Later On

Tabac is always good. A fine lather with the Plisson HMW 12, then three smooth passes with the (rhodium-plated) Gillette Slim Handle holding a Schick Platinum Plus blade. A splash of Tabac, and I’m ready to roll.

Here’s the Bob Mintzer Big Band playing one of his own tunes, "Who’s Walking Whom" – at least that would be the title if he understood the objective case for pronouns. I bet he’s one of those who say "between you and I". Still: nice piece.

I think it would be difficult to tell, but he does seem to have lost his memory of his actions and words during his administration. Tanya Somanader reports for ThinkProgress:

Former President George W. Bush will unveil his memoir “Decision Points” this Sunday to offer “an account of a key decisions in his life.” According to his publisher, the book will offer “gripping, never-before-heard detail.” One of those unheard-of details? Bush didn’t want the Iraq War.

Conducting Bush’s first interview of his publicity tour (which will air Monday), NBC News’ Matt Lauer pressed Bush on his decision to go to war despite “questions” from a number of “dissenters” like Gen. Colin Powell and his father’s former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft. Bush responded that “of course there were” dissenters, like himself:

LAUER: Not everybody thought you should go to war, though. There were dissenters.

BUSH: Of course there were.

LAUER: You know, there were questions at the Pentagon. Colin Powell had questions. Brent Scowcroft, your father’s former National Security Advisor, and dear friend, wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, I’m paraphrasing here, saying, “It’s not a good idea to go to war in Iraq.” So there were dissenting voices.

BUSH: I was a dissenting voice. I didn’t want to use force. I mean force is the last option for a President. And I think it’s clear in the book that I gave diplomacy every chance to work. And I will also tell you the world’s better off without somehow in power. And so are 25 million Iraqis.[...]

LAUER: You would still go to war in Iraq?

BUSH: I– first of all, didn’t have that luxury. You just don’t have the luxury when you’re President. That’s a very hypothetical question. I will say definitely the world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power, as are 25 million people who now have a chance to live in freedom.

Perhaps Bush doesn’t seem to remember his avaricious thirst for the Iraq war. So let’s remind him.

Recall, in 2002, when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was meeting with three U.S. Senators on how to approach Iraq diplomatically, Bush “poked his head into the office” and “neatly summed up” his take: “F*** Saddam. We’re taking him out.” In “talking about why we needed this war,” Bush later referenced an alleged Iraqi assassination plot against Bush’s father: “We need to get Saddam Hussein…that Mother ______ tried to take out my Dad.”

This “get Saddam” mentality was hardly a momentary craze. Recently declassified documents reveal that his administration were looking for a way to “decapitate” the Iraqi government since 2001. As Bush’s Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill — who Bush fired for “disagreeing too many times” with him — puts it, Bush was “all about finding a way to [go to war]. That was the tone of it. The president saying ‘Go find me a way to do this.’”

In the interview, Bush added that he still feels “sickened and angry” over the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Maybe he should watch his old comedy routine about those non-existent weapons of mass destruction. But, the 5,000 troop casualties and nearly100,000 Iraqi civilian casualties resulting from his decision is no laughing matter. (HT: TPM)

UPDATE: While Bush might have been "disgusted" with the lack of WMDs in the interview, he also registered a greater disgust over Kanye West’s derision of his Hurricane Katrina response. "Disgusted" that he "called me a racist," Bush determined West’s comment — not the Hurricane Katrina disaster — was "the worst moment" of his presidency:

LAUER: You say you told Laura at the time it was the worst moment of your Presidency?

BUSH: Yes. My record was strong I felt when it came to race relations and giving people a chance. And– it was a disgusting moment.

LAUER: I wonder if some people are going to read that, now that you’ve written it, and they might give you some heat for that. And the reason is this—

BUSH: Don’t care.

LAUER: Well, here’s the reason. You’re not saying that the worst moment in you’re Presidency was watching the misery in Louisiana. You’re saying it was when someone insulted you because of that.

BUSH: No — that– and I also make it clear that the misery in Louisiana affected me deeply as well. There’s a lot of tough moments in the book. And it was a disgusting moment, pure and simple.

This time I’ll use the lessons learned: halve the olive oil and no salt unless needed at the very end (after adding the olives and cooking away the red wine). The Wife hoovered up her portion and has asked for a repeat. Good stuff.

