Later On

After reading the article on the capabilities of the septuagenarian knee, I decided that I’ve lost enough weight to chance a walk at my current 186-lb weight: 21 minutes on a beautiful cloudless Spring afternoon. I listened to Don Quixote and felt quite good. I did take the precaution of taking a couple of aspirin on my return.

Lots of flowers in bloom. This one is Pride of Madeira, which seems to be popular here, probably because it’s attractive and drought-tolerant:

Interesting post by Matt Marshall at American Blues Scene:

Straight from the mouth of Hugh Laurie, on his many deeply blues influences and his new album:

I was not born in Alabama in the 1890s. You may as well know this now. I’ve never eaten grits, cropped a share, or ridden a boxcar. No gypsy woman said anything to my mother when I was born and there’s no hellhound on my trail, as far as I can judge. Let this record show that I am a white, middle-class Englishman, openly trespassing on the music and myth of the American south.

If that weren’t bad enough, I’m also an actor: one of those pampered ninnies who hasn’t bought a loaf of bread in a decade and can’t find his way through an airport without a babysitter. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that I’ve got some Chinese characters tattooed on my arse. Or elbow. Same thing.

Worst of all, I’ve broken a cardinal rule of art, music, and career paths: actors are supposed to act, and musicians are supposed to music. That’s how it works. You don’t buy fish from a dentist, or ask a plumber for financial advice, so why listen to an actor’s music?

The answer is – there is no answer. If you care about provenance and genealogy, then you should try elsewhere, because I have nothing in your size.

I started piano lessons at the age of 6 with Mrs Hare. She was a nice woman, probably; but in my twisted childhood memory I have cast her as a warty thug who bullied me across the hot coals of do-re-mi. I stuck it for about three months, grinding through Elementary Piano Book One until we reached Swanee River by Stephen Foster. (Foster, as it happens, was also a trespasser. Born in Pennsylvania, he never saw the actual Suwannee River – nor did he set foot in Florida, which adopted the song as its state anthem in 1935. I’m just saying.)

Now you could hardly call Swanee River a blues song – in one of its earliest editions, the score was sold as “An Ethiopian Melody” – but it’s a lot closer than the French lullabys and comical Polish dances that made up the rest of that hellish book.

The day arrived, and Mrs Hare turned the page: “Swanee River”, she read, peering through the pince-nez that I have imagined for her, 45 years later. And then, with a curl of her hairy lip, she read the subtitle: “ ‘Negro Spiritual – Slightly Syncopated.’ Oh dear me no.….”. With that, she flicked the page to Le Tigre Et L’Elephant, or some other unholy nightmare, and my relationship with formal music instruction ended.

And then one day a song came on the radio – I’m pretty sure it was “I Can’t Quit You Baby” by Willie Dixon – and my whole life changed. A wormhole opened between the minor and major third, and I stepped through into Wonderland. Since then, the blues have made me laugh, weep, dance… well, this is a family record, and I can’t tell you all the things the blues can make me do.

At the centre of this magical new kingdom, high on a hill (which shows you how little I knew back then), stood the golden city of New Orleans. In my imagination, it just straight hummed with music, romance, joy, despair; its rhythms got into my gawky English frame and, at times, made me so happy, and sad, I just didn’t know what to do with myself. New Orleans was my Jerusalem. (The question of why a soft-handed English schoolboy should be touched by music born of slavery and oppression in another city, on another continent, in another century, is for a thousand others to answer before me: from Korner to Clapton, the Rolling Stones to the Joolsing Hollands. Let’s just say it happens.)

Over the next decade, . . .

Continue reading.

I just learned about the game Arimaa. It is played on a chessboard with chess pieces, but the names, moves, and goals are different: totally different game.

It was created to frustrate computer scientists who write game-playing software—which is now good enough to defeat world champions in chess, checkers, and backgammon. Checkers, in fact, has now been solved. (With best play, it’s a draw.) So writing a game that is not so amenable to computer play is an interesting challenge.

