Later On

I bought a Macbook Pro yesterday, 13" screen. It’s an enormous time sink right now, as I try to learn the ins and outs, but I’m pleased that I am untouched by buyer’s remorse. I’m actually quite happy with it, despite the occasional glitch.

Full disclosure: a week or so ago, I ordered that computer on-line, and after an hour or so cancelled the order. So I have wavered.

However, the temptation to have a computer that I can use in the living room chair, and the use I made of Macbooks on my trip (which showed that they work well for me: better than the Windows notebooks I had tried), finally moved me to actually go out to the Apple store and buy one.

But that’s why the late posting, and that’s why the light posting for a while: I’m learning two foreign languages: español and Macintosh.

(Despite all the demands, though, I did 30′ nonstop on the Nordic Track this morning. )

My Spanish learning is going well. I’m starting to realize the benefits of having learned Esperanto.

Let me tell you a story about Finland. The standard practice in Finland was (and still may be) that students take 3 years of German. As an experiment, they had one group of students (the experimental group) take a year of Esperanto, followed by 2 years of German with their Esperanto continuing to be used as the instructional language for a geography course.

Because they didn’t want students in the experimental group to be moving away before they completed the three years, they selected the experimental group from families that were more or less rooted in the community. Generally speaking, this meant that children of professional families (who they thought were more likely to move at some point in the next three years) were not included, though these children were on average more academically able (due to home environment, I presume).

The result: In the first year, after a few weeks, the students in the Esperanto class were chattering away on the playground in Esperanto, having fun with their “secret” language (and, of course, getting in lots of practice). Because Esperanto was specifically designed to be easy to learn (it was designed to be a universal second language), it’s … well, easy to learn: no irregular verbs, easy way to form new words using a system of affixes, and so on.

The students learning German did no playground conversations in German.

At the end of the three years, they found that the students with 1 year of Esperanto and 2 years of German were much more fluent in German and had better comprehension.

And it makes sense. The second foreign language is almost always easier to learn than the first: you know more what you’re doing, you know how to build your vocabulary, you understand that you might as well memorize the prepositions, you know if you’re trying to say something in the language not to get hung up by not knowing a word but to paraphrase, using words you do know, and so on. Moreover, the students who began with Esperanto had an extremely positive first-foreign-language experience so when they started a second foreign language they optimistic and ready to buckle down. (Did I mention that it was easy? And, of course, it’s fun to talk in front of your friends in a secret language. )

The experiment was run by the United Nations (specifically, UNESCO, as I recall), which has an obvious interest in finding a common second language, given the billions they burn through printing everything 5 times over (in all the official language), paying the translators for that and also the simultaneous interpreters—and maintaining the technology to support that effort. It would obviously save enormous sums of money, not to mention time, if all the representatives were to learn Esperanto (designed for ease of learning) and use that as their common second language. (The fact that Esperanto is not native to any country is a benefit here: there would undoubtedly be strong political objections to using a language that would favor some particular country: English, French, German, Chinese, Russian—you can see the objections that would be raised. But Esperanto is neutral.)

Well, Esperanto was really my first foreign language: the first I learned well enough to speak. And now that I’m hitting my stride in Spanish, I see all the old tricks coming back to me. E.g., make your own flash cards (I use these Vis-Ed blank cards): You start learning the word simply from making the card. Then carry the cards with you and review them constantly.

I generally keep the card in three decks, held with rubber bands:

Green rubber band – I know these words pretty well. I review every 2-3 days. If I even hesitate over a word, much less get it wrong, it goes back to the yellow pack. If I have no idea, it goes directly into red pack.

Yellow rubber band – These words are still tricky, so I review them 3-4 times a day. Once I seem to know one cold, it moves to the green pack. If I get really stuck with one, it moves to the red pack.

Red rubber band – These are new or else problem words. I review these more or less constantly—like once or twice an hour. They move into the yellow pack as soon as I think I know them, and that usually doesn’t take long at that rate of review.

