Accidental Blogger

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  • Time To Clear The Bush

    As noted yesterday, the Democrats who scurried away like frightened mice from Howard Dean and Dennis Kucinic during the 2004 presidential campaign, rose up at last to bite like a dog who has been kicked around for too long. They are demanding answers to their (and the public’s) questions about the manipulated, misleading and misanthropic war in Iraq. The president dangled the twin bait of Alito and bird flu before them but they did not bite. The Republican leadership tried to dismiss the closing down of the US senate as tantrum by a frustrated opposition bereft of new ideas. Senator Frist harrumphed about being stabbed in the back and cried crocodile tears for the lack of collegiality of  his Democratic counterpart, Senator Harry Reid.  That is a bit rich coming from someone who traveled to South Dakota in 2004 to shamelessly campaign against Tom Daschle, the previous minority leader of the senate.

    President Bush is heading to Argentina tomorrow to attend the Summit of the Americas with our Latin American neighbors among whom he is not wildly popular. Street protests, one of them led by soccer star Diego Maradona, are expected to be lively and widespread.  Not acknowledging our own poor standing with our neighbors, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela who is better liked in that region, is being termed the "fly in the ointment". The flamboyant Chavez, whatever his shortcomings, has a more appropriate moniker for George Bush whom he calls "Mr. Danger."

    More news of this administration’s abuse of power and flouting of international laws are reported here and here by our own mainstream journalists. In advance of his trip to Latin America, Bush gave an interview to an Argentinian reporter during which he was asked to reveal the contents of his pockets. Ever obliging with easy and frivolous questions, Bush turned his pockets inside out to show that the only thing he carries on his person is a handkerchief.  If only his hands and his conscience were as clean as his pockets !

  • Fooling With The Flu Virus

    China has a habit of hiding or downplaying news of outbreaks of infectious diseases (AIDS, avian flu) lest that should scare away eager foreign investors. Outside observers have reported that Chinese farmers have fed their poultry Amantadine, one of the two main types of flu medication used for humans. There is evidence that the drug was administered at the behest of veterinarians, who in turn were directed to do so by the Chinese government. Consequently, flu virus resistant to Amantadine has now surfaced among infected birds in China. This is not good news because if that strain is responsible for causing a pandemic, a substancial portion of available flu medication will be rendered useless. China has predictably denied the widespread use of the drug and the Chinese government’s role in giving flawed advice to farmers and vets. Even while denying the practice, it is blaming the Merck Veterinary Manual. I am inclined to believe outside observers.

    Also, the WHO advices nations to stock up on enough flu medication to treat 20% of their population.  Australia and New Zealand may be the only two countries close to having the recommened stockpile  – the US has enough for 2% of its population.  And what about less prosperous but populous nations? How will they prepare for a pandemic?

  • Misinterpreters of Maladies

    In the early 1980’s, my husband and I and our two small children lived in Germany for two years. Our daughter attended grade school there and was fluent in German while my own grasp of the language was rudimentary. I remember occasionally seeking my six year old daughter’s help with translation in dealing with workmen, shopkeepers and strangers on the street when my own vocabulary of German proved inadequate. It was amusing and slightly unnerving at the same time, to have a small child act as a conduit for communication between adults. Fortunately, our German friends and doctors spoke English and I did not require the intervention of my children in talking to them.

    In many immigrant families, children are often the ones fluent in the local language and they act as a window to the world for the adults. In states with high immigrant populations, the use of children as medical interpreters is common. The adult language barrier has poignant and sometimes lethal consequences when sick parents or older family members must rely on the immature minds and faulty translations of their children for medical care and advice. Now the state of California may seek legislation banning the use of child interpreters in most hospitals and clinics. Exceptions will be permitted for emergencies. Many US hospitals provide translators for patients who speak no English. Members of large immigrant groups such as Spanish, Chinese and Vietnamese speakers, can usually find interpreters in most medical facilities. But speakers of more uncommon languages will find it very difficult to talk to their doctors if their children are barred from speaking for them and no other translator is available.