From the Wikipedia article at the link:

Arimaa was invented by Omar Syed, an Indian American computer engineer trained in artificial intelligence. Syed was inspired by Garry Kasparov’s defeat at the hands of the chess computer Deep Blue to design a new game which could be played with a standard chess set, would be difficult for computers to play well, but would have rules simple enough for his four-year-old son Aamir to understand. (“Arimaa” is “Aamir” spelled backwards plus an initial “a”). In 2002 Syed published the rules to Arimaa and announced a $10,000 prize, available annually until 2020, for the first computer program (running on standard, off-the-shelf hardware) able to defeat each of three top-ranked human players in a three game series.^[1]

Here’s an intro video from the Arimaa home site:

This article makes me think I should set out walking once more—and Spring is definitely here. I wonder about these shoes. I do have flat feet, however, and wear orthotics. OTOH, maybe those shoes would strengthen and raise the arch of my foot by exercising my foot muscles more.

From the article:

Lane did some of the very first studies of runners and knees while she was a resident at Stanford University.

“We wanted to answer the important question of whether, if you continued to run into your 50s and 60s and even 70s, you also ran the risk of damaging the knees,” she says. The answer, she says: absolutely not. And there was an extra bonus: While enthusiasm for jogging seemed to diminish as people hit their mid-60s, Lane says they were still more inclined than the non-joggers to get out and exercise.

“They were active doing other activities, like walking, yoga, water aerobics,” she says. “We found that as these people aged, not only did they feel better about themselves, but their quality of life was better and they tended to actually live longer” than the non-joggers.

So, the message for joggers like the Riders, who hope to be jogging all their lives, is a hearty two thumbs up.

Lane cautions that if you have suffered a knee injury, especially one that required surgery, running can actually increase your risk of knee arthritis. So can routinely running really fast — at a five- or six-minute-mile pace — or running in a marathon. Lane’s best advice? Running in moderation, at an eight- to 10-minute mile pace, for about 40 minutes a day.But if people are more than 20 pounds overweight, Lane says they shouldn’t start off with an intense running regimen.

“I have them walk and walk until they’re to a point where I think their body mass is reduced enough that it won’t traumatize their joints,” she says. Otherwise, significantly overweight joggers run the risk of that extra weight stressing the knee to the point of inflammation, the formation of bony spurs and accelerated cartilage loss.

I have learned some things about bodywork in my Pilates training. Most of these insights are from The Wife, who has experience with a variety of bodywork therapies: yoga, Rolfing, Feldenkreis, and now Pilates.

This came up when I was talking to someone about their very first Pilates session, and she was telling me how difficult it was to keep so many things in mind and still try to move: position of feet, position of hands (palms out), breathing, spine, etc., etc.—so many things that the instructor was constantly correcting her.

I found myself laughing because that was exactly my experience, which I’d forgotten. Because, of course, you gradually learn the stance and the breathing and so constant correction is no longer needed. But her description brought back all my early confusion and frustration, so I passed along some few things I had learned about how to address the process.

First is the incredible sense of frustration one feels when the brain’s instructions to the body seem to go completely awry or be ignored. You’re trying to do as requested, but your body doesn’t seem to be getting the message. The frustration can really spike at those times, because the frustration is not erupting from your conscious mind but from high in the unconscious—close to consciousness, and close to berserk with its inability to deliver the body movements the consciousness is requesting.

This feeling apparently is common in bodywork, and The Wife’s advice was to stop trying to do whatever it is and take a couple of deep, slow breaths, relaxing and centering, and then try again, calmly. She said that bodywork instructors know about this phenomenon and will understand what I’m doing. Apparently, that’s how bodywork is in fact done, with the pauses to regroup when trying new things.

Moreover, the breathing, as I’ve come to realize, is really central not only to the Pilates work but movement in general. Lots of emphasis on deep, regular breathing in Pilates, and coordinating inhalations and exhalations with movement. It seemed finicky at first, but I’ve come to recognize that proper breathing delivers a lot of power and balance to movements. And yesterday, on our outing to Santa Cruz, The Wife commented that the funny little bursts of breath I would make while thinking or just sitting—those were not happening anymore. I imagine that they were the result of shallow breathing using only the top of the lungs, and now that I am breathing better (more deeply), the airbusts have stopped.

So: pause when frustrated or confused, take a couple of breaths, focusing on the the breathing, and then resume.

Once I started doing that, I found my progress picked up and I learned new things faster.

Another point: Bodywork instructors tend to use phrases that are either metaphorical or that describe things I can’t yet feel: “Push your knees with your sides,” for example. I feel no such connection (though after reading in Anatomy Trains (link is to the Cool Tools review) and watching a couple of videos (this one and this one), I’m willing to believe that there is a connection). So how does one respond?

