Very interesting article by David P. Barash, an evolutionary biologist and a professor of psychology at the University of Washington. It begins:

To paraphrase Shakespeare’s Falstaff, “honor pricks us on.” And although Sir John famously concludes “I’ll none of it,” the reality is that for most people, honor is more than a “mere scutcheon.” Many colleges have honor codes, sometimes elaborated into complex systems: The list includes small colleges (e.g., Gustavus Adolphus, Haverford), large universities (e.g., the University of Virginia, Texas A&M), Ivies like Dartmouth and Princeton, sectarian institutions like Brigham Young, science-tech (Caltech) as well as liberal-arts (Reed) colleges, and, with particular solemnity, the three military academies. The code at West Point is especially terse and predictably directive: “A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.” The first “three commandments” — thou shalt not lie, cheat, or steal — speak for themselves. Of particular interest for our purposes, however, is that fourth admonition: “nor tolerate those who do.” (Sure enough, Prince Hal shows himself true to this martial virtue when he eventually — and for many of us, hurtfully — turns away from Falstaff, showing that as king he disowns Fat Jack’s dishonorable behavior.)

Doesn’t it stand to reason that everyone would be intolerant of violators? After all, when someone lies, cheats, or steals, it hurts the rest of us while making a mockery of society itself (cue Immanuel Kant, and his categorical imperative). The “fourth commandment” should, therefore, be altogether logical and hardly need specifying. The problem for theorists — if not for the “naturally intolerant” — is that blowing the whistle on liars, cheaters, or thieves is likely to impose a cost on the whistle-blower, while everyone else benefits from her act of conscience. Why not mind your own business and let someone else do the dirty work? Isn’t that why we have police: to, as the word suggests, police the behavior of others, at least in part so we don’t have to do so ourselves?

A conceivable explanation is …

Continue reading.

Interesting report by Jennifer Warner of WebMD News:

Cesarean section rather than vaginal deliveries may raise the risk of childhood asthma and allergies by interfering with the child’s immune system development, according to a new study.

Researchers say previous studies have suggested that babies born via C-section are more likely to develop childhood asthma and allergies, but the reasons are unclear.

This study suggests that babies born via C-section have impaired immune cell function because of suppression of regulatory T cells, which regulate the development and function of the immune system.

“This finding is exciting because it suggests that the mode of delivery may be an important factor influencing immune system development,” researcher Ngoc Ly, MD, MPH, assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco, says in a news release.

In the study, presented at the American Thoracic Society’s 2008 Conference in Toronto, researchers compared T cell suppression in a group of inner city newborns with a family history of asthma that put them at increased risk for childhood asthma.

Fifty of the children were born via C-section, and 68 were born vaginally. T cell suppression was measured by analyzing the child’s cord blood.

The results showed that children born by cesarean section had a reduction in T cell suppression function compared with the other children. For example, the average T cell suppression index was 0.78 for children born via C-section and 1.11 for those born vaginally.

Ly suggests that the stress and process of labor itself or exposure to specific microbes through the birth canal in vaginal rather than C-section delivery may influence neonatal immune responses.

“These findings are preliminary and further work is needed to explore potential mechanisms for the association between mode of delivery and neonatal immune responses,” Ly says. But researchers say this study provides a possible biological explanation for previous reports of the association between cesarean section and asthma.

I knew it!

Molecular and statistical genetic studies in 15 Finnish families have shown that there is a substantial genetic component in musical aptitude. Musical aptitude was determined using three tests: a test for auditory structuring ability (Karma Music test), and the Seashore pitch and time discrimination subtests. The study represents the first systematic molecular genetic study that aims in the identification of candidate genes associated with musical aptitude.

The identified regions contain genes affecting cell extension and migration during neural development. Interestingly, an overlapping region previously associated with genetic locus for dyslexia was found raising a question about common evolutionary background of music and language faculties. The results show that musical aptitude is likely to be regulated by several predisposing genes/variants.

