With my children all grown up, I no longer have the opportunity to sing the Mom-Song on a regular basis. But the Wife-Song I sing for my husband (to his great chagrin), sometimes sounds awfully close to it. (thanks to Razib for uploading the video on You Tube and my friend Nancy for sending me the original link)
I want to comment on Alex Rodriguez, who, you've surely heard by now, was part of the steroids-in-baseball conspiracy, which seeks to dishonor a game in which grown men are paid millions of dollars to wear ridiculous outfits and stand around while one guy throws a little white ball to another guy and a third guy in a differently colored ridiculous outfit swings a stick at the ball and, if really good, intercepts it about 30 percent of the time.
I actually don't have anything against baseball. I used to enjoy watching it until the Red Sox won the World Series, at which point it became difficult to continue caring. I do, however, have a problem the refrain, repeated ad nauseam, that A-Rod "disrespected the game" by taking performance enhancing drugs in order to secure for himself approximately $500 million in contracts handed out by the Texas Rangers and New York Yankees. People take performance enhancing drugs in law school, but no one seems to mind. Caffeine. Amphetamines, only somewhat less commonly. Sleeping pills and alcohol are even performance enhancing in their own ways. But it's a world crisis only when athlete-entertainers take drugs that make them stronger and effectively healthier, allowing them to hit more of the home runs that spectators are always happy to see. Yeah.
Anyhow, there are two aspects of this "scandal" that I intended to comment on when I decided to write this post. First, A-Rod's claim that he took steroids because he was "young and stupid and naive." It was actually an intelligent move, since it probably made him tens of millions of dollars. But anyway, according to his official story, he took steroids from 2001 to 2003, his years in Texas — when he was 26, 27, and 28 years old. Again, to relate this to my own peer group, there are a lot of lawyers who are 26 years old. Some of them even have significant decision-making responsibility. I have a friend who's going to be a physician at age 26. You don't get to play that card. 19 year olds are young and stupid; 26 (or 28) year olds are not.
Second, it's such an intriguing "confession." Reporters found out that he had tested positive for a banned substance in 2003. He could have said it was a one-time thing, but because he's so immensely unpopular, people wouldn't have been willing to accept that fiction (like they did with Andy Pettitte). So he said that, because he had just signed a $252 million contract with Texas, he felt pressured to be at his best all the time and responded to that pressure by chemically enhancing himself. He subsequently admitted that he injected himself with something (which he knew was "not Tic Tacs"; people are giving him grief over not naming which particular steroid it was, again, because he's unpopular) two times per month during those three years. That's an unprecedented confession. It's positively huge. That's a lot of doping! And three years, in response to pressure, is believable, right? Except that, no, it's not, because it's unfathomable that a baseball player would NOT do anything when he's 25 and about to become a free agent and hoping to sign a contract for hundreds of millions of dollars, but WOULD take steroids after signing for a guaranteed $252 million. I would bet my iPod that he was juicing while in Seattle. Seriously, I'd bet it against a Diet Coke, and feel comfortable with that bet.
He obviously said what his agent and his lawyer and his other people (whoever they may be) told him to say. But why did they tell him to admit to only those three years? He confessed to a lot, but won't even gain credibility points because of the way he did it. So either he should have said that he also took steroids before those three years in Texas, or he should have just said "I took steroids; the report of a positive test is accurate. I apologize to my fans" and left it at that. I just think this is fascinating. Alex Rodriguez admitted much more misconduct than any other professional athlete ever has, and yet he's being attacked by columnists (who have praised those other athletes for their own forced, incomplete disclosures) for not being forthcoming enough. He admitted to more than the reporters had evidence of in order to make his story believable, and as a result no one believes his story. How does this happen?
A strange thing happened over the weekend in Texas. Last Sunday morning in broad daylight, a fireball appeared in the sky over Austin. Apparently, it was also visible over Houston but no one I know saw anything. People were both scared and thrilled to spot the unusual phenomenon that was "competing" with the sun, as one man observed.
