Tom Faranda's Folly

Titanis Walleri, a bird you wouldn't want to meet

I found the following article from the BBC, about this guy -

pretty interesting!!

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | 'Terror birds' never met humans

It had been thought the fearsome beasts became extinct as little as 10,000 years ago - a time when humans shared their North American habitat.

But a US team has now revised this date to about two million years earlier.

The study, published in Geology, also sheds light on the flightless birds' migration to North America.

Top predator

T. walleri is thought to be the largest species of the terror bird family. It would have stood 2m (7ft) tall and weighed 150kg (330lb).

The flightless species, which inhabited South and North America, had an enormous beak and lived up to its terror tag by being a top predator of its time.

Obama-mania Update IV

Well I'm not the only weblog all over Obama-mania.

The online left wing magazine Slate is into the act in the person of one of their major writers, Timothy Noah.

The Obama Messiah Watch. - By Timothy Noah - Slate Magazine

I therefore inaugurate the Obama Messiah Watch, which will periodically highlight gratuitously adoring biographical details that appear in newspaper, television, and magazine profiles of this otherworldly presence in our midst.

Today's item, from a Los Angeles Times profile by Larry Gordon about Obama's two years at Occidental College (before he transferred to Columbia):

In [political science professor Roger] Boesche's European politics class, [classmate Ken] Sulzer said he was impressed at how few notes [italics mine] Obama took. "Where I had five pages, Barry had probably a paragraph of the pithiest, tightest prose you'd ever see. … It was very short, very sweet. Obviously somebody almost Clintonesque in being able to sum a whole lot of concepts and place them into a succinct written style."

On the Faranda domestic front

My oldest son, Joe, is in the eighth grade, so we are looking around at Catholic high schools. The way it works, you take a test (in New York it's called the TACHS), and the results are sent to three high schools you choose, along with your grammar school transcript. They then send out letters of acceptance or rejection around January 19th.

Although you wouldn't know it from his grades - he's never made the honor roll in a single marking period in junior high - he must be pretty sharp. He reads A LOT, takes advanced placement math, and always seems to do well on these types of tests. His percentile rank in reading was the highest possible - 99 - and in math 97. (By the way, this settles the Nature v. Nuture debate forever. It's Nature!)

So he's been accepted at Kennedy in Somers, Stepinac in White Plains, and Fordham Prep in the Bronx. Stepinac has told him he's in the honors program, and he was invited back to Fordham Prep to take their scholarship exam.

Tomorrow he is going to have a day at Stepinac - he'll probably go to classes with a freshman, to get the feel of the place. I have a slight bias toward Stepinac - I went there - but the problem is the commute. He'd have to take public busing, with a change in White Plains, or we'd have to do a car pool with other students from our area. The bus ride would take about 70 minutes.

Kennedy is the closest, and we qualify for school busing (we are just within the 15 mile range). It's also coed, unlike the other two schools.

Fordham Prep would require a train trip of about an hour (with one switch of trains) and it is also the most expensive. Right now it seems to be the "hot" school to go to from our Croton area. The commute is probably less troublesome to Fordham then to Stepinac, since it's a lot easier to read or study (or sleep) on a train then a bus.

In a way, Kennedy may be too easy for him - easy bus ride, girls, etc. And either Stepinac or Fordham Prep is likely to push him harder then at Kennedy.

Here's Joe in a typical pose:

Meanwhile Tim is also motoring along quite well at school, after a slow starting first marking period. He ace'd four of his mid-term exams (but I'll be kind and not mention his social studies grade) including 90 in math. And we spoke to Mrs. Matra, his teacher, at a school open house this past Sunday. She was quite pleased with his excellent improvement.

So Hurrah, Joe and Tim!!

Real Newspaper Ads

This was sent to me by another one of my humor consultants, Karen Riner.

Question: "why do you need 'humor consultants for your weblog?"

Answer: "Because I'm not very funny."

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A year ago today, I was discharged from Memorial Sloan Kettering

Hard to believe it's been a year since my 20 day stay in Sloan. Six days of high dose chemotherapy, my stem cell transplant, and then the wait for my white blood cell count to get back up to  normal range.

Here's my posting for January 28, 2006:

Tom Faranda's Folly: Day 20 - noontime - YIPPEE - we are outta here!

How am I doing now? Well I'm on antibiotics for my third sinus infection since November, and my white counts are still being monitored because they are too low. Not sure why they're low (after-effect of Rituxin therapy I had following the chemo?), or when they'll bounce back. Being monitored closely by Sloan Kettering Docs.

Other then that, I feel fine! Going to the gym, working hard, fighting with my kids - all the usual stuff!

Does the Swiss army really use the Swiss army Knife?

If you, like me, have been wondering about this question for the past few years, here's the answer. And it's pretty interesting:

The Straight Dope: Does the Swiss army really use the Swiss army knife?

Bill Gates on the future of television

Bill Gates spoke at a business forum in Switzerland a couple of days ago. This sounds like bad news for network television.

Internet to revolutionize TV in 5 years: Gates - washingtonpost.com

The Internet is set to revolutionize television within five years, due to an explosion of online video content and the merging of PCs and TV sets, Microsoft (MSFT.O) chairman Bill Gates said on Saturday.

"I'm stunned how people aren't seeing that with TV, in five years from now, people will laugh at what we've had," he told business leaders and politicians at the World Economic Forum.

The rise of high-speed Internet and the popularity of video sites like Google Inc.'s (GOOG.O) YouTube has already led to a worldwide decline in the number hours spent by young people in front of a TV set.

