Later On

I tried another brushless shaving cream I have on hand: this Avalon Organics was recommended for use on the third-pass: rub a little over your beard, then do the ATG pass.

The first thing I discovered is that this cream does not lather AT ALL, and it also gums up your brush. I did the first pass only, then washed out the brush and switched to Cremo Shave Cream for the next two passes, since it does lather. I won’t be using this one again.

A good shave with a Gillette British Aristocrat—Lando, do you know the model number? It holds a Iridium Super blade and it did a fine job. Then a good big splash of Paul Sebastian aftershave to finish the job.

I already lost my food journal, and I need it for tomorrow’s meeting.

—-

Found it! (On shelf beside my chair, but at the back and not visible from above.)

Right now the GOP is simply not worth commenting on: they are obstructive, incoherent, stupid, willfully ignorant, and have absolutely no interest in governing the country. The whole idea seems to be to get in, make as much money as you can helping large corporations, and get out: it’s a personal enrichment scheme. In the rare event that some member of the GOP says something rational, I’ll try to note it, but really that party has become hopeless. They can’t even lie well—Ike Skelton of Missouri Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) admitted that the Bush bailouts and tax cuts had added to the debt, but he blamed on the the Secretary of the Treasury, Hank Paulson, whom he said was a Democrat. He’s not. He’s as Republican as you can get. [Sorry for the error: It was Ike Skelton who said that the military should not end DADT because then children might ask about the event and it would be very uncomfortable to explain to them. See this video:]

And Rubio, who has been blasting the government for ages as worthless, incompetent, and wasteful, wants the government to come to Florida to help them recover from the spill—the very government that he… it’s hard to write about these worthless pieces of shit, I find.

And now the Chamber of Commerce (and John Boehner, majority leader of the House) think that the “government” (i.e., you and me and all the other taxpayers) should pay the costs of the clean-up from the BP spill. Why is that? You guys don’t like the government doing things in the first place, and you hated the stimulus plan and bailout, but now you want the government—the taxpayers—to pony up millions to pay the costs of BP’s own operation? So far as I’m concerned, BP can pay the entire cost and do what they can to recover from Halliburton and Deepwater Horizon. The government should bill BP for all its expenses as a result of the spill. There is no reason for the public to pay for BP’s errors.

And the endless string of Republicans who call the spill an Act of God—it isn’t. It’s an act of BP, which has responsibility for the entire mess.

And the Democrats are little better, though some good legislation seems to be getting passed. But Obama’s record on civil liberties is absolutely abysmal—he’s as bad as Bush, and no reason to be. Take a look at what Daniel Ellsberg has to say. Among other things:

Ellsberg: Also, the recent US indictment of Thomas Drake.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Drake was a former senior official with the National Security Agency (NSA) who provided reporters with information about failures at the NSA.

Ellsberg: For Obama to indict and prosecute Drake now, for acts undertaken and investigated during the Bush administration, is to do precisely what Obama said he did not mean to do — “look backward.” Of all the blatantly criminal acts committed under Bush, warrantless wiretapping by the NSA, aggression, torture, Obama now prosecutes only the revelation of massive waste by the NSA, a socially useful act which the Bush administration itself investigated but did not choose to indict or prosecute!

Bush brought no indictments against whistleblowers, though he suspended Drake’s clearance. Obama, in this and other matters relating to secrecy and whistleblowing, is doing worse than Bush. His violation of civil liberties and the White House’s excessive use of the executive secrecy privilege is inexcusable.

It’s inexcusable, irrational, unjust, and infuriating, but it does show a lot about Obama the man, who seems to have become crazed for power already.

And take a look at this, by Scott Horton:

Last week we learned from an interview with former Argentine president Néstor Kirchner that former president George W. Bush touted war as a cure to a nation’s economic ills. Bush has not contested that account. Moreover, yesterday he clarified his role in the torture of prisoners at CIA black sites. For two years, Republicans have argued against any inquiry into the torture practices of the Bush-Cheney administration, but apparently all it takes to get Bush to discuss the issue is a fat speaking fee. In a keynote address before the Economic Club of Grand Rapids, he spoke glibly about waterboarding:

Sure, we waterboarded Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, former President George W. Bush reportedly said on Tuesday. And he would “do it again to save lives.”

