Tom Faranda's Folly

Colbert: As "Sexy Teenage Vampire"

And two more below that - half the show is up on youtube.

 

Plus this.

And "The Gronk"

 

National "knock-knock, who's there" joke day is today

Ugh. This from the NY Daily News. A halloween one, suitable below.

Knock knock, who's there? 15 jokes to celebrate National Knock Knock Joke Day

A sample -

2. Knock Knock.

Who's there?

A broken pencil.

A broken pencil who?

Never mind...it's pointless

And this one, suitable for Halloween

8. Knock knock.

Who's there?

Howie.

Howie who?

Howie gonna hide this dead body?

 

Rugby World Cup: 3rd place game, Argentina v. South Africa

The losers of the semifinals playing for 3rd on Friday.

 

Colbert: the CNBC Republican debate

And here he is on his last two appearances on Faranda's Folly - Colbert: The Meat Apocalypse as well as this ditty Cobert on the Democrat Debate

The latest -

 

Rugby World Cup: Tomorrow, NBC live noontime, NZ v. Australia

New Zealand inside center Ma'a Nonu talks about playing Australia.  He's represented the All Blacks 102 times. one minute video produced by  Adidas.

 

Stepinac football - #1 in the state

Having beaten St. Peter's of Staten Island, 52-6 last Saturday. They are now 7-0 and finish their conference games tomorrow against Chaminade, who are not having a good season.

Here are the national and state rankings - 126 nationally and 1st in NY State.

The Alamo: "Preservation in Progress"

Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, those Texans! 2 minutes from the AP.

 

China ends one child/family policy

Now it's two children! They had to end it - but not for human rights reasons - it's the demographics -

Good Press Release from Population Research Institute -

China Announces End of One Child Policy

The Chinese government is apparently ready loosen to the stranglehold it has had on reproduction in that country since the late seventies—a little bit. Under the new policy, married Chinese couples will be allowed not one, but two children.

“The regime is backing away from draconian birth limits,” says Steven Mosher, President of the Population Research Institute, “not because senior Party officials have suddenly developed a conscience. Rather, it will be because they have finally realized that a shrinking workforce and a rapidly aging population are crippling future economic growth.”

For at least the past two years, China’s workforce has been shrinking. Last year, the potential workforce fell by 3.71 million, a significant number even by China’s standards. At the same time, the over-sixty population is exploding. According to U.N. projections, it is expected to more than double by 2050. China is gro wing old before it grows rich, and the strains on China’s nascent pension programs will be enormous.

Mosher says, “Beijing now realizes that it must stop restricting childbirth and start encouraging it as soon as possible. Yet it can’t simply abandon the policy altogether and admit it made a mistake. That would call the regime’s legitimacy into question.”

The parallels between China’s current demographic and economic malaise and Japan’s demographic and economic decline in the 1990s is striking. The Japanese economy has never really recovered from its “demographic recession.” China may not recover either.

The One Child Policy has caused fertility rates to plummet over the past three and half decades. Sex-selective abortion has reached epidemic proportions in many parts of the country. The strong preference for sons in Chinese culture, especially in rural areas, has resulted in the deaths of millions of unborn baby girls.

The overall loss of human life in China is staggering. China’s own Ministry of Health estimated in 2013 that 336 million babies had been aborted as a result of the onerous population control program. With an estimated 13 million abortions taking place in China every year—almost 1,500 lives per hour—the number is likely significantly higher today.

Chinese President Xi Jinping first sought to loosen the policy in 2013. It was announced that couples where both the husband and the wife were themselves only children would be allowed to have a second child following the birth of their first. The response was underwhelming as few couples applied for a second birth “permit."

Mosher says, “Now couples are allowed to have a second child. But don’t expect it to stop there. A government bent on controlling the fertility of its people will do whatever necessary to produce the number of children it thinks necessary.”

After all, the One Child Policy is only one phase of the larger Planned Birth campaign. This is Beijing’s ongoing campaign to control the reproduction of the Chinese people under a state plan in the same way that it controls the number of tanks, or the number of coal-fired power plants, that it builds each year.

This means that, if the Chinese people refuse to conceive and bear the number of children that the state demands, childbearing will become mandatory. Women will be forcibly inseminated, regular pelvic examinations will be instituted to monitor their pregnancies, and abortions will be forbidden.

