Later On

Charlie Savage reports in the NY Times:

The Obama administration, fresh off a victory in persuading federal judges to dismiss a torture case for fear of revealing state secrets, is divided over using similar tactics to try to block a lawsuit over government efforts to kill an American citizen accused of ties to Al Qaeda.

The administration’s legal team is debating how aggressive it should be in a brief responding to the lawsuit, which is due Sept. 24. The suit, filed last month, seeks an injunction that would prevent the targeted killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric who is accused of playing a leading role for Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen.

Justice Department lawyers are circulating a draft brief with several potential arguments for dismissing the case, and lawyers from national security agencies have met to discuss what should go into the final version. But they have not reached a consensus, according to officials familiar with the discussions, because the arguments seen as strongest also carry significant political and legal risks.

“There are a lot of cross-cutting things going on here, and they have to be very careful about how they litigate this,” said Jack Goldsmith, who was a senior Justice Department lawyer in the Bush administration. “It’s not just a question of winning the case. There is the public diplomacy side, and there are implications for everything else they are doing in the war on terrorism: detention and targeting and other things, too, I imagine.”

The lawsuit was filed by Mr. Awlaki’s father, Nasser al-Awlaki, who is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights. It contends that designating a United States citizen for killing outside of a war zone, without an imminent threat, amounts to an extrajudicial execution, and it disputes the notion that battlefield law applies far from Afghanistan.

There is widespread agreement among the administration’s legal team that it is lawful for President Obama to authorize the killing of someone like Mr. Awlaki — regardless of his citizenship — if he is found in an ungoverned place or in a country that grants permission. (The details of any arrangement with Yemen are unclear.)

Mr. Awlaki has not been indicted or gone to trial to prove that he played an operational role in terrorist attacks. Still, he has released videos calling on Muslims to kill Americans, and the Treasury Department has labeled him a “specially designated global terrorist.” The man who tried to blow up a Detroit-bound jet on Dec. 25 is believed to have told interrogators that Mr. Awlaki directed him to do so.

Nevertheless, many in the administration are reluctant to air in court the case that Mr. Awlaki is waging war against the United States, in part because they do not want to concede that judicial review is appropriate for executive branch decisions on targeted killings.

Instead, they are seeking to have the lawsuit dismissed without discussing its merits. For example, officials say, the brief is virtually certain to argue that Mr. Awlaki’s father has no legal standing to file a lawsuit on behalf of his son.

To strengthen the case, they are considering at least two other potential arguments, each with a downside.

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I have now lost 28 lbs and am within striking distance of being "merely" overweight. I do give a lot of credit to the nutrition counselor and her little company.

First, it helps for someone to review your food log every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday—and it keeps you maintaining the food log.

Second, cheating a little bit shows up by stopping weight loss. Surprise!

Third, there are times when it seems having a counselor seems absolutely essential. For example, after a week of closely following the diet, you find out that you not only didn’t lose any weight, you’ve gained 2 lbs. That’s when a counselor can say, "That happens. Make sure your food log is accurate, and let’s look at what we can do." What we did at various times for me were:

• Reduce amount of beef consumed. I moved to chicken and fish.
• Reduce snacking.
• Make sure I eat a carb at each meal.
• Exercise—my weight loss stopped finally when I was trying to do it by food alone.

Most of all, by seeing the counselor regularly I don’t have the experience I’ve had when trying to lose weight on my own: after a month or so, having a very careful 7-10 days of eating, with no weight loss at all and in fact a gain of a pound or two, would have made me (stupidly) abandon the effort. I would go get a big steak, have a big meal, and forget about losing fat. Now I have a new attitude.

Part of it is, as I’ve perhaps mentioned, that I paid a hefty fee to participate in the program. It gradually came to me that, having paid that fee, if I didn’t lose weight, it would amount to a scam: pay a lot of money, don’t get what you paid for. That motivated me strongly to lose this weight so I do not get scammed. I won’t let them cheat ME!! I’m going to lose the full 75 lbs!

And in case you’re wondering, I have already enrolled in and paid for the maintenance program I’ll follow once I reach target weight.

