SAPIENTI SAT

Memoirs

2011-02-07T07:39:00.000-08:00

I have decided to write my memoirs in this format.

Let's start with a quiz. Get these answers correct and inherit my classic wood boat and my classic Speedster, soon to be restored by none other than Porsche Classic in Stuttgart.

Who in my family has already written a family history?

Which illustrious ancestor changed the family's surname, and from what to what?

How did this person acquire great wealth and when? His son John was ennobled by Louis XIV, why? What is the name of the old imperial fief that was given to him and his descendants?

What was his wife's family's name? Who was his wife's first husband and what happened to him?

Who in this (wife's) family went on the First Christian Crusade, and what did he do to distinguish himself? Who went on the Third Crusade ("La Croisade des Trois Rois") and was featured in Umberto Eco's novel? What German language saga did he write? Which composer used the story in his works? Which world conqueror favored this composer?

Who were put under Imperial ban for being robber barons?

Who gave the Ouroboros to the family by including it in his Imperial Wappenbuch?

What happened to the old imperial fief held by the robber barons? What happened to the fief when the Harters had it? What happened to those Harters who last held it?

How did the Harters come to the USA? When and why?

GOOD GOVERNANCE

2010-03-12T08:38:00.000-08:00

The importance of good governance: when is the last time you gave thought to that? Yet your American life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness depend not just upon the nation's mission statement, but also upon its implementation. That implementation in turn depends upon honest, intelligent, impartial, and effective rule of law: good governance. From immediate situations such as Home Owner Associations bylaws and boards to distant ones like the Health Care Reform debate in our nation's capital the impact of governance will sooner or later be felt by all.

Not only is there the matter of quality of governance, there is also the issue of quantity. The American character was forged in two crucibles: the American Revolution emphasizing relief from overarching, constitutional monarchy, and the War Between the States emphasizing the dominance of Federal and Union over State and Region. In this way we Americans have a touch of schizophrenia with respect to how much governance we want. The two great events shaped our national character without resolving the fundamental issue of how much we want, and from which source our governance should come.

At this point in our history we have some advantages: a succinct written constitution that has stood the test of time, a legal system that is based on precedent, a two party political system along the lines of the British one, a two house federal legislature along the lines of the British parliament (House of Lords/Senate, House of Commons/Representatives), a chief executive, a supreme court, and no king or queen. Are we a democracy or a republic? Does it matter? What if any of this ought to be revised?

The electorate seems about equally divided between those who would modernize the system and those who would return it more faithfully to its original state. Then we have fifty states with more or less the same three branches of government and powers, excepting the power to print money, of course. Praise the Lord for that.

Let's start with the matter of quality of our governance. Next blog.

PAST THE TIPPING POINT.

2009-11-13T07:18:00.000-08:00

Freya

In Norse mythology, Freya is a goddess of love and fertility, and the most beautiful and propitious of the goddesses. She is the patron goddess of crops and birth, the symbol of sensuality and was called upon in matters of love. She loves music, spring and flowers, and is particularly fond of the elves (fairies). Freya is one of the foremost goddesses of the Vanir.

Goddess of sex, battle, and pleasure, most beautiful and desirable of white-armed women, Freyja was sister to the male fertility god Freyr. Freyja had unusual parity with Odin, for they divided the heroic dead amongst themselves. Half went to live eternally in Odin's hall, and half in Freyja's hall Sessrumnir- and the goddess got first pick.

As befits a goddess, Freyja owned potent magical equipment. Like Frigg, she possessed a falcon skin, which when pulled over her shoulders, allowed her to take the form of that raptor.This also provided a useful disguise when needed - important to a goddess whose personage made her instantly recognisable.

Freyja's most wonderful adornment was her necklace (or possibly a jewelled belt), Brisingamen.It was crafted by four dwarfs, and was of exceptional beauty.Freyja so longed for it that she consented to spend one night each in the arms of its makers as her payment.This was a just recompense in the eyes of the goddess, for as the necklace was the finest of all things the dwarfs could produce, the utter summation of their skill, why not repay them with an equally precious example of her love-art?

Freyja always wished to give her love freely.Her beauty and desirability often attracted the attention of those she did not want, such as the giant who offered to build an impregnable defensive wall around Asgard, the dwelling of the gods, in exchange for taking Freyja away as his wife. The goddess knew nothing of this agreement, and her outraged indignation at being so wagered grew the greater as the wall grew taller. Never believing they would have to forfeit Freyja, the gods grew more and more uneasy in their wager, until Loki ,who had urged the agreement, was forced to utilise his trickster ability to the fullest.

Three animals are associated with Freyja. She is pulled about in a cart to which two cats are harnessed. Their sinuous beauty and comfort-loving nature recall one side of the goddess. The other two animals are direct symbols of sexuality and strength.

Her golden-bristled boar is called Battle Swine (Hildisvini), and recalls her role as the receiver of heroic dead. Battle helmets topped with iron and bronze images of boars have been found throughout England and Scandinavia, for the boar's savage and cunning nature was widely revered. The other animal is the mare, associated with night, unbridled sexuality, and dangerous magical power. To "ride the night-mare" meant then, as now, to have bad dreams.

The above thanks to Google Images--Google from whom all blessings flow.

QUOTES OF SHRI MATAJI
Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi

"But today it is the day I declare I am the One who have to save the humanity. I declare I am the One who is Adi Shakti, who is the Mother of all Mothers, who is the Primordial Mother, the Shakti (Divine Primordial Power) of the Desire of God, who has incarnated on this Earth to give meaning to itself, to this Creation, to human beings, and I am sure that through My Love and Patience and My Powers I am going to achieve it.I was the One who was born again and again. But now I have come in My complete Form and with complete Powers. I have come on this Earth not only for salvation of human beings, not only for their emancipation, but for granting them the Kingdom of Heaven, the Joy, the Bliss that your Father wants to bestow upon you."Shri Puratana Devi(Purantana: Primordial or Ancient)On July 26, 1995, the Great Primordial Goddess revealed that the Miracle Photo was genuine. Implying that over the duration of 21 full moons all the Messengers of God Almighty had given enough evidence necessary for the Believers on Earth to surrender to the Divine Message to humanity the Great Primordial Mother ended Her Revelations with these parting words: "We Have Done Our Job Here." Thus 1995 fits perfectly with the ancient Mayan prophecy that "a calendar cycle of twice the Kal-tun of 260 years had to go by in order for the Solar culture to flourish again for the benefit of all humanity." The actual prophecy reads;“In the year 1475, before the arrival of the Spanish, The Supreme Maya Council revealed the long-held vision of an ancient Solar Grandmother named X'Nuuk'K'in, that a calendar cycle of twice the Kal-tun of 260 years had to go by in oder for the Solar culture to flourish again for the benefit of all humanity. In the spring of 1995, this 520 year period will be completed. Thus, 1995 is a decisive year and the human race will have to enter the path of the cosmic light if it is to remain a thinking species. Humans will have to seek the path of initiation on Earth and in Heaven. Through Solar Initiation they will be able to see the luminosity of the Great Spirit...through Solar Initiation, the sleeping body of humankind can be awakened." Hunab K'u (Creator) will flash like lightening that will pierce through the shadows that envelop the human race. Let us prepare to receive the light of knowledge" (paraphrased Mayan prophesy)www.nativenet.uthscsa.edu/

Friends, we have passed a tipping point. I submit the above as evidence. In the proverbial three score and ten years we have gone from patriarchal to matriarchal societal structure. Mind you, we are not all the way to the right side of the pendulum's swing. But we have passed the mid position, or tipping point.

We can see that the ancients lived variably under one or the other structures. In almost all cultures of Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas we see patriarchal organization. But it was not always that way. Using the kind of gods the ancients worshipped, scholars find that there were different ways in the past.

Marija Gimbutas

Gimbutas gained unexpected fame — and notoriety — with her last three books: The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe (1974); The Language of the Goddess (1989), which inspired an exhibition in Wiesbaden, 1993/94; and her final book, The Civilization of the Goddess (1991), which presented an overview of her speculations about Neolithic cultures across Europe: housing patterns, social structure, art, religion, and the nature of literacy.

The Civilization of the Goddess articulated what Gimbutas saw as the differences between the Old European system, which she considered goddess- and woman-centered ("matristic"), and the Bronze Age Indo-European patriarchal ("androcratic") culture which supplanted it. According to her interpretations, gynocentric and gylanic societies were peaceful, they honored homosexuals, and they espoused economic equality.

The "androcratic", or male-dominated, Kurgan peoples, on the other hand, invaded Europe and imposed upon its natives the hierarchical rule of male warriors.

Gimbutas' books and papers are housed, along with those of her colleague, mythologist Joseph Campbell, at the Joseph Campbell and Marija Gimbutas Library on the campus of the Pacifica Graduate Institute in Carpinteria, just south of Santa Barbara, California.

In 1993, Marija Gimbutas received an honorary doctorate at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, Lithuania. On 2 February 1994, Gimbutas died in Los Angeles. Soon afterwards she was interred in Kaunas' Petrašiūnai Cemetery.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Marija-Gimbutas-newgrange.jpg

Among other changes ushered in by a shift from matriarchal to patriarchal, one often as not sees a switch from gentle gods devoted mostly to feeding the people who worship them, to gods of war and conquest. Only one culture seems to have kept both the old gods and the new. These people seemed to have worked out a unique system in which some of the former were held as hostages in the house of the latter. To which people/culture am I referring? Check out Norse mythology. I refer to the Aesir and the Vanir, and Asgard.

Thor as a blond.

So, here's what's in store for us shortly: gentle fertility gods and goddesses regaining their place in the pantheon (gentle, but occasionally planting a virile youth for the sake of a good harvest in the Fall), storm gods like YHWH losing a large part of His following, women moving into top jobs, and ultimately into control, physically larger women outweighing men on the scale as well as in the halls of government, academics, the professions, and industry; less risk of world war and diminished status of the warrior, greater emphasis on the family, clan, tribe; less emphasis on the nation, state, empire. Look around you and see some of this happening. The reason historians don't study anything less than fifty years old is that we cannot analyze contemporary events very well. We are in a great change right now.

But just as people who lived through the end of the Dark Ages and the beginning of the Renaissance, or through the end of the Agrarian Age and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution could not fully appreciate the scale of change swirling around them, so we cannot appreciate what is happening now. Add the possible near future events prophesied by Hopi, Mayan, New Testament authors, and others, and you can imagine the exciting and scary ride we are on. Think of your favorite scary roller coaster ride: the cars leave the station, begin a slow climb up a surprisingly steep incline, round a sharp curve to the right (and you are afforded a splendid view in 360 degrees), and then, suddenly, the bottom drops out. We are past the tipping point on the testosterone/estrogen axis. Big T is losing its control, Big E is in its ascendancy. Everything human is in transition accordingly. We are alive to see and feel it. And at least we can be aware of these momentous changes.

You go girl!

From Thor to Freya, if not a complete shift, at least a better compromise--something along the lines of the Norse of old.

If you like redheads, you will love Norse gods.

Now if we can just get the Muslim world on board. Women of the world unite! Work on this. Allah is to the right of YHWH. Go Freya! Go Freya!

PELOSI'S TORT BOMB.

2009-11-13T05:44:00.000-08:00

And a Buried Tort Bomb:

A stealth provision that would undermine state damage caps. Article Comments (71).

In his September address to Congress, President Obama made a nod to bipartisanship by acknowledging that excessive litigation "may be" contributing to rising health costs, and he proposed state "demonstration projects" to test medical tort reform. This wasn't much of a concession, but it apparently was still too much for House Democrats, who are using their bill to subvert reform that is already on the books in many states.

Buried in Speaker Nancy Pelosi's 1,990-page bill is a provision that provides "incentive payments" to each state that develops an "alternative medical liability law" that encourages "fair resolution" of disputes and "maintains access to affordable liability insurance." Sounds encouraging. Read on, however, and you come to this nugget: The state only qualifies if its new law "does not limit attorneys' fees or impose caps on damages."

Holy Bill Lerach.

Huge contingency fees and damage awards are the mother's milk of frivolous lawsuits. That's why 30 states have adopted caps on awards as the core of their reform, with huge success. Texas imposed malpractice caps in 2003, and the state has been rewarded with fewer lawsuits, a 50% drop in malpractice premiums, and a flood of new doctors. The House bill is intended to discourage other states from doing the same.

The Pelosi bill also provides these incentives only if states adopt watered-down alternatives to existing malpractice caps. Those alternatives include certificate-of-merit rules, which in theory require lawyers to get medical proof before suing but in practice mean that lawyers recruit and finance "expert" witnesses.

States could also provide "early offer" rules, which are supposed to encourage fair settlement of legitimate claims. But as organizations like the Manhattan Institute have noted, those offers only work if combined with restrictions on lawyer fees and damage awards that reduce the incentive to go for the jackpot judgment.

The Senate bill avoids tort reform entirely, notwithstanding Mr. Obama's showy pledge before a national TV audience.

Never mind that reducing medical lawsuits is a rare reform provision that really would reduce health-care costs. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the savings at $54 billion over a decade. Consulting firm Tillinghast Towers-Perrin has suggested the direct cost of medical tort litigation is more like $30 billion annually. PriceWaterhouseCoopers estimates that last year $240 billion in health expenditures were the result of doctors ordering unnecessary procedures to protect against the risk of lawsuits.

The hidden Pelosi tort bomb is one more example of the stealth radicalism that defines ObamaCare. If it passes in anything like its current form, we are going to be cleaning up the mess for decades to come.

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A24. Bold face mine.

This much should be obvious to everyone: when we drive up the cost of covering the populace, we must decrease the amount spent on any one person in the population. So when we divert health care dollars to the trial attorneys we take money away from the providers and recipients of health care. There is not an unlimited amount of money available for health care in our country. Our limit is $2.1 T, or $2,100,000,000,000.00--wow, that's a big number. But so is the number of dollars currently diverted to the fat cats who suck the juice out of the system. Trial lawyers like the presidential candidate John Edwards take directly and indirectly a significant portion of the allowance. Someone goes without care already on account of the Tort Lobby and its owners. Change the system according to the Pelosi Tort Bomb and we will see a really painful diversion of money out of the system of health care. Add more recipients, take away some providers, add government bureaucracy and its inefficiencies (the "employer of last resort"), use the bully pulpit to push chronically ill elderly into Hospice prematurely, fatten the take of the Drug Lobby owners, demoralize the providers in the trenches, and markedly increase the diversion of increasingly scarce monies into the Tort Lobby and its owners. One does not need to be a logician or mathematician to see what is going to happen here. No doomsday predictions, just common sense here.

People will die of the Tort Bomb. John Edwards made a ton of money pulling on the heart strings of jurors, retarded the specialty of obstetrics in America, pushed millions of expectant mothers into the care of midwives, and did not give anyone a red cent worth of care. Multiply John Edwards time thousands and add up the cost of diverting health care dollars to lawyers. And don't think for a minute that these fat cats advance the science or art of caring for the well or the sick. Too many lawyers in government already. Now add to their take by rolling back state legislation limiting fanciful awards for pain and suffering a la John Edwards. This country was born in Liberty and will die in Law. If you have a solution for this one, have at it. I think we have passed a tipping point. Glenn Beck and his group will point such things out, no doubt. But I doubt anyone will change the trajectory of the "debate" at this point.

Cartoon courtesy of the WSJ. It's tough to debate with these people! Got to love Pelosi, Reed, and our President Obama. We voted for change and we are getting it!!

PC DEADLIER THAN OBL?

2009-11-12T17:35:00.000-08:00

Granted, Osama bin Laden killed thousands on 09/11/2001. But I submit that our peculiar American penchant for "political correctness" is killing Americans, American soldiers at home and in the war zones.

Some backround first. I served five years of active duty in the US Navy Medical Corps. Those were years in the Regular Navy, not the Reserve. I started as an Ensign and ended as a Lieutenant Commander. A few friends in medical school and I drove to Milwaukee to sign up for service. We were hoping to get better training, experience, duty stations, and rank by signing up for a Navy program than by waiting for the draft. (In those days a doctor was drafted right out of training unless he was blind in one eye and losing vision in the other, or dying of a lethal process, or from New England.) Just half kidding on that last one.

I am sure that my being in the Navy's Ensign 1915 Program helped me land a great internship at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, MD. Excellent training and a great duty station but not a way to learn the ways and people of the US Navy. For that one must serve in the Fleet. And that came about in a fortuitous way.

Medical School, Madison, Wisconsin

I talked to residents and fellows and staff about choices for duty after the Postgraduate Year 1, or internship year. Our internship group was told we could opt for two years duty in Viet Nam, or other. The others for me were Northwest Cape, Australia, or a base in the outer Aleutian Islands where the people were taller than the trees. Alcoholism and/or frostbite, or opt for a three year tour. Easy enough so far. One of the choices for a three year tour was Charleston, SC. And, as luck would have it, one of the doctors at Bethesda was from the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. Since I was from Wisconsin, and since this was a turbulent year of racial unrest, I was a little uneasy about the idea of the Old South. My wife was more adventurous and had a good feel about SC and about Charleston, even though she had never been anywhere in the American South except Florida--and St. Petersburg, FL, is hardly Southern. (For that matter, neither is the Washington, DC, area where people quipped that the city enjoyed a combination of Northern charm and Southern efficiency.)

Charleston Harbor, beginning of the Atlantic Ocean

My wife and I opted for the Charleston tour, and we will always be grateful for that experience. There was an adjustment period. Our realtor told us we would not enjoy the South unless we slowed down a bit--Charleston then and Charleston now are not the same place. As one example: my first day on base started well enough, but as I was leaving the house I found the garbage scow and crew blocked the driveway. I was very upset and about to yell something when one of the men said "mornin' Cap'n, ain't it a fine, lovely day!" Well, I definitely got an on the spot education in the mores and manners of the Old South.

My first year in Charleston was spent in the fleet: Destroyer Division 42 of COMCRUDESLANT, an organization of the Atlantic Fleet with ships and crews and Division officers. Each of my ships had a petty officer corpsman on board, often as not a chief petty officer. The Navy has its own way, but it's been around a long time and it works well. (The slogan "shine she must, work she might" is a joke.) Look closely and you see that the Navy is run by Admirals and Chiefs. That is worth a post all by itself. This experience allowed me to get to know the Navy from the bottom up. Experiential knowledge is better knowledge.

The second year of the tour was spent at the US Naval Base Dispensary. I was the assistant medical director with five doctors on staff. The Medical Director was a board eligible psychiatrist. (We saw all the sailors and marines who claimed they needed to be excused from service because of this or that reason, mostly psychological reasons. The psychiatrist was to be our solid resource for these clinical judgements.) But the psychiatrist was absent more than present. This impacted the work load of each of us but none of us complained about it or about our Director. We just got the work done with the four of us.

My final year was spent as a general medical officer on the Orthopedic Service at the Charleston Naval Hospital. This is knowledge and experience that every doctor ought to have. If nothing else, it helps a person with orthopedic complaints, and that is something we all have, doctors included. Added up, I got a good grounding in military medicine and the military. This allows me to make a few judgements of my own with regard to the Fort Hood massacre and what is going on in today's Army.

The Fort Hood massacre will turn out to be a disgrace for the Army and Army medicine. The initial announcements by Army spokespersons and by command that the "alleged shooter" (was there any doubt about who did the shooting?) was not engaged in terrorism will turn out to have been outright lies. The extraordinary concern for the "diversity" of the military, at the expense of lives of soldiers, likewise is preposterous. The good army is a homogeneous band of brothers and sisters who obey orders instantaneously, can cross train, share rations and ammo, carry out missions and their own wounded, and that is anything but diverse. Not to mention the demographics which show fewer than one in twenty soldiers is not Christian. If the army wants to attract Muslims, it should do it in some way that does not neglect the safety of the vast majority of its own soldiers. If the army is so politically correct that its high command jeopardizes the lives of Americans, most especially of Americans in uniform, then we need a top down retraining.

The psychiatrist/jihadist Muslim/shooter should have been drummed out of the service as soon as he spoke out with jihadist views so publically and so loudly. He should have been investigated years before this terrible tragedy. This is a train wreck that should never have happened. We need courageous investigation and vigorous prosecution. And we need to hope for change.

And why do civilian police have to bring down the shooter on a military base? Does the army not have its own military police? Have we outsourced that to civilians, too?

Worse than the wounded and dead in Fort Hood is this: I think that we lose soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq because of the same deadly, idiotic political correctness. I know of cases where a soldier was killed by a friendly Afghan. If there is a blithe indifference toward Muslims who might or might not be a massacre in the making, there is no reasonable solution but to pull the military out of the war zone to protect Americans. Political correctness kills more than Osama bin Laden, at least at this point post 9/11. PC DEADLIER THAN OBL?

At best, a burial ground for empires.

Are we Americans going to allow our soldiers to be killed by and for Political Correctness? We and they are better than that. This nonsense has gone on long enough. Time for common sense to prevail--if not in our society at large, at least in the life and death world of the war zones.

WWBBD? WHAT WOULD BRUNO BETTELHEIM DO?

2009-10-22T09:34:00.000-07:00

Too bad that Bruno Bettelheim has been (posthumously) debunked, dethroned, and defenestrated--metaphorically. Just as "da Bears aren't da same wid'out Ditka" our modern world is missing a font of wisdom as well as the poet laureate of the fairy tale. Bruno's is a long,long story, but I think he would have something to say about a scourge of our present day: the abduction and abuse of little girls. I live in Florida where this is a common place event. Today's child psychologists and educators frown on Grimm Brothers fairy tales. Way too scary for little children. (BB had a different view, clearly and intelligibly laid out in his book Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, ISBN 0-679-72393-5 for the Vintage Books Edition of 1989. This was originally published by Alfred Knopf, Inc., in 1976. BB felt that children can mature better if they can address primitive fears, and that socially mature material like fairy tales facilitates this process.)

Let's look closely at the most famous fairy tale of all: Little Red Riding Hood. Does it tell us adults anything? Does it tell children anything? Does it help children in any way? Does it hurt them?

Little Red Riding Hood by the Brothers Grimm: "Once upon a time there was a dear little girl who was loved by every one who looked at her, but most of all by her grandmother, and there was nothing that she would not have given to the child. Once she gave her a little cap of red velvet, which suited her so well that she would never wear anything else. So she was always called Little Red Riding Hood.

One day her mother said to her, "Come, Little Red Riding Hood, here is a piece of cake and a bottle of wine. Take them to your grandmother, she is ill and weak, and they will do her good. Set out before it gets hot, and when you are going, walk nicely and quietly and do not run off the path, or you may fall and break the bottle, and then your grandmother will get nothing. And when you go into her room, don't forget to say, good-morning, and don't peep into every corner before you do it."

I will take great care, said Little Red Riding Hood to her mother, and gave her hand on it.
The grandmother lived out in the wood, half a league from the village, and just as Little Red Riding Hood entered the wood, a wolf met her. Little Red Riding Hood did not know what a wicked creature he was, and was not at all afraid of him.

"Good-day, Little Red Riding Hood," said he.
"Thank you kindly, wolf."
"Whither away so early, Little Red Riding Hood?"
"To my grandmother's."
"What have you got in your apron?"
"Cake and wine. Yesterday was baking-day, so poor sick grandmother is to have something good, to make her stronger."
"Where does your grandmother live, Little Red Riding Hood?"
"A good quarter of a league farther on in the wood. Her house stands under the three large oak-trees, the nut-trees are just below. You surely must know it," replied Little Red Riding Hood.

The wolf thought to himself, "What a tender young creature. What a nice plump mouthful, she will be better to eat than the old woman. I must act craftily, so as to catch both." So he walked for a short time by the side of Little Red Riding Hood, and then he said, "see Little Red Riding Hood, how pretty the flowers are about here. Why do you not look round. I believe, too, that you do not hear how sweetly the little birds are singing. You walk gravely along as if you were going to school, while everything else out here in the wood is merry."

Little Red Riding Hood raised her eyes, and when she saw the sunbeams dancing here and there through the trees, and pretty flowers growing everywhere, she thought, suppose I take grandmother a fresh nosegay. That would please her too. It is so early in the day that I shall still get there in good time. And so she ran from the path into the wood to look for flowers. And whenever she had picked one, she fancied that she saw a still prettier one farther on, and ran after it, and so got deeper and deeper into the wood.

Meanwhile the wolf ran straight to the grandmother's house and knocked at the door.
"Who is there?"
"Little Red Riding Hood," replied the wolf. "She is bringing cake and wine. Open the door."
"Lift the latch," called out the grandmother, "I am too weak, and cannot get up."
The wolf lifted the latch, the door sprang open, and without saying a word he went straight to the grandmother's bed, and devoured her. Then he put on her clothes, dressed himself in her cap, laid himself in bed and drew the curtains.
Little Red Riding Hood, however, had been running about picking flowers, and when she had gathered so many that she could carry no more, she remembered her grandmother, and set out on the way to her

She was surprised to find the cottage-door standing open, and when she went into the room, she had such a strange feeling that she said to herself, oh dear, how uneasy I feel to-day, and at other times I like being with grandmother so much.
She called out, "Good morning," but received no answer. So she went to the bed and drew back the curtains. There lay her grandmother with her cap pulled far over her face, and looking very strange.

"Oh, grandmother," she said, "what big ears you have."
"The better to hear you with, my child," was the reply.
"But, grandmother, what big eyes you have," she said.
"The better to see you with, my dear."
"But, grandmother, what large hands you have."
"The better to hug you with."
"Oh, but, grandmother, what a terrible big mouth you have."
"The better to eat you with."
And scarcely had the wolf said this, than with one bound he was out of bed and swallowed up Little Red Riding Hood.

When the wolf had appeased his appetite, he lay down again in the bed, fell asleep and began to snore very loud. The huntsman was just passing the house, and thought to himself, how the old woman is snoring. I must just see if she wants anything.
So he went into the room, and when he came to the bed, he saw that the wolf was lying in it. "Do I find you here, you old sinner," said he. "I have long sought you."
Then just as he was going to fire at him, it occurred to him that the wolf might have devoured the grandmother, and that she might still be saved, so he did not fire, but took a pair of scissors, and began to cut open the stomach of the sleeping wolf.
When he had made two snips, he saw the Little Red Riding Hood shining, and then he made two snips more, and the little girl sprang out, crying, "Ah, how frightened I have been. How dark it was inside the wolf."

And after that the aged grandmother came out alive also, but scarcely able to breathe. Little Red Riding Hood, however, quickly fetched great stones with which they filled the wolf's belly, and when he awoke, he wanted to run away, but the stones were so heavy that he collapsed at once, and fell dead.

Then all three were delighted. The huntsman drew off the wolf's skin and went home with it. The grandmother ate the cake and drank the wine which Little Red Riding Hood had brought, and revived, but Little Red Riding Hood thought to herself, as long as I live, I will never by myself leave the path, to run into the wood, when my mother has forbidden me to do so.
It is also related that once when Little Red Riding Hood was again taking cakes to the old grandmother, another wolf spoke to her, and tried to entice her from the path. Little Red Riding Hood, however, was on her guard, and went straight forward on her way, and told her grandmother that she had met the wolf, and that he had said good-morning to her, but with such a wicked look in his eyes, that if they had not been on the public road she was certain he would have eaten her up. "Well," said the grandmother, "we will shut the door, that he may not come in."

Soon afterwards the wolf knocked, and cried, "open the door, grandmother, I am Little Red Riding Hood, and am bringing you some cakes."
But they did not speak, or open the door, so the grey-beard stole twice or thrice round the house, and at last jumped on the roof, intending to wait until Little Red Riding Hood went home in the evening, and then to steal after her and devour her in the darkness. But the grandmother saw what was in his thoughts. In front of the house was a great stone trough, so she said to the child, take the pail, Little Red Riding Hood. I made some sausages yesterday, so carry the water in which I boiled them to the trough. Little Red Riding Hood carried until the great trough was quite full. Then the smell of the sausages reached the wolf, and he sniffed and peeped down, and at last stretched out his neck so far that he could no longer keep his footing and began to slip, and slipped down from the roof straight into the great trough, and was drowned. But Little Red Riding Hood went joyously home, and no one ever did anything to harm her again."

English translation by Margaret Hunt; http://www.fln.vcu.edu/grimm/redridinghood.html.

The sexual predator lives among us and presents a socially acceptable appearance. And, since our politically correct society encourages diversity of all sorts, what is socially acceptable appearance today is broader than in years past. Many sexual predators are so labelled from actions they committed years and years before: Romeo and Juliet crimes. Many live within the household: the rich and beneficent uncle in Monsoon Wedding. Many are locked away for good. But that still leaves enough of these wolves to harm our children on a daily basis. Granted, many victims are not murdered. But all are injured severely. The four legged wolf has been eradicated in most parts of America. In fact, it is being reintroduced as an important part of the ecosystem in some states. (The increasing problem of deer overpopulation and attendant auto accidents, crop damage, landscaping damage, and rising threat of cervid wasting disease calls for some sort of predator. With the popularity of deer hunting on the wane, and the dense populations of humans sharing the deer habitat the human is less able to fill that role. So I suppose it is just a matter of time and we will hear wolves howling in the night.)

But a much more deadly, two legged variety of wolf is out and about. And our children are their prey.

Protecting Kids From Predators: Signs of Abuse, What to Do.
Thursday, August 17, 2006 By Colette Bouchez; http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,209058,00.html.

"Now if you're thinking this means cautioning your children about taking candy from strangers and holding their hand extra tight in the shopping mall -- well, you're only partly right. According to BJS (U.S. Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics) , assault by a stranger accounts for just 3 percent of molestations in children under the age of 6, and just 5 percent in children aged six to 11.
Since winning the child's trust is part of the abuse pattern, the vast majority of sexual abuse occurs with adults the child knows and comes to trust. And it often occurs right in their home.
"Sexual offenders are not 'dirty old men' or strangers lurking in alleys. More often, they are known and trusted by the children they victimize, and frequently are members of the family," says Esther Deblinger, PhD, a member of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, and the developer of a treatment for childhood sexual abuse.
Amaranth says the abuser can just as easily be a neighbor, a close family friend, a baby sitter, a soccer coach, a scout leader, or anyone in a position of trust and authority.
While experts caution parents to be vigilant about all those who seek exclusive contact with their children, they also caution against starting a "witch hunt" for anyone who is nice to their kid.
"The message you don't want to give your child is that the world is a bad or scary place -- or that they should be afraid of everyone who is nice to them," says Amaranth.
So how do you strike a balance between protecting your child and encouraging growth and trust?
It begins, say experts, by building awareness and trust into your own relationship with your children."

This article states BJS data that only five per cent of sexual assaults in children age six to eleven are committed by strangers. That does not seem intuitively correct. But I suspect that the data are including a broad range of assaults. If one took abduction for sexual purposes and murder for the subset, I believe the number of such crimes committed by strangers would be much, much higher than five per cent. These numbers are hard to come by, or at least so far it has seemed that way to me. And there is a continual back round noise generated by people who oppose such "panic incitement" on the part of media and concerned parents. Some of the counter talk is at a minimum strange. A paranoid person might think the wolves preying on children have an advocacy group. And indeed, there have been recent cases where family members covered for a sexual predator and likely facilitated murder of a child--right here in Florida.

Predator Panic: A Closer Look: Special Report
Ben Radford
Volume 30.5, September / October 2006; http://www.csicop.org/si/show/predator_panic_a_closer_look/

Recidivism Revisited:

"Much of the concern over sex offenders stems from the perception that if they have committed one sex offense, they are almost certain to commit more. This is the reason given for why sex offenders (instead of, say, murderers or armed robbers) should be monitored and separated from the public once released from prison. While it’s true that serial sex offenders (like serial killers) are by definition likely to strike again, the reality is that very few sex offenders commit further sex crimes.

The high recidivism rate among sex offenders is repeated so often that it is accepted as truth, but in fact recent studies show that the recidivism rates for sex offenses is not unusually high. According to a U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics study (“Recidivism of Sex Offenders Released from Prison in 1994”), just five percent of sex offenders followed for three years after their release from prison in 1994 were arrested for another sex crime. A study released in 2003 by the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that within three years, 3.3 percent of the released child molesters were arrested again for committing another sex crime against a child. Three to five percent is hardly a high repeat offender rate.

