Happy Halloween!!!

One of my favorite halloween pics... :-)

Obama: travel ban on HIV-positive individuals will end just after the new year begins

While signing a re-authorization of the Ryan White CARE law, President Obama just announced that on Monday his administration will publish finalized new rules which will eliminate the nearly two decades old law that prevented HIV-positive individuals from entering the U.S. The new rule will take effect just after the beginning of the new year.

But on the other hand...

I completely agree with Pakistani (and Afghani) outrage over U.S. drone attacks that kill civilians. Secretary of State Clinton sat down with some Pakistanis to hear their concerns but didn't seem to acknowledge their validity.

Hillary lays it out: You don't know where Al Qaeda is? Really?

In a newconference in Pakistan today, Secretary of State Clinton was blunt that the U.S.-Pakistani relationship is a "two-way street" and expressed doubt that Pakistan's military didn't know where Al Qaeda was hiding and couldn't go after them if they wanted to.

You go, girl.

More here.

The day has come: leaving Las Vegas

Two months and a day ago, I wrote a post about my plans to leave Las Vegas. The day has come.

I almost didn't move here in the first place; sitting in a San Francisco coffee shop and researching Las Vegas, I was ready to tell Victor that I didn't think it was a place where I wanted to live. And then I heard a song playing: the theme from the French movie Contempt, which I first heard when it was re-used on the Casino soundtrack. It was a song that I liked so much that I'd made it the first track on my "bedtime ZZZs" playlist.

(Music link)

"A song from the Casino sountrack," I thought, "It must be a sign."

I've since realized that it really was a sign. Unfortunately, a sign that I badly misinterpreted. After all, Casino opens with the main character being blown up, and his wife was practically a prisoner in their home. Hearing the song that day wasn't a sign that I should move to Vegas... it was a warning not to come.

So my reasons for coming to Vegas were suspect, at best, and the man I came for turned out to be a shady character, to put it mildly. LESSON LEARNED.

Still, I grew to love the desert, and I came to appreciate much about Sin City. There are so many great people here, and I'll miss them. But I'll also welcome them to Portland, and I'll see them again here (and everywhere else we crazy queens fly off to).

But it took coming to Vegas for me to make a decision about what to do with myself for the second half of my life. I've been nursing this feeling of being "in between" the past few years... at least now I know where I'm going.

I THINK I MUST HAVE BEEN a nomad in another life (probably a desert nomad considering how much I love the heat). Driving to Portland will mark my 21st move to a new home. I was just talking to my dad, and we agreed that I must like it since I keep doing it.

I'm looking for something, and maybe like the main character in The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon, I'm looking for exactly the opposite of what I think I'm looking for.

But today I'm getting on the road again. I'm leaving Las Vegas, without any regrets for coming, and having learned here again both the importance of friendship and of believing that I can follow my own path. And I'm going somewhere that I love, and even more than the first time, it feels like going home.

To everyone I love in Vegas, you will be missed, but I'll see you the weekend of November 7th to the 8th!

And to everyone in Portland, can't wait to see you... and I'm looking forward to the spring, lol.

As for you, Alejo, I'm looking forward to it all. :-)

Here we go. Ready. Begin.

My cupboard is bare

I'm realizing tonight that packing the kitchen has a sense of finality about it. Something deep inside realizes that this is no longer the place where it will be fed.

Quote for the day

If you want to build a ship, don't herd people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Perspective on H1N1

Having gotten the public convinced that the H1N1 (swine) flu is something to be concerned about, public health officials are now having to work a little harder to ensure that the vaccine is getting to those who are most likely to be hit hard by the disease:

On the one hand, each vaccinated person is one less carrier of the flu, regardless of individual risk. On the other, government officials have set unambiguous priorities based on who is most vulnerable: pregnant women, people who live with or take care of infants under 6 months old, health care workers, anyone 6 months to 24 years of age and people who are older than that but have underlying health problems that make them susceptible to influenza-related complications.

While the seasonal flu we're used to tends to hit those with weakened immune systems hardest, like the elderly, H1N1 causes more trouble for the young. If you're not in a high priority group, this doesn't mean that you shouldn't get vaccinated. Just give some thought to your relative risk...

Jennifer goes green

My friend Jennifer recently won first place in a video contest sponsored by Nevada Federal Credit Union. Here is her winning entry, "Furry Friends Go Green." Love it! And she loves the giant $1000 check they gave her! :-)

(Video link)

Afghan strategy is coming together

The New York Times reports that our new strategy for Afghanistan is taking shape:

At the moment, the administration is looking at protecting Kabul, Kandahar, Mazar-i-Sharif, Kunduz, Herat, Jalalabad and a few other village clusters, officials said. The first of any new troops sent to Afghanistan would be assigned to secure Kandahar, the spiritual capital of the Taliban, which is seen as a center of gravity in pushing back insurgent advances.

But military planners also are pressing for enough troops to safeguard major agricultural areas, like the hotly contested Helmand River valley, as well as regional highways essential to the economy — tasks that would require significantly more reinforcements beyond the 21,000 deployed by Mr. Obama earlier this year....

“We are not talking about surrendering the rest of the country to the Taliban,” a senior administration official said.

Military officers said that they would maintain pressure on insurgents in remote regions by using surveillance drones and reports from people in the field to find pockets of Taliban fighters and guide attacks, in particular by Special Operations Forces. But a range of officials made the case that many insurgents fighting Americans in distant locations are motivated not by jihadist ideology but by local grievances and therefore are not much threat either to the United States or the Kabul government.

At the heart of this strategy is the conclusion that the United States cannot completely eradicate the insurgency in a nation where the Taliban is an indigenous force — nor does it need to in order to protect American national security. Instead, the focus would be on preventing Al Qaeda from returning in force while containing and weakening the Taliban long enough to build Afghan security forces that would eventually take over the mission.

Sign Harry Reid's petition in support of a public healthcare insurance option

I just received the email below from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. I also signed his petition... you can, too, right here.

After Reid's email is more information on his strategy for passing this legislation. There's also a list of senators who have expressed reservations or opposition to a public option but who can still be persuaded.

Dear Michael,

When I emailed last night, I told you we were working on ideas for mobilizing support for the bill I sent to the Congressional Budget Office yesterday. Well, we did just that and decided that the best way to build support in the Senate is for me to have as many signatures from as many Americans as possible that support health insurance reform with a public option.

This way, when I ask my colleagues to support a bill with a public option, I can tell them that it's not just me asking, it's me AND thousands of Nevadans - AND a majority of our fellow Senators - AND thousands of voters from their home state. To do this, I need you to add your voice to mine right away.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN MY PETITION FOR REFORM WITH A PUBLIC OPTION

If there's one thing I've learned from being the Senate Majority Leader, it's that we need strong grassroots momentum to win the support required to pass big legislation. Change isn't easy. And big change is even more difficult. But we have the chance to deliver real health insurance reform this year, we just have to work together to convince every Senator we can that a vote for this bill is a vote on the right side of history.

Please, sign our petition today and tell your friends and family to add their names as well. Thanks so much for your support.

Together, we'll get this done.

Harry (signed)

Some Democrat senators are wary of supporting a public option, and GOP Senator Olympia Snowe has said she won't support a bill that contains one. Independent Senator Joe Lieberman is also against the public option. Reid's strategy is to first get the bill onto the Senate floor for debate; he needs sixty votes for that. Some senators have stated they will vote yes to allow debate to begin but may not vote yes on actual passage. More here.

