Tom Faranda's Folly

What's changed at the Wall Street Journal since Murdoch took over?

Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post has a good piece about changes at the Journal. As an avid reader of the Journal, I think he's got it about right.

Howard Kurtz - Wall St. Journal Makes Politics Its Business - washingtonpost.com

"Mr. Murdoch wants to see the paper take on added urgency and broaden its areas of coverage," says Marcus Brauchli, the Journal's top editor. "He's very engaged in news. He knows what's going on. He's got good, strong ideas about journalism."

In an interview here in the shadow of Ground Zero, in a building the paper will soon abandon for Murdoch's News Corp. headquarters in Midtown, Brauchli acknowledged that the December takeover caused considerable anxiety. There were predictions that the owner of Fox News might push the news pages at the 2 million-circulation paper to the right or tart it up like his New York Post. Some big-name correspondents bailed out.

"I don't think anyone left us because Rupert Murdoch was coming," Brauchli says. "People left because they got a lot more money. Other companies raided us."

In an era in which newspapers are laying off staff and slashing budgets -- the Journal itself did a round of buyouts last year -- Murdoch is underwriting increased space in the paper and slightly enlarging the 40-person Washington bureau. Brauchli says he expects the newsroom staff of 750, up from 600 two years ago, to grow modestly this year.

Thomson says Murdoch is also opening his checkbook to beef up foreign coverage. "Strategically, Rupert is very much involved," Thomson says. "He loves newspapers. He's passionate about them."

Many current and former staffers are pleased. "Just about everything that's happened so far has been in the right direction," says Paul Steiger, who retired last year as the Journal's top editor. Murdoch "has given them money to expand the news hole and expand staffing. I'm not aware of any bad-Rupert fears manifesting themselves."

Westchester Business Council Mega-Mixer sends Farandas to Yankee Stadium

The Westchester Business Council is the local branch of the Chamber of Commerce. I only joined the council a couple of years ago, and just pay my several hundred dollars annual subscription, without participating in too many events.

However last year my business associate Judy Anderson and I went to the annual  Business Council MEGA MIXER, which is a kind of business exhibition, where companies large and small show their wares. We had a lot of fun going from booth to booth, sampling food (and drink) talking to various businesses and collecting their freebies. All for $10 bucks. What a deal!

So last Monday we went to this year's event, and brought along my brother Phil and a friend of ours, Rich Fuerst. Many companies hold little drawings, where you drop your business card in a bowl and at the end of the day you can win something.

And... I won the drawing at People's United Bank for two tickets to this Thursday's Yankee game. Yay! I definitely dropped my card into their bowl, and Judy may also have put my card in. In any event, Tim and I are going Thursday - the Yanks are playing the Toronto Blue Jays.

Here are a few pictures from the day, which is held at the Marriott in Tarrytown - the one on Rte 119.

This picture requires some explaining - I posted it Saturday Tom Faranda's Folly: Another excellent contest for a six pack of Guinness. Who is this lucky guy, surrounded by three fabulou... and our friend Maria Abonnel Id'd Rich Fuerst and will get the Guinness.

The two women in front of Rich are Karen Robilotta and Laura Winterroth (in the red). Next to Rich, just peeking out, is Judy. Laura is a friend of mine from way back, and Karen is her business partner. They have an interesting business, TDGroupUSA, doing consulting to train company employees and producing training books and materials.

I would say Rich looks like a happy camper in this picture.

Reforming financial oversight

The Washington Post had a good, relatively brief article yesterday on suggested financial reforms being put forward by the Treasury Department.

What you might call the "retail" market - individual banking, insurance, and investment services - is already well regulated (some might say over-regulated). This is what I do, and I can assure you, the regulations and regulators are very tight.

The problem is more the major financial institutions, doing business with each other, often with new and exotic investment and hedging instruments. These new instruments and their international scope means they need new regulatory elements.

There are two problems for the reformers. First, politicians who will look to use reform as a way to score political points. Second, current regulatory agencies, who are anxious to maintain their own turf and importance.

Long Fight Ahead for Treasury Blueprint - washingtonpost.com

Some Democrats and consumer groups criticized the plan for serving the needs of financial markets but not consumers. Former and current regulators hinted at a likely fight over proposals to strip authority from agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the head of another imperiled body, the Office of Thrift Supervision, was dismissive of the Treasury blueprint in an e-mail Friday to his employees. Other officials worried whether the effort to streamline financial oversight would lead to a massive disruption and elimination of positions across the federal government.

Though recent upheaval on Wall Street has put Treasury's efforts in the spotlight, work on the blueprint began a year ago before the downturn in credit markets, and the plan was never envisioned to be an emergency cure for the ills now threatening the economy. The proposed changes to the regulatory system were instead meant to prevent financial crises like today's from recurring.

The plan, which is scheduled to be officially unveiled tomorrow by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., got a mixed reception on Capitol Hill with differences of opinion emerging within the ranks of Democrats and Republicans.

Some Democrats in Congress praised the blueprint, saying it charts a clear course for broader regulation of the nation's financial markets. While some elements don't go as far as many Democrats would like, they said the proposal changes the terms of the discussion over whether to increase government oversight on Wall Street.

"The debate now is: We have this wholly new financial system, we need much better regulation, how do we do it?" said Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. "I mean, you've got the secretary of the Treasury, the former head of Goldman Sachs, acknowledging that regulation is good for financial markets and it's not going to kill them. That's very significant."

But Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, declined to give the administration credit for the proposals, saying its earlier inaction was responsible for the financial problems. "Regrettably, the Administration's blueprint, while deserving of careful consideration, would do little if anything to alleviate the current crisis -- which was brought on by a failure of will," Dodd said in a statement.

Some key Republicans cheered the plan. "I commend the administration and Secretary Paulson for regulatory restructuring and reform that is very comprehensive in its potential impact," said Rep. Spencer Bachus (Ala.), who is the ranking Republican on the Financial Services Committee. He called for swift congressional action to implement several reforms. But it was unclear whether Republicans would approve proposals recommending that agencies, such as the Federal Reserve, gain sweeping powers over Wall Street. Several influential Republicans, including Sen. Richard C. Shelby (Ala.), ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, declined to comment on the initiatives.

An interesting projection on the Democratic Primary battle: Clinton wins the popular vote; Obama wins the delegate count

Projection: Clinton Wins Popular Vote, Obama Wins Delegate Count - Michael Barone (usnews.com)

These two projections, if they come to pass, seem likely to cause maximum pain among the superdelegates. Clinton will be able to claim a lead in popular vote. But only because of Puerto Rico—and because Puerto Rico this month replaced its caucus with a primary. Obama will be able to claim a lead in pledged delegates. But only because he gamed the caucuses better. His lead in caucus-selected delegates is currently 125, as best I can calculate it; that would mean Clinton would have a 35-delegate lead among delegates chosen in primaries. Both sides will be able to make plausible claims to be the people's choice.