Unless and until the Communist regime abandons its Planned Birth policy, and allows couples to freely choose the number and spacing of their children, abuses will continue.

And since when has a one-party dictatorship ever voluntarily relinquished even a portion of the power that it wields over its people?

 

Colbert: The Meat Apocalypse

This is really funny. And he can't keep a straight face.

 

Carly Fiorina on Hillary's economics

This was an op ed on the WSJ on Tuesday, which the Carly Fiorina campaign also put out as a press release. Love the last line.

Hillary Clinton Flunks Economics

There can be no doubt now: The U.S. economy is struggling, inequality is on the rise and too many Americans feel uncertain about their future.

 

On the campaign trail, I have met many of these men and women, who sit at the kitchen table each week, straining to stretch their dollars from shrinking paychecks. Families who can’t save for retirement with near-zero interest rates. Young parents who are being crushed by their student debt. Shop owners who can’t get a loan because their community bank went out of business.

 

We’ve had more than six years to watch the left’s prescriptions in action and the verdict is in: They don’t work. Under President Obama, the economy has been hobbled. The 73,000-page tax code is too complex to navigate without an army of accountants. The administration has added $7 trillion in new federal debt, and has doubled down on environmental regulations that crush business owners and farmers while raising energy prices.

 

And yet Hillary Clinton said on Oct. 13 in the first Democratic presidential debate, “The economy does better when you have a Democrat in the White House,” and she offers variations on that line when campaigning.

 

Whose economy is she talking about? The middle class has shrunk under the Obama administration. According to government figures and industry analyses, median-income households have lost nearly $1,300 after inflation, while the prices of food, health care and college tuition have risen almost twice as fast as inflation.

 

Those struggling to find work are increasingly out of luck: Labor-force participation for working-age Americans has fallen to 62.4%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), a level last seen in the Jimmy Carter-era recession. Millions have given up looking for work, and millions have fallen into poverty as a result.

 

While Mrs. Clinton touts her gender to bolster her campaign, 92% of the jobs lost during Mr. Obama’s first term—when Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state—belonged to women, according to the BLS. The National Women’s Law Center reports that the poverty rate among women is 16.1%—the highest level in 20 years—and the extreme poverty rate among women the highest ever recorded.

 

African-American unemployment is almost twice as high as the national average. The median household net worth for black families fell by 33% from 2010 to 2013. The left continually urges more spending for the Education Department, yet the achievement gap between black and white students has stagnated and remains far too wide—and only half of black male high-school students graduate on time. Meanwhile, liberals pander to the teachers unions while blocking merit pay and shutting down school-choice programs.

 

People at the top seem to be doing just fine under the policies sheextols. As this newspaper reported last year, in the period 2009-12, 95% of income gains went to the top 1%.

 

That’s because big government only works for big business, the powerful, the wealthy and the well-connected. Consider the 2010 Dodd-Frank law: Under that legislation passed by a Democrat-led Congress, “too big to fail” banks got even bigger, while 1,500 community banks—the source of half of all loans to local businesses—reportedly have been destroyed. The remaining community banks have had to hire 50% more compliance staff just to keep up with the regulations.

 

Only big businesses can manage the weight and complexity of today’s regulatory regime. The small businesses that are the real engine of growth—they create two-thirds of new jobs—are being crushed by costly new rules and regulations that they must understand and navigate.

 

Mrs. Clinton stunned listeners earlier this year when she admitted being “surprised” to learn that small businesses are struggling. Since the Obama tenure began, the Gallup organization reports, America has seen a net total of 70,000 more small businesses closed than startups begun—reversing a growth trend that had lasted a decade.

 

The Republican debate on Wednesday will focus on the economy. America needs someone in the White House who actually understands how the economy works—and who knows what it will take to get it going and growing again. We have to reverse the government-driven decline of small businesses. That means radically simplifying the tax code, shrinking the bloated federal bureaucracy and rolling back a complex, corrupt regulatory regime.

 

Hillary Clinton talks a good game against crony capitalism, large banks and income inequality. She just doesn’t mention that all three have flourished during the Obama years.

 

Rugby World Cup: Nice article about the referee

As expected, the Welshman, Nigel Owens.

One of the first things Nigel Owens did when he was named referee for the World Cup final was thank the people who helped him through "those very tough and dark times years ago".

