Accidental Blogger

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  • Cat Quote

    O little emperor with no orb,

    conqueror without country, …..

    tiny tiger of the living room,

    posing four delicate feet on the ground

    sniffing, mistrustful of everything on earth,

    because everything is unclean

    for the cat’s immaculate foot.

    The above is an excerpt from Pablo Neruda’s poem Ode to the Cat (Oda al Gato) which was sent to me by Narayan Acharya.  Despite a severe allergy to cats, fortified with anti-histamines, Narayan entertains his neighbor’s cat Sammy in his home. The full poem below the fold. 

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  • Primary Colors: It’s Not Just About Race

    Super Tuesday has come and gone and it is up to us, the candidates and media pundits to crunch the numbers, read deep meanings in voter demographics and slice the cucumber thin to get the big picture.  None of us knows what lies ahead. The Republican primaries have been decisive in their verdict – John McCain is a clear front runner. The picture on the Democratic side is more murky.  Brian Leiter has a summary and analysis of last night’s results at Leiter Reports where he concludes:

    The margins of victory are telling elsewhere.  In her home state of New York, Clinton beat Obama by 17 percentage points; in his home state of Illinois, Obama beat Clinton by 32 percentage points.  Obama beat Clinton by a small margin in neighboring Connecticut (that he won at all is very telling), and by ten percentage points in Delaware, part of the Northeast corridor, which one might have thought safe territory for the New York Senator. 

    If one remembers that Senator Clinton started with a huge name recognition advantage, and was the presumptive nominee before the process started, it is clear how much trouble she is now in.  She may yet pull it out.  The decent thing to do, of course, would be to withdraw from the race.  As one right-wing pundit wrote not long ago, "Only one thing can now unite the Republican Party:  Hillary Clinton."

    Like everyone else I am struck by Obama setting the American prairie on fire – huge margins of win in places like Colorado, Minnesota, N. Dakota and Idaho. Add to that even more unlikely states  such as Alaska and Utah. Young men in Idaho (Idaho?) have switched party registration so they can vote for him. This can mean one of two things. Either Obama is indeed a person (like Tiger Woods) who transcends race or some people are really uneasy about Clinton. Or may be it is both. The latter however explains why a surprisingly large parade of US senators and governors (some of them women) have endorsed Obama so enthusiastically so early in the campaign.

    But there is an "inspiration" vs "duty to establishment" divide in this campaign which might yet put Billary over the top.  I am going to stick my neck out and look under some rocks for undercurrents which have defined the Democratic race thus far.

    Friend and fellow blogger Elatia Harris (3 Quarks Daily)  who is supporting Barack Obama forwarded me a rage filled article by feminist author and Hillary Clinton supporter Robin Morgan.  Among other insults and unfounded suspicions, Morgan implies (quoting Harriet Tubman) that women who prefer Obama over Clinton are slaves who don’t know that they are slaves. In the process, she ends up saying some amazingly condescending things about Obama – sounding more like a wounded member of a snooty sorority whose exclusive gates have been crashed rather than a cool headed analyst of how and why the elections are unfolding the way they are. To paraphrase Morgan, "Shut up and wait your turn after eight years. You will only be 54!" is the message to Obama. To enraged HRC supportes like her the anti-Hillary (or pro-Obama) votes are all about gender and punishing women.

    The other telling aspect of this election is the Latino and Asian aversion to Barack Obama, an African American.  We are comfortable discussing the standard racism and sexism of the white male but are reluctant to address the prejudices of minority communities.  In California Clinton’s win or at least, the margin of her win was facilitated by the Latino and Asian voting blocks who overwhelmingly favor her over Obama.  In my own unscientific survey, I find that while many younger Asians of both genders are supporting Obama, Hillary is the favorite of older Asians (all Asians).  The support is much stronger among older women than with men.  Among Latinos, her support spreads across the board. This has been attributed rightly or wrongly to hostilities between black and Latino communities.  (Hillary Clinton coolly shrugged off a comment to that effect by ethnic researcher Sergio Bendixen as a mere "historic statement.") In New Mexico (as yet undecided) where Native Americans form a significant part of the minority population and both Asian and African American presence is small, Obama is holding his own against Clinton.   

