Strongly Worded Letter

Fool Me Once.....

Here are the first four paragraphs of a story of great interest to me I found this week on AdWeek.com:

The company that manufactures Airborne, described as a dietary supplement whose vitamins and minerals help support the immune system, has settled its case with the Federal Trade Commission over the advertising and labeling of its products.

According to the FTC, Airborne, Bonita Springs, Fla., "Has agreed to pay up to $30 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it did not have adequate evidence to support its advertising claims in which its effervescent tablet was marketed as a cold prevention and treatment remedy."

Airborne has denied wrongdoing or illegal conduct, but reached an agreement with the FTC and agreed to settle a class action lawsuit "to avoid continued expense and distraction from management of the business," according to a statement released by the company.

The FTC's complaint stated that there was "no competent and reliable scientific evidence to support the claims made by the [company] that Airborne tablets can prevent or reduce the risk of colds, sickness, or infection; protect against or help fight germs; reduce the severity or duration of a cold; and protect against colds, sickness, or infection in crowded places such as airplanes, offices or schools."

Me again. Now I have a tough decision to make. Do I....

A) Convince myself that Airborne works as advertised but they got busted by the Feds because the company didn't have the proper scientific research to prove their claims?

or B) Accept that the product doesn't work and that millions of us who swear by it, and have much anecdotal evidence to support our strong faith in its effectiveness, are just victims of a placebo effect?

Can it really be all in my head? Here's all I know. Before Airborne: scratchy sore throat every time I traveled. After Airborne: healthiest man getting off the plane. Am i a sucker?

Bean, Olympian?

Like most Americans, Donna and I were talking about Michael Phelps last night. I asked how many endorsement contracts the Golden Boy of the Olympics will be signing when he returns home from China. Her answer? All of them! I have to agree with her.

But not so fast, Mad Men! Michael Phelps and I have a great deal in common and I am far, far cheaper to hire as your pitchmen. True, I am not much of a swimmer and have not even won one gold medal - much less a dozen - but we are practically twins when it comes to training. 

At least the eating part. The New York Post just broke down what Phelps (and I) eat every day during these Olympic Summer Games.

"Swimming sensation Michael Phelps has an Olympic recipe for success - and it involves eating a staggering 12,000 calories a day.

"Eat, sleep and swim. That's all I can do," Phelps told NBC when asked what he needs to win medals. "Get some calories into my system and try to recover the best I can."

By comparison, the average man of the same age needs to ingest about 2,000 calories a day.

Phelps, 23, will swim 17 times over nine days of competition at the Beijing Games - meaning that he will need all the calories he can shovel in his mouth in order to keep his energy levels high.

Phelps' diet - which involves ingesting 4,000 calories every time he sits down for a meal - resembles that of a reckless overeater rather than an Olympian.

Phelps lends a new spin to the phrase 'Breakfast of Champions' by starting off his day by eating three fried-egg sandwiches loaded with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayonnaise.

He follows that up with two cups of coffee, a five-egg omelet, a bowl of grits, three slices of French toast topped with powdered sugar and three chocolate-chip pancakes.

At lunch, Phelps gobbles up a pound of enriched pasta and two large ham and cheese sandwiches slathered with mayo on white bread - capping off the meal by chugging about 1,000 calories worth of energy drinks.

For dinner, Phelps really loads up on the carbs - what he needs to give him plenty of energy for his five-hours-a-day, six-days-a-week regimen - with a pound of pasta and an entire pizza. He
washes all that down with another 1,000 calories worth of energy drinks."

Me too! And by-the-way, I have that same body that Michael is forcing you to look at above. I just don't feel the need to walk around on TV all day with no shirt on. Sheesh, what a show-off!

The Black Death

I wasn't going to devote a blog post to comedian Bernie Mac's sad and untimely death this weekend but it was not because I did not admire him greatly - I did. But as is so often the case, I know there are many others who will do a far better job of eulogizing him elsewhere. My friend Frank wrote a personal tribute on his blog yesterday including links to some nice write-ups from Mac's hometown newspaper, the Chicago Tribune.

Then came word that Oscar and Grammy-winning soul legend Isaac Hayes had also passed away. Depending on your age you might know him best for his 1960s music career as a songwriter and performer in the Stax Records stable or his 1970s successes as a popular soul singer or his more recent work as the voice of Chef on the popular cartoon South Park.

I'm sure many people will seek out actor Samuel L. Jackson for comment about working with both Mac and Hayes recently on a film named Soul Men, due for release November 14th.

One Of These Is Not Like The Others.....

Some will joke that Jackson should immediately lie down somewhere safe in his house and not leave until the Summer of Death is over. I'm not worried about him and have never bought into the dumb theory that celebrity deaths happen in threes. We just count them that way.

Actor Morgan Freeman already dodged the Grim Reaper this week by surviving a serious auto accident so I guess it wasn't his time. But just in case there is going to be another black celebrity joining the All-Heaven Squad soon, here are my more likely picks.

1. Harry Belafonte
2. Aretha Franklin
3. Mohammad Ali

End Of The World, Momentarily Postponed

There are more than a few people around the world who breathed a sigh of relief yesterday to learn that a scientific experiment planned in Geneva, Switzerland will now actually happen September 10.

The Large Hadron Collider is a new particle accelerator and the world's largest.  So on that date next month scientists will "make the first attempt to circulate a beam of protons around a 17-mile-long super-cooled underground racetrack."

The collider, 14 years and $8 billion in the making, has been built to smash together protons that have been accelerated to energies of 7 trillion electron volts, and examine the remains for clues to the origin of mass and new forces and particles in the universe." (New York Times)

Why were there people who cared so much about this complex experiment? Because of the possibility, admittedly remote, of that this doomsday machine will really be a black hole factory and that a stray one could "devour our planet whole. Black holes possess gravitational fields so strong that nothing can escape them, even light." (LiveScience.com)

So, planetary annihilation has been put on low heat for now but I'm going to be keeping tabs on what happens next, that's for sure.

The experiment hopes to answer many questions about the Big Bang Theory that some believe formed our universe, why there is more matter than anti-matter in space and more.  Just Google "Hadron Collider" and pick your news source.

One fascinating group of Collider photos can be found on Slashdot.com and I want to share a few here. In case you care to see the face of your new Master. 

 

But Hu Is The President Of China?

I would say I am "moderately" interested in the 2008 Summer Olympics from Beijing. I haven't heard much buzz in my crowd but am guessing it would not be difficult to find friends who are more eager for tomorrow's big day to arrive and also easy to find some who have even less interest than I.

With almost non-stop TV coverage on NBC for the next two weeks-plus, it will be tough to see everything. The time difference certainly works against convenient prime time broadcasts here in the U.S. and each year that we get deeper into the 21st century it is becomes less acceptable to air sporting events on a delay of several hours.  Sorry, the internet doesn't care what time it is.

One thing I do like about the Olympics every two years is the virtual guarantee that someone I have never heard of today on the eve of the Games will do something that will amaze or inspire or maybe even crush me before the closing ceremony. 

Looking past the LeBron James-Michael Phelps-Tyson Gay-type star athletes I will already be watching, here are 5 other Olympians whose stories make me want to search out their events too.

1. Jake Deitchler, just the third high school wrestler to make an Olympic team. He graduated from Anoka (Minnesota) High School in April, finishing with an 111-match unbeaten streak. What was I doing 4 months out of high school? Planning on getting around to filling out that McDonald's application probably.

2.  Natalie Du Toit, on the South African swimming team, is an amputee. She lost her left leg below the knee in an auto accident. And she swims without a prosthetic limb. Hmmm....seems like a disadvantage to be down a flipper.

3. Dara Torres, the first U.S. swimmer to qualify for - wait for it - five Olympic teams. She set two American records in the 50 freestyle during the U.S. trials. Did I mention she is 41 years old? And kinda hot?

4. Eric Shanteu, on the U.S. swim team, diagnosed with testicular cancer in June and has been undergoing treatment. No word on whether he got the Lance Armstrong surgery. I'm guessing not or he would only swim in circles.

5. Amnat Ruenroeng, released from a Thai prison last year after serving less than two years of a fifteen year prison sentence for burglary. Authorities commuted his sentence after he unexpectedly won the nation's light flyweight boxing crown. I need to find out how he was able to enter the tournament from jail.

Opening Ceremonies air (tape delayed) here on the West Coast at 7:30 tomorrow night. 

The Future Ain't What It Used To Be

Anyone who knows me even tangentially knew what today's post was going to be about before you clicked on through.

