Later On

Very interesting New Yorker article by Jonah Lehrer:

In the late nineteen-sixties, Carolyn Weisz, a four-year-old with long brown hair, was invited into a “game room” at the Bing Nursery School, on the campus of Stanford University. The room was little more than a large closet, containing a desk and a chair. Carolyn was asked to sit down in the chair and pick a treat from a tray of marshmallows, cookies, and pretzel sticks. Carolyn chose the marshmallow. Although she’s now forty-four, Carolyn still has a weakness for those air-puffed balls of corn syrup and gelatin. “I know I shouldn’t like them,” she says. “But they’re just so delicious!” A researcher then made Carolyn an offer: she could either eat one marshmallow right away or, if she was willing to wait while he stepped out for a few minutes, she could have two marshmallows when he returned. He said that if she rang a bell on the desk while he was away he would come running back, and she could eat one marshmallow but would forfeit the second. Then he left the room.

Although Carolyn has no direct memory of the experiment, and the scientists would not release any information about the subjects, she strongly suspects that she was able to delay gratification. “I’ve always been really good at waiting,” Carolyn told me. “If you give me a challenge or a task, then I’m going to find a way to do it, even if it means not eating my favorite food.” Her mother, Karen Sortino, is still more certain: “Even as a young kid, Carolyn was very patient. I’m sure she would have waited.” But her brother Craig, who also took part in the experiment, displayed less fortitude. Craig, a year older than Carolyn, still remembers the torment of trying to wait. “At a certain point, it must have occurred to me that I was all by myself,” he recalls. “And so I just started taking all the candy.” According to Craig, he was also tested with little plastic toys—he could have a second one if he held out—and he broke into the desk, where he figured there would be additional toys. “I took everything I could,” he says. “I cleaned them out. After that, I noticed the teachers encouraged me to not go into the experiment room anymore.”

Footage of these experiments, which were conducted over several years, is poignant, as the kids struggle to delay gratification for just a little bit longer. Some cover their eyes with their hands or turn around so that they can’t see the tray. Others start kicking the desk, or tug on their pigtails, or stroke the marshmallow as if it were a tiny stuffed animal. One child, a boy with neatly parted hair, looks carefully around the room to make sure that nobody can see him. Then he picks up an Oreo, delicately twists it apart, and licks off the white cream filling before returning the cookie to the tray, a satisfied look on his face.

Most of the children were like Craig. They struggled to resist the treat and held out for an average of less than three minutes. “A few kids ate the marshmallow right away,” Walter Mischel, the Stanford professor of psychology in charge of the experiment, remembers. “They didn’t even bother ringing the bell. Other kids would stare directly at the marshmallow and then ring the bell thirty seconds later.” About thirty per cent of the children, however, were like Carolyn. They successfully delayed gratification until the researcher returned, some fifteen minutes later. These kids wrestled with temptation but found a way to resist.

The initial goal of the experiment was …

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Interesting:

A newly released report identifies climate change as the biggest global health threat of the 21st century.

If nothing is done, global warming could affect the health of billions of people throughout the world, with the poor suffering most, according to the report from the University College London and The Lancet.

Deaths from heat waves, malaria, and other vector-borne diseases (diseases transmitted by sources such as mosquitoes or ticks) are projected to rise as global temperatures increase. But the report identifies food and water shortages and increasingly violent weather events as the biggest climate-change-related threats to human health.

Pediatrician Anthony Costello, MD, who chaired the commission that issued the report, says there is new evidence that climate change is occurring faster than many experts had anticipated.

He tells WebMD that recent findings on greenhouse gas emissions, global temperature changes, sea level rise, ocean acidification, and extreme climatic events suggest that climate forecasts made in 2007 by an international panel evaluating climate change may be optimistic.

"The forecasts made by the world climate scientists a few years ago are starting to look too conservative," he says.

Costello points out that since records began to be kept a century and a half ago, 12 of the warmest years on record have occurred within the last 13 years.

He adds that the health effects of climate change are already being seen and will increasingly be felt as temperatures rise.

According to the report: …

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Something worth knowing:

Long-distance walking on a daily basis may take off twice the weight and result in greater loss of fat mass than standard cardiac rehabilitation in overweight heart patients, researchers say.