The particular senators who need to hear from their constituents who support a public option are:

• Joe Lieberman (I-Connecticut)
• Olympia Snowe (R-Maine)
• Evan Bayh (D-Indiana)
• Mary Landrieu (D-Louisiana)
• Blanche Lincoln (D-Arkansas)
• Mark Pryor (D-Arkansas)
• Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska)

It wouldn't hurt, of course, to contact your senators even if they're not on the above list!

News from the stairclimber...

Things that caught my eye while I was doing cardio:

• Lithium batteries (think laptops, cell phones, etc.) are causing more and more fires on airplanes. Given the danger, I can imagine them being the next thing that some terrorist exploits as an improvised explosive device. (Oddly enough, the government's "Safe Travel" website still highlights a change in the air travel rules regarding lithium batteries that went into effect almost two years ago!)
• I knew that with ten gazillion channels on cable that individual shows weren't receiving nearly as many viewers as they used to... but these numbers for the cable news programs blew my mind:

  [Fox News'] 7p.m. show, anchored by Shepard Smith, regarded as a nonideological program, dwarfs every CNN show in prime time.

  In October, Mr. Smith averaged 465,000 viewers among the 25- to 54-year-old audience that news sells to advertisers. Lou Dobbs on CNN was fourth in the hour, with 162,000, edged by Ms. [Jane] Velez-Mitchell on HLN with 166,000. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews and “Hardball” was second with 179,000 viewers.

  At 10 p.m., Mr. [Anderson] Cooper had 211,000 viewers, to 223,000 for Mr. [Keith] Olbermann’s repeat. Ms. [Greta] Van Susteren had 538,000 viewers, and Ms. Grace averaged 222,000.

  For the month, CNN averaged 202,000 viewers, ages 25 to 54. That was far behind the dominant leader, Fox, which averaged 689,000. But it also trailed MSNBC which had 250,000 viewers in that group and HLN, which had 221,000 viewers.

  A few hundreds of thousands of viewers in a country of roughly 300 million!!!
• This New York Times article on Pakistan makes me feel "realpolitiky" all over. Sometimes it's hard to hold onto the notion that there's any common ground left in the world... (and sometimes it sadly feels that way at home, too).
• Finally, David Brooks worries about the Obama administration overreaching in an attempt to engineer solutions to the nation's problems, with capping executive pay as one example:

  Furthermore, when extending federal authority, the Obama folks never seem to ask how Republicans will use this power when they regain the White House. The Democrats trust themselves to set private-sector salaries and use extralegal means to go after malefactors, but would they trust a future Dick Cheney?

  I hope they know what they’re doing. Because when a future Cheney comes into office, I’m pretty sure he’ll be coming after columnists’ salaries first.

  At least he got in a Dick Cheney dig.

Built for speed...

Or, at least, for running. A variety of evidence--from how we cool our bodies to the length of our toes--suggests that humans evolved for long distance running.

So why so many injuries? More and more people think it may be due to our thickly padded running shoes... another example of unintended consequences. I know when I tried running barefoot a summer ago that I felt a lot less fatigued, though I needed to do some stretching to compensate for being used to running with a thick-heeled shoe.

Challenging the conventional wisdom: some tumors go away

More research on cancer is providing evidence that all cancerous cells are destined to become aggressive tumors, and in some cases, may even resolve on their own. From the New York Times:

Cancer cells and precancerous cells are so common that nearly everyone by middle age or old age is riddled with them, said Thea Tlsty, a professor of pathology at the University of California, San Francisco. That was discovered in autopsy studies of people who died of other causes, with no idea that they had cancer cells or precancerous cells. They did not have large tumors or symptoms of cancer. “The really interesting question,” Dr. Tlsty said, “is not so much why do we get cancer as why don’t we get cancer?”

The earlier a cell is in its path toward an aggressive cancer, researchers say, the more likely it is to reverse course. So, for example, cells that are early precursors of cervical cancer are likely to revert. One study found that 60 percent of precancerous cervical cells, found with Pap tests, revert to normal within a year; 90 percent revert within three years.

And the dynamic process of cancer development appears to be the reason that screening for breast cancer or prostate cancer finds huge numbers of early cancers without a corresponding decline in late stage cancers.

If every one of those early cancers were destined to turn into an advanced cancer, then the total number of cancers should be the same after screening is introduced, but the increase in early cancers should be balanced by a decrease in advanced cancers.

That has not happened with screening for breast and prostate cancer. So the hypothesis is that many early cancers go nowhere.

An earlier study from Norway provided evidence that breast cancer screening does indeed find some small tumors that will self-resolve.

Frank Rich on Balloon Boy's Dad

Frank Rich looks beneath the facade and finds a bit more depth in the Balloon Boy story: a tale of a misguided person trying to navigate a culture that has seriously blurred the line between news and entertainment, between reality and make-believe.

It would also be nice to think that the “balloon boy” viewers were the innocent victims of a dazzling Houdini-class feat of wizardry — a “massive fraud,” as Bill O’Reilly thundered. But even slightly jaundiced onlookers might have questioned how a balloon could waft buoyantly through the skies for hours with a 6-year-old boy hidden within its contours. That so few did is an indication of how practiced we are at suspending disbelief when watching anything labeled news, whether the subject is W.M.D.’s in Iraq or celebrity gossip in Hollywood.

“They put on a very good show for us, and we bought it,” the local sheriff, Jim Alderden, said last weekend, when he alleged that “balloon boy” was a hoax. His words could stand as the epitaph for an era.

Rich's column is an interesting reflection on our times and worth the read.

How we think

A couple of interesting posts on how we make sense of the world around us:

• Ezra Klein sums up an article on how we evaluate the opinions of novices and experts differently
• Andrew Sullivan quotes from a blog post about how our expectations color our opinions (and illustrates the point with a hilarious Absolutely Fabulous winetasting video... :-)

The second link is worth it just for Patsy and Eddie!

Prospects for a public health insurance option are improving

The Washington Post is reporting that there's been a remarkable turnaround in Congress with respect to the chances of passing a healthcare reform bill that includes a public option. Why? Members of Congress are concluding that a public option may be the best way to bring down the nation's healthcare costs.

Directions by bee

The details of how bees communicate directions to pollen sources is frickin' amazing.

(Video link)

Senate passes hate crimes law with sexual orientation language

Both the House and the Senate have passed an update to federal hate crimes laws:

The measure would extend the current definition of federal hate crimes -- which covers attacks motivated by race, color, religion or national origin -- to include those based on sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability. It also would make it a federal crime to attack U.S. military personnel because of their service.

The [Senate] measure was approved, 68 to 29, with a majority of Republicans voting against it. The House passed the same bill Oct. 8, also with most Republicans opposed....

The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act is named for Shepard, a gay University of Wyoming student who was murdered in 1998, and Byrd, a black man who was dragged to death behind a pickup truck in Texas in 1998. Shepard's family founded the Matthew Shepard Foundation, which helped lobby for the measure. Offered repeatedly by the late senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), the bill had stalled previously in the Senate, and President George W. Bush vowed to veto it if it reached his desk.