 Yesterday was the long awaited public unveiling of the next generation of jetpacks. Yes, the jetpack, which science fiction comics, TV shows and movies have promised us since at least the 1920s when Buck Rogers flew one.

In the 1960s, James Bond flew one in Thunderball and we were told they were right around the corner in real life.

 In the 1990s, The Rocketeer had one and we were promised they were going to be available any minute.

Heck,  just last month I saw Iron Man fly a jetpack built into his suit and as I drove away from the theater I noticed I was in a car, not a jetpack. Again. And I wept.

All that was supposed to change yesterday when the first long range personal human transporter was unveiled at an air show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. The Martin Jetpack (details here)  does make several noticeable improvements over anything that's flown before. It runs on regular gasoline, rises to about 8000 feet (although I am not clear why that is the top altitude), and, most importantly, allows one to fly for about 30 minutes.

On the down side, the technology is still nowhere near as compact as the backpack-sized device we've been expecting. Plus it's still about $100,000 - I know! - and  seems like it might still have some stability problems on windy days like yesterday at the exhibition.

See the underwhelming video of that "flight" here but definitely check out MartinJetpack.com for updates periodically because this is a work in progress (and a lifetime labor of love for Mr. Glenn Martin) and they are headed in the right direction with it. Please let me live long enough to fly one one day. Even if it is literally the last thing I do.

Houston Has A New Problem...

Edgar Mitchell, the sixth man to walk on the moon, says aliens have been visiting the earth for the past sixty years.

A veteran of the Apollo 14 mission, Mitchell also says world governments are aware of the alien visits, but have covered them up.

NASA denies it is involved in an alien conspiracy or cover up.

Here's more of the story in Dr. Mitchell's own words from Reuters News.

Let's set aside for today whether you or I think extraterrestrials have already visited Earth. We won't solve anything with opinion and we are still short of irrefutable proof more than 60 years since the modern flying saucer era began on 24 June, 1947 near Mt. Rainier, Washington, just a few miles south of where I am sitting right now.

Here's the question on my mind today. Why would he lie? What explanation can there be for an American hero, one of only twelve humans to have ever walked on the moon, to make up stories like this? Would he really risk his reputation - his legacy - on a hoax? What do you think?

I Want To Believe

More than just the name of the new X-Files movie, I Want To Believe is what people must think when they receive a forwarded email and decide to then send it to everyone in their address book too. I'm not sure what makes that unsolicited and unverified information so irresistible to some folks but the chain is hard to break.

Some of the more famous, and durable, email hoaxes include "Bill Gates wants to pay you to try a new email program," "Telemarketers will soon be given your cell phone number if you don't put it on a Do Not Call list," and "Boycott gas stations on a certain date to send a message to Big Oil."

Politicians are often victims of mass email smears, either through carelessness or malice.  Some recent examples of widely circulated stories that are false include "George W. Bush has the lowest IQ of any president" and  "John McCain does not qualify to run for  president because he was born in Panama."

But Senator Barack Obama is the undisputed recent champion of misinformation victims. See how many of these untrue stories you recognize from the past year:

"Barack Hussein Obama" is a Muslim."
"Barack Hussein Obama is a radical Muslim"
"Barack Obama will not recite the Pledge of Allegiance."
"Barack Obama was sworn into office on the Quran"
"Barack Obama has been endorsed for president by the Ku Klux Klan."
"The bulk of donations to Barack Obama's campaign come from foreign financiers."

And my very favorite, "The Book of Revelations describes the Anti-Christ as someone with characteristics matching those of Barack Obama."  That one includes a Biblical warning about Muslims that was written some 400 years before Islam was even founded!

New to in-boxes this week is an email originating from a Captain Jeffrey S. Porter, soldier in Afghanistan describing how the Senator "blew off" the troops during a brief visit to Bagram. It described how he ignored soldiers that "were lined up to shake his hand" in order to instead "take his publicity pictures playing basketball."

U.S. Army spokespeople have declared the email "factually false," citing among other things that Mr. Obama "took time to shake hands, speak to troops, and pose for photographs" while in Bagram. Additionally, he did not visit the recreation tent mentioned in the original email for basketball, photos or any other reason. The  solider may have been confused since the Senator did spend some time in the gym, playing and talking with dozens of American servicemen in Kuwait earlier in the week.

Capt. Porter has since released a statement that includes, "After checking my sources, information that was put out in my email was wrong."

Much like a print newspaper's correction on page D27 of a front page mistake I am certain only a tiny fraction of people who received the original false description of Mr. Obama's visit to Bagram will ever read the factual follow-up. Something to keep in mind before any of us hit Send on something that might be too good to be true.

For those who don't have them bookmarked, there are two terrific websites worth visiting to check the veracity of forwarded material of any kind. You can find more details on all of the examples mentioned above as well as hundreds more.

Snopes.com is perhaps the best and best known but TruthOrFiction.com is also very good. 

American Idiot

Radio talk show host Michael Savage is this week's media punching bag after he made these comments about autism on his syndicated show:

"[a] fraud, a racket. ... I'll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out. That's what autism is. What do you mean they scream and they're silent? They don't have a father around to tell them, 'Don't act like a moron. You'll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don't sit there crying and screaming, idiot.' " 

First of all he's an idiot. He can argue that autism is often misdiagnosed or difficult to diagnose but anyone who claims 99% of autistic children are just badly behaved or victims of poor parenthood is stupid. Or disingenuous. Or both.

But that should be no surprise to anyone who has ever listened to the Savage Nation, as he calls his show for Michael Savage is the worst kind of "shock jock."  Howard Stern, in contrast, uses humor to make a point, or exaggerates his actual opinion to make a point or just entertains his audience without making a point. Same with Rush Limbaugh. They are not only brilliant communicators but are intelligent and believable people, as well as responsible broadcasters.

Savage is the opposite. Is it possible he is the rude, intolerant, racist, homophobic, fascist, bigoted, vulgar brute that he sounds like every minute of every day on his show? Possibly, but I think he says shocking things just to shock.

The guy in an embarrassment as a talk show host,  as an American, and as a human. But here is where I disagree with some of his critics this week.

Yesterday, a band of protesters turned out on the street in front of WOR, the radio station that airs the Savage show in New York City. They marched, carried signs, and chanted their wish that the host be fired for his remarks.

Seriously, can't someone be stupid anymore without being fired? Clearly there is a huge audience for Savage's act. He is the third most listened to talk show host in America behind Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. More that 8 million people a week want to hear what he has to say. Why not let them instead of demanding that every voice that offends you is silenced?    
 
Disagree with him? Think his facts are wrong? Offer to go on his show and present a different opinion. If he declines, take your message to one of the thousands of other media outlets available to you.

Here is a convenient sign for you to print out and tape to your radio for future reference.

IF YOU DON"T LIKE THE PROGRAM YOU ARE LISTENING TO, THEN CHANGE THE STATION. IT IS OKAY IF OTHERS DO WANT TO HEAR IT. THIS IS STILL AMERICA.

No Longer A Child Of The Universe

Possibly 99 percent of you who came across the obituary this week of radio and television host Les Crane would not have recognized the name. That is certainly understandable as Mr. Crane's public fame waned about 35 years ago but here are three fascinating things about the man we lost Sunday at age 74.

1. In the early 1960s he was one of the early pioneers of modern talk radio with his frank opinions and confrontational style on KGO San Francisco. He was one of the first to take live listener calls on the air too.

2. The first American television appearance of the Rolling Stones was on Crane's late night ABC show in June 1964.  That summer the program aired at 11:30 p.m., becoming one of the many shows to fall to young Johnny Carson's ratings dominance.

3. He was married five times - his fourth wife was Tina Louise, "Ginger" from TV's Gilligan's Island.

However even without any of that, Les Crane's passing would have been notable for his memorable Top Ten pop single from 1971. He even won a Grammy for his spoken-word recording of a 1927 poem called The Desiderata. This was the 70s version of that silly Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen) song that was a hit by Baz Luhrmann about ten years ago.

As nearly vacant as the memories of my early years are, I vividly remember hearing The Desiderata (Latin for "desired things," by the way) on the radio during its chart run.

And like millions of other young people back then I also had a poster on my bedroom wall of the lyrics to the poem.

If you are old like me, click on the player below to relive your own memory of the song. And you are lucky enough to be young, hit play too and prepare to be embarrassed for my generation that this song was actually taken seriously at the time.

R.I.P. Les Crane. Go placidly amid the noise and the haste...

Miss Washington Is A Goer!!!