A group of thirteen retired admirals and generals meeting in Philadelphia to discuss national security issues, speaking through former CENTCOM commander General Joseph Hoar, responded:

Waterboarding is torture. John McCain has said it’s torture. We have prosecuted foreign and American military personnel for waterboarding. We even prosecuted a sheriff in Texas for waterboarding. Waterboarding is torture and torture is a crime. It cannot be demonstrated that any use of it by U.S. personnel in recent years has saved a single American life. To the contrary, the misguided belief that torture saves lives has cost America dearly. It is shocking that former President George W. Bush said he would use waterboarding ‘again to save lives.’ When he authorized it the first time he sent America down the wrong road, battering our alliances, damaging counterinsurgency efforts, and increasing threats to our soldiers.

Bush’s statement amounts to an admission of his role in a serious crime. He can speak and act without concern because the Obama White House has announced its intention not to enforce American domestic law, under which this conduct was a felony, and not to comply with the unequivocal treaty commitments of the Convention Against Torture, under which the United States is unconditionally obligated to undertake a criminal investigation. In this way, the sins of one regime have been assumed by its successor.

Obama has Bush’s back. Great.

I am stepping aside from politics for now. I see the country as having totally lost its way, lurching toward a plutocracy, with Congress controlled by large companies, with the government pouring money into the hands of private industry instead of doing the government’s job. I think the decline, when it comes, will be remarkable.

This is absolutely disgusting, but inevitable in a plutocracy with its imperative to protect the wealthy and powerful. And Obama seems totally cooperative: note that the Coast Guard is also preventing the press from reporting on the damage. Jeremy Peters in the NY Times:

When the operators of Southern Seaplane in Belle Chasse, La., called the local Coast Guard-Federal Aviation Administration command center for permission to fly over restricted airspace in Gulf of Mexico, they made what they thought was a simple and routine request.

A pilot wanted to take a photographer from The Times-Picayune of New Orleans to snap photographs of the oil slicks blackening the water. The response from a BP contractor who answered the phone late last month at the command center was swift and absolute: Permission denied.

“We were questioned extensively. Who was on the aircraft? Who did they work for?” recalled Rhonda Panepinto, who owns Southern Seaplane with her husband, Lyle. “The minute we mentioned media, the answer was: ‘Not allowed.’ ”

Journalists struggling to document the impact of the oil rig explosion have repeatedly found themselves turned away from public areas affected by the spill, and not only by BP and its contractors, but by local law enforcement, the Coast Guard and government officials.

To some critics of the response effort by BP and the government, instances of news media being kept at bay are just another example of a broader problem of officials’ filtering what images of the spill the public sees.

Scientists, too, have complained about the trickle of information that has emerged from BP and government sources. Three weeks passed, for instance, from the time the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April 20 and the first images of oil gushing from an underwater pipe were released by BP.

“I think they’ve been trying to limit access,” said Representative Edward J. Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts who fought BP to release more video from the underwater rovers that have been filming the oil-spewing pipe. “It is a company that was not used to transparency. It was not used to having public scrutiny of what it did.”

Officials at BP and the government entities coordinating the response said instances of denying news media access have been anomalies, and they pointed out that the company and the government have gone to great lengths to accommodate the hundreds of journalists who have traveled to the gulf to cover the story. The F.A.A., responding to criticism following the incident with Southern Seaplane, has revised its flight restrictions over the gulf to allow for news media flights on a case-by-case basis.

“Our general approach throughout this response, which is controlled by the Unified Command and is the largest ever to an oil spill,” said David H. Nicholas, a BP spokesman, “has been to allow as much access as possible to media and other parties without compromising the work we are engaged on or the safety of those to whom we give access.”

Anomalies or not, reporters and photographers continue to be blocked from covering aspects of the spill.

Read the rest of this entry »

Interesting report by Sheera Frenkel in McClatchy:

As Israel ordered a slight easing of its blockade of the Gaza Strip Wednesday, McClatchy obtained an Israeli government document that describes the blockade not as a security measure but as "economic warfare" against the Islamist group Hamas, which rules the Palestinian territory.