In the years ahead, more and more viewers will hanker after the flexibility offered by online video and abandon conventional broadcast television, with its fixed program slots and advertisements that interrupt shows, Gates said

A couple of items from my humor consultants

This from Jeanne Marie Gagnon:

WHEN INSULTS HAD CLASS

         "He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire."
           -- Winston Churchill

         "I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure."
           -- Clarence Darrow

         "He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary."
           -- William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)

         "Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time reading it."
           -- Moses Hadas

         "He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know."
           -- Abraham Lincoln

         "I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it."
           -- Groucho Marx

         "I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it."
           -- Mark Twain

         "He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends."
           -- Oscar Wilde

         "I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend.... if you have  one."
           -- George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill

         "Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second... if  there is one."
           -- Winston Churchill, in response

         "I feel so miserable without you; it's almost like having you here."
           -- Stephen Bishop

         "He is a self-made man and worships his creator."
           -- John Bright

         "I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial."
           -- Irvin S. Cobb

         "He has the attention span of a lightning bolt."
           -- Robert Redford

         "He loves nature in spite of what it did to him."
           -- Forrest Tucker

         "His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork."
           -- Mae West

         "Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go."

And this little bit of psychological research supplied by Ellen Mullin:

Study by UCLA Dept. of Psychiatry ~

A study conducted by UCLA's Department of Psychiatry has revealed that the
kind of face a woman finds attractive on a man can differ depending on
where she is in her menstrual cycle.

For example: If she is ovulating, she is attracted to men with rugged and
masculine features.

However, if she is menstruating, or menopausal, she tends to be more
attracted to a man with duct tape over his mouth and a spear lodged in his
chest while he is on fire.

No further studies are expected.

Interesting commentary by Peggy Noonan on Senator Hagel

Hre's a good column, where Noonan expresses her admiration for Hagel's willingness to speak up about Iraq and the Senate's responsiblities. She quotes what the Senator actually said. She also has the following great line at the end of the op ed:

The Democrats have no idea what they stand for, the Republicans only remember what they stood for.

Here's the full column - hit the link and read the whole article to see what Hagel said.

OpinionJournal - Peggy Noonan

The committee was nearing a vote on what was, essentially, an announcement of no confidence in the administration's leadership in Iraq. Specifically it was a nonbinding resolution opposing the increase in troops the president has requested. This was not significant in a concrete way: The president has the power to send more troops, and they are already arriving. But as symbols go, it packed a punch. You couldn't watch it on television or on the Internet and not see that Mr. Hagel was letting it rip. He did not speak from notes or a text but while looking at his fellow senators. There seemed no time lag between thought and word. He was barreling, he was giving it to you straight, and he'd pick up the pieces later.

This is what he said: Congress has duties; in the case of the war, meeting those duties was not convenient; Congress did not meet them.

In the same way that I think it took courage for Lieberman to go against his Party, I think Hagel also had guts bucking his Party and the President.

Full disclosure: I don't agree with Hagel; I agree with Lieberman.

More on intolerant atheists

I posted a couple of times about the current trendiness of being a nasty atheist - here Tom Faranda's Folly: Militant atheism and here Tom Faranda's Folly: Wall Street Journal op ed on the new atheism.

Today the evangelical magazine Christianity Today had a good editorial on the phenomena -

The New Intolerance | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

You can also tell that atheism is in trouble because it is becoming increasingly intolerant. In the past, atheists (or secular humanists or freethinkers) were often condescendingly tolerant of their less-enlightened fellow citizens. While they disdained religion, they treated their religious neighbors as good-hearted, if misguided.

But now key activists are urging a less civil approach. At a recent forum sponsored by the Science Network at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, the tone of intolerance reached such a peak that anthropologist Melvin J. Konner commented: "The viewpoints have run the gamut from A to B. Should we bash religion with a crowbar or only with a baseball bat?"

This newly aggressive mood (Dawkins calls religious education "brainwashing" and "child abuse") is in danger of undermining civil society.

CT columnist David Aikman recently sounded a warning in a commentary for the Trinity Forum. Sam Harris, he noted, not only advocates a shift from viewing religion as harmless to treating it as dangerous, but he also wants to suppress religion. Aikman evoked images of Mao's China and Stalin's Russia as the future of America—if liberals ever abandon true liberalism.

Health update

Got my results from last Friday's complete blood count.

White count (WBC's) was 4.9, down from 10.3 the prior Friday. Absolute neutrophil (sp?) was 3.9, down from 8.4. However both are currently in the normal range.

Since the trend is down after getting the neulasta shot on January 5th, I expect that the results of tomorrow's test will show numbers lower then last Friday's. That's been the pattern for months. The neulasta gives me a quick boost (so at least my bone marrow responds nicely to it) and then the numbers head downward.

I see both Dr. Zelenetz, the lymphoma guru, and Dr. Klimek, the hematologist, on February 8th. I think she (Klimek) is going to do another bone marrow biopsy, and I'll probably get another shot of neulasta.

Latest Read: Sea of Thunder

I posted this review on Amazon. It's in the four stars column - titled the review A page-turner, with some debatable opinions

The title "Sea of Thunder" refers to the greatest naval battle in history. The Battle of Leyte Gulf (pronounced Laytee) was fought off the Philipines from October 23 to 26, 1944. There were actually four sub-battles with the final result being the demolition of most of what was left of the Japanese navy.

The author, Evan Thomas, is an editor at Newsweek and previously wrote a well-received biography of John Paul Jones. In Sea of Thunder he concentrates his attention on four individuals; the Japanese Admirals Kurita and Ugaki, the American overall commander William "Bull" Halsey, and the commander of one an American destroyer, Ernest Evans. Thomas offers a fine account, with some debatable opinions.

More than half of the book is taken up with Thomas' examination and evaluation of the four officers; their backgrounds, ways of thinking, how they got to be where they were at. He also presents the Pacific War as being a clash of cultures, with the Japanese not understanding the American pysche, and vice versa.

The author's evaluation of Halsey I am sure raises some hackles. Thomas is certainly measuring Halsey against a somewhat unfair standard - as in how does Halsey measure up as a 21st century liberal? Well it was the 1940's and a war was going on. He repeatedly points to Halsey's famous phrase (which was put up on Naval base billboards) "Kill Japs, Kill Japs, Kill more Japs" as racist. Of course there was plenty of racism in the 40's. (Thomas made an interesting point at the end of the book - Halsey was against the use of nuclear bombs on Japan; he felt it was unnecessary.)

