Signposts to Sanity

Wherein your ever lovin' Granny points out other people's stuff to you.

Let's use the signpost with the crooked trail today, since we are dealing with politics.

Think Progress has posted Fact Check the State of the Union should you like to compare statements to facts.

We can cheer for another step taken in the right direction concerning the FISA bill on Monday at Fiery FISA Debate Dominating Senate: GOP Bill Fails Cloture by Steve Benen. It seems that the public spoke. I made my calls on Sunday, because I wasn't certain of when it was coming to a vote and the four hour time difference between D.C. and Alaska and the further down the list I got, the more I was running into voice mailboxes that were already full.

And there needs to be concern for the polar bears when we read Joe Connolly's Bush Moves On Alaska about how the declaration of the polar bear as endangered is being delayed until after their habitat is opened for oil drilling while our eyes are on the economy.

Update Life in Juneau. So, everyone in the building left the cold water dripping and when we got up on Monday discovered that the water pipe leading into the hot water heater had frozen. Luckily nothing broke, but it took 24 hours to thaw it and get hot water back. Luckily I once lived on a homestead, so I know how to boil water on the stove to do dishes with.

Signposts to Sanity

An occasional feature where your lovin' Granny points you at somebody else's really good stuff and where the twisty path behind this signposts signals that it is about politics.

Over at Anything They Say,
Iraq Oil, The Long Game THBCH talks about the Iraq Oil Law.

The Long Game

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
-- Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler,
USMC,
War is a Racket

If it has not already done so [Ed. to date, it has not], the Iraqi parliament is expected to pass a new National Oil Law. This is probably not something many Americans have heard much about and generally most US media outlets have portrayed the law as a good and necessary thing. The law appears designed to reinvigorate the dilapidated oil industry in a country with vast oil wealth but which has been punished by wars and sanctions for decades. I say "appears" because, while the law is designed to spur Iraq's oil production, there are also other purposes for which it is designed: enrich western oil companies to new and lofty heights and, more importantly, to secure Middle Eastern oil deposits for American interests and against those of competing world powers. Twenty years of "realist" foreign policy, which has overseen the deaths of millions, along with the current mayhem, has finally culminated in Western interests citing those very policies as the rationale for taking control of Iraqi oil fields for the first time since 1972. This is what is known as "the long game."***To understand the magnitude of potential profits, it is important to know that only 17 of 80 potential oil fields in Iraq have ever been touched and it is estimated that pumping light sweet crude out of Iraq's oil fields could cost as little as one dollar per barrel. Up to 3 million barrels per day are the expected output and, at $50/bbl, this amounts to a profit potential of $100 million per day for participating oil companies. *** If the shifting sands of justification demonstrated one thing it was that none of the reasons proffered bore any resemblance to the actual reasons for the invasion of Iraq. While many people raised the issue of oil both before and after the invasion, administration officials insisted and continue to insist that the industrialized world's most important resource was of no interest to this White House, a White House piled high with former oil industry executives. Though Colin Powell explicitly said that, "we did not do it for oil," the new Oil Law casts a very long, very dark shadow across those words.

Despite the common refrain that errors in "intelligence" resulted in the invasion of Iraq, the invasion was not a mistake. Mistake implies some level of accident or inadvertence, something that might have been avoided if only other things were known. But it obvious now that the invasion of Iraq was an orchestrated, deliberate action and merely the last of many policy prescriptions that have been exacted upon that country for the last twenty five years.

On Barbara's Blog, Barbara Ehrenreich looks into obtaining insurance for her three year old niece (who is not poor and who has insurance) to compare the health care/insurance being provided to America's poor children to the insured health care being provided to America's rich pets. In Children Deserve Veternary Care, Too

This year, Americans will spend about $9.8 billion on health care for their pets, up from $7.2 billion five years ago. According to the New York Times, New York’s leading pet hospitals offer CT scans, MRI’s, dialysis units, and even a rehab clinic featuring an underwater treadmill, perhaps for the amphibians in one’s household. A professor who consults to pet health facilities on communication issues justified these huge investments in pet health to me by pointing out that pets are, after all, “part of the family.”

Well, there’s another category that might reasonably be considered “part of the family.” True, they are not the ideal companions for the busy young professional: It can take two to three years to housebreak them; their standards of personal hygiene are lamentably low, at least compared to cats; and large numbers of them cannot learn to “sit” without the aid of Ritalin.

I’m talking about children, of course, and while I can understand why many people would not one of these hairless and often incontinent bipeds in their homes, it is important to point out that they can provide considerable gratification. ***So I went to the website of VPI Pet Insurance, one of the nation’s largest animal companion health insurers, to see what kind of a policy I could get for her. ***When I completed the form and clicked to get a quote I was amazed to see that I get her a “premium” policy for a mere $33 a month. ***It may seem callous to focus on children when so many pets go uninsured and without access to CT-scans or underwater treadmills. But in many ways, children stack up well compared to common pets. They can shed real tears, like Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs. They can talk as well as many of the larger birds, or at least mimic human speech. And if you invest enough time in their care and feeding, they will jump all over you when you arrive at the door, yipping and covering your face with drool.

The Senate Finance Committee has approved a bill that would expand state health insurance cover for children (S-CHIP) to include 3.2 million kids who are not now covered (but leaving about 6 million still uncovered.) Bush has promised to veto this bill, on the grounds that government should not be involved in health coverage. If he does veto the bill, the fallback demand should be: Open up pet health insurance to all American children now! Though even as I say this, I worry that the president will counter by proposing to extend euthanasia services to children who happen to fall ill.

With the latest information coming out about Pat Tillman, at Brilliant At Breakfast, Jill has posted Was Pat Tillman the victim of a deliberate hit?.

We know that Tillman believed the war in Iraq was "f***ing illegal" and we also know that he was a devot´ of the writings of Noam Chomsky. It only took three years for the rest of America to catch up with what Tillman knew when he was killed in 2004.

But as horrific as the details of Tillman's death have been up to now, it appears that his death bears all the earmarks of a deliberate murder -- dare I say it? A hit on a soldier deemed insufficiently loyal to "the Family":

Army medical examiners were suspicious about the close proximity of the three bullet holes in Pat Tillman's forehead and tried without success to get authorities to investigate whether the former NFL player's death amounted to a crime, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.***The doctors - whose names were blacked out - said that the bullet holes were so close together that it appeared the Army Ranger was cut down by an M-16 fired from a mere 10 yards or so away.***Among other information contained in the documents:

_ In his last words moments before he was killed, Tillman snapped at a panicky comrade under fire to shut up and stop "sniveling."

_ Army attorneys sent each other congratulatory e-mails for keeping criminal investigators at bay as the Army conducted an internal friendly-fire investigation that resulted in administrative, or non-criminal, punishments.

_ The three-star general who kept the truth about Tillman's death from his family and the public told investigators some 70 times that he had a bad memory and couldn't recall details of his actions.

_ No evidence at all of enemy fire was found at the scene - no one was hit by enemy fire, nor was any government equipment struck.***With questions lingering about how high in the Bush administration the deception reached, Congress is preparing for yet another hearing next week.

Now why should the truth about what happened to Pat Tillman fall under "executive privilege"? Unless said privileged executive decided that a high-profile soldier opposed to his Iraq policy was just too risky to keep around?