Interesting story blogged by Dan Riffle at MPP:

Over on our state overview for Missouri, I mentioned the case of Kenneth Wells, a 57 year-old St. Charles man with no criminal record who was facing 5-15 years in prison for felony marijuana cultivation charges. Mr. Wells suffers from chronic seizures and had been using marijuana to treat his symptoms. As his doctor, whose testimony was ruled inadmissible because Missouri has no medical marijuana law, would have said:

“Marijuana is safe and effective in the treatment of seizure disorder as manifest in this case. In patients who have not obtained adequate seizure control with conventional therapy, cannabis offers a rational alternative at least as safe as conventional therapy for intractable chronic epileptic seizures. Mr. Wells has been exposed to multiple medications over the past 26 years to treat his seizures with risks far higher than with cannabis.”

The good news is that yesterday, the prosecutor handling the case sent Mr. Wells a letter to notify him that all charges were being dropped. So does this mean that patients in Missouri no longer need to worry about being prosecuted for legitimate medical marijuana use? Not exactly.

The bad news is the charges weren’t dropped because the prosecutor suddenly grew a heart. He felt, despite the ruling preventing Wells’ physician from testifying, that it would have been difficult to keep evidence of his condition from the jury, who likely wouldn’t convict once they knew about the seizure disorder. In other words, he was worried that a non-conviction would have “muddied the waters” regarding Missouri’s approach to medical marijuana, which of course is to arrest and convict seriously ill people for using the medicine their doctor recommends.

I mention all this because a bill has been introduced in the Missouri legislature every year for the last four years that could have prevented this unfortunate situation. This year the bill had more sponsors than ever, including a Republican physician, but was once again denied a hearing. While it’s nice that Mr. Wells won’t be convicted, he and his defense attorney spent more than two years contesting these charges before they were eventually dropped. Imagine all the time, money, and hand wringing both he and the state could have saved if Missouri had a more sensible approach to medical marijuana and he hadn’t been arrested in the first place.

For obvious reasons, I assume: people who use marijuana are less likely to use alcohol. Perhaps candy and chip manufacturers should be fighting for marijuana legalization. Mike Meno blogs at MPP:

On September 7, a major new front opened up in the campaign for Proposition 19, the ballot measure to tax and regulate marijuana in California. On that day, the California Beer and Beverage Distributors made a $10,000 contribution to a committee opposing Proposition 19.

In response, MPP issued the following statement by Steve Fox, director of government relations for the MPP and co-author of Marijuana is Safer: So why are we driving people to drink?:

“Unless the beer distributors in California have suddenly developed a philosophical opposition to the use of intoxicating substances, the motivation behind this contribution is clear,” Fox said. “Plain and simple, the alcohol industry is trying to kill the competition. They know that marijuana is less addictive, less toxic and less likely to be associated with violent behavior than alcohol. So they don’t want adults to have the option of using marijuana legally instead of alcohol. Their mission is to drive people to drink.”

The alcohol industry is now working hand-in-hand with the law enforcement community to keep marijuana illegal. For example, the California Police Chiefs Association has given at least $30,000 to the “No on Proposition 19” campaign, while the California Narcotics Officers’ Association has chipped in $20,500 of its own. This partnership underscores the hypocrisy among law enforcement officials opposed to Prop. 19.

“Members of law enforcement have argued against Proposition 19 by asserting, ‘We have enough problems with alcohol, we don’t need to add another intoxicating substance to the mix,’ implying that marijuana is just as bad as alcohol,” Fox continued. “But the truth is that a legal marijuana market would not add another dangerous intoxicant to the mix; rather it would provide adults with a less harmful legal alternative to alcohol.”

“In their campaign to defeat Proposition 19, members of law enforcement and the alcohol industry have joined together under an umbrella group calling themselves ‘Public Safety First.’ Sadly, by fighting to keep marijuana illegal and steering adults toward alcohol instead, they are putting public safety last,” said Fox.

Interesting how technology will regress from time to time. I got a new Sony Blu-Ray DVD player to replace the old Sony DVD player, since I now have a TV capable of HD. If you put into the old player a DVD you had been watching (and put aside for a while as you watch other DVDs), the DVD would automatically resume at the point at which you stopped watching: extremely nice.