“The identification of genes/genetic variants involved in mediating music perception and performance would offer new tools to understand the role of music in human brain function, human evolution and its relationship to language faculty”, says the leader of the study, Dr. Irma Järvelä from the University of Helsinki.

http://www.helsinki.fi/en/index.html

Interesting:

Religious leaders have contended for millennia that burning incense is good for the soul. Now, biologists have learned that it is good for our brains too. In a new study appearing online in The FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org), an international team of scientists, including researchers from Johns Hopkins University and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, describe how burning frankincense (resin from the Boswellia plant) activates poorly understood ion channels in the brain to alleviate anxiety or depression. This suggests that an entirely new class of depression and anxiety drugs might be right under our noses.

“In spite of information stemming from ancient texts, constituents of Bosweilla had not been investigated for psychoactivity,” said Raphael Mechoulam, one of the research study’s co-authors. “We found that incensole acetate, a Boswellia resin constituent, when tested in mice lowers anxiety and causes antidepressive-like behavior. Apparently, most present day worshipers assume that incense burning has only a symbolic meaning.”

To determine incense’s psychoactive effects, the researchers administered incensole acetate to mice. They found that the compound significantly affected areas in brain areas known to be involved in emotions as well as in nerve circuits that are affected by current anxiety and depression drugs. Specifically, incensole acetate activated a protein called TRPV3, which is present in mammalian brains and also known to play a role in the perception of warmth of the skin. When mice bred without this protein were exposed to incensole acetate, the compound had no effect on their brains.

Read the rest of this entry »

The NY Times reports that the FBI did not hesitate to label the US torture of prisoners as “war crimes”:

In 2002, as evidence of prisoner mistreatment at Guantánamo Bay began to mount, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents at the base created a “war crimes file” to document accusations against American military personnel, but were eventually ordered to close down the file, a Justice Department report revealed Tuesday.

The report, an exhaustive, 437-page review prepared by the Justice Department inspector general, provides the fullest account to date of internal dissent and confusion within the Bush administration over the use of harsh interrogation tactics by the military and the Central Intelligence Agency.

In one of several previously undisclosed episodes, the report found that American military interrogators appeared to have collaborated with visiting Chinese officials at Guantánamo Bay to disrupt the sleep of Chinese Muslims held there, waking them every 15 minutes the night before their interviews by the Chinese. In another incident, it said, a female interrogator reportedly bent back an inmate’s thumbs and squeezed his genitals as he grimaced in pain.

The report describes what one official called “trench warfare” between the F.B.I. and the military over the rough methods being used on detainees in Guantánamo Bay, Afghanistan and Iraq.

The report says that the F.B.I. agents took their concerns to higher-ups, but that their concerns often fell on deaf ears: officials at senior levels at the F.B.I., the Justice Department, the Defense Department and the National Security Council were all made aware of the F.B.I. agents’ complaints, but little appears to have been done as a result.

The report quotes passionate objections from F.B.I. officials who grew increasingly concerned about the reports of practices like intimidating inmates with snarling dogs, parading them in the nude before female soldiers, or “short-shackling” them to the floor for many hours in extreme heat or cold.

Such tactics, said one F.B.I. agent in an e-mail message to supervisors in November 2002, might violate American law banning torture.

More senior officials, including Spike Bowman, who was then the head of the national security law unit at the F.B.I., tried to sound the alarm as well.

More at the link. Full report here (PDF).

The “holy trinity” of Cajun cooking is minced onion, celery, and green bell pepper (similar to the French mirepoix: minced onion, celery, and carrots), and they have been onto something. Look at this report by Kelli Stacy Miller:

A compound found in celery and green peppers may help protect against inflammatory brain conditions.

The compound, called luteolin, is a potent antioxidant known for its anti-inflammatory properties. Luteolin belongs to a family of plant molecules called flavonoids, which are found in various vegetables, fruits, and beverages, including chamomile tea.

Researchers have rigorously studied the potential health effects of flavonoids for more than a decade. Previous studies have shown that flavonoids can help counter dementia caused by brain inflammation.

