Later On

If torture is seen as acceptable in some circumstances, the circumstances tend to expand so that in time you have local police indulging in abuse because it is now, somehow, okay. Read Steven D’s report about what the San Jose Police are up to these days.

Read his entire report. The conclusion:

The common denominator in each of these incidents? The person beaten and/or tased was a member of a minority group. None of them were armed at the time police used this high level of force against them. And the fact that five six people have died after San Jose police used their tasers in the four year period 2004-2008 since 2004 suggests a fondness by the San Jose officers for using this so-called "non-lethal" weapon much too often. I live in a metropolitan area not much smaller than San Jose, yet we’ve had no one die as a result of being tasered to death to my knowledge.

My advice to you if you are a person of color and living in San Jose? Move. ASAP. The police there apparently do not see you as a person to whom the owe a duty to "serve and protect." You can be an upstanding, law abiding citizen living there and apparently that will not matter to the SJPD in the least. Instead, they apparently see you as their enemy, an enemy who deserves whatever punishment they choose to dish out. All in the interest of Public Safety, of course.

I made this up, but it uses standard Italian ingredients and my “making it up” included drawing on memories of cooking previous dishes, so this may be a well recognized recipe. But I was winging it at the time:

Take one 6.7 oz jar of Tonnino tuna (line-caught yellowfin tuna, hand-packed) with oregano and olive oil. (It’s so tasty that I’m buying some fresh oregano to make my own olive-oil infusion of it.)

Pour the oil into a small sauté pan. I also add just a little more olive oil. (I favor Whole Foods Greek extra-virgin olive oil.)

Add 1 pint of tiny plum tomatoes—the size of cherry tomatoes, but plum shaped.

Stir to coat the tomatoes with oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper and just a little crushed red pepper (not enough to make it spicy, just enough to give it some body).

Put those in a pre-heated 400º F oven for 25-30 minutes: you want almost all the tomatoes to break open.

While that cooks, bring a pot of water to boil and cook 2-3 ounces of cut pasta. I used medium shells, which worked nicely. When the pasta is done, drain it.

Remove sauté pan from the oven when the tomatoes are done. Put the pan on the still-hot burner where the pasta cooked (or turn the burner on low if it’s not still hot), and add:

1 minced clove of garlic

When you can smell the garlic fragrance, add:

1 cup finely chopped flat-leaf parsley (enough so that the parsley is the greens in the dish)
1/2 cup pitted Saracena (or Kalamata) olives
The tuna from the jar

Heat and cook briefly, until the parsley wilts, breaking up the tuna into small pieces.

Add the pasta, stir well to mix, and serve.

It’s extremely tasty. Ask The Wife.

UPDATE: Some variations.

An absolutely fascinating post about hypergraphia with some stellar examples, including this comment about Dostoevsky:

Hypergraphia, the behavior is defined as an overwhelming urge to write, often associated with the manic phase of bipolar disorder and with temporal lobe epilepsy (as one in a cluster of symptoms). Influential behavioral neurologist Norman Geschwind described the personality changes that can be observed in persons with temporal lobe epilepsy in a series of lectures¹ and papers from the 1970s and 80s (reviewed in Devinsky & Schachter, 2009). He viewed these changes as:

…resulting from a stimulating lesion in the limbic system. This neurobiology accounted for the overarching increased interictal [time between seizures] emotionality that underlay the increased religious interests, hypergraphia, increased aggression, increased moral and philosophical concerns, viscosity, and seriousness (lack of humor).

Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky is the classic example (see Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, etc.). According to Geschwind,

Dostoevsky typified many personality features of the temporal lobe epileptic—tremendous concern about moral details, many of them small details, extremely pedantic, he was angrily impulsive, an impossible person to live with in every way, and extremely aggressive, even toward people who had befriended him. Yet he was also deeply emotional and despite these negative personality traits, many of those close to him felt a strong emotional bond.