What’s more, in addition to losing fat mass and twice the weight, overweight coronary patients on a steady walking regimen apparently can improve their insulin sensitivity to a greater degree than people undergoing standard cardiac rehabilitation, says a new study in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

In the study, researchers at the University of Vermont randomized 74 overweight cardiac rehab patients whose average age was 64 to either a high-caloric expenditure exercise regimen, aimed at burning 3,000 to 3,500 calories a week by walking almost daily, or to standard therapy, burning 700 to 800 calories a week, exercising three times per week.

Shedding weight on a daily basis called for walking 45-60 minutes at a moderate pace — a lower speed than standard therapy — for five to six days per week.

The standard rehab called for walking, biking, or rowing for 25-40 minutes at a brisker pace, but only three times per week.

Five months into the study, the researchers compared the two groups and found that patients doing the daily walking had: …

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Very interesting post by Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson, former chief of staff of the Department of State during the term of Secretary of State Colin Powell and currently Pamela Harriman Visiting Professor at the College of William & Mary:

First, more Americans were killed by terrorists on Cheney’s watch than on any other leader’s watch in US history. So his constant claim that no Americans were killed in the "seven and a half years" after 9/11 of his vice presidency takes on a new texture when one considers that fact. And it is a fact.

There was absolutely no policy priority attributed to al-Qa’ida by the Cheney-Bush administration in the months before 9/11. Counterterrorism czar Dick Clarke’s position was downgraded, al-Qa’ida was put in the background so as to emphasize Iraq, and the policy priorities were lowering taxes, abrogating the ABM Treaty and building ballistic missile defenses.

Second, the fact no attack has occurred on U.S. soil since 9/11–much touted by Cheney–is due almost entirely to the nation’s having deployed over 200,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and not to "the Cheney method of interrogation."

Those troops have kept al-Qa’ida at bay, killed many of them, and certainly "fixed" them, as we say in military jargon. Plus, sadly enough, those 200,000 troops present a far more lucrative and close proximity target for al-Qa’ida than the United States homeland. Testimony to that fact is clear: almost 5,000 American troops have died, more Americans than died on 9/11. Of course, they are the type of Americans for whom Cheney hasn’t much use as he declared rather dramatically when he achieved no less than five draft deferments during the Vietnam War.

Third–and here comes the blistering fact–when Cheney claims that if President Obama stops "the Cheney method of interrogation and torture", the nation will be in danger, he is perverting the facts once again. But in a very ironic way.

My investigations have revealed to me–vividly and clearly–that once the Abu Ghraib photographs were made public in the Spring of 2004, the CIA, its contractors, and everyone else involved in administering "the Cheney methods of interrogation", simply shut down. Nada. Nothing. No torture or harsh techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator. Period. People were too frightened by what might happen to them if they continued.

What I am saying is that no torture or harsh interrogation techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator for the entire second term of Cheney-Bush, 2005-2009. So, if we are to believe the protestations of Dick Cheney, that Obama’s having shut down the "Cheney interrogation methods" will endanger the nation, what are we to say to Dick Cheney for having endangered the nation for the last four years of his vice presidency?

Likewise, what I have learned is …

Continue reading. There’s a good video from the Rachel Maddow show at the link.

When I tested the link, I discovered that Fitday 2.0 is now available for download. I really like this program. Windows only, I believe, though you can use the same sort of facility for free using their Web site.

The Younger Daughter send a link to this article in the NY Times:

If you exercise to improve your metabolism and prevent diabetes, you may want to avoid antioxidants like vitamins C and E.

That is the message of a surprising new look at the body’s reaction to exercise, reported on Monday by researchers in Germany and Boston.

Exercise is known to have many beneficial effects on health, including on the body’s sensitivity to insulin. “Get more exercise” is often among the first recommendations given by doctors to people at risk of diabetes.

But exercise makes the muscle cells metabolize glucose, by combining its carbon atoms with oxygen and extracting the energy that is released. In the process, some highly reactive oxygen molecules escape and make chemical attacks on anything in sight.

These reactive oxygen compounds are known to damage the body’s tissues. The amount of oxidative damage increases with age, and according to one theory of aging it is a major cause of the body’s decline.

The body has its own defense system for combating oxidative damage, but it does not always do enough. So antioxidants, which mop up the reactive oxygen compounds, may seem like a logical solution.