For the current study, Saebyeol Jang of the division of nutritional sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and colleagues investigated how luteolin acts on cells called microglia taken from mice. Microglia are scattered throughout the central nervous system and are principally responsible for the brain’s immunological defense. Excessive production of inflammatory molecules produced by microglia in the brain can worsen neurodegenerative changes seen in animal studies on Alzheimer’s disease and an inflammatory brain condition called Creutzfeld-Jakob disease.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is amusing or pathetic, depending on your take. David Loos reports in EcoGeek.org:

The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine held a press conference this morning to announce that 31,000 “scientists” have signed a petition rejecting claims of human-caused global warming.

According to OISM officials, the purpose of the Petition Project is to demonstrate that “the claim of ’settled science’ and an overwhelming ‘consensus’ in favor of the hypothesis of human-caused global warming and consequent climate damage is wrong.”

So what does it take to be included among the 31,000 “experts” on the petition? Well, according to the OISM criteria, any undergraduate science degree will do just fine. Bet you never thought that BS you earned 20 years ago made you a qualified climatologist. Congratulations!

OISM also wants to let you know that 9,021 of the signers hold PhDs. They don’t specify what the doctorates are in, but they repeat that figure quite a bit, as if it means something. Since the group was nice enough to list all 31,000 signers, including the dead people, let’s take a look at the qualifications of three randomly-selected “climate experts.”

• W. Kline Bolton, M.D. is a professor of medicine and Nephrology Division Chief at the University of Virginia. Nephrology deals with the study of the function and diseases of the kidney.
• Zhonggang Zeng is one of the 9,000 with a PhD. He is a professor of mathematics at Northeastern Illinois University. His most recent publication is entitled “Computing multiple roots of inexact polynomials.”
  
• Hub Hougland is a dentist in Muncie, Indiana. He was inducted into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame last year.

Another problem for our spewing billions of tons of CO2 into the air: the oceans are becoming acidified:

Up to now, the oceans have buffered climate change considerably by absorbing almost one third of the worldwide emitted carbon dioxide. The oceans represent a significant carbon sink, but the uptake of excess CO2 stemming from man’s burning of fossil fuels comes at a high cost: ocean acidification.

Research on ocean acidification is a newly emerging field and was one of the major topics at this year’s European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly held in Vienna in April. The European Science Foundation EUROCORES (European Collaborative Research) programme EuroCLIMATE, which addresses in particular global carbon cycle dynamics, organized and co-sponsored several sessions on ocean acidification.

The chemistry is very straight-forward: ocean acidification is linearly related to the amount of CO2 we produce. CO2 dissolves in the ocean, reacts with seawater and decreases the pH. Since the industrial revolution, the oceans have become 30 percent more acidic (from 8.2 pH to 8.1 pH). “Under a “business as usual scenario, predictions for the end of the century are that we will lower the surface ocean pH by 0.4 pH units, which means that the surface oceans will become 150 percent more acidic – and this is a ‘hell of a lot’ “, said Jelle Bijma, chair of the EuroCLIMATE programme Scientific Committee and a biogeochemist at the Alfred-Wegener-Institute Bremerhaven. “Ocean acidification is more rapid than ever in the history of the earth and if you look at the pCO2 (partial pressure of carbon dioxide) levels we have reached now, you have to go back 35 million years in time to find the equivalents” continued Bijma. A maximum allowed change in pH, where the system is still controllable, needs to be found. This is a major challenge considering the multifaceted unknowns that still are to be clarified. This so-called “tipping point” is currently estimated to allow a drop of about 0.2 pH units, a value that could be reached in as near as 30 years. More research and further modeling needs to be undertaken to verify the predictions.