Israel imposed severe restrictions on Gaza in June 2007, after Hamas won elections and took control of the coastal enclave after winning elections there the previous year, and the government has long said that the aim of the blockade is to stem the flow of weapons to militants in Gaza.

Last week, after Israeli commandos killed nine volunteers on a Turkish-organized Gaza aid flotilla, Israel again said its aim was to stop the flow of terrorist arms into Gaza.

However, in response to a lawsuit by Gisha, an Israeli human rights group, the Israeli government explained the blockade as an exercise of the right of economic warfare.

"A country has the right to decide that it chooses not to engage in economic relations or to give economic assistance to the other party to the conflict, or that it wishes to operate using ‘economic warfare,’" the government said.

McClatchy obtained the government’s written statement from Gisha, the Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, which sued the government for information about the blockade. The Israeli high court upheld the suit, and the government delivered its statement earlier this year.

Sari Bashi, the director of Gisha, said the documents prove that Israel isn’t imposing its blockade for its stated reasons, but rather as collective punishment for the Palestinian population of Gaza. Gisha focuses on Palestinian rights.

(A State Department spokesman, who wasn’t authorized to speak for the record, said he hadn’t seen the documents in question.)

The Israeli government took an additional step Wednesday and said the economic warfare is intended to achieve a political goal. A government spokesman, who couldn’t be named as a matter of policy, told McClatchy that authorities will continue to ease the blockade but "could not lift the embargo altogether as long as Hamas remains in control" of Gaza.

Continue reading. Group punishment is, of course, a violation of the Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a signatory. But then Israel agrees to many things with no intention of honoring the agreements (cf. the illegal settlements, still being build and planned). Israel is thoroughly in the wrong on this.

Since Cremo Shave Cream—a brushless shave cream that works quite well with a brush—did so well, I thought I’d try other brushless shave creams. So I started with this from Trader Joe’s, which I got a long time ago based on praise from a friend (who didn’t use a brush).

Well, with a brush it doesn’t do so well. In fact, after the first pass, I rinsed out the Rooney 3,1 Super and moved to Cremo Shave Cream for the remainder of the shave—and that was fine. The TJ’s went into the dustbin.

The razor is an Gillette English open-comb Aristocrat, I believe. I don’t understand the dark discoloration on the finish. I’ll give it a go with silver polish and see whether that will clean up. The razor holds a new Swedish Gillette blade.

Three passes, two of them quite nice, and then a good splash of Acqua di Parma. Read for the day.

Witness Overhears Deepwater Manager: ‘The Rig’s On Fire! I Told You This Was Gonna Happen!’

US Border Patrol union rep: It’s okay to shoot Mexican kids who throw stones

Senator Levin: Gitmo Closure Going Nowhere, ‘Not Enough’ Push From Obama (too much trouble for Obama?)

R.I.P. Climate Legislation

Where Will Big Food Put 1.5 Trillion Calories? (Hint: They’re following the tobacco industry playbook.)

Financial commission subpoenas Goldman Sachs

How do they get to be that way? – Robert Ebert in his Journal

Feds knew of Gulf spill risks in 2000, document shows (But then Dick Cheney became VP)

AIG’s problems far greater than Bush officials told public (And it looks a hell of a lot like bad faith on the part of Bush officials)

How Sen. Dodd empowered Fed to assume AIG’s toxic assets – Sen Dodd: sometimes good, sometimes terrible

Chart of the Day – Any guesses on what caused the sudden climb?

Afghan Corruption Czar Is “Dead Meat” if He Pursues Top Graft

My BP Mole Spills the Secrets of BP’s Cleanup Ops

I just realized that for the third day in a row I’ve been busy the entire day. Somehow I’m moving around more and burning more energy. Part of that is preparing and cooking the produce required by this way of eating, and that involves some clean-up of pots and pans. Late this afternoon I put a pot of water to simmer for half an hour or so with a large onion and three carrots, all cut into chunks, along with juice of two lemons, some peppercorns, star anise, and crushed red pepper.