But Obama said he plans to sign the measure, a key moment for a president who has been subject to criticism from some gay and lesbian activists who say he has not pushed hard enough for their agenda. Obama has vowed to do so, and said he will repeal the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

Behind the scenes: reducing the nuclear risk in Iran

Time has a great article about the behind the scenes diplomacy that the Obama administration initiated several months ago to turn Iran's existing supply of nuclear material into a safer form that could be used for medical purposes:

In early July, Obama traveled to Moscow, where his top nonproliferation aide, Gary Samore, floated a proposal to the Russians: If Iran would agree to export a supply of LEU to Moscow, the Russians could enrich it to the level needed to power the research reactor, and then the French, who had been brought into the discussions, could turn it into the specialized plates that are used to produce the isotopes. The plates, which Iran does not have the capacity to turn into weapons-grade uranium, would then be sent back to Tehran. "The Russians immediately said, 'Great idea,' " says the senior Administration official.

The deal continues to move forward, with Iranian negotiators agreeing to the deal today. Final approval from Tehran is still needed.

Flu vaccine safety

NewScientist has a new post out today which debunks one concern about the H1N1 (swine) flu vaccine. Studies show that the risk of getting Guillain-Barré syndrome from the flu is around 40 times higher than the risk of getting it from the flu shot. Full details here.

Over 300,000 calls today...

Organizing for America did just that today: it motivated over 300,000 315,000 people to call their legislators in Congress and ask them to pass a healthcare reform bill this year.

Maybe John McCain was right after all...

I'm starting to think that taxing healthcare benefits makes sense after all; the current system results in some very unfair outcomes. Ezra Klein has a post that demonstrates this in a nutshell; Matthew Yglesias has a somewhat longer post on the same topic.

Call Congress and express support for healthcare reform

I just called all three of my legislators in Washington and registered my support for President Obama's healthcare reform proposals. With respect to the public option, I urged them to support it but also stated that trigger and state opt-out mechanisms are acceptable to me.

You can make your own calls by getting your legislators' phone numbers here.

Song of the day

Nina Simone singing "Ne Me Quitte Pas (Don't Leave Me)":

(Video link)

I was fortunate enough to see Nina perform at the Paramount Theater in Oakland back in July of 2001. I've never been in a crowd that expressed such adulation for the performer... and what an interesting crowd it was: a third gay, a third seniors, and a third black.

Halfway through her performance, Nina stood up from the piano in the middle of a number and slowly crossed the stage and exited; her band kept playing. A few minutes passed, and eventually my friends Dennis and Joe and I decided to grab a quick cocktail, but sadly the bar was closed. We returned to our seats; Nina still had not returned. After more than ten minutes she finally came back on stage, returned to the piano, and picked up exactly where she had left off. Our best guess was that she'd taken a bathroom break! (Her band evidently knew the drill. ;-)

The public is warming to the public option

According to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll:

Independents and senior citizens, two groups crucial to the debate, have warmed to the idea of a public option, and are particularly supportive if it would be administered by the states and limited to those without access to affordable private coverage....

On the issue that has been perhaps the most pronounced flash point in the national debate, 57 percent of all Americans now favor a public insurance option, while 40 percent oppose it. Support has risen since mid-August, when a bare majority, 52 percent, said they favored it. (In a June Post-ABC poll, support was 62 percent.)

If a public plan were run by the states and available only to those who lack affordable private options, support for it jumps to 76 percent. Under those circumstances, even a majority of Republicans, 56 percent, would be in favor of it, about double their level of support without such a limitation.

Fifty-six percent of those polled back a provision mandating that all Americans buy insurance, either through their employers or on their own or through Medicare or Medicaid. That number rises to 71 percent if the government were to provide subsidies for many lower-income Americans to help them buy coverage. With those qualifiers, a majority of Republicans say they support the mandate.

The poll also found that most Americans are opposed to one proposed way to pay for healthcare reform: an excise tax on so-called Cadillac health plans (Ezra Klein explains how this tax on insurance companies would work).

The Wild Things

After reading David Brooks' take on Where the Wild Things Are, I'm even more eager to see it...

Believe it or not, bipartisanship is not yet dead

At least the conservatives over at New Majority are seeing some glimmers of hope with respect to the recent Graham-Kerry proposal for climate change legislation:

This rare display of constructive bipartisanship has breathed new life into efforts to pass climate change legislation this year and dramatically changed the tone of the debate.

Suddenly, Democrats are uncharacteristically open to nuclear energy and additional offshore oil drilling.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) called the Graham/Kerry effort “encouraging” and added, “As a supporter of increased nuclear and domestic energy production, I think there is receptivity in the House to additional discussion on these issues.”

Environment and Public Works Committee chair Barbara Boxer (D-CA), who previously voted against a climate bill because it promoted nuclear energy, now appears willing to have a robust nuclear provision in her own climate bill.

On the Republican side, Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH)—a leader in the effort earlier this year to brand the House climate bill a “cap-and-tax” proposal—said the Graham/Kerry effort “could be a major step forward,” and Senators Murkowski, Corker, Collins, Isakson and McCain also offered positive comments....

Of course none of this will matter to the loudest voices on the right who are blinded by partisanship and a radicalized world view. Senator Graham will now become the target du jour of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, as does any Republican with the audacity to seek bipartisan solutions to our current problems.

For the sake of our nation, our party and our planet, other Republican Senators need to ignore the voices of polarization and roll up their sleeves like Senator Graham.

Vaccination: it's not just about you

To all of those folks out there obsessing over the risks of getting a swine flu shot (or any vaccine, for that matter; are you listening, Bill Maher?), it's important to remember that immunization has been a huge public health success not only because it protects individuals but because it increases the overall "herd immunity" of a community. The fewer susceptible people there are in a population, the slower a disease will spread, and the fewer the people who will ultimately get sick.

And if you need a reminder of how serious the swine flu can be, especially for pregnant women:

On June 27, Ms. Opdyke, a 27-year-old waitress and former high-school swimmer who weighed 135 pounds before her pregnancy and had no health risks other than a smoking habit, came down with mild flu symptoms.

She finally came home from the hospital three weeks ago.

“At first, I didn’t think anything of it — just another flu bug,” Ms. Opdyke said recently. “But it really wrecked me. I probably shouldn’t have made it.”

In the four months she was hospitalized, she spent five weeks in a coma, suffered six collapsed lungs and a near-fatal seizure. High-pressure ventilation blew her up like a molten balloon until “she looked like she weighed 400 pounds,” her husband, Bryan, said, and she has stretch marks from her neck to her ankles. Her muscles and lungs are still so weak that she uses a walker....

And, most important, she lost her baby. Parker Christine Opdyke, almost 27 weeks in the womb, was delivered by emergency Caesarean section on July 18, when her fetal heart rate plummeted during Ms. Opdyke’s third lung collapse. Her airways were too blocked to let a breathing tube in, possibly a side effect of the drugs saving her mother. She lived seven minutes.

On Oct. 1, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 100 pregnant women had been in intensive care with swine flu and 28 had died. That is a tiny fraction of what are believed to have been millions of cases in the country. But it is the best argument, federal officials say, for the drawn-out, expensive effort to make a swine flu vaccine.

Pregnant women are particularly susceptible because they are in the younger age group most likely to catch this new virus, while those over 50 who have had more flus rarely catch it. Moreover, pregnancy suppresses the immune system to protect the fetus, and the growing baby makes it harder for a mother to clear her lungs.

