Musings of a Code Warrior

Free range outsell battery eggs for the first time

2007-09-01T10:47:00.000-07:00

No points for guessing this headline didn't come out of the US. Not even the People's Republic of Berkeley. It's the British of course. But do they really get 'free-range?' Not clear, the numbers appear to be based on battery vs. non-battery rather than free-range vs. not free range and includes 'barn' and 'roaming' hens. But I still maintain (see previous post) that any signals by consumers which are significant enough to change production in favor of animal welfare are better than none.

Sales of free range, barn and organic eggs from chickens allowed to roam outdoors accounted for just over 50 per cent of total sales last year - a huge turnaround from five years previously.

It is one of the most startling illustrations of how the trend towards buying "ethical" food is bringing huge changes to the food industry. Sainsbury's announced this year that it planned to phase out battery eggs by 2012.

Architectural Genius

2007-09-01T10:40:00.001-07:00

I for one would like to see more houses like this. You could make up a whole neighborhood of houses tumbling down a hill. And this one doubles as political art:

[A]n upside-down house built by Polish artist Daniel Czapiewski at the centre for education and regional promotion in the village of Szymbark, Poland. Czapiewski reportedly intended to show the state of affairs in his homeland with the house that rests on its own roof and represents the times of the Communist area as well as the change of values in the former Eastern bloc countries

Marathon training or child abuse?

2007-08-27T11:01:00.000-07:00

Childhood obesity is a growing epidemic throughout the country as showcased by American media and the health care industry, among others. It is not a uniquely American problem but stems in part from a culture of excess and mass production which, while also not uniquely American, goes a healthy distance toward characterizing the country's insatiability for......well, for 'more.'

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, the opposite extreme. A father leads his daughter on a consecutive series of marathons over the course of two months. But is this about fitness or health? Probably not. It probably is also not about how much this girl likes to run, as her father claims. Likely it is more about wealth and notoriety in a communist country.

I am a firm believer that most people are not biologically designed to enjoy more good than harm from running marathons. I think the design can be and has been developed safely and healthfully through the centuries, through the lifetimes of some lucky recipients of genetic jackpots and through technological and surgical advances, but by and large I think the recent spike in popularity of marathons is born not of a natural predisposition, but of the same culture of excess that has illuminated the obesity problem. Specifically, America's obsessions with health, longevity, physical perfection, workoholism, and competition, paired with whatever drives a given individual to participate in charitable causes be it guilt or concern or both.

While I am only lukewarm about the wisdom of running marathons, one thing I will come out in staunch opposition to is what's going on in this story. As unhealthy as marathoning is for many (and perhaps most) adult humans despite their having reached maturity and the prime of their physical compositions, it certainly cannot be healthy or even humane to allow (much less encourage or force) a girl of 8 to endure the regimen prescribed (and hereunder defended) by her father, Mr. Zhang.

A Chinese girl has arrived in Beijing after running more than 3,550km (2,200 miles) from the southern province of Hainan in less than two months. [For sake of comparison, an individual who runs 4 miles a day, 7 days a week for two whole months would cover only 240 miles.]

Zhang Huimin, eight, rose each day at 0230 and ran about 1.5 marathons (64km, 40 miles), Xinhua news agency said. Her father accompanied her on a bicycle.

He said the feat was aimed at drawing attention to her Olympic potential ahead of the Beijing games next year.

He denied forcing her to run, but some experts have said it amounted to abuse.

"She loves to run. Many people don't understand us," he said.

Zhang and his wife have separated, mainly because she opposed his way of training their daughter, the newspaper reported.

"Whether people oppose it or not, we will soldier on," Mr Zhang said.

Greek Fires

2007-08-27T10:16:00.000-07:00

Greek officials suspect arson, though this has not been confirmed. They have announced a reward of 1 million euros and are holding 32 suspects.

A top Greek prosecutor has ordered an inquiry into whether arson attacks can be considered terrorism, and prosecuted under Greece's anti-terror laws.

Treating arson as a potential act of terrorism would give authorities broader powers of investigation and arrest.

I don't think this is too extreme a position to be taken by the prosecutor; the areas burning in Greece are many and rife with historical and cultural value, the fires have caused the deaths of at least 39 people and has resulted in the destruction of many livelihoods in an already fragile economy. That said, I should admit that at first this struck me as a somewhat draconian prosecutorial approach given that no one as yet is sure of arson and that the country has far more pressing needs, currently, than deciding what to do with the perpetrator. Such as containing the fires. But a look at the scope and disparate geographical origins of the fires and the international aid rendered leaves little doubt that the blazes sprang not from natural or accidental sources and that 'terrorism' is not too strong a word for what is happening. And that the world's finest fire response program would likely be no match for the catastrophe.

MORE:

At least 11 countries - including France, Italy and Spain - are helping Greece fight the fires with planes, helicopters and specialist firefighters.

The European Commission's Barbara Helfferich told the BBC the firefighting effort revealed "a tremendous solidarity" between EU member states.

Treating arson as a potential act of terrorism would give authorities broader powers of investigation and arrest.

Meanwhile, police are patrolling suburban areas on the lookout for fire-starters.

The fires have gutted hundreds of homes, forcing thousands of villagers to flee and blackening hillsides.

Many people are still reported to be trapped by the fires.

Emergency crews scrambled to Frixa in western Peloponnese to rescue stricken villagers on Monday, the Associated Press reported.

A fire department spokesman told AP that 11 people were also believed to be trapped in woodland in Aigialia, in northern Peloponnese.

Charred remains of buildings, trees and once thriving agricultural communities mar the roadside for mile upon mile throughout the Peloponnese.

Ancient Olympia, the birthplace of the Olympic Games and one of the country's most revered archaeological sites, was narrowly saved from destruction by firefighters on Sunday.

Cute Picture of the Week

2007-08-27T09:48:00.001-07:00

What is more compelling than couple-week-old orphaned hedgehogs?

We've heard of inter-species adoption, but how about these tiny and still slightly blind things adopting a sweeper bristle brush as a mother.

Something good happening in China

2007-08-16T13:10:00.000-07:00

Four pandas were born in captivity in China on the same day, the state media have reported.

Xinhua News Agency said Eryatou just gave birth to two female cubs at the Chengdu giant panda breeding centre in Sichuan province.

Earlier Jiaozi gave birth to a male and a female at the same facility.

Chinese panda breeding centres, which use artificial insemination techniques, have produced 14 cubs so far this year.

