Later On

That didn’t take long because the (free) shipping is via USPS Priority Mail. The two kettlebells arrived in two medium flat-rate Priority Mail boxes. Postage was $11.45 each. Very fast delivery.

Montel Williams uses marijuana to combat the effects of multiple sclerosis. Hear what he says.

Andrew Sullivan has an excellent post on this:

This blog, along with others, compiled some anecdotes and research to show how the New York Times had always called "waterboarding" torture – until the Bush-Cheney administration came along. Instead of challenging this government lie, the NYT simply echoed it, with Bill Keller taking instructions from John Yoo on a key, legally salient etymology. Now, we have the first truly comprehensive study of how Bill Keller, and the editors of most newspapers, along with NPR, simply rolled over and became mouthpieces for war criminals, rather than telling the unvarnished truth to their readers and listeners in plain English:

Examining the four newspapers with the highest daily circulation in the country, we found a significant and sudden shift in how newspapers characterized waterboarding. From the early 1930s until the modern story broke in 2004, the newspapers that covered waterboarding almost uniformly called the practice torture or implied it was torture: The New York Times characterized it thus in 81.5% (44 of 54) of articles on the subject and The Los Angeles Times did so in 96.3% of articles (26 of 27).

By contrast, from 2002‐2008, the studied newspapers almost never referred to waterboarding as torture. The New York Times called waterboarding torture or implied it was torture in just 2 of 143 articles (1.4%). The Los Angeles Times did so in 4.8% of articles (3 of 63). The Wall Street Journal characterized the practice as torture in just 1 of 63 articles (1.6%). USA Today never called waterboarding torture or implied it was torture.

In addition, the newspapers are much more likely to call waterboarding torture if a country other than the United States is the perpetrator. In The New York Times, 85.8% of articles (28 of 33) that dealt with a country other than the United States using waterboarding called it torture or implied it was torture while only 7.69% (16 of 208) did so when the United States was responsible. The Los Angeles Times characterized the practice as torture in 91.3% of articles (21 of 23) when another country was the violator, but in only 11.4% of articles (9 of 79) when the United States was the perpetrator.

So the NYT went from calling waterboarding torture 81.5 percent of the time to calling it such 1.4 percent of the time. Had the technique changed? No. Only the government implementing torture and committing war crimes changed. If the US does it, it’s not torture.

The editors who insisted on these changes remain liars and cowards and a disgrace to journalism and a free society. They should quit for this kind of open deception and craven cowardice in putting power before truth. They remind you that if you really want to understand what is going on in the world, the New York Times will only publish what the government deems is fit to print – even in its choice of words.

DO NOT MISS reading the study.

Wonderful article, via Steve of Kafeneio.

Greenwald quite carefully and factually addresses some of Jeffrey Goldberg’s faulty arguments (in this post), and then Joe Klein goes crazy and responds in a way to does him considerable discredit (here’s the post, and be sure to read the comments: Klein’s readers seem to be considerably smarter than he is), thus providing an excellent example of why the mainstream media is so rightly distrusted: they can’t seem to grasp quite simple arguments, and they get hysterical when someone not in the Village does good reportage (e.g., Michael Hasting’s Rolling Stone article on Gen. McChrystal). In that hysteria, they reveal that they see their job primarily as publicists working on behalf of the rich and powerful.

John Cole also has a good post on the exchange.

Some readers don’t much like Greenwald, but I’m having a hard time understanding the specific reasons for the dislike. I get things like "he’s narcissistic" (with no evidence appended). I can’t do much with that, but in my reading Greenwald is quite careful in his arguments and strong in his defense of civil rights and the US Constitution.

And, in summary, Greenwald has an excellent column that demonstrates with examples of how subservient to the government the media have become.

An excellent review of the tenets of homeopathy. Highly recommended. It begins (click to enlarge):

Continue reading.

So far I have lost a total of 7 lbs, not very much considering I’ve been on the program for more than 3 weeks. I talked to my diet counselor today, and she suggested that I drop the evening snack since I go to bed early (around 9:00) after eating around 6:00. That should help. And once I get into the aerobic exercises (e.g., the kettlebell swing, vigorous walking), it should go even better.

Last night I had some pseudo-meat on a stick: “BBQ Cubes On A Stick”. There were 4 sticks in the package, each with 4 cubes of whatever it was, with 2 sticks being a serving. I automatically took out two sticks for dinner, wrapped up the other two and put them in the fridge for tomorrow. As I was eating, I got to thinking about this behavior (I’m still watching me like a hawk). Normally I would have looked at the package, asked myself, “Can I eat that much comfortably?”, and answered, “Yes” and so would have eaten both servings, feeling as though it was really one serving.