I was sent by Short Woman to Hot Air and A Pilot On Airline Security an e-mail from Dave Mackett, President, Airline Pilots Security Alliance, www.secure-skies.org is printed in total. This is a very sobering post, where Mackett says, among other things,

What is TSA’s fault is their abject failure to embrace more robust approaches than high visibility inspections, and their accommodations to the Air Transport Association’s revenue interests at the expense of true security, while largely ignoring the recommendations of the front-line airline crews and air marshals who have no direct revenue agenda and are much more familiar with airline operations than are the bureaucrats (remember government ignoring the front-line FBI agents who tried to warn them about 9/11?). Deplorable amounts of money have been wasted on incomprehensible security strategies, while KISS [Keep It Simple, Stupid] methods proven to work have been ignored. ***It has taken six years, but TSA is now finally flirting with behavioral assessment training for screeners and random (but not mandatory) ground employee inspections. The airlines complain screening all ground employees would significantly hinder airline operations. They’re right — it would.

Signposts to Sanity

An occasional feature where your ever lovin' Granny points you to other people's really good stuff. And, as you can tell from our fat little signpost, today we are dealing with weight.

I wasn't going to say any more about this study, having posted If You Can Catch It, giving a light hearted take at the nonsense involved (because when I tried to address it seriously I couldn't keep my language decent and Maya reads this blog on occasion and has excellent reading skills), and linking you to Shark-fu's equally light hearted take on it. However, like Sandy Szwarc, below, I find that this study is turning up everywhere. The fact that it should be laughed out the door doesn't seem to be occurring to anyone who isn't a fat-activist. I'm finding that the more I think about it, the hotter I get. I don't like being the target of bias, and the fact that for so many years I bought into it myself just makes it that much worse. It isn't enough that I'm fat, unhealthy, gluttonous, slothful, and a bad person, now I'm also responsible for both a collapsing health-care system and the weight gain of my friends. If I bought into this stuff (or as much of it as was around at the time) when I was younger, how are fat children going to react? Are they going to be shunned even more than they are today? Will they stop getting invitations to birthday parties because their little friends and the parents of their little friends don't want fat being spread to them? Will their parents, in the hope of helping them to have a social life, be even more driven to put them on the diets that science says will eventually make them fatter? Too much. So, I am linking you here to three recent posts which really examine it in depth.

Kate at Shapely Prose has looked at it in two posts. The first, Fat Is Contagious

2) Obesity, according to this study, is more socially transmissible from one man to another than one woman to another.

Does this jibe with other research that suggests women are much more invested in social networks, more communicative with their friends about personal issues and, not for nuthin’, more susceptible to mirroring their friends’ eating behaviors when they do eat together?

***4) As I understand it, spouses did not “affect” each other as strongly as even geographically distant friends.

This goes back to point 1. Are we really meant to believe that people in one of the most intimate possible relationships, who communicate daily, eat together, and share umpteen “lifestyle” factors, are less likely to “transmit” obesity to one another than friends who live on opposite coasts? What is it that makes you fat, then? If we believe it’s diet and exercise, how is it conceivable that people who live together do not affect each other’s diet and exercise habits as strongly as pals who rarely see each other? And regardless of what they’re claiming the direct cause of obesity is here, do we really believe that people are more susceptible to the opinions of distant friends than their own spouses?

***
So the whole premise that justified this review of another study’s data — that we, as a country, are SO MUCH FATTER than we used to be — is basically horseshit. There’s that.

Finally, it sounds like what they’re really afraid of is people telling their friends it’s okay not to diet. If that’s what’s actually happening here? I hope it becomes a goddamned epidemic.

The second post of Kate's I want to direct you to is Warning: If You Read This, You Might Get Fat

Now, I do stand by what I wrote, which was that we don’t know how to make a naturally thin person fat. I was thinking specifically of the prisoner study, where a bunch of men ate ridiculous amounts of food and stopped exercising in order to deliberately gain weight, but the weight gain didn’t last; as soon as they went back to eating normally, they went back to right around their original weights.***What that study does point to is the existence of a stubborn natural weight range in every individual. Anyone who’s dieted and gained it back (i.e., pretty much everyone more than 5 years out from the last diet) will recognize an incredibly familiar pattern in the prisoner study — it’s the reverse of what we’ve lived out, but the elements are all the same. They tried to push their bodies beyond their natural weight ranges, and their bodies resisted mightily. Their metabolisms changed to account for the changes in diet and exercise and try to force them back into their natural weight ranges. And as soon as they stopped the unnatural diet, their bodies returned to what was normal for them.

That’s exactly what happens to dieters.

But because it’s a weight range we’re talking about, and because dieting is akin to starvation as far as the body’s concerned, when dieters go back to normal, they often end up fatter than they were — presumably at the top of their natural weight ranges. Dieting, as a rule, not only doesn’t make you permanently thin — it makes you fatter.

***Now back to the important point here: this fact that I overlooked offers one simple, plausible explanation for the “fat is contagious” findings: friends recommend diets to each other. And diets ultimately make people fatter. And if those people started out at the top of the “overweight” BMI category, dieting could very easily have pushed them into the “obese” one.

It’s unlikely that that fully explains the correlation they found — but frankly, it’s a much more plausible theory than the one that has fat people calling each other up and saying, “Hey, you know what? I overeat and never exercise, and I feel great! You should try it!”

Sandy Szwarc, at Junkfood Science has also addressed this "study" in her post Oh, What A Tangled Web We Weave.

I wasn’t even going to write on this “study” because it elicited nothing more than thinly veiled hate speech and was such junk science I was certain no one would take it seriously.

I was wrong.

Within hours of the press releases, a massive, well-orchestrated marketing campaign was off and running. By dinnertime yesterday, Google noted 300 nearly identical articles had been published about it and there were 500 by this morning. Television and radio reporters have been gushing over it, with MSNBC reporting that having a fat friend can make you fat and be downright dangerous for your health.

***Let’s not beat around the bush. The key message of this study was to justify and promote the social shunning and discrimination of fat people.

Not one health or medical writer, even at the most prestigious consumer or medical publications, has critically reported on this study or even appears to have read it. Not one has made a critical examination and pointed out its unorthodox methods, its findings that conflict with known science and known biological mechanisms, or the flawed and contradictory findings within the study itself. Not one.

*** We are to believe, it seems, the media images that we’ve all gained gargantuan amounts of weight, rather than the average 7 - 10 pounds actually evidenced over recent decades among our increasingly diverse population, as reported by Dr. Jeffrey Friedman, head of the Laboratory of Molecular Genetics at Rockefeller University in New York.

***Medical writers at publications such as MedPageToday were equally credulous, giving physicians the action point: “Explain to patients who ask that this observational study found that the likelihood of a person becoming obese is heavily influenced by obesity in their friends, siblings, and spouse.” ***No need to go on, as you’ve heard all of this, too. But what you haven’t heard was that this paper wasn’t actually a study, researching people using recognized, proven sound medical research methodology.***They made no efforts to give any physiological explanations for these implausible findings or how long-distance relationships might be more associated with obesity than genetics. Nor, did they have any data on the closeness of the friendships or how often people were in contact with their supposedly fattening friends

Forgetting that their study was a data dredge looking for correlations, which is unable to ever demonstrate causation,

***This study illustrates the difference between politics and good science. The reporting and responses from media and medical professionals have illustrated the difference between prejudice versus knowledge, understanding and compassion. There is absolutely no credible science to support stigma against any group. You cannot “catch” fat from associating with a fat person anymore than you can catch “black” from a black person.

What the science knows about obesity “should be sufficient to end the opprobrium of the obese,” said Dr. Friedman. “To end the stigma of obesity, the scientific community must communicate more effectively a growing body of compelling evidence indicating that morbid obesity is the result of differences in biology and not a personal choice.”

The public trusts medical and journalism professionals to give them reliable information to help them. Over the past 24 hours, that trust has proven to be undeserved.

Since Kate and Sandy have said this so well, I hope I won't feel driven to say any more about it myself. I do have to say, though, that this study reminds me of nothing so much as The Bell Curve.

Signposts to Sanity

An occasional feature where your lovin' Granny directs you to other people's really good stuff.



Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast, He Gassed His Own People is a must read. as she talks about the 120,000 formaldehyde infected trailers that were set up by FEMA for Hurricane Katrina victims.

Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.) said FEMA obstructed the 10-month committee investigation and "mischaracterized the scope and purpose" of the agency's actions.

"FEMA's reaction to the problem was deliberately stunted to bolster the agency's litigation position," Davis said. The documents "make it appear FEMA's primary concerns were legal liability and public relations, not human health and safety."

About 60,000 households affected by Katrina remain in trailers.

On Alternet is an excellent column, Five Ways Bush's Era of Repression Has Stolen Your Liberties Since 9/11 by Matthew Rothschild. He discusses the actions that the current administration has curtailed liberty under the guise of security.

What the Bush administration did after 9/11 was not to engage in precise police work to find any would-be terrorists in our midst. Instead, it issued edicts and enacted laws that curtailed all of our freedoms. And it cast a gigantic dragnet over Arabs and Muslims in this country, treating many of them with a de facto presumption of guilt. To put those experiences in context we need to examine how the Bush administration constructed the edifice of repression.

It got the job done, in part, by blasting those who dared to dissent. When the president's former press secretary Ari Fleischer told people they should "watch what they say" after comedian Bill Maher on ABC's Politically Incorrect dared to question the label of "cowards" that Bush had slapped on the suicide bombers, it sent a message. As did the canceling of Maher's show. As did Bush's repeated assertion that "you're either with us or against us."

The entire article is a very sobering read.

Also on Alternet is Alberto Gonzales' Pants Are On Fire, an examination of our fearless Attorney General's propensity for lying with a straight face.

If Gonzales' testimony is accurate today, then he is confirming the existence of a new administration spying program.
Transcript:

SPECTER: Let me move quickly through a series of questions there's a lot to cover. Starting with the issue Mr. Comey raises, you said "there has not been any disagreement about the program." Mr. Comey's testimony was that "Mrs. Gonzales began to discuss why they were there to seek approval" and he then says "I was very upset, I was angry, I thought I had just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man."

GONZALES: The disagreement that occurred was about other intelligence activities and the reason for the visit to the hospital was about other intelligence activities. It was not about the terrorist surveillance program that the president announced to the American people.

SPECTER: Mr. Attorney General, do you expect us to believe that?

At nobody asked. . . , in the post Patriotic Opposition. Winston quotes in total a concise letter to the editor of The Tennessean, about which Winston remarks,

What a great couple of concepts! (1) Spend on real security here at home to replace the joke and hassle that beefed up border patrols have become. So far these efforts have created problems primarily for law abiding U.S., Canadian, and Mexican citizens — families on vacation and people engaged in legitimate business. (2) And why didn’t somebody think of this before? Attack the enemy where he is. Wow! Quick, somebody tell the generals at the Pentagon…

The letter, by Steve Entman of Nashville, is well worth reading in its entirety.

Signposts to Sanity

An occasional feature where your lovin' Granny points you at somebody else's really good stuff, and today it's about size.

Sandy Szwarc at Junkfood Science, tells us that "An article in New Scientist magazine accuses fat people of causing global warming and killing polar bears:" in Blame Fat People.

In fact, among the many disconnects in the reasoning in the New Scientist piece, one comes from Roberts' own research! He and colleagues in London previously published a study on inner-city children in the UK, for example, that found most children (69%) walked to school and only 26% travelled by car, but it was the poorer children who walked more than the richer kids. “Attendance at a private school, family car ownership and longer distances to travel to school were the principal determinants of car travel,” he and colleagues said. In another 2003 report on pedestrian safety and overcrowded roads, he also said: “Poor kids walk much more than rich kids, who tend to spend a lot of time in the car.”

Yet it’s poorer children who tend to be fatter.

And speaking of size, AlterNet.org's, Joshua Holland looks at Are You One of The Shrinking Americans? It seems that we are no longer the tallest industrialized country in the world, indeed we are now shorter than the residence of all Western European countries.

The United States also has far more concentrated wealth than any of its European allies. That means that while we are, on average, one of the wealthiest countries in the world, we also lead all the advanced economies in poverty. Poverty limits access to both healthcare and good nutrition.

More importantly in terms of average height is childhood poverty. Here, the United States stands alone among the advanced economies with a stunning figure: eighteen percent of American children -- almost one in five -- live in poverty. No other industrialized country comes close -- it's about five times the child poverty rate in Northern Europe. Again, nutrition and access to healthcare both vary with family income for children just as they do in adults.***The key finding of the study is is not that we are shrinking in absolute terms, it's that we're falling behind relative to our wealthy cousins. Europeans have grown in height as much as the rise in their average incomes during the 20th century would predict; Americans have not.

And it's not just height. Among the 20 most developed countries in the world, the United States is now dead last in life expectancy at birth, but leads the pack in infant mortality -- forty percent higher than the runner-up -- and in the percentage of the population that will die before reaching 60.***"those countries with higher social expenditures -- as a percentage of gross domestic product, or GDP -- have dramatically lower poverty rates among children."***"[T]he political economy of the health-care system, education, transfers to the poor, and government policy toward equality (hence taxation policy) all matter" in determining average height, say the researchers.

These are policy matters that are usually understood as ideological, as left-right issues. In one sense they certainly are, but they're also questions of gearing public policy to the long- or the short-term, and we seem to prefer short-term approaches. Investing in our children's health and well-being may not pay off in terms of lower taxes next quarter or next year, but it might allow them to walk a bit taller a generation or two down the line.

Over at Big Fat Blog, there is an article looking at size and public policy from a different angle, New Zealand Doctors to Fat Immigrants: Stay Out

In a stunning display of discrimination, doctors in New Zealand are promoting the idea of screening immigrants for their weight and smoking habits. The reason? Lots of unhealthy people are putting a burden on the healthcare system there and since a lot of people there are also fat, they're getting a bad rep.

And let us end with this wonderful production of Joy Nash -- Fat Rant. How I wish that I had known what she knows when I was her age. I could have saved myself so much grief.

I have to say, that when she found the double 0 in the dress rack, I was amazed. I thought a 0 was as small as they could go. And, she has a blog of her own these days, called, oddly enough, Fat Rant. And meantime, "choose two thin parents."

Signposts to SanityThis Scares Me

An occasional feature in which your ever lovin' granny points you at other people's really good stuff. Please note that the signpost chosen for today leads down a green and twisting trail, indicating a need to follow the twists and turns that the money takes.

Yesterday on Junkfood Science, Sandy Szwarc posted an article which frightens me. Doctors — forced into becoming lifestyle police. I am directly quoting her a great deal, because the way the pieces come together is important; since I don't quote her first mention of RWJF, I'll tell those of you who might not know that she is referring to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the "philanthropic" arm (worth $8.99 billion) of Johnson & Johnson, the health care products company. And while you read this, keep in mind that the current Surgeon General has targeted obesity as a major health problem and has been issuing press releases touting disproven numbers of premature deaths caused by obesity and ignoring the fact that fat people outlive thin ones.

If government agencies and the American Medical Association get their way, doctors and pediatricians will be compelled to police the behaviors of children and families to make sure they comply with the obesity initiatives of the world’s most influential interest groups***As predicted here, they first recommend the definitions be changed so that children are labeled as “obese” and “overweight” using BMI percentiles*, rather than the long-standing recognition that such classifications are inappropriate for growing children and teens***Every well-child visit is now to include a qualitative assessment of eating behaviors, which must include identifying how often the family eats meals away from home, consumption of sweetened beverages, portion sizes, how often and what children and teens eat for breakfast, how much fruit juice is drunk, how many fruits and vegetables and foods high in fat or calories are eaten, and the frequency and types of snacks.***Labwork for these heavier children, even those without risk factors, is to include lipid (“cholesterol”) profile, fasting glucose and a slew of other biomedical tests.*****All children and teens, of “normal” BMI ranges should be assured to be in compliance with the obesity prevention guidelines as it delineated.***

Additionally, all children and teens with BMIs above the 85th percentile must receive special intervention by a primary care provider or healthcare professional trained in weight management**** and behavioral counseling.***But children or teens with any risk factors and who are not successfully losing weight, or all children above the 99th percentile*****, are placed in the “Tertiary care protocol.”