The Wife said that what she does when she gets one of those “push-your-knees-with-your-sides” sort of instructions is that she pictures the image in her mind as she does the movement. Generally, when she does that, the instructor says, “Good,” and offers no more correction. The mental picture apparently helps the body get the idea.

Bodywork instructors seem to have a quiver full of such metaphorical instructions, which can be frustrating to the literal-minded. But picturing the image as you do the movement seems to really work.

Moreover, you gradually know what to do with your body when you get one of those instructions: it’s almost Pavlovian in that the instructor says to do something, and though you don’t know what the words mean, you know exactly what to do when those words are said. And, of course, over time and with practice you start to get the idea of the movement and “understand” it with your body (not necessarily with your mind).

UPDATE: Today (28 Oct 2011) I suddenly flashed on an image that seems to be helpful. Imagine that you’re carrying a bowling ball around sitting inside you on your pelvis.

What this image did was to focus my attention on the pelvis as my center of balance, with my torso (and spine) stacked above it, instead of my usual image, that my lower body is suspended and hanging from my head, throat, and shoulders. I have a tendency to try to move my body with my head as the center of effort rather than the pelvis. The image helps with that.

I’m still very much a beginner, so you should check out this idea with your Pilates instructor. But it seems to help me.

This came up on another blog, so I thought I’d post here as well.

This is a fascinating post by Marta Kagan at Hubspot:

It’s no secret that the marketing landscape has changed dramatically over the past few years as social and mobile technologies have “jumped the shark” from the early-adopter crowd to the mainstream.

Still, there are plenty of traditional marketing stalwarts out there who aren’t buying all of the social media hype or can’t convince their boss or marketing team to experiment in the brave new world of inbound marketing.

So we’ve rounded up a dozen powerful stats that are sure to be eye-openers, if not total mind-changers.

1. 78% of Internet users conduct product research online.
That means your website stands a good chance of being a prospect’s “first impression.” That also means your new business card isn’t a business card—it’s Google.

2. In the past year, Web-based email usage dropped a staggering 59% among 12-17 year olds, who prefer to communicate via text, instant messaging, and social networks.

If 12-17 year olds aren’t your primary customers, you may think, “So what? They’re just kids.” But web-based email usage has been on the decline among ALL Internet users under the age of 55. And by the way, today’s kids are tomorrow’s customers—and they’re probably not going to be reading your email.

3.   78% of business people use their mobile device to check email.
So that means pretty much everybody that can check email on a mobile device, does. Is your email newsletter optimized for mobile devices?

4. . . .

Continue reading.

This sounds quite tasty to me. Mark Bittman blogs:

Makes: 2 main-course or 4 side-dish or appetizer servings
Time: 30 minutes

A crowd-pleaser and an easy starter or side—or a main course on a hot day. To make it more substantial, add 1/2 cup or so of small tofu cubes or cooked soybeans. Or top each serving with a few slices of grilled, roasted, or poached chicken. The cucumber adds nice crunch and freshness to what is otherwise a pretty dense dish. Recipe from How to Cook Everything.

Salt
1 medium or 2 small cucumbers (optional)
12 ounces fresh Chinese egg noodles or long pasta, like linguine
2 tablespoons dark sesame oil
1/2 cup tahini, peanut butter, or a combination
2 tablespoons sugar
3 tablespoons soy sauce, or to taste
1 teaspoon minced fresh ginger (optional)
1 tablespoon rice or white wine or other vinegar
Hot sesame oil or Tabasco sauce to taste
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, or more to taste
At least 1/2 cup chopped scallion for garnish

1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and salt it. Peel the cucumbers if you’re using them, cut them in half lengthwise, and, using a spoon, scoop out the seeds. Cut the cucumber into shreds (you can use a grater for this) and set aside.

2. Cook the noodles in the boiling water until tender but not mushy. Meanwhile, whisk together the sesame oil and tahini, sugar, soy, ginger, vinegar, hot oil, and pepper in a large bowl. Thin the sauce with hot water until it’s about the consistency of heavy cream; you will need 1/4 to 1/2 cup. Stir in the cucumber. When the pasta is done, drain it and run the pasta under cold water. Drain.

3. Toss the noodles with the sauce and cucumbers. Taste and adjust the seasoning (the dish may need salt), then garnish with the scallion and serve.