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Of course my projections could just be plain wrong. Clinton could win Pennsylvania by an unimpressive margin on April 22 and get clocked in Indiana as well as North Carolina on May 6. Then you might see a cascade of superdelegates toward Obama, and the race might effectively be over. But if all those three things don't happen, then I am sure the contest will go on through June 3. And in that case I think my projections are within the realm of possibility.

Mario Cuomo on how to avoid a Democrat disaster

The former NY governor thinks it's simple: an Obama-Clinton or Clinton-Obama ticket -

How to avoid a Democratic disaster - The Boston Globe

Obama and Clinton can - by putting aside personal irritations, and to some extent personal aspirations, and agreeing to end the hostilities and form a ticket that offers both of them, a candidate for president and a candidate for vice president who is clearly good enough to serve as president, should the occasion arise. That candidate for vice president would also have a good chance of being elected president eight years from now because neither of the two would be too old in 2016. If they are not capable of doing that, the two could announce they will complete the primary schedule and convention with the winner becoming candidate for president and the other agreeing to be a candidate for vice president, thereby mollifying to some extent the constituency of the candidate who was not chosen as the nominee for president.

Your mother was right: eating breakfast is good for you

A five year study of 2,300 teenagers -

Skipping Cereal and Eggs, and Packing on Pounds - New York Times

The authors found a direct relationship between eating breakfast and body mass index; the more often an adolescent had breakfast, the lower the B.M.I. And whether they looked at the data at a given point or analyzed changes over time, that relationship persisted.

Why eating breakfast should lead to fewer unwanted pounds is unclear, but the study found that breakfast eaters consumed greater amounts of carbohydrates and fiber, got fewer calories from fat and exercised more. Consumption of fiber-rich foods may improve glucose and insulin levels, making people feel satisfied and less likely to eat more later in the day.

“Food consumption at breakfast does seem to influence activity,” said Donna Spruijt-Metz, an assistant professor of preventive medicine at the University of Southern California, who was not involved in the study. “Maybe kids eating breakfast get less refined foods and more that contain fiber. The influence of that on metabolism and behavior is something we’re still trying to sort out ..."

Another excellent contest for a six pack of Guinness. Who is this lucky guy, surrounded by three fabulous damsels?

Here was the prior contest, Tom Faranda's Folly: Friday afternoon contest: Name this person and win $1 million!  and the winner (Fr. Mike Keane) is ineligible for this one, as is anyone in the picture, or my brother Phil.

First person to post this happy man's name (and spell the last name correctly - or at least close!) in the comments section below gets the Guinness. Doesn't he look like he's died and gone to heaven?

More on Italy's most prominent Muslim converting and being baptized by the Pope

I mentioned this a few days ago, wondering about the prudence of widely publicizing Magdi Allam's conversion.   Tom Faranda's Folly: Italy's most prominent Muslim converts to Catholicism; baptized by the Pope at Easter Vigil

John Allen, in his weekly column discusses - sorry about the NCR ad below in the text; when I cut and pasted it insisted on coming along... By all means, ignore it.

Public spotlight on a personal conversion; Papal trip prep; 1978 and Catholic life | National Catholic Reporter Conversation ...

Rarely does an Easter Vigil Mass become a news event, but this year's edition in St. Peter's Basilica certainly got the world's attention. The reason: One of seven new Catholics personally baptized by Pope Benedict XVI happens to be an Egyptian-born Italian journalist and convert from Islam, widely regarded as the successor to Oriana Fallaci in terms of visceral protest against Muslim extremism.

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Allam added fuel to the fire with an Easter Sunday letter to the editor of his own newspaper, Corriere della Sera. Among other things, Allam charged that deeper than the current wave of fundamentalist-inspired terrorism, Islam itself contains "the root of evil" because it is "physiologically violent and historically prone to conflict."

All this was bound to produce blowback, and it wasn't long in coming.

Few questioned Allam's right to convert, but rather the public spotlight afforded by the pope. Aref ali Nayed, for example, director of the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre in Amman, Jordan, suggested that the affair "provokes genuine questions about the motives, intentions and plans of some of the pope's advisers on Islam." A piece on a Hamas-owned Web site by Palestinian journalist Khalid Amayreh objected to the "purposefully high profile the Vatican gave this conversion," adding that "the problem lies in the vindictive atmosphere, including anti-Islamic allusions and insinuations."

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Given those realities, why did Benedict do it? At least three points come to mind:

• For a pope committed to reawakening a strong missionary spirit in Catholicism, receiving a high-profile convert during the Easter Vigil is a symbolic way of making the point. In effect, Benedict is saying that the church shouldn't shrink from receiving anyone who knocks on its door, even if there's a political price to be paid.
• Allam's baptism can also be read as a statement of solidarity with Muslim converts to Christianity around the world, many of whom suffer in various ways on account of that decision.
• Finally, the episode illustrates an important wrinkle to Benedict's personality -- stubborn indifference to the canons of political correctness. Benedict is a gracious figure, but he also refuses to sanitize what he regards as important matters of belief or practice in order to avoid PR headaches. Whether that amounts to moral courage or tone-deafness to public reaction is a matter of opinion, but the pattern is clear.

Allam himself confirmed the first two interpretations in his letter to Corriere della Sera, describing Benedict's act as a "courageous and historical gesture" as well as an "explicit and revolutionary message" that Christians "should not be afraid to affirm the truth of Jesus, even among Muslims." He also said that Benedict never hesitated to baptize him, "from the first instant in which he learned of my desire."

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... Benedict XVI does genuinely seem to want dialogue with Islam, in a way that distinguishes his position from true anti-Islamic hawks (including, perhaps, Allam himself, at least at his most acerbic). Benedict went out of his way to meet with Islamic leaders in Cologne, Germany, during his first foreign trip; he conducted a successful fence-mending exercise with Muslims during his November 2006 trip to Turkey, including a moment of silent prayer in Istanbul's Blue Mosque; Benedict will sit down again with Muslims, along with leaders of other religions, during his April visit to the United States; and plans were recently finalized for a November meeting between the pope and signatories to a letter from 138 Muslim leaders proposing theological common ground between Christianity and Islam.

In other words, at precisely the same time that Benedict is challenging Muslims on religious freedom and the relationship between faith and reason, he's also determined to build relationships.

How does the pope reconcile those two impulses? Simple: In Benedict's worldview, the deepest threat today is not Islam, it's the "dictatorship of relativism," meaning secularism and moral and philosophical relativism in the West. In that struggle, Benedict believes a reformed, moderate Islam ought to be Christianity's natural ally. His efforts to stimulate such a reform, and his outstretched hand in dialogue, are, by that logic, perfectly consistent.

I'm told this is a NASCAR tank top - called a "modified Hanes"

Bush the Multilateralist

Here's a good op ed in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. Of course Bush has been forever for the moment tarred as a go-it-alone cowboy. But the facts don't support that at all.

Bush the Multilateralist - WSJ.com

... (McCain) The presumptive Republican nominee spoke of the need for a "new global compact" based on "mutual respect and trust," of adding "luster to America's image in the world," and of "paying a 'decent respect to the opinions of mankind.'" The media played it all up as an attempt to distance himself from the "unilateral" President Bush, although the Arizona Republican never used that word.