Last year 34 pandas were born in captivity, 30 of which survived.

The panda is one of the world's rarest animals, with an estimated 1,590 living in the wild while another 210 have been successfully bred in captivity.

"Free Range vs. Cage Free" or "What ever happened to truth in advertising?"

2007-08-13T10:22:00.000-07:00

Turns out though that the (all too typical American marketing) term of art is "Cage Free." I guess. I mean there aren't any cages in there. Though I can't really imagine a less humane way to contain animals.

This photo appeared front and center of NYT's homepage two days ago. The article is called Suddenly the Hunt is On for Cage Free Eggs. The picture is dramatic and seems to cry out for some commentary on whether eggs from this particular hen-house can seriously qualify as "cage-free," and while we're at it, whether the distinction between "cage free" and "free range" can honestly be expected (by policy-makers and industry giants) to be made by the average consumer. It seems just one more example of diabolical marketing genius designed to mislead without being untrue in the literal sense. Which is typical and often accepted in the political and commercial contexts - but when the health and comfort of living things is in the balance, this genius seems misplaced and cruel.

The first half of the article leaves the animal-rights inclined reader feeling cold as it addresses the wisdom of cage-free operations from a financial standpoint and the frustration of various Cage Free consumers at not being able to find enough product to fill demand. The futility of such complaints glares at the frustrated reader throughout.

The Vermont ice cream maker Ben and Jerry’s got plenty of attention last September when it became the first major food manufacturer to announce it would use only cage-free eggs that have been certified humane by an inspecting organization. But the company says it will need four years to complete the switch.

“It’s not easy to find all the eggs you’re looking for,” said Rob Michalak, a spokesman for Ben and Jerry’s. “The marketplace is one where the supply needs to increase with the demand.”

At Whole Foods, shoppers have no trouble finding cage-free eggs, which are the company’s minimum standard. But there are not always enough for the Whole Foods bakeries and kitchens, which have used only cage-free eggs since 2005, said Perry Abbenante, the company’s national grocery coordinator. Whole Foods sometimes has to scale back the amount of prepared food and baked goods it makes.

“There is a lot of talk about cage-free, but are people actually buying them?” said Gene Gregory, president of the United Egg Producers. “I think the consumer walking into the grocery store sees cage-free and they cost two or three times more, and they don’t buy them.”

It takes about six months to build a cage-free operation from the ground up, including raising the chicks, said John Brunnquell, who owns Egg Innovations, based in Port Washington, Wis. The cost for a well-designed facility is about $30 a bird. Building a conventional operation with the stacks of cages known as batteries costs about $8 a bird, he said.

Converting to a cage-free operation can cost less than building anew, but it can still mean the loss of several months’ income and the complexities that come with new methods.

The second half gets more to the points I mentioned above, though still with the inevitable undertones of economics.

The eggs can cost an extra 60 cents a dozen on the wholesale market. But most chicken farmers are not ripping out cages and retrofitting their barns. They question whether the birds are really better off, saying that keeping thousands of hens in tight quarters on the floor of a building can lead to hunger, disease and cannibalism. They also say that converting requires time, money and faith that the spike in demand is not just a fad.

Officials at Notre Dame turned down a request by a campus animal rights group to switch to cage-free eggs after investigating the issue for six months.

The university, which serves 16,000 meals a day in its dining halls, visited both cage and cage-free operations, examining animal welfare, food safety, environmental impact, taste and other issues. Both operations they toured appeared to take equally good care of their chickens, said Jocie Antonelli, nutrition and safety manager.

The university decided that its current source of eggs, which uses a cage system, had the edge in food safety.

Eggs labeled organic and free-range come from chickens with access to the outdoors. But most cage-free chickens never peck in a barnyard during their lives, which last from 12 to 18 months. The term “cage free” is lightly regulated. Companies get approval to use it on their labels through the Food Safety Inspection Service of the Agriculture Department, which does not actually inspect laying operations.

“There are pros and cons to each system,” Ms. Antonelli said. “Either way, these are not free-roaming chickens living out in a pasture.”

Emphasis added in the bolded paragraph to note that in the animal industry, meat is a byproduct of such operations as egg and dairy production and that vegetarianism, though I am loathe to admit it, does not do all the work that one would hope. In the extreme example that meat is outlawed, the animals will still be raised and subjected to inhumane conditions, perhaps for longer periods of time.

Some insist that progress has been made:

“While cage-free certainly does not mean cruelty-free, it’s a significant step in the right direction,” said Paul Shapiro of the Humane Society.

I think this is true to the extent that anytime consumer protests can make enough noise to change offensive business practices, it is a step in the right direction, businesses and consumers take notice and apathy and inertia are abated. However, if you're a hen, it's hard to see that any real change has taken place.

Skepticism aside, I like this article because it exposes an important point - the incidence of companies like Whole Foods and Burger King switching to "Cage-Free" eggs and publicly complaining that supply is not meeting demand does not, in itself, mark a meaningful shift in corporate responsibility but rather the achievement of suckering consumers and paying deceptive lip service to animal rights groups. It is not what we asked for, "Cage-Free" is a trick of the trade and this article demonstrates the importance of consumer education. That in itself is a step in the right direction.

In Silicon Valley, Millionaires Who Don't Feel Rich

2007-08-06T14:23:00.000-07:00

Goes the headline yesterday in the New York Times.

This article is irritating and embarrassing (as one who is about to commence daily appearances in this neighborhood), imho, for a couple reasons.

First, the unsubstantiated complaint of 'not feeling rich' without a definition (or even an attempt at one) of what it is to feel rich. I'm not even asking that the interviewees stop to account for things like health, successful marriages, or happy children - let alone such obvious luxuries as running water, electricity, and health care. Even if we restrict the notion of 'feeling rich' to monetary wealth, as we must in order to be faithful to the article's premise, the effectiveness of the piece would be aided by some perspective.

I have been a member of an upper/middle class northern California family for my whole life, an undeniably fortunate position by virtually any standard. But still, through my naivete and skewed sense of need, wealth, and the state of "being rich" even I can see that these millionaires perhaps do 'feel rich' without knowing it. I would suggest that 'feeling rich' means not having to worry about one of the 2-3 family cars breaking down, knowing that such an event will not threaten one's employment or send one into bankruptcy. Having a paid-off house should count as 'feeling rich,' even having a back yard in this day and age and in this particular bay area community. Not having to worry about being able to afford the kids' education or a medical emergency. How can these things, particularly when taken together (after all, they come admittedly as a package deal for these not-rich-millionaires) not qualify as 'feeling rich?'