Thomas narrative throughout the book is fast moving and absorbing. While this was a multi-phase battle and all parts of it are described, he is mainly interested in the tactical decisions made by Halsey and Kurita, as well as the battle off the coast of Samar on October 25th.

In a nutshell, Halsey is lured away to the north.  He chases the Japanese carriers, leaving a small force of baby aircraft carriers, destroyers, and destroyer escorts behind to support the ground forces that were in the process of continuing the invasion and recapture of the Philipines. A powerful Japanese unit of several battleships (including the world's biggest, the Yamato) and heavy cruisers  under Admiral Kurita came through where Halsey's battleships should have been and had an opportunity to wipe out the small naval force and wreak havoc on the transports and ground units.

I found his analysis of Halsey's decision to chase the Japanese carriers - going for a knockout blow - rather than staying put and defending the landing areas, to be overly harsh. Halsey made an aggressive tactical decision. He was wrong, but hindsight is 20/20. Thomas' view is that Halsey made the decision for the greater glory of Bull Halsey - but that is a very speculative interpretation.

So off Samar there is a three hour running battle - one of the most celebrated showcases of American naval valor in history. This is where Commander Evans, captain of the destroyer Johnston earns his Medal of Honor (posthumous). Mysteriously, Kurita then turns his ships around and heads back to safety. Why he did it, when he could have continued the battle and ultimately done great damage to the American landing force is one of the mysteries of the War.

The reasoning today seems to be that Kurita realized that he could have sunk empty transport ships and shot up the shore troops. However ultimately his battle force would be cut to pieces by Halsey's other units, and he was not prepared to sacrifice the 30,000 sailors under his command. The Japanese Naval Command realized that their days were numbered and they were reduced to fighting for honor, and that may not have been a good enough rationale for Kurita to sacrifice his fleet. Kurita's force was the only Japanese fleet that was not completely devastated during the battle.

So the book is very worth reading, with the caveat that Thomas does not take a phenomenological approach in his portrayals - he doesn't allow the four characters to present themselves; he presents them through his own prism of progressive morality.

Nevertheless, Sea of Thunder is a page-turner.

March for Life trip

We went to the March on Monday. If you go here, you'll find a picture of Brigid giving a radio interview.

LifeNet: March for Life a big success

A little Chinchilla action

Haven't written much about Gloria since we got her on Boxing Day (day after Christmas - that's what the day is called in England).

Here she is yesterday with her official trainers!

Here Gloria does her imitation of a Parrot

How many eyes can you spot in this picture?

This is our friend Laurie Hurley from Vermont, who is with us this weekend and going tomorrow with us to Washington for the March for Life. Gloria escaped onto the kitchen table and Laurie captured her.

News on a priest friend of ours

We know Fr. Norman Weslin quite well. He's said Mass at our house on a couple of occasions.

LifeNet: Some news on Father Norman Weslin

Health update

Got the results of last Friday's blood count. I had a good and quick response to the shot of the white blood cell booster Neulasta, which I received the previous Friday. My WBC count was 10.3 (high normal) and the absolute neutrophil (sp?) count was 8.4 - another high normal.

I will have another blood count tomorrow - they are scheduled for every Friday for the next three months! And I am seeing both Dr. Klimek and Dr. Zelenetz on February 8th.

"If you're given a lemon, make lemonade." At least it should get me out of jury duty - received a notification yesterday, to turn up on Feb. 5th.

Embryo survival story from Katrina

You may have heard about this baby just born in Louisiana. He was rescued as an embryo during the hurricane.

A Flood Survivor Named Noah - washingtonpost.com

Two weeks after Katrina hit in August 2005, law officers used boats to rescue the Markhams' embryos and about 1,400 others stored at New Orleans's Lakeland Hospital.

The storage tanks had been topped off with liquid nitrogen and moved from the first floor to the third as the storm drew near, but the hurricane swamped the hospital with eight feet of water and knocked out power.

The Post article ends this way:

If the embryos had thawed, each woman who wanted another baby would have had to undergo another round of fertility drugs, egg harvesting and in vitro fertilization. Rebekah Markham estimated her first pregnancy cost $12,000.

Unsurprisingly, no mention of the fact that if the embryos had been thawed, they'd be dead!

A year ago today, I had my stem cell transplant

Hard to believe it was a year ago.

Tom Faranda's Folly: Transplant went well

Then - thirteen days in isolation until going home.

Here's what I look like now - more or less. This was taken the day before New Years. You can compare it with the picture in the link above. Actually not much of an improvement!

Obama-mania update III

Here's a link to Barak Obama's announcement that his hat is in the ring!

His theme is "healing."

Hot Air » Blog Archive » Messiah reappears, forms presidential exploratory committee

Latest read: The Only Three Questions that Count

This is a superb book. The sub-title is "Investing by Knowing What Others Don't" and it is the best book I've read on investing and asset managment in years.

The author is Kenneth Fisher, an investment manager based in California, who also writes a monthly column in Forbes magazine. He's a pretty successful guy, ranked 297 on the latest Forbes 400 Richest American's list. Yup. That's successful allright.

His father is Philip Fisher, also a pretty famous investment manager, who was known for recognizing good companies, and then buying and holding their stock - sometimes for decades. Lastly, Fisher has an interesting philanthropy - redwood trees. He has endowed the only university chair dedicated to a single species of tree.

On to the book. Here's the only negative: Fisher has a slightly cute sense of humor, which I found a little annoying at times.

But the pluses are huge.

The three questions are: (1) What do you believe that is actually false? (2) How can I fathom what others find unfathomable? And, (3) What the heck is my brain doing to blindside me now?

Each of the first three chapters is dedicated to explaining one of the three questions. The first chapter debunks many "facts" about markets that are actually wholly or partially incorrect myths. Here are two examples: High P/E markets are riskier than low P/E markets (P/E stands for price-earnings ratio and is one of the most fundamental valuation metrics for stocks) and a weak U.S. dollar is bad for stocks.