The researchers, led by Dr. Michael Ristow, a nutritionist at the University of Jena in Germany, tested this proposition by having young men exercise, giving half of them moderate doses of vitamins C and E and measuring sensitivity to insulin as well as indicators of the body’s natural defenses to oxidative damage.

The Jena team found that in the group taking the vitamins there was no improvement in insulin sensitivity and almost no activation of the body’s natural defense mechanism against oxidative damage.

The reason, they suggest, is that the reactive oxygen compounds, inevitable byproducts of exercise, are a natural trigger for both of these responses. The vitamins, by efficiently destroying the reactive oxygen, short-circuit the body’s natural response to exercise.

Continue reading. I quite taking vitamins C and E some time ago since I discovered (via Fitday) that I was getting ample amounts in my diet. My daily multivitamin has some, though—maybe I’ll drop that pill from the daily ration.

Interesting article in Salon by Mark Benjamin:

The testimony of a key witness at a Senate hearing Wednesday raised serious questions about the truthfulness of former President George W. Bush’s own personal defense of the CIA’s brutal interrogation program. Former FBI agent Ali Soufan also indicated that the harsh interrogation techniques may actually have hindered the collection of intelligence, causing a high-value prisoner to stop cooperating.

In the first congressional hearing on torture since the release of Bush administration memos that provided the legal justification for torture, Soufan told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the CIA’s abusive techniques were "ineffective, slow and unreliable, and as a result harmful to our efforts to defeat al-Qaida." According to Soufan, his own nonviolent interrogation of an al-Qaida suspect was quickly yielding valuable, actionable intelligence — until the CIA intervened.

Soufan was with the FBI on March 28, 2002, when the United States captured its first suspected al-Qaida operative after 9/11, a man named Abu Zubaydah, held at a secret location overseas. Soufan had investigated terrorism cases dating back to the East Africa embassy bombings in 1998, and he was one of the first experts called after Zubaydah’s capture.

Soufan, who testified at the hearing from behind a partition to hide his identity, worked on a small team of interrogators utilizing tried-and-true techniques that emphasize knowing the detainee’s language, understanding his culture, leveraging known information about a detainee, and sometimes using a bit of trickery. The method is based on rapport and is believed by experienced interrogators to result in the most reliable actionable intelligence. "It is about outwitting the detainee by using a combination of interpersonal, cognitive and emotional strategies to get the information needed," Soufan said in written testimony, which he paraphrased on Wednesday.

"For example," Soufan told the committee, "in my first interrogation of the terrorist Abu Zubaydah … I asked him his name. He replied with his alias. I then asked him, ‘How ’bout if I call you Hani?’"

"[Hani] was the name his mother nicknamed him as a child," recalled Soufan. "He looked at me in shock, said, OK,’ and we started talking."

"Within the first hour of interrogation," Soufan said, "we gained actionable intelligence." Soufan could not say what that information was because it remains classified. Zubaydah had been injured during his capture, and Soufan’s team arranged for medical care and continued talking to the prisoner. Within the next few days, Soufan made one of the most significant intelligence breakthroughs of the so-called war on terror. He learned from Zubaydah that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the mastermind behind the attacks on 9/11.

Then, however, a CIA interrogation team from Washington led by a contractor arrived at the secret location. Zubaydah was stripped naked and the contractor began a series of coercive, abusive interrogations, based on Cold War-era communist techniques designed to elicit false confessions. During the Korean War, for example, Chinese interrogators employed the measures to get captured American pilots to make false confessions. "The new techniques did not produce results, as Abu Zubaydah shut down and stopped talking," Soufan explained. "After a few days of getting no information, and after repeated inquiries from D.C. asking why all of a sudden no information was being transmitted … we again were given control of the interrogation."

As Soufan and his team resumed their interrogation, Zubaydah revealed information about Jose Padilla, the alleged "dirty bomber."

But after that, the CIA and the contractor again took over, using what Soufan called an "untested theory" that the Cold War techniques might work for getting good information. "Again, however, the technique wasn’t working," Soufan recalled.

Soufan’s team was brought back yet again. "We found it harder to reengage him this time, because of how the techniques had affected him," Soufan noted. "But eventually, we succeeded."