    The permutations and combinations of the play of gender and race in the Democratic primary are complex and it is difficult to come up with a predictable pattern. It is foolish to attribute the results to just race or gender.  I do not know if Obama, a newcomer on the stage of national politics has enough time to allay the fears of his detractors and gain their vote of confidence. Hillary’s name recognition on the other hand, can work both for and against her. A well known political commodity, she can change fewer minds. Let us see how the rest of the primaries play out.

    Ms Morgan trots out Hillary’s lengthy feminist credentials (some of which sound as thin as her "thirty five years" of experience and public service) but doesn’t stop to ask why we didn’t hear from HRC when her husband threw women like Joycelyn Elders, Lani Guinier and Marian Wright Edelman (who also happen to be African Americans) under the bus. In her impassioned defense of Hillary, Morgan comes across as an angry activist who in her frustration, would rather see women bow to entitlement politics in favor of gender while bitterly decrying the other side of doing the same for race. To the unconvinced, that impatient message has the disturbing undertone of "We have been foot soldiers, we have fought the war, our bones have been broken. You owe us even if what we have to offer at this time is terribly flawed."

    I am an Obama supporter. My age, race, gender and political leanings should make me a Hillary supporter. I also know other Asian and white women who defy the so called "race and gender" considerations and support Obama over Clinton. As far as I know, none of them has uttered the ugly epithets against Hillary that Morgan claims are the reason why women (and men) fear her. Neither has any one of us ever scolded her for not baking enough cookies. We do not doubt that Hillary is intelligent and hard working.  But we do question her political judgement. Also, we cannot in good conscience help elect a candidate when we are aware of her easy mendacity, cynical opportunism and the brittleness of her principles. The decision is based on her politics and not her womanhood. But the most important reason many of us will not vote for Hillary remains Bill (then and now) whom Morgan seems to either forgive or forget just so she can send a woman to the White House.

  • The Obama-Mandate Kerfuffle (Andrew)

    Since Joe is still waiting to be convinced by Obama — and Paul Krugman continues in his quixotic project to convince us all that Barack is actually Bob Dole, once again due the lack of mandates for universal coverage in his health plan — I thought I’d share a recent exchange between one Anna Levine and me on an Obama mailer that slams Hillary’s emphasis on mandating that each American be insured. 

    If you missed this mini-controversy, the concern is that Obama is using imagery and anti-government rhetoric uncomfortably similar to the infamous Harry and Louise ads that helped destroy Hillary’s first health care reform plan.  Ezra Klein summarizes it well here.  So I wrote to ask Obama-supporter Ms. Levine what gives.  Here’s her qualified defense:

    "Clinton supporters, and Krugman, argue that
    Obama’s health care proposal cannot be called ‘universal"’because it
    does not mandate that people obtain insurance, and that anyone who
    elects not to obtain insurance, whether or not it was available to them
    and regardless of the reason for their decision, cannot be said to be
    covered by the health care proposal. They argue that whether the
    mandated coverage is affordable is an issue that will have to be
    decided secondarily. Obama’s campaign disputes that definition of
    universal, asserting that "universal" means "available to everyone who
    wants it" and that if insurance is affordable, people will buy it. They
    argue that affordability has to be decided before mandates.
     
    This ad seems to me squarely in line with that debate over
    mandates. I’m not sure how I come out on the debate. It would help if
    Clinton, or Krugman, or anyone else would explain how mandates would
    work and why affordability isn’t an issue, or even just isn’t a
    sufficient concern, balanced against the problem posed by the people
    who do not choose to purchase insurance under the Obama plan. Anyone
    who’s going to sell mandates to the general electorate is going to have
    to answer that question, or at least come up with a better
    counter-argument than, "How dare you– that’s just like the Harry and
    Louise ad!" To me, the brouhaha over this mailer highlights the fact
    that they haven’t.
     
    Edwards at least had the guts to say that the enforcement
    mechanism would be through referral by the IRS, which has the benefit
    of clarity.  On the other hand, I have some mixed feelings about
    entrusting the IRS with such a job, given the way that punishing poor
    working people has become the agency’s dominant auditing concern in the
    EITC era; it would make much more sense to me if everyone were enrolled
    and had their wages garnished, as for Medicare, since at least then the
    IRS would have no discretion and no prerogative to weed out and punish
    "misbehavior."  Hillary hasn’t offered even Edwards’s explanation.
     