From Dostoevsky, by Richard Freeborn.
Also see Dostoevsky’s Doodles,
an exhibit held at the Harriman Institute.

In 1974 Waxman and Geschwind (reprinted in 2005) described copious writing and temporal lobe seizures in a series of patients: …

Read the whole thing.

From this post.

It’s not some psychological problem, it’s a real illness. Jon Hamilton reports at NPR:

Scientists have uncovered a strong link between an unusual virus and chronic fatigue syndrome, which affects more than 1 million people in the United States.

Researchers found that two-thirds of people with chronic fatigue are infected with a retrovirus called XMRV, according to a new study in the journal Science Express. XMRV has also been found in the tumors of some prostate cancer patients.

Scientists say it’s too soon to say whether XMRV actually causes chronic fatigue.

People with the syndrome feel tired even after a good night’s sleep. Many also have debilitating pain in their muscles or joints, trouble concentrating and immune problems.

The new study compared blood samples from 101 chronic fatigue patients with samples from 218 healthy people. About 67 percent of the sick people had XMRV, compared with fewer than 4 percent of healthy people.

XMRV and other retroviruses are known to infect immune cells. XMRV has been found in some prostate tumors. It’s also related to a retrovirus that causes cancer in animals.

The best-known retrovirus is HIV. But scientists say XMRV is simpler, and not a close relative.

Read the rest of this entry »

This post by Paul Rosenberg uses material from the online slideshow presentation accompanying the 2007 report, National Security and the Threat of Climate Change, Center for Naval Analysis, 2007. It begins:

On this international day of global warming action, it’s quite clear that the US remains the biggest impediment to effective action to avoid catastrophic global warming. There are many reasons for this, not least is the failure of progressives to mount an effective counter-campaign against the massive flood conservative disinformation.  If we want to fix the problem of America’s Neanderthal self-destructive politics of global warming, then we need to look at this failure and how to correct it.  One key to this is the blindingly obvious argument that global warming constitutes an overwhelming threat to our national security—which is the main thrust of this diary. However, that’s just one basic point among several that should have been driven into the heads of every single American voter—no, every single American resident—as a basic pre-requisite for having a responsible debate about how to deal with global warming.  Here is a sample of such points (more in the extended entry):

(1) There is no scientific debate about global warming. The peer-reviewed literature—which is where such a debate would happen if did exist—has virtually no papers questioning the basic logic of global warming.  This unanimity dates back to the early 1990s.

(2) The purely economic costs of global warming will vastly exceed the economic costs of preventing it.  This point was first made widely understood via the Stern Review.

(3) The threat of global warming goes far beyond economic costs, to threaten the very security of our nation.  Natural disasters have threatened the stability and even the existence of human societies for thousands of years.  In addition to direct threats, the stresses placed on one society can lead military invasions of others, as well as less dramatic results—such as mass migrations or prolonged political instability—which can place intense burdens on the military, police, and other security-related state functions.  Because global warming will increase the impact of natural disaster on all nations at the same time over a period of centuries, the security impacts will be unprecedented in human history.

Read the rest of this entry »

KarenM at Firedoglake:

Elyse Siegel at HuffPost has a new story about Anthony Weiner in his campaign to humiliate Republicans into supporting, or at least not sabotaging, a robust public option.

His most recent tactic has been to publish the name of 55 Republicans–in both the Senate and the House– who are on Medicare themselves, and yet oppose making a public option available to either the uninsured or those with insurance they can hardly afford now.

On Thursday, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) called on 55 Republican adversaries of the public option to give up their government-funded health insurance. The congressman argued that it is hypocritical for Senate and House members receiving “government-administered single-payer health care — Medicare” to oppose making such coverage available to the American public.

“Even in a town known for hypocrisy, this list of 55 Members of Congress deserve some sort of prize,” Weiner wrote. “They apparently think the public option is ok for them, but not anyone else.”