Tertiary care protocol

· Referral to a weight management center to include a multi-disciplinary team to institute diet and exercise counseling, a very low calorie diet, medication and surgery.******<***Not one single clinical practice recommendation is based on credible science on childhood obesity, has anything to do with healthy eating, or has any evidential support. In today’s “pay for performance” world, however, doctors who do not comply with clinical practice guidelines — based on their patients meeting requisite BMIs, behaviors and health risk factor numbers — will see their private and public insurance reimbursements cut.********** The unmistakable aspect of everything RWJF funds, unbeknownst to the public, is that the feel-good reforms are never for programs that actually care for sick people or children, but are always designed to coerce and move towards legislation that governs lifestyle issues, behaviors and societal values; and that increase the power and influence of governmental agencies and managed care, while undermining the choices of individuals and the judgment of doctors, parents and others directly involved in patient care. And with each one, computerized data collection is fundamental.*** It’s interesting that the war on obesity is often compared to that against smoking, because the two targets share surprising similarities, and not just because they’ve both become among the most socially condemned in our culture.***Meanwhile, how many consumers know that Johnson & Johnson is the largest manufacturer of pharmaceutical nicotine products (like Nicoderm, Nicoderm CQ, etc.) in the world, which alone are a $500 million annual business for the company? I didn't and was also surprised to see how squishy the evidence on second-hand smoking being used*** Johnson & Johnson, Inc., with $53.324 billion in annual sales, is also an international giant in weight loss and healthy eating products, selling nutritional supplements (McNeil Nutritionals, LLC), artificial sweeteners (Splenda), diet pills, employer wellness programs (J&J Consumer Companies, Inc. Vida Nuestra), and bariatric surgical devices and lap bands (Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Inc.). And just this past week, the President and CEO of RWJF, Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, finally stepped down from the Board of Directors of Beckman Coulter, Inc., a company with $2.53 billion in annual sales of biomedical laboratory tests — a position she simultaneously held while at the helm of RWJF, ensuring preventive wellness guidelines calling for excessive screening tests.

* By these standards, if I'm understanding this correctly , when Maya was four she would have been identified as obese, since she was so tall that she was off the chart for her age group. She was slender and tall.

** Think of the additional time and expense of these evaluations and tests. If this is to occur at each well-child visit, how that adds up over the years. Fasting glucose tests, as those of us who have them can tell you, are blood tests, preceded by no food and minimal water for 12 hours. For young children who happen to be genetically larger? Be hungry, thirsty, and stuck with a needle? Whether your doctor thinks you need it or not? Let's see how fast we can make chubby children hate going to the doctor.

*** Children within the government's definition of normal are also to be subjected to evaluation of their eating and exercise habits? No children, no families, are to be spared the indoctrination that fat is evil? Aren't the five year olds who are dieting today bad enough? Shall we see if we can add more?

**** In other words, these kids, fat or just tall, will be placed on diets. When studies have shown that dieting before physical maturation not only leads to nutritional problems but also almost guarantees a lifetime of weight problems. When the Berkeley Nutritional Study "of women defined as clinically obese shows that nearly two-thirds of them went on their first diet before age 14 and, as adults, were more likely to be heavier than women who started dieting after age 14."

***** That's Maya, the four year-old who was so tall she was off the chart! To be placed in "tertiary care protocol"!

****** Medication. Perhaps another phen-fen that proves fatal? One that leads to "anal leakage"? Surgery. That's weight loss surgery (WLS), they are talking about here. On children. A surgery with a death on the table rate exceeded only by the quadruple bypass. With a death within 90 days of surgery rate of one in 50! A surgery that results in nutrient malabsorption -- on a developing child! That can result in brain damage! So, while we are looking at the prospect of WLS for children, let me tell you about my conversation with my brother about his bout with WLS. Now, Forrest was over 400 pounds and had a severely enlarged heart. His cardiologist told him it was WLS or he would be dead within six months. And, after the first surgery, he told me that he thought he had made the worst mistake of his life. At the time he told me this, he would have already been dead without it. Every bite he ate, he threw up. Since then he has had a second surgery which doubled the 20" of gut that he had still functioning to 40" (out of 28'), and he is doing much better. He still throws up often enough that his pre-WLS perfect teeth are rotting and he is losing them. Teeth that had never had a single cavity! He throws up if he gets post-nasal drip. He throws up if he eats one bite of bacon. The list of food that he has to avoid is incredibly long and, because he has only a one cup stomach capacity and food only has a two hour transit in his body, he has to pretty much avoid fruit, vegetables, and grains because they don't give him a high enough nutrient load for the bulk. He eats mostly meat. But not fatty meat! Not fats. He takes multiple calcium and vitamin tablets a day -- one of each every two hours. Also, since he has ADD, he must take a ritalin capsule every two hours. Any medication he needs, he has to take every two hours. What if something absorbs faster than that and he gets too much? And the cost of 12 pills instead of one! He does say that it's worth it to be alive, to see his grandchild, to live. But, he also says that if it had not been necessary to save his life, in no way would it have been worth it. Not to look better. Not to feel better -- because he doesn't. He just feels miserable in different ways.

******* In other words, doctors will be paid less if they don't follow these guidelines, no matter what their professional opinion of worth or harm they might do patients..

Sandy leads you to an excellent article on ED Bites, a weight site I was previously unaware of and have subsequently linked in my Size Acceptance blog roll.

Signposts to Sanity

An occasional feature where your lovin' Granny points you at somebody else's really good stuff*


You may have noticed that I've recently added a new blogroll on Size Acceptance. If size is an issue for you or for someone you care about, you might want to explore it. In the meantime, there is a terrific article over at fat fu, Taking Care of Our Healthcare

This is an article from January, but it’s well-worth reflecting on. Apparently fat women are more likely to be undertreated with chemotherapy for breast cancer. For reasons that aren’t totally clear, doctors are more likely to give fat women (and poor women as well) doses of chemotherapy below what the guidelines say they should.

I want to pause on one sentence in particular:

Obesity is controversial as a risk factor for breast cancer; studies haven’t shown that obesity causes breast cancer, but obese women are at increased risk of dying from the disease.

This raises the ominous (if unsurprising) possibility that whatever “excess risk” fat holds, may at least in part be due not to its effect on our bodies, but to its effect on our doctor’s brain.*** * About half (49.5%) of doctors rated fat patients as “noncompliant” About a third rated us as “sloppy” and “lazy.” 44% rated us as “weak-willed.” And 44.5% thought that psychological problems were “very important” or “extremely important” causes of “obesity.”

Translation: Almost half of your doctors will think that your weight is an indicator of your character and mental health. *** * 95% of doctors feel it is “necessary to educate obese patients on health risks” and only 48% thought that “most obese patients were well-aware of the health risks of obesity.”

Translation: given the opportunity, your doctor is virtually guaranteed to lecture you on how unhealthy your weight is, and there’s a strong chance he thinks you’ve never heard of this before.

The article lists a number of other statistics from a recent study of doctors' attitudes towards fat patients. It warrants reading.

There is a new fat friendly blogger, an 18 year old high school senior, XXLA. Those of you with young people in your families with weight concerns, send them to her blog. She is a most sensible young woman.