    If mandates are necessary, and universal means universally
    obtained, the Obama mailer is terrible.  If universal means universally
    available, and mandates are a trivial distinction in two otherwise
    extremely similar plans, this mailer is not so terrible. I don’t
    believe it sinks any effort at health care reform or is particularly
    right wing. I do think the mailer will make enforcing mandates, if they
    turn out to be necessary, more difficult, and is therefore a bad idea,
    on balance: it’s short-sighted to preclude a policy option that Obama
    campaign has hinted may be necessary down the line. But given the vast
    expansion of government subsidized health care that Obama proposes,
    which no right-winger will love, calling Obama a right-wing panderer
    seems equally ill-advised."

    So what do folks think?  Krugman makes the case about why healthy people will elect not to buy coverage even if it were affordable, unless there are mandates.  And as distasteful and intellectually dishonest as some of Krugman’s attacks on Obama have been, I do share his concern on the mandate issue.  This seems like a genuinely important policy issue, in which everyone in the country has a vested interest.

     
     
     

  • But COULD You Use It?

    In early 2005 an amusing urban legend did the rounds of the World Wide Web.  The story involves the city of Houston and a public toilet.  It asks a question that tests the threshold of the fact / feeling barrier in our minds and our comfort level dictated by unscientific associations. 

    Two days ago, I got a mass mailed message from a friend containing the same apocryphal (as far as Houston is concerned) story asking the same question and the same accompanying images.  The e-mail goes as follows:

    There is an awesome water closet in Houston – an awesome public toilet.       

    It is made entirely of one-way glass! No one can see you from the outside but when you are inside, it’s like sitting in a clear glass box.

    Now would you … COULD you use it ????

    As I said, there is no such public toilet in Houston. At least I haven’t seen it or heard about it and neither has anybody I know. The Houston Architecture Forum (they should know) wondered about its whereabouts when the story first made its appearance. A google search shows that several sites were discussing the toilet in 2005 and one claimed that the toilet is actually to be found in Switzerland.

    But wherever the toilet may be, take a look at the photos below. Two years later, I am repeating the question about knowledge and perception:

    "Knowing that no one on the outside can see you even though you can see them, would you feel comfortable using this toilet located in the middle of a busy street?"   

    (outside view)     Houston_toilet_1_6 Houston_toilet_2_6 (inside view)               

    (click to enlarge)

  • Save The Boys Too

    Almost exactly a year ago I had posted an article here on the wisdom of making Gardasil vaccinations mandatory for teenage girls. Gardasil is a vaccine manufactured by Merck against the human papilloma virus (HPV) which causes cervical cancer, one of the most common forms of cancer affecting women.  The vaccine has been found to be 100% effective in clinical trials. But no data is available on the long term effects of the vaccine.  While I strongly believe that the vaccine holds great promise and should be looked at carefully, my post questioned Texas governor Rick Perry’s motives in aggressively pushing the drug for Merck.

    I had asked the following question in my previous post:

    [W]hy is the vaccine being aimed only at girls?  Gardasil is a vaccine against the human papilloma virus (HPV), not cervical cancer. Although only girls are at risk of developing cervical cancer when infected with HPV, boys too get infected by the virus and can spread it to their sexual partners. Should yet another onerous burden of responsible sexual behavior be borne just by young women? The report on Gardasil says:

    ….A recent study found that 90 percent of cervical cancer cases could be eliminated if boys and girls got the vaccine. If only girls get it, just more than three quarters of cases would be eliminated. (italics mine)

    A recent study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology now reveals that boys (men) infected with HPV are not just prone to infecting their sexual partners, but they themselves are vulnerable to oral and throat cancers brought about by the virus. Based on the results of the study, Merck plans to petition Congress for FDA approval to make Gardasil shots available to teenage boys.

    ATLANTA (AP) — The sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer in women is poised to become one of the leading causes of oral cancer in men, according to a new study.