The new player lacks this feature. Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb.

UPDATE: Just talked to Customer Support at Sony. They were quite helpful, but clearly the development process at Sony is badly broken and some high-placed manager should lose his or her job over this.

Here’s the story: The “resume-play” feature that I described above is part of Sony regular DVD players, and a very useful feature it is. But for the Blu-Ray player, the customer support person said that it will also resume from where I stopped provided:

1. The DVD has not been removed from the drawer.
2. The drawer has not been opened.
3. The power has not been turned off.

In other words, you can resume after pressing “stop”: the very same “feature” that has been a (necessary) part of players from the outset.

I asked why such a clearly useful feature—and, let me tell you, and important part of the user experience—was omitted from their top-line new players. The only reason she could offer was that Blu-Ray takes more time to load than regular DVDs and a “resume-play” feature would have meant the user having to wait a “long time.”

I told her to compare that wait time with the time it took to load a Blu-Ray DVD and find where you were in it. That also takes a long time—and it takes attention: the resume-play feature is automatic.

What actually happened, I think, is that the development process is sufficiently bad that, as the new products were planned, no one did a list of user expectations and user experience with the current models. The user interviews and user observations were not done at all, or were done so poorly that the Sony people failed to detect performance features that are important to users.

Without the feature in the feature list, it was easy to overlook, especially if a new/different team of developers was working on the Blu-Ray model and didn’t know about the common features of the DVD models. Result: a crippled implementation of what should be an important new product line.

Nordic Track. Oofta.

Above you see the Omega “artificial badger” brush that I now recommend as a beginner brush: low price ($25) and excellent performance were two of the criteria. And I did indeed get excellent performance this morning as it worked up a superb lather from the QED Bay Rum shaving soap. The Futur with a sharp blade did a fine job except a nick on the upper lip (a badly timed hand tremor). A splash of Royall Lyme, a quick roll of My Nik Is Sealed, and I’m ready for the Nordic.

I’m banned again from ShaveMyFace.com, which is a shame. I enjoy that forum but apparently I greatly annoyed many, particularly the moderators. The tipping point seems to have been my sharing my photos and experience in having my razors revamped at Razor Emporium. The service and results are excellent, but Razor Emporium is a banned vendor and apparently not to be mentioned. Strange, that, though vendors are frequently banned from the shaving forums. People will recall Giovanni Arbate of Razor and Brush who provided excellent products and services. But not being able to mention the vendor or show what you purchased is new to ShaveMyFace (though common on B&B—indeed on B&B you can be banned simply for mentioning a banned vendor). So it goes.

I just received my Internet-ready TV and my Internet-ready DVD player (both of which are Blu-Ray capable). Clearly some thought has gone into making set-up easier, and I think it is—but at the same time, the range of options and things that can be controlled/adjusted has increased.

I did discover that I can readily use Netflix Watch Instantly and Amazon DVD Rentals, though they are not quite so convenient as with the Roku player. For example, with the Roku player you can search of Watch-Instantly movies and add them to your queue, not available when accessing via DVD player or TV. So I might return to my old set-up. OTOH, the DVD player immediately downloaded a firmware update: from version 147 or thereabouts to 496: lots of updating done automatically.

I am watching an HD movie (Killers) I rented from Amazon. I just wanted to see HD—and it is crisp. Plus the refresh rate on this is 120 Hz, so picture is quite stable.

I think that I will include the Roku in my set-up: it’s much faster and easier then to switch between watching a DVD and watching a streaming movie. And I do have an HD-compatible Roku.

Good news for fans of chiles. From ScienceDaily:

For those with high blood pressure, chili peppers might be just what the doctor ordered, according to a study reported in the August issue of Cell Metabolism, a Cell Press publication. While the active ingredient that gives the peppers their heat — a compound known as capsaicin — might set your mouth on fire, it also leads blood vessels to relax, the research in hypertensive rats shows.

"We found that long-term dietary consumption of capsaicin, one of the most abundant components in chili peppers, could reduce blood pressure in genetically hypertensive rats," said Zhiming Zhu of Third Military Medical University in Chongqing, China.