It’s not evident, but this shelf space is not very tall at all. So she’s squished from the top, plus there’s not enough room beside the DVD and BD players—plus she has to jam her face against the wall at the end of the shelf. But cats seem to like discomfort when they nap—like draping their neck over an upright piece of cardboard.

A very nice lather from the Omega synthetic bristle brush—another of the “artificial badger” type. I am liking Trumper’s soaps a lot—I need to use them more frequently.

A fine lather, and then three passes (lathering my wet beard before each pass) with the iKon bulldog open-comb, still a razor that defines “comfort” so far as I’m concerned. Then a splash of Pashana for our Santa Cruz trip today.

Amazon has raised its price on Leisureguy’s Guide to Gourmet Shaving, Fourth Edition to $8.74 from $8.60, but it’s still a very good buy given that the list price is $11.95. And it continues to be a perfect gift (IMHO) for any man who regularly shaves but not actually enjoy shaving. Here’s review just recently posted:

5.0 out of 5 stars
The Only Amazon Book Purchase Your Face Will Forever Appreciate, April 1, 2011

ByAnecleto – See all my reviews

As a “newbie” who decided to take on the perceived risk of traditional shaving with a double edge (DE) razor, I was desperate to gain quick but relevant knowledge on what my Grandfather never taught me on shaving. I really did not know where to look for information and found no book information readily available in local bookstores. Thank you Amazon for making this truly valuable resource available for “newbie’ double edge shavers! What millions of men do each day to shave their face always seems to be a boring and mindless event. I have been shaving for 46 years using expensive shaving equipment with lousy results. Thanks to “Leisureguy’s Guide to Gourmet Shaving”, our daily shaving event can become a moment to treasure with results that not only remove hair from our face, but will also leave us with an extremely smooth and soft-to-the-touch face. Leisureguy’s book is not just about shaving, but it is an “awesome” informational outreach that provides tremendous insights and invaluable advice for new and veteran DE shavers. This is not one of those books you will read just once, but it will become your shaving reference for as long as you shave. Leisureguy has become my hero for his passion and extensive knowledge in DE shaving, which is readily passed on to anyone who will take the opportunity to purchase and read his book. I highly recommend purchasing this book whether you are thinking about changing the way you shave or not. I guarantee your face will be ever grateful.

I have no idea how long Amazon will continue their discount—it’s relatively new, and it’s completely their decision and under their control. So if you do know some guys who would like to enjoy shaving, you might consider getting the book as a gift.

I’ve about used up my first batch of Worcestershire sauce, so I’m making a second batch. Still sticking with the recipe from Saveur, on the whole, but with these changes:

Malt vinegar instead of white vinegar—malt vinegar is what is used in the UK version.

Barbados molasses instead of blackstrap—blackstrap molasses definitely has more nutritional value but also a stronger taste. Since a splash of Worcestershire is not used for nutrition per se, I’m willing to try the Barbados molasses this time.

Otherwise I’ll follow the recipe again, with the usual adjustments (more garlic and anchovies than the recipe specifies, for example). That’s just tailoring it to one’s taste.

It occurs to me that I could include some hot peppers and get a spicy Worcestershire sauce.

Oh, my, I do love this sort of pie. I cannot wait until I reach goal! Take a look:

Martha Foose’s Lemon Icebox Pie

From “Screen Doors and Sweet Tea.” Used with permission, except for the stupid commentary, which is my own.

Makes one 9-inch pie

• 1½ cups graham cracker crumbs (Whirl the graham crackers in a food processor for crumbs.)
• ¼ cup granulated sugar
• ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon (Cinnamon? In a lemon dessert? Yes. Just do it. You’ll thank Martha later.)
• ½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted
• 2 14-ounce cans sweetened condensed milk
• 4 large egg yolks
• 1 teaspoon grated lemon zest (I actually like a little more than this)
• ½ cup fresh lemon juice (And I like a little more juice than this too, but taste it before baking and add to taste.)
• 2 cups heavy cream
• 6 tablespoons confectioners’ sugar

Preheat the oven to 350 F.

In a medium bowl, combine the crumbs, granulated sugar, cinnamon and melted butter. Pat into a 9-inch deep-dish pie pan and bake for 6 to 8 minutes, or until slightly browned. Remove to a wire rack to cool.