Fiery debris burned through the Texas sky Sunday morning, alarming some and enchanting others but resulting in no apparent injury or damage.
From Dallas to Austin and beyond, sightings were reported of a red and orange fireball with a small black center speeding toward Earth before burning out in a trail of lingering white smoke.
Roland Herwig, spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration’s southwest division, said the fireball was probably superheated debris from a broken satellite falling to Earth.
The FAA could not directly link the debris to the reported collision last week of Russian and U.S. communications satellites, however.
“It’s yet to be proved it’s those satellites,” Herwig said.
However, a spokeswoman for U.S. Strategic Command said the fireball spotted in the Texas skies Sunday was unrelated to the satellite collision.
Now the Federal Aviation Administration has declared that the object over Austin was an IFO (Identified Flying Object) and not UFO. Moreover it was a natural phenomenon and not the result of any activity by sentient beings, earthly or extra-terrestrial.
The fireball that blazed across the Texas sky and sparked numerous weekend calls to police agencies now can be considered an identified flying object.
The Federal Aviation Administration said today the fireball was a natural phenomenon — not flying space junk — and a North Texas astronomer said it probably was a meteor about the size of a pickup truck, with the consistency of concrete.
The FAA backed off its weekend statement that the fireball might have been caused by falling debris plummeting into Earth’s atmosphere after Tuesday's collision of two satellites from the United States and Russia.
The FAA fielded calls from across Texas on Sunday morning with sightings of a fireball in the sky. Callers also reported hearing an explosion, probably a sonic boom caused by an object moving faster than the speed of sound, said Roland Herwig, an FAA spokesman.
A chief of staff for Mayor Bill White, Michael Moore, said a blindingly bright flash made its way across his windshield in a matter of seconds. It seemed nearby, but Moore realized it had to be closer to heaven than Earth to appear so clearly in the morning sky.
“It’s hard to compete with the sun,” said Moore.
Moore was just leaving Austin when he saw the bright blip in the sky around 11 a.m. He assumed it was an unusually large meteor.
Hmm… are they sure? Should we believe everything the government tells us?
Just in time for Presidents Day, C-Span has surveyed 65 historians for their opinion of American presidents. Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and Franklin D. Roosevelt top the list at #1, 2 and 3 respectively. James Buchanan ranks last. Predictably enough, George W. Bush is among the ten worst, coming in at # 36. That makes him the seventh worst president to date. But I feel that it is still too high a position for such a dangerous and clueless man. I am convinced that Bush will slide down the list as his misdeeds and missteps are evaluated more objectively in the proper historical perspective of time and distance from his disastrous reign.
Further analysis of the survey here.
I guess to be perfectly accurate, in Mexico he was more of a "green" revolutionary – a Norman Borlaug of sorts.
This is the first time I have heard of Pandurang Khankhoje, an Indian nationalist who traveled the world seeking support for India's freedom from British rule. For a while Khankhoje settled in Mexico where he applied his training as an agricultural scientist to help Mexican farmers successfully grow sturdier varieties of corn. For his efforts and his popularity, Mexican artist Diego Rivera painted a picture of the revolutionary scientist at the head of a dinner table, sharing bread with others. Although I have seen numerous paintings by Diego Rivera, I was unaware of the painting of Khankhoje, just as I was of his life story. (Thanks to my sister Mandira for the link to the story)
Pandurang Sadashiv Khankhoje, born in Wardha in 1886, was an angry young man who wanted freedom for India and dignity for Indians. He was raised on stirring tales of 1857 and was in constant trouble with the British police who had a long history sheet on him. The fiery young revolutionary had to flee India when the British spread a dragnet for him.