I’m following many of the suggestions in the wonderful book Polyglot: How I Learn Languages, by Kató Lomb:

KATÓ LOMB (1909–2003) was one of the great polyglots of the 20th century. A translator and one of the first simultaneous interpreters in the world, Lomb worked in 16 languages for state and business concerns in her native Hungary. She achieved further fame by writing books on languages, interpreting, and polyglots. Polyglot: How I Learn Languages, first published in 1970, is a collection of anecdotes and reflections on language learning. Because Dr. Lomb learned her languages as an adult, after getting a PhD in chemistry, the methods she used will thus be of particular interest to adult learners who want to master a foreign language.

I’m following many of her selections: watching movies in the target language, listening to audiobooks and the radio in the target language, using a dictionary that’s totally in the target language (rather than English-Target, Target-English, which keeps you thinking in English), reading magazines and newspapers in the target language, and so on. It’s a very interesting book even if you’re not yet learning another language.

I should also mention a very handy little piece of software for Windows (don’t know yet whether it’s available on the Mac, which indeed may not need it): Diacrit. It’s quite wonderful and supports a host of languages (including Esperanto, which is why I originally got it). UPDATE: Here’s how the Mac does it.

Another gift from The Wife, this Gerson razor with a horn handle carries what appears to be a Mühle head, using the design developed with Neil Jagger. Not sure, though. At any rate, it shaves quite well on a beard softened with Yardley shaving soap. A splash of Pashana, and I’m ready to go.

Ed Brayton:

On President Obama’s very first day in office he pledged that his would be the most transparent administration ever. He issued an executive order telling federal agency and department heads to change their ways when it comes to Freedom of Information Act requests and err on the side of transparency rather than secrecy. And he was particularly adamant about the public knowing about government officials meeting with lobbyists. In fact, in his State of the Union address last week he said:

Because you deserve to know when your elected officials are meeting with lobbyists, I ask Congress to do what the White House has already done: put that information online.

The rhetoric sounds great. The reality isn’t matching up. Right now, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is in the process of making a decision on whether to greenlight the Keystone XL pipeline, which will carry highly polluting tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada all the way to Houston, Texas. And it just so happens that the deputy national campaign manager of her 2008 presidential campaign is now the chief lobbyist for TransCanada, the oil company that is proposing the pipeline.

A group of environmental groups filed a FOIA request for all communications on the subject between Clinton and Paul Elliott, her campaign manager turned lobbyist. The State Department rejected it. Those groups have now filed an appeal of that rejection, which will almost certainly be ignored (under FOIA law, no answer means a rejection of the appeal), forcing the issue into court.

But if the Obama administration actually meant what it says about transparency, they wouldn’t have to.

This bill is, to my mind, the clearest evidence yet that the US is headed in an ominous direction. Declan McCullagh at CNET News:

A controversial bill handing President Obama power over privately owned computer systems during a “national cyberemergency,” and prohibiting any review by the court system, will return this year.

Internet companies should not be alarmed by the legislation, first introduced last summer by Sens. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), a Senate aide said last week. Lieberman, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, is chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

 

“We’re not trying to mandate any requirements for the entire Internet, the entire Internet backbone,” said Brandon Milhorn, Republican staff director and counsel for the committee.

Instead, Milhorn said at a conference in Washington, D.C., the point of the proposal is to assert governmental control only over those “crucial components that form our nation’s critical infrastructure.”

Portions of the Lieberman-Collins bill, which was not uniformly well-received when it became public in June 2010, became even more restrictive when a Senate committee approved a modified version on December 15. The full Senate did not act on the measure.

The revised version includes new language saying that the federal government’s designation of vital Internet or other computer systems “shall not be subject to judicial review.” Another addition expanded the definition of critical infrastructure to include “provider of information technology,” and a third authorized the submission of “classified” reports on security vulnerabilities.

The idea of creating what some critics have called an Internet “kill switch” that the president could flip in an emergency is not exactly new.

A draft Senate proposal that CNET obtained in August 2009 authorized the White House to “declare a cybersecurity emergency,” and another from Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) would have explicitly given the government the power to “order the disconnection” of certain networks or Web sites. House Democrats have taken a similar approach in their own proposals.

Lieberman, who recently announced he would not seek re-election in 2012, said last year that enactment of his bill needed to be a top congressional priority. “For all of its ‘user-friendly’ allure, the Internet can also be a dangerous place with electronic pipelines that run directly into everything from our personal bank accounts to key infrastructure to government and industrial secrets,” he said.