I realized that I had been looking upon a “serving” as “an amount of that food that I can eat comfortably,” which is how I got to eating 3 thick-cut lamb chops for dinner: each having a net weight (sans bone) of 6 ounces, so the three were 18 ounces: 4.5 times one actual serving, which is the amount I should eat for a meal.

In fact, one can comfortably eat quite a large meal in terms of one’s actual needs (assuming you’re as sedentary as I). Indeed, that’s probably a contribution from evolution: our hunter-gatherer ancestors doubtless had many days of short rations, so when they actually had a surplus, it would have been very bad if they could not comfortably eat any more than the minimum to which they had grown accustomed. It’s good (in a sense) that we can quite comfortably eat much more food than we actually need to get through to the next meal—in those days, hundreds of thousands of years before the all-you-can-eat buffet.

But now I’m regaining the modern idea of “one serving”: the amount of whatever that I should eat.

Another thought I had is that these days I eat a well-balanced diet like clockwork: 10-12 oz of protein, 4 servings of starch, 6 servings of veggies (steamed and/or as a salad), 3 servings of fruit. I had thought about this earlier this year, but it just seemed too difficult. Now it’s a snap. I thought about why:

a. I have a definite, specific program to follow.

b. I keep track of what I eat in a food journal.

c. The fee is highly motivating: I paid for this counseling, and if I don’t lose weight, I’ll feel like a chump. So I’m being quite careful to avoid being a chump.

d. I meet with the diet counselor three times a week.

As a result: it’s easy to stick with a healthful diet..

I’m very pleased to cut out that last snack, which included a starch. The 4th starch was always a problem.

UPDATE: Thus, as is obvious, a “serving” came to mean “as much of that particular dish as I want to eat.” Totally driven by appetite: gluttony (a mortal sin). How it happens: I’m still looking for my copy of Wolinsky’s Trances People Live, and I think that will prove illuminating (as, indeed, Daniel Goleman’s Vital Lies, Simple Truths: The Psychology of Self-Deception already is).

Barry Estabrook:

Prince Edward Island bills itself as a bucolic haven of pristine beaches, white clapboard farmhouses, and quaint fishing villages. But the province is also home to one of the scariest places I’ve ever visited. There, in 2002, I toured a small warehouse-like building housing a dozen aquariums containing salmon that were genetically modified to grow twice as fast as normal salmon.

In one tank, a biologist showed me fish that were about the size of hot dogs. In an adjacent tank, salmon easily the size of my forearm paddled in listless circles. The fish in the two tanks were exactly the same age and had been fed identical diets. The giants, however, carried a gene that from a cold-water dwelling ocean pout that continuously enabled them to produce a growth hormone. Normal salmon stop excreting growth hormones when water temperatures cool.

So far, the Frankenfish have been confined to the laboratory. But that may change. Last week, AquaBounty Technologies, the company that bioengineered the salmon, told the New York Times that it had completed most of the steps required for Food and Drug Administration approval. “Perhaps in the next few months, we expect to see a final approval,” Ronald Stotish, the company’s president said to the Times.

Stotish told the newspaper that his “AquAdvantage” fish were “identical in every measureable way” (no pun intended, one assumes) to traditional farmed Atlantic salmon and therefore having to label them as genetically modified would be “misleading.”

Shortly after visiting the P.E. I. laboratory, I began steering clear of farmed salmon. AquAdvantage’s pending approval is yet another reason I’m glad I did.

Acid Rain Redux

Remember acid rain? The stuff that was killing our lakes and denuding our mountain tops? The stuff that was supposed to be a thing of the past, thanks to reduced sulfur dioxide emissions? Well, acid rain is back and worse than ever, only this time the culprit isn’t coal-fired power plants, it’s farms.

Writing on Grist, markbittman.com contributor Tom Laskawy, in his usual clearheaded way, explains that industrial has given us an acidic “double-whammy.” Chemical fertilizers spread on fields produce ammonia vapor. Feedlots full of tens of thousands of animals fed crops grown on those fields also emit ammonia. All that ammonia produces nitric acid, which returns to the earth as poisonous rain, that as as Laskway points out is even worse for the environment that the sulfuric acid emissions of yore. His article makes for a chilling must read on a drizzly summer’s day.

Land of Milk and Money

During the recession, the market for organic milk tanked, along with the rest of the economy. In an unprecedented move, Organic Valley, the country’s largest organic dairy, told the 1,600 farmers that supply it with milk to cut their production by 7 percent. It enabled the company to keep paying the same rate for the milk it purchased, which is about twice what conventional milk sells for.