In the second chapter Fisher makes the point that the only way to beat the financial market is to know something the market doesn't know, or at least ignores. This is pretty basic. The market (prices of stocks, commodities, currencies, bonds, etc) has already discounted in the underlying pricing known knowledge; to outperform the averages, you have to know something not widely known.

The third chapter is how our mental processes frequently work against us in trying to sort through meaningful data and relationships. Fisher refers to the market as "The Great Humiliator" (TGH) where we are constantly at risk of allowing our emotions, like pride and regret, get in the way of rational decisions. For example "confirmation bias" where we seek evidence confirming our preset notions and reject contradictory evidence. And of course very applicable to other aspects of our life, besides our finances.

The remainder of the book - six chapters and an interesting short conclusion - expands on the three questions. The chapters have titles like "Capital Markets Technology", "Shocking but True", and the last chapter "Putting it all Together."

Much of the analysis is quite brilliant. For example I loved his examination of U.S. budget deficits, and why they are not negative for the financial markets - or for the country. COULD they be a negative - YES - but only if we do certain stupid things in managing our fiscal and monetary policies. He step by step builds a powerful case that, if anything, the United States is underleveraged - we could easily manage more debt. He gives several examples of debt-free developed countries with stagnant economies and lower standards of living.

I could go on and on. Get the book if you want a mind expanding read about managing your money (And your life! Much of what he says has applicability to all facets of life). Their are 42 pages of appendixes, including showing his audited records as a prognosticator in his Forbes column and the performance of his money management Firm.

His record shows that Fisher doesn't just talk the talk; he has walked the walk.

Students generally ignorant of who Martin Luthor King was

Here's a disheartening article in the Washington Post.

Despite Lessons on King, Some Unaware of His Dream - washingtonpost.com

In a recent survey of college students on U.S. civic literacy, more than 81 percent knew that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was expressing hope for "racial justice and brotherhood" in his historic "I Have a Dream" speech.

That's the good news.

Most of the rest surveyed thought King was advocating the abolition of slavery.

I also posted here yesterday about King.Tom Faranda's Folly: Why Martin Luthor King's "I Have a Dream" speech resonates

Here's the preface to Benedict XVI's upcoming book

Yes a publishing coup. I have the preface to the book coming out in the spring, written by Cardinal Ratzinger/Pope Benedict.

Actually the preface has been released and several outlets have it. I lifted this from an Italian website maintained by Sandro Magister.

The book will be a blockbuster worldwide. The Pope is a great scholar and excelllent writer, and he is taking on a crucial issue - Historical Jesus v. the Jesus of Faith

"My interpretation of the figure of Jesus in the New Testament..."

by Joseph Ratzinger / Benedict XVI

I came to this book about Jesus - the first part of which I now present to the public – after a long interior journey.

In the time of my youth – during the 1930’s and ‘40’s – there was published a series of exhilarating books about Jesus. I recall the names of just a few authors: Karl Adam, Romano Guardini, Franz Michel Willam, Giovanni Papini, Jean-Daniel Rops. In all these books, the image of Jesus Christ was outlined beginning with the Gospels: how He lived upon the earth and how, although He was truly man, He at the same time brought God to men, being one with God as Son of God. Thus, through the man Jesus, God became visible, and beginning with God one could see the image of the just man.

Beginning in the 1950’s, the situation changed. The rift between the “historical Jesus” and the “Christ of faith” became wider and wider; the one pulled away from the other before one’s very eyes. But what meaning can there be in faith in Jesus Christ, in Jesus the Son the of living God, if the man Jesus is so different from how the evangelists present Him, and from how the Church proclaims Him on the basis of the Gospels?

Why Martin Luthor King's "I Have a Dream" speech resonates

Here's a really fine essay on King's famous speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in August, 1963 (44 years ago this August!). It's short so hit the link and read the whole thing.

The Power of Dreams OpinionJournal - Taste

There is no gainsaying King's natural gifts. But King's speech didn't just bubble forth from some innate Negro musicality. Rather, it demonstrates a savvy understanding of how memorable oratory works, knowledge available even to stutterers and malapropists.

What lifts King's performance from merely brilliant to unforgettable is his use of what we might call resonance. The best speeches are almost never self-contained, wholly original works. They depend for their power on the ability to strike chords that already exist within us. Both Ronald Reagan's 1974 "City on a Hill" speech and Mario Cuomo's 1984 "A Tale of Two Cities" allude directly to John Winthrop's 1630 speech aboard the Arbella. At the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Barack Obama quoted the Declaration of Independence, and he called people to "a belief in things not seen," which references Hebrews 11: "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." In John F. Kennedy's inaugural speech, he quoted Isaiah and alluded to the angel Gabriel. And so forth.

Obama-mania Update II

Well, here's something - black leaders aren't so keen on Obama stealing their spotlight. This from the Sunday Times of London -

Obama's charm lost on America's black activists - Sunday Times - Times Online

Sharpton, 52, is widely considered to have no better chance of winning the Democratic nomination than in 2004, when he never amassed more than a few percentage points in the polls but still made a national impact with his barnstorming performances in the televised primary debates.

When asked about Obama’s likely candidacy, the preacher, renowned for outrageous self-publicising antics, shrugged: “Right now we’re hearing a lot of media razzle-dazzle. I’m not hearing a lot of meat, or a lot of content. I think when the meat hits the fire, we’ll find out if it’s just fat, or if there’s some real meat there.”

Belafonte, who returns to British cinema screens shortly with a small role in Bobby, the new Emilio Estevez film about the assassination of Robert F Kennedy, also cast doubt on Obama’s credentials as a legitimate candidate.

“He’s a young man in many ways to be admired,” Belafonte said. “Obviously very bright, speaks very well, cuts a handsome figure. But all of that is just the king’s clothes. Who’s the king?” There were contrasting views on the likely impact on Obama’s campaign of black competition or criticism. One analyst argued that a Sharpton candidacy would “put Obama on the spot” by forcing him to address awkward civil rights issues such as police brutality and racial profiling that he tends to steer clear of. One Democratic blogger argued that Sharpton was “just what the doctor ordered to keep Obama on the straight and narrow”.