It was the big only story in Seattle yesterday and I couldn't be prouder. Our state's beauty pageant winner kicks your state beauty pageant winner's ass! That is, unless you live in Nevada - that girl is crazy!

Our Miss Washington, a delicate little flower named Elyse Umemoto, was the second runner up in the Miss America contest last year. But like most beauty queens, you would never have even heard of her if not for TMZ.com posting some private photos yesterday.

Here was their description of the shots: "Miss Washington 2007 might wanna take the crown off before flipping off the camera, getting her Beer Pong on and making suggestive oral sex gang signs."

Judging from the reaction here and online from around the world you would think a video just surfaced of her drowning nuns.  My informal breakdown of the comments shakes out this way: Half think she should be stripped of her crown and the other half say she is a "stupid whore."

To the first point, she'll give up her title Saturday night anyway when Miss Washington 2008 is named. To the second, no, these photos do not necessarily demonstrate she is either stupid or whorish.

What she is is 23 years old. If you don't think these things go on at almost every single party where young people drink then you are as naive as Miss Umemoto. That she was a young woman with public ambition and didn't consider the possibility of shots like this coming back to haunt her was possibly ignorance and more likely naivety. Sidebar question to TMZ; What makes this a "suggestive oral sex gang sign?" Wow, gangs have really changed since I rolled like that in the 80s.

I don't really care what happens to her with respect to the Washington State beauty pageant because the Miss America pageant is as relevant to the 21st century as Beanie Babies.

I have two pieces of advice, not that anyone asked.

Thing One: I hope our own 23 year-old Mystery Daughter learns from Elyse's poor judgment and now better understands that the only surefire way to not be the victim of embarrassing photographs, even if the behavior itself is not particularly scandalous, is to not be in them.

I'm sure our Miss Washington would agree that she would much rather wake up tomorrow virtually anonymous again like she was 48 hours ago than have these photos be the only thing most of us will ever know about her.

Thing Two: For all other drunk beauty queens who forget this incident and do end up in regrettable party photos, don't let your no-good back-stabbing friends get them and potentially  ruin you with their lack of discretion. Send them to me for safe keeping. Word is bond.

Insane Clown Posse

The Summer Of Death continues over the holiday weekend with the reported deaths of two famous American clowns.

First, former Senator Jess Helms, Republican from the great state of North Carolina, finally responded to the will of the people and died at age 86. He was perhaps most famous for trying to filibuster the Senate's vote on making Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday a national holiday in 1983. He likely represented the views of many of his constituents during his early terms of office but perhaps they continued to evolve on social and racial issues where he did not.

More significantly, how about that Bozo The Clown?

From the Associated Press report, "Larry Harmon wasn't the original Bozo the Clown, but he was the real one. Harmon, who portrayed the wing-haired clown for more than half a century, died Thursday of congestive heart failure, said his publicist, Jerry Digney. He was 83.

As an entrepreneur, Harmon licensed the character to others, particularly dozens of television stations around the country. The stations in turn hired actors to be their local Bozos..."

Some fun facts I learned about Bozo from his obituary:

1. Pinto Colvig, who provided the voice for Walt Disney's Goofy, was the first Bozo the Clown, a character created by writer-producer Alan W. Livingston for a series of children's records in 1946.

2. Bozo wore size 83AAA shoes!

3. The business — combining animation, licensing of the character and personal appearances — made millions, as Harmon trained more than 200 Bozos over the years to represent him in local markets.

4. The Chicago version of Bozo ran on WGN-TV in Chicago for 40 years and was seen in many other cities after cable television transformed WGN into a superstation.

And my favorite, 5. Bozo — portrayed in Chicago for many years by Bob Bell — was so popular that the waiting list for tickets to a TV show eventually stretched to a decade, prompting the station to stop taking reservations for 10 years. On the day in 1990 when WGN started taking reservations again, it took just five hours to book the show for five more years. The phone company reported more than 27 million phone call attempts had been made.

While reflecting on Bozo, I was wondering, "Are there are any local children's shows anymore?". There used to be hundreds on television, including many that even went national like Romper Room, Shari Lewis, and Captain Kangaroo. And of course, the majority that did not, like Seattle kids' show legends J.P Patches or Stan Boreson. Does anyone know of any still being made today? 

"...It's A Gas, Gas, Gas!"

A guy I know named Bruce Maiman has a subscription-only blog in which he sometimes he makes a lot of sense. Here's a chunk l enjoyed from Thursday's post, on a very timely issue of concern to all Americans. It's a little wonky in places but worth wading through.....

With gas prices where they are and economic pressures mounting, President Bush asked Congress yesterday to lift the federal ban on offshore drilling and to allow drilling in Alaska's wildlife refuge, ANWR, saying there is no excuse for delay.
   Mr Bush pointed the finger of blame for past delays at Democrats on Capitol Hill who have "rejected every proposal, and now Americans are paying the price for this obstruction."
   There's little chance Democrats will approve drilling offshore or in Alaska, some perhaps influenced by environmental concerns, others skeptical about the claims that drilling will solve the problem since oil from such operations will take as much as a decade to get to the pumps.

But as is often the case in politics, there's always more to the story. The NY Times notes that "the topic of coastal drilling has been an extremely sensitive one in the Bush family; Mr. Bush's father, the first President Bush, signed an executive order in 1990 banning coastal oil exploration, and Mr. Bush’s brother Jeb was an outspoken opponent of offshore drilling when he was governor of Florida."
   Florida's new governor, Charlie Christ, in the past opposed offshore drilling; he's changed his mind, citing high gas prices. But Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in California opposes the president's call to lift the offshore drilling ban.
   And while the White House says the president is considering repealing his father's order, "he's not taking any executive action." At least not yet.
   The president also proposed lifting restrictions on oil shale leasing in what's called the Green River Basin of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming and easing the regulatory process to expand oil refining capacity.

Fact Check: Just how much oil do we have offshore? Let's put it this way: Drilling is not gonna be like rubbing the magic lamp. We're only talking about acreage that is presently off limits, which the American Petroleum Institute says will yield about a million to two million barrels a day and that it would only yield a supply for between two to two-and-a-half years of what we use in the United States. That's all we're talking about, and that's if the drilling acreage that opens up actually turns up oil, let alone oil that's economically viable to drill.  The API says --quote-- "only a small share of the leases have development potential." Now, is there more potential oil yield offshore? Yes. The oil companies have leases for 68 million acres right now that they're not drilling in, but the moratorium acreage is only about a fifth that size.

But it's not just a matter of drilling; the issue being ignored is the time it would take to drill for it. In 2004, the Energy Information Administration released a report saying that if Congress were to allow drilling in ANWR that year, the oil would not actually begin flowing until 2013 and peak production would not be reached until 2025. Offshore drilling? We'd have to wait 7-10 years for oil to arrive at the pumps. What do we do in the meantime?
   Last year, the EIA did a detailed study of the likely outcome of offshore drilling that concluded: "The projections in the OCS access case indicate that access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030. The impact of the projected 7% increase in lower-48 oil production that might result is expected to be insignificant."

 And, while the president promised "about a million additional barrels of oil every day," just from ANWR alone, he neglected to mention that, according to Energy Literacy Advocates, the U-S uses 21 million barrels of oil a day. The additional production would account for less than five percent of our current total oil use. Even adding in the additional million-to-two-million barrels a day from offshore drilling (if we do that), that's still only by today's consumption standard; in 10 years, more people, more cars, more energy needs, what will the demand be then? Not to mention the price of a gallon of gas?
   And let's not forget that none of this drilling --none of it-- will be worth squat without the capacity to refine the product, and in case you hadn't heard, the average length of time it takes to build a refinery from start to finish, from the moment ground is broken to the moment the plant is online? Seven years. Again, what good is that going to do us today?

The real deal: This issue is being politicized --shocker! If you're pro-drilling, you should be madder than the people who are against it. Here's why: There are two orders that keep Big Oil from drilling offshore in these areas right now. One is from Congress; the other is an executive order signed by the president that bans new leases being handed out until at least 2012. That executive order came from the George Bush --the first President Bush, not this one. Here's what's interesting. President Bush is telling Congress they need to eliminate their bill, but he hasn't done his part by withdrawing the executive order. If he's really interested in doing this, why hasn't he rescinded the executive order, which he could do just by signing a piece of paper? He's the decider, ain't he?
   He's not doing it because the House Appropriations Committee was supposed to vote yesterday on whether or not to extend the offshore ban (which goes to 2012 right now) --they postponed the vote. Congress is an important part of this story, too, but so is the president.
   Now withdrawing his father's order wouldn't okay drilling --Congress has to vote on that-- but it would allow new leases to be given out. And more important, it would be a sign of executive leadership, the kind we need on this issue, but instead, he'd rather blame Democrats and environmentalists?
   Everyone has to give a little bit here and pull their own weight, but we're getting nothing more than politics, which should have both sides ticked off.