For more in depth information, check out the New England Journal of Medicine's H1N1 section of their website or the CDC's swine flu site (which includes the recommendation that people not go to "swine flu parties"... believe it or not, people are having swine flu parties to purposely get infected!).

Quote for the day

Janeane Garofalo on Sarah Palin: "I think she's an intellectually incurious person with charisma."

LOL!

UPDATE: The GOP base isn't entirely swayed by the Palin charisma judging from this recent Rasmussen poll.

The Ag Industry Empire Strikes Back

A California Polytechnic Institute donor has threatened to withhold his $500,000 donation to the school if food writer Michael Pollan is allowed to speak there. Seems this donor--who works for a company that runs a large California cattle feedlot--thinks that Pollan's ideas might just make things tougher for the agriculture industry if they take root with the public.

And yes, he has some real wacko ideas. Like eating real food! LOL

If you haven't seen The Meatrix, check it our here.

Video: A Pale Blue Dot

Here's a great video version of Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot."

(Video link)

Conservatives for Obama

Wow, NewMajority writer Eugene Debs offers quite a strong defense of President Obama in response to Newt Gingrich's making the claim that Obama “is a radical in the sense that the victory of those values would mean the end of American civilization as we know it.”

Given Gingrich's hyperbole, Debs didn't have that hard of a job...

MEANWHILE, LESS RESPONSIBLE CONSERVATIVES are accusing Muslim Americans of attempting to "infiltrate" Congress. Read Glenn Greenwald's article here.

Quote for the day

On being asked when she knew Homer was the one, Marge Simpson told Playboy:

Well, when the doctor said I was pregnant, I heard a voice saying "That’s the man you’re going to marry." The voice was my mother’s.

Mid-life: our forties

A thoughtful reflection on growing older from Judith Warner. On the "circle of life":

We always say “circle,” but to be perfectly honest, I now see the passage of time more as a kind of bell curve. Years of ascension, soaring anticipation, followed by a plateau — which is not so bad, really — and then, no way to sugar coat this: a rather precipitous decline.

You are not supposed to think this, much less say it. A decline? Never!

Fifty is the new 30, after all; and 70 is the new 15, and 40 — well, the forties are just so fabulous that they can’t even be considered middle age. Even if they do happen to fall right smack in the middle of what, despite our best efforts, is still a limited human lifespan.

And my own reflections on the circle of life here and here.

News bites

The EPA plans to step up enforcement of the Clean Water Act.

The Karzai goverment admits that a runoff election in Afghanistan is now likely, possibly late this month or early next month.

And authorities in Pakistan have increasing concerns about the wave of attacks there.

Painful reminder that gay-bashing still happens

Last Friday a 49yo gay man in Queens was savagely beaten by two men; the assault was captured on video. The victim was in a coma for several days. A video report is below; more from Towleroad here.

(Video link)

UPDATE: Perhaps the guy in the video who tattooed Leviticus 18:22 on his arm should have kept reading. Verse 19:28 says:

'Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the LORD.'

Late night news roundup

Ezra Klein dissects the latest health insurance agency report:

This is the house they've built: an insurance market where plans are written for the healthy and all legal efforts are made to exclude the sick. That's meant premiums are somewhat lower than they'd otherwise be, but only because the people who most need health-care insurance aren't able to afford it, or in some cases, aren't able to convince anyone to sell it to them. Now that arrangement is ending and they're scared that they can't provide an affordable product to the people who need it. They may be right, but it's evidence of how deeply perverse their business has become, not of what's wrong with health-care reform. When they say that the individual market would be cheaper in the absence of health-care reform, they're saying the individual market would be cheaper if they could continue refusing to sell affordable insurance to people who need health-care coverage.

This isn't an argument against health-care reform. This is proof of its necessity.

THE LAWSUIT AGAINST CALIFORNIA'S PROP. 8 moves forward:

A federal judge refused today to dismiss a lawsuit challenging California's ban on same-sex marriage, setting the stage for the nation's first trial on the constitutionality of a law allowing only opposite-sex couples to wed.

Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, in a ruling from the bench in San Francisco, said a trial was needed to resolve crucial issues, including whether gays and lesbians are persecuted minorities entitled to judicial protection from discriminatory laws. He has scheduled the trial for January.

SOME ANALYSTS THINK THAT IRAN, having gotten this close to being a nuclear power, may be ready to make a deal:

“If the Iranian endgame is to keep enrichment, and if the United States’ endgame is to make sure there are no nuclear weapons in Iran, then it can be a win-win,” said Trita Parsi, author of a book on Iran and president of the National Iranian American Council, an independent advocacy group in Washington. “Those who have been criticizing the administration for compromising or giving Iran a concession, they are wrong. It is not a concession to adjust to an unchanging reality.” ...

Tehran knows that actually deploying a weapon could undermine its regional strength by driving smaller oil-rich neighbors to seek their own nuclear umbrella, presumably from the United States. Rather, experts say, Iran’s intention all along was to strengthen its hand in dealing with the West, to achieve legitimacy, security and recognition of its leadership in the region. Iran’s meeting with the United States and Western powers in Geneva brought it within reach of those goals.

More on the notion of "nuclear latency" from Juan Cole.

Ignoring their own long term interests...

The American Farm Bureau is about to begin a major campaign to defeat legislation that seeks to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. You'd think farmers of all people would realize how much they have to lose from global warming... the USDA has already begun spelling out the potential impacts.

Can we succeed with the current Karzai government as a partner?

Thomas Friedman makes some excellent points today about Afghanistan:

Independent election monitors suggest that as many as one-third of votes cast in the Aug. 20 election are tainted and that President Hamid Karzai apparently engaged in massive fraud to come out on top. Yet, he is supposed to be the bridge between our troop surge and our goal of a stable Afghanistan....

We have been way too polite, and too worried about looking like a colonial power, in dealing with Karzai. I would not add a single soldier there before this guy, if he does win the presidency, takes visible steps to clean up his government in ways that would be respected by the Afghan people.

If Karzai says no, then there is only one answer: “You’re on your own, pal. Have a nice life with the Taliban. We can’t and will not put more American blood and treasure behind a government that behaves like a Mafia family. If you don’t think we will leave — watch this.” (Cue the helicopters.)

So, please, spare me the lectures about how important Afghanistan and Pakistan are today. I get the stakes. But we can’t want a more decent Afghanistan than the country’s own president. If we do, we have no real local partner who will be able to hold the allegiance of the people, and we will not succeed — whether with more troops, more drones or more money.

I've been saying this same thing since the election...

Jon Stewart: where was the Fox crew on Sunday?

Jon Stewart notices that Fox News didn't even send a film crew to Sunday's March on Washington... and devoted more than twice as much airtime to a story about a small anti-Obama protest in New Jersey sparked by kids singing a song about the president!

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Queer and Loathing in D.C.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Ron Paul Interview

As seen over at the Daily Dish... check it out.

Cry me a river

Uh, pardon me if I'm not feeling very sympathetic to this idea: the Saudis think that the oil-producing nations should be compensated if the rest of the world cuts back on their oil use in order to slow down global warming.

Insurance industry report caveat

PricewaterhouseCoopers, the company that prepared the report for the insurance industry which suggested that insurance premiums would rise if healthcare reform passes, is backpedaling. They've issued a statement noting that they didn't included expected cost savings in their analysis. More here.