Not being able to keep up with the Joneses, history dictates, is a horribly misguided way to determine one's success or failure in life. It is a symptom of that ancient malady, greed, the perpetuation of which we have somehow still not learned to control. How it rose to the "Top 10 most emailed" list is beyond me, the only news harbored in the article for me is just how materialistic America's most wealthy communities have become and how blind to the struggles and prohibitive disadvantages suffered by those in our country and in others who truly are not rich in the monetary sense.

This is not to argue that those caught up in the Silicon Valley rat race fail to recognize just how fortunate they are. But rather that it is surprising that a publication like the New York Times would devote energy and space to such a frivolous and misguided topic. If it's meant to be serious, it's a sad commentary on the community. If it's meant to poke fun and sarcasm at the wealthy and shock the world at the selfishness of Silicon Valley executives, it is too narrow to be fair.

The second point of interest and disappointment for me came with the obvious and yet unmentioned gender divide the situation evokes. For once, the divide has nothing to do with income, but rather has to do with differing responses of men and women to SV-sized paychecks. Men tend to respond by pledging to increase their 60 hour work week to an 80 hour week in order to maintain a respectable place in the pecking order. Women, on the other hand, seem to engage in a back and forth between wondering whether they deserve such excess and worrying that their lives are passing them by and considering the possibility that perhaps a reduction in hours is called for.

Note the difference between this:

“Everyone around here looks at the people above them,” said Gary Kremen, the 43-year-old founder of Match.com, a popular online dating service. “It’s just like Wall Street, where there are all these financial guys worth $7 million wondering what’s so special about them when there are all these guys worth in the hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Mr. Kremen estimated his net worth at $10 million. That puts him firmly in the top half of 1 percent among Americans, according to wealth data from the Federal Reserve, but barely in the top echelons in affluent towns like Palo Alto, Menlo Park and Atherton. So he logs 60- to 80-hour workweeks because, he said, he does not think he has nearly enough money to ease up.

“You’re nobody here at $10 million,” Mr. Kremen said earnestly over a glass of pinot noir at an upscale wine bar here.

And this:

Celeste Baranski, a 49-year-old engineer with a net worth of around $5 million who lives with her husband in Menlo Park, no longer frets about tucking enough money away for college for their two children. Long ago she stopped bothering to balance her checkbook. When too many 18-hour days running an engineering department of 1,200 left her feeling burned out and empty, she left and gave herself 12 months off.

Yet like other working-class millionaires of Silicon Valley, she harbors anxieties about her financial future. Ms. Baranski — who was briefly worth as much as $200 million in 2000 but cashed out only $1 million before the collapse of the tech bubble — returned to work in March.

Along with two partners, she founded a software company, Vitamin D, and already she is resigned to the sleepless nights and other stresses that await her. “I ask myself all the time,” Ms. Baranski confessed, “why I do this.”

That today she is worth around $5 million, said Ms. Baranski, who helped to put herself through school cleaning houses, “was unimaginable in my 20s.”

“I always ask myself, ‘Do I deserve it?’ ” she said. “It never feels like you do, because that’s a lot of money.”

The author chalks this up to 'some people feel differently' but this is a cop out. Much remains to be said about why, while men respond with renewed aggression towards achieving that elusive income level at which he will finally be equal or superior to his contemporaries, women muse that they never expected such wealth and are not sure they deserve it or, in some cases, even want it. Men respond with jealousy, women with a different source of dissatisfaction: worry and self-doubt. Neither of which are healthy or get to the heart of any important issues.

Clearly the distinction that I have drawn may be illusory and the result of a statistically insignificant sample size. Also admittedly, hashing out the science and social implications of this dichotomy would require a measure of surveys, research, and scientific, economic, social and psychological analysis far beyond the resources of this author. However it does a disservice to readers to incorrectly dismiss the issue as a difference of opinion between purportedly identically situated individuals.

How many lost&found mallard babies does it take to fill a teacup?

2007-07-29T18:48:00.000-07:00

A pair of tiny abandoned ducklings found battling against waves after being washed out to sea are being nursed back to health - in a teacup.

The fluffy birds were saved from a watery grave when they were found by passing canoeist Chris Murray. He plucked the pair out of the sea and brought them back to land in his canoe. He then took them to Pennywell Farm, in Buckfastleigh, Devon, where they are recovering from their terrifying ordeal. The birds were washed into the sea via the Erme estuary.

Well, ok but you'd think they could splurge for a brownie pan or something right? At least a bowl. I guess it wouldn't have quite the media appeal. Both are named "George" btw.

Consumer Review: California Bar Exam (Part 1 of 2)

2007-07-29T16:57:00.000-07:00

So it's been a while. I know. I gave the bar all I had, even my "blog time." I went at it all work-o-holic style, the stereotypical hermit's lifestyle for the duration of that ultimate leg of every law student's academic career. Worth it? So far I think so. I felt prepared so I was able to relax a bit as the big week approached. Whether it helped my performance remains to be seen.

Note to law students and potential law students: The bar exam is 17000 parts hype and 3 parts stuff you actually need to worry about. Believe me when I say this because I am an expert at being a worrier. Those worry-worthy things are a) make sure you get there on time, like for all SIX sessions, b) concentrate on what you need to do to eat and hydrate and sleep well during the three days so that you will maintain consciousness ('cause by the end of July you're running on fumes and going cross-eyed even before the exam starts - 18 hrs of consciousness is not as easy as it sounds), like make a meal plan that doesn't take much extra time on your part during the exam (example 1: I'll get room service because I can afford $18 meals + tip three times a day, OR example 2: pack like you're going on a three day backpacking trip....on Everest) and c) if you're taking it at the Sac convention center - good choice, but don't be a hero. Be a slacker and sign up late so you'll be closer to the water and bathrooms. I had to walk about a quarter of a mile if I needed hydration which put me in the unenviable position akin to that of someone stranded in the middle of a desert - do I go for water and risk collapsing before I find it? And if I collapse do I risk 'them' (the seemingly kind and unassuming little old people who are tasked with securing the premises and take their job about as seriously as they do bingo-calling) calling an ambulance and eventually finding out that I've hidden forbidden nutrients in the form of PowerBar 'Gel' packets stuffed inconspicuously in my bra? Or do I stay put to conserve energy and avoid a rule 12 violation on the Gel?