And from Rep. Weiner’s home page, we have the complete list:

Rep. Ralph M. Hall
Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett
Rep. Sam Johnson
Rep. C.W. Bill Young
Rep. Howard Coble
Sen. Jim Bunning
Sen. Richard G. Lugar
Rep. Don Young
Sen. Charles E. Grassley
Sen. Robert F. Bennett
Rep. Vernon J. Ehlers
Sen. Orrin G. Hatch
Sen. Richard C. Shelby
Rep. Jerry Lewis
Sen. James M. Inhofe
Rep. Ron Paul
Rep. Henry E. Brown
Sen. Pat Roberts
Sen. George V. Voinovich
Sen. John McCain
Rep. Judy Biggert
Sen. Thad Cochran
Rep. Harold Rogers
Rep. Dan Burton
Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon
Rep. Frank R. Wolf
Sen. Christopher S. Bond
Rep. Michael N. Castle
Rep. Joe Pitts
Rep. Tom Petri
Sen. Lamar Alexander
Rep. Doc Hastings
Rep. Cliff Stearns
Rep. Sue Myrick
Rep. John Carter
Sen. Mitch McConnell
Sen. Jon Kyl
Rep. Phil Gingrey
Rep. Nathan Deal
Rep. John Linder
Rep. Kay Granger
Rep. John L. Mica
Rep. Walter B. Jones
Sen. Jim Risch
Rep. Ed Whitfield
Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner
Rep. Virginia Foxx
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison
Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite
Sen. Saxby Chambliss
Sen. Michael B. Enzi
Rep. Elton Gallegly
Rep. Donald Manzullo
Rep. Peter T. King
Rep. Ander Crenshaw

Rather than term limits, perhaps we should be considering age limits.

Update: Apparently their former colleague, Chuck Hagel, agrees that the Republican Party is acting irresponsibly on the health care issue. Read and/or watch here.

Anthony Tarricone, President of the American Association for Justice, at Firedoglake:

In the immortal words of the 43^rd President of the United States, “fool me once, shame on you. Fool me … you can’t get fooled again.”

Tort reform has made fools out of a lot of people for many years. First, it is touted as the answer for doctor’s skyrocketing premiums, then for the exploding cost of health care. Yet time after time, the only group that ever really profits from it is the insurance industry.

In the early part of the decade, doctors clamored for tort reform in response to insurance companies jacking up their rates for malpractice insurance. Now, 46 states have passed some version of it. But ironically, malpractice premiums are lower in states without caps. Doctors did not benefit, and the patients who had their rights eliminated certainly did not benefit. So who came out winners from a decade of destroying the civil justice system?

That would be the insurance industry. Tort law changes made medical negligence cases so difficult to pursue that claims dropped precipitously. Between 2000 and 2006, the amount of money insurance companies paid out decreased by 15%. But that did not help the doctors because insurance companies never passed on those savings. In fact, the amount of money insurance companies took in from doctors increased by 120%.

Read the rest of this entry »

Some people are strongly against genetic research and using genes to make changes in living organisms—but such things do have a bright side:

Born with a retinal disease that made him legally blind, and would eventually leave him totally sightless, the nine-year-old boy used to sit in the back of the classroom, relying on the large print on an electronic screen and assisted by teacher aides. Now, after a single injection of genes that produce light-sensitive pigments in the back of his eye, he sits in front with classmates and participates in class without extra help. In the playground, he joins his classmates in playing his first game of softball. His treatment represents the next step toward medical science’s goal of using gene therapy to cure disease. Extending a preliminary study published last year on three young adults, the full study reports successful, sustained results that showed notable improvement in children with congenital blindness.

The study, conducted by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and the Center for Cellular and Molecular Therapeutics at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, used gene therapy to safely improve vision in five children and seven adults with Leber’s congenital amaurosis (LCA). The greatest improvements occurred in the children, all of whom are now able to navigate a low-light obstacle course—one result that the researchers call "spectacular."