Campaign Analysis: The president's call for offshore drilling have injected him squarely into the presidential campaign, by putting the full weight of the White House behind John McCain at a time when the Senator is trying to demonstrate presidential stature. But it will also expose McCain to accusations from Democrats that a McCain presidency would be akin to a Bush third term.
   At the same time, the move will put the onus on Democrats, many of whom have long been staunchly opposed to offshore drilling. And it is likely to exacerbate the 30-year-old standoff in Washington over whether domestic drilling or conservation is the way to end American dependence on foreign oil.

The prevailing sentiment in the country is that oil is not necessarily the way to go. Reasons include:
   --Resentment towards oil companies for the high gas prices
   --Others don't trust the oil companies and suspect the prices aren't going to drop anyway
   --Still others worry about the environment
   --Others say the president never mentioned conservation or fuel efficiency standards, the so-called CAFÉ standards. Why aren't we pushing Detroit to meet CAFE standards, standards the Japanese have been meeting for years?
   --Others who can't afford to gas up their cars right now wanna know what good it'll do to have the oil 10 years from now? The pressure may be less about drilling and more about today, what about today?

Bottom line: The problem with the president's proposal is that it's not a mandate; it's not the Manhattan Project everyone says the country needs, and frankly, the president has none of the political capital, public equity or leadership capacity to make that happen. Everything he said today was about just one part of the equation: Oil, and if anyone has an even worse approval rating than the president, it's Big Oil. We're being asked to put our trust in an entity that no one trusts. That's a hard sell politically, particularly when you're an unpopular lame duck president.

What will have more resonance is a call to change the country's entire energy infrastructure, and that requires the pursuit of energy solutions on all fronts --oil, nuclear and alternative-- and it needs to be smart and practical.
   Consider Honda Motors, which, incidentally has far greater brand integrity than the oil industry, rolled their first zero-emissions, hydrogen fuel cell car off the assembly line this week in Japan --the four-seat, FCX Clarity. It gets 300 miles on a single fuelling with a top speed of 99 mph. Some of them will be leased in California to start, more cars are due out next year and Honda plans to be at full mass-production capacity of a fuel-cell car within ten years.
   That's the same 10 years the Energy Department has said it will take for oil from ANWR or offshore to get to our gas stations. Which is the wiser long-term investment, drilling for oil we won't see for 10 years, or developing and improving a mode of transportation that will make oil obsolete as a fuel source for the automobile? By all means, do both; do everything, but let's do it with common sense. Right?

Me again. The one major plot line Bruce leaves out is the Democrats' ridiculous plan recently to further tax the "windfall profits" of the  oil companies.  Since when do we want our government deciding how much profit a business can make? Except for price gouging situations in the time of actual emergencies, who is to say how much profit is "enough" anyway?  There are plenty of companies with a higher profit margin than Exxon-Mobil - Microsoft for example.  Should the government tell them how much they are allowed to make too? And by-the-way, the feds make more in gasoline taxes per gallon sold than the oil companies do! How about we start reducing the cost to the consumer from there first?

No Peace For Pluto

Many of the readers of my previous blog might remember that I am a devout Pluto enthusiast. It is my favorite planet by far, and yes, i am including yours - what's it called? - oh, yeah, Earth.

I tried to not overreact when Pluto was demoted from planethood in 2005, partly because I felt then that the subject wasn't closed. Now the backlash over the International  Astronomical Union's decision is growing in science circles.

Alan Boyle writes an MSNBC astronomy column called Cosmic Log and this week he printed the most significant salvo in this war of words I have seen this year. I'll reproduce a few key paragraphs but the entire article is fascinating and worth reading here.

The latest round in the planethood debate may well provoke planetary scientists into a revolt against the international body that usually has the last word on astronomical terminology, according to the top scientist for NASA’s mission to Pluto.

This week's announcement from the International Astronomical Union that Pluto and other dwarf planets on the solar system's edge would be known henceforth as "plutoids" has been seen by some as a sign of respect for what was once considered the smallest of the solar system's nine planets.

That's not how Alan Stern, principal investigator for NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto, sees it. In fact, he wonders whether this will be the last straw for those who think IAU officials badly bungled their definition of a planet almost three years ago.

"They're almost needling the planetary community to go their own way," Stern told me today.

Stern isn't alone - and in fact, there's a wide range of opinions on the planethood question, ranging from outrage to acceptance of the IAU's definition. The main point of contention is the idea that a planet must have "cleared the neighborhood around its orbit" - a definition that Stern maintains could exclude worlds exactly like Earth.

In today's telephone interview, the former NASA associate administrator discussed Pluto, planethood and what planetary scientists might do about those questions. Here's an edited transcript of the Q&A:

Q: It's a case of defining a planet not by the thing itself, but by everything that's around it?

A: Exactly. I would like to see a definition that's really simple. I like to use the "Star Trek" Enterprise test. The Starship Enterprise shows up at a given body, they turn on the cameras on the bridge and they see it. Captain Kirk and Spock could look at it and they could say, "That's a star, that's a planet, that's a comet." They could tell the difference. They don't need a Ph.D.

In the case of the IAU, when Kirk asks, "Is it a planet?" Spock would have to say, "I don't know, Captain. We have to make a complete census of the solar system, feed that into a computer, and do numerical integrations to determine which objects have cleared their zone."

Q: So the issue of the nomenclature, whether it's a dwarf planet, or a plutino or a plutoid - as far as you're concerned, that's not the real point.

A: It's really about us "planetary scientists" having a basic understanding of the object after which our field is named. The reason we're having this discussion is because for a long time, we only knew of a few planets, and life was simple. Then, in the 1990s, there was this explosion in the variety of new kinds of bodies orbiting other stars and out in the solar system, because our technology got more sophisticated. We could suddenly see what we couldn't see before.

It's as if we were biologists trapped on a single desert island, and the only kinds of plants and animals that we knew were on that desert island. And then we were taken on a world tour of the flora and fauna of the earth. It would blow our minds. You would have two choices: You could say, 'Anything I didn't recognize from my own island is not living. I'm not counting that, because there would be too many varieties and I can't keep up with them.' Or you could say, 'I'm a scientist, and I have to adapt to new data. Wow, I really underestimated the situation.'

I think that's what's happened. But the IAU's reaction is, 'No, stop, I won't have any more planets. We have to limit the number because I'm more comfortable with a small number.' So you get this arbitrary algorithm that produces ridiculous results.

Q: Some of the discussion has focused on whether the approach to having an IAU that is the arbiter is not the right way to go nowadays. There's even talk about setting up an alternate organization.

A: That's right. Most things are done these days open-source and by consensus. You don't find little committees of 10 people speaking for 10,000, all without some sort of a sanity check. The fact that the IAU would claim that the world's astronomers have somehow met and decided something when it was a small committee of a dozen ... where were the experts in this field? What kind of process is that?

So people are asking, "What do we need these guys for? We'll set up an alternative." The IAU has no special claim. They have no police force or army. They're not the Supreme Court. If they're doing a bad job ...

The fundamental issue is that not many planetary scientists even belong to the IAU. The vast majority of its members work on galaxies, and stars, and black holes and cosmology. The reason most of the IAU doesn't care is because it's not their issue. The people who actually understand the physics, the chemistry, the work on planets aren't in the IAU. It's kind of like having a bunch of French professors deciding issues regarding the German language.

Q: So you think there eventually will be a consensus, which emerges not by taking a vote but by gathering more evidence?

A: I do. Let me give you an example: I think it's now widely expected among experts that we will find objects substantially larger than Pluto in the deep outer solar system, because now we really understand how easy planet formation was and how many kinds of things were thrown into the outer regions by the giant planets.

So just watch: When a Mars-size body of an Earth-sized body is found, it will be widely accepted that there will be a planet that doesn't fit the IAU's definition. At that point, even the last vestiges of the definition's defenders will say, "Wait a minute, we have to rethink this." ... The whole thing will be shown for the farce that it is.

Me again. Mr. Stern makes a great deal of sense to me and I appreciate that he communicates so well, in terms we lay people can understand.  I am extremely eager to see what happens next on this question.