Then I ladled out and discarded all the veg and spice, added the chicken breasts (half breasts on the bone with skin) and let those simmer for 20 minutes after returning the stock to the boil. Then I turned off the heat and they’re cooling in the stock. When they’ve cooled, I’ll take the skin off and pull the meat from the bones. Skin and meat will return to the stock to simmer a bit more, then I’ll refrigerate and use it for cooking rice and the like.

It’s important that the wealthy get to keep all their wealth. I suppose we can work on the deficit by taxing the poor and the middle class.

This is a bad, bad story. And it’s just the tip of the iceberg: America is well along the way to a plutocracy, with wealth buying Congress (whose membership itself is increasingly made up of the wealthy or the going-to-be wealthy as soon as they can shake down some lobbyists and corporations).

For example, the editorial in today’s NY Times:

In a burst of judicial activism, the Supreme Court on Tuesday upended the gubernatorial race in Arizona, cutting off matching funds to candidates participating in the state’s public campaign finance system. Suddenly, three candidates, including Gov. Jan Brewer, can no longer receive public funds they had counted on to run against a free-spending wealthy opponent.

The court’s reckless order muscling into the race was terse and did not say whether there were any dissents, though it is hard to imagine there were not. An opinion explaining its reasoning will have to wait until the next term, assuming it takes the case, but by that time the state’s general election will be over and its model campaign finance system substantially demolished.

It seems likely that the Roberts court will use this case to continue its destruction of the laws and systems set up in recent decades to reduce the influence of big money in politics. By the time it is finished, millionaires and corporations will have regained an enormous voice in American politics, at the expense of candidates who have to raise money the old-fashioned way and, ultimately, at the expense of voters.

Arizona’s clean elections program was established by the state’s voters in 1998 after a series of scandals provided clear illustrations of money’s corrupting influence. In particular, the program was prompted by the AzScam scandal of 1991, in which many state legislators were recorded accepting contributions and bribes in exchange for approval of gambling legislation.

The system gives qualifying candidates a lump-sum grant for their primary or general election races in exchange for which the candidates agree not to raise large private contributions. If an opposing candidate is not participating in the system and spends more than the lump-sum grant, the participating candidate qualifies for additional matching funds.

It was those matching funds that produced a challenge from well-financed candidates, backed by the Goldwater Institute and other conservative interests. The candidates argued that the matching funds “chilled” their freedom of speech because they were afraid to spend more than the limit that triggered the funds. A lower court agreed with that pretzel logic, but last month a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit disagreed. It said the speech of the plaintiffs had not been chilled. “The essence of this claim is not that they have been silenced,” the panel said, “but that the speech of their opponents has been enabled.”

In 2008, the Supreme Court eliminated the Millionaires’ Amendment, which let Congressional candidates raise more money when running against candidates who pay for their own campaigns. In January, in the Citizens United case, the court eliminated limits to campaign spending by corporations. Both cases cited the First Amendment rights of the wealthy, and in that depressing sequence, state finance programs would be the court’s next conquest.

If the court pushes on with its chainsaw, cutting down programs that trigger matching funds, it would threaten systems in Connecticut and Maine, and judicial-race financing systems in Wisconsin, North Carolina and elsewhere. It might even shake New York City’s system, which provides higher matching funds when a well-financed opponent does not participate in the system. Candidates with no prospect of matching funds would be reluctant to join a system that limits their spending. Unless the court veers from its determined path, there will be no limit to the power of a big bankbook on politics.

In fact, it would clean up US politics considerably if ALL elections were publicly funded: no contributions from any individual or company, in kind or in cash.

I started watching It’s Complicated last night. From the instant the movie opened, it was clear that I (as audience) was in good hands: absolutely stellar opening credits—Steve of Kafeneio will in particular find the credit sequence (which opens with a shot of a tile roof, and moves on to other patterns of repetition) wonderful. And I note that, like a modern Preston Sturges, Nancy Meyers produced, wrote, and directed the movie  (well, co-produced, but that still counts as the trifecta).

But very early in the movie: the Bad Lift once more!! Why in the hell do movies so frequently show items being lifted improperly, in such a way to maximize the chance of back injury? Ignorance? Hatred of the audience? Stupidity?