Civil libertarians and some industry representatives have repeatedly raised concerns about the various proposals to give the executive branch such broad emergency power. On the other hand, , , ,

Continue reading.

That’s been obvious for generations, but the Ensign case is the current blatant exhibition of bad behavior that Congress seems happy to accept. Susan Crabtree writes at TPM Muckraker:

The Senate Ethics Committee’s decision to appoint a special counsel to lead the investigation into activities surrounding Sen. John Ensign’s (R-NV) affair with a political staffer is raising age-old questions about the panel’s relevancy.

Members of Congress are the first to admit that they hate serving on the Ethics Committee, and policing their peers puts them in an unusually awkward position. If that’s the case and the panel has to farm out its work to true professional investigators, then why have lawmakers investigating their colleagues misbehavior in the first place?

The Ensign case is particularly troubling because the investigation was well underway last year, and Ensign staffers had testified to the panel that Ensign and his senior aides knew they were breaking the one-year lobbying ban when they helped
a former staffer set up a short-lived career on K Street, as The Hill reported last June.

In fact, at least one Ensign aide told the Ethics Committee that Ensign and Hampton were so bold about the lobbying job that the pair ate lunch together at least once in the Senate dining room, according to The Hill.

The information was provided as part of the panel’s probe into payments Ensign’s parents made to Cynthia and Douglas Hampton. Ensign was having an affair with Cynthia, who is married to Douglas.

Both worked for Ensign, and Douglas Hampton was a close political aide. Ensign’s parents paid the Hamptons $96,000 once they left the senator’s employment. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a complaint with the ethics panel, charging Ensign with paying the Hamptons hush money.

Ensign admitted to the affair in June 2009 but has denied any wrongdoing. He cites the December decision by the Justice Department to abandon its criminal investigation and the Federal Election Commission’s decision to drop a probe into whether payments to the Hamptons violated campaign rules.

Watchdogs are not convinced. The Justice Department’s public integrity section, which is charged with investigating allegations against members of Congress, has been gutted, and the FEC has long been known as a paper tiger that very rarely takes aggressive action against members, they contend.

Ensign’s case is exhibit A for why Congress should hand all authority to investigate serious allegations against members of Congress over to an independent ethics office equipped with attorneys who specialize in white-collar crime, argues Public Citizen’s Craig Holman. . .

Continue reading.

Because if the pope is canonized, those organs become magical relics that can work miracles. Here’s the story from Reuters:

Pope Benedict has a soft spot in his heart for organ donations but his body parts can’t be donated to save lives after he dies, the Vatican says.

A doctor in Germany had been using the fact that the pope possessed an organ donors’ card from a medical association to advocate the practice. The Vatican asked him to stop but he did not.

To settle the matter, the pope’s secretary, Monsignor Georg Gaenswein, sent a letter to the doctor and the missive was reported in the German program of Vatican Radio.

"It’s true that the pope owns an organ donor card … but contrary to public opinion, the card issued back in the 1970s became de facto invalid with Cardinal Ratzinger’s election to the papacy," Vatican Radio quoted from the letter.

In 1999, six years before he was elected to the papacy, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger disclosed that he always carried an organ donor’s card with him and encouraged the practice as "an act of love."

Vatican officials say that after a pope dies, his body belongs to the entire Church and must be buried intact. Furthermore, if papal organs were donated, they would become relics in other bodies if he were eventually made a saint.

Ed Brayton:

Sens. Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins released a statement earlier this week about Egypt cutting off the internet in that country, condemning Mubarak for doing so but trying to argue that their bill would never be abused in that manner in the United States. I’ll put the entire statement below the fold:

Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, ID-Conn., Ranking Member Susan Collins, R-Me., and Senator Tom Carper, D-Del., issued the following statement Tuesday about the Internet shut down in Egypt and pending cybersecurity legislation that would protect the U.S. from cyber attacks.

"The steps the Mubarak government took last week to shut down Internet communications in Egypt were, and are, totally wrong. His actions were clearly designed to limit internal criticisms of his government. Our cybersecurity legislation is intended to protect the U.S. from external cyber attacks. Yet, some have suggested that our legislation would empower the President to deny U.S. citizens access to the Internet. Nothing could be further from the truth.