Owens is the most experienced professional referee working today, and is also known for his one-liners in the heat of battle, discouraging players from diving using quips about soccer, and sledging international props for poor scrummaging.

What it means for Australia is interesting. Former All Black Grant Fox said of his appointment: "Nigel is clearly the best referee in the world - he's demonstrated that. If if you want a good contest, a good spectacle, you've actually got to let the breakdown go a little bit and he's really good at that."

 

WSJ: Obamacare rewrite is inevitable

They are totally right and it was totally predictable. As long as they keep the Obamacare name - so many people have emotional capital tied up in it.

The Decline of ObamaCare. Fewer enrollees and rising loss ratios will force a rewrite in 2017.

ObamaCare’s image of invincibility is increasingly being exposed as a political illusion, at least for those with permission to be honest about the evidence. Witness the heretofore unknown phenomenon of a “free” entitlement that its beneficiaries can’t afford or don’t want.

******

Recruitment for 2015 is roughly 70% of the original projection, but ObamaCare will be running at less than half its goal in 2016.

******

Among this population of the uninsured, HHS reports that half are between the ages of 18 and 34 and nearly two-thirds are in excellent or very good health. The exchanges won’t survive actuarially unless they attract this prime demographic: ObamaCare’s individual mandate penalty and social-justice redistribution are supposed to force these low-cost consumers to buy overpriced policies to cross-subsidize everybody else.

Right. Who said "There's a sucker born every minute"? Maybe not. I could tell you of the travails of clients of mine who were caught in the crosshairs of cancelled coverage and having to pay more AND have higher (much higher!) deductibles for their new Obamacare-approved coverage.

MLRs measure the share of premium revenue that flows to reimbursing medical claims. ObamaCare sets an MLR floor of 80% for patient care, with one-fifth left over for overhead like administration and profits, and the pre-ObamaCare 2010-13 historical trend for the individual market ranged from 79% to 86%.

The researchers found that in 2014—the first full year of claims experience in ObamaCare—average MLRs across all health plans sold on 16 state exchanges roamed from 90% to 99%. Average MLRs in 11 states climbed to 100% or more, reaching as high as 121% in Massachusetts. A business can’t stay solvent for long spending $1.21 for every $1 that comes in.

The 2014 MLRs are used to set rates for 2016 premiums, which are still under regulatory review. But the researchers estimate that to rebound to an MLR of 85%, premiums in the 11 money-losing states need to rise by 10% to 36% in the best estimate and 23% to 52% in the worst scenario.

In insurance parlance, this is called a "death spiral." Now, how to fix? Here's what the Journal calls a "consensus" among republican primary contenders -

The basic approach is to deregulate insurance and medical practice while replacing ObamaCare’s complex subsidy schedule with a refundable tax credit for individuals who lack job-based coverage. ... The credit would be sufficient to buy at least coverage for catastrophic expenses if people get sick, and the trade-offs of such skinnier plans might look better to voters priced out of ObamaCare.

Last paragraph of the editorial -

ObamaCare is built on a 20th-century chassis that is ever less relevant to modern medicine and consumer finance. If the law continues to underperform, voters may be open to a new model that puts their choices and needs ahead of the political class’s.

 

 

New "Sherlock" out on January 1

If you're not familiar with the BBC  Sherlock Series - Joe introduced us to the series, or rather explained it to us after we quite by accident recently saw the initial episode on PBS (we don't watch a lot of tele). The series started in 2010, and there are nine  90 minute episodes - three series of three. We've now seen them all - great stories, great acting.

The series is set with Sherlock Holmes in 21st century London and his friend and roommate Dr. Watson (a physician and veteran of Afghanistan - you may remember the original Watson was a physician and veteran of service in India) maintains a blog of his exploits. Very clever!

Anyway they are bringing out a one off episode and setting it in the original Sherlock Holmes time frame - late 19th century. If it's up to there normal standards, should be lots of fun.

Here's a trailer - Sherlock in the top hat. -

 

Trump's "small" $1 million loan from his Dad

"It has not been easy for me..." Yeah - that was back when a million bucks was REAL MONEY! Hahaha. Doesn't every father lend his son a million?