We fully understand why Mr. McCain feels the need to show that his Administration would not simply be a third Bush term. But with Mr. Bush's days in office nearing an end, it's worth blowing apart the myth of the "go it alone" Presidency. The truth is that, with a couple of exceptions, he's been the model of a modern multilateralist.

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Mr. Bush came under early fire after announcing that the U.S. would reject the Kyoto Protocol. Of course, the U.S. had never ratified Kyoto, and the Clinton Administration had refused even to submit it for a vote. In 1997, the Senate voted 95-0 not to endorse any climate change pact that didn't include China, India and other developing countries, as Kyoto didn't. Voting "aye" were Ted Kennedy, John Kerry and Harry Reid, among other noted unilateralists.

Then came September 11 and the war in Afghanistan, which the U.S. continues to wage under a NATO flag. Unfortunately -- and despite the honorable exceptions of Britain, Canada and Holland -- few of America's allies in the theater are willing to commit more troops, much less put them in harm's way.

Iraq is where the unilateral myth settled into media concrete. But in fact, in 2002 President Bush bucked the advice of his more hawkish advisers and agreed to take Tony Blair's advice and seek another U.N. Resolution -- was it the 16th or 17th? -- against Saddam Hussein. Resolution 1441 passed 15-0. True, the Administration failed to obtain a second resolution, not least because the French reneged on private assurances that it would agree to a second resolution if America obtained the first. But who was being unilateral there? As it was, the "coalition of the willing" that liberated Iraq included, besides the U.S. contingent, some 60,000 troops from 39 countries, who have operated under a U.N. resolution blessing their presence.

The Bush Administration has since become all too multilateralist, even -- or especially -- regarding the "axis of evil." On North Korea, the Administration adhered strictly to the six party formula. Oddly, the same critics who decry "unilateralism" would prefer that the U.S. negotiate with Pyongyang directly -- which is to say, unilaterally -- and do without the help currently being offered by Tokyo, Beijing, Seoul and Moscow.

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All of this goes unnoticed by the news media, which long ago settled on their "unilateral" stereotype and which has now become a Democratic talking point. Here's a prediction: Despite their campaign talk about cooperating with the world, two years into a McCain, Obama or Clinton Presidency our relations with Europe and the Middle East won't be much different than they are today. These disputes have far more to do with underlying differences in national interest and values than they do with the myth of Mr. Bush's unilateral diplomacy.

Newspaper revenues continue to get pounded

The new media rises while newspapers lose, across the board.

NAA Reveals Biggest Ad Revenue Plunge in More Than 50 Years

According to new data released by the Newspaper Association of America, total print advertising revenue in 2007 plunged 9.4% to $42 billion compared to 2006 -- the most severe percent decline since the association started measuring advertising expenditures in 1950.

The drop-off points to an economic slowdown on top of the secular challenges faced by the industry. The second worst decline in advertising revenue occurred in 2001 when it fell 9.0%.

Total advertising revenue in 2007 -- including online revenue -- decreased 7.9% to $45.3 billion compared to the prior year.

Still "anti-Papist" laws in Great Britain

Princess Royal's son to renounce birthright - Telegraph

What's that thing growing out of her head? Is she an alien? No! She's Catholic -

Peter Phillips, 30, the eldest grandson of the Queen and currently 11th in line to the throne, will automatically renounce his birthright by marrying Autumn Kelly, a baptised Catholic, at St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle on May 17.

The Act of Settlement in 1701 prohibits any Roman Catholic from having access to the throne, even through marriage.

It stipulates that once a person marries a "Papist" they shall be "for ever incapable to inherit, possess or enjoy the Crown".

Eyewitness accounts of the violence in Tibet

This is a good article. It isn't just a question of Chinese police beating up Tibetan monks and students. Tibetans are also terrorizing ethnic chinese residents.

Eyewitnesses Recount Terrifying Day in Tibet - washingtonpost.com

It was a heady feeling, being part of a howling pack that had forced police to turn tail and run, some dropping their shields as they fled a barrage of rocks. Then the Tibetans in the crowd slowed and began turning back, grinning and patting one another on the back.

The ebullient mood did not last long. The pack broke into smaller groups, gathering rocks and pulling out knives, looking for the next target.

"There was no more crowd to be part of. It looked like they were turning on everybody," said Kenwood, 19, describing the scene to reporters last week when he arrived in Kathmandu, Nepal, after 10 days in the Tibetan capital. "It wasn't about Tibet freedom anymore."

What he witnessed next was a violent rampage unlike any in decades in Lhasa, a city where Tibetan Buddhism's most revered temples sit among office buildings and concrete markets built by Chinese bent on developing the remote Himalayan region. Hundreds of mostly young Tibetans broke up into roaming gangs and attacked Chinese passersby and vandalized shops, killing 19 people and injuring more than 600 over two days.

During the riots, looters set fire to a clothing store, burning to death five young employees who were huddled on the second floor. Most police officers kept their distance while the center of Lhasa descended into chaos.

Nearly two weeks later, there are still more questions than answers about what sparked the violence. But several witness accounts suggest that what began as a small protest by Buddhist monks on the morning of Friday, March 14, turned quickly into ethnically charged rioting, possibly fueled by rumors that monks had been roughed up by police. Some outside experts cite another factor behind the uprising: Tibetans' awareness that the world is following news of their cause more closely as China prepares to host the Olympic Games in August.

Science looks at "runner's high"

Presumably the endorphin effect from running also occurs with other strenuous activity ...

Yes, Running Can Make You High - New York Times

The runner’s-high hypothesis proposed that there were real biochemical effects of exercise on the brain. Chemicals were released that could change an athlete’s mood, and those chemicals were endorphins, the brain’s naturally occurring opiates. Running was not the only way to get the feeling; it could also occur with most intense or endurance exercise.

The problem with the hypothesis was that it was not feasible to do a spinal tap before and after someone exercised to look for a flood of endorphins in the brain. Researchers could detect endorphins in people’s blood after a run, but those endorphins were part of the body’s stress response and could not travel from the blood to the brain. They were not responsible for elevating one’s mood. So for more than 30 years, the runner’s high remained an unproved hypothesis.

But now medical technology has caught up with exercise lore. Researchers in Germany, using advances in neuroscience, report in the current issue of the journal Cerebral Cortex that the folk belief is true: Running does elicit a flood of endorphins in the brain. The endorphins are associated with mood changes, and the more endorphins a runner’s body pumps out, the greater the effect.

Leading endorphin researchers not associated with the study said they accepted its findings.

“Impressive,” said Dr. Solomon Snyder, a neuroscience professor at Johns Hopkins and a discoverer of endorphins in the 1970’s.

Personal Generosity: Not on Obama's Agenda

Here are the year-by-year portions of AGI (Adjusted Gross Income) for the Obama's that went to charity -- much of it to Reverend Wright.
2006: 6.1%
2005: 4.7%
2004: 1.2%
2003: 1.4%
2002: 0.4%
2001: 0.5%
2000: 0.9%

For example, their AGI in 2004 was $206,647; their deductible charitable donations $2,500. The Obama income rose to $983,826 in 2006 (he had been in the Senate at that point for two years) and charitable donations were $60,307.