"We would never sign on to legislation that authorized the President, or anyone else, to shut down the Internet. Emergency or no, the exercise of such broad authority would be an affront to our Constitution.

"But our current laws do give us reason to be concerned. Most important, under current law, in the event of a cyber attack, the President’s authorities are broad and ambiguous – a recipe for encroachments on privacy and civil liberties.

"For example, in the event of a war or threat of war, the Communications Act of 1934 authorizes the President to take over or shut down wire and radio communications providers. This law is a crude sledgehammer built for another time and technology. Our bill contains a number of protections to make sure that broad authority is not used.

"First, the emergency measures in our bill apply in a precise and targeted way only to our most critical infrastructure – the networks and assets most essential to the functioning of society and the economy – to ensure they are protected from destruction.

"Second, our legislation specifically says the President can only invoke the emergency authorities "if there is an ongoing or imminent" attack that would "cause national or regional catastrophic effects" by the disruption of the nation’s most critical infrastructure. The legislative language defines "national or regional catastrophic effects" as, among other things, "a mass casualty event which includes an extraordinary number of fatalities" and "mass evacuations with a prolonged absence."

"Third, any measures ordered by the President must be "the least disruptive means feasible."

"Fourth, when invoking these authorities, the President must notify Congress, and the emergency measures cannot be continued beyond 120 days without congressional approval.

"Fifth, the legislation expressly forbids any action that would violate the First Amendment and also prohibits limiting internet traffic, emails, and other forms of communication (except those between critical infrastructure providers) unless no other action would prevent a regional or national catastrophe.

"Our bill already contains protections to prevent the President from denying Americans access to the Internet – even as it provides ample authority to ensure that those most critical services that rely on the Internet are protected. And, even though experts question whether anyone can technically ‘shut down’ the Internet in the United States, we will ensure that any legislation that moves in this Congress contains explicit language prohibiting the President from doing what President Mubarak did.

All of which might be a bit more comforting if the bill did not contain a provision forbidding the courts from reviewing any decision by the president to shut off the internet. Why get rid of such a crucial check on executive authority if you’re going to insist that such authority can’t and won’t be abused?

As our experience the last 10 years with FISA shows, the executive branch will gladly overreach its authority if it thinks the courts won’t intervene to stop them. Giving them carte blanche without even the possibility of judicial intervention is absolute madness.

Incidents such as this show what the US has become:

A 48-year-old Afghan citizen and Guantanamo detainee, Awal Gul, died on Tuesday of an apparent heart attack.  Gul, a father of 18 children, had been kept in a cage by the U.S. for more than 9 years — since late 2001 when he was abducted in Afghanistan — without ever having been charged with a crime.  While the U.S. claims he was a Taliban commander, Gul has long insisted that he quit the Taliban a year before the 9/11 attack because, as his lawyer put it, "he was disgusted by the Taliban’s growing penchant for corruption and abuse."  His death means those conflicting claims will never be resolved; said his lawyer: "it is shame that the government will finally fly him home not in handcuffs and a hood, but in a casket."  This episode illustrates that the U.S. Government’s detention policy — still — amounts to imposing life sentences on people without bothering to prove they did anything wrong.   

This episode also demonstrates the absurdity of those who claim that President Obama has been oh-so-eagerly trying to close Guantanamo only to be thwarted by a recalcitrant Congress.  The Obama administration has sought to "close" the camp only in the most meaningless sense of that word:  by moving its defining injustice — indefinite, due-process-free detention — a few thousand miles north onto U.S. soil.  But the crux of the Guantanamo travesty — indefinite detention — is something the Obama administration has long planned to preserve, and that has nothing to do with what Congress has or has not done.  Indeed, Gul was one of the 50 detainees designated by Obama for that repressive measure.  Thus, had Gul survived, the Obama administration would have sought to keep him imprisoned indefinitely without any pretense of charging him with a crime — neither in a military commission nor a real court.  Instead, they would have simply continued the Bush/Cheney policy of imprisoning him indefinitely without any charges.