Those effects depend on the chronic activation of something called the transient receptor potential vanilloid 1 (TRPV1) channel found in the lining of blood vessels. Activation of the channel leads to an increase in production of nitric oxide, a gaseous molecule known to protect blood vessels against inflammation and dysfunction, Zhu explained.

The study isn’t the first to look for a molecular link between capsaicin and lower blood pressure. However, earlier studies were based on acute or short-term exposure to the chemical, with some conflicting results. Zhu says their study is the first to examine the effects of long-term treatment with capsaicin in rats with high blood pressure.

The findings in rats should be confirmed in humans through epidemiological analysis, the researchers said. In fact, there were already some clues: the prevalence of hypertension is over 20% in Northeastern China compared to 10-14% in Southwestern China, including Sichuan, Guozhuo, Yunnan, Hunan, and Chongqing, where Zhu is from.

"People in these regions like to eat hot and spicy foods with a lot of chili peppers," Zhu says. "For example, a very famous local food in my hometown, Chongqing, is the spicy hot pot."

It isn’t yet clear just how many capsaicin-containing chili peppers a day you’d have to eat to "keep the doctor away," although that’s a question that should now be examined in greater detail, Zhu says.

For those who can’t tolerate spicy foods, there might still be hope. Zhu notes the existence of a mild Japanese pepper, which contains a compound called capsinoid that is closely related to capsaicin.

"Limited studies show that these capsinoids produce effects similar to capsaicin," Zhu says. "I believe that some people can adopt this sweet pepper."

I’ll be hooking up the new TV. This is the first TV remote I’ve had that includes a slide-out Qwerty keyboard. It’s big, but it’s not very heavy: quite thin.

No headphone jack per se, but quite a few USB ports, so I guess I can use USB headphones or get a USB adapter for a headphone plug.

Down to just over 223 lbs. Non-obesity is in sight.

And I did 17.5 minutes on Nordic Track ski machine, which turned out to be easier than I thought. (I was encouraged by my cardiologist, who said that waiting a week after an angiogram to resume exercise was extremely conservative—he said he just recommends waiting 48 hours.)

Continuing the series of lime/bay rum combos with non-badger brushes, today with have QED’s Fresh Limes shaving soap—intense lime aroma—that generated an exceptional lather with the Tres Claveles horsehair brush. I have to admit that this brush did a better job than yesterday’s boar brush, but perhaps the boar still has some breaking in to do (and, of course, there’s the issue of user skill).

Another thread in the current series is the use of an adjustable razor, and I continued that with the Progress—a very fine razor, IMO, and I particularly like the new adjustment knob from iKon: much more precise than the original knob. Three passes to perfect smoothness, then a splash of TOBS Bay Rum. And now I’m ready for breakfast and the Nordic.

Next step is to return on Monday and get a monitor to use for a few days to learn more about this extra beat thing. And I can resume the Nordic Track tomorrow—yay!

From an email:

Sometimes I uncover a clip so amazing I can’t believe it’s true until I’ve watched the whole thing myself. 

It starts with a duet between Charlie Parker and Coleman Hawkins (which we’ve seen before.)

Then to pile riches on riches Lester Young pulls up a chair and as if that weren’t enough Harry Edison and Ella Fitzgerald get on the bandstand.

To round things out Flip Philips smokes on tenor and Hank Jones, Ray Brown, and Buddy Rich hold down the rhythm section.

Can it get any better?

Very interesting article from Science and Mechanics, February 1957. From the article this sidebar “10 Minutes To A Good Shave”:

(Click for full size)

Christopher Hitchens reviews a book for Slate:

Reading Diarmaid MacCulloch’s extraordinary and limpid new work Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (a history informed by a general, if Anglican, sympathy for its subject), I came across the following passage from Cardinal John Henry Newman’s classic statement of belief, his Apologia Pro Vita Sua:

The Catholic Church holds it better for the Sun and Moon to drop from Heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions on it to die from starvation in extremest agony … than that one soul, I will not say, should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should tell one wilful untruth, or should steal one poor farthing without excuse.