In the largest and most comprehensive study ever done of prison recidivism, the Justice Department found that sex offenders were in fact less likely to reoffend than other criminals. The 2003 study of nearly 10,000 men convicted of rape, sexual assault, and child molestation found that sex offenders had a re-arrest rate 25 percent lower than for all other criminals. Part of the reason is that serial sex offenders—those who pose the greatest threat—rarely get released from prison, and the ones who do are unlikely to re-offend. If released sex offenders are in fact no more likely to re-offend than murderers or armed robbers, there seems little justification for the public’s fear and the monitoring laws targeting them. (Studies also suggest that sex offenders living near schools or playgrounds are no more likely to commit a sex crime than those living elsewhere.)

While the abduction, rape, and killing of children by strangers is very, very rare, such incidents receive a lot of media coverage, leading the public to overestimate how common these cases are."

Italics and bold face are mine. Here is a suggestion of a sexual offenders' advocacy. Well, ours is a big country with room for a lot of people. Right.

By now I am sure you want to know more about Bruno Bettelheim, so I include the following discussion of his biographer's slant on the subject. This is courtesy of :

http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/01/26/reviews/970126.boxer.html; Sarah Boxer reviewing Richard Pollak's book, January 27, 1997, for the New York Times.

THE CREATION OF DR. B A Biography of Bruno Bettelheim.By Richard Pollak.Illustrated. 478 pp. New York: Simon & Schuster. $28.

"Bruno BETTELHEIM'S new biographer lays his cards on the table right away: he thinks Bettelheim was a pathological liar. Richard Pollak, the former executive editor and literary editor of The Nation, got interested in the famous psychotherapist and author in order to learn more about his own younger brother, who died on a family vacation in 1948 when he slipped through a hayloft chute during a game of hide-and-seek. The boy had been at the Orthogenic School for emotionally disturbed children at the University of Chicago for five years before he died, so, in 1969, Mr. Pollak figured Bettelheim, the director of the school, could tell him about his dead brother.
Instead, Bettelheim called Mr. Pollak's father a simple-minded ''schlemiel'' and his mother a false martyr. Then he bluntly announced that the child had committed suicide. And, he added, Mr. Pollak's mother was largely to blame, because she had rejected him at birth. ''What is it about these Jewish mothers?'' Bettelheim fumed.
Mr. Pollak left reeling. On reflection, though, something seemed fishy. He recalled that the hayloft his brother died in was so treacherous that he himself had almost fallen, too. And his mother, whatever her quirks, was not the harpy Bettelheim described. Mr. Pollak began exploring other options. What if the great Dr. Bettelheim, the champion of emotionally disturbed children and the author of ''The Uses of Enchantment,'' ''Freud and Man's Soul'' and ''The Empty Fortress,'' was in fact a bitter, sadistic, anti-Semitic, mother-hating liar?
That is the hypothesis Mr. Pollak follows in ''The Creation of Dr. B.'' Although Bettelheim declined to be interviewed for the book, Mr. Pollak interviewed two of Bettelheim's three children, his first wife and a slew of colleagues, editors, students and friends. And many of them agreed that, in the words of Jacquelyn Seevak Sanders, Bettelheim's successor at the Orthogenic School, ''you couldn't believe anything he said.''

One would be well advised to suspend belief when the biographer has so much animus. I am going to ask you beloved readers to read Bruno for yourself. Maybe he was a tortured soul--you might remember the cameo appearance in Woody Allen's mock documentary, Zelig (1983). Bruno Bettelheim accepted Woody Allen's invitation to appear as himself in the film. It presaged his tragic end by suicide March 13, 1990. He suffered the indignity of concentration camp life and later wrote about the experience. At least he was spared the indignity and pain of his biographer's cruelty. He helped a lot of people. His book on fairy tales helped me and my children. I know he would have had something to offer us, were he still here. WWBBD.

Why doesn't everyone have one?

2009-10-20T10:13:00.000-07:00

The iPhone camera is good even in low light conditions, and is less intimidating than a standard camera, especially one with flash. One must master the technique of holding the phone steady and actuating the release "button" without shaking the device. Here is a medley of difficult subjects and subject matter shot with a variety of lighting conditions. The pixels can be enhanced to simulate flash but have not been adjusted in these photographs.

The clown and the harlequin are from the Museum of Musical Automata housed in the BarockSchloss, Bruchsal, Germany. "Nothing scarier than a clown after midnight."

Phil loves Babysbreath, and can't get enough of it.

The iPhone is silent and so does good candid camera. Skin tones are the best test of a camera and film/digital system. I have been impressed with the iPhone in this regard. My collection of Leica lenses and bodies pretty much stays home these days.

The lens is surprisingly good and handles distant and near scenes. Sometimes it surprises you with the quality of the image.

I had a Blackberry and loved it. At first I found the iPhone more difficult for typing. In fact, all these tiny informational devices are frustrating if you actually type--as opposed to index finger picking--your messages, notes, other various entries. But after some time passed my "typing" on the iPhone has gotten easier and quicker. Some short cuts and techniques one figures out for himself and others must be learned from documentation or a teacher. As an example, when you want to write "u umlaut" you first select Deutsch, lower center; then Leerzeichen appears, then you press "u" (and the keyboard is no longer Qwerty, but not much different), and hold the "u" key until a range of special character "u's" appear. Slide your finger to the one you want and linger there a while, and magically your "u umlaut" appears in text. I stumbled upon this one myself but could more easily have read how to do the languages.

The camera is good, and one can tweak the pixels so as to simulate flash, picking the version of the image you most like. The photographs move so easily back and forth from iPhone to computer either PC or Mac. And if the iPhone photos are good enough for David Hockney, they are surely more than good enough for the rest of us.

The weather application is terrific for travellers or weather junkies. You get six days and most cities on earth. Notes and Memos are good. Really facile. These Apple geeks are really good. I use the Calendar a lot. Great for a trip.

Stocks application is a must for even the poorest capitalist. And there are hundreds of applications to choose from for spreadsheet effects.

I like the clock application, too. I set all the antique clocks in the house according to this iPhone clock. Of course, clocks from the late 1600's and early and mid 1700's drift a bit for the rest of the week. But they all chime in harmony and synchrony for the first part of the week.

The iPhone is a good phone, too. I like it the best of any I have ever had.

Maps Application is fun and easy to figure out. There is a compass application for the 3GS, and I would like to have had that function but am not willing to buy a new phone just to get that one feature. I have used the navigation in remote parts of Germany and found it helpful. At times and in places my iPhone and I were the only English speakers within hailing distance. The satellite view of things is fun, too.

Of course, there is a calculator. It's pretty basic and will not satisfy the needs of engineers and physicists who have their own equipment anyway.

Mail application serves the purpose. Having a number of e-mail accounts and providers might mean a trip to the ATT store or the Apple store for expert help.

And lastly, there is the APP store providing more than you could ever want in terms of further applications for this little wonder. Two years ago Steve Jobs said there would be no room for amateurs writing applications for the iPhone. The exclusivity of the product mirrors Mac and the way some PC problems just don't happen to Mac users. I don't pretend to understand this but there must be less room for viruses and all other nuisances with Mac. At any rate, that kind of pronouncement just energizes the hacker community. So there are now all kinds of non Apple applications. Of course, there is always the possibility that your hacker app will be working fine until an Apple upgrade arrives and bricks your phone. Enter the iPhone App Store. Apple says it checks each and every game, puzzle, recipe box, and so forth. There must be 100,000 or more apps (applications) by now for this truly astounding piece of engineering.

There is an old joke: the world's leading scientists and engineers gathered in New York City to reach a consensus on what was the greatest invention of the human race. A distinguished guest said the wheel. Another said fire. Others submitted speech, writing, gun powder, domesticated grains and animals, electricity, and so forth. From the back of the room a person said the thermos bottle. The high powered panel guffawed "what's so great about the thermos bottle?" "It keeps hot things hot, and cold things cold," replied the man in the back. "What's so great about that?" countered the panel of experts. To which the man answered "how does it know?"

Well, I submit the iPhone as at least one of the seven wonders of the modern age, if not mankind's greatest invention. Bravo, Steve Jobs and crew at Apple.

Built to last . . .

2009-10-17T07:20:00.000-07:00

At the Leomuehle:

These two gentlemen are standing in front of the main door to the Leomuehle, built in 1533 by Curth Gottfried von Loewenstein, local heavy weight aristocrat and entrepreneur. Soon to be five hundred years old, the mill still grinds grains into bakers' flours and animal feeds. The only major difference between the mill of today and the one of von Loewenstein's day is the way the great water wheel's work is harnessed. Today it generates hydroelectricity 24/7. When not utilized for grinding grains into bakers' flours or animal feeds, the electricity that is generated is sold back to the grid.

I toured the mill with an old friend (on the left in the picture) who has been helping me with my Nord Hessen family history. Like the mill, he was built to last, too. He is a world war II veteran who was captured by the American forces, thanks to which experience he learned English. And he is pretty much the only person in his little city who speaks English. The day that this picture was taken was the first day that he wore a tie other than black--black to mourn the death of his wife of sixty-one years, the one love of his life, mother of their children, and grandmother and great grandmother.

He is still in grief, but walked me into the ground as we toured his city. Although he is retired from farming he still works hard during the planting and harvesting times. And he lives in the old Hof in his own little suite. (This Hof is separate from the old living quarters of what was once a knight's schloss. The original schloss was the present farm house and the more elaborate house next door--a very large structure. And the present farm house was the animal quarters. Not much gets torn down here, but a lot gets remodeled or refitted. These Hessians built things to last.)

The same aristocrat built the church in Bad Zwesten. This part of Germany went Protestant very early. "As the prince, so his people" was the way one's religion was decided in that time. I was told that late one Sunday morning my grandfather (who died when my mother was only sixteen) left the church services, placed his book of songs on the table of the family's old house, and left the city for Hamburg and America. No explanations given. Since the family's business for generations was wagon making and since he was not mechanically inclined, I think he rejected his future in the Old World and decided to try his luck in the new.

The church in Jesberg, Hessen
:

I like the church in Bad Zwesten, and it is in very good condition, as are the others in this part of Germany. My favorite is is the church in Jesberg, an even smaller city from which my grandfather's fathers came. Europe has a reputation of being post Christian, and a land of no belief (except for its new immigrants' Muslim faith). That is not what one sees in the rural parts of Germany. These churches are attended and attended to. Probably some disconnect between the country mice and the city mice.

The church in Kerstenhausen, from which my mother's father's mother's people came.

The bell tower of the Bad Zwesten church is coming off a renovation for which all the money has been raised. I offered help but was politely told that all the money was in place. At which point you know you are in a special place indeed. You are not in South Florida anymore.

What an incredibly well preserved medieval building: The Guild Hall in Haguenau:

This is the Guild Hall in Haguenau, Bas-Rhin, northern Alsace. Now indisputably French, Alsace has been a part of the German world for most of its history. This magnificent building is only a century old but feels truly ancient. It was built when Alsace was German. It looks to me as though this one was built to last, too. The archives for the Department de Bas-Rhin are housed here. There is also a neat and tidy little museum of the region which includes the Forest of Haguenau. This was a free city in the Empire and rich. The burghers and tradesmen kept more of their hard earned money because they had no intermediate grasping hands of church and state. Haguenau was the lead city of the Decapole (the ten free cities of Alsace). The Battle of Alsace in WWII destroyed most of the city along with surrounding cities including Kaltenhouse from which my paternal immigrant ancestor came to America in 1828. Read Nicholson Baker's Human Smoke if you wonder whether all the death and destruction of WWII was absolutely necessary. Unless you are afraid to think such a thought.

Here is a part of the Roman wall in Barcelona. Now, I always considered the origin of the city's name to be Hamilcar Barca's family (the most well known of them was Hannibal). So, Barca--(l)ona, or Barca's city. But now the official version is that this is a city of and by Romans. And it is hard to argue with the ruins. But etymology makes for a good argument, too. Once again, the old ones, European or North African, built things to last. Barring extreme periods of time or modern weapons of great destruction, the buildings of the Old World tend to last.

Let not a monument give you or me hopes, Since not a pinch of dust remains of Cheôps.

--Byron

The quadrilateral pyramids of the Giza plateau: we could not duplicate them today. They are apparently built, against the advice of the Good Book, on sand. Yet their subsidence is negligible forty centuries after their construction. (And, though it appears that the pyramids are built on a sea of sand, they must be on rock since the deep chamber in the Great Pyramid is cut from the living rock one hundred twenty feet below ground level.) Here is the author of the best book ever on the architectural features of the Great Pyramids, James Ferguson:

Come we now to the "Great Pyramid," "which is still," says Lenormant, "at least in respect of its mass, the most prodigious of all human constructions," The "Great Pyramid," or "First Pyramid of Ghizeh," as it is indifferently termed, is situated almost due north-east of the "Second Pyramid," at the distance of about two hundred yards. The length of each side at the base was originally seven hundred and sixty-four feet, or fifty-seven feet more than that of the sides of the "Second Pyramid." Its original perpendicular height was something over four hundred and eighty feet, its cubic contents exceeded eighty-nine million feet, and the weight of its mass 6,840,000 tons. In height it thus exceeded Strasburg Cathedral by above six feet, St. Peter's at Rome by above thirty feet, St. Stephen's at Vienna by fifty feet St. Paul's, London, by a hundred and twenty feet, and the Capitol at Washington by nearly two hundred feet. Its area was thirteen acres, one rood, and twenty-two poles, or nearly two acres more than the area of the "Second Pyramid." which was fourfold that of the "Third Pyramid," which, as we have seen, was that of an ordinary London square. Its cubic contents would build a city of twenty-two thousand such houses as were above described, and laid in a line of cubic squares would reach a distance of nearly seventeen thousand miles, or girdle two-thirds of the earth's circumference at the equator. Herodotus says that its construction required the continuous labour of a hundred thousand men for the space of twenty years, and moderns do not regard the estimate as exaggerated.
The "Great Pyramid" presents, moreover, many other marvels besides its size. First, there is the massiveness of the blocks of which it is composed. The basement stones are in many cases thirty feet long by five feet high, and four or five wide: they must contain from six hundred to seven hundred and fifty cubic feet each, and weigh from forty-six to fifty-seven tons. The granite blocks which roof over the upper sepulchral chamber are nearly nineteen feet long, by two broad and from three to four deep. The relieving stones above the same chamber, and those of the entrance passage, are almost equally massive. Generally the external blocks are of a size with which modern builders scarcely ever venture to deal, though the massiveness diminishes as the pyramid is ascended. The bulk of the interior is, however, of comparatively small stones; but even these are carefully hewn and squared, so as to fit together compactly.
Further, there are the passages, the long gallery, the ventilation shafts, and the sepulchral chambers all of them remarkable, and some of them simply astonishing. The "Great Pyramid" guards three chambers. One lies deep in the rock, about a hundred and twenty feet beneath the natural surface of the ground, and is placed almost directly below the apex of the structure. It measures forty-six feet by twenty-seven, and is eleven feet high. The access to it is by a long and narrow passage which commences in the north side of the pyramid, about seventy feet above the original base, and descends for forty yards through the masonry, and then for seventy more in the same line through the solid rock, when it changes its direction, becoming horizontal for nine yards, and so entering the chamber itself. The two other chambers are reached by an ascending passage, which branches off from the descending one at the distance of about thirty yards from the entrance, and mounts up through the heart of the pyramid for rather more than forty yards, when it divides into two. A low horizontal gallery, a hundred and ten feet long, leads to a chamber which has been called "the Queen's"--a room about nineteen feet long by seventeen broad, roofed in with sloping blocks, and having a height of twenty feet in the centre. Another longer and much loftier gallery continues on for a hundred and fifty feet in the line of the ascending passage, and is then connected by a short horizontal passage with the upper-most or "King's Chamber." Here was found a sarcophagus believed to be that of King Khufu, since the name of Khufu was scrawled in more than one place on the chamber walls.
The construction of this chamber--the very kernel of the whole building--is exceedingly remarkable. It is a room of thirty-four feet in length, with a width of seventeen feet, and a height of nineteen, composed wholly of granite blocks of great size, beautifully polished, and fitted together with great care. The construction of the roof is particularly admirable. First, the chamber is covered in with nine huge blocks, each nearly nineteen feet long and four feet wide, which are laid side by side upon the walls so as to form a complete ceiling. Then above these blocks is a low chamber similarly covered in, and this is repeated four times; after which there is a fifth opening, triangular, and roofed in by a set of huge sloping blocks, which meet at the apex and support each other. The object is to relieve the chamber from any superincumbent weight, and prevent it from being crushed in by the mass of material above it; and this object has been so completely attained that still, at the expiration of above forty centuries, the entire chamber, with its elaborate roof, remains intact, without crack or settlement of any kind.
Further, from the great chamber are carried two ventilation-shafts, or air-passages, northwards and southwards, which open on the outer surface of the pyramid, and are respectively two hundred and thirty-three and one hundred and ninety-four feet long. These passages are square, or nearly so, and have a diameter varying between six and nine inches. They give a continual supply of pure air to the chamber, and keep it dry at all seasons.
The Great Gallery is also of curious construction. Extending for a distance of one hundred and fifty feet, and rising at an angle of 26° 18', it has a width of five feet at the base and a height of above thirty feet. The side walls are formed of seven layers of stone, each projecting a few inches over that below it. The gallery thus gradually contracts towards the top, which has a width of four feet only, and is covered in with stones that reach across it, and rest on the walls at either side. The exact object of so lofty a gallery has not been ascertained; but it must have helped to keep the air of the interior pure and sweet, by increasing the space through which it had to circulate.

(James Ferguson, in his great work, the History of Architecture.)

So, where are we today with respect to building things to last? Need I ask? Check for yourselves the subsidence rates of buildings in New York City, Houston, Beijing, and Shanghai. The magnificent skyline of Pudong is built on river mud. Granted, a million or so piles were driven into the mud. But river city skyscrapers are problematic by nature. And those grew like weeds. Houston is built on alluvial mud and is going the same way of subsidence. Ditto Beijing. New York City is atop hard rock but subsiding nonetheless. The one remaining monument of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World will likely outlast any and all such wonders of the modern world. I wouldn't say that is a bad thing. But in a world of Kleenex a handkerchief is a welcome sight.

Making that handkerchief: El Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Familia, Barcelona. This is the master work of the mad cap genius Antoni Gaudi. There is nothing in the world like this. This is a must see for any and all who possess some spiritual sense, love architecture, need to see something hopeful, or just like the exotic. It won't be completed in our lifetime, just as was the case with the great Gothic cathedrals. It might restore your faith, if not in God, then in mankind. If nothing else, it is folly on a truly monumental scale. It is breathtaking.

A Gothic cathedral without flying buttresses, without straight lines, hand wrought of cut stones, replete with sculptural details from the Good Book and from fantasy, and all of it on a huge scale. See it to believe it.

The Burial Ground of Empires.

2009-09-24T18:09:00.000-07:00

"When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains, and the women come out to cut up what remains, jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains and go to your gawd like a soldier."

Rudyard Kipling.

My mother loved to read

and was a truly incurable romantic. She loved Rudyard Kipling's Kim, still in print more than a century after its first publication. She named my brother after the main character because she hoped he would enjoy travelling and seeing the world. This character, Kimball O'Hara, is actually a British agent, and surely one of the youngest agents in the field. It is a really good book, very enjoyable and surprisingly pertinent.
We have drained the proverbial swamp and are now up to our ass in alligators. (Good saying for Florida but not going to mean much in Pashto.) Let's look at this ancient land so rich in history and so front and center in our war on terror. Some back round and more on the book, Kim:

"Rudyard Kipling was the first to chronicle the treacherous and often clandestine exploits of the subcontinent's so-called Great Game. A century later, the West should heed his advice and exercise 'extreme caution before contemplating an extended plunge into the Afghan morass'
It was published exactly 100 years ago, in the fall of 1901, but it is hard to imagine any work of fiction as bitterly relevant today -- in the second half of September, 2001 -- as Kim, Rudyard Kipling's masterpiece. Too easily dismissed as an artifact of patronizing "Orientalism," Kim is not only "the finest novel in the English language with an Indian theme," according to Bengali scholar Nirad Chaudhuri, "but also one of the greatest of English novels in spite of the theme." But that theme could not be more contemporary: Kim tells of the Great Game, the secret war an otherwise peace-loving British raj conducted against sinister forces of disorder located across the northern passes -- in Afghanistan, to be precise. Equally contemporary -- almost heartbreaking in the aftermath of last week's terror -- is the Lahore-born author's brilliant portrayal of the precious Indian civilization that needs protection: a gloriously diverse, ecumenical society supported by deep traditions of religious and social tolerance, yet tragically vulnerable. Suddenly, Kipling's striking effort to imagine a humane imperialism -- to honour his beloved India in the name of the raj -- does not seem so quaint. Kim has always been more influential as a political, rather than a literary, work. Anti-imperialists will not be surprised to learn that Allen Dulles, director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency during the height of the Cold War, revered Kim and died with a well-thumbed copy at his bedside. The Great Game that Kipling immortalized, pitting Russia against Britain in an extraordinary clandestine struggle that swept across Central Asia throughout the 19th century, flowed seamlessly into the secret war that Dulles led, with all its geopolitical fallacies intact. The buoyant, archaically noble spirit of Kim transformed easily into the beau ideal of the early CIA."

http://www.sfu.ca/~burr/Afghanistan/John~Barber~re~Kipling.html.

Alexander of Macedon invaded Afghanistan after defeating and killing the Persian emperor, Darius, and assuming his crown in 330 BC. He fought his hardest campaigns in Afghanistan but met Rokhsana (Roxanne) there. She was the daughter of a local Afghan chief. From there Alexander went on to invade India, where he was injured. He died in Baluchistan on the way back to Afghanistan and Roxanne. Alexander was only 32 years old when he died. After his death Roxanne and her young son were murdered by insurgent Afghans.

In 1220 AD Genghis Khan, the megalomaniac formerly known as Timujin of the Mongols, invaded Afghanistan with an army of 220,000 warriors. Undeterred by the massive size of the invading army the locals fought him for five years. Finally, after the death in battle of one of his sons, Genghis Khan laid waste the land of the Afghans. Ironically, he ended a flourishing culture and erased many cities and monuments. Genghis Khan died at the age of 72 years in 1226 AD. His body was carried back to his homeland and buried in a hidden place. Recently archaeologists believe they may have found the grave.

Ahmad Shah Baba ruled Afghanistan as its first king selected by the elders and leaders of the Pashto speaking elements. He changed his name to Abdali Durrani. He ruled with the help of elders and chiefs until his death in 1772. His realm grew to be larger than present day Afghanistan.

In 1833 and again in 1839 the British fought in Afghanistan. There interests were primarily standing down Russia which was influencing Iran. This was hot war/cold war and it was termed The Great Game. Britain aimed at regime change. Britain expended large sums of money and tied up armies for decades.

The Afghans experimented with different forms of government always with the Loya Jirga or council of elders and chiefs. There were periods of liberalism and of crack down. Finally Marxists made inroads and on Christmas of 1979 Soviet troops invaded to install Babrak Karmal.

This effort went smoothly at first

but the Soviet army met furious resistance and the conflict soon developed into a Soviet version of America's Vietnam. The cost to the USSR was mammoth. Another grave for another empire.

In 1992 a former mujahid, village mullah and head of the local madrassa, Mullah Mohammad Omar, gathered mujahidin and former students around himself and formed the group who called themselves taliban, for seekers of knowledge. The Taliban began a series of attacks on notorious warlords and established their near mythic reputation. They had a target rich environment--lots of despicable warlords to attack and defeat. Pakistan recognized the rule of the Taliban as the legitimate government of the country in May, 1997. Saudi Arabia followed soon thereafter.

By the middle of 2000 Osama bin Laden

was the Taliban paymaster. His agents attacked Ahmad Shah Masood September 9, 2001, in a most cowardly way posing as newsmen with a bomb laden camera. Masood died September 10, 2001.
The following day Osama bin Laden's suicide pilots flew into the Twin Trade Towers in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, DC. A third target was either the Capitol Building or the White House but was foiled by courageous, unarmed passengers on the plane.

It is understandable that our president targeted Afghanistan in the War on Terror following the attacks on New York City and Washington, DC.

Why Iraq was chosen we might never know. It must have appeared worthwhile at the time.

The two theaters of war are going to cost us more than we can afford. We are no longer defending the homeland. We have effected regime change in both countries. We swore we would not engage in nation building, and could not have chosen two less auspicious countries for such a venture. There are now democratically elected governments in both nations and that is more than can be said for the Muslim world in general or the neighborhood in particular. Let's look at costs:

War costs may total $2.4 trillion

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By Ken Dilanian, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — The cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could total $2.4 trillion through the next decade, or nearly $8,000 per man, woman and child in the country, according to a Congressional Budget Office estimate scheduled for release Wednesday.
A previous CBO estimate put the wars' costs at more than $1.6 trillion. This one adds $705 billion in interest, taking into account that the conflicts are being funded with borrowed money.
The new estimate also includes President Bush's request Monday for another $46 billion in war funding, said Rep. John Spratt, D-S.C., budget committee chairman, who provided the CBO's new numbers to USA TODAY.
Assuming that Iraq accounts for about 80% of that total, the Iraq war would cost $1.9 trillion, including $564 billion in interest, said Thomas Kahn, Spratt's staff director. The committee holds a hearing on war costs this morning.
"The number is so big, it boggles the mind," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill.
Sean Kevelighan, a spokesman for the White House budget office, said, "Congress should stop playing politics with our troops by trying to artificially inflate war funding levels." He declined to provide a White House estimate.
The CBO estimates assume that 75,000 troops will remain in both countries through 2017, including roughly 50,000 in Iraq. That is a "very speculative" projection, though it's not entirely unreasonable, said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst at the non-partisan Lexington Institute.
As of Sept. 30, the two wars have cost $604 billion, the CBO says. Adjusted for inflation, that is higher than the costs of the Korea and Vietnam conflicts, according to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
Defense spending during those two wars accounted for a far larger share of the American economy.
In the months before the March 2003 Iraq invasion, the Bush administration estimated the Iraq war would cost no more than $50 billion.
S

http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2007-10-23-wacosts_N.htm

Where to next for the USA in Afghanistan? The graveyard of empires is going to claim another victim, or so it would appear. Our courageous soldiers and dedicated generals and superior technology are not going to make a peaceful and productive nation of Afghanistan. Look closely at the history of this land. It would take a very brutal central rule fully accepted by the council of elders and chiefs, fully backed by the might of the US Armed Forces, and financed for the duration. Short answer: declare victory and leave with honor. The ugly rule of the Taliban is ended. A democratically elected government is in its place. The land is as pacified as it has ever been. Anyone who wishes to live in peace and harmony has already left or is planning on doing so soon. This is a graveyard and we should leave it before we are interred in it. Save our brave warriors for a more worthy cause. Save our treasury for a more fitting use. Save the Afghan people who fight much better than they govern or farm or manufacture.

Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana

REREAD THE BOOK OF CHANGE

2009-09-24T06:08:00.000-07:00

The iconic business book "Who Moved My Cheese?" is all about adapting to change. We might need to reread it as preparation for what is to come in Health Care in America. The electorate gave Obama a mandate for change, at least as he and the mainstream media in our country see it. The change that is coming was change, NOS--change, not otherwise specified. We the people bought a pig in a poke.

We will need to adapt to many changes that are coming. Most of these changes will not be on account of our new president and his congress. But he fact that America is fast becoming a socialist society, where government is the biggest employer in the land, is his doing. If this socialism is being constructed along the lines of National Socialism meets Mandarin Meritocracy (read Ivy League elite politicians and bureaucrats will attempt to run America and everything in it), our nation is about to break the sound barrier of social change. This is going to produce a shock wave. It's not going to feel good or look pretty.

Toll the bell for the death of Christian America. Unless you hate Christian America, in which case break out the champagne. And mourn the loss of our Judeo-Christian culture with its peculiar and unique melange of values, mores, ethics, hopes and aspirations. And say good bye to the Protestant work ethic, too, along with love thy neighbor as thyself, and the sacredness of life, and so much more. Secular humanism might be secular but it is hardly humane. Differential valuation of individual human lives according to productivity for the society at large, those who consume more care than they give will be valued low, and those who give nothing will have no value. Their lives will be forfeit to the state. Read the writings and opinions of Ezechiel J. Emanuel, MD, PhD, who is the chief advisor to Obama for Health Care Details, and Bioethics. See what you make of his ethics. Imagine what he is recommending to his Chief.

Nations have travelled this road before. When life in general and human life in particular is not sacred, every American is in jeopardy. Most especially those who have special needs. Asian Indian sages have observed that cultures can be judged by how they treat the cow. She is the most gentle, forgiving, pleasant, patient, and productive of animals. She is not so much sacred in India as revered and appreciated. Contrast that with our slaughter houses and feed lots. In particular, look at kosher butchery. Look at how the cow is treated in kosher slaughter--if you can stand to look at that.

Life is sacred. It is not a question of whether the challenged, weak, infirm, and elderly among us are worthy of our love and care, but of whether we are good enough to know it. Abortion is rightly viewed as a private matter between a woman and her doctor. But it is hardly something to celebrate. Secular humanism celebrates abortion and will defend the right to extinguish human life even when the fetus is term and viable--what do you think late term abortion means? Who was the most recent martyr for the cause of terminating human life in late term pregnancy? He was a major supporter of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, our present head of Health and Human Services. Those who are overhauling our medical system do not represent diversity of beliefs or values in this matter. They are a group for whom life is not particularly or intrinsically sacred. Read the ethicist-in-chief for his views. See my post on Ezechiel J. Emanuel, MD, PhD.

It is camp to denigrate Roman Catholicism. The Church is one of very few things that one can lampoon these, politically correct days. But the Church stood up against murderous thugs who were in power in Germany. (Under the pope that some who call themselves historians (but who lack the fairness and objectivity of the historian), labelled Hitler's pope no less.) Check this out, please:

http://www.shoaheducation.com/t4.html: Bishop Galen and the Outcry Against T-4.

"During WWII, the Catholic Church had far more latitude than other denominations partly because many of the higher echelon of the Nazis had been raised Catholic or still were, and because at least half or more of the Catholic Clergy supported the new regime, which had initial but then wavering favor with the Vatican. The Wehrmacht saw many Catholic young men joining the ranks, in a 'God and Country' spirit during the early years as well. A few persons though, noted throughout that time, that the new Regime was not in accord with basic Christian and Catholic principles, and Catholic leaders such as Preysing, the Bishop of Berlin and Galen, stood against Nazi Racial Policies from the beginning, while others such as Faulhaber from Munich, supported and even hosted gala birthday parties for Hitler.
Catholic Clergy who opposed Hitler's policies often risked their lives as did those from other Christian denominations and some were imprisoned and killed. Notably, Galen, early wrote in vehement opposition to the policies of the T-4 Program in the massive State Killing of Innocents. It was one of his homilies which Sophie and Hans Scholl and the White Rose printed into pamphlets, distributing them at the University of Munich. The pamphlet called for the immediate end to the killings, leaning on traditional and contemporary Catholic doctrine. It was among the literature for which the Scholls and other members of the White Rose were tried, convicted and guillotined."

Whether neoatheists like it or not, the Catholic Church stood up to bullies and still does. Something tells me that popular as they are, Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens are not about to risk the guillotine for any cause or any persons. I think they are all talk. Please see my post on this subject if you have time. As far as our elected leadership goes, I don't so much worry that they will not stand up to bullies as that they are the bullies.

This is from The Irish Independent, October 30, 1999), and shows a fetal hand grasping the finger of his in-utero surgeon who is going to repair the defects of spina bifida and then put him back in the uterus for a few more months of gestation.

"Take a good look at this picture. It's one of the most remarkable photographs ever taken. The tiny hand of a foetus reaches out from a mother's womb to clasp a surgeon's healing finger. It is, by the way, 21 weeks old, an age at which it could still be legally aborted. The tiny hand in the picture above belongs to a baby which is due to be born on December 28. It was taken during an operation in America recently."

A human fetus is a human. And any society that applauds the termination of human life in not humane. Whether it's Muslim ululation in response to an American or Israeli tragedy or NOW rejoicing in yet another victory over their right-to-life opponents. Yes, I grant that our laws protect the killing of the not yet born, and that it is better to have this be a private matter between a woman and her doctor than put government and law and order in between the two. But it does not sanctify abortion or make it less reprehensible. Kosher butchery is legal, too. But it is reprehensible. Doubt me on this one? Check it out yourself. The point of this is not to change established law of the land or make legal illegal. The point is to know that our society must tread carefully in the Great Health Care debate. Others before us have gone down an ill chosen path.