Last week, Organic Valley announced that farmers could go back to 100 percent production beginning Aug. 1 in light of improved market conditions. “Raising the quota is a great accomplishment for our farmer-owned cooperative, and a testament to our democratic process, said company “C-I-E-I-O,” George Siemon, in a press release. “One year ago, we committed to create a sustainable solution through a supply management program to avoid farmer pay cuts.”

Interestingly, Siemon’s announcement came about the same time that Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack was meeting in Wisconsin, Organic Valley’s home state, with 500 dairy farmers, industry representatives, and politics from across the country to hear grievances about the on-going dairy crises. At that meetings, there were pleas to change the milk-pricing formula and calls to prosecute big dairy firms for antitrust violations. But I didn’t read any mention of an approach that worked in at least one proven case: supply management.

We had some conversation on crutches, which opened my eyes to how invaluable a crutch is and how we should regard a crutch highly, rather than condemning it by reflex, as people do. Here’s a wonderful crutch (in the literal sense):

Read the review at Cool Tools.

Ed O’Keefe in the Washington Post:

Many disgruntled workers file grievances with their union or write a letter to the editor, but a half dozen federal employees have turned to the big screen to raise concerns with the nation’s airport security.

"Please Remove Your Shoes" [see trailer or the entire movie at the link – LG] uses the experiences of current and former employees of the Federal Air Marshals, Federal Aviation Administration and Transportation Security Administration to argue that FAA officials frequently turned a blind eye to significant security threats in the years before the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The workers argue that lawmakers later compounded existing problems by reflexively establishing TSA.

"We took the same organizational template and same counterterrorist template verbatim and reapplied it under a new label and new people and threw some more money at it," said Fred Gevalt, the film’s producer and a long time aviation industry observer. "But there are still some fundamental errors."

Gevalt and his team spent almost two years and “six figures” exploring the topic. The film debuts Wednesday evening at the Landmark E Street Cinema in Washington, less than a week after the Senate confirmed FBI Deputy Director John Pistole as TSA administrator.

Brian Sullivan, a retired FAA special agent who narrates the film, said Pistole’s experience with intelligence and counterterrorism will lend well to his new role. And the documentary, though slanted, could help balance his early perceptions of TSA.

"He’s going to come on board and TSA management will give him in briefings, but their presentations will be equally slanted in terms of putting the best foot forward," Sullivan said.

The FAA declined to comment, and TSA declined Gevalt’s invitation to participate in the documentary.

"TSA is a young agency and many of the allegations raised in the film are past issues that have been long since addressed," said agency spokesman Greg Soule. "TSA has significantly improved aviation security following the tragic events of 9-11."

The film’s central focus in airport security, but it also chronicles the struggles commonly faced by federal whistleblowers, including threats, demotions and reassignments to the graveyard shift for speaking out.

"Raising issues and challenging management’s position on security issues, it sidetracks your career," said Sullivan, who spent years alerting FAA officials and lawmakers of potential threats. He’s irked by suggestions that the film is a televised airing of his grievances.

“When I saw the two planes flying into the World Trade Center, I knew what it was instantly," Sullivan said. "I cried, I felt like throwing up. I criticized myself, I said, ‘What the hell is the matter with me? Am I so inarticulate? Do I not know how to write or speak? Why couldn’t I have prevented this? I’ve gotten over that, I know I did what I could."

The software he discusses is being used in this Oil Spill Crisis Map, a specific implementation of Ushahidi.com.

As has been pointed out many times, marijuana use can be detect in blood tests for as much as 30 days after use, long after the effects of the drug have worn off. The result is that a weekend marijuana user will fail drug tests the following week—but if he instead uses cocaine or crack cocaine or crystal meth or any of several other hard drugs, then the Monday after heavy usage on Friday night and Saturday, he will test clean. Drug testing, in other words, drives recreational users from marijuana to hard drugs, simply so they can avoid being detected on a workplace test.

That’s not good, even for recreational users: the hard drugs are dangerous, whereas marijuana is not. But medical marijuana users don’t have the option of moving to hard drugs: if marijuana helps them, then they will have to use marijuana, which is legal for medical use now in 14 states.

But Wal-Mart didn’t get the word. David Rune for Associated Press:

A man who uses medical marijuana to treat symptoms of an inoperable brain tumor and cancer claims in a lawsuit filed Tuesday he was wrongfully fired from a Walmart store in Michigan after testing positive for the drug.

Joseph Casias was fired last year after five years on the job in Battle Creek despite being legally registered with the state to use the drug, according to the lawsuit against the world’s largest retailer in state court.

Casias, 30, said he didn’t use marijuana at work or come to work under the influence. Scott Michelman, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, said the lawsuit aims to test the extent that Michigan’s law protects employees.

