Tom Faranda's Folly

Leap year? Blame Julius Ceasar.

Leap Day - washingtonpost.com

... The institution of leap years was strictly a necessity, created by the failure of the 365-day year to match up with the astronomical year. The discrepancy is only about a quarter of a day, but just try to figure out where to put that six hours.

Julius Caesar, a man used to acting decisively on thorny problems, solved this one, somewhat, by adding a day to every fourth year, placing it, unfortunately, in the month of Februarius. He made the calendar change in 46 B.C. and was assassinated not too long after, possibly a coincidence. We have been stuck with this extraneous day ever since, an extension of a dreary and unpopular month and an occasion for obscure and quickly forgotten acts not suitable for anniversary remembrance....

Who has a lower approval rating then the President?

This is amusing. According to realclearpolitics.com RealClearPolitics - Opinion, News, Analysis, Videos and Polls, President Bush has a 32% approval rating.

Uhhh, not great.

Here's the Congress's approval rating --  24%.

And here's the approval rating of the NY Times  --  24%.

Rasmussen Reports™: The most comprehensive public opinion coverage ever provided for a mid-term election.

Just 24% of American voters have a favorable opinion of the New York Times. Forty-four percent (44%) have an unfavorable opinion and 31% are not sure. The paper’s ratings are much like a candidate’s and divide sharply along partisan and ideological lines.

Chuck Colson: Is the influence of Evangelical Christians on the decline?

Here's a really good feature in Christianity Today.

No Utter Collapse | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

Not anymore, apparently. Many commentators are now saying evangelicals, whom they still mistakenly assume are all Republicans, are headed for a political crack-up. New York Times columnist Frank Rich wrote our eulogy last fall: "Inauguration Day 2009 is at the very least Armageddon for the reigning ayatollahs of the American right."

Really? How did we go from being the most powerful voting bloc in America to utter collapse in four short years?

The answer is, we haven't. The press is merely up to its old tricks. When I worked in the Nixon White House, the press heralded me as the President's brilliant young political strategist. After having built me up, the press tore me apart, calling me the "White House hatchet man" and "evil genius." The press loves to promote people—it's good copy—and then tear them down—also good copy. They take credit for slaying monsters they helped create. We see this vicious cycle with so many public figures today.

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Every evangelical leader I know—Rick Warren, Jim Dobson, Bill Hybels, Jim Wallis, and Ron Sider—all of us, right and left, in our own ways, are battling for traditional values. We're defending life, pursuing justice, and caring for the poor. Yes, we're beginning to be more involved in environmental issues, thanks to younger evangelicals reminding us that God commanded us to care for his creation. But we do all of this in God's name—which is what sets the secular media's teeth on edge.

It would be a tragedy if, regardless of how evangelicals vote, we allowed the media to define us. What is it that makes us evangelical? Our commitments to orthodox biblical Christianity, spreading the gospel, and promoting righteousness in all spheres of life. To be an evangelical is to defend life at every stage, help the poor, and strive for justice.

Some vintage William Buckley quotes

The Wall Street Journal yesterday had a half page collection of Buckley at his best. Hit the link for all of them and some samples below:

Buckley Athwart History - WSJ.com

I believe that the duel between Christianity and atheism is the most important in the world. I further believe that that the struggle between individualism and collectivism is the same struggle reproduced on another level.

-- "God and Man at Yale," 1951

The attempted assassination of Sukarno last week had all the earmarks of a CIA operation. Everyone in the room was killed except Sukarno.

-- Editorial, National Review, 1957

Henry Gibson: Mr. Buckley, I have noticed that whenever you appear on television, you're always seated. Is that because you can't think on your feet?

Buckley: It's very hard to stand up carrying the weight of what I know.

-- Appearance on "Laugh-In," 1970

I am lapidary but not eristic when I use big words.

-- Column, 1986

Above all, conservatives tend to intuit that materialist terminology is insufficient to express the depth of American attachments to their ideals. It remains, for some reason, arresting that one speaks of the "sanctity" of life, of our "devotion" to our ideals, of the "holy" causes in which we engage. American conservatives never exclude those who discountenance transcendent perspectives, but we tend to live by them.

-- "To Preserve What We Have," essay in The Wall Street Journal, 2002

The Marine recruiting station in Berkeley has stirred up some moonbats

Here's a rejoinder. (Off Michelle Malkin's weblog.)

1995 Buckley interview in Christianity Today

William Buckley gave an interview to the evangelical magazine Christianity Today, which they reprinted today.

CONVERSATIONS: W Buckley: Listening to Mr. Right | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

YOU ONCE DESCRIBED YOURSELF AS A PHILOSOPHICAL PESSIMIST WHO REMAINED A TEMPERAMENTAL OPTIMIST. DO YOU STILL FEEL THAT WAY?

I remember that someone once said that the trouble with socialism is socialism, and the trouble with capitalism is capitalists. I've talked in general about the theme that there is every objective reason to think that things are going to go bad, like Whittaker Chambers thinking that he was joining the losing side. But temperamentally, I think the notion of disaster is very sinful.

IS YOUR TEMPERAMENTAL OPTIMISM ROOTED IN A CHRISTIAN THEOLOGICAL VIEWPOINT OF GOD'S SOVEREIGNTY OVER THE WORLD?

God has a role which you can't predict, to begin with. Plus, one likes to think that the sheer enterprise of right-thinking people will at least cause things to survive. I was 18 years old when the atom bomb went off, and I was 65 years old when the Berlin Wall came down. My entire adult lifetime was during the Cold War. When you consider that this is what 250 million people in the Iron Curtain countries and Russia endured throughout their entire lifetime, it is very hard to say that God cleared his throat early on in this contest. On the other hand, we did finally win.

Darfur Update: Warning that the north-south Sudan civil war could be re-opening

NY Times op ed writer Nicholas Kristoff has a column today -

A Genocide Foretold - New York Times

Researchers from the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center in Washington, D.C., studied the effects of expressive writing on 71 adults with leukemia or lymphoma who journaled their thoughts while waiting for their regular oncology appointments. The patients were asked to write their thoughts in answer to the question: How has cancer changed you, and how do you feel about those changes?

After the writing assignment, about half of the cancer patients said the exercise had changed their thinking about their illness, while 35 percent reported that writing changed the way they felt about their illness. Three weeks after the writing exercise, the effect had been maintained. Writing had the biggest impact on patients who were younger and recently diagnosed. While a change in the way a patient thinks or feels about a disease may not sound like much, the findings showed that the brief writing exercise led to improved quality of life.

“Thoughts and feelings, or the cognitive processing and emotions related to cancer, are key writing elements associated with health benefits,'’ said Nancy P. Morgan, director of the center’s Arts and Humanities Program. “Writing about only the facts has shown no benefit.”

The researchers also analyzed the content of the patient writings. Most of the patients noted that cancer had been life-changing. Many patients wrote that the changes were positive ones and that cancer had altered their views about family, spirituality, work and the future. One patient wrote: “Don’t get me wrong, cancer isn’t a gift, it just showed me what the gifts in my life are.”

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Although people speak of renewed “war,” the violence is more likely to resemble what happens in a stockyard. If it is like the last time, government-sponsored Arab militias will slaughter civilians so as to terrorize local populations and drive them far away from oil wells.

Under the 2005 deal that ended the war, Sudan is supposed to hold elections early next year, but President Bashir is unlikely to allow them because he almost surely would lose. Likewise, Mr. Bashir is unlikely to abide by his commitment to allow the south to hold a referendum in 2011 to decide whether to separate from Sudan because southerners would likely vote overwhelmingly for independence — and more than three-quarters of the country’s oil is in the south.

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One of the lessons of Darfur, Rwanda and Bosnia is that it is much easier to avert a genocide ahead of time than to put the pieces together afterward. So let’s not wait until gunshots are ringing out again all over the south.

Keeping a journal can be helpful for cancer patients

Here's an interesting posting on the health blog at the NY Times. I left a comment.

The Power of Words for Cancer Patients - Well - Tara Parker-Pope - Health - New York Times Blog

Researchers from the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center in Washington, D.C., studied the effects of expressive writing on 71 adults with leukemia or lymphoma who journaled their thoughts while waiting for their regular oncology appointments. The patients were asked to write their thoughts in answer to the question: How has cancer changed you, and how do you feel about those changes?

After the writing assignment, about half of the cancer patients said the exercise had changed their thinking about their illness, while 35 percent reported that writing changed the way they felt about their illness. Three weeks after the writing exercise, the effect had been maintained. Writing had the biggest impact on patients who were younger and recently diagnosed. While a change in the way a patient thinks or feels about a disease may not sound like much, the findings showed that the brief writing exercise led to improved quality of life.