One drawback: a fair amount of standing and stirring.

UPDATE: Both changes were right on target: 1 Tbsp olive oil is plenty, and with the olives the dish needs NO additional salt.

Greenwald:

Following up on yesterday’s post regarding the evidence-free claims from anonymous government officials baselessly blaming Anwar Awlaki for the mailed bomb plot:  Andrew Sullivan today, referencing our recent debate over Obama’s efforts to assassinate Awlaki, favorably quotes John Burns, who wrote on Sunday:  "Increasingly, Mr. Awlaki is being depicted by Western intelligence officials as a threat on the scale of Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri."  Right:  because if there’s one thing that’s reliable, it’s anonymous claims about Terrorist threats laundered through The New York Times. Actual Yemen expert Gregory Johnsen today details how ludicrous are these breathless government and media assertions about Awlaki’s role in Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

As for Andrew’s citation of a news story today claiming that a man who knifed a member of the British Parliament was "inspired" by Awlaki’s sermons:  is that supposed be a justification for killing Awlaki?  The Supreme Court has held that the First Amendment bars imposing punishment or other liability on someone for the actions of others "inspired" by their speech (that ruling was the result of efforts by the State of Mississippi to impose liability on local NAACP leaders in the 1960s on the ground that their incendiary pro-boycott rhetoric "inspired" various individual NAACP members to engage in violence to enforce the boycott).  But if merely "inspiring" violence with incendiary rhetoric is the basis for labeling an American citizen a Terrorist and then killing them, we need not look all the way to Yemen for that.  We can find that right here at home.

I don’t know about you, but I tire of the ceaseless lies from our government and military. What a relief it would be to get the truth told consistently. A policy based on lies will fail. And this set of lies is being used to create a new Presidential power: the power to order the killing of American citizens with no due process, no judicial review, and no appeal. Somehow, I don’t see this was something the country needs.

Although Prop 19 (legalizing, regulating, and taxing marijuana) was defeated, it did garner the support of 46% of those voting—and who knows what would have happened had the election coincided with a presidential election. I imagine the action in California will move into the state legislature, not a body that is accomplishment-oriented. But who knows?  Certainly people are not becoming increasingly aware of the costs and failures of the War on Drugs™.

This American Prospect article by Eli Sanders from June 2009 seems worth a look:

In late May the new leader of America’s fight against illegal drugs, Gil Kerlikowske, returned to Seattle, the dope-tolerating city where he’d previously served as police chief. As part of the visit, he stopped by a local morning radio talk show, where right off the bat he declared, "I’m ending the phrase, ‘the war on drugs.’"

As far as statements from high government officials go, it was a radical declaration. Kerlikowske, and by extension Barack Obama, was rejecting four decades of federal government marching orders — a bold departure that would have been unthinkable in previous administrations. But even more striking than his announcement was the reaction: crickets. It’s not just that Kerlikowske made the statement in liberal Seattle or that he was seated inside the studio of a local National Public Radio affiliate when he spoke the words. The reaction had been similarly muted earlier that month, when he’d made a virtually identical comment to a very different audience, The Wall Street Journal and its readers, telling a reporter, "Regardless of how you try to explain to people it’s a ‘war on drugs’ or a ‘war on a product, ‘ people see a war as a war on them. … We’re not at war with people in this country." There was no immediate outcry, no conservative clamor for Kerlikowske’s head, not much of anything except expressions of gratitude from drug-policy-reform advocates.

It’s easy to figure out why Kerlikowske’s statement has been such a notable nonevent. For a majority of Americans, the failure of our militant anti-drug policy has now become self-evident. Recent polling found that more than 75 percent of people in this country think the drug war has not worked and will not work in the future. "Just say no" long ago morphed from a Nancy Reagan public-service announcement into a national punch line. Pot-smoking pop-culture figures are everywhere, from Woody Harrelson’s open advocacy of marijuana legalization to Jennifer Aniston’s nonchalant statement that "I enjoy it once in a while." The last three presidents have all admitted to trying drugs. Bill Clinton acknowledged he at least put a joint to his lips, though whether he actually inhaled or not remains fodder for comic speculation. George W. Bush artfully non-denied his past cocaine and marijuana use. And Barack Obama, who on the campaign trail memorably said, "The point was to inhale," wrote in his memoir,Dreams from My Father, that he "tried drugs enthusiastically" as a young man.

