-'90s edition)

There are plenty of politicians who have heated ideological disagreements but can still smile and play golf together. Newt Gingrich and Barney Frank don't have that luxury. Long before the 2012 Republican presidential contender said it was a good idea to throw Frank in jail for "put[ting] this country in trouble," the two were already busy hating on everything the other stood for. Along with making it abundantly clear that he "despise[s] Gingrich because of the negative effect he has had on American politics," Frank had the following to say about the then-House Speaker during a 1995 interview with Mother Jones:

That's why [Gingrich] says so many wrong things: He doesn't know a lot about substance. He half-reads some future-oriented books and out of that comes a gabble that's not terribly coherent…[H]e's a mechanic of power.

More than 16 years later, the mutual animosity show little sign of cooling off—Frank even made sure to work a couple Gingrich-related zingers into the Monday afternoon press conference announcing his retirement.

2) Frank's "Make Room for the Serious Criminals" legislation

Frank occasionally found common ground with politicians like Ron Paul on some pet causes. Here's one of them:

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

Rocky Balboa Heads to Broadway

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Wed Nov. 23, 2011 2:40 PM PST

Sly should seriously think about getting those veins checked out.

In 2011, the American people witnessed all kinds of previously unfathomable weirdness: For starters, we found out that small albino cyclops sharks really do exist. We saw the ex-CEO of Godfather's Pizza actually become the front-runner in the 2012 Republican presidential field. The White House told us that an alien invasion was not imminent. And just this week MoJo senior editor Dave Gilson gave us a disturbing, childhood-ravaging mash-up of The Adventures of Tintin and Newt Gingrich.

After being through so much, we're almost at the end of the year. 2011 can't possibly get any weirder now, can it?

Oh, yes. Yes it can. The Los Angeles Times' "Culture Monster" reported on Tuesday:

Sylvester Stallone is getting back in the ring with Rocky Balboa one more time -- but not as a star. The actor is co-producing "Rocky: The Musical," based on the Oscar-winning 1976 movie that launched his career.

The star appeared alongside his co-producers, the Ukranian boxing stars (and siblings) Wladimir and Vitali Klitschko, at a press event in Hamburg, Germany, where the musical is set to open in November 2012.

Inspired by the box office success of "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark," and surely not intimidated by the troubles that musical encountered along the way, Stallone and company are reframing the underdog boxing tale as a love story between Rocky and Adrian..."Rocky" purists shouldn't fear -- hits from the films, including "Gonna Fly Now" and "Eye of the Tiger," will be included in the show...The world champion Klitschko brothers will help train the performers in boxing maneuvers.

Let me get this straight: They are turning Rocky into a musical.

And this man...

...is producing the show in Germany. I'm sure it'll end up being the manliest, most steroid-cocktail-drenched musical play ever to grace the stage, but...a musical?

Is this real life? This isn't an Onion headline? Does this mean we should expect The Expendables: The Musical to make its Broadway debut soon, too?

Stallone, famous for insane bodybuilding, his endorsement of fun, cancerous products in his films, and a popular action franchise that completely misses the point of its first movie, announced in March that he is also kicking off a new men's brand clothing line inspired by the fashion sense of (you guessed it) Rocky Balboa. Perhaps the musical is just more of the same cross-promo.