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The researchers also analyzed the content of the patient writings. Most of the patients noted that cancer had been life-changing. Many patients wrote that the changes were positive ones and that cancer had altered their views about family, spirituality, work and the future. One patient wrote: “Don’t get me wrong, cancer isn’t a gift, it just showed me what the gifts in my life are.”

Buckley: "Up from Liberalism"

The Wall Street Journal on the impact that William Buckley had -

Up From Liberalism - WSJ.com

In 1950, the literary critic Lionel Trilling could assert "the plain fact" that there were no conservative ideas "in general circulation." That confidence would be ground away. In 1951, Bill Buckley made his name with "God and Man at Yale," which critiqued his alma mater for its hostilities to capitalism and religion. Four years later, Buckley founded National Review. He was 29.

In its fecund early period in the 1950s and '60s, National Review helped introduce a modern conservatism into American political life. Buckley and his talented stable of editors and contributors gave coherence and shape to what he called "a fusion" of traditionalism, anti-Communist internationalism and free-market economics. Equally important, the magazine worked to discredit fringe elements like the John Birchers, the Jew-haters and the Lindbergh isolationists.

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These achievements might not have happened without Buckley, who was uniquely suited to preside over the often-feuding factions of the early political right. He liked arguments over principle, but he also had an uncommon talent for adjudicating disputes and building coalitions. And though Buckley had bedrock beliefs, he had a conservative's distrust for systems and grand theories; his politics were pragmatic. His thinking and prose were governed by a critical-deliberative style that emphasized contingency and complexity. More than anything else, Buckley wanted to promulgate what he often referred to as "a thoughtful conservatism."

He seemed to embody it. WFB was a public intellectual in the best sense of the term: His wit, learning, civility, his sophistication—all these hugely contributed to the respectability of the conservative cause. Buckley was also a tireless popularizer and political combatant. By the time his television program "Firing Line" closed down in 1999, he had filmed 1,429 episodes. He edited NR for 35 years, gave 70 speeches a year over four decades, and filed a syndicated column until the end of his life. He wrote more than 50 books. He said he had "a cognate aversion to boredom."

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Buckley himself never lost his faith—in God, his country, the obligation to engage in the controversies of the age, and the wonders of the mind. His half-century at the center of the American scene was a model of thoughtfulness and political creativity that remains as relevant today, perhaps more so. Ave atque vale.

FDA gives conditional approval for Avastin use by breast cancer patients.

I posted about this last week.  Tom Faranda's Folly: The FDA and cancer drug testing The FDA went against past form and approved the drug -

Breast Cancer Reprieve - WSJ.com

Avastin shouldn't have been controversial. But an FDA panel ruled that "progression-free survival" was not sufficient, because the agency's usual acid test for anticancer agents is extending life overall. Such an analysis overlooks the real benefits to women in the months they have left. But as late as last week, it looked as though approval would be delayed or rejected outright.

The "accelerated approval" granted to Avastin is contingent on follow-up trials, and Avastin could be pulled from the market if future research fails to demonstrate that treatment prolongs life. In an interview with us on Monday, oncology drugs chief Richard Padzur said that the FDA was "not demanding" a survival advantage but would consider it a factor. In 2005, the lung cancer drug Iressa was approved and then withdrawn under similar conditions, and the danger is that history will repeat itself.

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The finality of life-and-death decisions makes the approval of such drugs fundamentally a moral issue. Avastin may have slid beneath the wire, but the FDA hasn't changed its morally indefensible standard, and further drug approvals are still subject to the whims of a bureaucracy that puts statistical models above the choices of dying patients.

Hospitals and healthcare

Forbes magazine current issue cover story is entitled Bad Medicine. It looks at hospital care in general, with particular emphasis on competition between the large general hospitals, and so-called "specialty" hospitals that may offer limited services, like cardiac care, or hip and knee replacement.

It's an enlightening feature. Forbes website is free, buy you may have to register to read the article. it's a little bit too long to read without printing it out.

Bad Medicine - Forbes.com

Hospitals are still the heart of the health care industry, consuming a third of the $2 trillion U.S. health care bill. Some are very good. But many are not, brimming with infectious bugs, systemic error and negative hospitality. And because the hospital industry does all it can to thwart competition, many communities are stuck with the hospitals they have. One in 200 patients who spends a night or more in a hospital will die from medical error. One in 16 will pick up an infection. Deaths from preventable hospital infections each year exceed 100,000, more than those from AIDS, breast cancer and auto accidents combined. The presidential candidates are grappling over the plight of the uninsured, yet you're five times more likely to die from visiting a hospital than from not having health insurance, according to the not-for-profit Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths.

Patients have a choice, but it's not widespread yet. It's called the specialty hospital, a center that focuses on the care of a particular body part such as the heart, spine or joints, or on a specific disease such as cancer. There are 200 specialty hospitals in the U.S. (out of 6,000 hospitals overall), and they often deliver services better, more safely and at lower cost. A recent University of Iowa study of tens of thousands of Medicare patients found that complication rates (bleeding, infections or death) are 40% lower for hip and knee surgeries at specialty hospitals than at big community hospitals. A 2006 study funded by Medicare found that patients of all types are four times as likely to die in a full-service hospital after orthopedic surgery as they would after the same procedure in a specialty hospital.

The death of William Buckley

The magazine he founded has a bunch of remembrances.

National Review Online

And here's the NY Times -

William F. Buckley Jr. Is Dead at 82 - New York Times

Mr. Buckley’s greatest achievement was making conservatism — not just electoral Republicanism, but conservatism as a system of ideas — respectable in liberal post-World War II America. He mobilized the young enthusiasts who helped nominate Barry Goldwater in 1964, and saw his dreams fulfilled when Reagan and the Bushes captured the Oval Office.

To Mr. Buckley’s enormous delight, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., the historian, termed him “the scourge of liberalism.”

In remarks at National Review’s 30th anniversary in 1985, President Reagan joked that he picked up his first issue of the magazine in a plain brown wrapper and still anxiously awaited his biweekly edition — “without the wrapper.”

“You didn’t just part the Red Sea — you rolled it back, dried it up and left exposed, for all the world to see, the naked desert that is statism,” Mr. Reagan said.

Are you a Democrat, Republican, or Southerner?

(This from one of my law enforcement friends.)

Here is a little test that will help you decide.

Imagine this situation:

You're walking down a deserted street with your wife and two small children. Suddenly an Islamic terrorist with a huge knife comes around the corner, locks eyes with you, screams obscenities, praises Allah, raises the knife, and charges at you.

You are carrying a Kimber 911 cal. 45 acp and you are an expert shot. You have mere seconds before he reaches you and your family. What do you do?

DEMOCRAT'S ANSWER

Well there's not enough information to answer the question. Does the man look poor and oppressed?

Have I ever done anything to him that would inspire him to attack?

Could we run away?

What does my wife think? What about the kids?

Could I possible swing the gun like a club and knock the knife out of his hand?

What does the law say about this situation?

Does the gun have an appropriate safety built into it?

Why am I carrying a gun anyway and what kind of message does this send to society and my children?

Is it possible he'd be happy with just killing me?

Does he definitely want to kill me, or would he be content to just wound me?

If I grab his knees and hold on, could my family get away while he's stabbing me?

Should I call 9-1-1?

Why is this street so deserted?

We need to raise taxes, have paint and weed day, and make this a happier, healthier street that would discourage such behavior.

This is so confusing! I need to debate this with some friends for a few days and come to a consensus.

I need to consult with the ACLU first.

REPUBLICAN'S ANSWER

BANG!

SOUTHERNER'S ANSWER

Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang, click. (Sounds of reloading.) Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang, click.

Daughter: "Nice grouping Dad! Were those Winchester Silver Tips, or Hollow Points?

Son: "Can I shoot the next one?"

Wife: "You ain't takin' that to the taxidermist!" 

Evangelical commentary on the Pew Religious survey

The evangelical magazine Christianity Today had an interesting commentary on the religious survey that I posted about Tom Faranda's Folly: Big survey on religion in the U.S. yesterday.

The Problem with Counting Christians | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

The survey's topline summary describes this scene as "both very diverse and extremely fluid," which is an apt assessment as long as one remembers that the subject examined is a landscape and not, say, a moving crowd in an airport. For all of the often quite illuminating attention they get, non-Christian religions still constitute only about 5 percent of the American population. All religious groups are gaining and losing members in a very competitive environment, but the overall percentages remain fairly stable year to year and even decade to decade. Contrary to some solicitations for home missions, America is not going to become a minority Christian country anytime soon.

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The U.S. Religious Landscape Survey usefully conveys a lot of information about faith in America. But as it can be helpful to toggle between road, satellite, and terrain maps online, it is helpful to compare the image drawn by social scientists with images drawn by historians and theologians. Surveyors do not always see the historical patterns or theological values that matter most to other scholars or to religious Americans. As mapping sites remind us, directions are for planning purposes only. The reality on the ground can look quite different.