    The HPV virus now causes as many cancers of the upper throat as tobacco and alcohol, probably due both to an increase in oral sex and the decline in smoking, researchers say.

    The only available vaccine against HPV, made by Merck & Co. Inc., is currently given only to girls and young women. But Merck plans this year to ask government permission to offer the shot to boys.

    Experts say a primary reason for male vaccinations would be to prevent men from spreading the virus and help reduce the nearly 12,000 cases of cervical cancer diagnosed in U.S. women each year. But the new study should add to the argument that there may be a direct benefit for men, too.

    "We need to start having a discussion about those cancers other than cervical cancer that may be affected in a positive way by the vaccine," said study co-author Dr. Maura Gillison of Johns Hopkins University.

    The study was published Friday in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

    Human papillomavirus, or HPV, is the leading cause of cervical cancer in women. It also can cause genital warts, penile and anal cancer — risks for males that generally don’t get the same attention as cervical cancer.

    Previous research by Gillison and others established HPV as a primary cause of the estimated 5,600 cancers that occur each year in the tonsils, lower tongue and upper throat. It’s also been known that the virus’ role in such cancers has been rising.

    The new study looked at more than 30 years of National Cancer Institute data on oral cancers. Researchers categorized about 46,000 cases, using a formula to divide them into those caused by HPV and those not connected to the virus.

    They concluded the incidence rates for HPV-related oral cancers rose steadily in men from 1973 to 2004, becoming about as common as those from tobacco and alcohol.

    The Associated Press report here.  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s facts sheet on HPV and Gardasil still lists only girls as the potential beneficiaries.    

  • Birds on the Brain(Sujatha)

    Cross posted from Fluff-n-Stuff:
    Wpc3

    After a long break, I started refilling the lonely birdfeeder hanging
    on a shepherd’s hook from our deck railing. The birdseed had been
    purchased months before and sat on a high shelf in my pantry, waiting
    patiently for an opening day. Are birds particular about expiry dates,
    come to think of it, do these bags of generic birdseed even have expiry
    dates? Probably not- I doubt that any consumers are going to sue the
    companies churning these out, one wouldn’t know if it gave a bird food
    poisoning, I guess.

    (more…)

  • Cat Quote

    He who dislikes the cat, was in his former life, a rat. 

                                                           Chinese Proverb

    (This is the beginning of a regular series of cat quotes that will appear here)

  • Choose Your Candidate

    If this week’s presidential debates in California and the barrage of campaign information in the media haven’t convinced you to choose your candidate so far, here is a simple test to help you decide.

    My results :

    • Barack Obama :  Points of agreement = 9, disagreement = 1
    • Hillary Clinton :  Points of agreement  = 7, disagreement = 3
    • John McCain   :  Points of agreement  = 3,  disagreement = 7
    • Ron Paul :          Points of agreement  = 3,  disagreement = 7
    • Mike Huckabee: Points of agreement  = 2,  disagreement = 8
    • Mitt Romney :    Points of agreement  = 1,  disagreement =9

    Pretty accurate except that my biggest disagreement with Hillary is Bill.   Find out who you man or woman is.

  • Putting the “nut” in “wingnut” (Joe)

    Ann Coulter says she would support Hillary Clinton over John McCain.

    Speaking on Fox’s "Hannity and Colmes," Coulter took aim at the GOP
    frontrunner, and suggested he was little more than a Republican in name
    only.

    "If you are looking at substance rather than if there is an R or a D
    after his name, manifestly, if he’s our candidate, than Hillary is
    going to be our girl, because she’s more conservative than he is,"
    Coulter said. "I think she would be stronger on the war on terrorism."

    Coulter took aim at McCain’s positions — particularly his fervent
    anti-torture stance — and said he and Clinton differ little on the
    issues. Coulter also said she is prepared to campaign on Clinton’s
    behalf should McCain win the party’s nomination.

    "John McCain is not only bad for Republicanism, which he definitely is — he is bad for the country," she said.

    Coulter is the latest high profile conservative to express dismay
    with McCain’s surging candidacy. Talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh said
    Wednesday McCain’s rise was the product of a ‘fractured’ conservative
    base and an "uninspiring" GOP presidential field.