Meanwhile, in a large bowl, whisk together the milk, yolks, lemon zest and lemon juice. Pour the lemon filling into the cooled crust. Bake for 10 minutes, or until set. Cool on a rack. Chill the pie for 30 minutes.

When the pie is completely cooled, whip the cream with the confectioners’ sugar until stiff peaks form. Mound the whipped cream on top of the pie and chill for 1 hour. (The chilling together isn’t strictly necessary, but it does make the whipped cream bond to the pie in a sort of fabulous way.)

I just came across this article on the extinction burst, and I realized in the course of this weight loss I experienced several. As the article explains, the extinction burst is what happens when you try to extinguish one type of conditioning (see the article at the link).

Dieters often (as the article discusses) stay on track, extinguishing the old eating habits as fast as they can, when suddenly they are grasped by an irresistible urge to eat this, that, or the other thing, and pretty soon they’re hammering down those single-serving pints of Ben & Jerry’s and swilling Hershey’s chocolate syrup directly from the can. And that’s (for most) the end of the diet and the weight-loss effort.

I had several of these, as I say, of diminishing intensity, as though I were gradually extinguishing the extinction burst.

The first breakdown was the most overt—truly pigging out, I’m sorry to say. And I can readily see that, were I on my own—and despite hearing constantly that you just get back at it—I undoubtedly would have quit. I know that, because that has happened in the past.

The problem is not the big meal: it’s the weight gain, usually large, immediate, and enduring. Seeing the scale stuck at that same weight—and perhaps edging up—week after week (and that’s enough: 2 weeks of no progress or negative progress feels like an eternity) makes almost everyone (statistically speaking) abandon their diets. That’s why the admonition is so well known.

But this time I had just paid a honking great sum of money (at least for me) and I simply could not drop out at this point—”sunk-cost fallacy” be damned, the thought of quitting struck me strongly as throwing away money.

So the only thing to do was to pick up and continue. So I did (and all this is recorded in my food journals, so I actually can go back and find those binges, though I think in this instance my memory will prove reliable: this is about food) and within a few weeks [interesting: I actually typed "weaks"---that Freud! - LG] I experienced another extinction burst. I remember talking about that one: I had restricted myself to protein (hard-boiled eggs and string cheese). Too much, but better than a baked potato with butter, sour cream, chives, and cheese, with bacon on top. Right?

By the third or fourth one I vividly recall sitting in my chair, binging out on an enormous (truly enormous) Romaine salad with one hard-boiled egg, non-fat dressing, and Bac’Uns. And I felt almost decadent. That poor extinction burst at that point was so weak it was glad to get anything. And I realized that my perspective had really changed if eating this felt like bingeing.

I think that was the last one. Every couple of weeks I’ll get an urge to eat an extra hard-boiled egg or the like. I wonder if those are the last fading echoes of the extinction burst.

UPDATE: It occurs to me that having a name and context for the feeling will make it much easier to handle, I believe. Knowing the source and likely duration, I would think resistance would become easier. Acting with information is always better than acting in ignorance, don’t you find?

This Cool Tool looks extremely interesting—and note it’s available as an iPhone app.

I read about it in BusinessWeek and now I’ve donated to it. (Donate here.) The article begins:

t didn’t take long for Minnesotan Franz Gastler to grow tired of his desk job at the Confederation of Indian Industry. He was acting as a consultant to companies interested in corporate responsibility, but “after six months of wearing a suit and tie in 120-degree weather,” he says of the Delhi climate, Gastler was ready to leave office life behind. In 2008, the Boston University graduate, now 29, took a job at Krishi Gram Vikas Kendra, a nongovernmental organization that focuses on the economic development of the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand, which is considered to be a top source of human trafficking for forced labor and sexual exploitation.After starting at KGVK, Gastler was living in a farmer’s mud hut when a young girl told him she wanted to learn to play soccer. He agreed to teach her if she could gather enough girls. Teamwork, Gastler thought, could be a grass-roots way to forge gender equality, confidence, and opportunity. Soon he had a makeshift soccer league up and running. He saw so much enthusiasm that he persuaded KGVK to let him build the program and pay his salary. So in 2009, with $6,000 of his savings and his $2,000 monthly stipend, he launched Yuwa, the Hindi word for Youth. A friend matched his $6,000, allowing the team to buy uniforms and equipment and to travel for matches.

