“Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.” - H.L. Mencken
I’ve just published the second edition of the Guide. Quite a bit new. You can look at the table of contents in the “preview” function at the book’s page on Lulu. It will take a while for the new book to trickle down to Amazon, so for now if you want the new edition, order it from Lulu.
At least toward foreign visitors. Look at this story by Nina Berstein in the NY Times:
He was a carefree Italian with a recent law degree from a Roman university. She was “a totally Virginia girl,” as she puts it, raised across the road from George Washington’s home. Their romance, sparked by a 2006 meeting in a supermarket in Rome, soon brought the Italian, Domenico Salerno, on frequent visits to Alexandria, Va., where he was welcomed like a favorite son by the parents and neighbors of his girlfriend, Caitlin Cooper.
But on April 29, when Mr. Salerno, 35, presented his passport at Washington Dulles International Airport, a Customs and Border Protection agent refused to let him into the United States. And after hours of questioning, agents would not let him travel back to Rome, either; over his protests in fractured English, he said, they insisted that he had expressed a fear of returning to Italy and had asked for asylum.
Ms. Cooper, 23, who had promised to show her boyfriend another side of her country on this visit — meaning Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon — eventually learned that he had been sent in shackles to a rural Virginia jail. And there he remained for more than 10 days, locked up without charges or legal recourse [the new America, under Bush; lucky he wasn't tortured as well. - LG] while Ms. Cooper, her parents and their well-connected neighbors tried everything to get him out.
You really can’t get good sleep if you have obstructive sleep apnea, but if you don’t, here are some tips from Gretchen Rubin of the Happiness Project blog, though the tips appear on Huffington Post:
We quickly adjust to being sleep-deprived, and don’t notice that we aren’t functioning at a normal level, but lack of sleep really affects us. If you’re feeling blue or listless, try going to sleep thirty minutes earlier for a week. It can really help.
Here are tips that have helped me get good sleep:
Good habits for good sleep:
1. Exercise most days, even if it’s just to take a walk.
2. No caffeine after 7:00 p.m.
3. An hour before bedtime, avoid doing any kind of work that takes alert thinking. Addressing envelopes–okay. Analyzing an article–nope.
4. Adjust your bedroom temperature to be slightly chilly.
5. Keep your bedroom dark. Studies show that even the tiny light from a digital alarm clock can disrupt a sleep cycle. We have about six devices in our room that glow bright green; it’s like sleeping in a mad scientist’s lab. The Big Man has a new pet, a Roomba (yes, he loves his robot vacuum) that gives out so much light that I have to cover it with a pillow before bed.
6. Keep the bedroom as tidy as possible. It’s not restful to fight through chaos into bed.
If sleep won’t come:
This report is surprising. I would assume that white tea would do an even better job. Remember, BTW, that a squeeze of lemon makes green or white tea more effective by preserving the good stuff as the tea is digested.
A cup of green tea may be just what the doctor ordered if you have learning and memory problems related to obstructive sleep apnea, the most common type of sleep-related breathing disorder.
Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) starves the body of oxygen during sleep. Persons with the condition experience pauses in breathing while sleeping. This condition can cause a drop in oxygen levels, which can affect organs of the body. OSA increases your risk for high blood pressure, heart attacks, and strokes, and affects cognitive function such as learning and memory.
The powerful antioxidants found in green tea may help thwart such cognitive problems, according to a study published in this month’s second issue of the American Thoracic Society’s American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. Green tea contains compounds called polyphenols, which animal studies suggest can protect against neurodegenerative changes related to Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease. Green tea polyphenols (GTP) work by counteracting oxidative stress in the brain. Oxidative stress is cell damage brought on by harmful molecules called free radicals. Antioxidants protect against this damage. Oxidative stress is believed to play a role in many diseases.
Signs of oxidative stress and changes in the brain have been documented among some patients with OSA, the study cites.
“OSA has been increasingly recognized as a serious and frequent health condition,” study author David Gozal, MD, professor and director of Kosair Children’s Hospital Research Institute at the University of Louisville, says in a news release. “A growing body of evidence suggests that the adverse neurobehavioral consequences imposed by [intermittent hypoxia] stem, at least in part, from oxidative stress.”
You just can’t trust them. Article by Arlene Weintraub in Business Week:
A group of researchers at Duke University scoured 746 studies on heart stents published in medical journals over the course of a year and were shocked to discover two huge omissions. First, 83% of the papers failed to disclose whether any of the authors were paid consultants for companies, even though many journals formally require that information. And of those articles specifically describing clinical trials, 72% didn’t say who funded the research. When it comes to policing their disclosure rules, says lead author Kevin Weinfurt of the Duke Clinical Research Institute, “these journals should be doing better.”
