11.21.06
Vitamin D from milk
I mentioned the importance of getting adequate amounts of Vitamin D, especially in the winter when the sun’s rays are too weak to produce adequate D via the skin—for those who spend time outdoors in the winter.
Milk is fortified with Vitamin D: 400 IU per quart. At the current level thought to be reasonable for adults, you can get all the D you need simply by drinking one gallon of milk a day. (The fortification level reflects the older idea that adults need only about 400 IU per day. This is now believed to be insufficient, and levels of 1400-1600 IU are seen as appropriate.)
The Beltway Pundit: an example
The Carpetbagger has a good takedown of a typical Beltway Pundit, Richard Cohen, who wrote a remarkable column describing his on-going bad judgment. Read the Carpetbagger’s comments—and even read Cohen’s column, if you can stand it.
The GOP doesn’t do its job—and not just Bush
The GOP simply is not interested in governing—not at all. They are interested, as we’ve seen, in funneling money to big business and in making themselves wealthy through various forms of payoffs and earmarks. But so far as actually governing the country, forget it. Via TPM, this report from AP:
Republicans vacating the Capitol are dumping a big spring cleaning job on Democrats moving in. GOP leaders have opted to leave behind almost a half-trillion-dollar clutter of unfinished spending bills.
There’s also no guarantee that Republicans will pass a multibillion-dollar measure to prevent a cut in fees to doctors treating Medicare patients.
The bulging workload that a Republican-led Congress was supposed to complete this year but is instead punting to 2007 promises to consume time and energy that Democrats had hoped to devote to their own agenda upon taking control of Congress in January for the first time in a dozen years.
The decision to drop so much unfinished work in Democrats’ laps demonstrates both division within Republicans ranks and the difficulty in resolving so many knotty questions in so short a time. GOP leaders promised their House and Senate members the December lame duck session would last no more than two weeks, or until Dec. 16 at the latest.
Now, with the agenda shrinking, a session that will be the last for 45 retiring or defeated House members and senators should be wrapped up by Dec. 8. Read the rest of this entry »
AllergyCard can save lives
If you have a food allergy—or know someone who does—print some of these free Allergy Cards:
What’s this all about?
This is about food allergies, you, me, kids, travelling abroad, and eating out. Food allergies cause preventable deaths — particularly among children. An Allergy Card is one way to help minimize the risk of eating out — around town, or while travelling the world; whether you’re 10 years old and on a school trip, or retired and trying a new restaurant.What’s an Allergy Card?
An Allergy Card is a wallet-size card that you can carry with you whenever you’re planning on eating out. When you’re ordering, just pass the card to your server, and ask them to pass it along to the person or people that will be preparing your food.Who is it for?
Your Children: If you have a child with an allergy, help them get their message across — whether they’re out with friends for lunch, or on school trips.
You: Use an allergy card to get your message across too. Especially if you’re planning on travelling somewhere that you don’t speak the local language, then make sure you can communicate your allergy.Why use one?
Cross the language barrier: Allergy Cards are available in a variety of languages — make sure your allergy is understood, wherever your travels take you.
Get the message through: Giving your server a card to deliver changes an allergy from an asterisk on a notepad to something real, and much less easily forgotten.
Circumvent the credibility gap: Not everyone takes a kid seriously. Giving your child an Allergy Card and teaching them how to use it helps make sure their message isn’t ignored. The same idea, of course, applies to anyone of any age.
The Straussians
I am an alumnus of St. John’s College in Annapolis MD (and nowadays there’s a campus in Santa Fe NM as well), and I worked there in the early 70’s. St. John’s has an unusual program, using small classes built on student discussion of a collection of great works from (at the time) the Western tradition. Beginning with the Iliad, the curriculum moved through Greek, Roman, Christian, and European and American thought: literature, poetry, music, philosophy, science, mathematics, theology—all the liberal arts. The tutors (as the faculty are known) mainly asked questions to elicit and guide discussion, and the students responded based on their understanding of the works they had studied.
It was while I worked there that I became aware of a coterie of tutors, called “Staussians” by non-members because of their veneration of Leo Strauss, who looked at the Great Books (as the program materials were collectively known) as holding secret teachings, discernible only by the elite and through some oral traditions. The Books as approached by hoi polloi seemed to say one thing, but the elite read quite a different story—including, among other things, the necessity of various Noble Lies to keep the populace in line and moving in the right direction.