There’s one other aspect of this episode that warrants attention.  In its 2008 Boumediene decision, the Supreme Court struck down the provision of the Military Commissions Act which denied habeas corpus review to all detainees, and ruled that Guantanamo detainees at least have the right to a one-time review by a federal court as to whether there is credible evidence to justify their detention (a far less rigorous standard than the one that applies if they’re charged with a crime and the state has to prove their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt).  Gul had filed a habeas petition and it was fully argued before a federal court back in March – 11 months ago. The federal judge never got around to issuing a ruling.

This happens quite frequently in our court system:  judges simply fail to act within anything resembling a reasonable period of time.  Gul was imprisoned for 8 years without a shred of due process (outside of internal Bush Pentagon "administrative reviews") and finally had his Constitutional right to obtain habeas review affirmed by the Supreme Court in 2008.  His habeas petition was fully submitted and orally argued almost a full year ago, yet even in the face of his prolonged, due-process-free imprisonment, the federal judge presiding over the case just never bothered to rule on his claims.  There’s a well-known legal maxim that "justice delayed is justice denied," but this goes well beyond merely violating that.  Taking almost a full year — at least — to decide a habeas petition for someone who is languishing in indefinite detention for their ninth year is simply inexcusable. . .

Continue reading.

Lots of activity today, including getting a Macbook Pro, 13" screen, 4 GB RAM, no extras.

Also: 30 minutes nonstop on Nordic Track. It’s obvious that the Nordic Track is going to have to be skipped on Tuesdays and Thursdays because I have to get to campus early. Still, 30 minutes for 5 days a week is 150 minutes, well above the 100-minute minimum currently suggested.

And this afternoon The Wife and I had a Pilates session.

Much more to do in terms of study, etc.

Very interesting article by Bob Grant in The Scientist:

Chances are you’ve never seen climate change from this perspective. French filmmaker Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s HOME takes the viewer into the sky to peer down upon a beautiful and fragile Earth in distress. The movie, originally released across in 2009 and shown on televisions across Europe and Asia, made its US premier this week to an auditorium full of people on the campus of Columbia University on Monday (31st January).

"This movie is like a pedagogic movie trying to explain how we came to this place," Arthus-Bertrand told The Scientist. "Man is a fantastic species. We have done so many amazing things, but now we have put the Earth in danger."

HOME is shot using only aerial photography, a technique for which Arthus-Bertrand is well known. Sweeping shots of otherworldly landscapes displaying the majesty of our planet intermingle with surprisingly intimate close-ups on human and animal inhabitants suffering the effects of climate change. . .

Continue reading. The article includes this trailer for the movie, best watched in full-screen mode:

This is the Joris open-comb razor with an olive-wood handle. The Wife brought this back from Paris—the same source as the Plisson Chinese Grey brush I used today. I got a very good lather from the Sweet Gale, and it struck me that my lathering technique has changed (improved) since I started using boar brushes: I work the brush more vigorously over the soap and for a longer period, loading the brush more fully than I once did.

Three passes with the new razor, using a new Iridium Super blade, and a very smooth face resulted. I would say the aggressiveness of this razor is like, say, the 1940′s Gillette Aristocrat: aggressive, but not harsh. And not too aggressive. OTOH, it does not quite achieve the sublime comfort of the iKon.

It’s quite a nice razor and one that I definitely will enjoy using. A splash of aftershave, and I’m off for my weigh-in.

Ina rare clip of his involvement in The Jungle Book:

Interesting article in Science News:

In a midtown-Manhattan psychotherapist’s office, a new client adjusts his floppy, glow-in-the-dark shoes and nervously tugs at his multicolored shock of hair before starting to talk.

You might recognize me, doc. I’m Bozo. Bozo the Clown.

The circus is in town? How’d you get here today — cannon shot?

Spare me, doc. This is serious. I’ve lost my happiness. I’ve still got my pensiveness. But who wants to see a pensive clown? I need to be happy — make that slap happy.

You have a painted red smile plastered on your pasty face. You look menacing, not happy. No one smiles that much. You look like Bozo the Serial Killer.

That’s harsh, doc. Put yourself in my size 150s. Happiness is a job requirement for me. I can’t do my job when I’m having nightmares about kids asking me to make balloon animals for them.

Don’t you do that all the time?

In my nightmares, all the little buggers want porcupines.