Virtually every medical organization urges physicians to be up front about their financial ties to industry. It’s especially a concern when doctors who publish studies about drugs and medical devices receive funding from the companies that make those products. Over the past few years, a spate of safety warnings and product recalls has left journal editors fearful that company-paid researchers might be filtering their results to highlight the positive. So the publications have toughened up their disclosure policies, hoping that transparency by itself would neutralize conflicts of interest.
And I’m simply delighted to read that charring the peppers over a gas flame is NOT the way to go. Read this tutorial.
Thanks to Jack, this nice list to guide your CD acquisition.
While finishing “Bird-Watcher,” a Profile of the jazz broadcaster and expert Phil Schaap, I thought it might be useful to compile a list of a hundred essential jazz albums, more as a guide for the uninitiated than as a source of quarrelling for the collector. First, I asked Schaap to assemble the list, but, after a couple of false starts, he balked. Such attempts, he said, have been going on for a long time, but “who remembers the lists and do they really succeed in driving people to the source?” Add to that, he said, “the dilemma of the current situation,” in which music is often bought and downloaded from dubious sources. Schaap bemoaned the loss of authoritative discographies and the “troubles” of the digital age, particularly the loss of informative aids like liner notes and booklets. In the end, he provided a few basic titles from Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Miles Davis, and other classics and admitted to a “pyrrhic victory.”
What follows is a list compiled with the help of my New Yorker colleague Richard Brody. These hundred titles are meant to provide a broad sampling of jazz classics and wonders across the music’s century-long history. Early New Orleans jazz, swing, bebop, cool jazz, modal jazz, hard bop, free jazz, third stream, and fusion are all represented, though not equally. We have tried not to overdo it with expensive boxed sets and obscure imports; sometimes it couldn’t be helped. We have also tried to strike a balance between healthy samplings of the innovative giants (Armstrong, Ellington, Parker, Davis, Coltrane, etc.) and the greater range of talents and performances.
Since the nineteen-seventies, jazz has been branching out in so many directions that you would need to list at least another hundred recordings, by the likes of Steve Coleman, Stanley Jordan, Joe Lovano, Jacky Terrasson, John Zorn, David Murray, Avishai Cohen, Béla Fleck, Eliane Elias, Roy Hargrove, Dave Douglas, Matthew Shipp, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Fat Kid Wednesdays, and many, many others. There is a suggestion below of the dazzling scope of contemporary jazz, but the focus is on the classic jazz that is Schaap’s specialty.
This reminds me of an earlier effort, the three-part series “Jazz Masterpieces” by Terry Teachout, published in Commentary magazine in November and December 1999 and January 2000. The focus of that list was specific tracks, rather than albums, but I did indeed buy all the CDs, ripped them, and assembled the tracks into an album of my own. Those three articles are worth reading, but access is to subscribers or by purchase.
I really like the Lord Platinum blade—I loaded a new one in the ivory Chatsworth and after applying the wonderful Gold Dachs Rivivage lather, worked up with the Simpsons Emperor 3 Super, I got a wonderful shave from it. The oil pass was Gessato, and the aftershave was the menthol Floïd. Very nice shave for a warm morning.
Make and mod your own at BugLabs.net. Their products:
BUG is a collection of easy-to-use electronic modules that snap together to build any gadget you can imagine. Each BUGmodule represents a specific gadget function (ex: a camera, a keyboard, a video output, etc.). You decide which functions to include and BUG takes care of the rest, letting you try out different combinations quickly and easily. With BUG and the integrated programming environment/online community (BUGnet), anyone can build, program and share innovative devices and applications. We don’t define the final products - you do.
An interesting article by Rebecca Armstrong in the Independent:
As she makes her way through the hospital wards, Billie-Jean keeps up an impressive pace. She has to if she is going to see all the patients who are waiting for her. Wearing her official uniform, she looks neat and trim, and despite how busy she is, she always has time to stop if someone wants to say hello or slip her a Bonio. You see, Billie-Jean isn’t a ward sister doing the rounds or a doctor bringing vital medicine, she’s an Irish terrier. But despite the fact she’s a canine, not human, carer, her medical value is second-to-none because she is a Pets As Therapy dog.