"EUTHANASIA" KILLINGS

"Forced sterilization in Germany was the forerunner of the systematic killing of the mentally ill and the handicapped. In October 1939, Hitler himself initiated a decree which empowered physicians to grant a "mercy death" to "patients considered incurable according to the best available human judgment of their state of health." The intent of the so called "euthanasia" program, however, was not to relieve the suffering of the chronically ill. The Nazi regime used the term as a euphemism: its aim was to exterminate the mentally ill and the handicapped, thus "cleansing" the "Aryan" race of persons considered genetically defective and a financial burden to society.

The idea of killing the incurably ill was posed well before 1939. In the 1920s, debate on this issue centered on a book coauthored by Alfred Hoche, a noted psychiatrist, and Karl Binding, a prominent scholar of criminal law. They argued that economic savings justified the killing of "useless lives" ("idiots" and "congenitally crippled"). Economic deprivation during World War I provided the context for this idea. During the war, patients in asylums had ranked low on the list for rationing of food and medical supplies, and as a result, many died from starvation or disease. More generally, the war undermined the value attached to individual life and, combined with Germany's humiliating defeat, led many nationalists to consider ways to regenerate the nation as a whole at the expense of individual rights.

In 1935 Hitler stated privately that "in the event of war, [he] would take up the question of euthanasia and enforce it" because "such a problem would be more easily solved" during wartime. War would provide both a cover for killing and a pretext--hospital beds and medical personnel would be freed up for the war effort. The upheaval of war and the diminished value of human life during wartime would also, Hitler believed, mute expected opposition. To make the connection to the war explicit, Hitler's decree was backdated to September 1, 1939, the day Germany invaded Poland.

Fearful of public reaction, the Nazi regime never proposed a formal "euthanasia" law. Unlike the forced sterilizations, the killing of patients in mental asylums and other institutions was carried out in secrecy. The code name was "Operation T4," a reference to Tiergartenstrasse 4, the address of the Berlin Chancellery offices where the program was headquartered.

Physicians, the most highly Nazified professional group in Germany, were key to the success of "T-4," since they organized and carried out nearly, all aspects of the operation. One of Hitler's personal physicians, Dr. Karl Brandt, headed the program, along with Hitler's Chancellery chief, Philip Bouhler. T-4 targeted adult patients in all government or church-run sanatoria and nursing homes. These institutions were instructed by the Interior Ministry to collect questionnaires about the state of health and capacity for work of all their patients, ostensibly as part of a statistical survey.

The completed forms were, in turn, sent to expert assessors physicians, usually psychiatrists, who made up "review commissions." They marked each name with a "+," in red pencil, meaning death, or a "" in blue pencil, meaning life, or "?" for cases needing additional assessment. These medical experts rarely examined any of the patients and made their decisions from the questionnaires alone. At every step, the medical authorities involved were usually expected to quickly process large numbers of forms.

The doomed were bused to killing centers in Germany and Austria walled-in fortresses, mostly former psychiatric hospitals, castles, and a former prison — at Hartheim, Sonnenstein, Grafeneck, Bernburg, Hadamar, and Brandenburg. In the beginning, patients were killed by lethal injection. But by 1940, Hitler, on the advice of Dr. Werner Heyde, suggested that carbon monoxide gas be used as the preferred method of killing. Experimental gassings had first been carried out at Brandenburg Prison in 1939. There, gas chambers were disguised as showers complete with fake nozzles in order to deceive victims — prototypes of the killing centers' facilities built in occupied Poland later in the war.

Again, following procedures that would later be instituted in the extermination camps, workers removed the corpses from the chambers, extracted gold teeth, then burned large numbers of bodies together in crematoria. Urns filled with ashes were prepared in the event the family of the deceased requested the remains. Physicians using fake names prepared death certificates falsifying the cause of death, and sent letters of condolences to relatives.

Meticulous records discovered after the war documented 70,273 deaths by gassing at the six "euthanasia" centers between January 1940 and August 1941. (This total included up to 5,000 Jews; all Jewish mental patients were killed regardless of their ability to work or the seriousness of their illness.) A detailed report also recorded the estimated savings from the killing of institutionalized patients."

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/disabled.html

Given this much, how did Obama get the American Medical Association on board with his plan? Old fashioned carrot and stick. Medicare was set up to slash physician reimbursement--the stick. And the carrot was money, of course. Not that money is the only factor motivating this worthy organization of which I am a member. But money made the sale. Check this out: statement attributable to J. James Rohack, MD, President, American Medical Association.

“The AMA applauds Chairman Baucus and his colleagues for their hard work and important contribution toward our mutual objective of comprehensive health system reform. Expanding coverage through tax credits, insurance market reforms that protect patients if they get sick or lose their job, and offering more affordable choices through new health insurance exchanges will significantly improve our health care system.

“The AMA will continue to work with Chairman Baucus and his colleagues to strengthen this proposal. The AMA continues to call for permanent repeal of the current Medicare physician payment formula that threatens seniors’ access to care. The House has already recognized the importance of this action by including it in pending legislation.

“Without permanent repeal of the current formula, physicians face cuts of 40 percent over the next few years that will erode access and choice for America's seniors. A recent AARP poll found that 90 percent of people 50 and over are concerned that the current Medicare physician payment formula threatens their access to care.

“After further review of the proposal, the AMA will continue ongoing discussions with Chairman Baucus and other Finance Committee members regarding policies of concern to physicians.”

###

Contact:
Katherine Hatwell
AMA Media Relations
202-789-7419
Follow AMA on Twitter and Facebook.

Bold face and highlighting are mine, not the speech writer's. .

Doctors are going to face uncomfortable change in the coming years. I was in medical school when Medicare was enacted into law. It frightened a lot of practicing doctors. It turned out to be a great boon for seniors, for doctors taking care of them, and for our country. Sometimes change is for the better. Doctors should reread the book: "Who Moved My Cheese?"

Who Moved My Cheese? is the story of four characters living in a "Maze" who face unexpected change when they discover their "Cheese" has disappeared. Sniff and Scurry, who are mice, and Hem and Haw, little people the size of mice, each adapt to change in their "Maze" differently. In fact, one doesn't adapt at all...

This timeless allegory reveals profound truths to individuals and organizations dealing with change. We each live in a "Maze", a metaphor for the companies or organizations we work with, the communities we live in, the families we love places where we look for the things we want in life, "Cheese". It may be an enjoyable career, loving relationships, wealth, or spiritual peace of mind. With time and experience, one character eventually succeeds and even prospers from the change in his "Maze".In an effort to share what he has learned along the way, he records his personal discoveries on the maze walls, the "Handwriting on the Wall". Likewise, when we begin to see the "writing on the wall", we discover the simplicity and necessity of adapting to change.

Full of modern day insight, the story of Who Moved My Cheese? invites individuals and organizations to enjoy less stress and more success by learning to deal with the inevitable change.

Our doctors' organization is on board with some kind of change coming at us:

http://www.ama-assn.org/ama1/pub/upload/mm/399/hsr-testimony-15sept2009.pdf

Statement of the American Medical Association to the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee United States House of Representatives
Re: Urgent Need for Enacting Health System Reform
September 15, 2009

"The American Medical Association (AMA) appreciates the opportunity to testify on behalf of
our physician and medical student members before the House Democratic Steering and Policy
Committee regarding health system reform. We commend Speaker Pelosi and the chairmen of
the Committees on Energy and Commerce, Ways and Means, and Education and Labor for their
leadership in developing a framework to transform our nation’s health care system and in
successfully moving H.R. 3200 through committee mark-ups prior to the August recess.
With millions of Americans uninsured and millions more afraid of losing their health insurance,
the status quo is unacceptable. The AMA is committed to working with Congress, the
Administration, and other stakeholders to achieve enactment of health system reforms this year
that include the following seven critical elements:
• Provide affordable health insurance coverage for all Americans
• Enact insurance market reforms that expand choice of affordable coverage and eliminate
pre-existing conditions
• Assure that health care decisions are made by patients and their physicians, not by
insurance companies or government officials
• Provide investments and create incentives for quality improvement and prevention and
wellness initiatives
• Repeal the Medicare physician payment formula that will trigger steep cuts and threaten
seniors’ access to care
• Implement medical liability reforms to reduce the cost of defensive medicine
• Streamline and standardize insurance claims processing requirements to eliminate
unnecessary costs and administrative burdens.

Repeal the Medicare Physician Payment Formula
The AMA greatly appreciates the House of Representatives’ recognition that the Medicare
physician payment formula, called the “sustainable growth rate” (SGR), is fatally flawed and
must be fixed to avoid steep cuts that threaten Medicare access to care and undermine broadbased
health reform efforts. Repealing the SGR is a critical element that must be included in any
health system reform legislation passed by Congress. We are pleased that the new target growth
rates proposed in the House legislation are not limited to GDP growth; however, we are
concerned that the new system could still lead to significant pay cuts in future years, and we urge
inclusion of design features that will preclude negative payment updates.
The physician and allied health community face over a 21 percent Medicare payment cut on
January 1, 2010, and further substantial cuts over the next several years. Physicians and allied
health professionals cannot absorb cuts of this magnitude nor continue to face the threat of cuts
each year. In addition, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has released data
showing that, even before the cuts, physicians are only being reimbursed for half of the labor,
supply, and equipment costs that go into each physician service, which further exacerbates the
7
effect of these payment cuts. Without Congressional action to repeal the SGR, Medicare seniors
and disabled patients stand to lose significant access to their physicians.
A stable, predictable payment system is needed to allow physicians to plan ahead for practice
innovations, investments, and personnel decisions that are fundamental to improved care
coordination, chronic disease management, and quality of care initiatives. It will also help
sustain the physician workforce, which policy makers acknowledge will experience severe
shortages in the near future, just as the baby boomer generation begins entering the Medicare
program."

Bold face and differential highlighting mine.

Well, we can trust our doctors. They would not breach their oath of Hippocrates or of Maimonides, right? There is the doctor patient relationship, after all. Certainly there are the oaths and there is the doctor patient relationship. But a universal, government run system of Health Care does not pay attention to these things. I know doctors in Sweden, UK, Canada. I know doctors in the VA, in the US Navy, in the Bureau of Indian Affairs. You can and should trust your doctor to practice ethical and scientifically sound medicine. Formulating health care legislation is not in the skill set of most doctors. I would not trust the oaths and the doctor patient relationship to protect against unwanted policies. Our leadership is being advised by a prominent and respected academic doctor who took the oath and is a renowned bioethicist as well. But he does not accept the intrinsic sanctity and inviolability of human life. He values human life differentially. It's his viewpoint.

In its day, German medicine was what American medicine is today: at the cutting edge of science, technology, and art. Our American medical schools were reformed by Dr. Abraham Flexner after his survey of all schools revealed widespread deficiencies. The German academic medical school model was adapted following that review and report (Carnegie Foundation Bulletin number four of 1910).

The Carnegie Foundation Bulletin 4, "Medical Education in the United States and Canada" (1910), commonly known as the Flexner Report, is widely credited with the reform and reconstruction of the entire medical school curriculum. The report was the result of a mandate by the American Medical Association to conduct a study of North American medical schools. The study was completed by Abraham Flexner, a former schoolmaster who had received his undergraduate degree from Johns Hopkins University. He chose the Johns Hopkins Medical School as the model program to which all others were compared. Flexner visited all 155 North American medical schools, spending only one-half hour at each collecting data. His report recommended a drastic decrease in the number of medical schools, affiliation with universities, and establishment of the scientific model in medical education. The original Flexner Report was part of a broad move of professional education from the private sector to the university. When this happened, professional education incorporated the values of the academy (scientific thinking, rigor, and analysis).

http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED480298&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED480298

And after whose "scientific thinking, rigor, and analysis" were the newly reformed American medical colleges modeled?
So we assume our doctors will protect us from abuses of any national medical system that does not value human life. Just as the doctors of Germany protected their patients during the Weimar years and during the National Socialist years. Right.

"I have no words. I thought we were human beings. We were living creatures. How could they do things like that?" - Auschwitz survivor.

It was in my own lifetime that many German doctors went From Healer to Killer:

There was a problem in the Fatherland--"not just Doctor Joseph Mengele and the 23 other physicians tried at Nuremberg, either. Over 45% of German doctors joined the Nazi party. Physicians joined the Nazi party not only earlier, but in greater numbers than any other professional group - the same with the SS and the storm trooper units.[510] As a 1933 editorial from the National Socialist (Nazi) Physicians' League boasted, the Nazi movement was, "the most masculine movement to appear in centuries."

http://upalumni.org/medschool/appendices/appendix-47a.html. This is a Cornell University alumni organization. Above and below courtesy of them. Sources referenced in their web site.

The Noble Profession

"According to an article in JAMA, physicians were essential in running the death camps. Indeed the first commandant of Treblinka was a physician. The euthanasia program, for example, was planned and administered by leading figures in the German medical community. Unlike in the Milgram study, physicians were never ordered to harm anybody. No euthanasia law was ever formally enacted by the Third Reich. No direct orders were given and refusal to cooperate didn't result in any legal or professional sanction. Rather, physicians were empowered to carry out "mercy killings," but never obligated to do so. They went about killing psychiatric patients, disabled children, etc., without protest, often on their own initiative. In some cases the inducement for physicians to name candidates for euthanasia was a financial reward. Quoting from an article published in JAMA, "In short, the medical profession served not only as an instrument of Nazi mass murder, but was involved in the ideological theorizing and in the planning, initiation, administration, and the operation of the killing programs."

If so civilized and cultured and scientifically advanced a society as Germany prior to WWII could set about such heinous activities, we in America should be watchful. Pride goeth before the fall. We are proud of our liberal and enlightened society and its scientific basis. Well and good. Humility is the least prized of personal virtues, understood. But will prove to be the most valuable social virtue. We would do well to acquire some and watch what our leadership is doing.
Does the leadership consider human life sacred? Does our Bioethicist-in-chief, Ezechiel J. Emanuel, MD, PhD, consider all human lives sacred? Or does he believe, as did so many prominent academic doctors in the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich that followed it, that human life is valuable only in proportion to potential or actual productivity.
The difference between Emanuel and his boss Obama is that the former is not a politician, and so he speaks and writes his mind. The latter is too subtle to do that. As the sign says: Obama lies, Grandma dies. Don't believe me, its too important for you to know the truth. Read what Ezechiel J. Emanuel has written. Then try to discern what Obama is thinking.

But how is what happened an ocean away and generations ago relevant to Americans today? Read the following, it's closer to home:

"In the first three decades of the 20th Century, American corporate philanthropy combined with prestigious academic fraud to create the pseudoscience eugenics that institutionalized race politics as national policy. The goal: create a superior, white, Nordic race and obliterate the viability of everyone else. How? By identifying so-called "defective" family trees and subjecting them to legislated segregation and sterilization programs. The victims: poor people, brown-haired white people, African Americans, immigrants, Indians, Eastern European Jews, the infirm and really anyone classified outside the superior genetic lines drawn up by American raceologists. The main culprits were the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman railroad fortune, in league with America's most respected scientists hailing from such prestigious universities as Harvard, Yale and Princeton, operating out of a complex at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island. The eugenic network worked in tandem with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the State Department and numerous state governmental bodies and legislatures throughout the country, and even the U.S. Supreme Court. They were all bent on breeding a eugenically superior race, just as agronomists would breed better strains of corn. The plan was to wipe away the reproductive capability of the weak and inferior.

Ultimately, 60,000 Americans were coercively sterilized — legally and extra-legally. Many never discovered the truth until decades later. Those who actively supported eugenics include America's most progressive figures: Woodrow Wilson, Margaret Sanger and Oliver Wendell Holmes.

American eugenic crusades proliferated into a worldwide campaign, and in the 1920s came to the attention of Adolf Hitler. Under the Nazis, American eugenic principles were applied without restraint, careening out of control into the Reich's infamous genocide. During the pre-War years, American eugenicists openly supported Germany's program. The Rockefeller Foundation financed the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute and the work of its central racial scientists. Once WWII began, Nazi eugenics turned from mass sterilization and euthanasia to genocidal murder. One of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute doctors in the program financed by the Rockefeller Foundation was Josef Mengele who continued his research in Auschwitz, making daily eugenic reports on twins. After the world recoiled from Nazi atrocities, the American eugenics movement — its institutions and leading scientists — renamed and regrouped under the banner of an enlightened science called human genetics."

http://www.waragainsttheweak.com/

This is hard to believe and seems way over the top. But even if this one is ten percent factual, it's scary. I for one am going to look into this some more.

How American corporate philanthropies launched a national campaign of ethnic cleansing in the United States, helped found and fund the Nazi eugenics of Hitler and Mengele — and then created the modern movement of "human genetics."

Here is mainstream media on the need to change.
We can always count on the fourth estate to keep our leadership under surveillance and thereby protect us. Right, especially these days. (When one has loved someone or some idea or some thing for a lifetime, change will be hard and slow in coming. The press is people, too. And they are almost to a person very liberal.) They are strongly against oppression of the weak, dishonesty in high places, phony morality, false piety, and unscientific, primitive, violent, barbaric behavior by individuals or nations.
Still, the press is people and these people are in love with Obama. Meanwhile, Kejserens nye Klæder. (Danish, read my post by this name, please. It's short.)

You Have No Idea What Health Costs.
If You Did, You Might Just Want Real Reform

By Ezra Klein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 20, 2009

"The most important health-care document released this week was not Sen. Max Baucus's Healthy Future Act. It was the Kaiser Family Foundation's 2009 Employer Benefits Survey.

While the proposal by Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, outlines a direction for policy, the survey, which polls employers about health benefits to assemble a detailed look at the actual cost of health care, fits it squarely in our pocketbooks.

The truth is we all pay, and much more than we recognize, for health care.

For many, it's among the largest investments we'll make, on par, even, with the money we spend on a house or tuck away for retirement. But while it's easy to track our stock portfolios as they tank along with the market, our outlay for health care is less obvious. Employers pay some, and so do individuals, and taxpayers. And some even hides behind the deficit. As such, few of us see the full picture. But to make sense of the proposals for reform, getting a grasp of the cost is critical.

The average health-care coverage for the average family now costs $13,375, according to Kaiser. Over the past decade, premiums have increased by 138 percent. And if the trend continues, by 2019 the average family plan will cost $30,083.

Three years of slightly above-average health insurance will cost a solid six figures.

Those are numbers to marvel at. Those are numbers to fear. But they are not the numbers that loom in the minds of most Americans. And therein lies the problem for health-care reform.

About 160 million Americans receive health coverage through their employers. In general, the employer picks up 73 percent of the tab. This seems like a good deal. In reality, that money comes out of wages.

As Ezekiel Emanuel, who advises Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag on health-care policy, has pointed out, health-care premiums have risen by 300 percent over the past 30 years (and that's after adjusting for inflation). Corporate profit per employee has soared by 200 percent. Hourly earnings for workers, adjusted for inflation, have fallen. The wage increases have been consumed by health-care costs.

Another 80 million Americans are on public plans, mainly Medicare and Medicaid. Those costs are paid by taxpayers. And about 46 million Americans are uninsured. The costs for their care are shifted to the insured: This raises premiums for the average family by $1,100 each year, according to an analysis by Ben Furnas and Peter Harbage of the Center for American Progress."

I for one do not count on the Fourth Estate to protect us from evil. Or at least, not this time. As pointed out above, the First Estate waffled when the going got hard. The Second Estate is never to be trusted: politicians are about power over people. They begin in high school. You remember them when they were embryonic pols. In America politicians wield power. The president wields immense power. If he does not hold human life sacred, many Americans' lives will be in jeopardy--for the fact that they were not worthy of our love and support, for the fact that they became economic burdens for society, for the fact that they were inconvenient truths.

So who will protect the weak and vulnerable? Well, the first thing to realize is that we will all be in that number sooner or later. At which point we will be the ones looking for help. Help is ideally based upon an abiding belief in the dignity and sanctity of human life, indeed of all life. If I am correct that such a belief is under siege, and that the weak and vulnerable are in jeopardy, it will not be the Fourth Estate who stands between us and the active or passive mercy killers of our new world order. That's too bad as they have always been a bulwark for freedom, truth, and justice in our democracy.

The First Estate waffled in the mid 20C and will again, I am afraid.

The Second estate is looking more like the problem in this case than the solution.

So who is left--the Third Estate, you guessed it. Who holds the ultimate power in America? The Third Estate, that's who. (And what in the world is the basis of all this "estate" talk, you ask. The 1789 Estates General called by the king of France is where this terminology originates. In that great convocation Louis XVI convened the bishops, the nobles, and representatives of the people of France. These were the first, second, and third estates of France.)

We the people must exercise our legitimate rights. The Constitution of These United States spells out who holds ultimate power in America, and it is we the people. Obama and the rest of the Chicago thugs might wield the power, but when push comes to shove, we own it. Until our Constitution gets a rewrite, of course. Hold on tight; we are in for quite a ride. Sapienti sat . . .

AS ABOVE, SO BELOW.

2009-09-23T06:48:00.000-07:00

A member of the Local Group of galaxies, irregular galaxy Sextans A is 10 million light years distant. The bright Milky Way foreground stars appear yellowish in this view. Beyond them lie the stars of Sextans A with young blue star clusters clearly visible. Courtesy of Google, from whom all (modern) blessings flow.

Author Dan Brown's latest blockbuster, The Lost Symbol, deals with coded messages, ancient knowledge, noetic science, and the Masonic Order--a more or less coherent plot. This plot is no less plausible than his other plots, and will no doubt push the total number of books sold past the 100,000,000 mark. It will make a very good Ron Howard movie with actors who by now are a reperatory company. A phrase that recurs in the book "as above, so below." My "as above, so below" will look at some odd symmetries between the stars above us, and the tiny, points of light inside us. I will look for symmetry between outer space and inner space (that inner space within which our selves live--the three dimensional neocortex of our brain). Were the neocortex (NCX) flattened, it would have the length and width of an ordinary linen table napkin, but be several times thicker. Within this rather small volume of tissue, convoluted and overlaid upon the other brain structures, our conscious self flits among the neurons and their many synaptic connections. First the heavens above:

There are an estimated 100,000,000,000 stars in the Milky Way galaxy, which is our home town galaxy in this Universe. There are lots of galaxies in the Universe and many are grouped together. Our group is called, prosaically, the Local Group. It is made up of the Messier catalogued objects M31 (Andromeda), M32 and M110 (satellite structures of Andromeda), and M33 (Triangulum). The Local Group's diameter is 10,000,000 light years, meaning that light will take ten million years to travel from one edge to the other. So, unless we can make holes in space/time or find existing holes, a person would take more than ten million years to travel from one edge to the other. Why would anyone want to do that? Well our Milky Way galaxy is part of the Local Group, so a Local Group Confederation warship will need that capability some day. For sure. The dominant members of the LG are Andromeda and Milky Way. Hubble's The Realm of the Nebulae explains what went into studying and characterizing the LG. (I wish the candy bar named Milky Way had never been invented because saying "Hi, I'm from the Milky Way" is going to sound so dorky. And, to make things worse yet, the American Milky Way bar is other countries' Mars bar, and other countries' Milky Way is basically our 3 Musketeers' Bar. At any rate, it's too late, the damage has been done. Thank you, Mars Candy Company for undermining our galactic dignitas.)

Map of the Local Group whose weighted center is between Andromeda and the Milky Way.

http://www.google.com/imgres

How many galaxies are there in our Universe? The computer modeling involved in answering this question is difficult even though the physics is straightforward Newton. Below is a windy explanation why astrophysicists need better, more expensive, and (architecturally) dedicated machines to answer the question:

"The basic reason why the investigation of the dynamical evolution of galaxy clusters (as well as the evolution of single galaxies, or even globular clusters) is so computer intensive actually is due to a fundamental mathematical property of the equations that determine this evolution. The gravitational attraction between all objects is described by Newton's Laws, which you are probably familiar with. One law states that the gravitational force between two objects is a constant multiplied by the product of the two masses, divided by the distance separating the objects squared. In most of the solar system examples we are presented with on a 'day to day' level, the system can be described as two bodies. For each of the planets, we can treat their orbital evolution largely as if they were a single object in orbit about the Sun (the other planets produce only minor perturbations to this simple two-body orbit). Likewise, the Moon's orbit about the Earth can be treated largely as a two-body problem, since the distance between the Earth and Moon is much smaller than that between the Earth-Moon system and the Sun. Mathematically, the two-body problem is one that we refer to as 'integrable'. What this means is that it is possible to write down the solution to the equations of motion in closed form. Then for any set of initial conditions, we can use this closed form solution to determine the positions and velocities of the two bodies for all time.

When even one more body is added to the mix, the problem becomes 'non-integrable'. This has two important consequences. The first is the equations that determine the evolution are no longer in closed form. The second is that the system can now have parameter ranges for which the evolution is extremely sensitive to the initial conditions of the system. Very small changes in the initial conditions (positions and velocities) can lead to drastically different evolutions. Putting these two consequences together, you can probably see now why one needs a lot of computer power: galaxy clusters are comprised of numerous objects (galaxies) which are themselves made up of individual stars, interacting with each other. There are clever ways to make the calculation of the cluster evolution less computationally intensive, such as concentrating only on the interactions of nearest neighbor stars, and treating the contribution from the numerous more distant stars as a smooth gravitational potential. You still need to have a lot of computer power to do this. The sensitivity to initial conditions means that researchers often try a very large number of initial conditions so they can get an idea of the statistical behavior of the interactions.
To answer your specific questions: the need for teraflop or faster computers to do these calculations is not recent. However, the development of special purpose computers (that are hard wired to do nothing but the cluster evolution calculation) and novel ways of networking computers to achieve greater speeds, are currently very active areas of computational astrophysics research. The sophistication of the cluster evolution models is constantly growing. None of these calculations are aimed at trying to determine if our cluster is the center of the Universe. One of the fundamental assumptions of modern cosmology is that no single location in the Universe is special, and that there is no meaning to the concept 'the center of the Universe.' However, the average observer in any location in the Universe would observe galaxies to be receding from her position, and so might erroneously suppose herself to be at the center of the Universe. In any case, the dynamical evolution of the cluster is a local phenomenon, not connected to the overall expansion of the Universe."

A student asked the "how many galaxies" question:

"A recent German super-computer simulation estimates that the number may be as high as 500 billion! Can someone please clarify the accepted educated ballpark figure? Thanks a billion!"

The student got a better answer, at least in terms of getting a number for an answer.

"The methods used to achieve such number varies, and therefore, the results would vary, too. Also, as new and improved technology becomes available, astronomers can detect fainter objects that were not seen before. These objects that have come into view will in turn change the estimated number of galaxies.
For example, in 1999 the Hubble Space Telescope estimated that there were 125 billion galaxies in the universe, and recently with the new camera HST has observed 3,000 visible galaxies, which is twice as much as they observed before with the old camera. We're emphasizing "visible" because observations with radio telescopes, infrared cameras, x-ray cameras, etc. would detect other galaxies that are not detected by Hubble. As observations keep on going and astronomers explore more of our universe, the number of galaxies detected will increase."

We need a politician who sits on some federal budget committee to give us the big number. Take the number from ten years ago, improve the Hubble Space Telescope so that the number doubles, add the other galaxies that a telescope seeing only within the visible spectrum will not see (those galaxies detectable by radio wave emissions, x-ray emissions, infrared emissions, and those whose emissions no telescope yet built sees), and what do we get for a number? I say 1,000,000,000,000 galaxies exist in our Universe.

What are the periodic movements of the earth and the heavenly bodies? Where is the center of the Universe? How fast are things moving, and in relationship to what? (This was to Einstein what the apple was to Newton.)

Explanation: Our Earth is not at rest. The Earth moves around the Sun. The Sun orbits the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. The Milky Way Galaxy orbits in the Local Group. The Local Group falls toward the Virgo Cluster of Galaxies. But these speeds are less than the speed that all of these objects together move relative to the microwave background.

COBE Dipole: Speeding Through the Universe Credit: NASA, COBE, DMR, Four-Year Sky Map

In the above all-sky map, radiation in the Earth's direction of motion appears blueshifted and hence hotter, while radiation on the opposite side of the sky is redshifted and colder. The map indicates that the Local Group moves at about 600 kilometers per second relative to this primordial radiation.>This high speed was initially unexpected and its magnitude is still unexplained. Why are we moving so fast? What is out there? Are we being pushed or pulled?

The Sun orbits the center of the Milky Way at about 250 km/second and it takes about 220 million years to complete an orbit.

So our earth spins, wobbles, bobs and weaves around the sun which rotates like a gas planet--on its axis but differentially faster at its equator (27 days) than at its poles (31 days), and which moves side to side within the Orion arm of the Milky Way pinwheel**, while the entire pinwheel of our spiral galaxy rotates, and in turn dances with Andromeda, the Magellanic clouds big and small, and the thirty dwarfs in the Local Group reel. There is no center to the Universe, so we must assume there is no rotation of the entirety. But one does wonder . . .

**We are nearing the mid plane of the galaxy and will be at the midpoint 12.21.2012, 11:11 AM GMT at which point the Mayan Age of the Jaguar, the Fifth Age of Man will end.

The NASA Goddard Space Flight Center has an educational site. Above and below courtesy of them: http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/021127a.html.

Known to Al-Sufi about AD 905. Messier 31 (M31, NGC 224) is the famous Andromeda galaxy, our nearest large neighbor galaxy, forming the Local Group of galaxies together with its companions (including M32 and M110, two bright dwarf elliptical galaxies), our Milky Way and its companions, M33, and others.
Visible to the naked eye even under moderate conditions, this object was known as the "little cloud" to the Persian astronomer Abd-al-Rahman Al-Sufi, who described and depicted it in 964 AD in his Book of Fixed Stars: It must have been observed by and commonly known to Persian astronomers at Isfahan as early as 905 AD.

The magnificent M81 spiral galaxy takes center stage in this ultraviolet image from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer. Young stars appear as wisps of bluish-white swirling around a central golden glow, which comes from a group of much older stars. The large fluffy bluish-white material to the left of M81 is a neighboring galaxy called Homberg IX. This galaxy is practically invisible to the naked human eye. However, when viewed in ultraviolet light, a region that is actively forming young stars is revealed. Image and caption by NASA.

So, in accordance with the theme of this post, as above, so below: we found the number of stars in our Milky Way galaxy to be 100,000,000,000.

And we found by my estimate, all inclusive and psychically derived, the grand total number of galaxies in our Universe to be 1,000,000,000,000.

The Universe has no center. It composed is dynamic matter/energy, expanding from an initial singularity.

Then we have inner space: that organ lying within the bounds of the cranial vault, weighing 1400 grams, suspended in cerebrospinal fluid, organized in a number of ways, and home to the NCX within which our conscious self lives--there in the dark, with thermostatically controlled temperature, a guaranteed minimum concentration of glucose supplied in the generous blood flow accorded this most vital of organs. The NCX has no center, expanded from an initial cell that differentiated into ectoderm and made the primitive neural tube then the brain and finally, in a kind of ontogenic recapitulation of phylogeny, the human embryo's head end develops frontal bossing and the "newest thing in brain evolution," the neocortex expands. Hence the human propensity for big headed babies and ceaserian sections.

Romanes's 1892 copy of Ernst Haeckel's controversial embryo drawings (this version of the figure is often attributed incorrectly to Haeckel).

There are 100,000,000,000 neurons in the human brain. These neurons have a staggering 100,000,000,000,000 synaptic connections among themselves. Even the General Accounting Office can't cope with this many of anything. This is more connectivity in a single human brain than galaxies in a hundred Universes! If that doesn't blow you away, nothing will. One hundred trillion synaptic connections.

This is the central nervous system of the human, dissected free of the cranium and spine within which it is lodged. It floats in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). Its delicate and complex structures are protected from trauma by sturdy mineralized bone tissue and the effect of floatation in CSF.

The big cell above the two arrows is the neuron. (The arrows point to inclusions in the cell.)

The human brain consists of about 100 billion (1011) neurons, which altogether form about 100 trillion (1014) synaptic connections with each other. A crucial mechanism for the generation of this complex wiring pattern is the formation of neuronal branches. The neurobiologists Dr. Hannes Schmidt and Professor Fritz G. Rathjen at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) Berlin-Buch, Germany, have now discovered a molecule that regulates this vital process. At the same time they have succeeded in elucidating the signaling cascade induced by this molecule (PNAS, Early Edition, 2009, doi:10.1073)*.

http://www.mdc-berlin.de/en/news/2009/20090921-mdc_researchers_discover_molecule_responsi/index.html

There are as many neurons in our brain as there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy. Each tiny gray blob of jello is connected to many others. There is no central processing unit in the brain. The entire volume of the neocortex is organized in layers or hierarchies. But even with a microscope all parts of the neocortex look the same. It is undifferentiated in that way. Lose the visual cortex early on and that part of the neocortex might be allocated to another neural task. Like the Universe, the neocortex, or inner space within which our conscious self resides, has no center.