The evolution of these three presidential candidate statements on the matter — from Clinton’s unbelievable denial to Bush’s tacit admission to Obama’s frank acceptance of past drug experimentation — tracks neatly with the evolution of American attitudes toward the war on drugs. The national mood has shifted from unbelievable denial about the drug war’s failure to frank acceptance, from tough-guy bravado about the need to chase down drug traffickers to sensitive instructions to look within ourselves for the sources of the drug problem. That is not to say that America is on the brink of an immediate, Amsterdam-like legalization scheme. Rather, we are moving into an era of new openness to different approaches, an openness that allowed Obama to call the war on drugs an "utter failure" on the campaign trail with decidedly positive results and, once he was president, appoint someone who agrees with his assessment.

The Seattle radio host, Steve Scher, asked Kerlikowske why he wanted the job in the first place. Kerlikowske replied that he was excited by the opportunity to use his experience as a former police chief, in combination with the "bully pulpit" his new position provides, to "change the conversation." After all, he added, "the addiction problem, the drug problem in this country is much more complex than a 40-year-old metaphor for a war on drugs." The situation, he said, should instead be seen as "a public health problem where law enforcement is a big, key player."

Kerlikowske, in other words, sees himself as a credible mouthpiece who can say the things that cops, conservatives, and other longtime drug warriors don’t tend to want to hear from doctors who haven’t spent time in squad cars. He can say, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did in March on a trip to Mexico, that the drug problem is an addiction problem — a demand problem requiring treatment just as much as it is a supply problem requiring police action. He’s fine with Obama having demoted the drug czar post from Cabinet rank before he even got the job; in fact, Kerlikowske said he doesn’t even want to be called "drug czar," a term coined back in 1988 by then-Sen. Joe Biden. He prefers "director" — as in, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy — though he jokes that his wife still likes the term "czarina."

Given all this, one gets the distinct impression that Kerlikowske is positioning himself as a caretaker who can put an old model out to pasture while a new discussion is initiated. Scher asked the obvious next question: . . .

Continue reading.

Advice the US itself has firmly and explicitly rejected. Greenwald:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in Cambodia yesterday and urged its government to proceed with more prosecutions of surviving Khmer Rouge officials.  This is how The New York Times described her visit:

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visited a former Khmer Rouge torture house in Cambodia on Monday and urged the nation to proceed with trials of the former regime’s surviving leaders in order to "confront its past."

The commandant of that prison, Kaing Guek Eav, was sentenced to 19 years in prison last July in the first part of a United Nations-backed trial of leading figures of the Khmer Rouge regime, which was responsible for the deaths of 1.7 million people between 1975 and 1979.

A second trial involving the four most senior surviving leaders has been expected to follow, after they were formally indicted in September. But Prime Minister Hun Sen, who once said that Cambodia should "dig a hole and bury the past," has said that he would not allow any additional prosecutions beyond those four.

Mrs. Clinton repeated an argument that has been used by proponents of the trials, saying that "a country that is able to confront its past is a country that can overcome it."

"Countries that are held prisoner to their past can never break those chains and build the kind of future that their children deserve," she said. "Although I am well aware the work of the tribunal is painful, it is necessary to ensure a lasting peace."

Obviously, few regimes can compete with the Khmer Rouge in terms of the breadth and depth of its crimes, but I trust that everyone sees how irrelevant that is to the point.  Previously, Secretary Clinton instructed Kenya to proceed with war crimes trials of its former officials, while President Obama demanded that Indonesia continue investigating past human rights abuses on the ground that "we can’t go forward without looking backwards."  In other news yesterday:  George W. Bush threw out the first pitch at the World Series baseball game while the Texas crowd cheered and chanted: "USA. USA."

I guess to succeed in national politics, you must transcend shame and conscience, a step that Secretary Clinton and President Obama seem to have taken quite successfully. You also apparently have to believe that your constituents are idiots, which unfortunately seems to be for the most part true.

A terrific lather from Floris London’s JF shaving soap, worked up with the TOBS “artificial badger” brush. Then my newly gold-plated iKon loaded with a Swedish Gillette blade gave me its usual wonderfully comfortable shave—but on my upper lip, as I worked under my nose, I held the blade at the wrong angle and… nick! Get a bad angle—too steep—and you’ll nick yourself every time. It’s not the fault of razor or blade, it’s the problem of holding a sharp edge so as to cut yourself, and then you cut yourself.