  • Halloween & Holy Terror

    I just watched a segment on the CNN evening news about a disturbing practice that I was not aware of until today. Several fundamentalist churches operate Halloween Hell Houses in order to scare believers and non-believers (young and impressionable kids among them) into following the "righteous" path. Like all houses of horror, these are meant to scare revelers during Halloween, except they are not meant to amuse but to indoctrinate, intimidate and proselytise in a gruesome fashion.  Some of the favorite themes in these so called "gospel" driven theme parks of horror are:

    __ A gay man dying of AIDS, being tortured and taunted for his sinful ways.

    __ A teenage girl brutally killed by the devil for professing her faith.

    __ A baby crying for mercy from inside the mother’s womb while being aborted. 

    After witnessing this edifying tableau, the visitor is given the option of "salvation" by accepting the church’s teachings.

    Apparently, hell houses were the brilliant brainchild of Jerry Falwell, some time in the 1970’s but did not catch on as regular "halloween entertainment" until the 1990’s and the idea is spreading in popularity. Churches more experienced in running these obscene shows act as dramatic consultants to other churches interested in following suit. Hell House kits, videos and outreach manuals detailing how to set up the grisly shows, are available for sale.

    The supreme irony here is that the same institutions which run these X- rated brain washing schemes in the guise of religion (and probably make money), scream bloody murder every time they find something objectionable in the popular media. They are quick to organize boycotts against  radio and TV stations, threaten and deride Hollywood and video game makers and regularly harangue libraries to ban books in order to protect our youth from "corrupting" influences!

  • Heroines, Heroes & Humility

    Civil rights matriarch, Rosa Parks is the first woman to lie in honor in the Capitol Rotunda : Washington Post, Oct. 30, 2005

    Goodman and Good Sense II

    Ellen Goodman has something more to say about women in public life, in leadership roles, in the context of Rosa Parks’ life and death. I agree mostly with what she says (except Condoleeza Rice’s competence) here.  The gist of it is that successful women (much more so than men) must be described in terms which go beyond the relevant qualifications in order for them to be accepted in their public roles. A woman’s “other” roles, such as wife, mother, secretary or seamstress are equally important in providing context for her public face – that of a senator, political activist, president of a university or perhaps soon, president of the United States. Most observers of an influential woman, even her supporters, feel the need to qualify her credentials with softening fillers.  A woman presenting an unvarnished professional CV, comes off looking as too competent, ambitious and tough – in other words, too much like a man. Is this need to round off the edges, an attempt to make men feel at ease with her or is it aimed at other women?  According to Goodman, it may be both.

    My own gripe along the same lines: (only questions here, I won’t hazard any answers)

    Another group which must be self effacing and “soft edged” to gain acceptance, especially in order to successfully run for elected office are the intelligent, scholarly folks. To convey the honest impression that you may have an intellectual edge over your opponent (or the electorate), may hurt your chances with voters (Re: Gore vs Bush, 2000). Voters want a president they can have a beer with and not a designated driver (paraphrasing Jon Stewart on the Daily Show).

    The paucity of scholars and intellectuals among our elected officials is baffling. We would much rather elect Hollywood actors, WWF wrestlers, athletes and coaches than a true blue scholar who, more often than not, is glibly dismissed as an arrogant “pointy head”. The legislature is bristling with lawyers and businessmen – many of them good and smart people, but often too focused on the “bottom line” and “hasty compromises.” Consequently, the collective vision and ethics of the country are being shaped by the popular media, post modernist social commentators and organized religion. Where are the scientists, philosophers, economists and historians in the mix, to elevate the debate and broaden vision?  Without clear, concise and rational voices, how do we introduce progressive ideas into the national conversation?

    We still have uses for the brainy among us. We just want them to be somewhat invisible – in classrooms and research labs, behind the scenes as advisors, hard at work in NASA and Silicon Valley but not in the hallowed halls of congress or the White House. Why is a culture that worships so adoringly and publicly at the altar of superior wealth and physical perfection, so unnerved when confronted with a “beautiful mind"?