    "He is not the choice of conservatives, as opposed to the choice of
    the Republican establishment — and that distinction is key," Limbaugh
    continued. "The Republican establishment, which has long sought to rid
    the party of conservative influence since Reagan, is feeling a victory
    today as well as our friends in the media."

    Not that anyone needed more proof that right-wing nuts are, well, nuts.  But there it is anyway.

    John McCain is the most conservative man in the Republican field.  Even if you go back to when Rudy and Fred Thompson were in, only Fred Thompson is arguably as or more conservative than McCain.  If you combine Romney’s Wall Street attributes, Rudy’s psychotic hawkishness, and Huckabee’s God-ology (he’s not descended from a chimpanzee! [unlike a certain President]), you probably wind up with a candidate who looks remarkably similar to Senator McCain.

    I know that the New York Times recently endorsed McCain for the Republican nominee.  And I know that Coulter has a point insofar as Hillary is a moderate-conservative Democrat, and a hawk on foreign policy.  But still.  Why doesn’t the base just love this guy?  And forget that, because voters tend to be uninformed and buy into media myths (such as "John McCain is a maverick" or "John Kerry is the most electable Democrat") — but why don’t pundits such as Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh, who ought to be fairly well-informed, rank him as their favorite candidate by far?

  • Perelman, Oh Perelman! Wherefore Art Thou In My Time of Need and Social Security Benefits? (Narayan Acharya)

    This post contains the writings of Narayan Acharya, a previous contributor and occasional commentator on A.B. who has now acquired the official status of "guest author." Narayan’s reminiscence about S.J. Perelman was in part inspired by a recent humorous piece in McSweeney –  Rilke’s Letters To A Young Plumber.  He suspects that the McSweeney letters are a riff on S.J. Perelman’s story, No Starch in the Dhoti – S’il Vous Plaît. (Dhoti is a sarong style dress worn by Indian men.) Narayan therefore found it necessary to note:

    Sj_perelman_2This [the Rilke letters] is a patent rip-off of a story by S.J.Perelman published in the early 50s. "No Starch in the Dhoti, S’il Vous Plaît" appeared in the New Yorker and in the collection "The Road to Miltown", S.J.Perelman, Grove Press, 1952. It documents the acrimonious correspondence between Motilal Nehru [father of Jawaharlal Nehru and grandfather of Indira Gandhi] in Allahabad, and Octave-Hippolyte Pleurniche, his launderer in Paris.

    In a three-page preamble to the correspondence,Perelman writes :

    "In the course of an article called "Portrait of a Symbol Named Nehru", Mr.Trumbull [former correspondent of the Times in India] had the following to say : ‘Nehru is accused of having a congenital distaste for Americans because of their all too frequent habit of bragging and of being patronizing when in unfamiliar surroundings. It is said that in the luxurious and gracious house of his father, the late Pandit Motilal Nehru – who sent his laundry to Paris – the young Jawaharlal’s British nurse used to make caustic remarks to the impressionable boy about the table manners of his father’s American guests.
    "It was, of course, the utter nonchalance of the phrase ‘who sent his laundry to Paris’ that knocked me galley-west."

    True, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but the very least McSweeney’s should have done was to acknowledge Perelman, the master of the "occasional piece". Perhaps with "apologies to …".

    So Narayan decided (after some prodding from me) to pay his own tribute to Perelman here on our blog and kvetch about his retirement in the same breath.   Thanks, Narayan.

    (more…)

  • Edwards Out. (Joe)

    Ezra summarizes, and has a links round-up.

    "It’s time for me to step aside so that history can blaze its path."  It will be interesting to see who it blazes for.

    Obama, I’m still waiting to be convinced.

  • A Cat In An Empty Apartment

    A sad, sad poem.

    Dying–you wouldn’t do that to a cat.
    For what is a cat to do
    in an empty apartment?
    Climb up the walls?
    Brush up against the furniture?
    Nothing here seems changed,
    and yet something has changed.
    Nothing has been moved,
    and yet there’s more room.
    And in the evenings the lamp is not on.

    One hears footsteps on the stairs,
    but they’re not the same.
    Neither is the hand
    that puts a fish on the plate. ……

    Read the rest here.