Seriously, it's all in the logistics. I've heard reports of people fainting and staying unconscious for 45 minutes, I've heard all kinds of vomit stories, like that the girls bathroom on the first day sounds like sunday morning in the dorms. Don't pretend like you don't know what I'm talking about. And I've also heard of people falling asleep, particularly on the multistate. It's a bizarre exercise.

The material is vast, overwhelming even. But just keep studying. It's like a language. You won't ever be called upon to get your head around all of it at once, you just need to know how to respond or at least how to fake it convincingly (seriously, this skill is rewarded) when they throw you that triple crossover. The only way to do it is total immersion. I think.

So it's over for now. Results don't come out for a very very long time. At which point I will unveil part 2.

Let me also give a shout out to barbri who has likely never been so embarrased in the duration of its existance. Not only did they not at all correctly predict what would be on the exam....they made predictions about what would 'surely not' be on the exam that turned out to be brutal and absolute mistakes - like more than one. So the diligent among us were scrutinizing our civ pro, trusts, crim pro, and california distinctions (several new california law topics were added to the bar starting with the july sitting), letting our property, con law, and crim law outlines collect dust when really, the opposite would have been wise. We listened when Barbri said we would see anywhere from two to four MBE subjects tested on the essays (all six appeared. ALL six, with contracts tested twice). We listened when they told us there would surely be a crim pro question, but in any case no crim law. And when they mused about how con law would not be on the exam, and if it was, it would defintely not be on first amendment. So you can imagine our delight when we turned the page to essay 4, thinking surely there MUST be some cal-law questions coming up, only to find an in-your-face-bar-bri crim law/1st amendment crossover.

I never thought I'd say this, but for me, and for this particular sitting, fully 90% of the points I manage to accumulate will come from studying PMBR materials. Which brings me to my PMBR review. Get the materials on ebay or amazon or wherever. Don't pay for the course. Materials are money, but they run kind of a sketchy operation. Which is overpriced but that goes without saying in bar-review land which, by all accounts seems to be immune to anti-trust law. Although I should reserve judgment on PMBR- they were just bought by Kaplan which should reduce the sketchiness (at the same time reinforcing my suspicion about the anti-trust immunity).

Also don't believe bar bri when they say the wait for the results is the 'hardest leg' of the bar exam journey. I'm finding that it's actually not that bad so far. I mean you know, it's a little hard to sleep in ALL the way 'till 11. And I couldn't tell you where my watch is and sometimes when I have to write the date on something, I'm at a loss and feel kind of blond. That's a problem. Also, I don't think it's good for me to be spending so much guilt-free time watching TV and reading novels and magazines. I've returned to that pesky old habit of showering daily. I've received a lot of exposure to the sun lately. I'm losing touch with my old, safe defaults 'can't,' and 'not today, maybe next week,' which have been increasingly replaced with words such as 'yes,' and 'ok' and potentially 'Hi, I'd like to buy a ticket to Hawaii.' But please don't worry, I think I will pull through, despite my inexperience.

And DON'T listen to your dean of students when she responds to your comment that 'bar review isn't THAT bad' by assuring you that "oh, it'll get worse." Jealousmuch of us finally getting to feel excited that our career is just beginning, full of opportunity and paid-off loans? It's a fleeting moment Ms. O, please just let us have it.

That's it, there's really not much more to it. I'm happy to have survived. I'll be happier to survive results. Tune in this fall.

Another wild thing named George

2007-07-27T11:37:00.000-07:00

What is it about that name that makes it the default for little lost things? See post here.

Cute picture of the week

2007-07-27T11:20:00.000-07:00

I'm back. More on that later. For now I just want to introduce a new series. I try to stay away from being extra cheesy but somethings I just can't resist. I have an instinctual and uncontrollable "awwwwww! how cuooooooote" reaction to pictures like this and can't keep them to myself but don't want to spam everyone who's not interested. So here 'tis.

It's worth 'clicking to enlarge' - yup that's a mini horse under the belgian, the smallest one alive. Or so says the british press.

Where were they then?

2007-05-02T11:24:00.000-07:00

From the show that started it all (and by 'it all' I mean America's obsession with lip-synching pre-teen popstars), I bring you the stars of Kids Incorporated....

Then:

Stacy and Love on the set

And now:

Jennifer Love Hewitt

Fergie

Don't be like the MBA students

2007-05-01T08:55:00.000-07:00

Just a bit of advice I'd like to give my colleagues who are in the very midst of their final round of finals.

So Duke has produced some winners this year, hasn't it (a-hem-lacrosseteam)? Have you ever wondered how it would even be possible to cheat on an open-book, take-home exam? Well, here's how to not...

Thirty-four first-year business graduate students at Duke University cheated on a take-home final exam, a judicial board has found, in what officials called the most widespread cheating episode in the business school’s history.

The final was an open-book test in a required course in March, with students told to take the exam on their own. But many students collaborated, in violation of the school’s honor code, according to a ruling last week by the judicial board of the Fuqua School of Business at Duke.

School officials declined to identify the course, the professor or the students, citing confidentiality in judicial board matters. But they indicated that the professor had noticed similarities in the answers by the students, who are candidates for a master’s in business administration.

Nine of the students face expulsion, according to the ruling, which was distributed within the business school on Friday. Fifteen students were suspended for a year and given a failing grade in the course; nine were given a failing grade in the course, and one got a failing grade on the exam. Four students accused of cheating were exonerated.

Good news for George

2007-04-30T20:57:00.000-07:00

Which George did you think I was talking about?

The giant Galapagos tortoise that became a conservation icon when it appeared he was the last of his kind is not so alone after all.

"Lonesome George" was thought to be the only survivor of a tortoise species native to the isle of Pinta.

Now, the journal Current Biology reports the discovery of a hybrid - the offspring from the union of a Pinta tortoise and another island species.

The "new" animal thus shares about half its genes in common with George.

Unfortunately for efforts to get George to reproduce, this hybrid tortoise, recently found on Isabela isle, is also a male.

Nonetheless, its discovery in a relatively small sample of tortoises raises fresh hope for the future of George's species (Geochelone abingdoni).

A more thorough sampling of the 2,000 tortoises living on Isabela could yet reveal a genetically pure Pinta tortoise, say the researchers.