Thank you, Senator Snowe

GOP Senator Olympia Snowe will vote today to move healthcare reform legislation out of the Finance Committee:

“Is this bill all that I want? Far from it,” Ms. Snowe said. “Is it all that it can be? Far from it. But when history calls, history calls.”

Ms. Snowe’s speech, shortly before the lunch break, came as the Senate Finance Committee edged closer to approving legislation that would reshape the American health care system and provide subsidies to help millions of people buy insurance....

But Ms. Snowe, the one Republican who expressed willingness to support the bill, had kept her colleagues — and the nation — in suspense. But on Tuesday she said she would vote to advance the legislation, saying the consequences of inaction were far too great.

With its vote, expected in the afternoon, the Finance Committee would become the fifth Congressional panel to report out sweeping health care legislation that President Obama says is his top domestic priority.

“All Americans should have access to affordable quality health care coverage,” the Finance Committee chairman, Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, said in opening remarks. “Now is the time to get this done.”

(Video link)

THE NEW YORK TIMES also has an interactive comparison of the various healthcare reform proposals; you can click on various categories like "Individual Mandates" and "What It Will Cost" to see the specifics for each.

Shades of squeezes to come

You don't have to know too much about Russian history to see how two new gas pipelines will give Russia leverage over their Eastern European neighbors... or wonder if they'll use it. In the coming era of increasing resource scarcity, we're bound to see more of that around the world. Maybe the new shale technology that's expected to increase natural gas reserves will blunt the impact, however.

Currently, Russian gas has to be piped through Eastern Europe to reach Western Europe. If Russia shuts off the gas to pressure a neighbor in the east, it is felt in the more powerful, wealthier countries to the west, where it touches off loud protests.

The new Nord Stream pipeline will change that equation. By traveling more than 750 miles underwater, from Vyborg, Russia, to Greifswald, Germany, bypassing the former Soviet and satellite states, it will give Russia a separate supply line to the west.

As a result, many security experts and Eastern European officials say, Russia will be more likely to play pipeline politics with its neighbors.

“Yesterday tanks, today oil,” said Zbigniew Siemiatkowski, a former head of Poland’s security service....

Such tactics are hardly without precedent. A Swedish Defense Ministry-affiliated research organization has identified 55 politically linked disruptions in the energy supply of Eastern Europe since the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Until now, Russia’s use of natural gas as a foreign policy tool has been limited to short embargoes, at least in part, analysts say, because it is so blunt a club.

Last January, for example, Russia shut down a pipeline that crossed Ukraine, ostensibly over a dispute with Ukraine on pricing and tariff fees.

The shutoff left hundreds of thousands of homes in southeastern Europe without heat and shuttered hundreds of factories for three weeks.

Clean the air, foul the water

Sometimes I wonder why we don't think these things through more thoroughly: many coal power plants which have installed scrubbers to remove toxins before they are released into the atmosphere are simply dumping the resulting sludge in rivers.

For years, residents here complained about the yellow smoke pouring from the tall chimneys of the nearby coal-fired power plant, which left a film on their cars and pebbles of coal waste in their yards. Five states — including New York and New Jersey — sued the plant’s owner, Allegheny Energy, claiming the air pollution was causing respiratory diseases and acid rain.

So three years ago, when Allegheny Energy decided to install scrubbers to clean the plant’s air emissions, environmentalists were overjoyed. The technology would spray water and chemicals through the plant’s chimneys, trapping more than 150,000 tons of pollutants each year before they escaped into the sky.

But the cleaner air has come at a cost. Each day since the equipment was switched on in June, the company has dumped tens of thousands of gallons of wastewater containing chemicals from the scrubbing process into the Monongahela River, which provides drinking water to 350,000 people and flows into Pittsburgh, 40 miles to the north.

“It’s like they decided to spare us having to breathe in these poisons, but now we have to drink them instead,” said Philip Coleman, who lives about 15 miles from the plant and has asked a state judge to toughen the facility’s pollution regulations. “We can’t escape.”

... No federal regulations specifically govern the disposal of power plant discharges into waterways or landfills. Some regulators have used laws like the Clean Water Act to combat such pollution. But those laws can prove inadequate, say regulators, because they do not mandate limits on the most dangerous chemicals in power plant waste, like arsenic and lead.

For instance, only one in 43 power plants and other electric utilities across the nation must limit how much barium they dump into nearby waterways, according to a Times analysis of E.P.A. records. Barium, which is commonly found in power plant waste and scrubber wastewater, has been linked to heart problems and diseases in other organs.

The body can be far ahead of the mind

I just read a fascinating post about a new research finding that people who are better able to count their own heartbeats did better when playing a computer gambling game. It was so interesting, in fact, that I'd love to quote the whole article here!

Instead I'll just excerpt a portion that deals with an earlier experiment that involved test subjects drawing cards from different decks of cards. The decks are stacked; some offered higher rewards than others.

At first, the card selection process is entirely random. The players have no reason to favor any specific deck, and so they sample from each pile, searching for money-making patterns. On average, people have to turn over about 50 cards before they began to only draw from the profitable decks. It takes about 80 cards before the average experimental subject can explain why they favored those decks. Logic is slow.

But Damasio wasn't interested in logic. He was interested in the body. He attached electrodes to the palms of the subjects and measured the electrical conductance of their skin. In general, higher levels of conductance in the skin signal nervousness and anxiety. (That's why our hands get clammy before a big test.) What Damasio found was that after drawing only 10 cards the hands of the experimental subjects got "nervous" whenever they reached for the negative decks. While the brain had yet to completely understand the game (and wouldn't for another 40 cards), the subject's hands "knew" what deck to draw from. Furthermore, as their hands grew increasingly sweaty, they started drawing more and more frequently from the advantageous decks. The unconscious feelings ricocheting throughout their body preceded their conscious decision. (For more on the body loop, check out Descartes' Error.) The hand led the mind.

This experiment reminds me of the Landmark Education course I took in Costa Rica in 2006 called Structural Connections; I wrote about my experiences in it here. Like my life coaching training at the Coaches Training Institute, one of the key themes was listening to your body and learning what it's trying to tell you. And a segment in What the BLEEP Do We Know? examines how we can, in a sense, become "addicted" to our own internal state: the rush of neurotransmitters, hormones, and other chemical messengers that result from experiences like eating, flirting, and falling in love.

A lot of the body's messages get filtered through our unconscious minds... imagine the insights available if you can bring that input directly into your consciousness.

Michael Moore's latest

For some reason I've gotten lazy: I haven't seen Sicko or Capitalism: A Love Story yet.

I just read a fellow blogger's review of the latter which has motivated me to see both. Whatever his faults, Michael Moore does focus attention on institutions in our culture which have well-funded lobbies and are generally working against the interests of the little guy.

Knowledge is power, and knowledge comes from inquiry. Watch... and ask your own questions.

Ezra Klein analyzes the insurance industry's report

Ezra Klein takes a look at the report the insurance industry released today which stated their belief that insurance premiums would rise if the healthcare bills in Congress become law. They make some deceptive assumptions:

Economists think that the tax on high-cost health-care plans will lead employers and consumers to demand cheaper plans that do more to control costs. In fact, PWC expects that, too. They just don't build it into their estimate. On Page 6, they say, "Although we expect employers to respond to the tax by restructuring their benefits to avoid it, we demonstrate the impact assuming it is employed." That's a bit like saying although I expect to eat doughnuts this morning, I will instruct my scale to act as if I had abstained.