In this case, Meryl Streep’s character’s son-in-law is picking up two cardboard boxes of books. I am not exaggerating: he is standing, bends from the waist to get a grip, then straightens up: legs totally not involved. I am sure that many men of late middle age inadvertently screamed in the theater as they watched.

The Wife thinks it happens because the boxes are props and not really heavy. But that’s not the case in general: in an earlier post, I noted that Robert Mitchum does a very bad lift of Deborah Kerr in the otherwise excellent movie Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison. It’s just Hollywood not thinking again.

Take a look.

In the course of the comment thread on this post, we got into some territory that interests me: namely, the reality of social constructs and mental creations. In what sense is a unicorn, for example, “real”? It was created in the mind of humanity, so without humanity the idea would not exist. However, “unicorn” is now “real” in the sense that it does exist among mankind’s instructions, with books, tapestries, and paintings depicting it, quite apart from the dolls and cartoons.

Another creation of the mind of humanity is mathematics. The epigraph for Kershner and Wilcox’s The Anatomy of Mathematics is a sonnet by Clarence R. Wylie, Jr.:

PARADOX

Not truth, nor certainty. These I forswore
In my novitiate, as young men called
To holy orders must abjure the world.
“If . . ., then . . .,” this only I assert:
And my successes are but pretty chains
Linking twin doubts, for it is vain to ask
If what I postulate by justified,
Or what I prove possess the stamp of fact.

Yet bridges stand, and men no longer crawl
In two dimensions. And such triumphs stem
In no small measure from the power this game,
Played with the thrice-attenuated shades
Of things, has over their originals.
How frail the wand, but how profound the spell!

Mathematics tracks the real world (the world as it would exist if humanity were not present) to the degree that some people believe that mathematics is discovered rather than invented. The inevitability of the conclusions that follow from a set of premises and postulates accounts for some of that. Leopold Kronecker declared, “God created the integers. All the rest is the work of Man.” But my commenter felt that the full structure of mathematical systems reflects reality.

I don’t think so. Start with the positive integers (1, 2, 3, . . .). Some argument can be made that these are derived pretty directly from the world—e.g., counting how many goats you have. Zero is naturally invented for the poor soul who had 1 goat and then ate it, and now needs a number for how many goats he has.

Then the negative integers are derived by observing that a + x = b sometimes has a solution (2, in the case where a=5 and b=7) and sometimes not (where a=7 and b=5). That’s very unsatisfactory: a strong feeling developed that the equation should always have a solution, and when a is 7 and b is 5 the solution is a new kind of number, –2.

So we now have all the integers. Fractions perhaps also are related to the real world and quickly derived from it. For example, you have a bolt of cloth twice as long as the bolt of cloth I have: if my bolt represents 1, yours represents 2. But what if yours represents 2? What is mine? Thus we get 1/2 and the rational numbers. You can also approach it as wanting solutions for equations: a * x = b. That’s easily solved if a=3 and b=6—x is then clearly 2. But what about when a=6 and b=3. We want to solve that equation as well, and the new kind of number 1/2 works.

So now we have the full set of rational numbers. That’s great, but even the ancient Greeks could prove that the square root of 2 (or, the side of a square whose area is 2) is not a rational number. The proof is by contradiction: you assume that the square root is indeed a rational number, but then you are forced into a contradiction. (If you’re interested, I’ll do the proof in the comments.)

These new numbers can be seen as the determination to have numbers to solve equations, such as x² = 2. We can simply define a new number x and say that it satisfies this equation. Similarly we get the complex numbers, by defining a number to solve the equation x² = –1.

But some very weird irrational numbers exist, such as the ratio of the diameter of a circle to its circumference: π, which turns out not to be the root of any equation with rational coefficients but can only be approached as the limit of a series.

If we throw in all these, so that every point on a continuous line is associated with a number, we get the real number system: a set of numbers that demonstrates the property of continuity.

But here we have moved beyond reality. Nature, so far as we can tell, is definitely NOT continuous: it exists as quanta—little discrete parts. Even time is thought by some not to be continuous but to move in tiny little jumps.

So mathematics is definitely not “real” in the sense that it corresponds with something in nature. Math uses continuity regularly, and while this will work as an approximation of reality, it is not reality. Reality is discontinuous.