"No patient should be forced to choose between adequate pain relief and gainful employment, and no employer should be allowed to intrude upon private medical choices made by employees in consultation with their doctors," Michelman said.

Michigan voters approved medical marijuana use in 2008. Federal law still prohibits the sale and cultivation of the drug.

Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said in a statement that it is an "unfortunate situation all around." It said it is sympathetic to Casias’ condition but said it is an issue of customer and employee safety.

"The doctor prescribed treatment was not the relevant issue. The issue is about the ability of our associates to do their jobs safely," the company said. "As more states allow this treatment, employers are left without any guidelines except the federal standard."

Casias’ drug test was given after he injured his knee at work in November, but the positive result on the urine test only indicated drug use in recent days or weeks, according to the lawsuit in Calhoun County Circuit Court. Casias said the injury had nothing to do with marijuana use; he simply stepped the wrong way…

Continue reading. Note the enormous leap in logic: "The issue is about the ability of our associates to do their jobs safely." But the drug test doesn’t decide that. The drug test only detects that marijuana has been used sometime in the past month or so—a fact that the person using medical marijuana would certainly accept. But that is irrelevant to doing the job safely or not. If he doesn’t come to work stoned, he can do the job as safely as anyone. (And, in fact, many people who never use drugs at all still manage to have accidents on the job: the drug test certainly doesn’t guarantee the ability of an employee to do the job safely, otherwise simply testing for drugs would eliminate all accidents—and it doesn’t. It doesn’t even prevent bone-headed management decisions like this one.

Maybe we can all admit now that the War on Drugs has been a complete and utter disaster, a failure of amazing magnitude (and expense). Commenter Dale points out this story by Michael Smith in Bloomberg:

Just before sunset on April 10, 2006, a DC-9 jet landed at the international airport in the port city of Ciudad del Carmen, 500 miles east of Mexico City. As soldiers on the ground approached the plane, the crew tried to shoo them away, saying there was a dangerous oil leak. So the troops grew suspicious and searched the jet.

They found 128 black suitcases, packed with 5.7 tons of cocaine, valued at $100 million. The stash was supposed to have been delivered from Caracas to drug traffickers in Toluca, near Mexico City, Mexican prosecutors later found. Law enforcement officials also discovered something else.

The smugglers had bought the DC-9 with laundered funds they transferred through two of the biggest banks in the U.S.: Wachovia Corp. and Bank of America Corp., Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its August 2010 issue.

This was no isolated incident. Wachovia, it turns out, had made a habit of helping move money for Mexican drug smugglers. Wells Fargo & Co., which bought Wachovia in 2008, has admitted in court that its unit failed to monitor and report suspected money laundering by narcotics traffickers — including the cash used to buy four planes that shipped a total of 22 tons of cocaine.

The admission came in an agreement that Charlotte, North Carolina-based Wachovia struck with federal prosecutors in March, and it sheds light on the largely undocumented role of U.S. banks in contributing to the violent drug trade that has convulsed Mexico for the past four years.

Wachovia admitted it didn’t do enough to spot illicit funds in handling $378.4 billion for Mexican-currency-exchange houses from 2004 to 2007. That’s the largest violation of the Bank Secrecy Act, an anti-money-laundering law, in U.S. history — a sum equal to one-third of Mexico’s current gross domestic product.

“Wachovia’s blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations,” says Jeffrey Sloman, the federal prosecutor who handled the case.

Since 2006, more than 22,000 people have been killed in drug-related battles that have raged mostly along the 2,000-mile (3,200-kilometer) border that Mexico shares with the U.S. In the Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez, just across the border from El Paso, Texas, 700 people had been murdered this year as of mid- June. Six Juarez police officers were slaughtered by automatic weapons fire in a midday ambush in April.

Rondolfo Torre, the leading candidate for governor in the Mexican border state of Tamaulipas, was gunned down yesterday, less than a week before elections in which violence related to drug trafficking was a central issue.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon vowed to crush the drug cartels when he took office in December 2006, and he’s since deployed 45,000 troops to fight the cartels. They’ve had little success.

Among the dead are police, soldiers, journalists and ordinary citizens. The U.S. has pledged Mexico $1.1 billion in the past two years to aid in the fight against narcotics cartels…

Continue reading. It seems obvious that we are taking the wrong approach.

I got a very fine lather from Geo. F. Trumper’s GFT shaving cream, using the Edwin Jagger synthetic-bristle brush. The Mühle porcelain-handled razor with a Swedish Gillette blade did three smooth passes, and then a liberal splash of Musgo Real finished the job.