And Ezra looks at what they're really trying to communicate with this document:

In other words, the insurers want health-care reform to have a stronger mandate, which will require substantially more spending, which means we'll need more revenue. But they oppose all the new revenue streams that help pay for the bill, and they oppose the major sources of savings that help offset the remaining cost of the bill. And they say the Finance Committee's numbers don't add up? That's some chutzpah, as my grandmother would say.

UPDATE: An MIT health economist has run the numbers and finds that health premiums would actually fall under the changes that Congress is proposing. More here, again from Ezra... and even more from Marc Ambinder.

Ciao

I like using the word "ciao." And I love it's etymology:

The word derives from the Venetian phrase s-ciào vostro or s-ciào su literally meaning "I am your slave".... The expression was not a literal statement of fact, of course, but rather a perfunctory promise of good will among friends (along the lines "if you ever need my help, count on me"). The Venetian word for "slave", s-ciào ([ˈstʃao]) or s-ciàvo, is cognate of the Italian schiavo and derives from Latin sclavus.

Why the March worked

Phil Reese over at the Bilerico Project has written a great piece on why yesterday's March on Washington worked:

The March worked because Cleve Jones, David Mixner, Robin McGehee, Kip Williams and the march organizers called it: We needed this. People turned out because of a deep, guttural, urgent need to stand up and be counted. They could both simultaneously express their deep frustration and deep hope and optimism. It was about more than just feeling better, though. It was about sparking a big reaction. Most of the speakers repeated the mantra: "This march is a beginning, not an end." If this comes true, then when we look back we can say the march was definitely a success. However, today at least I can without hesitation say the March worked.

The March worked for six reasons. The March created positive attention for our LGBT rights, it inspired the budding activists in the movement, it groomed our movement's future leadership, it provided a great summit for new strategy creation and infrastructure building in the movement, it put positive pressure on the government and it pointed a big red arrow at Washington, Maine, and Kalamazoo....

Talking about seeing Cleve Jones debate some march detractors on the news Saturday night, my dad called to tell me how he felt about all of this and expressed his agreement with those who were calling on the movement to wait. Ten years ago, my father was an avid opponent of LGBT rights, but today he's accepted the need for equality as a given - and merely disagrees with the tone of people like Cleve.

My dad's words now expressed a clear cognitive dissonance to me. Cognitive dissonance occurs when we are confronted with clear, immutable facts that are in clear opposition with our skewed world view. Cognitive dissonance occurs in the moments before we accept a new reality. My blue-collar Midwestern Reagan-Republican father is the posterboy of Middle America for me. If my father is experiencing dissonance, America is experiencing dissonance. The lightbulb is about to flip on.

Seeing my former Senator, Michigan's Debbie Stabenow, debating Senator Bob Casey on CNN the morning of the march, not about whether or not to extend equality but when, shows the conversation is happening and we're finally discussing the right things. America watched Lady Gaga, Cynthia Nixon, David Mixner and Julian Bond tell them not only is supporting equality the right thing to do, but an urgent need. This will influence the thoughts of more folk than I think we realize.

Tiny dinosaur footprints found

The smallest dinosaur footprints ever founds have been discovered on an island off of South Korea. They belong to a smaller cousin of Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Don't forget Pelosi and Reid

Jonathan Capehart at the Washington Post points out that Obama isn't the only one who needs to be called out on the lack of progress this year on gay and lesbian issues:

The chants [at yesterday's March on Washington] ranged from predictable ones -- "What do we want? Equal rights! When do we want it? Now!" -- to a reminder roared outside the White House gates -- "What does democracy look like? This is what democracy looks like!"

It should also be a reminder for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. They've done a good job of letting Obama take all the heat from the gay community for inaction in Washington. But if the shameful ban on gays serving openly in the military is to end, if gay and lesbian couples are to share in the rights and responsibilities of marriage that would come with the demise of the Defense of Marriage Act, Congress must overturn them, sending bills to Obama. The president has made it clear that he would sign them. It's time for Pelosi and Reid to follow through.

Obama, that Nobel Peace Prize, and all those complainers

I was dismayed by Ross Douthat's column in the New York Times yesterday, but I think Ezra Klein has the perfect rebuttal to all these people complaining that someone more deserving should have received the Peace Prize:

It's strange to watch op-ed columnists using their valuable and finite real estate to complain that the real problem with Barack Obama accepting is that there were more deserving recipients. One might say the same about these op-ed columns, which could surely be about something more useful.

Ross Douthat, for instance, says it will be "offensive when Obama takes the stage in Oslo this November instead of Morgan Tsvangirai, Zimbabwe’s heroic opposition leader." By that same logic, it seems a bit offensive for Douthat to spend his column arguing that Obama should give back the Nobel rather than devoting his column to the struggles of Tsvangirai, who has never before been mentioned in one of Douthat's op-eds. That's all the more true given that Douthat chooses the subject of his columns, while Obama does not choose the recipients of the Nobel.

Fighting the good fight

I hadn't noticed this Gallup Poll last June; it shows a large movement in the last five years in favor of ending "Don't Ask Don't Tell" among church goers, conservatives, and Republicans:

The finding that majorities of weekly churchgoers (60%), conservatives (58%), and Republicans (58%) now favor what essentially equates to repealing the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy implemented under President Clinton in 1993 is noteworthy for several reasons. First, the data show that these traditionally conservative groups are shifting on this issue, supporting it to a far greater extent than they support legalized gay marriage. Second, it suggests the political playing field may be softer on this issue, and President Barack Obama will be well-positioned to forge ahead with his campaign promise to end the military ban on openly gay service members with some support from more conservative segments of the population. To date, it is estimated that more than 12,500 servicemen and servicewomen have been discharged under the policy, including more than 200 since Obama took office.

Overall, the number of American adults supporting "openly gay men and lesbian women serving in the military" has gone from 63% in 2004 to 69% today.

AND HERE IS SAM SUSSMAN, a young straight man who won the Equality Idol contest and spoke at yesterday's March on Washington in favor of full equality for gays and lesbians.

(Video link)

Thanks to The Daily Dish for the heads up.

Schwarzenegger signs Harvey Milk Day and gay marriage recognition bills

Arnold has had a busy day:

Harvey Milk Day, a state day to honor the slain San Francisco gay rights advocate, is now official in California thanks to a somewhat unexpected signature Monday from Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has vetoed such legislation in the past.

The bill was one of two key gay rights bills authored by State Senator Mark Leno of San Francisco, who says he's "pleasantly surprised" that the governor put his pen to both; the other bill makes gay marriages performed in other states legal in California.

Leno, reached Monday, said he believed Schwarzenegger finally signed the bill this session to establish a day for the late San Francisco supervisor because "Harvey Milk Day is an idea whose time has come.''

In the past, Schwarzenegger "could suggest that Harvey was a local personality,'' he said.

But that was before Milk's life and accomplishments were recognized in a shower of honors last year: there was the success of the Oscar-winning film, "Milk,'' the biopic starring Sean Penn, who also pushed for the measure; the President's Medal of Freedom, and an induction into the Goveror's own California Hall of Fame.