 

Rugby World Cup: Semifinal, Argentina v. Australia

So the top two teams based on world rankings are in the finals. New Zealand v. Australia, next Saturday. Live at 12 noon on NBC.

 

NYT: "Can you Get Smarter?"

Excellent article. only takes six minutes to read the whole thing.

This is hardly an idle question considering that cognitive decline is a nearly universal feature of aging. Starting at age 55, our hippocampus, a brain region critical to memory, shrinks 1 to 2 percent every year, to say nothing of the fact that one in nine people age 65 and older has Alzheimer’s disease.

The answer is, yes, sort of, kind of. Some things can slow the decline, if not "make us smarter". Some excerpts:

Results of this follow-up study, ... generally show that continued brain training helps older subjects maintain the improvement in verbal reasoning seen in the earlier study. This is good news because it suggests that brain exercise might delay some of the effects of aging on the brain.

******

There are also easy and powerful ways to enhance learning in young people. For example, there is intriguing evidence that the attitude that young people have about their own intelligence — and what their teachers believe — can have a big impact on how well they learn.... kids who think that their intelligence is malleable perform better and are more motivated to learn than those who believe that their intelligence is fixed and unchangeable.

******

It turns out that physical exercise can also improve cognitive function and promote the growth and creation of neurons. ...researchers found that while both resistance and aerobic training groups improved equally on spatial memory, only the women who did aerobic exercise improved on verbal memory, suggesting that different types of exercise might have specifically different cognitive benefits. ... a new study found that women who did weight training twice a week for a year had less brain shrinkage than those who trained once a week or did stretching exercises ...

******

There is strong epidemiologic evidence that people with richer social networks and engagement have a reduced rate of cognitive decline as they age. ... (Test) results showed that people with the highest level of social integration had less than half the decline in their cognitive function of the least socially active subjects.

Don't know about those "brain training" courses and games, but certainly go to the gym and make a lot of friends!

 

 

 

Rugby World Cup: semifinal New Zealand v. South Africa

Watched the 2nd. half on a huge screen in a Fairfield, CT. pub - the physicality was incredible.

 

Here's the South African wing speaking about how much the Springbok team means to South Africa.

Maureen O'Hara

What a girl! Family confirms ‘Quiet Man’ star died peacefully on Saturday in her sleep

 

WaPo: The Trump & Carson relationship

A bit interesting.

Carson and Trump are dominating, but their chummy rapport turns cool

The two men could not be more different: One grew up poor and black in Detroit, the other rich and white in Queens. One is soft-spoken and spiritual, the other loud and caustic. Each epitomizes American success, though in vastly different arenas: one as a brain surgeon, the other as a celebrity deal-maker.

******

Each has resisted bludgeoning the other, but with tensions rising as the kickoff Iowa caucuses draw near, they are starting to take each other on. After fresh polls last week showed Carson leapfrogging Trump for the lead in Iowa, Trump went on the attack.

“We have a breaking story: Donald Trump has fallen to second place behind Ben Carson,” Trump announced Friday night at a rowdy Miami rally. Pausing for dramatic effect, he added, “We informed Ben, but he was sleeping.”

Carson is “super low energy. We need tremendous energy,” Trump thundered, prompting his supporters to break into chants of “USA! USA!” He also said Carson could not create jobs and negotiate trade deals.

Carson shot back, saying at a Saturday event in Iowa: “My energy levels are perfectly fine. . . . There have been many times where I’ve operated 12, 15, 20 hours, and that requires a lot of energy. Doesn’t require a lot of jumping up and down and screaming, but it does require a lot of concentration.”

And the article goes on - hit the link.

Life & Death - Weasel v. Squirrel.

From the well-known nutnfancy youtube channel.

 

Quote from the founder of Opus Dei

A Catholic thing.

“Don’t you long to shout to those youths who are bustling around you: Fools! Leave those worldly things that shackle the heart – and very often degrade it – leave all that and come with us in search of Love!” 
-St. Josemaria Escriva

WSJ on Clinton: "Benghazi and Character"

Sad - anything to avoid damaging the Democrat campaign in 2012. But not surprising. A short video (also from the Wall Street Journal) showing some of the testimony is below the editorial excerpts.

"In public Clinton blamed a video. In private she knew better".

...  don’t believe those who say we learned nothing. The hearing turned up new information that relates directly to the former Secretary of State’s political character and judgment as a potential Commander in Chief.