There are one hundred times many more synaptic connections in our brain than there are galaxies in our universe.

There is no center, or central processing unit in our neocortex.

Inner space functions electrochemically, the neurons and their synaptic connections are matter/energy.

The brain began with a single differentiated cell and expanded from this singularity to become all of our inner space.

Neurons are created continually just as neurons die continually, and here inner space is like outer space where stars are birthed and stars die in a great cycle of life and death.

So there you have it, Dan Brown's "as above, so below," so to speak. We do have an unexpected symmetries between outer space and inner space, as above.

Let's take a tour of inner space photographs, as we did with outer space.

Schematic representation of a sensory neuron. When the axon of the sensory neuron grows into the gray matter of the spinal cord, two types of branching can be observed: At the dorsal root entry zone the axon shaft divides into two branches (1), which continue to grow on the surface of the spinal cord in opposite directions. Out of these branches collaterals then sprout in several places (2) thus enabling the transmission of a signal to several target cells. (Drawing: Hannes Schmidt / Copyright: MDC).

The blue color shows the dispersion area of CNP in a mouse embryo twelve and a half days after fertilization. Through alterations via genetic engineering the original gene for CNP was replaced by the lacZ gene in the depicted mouse. In a color reaction the expression of CNP in the tissue can thus be made visible. (Photo: Hannes Schmidt / Copyright: MD

Dorsal view of the spinal cord with single visible sensory neurons A) Wild-type with bifurcations marked by arrows and B) CNP knock-out mouse. (Photo: Hannes Schmidt / Copyright: MDC).

The above pictures from an experiment tracking the process of synapse formation. Lastly, let's look at brain/body size. We humans like to think our inner space is a lot more spacious than that of the lower creatures. Size matters whether in galaxies or in neocortices.

The human weighs 62,000 grams and her brain weighs 1,400 grams. The baboon weighs 30,000 grams and its brain weighs 140 grams.

My wife thinks I should not leave this post as it is, too cold out there. So I leave you with some Celtic wisdom, courtesy of the Bard of Connemara, author of Anam Cara and To Bless the Space Between Us, A Book of Blessings; John O'Donohue, a man from whom many blessings flow.

The Umbra Nihili

"In a vast universe that often seems sinister and unaware of us, we need the presence and shelter of love to transfigure our loneliness. This cosmic loneliness is the root of all inner loneliness. All of our life, everything we do, think, and feel is surrounded by nothingness. Hence we become afraid so easily. The fourteenth-century mystic Meister Eckhart says that all of human life stands under the shadow of nothingness, the umbra nihili. Nevertheless, love is the sister of the soul. Love is the deepest language and presence of soul. In and through the warmth and creativity of love, the soul shelters us from the bleakness of that nothingness. We cannot fill up our emptiness with objects, possessions, or people. We have to go deeper into that emptiness; then we will find beneath nothingness the flame of love waiting to warm us."

Anam Cara, pp. 11 and 12, John O'Donohue; ISBN 978-0-06-092943-5, Cliff Street Books/Harper Collins Publishers.

HOW HAPPY IS MAN MEANT TO BE?

2009-09-21T06:36:00.000-07:00

Blue Is the New Black
MAUREEN DOWD
Published: September 19, 2009
WASHINGTON

Maureen Dowd:

Women are getting unhappier, I told my friend Carl.

“How can you tell?” he deadpanned. “It’s always been whine-whine-whine.”

Why are we sadder? I persisted.

“Because you care,” he replied with a mock sneer. “You have feelings.”

Oh, that.

I feel compassion for Maureen Dowd, but then I feel sorry for squashed pill bugs. All life is sacred in my book--it's my philosophy. (If you want a wordier version, try this: "By having a reverence for life, we enter into a spiritual relation with the world. By practicing reverence for life we become good, deep, and alive." Albert Schweitzer) My father's philosophy was pithy like mine "How happy is man meant to be?" Born in 1908, he was understandably old school. He would be surprised to read, courtesy of Ms. Dowd, that men are getting happier. As for the matter of women getting unhappier, there is the old joke that the recipient of an award tells following a glowing introduction "my father would have enjoyed it and my mother would have believed it." I think Ms. Dowd is unhappy all right, and I believe I know why. She is meaner than a seasoned CIA interrogator whose Redskins have just lost a squeaker. Hers is not sorrow, it is karma.

That accounts for Ms. Dowd, a singular woman so to speak, but what about all the other unhappy women, in the plural? Well, something is going on here:

According to the General Social Survey, which has tracked Americans’ mood since 1972, and five other major studies around the world, women are getting gloomier and men are getting happier.

Before the ’70s, there was a gender gap in America in which women felt greater well-being. Now there’s a gender gap in which men feel better about their lives.

The information above and below thanks to Ms. Dowd's Sunday NY Times column.

Marcus Buckingham, a former Gallup researcher who has a new book out called “Find Your Strongest Life: What the Happiest and Most Successful Women Do Differently,” says that men and women passed each other midpoint on the graph of life.

“Though women begin their lives more fulfilled than men, as they age, they gradually become less happy,” Buckingham writes in his new blog on The Huffington Post, pointing out that this darker view covers feelings about marriage, money and material goods. “Men, in contrast, get happier as they get older.”

Buckingham and other experts dispute the idea that the variance in happiness is caused by women carrying a bigger burden of work at home, the “second shift.” They say that while women still do more cooking, cleaning and child-caring, the trend lines are moving toward more parity, which should make them less stressed.

When women stepped into male- dominated realms, they put more demands — and stress — on themselves. If they once judged themselves on looks, kids, hubbies, gardens and dinner parties, now they judge themselves on looks, kids, hubbies, gardens, dinner parties — and grad school, work, office deadlines and meshing a two-career marriage.

“Choice is inherently stressful,” Buckingham said in an interview. “And women are being driven to distraction.”

One area of extreme distraction is kids. “Across the happiness data, the one thing in life that will make you less happy is having children,” said Betsey Stevenson, an assistant professor at Wharton who co-wrote a paper called “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness.” “It’s true whether you’re wealthy or poor, if you have kids late or kids early. Yet I know very few people who would tell me they wish they hadn’t had kids or who would tell me they feel their kids were the destroyer of their happiness.”

The more important things that are crowded into their lives, the less attention women are able to give to each thing.

Add this to the fact that women are hormonally more complicated and biologically more vulnerable. Women are much harder on themselves than men.

They tend to attach to other people more strongly, beat themselves up more when they lose attachments, take things more personally at work and pop far more antidepressants.

“Women have lives that become increasingly empty,” Buckingham said. “They’re doing more and feeling less.”

Another daunting thing: America is more youth and looks obsessed than ever, with an array of expensive cosmetic procedures that allow women to be their own Frankenstein Barbies.

Men can age in an attractive way while women are expected to replicate — and Restylane — their 20s into their 60s.

Buckingham says that greater prosperity has made men happier. And they are also relieved of bearing sole responsibility for their family finances, and no longer have the pressure of having women totally dependent on them.

Men also tend to fare better romantically as time wears on. There are more widows than widowers, and men have an easier time getting younger mates.

Stevenson looks on the bright side of the dark trend, suggesting that happiness is beside the point. We’re happy to have our new found abundance of choices, she said, even if those choices end up making us unhappier.

A paradox, indeed.

Lo and behold, "happiness is beside the point" sounds a lot like my late father's philosophy to me. I should see if the birthday/date of death are synchronized--I may have located a reincarnated parent courtesy of Maureen Dowd. I might have to change my attitude toward Ms. Dowd. At a minimum I might have to renew my subscription to the Sunday NY Times. Mentioning the Times is inviting all kinds of trouble into your day. Here is another lead c/o Ms. Dowd's Sunday column:

As Arianna Huffington points out in a blog post headlined “The Sad, Shocking Truth About How Women Are Feeling”: “It doesn’t matter what their marital status is, how much money they make, whether or not they have children, their ethnic background, or the country they live in. Women around the world are in a funk.”

The human central nervous system: brain and spinal cord. We live here. We flit about among the 100,000,000,000, neurons whose synaptic connections number 100,000,000,000,000.

But enough wallowing in opinion, let's see what hard science tells us about all this. After all, the chemical neurotransmitter of happiness, a sort of blue bird of happiness in the intracranial world, is well known and under study in many centers. A whole field of pharmacology endeavors to manipulate this hormone which cannot be taken by mouth to any good effect. The brain, a kind of pharmaceutical factory in its own right, makes the hormone on site. And while we can slow the loss of the substance from the brain, we lack the means to infuse it into the brain. This neurotransmitter is serotonin. Drugs like Prozac (a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, SSRI) work to slow the loss of the substance from the brain. What happens if all the serotonin is lost and no more is made? Here is a study from Berlin:

"A lack of serotonin, commonly known as the "happiness hormone", in the brain slows the growth of mice after birth and is responsible for impaired maternal behavior later in life. This was the result of research conducted by Dr. Natalia Alenina, Dana Kikic, and Professor Michael Bader of the Max Delbrück Center (MDC) Berlin-Buch, Germany. They also discovered that the presence of serotonin in the brain is not crucial for the survival of the animals. Furthermore, they were able to confirm that there are two strictly separate pathways of serotonin production: One gene is responsible for the formation of serotonin in the brain, another gene for the production of the hormone in the body (PNAS)*.
The researchers "switched off" the gene Tph2 in mice to elucidate the function of the gene in the brain. Tph2 produces the enzyme tryptophan hydroxylase (TPH), which is responsible for the formation of serotonin.

After the researchers switched off Tph2, the animals produced almost no serotonin in the brain. Nevertheless, the animals were viable and half of them survived until adulthood. However, they needed more sleep during the day and the regulation of their respiration, body temperature, and blood pressure was altered.

The female mice were able to give birth and produced enough milk to feed their pups, but their impaired maternal behavior led to poor survival of the offspring.

The Tph2 gene was discovered by MDC researchers several years ago together with researchers of the Free University (FU) Berlin and Humboldt University Berlin (HUB)."

Informationsdienst Wissenschaft: http://idw-online.de/pages/en/news322087.

Press release
Lack of "Happiness Hormone" Serotonin in the Brain Causes Impaired Maternal Behavior in Mice
Barbara Bachtler, Presse- und Öffentlichkeitsarbeit
Max-Delbrück-Centrum für Molekulare Medizin (MDC) Berlin-Buch

06/23/2009 12:03

Science will no doubt elucidate the pathways, products, and effects of impaired production and so forth and so on. But is happiness a product of brain chemistry? And if yes, is brain chemistry the only factor to consider? There are a lot of problems associated with the SSRI drugs, as well as with older drugs aiming also at "anti depression." Are there ways beside drug therapy to enhance serotonin production, or retard its loss from the brain? Where does the Dalai Lama fit into all this? How happy is man meant to be?

Descended of Wolves.

2009-09-19T07:29:00.000-07:00

All modern breeds of dogs are descended of wolves and DNA studies are the proof. There is one exception--the one that proves the rule, so to speak. This exception is a bit of a mystery in some other ways, too. And this (exceptional) dog might prove something besides the rule. This exceptional dog is the Chihuahua, which is descended of foxes.

Baby Chihuahua, the smallest of puppies.

Paco, The Devil Dog of Pipers Landing, loves blondes but hates cameras and cameramen.

Native of the Lybian desert and smallest of foxes: the Fennec fox (Vulpes zerda). This is the closest wild relative of the Chihuahua.

The range of the Fennec fox extends across North Africa. Note how the Arabian peninsula was once part of Africa and ought still, in my opinion, to be shown on maps as Africa's NE shoulder. It is departing Africa because it rides its own tectonic plate, but including it in Africa gives the mother continent better symmetry.

So how did the Fennec fox derived "dog" now called the Chihuahua get across the Atlantic ocean? PreColumbian clay figurines of Chihuahuas are common, even our Norton museum has shown them. Aztec royalty kept hundreds of the tiny dogs in their palaces. They served the rulers in this life and in the next. (And, you guessed it, the Conquistadors ate the little guys. "Meat of the Gods" same as the chocolate tree, Theobroma cacao.) Legends abound and are told even today--we heard wonderful tales on the way to the Mexico City airport years ago. The following example was told to us by our cab driver:

"An old, old man is very poor and still working hard to earn enough for food and shelter. His only companion is his old Chihuahua. Every morning the old man gets out of bed before sunrise to fry two eggs, one for his Chihuahua and the other for himself. Then he heads out the door and walks to the fields where he will labor until near sundown. Well, this old, hard working man has painful arthritic feet. His malady threatens to prevent his working and that would mean starvation for both him and his dog. So, when he turns in for the night he tucks his tiny dog under the covers, pushing him all the way to the foot of the bed. Then he climbs in and rests his gnarled, aching feet on the little dog. In the morning, lo and behold, the old man has no pain in his feet and is able to prepare the eggs and head out for another hard day in the fields. Meanwhile the faithful little dog limps painfully from the bedroom to the kitchen, having taken the pain from his master."

My wife has survived very serious illness and surgery. At 5:20 PM on June 30, 2002, she had the onset of extreme chest pain. She was sitting in her favorite chair. I came home to find her in great pain and agitation. Our Chihuahua was clinging desperately to her chest. She said she had to get him off her chest it hurt so much. I said she should perhaps move to the couch. She said she doubted she could make it to the couch (12 feet away). I said let's go to the hospital. The little dog risked life and limb to cling to her chest--she wanted to throw him off her chest. I could not dislodge him. She is a survivor of the same ailment that claimed a famous star of TV, a sudden, catastrophic failure of the proximal thoracic aorta.

Recently, my wife had the influenza 2009 H1N1 and developed bronchospasm and localized asthma. Once again, our Chihuahua braved life and limb to cling mightily to his mistress' chest and do his best to take the asthma and dyspnea from her. He wheezed away night after night. Now that antibiotics and inhalant medication and time have cured his mistress both she and he sleep soundly, no wheezing. Paco has not yet tried his healing on me. Maybe he senses I am an orthodox doctor and that his unorthodox healing might either offend me or not work on me or both. I could go on and on.

The Mexican dictator General Antonio López de Santa Anna, outfoxed so to speak at the Alamo, kept dozens of these little wonder dogs with him on campaign. He believed as do many Mexicans past and present (despite the exterior trappings of devout Roman Catholicism) that the Chihuahua will go ahead of the departed soul into the underworld. This legend is a scene out of Black Orpheus: seven rivers, cold, dark, and scary; a ferryman poling his empty raft; enigmatic and arcane questions requiring correct answers. But the ferryman looks just like a Chihuahua, at least the head. A jackal headed figure is poling the raft. Your Chihuahua hails the ferryman and gives the signs. He goes on to tell the ferryman about his dear master, emphasizing the good features and playing down the bad. He negotiates passage across the seven rivers aux champs elysees. This whole thing smacks seriously of Egyptian, don't you think? And there is the matter of how this descendant of tiny indigenous foxes of Egypt's Libyan desert ended up in the temples of Aztec royalty. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, the Chihuahua is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

This has the appearance of a crime scene, but appearances can be misleading. Now, nobody is perfect, and neither is our Chihuahua. He is known in our neighborhood of elderly people and small dogs as the Devil Dog of Pipers Landing. His full and proper name is Lord Pacal of Palenque, "Paco" for short. He of the good medicine, in the sense of Indian medicine bundle. He is tiny, but as noted above, appearances can be misleading. He is totemic.

Paco views people in black and white. He worships our eldest grandchild, loves our daughters, hates our son, our daughter-in-law, our son-in-law, both grandsons and both younger granddaughters. He adores my wife and loves me. He arrives at these polar opinions instantaneously, and they remain constant and irreversible for ever after. In ten years only one person has managed to move from the hate column to the love column, and it took her five years to do it. Once a cousin from Kansas came to visit. Paco came to check the family out. He immediately growled at the wife, snarled at the husband, and wagged his tail in greeting for their daughter. He despises anyone who comes to work on the house, including electricians, plumbers, gardeners, carpenters, and delivery people. All others he divides into two groups: blond and brunette. He loves the former and hates the latter. He confuses gray/white hair and blond. He makes no distinction between natural blond and bottle blond. In the case of the cousin from Kansas, the mother was brunette, the daughter red headed, and the father bald. He hates most other dogs but accepts one of our neighbors' two pugs. He likes Chester because he is a Yankee from Connecticut and very gentlemanly. He dislikes Winston who is from the South and overly demonstrative.

He is tiny on the outside but very big inside.

Once our eldest granddaughter was running down the street well ahead of me. I heard a scream and hurried to see what was the matter. A very large and friendly chocolate Labrador retriever had run across her yard to play with my granddaughter. Paco took this as an attack and engaged the enemy with a preemptive attack of his own. When I got to where all this was taking place I saw an amazing sight. This little girl was standing in front of this very big dog with a tiny dog hanging for dear life onto the base of the big dog's wagging tail. Paco is an eighty pound dog in an eight pound package. (Yes, he is fat for a Chihuahua but his mother believes food is love.)

Chihuahuas have a surprisingly fast "clock" in the sense of a computer system. They will walk along side you even when you are walking quite fast. This means their legs are a blur. Same with their tail which can wag so fast it is a blur on camera. Their relative the Fennec fox is surprisingly athletic and known for its leaping attack onto the back of prey. This looks almost like the lion and the gazelle. Both Fennec and Chihuahua have elongated toes on the front feet, large eyes, tiny faces with small jaws, and ears with character. It would be worthwhile to study these two with DNA for distant kinship. I know of no such studies.

The tail wags so fast it is a blur on camera. There is no greater love than a Chihuahua's.

"Legend and history are rich in tales of the ancestors of the present Chihuahua. He is described as a popular pet, as well as a religious necessity. The Techichi, companion of the ancient Toltecs, is believed to be the progenitor of the Chihuahua. No records of the Techichi are, so far, available prior to the 9th century, but it is probable his ancestors were present prior to the Mayans. Dogs approximating the Chihuahua are found in materials from the Pyramids of Cholula, predating 1530 and in the ruins of Chichen Itza on the Yucatan Peninsula.

There is little question the Chihuahua’s principle home was present-day Mexico but the breeds immigration to Europe may be the result of the travels of Christopher Columbus. A historical letter written by Columbus to the King of Spain makes reference to the tiny dog.

The Chihuahua as we know it today is a much more diminutive dog than its predecessor. It is theorized that the Chinese Crested, brought from Asia to Alaska across the Bering Strait, was responsible for the reduction in size. Modern Chihuahuas are also found in a myriad of colors. The Chihuahua is an older breed by American Kennel Club standards, first registered in 1904."

This is courtesy of the American Kennel Club web site.

Fennec Fox Profile courtesy of the National Geographic Society site:

"The fennec fox is the smallest of all the world's foxes, but its large ears, measuring 6 inches (15 centimeters), appear to be on loan from a bigger relative.

Fennec foxes dwell in the sandy Sahara Desert and elsewhere in North Africa. Their nocturnal habits help them deal with the searing heat of the desert environment, and some physical adaptations help as well.

Their distinctive, batlike ears radiate body heat and help keep the foxes cool. They also have long, thick hair that insulates them during cold nights and protects them from hot sun during the day. Even the fox's feet are hairy, which helps them perform like snowshoes and protects them from extremely hot sand. The fox's feet are also effective shovels for frequent digging—fennec foxes live in underground dens.

These foxes dwell in small communities, each inhabited by perhaps ten individuals. Like other canids, male fennecs mark their territory with urine and become aggressive competitors when mating season arrives each year.

Fennec foxes are opportunistic eaters. They forage for plants but also eat rodents, eggs, reptiles, and insects. Like most desert dwellers, the fennec fox has developed the ability to go for long periods without water.

These foxes are cream-colored with black-tipped tails. Their adorable appearance makes them favorites of the captive pet trade, and local peoples also hunt the fennec fox for its fur. Little is known about the status of wild fennec fox populations."

Note the comments below by John P. Jackson, Article Directory:

"Urban legends are also known as folklore, often these tales are concocted by people of a bygone time period who have tried to offer up explanations about the unexplained. Some of these mythical tales and stories still exist and linger on, even today. There are several stories that surround different dog breeds, Chihuahuas included.
Chihuahuas Cure Asthma and Allergies:
One such legend for Chihuahuas hails from Mexico, which states the dogs have an uncanny ability to transfer the illness of the owner to itself and thus freeing the owner from such illnesses as allergies and asthma. This legendary folklore resurfaced in America where Sandra Billitz of Warrior, Alabama, states she bought a Chihuahua with the strict intention of having the dog cure her mother of asthma.
Bigchihuahua.com disputed the claim that a Chihuahua can cure or lessen the effects of asthma, even though Ms. Billitz stated that it cured her mother. Devoted Chihuahua owners commenting on the site claimed that their Chihuahuas truly cured or lessened the symptoms of their asthma. However, Bigchihuahua.com backs up their statements by citing there is no specific information to lend credence to this claim.
Many possible explanations exist because of the way a Chihuahua owner feels pure love, "the power of faith, belief and suggestion." Also since a Chihuahua can either have a smooth or longhair coat, it is possible that a smooth coated Chihuahua owned as a family pet, can produce less dander and other airborne allergens which can be triggers for asthma and allergies in some people.
Chihuahua Being Swept Up By a Hawk:
Occurring in Manhattans Bryant Park, this incident happened when a tourist had her pet Chihuahua on a leash and saw a trained hawk, who was part of the recreational program of the park, swoop down and carry the dog away in its sharp talons. Apparently, the Chihuahua ended up being released and suffered only minor injuries.
No proof was offered to back up these claims that a tiny Chihuahua was almost a meal for a trained hawk. The hawk more than likely believed the animal to be a rat or other vermin. Officials at the park have since taken extra precautions to prevent something like this from happening. They are continuing their hawk recreational program, which was implemented to get rid of the pigeon population in the park. The program has been a success and park officials say they are not going to get rid of the program because of one small mistake.
According to David Emery of "Your Guide to Urban Legends and Folklore," this hawk story should be considered a "near myth." Emery also states that it could become a real urban legend if the Chihuahua had not been tethered to a leash at the time.
Nonetheless, an urban legend still exists where a small pet like a Chihuahua is commonly being caught and snatched up by birds like hawks, pelicans and other large birds. Most likely, it is a coyote who would hunt down a Chihuahua and other small animals.
A Tourist Buys a Chihuahua Which is Really a Rat:
Another story widely reported on the internet was that a couple from America purchased a Chihuahua to bring home with them. It turns out the dog was strange looking, but the buyer reassured them it was really a Chihuahua. Once the couple returned to the states, their veterinarian confirmed that they had actually purchased a hairless, Mexican sewer rat.
There are several versions of this story circulating around, some have stated the dog was a stray and the couple took a liking to it, others have said the dog was close to drowning and was rescued. Still other sources state that the vet confirmed the animal was a number of different species of rat; Korean, Chinese and Guatemalan are just a few. Other variations of the story claim that the hairless rat was allegedly dying by the time it reached a veterinarian. Again, like all the other stories, this one is also an urban legend."

By: John P Jackson Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com
http://www.articledashboard.com/Article/Chihuahuas--Urban-Legends-And-Myths-About-The-Breed/973422

Well, my first hand accounts of Chihuahua/Health are for real, I guarantee that. No rehashed urban legends there. As for Jackson's article, make up your own mind. Or buy your own Chihuahua and see what follows. I did not tell you all the adventures Paco and my family and I have had for the past ten years. I should have told you that I did have a golden eagle swoop down in an abduction attempt. I felt the powerful left wing as it dropped over my shoulder. I reflexively pulled in the leash and avoided an aerial tug-of-war with the big raptor. And yes the landing gear was down and very impressive! My wife had a similar experience years before with an osprey which she batted away. And it is not uncommon to see the osprey pair who live behind us circle overhead when we are taking our walk. Once I was working on the boat, standing in the back of the boat and Paco was nosing along the shoreline where the manatees browse. Suddenly I saw what looked like a submarine missile launch five or six feet behind the boat. A large dark form shot out of the water toward Paco. I shouted loud but Paco was already hightailing it up the bank and to the house. Alligators claim a lot of dogs here in South Florida. But I doubt they catch many Chihuahuas. That's the kind of canine intelligence that's useful here in Florida.

Some interesting background facts on the Mexican state and city that gave the Chihuahua its name, Chamber of Commerce material:

"Chihuahua, capital of the state of Chihuahua, is a prosperous city of almost 700,000 people located in northern Mexico amidst an unforgiving landscape of sun-baked hills and mesas. Travelers usually spend little time in Chihuahua, treating it merely as a starting point for the spectacular Copper Canyon train ride. However, Chihuahua´s unusual museums, historic architecture, and friendly citizens make it a pleasant city to linger in for at least a day or two.

The first settlers in this area of Mexico were miners digging for silver in the nearby Sierra Madre mountains. They were followed by Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries sent to Christianize local indigenous peoples. In 1709, the Spanish established a town called San Francisco de Cuéllar on the present site of Chihuahua. It eventually grew into a large administrative and military center.

After Mexico gained independence from Spain in 1821, the city was given the name "Chihuahua," thought to be a corruption of a word from the Nahuatl indigenous language meaning "dry and sandy place."

In more recent times, Chihuahua´s best known son was the actor Anthony Quinn who died in 2001. Quinn was born in Chihuahua on April 21, 1915, during the Mexican Revolution. Fleeing the war, his family moved first to Texas and then to Los Angeles, where Anthony Quinn eventually became a Hollywood star, often playing the rebel in feature films. A statue of Quinn performing his famous dance from the movie "Zorba the Greek" can be seen in Chihuahua´s Palomar Park."

Didn't you love Anthony Quinn's Zorba? Six degrees of separation or less, favorite dog to favorite movie character.

This is the point at which the paths crossed: this embro whose face looks like a Chihuahua puppy is actually a human embryo. So much for six degrees of separation!

Ήμουν ακριβώς αστείος: το embro δεν είναι ανθρώπινο!!

Latter Day Atheists get thumped.

2009-09-18T06:23:00.000-07:00

Rational, punk-theist Vox Day, aka Theodore Beale, author of books and blog Vox Populi.

In his book The Irrational Atheist, Dissecting the Unholy Trinity of Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens, author Vox Day aka Theodore Beale takes a sharp scalpel to the bloated prose of those three preeminent, latter day atheists. (2008, ISBN 1-933771-36-4) These authors and others have it easy in the post Christian era, though. It would have taken genuine courage to slander belief and believers years ago. And it would have taken more intelligence and logic than demonstrated by these three to have crossed swords with Thomas Aquinas or Augustine. These three, Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens, are flayed in The Irrational Atheist. There is the old joke: "what is the difference between an onion and a Frenchman?" Answer: "no one cries when the Frenchman is cut up." Ditto for atheists. And no politician aspiring to high office will proclaim his or her atheism, either. (Even Nancy Pelosi who is either Roman Catholic or Argentine Jew will not divulge her true beliefs, and will certainly not proclaim her atheism.)

"On one side of the argument is a collection of godless academics with doctorates from the finest universities in England, France, and the United States. On the other is Irrational Atheist author Vox Day, armed with nothing more than historical and statistical facts. Presenting a compelling argument (but not for the side one might expect), Day strips away the pseudo-scientific pretensions of New Atheism with his intelligent application of logic, history, military science, political economy, and well-documented research. The arguments of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, and Michel Onfray are methodically exposed and discredited as Day provides extensive evidence proving, among other things that:

More than 93 percent of all the wars in human history had no relation to religion.

The Spanish Inquisition had no jurisdiction over professing Jews, Muslims, or atheists; and executed fewer people on an annual basis than the state of Texas.

Atheists are 3.84 times more likely to be imprisoned than Christians.

"Red" state crime is primarily committed in "blue" counties (of those red states).

Sexually abused girls are 55 times more likely to commit suicide than girls raised Catholic.

In the twentieth century, atheistic regimes killed three times more people in peacetime than those killed in all the wars and individual crimes combined.

The Irrational Atheist provides the rational thinker with empirical proof that atheism's claims against religion are unfounded in logic, fact, and science."

This is from the publisher.

I read and enjoyed this book. The author is amazing and his logic is hard to refute. It is not an apologia for religion but is a reasoned analysis of the neoatheists' logic, data, and conclusions regarding religion's fallacies, crimes against humanity, and evil influence in our modern world.

Please read the book. I am not recommending other books of his, just this one.

Before the advent of our modern, pompous and fumbling neoatheists there was a genuine powerhouse critic of religion. I refer to Henry Louis Mencken, the sage of Baltimore. He loved to point out human foibles, and he did so in a classy way so unlike our present crop of neoatheists, those who are rudely hoisted with their own petards in Vox Day's book. Witness H. L. Mencken's s epitaph, a line from one of his many works: "If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner, and wink your eye at some homely girl." Arguably H. L. Mencken's finest book, Treatise on the Gods, is still in print and makes for very enjoyable reading. Henry Louis Mencken is a giant to the Unholy Trinity pygmies. Here is a review of Treatise of the Gods by Keith Otis Edwards:

Whatever merit Treatise on the Gods has in the intelligent speculation and worthy scholarship shown thus far, I am of the opinion that the book’s real appeal lies in its final part which consists of one short section entitled, “Its State Today.” Here Mencken contradicts the goal of objectivity stated in the introduction as he takes off the soft gloves, grabs the subject by the neck and begins to handle it roughly.
He declares that religion is a vestige of that dark and frightened past when man had to dream up explanations for the world around. This manner of thinking is obsolete as we now have science to account for the details of our universe. Whatever effect prayer has as a treatment for disease has been displaced by the highly effective means of scientific medicine. The decline of Christianity began in the Renaissance which “was a reversion to the spacious paganism of Greece and Rome,” but it was not until the Seventeenth Century when enough facts and exact knowledge were able to convince intelligent men that “Christian theology was a farrago of absurdities.” Of course, the benefits of skepticism have not been limited to the modern era—in every society of every era human progress has not come from the faithful with their capacity to worship, but from those with a capacity to doubt and flout the gods. “Everything that we are we owe to Satan and his bootleg apples."
Why then is there usually a religious revival in progress? It is because the growth of scientific knowledge has been too rapid for “the ignorant and ignoble” to comprehend. And with the introduction of those of meager intelligence into the ring what began as a dispassionate examination of religion has turned into a battle royale with Mencken taking on all comers. Along with Christianity, censorship, Prohibition and American democracy each are pummeled, as according to Mencken they are not separate topics but merely different manifestations of the same disease: the mass of stupid and foolish people obstructing the freedom of those capable of independent thought.
This is classic Mencken at his most ferocious. Those who are unfamiliar with Mencken’s work and want to discover what he is all about will do well to look here.

Well, here you have it--Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens for today's brute force bludgeoning of religion; H. L. Mencken for yesteryear's witty but hard hitting critique of belief and believers, past and present; and Vox Day's data intensive, cool and logical dissection of neoatheism. The thinking believer might enjoy reading these arguments.

I intend to put my own analysis of religious belief into cyberspace. The crux of the problem of religious belief is that there undoubtedly was evolution in the production of Homo sapiens. There is no doubt of that. But evolution gets us to some forebear such as Homo erectus, and no farther. Something or someone "jump started" our further evolution from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens and gave us the many human faculties that separate us from our cousins the chimpanzee and the bonobo ape. There is the matter of six million missing years (of evolution). One possibility is that the someone who upraised us is the same person known to ancients and moderns as their God, or the gods. Gods, by which I mean beings of extraordinary learning, possessed of marvelous technology, of either terrestrial or extraterrestrial origin, certainly made a presence on this planet of ours. They are described in writings that are impossibly ancient and, in one instance, in a language (Sumerian) that bears no relationship to any other known tongue. These writings describe how they, the gods who came from space and counted the planets from farthest from the sun inward (terrestrials would count them from nearest the sun outward, at least as I see it), created the first humans. The individuals responsible for this feat of genetic engineering are named (Enki/Ea and Ninharsag). The process is described. Before our present knowledge of molecular biology and cloning techniques these ancient accounts would make no sense whatsoever. Sapienti sat. Now mankind is in a position to reevaluate these writings including our own bible accounts. But note that uplifting Homo erectus to Homo sapiens is not creating the universe with its billions of galaxies and too numerous to count stars and who knows how many planets--and life forms, some of them self-aware and intelligent.