As is so often the case, those who held this view invariably seemed to number themselves among the elite.
The dean at the time left the College to join the American Enterprise Institute, which I didn’t then realize was the home and proving ground of those who later were called “neoconservatives.”
Just recently, I started reading Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s excellent book about the war in Iraq, Imperial Life in the Emerald City. At the very beginning, I came across this passage:
It was in the palace garden where I met with John Agresto for the first time. He had arrived in Baghdad nine months earlier to undertake the daunting task of rehabilitating Iraq’s university system—more than 375,000 students enrolled at twenty-two campuses, almost all of which had been decimated in the looting that followed the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s government. Agresto had no background in post-conflict reconstruction and no experience in the Middle East. The institution he ran, St. John’s College in Santa Fe, had fewer than five hundred students. But Agresto was connected: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s wife had been on the St. John’s board and Vice President Dick Cheney’s wife had worked with him at the National Endowment for the Humanities.
When we met, he was fifty-eight years old. A stocky man with thinning silver hair, a gray-flecked mustache, and a prominent nose, he like to compare his appearance to that of Groucho Marx.
Puffing on his pipe under the shade of a broad palm—there was no smoking indoors in the Green Zone—Agresto said that he had landed in Iraq with an abundance of optimism. “I saw the images of people cheering as Saddam Hussein’s statue was pulled down, he said. “I saw people hitting pictures of him with their shoes.”
But the Iraq he encountered was far different from what he had expected. His visits to the universities he was trying to rebuild and with the faculties he wanted to invigorate became more and more dangerous—and infrequent. He told me his Iraqi staff had been threatened by insurgents. His evenings were disrupted by mortar attacks on the Green Zone. His plans to repair hundreds of campus buildings had been scuttled by the White House. He had concluded that Iraq’s universities needed more than $1 billion to become viable centers of learning, but he had received only $8 million in reconstruction funds. American colleges and universities had rebuffed his entreaties for assistance. He had asked for 130,000 classroom desks from the U.S. Agency for International Development. He got 8,000.
His agitation grew as he spoke. Then he fell silent, staring at the pool and puffing away. After a moment, he turned to me, his face grave, and said, “I’m a neoconservative who’s been mugged by reality.”
Compassionate conservatism at work
Turns out that it’s not compassionate at all, just the same old “stomp on the poor and minorities” conservatism that we’re so familiar with. Via ThinkProgress, this news report:
State psychiatric hospitals will begin turning away new patients on Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, in response to emergency budget cuts issued earlier this month by Gov. Mitt Romney.
The cuts will force the elimination of 170 Department of Mental Health staff positions, including staffers who provide care to hundreds of emotionally disturbed children and teens.
Representatives of the Massachusetts Hospital Association and the Massachusetts Association of Behavioral Health Systems said they were informed of the moratorium on new patients by Mental Health Commissioner Beth Childs on Friday.
Besides barring new inpatient admissions to mental health facilities, Child’s department will also restrict access to residential programs, advocates said.
“These are the unkindest cuts imaginable, and their timing is hard to fathom,” Massachusetts Hospital Association President Ron Hollander said in a written statement. “We implore the governor to restore these essential services to the people who depend on DMH.”
David Matteodo, head of the Massachusetts Association of Behavioral Health Systems, said the chronically and severely disabled will be denied the critical care they need.
“That is the harsh consequence of these cuts, which will be imposed on a mental health system that is already under tremendous strain,” he said.
Romney announced earlier this month that he would withhold $425 million in spending previously approved by the Legislature, saying the state cannot afford it and shouldn’t draw out of its rainy-day fund to pay for it. Read the rest of this entry »
Ken Adelman: a man without integrity or honesty
Ken Adelman really takes the cake(walk): he’s in total denial of his earlier stance and seems to actually believe that he’s always been right. Just the sort of person, in other words, who is immune to learning from experience. Here’s a good dissection:
“Embittered Insiders Turn Against Bush,” was the headline of a front-page Washington Post story yesterday that detailed how former Iraq hawks have broken with the Bush Administration over the war. Exhibit A was Ken Adelman, a onetime Reagan Administration official and “onetime member of the Iraq war brain trust,” who has fallen out with Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, and who told the Post that “the President is ultimately responsible” for the “debacle” in Iraq.