The select committee led by Republican Trey Gowdy of South Carolina released hitherto undisclosed documents showing that Mrs. Clinton believed from the start that the attack was perpetrated by terrorists.

At 11:12 p.m. on the night of the attack, Sept. 11, 2012, Mrs. Clinton emailed her daughter Chelsea that, “Two of our officers were killed in Benghazi by an Al-Qaeda-like group: The Ambassador, whom I handpicked and a young communications officer on temporary duty w[ith] a wife and two young children. Very hard day and I fear more of the same tomorrow.” Her empathy is admirable, but presumably she was telling her daughter what she really believed.

The committee also released a State Department summary of Mrs. Clinton’s call the next day, Sept. 12, with Egypt’s Prime Minister. “We know that the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film. It was a planned attack—not a protest,” Mrs. Clinton said. The call summary then blocks out a comment by the Egyptian, to which Mrs. Clinton replies, “Your [sic] not kidding. Based on the information we saw today we believe the group that claimed responsibility for this was affiliated with al Qaeda.”

******

If Mrs. Clinton was telling people privately that it was a terror attack, why hint publicly at some other motivation? Keep in mind that this was in the heat of an election campaign in which one of President Obama’s main themes was that al Qaeda was all but defeated. If an al Qaeda offshoot could kill a sitting U.S. Ambassador for the first time in 30 years, that narrative would have been shown to be false.

The following Sunday Susan Rice, then U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., went on national television and blamed the attacks on the video. Mrs. Clinton knew that was false, yet the Secretary of State who was responsible for the safety of Ambassador Christopher Stevens never spoke up to contradict Ms. Rice’s statement. ...

All of this is no mere game of gotcha. Mrs. Clinton’s private-public contradiction goes to the honesty of a public official whose obligation was to protect Americans and who now wants a promotion to the Oval Office. It shows that her first instinct even on a matter of life and death was to help the Administration conceal the nature of the Benghazi attack...

Here's a 3 minute video

Rugby: New Zealand ball handling skills - silky

When they play well - sublime. This was this past Saturday against France. Game tomorrow in the semifinal against South Africa is on NBC starting at 2:30 EST.

An around-the-house item to get rid of that pesky faith in God.

Moderately amusing. Don't know who this guy is, but the journal referenced actually exists and the study is described here. The experiment - such as it is - a little bit less than it's cracked up to be.

Feast of Saint John Paul II today

When I saw this and mentioned it to Brigid, she reminded me that she'd stayed up until the very late morning hours to watch his funeral.

Years ago Frontline on PBS had a great series on him.

John Paul II: The Millenial Pope. An exploration into his character and beliefs, and his fierce challenge to the modern world

Congrats to the Mets!

I'm a Yankee fan but good for the Mets.  Swept the Cubs in the Pennant playoff four games to none.

Official NY MEts

 

Bernie Sanders explains how his tax ideas will pay fo all the free stuff

Good intentions X ignorance = Bernie Sanders, at least judging from this ABC interview.

Here's his wikipedia entry if you're wondering about his own job history prior to Sanders entering politics in 1981.

 

Today is "Back to the Future" Day!

This off "The Morning Jolt" from Jim Geraghty of NRO.

Happy Back to the Future Day -- October 21, 2015. Marco Rubio points out that the Democrats are focusing on the future with . . . Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. Wait, no Bernie Sanders, Senator?

For dog-lovers - when they arose and where they came from

A short NYT Science section article.

15,000 Years Ago, Probably in Asia, the Dog Was Born

Dr. Shannon analyzed three different kinds of DNA, Dr. Boyko said, the first time this has been done for such a large and diverse group of dogs, more than 4,500 dogs of 161 breeds and 549 village dogs from 38 countries. That allowed the researchers to determine which geographic groups of modern dogs were closest to ancestral populations genetically. And that led them to Central Asia as the place of origin for dogs in much the same way that genetic studies have located the origin of modern humans in East Africa.

The analysis, Dr. Boyko said, pointed to Central Asia, including Mongolia and Nepal, as the place where “all the dogs alive today” come from. The data did not allow precise dating of the origin, he said, but showed it occurred at least 15,000 years ago. They reported their findings Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Greger Larson of Oxford University, who is leading an international effort to analyze ancient DNA from fossilized bones, said he was impressed by the scope of the study. “It’s really great to see not just the sheer number of street dogs, but also the geographic breadth and the number of remote locations where the dogs were sampled,” he said. He also praised the sampling of different kinds of DNA and the analytic methods.