Pets As Therapy is a charity that takes pet dogs and cats to hospitals, hospices, residential care homes, day centres and special-needs schools. It was formed in 1983, explains chief executive Maureen Hennis, by a group of pet owners who were convinced that their animals could help other people. “At that time, people were moving into residential accommodation and nursing homes, and they had to give up their own pets,” she says. “This wasn’t only making them sad and depressed, sometimes it was actually making them ill.”
If you want someone to follow your advice, charge them for it. And to be sure, charge them a lot. Mind Hacks explains:
Hot on the heels of a study that found that simply describing a wine as more expensive made it taste better comes the discovery that the same advice is more likely to be followed if it costs more.
The study was led by organisational psychologist Francesca Gino and is covered by the BPS Research Digest:
Dozens of students were asked questions about American history and received small cash prizes for correct answers. The students were either given the option of receiving advice on the correct answers, or advice was imposed on them. Sometimes this advice was free; other times it was paid for out of the students’ winnings.
Crucially, the advice always came from the same source - in the form of the answer that a student from a pilot session had given to the same question - so the quality of advice was held constant regardless of whether it was free or paid for.
Throughout the study, the participants took more account of advice they had paid for than advice they were given free, even though it was made clear to them that the advice was of the same quality. A final study showed the students took even more account of advice if it was made more expensive.
The full text of the study is freely available online as a pdf, although if you’re not convinced of the findings I’m sure Dr Gino would be happy to supply an additional copy for a small fee.
Via Kevin Drum, this excellent article in Slate by Emily Bazelon and Dahlia Lithwick:
Legal commentators have argued for years about whether there might ever be legitimate trials for the so-called “enemy combatants” we’re holding at Guantanamo Bay. Some say no. Others, like our friend Ben Wittes, argue that the evidence is inconclusive. They want to see what the Guantanamo military commissions produce before pronouncing them a failure.
We may never get there. Key actors are declining to play their part in a piece of theater designed to produce all convictions all the time. These refusals, affecting two trials this week, suggest that the whole apparatus—seven years and counting in the making—cannot ever be fixed. The trials are doomed, and they are doomed from the inside out.
Today we learned that the Pentagon has dropped charges against Mohammed al-Qahtani—the alleged 20th hijacker (or maybe the 21st or 22nd, since that title has gone to others before him). Along with five other “high value” detainees, al-Qahtani was facing capital charges at Guantanamo. The decision not to try him comes from the convening authority for the commissions, Susan Crawford. She didn’t give an explanation for halting the prosecution, but, then, we don’t really need one. As Phillip Carter notes elsewhere in Slate, it’s been clear for a while that the evidence against al-Qahtani was torture (or near-torture) tainted, and prosecutors at Guantanamo had announced long ago that “what had been done to him would prevent him from ever being put on trial.” In light of all that, you might wonder why he was one of the six trotted out for the big show trials in the first place.
Responding to the California Supreme Court’s decision yesterday overturning the state’s ban on gay marriage, congressional conservatives attacked the decision by calling it the result of “unelected judges” turning over the will of the people.
Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO), the House Minority Whip, charged in a statement that “unelected judges” are trying to “substitute their own worldview for the wisdom of the American people”:
Today, the decision of unelected judges to overturn the will of the people of California on the question of same-sex marriage demonstrates the lengths that unelected judges will go to substitute their own worldview for the wisdom of the American people.
Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL), piled on, saying that “unelected judges” had “irresponsibly decided to legislate from the bench.”
But, in making their rush to judgment about the CA decision, both Blunt and Feeney have the basic facts wrong about how California’s judicial system works. SmartVoter.org, a resource of the League of Women’s Voters, makes clear that California’s Supreme Court justices are “confirmed by the public at the next general election” after being appointed and “justices also come before voters at the end of their 12-year terms.”
In fact, each of the seven justices involved in yesterday’s decision were approved by California voters by overwhelming margins:
- Justice Joyce L. Kennard confirmed in 2006 with 74.5% of the vote.
- Justice Carol A. Corrigan confirmed in 2006 with 74.4% of the vote.
- Justice Kathryn M. Werdegar confirmed in 2002 with 74.1% of the vote.
- Justice Carlos R. Moreno confirmed in 2002 with 72.6% of the vote.
- Justice Marvin R. Baxter confirmed in 2002 with 71.5% of the vote.
- Justice Ronald M. George confirmed in 1998 with 75.5% of the vote.
- Justice Ming William Chin confirmed in 1998 with 69.3% of the vote.The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder notes that Feeney’s statement on the decision also engages in “coded gay baiting” when he informs “Florida’s hardworking families” that he “will continue to fight to prevent San Francisco taxes and values from infiltrating our community.”