A third time the CIA and the contractor team took over, using increasingly brutal methods. Soufan reported what he called "borderline torture" to his superiors in Washington. In protest of the abuse, former FBI Director Robert Mueller pulled Soufan out of the location…

Continue reading.

From Politico’s Lisa Lerer:

Republicans know they can’t stop Henry Waxman’s ambitious climate change bill from clearing the Energy and Commerce Committee, but they’re promising to make the ride as bumpy as possible.

They plan to nitpick the Waxman bill into legislative oblivion by introducing more than 100 amendments during the committee debate. Some of those, they hope, will lure Democrats worried about the impact of energy proposals on hometown industries. 

“This is not going to be one of gentlemanly, pro forma markups,” said Texas Rep. Joe Barton, the top Republican on the committee. “We’re prepared for it to take weeks or months.”

Waxman has spent weeks convincing Southern and Midwestern Democrats to support his legislation, trying to cut deals that enable them to vote for the legislation while still satisfying constituents back home. On Tuesday, he predicted that legislation would pass the 59-member committee by the Memorial Day recess even without any Republican votes.

But Barton says his game plan is ready to go. He walked into a Tuesday night meeting of Democrats with fighting words, announcing that “we are ready when you are.”

“I don’t have to pass a bill,” said Barton. “But I believe I’ve got a better chance of preventing a bad bill from getting passed than he has the chance of passing the bill he wants to pass.”

On Thursday, Republicans will announce their own alternative legislation — a bill that they expect will be swiftly voted down by the committee in next week’s markup. After that, they say, will come the dozens of amendments.

“We’ll give the swing Democrats lots of opportunity to make positive changes to the bill, and we’ll see whether they’ll comply or not,” said Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), the ranking member of the Energy and Environment Subcommittee. “We’ve got a lot of constructive amendments to fix the obvious flaws.”

Republicans say they’ll give Democrats a chance to vote for increasing energy production and domestic drilling and will introduce proposals on nuclear power — tempting to some Southerners who wanted to see it included in the bill.

“We’re trying to appeal to everybody that’s from the energy states,” said Rep. Ralph Hall (R-Texas). “We’re trying to get them to vote pro-energy rather than what the leadership tells them to vote.”

Offering amendment after amendment in hopes of gumming up the markup process is a typical turn for the minority to take in the legislative dance.

But even the Republicans know that there’s only one band leader, and that’s Waxman. The committee chairman decides when to hold, conduct and suspend the markup hearing — powers that permit him to cut off Republican amendments…

Continue reading.

Glenn Greenwald notes:

I have one question for the great fighter-leader, Harry Reid:  during Reid’s tenure as Majority Leader, Michael Mukasey was confirmed as Bush’s Attorney General with a grand total of 53 Senate votes.  How come Dawn Johnsen "needs 60 votes" or else she’ll be rejected?

First catch of the season, if I’m not mistaken. I got two packages. Love those smelts.

I need to start walking: weight up a little, and my HbA1c is 6.1% (compared to 5.8% last time). Still good, but not enough for me. Blood pressure good, everything else looking okay. Just walk.

Defeating climate legislation seems to require a lot of lies. Kevin Knoblach, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, writes in McClatchy:

Thanks to documents recently uncovered by a lawsuit, we now know that a major industry trade group was told by its science advisers in 1995 that it was spreading false information about climate change.

But that didn’t matter to the Global Climate Coalition, which included the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and a number of oil and auto companies. The coalition, which disbanded in 2002, simply continued to deny the consensus of the world’s climate scientists.

Since then, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Chamber and many of their allies have largely dropped their anti-science stance. Instead, they now deny the emerging consensus among economists that we need policies aimed at reducing heat-trapping emissions. It’s a new campaign with a new emphasis, but their tactics still rely on an old formulation: If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it.

Last year, NAM and the American Council for Capital Formation, an industry think tank, released a study examining the cost of implementing a cap on heat-trapping emissions, and the Chamber hosted forums across the country to promote it. The study concluded that the U.S. economy would grow significantly with or without a cap by 2030, but that under a cap, the growth rate would be slightly lower. The Chamber misrepresented those findings and talked about the study as if it concluded a cap would reduce economic growth from today’s levels.