But in the world of dog studies, very little is definitive. The most recent common ancestor of today’s dogs lived in Central Asia, Dr. Boyko said, although he cannot rule out the possibility that some dogs could have been domesticated elsewhere and died out. Or dogs domesticated elsewhere could have gone to Central Asia from somewhere else and then diversified into all the canines alive today, he said.

This is amusing.

Dr. Boyko traveled to a number of the locations where blood was drawn from village dogs. He said: “The great thing about working with dogs is that if you show up with food you don’t usually have trouble recruiting subjects. Usually.”

He added: “We showed up in Puerto Rico at a fishing village and the dogs turned up their noses at roast beef sandwiches. They were used to eating fish entrails.”

 

Rugby World Cup: Qtr. finals,Scotland v. Australia

Australia scored five tries to three, but still needed a fortuitous penalty in the last two minutes to win. In their review, World Cup officials said the decision was wrong and they should have been given a scrum, not a penalty kick.  The semi-finals are South Africa v. New Zealand and Argentina v. Australia. No European teams!

Non-invasive pain relief techniques

A worthwhile 3 and a half minute video.  Halfway through turmeric is mentioned. I started taking turmeric capsules (amazon link; over 5,000 reviews of the product) twice a day about three months ago. I didn't expect it to do much, but it has definitely helped my knee pain. It's an anti-inflammatory. 

Also answered; what do you use first for acute pain, ice or heat? I knew the answer, but good to have it reinforced. Nice to see physicians suggesting herbal remedies.

Rugby World Cup: Qtr. finals, New Zealand v. France

Amazing skills. Watch the offload from #17, a reserve prop who came on in the second half. And France is ranked #7 in the world ... The wing Savea is 6'4", 247 lbs. Several other amazing tries were scored  - Savea had a hat trick - but not shown in this video.

Stepinac football - big win Saturday over St. Anthony's Prep

UPDATE: Article from a White Plains Newspaper Stepinac remains undefeated

Yay! Brigid and I went to the game - we know quite a few of the seniors.

Both teams were 5-0, but now Stepinac is the only undefeated team in the NYC Catholic league. They are ranked #2 in the state, and they should (but you never know!) finish #1 in the league with the home field advantage throughout the playoffs.

Stepinac was ahead by this at halftime -

But then almost blew it in the third quarter - giving up 16 unanswered points, before getting it together with a final score of this -

Vic Dibitetto: "The Last Leaf"

The New Joisey comedian.

 

Rugby World Cup: Qtr. finals, Ireland v. Argentina

Wow. Emphatic win. What happens when the Pope is an Argentinian? Last year they visited him at the Vatican.

The Irish captain after the game.

Cable news race

The usual slaughter. Erin Burnett Out Front which I think is a pretty decent show on CNN, isn't even in the top 10. The ghastly Christopher Hayes on MSNBC gets more views?

CABLE NEWS RACE
THURS., OCT 15, 2015

FOXNEWS O'REILLY 2,820,000
FOXNEWS KELLY 2,101,000
FOXNEWS BAIER 2,006,000
FOXNEWS FIVE 1,934,000
FOXNEWS GRETA 1,670,000
FOXNEWS HANNITY 1,488,000
MSNBC MADDOW 1,031,000
CMDY DAILY SHOW 829,000
MSNBC HAYES 808,000
MSNBC HARDBALL 870,000
MSNBC ODONNELL 696,000
CNN COOPER 572,000

Rugby World Cup: Qtr. finals, So Africa v. Wales

Evidently could have gone either way. Du Preez try takes Boks into semi-finals

 

Colbert on the Democrat Debate

A pretty funny six minutes. Can you guess who he left out? (He doesn't seem to have done one of these on the Republicans - yet.)

NY Times: A Dad v. Sloan Kettering cancer hospital

A very difficult situation and also tough to get to the truth of the matter.

Sloan Kettering of course, my hospital. Oh, and it's in the business section of the NYT, which I suppose says something.