From the "Divorce is expensive" file

Looks like Michael Strahan will not be retiring!

NFL- Strahan Ordered to Pay $15.3M to Ex-Wife - AOL Sports

Vanity Fair commentator on Bush

Vanity Fair is a Conde' Nast hoikey-toiky publication. I think it's read mostly by the beautiful people - and a few of my clients. Anyway, they hate Bush and editor James Wolcott takes second place to no one on that emotion.

Here's a piece from his blog - if your interested read the whole entry or just the excerpt below for the gist of it  James Wolcott's Blog: Nixon/Altman/Bush: Wolcott's Blog: vanityfair.com

And unlike Nixon, Bush will not be able to rehabilitate himself in retirement because he's simply too stuntedly ill-informed and reality-detached. I remember seeing an aging Nixon on C-SPAN speaking and answering questions smoothly and cogently for over an hour on a range of geopolitical topics without benefit of notes and with a humbled confidence that was (for Nixon) charming. Clinton has that kind of sophisticated knowledgability, Jimmy Carter does as well, but Bush never will, so uninterested is he in other cultures and so reliant upon platitudes and homilies and self-affirmation. I think (hope) Steve Gilliard is right: Bush's presidency will unravel in shame and disgrace, as Nixon's did. But unlike Nixon, Bush will not enjoy a lion-in-winter third act. For better or worse, Nixon was his own man, a stark lesson in the possibilities and limits of self-reliance. Bush, who has always relied upon others to bail him out of jams, is not his own man. If he were, he wouldn't let Cheney secretly run the show.

Jefferson Airplane's Grace Slick - who knew?

Here's an interview/article about Grace Slick (Jefferson Airplane/Jefferson Starship/"White Rabbit" fame), currently making a living as an artist (Rabbits hookah-smoking frequently featured...). White Rabbit was forty years ago... YIKES!

Counterculture Meets Mall Culture for Grace Slick - washingtonpost.com

Grace Slick says she can't remember a lot of things, which is perhaps no surprise given how much she drank and drugged herself into oblivion during her reign as a rock-and-roll queen. But she knows who she is today: "I'm a 67-year-old fat, white-haired, liver-spotted woman."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/postphotos/orb/style/2007-01-13/5.htm

How to meet a man

If you're a woman looking to meet a guy, here's your chance -

China facing major gender imbalance - Asia-Pacific - MSNBC.com

BEIJING - China will have 30 million more men of marriageable age than women in less than 15 years as a gender imbalance resulting from the country’s tough one-child policy becomes more pronounced, state media reported Friday.

The tens of millions of men who will not be able to find a wife could also lead to social instability problems, the China Daily said in a front-page report.

In Baghdad with Michelle Malkin

Columnist/pundit Michelle Malkin is in Iraq "embedded with an American Civil Affairs unit. Pretty interesting, with some good pictures.

Michelle Malkin: In the slums of Baghdad

366 days ago, I went into Sloan Kettering for my 20 day chemotherapy and stem cell transplant stay

Yup. Hard to believe it was one year ago yesterday that I went into MSK. The chemotherapy started the day I arrived, so by this time last year I'd received a whole day of the six day high dose chemo regimen.

Sophia Loren

Her husband Carlo Ponti, the film director, has died at the age of 94. Here's a really interesting post with some good links on Ann Althouse's weblog.  Althouse: Sophia and her older man. If you're of a certain age, then you have to view Sophia Loren as a classic (the classic?) beauty. She is now 72. Here is a Life magazine cover from 1966.

 

Multiple choice question on helping the needy

Who do you think will do a better job of getting money to the needy in Africa in the next twenty years -

(1) the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

(2) the UN

(3) the World Bank

(4) the European Union

(5) the American Government

Fascinating interview with a biblical scholar

N.T. Wright is the Anglican Bishop of Durham, England. He is also a biblical scholar of high note, with several well-received books on Jesus.

Christianity Today had a very fine interview with him that you can read in full here: Mere Mission | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

Your book Simply Christian speaks to people outside the faith, in what must be a conscious imitation of C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity. What made you want to write to that audience?

I suppose I've always wanted to say to my contemporaries in the wider world, "This stuff matters; it's life transforming; it's world transforming." Much of my academic life has been spent exploring underlying issues, particularly about the central events in the gospel. But now it really is time to say, "So what does it mean?"

Because I've done all that historical work, my view of the gospel and how it works out in the real world has been deepened and enriched in all kinds of ways that I would never have guessed 25 years ago when I was starting out writing about Jesus. So in Simply Christian there's a lot about justice, what it means to be human in the mandate to work, the putting to rights of God's world, generating beauty, alleviating poverty, working with ecology. Thirty years ago I would have said those were secondary issues.

There's an old evangelical saying, "If he's not Lord of all, he's not Lord at all." That was always applied personally and pietistically. I want to say exactly the same thing but apply it to the world. We're talking about Jesus as the Lord of the world—not the Lord of people's private spiritual interiority only, but of what they do with their money, with their homes, with the wealth of nations, and with the planet.

Headline the New York Times didn't run

The New York Times had an opportunity to run the following headline:

40% of all Americans -- and 100% of the Poor -- Pay No Income Taxes, Get Money Instead, says CBO
Increased revenues from middle and upper income taxes make it possible -- Bush gets credit!

The text of the article says the following: "The study offers ammunition to supporter's and opponents of Mr. Bush's tax cuts..."

We know (of course) where the NY Times stands. Here's the headline and link to the whole article: Tax Cuts Offer Most for Very Rich, Study Says - New York Times

The report shows that a comparatively small number of very wealthy households account for a very big share of total tax payments, and their share increased in the first four years after Mr. Bush’s tax cuts.

The top 1 percent of income earners paid about 36.7 percent of federal income taxes and 25.3 percent of all federal taxes in 2004. The top 20 percent of income earners paid 67.1 percent of all federal taxes, up from 66.1 percent in 2000, according to the budget office.

By contrast, families in the bottom 40 percent of income earners, those with incomes below $36,300, typically paid no federal income tax and received money back from the government. That so-called negative income tax stemmed mainly from the earned-income tax credit, a program that benefits low-income parents who are employed.