This Creator of All was none of the above in the pantheon of the Twelve Great Gods. The Creator of All is alluded to by the gods themselves, but their own sometimes shockingly immoral behavior suggests that they were not closely supervised by their creator. The ancient writings also suggest that the lower case "g" gods violated a major rule when they created humans. And that the Creator of All seems to have sent a messenger to Enlil, head of the Council of Twelve, requiring the gods to leave humans to their own resources and "pack it in." This they did 2500 years ago. Or so the ancient writings tell us. As for the Creator of All, his messenger Galzu, what He has planned for us, if anything, and what present day religions have to tell us about all this, I haven't a clue. This is what I do know:

The Gods were not omniscient, omnipresent, all merciful, solitary, without face or form. They were embodied beings with great learning who possessed splendid technology. They taught our forebears, the black headed people of Sumer, astronomy, city planning, reading, irrigation, warfare, governance, commerce, engineering, and so much more. These splendid beings were either survivors from Atlantis that sank beneath the sea, or were from space. They were variably benevolent or destructive. Some of them liked humans and others detested them. Noah and the ark is our modern tale, fashioned likely in Babylon during the captivity of Judea. It is a recounting of a much older story describing a very distant event that marked the end of the most recent Ice Age. The being Enki/Ea who liked humans broke the code of silence imposed by his own High Council of Twelve Great Gods by instructing Ziusudra, a human and one of his staff, to make a great ark and prepare for a cataclysmic end to the age. The god of Egypt known as Ra was one of Enki/Ea's sons. For better or worse the God of the Jews was Enlil, half brother of Enki/Ea. And so forth and so on. We know so much about these beings who were known also to the Indus Valley civilization, the Akkadians, the Hittites, the Greeks, and the Romans. These same gods were present in the New World and were described by the Mayans, Aztecs, and Incas. What happened to the Twelve Great Gods and lesser gods? Where are they today? Where will they be in the future?

Well, the answers to those questions make for a long story that deserves its own article. Suffice to say several of these gods died on earth--the story of Horus and his evil uncle Seth. Another was the Great God who was denied passage back home--Marduk. (He who was sought out by Alexander the Great because an oracle had told him that Marduk as Ra was his natural father, and that Ra was also the father of Hatshepsut, female pharoah of Egypt). When Alexander arrived in Babylon he requested an audience with the Great God Marduk. The priests in Marduk's temple told Alexander an audience was not possible. Alexander was persuasive, (in an age before water boarding, in a land where it has been helpful). Eventually the temple priests showed Alexander the dead body of Marduk, embalmed in oils and laid in a casket. The moon god Suen or Sin, after whom the Sinai is named, retired with his wife and servants to a home on the coast of the Red Sea. Some say he is Allah. (For the facts that he is the ancient god of the Arabian peninsula, and that the crescent moon above all mosques is his sign.)With a few exceptions--those who died, those who were exiled, and those who chose to retire to earth--the company of gods, Greater and Lesser, left this planet 2500 years ago. Promises to return are recorded in ancient legend and writings. Check your bible. Check this web log . . .

ACORN, corporate corruption, mighty oak tree . . .

2009-09-17T09:56:00.000-07:00

Even with our American style, short attention span most of us no doubt have heard of the organization ACORN. Irregularities of voter registration in the last federal election come to mind. Now we are shown undercover journalism video of ACORN offices in various cities aiding and abetting various criminal activity including prostitution, tax evasion, illegal immigration, and child molestation. One could be excused for failing to see the forest for the trees. To extend the metaphor a bit further, what comes after the acorn sprouts and takes root?

A seedling Quercus alba destined to grow into a mighty white oak.

The following courtesy of http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/247100.html:

Mighty oaks from little acorns grow

Meaning: Great things may come from small beginnings.

Origin:

The word acorn doesn't come from 'oak' and 'corn', as is popularly supposed, but from the Old English 'aecern', meaning berry or fruit. The tree genus Acer comes from the same root.

Before oaks were mighty they were first either great, tall, sturdy or even just big. Examples of early variants of 'mighty oaks from little acorns grow' are found in Geoffrey Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, 1374,

"as an ook cometh of a litel spyr" [a spyr, or spire, is a sapling]

Thomas Fuller's Gnomologia, 1732:

"The greatest Oaks have been little Acorns."

and in an essay by D. Everett in The Columbian Orator, 1797:

"Large streams from little fountains flow, Tall oaks from little acorns grow."

The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations states that 'great oaks from little acorns grow' is a 14th century proverb. Unfortunately, they don't include any details to support their view.

The 'mighty' version is known, in the USA at least, from the middle of the 19th century. It appeared in A. B. Johnson's The Philosophical Emperor a Political Experiment, 1841.

"ACORN Exposed" courtesy of The American Spectator:
By Matthew Vadum on 9.14.09 @ 6:08AM

ACORN's relentless death march continued last week as undercover sting videos surfaced in which the group's employees counseled reporters posing as a pimp and a prostitute on how to set up a house of ill repute using tax dollars.

The sensational undercover video showed ACORN Housing employees in the group's Baltimore office trying to help the two journalists set up a brothel. The pair told ACORN employees that underage girls from El Salvador were ready to enter the U.S. and start working as child prostitutes.

The video, first shown on Andrew Breitbart's new website Big Government, was featured that day on Glenn Beck's TV program. Hannah Giles, who portrayed the prostitute in the video, told Beck she got involved in the project "to expose ACORN."

"I saw them as a thug organization that was getting my tax dollars," said Giles.

But guess who might be facing prosecution for exposing the group best known for its never-ending voter registration fraud scandals? You guessed it -- the conservative journalists involved in the undercover reporting of course!

Obama supporter Patricia Jessamy, Maryland State's Attorney for Baltimore City, released a statement saying the video might violate the state's anti-wiretapping law that was used against Linda Tripp after she recorded telephone conversations with President Clinton's Oval Office paramour Monica Lewinsky. The law requires consent to the recording by both parties in a conversation . . .

Doing good does not always end up well. Take the case of Jesus of Nazareth. Let us pray for the brave young journalists who risked a lot to shine the light of truth on ACORN. But, so as not to lose sight of the forest here for the fact that they found a great number of trees, one should look at a well documented phenomenon in our modern world: corporate culture. This reflects the fact that corporations are living entities and have a sort of body, mind, and soul. It would surely appear that ACORN as an organization is (morally) ill. The corporate culture, often as not an extension of the top management's beliefs, aspirations, and morality, is one of corruption. Read Wade Rathke's contrary views out of fairness, some expressed below. But use your common sense. And know that corruption is contagious. Let's look at Merriam-Webster for some precision in language:

Main Entry: cor·rup·tion
Pronunciation: \kə-ˈrəp-shən\
Function: noun
Date: 14th century
1 a : impairment of integrity, virtue, or moral principle : depravity b : decay, decomposition c : inducement to wrong by improper or unlawful means (as bribery) d : a departure from the original or from what is pure or correct
2 archaic : an agency or influence that corrupts
3 chiefly dialect : pus

Main Entry: con·ta·gion
Pronunciation: \kən-ˈtā-jən\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Latin contagion-, contagio, from contingere to have contact with, pollute — more at contingent
Date: 14th century
1 a : a contagious disease b : the transmission of a disease by direct or indirect contact c : a disease-producing agent (as a virus)
2 a : poison b : contagious influence, quality, or nature c : corrupting influence or contact
3 a : rapid communication of an influence (as a doctrine or emotional state) b : an influence that spreads rapidly
Main Entry: 1cul·ture
Pronunciation: \ˈkəl-chər\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, cultivated land, cultivation, from Anglo-French, from Latin cultura, from cultus, past participle
Date: 15th century
1 : cultivation, tillage
2 : the act of developing the intellectual and moral faculties especially by education
3 : expert care and training
4 a : enlightenment and excellence of taste acquired by intellectual and aesthetic training b : acquaintance with and taste in fine arts, humanities, and broad aspects of science as distinguished from vocational and technical skills
5 a : the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations b : the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group; also : the characteristic features of everyday existence (as diversions or a way of life} shared by people in a place or time c : the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution or organization d : the set of values, conventions, or social practices associated with a particular field, activity, or societal characteristic
6 : the act or process of cultivating living material (as bacteria or viruses) in prepared nutrient media; also : a product of such cultivation

Pick a side on the ACORN debate. Then let's all tell our "best congress money can buy" how we want this matter handled. I'd like to see some of the promised transparency that was to accompany change, not otherwise specified.

I'd like to see if this is a RICO situation. Fairness, below:

"Fake Rush, Beck Demo’s and Boycott Betsy’s" courtesy of Wade Rathke's Blog:

Ottawa Going from city to city in California last week and now wrapped in the good spirited soul of Canada, it was all I could do in my brief 30 hours in New Orleans to keep up with the wildness of the city and the hate-eration of these times. One thing that had perplexed me had been a tweet from my darling daughter saying something about Betsy’s Pancake House across from her office, the ACORN building on Canal Street. Catching up on the internet and visiting with the home folks I finally got it. It was another “manufactured” media event where the main story is the imitation of real life.

In what is becoming the modus operandi for the “all-the-news-we-can-make-up-all-the-time” Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh’s, they had gotten one of their buddies, some fellow named John Osterlink from Massachusetts who is a talkie host on a New Orleans radio station to try to organize a charade “protest” across from the ACORN headquarters in New Orleans. So, the protest had a radio promo by Beck himself it seems, and the call to arms was the following:

John Osterlind was interviewed by Glenn Beck this morning about the ACORN protest he has organized for today, Sept.11 at Betsy’s Pancake House(across the street from ACORN Headquarters) on Canal from 5pm – 7pm. John is urging everyone to bring signs and come make our voices heard about the need for an investigation of ACORN before they receive another dollar of our tax money. I feel it is especially important for us to show up in large numbers as this is the first protest of this kind that’s been called for by a public figure from “outside” the Tea Party movement. If we show up in force and make it a success, John, and WRNO, will be more inclined to take part in these kind of events in the future. Plus, John’s a cool guy and it will be a lot of fun!

Of course it is a well settled question that has been elaborately documented that ACORN gets no federal money, but hey from the crowd talking about death panels all the time, we can’t expect accuracy, can we?

Talking to eyewitnesses, it seems there were 20 or so people, all white, so it is hard to tell where in New Orleans the crowd might have been drawn, who milled around Betsy’s Pancake House late Friday afternoon. There were a couple of signs and a lot of beer! They plugged into Betsy’s electricity and the joint stayed open to service the motley crowd. Betsy’s is cattycorner to the ACORN building and across the large neutral ground and streetcar tracks, so quite honestly if someone hadn’t noticed them as they were leaving work, it might have been an early Saints tailgating crowd coming in from the Parish somewhere.

When some of the ACORN people walked over to see what was happening and talked to Betsy’s daughter who runs the joint now (Betsy was murdered tragically a couple of years ago in a robbery), and asked how they could have stood for this given all of the business the building has given them along with the other non-profits from the United Way and Red Cross along the block, she simply said: “I need the business.”

Well, sister, this is all monkey business and in fact big business for Clear Channel Communications which owns WRNO and promotes the Beck and Limbaugh shows. The following piece from Dave Walker, television reporter for the Times-Picayune on April 16, 2008 when Limbaugh “came over” to WRNO from WWL, a competitor in New Orleans, says it all, and also says quite a lot about how we got a piece of work like this guy Osterlink in the Crescent City . . .

Please read all of the account on Wade Rathke's blog if the spirit moves you to know more. Really reassuring that ACORN receives no federal dollars. Believe that and someone will sell you a bridge over the St. Lucie river.

Courtesy of Dr. David Kaiser

2009-09-16T12:06:00.000-07:00

Take the three minutes to read this.

Maybe he is wrong.

What if he is right?

David Kaiser is a respected historian whose published works have covered a broad range of topics, from European Warfare to American League Baseball. Born in 1947, the son of a diplomat, Kaiser spent his childhood in three capital cities: Washington D.C. , Albany , New York , and Dakar , Senegal .. He attended Harvard University , graduating there in 1969 with a B.A. in history. He then spent several years more at Harvard, gaining a PhD in history, which he obtained in 1976. He served in the Army Reserve from 1970 to 1976.

He is a professor in the Strategy and Policy Department of the United States Naval War College. He has previously taught at Carnegie Mellon, Williams College and Harvard University . Kaiser's latest book, The Road to Dallas, about the Kennedy assassination, was just published by Harvard University Press.

Dr. David Kaiser

History Unfolding

I am a student of history. Professionally, I have written 15 books on history that have been published in six languages, and I have studied history all my life. I have come to think there is something monumentally large afoot, and I do not believe it is simply a banking crisis, or a mortgage crisis, or a credit crisis. Yes these exist, but they are merely single facets on a very large gemstone that is only now coming into a sharper focus.

Something of historic proportions is happening. I can sense it because I know how it feels, smells, what it looks like, and how people react to it. Yes, a perfect storm may be brewing, but there is something happening within our country that has been evolving for about ten to fifteen years. The pace has dramatically quickened in the past two.

We demand and then codify into law the requirement that our banks make massive loans to people we know they can never pay back? Why?

We learned just days ago that the Federal Reserve, which has little or no real oversight by anyone, has "loaned" two trillion dollars (that is $2,000,000,000,000) over the past few months, but will not tell us to whom or why or disclose the terms. That is our money. Yours and mine. And that is three times the $700 billion we all argued about so strenuously just this past September. Who has this money? Why do they have it? Why are the terms unavailable to us? Who asked for it? Who authorized it? I thought this was a government of "we the people," who loaned our powers to our elected leaders. Apparently not.

We have spent two or more decades intentionally de-industrializing our economy.. Why?

We have intentionally dumbed down our schools, ignored our history, and no longer teach our founding documents, why we are exceptional, and why we are worth preserving. Students by and large cannot write, think critically, read, or articulate. Parents are not revolting, teachers are not picketing, school boards continue to back mediocrity. Why?

We have now established the precedent of protesting every close election (violently in California over a proposition that is so controversial that it simply wants marriage to remain defined as between one man and one woman. Did you ever think such a thing possible just a decade ago?) We have corrupted our sacred political process by allowing unelected judges to write laws that radically change our way of life, and then mainstream Marxist groups like ACORN and others to turn our voting system into a banana republic. To what purpose?

Now our mortgage industry is collapsing, housing prices are in free fall, major industries are failing, our banking system is on the verge of collapse, social security is nearly bankrupt, as is Medicare and our entire government. Our education system is worse than a joke (I teach college and I know precisely what I am talking about) - the list is staggering in its length, breadth, and depth.. It is potentially 1929 x ten...And we are at war with an enemy we cannot even name for fear of offending people of the same religion, who, in turn, cannot wait to slit the throats of your children if they have the opportunity to do so.

And finally, we have elected a man that no one really knows anything about, who has never run so much as a Dairy Queen, let alone a town as big as Wasilla , Alaska . All of his associations and alliances are with real radicals in their chosen fields of employment, and everything we learn about him, drip by drip, is unsettling if not downright scary (Surely you have heard him speak about his idea to create and fund a mandatory civilian defense force stronger than our military for use inside our borders? No? Oh, of course. The media would never play that for you over and over and then demand he answer it. Sarah Palin's pregnant daughter and $150,000 wardrobe are more important.)

Mr. Obama's winning platform can be boiled down to one word: Change. Why?

I have never been so afraid for my country and for my children as I am now.

This man campaigned on bringing people together, something he has never, ever done in his professional life. In my assessment, Obama will divide us along philosophical lines, push us apart, and then try to realign the pieces into a new and different power structure. Change is indeed coming. And when it comes, you will never see the same nation again.

And that is only the beginning..

As a serious student of history, I thought I would never come to experience what the ordinary, moral German must have felt in the mid-1930s In those times, the "savior" was a former smooth-talking rabble-rouser from the streets, about whom the average German knew next to nothing. What they should have known was that he was associated with groups that shouted, shoved, and pushed around people with whom they disagreed; he edged his way onto the political stage through great oratory. Conservative "losers" read it right now.

And there were the promises. Economic times were tough, people were losing jobs, and he was a great speaker. And he smiled and frowned and waved a lot. And people, even newspapers, were afraid to speak out for fear that his "brown shirts" would bully and beat them into submission. Which they did - regularly. And then, he was duly elected to office, while a full-throttled economic crisis bloomed at hand - the Great Depression. Slowly, but surely he seized the controls of government power, person by person, department by department, bureaucracy by bureaucracy. The children of German citizens were at first, encouraged to join a Youth Movement in his name where they were taught exactly what to think. Later, they were required to do so. No Jews of course,

How did he get people on his side? He did it by promising jobs to the jobless, money to the money-less, and rewards for the military-industrial complex. He did it by indoctrinating the children, advocating gun control, health care for all, better wages, better jobs, and promising to re-instill pride once again in the country, across Europe , and across the world. He did it with a compliant media - did you know that? And he did this all in the name of justice and .... . .. change. And the people surely got what they voted for.

If you think I am exaggerating, look it up. It's all there in the history books.

So read your history books. Many people of conscience objected in 1933 and were shouted down, called names, laughed at, and ridiculed. When Winston Churchill pointed out the obvious in the late 1930s while seated in the House of Lords in England (he was not yet Prime Minister), he was booed into his seat and called a crazy troublemaker. He was right, though. And the world came to regret that he was not listened to.

Do not forget that Germany was the most educated, the most cultured country in Europe . It was full of music, art, museums, hospitals, laboratories, and universities. And yet, in less than six years (a shorter time span than just two terms of the U. S. presidency) it was rounding up its own citizens, killing others, abrogating its laws, turning children against parents, and neighbors against neighbors.. All with the best of intentions, of course. The road to Hell is paved with them.

As a practical thinker, one not overly prone to emotional decisions, I have a choice: I can either believe what the objective pieces of evidence tell me (even if they make me cringe with disgust); I can believe what history is shouting to me from across the chasm of seven decades; or I can hope I am wrong by closing my eyes, having another latte, and ignoring what is transpiring around me..

I choose to believe the evidence. No doubt some people will scoff at me, others laugh, or think I am foolish, naive, or both. To some degree, perhaps I am. But I have never been afraid to look people in the eye and tell them exactly what I believe-and why I believe it.

I pray I am wrong. I do not think I am. Perhaps the only hope is our vote in the next elections.

David Kaiser
Jamestown , Rhode Island
United States

Ezechiel J. Emanuel, MD PhD; America's Ethicist and Health Czar.

2009-09-16T07:14:00.000-07:00

Die wunderkindern Emanuels von Chicago! One of the sons of Dr. Emanuel of Chicago is also a medical doctor and a Chicagoan: Ezechiel J. Emanuel, MD, PhD. I have posted a recent photograph and some complimentary biographical comments courtesy of a Chicago newspaper columnist. And I post parts of a recent paper Dr. Emanuel published in JAMA, as below:

WASHINGTON--While the Obama White House is searching for a replacement for health czar Tom Daschle, policy work on health care reform--a priority for the administration--Is ongoing with one key advisor especially well connected.
The brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, a noted bioethicist, is advising the Obama administration on health care reform.
Dr. Emanuel is the Chair of the Department of Bioethics at The Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health and a breast oncologist.
Dr. Emanuel is a special advisor to the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget for health policy. He told me he is "working on (the) health care reform effort." He is "detailed" to the OMB spot and is still officially an employee of the NIH.
Until last August, Dr. Emanuel was commuting between his Chicago home in West Rogers Park and Washington. He moved to Washington last August after his youngest daughter graduated from Northside College Prep at Bryn Mawr and Kedzie.
One of three wildly successful Emanuel brothers (Ari is a Hollywood superagent) Dr. Emanuel also advised the Clinton White House on health care issues. He is a graduate of Amherst College, receiving his masters of science from Oxford University in Biochemistry. His M.D. is from Harvard Medical School. He holds a Ph.D. in political philosophy from Harvard University. In addition, in 1987-88, he was a fellow in the Program in Ethics and the Professions at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.
According to his NIH bio, Dr. Emanuel is "widely published on the ethics of clinical research, advance care directives, end-of-life issues, euthanasia, the ethics of managed care, and the physician-patient relationship, Dr. Emanuel's articles have appeared in The New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, Journal of American Medical Association, and many other medical and ethics journals. His book, The Ends of Human Life, has been widely praised and received the Rosenhaupt Memorial Book Award by the Woodrow Wilson Foundation.
"Dr. Emanuel served on the ethics section of former President Clinton's Health Task Force, the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, and the International Advisory Board on Bioethics of the Pan American Health Organization. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, UCLA, and Brin Professor at Johns Hopkins Medical School."

The Cost-Coverage Trade-off
"It's Health Care Costs, Stupid" (His words, not mine; my italics.) Ezekiel J. Emanuel, MD, PhD
JAMA. 2008;299(8):947-949

Figure. Cost-Coverage Trade-off in the United States by State in 2005
Each state's uninsured rate for 2005 for the population younger than 65 years (because Americans aged 65 years and older are nearly all covered by Medicare) vs family health insurance premiums as a percentage of median state household income to attain a determination of "affordability of health coverage." Controlling for median state income, proportion of minorities, part-time workers, and women in the workforce shows that for every 10% increase in the average family health insurance premium, the rate of the uninsured younger than 65 years increases by 0.55%. The points for Iowa and Florida illustrate how rates can differ markedly between states. The curve was fit using the least squares method.

Dr. Emanuel is the brother of Ari in Hollywood and Rahm in Washington. He is the new Health Czar replacing former senator Tom Daschle. Too numerous articles to cite, much less to quote. The above article will give a little of the flavor, though. He is arrogant, intelligent, outspoken, and ambitious. He is a genuine elite in medicine. And he has pointed out repeatedly that a life is not a life is not a life (as opposed to Gertrude Stein and roses). He puts actual emanuelized values on a human life. Not as a philosopher, either. He is writing as health care czar, bioethicist-in-chief for the Obama administration, and cost cutting theorist in charge. Read some of his writings on the matter of valuation of a human life and cutting the cost of medical care in America and you will wonder how exactly he derived his ethics. I submit to you, dear readers, the oath of Hippocrates, the oath of Maimonides, and the Jewish version of the Ten Commandments. I also submit that there is nothing in atheism to use as a system of ethics, nothing at all. (Moral atheists are borrowing parts of a parent culture to construct their own morality--Jews/Jewish morality; Christians/Christian morality; Muslims/Muslim morality, take the parent culture, extract some elements of its moral code, and arrive at your own atheist morality.) When he puts grandmother on the ice flow in order to free up monies for children's vaccinations he is devaluing grandmother's life. Check for yourself in the Big Three sources for physician ethics. See how many tenets Dr. Ezechiel Emanuel violates.

Obama lies; grandma dies; Ezechiels advise.

The Ten Commandments courtesy of : http://www.holidays.net/shavuot/ten.htm.

On the third day of the Hebrew month of Sivan, Moses was commanded by G-d to prepare the Jewish people for G-d's descent and visit. The Israelites washed and purified their clothes and their bodies. Three days later, on the sixth day of Sivan, the people were awaken by thunder and lightning. Thick, dark clouds hung over the mountain. The sounds of the Shofar, the ram's horn, were heard echoing across the desert. The earth began to tremble and shake. Then the Israelites heard a voice, G-d's voice, as he spoke to them from out of the clouds.
And G-d gave them his Ten Commandments*
*(Please note: Because Shavuot is a Jewish celebration we are presenting the Jewish interpretation of the Ten Commandments. Different religions have different versions of the commandments)
"I am the Lord your G-d, Who has taken you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of slavery"
"You shall have no other gods but me"
"You shall not take the name of your Lord in vain"
"You shall remember and keep the Sabbath day holy"
"Honor your father and mother"
"You shall not murder"
"You shall not commit adultery"
"You shall not steal"
"You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor"
"You shall not covet your neighbor's goods. You shall not covet your neighbour's house. You shall not covet your neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his bull, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbour's."
*(Please note: Because Shavuot is a Jewish celebration we are presenting the Jewish interpretation of the Ten Commandments. Different religions have different versions of the commandments)
Moses went up the mountain and returned with the Tablets that contained the Ten Commandments.

The Oath of Maimonides courtesy of www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/rambam-oath.html .

"The eternal providence has appointed me to watch over the life and health of Thy creatures. May the love for my art actuate me at all time; may neither avarice nor miserliness, nor thirst for glory or for a great reputation engage my mind; for the enemies of truth and philanthropy could easily deceive me and make me forgetful of my lofty aim of doing good to Thy children.
May I never see in the patient anything but a fellow creature in pain.
Grant me the strength, time and opportunity always to correct what I have acquired, always to extend its domain; for knowledge is immense and the spirit of man can extend indefinitely to enrich itself daily with new requirements.
Today he can discover his errors of yesterday and tomorrow he can obtain a new light on what he thinks himself sure of today. Oh, God, Thou has appointed me to watch over the life and death of Thy creatures; here am I ready for my vocation and now I turn unto my calling."

The Oath of Hippocrates courtesy of the National Library of Medicine.

The Hippocratic Oath is perhaps the most widely known of Greek medical texts. It requires a new physician to swear upon a number of healing gods that he will uphold a number of professional ethical standards. One of the best known prohibitions is, "to do no harm".

"I swear by Apollo the physician, and Asclepius, and Hygieia and Panacea and all the gods and goddesses as my witnesses, that, according to my ability and judgement, I will keep this Oath and this contract:

To hold him who taught me this art equally dear to me as my parents, to be a partner in life with him, and to fulfill his needs when required; to look upon his offspring as equals to my own siblings, and to teach them this art, if they shall wish to learn it, without fee or contract; and that by the set rules, lectures, and every other mode of instruction, I will impart a knowledge of the art to my own sons, and those of my teachers, and to students bound by this contract and having sworn this Oath to the law of medicine, but to no others.

I will use those dietary regimens which will benefit my patients according to my greatest ability and judgement, and I will do no harm or injustice to them.

I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan; and similarly I will not give a woman a pessary to cause an abortion.

In purity and according to divine law will I carry out my life and my art.

I will not use the knife, even upon those suffering from stones, but I will leave this to those who are trained in this craft.

Into whatever homes I go, I will enter them for the benefit of the sick, avoiding any voluntary act of impropriety or corruption, including the seduction of women or men, whether they are free men or slaves.

Whatever I see or hear in the lives of my patients, whether in connection with my professional practice or not, which ought not to be spoken of outside, I will keep secret, as considering all such things to be private.

So long as I maintain this Oath faithfully and without corruption, may it be granted to me to partake of life fully and the practice of my art, gaining the respect of all men for all time. However, should I transgress this Oath and violate it, may the opposite be my fate."

(Translated by Michael North, National Library of Medicine, 2002.)

Italics are mine, DJH.

The arrogance of the wunderkindern Emanuels is irksome but one would not expect anyone to die of it. In the right circles it might impress people. But in America's Health Care under Obama this arrogance combined with Dr. Ezechiel J. Emanuel's peculiar post Judeo-Christian ethics will propel an ugly agenda in which the lives of all Americans are not equal in value and in which none are sacred. Our new Health Czar is a true medical elite. But he is also one of the Chicago group of thugs and crooks who presently control our country. For now this cabal controls our destiny, too--at least until we wake up and show them all the exit door.

Wolves in sheep's clothing might bruise us in the Treasury Department or Education or Agriculture. They will kill us in Health Care Reform. Literally! A life is not a life is not a life. Write to your senator and representative to demand a better czar!

We the People need to budget.

2009-09-13T08:01:00.001-07:00

Just as a ordinary citizens review the household expenses and income weekly or monthly as part of personal budgeting, we the people ought perhaps to review our republic's budgeting. After all, whose republic is it? And, if it is ours, do we trust our elected representatives to do it? Here goes:

GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT: SECOND QUARTER 2009 (SECOND ESTIMATE)
CORPORATE PROFITS: SECOND QUARTER 2009 (PRELIMINARY ESTIMATE)

(Please skim this part fast, get to the highlighted paragraph.)

Real gross domestic product -- the output of goods and services produced by labor and property
located in the United States -- decreased at an annual rate of 1.0 percent in the second quarter of 2009,
(that is, from the first quarter to the second quarter), according to the "second" estimate released by the
Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the first quarter, real GDP decreased 6.4 percent.

The GDP estimate released today is based on more complete source data than were available for
the "advance" estimate issued last month. In the advance estimate, the decrease in real GDP was also
1.0 percent (see "Revisions" on page 3).

The decrease in real GDP in the second quarter primarily reflected negative contributions from
private inventory investment, nonresidential fixed investment, personal consumption expenditures
(PCE), residential fixed investment, and exports that were partly offset by positive contributions from
federal government spending and state and local government spending. Imports, which are a subtraction
in the calculation of GDP, decreased.

The much smaller decrease in real GDP in the second quarter than in the first primarily reflected
much smaller decreases in nonresidential fixed investment and in exports, an upturn in federal
government spending, smaller decreases in private inventory investment and residential fixed
investment, and an upturn in state and local government spending that were partly offset by a much
smaller decrease in imports and a downturn in PCE.

Motor vehicle output added 0.20 percentage point to the second-quarter change in real GDP after
subtracting 1.69 percentage points from the first-quarter change. Final sales of computers subtracted
0.05 percentage point from the second-quarter change in real GDP after adding 0.06 percentage point to
the first-quarter change.

________________________
FOOTNOTE.--Quarterly estimates are expressed at seasonally adjusted annual rates, unless otherwise
specified. Quarter-to-quarter dollar changes are differences between these published estimates.
Percent changes are calculated from unrounded data and are annualized. “Real” estimates are in
chained (2005) dollars. Price indexes are chain-type measures.

This news release is available on BEA’s Web site along with the Technical Note and Highlights related
to this release.
________________________

The price index for gross domestic purchases, which measures prices paid by U.S. residents,
increased 0.5 percent in the second quarter, 0.2 percentage point less than in the advance estimate; this
index decreased 1.4 percent in the first quarter. Excluding food and energy prices, the price index for
gross domestic purchases increased 0.8 percent in the second quarter, compared with an increase of 0.2
percent in the first.

Real personal consumption expenditures decreased 1.0 percent in the second quarter, in contrast
to an increase of 0.6 percent in the first. Real nonresidential fixed investment decreased 10.9 percent,
compared with a decrease of 39.2 percent. Nonresidential structures decreased 15.1 percent, compared
with a decrease of 43.6 percent. Equipment and software decreased 8.4 percent, compared with a
decrease of 36.4 percent. Real residential fixed investment decreased 22.8 percent, compared with a
decrease of 38.2 percent.

Real exports of goods and services decreased 5.0 percent in the second quarter, compared with a
decrease of 29.9 percent in the first. Real imports of goods and services decreased 15.1 percent,
compared with a decrease of 36.4 percent.

Real federal government consumption expenditures and gross investment increased 11.0 percent
in the second quarter, in contrast to a decrease of 4.3 percent in the first. National defense increased
13.3 percent, in contrast to a decrease of 5.1 percent. Non defense increased 6.2 percent, in contrast to a
decrease of 2.5 percent. Real state and local government consumption expenditures and gross
investment increased 3.6 percent, in contrast to a decrease of 1.5 percent.

The change in real private inventories subtracted 1.39 percentage points from the second-quarter
change in real GDP, after subtracting 2.36 percentage points from the first-quarter change. Private
businesses decreased inventories $159.2 billion in the second quarter, following decreases of $113.9
billion in the first and $37.4 billion in the fourth.

Real final sales of domestic product -- GDP less change in private inventories -- increased 0.4
percent in the second quarter, in contrast to a decrease of 4.1 percent in the first.

Gross domestic purchases

Real gross domestic purchases -- purchases by U.S. residents of goods and services wherever
produced -- decreased 2.5 percent in the second quarter, compared with a decrease of 8.6 percent in the
first.

Gross national product

Real gross national product -- the goods and services produced by the labor and property
supplied by U.S. residents -- decreased 0.8 percent in the second quarter, compared with a decrease of
6.6 percent in the first. GNP includes, and GDP excludes, net receipts of income from the rest of the
world, which increased $6.4 billion in the second quarter after decreasing $6.1 billion in the first; in the
second quarter, receipts decreased $16.8 billion, and payments decreased $23.2 billion.