Read the rest of this entry »

John Cole (a former Republican who became a Democrat after he saw what Republicans do when they’re given power) has some excellent thoughts on how to solve the problems in the current presidential primary (the Michigan/Florida problem) and on how to run the Presidential primaries next time. Really, really good thoughts. For example, just on the latter:

… Second, solving this mess from the future. Unlike many, I like the proportional representation. It allows for campaigns to last longer, it really allows non-institutional candidates a shot, and I think it is a good thing. Keep it. I would also get rid of the sense of entitlement that Iowa and NH have, and make the primary system run on a regional basis, rotating every election. Break the states into appropriate and manageable regional blocs, set a start date for primaries, and every two weeks a different bloc votes. Depending on how long you want the primary season to last, you could tailor the size of the blocs and the start date for the election. States would be free to determine whether they want to be a primary or caucus or hybrid.

One last thing. I would create a sort of political quasi-holiday for all Democratic candidates running nationally prior to the start of voting in which they the rules of the contest, the metrics that will be used to determined the outcome and the nominee, and all that stuff are read, agreed to, and then have the candidates sign a statement agreeing to them. Publicly. Turn it into a celebration, make it a big deal so everyone knows it happens. Get all the party heads there, take a time to remember past party giants who may have died in the past few years, present awards to people who have done great things for the party. Have fund-raisers, do meet and greets, introduce rising stars in the party, etc. Call it “Signing Day” or something. But make it big, known, and public. The bullshit goalpost moving a certain campaign has done the past few months is unacceptable.

Although Ted Kennedy gets flak to this day from the accidental death of Mary Jo Kopechne (see comment at the post on Kennedy below), at least he never pushed to torture American prisoners, some to their death. TPMmuckraker has a must-read post (with charts of the types of torture authorized by Bush, Cheney, Addington, Rice, Hadley, and Ashcroft—click the charts to read them). And note that the objection to torture comes not just from the liberal/progressive part of America: the FBI agents (a group that’s overwhelmingly politically conservative) thought it was beyond the pale, as the did many in the military, another politically conservative group. So don’t come in with “it’s just liberals who object” sort of comments.

But do read the post.

Interesting report from Charlene Laino in WebMD News:

Using a tiny sewing machine that is advanced down through the mouth and into the stomach, doctors are successfully reducing the size of obese teens’ tummies — and helping them to shed unhealthy pounds.

So far, 12 adolescents aged 14 to 17 have undergone the procedure. Their average weight dropped from 236 pounds before the procedure to 187 pounds six months afterward.

On average, the teens lost 60% of their excess weight in six months, says Roberto Fogel, MD, of the Hospital de Clinicas Caracas in Venezuela. Fogel invented the procedure.

There were no serious complications, and the patients left the hospital a few hours after the 40-minute procedure. One played softball that night, Fogel says.

Read the rest of this entry »

As readers know, I don’t trust the free market to solve all problems—sometimes the government must step in and protect the consumer from businesses, whose only goal is to continually increase profits. To do this, some (many) businesses continually search for ways to cut internal costs and externalize as many costs as possible—even though those costs must then be paid by the public at large. For example, the food industry had pretty much eliminated folic acid from foods, although folic acid is needed by pregnant women to prevent things like spinal bifida. Thanks to a government requirement, foods now contain more folates, as Kelli Miller Stacy reports in this article in WebMD:

The number of women of childbearing age with low blood folate levels has dramatically declined since the U.S. government mandated the addition of folic acid to cereals, breads, pasta, and other foods a decade ago.

The FDA’s folic acid fortification program, launched in 1998, increased the folic acid content of the most commonly eaten bread and grain products.

Folate is a water-soluble B vitamin (B9) that occurs naturally in leafy green vegetables, citrus fruits, dried beans, and peas. Folic acid is a synthetic form of the vitamin that is essential to good health, particularly during pregnancy. Inadequate amounts of folic acid during pregnancy can lead to serious birth defects of the brain, spinal cord, or their protective coverings called neural tube defects. One of the most common neural tube defects is spina bifida.