    P.S. A smart woman running for elected office therefore, has the doubly onerous burden of having to mask a high I.Q AND highlight her feminine side.

  • Sleep – So You Won’t Eat or Be Eaten

    It is possible that our sleeping habits may be related to the kind of food we eat, its availability and ease of procurement. The need and ability to hide from predators may also dictate how and how much different species sleep. Psychiatrist Jerome Siegel of UCLA makes an evolutionary connection between the "ecological niche" of carnivores, herbivores and marine animals and their sleep patterns. His theory does not contradict other explanations of the why’s and how’s of sleep, such as  the"down time" needed for brain cells to convert information into learning.

    According to Siegel, the theory does not so much contradict other theories about the role of sleep as much as place them in context: "What I am saying is that it is not that sleep has been adapted to allow some vital function to be fulfilled, but the core function of sleep is to adapt animals to their ecological niche," Siegel said. "Given the animal is inactive for a certain period of the day, certain functions will migrate to that period because it is more efficient" to perform them at that time."

  • Add These To Your Lexicon

    Tumultous events add to our vocabulary. The recent tempest in a teacup caused by the nomination and withdrawal of Harriet Miers appears to have enriched the English language: (italics mine)

    "A contributor to The Reform Club, a right-leaning blog, wrote that to get "borked" was "to be unscrupulously torpedoed by an opponent," while to get "miered" was to be "unscrupulously torpedoed by an ally."

    And to those, who voted for Bush – Cheney in 2004, I urge that you add a third one:

    To get "bushed" : torpedoed by your own unscrupulous vote.

  • Fool Me Twice, Thrice… ?

    With his own approval number and the support for the Iraq war sinking in public polls, President Bush is once again urging patience and promising positive results. Should we believe him?  My own opinion of this administration is amply clear by now. Here are the views of two other, better informed people – neither of them a Democratic partisan, as far as I know.

    "If something comes along that is truly serious, something like a nuclear weapon going off in an American city, or something like a major pandemic, you are going to see the ineptitude of this government in a way that will take you back to the Declaration of Independence."   

    Lawrence Wilkerson:  chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell

    AND —

    "… this administration now has the smell of Vietnam and the odor of Watergate."

    Robert Dallek : Presidential Historian /Author

  • A Leg Up In The Birth Order

    Being the first born in any family brings with it some universal advantages and drawbacks.

    _ You get the undivided attention of the parents for a while. But first time parents tend to make some mistakes which they don’t repeat with subsequent children.

    _ You have more early baby pictures but in the later ones, are often seen holding the "baby".

    _ You have the prerogative of bullying the younger siblings but more often than not, also get blamed for their mistakes because being older, "you should have known better".

    _ Recent research shows that you are also more likely to live to be "centenarians" . This is either an advantage or a disadvantage depending on your views on excessive longevity.

    The centenarians researched in the above study were all understandably  born more than a hundred years ago when pre and post natal care of mother and baby were less rigorous. Scientific data on diet and supplements were sketchy. Things have changed – so perhaps have also the environmental advantage enjoyed by the first borns of yore.  The other interesting fact to emerge in the study is that your chances of living long were further augmented if you were born some time around Halloween. 

  • Houston Nobelist Dead At 62

    From Houston Chronicle, October 29, 2005:

    Richard Errett Smalley, a gifted chemist who shared a Nobel Prize for the discovery of buckyballs, helped pioneer the field of nanotechnology and became Houston’s most notable scientist, died Friday afternoon after a six-year struggle with cancer. He was 62.

    Smalley possessed prodigious talent both within the lab, where he cobbled individual atoms together like tinker toys, and outside academia after he won science’s greatest prize. In the decade since he became a Nobel laureate, Smalley pushed Rice University and Houston to the forefront of nanotechnology research.

    Rest of the article here.