George Washington, businessman

After thoroughly researching his life as a general and a president, historians are now turning to the records of his entrepreneurial affairs:

To wade into Washington's accounts is to run the risk of trivia overload. The important information does not immediately distinguish itself from the ephemera. When he showed up in Philadelphia in May 1787 to preside over the Constitutional Convention, he records his meals (12 shillings for "dinner at the Head of Elk"), haircuts (7 shillings for "Barber"), purchases of finery (17 shillings for a silk handkerchief) and charity (8 shillings "for beggars").

Making meaning of all this is what historians get paid to do. In the past four decades, they've been less interested in the Great Man view of history and more focused on "social history," with ordinary people as the figures of interest. Washington's financial papers offer both: A great man amid the whirl of the mundane. Because Washington was Washington, we know how much he paid for his shoes.

Joyce Chaplin, a Harvard historian, said the Washington papers offer a picture of what she calls "material culture." She asks: "What kind of clothing, what kind of food, what kind of medical care did people have? When did ordinary people have cash?" By studying such things, she said, it's possible to see "a modern world coming into being." ...

As Washington aged, he was increasingly repulsed by the human bondage that served as the foundation of his enterprise. At first he approached the issue from a business perspective, said Dennis Pogue, Mount Vernon's associate director for preservation.

"It starts out as economics. He's got more slaves than he needs," Pogue said. But after commanding black soldiers during the Revolutionary War, Washington more fully recognized the hypocrisy of espousing liberty while remaining a slave owner.

In the final major gesture of his life, he wrote a will that freed his slaves upon the death of his wife, effectively dismantling the estate he had spent a life creating. He lacked a direct heir, and so his assets went to nephews and other relatives.

His most enduring gift, though, may be his records. Washington sensed as much. In 1797, two years before his death, he wrote a letter to a certain James McHenry expressing a desire to build a structure to house all his papers -- "which are voluminous and may be interesting," he wrote.

On the other hand, if you're more interested in his role as a founding father, I recommend the book American Creation.

The miracle of Ardi

I just watched "Discovering Ardi," a Discovery channel program which traced the 15 year journey from the discovery of the 4.4 million year old fossil remains of Ardipithecus ramidus--the oldest hominid found to date--to an understanding of how this creature lived and the place it represents on our own evolutionary path.

A. ramidus is a unique find: an ancestor of Homo sapiens that proves we didn't descend from a chimpanzee-like ape (because Ardi didn't walk on its knuckles) and reveals that our line probably took form not in the savannah as has long been believed but rather in wooded areas. And unlike Lucy, Ardi spent more time living in trees, a fact deduced from its grasping foot.

Ardi was bipedal and shows few of the other anatomical characteristics that are considered to be human. Bipedalism must be part of the essential, complex adaptation that distinguishes the human evolutionary line from the apes and from all other creatures on earth. Ardi's discoverers suggest that bipedalism reinforced pair bonding by allowing males to bring more food to their mates and offspring, thus increasing the reproductive success of the species. And unlike all living and fossil apes, Ardi--like other hominids--has small male canine teeth. This suggests that females were choosing mates who spent less time fighting which would have freed them to gather more food.

Twenty-four years ago I read Lucy: The Beginnings of Humakind for a human biology course at Stanford. Drs. Owen Lovejoy and Tim White both featured prominently in that book; it was so cool to watch them at work and discussing their find in the follow-up program, "Understanding Ardi."

The last few minutes of "Discovering Ardi" got me: no other creature we know of has ever traced its origins, and in doing so, confirmed its connection to the rest of the world around it. We are of the world, yet still unique. We reach for the stars, but our history lies in the earth. It's pretty damn crazy...

Peak oil is coming...

A new study finds that the difference between the most conservative and the most optimistic predictions as to when worldwide oil production will begin to decline is only 15-20 years... and that doesn't give us much time to prepare.

... Discoveries of new oil fields are in decline. Even the "giant" Tiber field recently found by BP in the Gulf of Mexico "will only serve to delay peak oil by a matter of days", he says.

"Of the 70,000 oil fields on Earth, just 100 giant fields account for 50 per cent of the oil we use," says Sorrell. "Most of these giant fields are quite old and past their peak of production, and we're not going to find many new ones."

More coverage of the March on Washington

Towleroad interviews Robin McGeehee, co-director of the March. (video)

Andrew Sullivan shares his observations.

The Bilerico Project interviews Lt. Dan Choi after Obama's speech at the HRC dinner last night. (video)

And here's Sex in the City's Cynthia Nixon speaking about the real importance of gays and lesbians having the right to marry:

(Video link)

Stonewall 2.0

Unlike many gathered at the HRC dinner where Obama spoke on Saturday night, a large number of the participants in today's March on Washington were not impressed with the president's speech:

Impatient and discouraged by what they see as a certain detachment by President Obama on their issues, gay rights supporters took to the streets of the capital on Sunday in the largest demonstration for gay rights here in nearly a decade.

Unlike previous marches promoting gay civil rights, the rally was primarily the undertaking of a new generation of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender advocates who have grown disillusioned with the movement’s established leadership.

Known as Stonewall 2.0 or the Prop. 8 Generation – a reference to the galvanizing effect the repeal of California’s same-sex marriage law had on many young people – this group of 20-and-30-something activists are at odds with gay advocates who are urging patience as Mr. Obama grapples with more pressing pieces of his domestic agenda like health care reform and the economic recovery.

“I think this march represents the passing of the torch,” said Corey Johnson, 27, a protester and blogger for the gay lifestyle website Towleroad.com. “The points of power are no longer in the halls of Washington or large metropolitan areas. It’s decentralized now. You have young activists and gay people from all walks of life converging on Washington not because a national organization told them to, but because they feel the time is now.”

... Demonstrators gave the president’s speech low marks for lacking any new substance and failing to acknowledge several major issues confronting the gay movement. In the words of Billie Myers, a musician who spoke to an eager crowd of tens of thousands that gathered on the West Lawn of the Capitol Sunday, “I’m sorry, but I didn’t like your speech.”

The president did not lay out a timetable for repealing the ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military, nor did he voice support for any of the battles going on at the state level to allow same-sex couples greater recognition under the law.

H1N1 flu update: '76 flu vaccine provides some protection

An interesting article from Scientific American reports that people who were vaccinated with the 1976 flu shot have some immunity to the H1N1 (swine) flu that began spreading last spring.

As soon as the newest H1N1 virus burst onto the scene in the spring, it conspicuously assaulted the young and left the old mostly unscathed. To date, 79 percent of confirmed U.S. cases have been in people younger than 30 years and only 2 percent in people older than 65. In light of that lopsided attack pattern, investigators at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention quickly started testing hun­dreds of human serum samples stored between 1880 and 2000, looking for evidence of past human experience with the novel H1N1 virus.

Data published in May showed a power­ful antibody response to the new virus in a third of the samples from subjects older than 60 and in a smaller number (6 to 9 percent) of samples from younger adults. The authors theorized that exposure to post-1918 H1N1 human flu viruses had primed the oldest subjects’ immune system to recognize the novel H1N1.

The CDC group procured serum samples collected from 83 adults and a handful of children who had received the vaccine against swine H1N1 that was given in 1976 to 43 million Americans. More than half of the samples from adults who received a single shot of that vaccine displayed a powerful immune response to the 2009 H1N1 virus, whereas little recognition of the new virus was seen in the serum of inoculated children, all younger than four at the time.