Wall Street Journal on Nader's presidential bid

They have a short (four paragraph) editorial

Nader's Triumph - WSJ.com

We sympathize with Mr. Nader on ballot access, as well as on his claim that he didn't defeat Mr. Gore in 2000. Mr. Gore's strange antibusiness populism amid a strong economy, combined with Bill Clinton's moral hangover, did that trick. Where Mr. Nader is wrong, however, is his claim that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are indistinguishable from John McCain. The party differences are as stark as they've been in a generation -- on taxes, trade, judicial nominations, and the war on terror. If Mr. Nader's real purpose is to drive Democrats to the populist economic left, his mission is already accomplished.

Interesting website on sustainable energy

This website at first glance looks pretty interesting - Faiths United for Sustainable Energy" (FUSE).

FUSE: Faiths United for Sustainable Energy * ACTION * EDUCATION * COMMUNITY * HEALTH * HUMAN RIGHTS * ENVIRONMENT * ECONOMY *...

Big survey on religion in the U.S.

A huge poll by the Pew Foundation; they surveyed 35,000 people. The Washington Post has a comprehensive article -

In Major Poll, U.S. Religious Identity Appears Very Slippery - washingtonpost.com

... More than 40 percent of respondents told pollsters that they had changed their religious affiliation since childhood.

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The survey also lays out, just weeks before Pope Benedict XVI's first papal visit to the United States, the Catholic Church's challenge here: no American faith group has lost more adherents. Among U.S. adults, about the same percentage -- 24 -- call themselves Catholic as in the past, but that statistic masks significant turnover. The percentage has held up primarily because of the huge number of recent Latino immigrants, who are largely Catholic, the survey found. Sixty-eight percent of people raised Catholic still identify with their childhood denomination, compared with 80 percent of Protestants and 76 percent of Jews.

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The survey is likely to feed the debate raging among scholars about what is happening in American religion. Some think that secularism is underreported as people may check a box correlating to a faith group without actually believing its tenets or following its practices. Others think the growth of the unaffiliated (sometimes called "religious nones," because they check "none" when asked their faith on polls) disguises the number of people who consider themselves "spiritual but not religious."

Here's an interesting commentary from the article about Catholicism -

Some Catholic researchers played down the survey's finding that about 10 percent of U.S. adults are former Catholics, and they said the church has always been significantly impacted by immigration. They also said the church's membership has increased by about 20 million since 1965.

Mary Gautier, a sociologist at Georgetown's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, said Catholics are more likely than members of other denominations to say they "left" their faith because the bar of being a "practicing Catholic" is high.

"They feel guilty," she said. "If you're a Methodist and you only go to church occasionally, you don't consider yourself no longer practicing, but Catholics tend to do that."

But Oscar Mendez, who coordinates charismatic renewal for the Arlington Diocese, said he sees evidence of Catholics leaving, particularly for Protestant denominations. According to Pew, one in 10 Protestants was raised Catholic. Too many Catholics, Mendez said, fall back on the label but don't engage with the church and don't have a "mature" faith. Protestants, he said, have been better at creating conditions for people to "have an experience" with Jesus.

And here's an amusing example of the "fluidity" of religious affiliation; a man who goes from Unitarian Universalist (a group with no beliefs or dogma) to Islam!

Fred Kurth, a retired aerospace engineer, was married at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in Manhattan. He later became a Unitarian Universalist and led several congregations as he moved around the world with General Electric. After meeting his second wife in Morocco, he had to face a hard choice: convert to Islam or forgo marrying her.

"I was soul-searching. I had to answer, How far is it? If I'm a Unitarian, I believe there is a direct link between me and God, and no third party to go through, how different is that from Islam?"

Today Kurth, who took the name Ibrahim, prays every day at the mosque near his home in Fredericksburg and carries a prayer rug in his car.

Woman in coma hears her husband yelling at her; comes out of it!

Sounds a little crazy, but the (UK) Telegraph is a serious newspaper.

Husband's love and a rollicking save coma wife - Telegraph

A mother who fell into a coma after losing her baby son during a difficult labour came back from the brink of death after her husband gave her "a bloody good rollicking".

Despite grieving for their lost son, her husband Dominic, 37, kept a round-the-clock vigil at her bedside for two weeks as she lay in intensive care.

But when doctors told him they could have to switch off her life support machine, Mr Sullivan took drastic action - by giving his wife a firm telling-off.

He held his wife's hand and demanded: "You start fighting. Don't you dare give up on me now. I've had enough, stop mucking around and start breathing. Come back to me."

Two hours later she started to breathe steadily again.

Within five days doctors were able to switch off her ventilator, and she regained consciousness to see her husband standing beside her.

She even remembers hearing her husband yelling at her as she lay in a coma and says it gave her the strength to pull through.

National Enquirer - NY Times merger deal cancelled

From Satirenewsservice -

The blockbuster deal with the Enquirer buying the famed NYT is down the rathole.

TCS Daily : Technology - Commerce - Society

Newspaper industry analysts and investors had praised the proposed deal which was announced four months ago. ...

According to industry sources, AMC planned to combine the Times' valuable sports and entertainment sections into the National Enquirer while moving the news and opinion sections into another AMC supermarket tabloid publication, The Weekly World News - which Sulzberger once famously called "The New York Times' twin regarding accuracy and relevance".

An AMC spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity, explained the company's abrupt decision. "The management of the Times breached a critical covenant during the interim period between the announcement of the merger and the close of the deal. This covenant required the Times to 'cease engaging in shoddy journalistic practices and pseudo-clever, hyper-partisan political reporting that discredit and dishonor serious journalism.'"

The spokesman stated, "the Times continues to breach this covenant every single day."

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Democratic Activist and AMC Board member Harold Dimsky cited another reason for the board's vote: "The Times has a history of providing decisive help to Republican presidential candidates by consistently failing to challenge Democratic candidates on issues and character while reporting the most speculative and inconsequential allegations about Republicans. Because the The New York Times is primarily read by Democrats, this negligence leaves these susceptible readers with the completely false sense that their selected candidates are electable. In fact this negligence leaves the Democratic candidate untested and unaware of serious challenges to his or her campaign narrative.

"This abuse of basic journalistic fairness," continued Dimsky, "has resulted in catastrophe for our party, saddling it with unelectable, badly flawed candidates while providing the other party's candidate with challenges that show their capacity to lead."

Dimsky cited as examples the willful neglect by the Times of the gaping holes in John Kerry's Vietnam service narrative, the Times' stunning lack of challenge to the current, preposterous Obama-as-Christ-like-rock-star campaign and, most recently, the Times' tabloid-like slanders against Republican John McCain.

The New York accent - still alive and well.

Until I moved to Jamaica in 1977, I  believed that I and other New Yorkers spoke in accentless English; everyone else had an accent, but not me.

The British expatriates living in my town of Mandeville straightened me out on my little prejudice; and they loved how I quite properly pronounced dog, "dawg".

Well the New York accent is still alive and well -

New York accent: Still talking the tawk? -- amNY.com

The New York accent is very much alive, linguists will happily tell you, but like all dialects -- and that's what our accent is -- it's changing. To be sure, it's been a long time since anyone called a toilet a "terlet." But many of us still drink "cawfee" and call our "fathas" on Father's Day. What's also true is that fewer of us, especially younger New Yorkers, are speaking this way in our increasingly mobile and diverse city. That said, you'd be mistaken to conclude that means New York talk is going the way of the Third Avenue El.

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And if classic elements of New York speech are indeed hanging on, one reason may be that in this post-Seinfeld world, more of us have finally embraced the fact that we're "supposed" to talk this way -- our long-held aversion to stereotypes be damned.

"It's still a part of New York identity and in part is perpetuated by the outside world. And so there's a sense in which New Yorkers buy into that. So if people keep saying that we talk so differently, I guess we do, dammit why shouldn't we," joked Walt Wolfram, distinguished professor of English Linguistics at North Carolina State University.

An accent in flux

The New York accent is part of a broader East Coast way of speech, with major distinctions in places such as Boston and Philadelphia. Our accent fits like a glove in between these two geographic zones, and the forces buffeting it include immigration waves, the city's transient young population and New Yorkers' tendency to clean up their speech. So it should come as no surprise that if indeed any part of the city is sounding less like New York, it's Manhattan.

"New York more than a great many other places is subject to homogenization," Jochnowitz said, "And I think that has already happened in Manhattan, where kids growing up in most of the neighborhoods in Manhattan don't have New York accents anymore."

What they're hanging on to in Manhattan, Jochnowitz said, are certain pronunciation distinctions he feels are worth preserving.

"New Yorkers who may be losing their accents are not losing the distinction between Mary, marry and merry. That really seems to be very much alive," Jochnowitz said, speaking of the distinctions (cot and caught is another one) that are rarely seen outside the East Coast.