Adelman’s hypocrisy is stunning. In 2002 it was he who famously predicted that American forces would enjoy “a cakewalk” in Iraq, and during the run-up to the invasion he derided war critics for their stupidity and naiveté. “There’s always the chicken littles, running around and saying ‘oh my God, it’s terrible,’” he said on Hardball, six days before the war began, when asked about the possibility that things might not go as smoothly as he and his fellow-hawks had predicted.
The following month, he was gloating to the New York Times that his “cakewalk” prediction had been remarkably prescient. Adelman, according to the story, “scorned recent complaints by retired generals and military analysts that the Pentagon had deployed too few troops” to Iraq. “I always thought that was ridiculous,” Adelman told the newspaper. “It turned out they were factually wrong. I never understood what having three times as many troops would have done.” Read the rest of this entry »
Uh-oh: bad signs about Robert Gates
This is not good news: that Gates is yet another from the mold of ideologues who ignore reality, the worst sort of corruption.
Fifteen years ago, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence asked me to testify at the confirmation hearings for Robert M. Gates, who had been nominated to be director of Central Intelligence.
I was asked because I had worked in the CIA’s office of Soviet analysis back when Gates was the agency’s deputy director for intelligence and chairman of the National Intelligence Council.
More specifically, I was asked to testify because of my knowledge about the creation of a May 1985 special National Intelligence Estimate on Iran that had been used to justify the ill-fated deals known as Iran-Contra.
It seems like a long time ago now. Iran-Contra is just one of many scandals that have come and gone in the intervening years. But today, in the aftermath of the U.S. decision to go to war in Iraq based on faulty intelligence — and with Gates poised to reemerge, this time as secretary of Defense — it is worth remembering some lessons from the 1980s about how intelligence was politicized to support ideologically-based positions.
In 1985, during Ronald Reagan’s second term as president, the U.S. faced enormous diplomatic and military challenges in the Middle East and in Central America. Reagan and then-CIA Director William J. Casey were known for their aggressive anti-Soviet rhetoric and policies. Gates, as Casey’s deputy, shared their ideology.
Iran-Contra was in the planning stages then, a secret scheme in which the Reagan administration was going to sell arms to an enemy country, Iran, and use the proceeds to fund the anti-communist Contras in Nicaragua. Read the rest of this entry »
The natural history of homosexuality
The Oslo Natural History Museum currently has a show on homosexuality in the rest of the animal world (i.e., beyond humans), where it is common and clearly natural—i.e., a part of nature. I wonder if such a show is possible in the US—just joking. Many Americans are wedded to the idea that homosexuality is unnatural and view any evidence that they’re wrong as intolerable.
The Oslo Natural History Museum opened the show last week and says it has been well attended, not least by families.
Organisers reported early criticism of the project, and being told by one opponent they would “burn in hell”.
But there has been strong interest in an aspect of animal behaviour the museum says is quite common.
It says homosexuality has been observed among 1,500 species, and that in 500 of those it is well documented.
The exhibition — entitled Against Nature? — includes photographs of one male giraffe mounting another, of apes stimulating others of the same sex, and two aroused male right whales rubbing against each other.
“Homosexuality is a common and widespread phenomenon in the animal world,” says an exhibition statement.
“Not only short-lived sexual relationships, but even long-lasting partnerships; partnerships that may last a lifetime.” Read the rest of this entry »
Many, many ideas for laptop lap desks
Lifehacker has a post on a laptop lap desk, and their readers have provided an enormous list of other ideas, both commercial products and homemade ingenuity.
Diabetics and holiday food
The rich and sugary foods of the holidays present challenges to diabetics (both types) and pre-diabetics. Via Megnut, browse this collection of holiday recipes for diabetics.
Looking for the perfect, low-carb side dish to add to the meal? Or maybe a tasty, sugar-free cookie recipe to satisfy those holiday hankerings? Look no further: the dLife Recipe Box is your secret weapon for the holiday season. Filled with over 1,100 recipes that are delicious, diabetes-friendly, and complete with nutritional analysis, the dLife Recipe Box can help you enjoy the holiday festivities and the food.