The discrepancy was an important clue, according to senior author Jackie Katz of the CDC’s influenza division, who published those particular findings in September. The adults, who were between 25 and 60 years old in 1976, would have been exposed to H1N1 flu before 1957, the year it stopped circulating for the next two decades. “We assume that by the age of five a person would have had at least one exposure to influenza,” Katz explains. That prior encounter with H1N1 seemed to be the key to a robust recognition of the 1976 vaccine virus, just as having had the 1976 vaccine seems to produce a strong response to the 2009 H1N1 virus. The very young children, in contrast, represent the responses of immune systems that have no past history with H1N1.

Katz cautions that high antibody levels in serum do not guarantee immunity from infection, but they serve as good indicators of protection when testing vaccines and are a fairly sure sign of earlier exposure to the pathogen. For people with some measure of previous immunity, a subsequent vaccine could act as a “booster shot.”

The researchers also found that over time and repeated exposure to flu viruses, people appear to build up a general immunity to influenza.

Analyses of infection rates in modern seasonal flu epidemics suggest that with age comes a subtle buildup of immunity to flu viruses in general. Although the external viral proteins hemagglutinin and neur­a­minidase (the H and N that designate a flu strain) are the main targets of vaccines, the human immune system may also recognize other viral parts. The resulting responses may not prevent infection, but they may reduce symptoms to a degree that people do not even realize they are infected.

Indeed, the seasonal flu peaks in kids and “then sort of declines with age,” says Jeffery Taubenberger, a virus expert at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “The elderly have the highest mortality because they often have underlying conditions,” he adds, “but you find that people in their 40s and 50s get a lot less clinical flu than kids, so one possibility is that there’s a slow accrual of a wide variety of flu immunity.”

HPV vaccine for boys?

An FDA advisory panel recently approved the use of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine for boys; it's been available for girls for several years. The family of HPV viruses causes genital warts and cancers of the cervix, vulva, vagina, penis, anus, and throat. The vaccine is designed to provide protection against those diseases.

A new British study finds that while the vaccine may be effective in boys, it's not cost-effective assuming that three quarters of girls receive the vaccine. Unfortunately that kind of analysis completely overlooks any benefits to gay men. Thanks for thinking of us, guys.

Hubris in Pakistan: they were warned about attack

From the New York Times:

The mastermind of the militant assault on Saturday that shook the heart of the Pakistani military was behind two other major attacks in the last two years, and the police had specifically warned the military in July that such an audacious raid was being planned, police and intelligence officials said Sunday.

The revelation of prior warning was sure to intensify scrutiny of Pakistan’s ability to fight militants, after nine men wearing army uniforms breached the military headquarters complex in Rawalpindi and held dozens hostage for 20 hours until a commando raid ended the siege. In all, 16 people were killed, including eight of the attackers, the military said.

The surviving militant, who was captured early Sunday morning, was identified as Muhammad Aqeel, who officials said was a former soldier and the planner of this attack and others. Mr. Aqeel, who is also known as Dr. Usman because he had once worked with the Army Medical Corps before dropping out about four years ago, is believed to be a member of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a militant group affiliated with Al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban.

The army has been promising to fight back against the fierce Taliban insurgency holed up in the tribal region of South Waziristan amid pressure from the Obama administration, which is about to secure a major aid package that would give $1.5 billion a year to the government here.

The attack on the headquarters was a signal that the Taliban insurgency had penetrated deeply into Punjab Province, where the military headquarters are located, and was no longer confined to the wild tribal areas that serve as the operational center for the Pakistani Taliban.

Keep the electrons flowing for long battery life

Apple has some good advice for maximizing the lifespan of lithium ion batteries:

For proper maintenance of a lithium-based battery, it’s important to keep the electrons in it moving occasionally. Apple does not recommend leaving your portable plugged in all the time. An ideal use would be a commuter who uses her MacBook Pro on the train, then plugs it in at the office to charge. This keeps the battery juices flowing. If on the other hand, you use a desktop computer at work, and save a notebook for infrequent travel, Apple recommends charging and discharging its battery at least once per month.

Temperature is also important; batteries prefer room temperature as much as humans do. Keeping a rechargeable battery on a charger all the time heats the battery and reduces it's useful life.

The night that might have been...

Given my Terminator conspiracy theory... how in the world did I miss this video???

Voting Machines Elect One Of Their Own As President

(Video link)

Song of the day

Just found this video of Mercedes Sosa singing "Gracias a La Vida." You can find an English translation of the lyrics here.

Pakistani Taliban's demands

Juan Cole comments on this weekend's takeover by militants of Pakistan's military headquarters; there are also a couple of videos from Pakistan.

March on Washington coverage

From the New York Times:

The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said Sunday that Congress will need to muster the resolve to change the ''don't ask, don't tell policy'' -- a change that the military may be ready for.

''I think it has to be done in the right way, which is to get a buy-in from the military, which I think is now possible,'' said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.

Obama's political energies have been focused on two wars, the economic crisis and health care reform, though he pledged ''unwavering'' commitment even as he wrestled with those problems.

March organizer Cleve Jones, creator of the AIDS Memorial Quilt and a protege of gay rights pioneer Harvey Milk, said he had initially discouraged a rally earlier in the year. But he and others began to worry Obama was backing away from his campaign promises.

''Since we've seen that so many times before, I didn't want it to happen again,'' he said. ''We're not settling. There's no such thing as a fraction of equality.''

Unlike the first march in 1979 and others in 1987, 1993 and 2000 that included celebrity performances and drew as many as 500,000 people, Sunday's event was driven by grassroots efforts and was expected to be more low-key. Washington authorities don't disclose crowd estimates at rallies, though at least several thousand appeared to be in attendance.

And the Los Angeles Times:

The National Equality March snaked past the White House and streamed down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol. Demonstrators chanted "Yes we can" in English and Spanish, resurrecting President Obama's campaign slogan, and waved signs and banners.

Organizers said the LGBT community, which encompasses lesbians, gays, bisexual and transgendered people, are not satisfied with a piecemeal approach to gaining civil rights. They are seeking "full federal equality" and singling out issues pertaining to marriage, adoption, military service and the workplace.

Along with video from the AP:

(Video link)

Barney Frank: Lobby your legislators instead of marching

While I'm not going to say I agree with Congressman Frank with respect to writing and calling rather than marching, I will definitely back him in saying that right now those letters, calls, and emails are important.

But Frank said the real problem is gathering enough votes in the House and Senate to win passage of anti-discrimination legislation.

Gay rights advocates should borrow from the playbooks of the two most effective interest groups, the National Rifle Association and the AARP, said Frank.

"Call or write your representative or senator, and then have your friends call and write their representative or senator," Frank said. "That's what the NRA does. That's what the AARP does."

Money matters in politics, but the folks in Washington still need to get re-elected, and that still comes down to us. So... let your legislators know where you stand on:

• Passing real healthcare reform
• Ending Don't Ask Don't Tell
• Repealing the Defense of Marriage Act
• Climate change and energy policy
• Whatever matters to you (just try and agree with me, okay? ;-)

Your voice does matter. Contact your Senators here and your Congressfolk here.