But when people think of New York, it's the classic elements of the accent they're talking about: The "aw" sounds, the dropped Rs after vowels and even the long-dead tortured verbal gymnastics like pronouncing "girl" as "goil."

The risk of developing dementia

Seems to be declining.

Dementia Risk May Be Dropping - Well - Tara Parker-Pope - Health - New York Times Blog

Compared to aging adults in the 1990s, people over 70 today may have a lower risk for serious memory problems, including Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia, according to a new study that examined mental function among more than 14,000 people over a decade. While the reasons for the apparent decline aren’t known, the brain boost may be explained by the fact that older Americans today are better educated, wealthier and have improved cardiovascular health compared to similarly-aged adults in the 1990s.

“The study suggests that it’s important to keep your mind active, not just in formal education in early life, but with reading and talking with friends and staying connected with the world through volunteering and social networks,’’ said lead author Dr. Kenneth Langa, associate professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan. “We think that’s part of the story of keeping your brain healthy and working against cognitive decline and dementia.’’

And here's another relevant article -

Walking May Lower Dementia Risk - Well - Tara Parker-Pope - Health - New York Times Blog

The recent research tracked the exercise habits of 749 men and women in Italy who were over age 65 and were in good health, with no indication of memory problems at the beginning of the study. After four years, they found that the most-frequent walkers had a 27 percent lower risk for developing vascular dementia than those people who walked the least.

What’s important about the study is that it again shows exercise doesn’t have to be excruciating to reap the benefits. “It’s important to note that an easy-to-perform moderate activity like walking provided the same cognitive benefits as other, more demanding activities,” said study author Dr. Giovanni Ravaglia of University Hospital S. Orsola Malpighi, in Bologna, Italy.

Monday morning humor

from the Luskin blog:

A tourist stops a cop in D.C., and asks "how can I get to the White House?"

Answer: "Easy, just go to Harvard and turn left."

Tax and Spend - now Toll and Spend?

The Wall Street Journal had a weekend editorial about the pending legislation in New Jersey to raise the state tolls to pay down their debt. I posted about this here Tom Faranda's Folly: NJ Governor Corzine proposes road taxes as solution to the state's debt woes, here Tom Faranda's Folly: The New Jersey toll increase will stir up a storm, and here Tom Faranda's Folly: More on the pending toll increases in New Jersey .

The Journal was sympathetic to the financial bind Governor Corzine finds himself in.

Toll and Spend - WSJ.com

"We have a serious structural financial problem," the state's liberal Democratic Governor Jon Corzine told us on a recent visit. "You better address these problems or you will put yourself in a 1970s-style New York City situation, where you get a control board telling you what to do." Mr. Corzine is promoting his own solution, but he's also tacitly admitting that the state's politicians have been sucking the place dry for decades. If you want to know where a state dominated by public-employee unions ends up, Trenton is it.

Mr. Corzine spent 25 years at Goldman Sachs and is fluent with numbers, most of them harrowing if you're a New Jersey taxpayer. In 1990 the state was $3 billion in debt. Borrowing has since grown at a compound annual rate of about 13%, and now the state is $32 billion in the red. Throw in unfunded pensions and health benefits for retirees, and that number swells to $113 billion, or $3,400 for every man, woman and child in the state. That's three times per capita higher than the national average, making New Jersey the nation's fourth-most indebted state.

>>>>>>

The real problem is tax and spend governance, by both political parties. State revenues have grown at an average annual rate of 3% over 20 years, while spending has increased by an average of 7%. And that's despite a tax burden that is already nearly the country's highest (see nearby table). Mr. Corzine's predecessor, James McGreevey, jacked up the top income tax rate to 8.97% from 6.37% in 2004, giving more hedge fund managers a reason to move to Connecticut.

Mr. Corzine's toll-hike plan is well meaning but unlikely to work and is already encountering bipartisan opposition. If it fails, he ought to consider the only real solution, which would be a state constitutional tax and spend limitation. He'd be a hero to taxpayers, and it might even save the state from bankruptcy.

Big Supreme Court decision on medical devices and product liability

Last Wednesday a major decision was handed down by the Supremos.

By an emphatic 8-1 vote (Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented) they said that medical device makers, whose devices had been approved by the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) most rigorous standards, could not be sued by consumers alleging the devices caused them harm.

Here's a good feature, with the central rationale of the Judges excepted:

Supreme Court Shields Medical-Device Makers - washingtonpost.com

Scalia wrote that devices such as Medtronic's catheter are subjected to nearly a year of study. Because they are designed to be used on people with the most serious medical conditions, Scalia wrote, they can carry great risks for patients and thus the FDA plays an important role in weighing the benefits against the potential costs.

Allowing juries to award damages when something goes wrong, Scalia wrote, would be unfair. A jury "sees only the cost of a more dangerous design, and is not concerned with its benefits; the patients who reaped those benefits are not represented in court," Scalia wrote. Patients "would suffer without new medical devices if juries were allowed to apply the tort law of 50 states to all innovations."

Great feature on Yankee catcher Jorge Posada

I loved this article from the NY Times a few days ago. Posada is 36 and last year was the best year of his career. He's signed a five year contract with the Yanks, and wants to stay at catcher for the whole time.

If he can do it, that will make him a real Iron Man!

Settling Into a Defensive Crouch - New York Times

TAMPA, Fla. — Jorge Posada, who is 36 years old and has a bit of gray in his black hair, is still catching and still excelling for the Yankees. At an age when most catchers have retired to the couch, switched positions or stopped being productive, Posada is still a formidable threat.

Posada hit .338 with 20 home runs, 90 runs batted in and a .426 on-base percentage in 2007, one of the most remarkable offensive seasons ever by a catcher. Bill Dickey, a Hall of Fame catcher for the Yankees, and Mike Piazza, a future Hall of Famer, are the only full-time catchers who have matched or surpassed those four Posada statistics in the same season. Neither did it after age 29.

But because players like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens have had terrific seasons later in their careers and have also been suspected of using steroids, statistical surges by other older players can raise eyebrows. The skepticism irks Posada.

“Now when you’re 36 and you have a good year, it’s guilt by association,” Posada said. “How about the fact that I was 36 and I just did good? How about all the hard work I did during the off-season and during the season?”

Darfur Update; some positive news

The NY Times had an analysis this morning -

China, in New Role, Presses Sudan on Darfur - New York Times

KHARTOUM, Sudan — Amid the international outrage over the bloodshed in Darfur, frustration has increasingly turned toward China, Sudan’s biggest trading partner and international protector, culminating in Steven Spielberg’s decision last week to withdraw as artistic adviser to the Beijing Olympics.

And it may be working.

China has begun shifting its position on Darfur, stepping outside its diplomatic comfort zone to quietly push Sudan to accept the world’s largest peacekeeping force, diplomats and analysts say.

It has also acted publicly, sending engineers to help peacekeepers in Darfur and appointing a special envoy to the region who has toured refugee camps and pressed the Sudanese government to change its policies.

Few analysts expect China to walk away from its business ties to Sudan, but its willingness to take up the issue is a rare venture into something China swears it never does — meddle in the internal affairs of its trading partners.

“China in my view has been very cooperative,” said Andrew S. Natsios, the former special envoy of President Bush to Sudan. “The level of coordination and cooperation has been improving each month.”

For all of China’s billion-dollar oil contracts, multimillion-dollar arms shipments and Security Council veto protection of Sudan, the global power with the biggest influence over the country has scarcely a dime invested here, has no ambassador on Sudanese soil and has slapped progressively tougher sanctions on its government: the United States.

While conventional wisdom holds that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have sapped America’s prestige and power, especially in Muslim countries, the United States remains the gatekeeper to international respectability in the eyes of the Sudanese government, and its power to influence top officials here — through threats or inducements — remains unmatched, diplomats, Sudanese government officials and analysts say.

“Coming to some sort of agreement with the United States is the Holy Grail of Sudanese politics,” said a senior Western diplomat in Khartoum, who was not authorized to speak publicly. “No one has been able to deliver it.”

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... John Prendergast, a former Clinton administration official, advocate and writer on Sudan for two decades, said that China and the United States needed to be engaged.

“Unless China and the U.S. are both exerting much more pressure on Sudan, the crisis will continue to spiral out of control,” he said in an e-mail message. “China has unique economic leverage, while the U.S. retains leverage based on its ability to confer or withdraw legitimacy.”

weekend wit

Or half-wit.

This from our friend Kevin, our British expat friend and humor correspondent, living in Australia. An Irish joke - and Kevin has Irish in him. Brigid was born in Cork, making me Irish by infusion.

Two men were sitting next to each other at a bar. After awhile, one guy
looks at the other and says, "I can't help but think, from listening to
you, that you're from Ireland."

The other guy responds proudly, "Yes, that I am!" 

The first guy says, "So am I! And where about from Ireland might you
be"? 