P.S. There have been hundreds of Pluto related pictures, products and gags flying around the internet in recent years. This one was new to me when blog reader Ryan sent it in recently. Thanks!!

Weird, Weird World

I don't know if this week's news is actually any weirder than usual or if I just accidentally happened upon a bunch of oddball stories but here are three that I thought worth sharing, adapted from wire services.



Thing One: A quadriplegic woman is embarking on a record-breaking attempt to sail solo around Britain using just her breath to navigate a 20 foot sailing boat.

Hilary Lister, 36, is to sail single-handed round the British Isles. Just one problem - she is quadriplegic and can only move her head, eyes and mouth. She will spend the next three months sailing round the British Isles in a specially adapted boat she controls using a 'sip-and-puff' system of straws.

She suffers from a rare disorder known as reflex sympathetic dystrophy, an agonizing muscle-wasting condition which has left her with no movement below the neck.

At home in Canterbury, Kent, she can only do the simplest of tasks by using her forehead to push levers on a machine which changes the channel on the television or answers the telephone.

But thanks to high-tech adaptations to her Artemis 20 boat, she has become the first quadriplegic to sail across the English Channel and the first female quadriplegic to solo circumnavigate the Isle of Wight. Her previous record-breaking achievements will pale in comparison to the latest challenge, which will see her encounter some of the trickiest sailing conditions in the world.

She has tried to lead as active a life as possible and graduated from Oxford University with a high 2.1 in biochemistry despite having to dictate papers while lying flat on her back with epidural painkillers being pumped into her spine.

Her outlook on life changed dramatically when she discovered sailing, and realized she did not have to sit staring out of the window, but could experience the exhilaration of riding the crest of a wave.

"It is the ultimate freedom for me," she said. "I get out on to the water and suddenly my physical inabilities no longer matter.  "It's amazing, I use my breath through three straws and they control the sails and the tiller.  "I have a support boat that follows me from half a mile away, and even that feels too close."

Through her challenge, Mrs Lister hopes to raise money for her charity, Hilary's Dream Trust, which aims to help other people with disabilities achieve their dreams of sailing.

Mrs Lister's progress will be posted on her website.

                                                               
Thing Two:  A street-sweeping truck roaring down a Bronx, N.Y. street sucked up a dog and killed her as her owner held the leash.

Robert Machin said he had just finished walking his two Boston terriers and was about to put them into his car when the truck appeared. The retired transit worker said he was suddenly whipped around and saw one of the dogs, Ginger (center, in photograph), being swallowed by the sweeper's round bristles.

"I went berserk at that moment because I couldn't believe what had occurred," he said and that he yelled at the driver to stop, but the truck kept going. He and friends chased the truck for 2 ½ blocks before catching up with it. Ginger's slight body was later pulled from the sweeper.

The city Department of Sanitation called the death "a rare and unfortunate accident."
A heartbroken Machin questioned whether the driver was observing proper procedures, saying the truck seemed to barreling through the street at an unsafe speed. The heartbroken Machin, 57, choked up as he described losing Ginger. With his children grown, he said, "These two dogs, they're my life."

Thing Three: Another human foot was found Wednesday on a British Columbia shoreline, the second this week and the sixth within a year in a bizarre mystery that has confounded police.

Like most of the others, it was a right foot encased in a running shoe, said Sgt. Mike Tresoor of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. He said a citizen spotted it on a beach and no other remains were found.

The latest find and most of the others were recovered within a few miles of each other along island shorelines in the Strait of Georgia, which lies to the south and west of the provincial capital of Vancouver.

Authorities say they haven't reached any conclusions about the origin of the feet but are working to determine if there are any links to any other partial remains recovered in the province.

"Too my knowledge, we have not encountered anything like this," RCMP spokeswoman Annie Linteau told The Associated Press Wednesday evening. She declined to speculate if foul play was involved.

She did suggest that the latest find could be from the body of a missing fishermen or a plane crash victim, but she didn't provide any specifics. "In the first four cases, we did not find any evidence the feet were severed," she said. "It's too early to say if this foot was severed."

P.S. Rare midday update! News just broke that Foot #6 was a hoax. It was animal remains stuffed into a shoe! Why? No known motive yet but the first five are still mysteries.

Help?

I pretty much write about stuff I'm interested in on this little blog but every once in a while I hope it might help someone as well. Today is one of those days, times two.

 I've mentioned before my desire to spread the good word on giving blood. There is almost literally nothing else you can do that costs nothing and take so little time but does so much good. We're talking saving lives, people! For reals.

Well, today I heard on the radio that the annual Seattle summer blood shortage is on, so much so that some surgeries are being rescheduled. Why? Several reasons.

#1. More need. Trauma cases here are up twenty percent in the summer.

#2. Fewer donations. The rest of the year, 25 percent of the blood donors are students who are somewhere else doing something else during the summer.

#3. Worldwide disasters, from China to Iowa, blood is needed and is being imported from all over, including here.

A new factor this year is, believe it, higher gas prices. Many potential and even regular donors are limiting their auto trips to essentials only. Volunteering is way down on the list for many.

Here's the link to the Puget Sound Blood Center and their area locations (I give every two months at the downtown center on Terry Avenue). And wherever you are reading this today, if you are eligible, please look into giving blood in your city this week. Free juice and cookies too!!!

Next up, blog reader Christina has asked me to mention the dire need for bone marrow donors as well. Her friend Michelle is in a race against time to find one and is also using her own situation to raise awareness of the crisis with this website, ProjectMichelle.com. So far, more than nine thousand new potential life savers have registered through the site to be part of the National Registry. Good luck, Michelle, and thank you to my readers for  clicking through to her page.

All right, people, let's go out and do some good today.

She's Got My Vote

There are many, many things that our local, state, and national government should be working hard on these days to keep our great country moving upward and onward. I ordinarily think interfering with legal, private enterprise should be last on that list, if at all. Let the marketplace determine the winners from the losers I say. Usually.

But California state representative Anna Eschoo (Gesundheit!) has had enough and I am right there with her. She has introduced a bill that will lower the volume on television commercials. Amen. She says, "I've had it with these loud advertisements. If I'm not close to my remote control to push the mute button, it practically blasts you out of the house. It's that annoying. And it's totally unnecessary."

The bill is called the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act, or CALM. I love it and I love Ms. Eschoo and I want to vote for her for something. Seriously, if my iPod can play everything at the same volume then there must be an easy way that the shows and the spots can pay at the same level too.

I watch TV to be lazy. Don't make me work while I do it, even if it is only handling the remote and no, that's not a euphemism.

Click here to read more about the proposed law and read the lame excuses that advertisers and television executives are already giving my sweet Anna. Courage.  

Equal Parts Sad And Angry

Wow, wasn't yesterday a black letter day for the world?

Thing One: By every account, one of the most decent men in television died unexpectedly of coronary thrombosis in his office at age 58 (!). Tim Russert was, to me, the face of NBC News as a political analyst who appeared frequently across their whole day's news programming. He was also the longest running host (since 1991) of the longest running show in worldwide television history (Meet The Press, on the air since 1947, and on radio before that!).

I try hard not to write posts for StronglyWordedLetter.com about subjects that are going to be covered so much better elsewhere and there are no shortage of tributes to Tim all over the internet, on TV, and in print this morning. I urge you to seek them out to read about this giant of American journalism.

On last night's Dateline NBC special remembrance, they showed interviews with Russert's colleagues and friends in the news business who all spoke of his decency, his loyalty, his passion for his work and family, his deep Catholicism, his love of baseball, his patriotism and so much more.

I didn't know some of the stories I heard but do know that as a viewer I was always impressed by how smart, articulate, fair and prepared he was every time I saw him on television. In a medium that is increasingly filled with Bill O'Reilly, Keith Olbermann, John Gibson and other blowhards like them, Tim Russert was a rare broadcaster, one that made you proud of how he used his platform to educate and enlighten the audience.

Thing Two: Are you kidding me that R. Kelly was acquitted of all 14 counts of child pornography yesterday? Even though I have been predicting it for years, I secretly hoped I was just being pessimistic about the American judicial system.

For those who didn't follow the case, Kelly is a popular R&B singer who managed to delay this trial for nearly six years before it got to court last month. He was accused of having sex with an underage girl. The principal evidence in the prosecution's case was A VIDEO OF R. KELLY HAVING SEX WITH THE UNDERAGE GIRL!!!          