Go here for all the return data:   http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/tvnews/nightly%20news/_tab%20boxes/obama_tax_return.pdf

Thomas Sowell on Rhetoric and Wright

Thomas Sowell, according to David Mamet "Our greatest living philosopher"Tom Faranda's Folly: Great essay in the Village Voice by David Mamet . An African-American born in the south (unlike Wright, who was born in Philadelphia), a marine (like Wright). A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard. Despite being black and born 11 years before Wright (Wright was born in 1941), and living in the segregated south, he seems to have avoided hating Jews, Italians, white folk, etc (unlike Wright).

Here's a fine short essay by Sowell:

RealClearPolitics - Articles - The Audacity of Rhetoric

It is painful to watch defenders of Barack Obama tying themselves into knots trying to evade the obvious.

Some are saying that Senator Obama cannot be held responsible for what his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, said. In their version of events, Barack Obama just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time -- and a bunch of mean-spirited people are trying to make something out of it.

It makes a good story, but it won't stand up under scrutiny.

Should Florida and Michigan count?

The Wall Street journal had a clever and entertaining op ed on the Democrtic primary - it's written by a lawyer. Keep trying the link if it doesn't work the first time. For some reason it takes several tries these days to get through to the Journal's free opinion pages.

Hillary's Last Hope - WSJ.com

... the Democrats appear to be a party of lawyers. Only lawyers could have invented delegate selection rules as complicated and opaque as the ones the Democrats are struggling under. It also looks like only lawyers have a chance at the Democratic nomination. Harvard Law (Obama) and Yale Law (Clinton) candidates have survived, while University of North Carolina Law (Edwards), Syracuse Law (Biden), and the University of Louisville Law (Dodd) have been eliminated. And lawyers at the DNC Rules Committee will decide what happens next.

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Democrats are clearly going to have to rewrite their delegate selection rules after this contest, like they did after similar fiascos in 1968 and 1988. Until then, it's up to the lawyers, and may the cleverest lawyer win. My money is on Mr. Obama blocking the statistically based solution described above. After all, as a product of Harvard myself, I know perfectly well that Harvard produces cleverer lawyers than Yale, regardless of what the numbers might say.

Local Darfur fundraiser

Friday in Valhalla. I am going to try and get there. thanks to Maria Cudequest for pointing this out to me.

Darfur fundraiser at Valhalla school | lohud.com | The Journal News

VALHALLA - A "Dinner for Darfur" aimed at creating awareness about the genocide occurring there and to raise money to help the victims is being hosted by the Valhalla Middle/High School Helping Hands Club on Friday.

Scheduled for 7 p.m. at the 300 Columbus Ave. school, the dinner will include African cuisine prepared by local African chefs and the Valhalla Cooking Club.

A psychiatrist on prayer, faith and illness

Short posting on the NY Times health blog -

Prayer, Faith and Doctors - Well - Tara Parker-Pope - Health - New York Times Blog

Several doctors I spoke with were religious before they became patients, but they were admittedly even more so once they faced serious illness. Others changed more dramatically. “Patients used to ask me to pray for them, and I’d pooh-pooh it,” one elderly physician told me. After he got sick, he “realized how important prayer was.”

Often these doctors expressed a hodgepodge of beliefs, drawing on the organized religion in which they were raised, and adding elements of Eastern philosophy or New Age beliefs.

That said, some physicians weren’t changed by illness, remaining skeptical and disillusioned with organized religion. “I see it helps my patients,” one doctor told me. “I wish I had it in my life more…But I don’t.” It could not always be willed.

Some doctors felt that prayer can directly alter the physical process of healing through God’s intervention. My view is that prayer and faith give vital strength and motivation that can help patients cope and continue to fight.

Raining McCain

Cute. About half a million views.

British expat compares London and New York

I especially liked his brief comparison of the charitable impulses  of Brits and Americans

The good and bad in New York and London - Telegraph

Most of all, one notices the different pace of life and of economic activity. A tour of the downtown area is especially revealing. Yes, there is squabbling over what to put where the World Trade Centre once stood. But the rest of the area is now festooned with new condominiums, new office buildings, new businesses. It is as if an entire new city has sprung up.

Perhaps some of the differences between New York and London stem from the fact that London is both a great metropolis and home to central government.

Londoners therefore, quite naturally, are absorbed with the day-to-day doings of Parliament and Prime Minister, and tend to look to government for solutions, whereas New Yorkers view Washington as some distant place that has less effect on daily life, and a generally malign one.

Being less concerned with the doings of central government, and less likely to look to it to solve their problems, New Yorkers can and do devote more time and energy to making money - and giving it away.

Because charities in America do not look first to government; because New York is home to lots of rich people; because America has a deeper tradition of private philanthropy than does Britain, with its welfare state; and because Americans receive more generous tax treatment for their charitable donations, New York is famous for its ritzy balls and charity-dos to benefit arts organisations and medical research into just about every known disease.

Do-gooders here seem to concentrate more on directly doing good than on trying to persuade government to do it for them. Which is not to denigrate Britons: their hearts are made of just as pure 21-carat gold as are Americans'. But the Government claims a larger portion of their hard-earned income, leaving them less to donate to worthy causes.

Resigning? This guy's a candidate for higher office!

A no-show State representative in New Hampshire -

UnionLeader.com - New Hampshire news - No-show state rep from Manchester resigns - Tuesday, Mar. 25, 2008

DesRoches, a Democrat, said he did not expect to win when he agreed to put his name on the ballot in 2006. Once elected, he said, he was sidetracked by a series of personal and financial problems, including a bad knee, a breakup and a bout with depression.

"I was concentrating on myself," he said yesterday. "Because if I didn't have a clear mind, with everything going on with my depression, how (would) I be able to actually vote correctly?"

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DesRoches is a former manager of the Uptown Tavern, an Elm Street bar that shut down last fall. He is one of several city Democrats who, as of last Wednesday, had not voted on any of the 82 bills that received a roll call vote in the House this year, according to the House Web site.

DesRoches did not cast any votes last year, either, when there were 154 roll call votes, according to the site. Several House Democrats said the only time they saw DesRoches was when he showed up for the swearing-in ceremony in December 2006.

Brunelle said he tried repeatedly to reach DesRoches by phone or e-mail since January 2007, but he never got a response.

A former Massachusetts resident, DesRoches said he was "kind of talked into" running for the seat by his boss at the time, Roy Arsenault. Arsenault is the former owner of the Uptown Tavern and currently owns Raxx, a downtown billiard hall.

DesRoches now says he was "under a misconception" about the work state legislators are expected to do. He said he did not understand he would be given a committee assignment that had the potential to fill up his schedule each week.

"My understanding is, when he ran, he had every intention of actually doing it," said Alderman Peter Sullivan, a former state representative. "He was kind of fired up about it."