You feel inadequate, I get it. But let’s deal with your happiness fetish. Happiness has its upside, of course. On average, happy people are healthy and satisfied. In real life, though, happiness isn’t appropriate in all situations and fits some people better than others. It’s even possible to have too much happiness. Psychologists presented the latest evidence on the perils of happiness in January at the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology in San Antonio.

You’re freaking me out. Do you have any Prozac? Cotton candy?

No. And I’m fresh out of Gummi Bears. Gnaw on this: Too much emotional zest can go seriously wrong, according to Yale University’s June Gruber. She studies people with bipolar disorder, who go through manic periods of such intense joy and abandon that they clean out their bank accounts in frivolous spending sprees and otherwise go wild. When not in a depressed phase, people with this condition are always — often inappropriately — primed for happiness. Their hearts race and their bodies generally rev up not just while watching inspiring videos but while viewing neutral or even upsetting scenes, Gruber finds. They cackle with delight when shown videos of their own tortured song renditions on a karaoke machine — the kind of thing that makes most tune-challenged crooners hide their faces in embarrassment.

Unless they’re contestants on American Idol. (Bozo guffaws and squeezes his big, red nose to make a rude beeping noise.)

Context is king, Bozo. Throw a bucketful of confetti into a circus crowd and the audience squeals with delight. Do that in the New York City subway and you’re dead meat. Maya Tamir of Hebrew University in Jerusalem finds that college students who prefer to be happy in situations that call for confrontation do worse in school and feel less satisfied with themselves than their peers who embrace anger when it’s necessary.

I’m Bozo the Clown. Gray skies are gonna clear up, put on a happy face. Brush off the clouds and cheer up, put on a happy face.

Don’t ever sing in my presence again. Some people don’t get jazzed by happiness. Consider individuals who score high on a personality trait called . . .

Continue reading.

Sounds intriguing:

The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science, and Fear</>
by Seth Mnookin

A review by Paul Collins

The news in 1998 was as startling as the jab of a needle: Dr. Andrew Wakefield, in new study in the influential medical journal The Lancet, had made a connection between MMR vaccination and the onset of autism.

“My concerns,” he announced dramatically at a London press conference, “are that one more case of this is too many.”

There was something to be concerned about, all right. Recently, the British Medical Journal found that Wakefield, who had undisclosed financial interests in discrediting the MMR vaccine, had forged patient records to get his results.

But for many, the news comes too late. In the years since Wakefield’s incendiary report, vaccination rates tumbled — Ashland is now one of the country’s least-vaccinated cities — even as studies disproved Wakefield’s theory, and even after Wakefield himself was struck off the British medical register for ethical violations. And slowly but surely, long-vanquished diseases like whooping cough and measles returned to stalk the land again.

Seth Mnookin‘s The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science, and Fear is the tale of a modern tragedy — though first you must inoculate yourself against Mnookin himself. He begins by noting fussy anti-vaccine rhetoric among the sort of people who “drove Priuses and shopped at Whole Foods.” It’s a silly characterization, even if true; the very people who need to read this book may toss it aside instantly.

And that’s a shame, because The Panic Virus becomes a devastating indictment of a dangerous mass delusion — and a disturbingly profitable fraud. Mnookin reveals the long history of a conflict that harks back to the 1720s, when Cotton Mather was firebombed for advocating vaccinations. Alarmist TV reports in the 1980s, bearing titles like “Vaccine Roulette,” proved scarcely less crude. The result, combined with fraudulent research bearing the imprimatur of The Lancet, is a damning parade of lazy reporters, incompetent doctors and opportunistic politicians.

But then, every decade has its charlatans. Why, one might ask, do they now have better soapboxes and bullhorns?

Much blame lies squarely upon my own profession. I’ve worked in British journalism enough to be unsurprised by this creeping realization as I read Mnookin’s story: that the vaccine panic is best understood as the monstrous offspring of the London press’ baffling aversion to fact-checking.

But, as Mnookin notes, there’s plenty of blame to go around America, too: A wave of cutbacks in the industry “has led to the jettisoning of science reporters.” The result, placed in the hands of untrained reporters, has been a disaster for the public’s understanding of public health issues. Panics make for good stories, but terrible policy — while quietly successful efforts get no press at all. This, Mnookin warns, “encapsulates one of the most vexing paradoxes about vaccines: the more effective they are, they less necessary they seem.”