Streetwise Father Takes On Sloan Kettering to Save His Son

Mr. Girondi accuses the cancer center of dawdling on developing a gene therapy that could potentially cure his son of an inherited blood disease called beta thalassemia, or Cooley’s anemia. The disease often kills people by their late 20s — an age his son will reach in a few years.

Ten years ago, when few companies were interested in gene therapy, Sloan Kettering licensed the rights to an experimental treatment to Errant Gene Therapeutics, a tiny firm started by Mr. Girondi. But after being accused by the cancer center of not fulfilling its obligations to move the therapy toward the market, Errant Gene ceded its rights in 2011.

Now, because of technological progress, gene therapy is considered highly promising. A company called Bluebird Bio has a market valuation exceeding $3 billion, largely on the basis of a very similar gene therapy for beta thalassemia and sickle cell anemia, which has had strong results in early clinical trials.

But while the well-financed Bluebird races ahead, the project at Sloan Kettering appears to have languished.

Four canonizations this Sunday

Including the parents of St. Thérèse of Lisieux

WSJ: Archbishop Chaput on the Family Synod

Wish he were in NY.

How to Read the Vatican Family Gathering

Vatican City

A friend of mine, happily married for many years, likes to tell a story. Over a 30th-anniversary dinner, and after a little too much wine, he said, “I love you, sweetheart. I’ve never been unfaithful, and I never will be.” He repeated that line a couple more times during the evening—until his wife put down her fork and said with all the warmth of a glacier, “Are you seeing someone else?”

The lesson of the tale: Even when done innocently, emphasizing one’s fidelity a little too often and earnestly can yield unwelcome results. Such may be the case in Rome, where more than 250 Catholic bishops from around the world have gathered in a three-week synod, ending Oct. 25, to discuss “the vocation and mission of the family in the contemporary world.”

Synods, from the Greek synodos for meeting or assembly, are purely advisory. They offer counsel to the pope on matters he chooses. As the Catholic Church’s supreme pastor, he can listen to their advice, ignore them or do something in between. But it is a rare bishop of Rome who would disregard the consensus of his brothers, so synods carry collegial weight.

Pope Francis has encouraged candor at this meeting. Bishops can freely speak with the media. They can publish their synod interventions, which are three-minute speeches to the assembly, and many do. The reports by the synod’s working groups are freely available. For anyone willing to dig through the material, a remarkably clear window on the mind of the bishops emerges. Much of this differs from the past. The bishops taking part have warmly welcomed it.

And that is where the sunny feelings get more complex. Early church councils were known for heated debates, which might include sticks, bats, shouting matches and fist fights. If the discussions are more genteel now, it isn’t because humans are nicer creatures. As the great 20th-century French theologian Henri de Lubac once said, most Western moderns have simply shifted their ferocity to politics, where salvation is a matter of tangible power. Today bishops stress mutual respect and shared mission. But on matters of substance, fissures can run deep.

Few issues are more substantive than the state of the family. Catholics see the family as the cornerstone of society and of the church herself. Put simply: Healthy families mean a healthy culture; broken families, a broken culture—which then makes for a sea of personal suffering and social conflict.

Reality is more complicated, obviously, but the point remains. Economic and technological change disrupts families everywhere. In the so-called developed world, divorce and cohabitation are common. Fewer people marry. Religious faith seems to be weakening. Same-sex couples seek recognition as families. Divorced and civilly remarried Catholics want access to the Eucharist, the sacramental “source and summit” of Christian life. In the developing world, especially in places like Africa where the church is growing rapidly, the problems—polygamy, syncretism, the collapse of the extended family, rivalry with Islam, religious persecution—are very different.

These differences take flesh in many of the bishops at this synod. One of the sharpest criticisms of the synod’s working document—the Instrumentum Laboris—is that its concerns are too North American and Eurocentric; too despairing; too focused on accommodating family breakdown rather than healing and preventing it. Even more astonishing, many claim, is the text’s lack of confidence in the Word of God; its blindness to the joy of children and large families; and its deaf ear to the witness of many millions of Christian parents who already live lives of hope and enthusiasm.

Veterans of these gatherings note that every synod working document is a “martyr text.” It exists to be pulled apart and improved. But precisely because the process this time is so new, the issues so neuralgic, the text so flawed and the working time frame so compressed, anxiety about the final product runs high—as shown by a letter of concern signed by 13 prominent cardinals, sent to the pope on the first day of the synod, and leaked to the media earlier this week.