Oh, well: My Nik Is Sealed plus a small patch of toilet paper for a few minutes. That I applied after I used the wonderful JF aftershave. Now I’m getting the apartment ready for the cleaning ladies.

Tony Keller writes in the National Post (Canada):

In the 1930s, that great legal innovator Joseph Stalin introduced the show trial. The accused would stand up in court and willingly, even eagerly, confess to the most fantastical crimes. At the first great show trial, in 1936, Grigori Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev and other former senior Communist party members admitted to being members of a terrorist organization. They said they had plotted to kill Stalin and other Soviet leaders. In the following years, as Stalin’s purges picked up steam, show trials featured increasingly incredible stories, usually involving the accused admitting to being agents of Western imperialism.

What made men confess to things that were unlikely, sometimes impossible and usually unsupported by other evidence? Torture. Sleep deprivation, beatings, and threats against their wives and children. To stop the pain, you had to confess to whatever it was that the interrogators wanted to hear. And then you had to get up in court and willingly confess to it all over again.

The trial of Omar Khadr has been called a travesty of justice, a violation of the rule of law, a kangaroo court and lots of other things beside. But what it really was, was a show trial.

On the main charge, "murder in violation of the laws of war" (a crime that doesn’t appear to even exist in international law, given that combatants who kill other soldiers in combat are not violating the laws of war), the chief evidence against the then-15-year-old child soldier was his own confession. And that confession, made years ago and long since recanted, was obtained under conditions that any normal human being would describe as torture.

Omar Khadr was captured in 2002 in Afghanistan. He was the only survivor after a firefight and an air strike on an al-Qaeda position. He had been wounded in his shoulder and in both eyes, shot twice in the back and was near death. It was alleged that, just before he was shot, he had thrown a grenade at attacking American troops, killing one of them. As already noted, he was 15 years old.

He then spent several months in the hellhole that was Bagram airbase in Afghanistan, where he claims — credibly, given all that we know about what went on at Bagram — that he was subjected to sleep deprivation, the chaining of his hands above his head for hours, that he was hooded and threatened by dogs, and sometimes forced to urinate on himself because he was not unshackled to go to the bathroom.

His chief interrogator at Bagram admitted to telling the teenage boy that unless he co-operated, he would be sent to a U.S. prison, where a group of black men would gang rape him to death. Ponder that for a moment.

He was interviewed about 25 times by this interrogator, Joshua Claus. Claus was also the interrogator for an Afghan taxi driver named Dilawar who was chained to the ceiling and beaten to death in Bagram in 2002; Claus pled guilty to his involvement in the affair and received a five month sentence. In a lovely Orwellian touch, the U.S. government insisted that reporters covering Khadr’s trial not name Claus, but instead refer to him as "Interrogator 1."

In Bagram, . . .

Continue reading.

Isn’t Obama great?

If you have Netflix Watch Instantly, pick Ip Man (about a real-life Wing Chun master) and fast-forward to 51 minutes. This is early enough so you get the full build to a fight sequence. Fights are extremely well choreographed. If you don’t like martial arts movies, you may not like this, but I think you’ll have to acknowledge Yen’s skill. The episode takes place during Japan’s brutal occupation of China in WWII.

As blog readers know, I believe firmly that police officers can (and should) be subject to having video/audio records made of their performance of official duties. It’s a travesty when laws are passed (as they have been in some states) that make recording police officers carrying out their public duties a felony. Wendy McElroy has an interesting article on police resistance to public accountability:

Why is it difficult to prosecute police officers for criminal misconduct even when the abuse is severe and unequivocal?

A February news item from WSVN-TV in Miami/Ft. Lauderdale points to one reason:

A homeless man’s attorney said surveillance video shows deputies used excessive force in his arrest. Gerald McGovern, 58 [said he] did not attack them, as charged. Instead, they attacked him. The public defender’s office said the surveillance video clears McGovern and implicates BSO [Broward Sheriff’s Office]. . . . A witness, Roberto Aguilara, backed up McGovern’s claim.