Three other state representatives from Manchester -- Sandra Smith, George Katsiantonis and Hector Velez -- had yet to cast any votes this year, according to the House Web site. All are Democrats.

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In an interview, DesRoches said he is recently unemployed and cannot afford to fix his car, which broke down about three months ago. He was evicted in mid-February, he said.

How Mrs. Clinton protected herself from snipers

Ahhh, photoshop! people are creative ...

 

My personal favorite -

A Homecoming from Iraq

Kathy and Sal Americo are friends of ours, whose youngest child Katy is married to a platoon tank commander. He returned from Iraq recently Tom Faranda's Folly: Lt. Eli and his 1st. Cavalry troops get home and the Americo's had a very nice open house celebration for Katy and Eli, who live in Texas (Fort Hood, I think).

The celebration was this past Saturday:

Here's daughter Katy, proud mom kathy, and grateful son-in-law Eli

That's Sal in the middle

Here's Brigid with Katy, who used to do some babysitting for us -

and Tim get into the act

A surprise visit from a few of Katy's girlfriends -

 

Now here's Tim again, teaching Ronnie McNally how to use her cell phone

Two rugby players! Eli played in the center at West Point. I very undiplomatically pointed out that when I was playing at Fairfield, we beat West Point a couple of times. Of course Eli hadn't been born yet ...

 

A brief Wall Street Journal editorial: "War and Foregiveness"

This is great - I printed the whole thing

War and Forgiveness - WSJ.com

The veterans of World War II are now at that age where they are dying ever more frequently, and their deaths should be an occasion to remember their achievement and sacrifice. Take the heroism and remarkable forgiveness of Jacob DeShazer, a bombardier on the famous Doolittle raid over Japan of April 18, 1942.

The Doolittle bombing raid was close to a suicide mission, a one-way trip to bring the war to the Japanese homeland for the first time. Coming not long after Pearl Harbor and before the Pacific island victories to come, the raid was a huge boost to domestic morale. Corporal DeShazer was one of five crewmen on Bat Out of Hell, a B-25 aircraft that took off from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet, dropped incendiary bombs over Nagoya, and then flew on to Japanese-occupied China, where the crew was forced to bail out.

DeShazer was taken prisoner, and was starved, beaten and tortured by his Japanese captors. For 34 of his 40 months in captivity, he was kept in solitary confinement. His pilot (Lieutenant William Farrow) and engineer-gunner (Sergeant Harold Spatz) were killed by firing squad. But DeShazer survived the war, was liberated after V-J Day in August 1945, and went on to get a degree in Biblical literature from Seattle Pacific College (now Seattle Pacific University). In 1948, he returned as a Christian missionary to the country that had nearly killed him, and he would continue his ministry in Japan for 30 years.

DeShazer died on March 15 at his home in Salem, Oregon, at age 95. It is one of life's safer bets that he is resting in peace.

A Hillary-Obama or Obama-Hillary ticket will look about like this -

Whew! Embarrassing for Hillary Clinton

CBS news on her 1996 Bosnia trip.

A horrific story about bullying in school

It's had to understand how the school officials seem to have done little or nothing about this particular case. And the family only now, after years of problems, is going to court.

A Boy the Bullies Love to Beat Up, Repeatedly - New York Times

A car the color of a school bus pulls up with a boy who tells his brother beside him that he’s going to beat up Billy Wolfe. While one records the assault with a cellphone camera, the other walks up to the oblivious Billy and punches him hard enough to leave a fist-size welt on his forehead.

The video shows Billy staggering, then dropping his book bag to fight back, lanky arms flailing. But the screams of his sister stop things cold.

Good Friday Pax Christi Stations of the Cross

Pax Christi is the Catholic peace organization. The Stations of the Cross going across Manhattan, mostly on 42nd St., are the New York branch's biggest event of the year.

This was the 26th year in a row they organized the Stations. Brigid and I participated for many years, from about 1991. I think being involved in a public display of belief, in a high profile location like mid-town Manhattan is very worthwhile. We brought Joe and then Tim along, but eventually that became too much (when your kids start saying at the third station "I'm bored" or "When are we going home?", you know it's too much). So for several years I went on my own, with members of my parish, Holy Name of Mary. The whole event takes about three hours, but I usually cheat, and arrive around the 4th or 5th station. The last time I went was 2005; I missed the last two years because of my lymphoma.

After the Stations there has always been a "15th Station", sponsored by one or another peacenik group and involving civil disobedience. I was arrested seven times in the nineties taking part, but to explain why I think that was (and is) worthwhile would take a complete posting, so I won't go there.

This time I went down with Judy Anderson, and we arrived for the fifth station, in front of the Daily News building. Each Station always blends in a contemporary theme and meditation; some are sublime and excellent. A Catholic girls school from Staten Island had a good one on the abuse of women. Catholic Charities had an excellent one (in front of the world's biggest McDonald's) entitled "amusing ourselves to death." Of course others are also inane. Right after a station on the genocide in Darfur, the next station was about "genocide on our city streets." But you gotta take the good with the bad...

The numbers were down this year; only about 350 people. in other years I believe there have been as many as 800. But it may have been a function of the weather. Normally good Friday is in April and it's warmer.

Here are a few pictues with a little commentary -

The Pax Christi truck moves along from station to station, with the music and the sound system

Amusing; a Jewish Lubavitch-evangelizing HQ motor home is also patrolling 42nd St. I think I've seen this during previous Pax Christi Stations.

Fordham Prep (Joe's school) had seven students and a teacher participating. They were mostly big guys, and they stood out.

Here we are at Times Square. The military recruiting station (closed; i suppose because of the bomb about two weeks ago) is the low building on the left of the island.

These folks were there when we arrived.

Times Square, surrounded by billboards and flashing signs - it's pretty surreal

further along; outside the world's biggest McDonald's

Here are pictures of Judy and Tom (can you tell who is who?) as well as Sue McMurty and her daughter, who we ran into at the last Station. Another parishioner, Regina O'Leary, had come down on her own, but we lost track of her and didn't get a pix.

 

Darfur Update

30,000 more displaced people last month.

The NY Times had an on-the-scene report.

Peacekeeping in Darfur Hits More Obstacles - New York Times

ABU SUROUJ, Sudan — As Darfur smolders in the aftermath of a new government offensive, a long-sought peacekeeping force, expected to be the world’s largest, is in danger of failing even as it begins its mission because of bureaucratic delays, stonewalling by Sudan’s government and reluctance from troop-contributing countries to send peacekeeping forces into an active conflict.

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The force has a robust mandate to protect civilians. But that is easier said than done, said Maj. Sani Abdullahi, the man in charge of the single company charged with fending off roaming militias and rebels to protect tens of thousands of displaced villagers in a handful of camps and thousands more vulnerable residents of remote villages.

One Sunday morning, Major Abdullahi, 34, a wiry Nigerian officer who served in peacekeeping operations in Sierra Leone and Liberia, led a few truckloads of troops to visit Abu Sorouj, one of the towns flattened by a recent government offensive in West Darfur.