Destination, Lithuania

2007-04-28T09:20:00.000-07:00

Vilnius, Lithuania is billed in the Times today as the poor man's Paris. It's a good article and makes me think the town has a little more originality than that.

"The night life is lively and unpretentious..." And as if that weren't enough, I do believe that's a Red Bull sign above the bar.

More pictures and full text available at this link.

Small World

2007-04-27T21:00:00.000-07:00

View from the Albany condo:

View from the Samos house:

Copycat threat revisited

2007-04-26T09:54:00.000-07:00

A letter from our dean re: the Boalt student who's hoax disrupted Hastings School of Law last week. Prior post here.

April 25, 2007

To: Boalt Community

From: Dean Christopher Edley, Jr.

It has been a week since the distressing events involving a Boalt
student’s threat —a hoax — against the community at Hastings College of
the Law. I am writing to let you know that all our actions following the
incident have been taken with the intention of securing the safety and
well-being of our community and that at Hastings, while respecting the
procedural rights of the student.

On Wednesday, April 25, 2007, the Law School filed a complaint with the
U.C. Berkeley Judicial Affairs Office against the law student who
claimed responsibility for posting the threat on a website. We, the
administrative leadership of Boalt, believe that the student’s action is
clearly in violation of a number of regulations detailed in the Student
Code of Conduct. The case will be adjudicated by Judicial Affairs
according to campus regulations. Those regulations prohibit us from
disclosing the name of the student against whom we are proceeding.

Based on the facts as we understand them today, we have recommended
expulsion. This is based not only on the intrinsic wrongfulness of the
act itself, but also the disruption, turmoil and emotional toll on the
Hastings community and, to a more limited extent, the Boalt community as
well. I have received ample evidence of this through a great many
emails, some of them painful to read.

This incident has once again confirmed for me the strength and qualities
of the Boalt community. Even in this challenging circumstance, you have
engaged in thoughtful and productive discussions. We should all take
some pride in this, imperfect though we are.

Christopher Edley, Jr.
Professor of Law and Dean

I was a little surprised to hear the school has settled on expulsion as the recommended course of action so soon, though I do believe it's warranted (maybe) if we're looking only at punishment and deterrence. From a policy standpoint though, expulsion would send a strong message to people like Trustafarian that the best course of action when one realizes the full ramifications and costs of one's mistake is to stay silent, lest you be made an example. Think about how much worse the situation would have gotten, how much more costly, how much greater a toll would've been exacted on Hastings students on the cusp of final exams and graduation had this guy not come forward so soon. That he did should be good for something. A public apology, as some have suggested, would have been worth even more - but would perhaps have been as bad for the perpetrator as expulsion since breaking his anonymity will inevitably tarnish his legal career for a very long time. It may be too late already to salvage his 'character' since state bars typically require disclosure of any 'non scholastic' school discipline. I.e. disciplinary discipline as opposed to grades-based discipline. On the other hand, I've never heard of anyone not getting into the bar because of a line item on their moral character and fitness application. Which is not to say it doesn't happen but my guess is that it's rare. In any case, this whole episode has been an oft forgotten lesson as to how seriously jokes, mistakes, and lapses of judgment and character are taken in this community.

I have to commend the system for an air-tight job keeping the name of the perpetrator confidential. None of the student-run threads or blogs in the Boalt or Hastings communities have come up with a name. That said, it can be (only speculatively) narrowed down to 3-4 people in the facebook based on uncorroborated self-descriptions Trustafarian has left over the past several months on AutoAdmit.

Note that the word in the halls these days is that Edly's (perhaps draconian) recommendation is really a strategic ploy to come off as hard-on-crime when everyone is aware that the notoriously flaccid Judicial Affairs won't really kick him out.

Alcohol makes fruit healthier

2007-04-21T12:03:00.000-07:00

Sweet. Bring the Vegas-sized pomegranate cosmos.

But there must be a downside, right?

[Strawberries contain] compounds that can protect against cancer, heart disease and arthritis.

But having them with alcohol, such as in a daiquiri, boosts these antioxidant properties, the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture says.

The researchers, from the Kasetsart University in Thailand and the US Department of Agriculture Research Service, were actually looking for more effective ways of keeping fruit fresh during storage.

They found that treating strawberries with alcohol enhanced the antioxidant capacity within the fruit - which boosts the fruit's power to neutralise destructive molecules called free radicals - by a third.

Free radicals are highly reactive oxygen molecules which damage DNA and cell membranes.

They are linked to a wide range of diseases and are thought to be one of the chief causes of ageing.

Treating blackberries in the same ways also had beneficial effects.

Still good....ok, here's the downside:

"Whilst this study suggests that consuming strawberries with alcohol increases the antioxidant capacity, there are clearly detrimental effects of consuming alcohol in terms of cell damage.

"So any potential antioxidant benefits may be cancelled out by the potential liver damage caused by too much alcohol.

Whilst? Seriously? Who would take advice from someone that uses the word "whilst?" Clearly they are channeling a time long before the advent of modern medicine.

And here's the let-me-rain-on-your-parade-by-mentioning-that-the-same-advantages-of -wine-can-be-obtained-by-eating-grapes bit of psychobable:

But Dr Frankie Phillips of the British Dietetic Association said: "It's well known that some preparation of fruit and veg can enhance the availability of nutrients and other plant chemicals including antioxidants.

"For example, cooking tomatoes or stir frying pepper facilitates availability of the lycopene and beta-carotene they contain.

"That's why the five-a-day message states to include a variety of fruit and veg as fresh, frozen, juice, dried and canned, and encourages different preparations."

Oh stop.

Please note that Dr. Phillips is the one who said 'whilst.'

Loose cannon at boalt high

2007-04-20T20:27:00.001-07:00

I haven't posted anything about the Virginia massacre because the more I think about it, the more moments of visceral empathy I experience, the more convinced I become that nothing I could write in a few sentences could do the situation justice. It's truly an unimaginable catastrophe and I don't want to trivialize it by posting a few pictures or a link. I think everyone has been pretty well appraised of the events as they've unfolded by the media and I mention it now only because it's been made into a backdrop for the drama that's unfolded over the last 48 hours on our own turf at Boalt.

I've visited law-related threads on AutoAdmit (self-billed, somewhat ironically, as "the most prestigious college admissions discussion board in the world") before and have been unpleasantly surprised to find that the maturity level of the discussions often bears an uncanny resemblance to that of the the yahoo chat rooms I remember from high school. Wednesday, someone on the message board spouted off some empty threats, meant as a joke, about a copycat VA attack on Hastings Law School. Turns out, it was one of our own.