Note the omission. The news report names the alleged victim, the witness, and (elsewhere) the lawyer but not the accused deputies. Nor do their names appear in subsequent stories about an official investigation into allegations that the deputies used excessive force.

Few people outside law enforcement are familiar with Police Disclosure Laws (PDLs), which in most states, including Florida, block the release of information about an officer’s alleged misconduct until internal investigations are completed. Even then, the laws are often broadly interpreted to block such release. Some states do not make information public unless criminal charges are filed or the officer is dismissed. Other states leave the issue entirely to the police department’s discretion.

The declared purpose of restrictive PDLs is to protect accused officers. With sympathetic courts ruling in favor of PDLs, police unions staunchly defend the practice of granting officers more privacy than others who are criminally accused. A news story from the New Orleans Times-Picayune offers a glimpse into the vigor of their defense:

Police unions trying to block news organizations’ access to internal police investigations of New Orleans officers also are waging a campaign in the civil and criminal courts to keep such records out of the hands of the city’s public defender’s office. Steve Singer, general counsel of the Orleans Public Defenders, said his office has filed public records requests for the New Orleans Police Department’s Public Integrity Bureau files of arresting officers in the cases of more than 50 defendants. The office also has sought subpoenas through Criminal District Court to obtain some of these records.

Critics argue that PDLs obstruct justice. The laws allow police officers to violate rights because they can avoid both transparency and accountability. The laws deny victims information that may be necessary to sue or otherwise press a legal case against officers. And by shielding important aspects of accusations—for example, whether the unnamed officer has been similarly accused in the past—the laws discourage the reporting of police abuse, especially by the media, for whom a significant delay in obtaining information makes a story grow cold. In turn, the lack of coverage encourages the public to believe misconduct is rare; thus those abused by police are doubly victimized by having their accounts dismissed out of hand.

On what legal basis do police departments refuse public access to information on misconduct by their officers?

Almost every state uses the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) as a model for its own statutes on the public disclosure of government records. FOIA was intended to give the public a general right of access to information held by government agencies. Nevertheless, the nondisclosure about police misconduct is generally justified by reference to two common exemptions: the “investigative record” and “privacy right” exemptions. The investigative record exemption can be invoked even after an investigation is completed.

Strong arguments can be made against both exemptions.

The Investigative Record Exemption. The police units that investigate accusations of misconduct are called “internal affairs” or something similar. But are such accusations an internal, private matter rather than one of compelling public interest? The question becomes more urgent when the alleged misconduct is criminal or involves the violation of constitutional protections such as the right to due process.

When anyone is given a gun and broad authority to use it in public, that same public needs to know if the gun and the authority are being misused. The public also needs to know the particulars of how abuse accusations are being investigated. For example, has a particular police department established such a high burden of proof that virtually no accusation against an officer can be sustained?

This compelling public interest is usually overridden by the argument that releasing information would have a “chilling effect” on law enforcement. In the essay “The Public’s Right of Access to Police Misconduct Files,” attorney Lynne Wilson comments, “A number of federal courts have seriously questioned the empirical basis for a finding that public disclosure of internal disciplinary files causes a ‘chilling effect’ on law enforcement. One judge said that ‘if the fear of disclosure . . . does have some real effect on officers’ candor, the stronger working hypothesis is that fear of disclosure is more likely to increase candor than to chill it.’”

The Privacy Right Exemption . . .

Continue reading.

James Fallows has a good post at the Atlantic blog:

As a diversion from today’s election news, but of course also a guide to longer-term political issues, it’s worth reading the new Stratfor analysis of the thwarted cargo-bombing plane. The whole thing is interesting, but two big themes stand out.

One is the ongoing obsession of al Qaeda and allied groups with attacking aviation, for the "terrorism theater" benefits a successful attack brings. Widespread fear, further gumming-up of world travel and commerce. You could far more easily kill far more people by attacking, say, a shopping mall, but apparently that doesn’t have the same spectacle value. (A reader from Norway made the same point about "terrorism theater" recently here; Richard Clarke wrote about the shopping-mall scenario in the Atlantic  here. The assumption is that future airline attacks will kill only the people on the plane, since fortified cockpit doors and alerted passengers make a 9/11-style plane-into-building mass attack virtually impossible.)