Read the rest of this entry »

Spencer Ackerman has a good report in the Washington Independent, which begins:

According to virtually every poll this election year, the working class voter — particularly the white working class voter — is most concerned about the economy, to the exclusion of almost all else. It’s through that prism, according to a parade of television pundits, that the working-class views the war in Iraq. Perhaps the war is unpopular to the working class, as it is to approximately 70 percent of Americans, but the greater danger, they believe, comes from overzealous opposition to the war.

If that was the case, the walkout in California earlier this month should not have happened. Across 29 California ports, as many as 25,000 longshoremen — members of the firebrand International Longshore & Warehouse Union — refused to show up for work in protest of the U.S. military presence in Iraq. Activity at the ports was significantly diminished on May 1 — the international day of labor solidarity. Labor historians interviewed by The Washington Independent were hard-pressed to remember the last anti-war labor strike of this magnitude.

The ILWU tied the war to the turbulence in the global economy to explain their action. “Big foreign corporations that control global shipping aren’t loyal or accountable to any country,” said Bob McEllrath, president of the union, in a prepared statement. “For them it’s all about making money. But longshore workers are different. We’re loyal to America, and we won’t stand by while our country, our troops, and our economy are destroyed by a war that’s bankrupting us to the tune of 3 trillion dollars. It’s time to stand up, and we’re doing our part today.”

Continue reading.

I’m taking a short break from walking, but will probably resume tomorrow if my new walking shoes arrive today. Partly it’s the new shoes, and partly it’s a few days off after giving blood. As usual, I donated 2 units via the Alyx machine, which returns the blood plasma while holding back an amount of red blood cells equal to that contained in a quart of blood. This way, I donate only 3 times a year. (It takes twice as long to recover as when you give 1 unit.)

As not usual, I fainted after this donation—well, not completely unconscious, but definitely woozy and unable to stand. I didn’t fall, exactly—the guy who drew the blood caught me, and I kind of did a slow drop to a kneeling position. I quickly recovered, but it got some attention in the blood center, you may be sure. So far as I can tell, it was probably because of a sushi lunch (rice: causes a small spike in blood sugar and then a drop, which normally just leads to a nice afternoon nap) combined the loss of the two units. At any rate, it was enough for me to decide to take it easy until the new shoes arrive.

Next time I will have a better lunch before the donation. And rest a bit before walking about.

The theme of “kids today!” is imperishable: a hardy perennial that blossoms anew as each generation faces the problems of its own offspring. Paul Lynde sang it well in the musical Bye Bye Birdie (Shut your eyes to ignore the visual and just listen to the song, sung by Lynde from the Broadway cast recording):

And kids today face new challenges that are probably affecting their education. Read this piece by Courtney Martin in The American Prospect. It begins:

As students across the country gear up for end-of-the-year blow-outs and graduation parties, there will surely be plenty of reminiscing—drunkest nights, most hilarious hook-ups, funniest first impressions. But how much will students be talking about their favorite professors and the quality of their ideas? To be sure, college has always been about far more than classes, but in the age of text messaging and increasing pre-professionalism, do students still care about the life of the mind?

According to Josh Waitzkin, a 2003 graduate of Columbia University, not much. When he returned to his favorite political theory professor’s course a few weeks ago, he slid into a seat in the back of the lecture hall and opened up his trusty spiral notebook. As he stared down at the sea of students, he realized how much had changed in the few short years since heds been gone.

Professor Dennis Dalton began his lecture on Mahatma Gandhi’s mass civil-disobedience campaign following the Amritsar massacre, focusing on the Indian activists’ persistence in staying attuned to their own inner morals despite the crush of British imperialism. The students flipped open their laptops and started clicking away. A few solely took notes, but many flipped back and forth between multiple windows: shopping on Amazon, cruising Facebook, checking out The New York Times Style section, reorganizing their social calendars, e-mailing, playing solitaire, doing homework for other classes, chatting on AIM, and buying tickets on Expedia. Josh kept a list because he was in such disbelief.

Was it just a random day, a random classroom, a particularly restless group of college students? Or was it a profoundly sad statement about the state of our distracted minds and the biggest challenge facing all of us in this 24/7, high-tech time: the crisis of attention and intention?