Gastler put the kids in charge from the beginning, asking them to set practice times and save for shoes and balls. The shoes cost $7.78, and Yuwa requires the players to contribute $2.22 toward the cost to teach them about saving. The girls save for the shoes as a team, with each player often able to contribute just 4 cents to 20 cents per week.

Yuwa is now an organization of 255 players among 18 teams. One of the program’s former stars even . . .

Continue reading. Given the poverty of the area, even a small donation will have a big impact.

A disgusting though familiar storry: the Catholic church, this time the ironcially named Society of Jesus—the Jesuits—sent north those priests and other members who had been detected as active pedophiles. The thinking, pretty obviously, was that if these child rapist would focus on poor children, particularly Native American children in isolated villages, they could rape children to their heart’s conent without causing problems.

That fell apart as people gradually awakened to the fact that priests and brothers and other religious were systematically raping children and that their superiors were protecting the rapists, transferring them to fresh pastures when suspicions arose in the laity that something was amiss. (Of course, the first step was to shame the laity and blame the victims.)

Now the Jesuits make another $166 million payment to their victims, bringing the total for that order in this venue to $250 million. Needless to say, not one of the child rapists has gone to jail or even been charged, so far as I can tell.

Here’s a report by Janet Tu in the Seattle Times:

The abuses spanned decades and states, from remote Alaskan villages to boarding schools on Northwest tribal lands. Hundreds of victims, most of them Native American or Alaska Natives, were sexually or physically abused as children by Jesuit priests or people the priests supervised.

On Friday, the victims received some justice.

In one of the largest monetary payouts nationwide in the Roman Catholic Church’s sexual-abuse crisis, and the largest one by a religious order, the Jesuits in the Northwest agreed to pay $166.1 million to about 500 abuse victims as part of its bankruptcy settlement.

The order has also agreed to no longer call the victims “alleged victims,” to write apologies to them and to enforce new practices designed to prevent abuse, according to plaintiffs’ attorneys.

“It’s a day of reckoning and justice,” said Clarita Vargas, 51, of Tacoma, who was abused while a student at St. Mary’s Mission and School, a former Jesuit-run Indian boarding school on the Colville Indian Reservation near Omak.

Of the 500 victims, about 470 suffered sexual abuse. About two dozen others were physically abused.

Insurance companies will pay $118 million of the settlement, with the Jesuits paying $48.1 million.

Including this week’s settlement, the Northwest Jesuits, formally called the Society of Jesus, Oregon Province, and their insurers have agreed to pay about $250 million total to some 700 victims. Victims’ lawyers say they’ve identified about 57 Jesuit priests or brothers who have abused.

Oregon Province leaders declined to comment “out of respect for the judicial process and all involved,” Provincial Superior the Very Rev. Patrick Lee said in a statement. “The province continues to work with the Creditors Committee to conclude the bankruptcy process as promptly as possible.” . .  .

Continue reading.

The GOP has always loved government—big government, pushy government—so long as the focus of the government’s actions and laws were private, personal pleasures, including religion. Even now Rick Santorum is calling on the US to follow the lead of Islam and base its laws on the holy book of a religion (the Quran for Islam, the Holy Bible for Rick), though he’s careful to condemn as a horrible error the basing of civil government on religious law. Think that doesn’t make sense? Well, that’s part for the course for old Rick and the GOP in general. Take a look at this editorial in the LA Times:

Imagine you decided to have a medical procedure but state law said that, even though your doctor supported your decision, you had to be screened to see if you were mentally fit for it, and then had to go to a clinic that directly opposes doing the procedure and listen to its spiel before you could go ahead. Most of us would call that unconscionable interference in our ability to make decisions about our own health.

Now imagine you’re a pregnant woman in South Dakota.

Under a law signed by Gov. Dennis Daugaard last week, women who seek an abortion will have to wait 72 hours, undergo two visits to physicians to be checked for unspecified physical and mental risk factors, and be proselytized by an antiabortion counseling center before they can have the procedure. This in a state with just one center that offers abortions, which are performed by an out-of-state doctor who flies in a couple of times a month. In other words, a few days of waiting could add up to a lot more.

The South Dakota law is among 371 pieces of legislation that have been making headway in state capitals during the last few months — none of them in California — seeking to restrict and in some cases all but remove women’s access to abortions, according to the National Abortion Rights Action League. Not only is that more than twice as many antiabortion bills as last year, but, like the South Dakota law, many of the appalling bills are making swifter and surer progress toward passage.