The other is the insistence that this was mainly an anti-Western rather than an anti-Jewish effort, despite initial interpretations to the contrary. According to Stratfor’s Scott Stewart, the bombs were clearly intended to go off in flight, rather than ever reaching the Jewish congregations in Chicago to which the packages were theoretically being sent. Those addresses were apparently a kind of false-flag, or bonus, intensifying the terrorizing effect. (If the bombs had gone off in flight, presumably the addresses might have been discovered in post-disaster tracking and investigation.) The real objective was to kill whoever happened to be on the plane, which could of course have included Muslims, and to terrorize Westerners in general. Samples from the analysis, provided by permission of Stratfor:

A tactical analysis of the latest attempt suggests that the operation was not quite as creative as past attempts, though it did come very close to achieving its primary objective, which in this case (apparently) was to destroy aircraft. It does not appear that the devices ultimately were intended to be part of an attack against the Jewish institutions in the United States to which the parcels were addressed. Although the operation failed in its primary mission (taking down aircraft) it was successful in its secondary mission, which was to generate worldwide media coverage and sow fear and disruption in the West….

As we’ve noted before, some jihadist groups have a fixation on attacking aviation targets. In response to this persistent threat, aviation security has changed dramatically in the post-9/11 era, and great effort has been made at considerable expense to increase the difficulty of attacking passenger aircraft….

There has long been an evolving competition between airline security policies and terrorist tactics as both are adapted in response to the other. Because of recent developments in aviation security, AQAP apparently has tried again to re-shape the paradigm by moving away from suicide-bomber attacks against aircraft and back to a very old modus operandi — hiding explosive devices in packages and electronic devices.

How does this assessment, and the reminder of terrorists’ ongoing obsession with aircraft, affect the ongoing discussion of "security theater" here? It emphasizes the deadly serious importance of distinguishing theatrical effects from real security — of recognizing the difference between measures that respond to the ever-evolving avenues of attack, and those that are the Maginot Line equivalent of showily fighting the last war. In that vein, today’s account from the traveling public. This was a note that came in with the subject line, "Security theater, part n," and this explanation:

(I’m a math type, couldn’t help the reference)

Just lost another folding utility knife to TSA. I discovered it just before stepping into the x-ray, so I threw out the blade and put the holder in my shoe. The idiot TSA supervisor said it couldn’t go because "it looks like a knife". He further elaborated that if I held it to the throat of a flight attendant he/she wouldn’t know it wasn’t a knife, nor would a federal air marshal, who would shoot me. Of course, the same logic holds if I were to hold a Barbie doll to the attendant’s throat, but I didn’t share that thought.

For those tracking this effort. I’m in my push up to 20 minutes. Once there, I’ll remain at least a week.

This recipe sounds particularly delicious to me.

UPDATE: And it is particularly delicious. Changes for next time:

a. Use 1 Tbsp of olive oil, not 2 Tbsp.

b. The oil-cured olives are quite salty, so add no salt at all until you taste at the very end: you probably won’t need salt.

UPDATE 2: Just made it again, and both the changes are right on target: 1 Tbsp olive oil is plenty, and the dish needs NO additional salt beyond what the olives contribute.

Winter weather makes bean soups tasty. Here’s a recipe that doesn’t have you soak the beans. (Soaking is never necessary, but it does allow you to cook the beans for a shorter time.) From Melissa Clark in the NY Times:

Herbed White Bean and Sausage Stew
Time: 2 1/2 hours

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, more for serving
1 pound sweet Italian sausage, sliced 3/4-inch thick
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
2 medium carrots, finely diced
2 celery stalks, finely diced
1 onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 pound dried Great Northern beans, rinsed and picked through
2 teaspoons kosher salt, or to taste
2 thyme sprigs
1 large rosemary sprig
1 bay leaf
2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar, more for serving
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper, more to taste.

1. Heat the oil in a large stockpot over medium-high heat. Add the sausage and brown until cooked through, about 7 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer to a plate lined with a paper towel.

2. Add the tomato paste and cumin to the pot. Cook, stirring, until dark golden, about 2 minutes. Add the carrots, celery, onion and garlic. Cook, stirring, until the vegetables have softened, about 5 minutes. Stir in the beans, 8 cups water, salt, thyme, rosemary and bay leaf. Turn the heat up to high and bring to a boil. Then reduce heat to low and simmer gently until the beans are tender, about 2 hours, adding more water if needed to make sure the beans remain submerged.