I have to believe the latter. For a few months now, I’ve been obsessed with the concept of attention and how it is our most precious contemporary commodity. As historian and rhetoric aficionado Richard A. Lanham argues in his latest book, The Economics of Attention, in an age of information overload, it is our capacity to zero in on the most valuable and joyful that determines the quality of our lives and the future of the planet.

Everyone is vying for our precious attention—political candidates, Victoria’s Secret, tech manufacturers, restaurant chains, YouTube, cleaning product companies, media outlets, children, The Gap, parents, blogs, friends, JetBlue, even pets. The average adult sees 1,000 advertisements a day. Internet users spend 32.7 hours per week online and about half as much time watching television (16.4 hours). Teens, not surprisingly, are most likely to participate in what tech experts call “concurrent media exposure”—using various media simultaneously. Among this crush, how well are we staying attuned to our own inner morals? How intentional are we about whom we let sap our energy, at what times, and in what ways?

Continue reading. It’s good.

Eight million Americans—that’s quite a few, isn’t it? From the Center for American Progress:

Last year, former deputy attorney general James Comey revealed that in 2004, he refused to “certify” the legality of certain aspects of the National Security Agency (NSA) spy program. The Center for American Progress’s Peter Swire noted at the time that Comey’s testimony implied that “other programs exist for domestic spying” outside of the NSA program. Radar’s Christopher Ketcham suggests that another spy program does exist: “Main Core,” which authorizes “computer searches through massive [unspecified] electronic databases” in order to discover “potential threats” in the event of a “national emergency.” According to a senior government official, “The database can identify and locate perceived ‘enemies of the state’ almost instantaneously.” One “knowledgeable source” claims that “8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect.” But the plans “are shrouded in extreme secrecy, effectively unregulated by Congress or the courts.” Furthermore, the NSA domestic surveillance program reportedly “suppl[ies] data to Main Core.” “[T]he program that caused the flap between Comey and the White House was related to a database of Americans who might be considered potential threats in the event of a national emergency,” Radar notes. Former Reagan administration official Bruce Fein observed, “To a national emergency planner, everybody looks like a danger to stability.”

From the Center for American Progress (via an email):

The $289 billion, five-year Farm Bill, originally slated for completion in 2007, finally passed both houses of Congress by veto-proof majorities last week, despite criticism from environmentalists, some advocates for the poor, and economic conservatives. The bill is now on the cusp of a largely symbolic presidential veto. Both the New York Times and the Washington Post have come out supporting the veto, while prominent congressional leaders, from diverse states and parties, have been vocally opposed to components of the final bill. Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), a prominent farm bill reform advocate, said, “This bill was well designed to avoid every opportunity for serious reform of wasteful, outdated subsidy programs while actually piling on additional layers of unnecessary spending.” While the bill does contain some giveaways to the powerful agro-business, Campus Progress explains that the Farm Bill encompasses far more than just farm subsidies. “Its influence goes far beyond agricultural policy. The bill affects public health, by shaping what Americans eat; the environment, by determining what land gets conserved and how much alternative energies are promoted; and global poverty, by playing a large part in setting U.S. crop prices.”

A LITTLE FOR EVERYONE: The bill has tied together some unlikely bedfellows, making its final passage contingent on groups banding together on issues ranging from nutrition programs to fuel efficiency regulations to labor provisions. As part of early deliberations, for example, corn growers, Wall Street investment firms, and ethanol producers, worked for an aggressive renewable fuels standard (RFS). The California Coalition for Food and Farming brought together organic farmers, minority groups, urban food banks, and environmentalists to support a community reinvestment proposal. “No one is thrilled with all aspects of this deal, but we understand the delicate balance it took to get it done,” said David Cleavinger, National Association of Wheat Growers president.” The nutrition section includes hard-fought improvements in the rules and funding for food stamps and other programs. Though pleased with the food stamp provision, NETWORK, a faith-based anti-poverty organization, explained that they are “disappointed that there is no significant reform of the commodity subsidies that give unfair advantage to large landowners at the expense of small farmers in the U.S. and around the world.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Interesting approach, described by Bill Taylor at Harvard Business Publishing:

… This company is fanatical about great service—not just satisfying customers, but amazing them. The company promises free, four-day delivery. That’s pretty good. But most of the time it delivers next-day service, a surprise that leaves a lasting impression on customers: “You said four days, but I got them the next morning.”