Put another way: rich families were the undisputed winners from President Bush’s tax cuts, but people in the bottom half of the earnings scale were not paying much in taxes anyway.

Amniotic stem cells seen as having great therapeutic potential

Here's an article from the Washington Post on the potential of amniotic stem cells -

Scientists See Potential In Amniotic Stem Cells - washingtonpost.com

The cells, shed by the developing fetus and easily retrieved during routine prenatal testing, are easier to maintain in laboratory dishes than embryonic stem cells -- the highly versatile cells that come from destroyed human embryos and are at the center of a heated congressional debate that will resume this week.

Moreover, because the cells are a genetic match to the developing fetus, tissues grown from them in the laboratory will not be rejected if they are used to treat birth defects in that newborn, researchers said. Alternatively, the cells could be frozen, providing a personalized tissue bank for use later in life.

The new cells are adding credence to an emerging consensus among experts that the popular distinction between embryonic and "adult" stem cells -- those isolated from adult bone marrow and other organs -- is artificial.

Latest Read: Body for Life

I came across this book while reading a review for another book on amazon.com. The subtitle to Body for Life is "12 weeks to Mental and Physical Strength", and it's written by a professional trainer named Bill Phillips.

The book and program (they have a big website operation) seems to be wildly popular; there were 904 reviews on amazon.com, many of them personal testimonies from people raving about the program - weight loss, build-up of self-esteem, etc. So I ordered a copy on amazon (second hand of course). I've been feeling that I'm in a rut in the gym, and figured I might get some new ideas from Body for Life.

I think the book is pretty good. It really aims at people without much experience in comprehensive training - nutrition and working out. But even if you have a lot of experience (like moi) there are useful ideas.

The nutrition sections are excellent. Six small meals a day, with a low fat diet. Phillips suggests substituting supplements (drinks, energy bars, etc) for the "in between" meals, late morning, late afternoon and after regular dinner. And of course he sells them on his website. I think supplements may be a very good idea for many people - it saves time, you can be sure of getting the right proportions of things - and you can probably get virtually the same supplements for 70% less cost at places like Walmart. You stick to the diet six days a week and eat whatever you want once a week.

The workouts also are for six days a week with one day off. There are three aerobic sessions and three weight training sessions.

The cardio sessions are only 20 minutes long. While he dosn't use the term, they consist of interval training, on whatever machine you favor. Or running/walking interval training. You have to make them as intense as possible. He suggests intensity levels rated 1 thru 10, with 1 sitting on the couch working the TV remote, and 10 "an all-out, 100% focused effort." So you start at level 5, gradually raising your effort to reach level 9, dropping down to level 5, back to level 9 and repeating the effort up to a level 10. Phillips also suggests that for optimium results (maximum fat burning), do the aerobics in the morning before breakfast, and don't eat for an hour after finishing. He makes the very valid point that many people do slow, low level aerobics, with no sign of any weight loss. So why not try his (the interval) approach?

The three weight training sessions take much more time. He doesn't use the term, but it is a pyramid exercise regimen. Again intensity level starts at 5, you do 12 reps of various exercises, and lower the number of reps as you raise the intensity. Then you finish with 2 sets of 12 at level 8 or 9. It's a tough workout schedule, and to do it right, would take about 45 minutes.

Oddly enough, there's absolutely no discussion at all of stretching, or anything about warming up. Because you are starting at a moderate intensity level in  both the aerobic and weight training modules, perhaps he feels that is your warm up. There's even no mention of stretching or warming up at all on his website; not even in the FAQ's.

Body for Life has the standard rah, rah. "stay the course" cheerleading, and psychological insight talk you'd expect in this sort of self-help book. That sounds like a glib comment, but it isn't. I think the cheerleading and psycho talk is useful to just about anyone.

I am incorporating some of Phillips stuff into what I'm (trying) to do.

Good article on getting financial aid for college

The Washington Post has a good column this morning on financial aid for college tuition. Think you need to be poor, or a minority, or have a phenomenal H.S. transcript to get merit-based money? Think again!

Michelle Singletary - Through College Avoiding Debt - washingtonpost.com

Right about now is also the time many scholarship applications become due. And yes, it's hard to get scholarship money, but not impossible. In fact, I love the section of Kaplan's book that dispels many myths about merit aid. If I had a dollar for every time I've heard, "Only low-income families get help paying for college," or, "Most scholarships are for athletes or minority students," I could fund a good portion of a year's tuition for one of my children at our state university.

"This myth stems from confusion between need-based and merit-based scholarships," Kaplan says. "Merit scholarships, by definition, do not consider financial need."

Another myth: Only students with high GPAs win merit awards. Not true. The Discover scholarship I mentioned earlier only requires applicants to have a 2.75 cumulative grade-point average (GPA) on a 4.0 scale for the ninth and 10th grades.

Some fun pictures

the following were sent to me by my humore consultants!

The first two pictures are from Thea MaGinnis.

Brigid thinks the "Now" picture of Arnold has been manipulated. I don't know - he will be 60 this summer.

This one is biblical

This was sent to me by Ellen Mullin

Wall Street Journal op ed on the new atheism

I posted something here on militant atheism Tom Faranda's Folly: Militant atheism about a month ago. Then yesterday the Wall Street Journal had a neat little op ed on the lack of charm/obnoxiousness of some of the men preaching the No-God gospel.

Without God, Gall is Permitted, with the sub-title "modern atheists have no new arguments, and they lack their forebears' charm"   OpinionJournal - Taste

Naturally, the atheists focus their peevishness not on Muslim extremists (who advertise their hatred and violent intentions) but on the old-time Christian religion. ("Wisdom dwells with prudence," the Good Book teaches.) They can always haul out the abortion-clinic bomber if they need a boogeyman; and they can always argue as if all faiths are interchangeable: Persuade American Christians to give up their infantile attachment to God and maybe Muslims will too. In any case, they conclude: God is not necessary, God is impossible and God is not permissible if our society--or even our species--is to survive.