The town is just a few dozen miles away, but the drive took three bone-crunching hours. Abu Sorouj was attacked nearly a month earlier, and most of the villagers had fled, some to Chad. They said they were blocked by the Chadian authorities from reaching refugee camps. So within days, some were returning, afraid of losing their land if they became long-term displaced people living in camps.

Before the attack, Abu Sorouj was a bustling town of hundreds of mud-brick huts roofed with thatch, clumped together in sprawling family compounds. It had a cinder-block school and clinic supported by a nongovernmental aid agency.

Today, it is an apocalyptic scene of ashy ruin. The residents who have returned salvaged what they could, sifting through the blackened rubble to find cooking pots, bedsteads and buried troves of grain.

Fadila Ahmed Mahamat, a great-grandmother whose legs are withered stalks, sat amid the charred ruins of her home, digging holes in the sand with bare, gnarled hands to construct the frame of a makeshift dwelling out of branches from a pen that had been used to keep sheep.

“Everything is gone,” she said. “I have nothing.”

Surveying the scene, Major Abdullahi let out a low whistle.

“My God,” he said. “Look at this.”

A few of the town’s sheiks remained, and they clamored to tell him their complaints. Arab gunmen, whom the villagers here call janjaweed, roam the edge of town, they told Major Abdullahi, coming at dawn and dusk to steal what little remained here. The women could not go to the river to collect water. The men could not leave the town to find big branches to build shelters.

“We need security,” one said.

“Why don’t you patrol more often?” another asked. “When you come, the janjaweed stay away for two or three days.”

Major Abdullahi told them: “We don’t have the number of troops on ground we need. As soon as we do, we will spread out. We are doing everything we can to make you feel more secure.”

All talk ceased as a pickup truck loaded with government soldiers drove up. An officer jumped out, smiling with an outstretched hand. But his smile was tense, and after some pleasantries he asked why the peacekeepers had come.

“The place is secure,” said the officer, Maj. Amar Ibrahim. “Even the Arabs who ride on camels and horses and harass people, we have patrols to chase them away.”

Major Abdullahi smiled and nodded.

“We really appreciate that and commend your efforts,” he said through an interpreter. “But we really need to ask you to do more. People still do not feel safe.”

Despite the agreement giving the peacekeepers free rein, government troops complain about their presence. Major Abdullahi said he must be careful not to alienate these troops because he must rely on them to help provide security. “The reality is we need to work with them,” he said. “It does no good to antagonize them.”

Major Abdullahi checked his watch. It was noon, and already he had to think about heading back. The armored personnel carriers, which had been provided to the African Union by the Canadian government and had been battered by years of abuse in Darfur’s harsh conditions, were already acting up. Two flat tires and engine trouble had made the journey to Abu Sorouj slow. But he could not risk being stuck on the way back.

Get Smart - "How about two cops in a rowboat?"

The TV series "Get Smart", with Don Adams as agent 99 and Barbara Feldon as agent 86 - and who was that guy staked out in the washing machine? - was a huge favorite in my house in the late 60's.

As the Journal feature below says, when you take Inspector Clouseau, and combine him with James Bond, you get Maxwell Smart.

How Maxwell Smart and His Shoe-Phone Changed TV - WSJ.com

...high-flown absurdism, winging well over the heads of the kids and maybe some of the adults in the audience, coexisted with gags about secret agents stationed inside washing machines and telephones on the soles of shoes in the 1965-to-1970 sitcom "Get Smart." With a DVD set recently released by Time Life and a movie based on the series coming to theaters in June -- starring Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway as Agents 86 and 99, the roles created by Don Adams and Barbara Feldon -- it is worth revisiting how this alternately trenchant and silly classic helped move TV comedy several steps forward.

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An obtuse chucklehead who nevertheless unfailingly got his man, secret agent Maxwell Smart was such an inspired creation that he has proved as indestructible as his two forebears, Inspector Clouseau and James Bond. In the years since the show's cancellation, "Get Smart" had already spawned a theatrical movie (1980's "The Nude Bomb," which lived up to its name and lost its shirt), a 1989 made-for-television film and a 1995 TV reunion series.

The pilot was filmed in 1965, and at the time producer Dan Melnick told writers Mel Brooks and Buck Henry that the biggest hits in the business were Clouseau and Bond. Why not combine the two? Messrs. Brooks and Henry, both of them trained at satiric variety programs ("Your Show of Shows" and "The Steve Allen Show," respectively) rather than the sofa school of family sitcoms, set out to write gags for the kids and satire for the adults, as Mr. Henry puts it in his commentary track on the DVD collection. Today no leap of nostalgic faith is required to enjoy the show.

Congestion Pricing in NYC: An idea whose time has come

I think this is a good idea.

Paterson Supports Congestion Pricing - New York Times

Congestion pricing addresses two urgent concerns of the residents of New York City and its suburbs: the need to reduce congestion on our streets and roads, and thereby reduce pollution, and the need to raise significant revenue for mass transit improvement,” Mr. Paterson said in a statement.

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The proposal outlined in the draft legislation would charge drivers with an E-ZPass tag $8 a day to enter the zone on weekdays from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., less any bridge or tunnel tolls they paid on the same day. Drivers without E-ZPass would pay $9 and would not receive credit for tolls.

The city stands to receive more than $350 million in federal funds for mass transit improvements if the congestion-pricing plan is approved by March 31, a timetable Mr. Bloomberg has been using to pressure lawmakers into approving it. The mayor and his allies have been working hard behind the scenes, wining and dining lawmakers and showing them the service improvements planned for their districts that the program could help finance.

But a few major issues need to be resolved before lawmakers will agree to vote for the proposal, said Jeff Kay, director of the mayor’s office of operations. He said that mayoral aides were considering creating a credit for low-income drivers and were looking to address the fact that city residents who now enter Manhattan via one of the toll-free bridges would have to pay $8, while those from areas like New Jersey would pay nothing because of $8 bridge or tunnel credits.

“Even we believe we won’t be able to do this unless that’s solved,” Mr. Kay said.

Going Green - Off the Grid with Les Stroud

This is long but looks interesting. so far I've only watched the first few minutes. Of great interest to anyone with a yen for low tech, very green living.

Les Stroud does the "Survivorman" series on the Science and Discovery channels (not to be confused with "Survivor" on one of the commercial channels).

StumbleVideo - Survivorman_-_Off_The_Grid.avi#p=l1uaxqjgsg

Easter Day at the Gagnon's

After 10:45 Mass (very crowded!) we went over to the Gagnon Estate for an Easter egg hunt and Easter dinner.

This is a bit of a tradition - we've gone to the Gagnon's for quite a few Easter days. Two of the six Gagnon's were not around - Monica is working in France, and Nate was visiting in England and in France.

But Philip was in from college and Kathleen is Joe's age - freshman in HS. The eggs had been painted the day before, by Kathleen, Tim, and two of Tims cousins, Katherine and Luke.