"This result is an exciting one for the entire field of gene therapy," said Katherine A. High, M.D., co-first author of the study and the director of the Center for Cellular and Molecular Therapeutics, the facility that sponsored the clinical trial at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. High, an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a past president of the American Society of Gene Therapy, has been a pioneer in translational and clinical studies of gene therapy for genetic disease. "This study reports dramatic results in restoring vision to patients who previously had no options for treatment," said High. "These findings may expedite development of gene therapy for more common retinal diseases, such as age-related macular degeneration."

Although the patients did not attain normal eyesight, half of them (six of 12) improved enough that they may no longer be classified as legally blind. "The clinical benefits have persisted for nearly two years since the first subjects were treated with injections of therapeutic genes into their retinas," said senior author Jean Bennett, M.D., Ph.D., F.M. Kirby professor of Ophthalmology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. For Bennett, the results build on nearly 20 years of gene studies on hereditary blindness, starting with pioneering work in mice and dogs. "These remarkable results," she added, "have laid a foundation for applying gene therapy not only to other forms of childhood-onset retinal disease, but also to more common retinal degenerations."

The study team reported their findings today in an online article in The Lancet.

Read the rest of this entry »

They are purely and simply obstructionist, with no interest at all in moving forward or finding good compromises. Example provided by Kevin Drum:

The Republican effort to block Obama’s nominees to federal judgeships is, truly, without precedent.  In the past there have always been a few high-profile fights, as well as a general slowdown toward the end of most presidencies when the minority party hopes that a few months of stalling will allow them to take office and fill the vacancies themselves.  It’s not pretty, but not surprising either.

But this presidency is different.  Republicans are holding up everyone, and they’re doing it during Obama’s first year.  Not a single appellate judge has gotten a vote yet:

And it’s not just judicial nominees. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, pointing to the difficulties of responding to the global flu pandemic, recently noted that the Senate isn’t allowed to vote on a surgeon general, because Republicans refuse to let Regina Benjamin’s nomination come to the floor. "We are facing a major pandemic, we have a well-qualified candidate for surgeon general, she’s been through the committee process. We just need a vote in the Senate," Sebelius said late last week. "Please give us a surgeon general."

….People for the American Way reported last week that between 1949 and 2009 — spanning 11 presidents — there were 24 nominees on which cloture was forced. In the first nine months of Obama’s first year in office, there have been five, meaning Senate Republicans on track to force more cloture votes on more Obama nominees than practically every modern president combined.

That’s Steve Benen, who points out accurately, "And that doesn’t include the secret and not-so-secret holds."  Temper tantrum politics is alive and well in the modern Republican Party.

It is indeed pleasant to have a camera in one’s pocket. For example, across the street from Toasties is the Pacific Grove Post Office, in front of which stand the Butterfly Kids:

Click to enlarge—click again to enlarge more. The same goes for this photo of a Watch Cat watching me:

She’s perched atop a narrow 6′ tall bookcase.

More and more I’m reading thoughtful writers who describe clearly the genesis and growth of an imperial push by the US, and the likely collapse of that empire. See, for example, this wonderful and enthralling talk by a guy who was involved and who clearly knows that he’s talking about: Speaking Freely Vol 4: Chalmers Johnson. Truly, it is fascinating and eye-opening. It’s available as a Watch Instantly movie.

And here’s another insider speaking out:

Interesting story by Gretchen Morgenson in the NY Times:

FOR decades, when troubled homeowners and banks battled over delinquent mortgages, it wasn’t a contest. Homes went into foreclosure, and lenders took control of the property.

On top of that, courts rubber-stamped the array of foreclosure charges that lenders heaped onto borrowers and took banks at their word when the lenders said they owned the mortgage notes underlying troubled properties.

In other words, with lenders in the driver’s seat, borrowers were run over, more often than not. Of course, errant borrowers hardly deserve sympathy from bankers or anyone else, and banks are well within their rights to try to protect their financial interests.