(You have arrived:)

Current-dollar GDP:

Current-dollar GDP -- the market value of the nation's output of goods and services -- decreased
1.0 percent, or $34.7 billion, in the second quarter to a level of $14,143.3 billion. In the first quarter,
current-dollar GDP decreased 4.6 percent, or $169.3 billion.

America is a rich country with a huge GDP. But let's look at costs, obligations present and future, and ways to return to fiscal balance. Let's start with Medicare, and Medicaid, costs of which are are projected to grow robustly at the very same time as our economy is projected to grow slowly.

Thoughtful, skilled, and sober experts predict that our unemployment will remain high and inflation will return with vigor at the same time that entitlement spending balloons. The bright light at the end of our (present) tunnel is not daylight. One does not need a degree in economics to see that our country is on a collision course.

Promises have been made to citizens and money has been collected from them, so there is Mandatory Spending. Accurate estimations of these costs can be made into the future. Actuarial science and standard accounting principles leave little room for error here.

Large deficits loom over the entitlements. Was the money never put aside? Did the Great Society #1 raid the lock box? Is it right to have called it a "lock box?" What will Great Society #2 do with the money citizens give back to their government, in good faith, for their health and comfort in old age? Is money being transferred from one segment of the society to another? Will "means testing" eventually disenfranchise the very segment of the society that put the money into Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security? "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." Except that in this new Obama marxism, if you both put in and need, you will not receive. This goes beyond communism and will be the gift that keeps on giving.

President Obama stated in May 2009: "But we know that our families, our economy, and our nation itself will not succeed in the 21st century if we continue to be held down by the weight of rapidly rising health care costs and a broken health care system...Our businesses will not be able to compete; our families will not be able to save or spend; our budgets will remain unsustainable unless we get health care costs under control."

The present value of unfunded obligations under all parts of Medicare during FY 2007 is approximately $34.1 trillion. In other words, this amount would have to be set aside today such that the principal and interest would cover the shortfall over the next 75 years.[15]

We have an unfunded obligation of 34.1 T, as above, but our annual federal government intake is as below:

This does not look workable. We need to stop our dreaming. Obama needs to do the job we elected him for--put our house in order after the ruination of George W. Bush's terms. (No, he did not have to spend our money on "regime change" and "nation building" in the Middle East.) We the people elected Obama to change the system, true enough. But change it to fiscally responsible, not from free enterprise capitalism (to Social Democrat Labor Unionist). Get on with the job, Mr. President. Balance our budget. Spread the pain and suffering, not spread the wealth. We're all out of wealth right now.

For starters, a budget for Health Care in America:

Inasmuch as our economy is 14 T/year and we are said to spend 15% on health care, we might say that we spend 2.1 T/year for our health care. Let's try an overly simplistic budget for Health Care using these numbers:

1.0 T/year for Medicare

1.0 T/year for Medicaid

Everyone who is older goes into Medicare.

All others go into Medicaid.

Now, we need to make Medicaid more appealing, so we put everyone not in Medicare in Medicaid. Everyone from our president on down is in Medicaid or Medicare. No special deal for unionists, legislators, members of the federal judiciary, members of the executive branch past or present, veterans, Indians, retired railroad workers, big CEO's, fat cats and skinny cats. Even visiting foreigners are in one or the other. I know this would spiff up tired, dowdy, unresponsive, under providing and under performing Medicaid overnight. Do you think Michelle Obama would accept Medicaid in its present form as insurance for her family? Few good doctors will accept Medicaid patients. (And fewer and fewer good doctors and clinics take Medicare patients.)

And we will need to make Health Care more efficient and cost effective across the board. I suggest we employ a version of the methodology used in the French health care system, where government writes the check but hospitals, clinics, doctors, and various other providers of proven beneficial health care compete for the privilege of caring for the citizens. Pay for curative interventions and important palliative maneuvers. Let the people pay for unproved nostrums out of their own pocket. Do not expect better preventive care to save money--it won't. But if it can be proven to be effective, employ it anyway. Improve the methodology of Evidence Based Medicine, and mounting large scale randomized and prospective studies to resolve clinical questions so we have more answers than questions in medicine. Quality, efficacy, efficiency should be the standard. Eliminate the foolish waste of defensive medicine by reworking the system of medical malpractice while still keeping our ancient law of torts.

Health Care is not the only budget buster to be addressed. I believe we need to do some other things, too. We need to stop dreaming of Great Society #2--no money for that right now. We should repeal some of the promises made in Great Society #1 while we are at it--same reason. We must scale back overseas imperial adventures. (Great Britain ceased to be Great because of the Boer War, which was her Iraq, and WWI, which some say she started.) We must scale back our military presence overseas, even though this will leave Japan, Germany, and South Korea unprotected. (Unprotected from whom? Let them buy military paraphernalia from our manufacturers so they defend themselves.) We have to curtail spending on military items no longer of any use--or redirect the money to items likely to serve our purposes better now and in the future. We need to implement the same changes in education and state and federal government that were made by companies in the private sector, and by the same means: eliminate layers and layers of managerial workforce by fully utilizing the power of the computer. We need to modernize or tax code and the methodology of tax collection.

America balanced its budget under President Clinton. Let's ask him to select a commission to balance the federal budget. I think he is likely to be fair and not balance our budget on the backs of those who do not vote blue. Nor would he unfairly disenfranchise the old, the poor, or the sick. We are a rich country with a huge Gross Domestic Product. We can balance our budget. We will need to grow up politically, and heed St. Paul's advice in 31 Corinthians 13: 11 "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things." King James Version, my italics. Amen.

President Obama, get on with the job for which you were chosen. Put us back on the road to fiscal responsibility. Insist on the single payer system but add some of the French essence. Use your supremely skillful oratory to get us back to where we were under President Clinton. Spread the pain and suffering not the wealth. If you want your head on Mount Rushmore, you will need to lead (the people) not follow (your misguided, misinformed, and misplaced) advisers.

Thanks to www sources including the Government Accounting Office and Wikipedia for data displayed.

Evidence Based Medicine.

2009-09-13T07:08:00.000-07:00

Our cat "Sweetie" counteracts the deleterious effects of stress and thereby saves lives. This is self evident.

Sweetie is the oldest known name for a cat, as it was found in an Egyptian tomb along with the embalmed cat that went by that name. Our Sweetie has expressed a preference for cremation.

Google hits for evidence based governance: 5,320, vs 2,250,000 for evidence based medicine. I'd like to see more interest in evidence based governance. But I'll write on Evidence Based Medicine this time.

The Great Health Care Debate grinds on. And on and on . . . Let us hope that our congress and president will turn out to be like the "mills of God (that) grind slow, but they grind exceeding fine." Health Care is obviously a right of the citizen in an advanced society. Get sick in Italy and you are taken to an Italian hospital, and cared for. You will not even meet the billing/admission officer (who is the first person you will see in our American hospitals). My wife just spent a week in Cardiac Intensive Care in hospitals in Sorrento and Sarno, regio di Napoli. I am a doctor and noticed the difference between our way and the Italian way. We left the hospital without any bill or statement whatsoever. Medicines for a month cost 40 USD. One of the same medicines cost 189 USD a month later, back home--I switched that one to a generic equivalent c/o Walmart and asked Walgreens to refund the money. I told Walgreens they should have told my wife that the Italian version of an ACE inhibitor was prohibitively expensive but that inexpensive alternatives were available here in America. (Some of our high cost is avoidable, but then not all Americans are physicians or spouses of physicians.)

Well, until we come to grips with the high cost of medication, the high cost of medical technology, the high cost of defensive medicine, and the high cost of life styles deleterious to one's health, we and our Great Debate will grind on without ginding exceeding fine. Let's look at the matter of Evidence Based Medicine--small "p" panacea for Health Care savings in the current planning.

Evidence Based Medicine is an attempt to upregulate the science of medicine and downregulate the art of medicine. This makes good sense and fits our modern mind set in the Age of Information. Add translational research and the widespread use of high quality medical studies and we will answer the perennial questions one by one, and save time and money by getting the diagnosis and proper, effective treatment on the first try. It used to be that medicine was described as an art and a science. The aim of Evidence Based Medicine is to hasten the day that medicine is described as a science.

There are some problems inherent in this venture. For one thing, even though we humans have a scant 30,000 genes and seem to constitute a single species with nearly identical DNA--we are within a percent or two of having the same DNA as chimpanzees--we do not react the same to threats, external or internal; toxins, medicines, the passage of time, diet, and so forth. Everyone has heard of someone's grandfather who smoked like the proverbial chimney for eighty years and died in his sleep at ninety-two. And who never went to a doctor, either. My mother was in her ninetieth year when she told me that she did not like to see doctors because all the people doing so were ill. Structuring what we call randomized prospective high quality studies that have sufficient intrinsic statistical power to resolve clinically important questions is easy on paper. Conducting the study without breaks in protocol because either the patient or the clinician departed from the script is difficult. The studies of cancer treatment must span years and years to accrue enough patients to yield solid answers to the original question. But treatments and styles change over time and so does the cast of investigators. Such basic questions as "does screening men for possible prostate cancer save lives? or does such screening translate to early diagnosis? and does early diagnosis of prostate cancer save lives?" seem straight forward enough. Maybe intelligent lay persons doubt a need to study such questions. Humor me, those issues and thousands of others have not been laid to rest.

But Evidence Based Medicine should answer such questions and let us move on to thornier issues like "do intracoronary stents save lives?" Believe it or not, one can find expert opinion on both sides of the above questions, each of the questions. This is baffling for patients and discouraging for their doctors. There is only one arena in which there is absolute certainty: court of law/medical malpractice/failure to diagnose cancer/late stage prostate cancer. Trial lawyers are not seeking truth, though. They are seeking settlement money. Theirs is all art and no science. But I digress and I apologize.

First let's look at definitions for Evidence Based Medicine. Then let's look at some recent reports in the fine Journal of Evidence Based Medicine.

NHS QIS 2005 (definition courtesy of the National Health Service of Scotland)
Evidence-based clinical practice is an approach to decision-making in which the clinician uses the best evidence available, in consultation with the patient, to decide upon the option which suits the patient best.
NHS Quality Improvement Scotland 2005

Evidence-based practice:
is integration of best research evidence with clinical expertise and patient values
Sackett et al. 2000

The National Mental Health Association is committed to promoting the appropriate use of medications for all illnesses, including mental illnesses. NMHA subscribes to the common definition of evidence based medicine as the integration of the best research evidence with clinician expertise and patient values, and has grave concerns about public policies and protocols that fail to account for this definition. Below please find links to more information on major research findings on the effectiveness of mental health medications as well as issue briefs on EBM more broadly.

When clinicians practice evidence-based practice:
The best available evidence, modified by patient circumstances and preferences, is applied to improve the quality of clinical judgements.
McMaster Clinical Epidemiology Group 1997

Some representative studies in this literature:

Evidence-Based Medicine 2009;14:105; doi:10.1136/ebm.14.4.105
Copyright © 2009 by the Royal Society of Medicine.

THERAPEUTICS

Periodic screening with prostate-specific antigen testing reduced mortality from prostate cancer

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

STUDY DESIGN

Design:
randomised controlled trial (European Randomised Study of Screening for Prostate Cancer [ERSPC]). Current Controlled Trials ISRCTN49127736 [controlled-trials.com] .

Allocation:
not concealed, at least in part.* In 3 countries, randomisation occurred before consent was obtained; in the other 4 countries, only consenting participants were randomised, but allocation concealment was unclear.

Blinding:
blinded (outcome adjudication committees).*

STUDY QUESTION

Setting:
7 European countries.

Participants:
162 243 men 55–69 years of age (mean age 61 y). Some countries also enrolled men outside of this age range, but they were not included in this analysis. Men with a previous diagnosis of prostate cancer were excluded.

Intervention:
screening, on average, once every 4 years with prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing (n = 72 890) or usual care (n = 89 353). In most centres, a serum PSA concentration >3.0 ng/ml was considered to be an indication for biopsy or additional diagnostic tests. Men diagnosed with prostate cancer were treated according to local standard practice.

Outcomes:
. . . [Full text of this article]

So, using the readily available blood test, PSA or prostate specific antigen, one can find prostate cancer earlier and the mortality or death rate was reduced. This suggests that there is Evidence available for the Basis of Medical practice of screening men with PSA testing. That should help the clinician with good decision making. Ah, but here comes another article reporting another study aiming at answering the same question:

Evidence-Based Medicine 2009;14:104-105; doi:10.1136/ebm.14.4.104
Copyright © 2009 by the Royal Society of Medicine.

THERAPEUTICS

Annual screening for prostate cancer did not reduce mortality from prostate cancer.

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

STUDY DESIGN

Design:
randomised controlled trial (Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian [PLCO] Cancer Screening Trial). ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00002540 [ClinicalTrials.gov] .

Allocation:
{concealed}*.

Blinding:
blinded (outcome adjudication committee).

STUDY QUESTION

Setting:
10 centres in the USA.

Participants:
76 693 men 55–74 years of age. Exclusion criteria included history of PLCO cancer, current cancer treatment, and >1 prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test in 3 years.

Intervention:
annual screening with PSA testing for 6 years and digital rectal examination for 4 years (n = 38 343) or usual care that might include screening (n = 38 350). A serum PSA concentration >4.0 ng/ml was considered to be a positive result. Men and their primary physicians were informed of test results; they decided on further diagnostic evaluation and treatment, according to standard practice.

Outcomes:
incidence of and mortality from prostate cancer at 7 years. {The trial had >90% power to detect a 20% relative reduction in prostate cancer mortality.}*

Follow-up period:
median 12 years.

Participant follow-up:
98% at 7 years (intention-to-screen analysis).

MAIN RESULTS
. . . [Full text of this article]

Steven E Canfield

University of Texas Medical School at Houston, Houston, Texas, USA

So, screening did not reduce mortality of prostate cancer. Opposite conclusions, same issue of the same journal, same clinical question. This illustrates the problem with Evidence Based Medicine: great idea but needs more work.

It is not ready for prime time yet. There is still ample room for art in the "medicine is an art and a science." In fact, look at those definitions again and see if there is not a bit of hedging there. The definitions seem to call for a measure of clinical art of medicine in applying the best available evidence. But perhaps prostate cancer is aiming too high. Let's pick something really basic, like does a vaccination that most young people and many older people get, the pneumococcal vaccine, do any good? This report appeared in the same issue as the two prostate cancer screening reports:

Evidence-Based Medicine 2009;14:109; doi:10.1136/ebm.14.4.109
Copyright © 2009 by the Royal Society of Medicine.

THERAPEUTICS

Review: pneumococcal vaccination is not effective for preventing pneumonia, bacteraemia, bronchitis, or mortality

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

QUESTION
Is pneumococcal vaccination effective for various clinical outcomes in adults?

REVIEW SCOPE
Included studies compared pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine with placebo, other vaccines, or no intervention (control). Studies of children; evaluation of antibody responses only or pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccines as a booster after conjugate pneumococcal vaccine; or animal, laboratory, and observational intervention studies were excluded. Outcomes were definitive pneumococcal pneumonia, presumptive pneumococcal pneumonia, all-cause pneumonia, bacteraemia or invasive pneumococcal disease, bronchitis, all-cause mortality, pneumonia mortality, and mortality from pneumococcal infection.

REVIEW METHODS
Medline (1966 to May 2007), EMBASE/Excerpta Medica (1974 to May 2007), Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Latin American and Caribbean Health Sciences Literature, Indian Medlars Centre, African Index Medicus, and reference lists were searched for randomised controlled trials (RCTs) or quasi-RCTs. 22 trials (n = 101 507) met the selection criteria.

MAIN RESULTS
Meta-analysis showed that pneumococcal vaccination did not differ from control for definitive pneumococcal pneumonia (table). The pneumococcal vaccination group . . . [Full text of this article]

Jennie Johnstone
McMaster University Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

Now, that's definitive and would guide practice. Except that an attending physician who neglected to offer the pneumococcal vaccine to his or her Florida patient would be on the wrong side of expert testimony were something bad to happen to that patient. The doctor would be right not to have offered or counseled for the vaccination but the jury would never see that journal report. We need more than just good clear data, we need to rework the medical litigation system in our country. At least study this problem and its high costs.

Any physician who has practiced medicine long enough to have mastered the art of medicine will welcome more science with open arms, including Evidence Based Medicine. But the present state-of-the-art of Evidence Based Medicine, if I can play on words here, is not sufficient to guide much of what goes on in Health Care, far less promise great savings early on. This is something we should invest in now so that the future will be better for patients and doctors and whoever pays for all this. Don't count on Evidence Based Medicine to save money in today's Health Care.

Kejserens nye Klæder

2009-09-13T07:07:00.000-07:00

Op-Ed Columnist
"Boy, Oh, Boy"
(courtesy of The New York Times, this date)

By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: September 12, 2009
WASHINGTON

"The normally nonchalant Barack Obama looked nonplussed, as Nancy Pelosi glowered behind.
Surrounded by middle-aged white guys — a sepia snapshot of the days when such pols ran Washington like their own men’s club — Joe Wilson yelled “You lie!” at a president who didn’t.
But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!
The outburst was unexpected from a milquetoast Republican backbencher from South Carolina who had attracted little media attention. Now it has made him an overnight right-wing hero, inspiring “You lie!” bumper stickers and T-shirts . . . "

Well, Maureen Dowd is a mean woman on a good day. After seeing a single member of congress point out the obvious she has sunk to a new low, for her and for the Times.

See if the following bears any similarity to what happened on Capitol Hill, and what got under Maureen's saddle:

An emperor of a prosperous city who cares more about clothes than military pursuits or entertainment hires two swindlers who promise him the finest suit of clothes from the most beautiful cloth. This cloth, they tell him, is invisible to anyone who was either stupid or unfit for his position. The Emperor cannot see the (non-existent) cloth, but pretends that he can for fear of appearing stupid; his ministers do the same. When the swindlers report that the suit is finished, they dress him in mime. The Emperor then goes on a procession through the capital showing off his new "clothes". During the course of the procession, a small child cries out, "the emperor is naked!" The crowd realizes the child is telling the truth. The Emperor, however, holds his head high and continues the procession.

Go Joe, and I don't mean Joe Biden. Someone pointed out the obvious--obvious, that is, to all but those on a mission to rework America and all her hallowed institutions, those blinded by their own colossal belief in change NOS.

But you wonder, how did Joe know that the president was lying? The old fashioned way--he could see the lips moving.

Just what America needs: her own Axelrod.

2009-09-11T09:42:00.000-07:00

Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. George Santayana

Untiring activist, communist: Pavel Axelrod, born in Chernigov, Russia, 1850.

These are perilous times for our republic and for the rest of the world. That which caught our attention so forcefully eight years ago to this day--the astounding amount of ill will "out there" directed against ordinary Americans, and the degree to which those who wish us harm will go, even including mass suicide by immolation; and the evil genius directing this campaign of terror--has not gone away, has probably not dissipated nor lost its will or its way, and will reappear in our land.

And Americans face other, more subtle perils. Our beautiful land and its people are under attack from without and from within. On the one hand, angry, determined Islamics are intent upon removing us and our influence from their lands; and on the other hand we have the equivalent of Formosan termites, hard at work destroying our free enterprise, our currency and credit, and our constitution. The leaders we have chosen and empowered by office to maintain peace and security in our land and to protect and preserve our systems of governance and commerce are failing us. (It is hard to believe that everything possible was done to minimize the impact, literal impact, of the aberrant airliners of eight years ago. Nor can I believe that no one considered the possibility of an attack on our centers of commerce and governance by civilian airliners. We know government types love Tom Clancy and his books. President Reagan loved Tom Clancy and his book The Hunt for Red October. So lots of military and government types had to be familiar with the idea of attacking US targets with an airliner.) Tom Clancy's book Debt of Honor:

In Debt of Honor, Ryan returns to government service to deal with a second war between Japan and the United States. For a brief time Ryan is the National Security Advisor, but when Vice President Ed Kealty is forced to resign after a sex scandal, President Roger Durling taps him for the job. Ryan accepts the Office of Vice President on the condition that it is only until the end of Durling's current term. He sees this as a way of ending his public life. He is barely confirmed by Congress when a Japanese airline pilot deliberately crashes his 747 onto the Capitol during a joint session of Congress, killing most of the people inside, decapitating the U.S. government and elevating Ryan to the Presidency.

Yes, that is how the protagonist Jack Ryan became POTUS: courtesy of an aberrant 747 flown into our Capitol Building. In a book that a plurality of top level types read. So no hiding behind "it was unimaginable." Ineptitude in government is a given. Ineptitude in leadership is a given. The scale of the ineptitude is what is striking these days. This is Woodrow Wilson level orange ineptitude. Perhaps you still believe that an intelligent person is by definition a capable person. Perhaps you believe the Ivy League elites are to be trusted in matters of governance, money management, leadership and honor. Well, check Harvard University's bank balance these days and reflect upon who was at the helm when the endowment went on the rocks. Or was securely on course for the rocks. (Dr. Lawrence Summers, I presume.) And what exactly is he doing these days? Financial advisor-in-chief to POTUS, I am told, but you really have to be kidding. Even those few remaining believers in the reality of Ivy meritocracy, in the competence if not benevolence of big banks and big bankers, in the ability of big government and government workers to get the job done on time and in budget, in the leadership and honor of all those government types up to and including POTUS himself must be having second thoughts about now. The people who brought us Cash for Clunkers and $5,000,000,000. for ACORN are as incapable of adding value as were the Mensheviks of old. And that brings me to (courtesy of the internet encyclopedias): Pavel Axelrod, untiring social activist of yesteryear, and no-value-added pol.

Pavel Axelrod was born in Chernigov, Russia, in 1850. Deeply influenced by the writings of Mikhail Bakunin, he established a socialist group of students in Kiev. He also contributed to the radical journals, Worker and Commune.
In 1877 he joined the Land and Liberty. Three years later the group split into two factions. The majority of members, who favoured a policy of terrorism, established the People's Will. Axelrod and George Plekhanov established the Black Repartition group that rejected terrorism and supported a socialist propaganda campaign among workers and peasants.
Axelrod went with George Plekhanov to live in Switzerland and in 1883 they established the Liberation of Labour group.
In March, 1898, the various Marxist groups in Russia met in Minsk and decided to form the Social Democratic Labour Party (SDLP). The party was banned in Russia so most of its leaders were forced to live in exile. Axelrod became co-editor of a journal called Iskra. It was printed in several European cities and then smuggled into Russia by a network of SDLP agents.
At the Second Congress of the Social Democratic Labour Party in London in 1903, there was a dispute between Vladimir Lenin and Julius Martov, two of SDLP's leaders. Lenin argued for a small party of professional revolutionaries with a large fringe of non-party sympathizers and supporters. Martov disagreed believing it was better to have a large party of activists.
Julius Martov based his ideas on the socialist parties that existed in other European countries such as the British Labour Party. Lenin argued that the situation was different in Russia as it was illegal to form socialist political parties under the Tsar's autocratic government. At the end of the debate Martov won the vote 28-23 . Vladimir Lenin was unwilling to accept the result and formed a faction known as the Bolsheviks. Those who remained loyal to Martov became known as Mensheviks.
Along with Julius Martov, Pavel Axelrod, Leon Trotsky, Irakli Tsereteli, Moisei Uritsky, Noi Zhordania and Fedor Dan, Axelrod joined the Mensheviks. However, a large number of important figures in the Social Democratic Labour Party, including Gregory Zinoviev, Anatoli Lunacharsky, Joseph Stalin, Mikhail Lashevich, Nadezhda Krupskaya, Mikhail Frunze, Alexei Rykov, Yakov Sverdlov, Lev Kamenev, Maxim Litvinov, Vladimir Antonov, Felix Dzerzhinsky, Gregory Ordzhonikidze and Alexander Bogdanov joined the Bolsheviks.
An opponent of the First World War, Axelrod worked with Julius Martov, Vladimir Antonov and Leon Trotsky, to produce the internationalist newspaper, Our World.
After the February Revolution Axelrod returned to Russia but was too late to stop some Mensheviks joining the Provisional Government. He strongly criticized those Mensheviks such as Irakli Tsereteli and Fedor Dan who now supported the war effort. However at a conference held on 18th June, 1917, he failed to gain the support of the delegates for a policy of immediate peace negotiations with the Central Powers.
After the October Revolution, which Axelrod called a "historical crime without parallel in modern history", he toured the world rallying socialist opposition to the Bolsheviks. Pavel Axelrod died in 1928

Uncle Pavel, untiring activist and communist. I would say that he went to his reward eighty years ago but he was an atheist. ("All dressed up and no where to go: the atheist at his funeral.") He reminds me of a present day Axelrod, another untiring social activist and seeker after power. There aren't many communists these days, so I doubt our present day Axelrod is a communist. But he's definitely on a crusade of some sort and I have a hunch it's not the free enterprise sort. Try social democrat labor party, or just get-in-power-and-we'll-figure-the-rest-out-as-we-go-along party. Let's take a close look at one of the primary architects of this change in America: Mr. David Axelrod, advisor-in-chief to POTUS.

Another untiring activist Axelrod: David, opportunist and/or social democrat laborist.

Biography courtesy of The Guardian:

For Axelrod, for reasons political, professional but also deeply personal, guiding Obama to victory in November has become more than just a challenge. It is, say those who know him best, a 'crusade'. And it began not with Obama's formal declaration of his candidacy in front of Illinois's capitol building on a cold February day 18 months ago, but nearly five decades earlier in Axelrod's boyhood home of New York.
The year was 1960. Axelrod was five, as he would recall the experience to fellow reporters when he began work on the Tribune. He had been taken by his sister to a campaign rally, where he heard the stirring oratory of another young senator who had set off on a journey to the White House: John F Kennedy.
'David was smitten, that's absolutely the right word,' says George de Lama, recently retired news editor of the Tribune, who began at the paper alongside Axelrod as a summer intern and became a friend. 'The experience of seeing Kennedy became etched in his memory - the excitement, the sense that something really important was happening.'
Eight years later, as a 13-year-old campaign volunteer, he sold lapel buttons and bumper stickers for the short-lived presidential bid of Robert, JFK's brother.
But if Axelrod's Kennedy-era sense of political idealism goes a long way to explaining his bond with Obama - and the course of the campaign, from its central message of 'change' to the echoes of JFK in last week's huge rally in Berlin - the focus and urgency he has brought to the fight has roots that are deeper and much more personal.
Axelrod was born in New York's Lower East Side and raised in Manhattan. His father was a psychologist, his mother a journalist for the city's crusading left-wing 1940s newspaper, PM. His early years no doubt helped to give him not only an interest in politics, but a sense that politics mattered.
But they also embedded other qualities remarked upon by friends and colleagues in the political word he has inhabited all his adult life: a sometimes moody introspectiveness. 'Soulfulness' is the word one friend uses; a seriousness; a 'driven' urge to succeed; and an 'inner toughness'.
When he was eight, his parents divorced. When he was 19 - a tragedy he mentioned publicly for the first time only in a moving Father's Day article for the Tribune - his father committed suicide. It began: 'My father died 31 years ago ...' and described him as my 'best friend and hero', an immigrant who had fled the anti-Jewish pogroms of eastern Europe, survived an 'unhappy, failed marriage', yet never showed any signs of sadness. It ended: 'It has taken me more than 30 years to say out loud that the man I most loved and admired took his own life.'
By then, Axelrod had moved west, studying political science at the University of Chicago and, first as an intern and, from 1977, a staff reporter, to the Tribune. He spent nearly eight years there, becoming City Hall bureau chief and then the paper's youngest political columnist, before leaving to join the campaign of another Illinois senator, Paul Simon.
Axelrod, says de Lama, was not only an incisive observer and reporter, but a 'beautiful writer - which you can see in some of the Obama speeches'. But when he left the paper, 'our editor said it was inevitable - that David loved being in the game more than writing about it'.
He founded a political consultancy and soon made his mark running the re-election campaign of Chicago's first African-American mayor, Harold Washington. He has since done work for clients ranging from the current mayor, Richard M Daley, to presidential hopefuls John Edwards and Hillary Clinton. But the Washington campaign proved a template for helping other African-American mayoral candidates, leading one commentator early in the Obama campaign to remark that Axelrod had 'developed something of a novel niche for a political consultant - helping black politicians convince white supporters to support them'.

"Helping black politicians convince white supporters to support them." In 1960 America was ninety percent white, or so it is said. We are now seventy-five percent white. Axelrod's "novel niche for a political consultant" worked at least a minor miracle for Obama. (And one cannot discount the excellent candidate he had to work with. Could Axelrod have put Jesse Jackson or Reverend Al Sharpton in the Oval Office?)

I submit that we are seeing the dismantling of our systems of commerce and governance in America. Systems that we have known all our lives are being exchanged for ones that Europeans would term social democrat labor unionist. The electorate's "vote for change" in the last federal election has (unwittingly) empowered a small but dedicated subset of America's elite, even though our Ivy League elites and those whom the elites gather around themselves have fallen from grace. Undeterred by their fall,they stumble on, seemingly more determined than ever to have their way with America. Now, social activists, communists, and anarchists have always been a fringe of American politics and of American academia. But now groups who dream of forcing severe social change upon America find themselves grasping the reins of power. This is a scary time, and just when America least needs it, what does she get but her own Axelrod. Let us all pray that our Axerod does more good for Americans than Mother Russia's did for Russians.

The good news seems to be that we have change. The bad news is what kind and how extensive. Soon we will see what is in store for us. Not to beat a dead horse, but did Cubans profit when they switched from inept, corrupt governance before Fidel Castro to communism? Of course not. They changed both the form of governance and the form of their economy. It is an unpleasant thought and an inconvenient truth but a crooked politician/free enterprise system worked better for Cubans than an honest politician/communism. And then, in accord with the old saw "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely," honest Fidel turned into corrupt Fidel--at which point there remained no advantage of having embraced change. Will we Americans be better off by change--going from inept, inattentive, greedy governance of the republicans to the high minded, uplifting and stirring rhetoric and generous promises of the social democrat labor party? Does anyone think blue pols are intrinsically more intelligent, moral, and vigilant than red ones? Does anyone think that an intelligent, moral, and vigilant big government could get the job done? Or is a good thing? Does anyone remember Thomas Jefferson's "He who governs least governs best?"

Does anyone ever swim from Miami to Havana?

End of the Age of the Jaguar, 11:11 AM GMT 12/21/2012.

2009-09-08T11:56:00.000-07:00

Newberry Library copy of the Popol Vuh translation written by Francisco Ximenez, ca 1701.

One of my grandsons asked for an article on 2012 so this is dedicated to him. He appears to have inherited the religious gene as did his father before him and as did I. That is unfortunate but there are worse (single gene) defects to inherit. The religious gene overstimulates the soul of a man. Those that are worse yet induce neurodegenerative processes or cancers or heart/kidney/lung/liver or bone/connective tissue disease and/or premature failure. These really deleterious gene defects leave you with the "spirit is willing but the flesh is weak" situation. And they rarely have a true cure, even in this modern age. The religious gene on the other hand seldom kills, at least in our day, and can pay an unexpected dividend, for it can lead to great material gain, over and above the spiritual riches for which it codes. Take as an example the pope of Rome, whose library, art collection, palaces, and clothing are the best. He also has a personal secretary who is qualified, diligent, and loyal; and the pope has his own private helicopter. He even has his own country. And the pope is only one of many, many religious professionals. You counter saying Jesus and His first pope, Peter the apostle, did not end up so well. True enough, but they were on a different track and the times were different then. Religion today is as big as the health care industry in our country and the president and congress have no plans to "fix" it. So Elijah, don't feel bad about your having inherited the religious gene. Try to make something good come of it. But back to 2012 which definitely has a religious element to it. I first learned of Mayan written materials when I was in the novitiate of the Jesuit Order. Common wisdom was that any written sources that the Mayans or Aztecs possessed were destroyed by the Spanish very early on. But even though some of the practices of the Aztecs, Incas, and Mayans were absolutely reprehensible and abhorrent to the Spanish soldiers, administrators, and clerics, you just know that not all books would have been destroyed. Some would survive for no better reason than that the pope and his curia in Rome would want to see what was in those books. And since there were no facsimile machines or copy machines five hundred years ago, materials had to have been bundled up and shipped out. Probably some of the materials would have been kept by native priests in hiding or surviving native nobles or just as souvenirs. Some surely ended up as booty and were destined to end up with courtly types who collect all kinds of books, most especially rare or exotic volumes. Well, I came to know of the existence of the book called Popol Vuh, at least in the form of a translation by Father Francisco Ximenez of the Dominican Order. Here is what he wrote for an introduction to his translation:

"This we shall write now under the Law of God and Christianity; we shall bring it to light because now the Popol Vuh, as it is called, cannot be seen any more, in which was clearly seen the coming from the other side of the sea and the narration of our obscurity, and our life was clearly seen. The original book, written long ago, existed, but its sight is hidden to the searcher and to the thinker."