What is new about the new atheists? It's not their arguments. Spend as much time as you like with a pile of the recent anti-religion books, but you won't encounter a single point you didn't hear in your freshman dormitory. It's their tone that is novel. Belief, in their eyes, is not just misguided but contemptible, the product of provincial minds, the mark of people who need to be told how to think and how to vote--both of which, the new atheists assure us, they do in lockstep with the pope and Jerry Falwell.

For them, belief in God is beyond childish, it is unsuitable for children. Today's atheists are particularly disgusted by the religious training of young people--which Dr. Dawkins calls "a form of child abuse." He even floats the idea that the state should intervene to protect children from their parents' religious beliefs.

For the new atheists, believing in God is a form of stupidity, which sets off their own intelligence. They write as if they were the first to discover that biblical miracles are improbable, that Parson Weems was a fabulist, that religion is full of superstition. They write as if great minds had never before wrestled with the big questions of creation, moral law and the contending versions of revealed truth. They argue as if these questions are easily answered by their own blunt materialism. Most of all, they assume that no intelligent, reflective person could ever defend religion rather than dismiss it. ...

A couple of tests...

To determine your "political" leanings. Sort of fun, they are quick and dirty (dirty as in half-assed, not obscene). I got them both off a posting at: Althouse: In which I annoy you once again with the asssertion that I'm a moderate.

This one takes about 2 minutes. Political Quiz

You score zero to 40 - zero you're a left wing whacko, 40 you're a right wing yahoo. I scored 26, the same as Andrew Sullivan the writer and gay activist.

This takes under a minute - World's Smallest Political Quiz

I was labelled a "centrist". Picture of Senator McCain next to the centrist label. McCain must be a centrist; my conservative friends are suspicious of him and my liberal friends just plain don't like the guy. Of course they hardly like anyone; a surly lot. BUT, they are all in a swoon over         B-B-B-B-Barak - Obamaaaa.

If you feel like it, let me know how you score.

Health Update

We saw Dr. Klimek this morning as planned. She briefly reviewed the blood results for the past month. Today's WBC count was almost identical to last Friday's - total WBC count of 1.5 (normal low is 4.0)and the absolute Neutropenic (sp?) at 0.6. The Abs Neut number is just above the 0.5 number where they really get worried. It should be between 1.5 and 8.8. Unfortunately the cyto-genetics study had not come in yet (the holidays). She will contact me if there is anything untoward on that study when it comes in.

So I got another shot of the white cell booster neulasta, and will continue having blood counts done every Friday. I see my lymphoma guru Dr. Zelenetz in a month (Feb. 8th) and there's a good chance I'll have an "ad hoc" meeting that day with Dr. Klimek for another bone marrow biopsy.

This was all about what I expected, since she had told us in our initial meeting that the thing to do for awhile is simply monitor my counts. I am a little surprised she's considering another bone marrow biopsy, since it will only be two months since my last one.

We spent a few minutes discussing our gym routines - she said she'd finished the rehab for her back injury and was heading back to weightlifting. I told her I'd just this week changed my workout routine, based on a book I'd read, "Body for Life." I will write about the new routine this weekend.

Meanwhile I have put on some weight - not happy about that. I'm around 162. My new routine runs for 12 weeks (with a big emphasis on change of diet - YIKES!) and I'm aiming to get down to under 154.

Health update coming up

Tomorrow I meet with the hematologist Dr. Klimek at Sloan Kettering regarding my low white blood cell count. Will post about it tomorrow evening.

Evangelicals on embryo research and human dignity

The Catholic Church tries to be consistent across a broad range of life and social justice activities - in theory. As often as not though, it's Evangelicals who do the better job of spelling out a "consistent ethic of life".

Here's an article in Christianity Today weaving together respect for prenatal life, and a proper understanding of our ultimate destiny.

Go Gently into That Good Night | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

Perhaps our culture clings so tenaciously to the hope of extended youthfulness and lasting life because we have shoved death from view. "All the things that once prepared us for death—regular experience with illness and death, public grief and mourning, a culture and philosophy of death, interaction with the elderly, as well as the visibility of our own aging—are virtually gone from our lives," writes Virginia Morris in Talking About Death. "Instead, we are tempted daily by that perfect apple, by promises of youth and immortality."

The apple that's currently tempting our society is the half-million frozen human embryos created in fertility clinics. Our culture so clings to life that it is prepared to legislate taking of life at its earliest stages in order to graft it on at the end.

Senator John McCain's son

Well no one can say that Senator McCain, who favors a "troop surge" in Iraq, doesn't have a personal interest in success in Iraq. His 18 year old son recently graduated from Marine boot camp and will be in marine infantry.

Troop Push Is Personal For McCain - washingtonpost.com

Jimmy McCain is an outgoing young man who told his fellow recruits that he had no ambition for politics, recalled Lance Cpl. Dominic Stam, 17, who served in a platoon with him for a time.

"On the very first day, I felt sorry for him because all the drill instructors already knew who he was," Stam said. Over three months of rigorous training, 80 of the 500 recruits quit. McCain "did really well" and "was a squad leader for a while," he said. "He started out as John McCain's son . . . and became Private McCain, just another Marine."

Stam said McCain signed up for the infantry. He reports to Camp Pendleton for more training in early January and could deploy by mid-2007. "He decided to choose one of the most dangerous jobs in the Marine Corps, and I respected him for it," Stam said. "He could have chosen something where he would be safe."

On graduation day, Stam scanned the military officers and family on the reviewing stand. There was John McCain, in suit and sunglasses.

How an election changes perspectives!

Ahhh, yes. Times have changed. One of the websites I read is "The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid". The owner is a portfolio manager and pundit named Donald Luskin.

He's a libertarian, so I disagree with much of what he says, but in the time I've been reading him, he's been right on in his criticisms of the NY Times op ed shill, economist Paul Krugman. In fact Luskin founded an internet group called "The Krugman Truth Squad" to expose the dishonesty of the guy.