The defense attorney lied argued that it was not his client in the video even though the whole courtroom could see that the man on the tape was the man in the suit sitting next to the defense attorney. At one point it was argued that a couple must have broken into R. Kelly's house and filmed the sex tape there, then digitally altered the video to make it look like the singer and his underage goddaughter. (!)

That the defendant is an internationally known celebrity didn't hurt him; he has even had numerous Top Ten albums and singles on the pop charts even since the charges were filed. You won't convince me that having eight  African-Americans on the jury wasn't as good as a Get Out Of Jail Free card either. Go ahead and argue that the racial makeup was appropriate for the trial's location, Chicago, and I'll even agree with you. It would be hard to find eight blacks in America who want to see R. Kelly in jail, much less eight in one jury pool. 

All in all, a truly sucky Friday the Thirteenth this year.

It's A Wonderful Life

My very favorite movie of all time was in the news again yesterday, a few months out of season.

Bob Anderson, the teenage actor who portrayed the young George Bailey in the film It's A Wonderful Life passed away at age 75. Jimmy Stewart acted his way into immortality as the adult Bailey but it was Anderson who had one of the film's most memorable scenes, described here by the Associated Press report:

"In one scene, the story called for him to spot a potentially fatal error made by a drunken druggist, played by H.B. Warner.

Warner took the role seriously and on the day of shooting had been drinking and was 'pretty ripe,' Victoria Anderson (Bob's wife) said. The scene called for Warner's character to slap the boy.

Anderson told the Los Angeles Times in 1996 that the scene and its rehearsals were painful.

'He actually bloodied my ear,' Anderson told the paper. 'My ear was beat up and my face was red, and I was in tears.'

'At the end when it was all over, he (Warner) was very lovable. He grabbed me and hugged me, and he meant it,' Anderson said."

The film was made in 1946 so it's no surprise that nearly all of the major actors in it are no longer with us, or, as I prefer to think of it, are "drinking with Clarence." I did a little research last night and came up with this partial list. If you love the movie as I do, you will recognize most of the characters mentioned here.

James Stewart      George Bailey          died 2 July 1997.
Donna Reed          Mary Bailey             died 14 January 1986
Lionel Barrymore   Mr. Henry Potter      died 15 November 1954
Thomas Mitchell    Uncle Billy Bailey     died  17 December 1962
Henry Travers       Clarence                 died 18 October 1965
Beulah Bondi        Ma Bailey                died 1 January  1981
Frank Faylen         Ernie Bishop            died 2 August 1985
Ward Bond           Officer Bert             died 5 November 1960
Gloria Grahame    Violet  Bick              died 5 October 1981
H.B. Warner         Mr. Emil Gower        died 21 December 1958
Frank Albertson    Sam Wainwright       died 29 February 1964
Todd Karns          Harry Bailey             died 5 February 2000
William Edmunds  Giuseppe Martini      died 7 December 1981
Sheldon Leonard   Nick                        died 10 January 1997

The Kids Are Alright: Karolyn Grimes, Larry Simms, and Jimmy Hawkins, who played the Bailey's three young children (Zuzu, Pete, and Tommy) in It's A Wonderful Life, are all still alive.

 

Let's Make Today Thanksgiving

Sometimes I get all sad if the show I am watching on TIVO catches up to real time and then I have to watch the rest of it live and with the commercials. After seeing this article I am considering redefining my definition of sad.


Woman in iron lung dies during power outage

"For the first time in more than half a century, the Odell residence is quiet. There are no squeaks and pops from the electric motor that powered an "iron lung" pumping air in and out of Dianne Odell's body.

 

A thunderstorm knocked out the power to her home Wednesday, shutting off the massive metal machine that had helped her breathe for nearly 60 years.  It was about 3 a.m. when the electricity went out at Odell's home in Jackson, a small Tennessee town about 90 miles northeast of Memphis. An emergency generator did not start, and Odell died as her father and brother-in-law took turns pumping the iron lung manually.

Dianne Odell, 61, was believed to be the nation's oldest survivor of polio to have spent almost all of her life inside an iron lung. She had been confined within the 7-foot-long, 750-pound machine ever since she was paralyzed at the age of 3 by bulbospinal polio. That was in 1950, just a few years before a polio vaccine was discovered..."

Read the whole L.A. Times article here.

 

Other iron lung stuff I just learned:

They are technically known as "negative pressure ventilators."

They work by producing pressure on the lungs that causes them to expand and contract.

Its first use was on October 12, 1928 at Children's Hospital, Boston on a child unconscious from respiratory failure. 

Only about 30 people still use them in the United States.

Ironically, Iron Man doesn't use one.


P.S. Sorry for the death in yesterday's post followed by more death in today's post. I'll look for something peppy or funny or something for tomorrow.

P.P.S. Thanks to whoever linked one of my posts to Stumble Upon last week. I got a lot of new traffic out of that and you gave me the idea to add a button on the bottom of my posts to make it easier to submit anything you like to Stumble Upon or Digg or wherever you like. 


 

Phoenix Rising

Mars, this weekend.

Like millions of other space enthusiasts around the globe, I was holding my breath Sunday in the tense moments between when NASA's Phoenix spacecraft landed on the Martian surface and when the data it was transmitting started to arrive back to Earth.

Fewer than half of our missions to Mars have included a successful landing but the Phoenix made the 422 million mile trip (!) and perfectly touched down on the planet's northern polar cap. Once landed, it unfolded its solar arrays, camera, weather station and more for three months of scientific testing. As you can imagine, looking for remnants of water and the possibility of past, present, or future life are the craft's top duties.  

I bring this up to make this observation. You don't have to look to another planet to be impressed with man's ingenuity. Look around you right now and you'll likely see a television, or a skyscraper, or a refrigerator, or any of the millions of other things that make our life more livable. All things that were conceived, designed, and assembled by human beings just like you or me, only smarter.

That I can sit here in my living room on a tiny island in Washington and make words appear on a screen with my fingers blows my mind. That I can hit a button and then you can see it in Indiana, or India for that matter, is more than I can comprehend.

I wonder sometimes if there were a catastrophic disaster that eliminated most of the world's cities and their population, how many people would we need for the manpower and know-how to be able to rebuild many of the things we'd lost? I hope I am never in a situation where I am asked how to make a watch, or a phone, or even a spoon.

"And What It Is Ain't Exactly Clear....."

This post isn't exactly about politics although it does start with Senator Barack Obama, the likely nominee for the Democratic Party in 2008.

This past weekend the candidate gave a stump speech, this time in Portland, Oregon and it is totally a coincidence that this is the second day in a row I've written about the Beaver State.

What was noteworthy about this appearance was the astonishing size of the crowd. The Portland Fire Bureau estimated that 75,000 people turned up to see a politician speak.

Oregon is, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than ninety percent white. Interestingly, that is 40% more white than Mr. Obama is.

Like I said, this is not about politics. Forget who you are thinking of voting for or why. Let's talk about audience appeal, magnetism, charisma, or whatever word you want to describe that could make 75,000 people spend a Sunday listening to a speech. Even for free. Even on a nice day on the banks of the beautiful Willamette River.   

How many others can you think of? No way President Bush draws that. Or even Miley Cyrus. I'll suggest Pope Benedict might hit that number. But who else? Can you think of anyone else with that kind of pull to add to my two-person list?

   

What's Next In That Crazy Country?

One of the great mysteries of the United States, at least to me,  is why you can't pump your own gasoline in Oregon. That's right, when you drive south from my house and cross the bridge from Vancouver, Washington into Portland, Oregon then all of a sudden you are in 1958 when you pull into a service station. I half expect to see girls on roller skates serving milkshakes while I watch the guy fill my tank. Come to think of it, that is not the worse idea ever.

I don't know when the great state of Oregon will put all those attendants out of work and repeal that law but I do know it is the end of an era on Prince Edward Island in eastern Canada this month.

Yes, for the first time since 1973 you can now buy a can of beer in that province. And soft drinks in a can for the first time since 1984.

Prince Edward Island was way ahead of the coming environmental awareness movement when they banned aluminum cans all those decades ago in favor of only refillable glass bottles. Here's why, so says former premier Pat Binns, "A pop bottle is refilled on average 17 times. You can imagine the energy that saves compared to filling a can in Montreal, driving it all the way to P.E.I., putting it through recycling and back into the mainstream again. Environmentally, glass is much better product than a can that has been used once."

The Niagra Falls Review in Ontario, Canada, where I read the story, also points out that "silica, the raw ingredient in glass, is one of the most plentiful and readily available substances on Earth. Aluminum, on the other hand, is a very expensive metal extracted from bauxite at enormous environmental cost."