He became a founder-member of the Ghadar Party in America (many of whose members were executed by the British) and worked unrelentingly to gain international sympathy for the cause of India’s freedom. Khankhoje’s adventures took him to Japan, Russia, Persia, the US and finally to Mexico, where he settled with his devoted Belgian wife, Jeanne, and had two daughters, Savitri and Maya. A stauch believer in the tenets of the Holy Gita, he started free agricultural colleges for the Mexicans, successfully experimented with varieties of corn, pioneering Mexico's ‘Green Revolution’ and was part of the country’s vibrant artistic and intellectual circle. The image (right) is of a mural by the great Mexican artist Diego Rivera showing Khankhoje distributing bread to the nations of the world.
However, despite his busy, useful life in Mexico where he felt safe and welcome, Khankhoje pined deeply for his homeland. He saw her gain freedom and came home for good, settling in Pune, re-reading his beloved Gita and the Upanishads. He passed away in 1967. His pediatrician daughter, Savitri Sawhney, who married into the Indian Army, has written a wonderful account of her father's life, called I Shall Never Ask Pardon (Penguin India, 2008, Rs 399). This inspiring and moving Indian life story is truly worth celebrating. Here's a taste:
… would stink just as foul. Blackwater, the private US security outfit of ill repute has now changed its name to "Xe" in the hope that the new title will help bury its murderous history.
Blackwater Worldwide, a private security company whose work in Iraq was plagued by trouble, said yesterday that it is changing its name to Xe as it shifts its business focus.
The company, based in Moyock, N.C., has more than a dozen business units that are owned by Erik Prince, a former Navy SEAL and heir to an industrial fortune. Prince grew the company over the past decade from a small firm that offered training for law enforcement and small military units to landing part of a lucrative State Department contract to provide security in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Its work in those countries was plagued with problems. In 2004, four of Blackwater's guards were ambushed by insurgents in Fallujah. The company made headlines again on Sept. 16, 2007, during a chaotic confrontation in downtown Baghdad, when Blackwater contractors allegedly shot and killed 17 Iraqis in a crowded square. That incident led to congressional inquiries and protests that it be removed from the country. Last month, the Iraqi government refused to issue a new operating license to Blackwater, and the firm is winding down its work there.
In a memo to employees, the company said its main focus will be on operating training facilities.
Anne Tyrrell, a spokeswoman for the company, said it was changing its name because "the idea is to define the company as what it is today and not what it used to be."
"We've taken the company to a place where it is no longer accurately described as Blackwater," she said.
Tyrrell said there is no meaning to the new name, which is pronounced "zee." "It was just a choice of a name," she said. "We thought of it internally." Xe is also the chemical symbol for the element xenon…
RJ Hillhouse, a national security expert and author of the blog called The Spy Who Billed Me, said the company is "obviously trying to distance itself from their image as reckless cowboys that's etched into the world's mind from the September shooting. With a new name, "there are a lot of people who probably won't connect the dots," she said. "In a year or two, people won't remember that's Blackwater."
Forget chocolates, roses, baubles and bears. Don't fret over the perfect ambience for the candlelight dinner. Ignore Mars-Venus interpretations of the world. What you really need to pay attention to in a romantic alliance is diplomacy, negotiation and balance of power. So says Stephen M. Walt, professor of International Relations at Harvard. Believe me, as a long married person who has had to negotiate and re-negotiate terms of endearment over the years, Walt's perspective is closer to the truth than all feel-good psycho babble out there. (via 3 Quarks Daily)
To begin with, any romantic partnership is essentially an alliance, and alliances are a core concept on international relations. Alliances bring many benefits to the members (or else why would we form them?) but as we also know, they sometimes reflect irrational passions and inevitably limit each member's autonomy. Many IR theorists believe that institutionalizing an alliance makes it more effective and enduring, but that’s also why making a relationship more formal is a significant step that needs to be carefully considered.
Of course, IR theorists have also warned that allies face the twin dangers of abandonment and entrapment: the more we fear that our partners might leave us in the lurch (abandonment), the more likely we are to let them drag us into obligations that we didn't originally foresee (entrapment). When you find yourself gamely attending your partner’s high school reunion or traveling to your in-laws for Thanksgiving dinner every single year, you’ll know what I mean.