The other guy answers, "I'm from Dublin, I am."

The first guy responds, "So am I!" 

"Sure and begora. And what street did you live on in Dublin"? 

The other guy says, "A lovely little area it was. I lived on McCleary
Street in the old central part of town."

The first guy says, "Faith and it's a small world. So did I! So did I!
And to what school would you have been going"? 

The other guy answers, "Well now, I went to St. Mary's, of course." 

The first guy gets really excited and says, "And so did I. Tell me, what
year did you graduate"? 

The other guy answers, "Well, now, let's see. I graduated in 1964."

The first guy exclaims, "The Good Lord must be smiling down upon us! I
can hardly believe our good luck at winding up in the same bar tonight.
Can you believe it, I graduated from St. Mary's in 1964 my own self!"

About this time, Vicky walks into the bar, sits down and orders a beer.

Brian, the bartender, walks over to Vicky, shaking his head and mutters,
"It's going to be a long night tonight." 

Vicky asks, "Why do you say that, Brian"? 

"The Murphy twins are drunk again." 

Snow today

About eight or nine inches. Here's the official snow shoveller in action (what an outfit)!

Those specks are snowflakes - the camera picked them up.

 

Here are a few pictures Brigid took -

   

"That's pretty thin beer". Follow-up to McCain - NYT story

Michelle Malkin quotes the analysis from editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on why they didn't run the McCain-lobbyist story -

Michelle Malkin » Seattle editor on NYT McCain story: “That’s pretty thin beer”

Fascinating feature on humanity's genetic diversity

In the Washington Post this morning. But more then just diversity, it shows "How we're all pretty much the same...". Hit the link, the whole article is great.

Genetic Mutations Offer Insights on Human Diversity - washingtonpost.com

All three studies support the idea that modern human beings left East Africa, walked into Central Asia and then fanned out east and west to people the entire planet. The studies also confirm earlier research showing that as a group, Africans have more diverse genes than people of other continents. But the new research further shows that genetic diversity declines steadily the farther one's ancestors traveled from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, which is roughly the site of the exit turnstile for the "out-of-Africa" migration.

The studies also show that many seemingly "purebred" ethnic groups have ancestry traceable to more than one continent.

For example, the Arabian Peninsula's Bedouin -- a culturally distinct group -- are descended not only from longtime Middle Eastern peoples, but also from Europeans and peoples originating from around modern Pakistan. The Yakut people of eastern Siberia share blood with East Asians, Europeans and American Indians, but very little with Central Asians, who are geographically closer to them than two of those populations.

The research may also shed light on the genetic underpinnings of human disease. One study found that Americans of European descent carry a larger number of damaging gene variants than African Americans do -- a byproduct of Caucasians' arduous march westward to the shores of the Atlantic.

The biggest message, though, is that these differences are the details, not the main message, of human diversity.

About 90 percent of the full catalogue of human genetic diversity exists in every human population. Individuals are likely to have almost as many differences with people we consider to be "like us" as with strangers on the other side of the world.

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With such diverse and abundant starting material, the researchers were able to sketch a picture of ethnicity far more detailed than previously known.

For example, Africa's surviving hunter-gatherers -- two groups of pygmies and the San people of southern Africa who were formerly known as Bushmen -- are closely related to one another and quite distinct on a genetic basis from all other black Africans. The Hazara of Afghanistan and Pakistan and the Uygur of northwestern China are also close genetic relatives, despite living far apart. On the other hand, China's dominant ethnicity, the Han, is actually two genetically distinct groups, the northern and the southern Han.

The research shows that populations' genetic footprints on the planet are deep, sharp and not easily covered over by time.

Both research teams using the French DNA collection found geographic distance from East Africa is a major determinant of genetic differences among groups.

"Each group carried only a subset of the genetic variation from its ancestral population. So there is a loss of genetic diversity with the distance from Africa," Rosenberg said.

>>>>>>

They found that the average person carries at least 2,000 SNPs that change the meaning of a genetic "word." However, in the European Americans, a larger proportion of those changes were likely to be unhealthy or unfavorable.

The reasons for this curious finding are not fully known, although there are theories.

The chief explanation is that the ancestors of Europeans (and most white Americans) suffered repeated population "bottlenecks" in which their numbers crashed as result of epidemics, environmental catastrophes and genocide. Each time that happened, the population lost a lot of its genetic diversity simply because a lot of people died.

The survivors, like their ancestors, carried a certain random collection of deleterious SNPs -- genes that caused disease or increased the risk of disease. When the population rebounded, those genes were spread widely as the small number of survivors gave rise to all living descendants.

But if they were potentially bad, why weren't they flushed out by natural selection? That is the mystery.

Good article shedding light on the British healthcare system.

The price of socialized medicine is de facto rationed healthcare.

And there are restrictions on going outside the government system - even when it's life or death. If you're interested in the healthcare debate in the U.S., this is a thought-provoking article. Note the drug in question - Avastin. Yeserday I posted about it's use in the U.S.Tom Faranda's Folly: The FDA and cancer drug testing

Paying Patients Test British Health Care System - New York Times

One such case was Debbie Hirst’s. Her breast cancer had metastasized, and the health service would not provide her with Avastin, a drug that is widely used in the United States and Europe to keep such cancers at bay. So, with her oncologist’s support, she decided last year to try to pay the $120,000 cost herself, while continuing with the rest of her publicly financed treatment.

By December, she had raised $20,000 and was preparing to sell her house to raise more. But then the government, which had tacitly allowed such arrangements before, put its foot down. Mrs. Hirst heard the news from her doctor.

“He looked at me and said: ‘I’m so sorry, Debbie. I’ve had my wrists slapped from the people upstairs, and I can no longer offer you that service,’ ” Mrs. Hirst said in an interview.

“I said, ‘Where does that leave me?’ He said, ‘If you pay for Avastin, you’ll have to pay for everything’ ” — in other words, for all her cancer treatment, far more than she could afford.

Officials said that allowing Mrs. Hirst and others like her to pay for extra drugs to supplement government care would violate the philosophy of the health service by giving richer patients an unfair advantage over poorer ones.

>>>>>>

“People swap from public to private sector all the time, and they’re topping up for virtually everything,” Dr. Charlson said in an interview. For instance, he said, a patient put on a five-month waiting list to see an orthopedic surgeon may pay $250 for a private consultation, and then switch back to the health service for the actual operation from the same doctor.

“Or they’ll buy an M.R.I. scan because the wait is so long, and then take the results back to the N.H.S.,” Dr. Charlson said.

In his paper, he also wrote about a 46-year-old woman with breast cancer who paid $250 for a second opinion when the health service refused to provide her with one; an elderly man who spent thousands of dollars on a new hearing aid instead of enduring a yearlong wait on the health service; and a 29-year-old woman who, with her doctor’s blessing, bought a three-month supply of Tarceva, a drug to treat pancreatic cancer, for more than $6,000 on the Internet because she could not get it through the N.H.S.

Asked why these were different from cases like Mrs. Hirst’s, a spokeswoman for the health service said no officials were available to comment.

>>>>>>

One of Mrs. Hirst’s troubles came, it seems, because the Avastin she proposed to pay for would have had to be administered at the same time as the drug Taxol, which she was receiving free on the health service. Because of that, she could not schedule separate appointments.

But in a final irony, Mrs. Hirst was told early this month that her cancer had spread and that her condition had deteriorated so much that she could have the Avastin after all — paid for by the health service. In other words, a system that forbade her to buy the medicine earlier was now saying that she was so sick she could have it at public expense.

Mrs. Hirst is pleased, but up to a point. Avastin is not a cure, but a way to extend her life, perhaps only by several months, and she has missed valuable time. “It may be too bloody late,” she said.

“I’m a person who left school at 15 and I’ve worked all my life and I’ve paid into the system, and I’m not going to live long enough to get my old-age pension from this government,” she added.

Pre-weekend humor - anatomy of a headline!

Off the Luskin weblog -

A man on a motorcycle is riding by the zoo, when he sees a little girl leaning into the lion's cage. Suddenly, the lion grabs her by the collar of her jacket and tries to pull her inside to slaughter her, under the eyes of her screaming parents. The biker jumps off his bike, runs to the cage and hits the lion square on the nose with a powerful punch. Whimpering from the pain the lion jumps back letting go of the girl, and the biker brings her to her terrified parents, who thank him endlessly.

A reporter has seen the whole scene, and addressing the biker, says, "Sir, this was the most gallant and brave thing I saw a man do in my whole life. "

"Why, it was nothing, really, the lion was behind bars. I just saw this little kid in danger, and acted as I felt right. "

"Well, I'll make sure this won't go unnoticed. I'm a reported for the New York Times, you know, and tomorrow's papers will have this on the first page."