I know it seems unlikely but I found the news interesting.

This Is Not A Post About Gay Marriage

As you know, The California Supreme Court dropped a gay atomic bomb on Thursday when they overturned the ban on same-sex marriages in that state. But that is not what this post is about, no matter how much I enjoy  seeing Portia Di Rossi kiss a girl even if it is just Ellen DeGeneres.

I've caught some of the coverage on the cable news channels and particularly on talk radio and have had just about an assful  over two things I keep hearing said over and over again.

Thing 1. "We've got to stop these activist judges."

Okay, someone help me here. President Bush was the first person I ever heard use this term and it has caught on like Free Hot Wings ever since. If a judge or court makes a ruling one disagrees with, then they are characterized as "activist judges."  But if one agrees with the ruling then the judge or court was "accurately interpreting the law." Because.....everyone who makes those statements is also a constitutional scholar so they would know?

That doesn't give the judicial branch, generally the most learned of any part of our government, much credit, does it?  In this particular ruling, for instance, the California Supreme Court, where six of the seven were justices were Republican appointees, voted 4-3 to overturn the earlier Appeals court ruling. 

You can read the opinions of all seven and they all justify their individual conclusions based on their interpretations of the Constitution, not based on their personal views on this one issue. They used the same criteria earlier courts used to make discrimination against citizens based on gender and race illegal in this country. I am not saying there aren't any bad judges or judges who sometimes make legal mistakes but that is why we have a higher court in place to have a way to settle any questions. This system worked exactly the way it was designed, regardless of the outcome.

Thing 2: "This ruling lets four wackos hijack the will of the people."

First of all, we've done pretty well in this country with a "majority rules" form of government for a very long time.  51-49 still makes a law in the Senate, and 500,000 to 499,999 still gets you elected as Mayor of any number of good-sized cities in this country. 4-3 means 4 wins.

Secondly, and this one irks me the mostest. It is not the job of the California Supreme Court or any other judge to rule according to the will of the people. No, their job is to rule according to the law. The people can legislate their will as much as they want as long as their wishes do not violate the Constitution. There are lots of laws that I disagree with and many rulings that make me furious. But that doesn't mean judges should care what I think. That is not their job.

Thing 3 (Bonus Thing): This really isn't a post about gay marriage. It is a post about fifth grade civics. Executive Branch, Legislative Branch, Judicial Branch. Rinse. Lather. Repeat.

More Than A Feeling...It's A Job!

This truly is one of the most remarkable rock and roll fantasy stories I have ever heard. Helpful back story for my younger readers (Hi Melissa!): The band Boston had the best selling debut album of all time in 1976. That one sold 17 million copies (!) and they followed it up with several other multi-platinum efforts and hit songs like More Than A Feeling, Don't Look Back, and their #1 charting ballad, Amanda.

Now, highlights from the recent USA Today article:

"One day you're trying to get Home Depot shoppers to apply for in-store credit. The next you're rehearsing with Boston and getting ready for a national summer tour.

'I never could have dreamed this,' says Tommy DeCarlo, 43, Boston's new  frontman, who is taking leave from his credit manager job at a Charlotte Home Depot to perform with the band. "That first gig is going to be something."

Bands ranging from AC/DC to Lynyrd Skynyrd have found new singers in the wake of tragedy (Delp committed suicide last year), inevitably choosing road-tested replacements. DeCarlo's rocking Cinderella tale includes the fact that he never has even been in a band.

'I did sing After the Lovin' at my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary,' says the affable DeCarlo, who is married and has two teenagers. 'I think they enjoyed it.'

All Boston founder Tom Scholz knows is he can't believe his ears. 'During rehearsals, it can get downright eerie,' he says. 'I forget it's not Brad. It makes me feel like someone was at work up there.'

In tribute to Delp, DeCarlo posted MP3 files of himself singing Boston over a karaoke soundtrack on his MySpace page. (He had hocked his prized keyboard in 2006 to buy his kids' Christmas gifts.) An impressed visitor to his page urged him to contact Boston management and offered up an old e-mail address. Doubtful but with nothing to lose, DeCarlo sent off a note with a link. Destiny intervened.

'My wife was at her computer playing our tunes, and I asked her whether it was us playing live,' Scholz says. 'She said, 'It's some guy in North Carolina singing your songs.' I said, 'I know Brad's voice, and that's Brad.' She turned it up, and only when I heard the backing track did I know it wasn't us.'

Scholz flew DeCarlo and his family up for an audition, which led to a Delp tribute show and the tour invite. DeCarlo and the band's other new member, Stryper frontman Michael Sweet, will appear on Boston's next album in early 2009.

Even if DeCarlo's Boston idyll proves short-lived, he's unlikely to forget this summer. His colleagues won't let him.

'It's like we've got our own American Idol winner right here in our store,' says DeCarlo's manager, Mark Ortiz. 'When he plays nearby, we'll all be there, orange aprons on.'

Me again: Isn't that an incredible story?  The fact that he was never even in a band before Boston makes it so much more bizarre  than the real life story of the Judas Priest cover band singer who took over the real thing. That tale was turned into the Rock Star movie, starring Mark Wahlberg.

Tommy Decarlo's Boston plays Seattle July 10th (with Styx!). I am tempted to go and see  Mr. Home Depot for myself.

"You Don't Need To Be A Weatherman...

.....to know which way the wind blows."

Yesterday my brother sent me this photo of a flooded intersection about five miles from where he works in Maryland (that's one of those states you might not have heard of but but trust me, it's real). On a normal week this would make the national news but right now it might not make the top ten weather emergencies in progress.

Seriously, what's the deal? Flooding yesterday in a South African town left more than a thousand families homeless.

There have been more than 100 tornadoes in the Midwest in the last two weeks, killing about two dozen.

The last week of April saw thousands of acres of Southern California blackened by wildfires. This week the same is happening in central Florida.

This month's cyclone in Burma may have claimed 100,000 lives.

Yesterday's 7.9 earthquake in southwest China, the worst in more than thirty years, caused at least 15,000 deaths and counting.

There have been several shark attacks, some fatal, all in the last two weeks at beaches as far flung as Mexico, California, Florida and Australia.

That kid David Archeletta made it to the top three on this season's American Idol.

See what I mean? Disaster after disaster. Is it just me or does it seem like somehow they can't all be coincidentally happening at about the same time? Like they are related in some way I can't see? The Earth is fighting back or something?  Anyone? Beuller? Beuller? Al Gore? Anyone?

Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep

Do you recognize the woman on the left in this recent news photograph? That's Deborah Jeane Palfrey, recently convicted   of running a Washington call-girl ring. You may have heard her referred to by her media nickname, the D.C. Madam.

The woman on the right in the picture is Deborah's mom. She was in the news last week  too when she found her daughter's body swinging from a nylon rope in her Florida home. It is unusual that suicide notes are released to the public, but she left three.

The first was for whoever found her body:

The second (on the other side of the above Do Not Revive note) was to her mother:

And the third was to her sister Bobbie (Click on each to enlarge):

If you've got  both the time and the interest, do yourself a Google search on "Palfrey murder" and see how the blogosphere has exploded with theories as to why, despite the medical examiner's certainly, this was not a suicide but a murder. Some even suggest the notes are forged, citing "evidence" like this:

Why would her note say, "I cannot live the next 6-8 years behind bars for what both you and I have come to regard as this 'modern day lynching,' only to come out of prison in my late 50s a broken, penniless and very much alone woman."  They point out that most legal analysts expected her prison sentence, scheduled to be handed down July 24, to be more in the two-to-three year range and that she also stood to make millions to write a book in which she named the names of her famous D.C. clients.

Unrelated Editor's Note: One of you will post the 3,000th reader comment on this blog today since going live seven months ago. Thanks to you and everyone else who chooses to make this daily visit interactive.

 

Kentucky Tragedy

 Here's part of the Baltimore Sun's recap of yesterday's disastrous Kentucky Derby running at Churchill Downs.

                        

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - "Eight Belles was grabbing all the real estate she could as she pounded down the front stretch in a long-striding effort to catch Big Brown as he streaked toward victory.

It was a race Big Brown would win by 4 3/4 lengths, but Eight Belles had shown her stamina and determination and the 157,770 fans at Churchill Downs for the 134th Kentucky Derby celebrated as the favorite, followed by the lone filly in the race, came home one-two today.

But the celebration didn't last. As Eight Belles galloped out around the first turn, she stopped and went to her knees and then collapsed on the track.