Via Boing Boing, a list of 7 insane conspiracies. The list begins:
#7. The Business PlotThe Plan: In 1933, group of wealthy businessmen that allegedly included the heads of Chase Bank, GM, Goodyear, Standard Oil, the DuPont family and Senator Prescott Bush tried to recruit Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler to lead a military coup against President FDR and install a fascist dictatorship in the United States. And yes, we’re talking about the same Prescott Bush who fathered one US President and grandfathered another one.
How did that work out?: A good rule of thumb: never trust a man named Smedley to run your hostile military coup for you. Besides being no fan of fascism, Smedley Butler was both a patriot and a vocal FDR supporter. Apparently none of these criminal masterminds noticed that their prospective point man had actively stumped for FDR in 1932.
Smedley spilled the beans to a congressional committee in 1934. Everyone he accused of being a conspirator vehemently denied it, and none of them were brought up on criminal charges. Still, the House McCormack-Dickstein Committee did at least acknowledge the existence of the conspiracy, which ended up never getting past the initial planning stages.
Though many of the people who had allegedly backed the Business Plot also maintained financial ties with Nazi Germany up through America’s entry into World War II.
The shingles vaccine Zostavax is now on the CDC’s official list of recommended vaccines for people aged 60 and older.
Shingles (herpes zoster) is a skin rash, typically with blisters, that can cause severe chronic pain. It’s caused by the chickenpox (varicella zoster) virus, which can lie dormant within the nerves and reactivate as shingles.
The risk of contracting shingles increases with age, starting around age 50, and the risk of complications from shingles rises after age 60, notes the CDC.
The FDA approved Zostavax, the first shingles vaccine, in May 2006. In October 2006, the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel voted to make shingles vaccination routine for everyone aged 60 and older.
In October 2007, the CDC printed the advisory panel’s recommendations for adult vaccines, including the shingles vaccine. Now, the CDC has finalized its shingles vaccination recommendation for everyone aged 60 and older by printing it in an early online edition of its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
Mark Bittman offers a recipe for fast and simple pot-stickers:
Round wrappers are somewhat easier to handle than squares, though both work. As for filling, you can use any you like. For a vegetarian pot-sticker, cabbage can dominate, complemented by chopped shiitakes, minced tofu, minced celery and carrots, chives or a combination. Shrimp dumplings are also quite fabulous.
- 3/4 pound ground pork or other meat
- 1 cup minced cabbage
- 2 tablespoons minced ginger
- 1 tablespoon minced garlic
- 6 scallions, the white and green parts separated, both minced
- 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons good soy sauce
- 48 dumpling wrappers
- 1 egg, lightly beaten in a bowl
- 4 tablespoons peanut oil or vegetable oil, more or less
- 1/4 cup rice vinegar or white vinegar
1. Combine meat, cabbage, ginger, garlic, scallion whites and 2 tablespoons soy sauce in a bowl with 1/4 cup water. Lay a wrapper on a clean, dry surface, and using your finger or a brush, spread a bit of egg along half of its circumference. Place a rounded teaspoon of filling in center, fold over and seal by pinching edges together. (Do not overfill.) Place dumplings on a plate; if you want to wait a few hours before cooking, cover plate with plastic wrap and refrigerate. Or freeze, for up to two weeks.
2. To cook, put about 2 tablespoons oil in a large nonstick skillet and turn heat to medium-high. A minute later, add dumplings, one at a time; they can touch one another, but should still sit flat in one layer. Cook about 2 minutes, or until bottoms are lightly browned. Add 1/4 cup water per dozen dumplings to pan, and cover. Lower heat to medium, and let simmer about 3 minutes.
3. To make the dipping sauce, combine remaining soy sauce, green parts of scallions and vinegar.
4. Uncover dumplings, return heat to medium-high and cook another minute or two, until bottoms are dark brown and crisp and water evaporates. (Use more oil if necessary.) Serve hot, with sauce.
Vegetarian Pot-Stickers: Make a filling of 2 cups minced cabbage, 1 cup minced shiitake caps, 1/2 cup minced scallions or chives, and ginger, garlic and soy as above (omit water).
Shrimp Pot-Stickers: Make a filling of 2 cups peeled and minced shrimp (about 1 pound unpeeled), 1/2 cup minced snow peas, 1/2 cup minced shallots, and ginger, garlic and soy as above. Add 1 tablespoon sesame oil (or 1 tablespoon minced bacon).
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