So at some point, math is not real, just a creation of the human might: perhaps a special kind of social construct.

I think everyone must love a squeaky toy, and I’ve discovered that Butler GUM Soft Picks (which I blogged earlier) are marvelous in that regard. I use them as I watch movies, and when you push the pick through the little gaps between your teeth, it squeaks. It feels good, and it squeaks. What could be better?

So far I’ve lost 6 pounds in the past couple of weeks. Of course, that’s the easy part and undoubtedly some of it is due to my cutting out salt. (BTW, the processed food industry is bringing out its big guns and loads for cash for compliant members of the House and Senate in order to fight the initiative to reduce salt in the foods we buy—this applies to processed foods only, of course, but people eat a hell of a lot of them and they include not only frozen dinners (easy to avoid) but also canned vegetables and, of course, salty snacks. I saw Alton Brown recently who, having been paid handsomely, say that salt really improves your food and be sure to have plenty of salt on hand in your kitchen. Plenty of salt? Like 25 pounds?)

So last night I got to thinking about those recurrent impulses on Monday night to go into the kitchen just for a bite or two: over and over, about every 10-15 minutes, the entire evening. The phenomenon recurred lasts night, but weaker. (For one thing, I saved a before-dinner apple to eat after dinner, and that helped.) But in pondering that, and realizing how much I was caught in a behavior pattern, I had the full realization that begins the 12-step thing: That I could not by myself control my eating, that because it was out of my control it was endangering my health, and that I needed professional help because I could not do it on my own. (This is a very minor version of the Higher Power, but the key is to realize that one cannot solve the problem alone.)

Now, you would think that being around 60-70 pounds overweight and having type 2 diabetes would be some indication, but people in the grip of a problem that involves the mind often simply cannot see what’s evident. (Daniel Goleman superbly traces this phenomenon in the fascinating book Vital Lies, Simple Truths, highly recommended.) A good example can be found in Anne Lamott’s wonderful book Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year (my standard gift to women who are expecting their first baby):

It’s amazing how blind one can be to one’s own problems, but I know exactly the mindset. She doubtless woke up thinking, "OMG, this is awful. But thank God! I don’t have a problem."

I, of course, knew I was overweight, but I had not fully focused on how (a) it was killing me, and (b) all my attempts to address the problem by myself had failed. As I sat there, savoring the "Aha!" moment, I gradually realized that I had been having this realization repeatedly, but in passing. It was as though I had to realize it repeatedly, like taking many brief glances at a terrible sight until you can gradually look at it full-on. But last night, I realized it fully and finally looked at it without blinking or turning away. Clearly I had to work up to that. And I knew I had a real problem, a problem that threatened my life, and I had proved myself helpless to address it, despite my knowledge.

One thing that helps one detect such things is to stop looking at yourself interiorly (i.e., looking at your thoughts, your feelings, and your attitudes and the like) and look at yourself objectively: focus on your actions without even considering the thoughts you may have been having. Just track the actions. Then, when you have a collection of related actions, deduce from them the thoughts and attitudes that would produce those actions.

I have been getting good at that, helped along by Megs. I think anyone who has a cat naturally observes that cat and its actions and tries to figure what on earth the cat is thinking. It’s an absorbing activity, and it is reasonably important: by observing closely you not only learn what your cat likes and dislikes, and the slowly changing pattern of those likes and dislikes, you can also detect problems: for example, if the cat seems hungry but doesn’t want to eat, it can indicate teeth or gum problems.

I’ve been applying that technique to myself, and last night I saw that my great realization was quite tardy: I had already started taking action and getting help—visiting Prime Monterey and signing up on the spot, and through them learning of The Healthy Way and immediately making an appointment with them, and starting the program right away. Clearly my unconscious mind had already come to the conclusion and had moved into action, while my conscious mind was still dithering about. (I think much of our lives is directed by the unconscious self going about its business, with the conscious self providing rationalizations for what we’re doing.) I was well on the new road before I quite woke up to what was happening. Indeed, it was in part by contemplating my recent actions that I came to the realization of my true situation: facing a mortal problem that I could not solve without professional help.