Recently, the Chamber released another study, this time by a consulting firm called CRA International, and is pulling the same bogus hide-the-numbers trick.

Meanwhile, the American Energy Alliance, another industry front group, is currently running misleading radio ads targeting members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is considering climate and energy legislation introduced by Reps. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Edward Markey, D-Mass. The ads are based on a deliberate misinterpretation of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology study that House Minority Leader John Boehner (Ohio) and other members of Congress have been repeating ad nauseum for weeks.

The MIT study estimates how much revenue the government could raise from polluting industries by auctioning off emissions permits under a cap-and-trade system. Climate and energy legislation opponents twist that estimate by calling it a tax on individuals. And they ignore the government’s ability to use that revenue to benefit consumers, for example, by giving them rebates and funding energy efficiency improvements.

An MIT professor who co-authored the study, John Reilly, asked Rep. Boehner to stop misquoting it. Rep. Boehner ignored his request, and the made-up number has become the mantra of climate and energy legislation opponents.

A more realistic look at climate and energy policy tells a different story…

Continue reading.

Keith Perrine of Congressional Quarterly:

President Obama has decided to reverse course on releasing dozens of photographs of detainees held in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Obama’s decision, which runs counter to his pledges of openness and transparency, was applauded by Republicans and decried by liberal activists. The move is the latest in a series of steps Obama has taken to shield his predecessor’s counterterrorism policies from public scrutiny.

Two senators are planning to offer an amendment to the fiscal 2009 supplemental spending measure to bar the release of the photographs.

In 2006, a New York federal district judge ordered the administration of President George W. Bush to release 21 photographs of detainees held by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan, in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union. Last September, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit upheld the judge’s orders.

On April 23, the administration told the judge that it would turn over the photographs, along with at least 23 others, by May 28. But Obama has changed his mind.

“Understand these photos are associated with closed investigations of the alleged abuse of detainees in our ongoing war effort. And I want to emphasize that these photos that were requested in this case are not particularly sensational, especially when compared to the painful images that we remember from Abu Ghraib,” Obama said. “But they do represent conduct that did not conform with the Army Manual; that’s precisely why they were investigated and, I might add, investigated long before I took office. And, where appropriate, sanctions have been applied.

The president added, “It’s therefore my belief that the publication of these photos would not add any additional benefit to our understanding of what was carried out in the past by a small number of individuals. In fact, the most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to further inflame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in greater danger. Moreover, I fear the publication of these photos may only have a chilling effect on future investigations of detainee abuse.”

Republican lawmakers praised Obama. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell , R-Ky., said, “The president made the right decision and I applaud him for it.” House Minority Leader John A. Boehner , R-Ohio, said, “I hope the administration continues to vigorously defend this position in the weeks and months to come.”

The release of the photos, which were expected to show abuses of the detainees, had promised to roil the already intense debate over whether and how to investigate the Bush administration’s treatment of detainees.

In 2004, photographs of detainee abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq sparked international outrage. The Bush administration painted those abuses as the work of a few low-level soldiers. But subsequent investigations, including by the Senate Armed Services Committee, have revealed that the authorization for the techniques used at Abu Ghraib originated at the highest levels of the Bush administration.

“The Obama administration’s adoption of the stonewalling tactics and opaque policies of the Bush administration flies in the face of the president’s stated desire to restore the rule of law, to revive our moral standing in the world and to lead a transparent government,” said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero. “This decision is particularly disturbing given the Justice Department’s failure to initiate a criminal investigation of torture crimes under the Bush administration.” …

Continue reading.

Very intriguing story by Zachary Roth in TPM DC:

On the issue of the torture briefings, is the main story starting to give way to the back story?

Here’s what we mean:

The main story, reduced to its key elements, is that by the end of 2003, it seems clear that Nancy Pelosi and other top Dems had learned that we had water-boarded detainees. Whether Pelosi did enough in response to that information, or whether she was legitimately constrained by congressional protocol and by the atmosphere of fear that prevailed at the time is a matter for debate.

But the back story demands attention too. The fact that the CIA released the document on the briefings in response to a request last month from Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the House intelligence committee, has received less focus than it should have.