It has always been rumored that Mayan volumes were hidden away upon the Spaniards' arrival and that they are presently either still safely stored or long forgotten. Even Father Ximenez did not have access to original works. But he gave us a translation and also wrote some asides. The asides hint at prophecy of end times while the body of the text is devoted to a history of the people and their gods. It appeared to me that Father Ximenez' early training was geared to his eventual immersion into the local culture of the native peoples in the Americas and not just to book burning and torture of the natives, as many or most historians have portrayed the Church's activities in the early years of the collision of cultures. Father Ximenez' book represents patrimony of the highest order and was part of the Dominican Order's library in what is now Guatemala until civil authorities looted the library and expelled the clerics. Later the book made a grand tour and finally came to rest in Chicago with the Newberry Library, thanks to a collector and patron. It is a minor miracle that it still exists and that we have it to study. See photograph above. Just as exciting as finding Mayan accounts of their history and tidbits of their prophecy was the discovery of their system of counting. They counted to huge numbers matched only very recently by educated, modern men and women--and they work in the US government accounting office! These huge Mayan numbers are reminiscent of Hindu numbers and hint at a theory of time that is different from our western view of the "arrow of time." We accept a time that is unidirectional and non reversible, even though Einstein's relativity theories suggest time is different from our popular conception of it. Mayan and Hindu ideas suggest a belief in circular and repetitive patterns of time. Karma is experiencing today the repercussions of what you did in the past, a sort of "what goes around, comes around" but on a personal level in cyclical and circular time. Well, I was studying this matter of the Mayan number system when I came across the Mayan calendars. These count toward a date and are so unlike our western calendars that counts from a date. For example, we have the date 1066 A.D. signifying one thousand and sixty-six years after or from the birth of Jesus, so anno domini. Before our present calendar of Pope Gregory we used the calendar of Julius Caesar. That one counted from the founding of Rome, or ab urbe condita. Cracking the code of the Mayan numbers opened the door to all this 2012 buzz. It turns out that the Mayans were counting toward a date that was rapidly approaching. And the date approaching was to be the end of an age, too. The Mayan fifth age of man, the Age of the Jaguar, began in 3113 B.C. and is counting toward 2012 A.D. The count of the fifth age runs out with the winter solstice of the year 2012, at 11:11 AM GMT. The fifth age began about when Pharaoh Menes united the kingdoms of upper and lower Egypt. I could not find any event in the new world that coincided with the beginning of the fifth age. But one would have to look at what happened when the first age began--or when the last cycle's fifth age ended--if this calendar system counts toward something. Well, when I got to work the following day I told my manager, Margherite, about this end date for the calendar. I said the age would end in 2012 (which was still a long time away.) Margherite asked when the age would end and "would the end include women?" I said I felt confident the Mayans intended it to apply to both men and women and that the age would end in 2012. She said "but when in 2012?" I said "winter solstice of 2012." She then asked when that would be, and I replied "December 21 most likely." Her response was "too bad, we'll miss Christmas." If this End of the Age does not go well, we will miss more than Christmas.

The way I see it there are five ages of man in Mayan mode and we are living in the last years of the Age of the Jaguar which is the fifth and final age of the current set of five. We are told this by the Mayan ancients who either figured it out by themselves even though theirs was basically a stone age civilization or who received this knowledge of astronomy and time from their gods (who are described in detail in books now hidden or destroyed, with the notable exception of the Popol Vuh, and in carvings on monuments). It appears that Mayan astronomers knew of the phenomenon of precession of the zodiac, which was known to the ancients in Mesopotamia, too. Given one degree of precession in seventy-two years of elapsed time, it is conceivable that this phenomenon of precession was observable within the life span of a single sharp eyed adept. A star's position would be one degree off after seventy-two years of observation; same day of the year, same star, same man who began observing the heavens at age eight and is now eighty years old and without significant cataracts or retinal disease. Good records and precise sight alignment systems would allow naked eye observations that in turn could be passed from one generation to another over hundreds of years and these in turn might lead to the development of a general theory of how our earth, solar system, and galaxy relate. It is almost easier to posit help from advanced alien visitors who lent their expertise and technology to the ancients in the new world and in the old than to believe that stone age people developed this technology and knowledge base by themselves, for this astronomy is quite advanced. And there is certainly no shortage of carved figures of gods playing prominent roles in the lives of the Mayans. Nor is there any lack of ritual or ceremony suggesting the presence of gods in the new world. By whichever method the Mayans acquired their surprisingly detailed knowledge of the movements of our earth, the solar system, and milky way galaxy there appears to be no question that they possessed and used that knowledge. And we today are left to wonder how and why. Their choice of five ages of man, presumably all equal in length, and their apparent knowledge of precession (caused by the planet's wobble about its polar axis) suggest to me that each of the five ages subtended 72 degrees of precession and was 5125 years in length. This makes for a full cycle of 25,625 years. This full cycle is 360 degrees of precessional wobble, and is a number that Mayans liked a lot, as did their counterparts in Sumer, and Babylon. Let each age of man be 72 degrees of precession. Five times 72 degrees is a full circle of 360 degrees. And, yes, a seventy-two year old will have seen one degree of precession in his lifetime. A modern man without suitable instruments is not going to observe any change in the sky pattern in that span. But the ancients likely could have done it. For a lot of reasons beyond the scope of this article. The Mayans were counting down to an event, but what event?

Well, after looking long and hard at likely foreseeable events having strong correlations with astronomy, but limiting the search to events that could be observed with the naked eye, I did find something that fit the bill. And one that the Mayans would likely have known to look for: our solar system's imminent passage through the mid plane of the galaxy. It appears that we are about to transit the mid point in our journey "side to side" in the radial arm of the Milky Way within which our star resides. This should take place on 12/21/2012 at 11:11 AM GMT when the sun's ecliptic will align with the mid plane of the galaxy. (High noon in the Galaxy and I plan to be in Paris to see it. And remember what people say: when God is on earth he stays in France.) We modern humans know that this event will occur on that date and at that time because we have an advanced knowledge of astronomy and possess sophisticated computer programs capable of displaying the sky patterns for any past or future date. We take for granted our knowledge of the earth's rotation , making a full turn every twenty-four hours. The ancients knew that, too. We know that it wobbles on its axis, leading to the effect we call precession. Apparently the ancients knew that, too. It circles the sun in its elliptical orbit. The ancients apparently knew that, too, and knew it millenia before Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler. And, in addition to all the above mentioned celestial motions, our solar system moves from side to side within its radial arm of the galaxy, like a sewing machine needle moving through the (plane of the) cloth being sewn. We know that the entire galaxy rotates like a giant pin wheel with our solar system securely lodged in one of its radial arms. I do not know whether the ancients knew that. (One would need a telescope good enough to see Andromeda clearly for she is more or less our twin in this part of the universe; make a note of its pin wheel pattern, and conclude that it turns about its center, then extrapolate to our own condition in the Milky Way galaxy. (If the ancients turn out to have known that, I will be a believer in the Popol Vuh account of gods who helped mankind acquire advanced knowledge.) One can even go one step further to suppose that our Milky Way galaxy moves in some predictable pattern within a constellation whose name we will never know--one that some intelligent eye on the other side of the universe observes on clear nights on his/her/its planet.

Disclosure time: I am not an astronomy teacher. I am not even an amateur astronomer. I have never taken an astronomy course. But I am willing to go to ridiculous lengths to help a reader envision some of these astronomical phenomena. To see the mid plane of the galaxy envision a bagel as big as the Milky Way. Slice it into two halves as you would slice a bagel. The mid plane of the galaxy is where the knife passed through the bagel. Our solar system is passing through one half of the bagel on a course toward the mid plane and then on to and through the other side to an end point where it will stop and change direction to turn back toward the mid plane again, this time from the other direction--weaving and dodging back and forth in our radial arm, and all the while encountering more or less dense neighborhoods. Right now we are in a dense part of the arm and are most likely heading into a cloud of (dark) matter. For this reason our solar system is heating. Jupiter runs interference for the inner planets and is more affected than Earth or Mars. But we are certainly warming, too. When we rendezvous with the mid plane we will see in the sky above us the hole in the center of the galaxy and the river of the milky way will lead from the horizon to that center. This might sound mystical and poetic but is real, not astrology but astronomy. And it would have been very dramatic to ancient peoples who could observe it with the naked eye after having anticipated it for untold generations.

The bottom line for the 2012 issue: I see several possibilities for the end date. One is that the calendar runs out; we begin a New Age, the first of five in a new cycle; and nothing else of note happens. When our 2009 calendar runs out on 12/31/2009 we toss it and hang 2010. Might be the same with the Mayan calendar.

A second possibility is not so pleasant This one is suggested by the reported unpleasant endings of the four ages that preceded our Age of the Jaguar. These are said to have ended in floods, fires, and other dire circumstances. Our age might end with some rock from outer space hitting Manhattan island. Or the poles might shift, as they have done before in geologic time. Or the "rind of the orange" of our earth might slide around its core, as has apparently happened in the past. Or some malady too horrible to envision, or too much even to be made into a B movie will befall us.

A final possibility is that the gods whom the ancient Mayans credited with their creation and whom they thanked for their extraordinary knowledge of time and space return as promised and on schedule, and in time for Christmas. Let us hope that these gods are well intentioned and that we do not do anything untoward or provocative. I would not expect rapture or mass annihilation. Nor would I anticipate a two hundred foot tall, resplendent Jesus in the night sky. Spaceships maybe, benign hopefully, exciting definitely. And in our life time, too.

Mayans are not the only ones whose prophecies point to 2012 as a momentous time for humans. Closer to home we have the Hopi people who prophecy an end time very soon and call for a change of heart for all humans. A change of heart and other preparations might be in order: a bolt hole in the high ground reachable by automobile, with laid up food, water, whisky, arms and ammunition, and fuel. Some extra bedding and clothing, books, tools, crop seeds, and the makings of a small survivalist farm would be prudent. Even with all this scary talk, some of it dating back a very long time, hope springs eternal. Our species has survived extreme conditions before. Saving life and limb comes first and foremost. Preserving our accumulated culture, history, art, and technology should be a priority, too. Saving politicians ahead of ordinary people seems misguided. But you know full well that elaborate, fully stocked underground warehouses and splendid, fully furnished underground palaces are already prepared for the world's political elites and their staffs and patrons.)

I would like to see the federal government plan for a repository of records documenting our civilization with all its cumulative tragedies, accomplishments, science, technology, art, music, literature, commerce, dreams, beliefs, and history. Edgar Cayce described such an archive left in triplicate by the people of Atlantis. We should probably make ours easier to find. (But not so easy as to found by looters.) A high level commission that represented our global community would be needed to plan and implement such an archive, and there is not much time to accomplish this. If a global catastrophe is about to descend upon us, we need to lay away knowledge and wisdom for those who survive, or for others who might come after us. And this ought to be accorded a higher priority than Cash for Clunkers or More Cash for AIG. Let's at least look like we are prepared for the end of our age, whatever it brings with it. Maybe Sarkozy will call for a World Archives of Human Civilization. If so, I suggest he specify human civilization, since the next form of intelligent life on the planet might be arachnid or cetacean. Plant this time capsule/archive in advance of 2012 and then kick back and hope for the best. We'll have prepared for the worst. Oh, and prepare that bolt hole in high ground, and add good French wine to that long list of necessaries . . .

Read Cormac McCarthy's The Road for a dark view of this (post 2012) world. (Soon to be made into a movie with Viggo Mortensen in the lead role.

Time for a better taxonomy.

2009-09-07T17:47:00.000-07:00

Despite what is shown on the silver screen scientists are humans when all is said and done. And just like all other humans, scientists can be grouped according to such observed differences in behavior as their tendancy to oversimplify or to overcomplicate. From this we get lumpers and splitters. Although this sounds sophomoric, it has a certain utility. In addition to being in the lumper or splitter group, scientists can often be found in family groupings. So you might find a prominent person in a field of science who made discoveries of note, formulated a philosophy of the field he or she was in, and trained acolytes who followed up leads and made break throughs and went on to publish more work in the field and head departments of that discipline and eventually earn prizes, too. Look at Enrico Fermi and the physicists who surrounded and succeeded him in Chicago. Examine other fields, some of them somewhat dubious science--the "dismal science" of economics, for example. Look at Nobel prizes awarded to persons in science fields and you will see a number of family groupings. These prominent scientists and their families influence the thinking of their fellow scientists strongly and sometimes disproportionately. Take anthropology as a case in point. Splitters have dominated the fields of paleoanthropology and physical anthropology for a long time. (Just as we had too numerous to count sub atomic particles in physics for a long time--splitters hard at work, literally and figuratively--so we have two dozen, give or take a couple, different species of predecessor humans and subhumans back in time to an ancestor in common with our closest living relations on this planet.) But you know what comes next: pendula of all sorts swing to the right and then back to the left, so splitters eventually yield to lumpers and we arrive at a new understanding. This new understanding might arrive without any new data. But here I want to give an example of the opposite: new data arriving without any new understanding. Check out this abstract of a recent paper in molecular biology studies.

Curnoe D, Thorne A.
Department of Archaeology and Natural History, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia. d.curnoe@unsw.edu.au
Despite the remarkable developments in molecular biology over the past three decades, anthropological genetics has had only limited impact on systematics in human evolution. Genetics offers the opportunity to objectively test taxonomies based on morphology and may be used to supplement conventional approaches to hominid systematics. Our analyses, examining chromosomes and 46 estimates of genetic distance, indicate there may have been only around 4 species on the direct line to modern humans and 5 species in total. This contrasts with current taxonomies recognising up to 23 species. The genetic proximity of humans and chimpanzees has been used to suggest these species are congeneric. Our analysis of genetic distances between them is consistent with this proposal. It is time that chimpanzees, living humans and all fossil humans be classified in Homo. The creation of new genera can no longer be a solution to the complexities of fossil morphologies. Published genetic distances between common chimpanzees and bonobos, along with evidence for interbreeding, suggest they should be assigned to a single species. The short distance between humans and chimpanzees also places a strict limit on the number of possible evolutionary 'side branches' that might be recognised on the human lineage. All fossil taxa were genetically very close to each other and likely to have been below congeneric genetic distances seen for many mammals. Our estimates of genetic divergence suggest that periods of around 2 million years are required to produce sufficient genetic distance to represent speciation. Therefore, Neanderthals and so-called H. erectus were genetically so close to contemporary H. sapiens they were unlikely to have been separate species. Thus, it is likely there was only one species of human (H. sapiens) for most of the last 2 million years. We estimate the divergence time of H. sapiens from 16 genetic distances to be around 1.7 Ma which is consistent with evidence for the earliest migration out of Africa. These findings call into question the mitochondrial "African Eve" hypothesis based on a far more recent origin for H. sapiens and show that humans did not go through a bottleneck in their recent evolutionary history. Given the large offset in evolutionary rates of molecules and morphology seen in human evolution, Homo species are likely to be characterised by high levels of morphological variation and low levels of genetic variability. Thus, molecular data suggest the limits for intraspecific morphological variation used by many palaeoanthropologists have been set too low. The role of phenotypic plasticity has been greatly underestimated in human evolution. We call into question the use of mtDNA for studies of human evolution. This DNA is under strong selection, which violates the assumption of selective neutrality. This issue should be addressed by geneticists, including a reassessment of its use for molecular clocks. There is a need for greater cooperation between palaeoanthropologists and anthropological geneticists to better understand human evolution and to bring palaeoanthropology into the mainstream of evolutionary biology.
PMID: 12733395 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Here scientists used the same technology as law and order investigators, paternity dispute family law practitioners, population geneticists, and state-of-the-art genealogists to look at our (human) molecular make up and compare us with others currently considered non human. To go with the law and order train of thought, killing a chimpanzee or a bonobo ape is not homicide. (For those who are not scientists but are nonetheless trying to follow all this: Homo is the genus and sapiens is the species. Killing another of the same genus as our own would be by definition Homo cide, or homicide.) But if you will read the abstract of Curnoe and Thorne's article again, you will see that these authors consider humans and chimpanzees to be in the same genus, or "congeneric." So, we should either join the chimps in their genus or they in ours. Better we keep ours and raise them up, so to speak. The ultimate "Old Boys' Club" of genus Homo is about to be opened up to the untermenschen. Literally and figuratively untermenschen, I should add. Just waiting for the lumpers to rise to the occasion.

A second point to be made is less practical but is even more revolutionary than the first. Just as the hundreds of identified sub atomic particles coalesced into a handful of pieces in the Standard Model of modern physics, we might soon observe some serious lumping of our two dozen or so ancestor species leaving us with but a handful. After all, if present day chimpanzees are congeneric with Homo sapiens it stands to reason that neandertals, and the various and sundry pre humans of the last million years were likely all in our species, or we in theirs. That's a lot of phenotypic variation for a minimum of genotypic variance. These rapid changes in our Homo sapiens structure and function came about with little or no change in our genetic make up. This spells ooparts. Chimpanzees and bonobo apes and a million years--one group on one side of the river and the other on the other side, and few observable differences in them now or in the past. Same species (in the new understanding but not yet in orthodox taxonomy) and nearly the identical genetic coding. Neandertals and us and five hundred thousand years--the former extinct for failure to adapt to climate change and us proliferating across five continents from ice age to global warming. With a paltry 30,000 genes we are managing our survival very well. (Some might say too well for what we have to work with.) Does anyone wonder whether we received outside help? Maybe this is not enough to warrant the existence of an omniscient, omnipresent, all loving Creator God whose special project we are; but an objective observer might consider the possibility that we modern humans received a genetic "uplift" sometime in the past 100,000 years. This would be within the scientific and technological capability of gods who knew then a bit more than we humans know now. (And these gods would almost certainly have uplifted our ancestor species, their untermenschen, for the gods' advantage, not for ours. This means that the Garden of Eden was likely a slave plantation producing food and wine for the gods, not the paradise lost of Adam and Eve.) Time to read those ancient cuneiform tablets from what is now our war zone and reread the second hand account in Genesis--now that humankind's own technological and scientific abilities are sufficient to allow an understanding of what is written in them.

I doubt any school or family of physical anthropologists or paleoanthropologists is going to switch en masse from splitter to lumper on the basis of current molecular biological data. But sooner or later you can bet it will happen. We will look at things differently with or without additional data. And just as a young couple expecting a baby turn to thinking of names, paleoanthropologists and physical anthropologists might start thinking of names for their (new and improved) taxonomy.

Obama's clouded citizenship . . .

2009-09-06T10:06:00.000-07:00

Would that the lawyers' bright line rule would clarify whether our president is or is not a legitimate occupant of the highest office of our land. Even persons who are citizens of other nations have a stake in this. Witness a letter to the editor of the Financial Times that was printed in the Saturday, September 5, 2009 paper:

"American patriots should read the US constitution" Published: September 5 2009 03:00 Last updated: September 5 2009 03:00

From Mr John Sabalis.

Sir, Edward Luce (“Health opens a new front in America’s culture wars”, August 15) writes in reference to the US presidency that “foreign-born candidates are ineligible”. In this, he unwittingly puts himself in the same camp as those on the American right who have not read the constitution.Article II, Section 1 of the constitution restricts the presidency to “natural born citizens”. Nowhere does it say the person must be born in the territory of the United States.Section 301 of the Immigration and Nationality Act defines the rules for US citizenship, listing the circumstances for persons who qualify as “citizens of the United States at birth”. Paragraph (g) of that section awards such citizenship to persons born abroad of at least one US-citizen parent. President Barack Obama’s mother was a US citizen, so even if he was born in Kenya, Indonesia or Shangri-La he would still have the right to American citizenship by birth. It seems the argument of the “birthers” is stillborn.I am a native-born American, with two children born abroad of a foreign mother. No member of the lunatic fringe is going to tell me my daughters are not Americans by birth. The constitution is a wonderful document; those who profess to be patriotic Americans should read it some time.
John Sabalis,Dubai, United Arab Emirates

I hope that the editor prints my response to Mr. Sabalis's letter (copy below):

From Dr. David J. Harter.

Sir, John Sabalis gives us good advice in "American patriots should read the US constitution." But when he writes about our president's clouded citizenship he lapses into simplicity and misses the point of the debate. He sees the large print but not the fine print.

Our president's citizenship is questioned by Philadelphia lawyer Philip J. Berg in Civil Action 2:08-cv-04083-RBS, US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania: "Obama was born at Coast Hospital in Mombasa, Kenya, located in Coast Province. Obama's father was a Kenya citizen and Obama's mother a U.S. citrizen who was not old enough to register Obama's birth in Hawaii as a "natural born" United States citizen. The laws on the books at the time of Obama's birth required the U.S. citizen parent to have resided in the United States for ten (10) years, five (5) of which were after the age of fourteen (14). Obama's mother was only eighteen (18) years old when Obama was born in Kenya. Nationality Act of 1940, revised June, 1952, United States of America v. Cervantes-Nava, 281 F.3d 501 (2002), Drozd v I.N.S., 155 F.3d 81, 85-88 (2d Cir.1998)."

Granted, there is a lot at stake here. Granted too, this is a matter of fine not large print law. But even I who am not a lawyer can see that this is a matter for the bright line rule. I believe Berg asks a legitimate question and he and all other Americans deserve an unambiguous answer.
From Dr. David J. Harter.

In point of fact, the technicality of Obama's mother's age and residence history, as above, are not the only reasons that he may not be a US citizen. He appears to have been a citizen of Indonesia after having been a citizen of Kenya. Now there is nothing wrong with being a citizen of either of those two countries but Obama would have to have sworn allegiance to the United States of America sometime before his eighteenth birthday to have established his US citizenship, something to which he was eligible I should add. But he appears not to have taken advantage of the opportunity. In fact, he appears to have used his Indonesian passport to travel to Pakistan and neighboring countries after age eighteen. Records for Obama's having sworn allegiance to and having received citizenship papers from the United States of America are no where to be found. But there are records of his having been enrolled in Indonesian schools as an Indonesian citizen by the name of Barry Soetoro, natural or adopted son of Lolo Soetoro, MA, of Jakarta, Indonesia. Long story, but the Indonesian government of the time was a police state and identities were verified and records kept, as in all police states. Just as there are no witnesses to his live birth in Hawaii but witnesses to the same in Kenya, there are no witnesses of Obama's changing his citizenship to US from Indonesian. But there are witnesses to his having been enrolled in public school in Indonesia as a citizen of the country and as a son of the citizen, Lolo Soetoro, MA.

As is often the case with clouded identities, there are other serious questions being asked: was Obama a Muslim in childhood and young adulthood? Was he ever baptized a Christian? If so, where is the baptismal certificate? (For non Christians, this issue of baptism is a bright line rule for being a Christian. No way to become a Christian without receiving the sacrament of baptism. There are lots of different denominations of Christians and they dispute theory and practice large and small ad nauseam but they do agree on one issue: no baptism, no Christianity.)

Our president has said on multiple occasions that he is a practicing Christian. I would not care if he claimed to be a practicing Muslim or an atheist, for that matter. But since he has claimed to be a Christian, I would like to see the proof of that. I am a Christian and have a baptismal certificate and would be happy to show him mine. Something tells me he doesn't have one, though, or he has one but it is like the birth certificates he has shown us--those records that have been shown to independent graphic specialists who judged them to have been altered and forged. (Go to http://www.dailykos.com/; http://fightthesmears.com/; http://factcheck.org/ to see the birth records Obama submitted.)

This is not a smear campaign. The election is over. Citizens voted for change. All true enough. But our nation is a nation of law and order as established by the founders and as incorporated in our constitution. This question of eligibility is a matter of bright line rule. The answer(s) to lawyer Berg's questions and those of others are overdue. Obama is a public person. It is the right of the citizen to examine the matter of eligibility. As disgraceful as it is that this matter of legitimacy was swept under the rug, it has not stayed under the rug. Even writers to foreign news papers bring the issue to print. America waits for her answer to this question: is Obama a citizen of the republic of which he is president?

Cut the high cost of health care in America.

2009-09-05T08:41:00.000-07:00

Americans pay more for health care than Europeans pay for more or less the same services. Some of the difference can be attributed to the greater number of dysfunctional families in America. Rural communities have metamphetamine addicts and family violence. Inner cities in America have more crack cocaine addicts, and some of these are not yet born by the time they are addicted. Add alcoholism, dreadful housing conditions, gang violence, under and unemployment, chronic criminality, and very poor education and one has an evil brew with no (easy) remedy and with severe social repercussions and costs. A significant portion of the cost is for health care--often as not, too little and too late. And that means less effective and ultimately more expensive. The commonest form of malnutrition in America is overeating. This, too, is societal not medical. This form of malnutrition makes for rampant obesity, and it is particularly prevalent among urban poor. Unless they are addicted to heroin, in which case they are not obese. But might well have HIV/AIDS. All of these societal problems will end up being expenses sooner or later. And a large portion of the expenses will be charged against the health care system.

Americans are paid better in the health care industry than are European workers. From doctors and administrators on down, our group earns more. The industry is about the same size as the tourism/hospitality industry or the sum total of state and federal workers, whatever we call that industry. (Governance or government industry sounds oxymoronic to me.) This disproportionately high pay scale in American health care is either a drain on the economy or a boon to the economy depending upon whether this particular industry is viewed as adding to or subtracting from Americans in general. Considering the fact that no one really needs tourism but everyone needs health care, one might conclude that the health care industry is a positive. Considering that little or no work in health care is shipped overseas to India or Pakistan or Brazil, and that almost all of the wages paid are therefore cycled through the American economy, one might again conclude that health care in America is a boon to the economy. And, objective comparisons of such important parameters of health care industry performance as breast cancer patient survival, and prostate cancer patient survival are different and better in America than in Scotland, England, Wales, or Canada, despite the fact that these latter populations are similar in culture and language and affluence. The latters spend less and get less. Which gets me to a final point: do we get a choice in the matter? The town hall meetings of this summer are reminiscent of a trail ride when a really stubborn horse was assigned. It just should not be that hard, whether to be heard by our representatives in congress or to keep the horse from eating the understory. After all, we have the best congress money can buy. And the horse was full price.

If health care in America is paying a premium for costs that are societal and not essentially medical, and if health care in America is a boon to the general American economy, and if health care is more efficacious in ways that mean a lot to Americans, then why reform the goodness out of it. By patterning our health care system upon systems that are cheaper by one third but less effective by that much or more we will opt for a change all right. But is this the change we as a nation want? Yes, I know that our health care system is ranked low by some experts--below most European countries. Take a look at what parameters the experts are using for the comparison. See if things that are societal are held against a system that is medical. For example, look at the importance of prenatal care and infant mortality in setting up the ranking of the countries. Our inner cities are rife with crack addicted, alcoholic single mothers with crack addicted, alcoholic fetuses and infants that need health care but need other things even more. Family structure, belief systems, moral systems, education, housing, law abiding neighborhoods, honest employment are examples. Do you think our present social engineers are willing to admit that? Or more likely than face up to tough problems, they will just rob Peter to pay Paul. Peter is old and going to die soon anyway. Paul might vote social democratic tickets for the rest of his life.

In the long overdue column: comparisons of our present health care system with the social medical care systems in Canada and the UK that spell out exactly what parameters of care are being studied; enumeration of the societal ills that add measurably to health care costs in America with some attempt to display those costs; creative ways to finance health care for Americans without saddling employers and young people; workable ways to enhance good health and healthy life style and habits in all the diverse groups in America. (The old Chinese men and women out early in the morning doing Tai Chi in the park, kids who are not on the varsity but are playing basketball, football, baseball, and soccer, people with walking shoes on going to work in Manhattan, week end softball players and vegetable gardeners, late night hours in the gym, and so forth and so on.) And a congress not already bought and paid for by George Soros, et al.

Bode's Law might explain all.

2009-09-04T07:13:00.000-07:00

Bode's law seems misnamed as it was quite clearly spelled out two years earlier by one Daniel Titius. This law describes a regular geometrical placement of the planetary orbits around the sun. At the time this law was proposed the outer planets of our solar system had not yet been found. Current astronomical thinking does not accord Bode's law anything beyond historical interest. But let's revisit this one.

Data
Here are the distances of our solar system's planetary orbits from the sun as calculated from the rule and as compared with measured distances, all in astronomical units:

Planet
k
Bode's rule distance (AU)
Measured distance (AU)

Mercury
0
0.4
0.39

Venus
1
0.7
0.72

Earth
2
1.0
1.00

Mars
4
1.6
1.52

Ceres1
8
2.8
2.77

Jupiter
16
5.2
5.20

Saturn
32
10.0
9.54

Uranus
64
19.6
19.2

Neptune
128
38.8
30.06

Pluto1
256
77.22
39.44

Note: Ceres was considered a planet from 1801 until the 1860s. Pluto was considered a planet from 1930 to 2006. A 2006 IAU proposal to define the term "planet" would have reclassified Ceres as a planet, but this resolution was modified before its ratification in late August 2006. The modification instead placed Ceres, Pluto, and Eris in the newly created category of "dwarf planet." One does not need the advantage of training in advanced mathematics to see that there are relationships here. Ceres is a sizeable structure in the asteroid belt and serves as a distance marker for the belt. Pluto is too little to be one of the major planets, so is now placed with Ceres and Eris in a new category, as above.

Consider for a moment that there might be on the one hand an ideal, or Platonic, siting of the planets in orbit around the sun as decreed in laws of physics, and on the other hand a present day, real situation that we observe in the sky above us. Then ask if there was in the ancient past a primordial solar system laid down in accordance with these laws of physics four and a half billion years ago. And was there an event that altered the primordial arrangement five hundred million years later to give us the one we have at present? How can we reconstruct that history? We may not need to, providing we heed George Santayana's sage advice about learning history. For, in some difficult to explain way the mesopotamian ancients who discovered irrigation, commerce, writing, computation, governance, organized religion, and astronomy also possessed an account of our solar system's origins. This account, told and retold by different peoples, includes a good explanation for present day deviations from Bode's law. And, against all odds, the records of these ancients who wrote on clay tablets are in our possession today. But just as modern astronomers have little use for Bode's law these days, modern cosmologists have little or no use for the Enuma elish and other accounts of the Babylonian, Akkadian, Sumerian, Hurrian, and Hittite peoples. The gist of the history I am alluding to is in Hebrew cosmology, too. (This, likely courtesy of the stay in Babylon.)

Here I want to propose a visual model for what happened to our solar system so long ago. Please bear with me. Imagine a pool table in space--really big table, lots and lots of space. Earth's gravity is removed from the game, so the cue ball can strike other balls above, at, or below their equator, thus sending them "out of orbit" below, within, or above the present plane of the table. In technical terms this game of pool is played in 4 pi geometry. Imagine the eight balls positioned around a central fixture and the whole lay out rotating in one angular direction. A struck cue ball is aimed in a direction counter to the "table's" rotation so as to strike the fifth ball from the center and shatter it. Picture this pool table on the scale of our solar system. The cue ball here is an as yet unidentified planet, called by the ancients of Sumer, Akkadia, and Babylon Niburu, or Marduk. This solid rocky planet the size of earth strikes protoearth, called by the same ancients Tiamat, a glancing blow. Let us assume that Tiamat lay in orbit 2.8 AU distance from the sun before impact. Imagine the fragments and water displaced from Tiamat--immense quantities of matter formerly part of a condensed planet but after collision bits and frozen pieces orbiting the sun and marking forever the crash site. (And if you are a pedantic type insisting on precision whenever and wherever possible, you will be glad to see that the asteroid belt of bits and pieces is not precisely where Tiamat orbited but a bit inside that original orbit. Imparted angular momentum, I suppose.)

Where did the surviving major portion of Tiamat go? I suggest it was displaced inward toward the sun as were the fragments now making up the asteroid belt. But the greater mass and momentum of the major remnant of Tiamat directed it farther from its original orbital position. I suggest it went past Mars in a near miss and settled into the next "orbital shell" at position 1.0 AU from the sun. Furthermore, I suggest that the object we know as our moon and that the ancients of mesopotamia called Kingu (which is disproportionately large for a moon of a planet our size) was probably already in position 1.0 as a minor planet. So, at this point we have an asteroid belt with its largest object Ceres at 2.77 AU, a slightly displaced Mars at 1.52 AU, and a new planet, Earth, with orbiting minor planet Kingu as moon of Earth, at 1.0 AU. Any more to explain here? Yes, but the rest of the story relates to heavenly bodies not known to old Bode or Titius in the 18C.