All along, the press — and even this valuable book itself — has also missed a fundamental moral question. But it’s one that, as the father of a 12-year-old autistic boy, I have long had to confront head on. Let us say, for the sake of argument, that Wakefield had been right. The implicit calculation made when a parent subsequently refuses vaccinations for their child is this: The risk of my child’s death is better than the risk of a disability.

This is an appalling philosophy.

Look: Even if a vaccine could cause autism, in the absence of a better formulation I’d still give it to my son. His disability is not a fate worse than death. And more to the epidemiological point — it is also not worse than your child’s death.

194 lbs today: less than 20 lbs to go. No Nordic Track though: I am panicking about class—I feel like I’m terribly behind. But I’m getting into the language-study rut.

I’ve been here before, when I was learning Esperanto. And apparently I did learn it pretty well: when I reach for a word (the word for "week", for example), my unconscious promptly delivers "semajna" instead of "semana". But we had a talk (my unconscious and my conscious), and he promised to behave.

I acquire vocabulary by talking to myself and more or less constantly reviewing flash cards I make. I prefer to make my own, since I can direct them to my particular weaknesses and needs, and I learn as I make them and as I review them.

I use three colors of rubber bands: green for those I know (review once ever few days), yellow for those I’m fairly sure of (review every few hours), and red for those I don’t know: that are new or that somehow stump me (temprano is was in that category). Those I review constantly.

The Wife is back, so all’s right with the world, except poor Molly has acquired quite a few mats while The Wife was gone. I trimmed out one, hence the bald spot on Molly’s neck. But she’ll soon be well-groomed once more.

The Wife has her own GOPM now, and last night I made one with tempeh for the protein, and that works very well indeed. In fact, this is probably my best tempeh success.

Back to the cards now. Blogging will resume after class (after 2:30 pm Pacific time).

An extremely pleasant shave today, which I hope bodes well for class today. This morning the Omega boar (Pro 49) delivered abundant lather (three passes easily with one loading), and the iKon was simply wonderful. I had the thought while I shaving that this would be my desert island razor: the one to have when you can only have one. I imagine that the next great shave with some other razor will change my mind, but this razor is very hard to beat because it is comfortable and does not nick (at least not for me).

A splash Mr. Sidney’s aftershave, and I’m back to studying.

Interesting article that begins:

At first glance, improv might seem like the direct opposite of the business world. It’s silly, raucous, and spontaneous. But improv actors are sharp professionals who have an incredible ability to pull from past dialogue, anticipate future scenes and relationships, and engage audiences in just moments. If you’re trying to make it in the business world, you can learn a lot from improv actors. Here are 25 tricks that work just as well in business as they do on stage.

1. Introduce yourself: Don’t assume anyone already knows who you are. As character actor, writer and improviser Jeremiah Murphy reveals, "the trick is to cram your introduction with as much detail as you can so your scene partner and you will have all sorts of material." It’s the same principle you should apply to interviews, business meetings and networking events.
2. Don’t block others: This meaning of "block" refers to the refusal of any line a player throws at you. Even it seems cheesy, laugh at or contribute to a joke, and play along with the person you’re talking to. Otherwise, you’ll seem offensive and boring.
3. Remember the "Yes, and" rule: Accept information your partner gives you, but also remember to add something to it. "Yes, I also think this speaker was a great choice, and I’m excited to see him/her at the lecture series next month, too." You want to be a source and to fuel a two-way conversation, not just a nodder.
4. Listen: One of the most important strategies in improv is to listen to your partner. You’re relying on each other to move the scene along, and it’s the same in a business meeting or conversation. Pay extremely close attention to what the other person is saying and how they say it. These details will pay off later, when you’re trying to remember everyone you’ve talked to and want to follow up.
5. Use your body: . . .

Continue reading.

Interesting report. Bucknell College is on the list—as is Yale and—to my surprise—Johns Hopkins.

I thought at one time the GOP opposed Big Government and such things. But look at this headline:

GOP pushing for ISPs to record user data

The story, by Declan McCullagh for CNN, begins:

The House Republicans’ first major technology initiative is about to be unveiled: a push to force Internet companies to keep track of what their users are doing.

A House panel chaired by Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin is scheduled to hold a hearing tomorrow morning to discuss forcing Internet providers, and perhaps Web companies as well, to store records of their users’ activities for later review by police.