The following morning the biker buys the paper to see if it indeed brings news of his actions, and reads, on the first page:

WHITE ASSAULTS AFRICAN AMERICAN AND STEALS HIS LUNCH.

The FDA and cancer drug testing

Here's an editorial from the Wall Street Journal this morning on approval of drugs for cancer treatment; specifically Avastin for breast cancer. Yesterday the Journal had a news feature article on this controversy (not available for free online).

If the link doesn't work the first time, try again - eventually it goes through -

A Moral Test for the FDA - WSJ.com

Some 40,000 women died from breast cancer in 2007. Almost unbelievably, the federal government may block one of the disease's more promising therapies for no other reason than the Food and Drug Administration's obsolete, even antimodern, regulations and approval models. Since the lives of terminally ill patients are in the balance, this is fundamentally a moral test -- and one, true to type, that the FDA may well flunk.

At issue is the biologic medicine Avastin, which interferes with the growth and spread of tumors through the body by choking off their blood supply. Manufactured by Genentech, Avastin was approved for colorectal cancer in 2004 and lung cancer in 2006, and it's been shown effective for treating recurrent or metastatic breast cancer. But in December, the FDA's Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee voted 5-4 against approval. The FDA is not bound by such decisions but usually follows them, and a final ruling is expected by Saturday.

>>>>>>

... dying patients live nearly twice as long on average before their disease gets worse, and maybe longer. It translates into an improvement in quality of life by delaying the onset of symptoms. But only in a few isolated contemporary cases has the FDA deemed progression-free survival as a relevant "end point" for approval. There's no reason besides the FDA's complacency and archaic procedures; a recent review by the agency's own Science Board concluded that "evaluation methods have remained largely unchanged over the last half-century."

>>>>>>

... Another major culprit is political pressure from Congress, where Members know they can always get headlines by calling for a crackdown on Big Pharma or exploiting public safety anxieties. Never mind patient interest.

Patients with limited options shouldn't be denied drugs that may improve what life they have left, even if it doesn't extend life in the end. Thousands of breast-cancer sufferers, on the advice of their oncologists, are currently taking Avastin "off label," and an adverse FDA decision this week will make it far more difficult for them to do so. It would also be the latest moral indictment of everything that's wrong with the FDA.

Is there an anti-cancer diet?

This article appeared in Forbes almost three months ago - I meant to post it and am only just getting around to it. To read the whole article you may have to register with Forbes, but it's free.

Despite a great deal of research, the relationship between nutrition and cancer - and fighting/preventing cancer - remains murky.

The Cancer Diet? - Forbes.com

So it goes in the murky world of studying cancer and diet. Each year brings a drumbeat of lab studies suggesting links between various dietary chemicals and cancer prevention: broccoli, soy, ketchup, bran, selenium. And then the studies come a cropper. "Green tea is the cure-all one week, and the next the data isn't good," says nutritionist Linda Chio, who works at the New York University Clinical Cancer Center. "People say, 'Tell me all I have to do is eat this and stop this and I will be able to avoid cancer.' We are not there yet." She tells people to eat lots of fruits and vegetables, go light on red meat, stay slim and not sweat the details.

Cancer takes years or decades to develop, so reliable trials are tough to perform. Gastroenterologist Moshe Shike, who heads nutrition for the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, says what people don't want to hear: "We don't know of any nutritional regimen we can positively say prevents cancer." Adds Harvard School of Public Health epidemiologist Walter Willett: "It is hard to put a finger on a specific food that prevents cancer in general."

One reason to think diet has an impact on cancer is that countries with differing diets have very different cancer rates. The Japanese have lower rates of prostate and breast cancer than the U.S., a fact attributed to their greater intake of soy and low-fat foods. And rates of stomach cancer are much higher in many Asian countries, where the food is heavily salted. By some estimates, 30% of cancer risk is attributable to diet.

But Willett says it's becoming clear that most of the dietary risk is due not to specific foods but to Americans' obesity and bulging waistlines, which, he says, are second only to smoking as preventable causes of cancer. One 900,000-person study in 2003 found that obesity raised the cancer risk by 52% in men and 62% in women. Alcohol is also a clear risk factor for many cancers. After these, specific foods make up a fairly modest 6% to 7% of cancer risk, Willett estimates.

When I was diagnosed with lymphoma, way back in the summer of 2003, I brought up the issue of diet and cancer treatment. My lymphoma guru, Dr. Zelenetz basically said that there was no evidence that a specific diet, vitamins, nutrients, etc, had any effect on preventing cancer or was helpful in treating cancer. His advice was essentially the same as the nutritionist quoted above: eat a well-rounded diet and stay active.

The hematologist I had to see for awhile after my chemo, Dr. Klimek, agreed. She said she'd love to see some real studies testing all the claims for vitamins and supplements - "Where are the studies"? On the other hand, she also said, "Chinese traditional medicine's been around for over two thousand years, so there must be something to it."

Evangelical Christians and the death penalty

From Christianity Today - a small rise in the number of people against capital punishment

Capital Doubts | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

While the issue before the Supreme Court is narrow, the national mood on capital punishment itself seems to be shifting. New Jersey became the 14th state to outlaw executions in December 2007. And a Pew Forum poll taken last August found that public support for capital punishment has dropped to 62 percent from a high of 80 percent in 1994. White evangelicals are still the death penalty's strongest supporters, with 74 percent approval, but that is down from 82 percent in 1996.

Some Christians have been disturbed by the disproportionate number of poor and African American prisoners on death row, said John Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, a conservative civil liberties organization. According to a January poll done by NationalChristianPoll.com, a research service of CT parent company Christianity Today International, about two-thirds of active Christians who oppose capital punishment are troubled by mistakes in the legal system that could lead to the execution of innocent people.

"It's anti-evangelical to kill people," Whitehead said. "Christianity is redemptive. But you can't redeem people by extinguishing them." Whitehead believes opposition to the death penalty will gain momentum in the future. "Young Christians are seeing right away that, hey, the meek and mild Jesus—would he pull the lever? Would he put the hood on and pull the lever? I don't think so."

The numbers may support Whitehead's theory. Only 55 percent of Americans ages 18–29 support the death penalty, according to David Masci of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. But Masci isn't ready to call it a trend. "I don't think we can tell," he said. The live-and-let-live attitude of youth may change as they get older, he said.

Now that McCain has the nomination in his grasp, it's slime-time from the NY Times

UPDATE - Just had another thought on this. She would be 32, and he'd have been 63. This might backfire on the NYT because it will play well with the over 50 male demographic! Hahahahaha!

The attack was sooo predictable.

For McCain, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk - New York Times

And the London Times picked up on it -

John McCain forced to deny romantic link with lobbyist - Times Online

Look at who's going to save the New York Times

The headline on the Luskin website for his posting on this was "There are no anti-capitalists in Foxholes". The NY Times is suffering financially so who do they recruit for their board of directors?

Saviors of the Times - February 14, 2008 - The New York Sun

How's this for poestic Justice? ...the management of the Times is turning to two directors it thinks will help turn things around. "We are delighted that these two exceptional individuals have agreed to be nominees for election by our shareholders," the company's chairman, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., said in a release on Tuesday announcing the news. "The skills, expertise and leadership qualities of these two nominees will greatly benefit our Company during this time of tremendous change in the media world."

So just who are these "exceptional individuals"? One, Dawn Lepore, served as a director of Wal-Mart from 2001 to 2004. While Ms. Lepore was serving as a Wal-Mart director, the Times was denouncing Wal-Mart for a series of supposed sins. A November 15, 2003, editorial thundered, "This Wal-Martization of the work force, to which other low-cost, low-pay stores also contribute, threatens to push many Americans into poverty. The first step in countering it is to enforce the law. The government must act more vigorously, and more quickly, when Wal-Mart uses illegal tactics to block union organizing. And Wal-Mart must be made to pay if it exploits undocumented workers." It went on, "Wal-Mart likes to wrap itself in American values. It should be reminded that one of those is paying workers enough to give their families a decent life."

>>>>>>

The second new Times director proposed by management is Robert Denham. Leave aside that the Council of Institutional Investors recommends that directors with full time jobs should serve on only two other boards and that if Mr. Denham wins a seat on the Times board, it will be his fifth board membership in addition to his job as a law firm partner at Munger, Tolles & Olson. One of those other board memberships is — wait for it — Chevron, where Mr. Denham has been on the board since 2004. And if you think the Times editorial writers have been tough on Wal-Mart, those editorials look like valentines compared to the ones about the oil companies. The Times in a 2006 editorial faulted Chevron for its role in "the Greenpoint oil spill, an underground spill covering 55 acres with an estimated 17 million to 30 million gallons of oil. The oil gathers in unseen subsurface reservoirs. It mixes with ground water. It seeps constantly into Newtown Creek, coating the waterway with rainbow sheens. It creates toxic vapors that could someday threaten 300 homes and small businesses." Another editorial that year asserted, "An oil industry already rolling in record profits does not need more tax breaks" and complained of "industry greed."