Measures to make abortion illegal after 20 weeks of pregnancy are advancing in Idaho, Kansas, Oklahoma, Alabama and at least 10 other states, and Ohio is considering banning . . .

Continue reading.

Strangely, the name of the state is misspelled throughout the review.

Unfamiliar Fishes
by Sarah Vowell

A review by Jeff Baker

History is everywhere in Hawaii. Imagine the three sides of a triangle in Honolulu: at one point is Pearl Harbor, home of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and site of the Japanese attack on Dec. 7, 1941, arguably the most momentous day of the 20th century. At another corner is the Iolani Palace, the only palace in the U.S. and the place where the last queen of Hawaii, Liliuokalani, was locked up after the Hawaiian monarchy was overthrown in 1893.

The third point of the triangle is above the city at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, known as Punchbowl. It’s a stunning spot, a volcanic crater filled with the graves of more than 34,000 veterans of World War I and II, Korea and Vietnam. Many of the men and women who died in the attack on Pearl Harbor are interred at Punchbowl, and many of them are Native Hawaiians. A series of maps on the walls of the memorial charts the relentless march of the U.S. and its Allies across the Pacific in World War II.

The earlier history of Punchbowl — its Hawaiian name, Puowaina, means “hill of sacrifice,” and human sacrifices were performed in the crater — is not mentioned. Neither is the day in 1820 when Hiram Bingham, a missionary from New England, climbed the hill on his first day in Honolulu and vowed that what he saw “was now to be the scene of a bloodless conquest for Christ.”

Within 75 years of Bingham’s arrival, the U.S. had taken control of Hawaii. The missionaries’ efficient, righteous and mostly bloodless conquest of an ancient culture is recounted in “Unfamiliar Fishes,” Sarah Vowell’s new book. It’s a sad story told in a lively way by Vowell, who is developing into a more thoughtful historian in her sixth book. She’s still good for a laugh and a pop-culture reference, but now when she notes that it’s tempting to compare “the initial encounters between Hawaiians and missionaries to some sort of clunky prequel to ‘Footloose,’” she follows with the more subtle observation that both Hawaiians and missionaries were traditionalists, coming from very different cultures.

The Hawaiian culture that Bingham and Asa Thurston and their wives encountered when they got to Hawaii was (and is) fascinating, constantly evolving and contradictory. The islands had only recently been unified under Kamehameha the Great, a fierce warrior who ended the practice of human sacrifice but was a strict follower of the traditions of kapu, which prohibited all sorts of contact between men and women, most notably eating together. Incest and polygamy among royals was encouraged, and a strict class system was followed.

Foreign traders had been stopping by the islands since Capt. James Cook stumbled onto them in 1778. The arrival of the missionaries, and the conflicts between them and the traders, is colorfully described by Vowell as “representing opposing sides of America’s schizophrenic divide — Bible-thumping prudes and sailors on leave. Imagine if the Hawaii Convention Center in Waikiki hosted the Values Voters Summit and the Adult Entertainment Expo simultaneously — for forty years.”

The missionaries were incredibly industrious and developed a written Hawaiian language, an education system, printing presses and newspapers, among many other things. They and the settlers and businesses that inevitably followed them also introduced the idea of private land ownership and turned much of the islands into vast sugar plantations. Asians, mainly Chinese, were brought in to work in the fields. By the time Liliuokalani was overthrown, the strategic military importance of Hawaii to the U.S. was obvious and the monarchy’s fate was sealed. Grover Cleveland called the whole affair “a miserable business” and said he was ashamed. His successors as president, William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, were delighted.

Vowell notes that Liliuokalani attended McKinley’s inauguration in 1897 and “intensely enjoyed the grand procession.”

“I wonder what she would have thought,” Vowell writes, “if she had known … that 112 years later, the first Hawaiian-born president of the United States would be inaugurated and in his parade, the marching band from Punahou School, his alma mater (and that of her enemies), would serenade the new president by playing a song she had written, ‘Aloha ‘Oe.’”

The article below appeared in the July 22, 2010, issue of The Economist. It came up recently in a discussion in the comment thread and looks interesting enough for its own post. It begins:

In 2000 four Americans were charged with importing lobster tails in plastic bags rather than cardboard boxes, in violation of a Honduran regulation that Honduras no longer enforces. They had fallen foul of the Lacey Act, which bars Americans from breaking foreign rules when hunting or fishing. The original intent was to prevent Americans from, say, poaching elephants in Kenya. But it has been interpreted to mean that they must abide by every footling wildlife regulation on Earth. The lobstermen had no idea they were breaking the law. Yet three of them got eight years apiece. Two are still in jail.