Easter egg hunts at the Gagnon's go something like this -

Here's Joe, Damian, Kathleen's friend Carolyn, and Kathleen

The Gagnon's have a trampoline, and there's no way Tim would have let the day go by without he two of us on it -

On to the food!

Tim, Philip, my mother, Jeanne Marie, and Brigid -

Philip likes his veggies -

For me, this is the great Easter desert! A coconut flake topped rabbit cake. I still remember when my mother made one - I was probably around kindergarten age. This one has had a good chunk taken out of him.

Thank you Gagnon crowd!

Italy's most prominent Muslim converts to Catholicism; baptized by the Pope at Easter Vigil

To be honest, I don't know if having the Pope do the baptism at such a high profile event, was prudent. This could incense some Islamic fanatics... 

Pope Baptizes Prominent Italian Muslim

Italy's most prominent Muslim, an iconoclastic writer who condemned Islamic extremism and defended Israel, converted to Catholicism Saturday in a baptism by the pope at a Vatican Easter service.

An Egyptian-born, non-practicing Muslim who is married to a Catholic, Magdi Allam infuriated some Muslims with his books and columns in the newspaper Corriere della Sera newspaper, where he is a deputy editor. He titled one book "Long Live Israel."

As a choir sang, Pope Benedict XVI poured holy water over Allam's head and said a brief prayer in Latin.

"We no longer stand alongside or in opposition to one another," Benedict said in a homily reflecting on the meaning of baptism. "Thus faith is a force for peace and reconciliation in the world: distances between people are overcome, in the Lord we have become close."

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Yahya Pallavicini, vice president of Coreis, the Islamic religious community in Italy, said he respected Allam's choice but said he was "perplexed" by the symbolic and high-profile way in which he chose to convert.

"If Allam truly was compelled by a strong spiritual inspiration, perhaps it would have been better to do it delicately, maybe with a priest from Viterbo where he lives," the ANSA news agency quoted Pallavicini as saying.

Easter and Lent

Today we are going to the 10:45 Mass, and then over to the Gagnons to eat lots of food and drink a bit of wine.

I thought this was a cool picture.  Tom Faranda's Folly: "Apostles Peter and John hurry to the tomb on the morning of the Resurrection" Unfortunately it's a little small - if I'd expanded it's size on the posting it would have been too blurry.

I give myself about a C+ for Lenten observance. Here was the original plan.  Tom Faranda's Folly: Lent and Lenten reading I tried hard to use the Magnificat prayerbook, but only batted around 40%, since I kept losing misplacing the darn thing. But my special intention of praying for my two rotten kids lovely sons - I kept to that pretty well. Reading though, was disapointing. I did do the entire Dan Berrigan book (a collection of some of his essays, poems, homilies, etc), but only have gotten through about a third of "The Forgotten Man" (about the depression), and never opened either the Joan Andrews book (would have been a re-read), or Von Balthasar.

"Apostles Peter and John hurry to the tomb on the morning of the Resurrection"

That's the title of this painting, done by Eugene Burnand in 1898. It's on the current cover of the Jesuit weekly magazine, America.

Many patients on transplant lists are not eligible - and an example of killing someone to harvest organs

This is bad.

A Third of Patients On Transplant List Are Not Eligible - washingtonpost.com

More than a third of the nearly 98,000 patients on the list at any one time are classified as "inactive," meaning they could not be given an organ if it became available because they are too sick, or not sick enough, or for some other, often unexplained, reason.

Although the need for organs far outpaces the supply, critics say the large number of inactive patients on the list may signal that potential recipients are languishing in limbo too long and that including them could mislead potential donors, recipients and policymakers about the magnitude of the need.

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"The wait list is dishonest," said Donna L. Luebke, a nurse who said she was rebuked by UNOS officials when she complained about the list near the end of the three years she served on the organization's board of directors. "The public deserves to know the true numbers."

The revelation comes at a time when advocates of organ donation have come under fire for using increasingly aggressive strategies to obtain organs, justifying their efforts by citing the long and steadily growing waiting list.

And here's an example of "aggressive strategies to obtain organs"

New Zeal in Organ Procurement Raises Fears - washingtonpost.com

... Ruben Navarro appeared close to death. So the hospital caring for him alerted the local transplant network, which rushed a team to the medical center to try to salvage the 25-year-old's organs.

But as Navarro hung on, tension mounted in the operating room of Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center in San Luis Obispo, Calif. With time slipping away, one of the transplant surgeons ordered repeated doses of the narcotic morphine and the sedative Ativan, jokingly calling the drugs "candy," according to police reports. Navarro eventually died, but too late for his organs to be useful.

Horrified nurses complained, prompting multiple investigations. In July, prosecutors charged Hootan Roozrokh with trying to hasten Navarro's death, marking the first time a surgeon has faced criminal charges in a transplant case.

No one thinks the Navarro case is typical, but it comes as transplant advocates are becoming increasingly aggressive in their efforts to procure hearts, livers, kidneys and other organs in the hope of saving more of the thousands of desperate Americans who die languishing on waiting lists. For some doctors, nurses and medical ethicists, it represents their worst fear -- the extreme end of a spectrum of practices that have been raising alarm in hospital wards, emergency rooms and intensive care units around the country.

"This is what we've been worrying about," said Michael A. DeVita, a University of Pittsburgh critical care specialist. "If you promote organ donation too much, people lose sight that it's a dying patient there. It's not just a source of organs. It's a person."

Beautiful story about a wounded Iraqi vet - a woman - going for the gold

Here's an inspirational story, as former army officer Melissa Stockwell tries to make the paralympic swimming team.

Wounded Vet Again Tackles Basic Training - washingtonpost.com

Nearly four years ago, most of Stockwell's left leg was blown off by a roadside bomb in Baghdad. The injury to the Army first lieutenant required 15 operations and nine months of treatment at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where Stockwell swam laps as part of her rehabilitation and learned that her Purple Heart and bronze star did not have to be the only medals she claimed while serving her country.

In the hospital's physical therapy center just months after the explosion, she encountered John Register, a U.S. Olympic Committee official and himself an amputee. Register pitched the opportunities within the Paralympic movement and this summer's Paralympic Games, a global competition for athletes with disabilities that will take place immediately after the Olympic Games in Beijing.

"As soon as I heard about it, I knew I was going to do it," Stockwell said.

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In preparation for the trials, Stockwell spends most of her waking hours in the pool or weight rooms at the Olympic Training Center. During a recent morning workout, she swam alongside a blind teenager, a teenager with spina bifida, a man missing both legs and a woman with only one functional arm. None, however, had been injured in war.

"The guys really respect her," said Flowers, her coach. "They know what she's been through, and what she's done."

But he added: "This isn't Camp Olympia. You're here for a reason. . . . She does have a lot of room to improve. She has to improve."

That night, Stockwell walked with a limp to an athletes' lounge on the training center campus. Her metal prosthesis was hidden by her sweat pants and a running shoe. She would be homesick, she said, if she weren't so busy. She knew the exact number of days remaining before her Paralympic trials. She didn't have much time to drop her times.