I can see now that the professionals are not so much a crutch as people with specific skills and knowledge that I pay to solve the problem. Some problems require professionals (e.g., a plumber doing an installation) who can do their work without really involving me. Other problems require my presence and participation while the professionals do their work. This problem (of getting my food consumption and exercise routine back on track) is that kind of problem. So are medical problems, where the professional is the doctor: you have to be there, and you have to follow instructions, but you are definitely paying someone to help you solve a problem you can’t solve alone.

Another example: the professionals who see to my dental health require my presence (for routine cleanings and exams and any repairs) and my participation (doing my job of brushing, flossing, and the like). And I’ll see them all my life. Question: Are they a crutch? I don’t think so. It seems to me that some problems simply require a trained professional.

My endocrinologist certainly understood immediately when I said that I realized I couldn’t do this on my own—he’s seen me over the years make various attempts and fail. But this time I think I’m on the right track by finding the right people to address the problem with me.

I do like Cremo Shave Cream (I received a complimentary tube from the maker), though I’ve never tried it brushless, which I believe is the intent. But it works fine with a brush (today, the Sabrini brush), lathering up to beat the band. I do like the fragrance, though it is definitely non-traditional. I think the maker should also bring out a traditionally fragranced version: Bay Rum, for example. Reason: Some guys are very resistant to unusual fragrances first thing in the morning. (I’m not one, but I know of some.)

The Gillette English Aristocrat—if I’m right about the identity of the razor—did a great job with a Gillette 7 O’Clock SharpEdge blade that’s still newish, and a splash of Pitralon set me up for my stretching exercises.

I realize (rather vividly at the moment) that if you have been living a caffeine-free life for weeks and weeks, then it’s probably not the best idea to buy and drink a 4-shot latte at 3:00 p.m.

2TB Hard Drives Crack the $100 Barrier (don’t worry, I’m not going to start a "when I began programming, we were happy to have 4K of RAM and the hard drive hadn’t even been invented" story)

BP Well Bore And Casing Integrity May Be Blown, Says Florida’s Sen. Nelson

11 Inspiring Life Lessons from Bruce Lee – the scene in Enter the Dragon in which Bruce Lee delivers a series of apothegms under questioning by his master is absolutely terrific. Some of those appear in this post.

For The Love of The Game: Softball Team Forfeits Game To Teach Neophyte Opponents How To Play – just when I was losing hope for the human race, something like this appears. Made me cry.

Copyright: The Elephant in the Middle of the Glee Club – we desperately need copyright reform and the first step to chop off the head of Mickey Mouse (and perhaps give it to Wesley)

Clever critters: Bonobos that share, brainy bugs and social dogs – we humans are not so unique as Victorians believed.

A friend is looking to buy a smartphone (iPhone or alternative), so I was looking for comparative reviews, and I found these, which might be of interest more broadly:

iPhone 4 vs Nexus One vs Evo 4G vs Droid Incredible

Apple iPhone 4 versus HTC Evo 4G

10 Things Android Does Better Than iPhone OS

Top Android phones vs. Top Windows Mobile phones

Android Phones

Apple’s control-freakery eclipses iPhone advances

Android army steps up assault on iPhone with 2 new devices

And, should you get an Android phone:

4 Actually Useful Health Apps For Your Android Phone

Two articles that provide useful background information: the Wikipedia entries on GSM and CDMA.

Finally, enjoyable in a “glad I’m not giving the presentation” sort of way:

Watch the Apple Keynote’s Network Meltdown

UPDATE: See also Apple  iPhone 4 Review Roundup: Apple vs. the Competition.

I did discover oddities in my diet plan beyond the recommendation of coconut oil (a cooking oil that is highly inflammatory—and people who have excess body fat already have serious problems with inflammation, since excess fat promotes that—telling obese people to use coconut oil is like throwing gasoline on a fire). For example, they list fish that you can eat, and the list includes tilapia (see this post and this post and this post) and orange roughy (which is terribly overfished: see this page). They have a chart showing pesticide residues on produce (good), but fail to explicitly note that the measurements were taken after washing the produce. (People resistant to information that changes their preconceptions will inevitably think—and sometimes say—”But we wash our produce before eating it, so this doesn’t apply”: that loophole should be closed.)