On Feed Me, there is an article on How cliches hurt us which looks at

What do the obesity epidemic, anorexia nation, and healthy eating all have in common?***Each time you say the words "the obesity epidemic," you're validating the notion that the nation is in the grip of a contagious pandemic of overweight.***I'll start: I think the idea of an obesity epidemic is a sadly unimaginative construct that has little or nothing to do with reality. It's a cover for institutionalized prejudice against overweight people, a trigger for eating disorders, and a big waste of our collective time and energy.

Your turn.

* Note that I've chosen a chunky little signpost this time, because these articles all have to do with size.

Signposts to Sanity

An occasional feature where your lovin' Granny points you at other people's good stuff.




As I've been slowly recovering from four years of health problems, I've begun to notice that my apartment has become cluttered. Having barely enough energy to work and wash dishes for a number of years has resulted in things being taken out of where ever they live and left out and of new things coming into the apartment and never being put away. Books, mostly. I won't put a book on the shelf until I've added it to my catalog (gotta be able to find it, and if it's non-fiction that means what category I listed it under and now that I'm getting older I forget the exact title of new books and more often than not, the actual name of the author. Rather than search every non-fiction book in the place, which would involve climbing on the ladder and kneeling on the floor in several places, how much easier to sit at my computer and read a list that tells me where it is!). So, boxes of books cover the once spotless surface of my upstairs work table. Also, some things come in and I need to make some changes to accommodate them. Richard and Kathy gave me a George Forman grill for Christmas and in order to put it where it will be convenient to use, I need to move the microwave and all of the other things on my counters, and I haven't had the energy and then Mama and Aunt Flo sent me birthday money and I arranged to hire a young woman to come in and do all that sort of thing while I directed her and then she was served with a restraining order that doesn't allow her to come back to this building and so . . . So, what with all that and the urgent need to get some clothes that I'm not wearing any longer out of my closet and to the Goodwill while they are still fashionable enough to do someone else any good, I've been inundated with stuff. I've lived in this apartment for over 12 years now, and the stuff piles up. The herbal cures for my sinuses that didn't work. The extra parts to items I no longer own. The three styles of flosser that didn't work and have been replaced with the one that does. The pills that have long lost their potency. All that sort of thing. Normally I would re-read Thoreau and get to it. Now I have to find another young person who I can hire to be my hands and back.

All of that has made me very thinky about material stuff and how much a person needs to live a good life as opposed to how much I've just stockpiled in case I live to be 347. And wondering how much of the landfill I'll cover with the stuff that I can't in good conscience dump on the Goodwill. All that. All that values and materialism and character stuff.

Although the workweek in Juneau is only 37.5 hours, I'm also thinking that I would like to work less. I wouldn't be able to buy as much stuff, but part of my problem is too much stuff and not enough time to put it away. I will need to work for at least another ten years before I can retire, but do I want to be working 37.5 hours when I'm 75? But, at these wages, if I choose to work less, could I ever afford to retire?

All of this contemplating made me open to Why Working Less Is Better For The Globe by Dara Colwell on Alternet.org.

Americans work more hours than anyone else in the industrialized world. According to the United Nations' International Labor Organization, we work 250 hours, or five weeks, more than the Brits, and a whopping 500 hours, or 12 and a half weeks, more than the Germans. So how does ecological damage figure in to the 40-plus workweek?

Do the math: Longer hours plus labor-saving technology equals ever-increasing productivity. Without high annual growth to match productivity, there's unemployment. Maintaining growth means using more energy and resources, both in manpower and raw materials, which results in increased waste and pollution.***When people work longer hours, they rely increasingly on convenience items such as fast food, disposable diapers, or bottled water. Built-in obsolescence has become standard business practice -- just throw it away and make more -- leaving mountainous landfills in its wake.

The interesting thing about Mistakes Were Made . . . But Not By George Bush by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson on CommonDreams.org, to me is that whether you agree that Bush practices self-justification or not, you can see how the mechanism works and understand its relevance.

When the fundamental belief that we are smart, moral, and kind crashes into the accusation that we did something stupid, immoral, or hurtful, we have major cognitive dissonance to resolve. Did I just commit an unethical act? I’m a good person; therefore my action was trivial, didn’t hurt anyone, and besides everyone does it. Did I make a decision that proved disastrously wrong? I’m a smart person; therefore that decision has to be right, even if it will take a few decades to prove it. In this way, the brain sees to it that the very need to maintain the belief that we are kind, smart, and moral can keep us stuck in a course of action that is cruel, stupid, or immoral.

The greatest problems that I have ever created for myself were instances of self-justification. The inability to face the fact that I do have a dark side and not everything I do is good just because it is me who is doing it. Thoreau yet again.

And finally, I have always loved the conversation between Thoreau and Emerson, where Emerson, upon finding Thoreau in jail for refusing to pay taxes to support war, asks, "Henry, what are you doing in there?" and Thoreau responds by asking what Emerson is doing "out there." So, finding What Happened To 'Fill The Jails'? by Sean Gonsalves was like a Thoreau tri-fecta.

When even Lee Iacocca is writing: “Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We’ve got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we’ve got corporate gangsters stealing us blind….but instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, ‘Stay the course.’ Stay the course? You’ve got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic” - you know it’s “fill-the-jails” time, to borrow from Gandhi’s tactical playbook.***King was talking about gumming up the gears of the system - fill the jails - to the point of gridlock. That - or the very real threat of that - is what brought progressive victories and is the reason why King was such a powerful and dangerous man in the eyes of his opponents.***The way I see it: those who fear real change have nothing to fear and far too many of those who desire real change are expecting a chicken to produce a duck egg.

How can it be that one quiet philosopher can hold answers to everything from clutter to social justice via the examined life? I don't know, but I do know that having declared him a role model early in my life has made my life both easier and harder. Easier because he so often points out the correct path. Harder because that is never the easier path.

Signposts to Sanity

Where your lovin' Granny points you at some other folks' really good stuff.

I'm getting a regional training together for the Teens In Action groups in Juneau, Craig, and Sitka this weekend. So, I'm going to direct you to other people and concentrate all my time on last minute arrangements. And trying to figure out why my e-mails to Sitka didn't arrive and didn't get kicked back so that I would know they hadn't arrived.

Over at Junkfood Science, on May 8, Sandy Szwarc discussed how risk factors frighten us in her post The Greatest Myth of Health Risk Factors

Why do studies continue to find that health risk factors don’t actually predict who will succumb to disease or die early? ***The answer comes down to what we’ve been misled to believe about risk factors. These misconceptions are the key to successfully scaring us about our health, food and life; the key to compelling us to do things proactively “for our health” that don’t really make all that much difference; and the key to identifying and blaming “bad” people, foods and lifestyles.***Dr. Malcomb Kendricks, Medical Director of Adelphi Lifelong Learning, Cheshire, UK, estimates that about 1,000 risk factors have now been identified for heart disease. And there are countless numbers for cancer. Just about everything, it seems, can cause cancer. Wearing a bra is a risk factor for breast cancer, wearing boxers a risk factor for prostate cancer, and eating (anything!) is a risk factor for most everything. Consuming a lot or too little garlic, red wine, chocolate, fat, red meat, whole grains, sugar, or produce; and having migraines, bad teeth, pot bellies, dark skin and big noses — have all been made a risk factor for something. And they’re sure to change tomorrow. It’s little wonder that we’re all nervous wrecks.***All that the term “risk factor” means is that a researcher has found a correlation between two variables. We get risk factors from epidemiology. And it’s easy to take a group of people and pull out endless correlations between those with and without some disease and produce another health “risk factor.” And something else to scare us with.***Remember: a risk factor is just a correlation.***The public has been convinced, however, to give risk factors such importance that it’s affected our very concept of what it means to be healthy. Rather than realize that most of us are healthy most of the time and only occasionally get sick and then get better again; it’s become widely believed that healthy young people need regular medical attention and constant diligence to stay healthy because we’re all at risk.