3. When the beans are tender, return the sausage to the pot. Simmer for 5 minutes. Stir in the vinegar and pepper. Taste and adjust seasoning. Ladle into warm bowls and serve drizzled with additional vinegar and olive oil.

Yield: 6 to 8 servings.

Obvious substitutions: Any white bean instead of Great Northern, or use pinto beans or even black beans.

Interesting interview with British psychologist Joan Freeman, who has spent 35 years studying children with extraordinary abilities:

When children are labelled as "gifted" we like to think the world will be their oyster when they grow up. Be very careful, warns British psychologist Joan Freeman. As she explains to Alison George, her 35 years of studying children with extraordinary abilities has revealed that the label has as many negatives as positives

You have followed one group of gifted children for the past 35 years. Did they all go on to lead brilliantly successful adult lives?

No. Only a few rose to fame and fortune, and no matter how glittering their early prospects, they had to work extremely hard most of their lives to get there. There is a big difference between a gifted child and a gifted adult. A child is seen as gifted because they are ahead of their age peers, especially at school, while a "gifted" adult has to be seen to make a difference to the world.

How did you define a "gifted" child?

That’s the most difficult question. A gifted child is someone who is distinctly better at something than other children of the same age. Each one is something of a prodigy. While some can do anything brilliantly, whether it is sport, music or philosophy, others focus on a single area. The criteria for giftedness vary, not only with the culture, but with age. The people featured in my latest book, Gifted Lives, which investigates what happens when gifted children grow up, all had IQs above 160.

Were all the children you studied gifted?

No. My study was unique in that from the beginning I compared three groups: children labelled "gifted", children of identical ability but without a label, and average children.

What were the parents’ reactions to having a very bright child?

The healthy reaction is to be nurturing, while the unhealthy is to do with parental need for their child to be bright. If you label a child as gifted when they are not, as some parents do, the child has the most terrible burden. If you are incapable of fulfilling your parents’ dreams, you must fail over and over – you can’t win. There was one boy whose mother was convinced he was gifted. She went on and on about how school didn’t appreciate him. When I tested him, he had an average IQ. As a child he was very depressed, but he escaped and now runs a bar in Spain and is having a great time…

Continue reading.

We all know that the plural of "anecdote" is not "data," so a single anecdote counts for little more than a suggestion to investigate. Still, I thought that this letter in New Scientist was intriguing, at least:

Andy Coghlan discusses the rise in the number of white girls in the US reaching puberty at the age of 7, suggesting oestrogen-like chemicals or obesity as causes (14 August, p 16). Indeed, when I moved to Maryland, as the mother of girls aged 10 and 8, I was shocked to meet a 9-year-old who was fully developed.

The early puberty in the US might not be the result of exposure to chemicals that mimic oestrogen, but to oestrogen itself. Unlike in Australia, where the use of hormones in farming is prohibited, calves and piglets in the US are ear-tagged with oestrogen pellets. Oestrogen causes weight gain, and so obesity might be a symptom rather than a cause of the problem.

For my own part, when I returned to Australia I suffered incredible mood swings and other symptoms of oestrogen withdrawal. The amount of oestrogen in the US food chain bears studying.

Kathy Smart
Hillcrest, Australia

If you’re inclined to plain text, note this tip from Microsoft:

Microsoft Notepad is a word processing tool included with Windows and is installed by default under the Accessories program group. You can use it to create a log-type file that adds the current date and time each time the Notepad file is opened. This article describes how to create a log file with Notepad.

To create a log file in Notepad:

1. Click Start, point to Programs, point to Accessories, and then click Notepad.
2. Type .LOG on the first line, and then press ENTER to move to the next line.
3. On the File menu, click Save As, type a descriptive name for your file in the File name box, and then click OK. When you next open the file, note that the date and time have been appended to the end of the log, immediately preceding the place where new text can be added. You can use this functionality to automatically add the current date and time to each log entry.

I got a fine lather from Nanny’s Silly Soap Company’s Yushu shaving soap, thanks in part to the G.B. Kent BK4 brush. The Mühle R41 open comb, loaded with an Astra Keramik Platinum blade, did an excellent three-pass shave, which I followed with a cooling splash of the slightly mentholated Floïd aftershave.