Realists have long argued that bipolar systems are the most stable. So if any of you lovers out there are thinking of adding more major actors to the system, please reconsider. As most of us eventually learn, trying to juggle romantic relationships in a multi-polar setting usually leads to crises, and sometimes to open warfare. It's certainly not good for alliance stability.
IR theory also warns us that shifts in the balance of power are dangerous. There's an obvious warning here: relationships are more likely to have trouble if one partner's status or power changes rapidly. So that big promotion that you both celebrated may be a good thing overall, but it's likely to alter expectations and force you and your partner to make serious adjustments. The same is true if one of you gets laid off. Bottom line: it can take a lot of patience and love to work through a major shift in the balance of power within a relationship.
CotL #84, the Stimulus Edition is up at Submitted to a Candid World. Please check out who is to be bailed out by Obama's nearly trillion dollar stimulus package.
Neil Sinhababu has his own version of the famous train hypothetical. Apparently it's an ethical dilemma or something. Anyhow, he's doing "philosophical research" based on the responses that he gets — so go participate!
My response, for those who are curious:
Anyhow,
assuming that away, and assuming away the possibility that I know any
of these people — what I do is subject to change if I'm friends with
some of them; I'm not sure if what I think is "right" is also subject
to change — it's easy for me. Push the button. One life versus five,
it's pretty simple math.
(Actually, I'd like to know what's on
the train. Would that affect what I would actually do? No. But if in
the hypo we have perfect knowledge, it's possible that at some level of
value wrecking the train becomes a factor along with those six people
— e.g., if it's a train full of the only known source of the cure for
AIDS.)
My train-value counterfactual (or hypo?) isn't all that well thought out, obviously — why would there be a train full of the world's supply of AIDS cure? But I think I'd stand by the point that there comes a point at which the value of wrecking the train becomes a significant factor in the decision-making process.
(For what it's worth, despite my description of this as "simple math," I'm not a hard-line utilitarian. I'm pretty sure, though, that I'm some sort of consequentialist.)
Turns out, it's not a question of whether money can buy happiness (at least not directly); it's a question of what you should buy to maximize the amount of happiness purchased. You'll buy more happiness, or maybe longer-lasting happiness, with a ski trip or concert tickets than a new big-screen TV.
As a concession to the grumbling GOP members of the Congress, President Obama dropped the provision for family planning and contraception for low income families from his economic stimulus package. Not that it did much to garner bipartisan support – no Republican voted for the bill. The conservatives had argued that family planning is not a means of stimulating the economy. As usual, they are wrong. Helping low income families have fewer children may not be a direct way to boost the economy in terms of creating jobs but indirectly it is indeed a way to create prosperity by reducing costs in social services. As Speaker Nancy Pelosi points out in the article, savings too are good for the economy.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi-D-Calif., appeared to sidestep the question when she was pressed over the weekend to explain how family-planning money would boost the economy or create jobs.
"Well, the family-planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost," she said on ABC.
"The states are in terrible fiscal budget crisis now, and part of it, what we do for children's health, education and some of those elements, are to help the states meet their financial needs," she said. "One of those, one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception … will reduce cost to the state and to the federal government."
Unfortunately, in the minds of conservatives any discussion of contraception and family planning here and around the world, is inextricably linked to just one thing – abortion. Every time the matter of limiting birth rate comes up, the specter of abortion becomes front and center. In their zeal to abolish abortion, the right wing often ends up opposing funding and education for any form of birth control. There is much to be settled in the abortion debate. However, family planning is NOT abortion. If anything, proper contraception is a deterrent to abortion, making it unnecessary.