Eight Belles, a big, strapping daughter of Unbridled's Song who was attempting to become the fourth filly to win the Derby, had broken both of her front ankles.                   

She was immediately euthanized.

'There was no reason to wait,' said Dr. Larry Bramlage, the American Association vet on call.

In the stands trainer Larry Jones saw his filly cross the finish line with her ears up, in no distress and he left the stands elated, having seen Eight Belles join Hard Spun as a second-place finisher for him in back-to-back Derbies. It wasn't until he got to the track that he discovered a horse had gone down and then that it was Eight Belles.

'I was shocked,' said Jones. 'Put her down? We're used to trying to save them now. But when I did see her, there was no doubt it had to be done.'

Bramlage, who has been working at race tracks since 1975, said he had never seen such an injury.

'Sometimes, rarely, you might see a horse suffer something in one leg,' Bramlage said. 'But I've never seen it happen in both like that.'

Eight Belles is the second 3-year-old in three years to be euthanized after injuries in a Triple Crown Race. Barbaro, the 2006 Derby winner, suffered a shattered left front leg in the Preakness Stakes two weeks after winning here."

Bean here. Question: At what price entertainment, you guys? I know that horse racing in this country generates millions of dollars of revenue for those involved and is enjoyed by millions of fans as well. 

But are the animals that are born and bred just to race merely expendable cogs in the money-making machinery? Should we just expect they'll just lose a few as the price of doing business? At the end of the day is Eight Belles' death just like crashing a NASCAR vehicle? Is it, "No sweat, we'll buy another one?"

Here's all I know. At 3:15 yesterday afternoon this very young horse was completely healthy. And through no fault of her own, just ten minutes later, she was completely dead.

Patient Dies

Patient Dies

That was the headline on a news wire service story in the print edition of yesterday's Seattle Post- Intelligencer. It is not the kind of headline that would guarantee I would keep reading but I am glad I took the time. Please join me and you'll see why.


"Denied transplant over pot use: A musician who was denied a liver transplant because he used medical marijuana with medical approval under Washington state law to ease the symptoms of advance hepatitis C died Thursday.

The death of Timothy Garon, 56, at Bailey-Boushay House, an intensive-care nursing center, was confirmed to the Associated Press by his lawyer and a spokeswoman for Virginia Mason Medical Center, which operates Bailey-Boushay.

Garon died a week after his doctor told him a University of Washington Medical Center committee had again denied him a spot on the liver transplant list because of his use of marijuana."


Okay, everybody still with me? The way that deal works, and this is the case in many other states as well, is that you are automatically denied a place on the organ transplant list if you have taken any non-prescription drugs in the past six months. Or taken the one prescription drug that your doctor gives you that is singled out above all others by the U.S. Government as being more dangerous than the rest.

Oh, but you are welcome to re-apply if you are "clean" for six months though, if you are still alive.

When I am running things (I'll get back to you with a date) there will be this new law on the books in my state:

No level of government gets to decide what a doctor can and can not prescribe to his patients.
   

This Is Why You Shouldn't Do Drugs

"Albert Hofmann, who died on Tuesday aged 102, synthesized lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) in 1938 and became the first person in the world to experience a full-blown acid trip." (Telegraph.co.uk)

Okay, I had two thoughts when I heard the news yesterday. First, anyone who had Dr. Hofmann in his celebrity death pool technically lost ground in the game. The way many of these pools work is on a point system. You generally get 100 points, minus the celebrity's age. That way Miley Cyrus, God  forbid, would be worth  85 points but would be a much gutsier pick than, say, former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, who is on the exact flip side at 15 points. So if you had Hoffman, you owe 2. 

Secondly, he was only 102. Imagine how long he might have lived if he'd stayed clean like his parents probably advised him to. This is why you shouldn't do drugs.

In case the letters LSD mean nothing to you, here is more from the rather interesting Telegraph obituary:

"Hofmann was working as a research chemist in the laboratory of the Sandoz   Company (now Novartis) in Basel, Switzerland, where he was involved in
studying the medicinal properties of plants. This eventually led to the study of the alkaloid compounds of ergot, a fungus which forms on rye.

Hofmann’s studies led to many new discoveries such as Hydergine, a medicament for improvement of circulation and cerebral function and Dihydergot, a circulation and blood pressure stabilizing medicine.

His interest in synthesising LSD was stimulated at first by the hope that it might also be useful as a circulatory and respiratory stimulant.

But when his molecule, known as LSD-25, was tested on animals, no interesting effects were observed, though the research notes recorded that the beasts became “restless” during narcosis. The substance was dismissed as of no interest and dropped from Sandoz’s research programme.

But five years later, acting on some intuition, Hofmann decided to resynthesise LSD. In his autobiography, LSD, My Problem Child (1979), he recalled that in the final stage of the synthesis, he was interrupted by some unusual sensations.

In a note to the laboratory’s director, he reported 'a remarkable restlessness, combined with a slight dizziness. At home I lay down and sank into a not unpleasant intoxicated-like condition, characterized by an extremely stimulated imagination.'

'In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed, I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors. After some two hours this condition faded away.'

Hofmann concluded that he must have accidentally breathed in or ingested some   laboratory material and assumed LSD was the cause. To test the theory he waited until the next working day, Monday April 19 1943, and tried again, swallowing 0.25 of a milligram.

Forty minutes later, his laboratory journal recorded 'dizziness, feeling of anxiety, visual distortions, symptoms of paralysis, desire to laugh.'

Unable to write any more, he asked his assistant to take him home by bicycle. 'On the way home, my condition began to assume threatening forms.'

'Everything in my field of vision wavered and was distorted as if seen in a curved mirror. I also had the sensation of being unable to move from the spot. Nevertheless, my assistant later told me that we had traveled very rapidly.'

Back home, when a friendly neighbour brought round some milk, he perceived her as a 'malevolent, insidious witch wearing a lurid mask.' After six hours of highs and lows, the effects subsided.

Sandoz, keen to make a profit from Hofman’s discovery, gave the new substance the trade name Delysid and began sending samples out to psychiatric researchers.

By 1965 more than 2,000 papers had been published offering hope for a range of conditions from drug and alcohol addiction to mental illnesses of various sorts.

But the fact that it was cheap and easy to make left it open to abuse and from   the late 1950s onwards, promoted by Dr. Timothy Leary and others, LSD became the recreational drug of choice for alienated western youth.

An outbreak of moral panic, combined with a number of accidents involving people jumping to their deaths off high buildings thinking they could fly, led governments around the world to ban LSD.

Research also showed that the drug taken in high doses and in inappropriate settings, often caused panic reactions. For certain individuals, a bad trip seemed to be the trigger for full-blown psychosis.

Hofmann was disappointed when his discovery was removed from commercial distribution. He remained convinced that the drug had the potential to counter the psychological problems induced by 'materialism, alienation from nature through industrialization and increasing urbanization, lack of satisfaction in professional employment in a mechanized, lifeless working world, ennui and purposelessness in wealthy, saturated society, and lack of a religious, nurturing, and meaningful philosophical foundation of life.'

Good times.  

Vamonos! Vamonos!

As you know, we do not have anything resembling a secure border policy in this country.  The current administration gave great lip service to getting serious about knowing who comes in and out of America after 9/11 but more than six years on (six years!) it is just as easy today to walk from Mexico into Texas as it was in 2001.   

Blog readers living along the southern U.S. border states will no doubt recognize the sign to the left. The Los Angeles Times recently ran a fascinating article about the artist behind this iconic 'running immigrant' sign.

Here are a few tidbits from the paper's profile of John Hood, the California Department of Transportation graphic artist who designed it.

1)  Hood is now 59 years old, close to retirement and has worked for Caltrans for 27 years.

2) His most famous sign went up in 1990, after more than a hundred immigrants were killed on Interstate 5 trying to cross over.  

3) In one earlier version of the sign "the characters had eyes and other features; officials felt those would be too detailed for motorists to discern at high speed. In another, the mother juggled a baby and a sweater, but that too was deemed overly complicated for the freeway."

4) "Comic Carlos Mencia 'whose family immigrated to East L.A. from Honduras when he was an infant -- filmed a segment based on the sign. 'Maybe,' Mencia says at one point in the segment, 'it's telling them: Run across the freeway. Just do it really fast.'"

5) "A photograph of the sign is hanging at the National Museum of American History, part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington," where it is described as "without a doubt, an icon of the current immigration debate. It's taken on meaning that was never intended."

To read the whole article, click here and thanks to  blog reader Chris for the  suggestion.