That pretty much sums it up. When a director of an oil company tries to make profits for his shareholders, he is accused of "greed." When a Wal-Mart director tries to make profits for her shareholders, she is lectured about being "tight-fisted." But when The New York Times Company's shareholders start getting restless for profits, where does Arthur Sulzberger Jr. turn to for "exceptional individuals"?

Asking the candidates the tough healthcare questions

Here's a really good op ed in the Wall Street Journal. Unfortunately you can bet these questions won't come up in the upcoming debates. If you have trouble getting the link to open (especailly if you have aol) keep trying, it does get you to the article after a few tries.

Health Questions for the Candidates - WSJ.com

On March 4, voters in the Texas Democratic primary will choose between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The battle is shaping up to be a health-care Alamo. Twenty five percent of people living in the Lone Star state are uninsured, according to the U.S. Census. That's the highest rate of any state.

Sen. Clinton has issued the challenge, telling Sen. Obama "I'll see you in Texas." She promises to provide health coverage for "every single one of the nation's 47 million uninsured," and she accuses Sen. Obama of offering a "band aid" solution that would leave about a third of those 47 million uncovered.

In preparation for the Texas showdown, Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama will debate this Thursday night in Austin -- and both candidates have called for less oratory and more specifics. With that in mind, here are some of the questions they should be asked:

- Sen. Clinton: When you pledge to cover every one of the 47 million uninsured, do you include recent and future newcomers to the United States, legal and illegal?

The recent rise in the uninsured is due primarily to new arrivals and their U.S.-born children, and it is happening mostly in the five border states, according to the Center for Immigration Studies and U.S. Census data. In Texas, the cost of caring for these newcomers and children has been paid by local and state taxes, with little help from the federal government. For example, 39% of babies born in Parkland Hospital in Dallas are children of illegal immigrants. County taxpayers foot the bill.

At the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, doctors are thrust into an ethical crisis. The hospital provides charity care to all. Its budget is at breaking point, and the hospital has had to lay off workers. In December, the hospital proposed that doctors triage cancer patients based on immigration status rather than medical need. But Galveston doctors say they are bound by their oath to heal, and that border control is Washington, D.C.'s problem.

Texas, as a border state, has specific problems, but also some typical ones. Of the nine million children in the U.S. considered "uninsured," six million are already eligible for government programs such as Medicaid or Schip, but their parents have not signed them up.

- Sen. Obama: You have said that you will require all parents to have health insurance for their children. What will you do to enforce this law?

In Texas, 850,000 children are eligible but not enrolled. The available programs provide check-ups, prescription drugs, hospital care, and dental care. The state runs radio ads, hands out brochures in several languages, and partners with community organizations to inform parents about these programs, but parents still fail to act.

Men: how to live long and well

This from the NY Times health section yesterday. Some of the stuff is obvious (don't smoke, etc), but there's enough new information, or twists on old stuff, to make it a worthwhile quick read.

Gentlemen, 5 Easy Steps to Living Long and Well - New York Times

“The take-home message,” said Dr. Laurel B. Yates, a geriatric specialist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston who was the lead author of the study, “is that an individual does have some control over his destiny in terms of what he can do to improve the probability that not only might he live a long time, but also have good health and good function in those older years.”

The study followed more than 2,300 healthy men for as long as a quarter-century. When it began, in 1981, the subjects’ average age was 72. The men responded to yearly questionnaires about changes in health and lifestyle, and researchers tested their mental and physical functioning. At the end of the study, which was published Feb. 11 in The Archives of Internal Medicine, 970 men had survived into their 90s.

There was no less chronic illness among survivors than among those who died before 90. But after controlling for other variables, smokers had double the risk of death before 90 compared with nonsmokers, those with diabetes increased their risk of death by 86 percent, obese men by 44 percent, and those with high blood pressure by 28 percent. Compared with men who never exercised, those who did reduced their risk of death by 20 percent to 30 percent, depending on how often and how vigorously they worked out.

McCain victory speech in Wisconsin shows how they'll go after Obama

Obama. A Messianic figure...! The Second Coming...! Scary.

My opinion as expressed for more than a year: Obama. Form without substance. An empty suit. Dan Quayle Lite.

I cannot believe that one of the two major parties in the country is on the verge of nominating him to be President. Here's a prior post on the Democratic candidates - Tom Faranda's Folly: Compared to her Democratic Primary opponents, Hillary Clinton is Winston Churchill

Good heavens! I find myself hoping Clinton wins the Democratic nomination (not that I'd be voting for her).

Compared to Obama - He's OK on invading Pakistan, and Edwards, who will negotiate with Iran but not with pharmeceutical companies, she's a Statesmanperson.

So here's a preview of the Republican strategy for beating Obama:

Political Radar: McCain Rips 'Eloquent But Empty' Obama

"I will work hard to make sure Americans aren't deceived by an eloquent but empty call for change," said McCain.

The presumed Republican nominee also knocked his likely Democratic opponent by taking a shot at the "confused leadership of an inexperienced candidate."

A week ago, after winning the Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C. primaries, McCain suggested without ever using Obama's name that the Illinois Democrat's theme of hope was nothing more than "a platitude."

But Tuesday was the first time that he painted his rival as "eloquent but empty."

McCain also used his victory speech to take what some might interpret as a subtle dig at Obama's wife.

"I have never lived a day, in good times or bad, that I haven’t been proud of the privilege" of being an American, said McCain. "Don't tell me what we can't do.  Don't tell me we can’t make our country stronger and the world safer.  We can.  We must.  And when I'm President we will."

Speaking Monday in Milwaukee, Wisc., Michelle Obama said, "For the first time in my adult lifetime, I'm really proud of my country . . . not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change."

Asked about McCain's new "eloquent but empty" line of attack, McCain spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker called it, "A preview of things to come."

Supreme Court shots down ACLU

Good. This was the legal program that the NY Times exposed. You can read about it here Tom Faranda's Folly: Should the NY Times help Al Queda?, here Tom Faranda's Folly: More on the NY Times exposing legal intelligence efforts, and here (about the rally I went to), Tom Faranda's Folly: At the (Anti) NY Times rally

Court Rejects ACLU Challenge to Wiretaps

The justices, without comment, turned down an appeal from the American Civil Liberties Union to let it pursue a lawsuit against the program that began shortly after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

The action underscored the difficulty of mounting a challenge to the eavesdropping, which remains classified and was confirmed by President Bush only after a newspaper article revealed its existence.

Is this Fidel Castro, or Willie Nelson?

Am I the only person to see a resemblance?

Darfur Update

Mia Farrow, and her son Ronan have written several op eds in the Wall Street Journal about Darfur. Here is one from this morning. Excerpts are below link.

One Olympic Victory - WSJ.com

Almost a year ago on these pages we questioned Steven Spielberg's position as an artistic director of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. We highlighted China's role as business partner, diplomatic protector and underwriter of Sudan's campaign of ethnic destruction in Darfur.

The piece, which labeled the games the "genocide Olympics," provoked immediate self-protective action from the People's Republic of China. Within days, Beijing placed rebuttal letters in prominent papers, hired two international press firms to sanitize their image, and appointed a special envoy to Darfur. Most significantly, China reconsidered its long-standing obstruction of United Nations Security Council actions on Darfur, and for the first time signed on to a resolution authorizing peacekeepers for the region.

Beijing's determination to keep the 2008 Olympic Games from being tainted proved to be a unique point of leverage with a country that has long been impervious to criticism. This sensitivity sparked new hope for Darfur.

Steven Spielberg responded too. He sought advice about China's role in Darfur, and tried over many months to engage Chinese officials, urging them to address the Darfur crisis in advance of the Games. His efforts were futile -- Sudanese government forces have intensified attacks on civilians, killing hundreds and displacing tens of thousands within the past two weeks. Expressing frustration last week, Mr. Spielberg resigned. In an eloquent statement, he explained that "my conscience will not allow me to continue with business as usual."

For an unthinkable five years, governments have watched the slaughter in Darfur and failed to take action. And so an unprecedented trend has emerged: Individuals have taken up the responsibility to protect this tormented population. Mr. Spielberg has joined scores of U.S. congressmen and European parliamentarians, as well as Nobel Prize winners, athletes, entertainers and ordinary citizens who have taken a public stand urging China to use its influence to stop the killing. In doing so, these individuals may just move China to reassess its no-strings-attached backing of abusive regimes across the globe.

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Mr. Farrow, a student at Yale Law School, has traveled in Darfur and worked on human-rights issues at the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Ms. Farrow, an actor, recently returned from her eighth trip to the Darfur region.

Obama-mania XIV - A colossal statement from Mrs. Obama

"For the first time in my lifetime, I am really proud of my country."

Now, I am no kneejerk, "my country right or wrong" type. Not at all.