In a few days, Joseph Ratzinger will make one of the most portentous voyages of his papacy, landing in Britain to announce the beatification of the author of those remarkable words. I am not writing about Catholic dogma today, and in any case do not have the space to discuss the hysterical, totalitarian fanaticism of Newman’s statement, coming as it does from a learned man celebrated for his relative "moderation." I thought I would simply ask how the church would emerge if anything remotely like Newman’s criterion were to be applied to it.

As we have recently been forcibly reminded, the Roman Catholic Church holds it better for the cries of raped and violated children to be ignored, and for the excuses and alibis of their rapists and torturers indulged, and for a host of dirty and wilful untruths to be manufactured wholesale, and for the funds raised ostensibly for the poor to be paid out in hush money and shameful bribery, rather than that one tiny indignity or inconvenience be visited on the robed majesty of a man-made church or any limit set to its self-proclaimed right to be judge in its own cause.

Earlier this year, as Roman Catholic authorities from Ireland to Germany to Australia to Belgium to the United States were being confronted with the fallout of decades of sexual assault and subsequent denial, I asked a simple question in print. Why was this not considered a matter for the police and the courts? Why were we asking the church to "put its own house in order," an expression that was the exact definition of the problem to begin with? Why had almost no offending priest or bishop faced justice, and even then usually after a long period of protection from the church’s own "courts"? I followed this up with a telephone call to Geoffrey Robertson, a British barrister with a second-to-none record in international human rights cases. (If it matters, the last time we had both cooperated was in a campaign against the British Act of Succession, an archaic piece of legislation that explicitly discriminates against Catholics.) This was one of the best dimes I have ever dropped. After a group of generous humanists and atheists agreed to pay his extremely modest fee, Robertson produced a detailed legal brief against the papacy and has made it widely available for the use of all interested or aggrieved parties. Titled The Case of the Pope: Vatican Accountability for Human Rights Abuse, it has just been published in the United Kingdom by Penguin Books. (It will be available in the United States in October.)

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Scott Horton at Harper’s:

Diplomacy, according to Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary, is the “patriotic art of lying for one’s country.” A fine example of this comes from the U.S. Department of State’s Report to the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights in Conjunction with the Universal Periodic Review (PDF), submitted at the end of August:

Thus, the United States prohibits torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment of persons in the custody or control of the U.S. Government, regardless of their nationality or physical location. It takes vigilant action to prevent such conduct and to hold those who commit acts of official cruelty accountable for their wrongful acts. The United States is a party to the Convention Against Torture, and U.S. law prohibits torture at both the federal and state levels. On June 26, 2010, on the anniversary of adoption of the Convention Against Torture, President Obama issued a statement unequivocally reaffirming U.S. support for its principles, and committing the United States to continue to cooperate in international efforts to eradicate torture.

A corrected report, with the text necessary to make an honest man out of Uncle Sam added in italics, would read something like this:

Thus, the United States prohibits torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment of persons in the custody or control of the U.S. Government, regardless of their nationality or physical location, except when the President, exercising his commander-in-chief powers under the Constitution deems it to be in the national security interest of the United States to use torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading techniques—in which case they will be used, although the United States will deny this fact, and when confronted with physical evidence thereof, it will claim that acts of torture or official cruelty constitute the work of rotten apples, lacking government authority. The United States takes vigilant action to prevent such conduct and to hold those who commit acts of official cruelty accountable for their wrongful acts, except when the President, taking the advice of his political advisors, concludes that it would be contrary to his political interests to do so—in which event the official policy of the Government is to “look forward, not back,” and the Attorney General and other law enforcement officials will be prohibited from taking the necessary steps to investigate or prosecute acts of torture and official cruelty. The United States is a party to the Convention Against Torture, and U.S. law prohibits torture at both the federal and state levels, with the exceptions noted above. On June 26, 2010, on the anniversary of adoption of the Convention Against Torture, President Obama issued a statement conditionally reaffirming U.S. support for its principles, and committing the United States to continue to cooperate in international efforts to eradicate torture. The President’s statement, must, however, be understood as prospective only, and the commitment to investigate and prosecute prior offenses must be understood as subject to the exceptions noted above.

Via Open Culture:

I’ve got a fever and there’s only one cure: More kettlebell!

And with that, check out these:

Kettlebell Fitness Training

Crossfit Kettlebell Workouts