One focus will be on reviving a dormant proposal for data retention that would require companies to store Internet Protocol (IP) addresses for two years, CNET has learned.

Tomorrow’s data retention hearing is juxtaposed against the recent trend to protect Internet users’ privacy by storing less data. Last month, the Federal Trade Commission called for "limited retention" of user data on privacy grounds, and in the last 24 hours, both Mozilla and Google have announced do-not-track technology.

A Judiciary committee aide provided a statement this afternoon saying "the purpose of this hearing is to examine the need for retention of certain data by Internet service providers to facilitate law enforcement investigations of Internet child pornography and other Internet crimes," but declined to elaborate.

Thanks to the GOP takeover of the House, the odds of such legislation advancing have markedly increased. The new chairman of the House Judiciary committee is Lamar Smith of Texas, who previously introduced a data retention bill. Sensenbrenner, the new head of the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, had similar plans but never introduced legislation. (It’s not purely a partisan issue: Rep. Diana DeGette, a Colorado Democrat, was the first to announce such a proposal.)

Police and prosecutors are the biggest backers of data retention. FBI director Robert Mueller has said that forcing companies to store those records about users would be "tremendously helpful in giving us a historic basis to make a case" in investigations, especially child porn cases. An FBI attorney said last year that Mueller supports storing Internet users’ "origin and destination information," meaning logs of which Web sites are visited. . .

Continue reading. These people really hate democracy, don’t they? Or at least they’re extremely uncomfortable with it and are determined to get it under control (theirs).

You’ll all recall when the FBI was given special restricted use of National Security Letters to get information about people linked to terrorism? Well, of course they used it for everyone. You CANNOT SIMPLY TRUST THE FBI. Over and over they have broken the law. The ACLU reported last April 10 on the National Security Letters:

The FBI’s general counsel and the Justice Department Inspector General (IG) testified today before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties on the most recent IG report on the FBI’s use of National Security Letters (NSLs). NSLs allow the FBI to secretly demand personal records about innocent customers from Internet Service Providers (ISPs), communications service providers, libraries, financial institutions and credit reporting agencies without suspicion or prior judicial approval. The FBI can then bar recipients of NSLs from disclosing anything about the records demands.

In January, the IG released a report on the FBI’s use of “exigent letters,” or emergency letters, to gain private records for investigations when no emergency existed. The FBI routinely issued NSLs after the fact in an attempt to legitimize the use of exigent letters. Today, the IG testified on the extent of the abuse of exigent letters and “other informal requests for telephone records.”

The NSL statute was greatly expanded under the Patriot Act, passed hastily by Congress in the days following 9/11. After the statute’s expansion, the IG’s office released a series of reports over the last several years, including its January report, outlining systemic misuse and abuse of NSLs by FBI agents. Late last year, to avoid expiration on December 31, 2009, Congress extended three provisions of the Patriot Act through February 28, 2010. Despite bills pending in both the House and the Senate to amend the expiring provisions, as well as the NSL provision, Congress decided instead to move ahead with a straightforward reauthorization in late February.

The following can be attributed to Laura W. Murphy, Director of the American Civil Liberties Washington Legislative Office:

“It has become painfully clear that unchecked Patriot Act power will inevitably lead to abuse, and National Security Letters are a poignant example. To ensure that our privacy and free speech rights are protected, there must be clear oversight and strict guidelines tied to their use. Innocent Americans have been swept into investigations and recipients have been barred from speaking about it publicly.

“Not only that, report after report from the FBI’s own Inspector General illustrates the blatant and systemic abuse of national security letters. Congress has less than a year before it must address the Patriot Act again. NSL reform must be made a priority this year instead of being kicked further down the road."

The ACLU Union and the New York Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in 2004 on behalf of an ISP that received an NSL, challenging the FBI’s authority to demand records through NSLs and to gag NSL recipients. A federal appeals court ruled in 2008 that parts of the NSL statute’s gag provisions were unconstitutional and sent the case back to the lower court to decide whether the gag on the ISP could stand. In October 2009, a federal court ruled that the government can continue to enforce the now six-year-old gag order on the ISP even though the FBI abandoned its request for records several years ago.