Then go to the Alternet article on Rosie O'Donnell by Jeanine Plant to look at just what makes this very opinionated star so very popular. Perhaps being true to yourself is appreciated by the public.

That she attracted the ire of Tom Delay, managed to stir up controversy with the Donald Trumps of the world, and often gets the conservative media machine in a tizzy bespeaks her power. That such a progressive force is in such high demand and so threatening to conservative men is a happy reminder that the sea change we saw last November is real and not going away, even though she is.

And then take a trip to CommonDreams.org and read Lee Iaccoca's Where Have All The Leaders Gone?.

Am I the only guy in this country who’s fed up with what’s happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We’ve got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we’ve got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can’t even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, “Stay the course.”

Stay the course? You’ve got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic.***I’ll go a step further. You can’t call yourself a patriot if you’re not outraged.***Why are we in this mess? How did we end up with this crowd in Washington? Well, we voted for them—or at least some of us did. But I’ll tell you what we didn’t do. We didn’t agree to suspend the Constitution. We didn’t agree to stop asking questions or demanding answers. Some of us are sick and tired of people who call free speech treason. Where I come from that’s a dictatorship, not a democracy.*** A leader must have COURAGE. I’m talking about balls. (That even goes for female leaders.) Swagger isn’t courage. Tough talk isn’t courage. George Bush comes from a blue-blooded Connecticut family, but he likes to talk like a cowboy. You know, My gun is bigger than your gun. Courage in the twenty-first century doesn’t mean posturing and bravado. Courage is a commitment to sit down at the negotiating table and talk.***Thanks to our first MBA President, we’ve got the largest deficit in history, Social Security is on life support, and we’ve run up a half-a-trillion-dollar price tag (so far) in Iraq. And that’s just for starters.***We were all frozen in front of our TVs, scared out of our wits, waiting for our leaders to tell us that we were going to be okay, and there was nobody home. It took Bush a couple of days to get his bearings and devise the right photo op at Ground Zero.

That was George Bush’s moment of truth, and he was paralyzed. And what did he do when he’d regained his composure? He led us down the road to Iraq***So here’s where we stand. We’re immersed in a bloody war with no plan for winning and no plan for leaving. We’re running the biggest deficit in the history of the country. We’re losing the manufacturing edge to Asia, while our once-great companies are getting slaughtered by health care costs. Gas prices are skyrocketing, and nobody in power has a coherent energy policy. Our schools are in trouble. Our borders are like sieves. The middle class is being squeezed every which way. These are times that cry out for leadership.

Signposts to Sanity

An occasional feature where your lovin' Granny points you at somebody else's really good stuff


Over at Alternet.org, Andrew Lam has written a provocative piece not so much on the bigoted response to crimes by minorities as on the frightening effect it has on the entire ethnic group.

In Aftermath of Va. Shooting, Ethnic Groups Prayed, "Let It Be Some Other Asian"

Lam quotes an African American friend:

An Anglo shooter may be an individual, a loner, but God forbid if a person of color goes on a shooting rampage. His whole tribe would be implicated. "I still recall my aunts when President Kennedy was assassinated. They were praying that it wasn't a Negro.***To be a minority in America, even in the 21st century, is to be always on trial. An evil act by one indicts the entire community. Whoever doubts this need only look at the spike in hate crimes against Muslims and South Asian communities after 9/11.

It brought back to me how, after 9/11, my Maya's then 16 year old cousin was cornered in a mall by a man who tried to sic his dog on her! Only because the dog had more sense than the man was she unhurt. And Ted saying that no one tried to run him off the road after he taped a picture of the American flag in the window of his car. Or how, after Desert Storm, my Palestinian brother-in-law who had just earned his degree in engineering could only get work as a janitor.

After yesterday's post on weight issues, again at Alternet.org is this piece on weight and perfectionism, The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body by Courtney E. Martin, an excerpt from her book, Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters.

There is a girl, right now, staring in a mirror in Des Moines, scrutinizing her widening hips. There is a girl, right now, spinning like a hamster on speed in a gym on the fifth floor of a building in Boston, promising herself dinner if she goes two more miles. There is a girl, right now, trying to wedge herself into a dress two sizes too small in a Savannah shopping mall, chastising herself for being so lazy and fat. There is a girl, right now, in a London bathroom, trying not to get any vomit on her aunt's toilet seat. There is a girl, right now, in Berlin, cutting a cube of cheese and an apple into barely visible pieces to eat for her dinner.***Even smart girls must be beautiful, even athletes must be feminine. Corporate CEOs, public intellectuals, and even accountants must be thin.

At Common Dreams is an article Are They Serious? by Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post, who discusses

Today's topic is credibility - specifically, recent claims by certain high-ranking present, former and perhaps soon-to-be-former Bush administration officials. The aim is to answer a simple question: Should we believe these three Bush loyalists if they tell us that rain falls down instead of up, or should we look out the window to make sure?***To his knowledge? What on earth does that mean? Is Gonzales in the habit of making decisions without his own knowledge? Does he have multiple-personality issues?

Rove, Wolfowitz and Gonzales are making the last-ditch argument of a cheating husband caught in flagrante: Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?

Signposts to Sanity

An occasional feature where your lovin' Granny points you at somebody else's really good stuff



Today it would be a good idea to visit Radical Christian Right Preaches Liberal Evil for a look at the goals and causes of the End of Days preachers.

Members of the radical Christian End Times movement are being taught to believe that America is ruled by evil, clandestine organizations disguised as liberal groups. As a result, the fearful are hoping for the end.***The plagues of alcoholism, divorce, drug abuse, poverty and domestic violence make the internal life here as depressing as the external one. And those gathering today in this church wait for the final, welcome relief of the purgative of violence, the vast, bloody cleansing that will lift them up into the heavens and leave the world they despise -- the one that was devastated by corporatism -- to be racked by plagues and flood and fire until it and all those whom they blame for the debacle of their lives are consumed and destroyed by God. It is a theology of despair. And for many, it can't happen soon enough.

And for a look into the misogyny of some members of the press, go to Strong Women Are Scaring the Pants Off the Right

Why Carlson looks at the junior senator from New York and immediately fears for the safety of his testicles might be something he and his therapist should explore, but he's hardly alone***John Kerry won women's votes by 3 points (51 to 48), while George Bush won men's votes by 11 points (55 to 44). But it is the fact that the latter margin is so much larger than the former that is worth noting. It is men, and white men in particular, who are so easily persuaded by campaigns like the one Bush ran, which can be boiled down to, "I'm a manly man, and my opponent is a sissy." Bush beat Kerry among white men by an astounding 25 points.***One can't avoid noticing that as a group, conservative media figures are not exactly secure in their masculinity. Forever promoting war when they avoided military service themselves and doubling over to protect their tender parts every time a strong woman appears on their television screens, it's no wonder they are so impressed by politicians who may not be real men but know how to present a convincing facsimile of manliness.

Once again, go visit Sandy Szwarc at Junkfood Science for an excellent article on the purported link between the "fat hormone" and colon cancer.

Wow, so there must be a lot of research confirming that obesity increases the risk for colon cancer.

Not so fast....it was the same study reported again! *** It would have taken a mere minute to confirm the National Cancer Institute’s statistics on cancer rates. With incidences of obesity rising, if obesity caused the development of colorectal cancer, then we should see correspondingly rising rates of colorectal cancer.***the incidences of colon and rectal cancers (even despite increased surveillance) have been dropping among both men and women. That alone suggests the opposite of what these recent stories have been trying to convince us of!