I was born in a country where overpopulation is the single most identifiable cause of poverty, infant death, poor maternal health and malnourishment of the young. Far be it for me to dictate who should have a baby and who should not. But it doesn't take much deductive power to figure out why large numbers of children around the world are condemned to a life of need and unrealized potential. Most of them are poor and often born in families with too many mouths to feed and too many minds to nurture. One image of a perfect (or near perfect) world that I envisage is where most, if not all babies are born to responsible and willing parents who can provide them with the basic minimums of health, nourishment, emotional support and education. That of course, is an idealistic dream. Meanwhile, responsible governments everywhere should have that very goal in mind for their citizens as far as is practical. I am not for eugenics, communist China style punitive measures of limiting family size nor the coercive attempts at population control that Indira Gandhi attempted in India in the 1970s for which she was rightly voted out of office. But what about common sense? What is not desirable about educating people that given the limited global resources, small families are good for parents, children and the world at large and then aiding those who like the idea?
Of course, the right wingers who are perpetually on a warpath against abortion in particular and contraception in general to a large degree, hardly ever raise their voices at irresponsible child bearing. (How else can they maintain a steady pool of man power to do cheap labor and fight the wars? ) More often than not, we hear from them that "children are gifts from god." God or not, most children born to poor mothers without access to contraceptives, especially in underdeveloped countries indeed are born the old fashioned way. But that doesn't hold true for wealthier, developed societies. Medical science now plays a vital role in making childbirth possible for parents who otherwise would remain childless. Fertility drugs, in-vitro births, surrogate pregnancies etc. are now thriving businesses of birthing. The alarming case of Nadya Suleman, the 33 year old single, unemployed mother of six who gave birth to an additional set of octupulets recently, has focused the public's attention on the physical, social and ethical aspects of unbridled fecundity. When does someone else's personal choices become our business? What ethical guidelines are there in place for the fertility industry? What are the penalties for non-compliance? Ellen Goodman explains with her usual aplomb.
Digby beats the drum in boring fashion about the impending "entitlement reform" agenda. Maybe I'd feel differently if I read Hullabaloo every day, but as it is I certainly don't find the rant to be boring.
Incidentally, the drum I feel myself wanting to beat in boring fashion is the one about the impending failure of postpartisanship. I'm going to quote Digby here, just because I'll pretty much quote any reference to "Presidents Nelson, Snowe and Collins":
This comic on "centrists" also seems apt.
Hopefully, President Obama will learn a lesson from the harm caused to the stimulus by the combination of his own "be reasonable and work with the other side" tendencies and the Republicans' "be unreasonable and never play nice" philosophy.
We have recently focused a lot on the greed and self absorption (here, here and here) of the wealthy and the powerful who even with plenty to spare, don't stop to think of others less fortunate than themselves. Here now for a refreshing change is the story of ordinary people who thought of the need of others even in a time of extraordinary grief.
CLIFTON, N.J. — James O'Hea was told privately his failing heart gave him little more than a month to live. Terence Begley's diabetes meant more years of dialysis and deteriorating kidneys. That was before a tragic event — the shooting of three people in a church last November — turned life-affirming through the quick response of one victim's family.
O'Hea, Begley and three other people received organs from 25-year-old Dennis John Malloosseril (mahl-LOO'-sir-ihl). He was shot and killed Nov. 23 as he tried to break up an argument between a fellow church member and her estranged husband, according to police and witnesses.
O'Hea, Begley and the other recipients — Malta Hameed, 40, of Clifton; Migdalia Torres, 52, of Cleveland, Ohio, and John Muscarella, 22, of East Newark — attended a memorial service for Malloosseril on Sunday at the St. Thomas Syrian Orthodox Knanaya (kah-nahn-NIGH'-ya) Church, where the shooting happened. Before the service, the recipients had an emotional meeting with Mallossseril's parents.
"They bent down and listened to my heart," O'Hea said. "I had tears rolling down my cheeks."
Torres, who has suffered for 25 years from lupus that has affected her kidneys, recalled jumping out of bed at 6 a.m. on the morning after the shooting when she received a call that an organ match had been found. Like the others, she admitted having mixed feelings about the events that led to her transplant.
Accidental Blogger 