But Mrs. Obama suffers from left wing BAF (Blame America First) syndrome. Let's see how this sells in Peoria.

Breitbart.tv » Michelle Obama: ‘For the First Time in My Adult Lifetime, I Am Really Proud of My Country’

"What we have learned over this year is that hope is making a comeback. It is making a comeback. And let me tell you something -- for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country. And not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change. And I have been desperate to see our country moving in that direction and just not feeling so alone in my frustration and disappointment. I've seen people who are hungry to be unified around some basic common issues, and it's made me proud."

Knee injuries in children and adolescents

A good feature in the New York Times today, on a knee injury that was once thought to be rare in children and young adolescents. It's no longer a "trick knee" - it's a torn ACL (anterior cruciate ligament). One of our friend's daughter's recently did this playing basketball. And it is much more common in girls then boys.

A Big-Time Injury Striking Little Players’ Knees - New York Times

The standard and effective treatment for such an injury in adults is surgery. But the operation poses a greater risk for children and adolescents who have not finished growing because it involves drilling into a growth plate, an area of still-developing tissue at the end of the leg bone.

Although there are no complete or official numbers, orthopedists at leading medical centers estimate that several thousand children and young adolescents are getting A.C.L. tears each year, with the number being diagnosed soaring recently. Some centers that used to see only a few such cases a year are now seeing several each week.

And contrary to the old belief that boys are more prone to the injury than girls, as many as eight times more girls than boys are suffering the tears, doctors report.

It is not an overuse injury from playing one sport too intensively, like shoulder injuries in young pitchers. Instead, doctors say, the injury occurs simply from twisting the knee, and diagnoses are on the rise partly because it can now be easily detected and partly because the very nature of youth sports has changed.

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... the standard A.C.L. repair operation, with its drilling into the growth plate, may cause permanent damage to the still-growing bones of young children. After drilling, surgeons replace the torn ligament with a tendon taken from elsewhere in the body, like the hamstring, or from a cadaver. But if the drilling damages a child’s growth plate, the leg bone will not develop normally.

Joe Faranda does brunch

The travails of being 14 years old. Yesterday Joe decided to try his hand at scrambled eggs and bacon for himself, Tim, and Brigid. (I passed; still suffering from gastritis.)

According to Brigid, he had to crack eight eggs - he kept missing dropping them in the bowl. Also forgot to add a little milk ...

Here's what the kitchen looked like after this extravaganza (with Brigid left to do the clean-up!) -

Now here is something Joe is really good at - XBOX! Note the headset - he's playing online and talking to the other players. Joe does not like it when I take his picture, but he was so into his gaming that he only protested verbally.

Evidently a Zombie zapping game.

NY's Senator Schumer on Meet the Press

An ultra-scheming windbag. Didn't see the show; read about it on the Althouse blog. Hit the link, it's amusing to read, as are many of the comments posted. I excerpted part of Ann Alhouse's posting - the first two paragraphs quote Schumer, and then her (she's a Lieberman-type Democrat) commentary -

Althouse: "Each candidate chooses the rule at the moment that is in their self-interest."

So, you know, this, this issue of how the superdelegates ought to vote, you know, this great epistemological, metaphysical issue, no one thought about it three months ago. To me, it is not a great moral issue. The great moral issue is defeating George Bush, John McCain, and coming up with a way that we can do--walk away from the convention unified. And neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama, I think, want to have an internecine fight where one side is so bitter that the other feels that they can't enthusiastically support the winner....

The bottom line is, for Florida and Michigan, I believe it's much like the superdelegates. There's a great dispute here... I think there's going to be a clear winner.... But let's say we're not there. Then Howard Dean, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have to sit down and come up with a process that both sides buy into and both sides will abide by. You cannot--you cannot let these internecine battles create a war.

He would not commit to any principle other than avoiding an "internecine" battle. Clearly, he came to Tim Russert's table ready to use the word "internecine" to fend off efforts to get him to debate what the right rule is about the superdelegates and the Florida and Michigan delegates. I'm suspicious of people who suddenly start using and reusing a word that people don't normally say. Schumer didn't even know how to pronounce it.

And here's one of the comments posted on her blog by a reader: "Translation: Rules can be broken as long as Democrats are victorious."

Preparing for the Pope's NY visit

Thre was a good article in the local Journal News, about the man responsible for Benedict XVI's visit.

As pope’s trip nears, every detail rehearsed | lohud.com | The Journal News

NEW YORK - Maybe the hardest part of Mark G. Ackermann's job is reading the letters that come in every day from people pleading for any chance to be close to their pope.

"They're heart-rending stories of people who have been through great tragedy and just want to be somewhere near the Holy Father," he said.

The problem is that there have been more than 180,000 requests for 90,000 total tickets for the six events that will take place in New York when Pope Benedict XVI visits from April 18-20.

And Ackermann is looking at two more months of desperate requests.

"Every piece of paper - everything - comes to this office," he said.

Ackermann is executive director of the archdiocesan Office of the Papal Visit, a temp job that packs a decade's worth of responsibility.

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Ackermann leads a 50-person Papal Visit Task Force that is kicking into high gear for an eight-week stretch that promises to fly by.

He spends about 20 percent of his time on security issues, working with the Secret Service, other federal agencies that he won't identify, the New York City and Yonkers police departments, the papal security team and others.

"New York has been through a lot; this region has been through a lot," he said. "The level of preparedness - people have no idea - when a major event happens is overwhelming."

Then there are the protocol people from the White House, the State Department, the Vatican, city and state agencies.

Then there are the logistics. A database, growing by the day, will include the names of every person ticketed to every event. It's a requirement of the Secret Service.

For the pope's youth rally at St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers on April 19, more than 20,000 youngsters from across the region will be bused to Yonkers Raceway. From there, they will be shuttled to the seminary, where Secret Service will be waiting to check bar-coded tickets.

"Nationally known entertainment" is being lined up for both the seminary and Yankee Stadium, Ackermann said.

More than 800 buses will descend on the stadium April 20, bringing representatives from all 195 dioceses in the United States. After hours of waiting, they'll see Benedict celebrate Mass from a stage above second base - assisted by more than 200 cardinals and bishops and some 800 priests.

And that's not all.

About 250 Christian leaders from across the country have to get to St. Joseph's Church in Manhattan on April 18 for an ecumenical prayer service.

"The One Ring" to sue them all!

The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy is a Faranda favorite - we have the extended versions of the movies, including the extra materials telling how they were made, etc.

These were blockbuster moneymakers, and of course since it's showbiz, there have been lawsuits as to who deserves the loot.

'The Rings' Prompts a Long Legal Mire The Lord of the Rings - Movies - New York Times

LOS ANGELES — According to the legend, one ring ruled the rest, with cruelty, malice and a will to dominate all life. It has also provoked an awful lot of litigation.

This week heirs of J. R. R. Tolkien, author of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy and “The Hobbit,” and a group of publishers joined the battle with a lawsuit demanding at least $150 million from New Line Cinema, the movie studio that hit the jackpot with three enormous hits based on the trilogy.

They are hardly the first: in fact, the trilogy may be turning into the first true cinematic “franchise” for local legal representatives. The lawsuits, to some extent, have fed one another, and are providing a feast for those who bill by the hour.

Peter Jackson, who directed, helped write and helped produce the movies, only last December settled a nasty suit, appearing to clear the way for his involvement in a long-awaited movie version of “The Hobbit.” In that legal action he had accused New Line of cheating him out of tens of millions of dollars by selling subsidiary rights for books, DVDs and merchandise to members of its own corporate family, Time Warner, for less than market value.

Meanwhile, the Saul Zaentz Company, named after the producer known for his collaborations with the director Milos Forman, recently filed a complaint of its own. It charges New Line with blocking its attempt to audit the accounting for the movies, which are said in the Tolkien suit to have taken in $6 billion in revenue around the world.

The litigation history surrounding the movies is almost as complicated as the lore of Middle-earth. The Zaentz company had sold the film rights to the Tolkien books to Miramax, when that studio was run by Harvey and Bob Weinstein. Miramax sold them to New Line — and had already sued, been countersued and settled once on claims that New Line defrauded it of $20 million by improperly tabulating foreign theatrical revenue.

Then came 16 New Zealand actors who appear in supporting parts in the films, who last year charged New Line with bilking them of a share in an estimated $100 million profit from the sale of video games, caps and other film-related merchandise. According to court records, a trial has been scheduled for December.

To some extent, the flood of suits is business as usual in Hollywood, where success has a thousand fathers, and they all want to be paid. Yet there is something extraordinary in the spectacle of litigants, one after another, filing claims for a bigger piece of the “Rings” trilogy.

Health update

Was put down for the count for the past thirty-six hours by a gastric issue.

It was a follow-up to a business dinner Friday evening.

enough said.