But if our current financial crisis has taught us anything, it is that many borrowers entered into mortgage agreements without a clear understanding of the debt they were incurring. And banks often lacked a clear understanding of whether all those borrowers could really repay their loans.

Even so, banks and borrowers still do battle over foreclosures on an unlevel playing field that exists in far too many courtrooms. But some judges are starting to scrutinize the rules-don’t-matter methods used by lenders and their lawyers in the recent foreclosure wave. On occasion, lenders are even getting slapped around a bit.

Read the rest of this entry »

Dan Colman blogs:

Yale University has added its third batch of courses to its open education initiative, bringing the total number of courses to 25. (Find the complete list here.) The latest round is slightly bigger than previous ones, which bucks the trend that we’re generally seeing. (Open Courses have been in a noticeable slump for the past year.) Below, I have listed the newly added courses and provided links to iTunes, YouTube, and pages where you can download the courses in various other formats. I have also added these courses to our collection of Free Online Courses from top universities. This collection now features over 250 free courses, all ready to download to your computer or mp3 player. iPhone owners can also find many other courses on our free iPhone app.

• Dante in Translation – iTunes – YouTube – Download Course – Giuseppe Mazzotta
• European Civilization, 1648-1945 – iTunes – YouTube – Download Course - Professor John Merriman
• Freshman Organic Chemistry – iTunes – YouTube – Download Course – Professor J. Michael McBride
• Global Problems of Population Growth – iTunes – YouTube – Download Course - Professor Robert Wyman
• Introduction to New Testament History and Literature – iTunes – YouTube – Download Course – Professor Dale B. Martin
• Introduction to Theory of Literature – iTunes – YouTube – Download Course – Professor Paul H. Fry
• Listening to Music – Download Course – Professor Craig Wright
• Principles of Evolution, Ecology and Behavior – iTunes – YouTube – Download Course – Professor Stephen C. Stearns
• The Psychology, Biology and Politics of Food – Download Course – Professor Kelly D. Brownell
• Roman Architecture – iTunes – YouTube – Download Course – Diana E. E. Kleiner

Amazing the Senators you can buy with a little cash. From an email from the Center for American Progress:

On Thursday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) thrust himself into the technology issues debate by introducing the "Internet Freedom Act." The legislation would prohibit the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from making sure that Internet service providers don’t create a pay-for-play system where they could selectively block or slow content and applications. "This government takeover of the Internet will stifle innovation, in turn slowing our economic turnaround and further depressing an already anemic job market," read McCain’s press release. "Outside of health care, the technology industry is the nation’s fastest growing job market. … Just this month, Google and Yahoo both released positive earnings reports." It’s ironic that McCain cited Google and Yahoo as examples of why net neutrality rules need to be blocked given the fact that both companies have said that without such measures, the "longstanding openness of the Internet" will be threatened. However, telecoms largely support blocking net neutrality rules, and McCain is a long-time friend of these businesses. McCain was the top recipient of campaign contributions from the telecom industry in the past two years, taking in $894,379. Even as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee from 1997 to 2001 and again from 2003 to 2005, McCain made sure to craft technology rules that benefited his campaign donors. He opposed a program designed to provide discounts to schools and libraries to connect to the Internet and supported large telecom mergers. McCain is an unlikely point person for technology policy. Just last year, called himself a computer "illiterate who has to rely on my wife for all of the assistance that I can get." In July 2008, he said he has "never felt the particular need to e-mail."

And I completely agree. Today’s editorial:

The Obama administration has clung for so long to the Bush administration’s expansive claims of national security and executive power that it is in danger of turning President George W. Bush’s cover-up of abuses committed in the name of fighting terrorism into President Barack Obama’s cover-up.

We have had recent reminders of this dismaying retreat from Mr. Obama’s passionate campaign promises to make a break with Mr. Bush’s abuses of power, a shift that denies justice to the victims of wayward government policies and shields officials from accountability.