  • Explosions In New Delhi

    With the biggest Hindu festival of Diwali approaching, Indians predictably are thronging the market place to shop for food, new clothes and firecrackers. Today, Saturday evening in India, was a busy shopping day before the impending holidays. Three (four by some reports) simultaneous explosions occured in major shopping areas in New Delhi , killing at least 50 people. No one has claimed responsibility and no suspect is in custody. But the usual suspects – Pakistani militants involved in the Kashmir conflict or their local supporters are believed to be behind the blasts. The prime minister of India, Manmohan Singh has urged calm (what else?). If indeed the perpetrators are Islamic terrorists who were hoping to kill only Hindu Indians, they may have miscalculated. Now is also a special time for Muslims, whose biggest festival, Eid is around the corner and many Muslims who go out to eat or shop for food at the end of the Ramadan fast, were also probably shopping at the same places. But who said that the killers would care about targets – Hindu or Muslim ?  The point is to rattle nerves. A terrible day for the dead, injured and their families – just another day at the office for terrorists.

  • Demand, Supply & Snake Oil

    I first heard this story on Thursday, on the local news in Houston. It appears that with the bird flu panic in full swing, some unscrupulous individuals have seen an opportunity to cash in on people’s anxiety. More than 1000 employees of an Exxon Mobil plant in Bay Town, near Houston have been vaccinated with fake flu vaccine which turned out to be nothing more potent than purified water. As I pointed out in another recent post,  Heads I Win, Tails You Lose, widespread panic and helplessness constitute the perfect climate for cold hearted, calculated opportunism.  I am afraid that this may not be the last and only instance of bogus medicine and dangerous profiteering. As fear spreads about impending epidemics, other charlatans will find ways to make a quick buck from quackery.

  • Happiness and P. G. Wodehouse

    In an otherwise unrelated article by Christopher Hitchens, the erstwhile brave contrarian and now a pathetic neocon prevaricator, I came across this statement:

    George Galloway Is Gruesome, Not Gorgeous
    By Christopher Hitchens

    My old friend and frequent critic Geoffrey Wheatcroft once tried to define a moment of perfect contentment and came up with the idea of opening a vintage wine while settling down to read an undiscovered work by P.G. Wodehouse.   ………..

    Wodehouse This brought back memories of an interesting, chance encounter aboard a London to Houston flight in the autumn of 1999 and the uncommon pleasure of reading P.G. Wodehouse. The gentleman sitting next to me on the plane was an older English man of great wit and charm. Very early in our conversation I found out that he was a member of the P.G. Wodehouse Society and was traveling to a Wodehouse conference in Houston.  Wodehouse in Houston! I am a huge Wodehouse fan, as are many among my friends and family. But I had not until then met a single Houstonian, including my book club friends, who had read him. My co-passenger, J.F, then revealed that apart from being a die-hard fan, he was also a researcher and publisher of rare and undiscovered writings of Wodehouse. Upon learning of my own devotion to the author, he presented me with a book by P.G. Wodehouse, "A Man of Means", published in 1991, of which I knew nothing. He had  discovered this little known work (first published in the Strand magazine in 1914) among Wodehouse’s early manuscripts and obscure magazine publications. J.F. and his friends published the stories (with the original accompanying illustrations) in the form of a brand new book through his own publishing company, Porpoise Books in Maidenhead, England. I was suddenly the proud owner of an "undiscovered" work of Wodehouse! Upon reaching home, I proceeded to enjoy it with relish (without the accompanying vintage wine, recommended by Hitchens’ friend). I own several books by Wodehouse published by larger, better known publishers like Penguin Books but this little book, (not Wodehouse’s best), is a treasure among them because of the totally unexpected way in which I came to own it.

    Reading Wodehouse is a bit like eating potato chips – you can’t stop after just a few, highly addictive when you begin to enjoy the process and once you are finished, there is nothing substantive you can say about the experience except a sense of pure, silly satisfaction. Wodehouse was the unOrwell – able to transform the bleak and the solemn to jolly and cheerfully banal. Fans of Wodehouse will understand what I am talking about and those who haven’t tried him, should find out. Although Jeeves and Bertie Wooster are the better known Wodehouse characters, to the uninitiated I recommend starting with the capers of Psmith ("The p is silent, as in phthisis, psychic and ptarmigan"), a lively and enterprising young man who always has a scheme (mostly for making money) and invariably fails, with hilariously disastrous results.