The person whose threats of violence shuttered Hastings College of the Law on Wednesday was a student at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law, according to officials at both schools.

The message was headed, "Just decided not to do a murder-suicide copycat at Hastings Law" and was authored by a user called "Trustafarian," who went on to write, "I went to bed all set for 'Bloody Wednesday,' but when I woke -- to sun, to flowers in bloom -- I just couldn't bring myself to suit up. Maybe tomorrow; I hear rain's in the forecast."

Hastings officials closed the law school Wednesday after being made aware of the threat and increased security in the wake of the incident, according to [Hastings Dean} Newton. The heightened security will remain in effect through the end of the school year, she wrote in the e-mail to students.

In Edley's [Dean of Boalt Hall] e-mail to Newton, he expressed his "deep regret and sympathy," to the Hastings community for "the anxiety and upset," created by the posting.

The FBI and San Francisco Police Department determined that the suspect "does not pose a risk to others," Edley wrote, and continue to "investigate whether criminal charges are appropriate."

Regardless of the criminal investigation, Edley said, the school will consider disciplinary proceedings against the student.

While this 'joke' was an unbelievable and costly display of bad judgment, insensitivity, and recklessness, there are mitigating circumstances. The post came down within 10 minutes and the student made an immediate confession permitting the assurance of the comment being a joke almost before news of the threat got out. I, for one, didn't hear about the threat until I received Dean Edley's email reassuring the Boalt community that the suspect and circumstances had been investigated by the FBI, no less, and were not considered a legitimate threat. I don't have any sympathy for whoever this is and the massive trouble they've gotten themselves into, but I'm also not proud of some of my classmates' reactions.

Much of the Boalt community is understandably enraged, but some are responding with a maturity level similar to that of the mystery 1L and a total disregard for all things "due process." Concern about rank, reputation, convinced this person should be barred from the profession forever or at least socially ostracized during the rest of his time in law school. There are threats to post his name on a Boalt blog and make his life a living hell forever more. Also some blog commenters have made the excellent point that Boalties have publicly slammed Hastings for far more docile offenses and today, not an ill word about Boalt can be found on popular Hastings blogs and bulliten boards.

High school never ends, indeed.

I'm betting a name will come out in the next week or two. These things have a way of doing that. Note that it is widely speculated, from this guy's own writings and other similarly unconfirmable and uncorroborated evidence, that "he" is a white male.

I think anyone with such an extreme deficit of common sense, discretion, intelligence and maturity is going to learn his or her lesson soon enough. Particularly in the highly competitive and hyper-critical world of law. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of assholes in the profession, but really, unless this person is smart enough to learn a lesson now and get his attitude in check, he won't have a good time of this profession, even if he does manage to survive law school. We live in a paranoid world. And no one should know that better than a lawyer.

Consumer Review - Diet CokePlus

2007-04-18T18:05:00.000-07:00

I have an acquired taste (regrettable passion?) for diet soda which makes what I have to say about DietCokePlus all the more sad.

The first disappointing thing about it is the label. The front is nice, "plus" is in rainbow letters, that's cute. I like the choice of seabreeze blue for the accents and cap. "Diet Coke with Vitamins & Minerals," it says. But then you turn to the Nutrition Facts on the back and realize you can probably get more vitamins and minerals out of a tablespoon of the water from your showerhead. Or maybe, depending on your cleaning habits, from the showerhead itself.

Per 8oz serving...
Niacin - 15% Daily value
Vitamin B6 - 15%
Vitamin B12 - 15%
Magnesium - 10%
Zinc - 10%

Notably completely absent are vitamin A, calcium, iron, and perhaps the most commonly (i.e. easily and cheaply) dissolved vitamin in prepackaged food and food-like products, vitamin C.

Also notably, in the ingredient lineup, coloring, aspartame (nutrasweet), and caffeine all occur in greater amounts than any of the above vitamins & minerals.

So if you were expecting a significant dose of anti-oxidants, this isn't for you. If you were looking for cough syrup that comes in coke flavor, this is a close substitute, which brings me to my second disappointment. Diet beverages are usually 'too sweet' but this is off the charts, and I think it only comes in "diet." I would recommend adding a cup of tap water to every 20oz bottle in order to dilute the aspartame and and top off the minerals.

Cognition Enhancers

2007-04-17T20:09:00.000-07:00

How have I not heard about this? Modafinil, is said to improve a range of brain functions including memory, concentration, and ability to learn.

The drug is not without dissenters.

New drugs that can boost brainpower could be given to children by pushy parents, it was claimed yesterday.

There are also fears that high- flying professionals might take the "cognition enhancers" to gain a competitive edge at work.

The warnings came as [British] Government backed researchers examine the potential of the drugs which previous research has shown to improve memory, concentration and learning ability.

There are some side effects, of course...like brain damage.

Critics say users can put themselves at risk of sleep deprivation and suffer damage to their brain and central nervous systems.

And it may be addictive.

But this is America, so bring it.

In the U.S., cognition drugs are taken by people such as long-distance truckers, students and taxi drivers because it 'turns off' the need to sleep while allowing them to remain mentally alert for days.

In the UK it's used only for narcolepsy. And it's been banned by the International Olympic committee.

Despite potential problems, researchers are optimistic about marketability:
t looked at the potential development of cognitive enhancers over the next 20 years and concluded they could become as "common as coffee".

Well ok, let's not get carried away. Maybe as common as no-doz. Which is totally passe. It would probably help sales a bit if they use this as a tag line:

Research carried out at Cambridge University in 2002 found that healthy volunteers taking modafinil scored higher on computer games designed to test their mental functions than those given a placebo.

But check out the pills - they may not need any creative sales strategies. This stuff couldn't look more like E if it was dyed blue and yellow.

Yes, I think it says "mod" in a cutesey font. Shameless.

And while we're on the topic, I should mention Robert Wright's hypothesis that there's a positive correlation between the amount of Prozac (and other SSRI's) in the world, and the amount of email. No joke. Well, sort of a joke, but he makes a good point. Here's the link.

Zach Braff - actor, director, and model. Who knew?

2007-04-16T18:37:00.000-07:00

My better half thinks I have a crush on this guy. But really I just admire his work. And he looks really good in bowling shirts, turns out....