Here's a link to a posting Luskin put up this morning about Krugman's sudden change of heart regarding budget deficits. which I have also excerpted below: The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid  You see, while Republican budget deficits are bad, Democratic ones are good:

Krugman revealed the truth in a Times column just before Christmas, when he created a rationale for why Democrats now in control of congress should abandon any concerns about the federal budget deficit, and instead go on a spending spree. How things have changed! While the GOP controlled congress, Krugman devoted column after column to what he called America's "fiscal train wreck," President Bush's "sheer banana-republic irresponsibility," a "fiscal catastrophe" and a "fiscal quagmire."

When Democrats were out of power, they all followed Krugman's deficit-hawk lead. Hillary Clinton worried about the "staggering federal deficit," Nancy Pelosi warned about "mountains of debt," Barack Obama fretted about "our structural deficit problem" and John Kerry raved about "fiscal cancer."

But now that they're in power, get ready for deafening deficit silence from the Dems. Krugman has their new deficit-embracing talking points all figured out. Surpluses are bad, deficits are good. According to Krugman now, the budget surplus of 1998 to 2001 was "a bad thing, because it greased the rails for Mr. Bush’s irresponsibility." Now, Krugman says, "let the deficit be."

"By spending money well, Democrats can both improve Americans’ lives and, more broadly, offer a demonstration of the benefits of good government. Deficit reduction, on the other hand, might just end up playing into the hands of the next irresponsible president."

Visitors for the New Year

My friendship with John Brown goes all the way back to my first year living in Jamaica - we met in September of 1977. He taught biology at Clarendon College, a school way off in the bush, compared to the town of Mandeville, where I lived. I met him because he was also a rugby player (and quite a good one!) and would come to town to play for the Mandeville Rugby Club. He would frequently spend the weekend at my flat and we had several rugby tours off the Island, including Guadelupe for the Caribbean championships and also over to the Cayman Islands (where I eventually ended up living for two years with my then-new bride Brigid).

The Christmas of '77 he and I teamed up with another expatriate teacher - an Irish guy named Paul McGeown - as we drove up the east coast from Miami in a pick-up truck that was being shipped from Brooklyn to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

John left the Island at the end of my first year there. We kept in touch and I saw him a couple of times in the U.K.

Brigid and I visited J.B. and his family in 1990 while he was living and teaching in Hong Kong, and I last saw him six years ago, when they paid us a visit.

His oldest child Rachel is doing a year of school in Tennessee, so John and his son Mark decided to meet up with her in New York. They spent a couple of nights with us - the 30th to the 1st.

Here's a few pictures:

The back yard, as everyone gets ready to fire away on the Faranda Paintball Range -

Yep. Paintball is serious stuff!

Rachel and Mark

And a halfway decent shot of John, Rachel, and moi -

John is the head of the Science Department at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Public School in Bristol (the term public school is deceptive to Americans - in Britain a public school is really a private school). The school began in 1509 (!) and here's the website - Queen Elizabeth's Hospital

Very interesting. The motto of the school is: "While we have time, let us do good."

How does 500 miles per gallon sound?

That's the sub-title to an opinionjournal.com op ed posted today. It's written by James Woolsey, former head of the CIA. He is optimistic abut the development of hybrid cars, able to operate off a rechargeable battery. And he expects it to be relatively soon.

Gentlemen, Start Your Plug-ins  OpinionJournal - Featured Article

Here's an excerpt, but you'll have to hit the link and read the whole article to find how we get to 500 miles/gallon of gas.

The change is being driven by innovations in the batteries that now power modern electronics. If hybrid gasoline-electric cars are provided with advanced batteries (GM's announcement said its choice would be lithium-ion) having improved energy and power density--variants of the ones in our computers and cell phones--dozens of vehicle prototypes are now demonstrating that these "plug-in hybrids" can more than double hybrids' overall (gasoline) mileage. With a plug-in, charging your car overnight from an ordinary 110-volt socket in your garage lets you drive 20 miles or more on the electricity stored in the topped-up battery before the car lapses into its normal hybrid mode. If you forget to charge or exceed 20 miles, no problem, you then just have a regular hybrid with the insurance of liquid fuel in the tank. And during those 20 all-electric miles you will be driving at a cost of between a penny and three cents a mile instead of the current 10-cent-a-mile cost of gasoline.

Utilities are rapidly becoming quite interested in plug-ins because of the substantial benefit to them of being able to sell off-peak power at night. Because off-peak nighttime charging uses unutilized capacity, DOE's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory estimates that adopting plug-ins will not create a need for new base load electricity generation plants until plug-ins constitute over 84% of the country's 220 million passenger vehicles. Further, those plug-ins that are left connected to an electrical socket after being fully charged (most U.S. cars are parked over 20 hours a day) can substitute for expensive natural gas by providing electricity from their batteries back to the grid: "spinning" reserves to help deal with power outages and regulation of the grid's voltage and amperage.

Once plug-ins start appearing in showrooms it is not only consumers and utility shareholders who will be smiling. If cheap off-peak electricity supplies a portion of our transportation needs, this will help insulate alternative liquid fuels from OPEC market manipulation designed to cripple oil's competitors. Indian and Chinese demand and peaking oil production may make it much harder for OPEC today to use any excess production capacity to drive prices down and destroy competitive technology. But as plug-ins come into the fleet low electricity costs will stand as a substantial further barrier to such market manipulation. Since OPEC cannot drive oil prices low enough to undermine our use of off-peak electricity, it is unlikely to embark on a course of radical price cuts at all because such cuts are painful for its oil-exporter members. Plug-ins thus may well give investors enough confidence to back alternative liquid fuels without any need for new taxes on oil or subsidies to protect them.

Environmentalists should join this march with enthusiasm. Replacing hydrocarbons with fuels derived from biomass and waste reduces vehicles' carbon emissions very substantially. And replacing gasoline with electricity further brightens the environmental picture. The Environmental and Energy Study Institute has shown that, with today's electricity grid, there would be a national average reduction in carbon emissions by about 60% per vehicle when a plug-in hybrid with 20-mile all-electric range replaces a conventional car.