  • Restaurant Critics, Roadside Stalls (Sujatha)

    Anna sent me a link to this article in LA Weekly from food critic Jonathan Gold, about what he claimsPaper_dosa is a rise in regional specialization among the Southern Indian restaurants in Artesia (a suburb of Los Angeles):

    Gold, who won the Pulitzer Prize this year for criticism, made his mark enthusiastically opting to report on restaurants in ethnically distinct commun ities rather than the latest French Bistro in Beverly  Hills.

    (more…)

  • “We Know Who You Are”

    Abbas Raza, editor of 3 Quarks Daily, recounts three tales of major and minor horror in The Smart Set. All are first person accounts; they variously involve a case of mistaken identity, a pompously pious immigration official, the unexpected outcome of making an illegal left turn on a Manhattan street and some terrifying hours spent in jail. (We are thankful that Abbas came out of the ordeals with his sense of humor intact.)

    Mr. Sampson, I Presume?

    It was about five years ago. I was returning from Pakistan and standing in the immigration line at JFK, completely exhausted after a 20-hour flight. When my turn came up at the counter, the INS agent looked at my papers, typed a few things into his computer, and then asked me to follow him to a large room at the side of the immigration hall. I was informed that I was being detained. Two agents handcuffed me and led me to another smaller room. When I asked what I had done. They said things like, "Oh, you know what you’ve done. We know who you are."

    “Who am I? What have I done?”

    “You should know that better than we do, now shouldn’t you?”

    When I asked to contact a lawyer, I was informed that I hadn’t yet been admitted to the United States, and so had no legal standing. No lawyer would be called, nor would I be allowed to call anyone else. They took my cuffs off, fingerprinted me (very difficult because of my sweaty palms), recuffed me, and then left me there.

    It was at this point that my knees went a little trembly. I had heard many stories of Pakistanis being held for months without charges under the Patriot Act, and now I had visions of Guantanamo in my head, and I became almost dizzy with the adrenaline rush of fear. I thought that I must have been mistaken for someone else, God knows who, and there would be no chance to clear my name. I sat in that room for a few sweat-drenched hours before a couple of INS officers came in with two police officers from the NYPD. The NYPD officers told me that they had a warrant for my arrest. This immediately came as a huge relief to me, because whatever it was they wanted with me, I would rather be held by the NYPD in New York, than in some INS facility. I felt like whatever it was, I would be able to clear it up…..  (Do read the whole story – all three adventures.)

    Abbas has posted the link to this piece at 3 QD. Despite the light hearted and self deprecating tone he injected into the narrative, the response of readers (including mine) ran the gamut of faint amusement, disbelief and alarm. Many interpreted the stories as describing the common fate of south Asian and middle eastern men in post 9/11 America. But the author assures us that his experience of living in America for nearly a quarter of a century has been nothing but peaceful, friendly and enjoyable. He just seems to encounter a disproportionately greater share of Kafkaesque adventures than most people. Here is his response to the concern of readers who saw the shadow of unfair profiling in these episodes.

    Let me emphasize this: I have NEVER, at work, at college, at university, or elsewhere (except for airports after 9/11) felt that I have been mistreated because of race or religion or ethnicity in America. On the contrary, America has been remarkably fair in its treatment of me. (Even the citizenship was granted on appeal, after all.)

    Even after the horrific attacks by Muslims on 9/11, I have never once felt singled out for mistreatment or suspicion in New York City, nor has anyone else I know, including many Arab friends. It is a remarkable and beautiful thing, really. Europe is far more xenophobic, and I have already had run ins with the Carabinieri here (sorry Bhaisaheb), and solely because of how I look. (My Pakistani friend–a prof at Oxford–and I, were stopped, for example, walking on the street and asked to show our papers and held there for a half hour until they could check up on us. My wife’s sister said to me that it was just a random check. I asked her how many times she has been randomly checked in the past 30 years here. The predictable answer: zero. I have been stopped several times in 3 months.)

    There is an ease with which America assimilates its immigrants that is very different from Europe. My stories were just meant to be funny. Please don’t take them as some sort of complaint. I have no complaints.

    (Abbas is currently on a sabbatical in small town in northern Italy near the Austrian border.)