The Recipe Box is optimized for searching for particular types of dishes. Looks useful.
The 100 most influential Americans to date
Lists are always a bit of fun—especially checking the lists made by others and spotting the ridiculous lacunae. Here’s the list of 100 most influential Americans to date, courtesy of The Atlantic Monthly. The top 21:
1 Abraham Lincoln
He saved the Union, freed the slaves, and presided over America’s second founding.
2 George Washington
He made the United States possible—not only by defeating a king, but by declining to become one himself.
3 Thomas Jefferson
The author of the five most important words in American history: “All men are created equal.”
4 Franklin Delano Roosevelt
He said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” and then he proved it.
5 Alexander Hamilton
Soldier, banker, and political scientist, he set in motion an agrarian nation’s transformation into an industrial power.
6 Benjamin Franklin
The Founder-of-all-trades— scientist, printer, writer, diplomat, inventor, and more; like his country, he contained multitudes.
7 John Marshall
The defining chief justice, he established the Supreme Court as the equal of the other two federal branches.
8 Martin Luther King Jr.
His dream of racial equality is still elusive, but no one did more to make it real.
9 Thomas Edison
It wasn’t just the lightbulb; the Wizard of Menlo Park was the most prolific inventor in American history.
10 Woodrow Wilson
He made the world safe for U.S. interventionism, if not for democracy.
11 John D. Rockefeller
The man behind Standard Oil set the mold for our tycoons—first by making money, then by giving it away.
12 Ulysses S. Grant
He was a poor president, but he was the general Lincoln needed; he also wrote the greatest political memoir in American history.
13 James Madison
He fathered the Constitution and wrote the Bill of Rights.
14 Henry Ford
He gave us the assembly line and the Model T, and sparked America’s love affair with the automobile.
15 Theodore Roosevelt
Whether busting trusts or building canals, he embodied the “strenuous life” and blazed a trail for twentieth-century America.
16 Mark Twain
Author of our national epic, he was the most unsentimental observer of our national life.
17 Ronald Reagan
The amiable architect of both the conservative realignment and the Cold War’s end.
18 Andrew Jackson
The first great populist: he found America a republic and left it a democracy.
19 Thomas Paine
The voice of the American Revolution, and our first great radical.
20 Andrew Carnegie
The original self-made man forged America’s industrial might and became one of the nation’s greatest philanthropists.
21 Harry Truman
An accidental president, this machine politician ushered in the Atomic Age and then the Cold War.
George W. Bush is not on the list, but then the list seems to be restricted to dead Americans and he’s not yet dead.
Shaving lab: dry brush with shaving cream
I did it: used a dry brush (Simpson Emperor 2 Super) to apply shaving cream (Taylor of Old Bond Street Avocado) to my freshly washed, wet beard. The dry brush picked up a small amount of cream quite easily—less, I think, than I would have dipped up to lather in a bowl.
The first surprise on applying it was that the cream—duh—was cold. A bit of a shock. The cream spread readily all over my beard in a thin layer—rather like the result with soap of rubbing the shaving stick against the grain all over the wet beard. No lather at this point, just a fine layer of shaving cream.
Dipped the brush into a bowl of hot water, gave it a small shake, and lathered up on my beard. I got a very thick lather, with the brush fully charged for later passes. In other words: it works (save for the little shock of cold).
I did four passes with the Progress razor—four, because I finally figured out that the reason that place at the heel of my jaw on the right stubbles up earlier than the rest of my face is not from lack of attention, but because there the beard grows horizontally, toward my chin, and in a three-pass shave, that little patch never gets an against-the-grain pass.
I will from now on make a separate little pass there, but today I went with the full Monty: four complete passes, followed by hot- and then cold-water rinse, the alum bar, and (since I use a TOBS shaving cream), Taylor of Old Bond Street No. 74 aftershave.
Extremely smooth and pleasant shave.
UPDATE: I now get the brush wet with hot water, shake it out, and use that to twirl in the tub of cream to charge the brush. The cream is then not so cold on my face. I then add small amounts of hot water to the brush as I build the lather on my face until I have it the way I want it. Works well.