They fail to note the possibility that grapefruit may make the client’s meds ineffective—they should include the note, “Before eating grapefruit, check with your pharmacist to see whether it will affect your meds.”

They also fail (so far) to note helpful tips, such as “Use turmeric in cooking because it’s a powerful anti-inflammatory.”

I’m hoping that I can work with them to contribute to the improvement of the manual. We’ll see. So far no response from the head office to my email warning of the inflammatory effect of coconut oil.

My HbA1c was 5.8. I was going for 5.7 since someone I know just today got that.

Now, I’m not a competitive guy. Indeed, if you had a contest to find the least competitive person around, I’m sure I would win by a large margin. Nonetheless, it pains me that I was so close and yet…

Still: I am losing weight and exercising and I have dedicated corps keeping me in line. So we’ll see 3 months from now.

I told my endocrinologist that I was signed up with Prime Monterey for exercise and The Healthy Way for diet. I said, "I finally recognized that knowledge is not enough, and that I required direct personal assistance… well, I guess you know that by now." He smiled, but I caught it.

He was kind enough to tell me how to adjust my meds in case, with the combination of diet, exercise, and fat loss, I had low-blood-glucose reactions. (I’ve had them: sort of trembling and weakness—but if you munch a glucose tablet, that takes care of it quickly.) What I do is drop my glipizide dose from bid to QD, and if necessary, drop the glipizide altogether.

He also smiled at my story about how I realized that, once I "finished" dinner, I continued to go into the kitchen at intervals throughout the evening "just for a bite." (Lucky I go to bed early.)

I wonder if he’s given thought to what he leaves behind. Greenwald:

Physicians for Human Rights yesterday released a report documenting (while relying on heavily redacted material) that "medical professionals who were involved in the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogations of terrorism suspects engaged in forms of human research and experimentation in violation of medical ethics and domestic and international law."  To those paying close attention, the evidence suggesting that this occurred has long been clear.  Today, The New York Times Editorial Page said this:

The report from the physicians’ group does not prove its case beyond doubt — how could it when so much is still hidden? — but it rightly calls on the White House and Congress to investigate the potentially illegal human experimentation and whether those who authorized or conducted it should be punished. Those are just two of the many unresolved issues from the Bush administration that President Obama and Congressional leaders have swept under the carpet.

When the history of the Bush era is written, the obvious question will be:  what was done about the systematic war crimes, torture regime, chronic lawbreaking, and even human experimentation which that administration perpetrated on the world?  And the answer is now just as obvious:  nothing, because the subsequent President — Barack Obama –decreed that We Must Look Forward, Not Backward, and then engaged in extreme measures to carry out that imperial, Orwellian dictate by shielding those crimes from investigation, review, adjudication and accountability.

All of that would be bad enough if his generous immunity were being applied across the board.  But it isn’t.  Numerous incidents now demonstrate that as high-level Bush lawbreakers are vested with presidential immunity, low-level whistle blowers who exposed serious wrongdoing and allowed citizens some minimal glimpse into what our government does are being persecuted by the Obama administration with a vengeance.  Yesterday it was revealed by Wired that the Army intelligence officer analyst who reportedly leaked the Apache helicopter attack video to Wikileaks — and thus enabled Americans to see what we are really doing in Iraq and other countries which we occupy and attack — has been arrested (Wikileaks denies the part of that report claiming that the whistle blower also leaked to it "hundreds of thousands of classified State Department records").  This latest episode led Der Spiegel today to decry Obama’s "war on whistle blowers" as more severe than the one waged by the Bush administration (English translation here).

At least in these areas, that’s the Obama administration in a nutshell:  protecting Bush extremism and war crimes from any form of accountability while significantly escalating the punishment for those who tried to bring about some minimal degree of transparency (thereby also escalating the intimidation toward those who might want to do so in the future).  As the very pro-Obama NYT Editorial Page puts it today:  the human experimentation accusation and the question of whether crimes were committed are just "two of the many unresolved issues from the Bush administration that President Obama and Congressional leaders have swept under the carpet."  If you really think about it, that’s a rather damning statement.