Zappos has also mastered the art of telephone service—a black hole for most Internet retailers. Zappos publishes its 1-800 number on every single page of the site—and its smart and entertaining call-center employees are free to do whatever it takes to make you happy. There are no scripts, no time limits on calls, no robotic behavior, and plenty of legendary stories about Zappos and its customers.

This is a company that’s bursting with personality, to the point where a huge number of its 1,600 employees are power users of Twitter so that their friends, colleagues, and customers know what they’re up to at any moment in time. But here’s what’s really interesting. It’s a hard job, answering phones and talking to customers for hours at a time. So when Zappos hires new employees, it provides a four-week training period that immerses them in the company’s strategy, culture, and obsession with customers. People get paid their full salary during this period.

After a week or so in this immersive experience, though, it’s time for what Zappos calls “The Offer.” The fast-growing company, which works hard to recruit people to join, says to its newest employees: “If you quit today, we will pay you for the amount of time you’ve worked, plus we will offer you a $1,000 bonus.” Zappos actually bribes its new employees to quit! ….

More at the link. Read the whole article. Full disclosure: The Wife buys shoes from Zappos from time to time.

I’ve been depressed about the announcement of Ted Kennedy’s illness—and malignant brain tumor is about as bad a diagnosis as one could get. It was a brain tumor that took the life of George Gershwin, though at a much younger age (38). Ted Kennedy is one of those who draw the hatred of the hardline Right. ThinkProgress reports today:

Yesterday, after news broke that Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) had been diagnosed with a brain tumor, right-wing radio host Michael Savage mocked him on air by playing audio from Kindergarten Cop in which Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character says, “It’s not a tumor.” Savage also played a song by the punk band the Dead Kennedys “in some respect” for Sen. Kennedy.

Partly they hate him because he has worked so hard for progressive principles and accomplished much. Via TalkingPointsMemo, here is Ted Kennedy speaking in the Senate:

UPDATE: Mike Lillis in the Washington Independent collects heartfelt reactions from Ted Kennedy’s colleagues in the Senate, both Republican and Democrat.

The Dutch government has wisely decided that the current technology of electronic voting machines is not where it should be and have banned the machines:

The government of the Netherlands has banned electronic voting machines from future elections because of a risk of eavesdropping. The nation will return to paper voting.

“Research indicates that a secure voting machine that is immune to the risks of eavesdropping can’t be guaranteed. Developing new equipment furthermore requires a large investment, both financially and in terms of organization. The administration judges that this offers insufficient added value over voting by paper and pencil,” the Ministry of Internal Affairs said Friday evening.

In its decision, the government also banned so-called voting printers. Because they leave a paper trail, the printers had been suggested as a potential alternative to traditional voting computers that store the vote counts in their memory.

A group of experts headed by Bart Jacobs, a professor at Radboud University in Nijmegen, dismissed the printer option. The group concluded that “even with regular testing of each printer, it can’t be guaranteed that all devices stay within the required emission limits” that safeguard against eavesdropping.

Instead of electronic voting machines, the nation will now shift focus to electronic vote counting. Election officials will initiate tests where a person will read out the elected name on the voting form. In one test, a second person will count the vote by scanning a barcode. A second test will use a special counting-device.

The reliability of voting machines marks a victory for a local activist group called “Wij vertrouwen stemcomputers niet” (”We don’t trust voting computers”) that is headed up by noted Dutch computer hacker Rop Gonggrijp.

The group published a note on its website on Friday declaring victory: “We, the proponents of election results that can be verified, are winning all over the world!”

Continue reading.