    The main character Roland Bleke in A Man of Means, the "rare" Wodehouse I mention above, has the opposite fate – he does not want money but wealth pursues him relentlessly.  I think the author tried Bleke as a model for a long running theme, found him unsatisfactory, reversed the circumstances and struck gold with the perennially penniless Psmith.

  • Bird Flu Panic

    There is not much good news on the avian flu front. Uncertainty and resulting anxiety may be causing panic even before a full blown epidemic, let alone a pandemic is in sight.  It is reported that doctors are being flooded with requests for prescriptions of Tamiflu, the antiviral drug, believed by many experts to be effective against bird flu and the physicians are obliging. This has caused a shortage of the drug already. Tamiflu, which is a proven protection against other known strains of the flu virus, is now scarce and hard to procure for those affected or at risk for contracting the more common forms of flu. Roche has decided to temporarily suspend shipments of Tamiflu to the private sector in the US, in order to counter the shortage due to panic buying by healthy people.

    There is one story out of  Florida about a newly developed machine which if effective, may prove to be a promising step in preventing or at least reducing the prospect of global transmissions of  flu and other air-borne diseases via airplane travel. Governments and airlines here and worldwide should surely check this out.  Here is a short description of the common sense design.

    An Orlando, Fla., company called AeroClave has developed equipment that modifies temperature and humidity inside airplanes so the air kills smallpox, SARS and bird flu. A giant white box and hose pump heated air through an airplane’s ventilation system for two hours, disinfecting parts of the plane that cleaning crews can’t reach.

    Company founder Dr. Ronald Brown said the FAA is in the process of certifying the system.

    “When we started this two and a half years ago, people looked at us cross-eyed,” Brown said. “SARS was just our two-minute warning. It showed how things can spread rapidly.”

    As I understand it, the method is similar to autoclaving, the procedure used in disinfecting laboratory and surgical instruments. It appears that aero-claving will be possible only when the airplane is on the ground for cleaning. I hope someone will come up with an in-flight air purification method that can continuously clean and disinfect the circulating air DURING flight. An infected passenger can transmit air borne diseases (not just the flu – tuberculosis is another threat) to other passengers quite easily through the stale air circulating repeatedly for many hours. A closed, confined space, such as the cabin of a packed airplane is a perfect set up for airborne pathogens to spread, especially during long intercontinental flights.

  • Harriet Miers Withdraws – Ho Hum

    With Ventriloquist In Chief,  Karl Rove preoccupied with his own problems, did anyone really expect that President Bush would have the stomach for a humiliating fight (mostly with his own supporters) over Harriet Miers? The news media are rife with speculations about why, when and who next? But that all constitutes a lot of pointless chatter about nothing, while they wait for the real big story – the expected indictments of White House officials by Patrick Fitzgerald, to be announced shortly.  I feel supremely indifferent to this piece of pre-ordained ‘Breaking News’.

    After chewing and spitting Miers out, the Republicans might now feel some remorse for their own brutality – although that is hard to imagine. They could make it up to her by nominating her for President in 2008. The right wing is reportedly outraged and suspicious about the new TV show, Commander In Chief about a female president of the United States. They think the show is a lengthy subliminal message, disguised as TV entertainment to prepare the American voters for Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. I have not seen the show and don’t know if the fictional TV president is a Democrat or a Republican. If her gender is the main issue on the show, then the public will be just as prepared to accept a Republican woman as president as a Democratic one. Why not Harriet Miers then on the Republican ticket? We already know all that is worth knowing about her, including the gushy "Thank You" notes she penned . So she is thoroughly inoculated in the "surprise scandal" category of her curriculum vitae. And we also know that the right wingers don’t demand the same exacting standards of competence or qualification of their presidential candidates as they do of their Supreme Court judges.