In case you like what you see, I'll include some price points.

Jacket - $3,995 by Giorgio Armani

Jacket - $1,450 by Dolce & Gabana

Pants - $168 by Juicy

Priceless

Isn't it arbitrary....

2007-04-16T18:19:00.000-07:00

...when the same week Imus is fired for saying "nappy-headed hos," the
Supreme Court decides not to hear the appeal of a man who was fired for
complaining too much about a white co-worker who referred to the
snipers who ran amok in Washington DC in Oct 2002 by saying:

"They should put those two black monkeys in a cage with a bunch of black apes and let the apes [sexually assault] them,"

Was
this somehow less bad than Imus? It was certainly less "celebrity." But
it was 'uttered' (<-- legal term meaning 'said') at work to a somewhat captive audience. Then again, the co-worker was talking about murderers. I think I've said before that I'm a fan of free speech, but with freedom comes responsibility not to be an ignorant prick. My thoughts are that Imus had it coming...although I'm not sure why this particular jab was the one that got him thrown out. Power of the media perhaps? As for the Court, from the little I know about the incident, I think they made the right decision. Full article here.

Consumer Review - Kinky Boots

2007-04-15T08:30:00.000-07:00

No one can mix a risque topic with a feel good lesson about life like the british. In the spirit of The Full Monty and Calendar Girls they've done it again with Kinky Boots. It's hot. That's really all there is to it. And it makes me want to go out and buy shoes. But it doesn't take much to make me want to buy shoes. The previews give away all the epic soundbytes ("sex isn't supposed to be comfortable!") but I still laughed at one and all.

Characteristically priceless advice from the CODE Prophet

2007-04-14T13:02:00.000-07:00

Perhaps you've noticed that for a bar-inspired blog, this one has had precious little to do with the bar thus far. That's because I was trying not to say anything about it, whether in real life or the www until graduation. But alas, we can't all be purists.

I write now to convey some well reasoned and wise advice from a certain esteemed, brilliant, and french upholstery-enamoured professor (who passed the NY bar w/ a week of study, btw):

"BarBri teaches you way more than you need to pass the bar. If you think about it, knowing to much could be harmful. If you really know the law you'll end up doing badly on the Multistate [day-long, super-tricky multiple choice section referred to by the founder of PMBR as "one atomic skull-crusher after another for six hours"] because you'll realize that either none of the answer choices are true or that more than one is."

This guy is my idol, if for no other reason than because he never fails to remind one of one's mediocrity.

On Marriage

2007-04-14T12:48:00.000-07:00

This is brilliant.

Consumer Review - Enviga

2007-04-13T14:22:00.000-07:00

I've been eyeing it in the supermarket, I've been blogging about it, I've been innundated with the posters at the gym (it's marketed in there as a "workout in a can," essentially). And today I tried it for the first time. Green Tea flavor. Conditions were perfect, it was ice cold, I'd been in a hot car for over an hour (with an hour to go) - there was no excuse for it not to hit the spot. But despite this, it was so unbearably gross that notwithstanding my desperation for something refreshing (and caffinated - my only entertainment for this roadtrip was the PMBR property lecture), I was forced to reach for my half-day-old luke warm coffee instead. Here's the best description I've been able to compose: It's like someone threw some alka-seltzer tablets into diet tonic water and then added more nutra-sweet (specifically the kind in the pink packages) and some tannins. Chalky and dry with that bizzare plasticy-saccharine aftertaste, it truly made me feel a little sick.

Bottom line: At a buck fifty a pop, I don't care how many calories it burns or how much EGCG and calcium is dissolved in there - I'd rather go for a run or pay the $2 for a sugar-free Red Bull. That stuff is money.

Selective enforcement

2007-04-12T08:40:00.000-07:00

Cocaine (the energy drink) has been deemed 'illegal' by the FDA. The problem seems to be that the company is making drug-like claims without having approval from the FDA from a drug-like product rather than simply a food product. But I think the real problem is that the FDA is uncomfortable with the marketing. It has the same name as an illegal drug, unlike 'red bull,' 'enviga,' or 'go girl.' And a suggestive font (read on).

This Cocaine is an energy drink produced by a Las Vegas company. It contains no actual cocaine but is being marketed as "The Legal Alternative" to the illegal drug, according to its website. Its logo appears to be spelled out in a white powder that resembles the drug.

The Food and Drug Administration said Redux Beverages was illegally marketing the drink as a street drug alternative and a dietary supplement, according to a warning letter dated April 4 that was released Wednesday. The FDA cites as evidence the drink's labeling and website, which include the statements "Speed in a
Can," "Liquid Cocaine" and "Cocaine — Instant Rush," according to the letter.

I've tried a lot of energy drinks and I don't know of many that don't make drug-like claims, take enviga which will boost your metabolism, and is "proven to help you burn calories." If this isn't a medical claim, I don't know what is. Plus it "provides 20% of the daily value for calcuim." How is this not marketing the drink as a dietary supplement? Note that milk makes a similar claim about calcium. And I think you could qualify just about anything we consume "street drug alternatives?"

In addition, dietary supplements cannot carry claims to prevent or treat a disease — something only drugs can do, according to the letter. The Cocaine website lists an ingredient called inositol and says it reduces cholesterol and helps prevent hardening of the arteries, among other health claims, the FDA said.

While we're at it, lets reclassify honey nut cherrios and quaker oatmeal.

"Your product, Cocaine, is a drug," the three-page letter reads in part. It's also a new drug and as such cannot be sold without FDA approval. In addition, the FDA said, the product is mislabeled because it doesn't include "adequate directions for its intended uses."

Drug yes. More of a drug than coffee or alcohol? No. Warnings I'll buy, I don't want kids to be having panic attacks or being rushed to the hospital in the middle of school and god knows the marketing poses a danger that the stuff will be over-used, but this is not the kind of thing anyone expects to find in the "No-Doze" or Vitamin section. If the FDA has a problem w/ the marketing and lack of warnings, that's fine, but by classifying the drink as a drug for the reasons in the letter, their regulations become unconstitutionally vague and overbroad (thank you PMBR). A better option would be getting the AG to prosecute for 'time place manner' violations in advertizing. Oh, the AG is tied up right now? My bad. Cheers.

When tax cuts become a Democratic platform

2007-04-09T19:13:00.000-07:00

An idea whose time has come. Again, and again, and again.