A simple search of the medical literature reveals that cancer registries in the United States have continued to find that “obesity is associated with lower incidence rates of colorectal cancer,” as researchers at the Kansas Cancer Registry reported in the journal

For a look at the power of the lie, go to Sweet Little Lies by Paul Krugman of the New York Times, over at Truthout.org

Four years into a war fought to eliminate a nonexistent threat, we all have renewed appreciation for the power of the Big Lie: people tend to believe false official claims about big issues, because they can't picture their leaders being dishonest about such things.

But there's another political lesson I don't think has sunk in: the power of the Little Lie - the small accusation invented out of thin air, followed by another, and another, and another. Little Lies aren't meant to have staying power. Instead, they create a sort of background hum, a sense that the person facing all these accusations must have done something wrong.*** The Clinton years were a parade of fake scandals: Whitewater, Troopergate, Travelgate, Filegate, Christmas-card-gate. At the end, there were false claims that Clinton staff members trashed the White House on their way out.*** There's a lot of talk now about a case in Wisconsin, where the Bush-appointed U.S. attorney prosecuted the state's purchasing supervisor over charges that a court recently dismissed after just 26 minutes of oral testimony, with one judge calling the evidence "beyond thin." But by then the accusations had done their job: the unjustly accused official had served almost four months in prison, and the case figured prominently in attack ads alleging corruption in the Democratic governor's administration.

This is the context in which you need to see the wild swings Republicans have been taking at Nancy Pelosi.

First, there were claims that the speaker of the House had demanded a lavish plane for her trips back to California. One Republican leader denounced her "arrogance of extravagance" - then, when it became clear that the whole story was bogus, admitted that he had never had any evidence.

Now there's Ms. Pelosi's fact-finding trip to Syria, which Dick Cheney denounced as "bad behavior" - unlike the visit to Syria by three Republican congressmen a few days earlier, or Newt Gingrich's trip to China when he was speaker.

Signposts to Sanity

An occasional feature where your lovin' Granny points you at somebody else's really good stuff

Go to Down With Tyranny and read Are Republicans Trying to Poison Your Little Fido ...

It is difficult enough for the U.S. Government to keep track of dangers in the American-produced food chain. You all remember the spinach problem last year. I cannot see how an American company can with any guarantee of safety keep track of dangers in the stuff they import from China.

Over at Shakespeare's Sister, you might want to check out Donohue, Head of the Hate League

Why on earth did Anderson Cooper let him get away with that horseshit? The only appropriate response after a statement like "you might lose more than your head" is "I'm sorry, Mr. Donohue. We don't tolerate our guests speaking to other guests in that manner. Cut his microphone. Thank you and goodnight, sir." Instead, Cooper blandly goes on with the inane questioning—"Cosimo, did you want people to eat this?" leaving Cavallaro to state the obvious: "No. Did you hear what this gentleman is saying, that I would lose my head?"

And, there is an opportunity at the end of the article to express your personal opinion of this behavior to Anderson Cooper.

Then, at Fallen Monk, there is The Hits Keep Coming,

A senior Bush political appointee at the Interior Department has repeatedly altered scientific field reports to minimize protections for imperiled species and disclosed confidential information to private groups seeking to affect policy decisions, the department’s inspector general concluded.

David Sirota, at Sirota's Blog has written Rants About Three Things That Disgust Me,

I’m tired of Republicans believing that, after destroying the country, all they have to say is “sorry” or “I didn’t know Bush was such a right winger” and all should be forgiven.***That he was for the war when the war didn’t affect his circle of friends and family suggests a sickening self-centeredness coursing through the American ruling class. Only when elites are personally affected by their own draconian policies do we hear regret – but not a peep when those draconian policies hammer the faceless, unfamous masses.***The knee-jerk cheering by progressives when right-wing lunatics, famous Republican Party operatives and assorted out-of-touch Washington pundits once in a while say something accurate is pathetic and worse, counterproductive.

Signposts to Sanity

An occasional feature where your lovin' Granny points you at somebody else's really good stuff

Shark-fu, at Angry Black Bitch has a wonderful post on The Duties of Citizenship. It starts with an update on her injured ankle, and is just an excellent run down on what we the people need to do in terms of informed voting and citizen oversight. I like to write my representatives every time they do something I agree with, as well as when I want them to vote a particular way and when I am disappointed in what they have done.

Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast discusses When Cancer Patients Refuse to Just Go Away, a compassionate, well thought out look at the ugly remarks that Katie Couric and Rush Limbaugh have made about John and Elizabeth Edwards. It is a very good read.

Digby, at Hullabaloo has an article on Faith Based Straight Jacket which looks at how intelligent conservatives are being held to the anti-science party line. Excellent work.

All of these people are obviously professional GOP whores and have a huge personal interest in trying to thread the wingnut. Some are willing to buck the base straightforwardly, notably Krauthammer, who went to medical school, but as I wrote when I first posted on this, the discomfort and dissonance is palpable among most of these people:

What do you suppose it's like to be intellectually held hostage by people who you know for a fact are dead wrong on something? It must be excruciating.

And, are you surprised that Sandy Szwarc has done it again? In Science is So Inconvenient she discusses the MSG scare.

Evil motives have been implied by the fact the MSG makes food taste better and, therefore, people might eat more. How sad that the idea of enjoying food has become something sinister among some people today.

Signposts to Sanity

An occasional feature where your lovin' Granny points you at somebody else's really good stuff


You might like to take a look at Why Having More No Longer Makes Us Happy by Bill McKibbon at Alternet.org . He discusses how in today's world, where we already have more than enough to survive with style, increased prosperity no longer equals increased happiness. Indeed, it may lead to increased stress, and decreased happiness, partly because of the loss of community and connectedness.

I was googling Anchorage, fire hydrant, cold to get further information on the fire hydrants popping out of the ground, and google took me to an article by Big Mitch Schapira at his blog, What We Know So Far, on voter suppression in Anchorage that involved using a helicopter to drop a chain on the power lines and opening the fire hydrants on a winter day and creating ice on the roads. It was a wonderful post, and by a blogger I hadn't encountered before. As I explored his blog, I ended up adding it to my political blog roll. Here is an article on the current US Attorney firings.

Suppose you had a small business, and you hired a secretary. After a bit, you decided that you didn’t want him or her to work for you anymore. You could fire the employee with impunity: you don’t need a reason. Likewise, if you discovered that your employees were stealing from you, you could fire them because, obviously, you have a good reason. The point is you can fire an employee for a good reason or for no reason.

But now suppose you discovered that your secretary was married to a member of a minority group. If you decided to fire the employee for that reason you would be guilty of discrimination, and your conduct would be actionable. You can fire for a good reason, or for no reason, but not for a bad reason.

I really like this guy. And, he's here in Alaska!

Over at Huffington Post.com is an article on The White House's "Voter Fraud" Fraud by Francis Wilkinson.

when the desperadoes behind the White House sandbags shout "voter fraud" in an attempt to justify their crude politicization of every nook and cranny of our government, I hopeBob Poe's experience with Bush justice will not be totally forgotten. When a cry of "fire" goes out from this White House, you can be all but certain you've just heard the voice of arson.

In A Nutshell follows.

Signposts to Sanity

An occasional feature where your lovin' Granny points you at somebody else's really good stuff

Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast has written the fantasy of the stoic warrior, a post about returning Iraq War soldiers and PTSD that you really should read.

Echidne of the Snakes sent me to this story of mid-feminism reality that is important for all working mothers The Opt Out Myth in Columbia Journalism Review.

And then, harking way back to my post on Sexualizing Children, you might want to read Echidne's own Spaggheti Straps and Lasagna which deals not only with the sexualization of young girls, but with society's tendency to hold mothers responsible for negative social trends.