In Britain earlier this month, a two-judge High Court panel rejected arguments made first by the Bush team and now by the Obama team and decided to make public seven redacted paragraphs in American intelligence documents relating to torture allegations by a former prisoner at Guantánamo Bay. The prisoner, Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian-born British national, says he was tortured in Pakistan, Morocco and at a C.I.A.-run prison outside Kabul before being transferred to Guantánamo. He was freed in February.

To block the release of those paragraphs, the Bush administration threatened to cut its intelligence-sharing with Britain, an inappropriate threat that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton repeated. But the court concluded that the actual risk of harm to intelligence-sharing was minimal, given the close relationship between the two countries. The court also found a “compelling public interest” in disclosure, and said that nothing in the disputed seven paragraphs — a summary of evidence relating to the involvement of the British security services in Mr. Mohamed’s ordeal — had anything to do with “secret intelligence.”

The Obama administration has expressed unhappiness with the ruling, and the British government plans to appeal. But the court was clearly right in recognizing the importance of disclosure “for reasons of democratic accountability and the rule of law.”

In the United States, the Obama administration is in the process of appealing a sound federal appellate court ruling last April in a civil lawsuit by Mr. Mohamed and four others. All were victims of the government’s extraordinary rendition program, under which foreigners were kidnapped and flown to other countries for interrogation and torture.

In that case, the Obama administration has repeated a disreputable Bush-era argument that the executive branch is entitled to have lawsuits shut down whenever it makes a blanket claim of national security. The ruling rejected that argument and noted that the government’s theory would “effectively cordon off all secret actions from judicial scrutiny, immunizing the C.I.A. and its partners from the demands and limits of the law.”

The Obama administration has aggressively pursued such immunity in numerous other cases beyond the ones involving Mr. Mohamed. We do not take seriously the government’s claim that it is trying to protect intelligence or avoid harm to national security…

Continue reading. And read Glenn Greenwald’s comment as well.

“Vanilla” meaning “usual” as well as “vanilla.” In fact it was typically wonderful Monday shave—the only thing that keeps me from shaving on Sunday is looking forward to the Monday shave: a two-day stubble mowed down by the power of the Slant. The Vanilla Cream shave stick from Honeybee Spa produce a very fine lather, helped by the Simpsons Persian Jar 2 Super, and then the still relatively fresh Astra Keramik Platinum blade in the Slant Bar wiped away the softened stubble. A splash of Raw Vanilla was an appropriate and pleasant finish.

The silk we use normally comes from silkworms rather than spiders, although spider silk is exceptionally strong. This tapestry is woven completely from spider dragline silk:

The story, at NPR:

This week in New York, the American Museum of Natural History unveiled something never before seen: an 11-by-4-foot tapestry made completely of spider silk.

Weavers in Madagascar took four years to make it, and the museum says there’s no other like it in the world.

It’s now in a glass case at the museum. The color is a radiant gold — the natural color of the golden orb-weaving spider, from the Nephila genus, one that’s found in several parts of the world.

Simon Peers, a textile maker who lives in Madagascar, conceived the project. Weaving spider silk is not traditional there; a French missionary dreamed it up over a century ago but failed at it. The only known spider silk tapestry was shown in Paris in 1900 but then disappeared.

Peers researched previous attempts, then teamed up with fashion expert Nicholas Godley to hire local weavers to try the near-impossible.

"They did think we were insane," Godley says. "It was actually hard to find people who were willing to collect and work with spiders. I think most people are arachnophobes. I mean, I am, and they bite."

The task of silking a spider starts with a small machine — designed centuries ago when the first attempts to silk spiders were begun — that holds the spider down.

"The spiders are harnessed … held down in a delicate way," Godley says, "so you need people to do this who are very tactile so the spiders are not harmed. So there’s a chain of about 80 people who go out every morning at four o’clock, collect spiders, we get them in by 10 o’clock. They’re in boxes, they’re numbered, and then as they get silked, about 20 minutes later, they get released back into nature."  …

Continue reading.