The possibility of formal changes in church teaching on sexuality, marriage and the family is implausible. Francis took that off the table as the synod began. He has repeatedly preached the beauty of Christian belief on these matters. But that isn’t the source of friction. What is at issue is the application of church teaching. In the case of divorced and civilly remarried Catholics, that means whether they should be admitted to Communion, under what conditions, and who should decide those conditions—the local bishop, bishops’ conferences or Rome? Many bishops feel that the last thing the church needs is fragmentation of practice on a matter of substance.

And that brings us back to the lesson of my married friend. The more some synod fathers claim that no doctrinal change is sought on matters of divorce and remarriage—only a change in “discipline”—the more other synod fathers worry. And for good reason. Practice inevitably shapes belief.

Rugby World Cup: England prepares for quarterfinals.

HA! To watch. From my friend John in Australia. We played rugby together in the Cayman Islands. He would fit in well in today's game - physical player.

Anyway it took me five minutes to figure out this picture. Then I laughed and laughed ...

Of course Brigid didn't find it that amusing.

Secretary Robert Gates interview: some disclosures

The former Secretary of Defense. Makes you shake your head.

"NSC" - National Security Council

Rugby World Cup: Front row talk

This is the guy who replaced New Zealand prop Tony Woodcock who has a torn hamstring.

A man of few words "Yea, smash anything in front of us."

 

Young Dems have the Bern!

So it says here. And there's a focus group video.

Young Democrats loving Bernie, hating Hillary on debate night

One of those dots was at the University of Maryland. And the watch party wasn't a dozen people gathered at someone's house or a small room in a brew pub. Instead, the pro-Sanders group Terps for Bernie, working with co-sponsor the University of Maryland College Democrats, reserved a 500-seat auditorium at the Stamp Student Union and managed to fill about 300. As he has across the country, Bernie got a big turnout.

Yes, the Terps for Bernie love Bernie. But just as important in this race, many just don't like Hillary. What young and idealistic college student would? Sanders inspires their passion about inequality, about climate change, money in politics, gay rights. Clinton doesn't.

"She's the epitome of the establishment and the corrupt politicians, and there are so many things to dislike about her," said J.T. Stanley, a senior who is one of the co-founders of Terps for Bernie.

Bishops, the Synod and single mothers

SciAm: A math problem only a methematician could love

The abc conjecture refers to numerical expressions of the type a + b = c. The statement, which comes in several slightly different versions, concerns the prime numbers that divide each of the quantities a, b and c.

I have no clue of course, but the article was interesting.

Math Mystery: Shinichi Mochizuki and the Impenetrable Proof. A Japanese mathematician claims to have solved one of the most important problems in his field. The trouble is, hardly anyone can work out whether he's right

Sometime on the morning of August 30 2012, Shinichi Mochizuki quietly posted four papers on his website.

The papers were huge—more than 500 pages in all—packed densely with symbols, and the culmination of more than a decade of solitary work. They also had the potential to be an academic bombshell. In them, Mochizuki claimed to have solved the abc conjecture, a 27-year-old problem in number theory that no other mathematician had even come close to solving. If his proof was correct, it would be one of the most astounding achievements of mathematics this century and would completely revolutionize the study of equations with whole numbers.

******

Three years on, Mochizuki's proof remains in mathematical limbo—neither debunked nor accepted by the wider community. Mochizuki has estimated that it would take an expert in arithmetic geometry some 500 hours to understand his work, and a maths graduate student about ten years. So far, only four mathematicians say that they have been able to read the entire proof.

CNN: Fake candidate polling better than real ones

No surprise. "Honest Gil" Fulbright.

 

How MH17 was shot down over the Ukraine

Pretty grim. From CNN - The Dutch Safety Board (DSB) said whatever happened to the plane happened quickly, leaving the passengers dazed or unconscious. And while it's not clear if anyone died in midair, no one could have survived the plane's impact with the ground,

Here's a video from the Telegraph (UK).

 

Who's the press room election favorite?

Hillary of course. Big surprise, eh?

CNN Debate: Press Room EXPLODES IN CHEERS as Bernie Sanders Demands Media Stop Reporting on Hillary’s Email Scandal