Over at Alternet.org there is a piece For the Christian Right, Gay-Hating Is Just the Start, By Chris Hedges dealing with the frightening path that the religious right is trying to lead us down.

In A Nutshell follows.

Signposts to Sanity

An occasional feature where your lovin' Granny points you at somebody else's really good stuff



For those of us who may feel that we are not exercising enough, and that it is impossible to exercise too much, please go over to see Sandy Szwarc at Junkfood Science and read about the downside of high impact exercise. The fact that people in their 40s are having joint replacement surgery because they thought they were doing something that was good for them, and perhaps forced themselves to do so under the idea that "no pain, no gain" is sobering.

And while you are at it, check out her article on the neurological harm that is too common with weight loss surgery.

And just to round things out, Cooking Up Fears not only deals with the hype about the danger of Teflon cookware, it also has a lovely rundown on how fears are created and exploited -- a thing we can all use understanding of.

And in a variation of the theme of harm masqurading as good, do go over to CommonDreams.com and read The Sport of King George by David Michael Green for an in-depth look at supporting the troops.

And here we have an editorial cartoon from the Juneau Empire, March 16, 2007. Gotta love it.

Loving Science

Among the things I love, and the list is long so it may be a while before you know all of them, is science. Told you I thought about becoming an astronomer. Majored in anthropology, intending to be an archeologist, my first swipe at college. After I dropped out and then returned as the single mother of two very young children, switched to psychology. Now, I know that the social sciences are not as developed as the hard sciences, but they are science. And, when I took psychology you had to have a semester of human anatomy. Among my anthro classes was one on comparative anatomy where we studied the teeth of various primates.

I got to thinking about this when I was over at A Natural Scientist and found this wonderful article Curiosity, Wires, Destruction

My other theory is that everyone would love science if they were only shown it the right way. I've sat through a lot of lectures where the teacher clearly didn't know the answer to "Why should my students care?" And you know what? Those lectures were boring. But there should always be a convincing answer. Sometimes the answer is, so you can understand something else. Sometimes it's, because it's cool. Occasionally, it's directly relevant to everyday life:
***We had a microscope growing up. Pond scum, dog hairs, onion skins, dirt, leaves: you name it, we looked at it.
***We took apart a washers, computers, blenders, and cars. "Why?" was always answered by "What do you think?"

All three of us are scientists.

I have taught people science all of my life, just about. I was a camp counselor the summer after my freshman year of college, and we studied the outdoors. The kids were out in it and they loved it. When I taught Montessori, we had a wonderful science section, where very sophisticated concepts were presented at the level a three or four year old could understand. It was a very popular section of the classroom.

I gave my own children a telescope, a microscope, a stethoscope, prisms, magnets, and gyroscopes and they played with them and learned.

Because I love science, I am always reading about it and adding new knowledge to my life. When I was teaching parenting classes, I added research about various things to help my students see the what and why of their children. I used research about wild ravens learning faster than tame ones to throw light on how their children needed to play outdoors and run and climb to learn easily. I brought in history to help them see that mistakes are to learn from rather than to be punished.

And the thing is, the thing that agrees with A Natural Scientist -- many of the parents in my class had dropped out of school. Some were illiterate. And yet, like all of the children that I taught, they loved the science that I taught them. Because I love it. Because I knew how it related to what they needed. And, because I taught it with respect for both my subject and my class. There is something that is amazing when you first see someone who the schools have always treated as stupid grasping science. Understanding that what she is learning is science. Knowing that she can understand it and that you know she can understand it.

Children are naturally curious about the world. They have to be slapped down, told that they are wrong for wanting to know the answers, to give up that curiosity. Children want to learn the way colts want to run and kittens want to pounce. What would you have to do to a colt to make it hate running? What would you have to do to a kitten to make it fear pouncing? We have to stop doing that to our children, whether it is happening at home or in school. Because it is their birthright to love learning, to love science, to be excited about new things. And too many of them are being robbed. Every adult you encounter who doesn't like science and learning has been robbed. It is unconscionable.

Junkfood Science

You may notice a new blog on my blogroll -- Junkfood Science. I only discovered on Tuesday that one of my favorite sane people has her own blog. I have read Sandy Szwarc, RN, BSN, CCP, for a couple of years now at Techcentral Station. (I was unable to give you a direct link to her series. If you are interested, use the link above, then under authors, look her up and it will take you to her archives.) She wrote a crackerjack series there on the moral panic (although, I'm not certain that she calls it that) about obesity and food that we are experiencing these days. Her writing is firmly rooted in science and she recognizes the misuse of research and pseudoscience in creating a false epidemic of obesity in order to sell products and services which, at best are useless, at worst are harmful and sometimes deadly. Hers is a voice of reason in the wilderness, and I can not recommend her too highly.

This quote from a recent post, Have your steak and enjoy it too! gives you an idea of the flavor of her writing and the solid, good sense of her information:

When it comes to food and health news, the saturation of media coverage is usually inversely proportional to the soundness of the research. Sensational claims sell a lot of newspapers, lure viewers and listeners, and create good buzz. The trouble is, most of us don't realize we're getting Hitchcock-like fiction when we turn on the news. With last week's scare du juor "red meat increases risk for breast cancer" no mainstream news reporter took a critical look at the study they were reporting, preferring to simply pass along the press release. No one except Steve Milloy, of course, who wrote an excellent review here.
Our first clue that there was something more afoot in this media blitz than brilliant science, is that this one study, out of the thousands of new studies released every single day, was reported in every media outlet, on the exact same day, all saying the exact same thing. This is evidence of brilliant marketing, but not much more. Like everything in media today, it deserves viewing with the same skepticism as you would any other commercial. The study wasn't nearly as well done as its marketing...

What more could I possibly say? Visit her. Visit her series on Techcentral Station.

My Pal Kate

I've told you a little bit about my pal, Kate. You first met her, briefly, within the first three days of my getting this blog up, in Why Not Do It In Public?. Not long after that, I mentioned the peculiar rites of her Girl Scout Troop in Rabbit-Rabbit-Rabbit which led to a discussion of the fact that many, many, many people do the Turtle Greeting.

We met when we were in high school, through the caring offices of a librarian, which I told you about in Friendship. Kate and I have been friends since 1957, a long time in anyone's book. For years, because we had both moved at the same time and then had both changed last names, we lost track of each other. Julie remembered my saying how much I missed Kate, and found her in 2003 on Classmates.com. Kate and I were delighted to be reunited and have been the same great guns we were way back then, ever since. We even still have sleepovers, just like in high school, although now they last a week and we don't have to worry about waking anyone up is we get a fit of the giggles in the middle of the night.

Kate is the one who got me interested in archeology. She's the one who introduced me to Georgette Heyer books. She's the one who took one look at Julie and recognized that her father wasn't who I thought her father was. She's the one who drove me for hours in a truck without air conditioning during a heat wave to visit another friend. She's the one who, when my original flight was canceled and I needed to stay with her one more day, said "of course" when what of course meant was that she would not be able to have her grandson Ross come to visit the next day and the next day was the last visit they were going to get before school started, which meant it was the last one until Winter Vacation. (Luckily a friend of hers had a solution and she didn't get so horribly dinged for her good deed.) She's the one who visited me in the hospital when I had my tonsils out, bringing me a stuffed rabbit she had made from her father's dress socks and made me laugh so hard they wouldn't let her come back. She's the one who came to visit me in the hospital when I had my hyster out and brought fresh fruit and books and good cheer. She's the one who dressed my wound every day for a week when she is really uncomfortable doing that even once at all. She is the one who drove me all over Sacramento to visit places I missed and eat food I can't get in Alaska. She's the one who made lemonade for me from the Meyer lemons in her back yard.

And she's the one who has a new blog, called Hugging Aspens. Visit it.