I suggest that the intruder planet with moons, that is mentioned in the cuneiform texts of the ancients (tough to counterfeit those) caused some other ruckus in our system either at the same time as the disruption of Tiamat or before or after that, since the intruder is described as having its own orbit around the sun and since it therefore makes periodic penetrations into the known solar system. Imagine one of Niburu's moons striking Neptune so as to displace it from its original 38.8 AU orbit to present day 30.06 AU. Imagine that and try to imagine that the present size and location of that offending Niburean moon are things we can deduce using Bode's law and present observations. Can you solve this mystery of the whereabouts of the Niburean moon that displaced Neptune (and caused it to roll not spin in orbit)? Hint: it is presently two thirds the size of our moon and is classified as a minor planet in our solar system.

Using the above reasoning, if "reasoning" is not giving all of this too much credit, one could go further and posit the original incoming trajectory of the offending planet and moons four billion years ago as well as guess the present orbit and likely locations of those same objects. Too bad present day experts cannot look into this matter, it being beneath their dignity, expertise, and orthodoxy. Though presently relegated to historical interest status, Bode's law might explain all . . .

A Conspiracy Theory Writ Large.

2009-08-28T08:15:00.000-07:00

One can appreciate conspiracy theorists and their often as not off-the-wall ideas without being oneself a conspiracy theorist. Belief in off-the-wall ideas seems to represent either the product of a great deal of time and focused effort on the part of a maverick personality, or the final proof of extreme gullibility on the part of a simple mind. In neither case is a theory certain to be incorrect solely for its tainted authorship. Nor are theories proposed by conventional scientific or professional persons of unimpeachable character and reference certain to be correct. Theories require proof. The famous final theorem of Pierre de Fermat went without proof until twenty years ago and serves as an exception to this rule. So, what would be the biggest conspiracy theories of all time, the seven wonders of the world of conspiracy theory? I propose that the number one such wacko theory is that our current president of the United States of America is not a citizen of the USA. (And, as though the proposed could be made any worse, the au courant theory adds that, even though he is a lawyer who was either a professor of constitutional law at a prominent law school or was one who taught classes in constitutional law at that law school, our president ran for the highest office in the land knowing full well that he was not eligible for the office he sought.)

To the end of establishing proof of the number one conspiracy theory of modern times--that our incumbent president of the United States of America is not eligible for the office--comes now Philip J. Berg, Esquire, presenting the following:

COMPLAINT FOR DECLARATORY AND INJUNCTIVE RELIEF PRELIMINARY STATEMENT
Article II, Section I of the United States Constitution, states in particular part, "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been Fourteen Years a Resident within the United States." Furthermore, all Presidents since and including Martin Van Buren were born in the United States subsequent to the Declaration of Independence. "The general doctrine of our Constitution is that the executive power of the nation is vested in the President subject only to the exceptions and qualifications, which are expressed in the instrument."

7 Works of Alexander Hamilton, J. C. Hamilton ed. (New York: 1851), 76, 80-81 (emphasis in original), U.S. Constitution, Article II (Hamilton and Madison.)
Z:\FO RM S\Obama Complainl.doc.

Obama is a representative of the Democratic People. However, Obama must meet the Qualifications specified for the United States Office of the President, which is he must be a "natural born" citizen. {Italics are mine, Nec Pluribus Unum.}Unfortunately, Obama is not a "natural born" citizen. Just to name one of the problems, Obama lost his U.S. citizenship when his mother married an Indonesian citizen and relocated herself and Obama to Indonesia wherein Obama's mother naturalized in Indonesia and Obama followed her naturalization, as he was a minor and in the custody of his mother. Obama failed to take the oath of allegiance when he turned eighteen (18) years to regain his United States Citizenship status.
The Democratic National Committee is for Plaintiff and "We the People" who believe in the Democratic Vision. The Democratic National Party is supposed to represent the Democratic Americans in seeking honest leadership, Open Government, Real Security, Energy Independence, Economic Prosperity, Educational Excellence, a Healthcare System that works for Everyone and Retirement Security. The Democratic Party is supposed to represent and protect the interests of working Americans and guaranteeing personal liberties for all. Of which includes securing a Democratic Nominee on the Presidential Election ballot who represents the Democratic vision and who is qualified and eligible to run for Office of the President under the qualifications of the United States Constitution.
The actions of Obama, a U.S. Senator, in running for President of the United States, knowing he is not eligible, have been taken entirely without authorization under the United States Constitution, completely ignoring the qualification and procedures created by the United States Constitution he is purporting to enforce.

I checked on Lawyer Berg and found people in Philadelphia who say he is not a nut case.

There are three people in Kenya who say the President was born in Kenya and that they witnessed that birth. No one says he witnessed Obama's birth in Hawaii even though there are several hospitals in Hawaii saying he was born in their facility. This surely sounds irregular. More than one birth certificate should mandate an investigation when the one on the certificates is the leader of the free world and the most powerful man on earth. Who were the delivering doctors and nurses in assistance for the delivery? Has anyone bothered to check this out? It should not be prohibitively difficult to find out what air connections Stanley Dunham used to fly from Hawaii to Kenya and back. If she had been refused boarding because her pregnancy was too advanced, someone had to have witnessed that and the argument that surely ensued. It is not inconceivable that a witness is still alive today, one who remembers Obama's mother having been refused a flight to Hawaii and her having been left in Kenya to deliver the baby there--it is the sort of human drama that tends to create a durable memory. Particularly long lived in those who refused the mother-to-be.

No doubt an African delivery would have been assisted by a doctor or nurse, as I doubt she was living at the time in a mud hut in the bush. It would likely have occurred in a clinic or hospital. But irrespective of which was the setting there must have been witnesses. And there are the three already on record as to the truth of this having happened in Kenya and not in Hawaii. There is little doubt that Stanley Dunham would have returned to Hawaii as soon after having delivered her baby as she was physically able to travel. In fact, she would most likely have used the same ticket that she attempted to use, in the line of reasoning of the conspiracy theory, before delivery when she was refused boarding for the imminence of her baby's birth. In this way she would have returned to the USA within a week of the live birth of her baby boy at which point she would have then registered the live birth as having occurred--her choice: honest, in Kenya or dishonest, in the USA. Apparently she registered the birth as having occurred in the USA. (She was a second or third wife of the muslim Obama and was probably not received by the extended family in Kenya with open arms. And it must have been about that time that she decided to leave her husband--we do not know if that had been a duly consecrated marriage--and return to the USA for at least a while.) And all of this suggests to me that the off-the-wall theory or claim might have enough merit to check it out.

The case gets worse yet when one looks at the young Obama and his early life with his Indonesian step father who was also a Muslim and who apparently saw to the proper Muslim identification and education of his adopted son. This situation also disqualifies Obama from the presidency for the fact that mother and son would have shared Indonesian citizenship in those years.

Obama could have opted for US citizenship anytime between the Indonesian years and his eighteenth birthday, at least as some would interpret this situation. But clearly he did not. In fact he first received a US passport when he was elected to office in Illinois. But he travelled to Pakistan and neighboring countries long before that, apparently on an Indonesian passport.

There are some other irregularities such as how much of his mother's life was spent in US territories before a certain age and, again, the answer comes up short for Obama's US citizenship.

None of this should be believable given the scrutiny of candidates for even lowly elected office in our country. Certainly, any candidate for elected office whose party affiliation is Republican would have had all of this sort of irregularity very carefully investigated. But even a Democrat running for office ought to have at least a cursory back round check by the parties and the press. Yet do you believe that candidate Obama was suitably scrutinized by a functioning fourth estate? You tell me if you think the New York Times, NBC, ABC, Frank Rich, Maureen Dowd, and their ilk vetted this candidate during the months leading up to the federal election. I have heard nothing of this controversy of our president's citizenship even on Fox News. Are Hannity, O'Reilly, and Beck afraid of something? Hard to imagine those three being afraid to check out a presidential candidate, much less one who has succeeded to the office. Or is this such a crack-pot theory that it deserves complete silence on the part of all orthodox news outlets? I wish someone would report on this Conspiracy Writ Large as I think it is number one in the list of the top ten conspiracy theories of modern time.

How to envision the universe.

2009-08-26T08:56:00.000-07:00

We use the term come to grips with . . . And we speak of grasping a concept. If you will accept the thesis that we are the direct descendants of a hominid that mastered upright, two footed gait, and that acquired as a consequence of that the ability to use its fore legs as arms and its fore feet as hands, you might go one step further and consider that much of our brain's special abilities relate to and are likely derived from those mechanical advantages. Even mental capabilities such as abstract thinking might rest upon a neurobiological foundation laid down in the past by our ancient, savannah dwelling forebears who literally and figuratively saw their hand in front of their face.

It is said that we see only what we know. But sometimes we know only what we see--at least in the case of modeling abstract concepts. So what would be a simple model for a simple abstract like a² + b² = c²? Well, there must be close to a hundred ways to prove the Pythagorean theorem. But a simple model would utilize little square tiles, all the same size arranged in three groups to form a small, a larger, and a largest square with values 3x3=9, 4x4=16, and 5x5=25, respectively. Of course, the square of the hypotenuse of the triangle formed when the three squares are laid with tip ends touching is here 25 and is equal to the sum of the two other sides of the triangle squared. One can mentally envision the nine little squares inside the one smallest square; sixteen little sqares inside the larger square and twenty-five little squares inside the largest square. But it is graphic when done as a model of little tiles so arranged. Squared is literally squared in the model. These tiles can be set up on a table top so as to help children grasp this with their hands as well as with their minds.

Let us move from two dimensions to three while still keeping the same model and concept: Pierre de Fermat's last theorem. This is a theorem that went without a proof for centuries. It was first proposed by de Fermat in the form of a note scribbled in one margin of his copy of an ancient Greek text, Diophantus's Arithmetica. The note read in the original Latin: Cubum autem in duos cubos, aut quadrato-quadratum in duos quadrato-quadratos, et generaliter nullam in infinitum ultra quadratum potestatem in duos eiusdem nominis fas est dividere cuius rei demonstrationem mirabilem sane detexi. Hanc marginis exiguitas non caperet.(Nagell 1951, p. 252). In English: It is impossible for a cube to be the sum of two cubes, a fourth power to be the sum of two fourth powers, or in general for any number that is a power greater than the second to be the sum of two like powers. De Fermat added that he had discovered a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition but that the margin of the page was too narrow to contain his proof. Let us envision a model for the simplest situation of this abstraction: an + bn = cn where n=3. One must see the model in three dimensions.

Envision a small, a medium, and a large cube arranged so as to make a sculpture in three dimensions. The small cube is axaxa where a=3. It is composed of twenty-seven smaller cubes as 3x3x3. The medium cube is bxbxb where b=4. It is composed of sixty-four smaller cubes as 4x4x4. And the largest cube is cxcxc where c=5. It is made up of one hundred and twenty-five smaller cubes. All the small cubes are the same size. Now attach the cubes so that their corners touch and form within a right triangle with sides three, four, and five units for the small, medium, and large cubes, respectively. This is a model for de Fermat's final theorem in its simplest form. One can see that for n=3 the x cube and the y cube do not equal the z cube in volume.

Going beyond three dimensions with the model just described requires mathematical notation and that does not lend itself to the process of envisioning. No doubt the reason for this is the inescapable fact that our species was born into three visual and palpable dimensions as were each of us as individuals and as were all of the forms of our ancestor species. We all evolved sensing but three dimensions. At least this is true of those that swam, flew, or at a minimum jumped. (If there was a flatworm in the family tree, it might have "known" but two dimensions.)

No doubt there exist more dimensions in our universe than the three we know as height, width, and depth. But light up your Cohiba in the tightly enclosed space and look for some part of that space not containing dense cigar smoke. Unless you have added a lot of Laphroaig to the mix you will not find dimensions beyond height, width, and depth. Even though our brains function better than those of our hairy, hunched back, gracile forebears on the savannah we see with our eyes and grasp with our hands but three dimensions. Perhaps fortunate for us that our mental grasp exceeds our physical grasp, at least as long as we refrain from blowing ourselves up or poisoning ourselves and our planet beyond our or its recuperative powers. But how to model in three dimensions our universe which is immense, almost infinite, really; incredibly old, and very dynamic? We know it is expanding. It is composed of energy and matter and the two are interconvertible, although not subject to destruction. We know that the laws of physics and the four forces are presumably the same throughout the entirety of the universe. We learned recently that the expansion of the universe is accelerating and that much of the universe is composed of dark matter and dark energy. We know a lot about the ultrastructure of matter, too. But what would serve us as a model of this universe of ours? Something simple enough to be easily grasped even by children?

I propose the kettle of water on the hot plate model. It helps to have good lighting for this. Set the kettle on the burner and turn on the heat. Watch closely as the first tiny bubbles form as if from nothing on the bottom of the kettle. Then the tiny bubbles let go of the bottom and begin their ascent to the top of the water. Note that the bubbles enlarge and shift their shape as they traverse the distance from the bottom to the top of the water layer. This is the model of our universe.

First observation: there is not just one bubble at a time. Likely lesson is that our universe is not universal. Probably we are one of a whole collection of such bodies but, like the bubbles that do not touch one another in their transit of the water layer, we know of no other universe. Still, the model suggests others coexist with us.

Second observation: the destiny of the universe we call home is to disappear into the void that surrounds all that is. No oscillating universe, no death in fire or ice. Just disappear into the void.

Third observation: one bubble knows only its own existence from its origin on the heated surface of the bottom of the kettle to its extinction at the surface of the water layer. And one universe knows only of its existence from its big bang origin to its eventual extinction. Even the planned array of gravity wave detectors will not disclose the existence of other universes beyond ours.

Fourth observation: energy is needed to power the model of the universe and energy is likely needed to power the universe of universes one of which we call our own.

Fifth observation: at first glance we have a couple of loose ends: matter/energy that cannot be destroyed but a whole universe of that very stuff disappearing into the void at the end of its run. Ditto for all the other sister universes. And a whole lot of energy powering up the kettle on the other end of the system.

Sixth observation: the loose ends can be connected, at least a concept of that can be grasped. Even with our feeble, three dimension accustomed minds.

Envision for the fun of it one more scene: dark clouds of a thunderstorm, a bolt of lightning striking a lone tree on the savannah, a dozen hairy, hunched, and upright forms watching awestruck as one of their number reaches into the burning pyre to extract a flaming branch. If our bold forebear could grasp (manually and mentally) the concept of fire, we can create a model so as to envision our universe.

Bane of the Land

2009-08-24T10:12:00.000-07:00

Bane of the Land is the English translation of the name of my grandfather's grandfather's grandfather's grandfather's mother's family which is Landschaden. So my grandfather, John J. Harter, his grandfather, François-Joseph Mattias "Frank" Harter, his grandfather, Philippe de Harter, his grandfather, Jean de Harter, his mother. She was the tail end of the family, the male line of which went extinct when Friedrich III Landschad von Steinach died in 1653. The family von Landschaden had heroes and villains as any family has. But the scale of the heroism and villainy was orders of magnitude greater than any others in my family tree. The behavior belongs in the truth is stranger than fiction category.

The names Conrad and Bligger recur in the annals of this family. Both are present early on but then Conrad ceases to be a choice while Bligger continues to be popular. No doubt this is because one of the most notorious men in the family and the reason for the appellation "Landschaden" was a very early Conrad. This man was the original robber knight. From his castle high above the Neckar river he would descend upon unsuspecting barges carrying persons and merchandise to Heidelberg 20 kilometer away. At one point the Emperor put Conrad under imperial ban and required him to go on Crusade for his crimes.

This was the First Christian Crusade. In many ways this was the only successful crusade. Certainly it is the one most detested by historians who detest Christianity in general and European Christianity in particular. It was the one that captured the city of Jerusalem. Lots of books have been written about this crusade which was called by the pope of Rome to reclaim holy sites from the muslims and which was heralded by the tragedy of Pierre L'Hermitte's crusade of peasants. This crusade was a crash of cymbals that marked a clash of civilizations. And after centuries of quiescence that clash of civilizations is active in our day. In a way we are in a Tenth Christian Crusade at present. Same two civilizations clashing now as a millenium ago. "He who fails to learn history is condemned to repeat it."

But back to the Conrad who garnered the distinction of being Bane of the Land and was forced to pack it in with the crusading army. Well, this was fighting the same determined enemy our soldiers face in Afganistan but without any of the logistical support, communications, and high tech weaponry of today. Just surviving long enough to reach the gates of the Holy City was a feat. Conrad fought in the climactic battle outside those gates. And he turned the tide of battle when he decapitated the leader of the Saracen forces. His heroism proved a match for his villainy. There is a church in Steinach am Neckar where the Landschaden are buried. An impressive tomb effigy mounted in a wall of that church shows Conrad in his armor, his strong and loyal wife at his side, and that Saracen's head dangling from his right hand. Local hero and former local villain, Landschaden goes from Bane of the Land to Hero of the First Crusade. So the family was redeemed, kept the name, and built another castle high above the Neckar.

These Rhenish robber knights ended up solid citizens of the realm. Some were poets and the most famous of them was Bligger von Steinach. "Hier hat die mär ein ende" is the penultimate line of his greatest work. And what work was that, you ask. Years ago one would need a good education or a learned friend. Today Google will get you the work. But you will still need resources to verify the author. Some of the Landschaden were lawyers--just like families today. These later lawyer Landschadens were reich chancellors and developers. Then came Freidrich III Landschad von Steinach and the end of the (male) line, 1653.

Upon Freidrich III Landschad von Steinach's death the wappen (coat of arms) went to his business partner, von Bohn. Upon von Bohn's death the wappen went to my grandfather's grandfather's grandfather's grandfather, Jean de Harter. He served in the Parlement de Paris and was later secretary to the War Minister Louvois and his master of the German Language. For these services well performed he received the fief de Landschaden from Louis XIV of France. The fief included properties formerly in the ancient imperial fief von Landschaden. The de Harters added de Landschaden to their surname and took the ancient wappen for their blazon, so Harter de Landschaden.

Just prior to the French Revolution the cadette branch of the family Harter de Landschaden changed their name to Hardter de Hartenstein, sold most of the properties including those of the fief de Landschaden, and moved to Switzerland. At this point the branch ainée of the family acquired the wappen and name and chose to stay in France. But after surviving the revolution, the many epic battles of Napoléon premier's Grande Armée, and the struggles inherent in running a small business my great great grandfather chose to sell out, change his name from François-Joseph Mattias de Harter to Frank Harter and catch the 1828 boat to New York City.

I wonder at times whether the branch that moved to Switzerland might have made the better move. Until recently I would have thought USA. But as I look around me and see our Constitution targeted for modernization, affirmative action based on skin pigment, Veterans' benefits means tested (so that after my five years of active duty service I am asked not just for my annual income but also for my net worth--things that were not discussed when I volunteered for the US Navy), Medicare benefits in the process of major downgrading, Social Security not worth applying for (I've been waiting for benefits to begin at age 70 so as to maximize that one but now think I'm waiting for Godot), wise Latinas who judge better than Old White Men, attorney generals who prosecute CIA agents for interrogating terrorists, billions of US dollars going to help Brazil drill offshore (some of the money to help George Soros, too) while permission to drill off our shores is denied, class warfare with special targeting of some Americans for much higher taxes and fewer deductions. But that is not the worst of it. No, the worst of it is that the USA is preparing to tax the net worth of citizens. Don't be shocked by that. If you own a home, you already pay an annual tax on that home and that home is a part of your net worth. Just add federal taxes on the whole of your net worth. This is the primary reason for the government's crusade to end offshore accounts, banking secrecy laws, and other ways citizens hide assets from their governments. As for the reason to tax net worth, well, there is just no other way to level our society's wealth--something at the heart of the Obama's Change for America. Not a level playing field but a level of affluence. The massive spending programs will mandate this step and give cover to the biggest social change in the nation's history. Is there room on Mount Rushmore for one more head? A modern Bane of the Land without the redeeming heroism of the original.

Chou en Lai's answer to the question "was the French Revolution as success?" was supposedly "too early to tell." In the same way, the answer to the question "which side won the cold war, Communism or Free Enterprise?" might be "too early to tell, but starting to lean toward the former."

Crisis, what crisis?

2009-08-21T08:21:00.000-07:00

Before one can do something for a living he or she must typically have an aptitude for it, an interest in it, and a period of training under supervision. Upon completion of that training there is examination and finally certification. Variable amounts of cleverness, intelligence, focus, endurance, and passion are requisites to arrive at that point in one's career. There will have been payment of some sort--cash as well as the labor of the entered apprentice or student/intern/resident. No difference really between plumbing and medicine, at least as regards the generalities of preparing for a lifetime of laboring in the craft.

The body of knowledge is undoubtedly larger for the doctor than for the tradesman and so the flux of knowledge, or knowledge throughput in the course of the study years, is greater for the student doctor. For that reason the student of medicine must be a quick study. Even when all the years of study have been successfully completed the newly minted doctor knows but a small fraction of what is needed to be good at medicine. I do not know if this is as true of tradesmen but I would think so. (The late, great Trade Unionist George Meaney said that anyone who did not respect a plumber had probably never paid a plumber's bill. Such presence is acquired after years in the craft.) But the explosion of knowledge in medicine is orders of magnitude larger than that which is continually bombarding those in other professions or crafts.

Besides knowledge there are technique and style to be mastered, and wisdom to be acquired. If the doctor is going to practice medicine, this is termed clinical wisdom. Judgement is another quality of importance. It is partly learned and partly intrinsic. Nobility of character, kindness, maturity, generosity, a sense of purpose, even a sense of humor all round out the ideal doctor. Cultural sensitivity is ever more relevant in our American society. This goes beyond competency in the English language and is more true in some specialties than others. (Compare the relative importance of the doctor's mother culture in the case of a child psychiatrist versus that of a pathologist.) Honesty should be a virtue held in high esteem by those in all crafts and professions. Hopefully the doctor did not get into medical school by cheating. That would not augur well for an honest and decent life in the profession.

Persons who have had experience with a good doctor likely have experienced poor ones, too. Medical regulatory agencies manage to exclude doctors who are egregiously incompetent practitioners. But they do not distinguish between the good doctor and the poor doctor. As long as the doctor meets minimal standards of care, is current in continuing medical education, has passed all appropriate examinations, and has a degree in medicine from any medical school in the USA that is approved or from any medical school outside the USA (and the regulatory agencies of the states do not hold these schools to any proper standards for political reasons) he or she is allowed to practice medicine in the state. Each state is different and may or may not reciprocate with other states. Since licensure certifies basic competency as measured by written and oral examination but Medicine is both an art and a science the testing ends up as a measure mostly of skills and ability in science. Patients, though, sense the doctor's art more than his or her science. In this way success in the practice of medicine demands accomplishment in both the art and the science of medicine--at least success in the free enterprise sort of health care we have in our country today.

Socialized medical systems as found in some European countries and the government run systems that we have here in our country (Veterans Hospitals and Clinics, Bureau of Indian Affairs Clinics, Military Hospitals, Bureau of Prisons, and so forth) assign doctors to patients with little or no choice on anyone's part. Although this is no reason to expect fewer good doctors and more poor ones, it does seem to be the experience of many patients that the experience was different in the government run medical clinics and hospitals. And it was not on account of the hospitals' facilities, equipment, or staff. Patients rate the doctor-patient relationship different and not as satisfactory in the federal medical programs. Hearsay, not scientific polling, but worth doing some further investigation of a scientific nature. A lot is at stake here.

At a minimum the President's talk of crisis and doomsday predictions by experts of all sorts are surely discouraging the best and brightest of America's students from pursuing a career in medicine. The arduous training, the expense of protracted years of study, the stress on the individual and his or her family, the many factors predicting for success or failure all militate against selecting Medicine. The President's diagnosis of terminal illness in our American health care system and the politicians' dithering will also discourage any and all doctors presently on the job. This will leave us with a discouraged senior corps and a barely able junior corps of doctors when we need everyone in peak form. Many, many advances are coming down the research pipeline. More and better life for our citizens is what is at stake. These advances have been decades in development. And most of them will require a high level of technical knowledge and skill on the part of the doctor and the doctor's team. (Take the example of robotic prostate surgery or intensity modulated radiation therapy for prostate cancer cure. Both require a higher not a lower level of physician ability.)

There is no crisis in health care. That much is obvious. There are parties on all sides eager to carve up the pie of health care reimbursement. And there is a lot to be gained by the Social Democrats should all health care in this country be government run. The voting preference of government workers is strongly Democrat so moving one sixth of the work force of the country into the federal sphere should guarantee Democratic domination of the legislature, executive branch, and eventually the judiciary from the highest offices down. This appears to be the rationale behind the push to federalize the health care system. It certainly is not a mission on behalf of politicians to alleviate suffering or improve efficiency or cut costs. The federal government epitomizes frustration, inefficiency, and waste. But an election map painted in democrat blue coast to coast could be the goal. Color this crisis blue.

DNA and genealogy

2009-08-14T16:53:00.000-07:00

Genealogy is said to be an old lady's avocation. Granted, not every old lady fancies it but these days every family has some member working on the family's origins. And that someone is often as not an old lady.

In centuries past transatlantic and transpacific voyage was time consuming and expensive. In addition there was often a good reason the immigrant left the ancestral village and journeyed to America. The founding generation and generations of Americans up to the early 20C often sacrificed their relations with families and nation states in Europe and Asia. Black slaves were entirely dislocated from their lands of origin. So piecing together the transatlantic story generations later is frequently not possible using traditional genealogical tools. This is changing as a new tool becomes available.

Note that this matter of distant origins searching applies more to persons whose families arrived prior to WWI than to new arrivals. Since today's world affords almost universal availability of telephones, timely and dependable surface mail, near instantaneous electronic mail, digital photography, and relatively inexpensive, safe, and rapid transatlantic and transpacific travel new immigrants do not suffer the paradigm of familial and cultural dislocation and divorce to the same degree as immigrants of prior centuries. Today's immigrant arrives in America with intact family ties that are relatively easy to maintain. He or she is always cognizant of the ancestral origins, and is in possession of the mother culture. I think genealogy will be less important to future generations of our new immigrants. But our culture is changing and a Confucian sort of respect for ancestors and their stories might be on the increase. If nothing else it seems to help young people to know that older family members faced trials that they now face. Makes for good story telling, too.

It is probably fair to add that this nation was more of a mixing bowl in the past, and that it will be less so in the present and the future. Even the color of the mixture in the bowl is changing as a nation that was ninety per cent European in origin from its founding up to 1960 is now seventy per cent so and is expected to drop to less than half so by mid 21C. (Open and poorly enforced immigration policy, low white birth rate, widely available fertility control including abortion, and declining influence of authoritarian institutions opposed to these forces will see the face of America change a great deal in the first half of this century.) Since, except for the maximally dislocated Native American peoples, we are all the children of immigrants there is probably no cause for alarm. America possesses a wonderful constitution, a culture of decency and accomplishment, good governmental systems, honest civil servants and judiciary, effective educational practices and institutions, hard working labor and management, good health care practitioners and institutions, and the best Congress and Executive branch that money can buy.

Back to the DNA genealogy thought: things have changed for the better when it comes to those little old ladies searching out the family origins, whether these Americans trace their origins to immigrants who left Europe, Asia, or Africa as free persons, indentured servants, or slaves. New advances in the science of DNA analysis will go where no one has gone before. There is a family record encoded in each of our cells that will read like paper trail genealogy when accessed by current and future technology. Whereas paper trail genealogy provides three, four, maybe five generations of ancestors our own DNA tells us the timeline and routes of migration of our own (straight) paternal and maternal lines all the way back to Africa. Future refinements in the methodology might even help fill in the pedigree chart between the straight paternal and the straight maternal lines.

For now DNA analysis in genealogy aims more at affirming or refuting blood relationships near and distant, as well as pinpointing the ancestral land and the route taken by our paternal and maternal line ancestors out of Mother Africa to Europe or Asia or not out of Mother Africa to Europe or Asia but rather direct to USA. The analysis looks at mutations in sections of the Y chromosome, which is in the nucleus of the cell, and studies the little circle of DNA in the mitochondria, which are in the cytoplasm. These go back to the sperm and the egg and just as you would imagine tell a story of the father and the mother of the person tested, as well as the story of the father's father and the mother's mother and so forth and so on back tens of thousands of years. One can see a map of places through which the paternal line or maternal line traveled to get to hometown, USA. The analysis uses technical manipulations and jargon but should be reasonably understandable for most people willing to work at it. Easier to understand than the inner workings of a kitchen faucet and never need to fix it.

Commercially available DNA analysis of the male line (Y chromosome typing done on male supplied specimens) and of the female line (mitochondrial DNA typing done on either male or female supplied specimens) will tell the family's distant origins. Thus one might find that a family that traces to an 18C immigrant in Virginia or Pennsylvania thought to have come from German states actually has a paternal line that originated (in Europe, that is) in what is now the United Kingdom. A half million kits for this kind of analysis have been sold and the total number of persons in the data base is increasing at twenty per cent per year. Since most people supply their own earliest known origin and since there is a system of anonymous presentation of data and since there is also the acquisition of European samples, the matching process is becoming more refined and more likely valid. This is probably more suitable for passionate amateur genealogists, especially ones facing a gap in the paper trail or an otherwise insurmountable obstacle.

The cost of DNA analysis is equivalent to the cost of a fine meal for two. No one ever said information was cheap. Accessing the information encoded in one's own DNA would seem to be something that should cost more than the price of a good meal. Check out Family Tree DNA by Dr. Bennett Greenspan. I highly recommend his organization.

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The role of the talking head.

2009-08-13T12:07:00.000-07:00

My spouse and I spent a week end in Rome two months ago. Long story why and not relevant, either. We saw amazing things, things that until that week end had not come through to us despite a lifetime of studying, television specials, and movies about Rome. Our week end was literally and figuratively an eye opener.

Take the half dozen Talking Heads of Rome. These antedate Beck and Hannity of Fox cable channel by five hundred years but have functioned for all that time in much the same way as the Fox talking heads today. This phenomenon began with a cobbler named Pasquino who was not a man to hold his tongue even though his era did not encourage free speech. A sorely stressed marble statue of Menelaus shielding the dead body of Patroclus (refer to Homer's Iliad for details) that used to serve as a stepping stone in the medieval sewer/street was set upright outside the cobbler's shop in 1501. (It is still there as are so many other things from ages past in the Eternal City. Rome is big but seems to have enough stuff for a hundred big cities.) The city's citizens beginning with Pasquino and continuing to our day write satirical comments on the times, particularly political comments, and stick them up onto the marble wreck. In this way the statues or heads talk. The satire is witty and well presented, making you think that the wonderful language skills of Rome's classical period continue to be practiced today. I will give one example. My examples are always long.

In the center of the piazza della Minerva there is the famous Egyptian obelisk atop Gian Lorenzo Bernini's elephant. (A Bernini design but Ercole Ferrata was the sculptor.) A brass plaque is fixed to the front of the church in the square (Santa Maria sopra Minerva) to monument the high water mark from a flood of the fiumi Tevere, or Tiber river. Our guide pointed this out and I asked him to stand by the plaque which he did. Then I asked him to point his finger at the line so I could take a picture. It seemed like a natural thing to do. The guide said most tourists ask him to do the same.

Later, while discussing the Talking Heads of Rome, he gave as an example of a posting a famous cartoon that featured a scandal ridden Italian politician named Fiumi. In the same way as the guide pointed to the high water mark of the fiumi or river, the cartoon showed a man pointing to the pubis of a naked woman. The caption read "Fiumi got up to here." Our guide assured us the people reading this knew to which woman the cartoonist was referring. And no, it was not Mrs. Fiumi.

The medium of the web log seems to serve as an adjunct to the Talking Heads--of Rome, of Fox cable networks, or of other similar outlets. And it seems to me that some of the wit and skill of the Romans--ancient, medieval, or contemporary--would be a comfort to us all in these eventful times. The strident, clumsy, ugly, and mean spirited editorial comments of Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich do not uplift or inspire Americans to greatness. Nor do these bitter commentaries promote civility, harmony, or understanding. We need information, true enough. But "Fiumi got to here" can be told in more agreeable ways than those used by Dowd and Rich. I hope we Americans evolve less toward them and more toward Pasquino et al.