"Every weight you lift counts," she said "Every practice counts."

But whether she makes it to Beijing or not, Stockwell seems to realize she already has found a new purpose in life.

"I've done more without a leg," she said, "than I ever did with two."

After 20 years of research; still no closer to an AIDS vaccine

Here is a pretty comprehensive article on recent devastating failures in AIDS vaccine research. Amongst it's recipients, the experimental vaccine actually appears to have increased the possibility of getging AIDS.

Vaccine Failure Is Setback in AIDS Fight - washingtonpost.com

The two-decade search for an AIDS vaccine is in crisis after two field tests of the most promising contender not only did not protect people from the virus but may actually have put them at increased risk of becoming infected.

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Numerous experts are questioning both the scientific premises and the overall strategy of the nearly $500 million in AIDS vaccine research funded annually by the U.S. government.

"This is on the same level of catastrophe as the Challenger disaster" that destroyed a NASA space shuttle, said Robert Gallo, co-discoverer of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes AIDS, and head of the Institute for Human Virology in Baltimore.

The recently closed studies, STEP and Phambili, used the same vaccine -- made from a common respiratory virus called adenovirus type 5 that had been crippled and then loaded with fragments of HIV. Both studies were halted when it became clear the STEP study was futile and possibly harmful.

The results of the Phambili vaccine trial, which was conducted in South Africa, were revealed last month and only worsened the gloom. Although the number of new HIV infections in that study was far smaller than in STEP -- and too few to draw firm conclusions from -- those results, too, hinted at a trend toward harm among vaccine recipients.

Many researchers are questioning the scientific premises on which all those studies were based and are wondering, along with AIDS activists, what effect this near-worst-case scenario might have on tests of future vaccines.

The working hypothesis for what went wrong is that the vaccine somehow primed the immune system to be more susceptible to HIV infection -- a scenario neither foreseen nor suggested by previous studies.

Washington Post: "Voters in Florida and Michigan should not be excluded from the presidential primary"

They favor some sort of do-over for Democratic primaries in the two states.

Democrats in Stalemate - washingtonpost.com

Our worry is about voters in Florida and Michigan. They shouldn't be punished because lawmakers and state party officials scheduled unauthorized early primaries or because national Democrats failed to anticipate the high cost of making good on their threat to ignore results from states that jumped the starting gun.

Good Friday, "Return from Calvary"

My friend Laura put me on to this picture, very coincidentally, yesterday.

It is by British artist Herbert Schmalz (1856-1935). You can just see Calvary in the upper right hand corner.

This morning I will be doing the Pax Christi Stations of the Cross, going across midtown Manhattan.

A classic. Spitzer on cover of New York magazine

As Donald Luskin says on his blog, this has got to be the "Magazine cover of the year. ... And it's only March."

The Last Supper - artwork and interpretation

Here's the first of nine interesting interpretations of the Last Supper. Hit the link below the picture for the others - I especially like 2, 4, and 6. You have to read the note to #9 to figure it out!

The Last Supper - 1 of 9 | Christianity Today

See who's a fan of St. Francis

Gobachev. The Hound of Heaven runs down another one ...

Mikhail Gorbachev admits he is a Christian - Telegraph

Accompanied by his daughter Irina, Mr Gorbachev spent half an hour on his knees in silent prayer at the tomb.

His arrival in Assisi was described as "spiritual perestroika" by La Stampa, the Italian newspaper.

"St Francis is, for me, the alter Christus, the other Christ," said Mr Gorbachev. "His story fascinates me and has played a fundamental role in my life," he added.

Mr Gorbachev's surprise visit confirmed decades of rumours that, although he was forced to publicly pronounce himself an atheist, he was in fact a Christian, and casts a meeting with Pope John Paul II in 1989 in a new light.

From the no-surprise-about-that department: Bin Laden doesn't like the Pople

Or Europeans. Or Americans.

Bin Laden warns EU over Prophet cartoons | International | Reuters

In an audio recording posted on the Internet coinciding with the birthday of Islam's founder, bin Laden said the drawings, considered offensive by Muslims, were part of a "new crusade" in which Pope Benedict was involved.

"Your publications of these drawings -- part of a new crusade in which the Pope of the Vatican had a significant role -- is a confirmation from you that the war continues," said the Saudi-born militant leader, addressing "those who are wise at the European Union".

You are "testing Muslims ... the answer will be what you shall see and not what you hear."

Wall Street dude injured during lap dance is suing

Fronm the UK Telegraph. I'm surprised they scooped the NY Post on this ... Sorry no photos.

Trader sues over 'lap dance injury' - Telegraph

Stephen Chang, a securities trader, claims in court papers filed at the Manhattan Supreme Court that he "sustained serious personal injuries" on his visit to the Hot Lap Dance Club near Madison Square Garden in November last year.

His lawsuit against the club states: "During the course of said lap dance, the employee suddenly swung around, striking [Mr Chang] in the eye with the heel of her shoe."

Mr Chang, who is married and in his early 30s, had visited the club on his own.

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On its website, the club states: "The dancers are not only exceptionally attractive with killer bodies, but they also have good personalities, are friendly and sensual, and are intelligent and can carry on a conversation."

Fr. Eugene Keane

I just got an email that this priest had died. I knew him a little, and then Brigid and I had some very pleasant contact with him. Tim and his birth mother stayed in his home (it was below Kingston, NY) before Tim was born. I doubt if we had seen Fr. at all in the last eight or so years.

Here's the text of the email informing us. It's from another father whose adopted son was helped by him:

I just learned that Fr. Eugene Keane died on February 25. A witty,
eccentric & dedicated priest, he was already fighting abortion in the
mid-sixties &, among other things ran a home for unwed mothers - where our
Joseph's stayed until his birth - & to which Governor Cuomo offered the 5
grand honororium from Notre Dame when the Governor made his Pontius Pilate
speech there in 1984 - but Keane turned it down.
So a prayer for this good priest's soul this weekend, & perhaps a Mass at
some point, I commend to your consideration.

I confess to shedding a couple of tears while posting this ...

Croton Trustee election

I wrote a bit about this yesterday. Tom Faranda's Folly: Local elections

My guy Streany lost. Evidently it was a bit of a blow-out as the two Democratic candidates won. I thought Streany would win one seat and the incumbent Democrat (Ann Galleli) the other, but it didn't work out that way. 

Tragic death in Croton

Yesterday morning there was a terribly sad and shocking accident at the Croton-Harmon railway station, as Theresa Fiorentino, the operator of the newstand in the station was struck and killed by an Amtrak train.

Like everyone else who ever commuted to New York, I saw the lady all the time back when I was a commuter.

Mrs. Fiorentino was blind. While it's not mentioned in the article below, the authorities believe that after going down in the elevator to the train track level to have her accustomed cigarette, she got back on the elevator, and the doors closed and then re-opened. She evidently thought she was back on the second floor of the station and stepped out, and then feel onto the tracks.

She was standing when the train hit and killed her instantly.

Croton-Harmon commuters miss newsstand owner killed by train | lohud.com | The Journal News