Hoekstra’s political motivation — to suggest that Democrats, by virtue of having been briefed, were complicit in the Bush administration’s torture program — is clear, and has only been made clearer by his response to the document’s release: "The bottom line is she and her key staff, they all knew about it," he told The Hill, referring to Pelosi in calling for hearings to determine what she and other lawmakers knew.

But Hoekstra may not have been the only one who was motivated by politics. As The Politico reported today, several top Senate Democrats have essentially accused the CIA of being all too ready to comply with Hoekstra’s request, releasing the documents in order to deflect attention away from the agency’s own unquestioned role in carrying out torture, just as the debate over possible prosecutions is heating up.

Sen. Russ Feingold perhaps went furthest, telling Politico it looks like "members of the committee or their staff were not in any way involved in [the release of the document]. It appears to come from the executive branch itself. … I think it’s unbelievable."

Sen. Carl Levin, who sat on the intel committee and was briefed on the program in 2006 and 2007, said: "I think there is so much embarrassment in some quarters [of the CIA] that people are going to try to shift some of the responsibility to others — that’s what I think."

Senate Number 2 Dick Durbin, for his part, said it’s "interesting" that the documents were being released just at the time that "some of the groups that have been responsible for these interrogation techniques were taking the most criticism."

And Sen. Dianne Feinstein, asked, in Politico‘s words, "whether the CIA was seeking political cover by releasing the documents," replied: "Sure it is."

She went on to put the blame for the program squarely on the CIA: …

Continue reading.

Last night I made a pretty tasty batch of chili:

1 large onion, chopped
1 serrano pepper, minced
6 cloves garlic, minced
1.5 lbs pork stew meat (I assume pork shoulder), cut into small pieces
1 can black beans
1 can dark red kidney beans
1 can pinto beans
2 cans diced tomatoes with green chiles
1 small can tomato sauce
1 cup whole wheat orzo
2 Tbs dried Mexican oregano, crushed
2 Tbs ancho chili powder
2 tsp chipotle chili powder
1 Tbs ground cumin
3 Tbs pepper sauce (my homemade)
2 Tbs Worcestershire sauce
good dash of liquid smoke
2 Tbs olive oil

Sauté onions and serrano pepper in olive oil. As onions turn translucent, add the oregano spices (and measures on those are approximate—I just dumped in what seemed to be the right amount). Sauté a bit more, then add the pork. Sauté that for a while, stirring from time to time, then add the remaining ingredients except orzo, bring to simmer, cover, and let cook for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the orzo, and simmer for 10 minutes more. It made about 4 quarts and had a nice moderate burn: a glass of water welcome but not required.

When I cook things like this, I generally add the measured ingredients by sight, not measuring them. 

A late start because I downloaded an earlier version of Logitech Setpoint, uninstalled the current version, renamed the driver file to .BAK status, installed the earlier version, cleaned up the registry, restarted computer, and now I have all the capabilities of the Logitech MX Revolution. One point I learned: the Microsoft Intellipoint mouse driver is incompatible with the Logitech, so that should be uninstalled before you install Setpoint (though obviously you need to uninstall Intellipoint and install Setpoint in the same session, without rebooting, or you have no mouse driver at all—awkward but not impossible to get around).

So everything is temporarily fine.

D.R. Harris Almond shaving cream has a wonderfully strong almond fragrance—and at the end of the shave my skin feels very nice. I think I may have to toss the Erasmic shave stick—too hard on my skin. The Simpsons Key Hole 3 brought forth a wonderful lather, and the Gillette 1940′s Aristocrat did a very nice shave indeed—so nice I checked the blade when I finished: Asco. Not bad at all. And Pinaud Clubman aftershave for an old timey fragrance.

Once those in power fully absorb the lesson that the powerful can break the law and violate the Constitution with impunity, look for substantial changes in how our government works. As all software users know, what good is a feature if you don’t use it? More and more of the powerful will test the breaking of the law and see if they get away with it. Obama is already doing it, ignoring the law embodied in the Convention Against Torture.

So I’m at the far end of the kitchen; around the corner and way down the hall is Megs, sleeping on my pyjamas.

I note her food bowl is down to the last layer of kibble, so I carefully and (I think) quietly open the food jar and add some kibble. As I put the lid back, I look down and there is Miss Megs, chowing down.

She eats her fill, washes her face, and just now when I looked into the bedroom, she was once again asleep on the pyjamas.