America is different from the rest of the world in lots of ways, many of them good. One of the bad ones is its willingness to lock up its citizens (see our briefing). One American adult in 100 festers behind bars (with the rate rising to one in nine for young black men). Its imprisoned population, at 2.3m, exceeds that of 15 of its states. No other rich country is nearly as punitive as the Land of the Free. The rate of incarceration is a fifth of America’s level in Britain, a ninth in Germany and a twelfth in Japan.

Some parts of America have long taken a tough, frontier attitude to justice. That tendency sharpened around four decades ago as rising crime became an emotive political issue and voters took to backing politicians who promised to stamp on it. This created a ratchet effect: lawmakers who wish to sound tough must propose laws tougher than the ones that the last chap who wanted to sound tough proposed. When the crime rate falls, tough sentences are hailed as the cause, even when demography or other factors may matter more; when the rate rises tough sentences are demanded to solve the problem. As a result, America’s incarceration rate has quadrupled since 1970.Similar things have happened elsewhere. The incarceration rate in Britain has more than doubled, and that in Japan increased by half, over the period. But the trend has been sharper in America than in most of the rich world, and the disparity has grown. It is explained neither by a difference in criminality (the English are slightly more criminal than Americans, though less murderous), nor by the success of the policy: America’s violent-crime rate is higher than it was 40 years ago.

Conservatives and liberals will always feud about the right level of punishment. Most Americans think that dangerous criminals, which statistically usually means young men, should go to prison for long periods of time, especially for violent offences. Even by that standard, the extreme toughness of American laws, especially the ever broader classes of “criminals” affected by them, seems increasingly counterproductive.

Many states have mandatory minimum sentences, which remove judges’ discretion to show mercy, even when the circumstances of a case cry out for it. “Three strikes” laws, which were at first used to put away persistently violent criminals for life, have in several states been applied to lesser offenders. The war on drugs has led to harsh sentences not just for dealing illegal drugs, but also for selling prescription drugs illegally. Peddling a handful can lead to a 15-year sentence.

Muddle plays a large role. America imprisons people for technical violations of immigration laws, environmental standards and arcane business rules. So many federal rules carry criminal penalties that experts struggle to count them. Many are incomprehensible. Few are ever repealed, though the Supreme Court recently pared back a law against depriving the public of “the intangible right of honest services”, which prosecutors loved because they could use it against almost anyone. . .

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Interesting article by Cathryn Denny:

My overriding memories of music lessons in school are of a teacher making us hold our breath and ‘deflate like a popped balloon’ every time we were about to sing. Needless to say, it wasn’t my favorite lesson of the day, but then I have never been very musically adept. Thankfully, the use of music therapy in treating Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) has a much more promising outcome.

Tomorrow is the fourth annual World Autism Awareness Day; a day on which Autism organizations around the world hold events for fundraising and to raise awareness of the condition, which affects an estimated half million people in the UK alone. Tying in nicely with this is work presented by Dr Dorita Berger of The Music Therapy Clinic, Norwalk, CT, USA who investigates the use of tempo-based music treatment to obtain ‘functionally adaptive’ behaviors in those suffering from Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Due to erroneous sensory processing children with ASD often resort to behaviors such as repetitive pacing and evasive movements to cope with stress; essentially they are fear-driven responses.

“Music is a whole-brain event,” Berger explains. During 45 minute individual sessions, she engages participants in rhythmic clapping and drumming, and paced marching and recorder blowing, all with set tempos. “Music does not require semantic interpretation – meaning that with or without language abilities, music yields responses!” The responses do indeed seem promising as after eight weeks with six children on the autism spectrum, progress was noted over a number of areas including: redirection of repetitive behaviors, reduced anxiety and increased motor coordination. A heart rate vest worn by participants further suggested a level of entrainment and regulation was occurring. Inadvertently, Berger also noted a correlation between difficulty in controlling breathing when using the recorder and limited expressive speech ability.

Berger’s work, which has been recently presented at the New York Academy of Science’s ‘Music, Science & Medicine’ meeting, essentially shows the benefits of . . .

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