The good:

Between now and the end of May, House Democratic leaders hope to draft a permanent overhaul of the [Alternative Minimum Tax] that would effectively exclude anyone who earns less than about $200,000 a year — about 97 percent of taxpayers.

The bad:

But that plan would leave a $1 trillion hole in the federal budget over the next decade, which Democrats would have to replace with revenues from other places or with spending cuts, under new “pay as you go” budget rules. Just postponing the expansion of the tax for one more year would reduce revenues by about $50 billion, according to Congressional budget projections.

And the ugly...

After his re-election in 2004, Mr. Bush vowed to overhaul the income tax and abolish the alternative minimum tax as part of the process. But even though he received recommendations from a handpicked advisory panel, Mr. Bush ignored the proposals and never came out with a plan of his own.

Well, I can see as how that would be difficult, what with not even being able to come up with a thought of his own. Oh but I exaggerate, I guess the war was his idea.

The Democrats themselves are divided on how to alter the alternative minimum tax. The Democrats’ chief tax-writer in the Senate, Max Baucus of Montana, has shown little enthusiasm for replacing it with tax increases in other areas. Earlier this year,... Mr. Grassley introduced a bill that would repeal the tax entirely, without trying to recoup the lost revenue from tax increases elsewhere. Mr. Baucus joined in sponsoring that bill.

Gramm-Rudman who?

And in yet another moment of lucid congressional logic...

“You’re talking about replacing a hidden tax which most people don’t even know about with an explicit tax,” said Leonard Burman, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute. “On policy grounds, it’s a good idea. On political grounds, it’s a lot easier to have the tax hidden.”

Good plan! Making the code so complex that the public doesn't even know they're paying taxes is certainly air-tight public policy.

Why is this not a bipartisan issue? Blame the Dems for this radical leftist plague of fiscal conservatism.

The House Democrats’ embrace of tax-cutting rhetoric stems in part from a pragmatic consideration: the alternative minimum tax has a disproportionate impact on Democratic-leaning states. That is because those states tend to have higher incomes, higher property values and higher state and local taxes — all factors that expose people under the alternative tax formula.

A new analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice, a liberal research group, predicts that almost one-quarter of all taxpayers in Connecticut, New Jersey and Massachusetts will have to pay the alternative tax in 2007 unless Congress freezes it again. About one-fifth of all taxpayers in New York and California would be exposed.

RIP AMT

Vitamins are still bad for you

2007-04-08T20:41:00.000-07:00

The battle of the experts (for grant $'s and patents) continues...

Looking at dozens of previous studies, Copenhagen University researchers suggested these appeared to raise, not lower, the risk of early death.

A supplements industry expert said the Journal of the American Medical Association study was fatally flawed.

But nutritionists said it reinforced the need to eat a balanced diet, rather than relying on supplements.

Note: this article doesn't offer much that wasn't included in the link from a previous post. BBC is behind the Times on this one. Ha ha.

Beijing's Penis Emporium

2007-04-08T20:34:00.000-07:00

I guess boiled sheep testicles were just the beginning. This is completely grotesque, don't read it if you've eaten anything in the last hour. Do read it frequently if you're trying to lose weight because it's a guaranteed appetite supressant. I couldn't finish it and I've got a pretty strong stomach. Don't tell me how it ends.

Stern and Malakar deserve each other

2007-03-31T13:58:00.000-07:00

Ok, back to Sanjaya, one last time. I am loathe to revisit this
pseudo-saga because I don't much like this kid and would prefer to just
ignore him. I consider myself generally a pretty tolerant person. And
I'm particularly tolerant of guys who can sing. But I don't like his
voice, I don't like his look, I don't like his performance style, in
fact, he's kind of like a tick - I just don't want to deal, you know?
It's BORING and annoying and weird. And I really don't like all this
gimmicky cheap-fame VFTW fuss.

So why do I join the fray? To take Howard Stern to task. IMHO, he has just totally annihilated any credibility he had left by assuming he is influential enough and smart enough to "corrupt the entire thing."

“All of us are routing ‘American Idol.’ It’s so great. The No. 1 show in television and it’s getting ruined.”

By promoting Mr. Malakar, Mr. Stern says, he hopes to turn the talent competition into a farce and destroy its popularity.

I have at least two problems with this. The first is that he treats the whole concept as if it's his brand
new brain-child and perhaps the most brilliant thing that has ever been
thought, ever. Second problem is that VFTW doesn't work. Neither the
group, nor Stern, came up with this idea yesterday. It started three
seasons ago and ultimately the most genuinely popular contestant still
wins. Not necessarily the best (see the Ruben and Taylor years), but
the one who wins our hearts. If Sanjaya wins, it won't be because some
obnoxious attention-and-maturity-starved group of kids that have too
much spite and too much time on their hands conspire to collectively dial
in every week. Aside: I often wonder just how big the contingency is
and whether it holds a candle to home-town contingencies, vote for the
cutest guy or girl contingencies, and other fanatic groups that don't
get as much press but that probably have similar success... Back to the point: If he wins it will be because
enough people (you know who you are....Althouse, L, and the crying girl) genuinely adore him. God help them.

These are not empty threats Mr. Stern. There is a mathematical proof that explains why the VFTW
candidate can't prevail and it goes like this. When voters have a dozen
people to choose from, it's easier for any organized group to amass a
simple majority. But as the field narrows and fans of good performers
have to choose one out of two or three, they concentrate in larger
numbers on the better contestants. Also, people start
to care more towards the end of the show because the stakes seem higher
and more tangible. And they start voting. So if it comes down to Sanjaya and Blake, VFTW is going to have to outnumber those against VFTW + those for Blake.*

*I imagine (and hope) it's possible for this whole Stern thing to have a "Newsom effect" whereby people opposed to VFTW
suddenly take notice that they better start proactively guarding their
values by passing constitutional amendments against the heathens. For
example, I'm definitely planning to start voting to combat this radical
and unhealthy movement. Maybe.

Has Mr. Stern's endorsement made a difference? The founder of VFTW claims yes, unsurprisingly.

According to Mr. Della Terza, votefortheworst.com
had been receiving a million or so hits per “Idol” show this season;
that number jumped to more than three million after his first
appearance on Mr. Stern’s show.

But he forgets to mention that if you visit the mail bag full of comments on votefortheworst.com,
messages left by these 2 million more people reveal a virulent hatred
toward the group and what it's doing. The 'comments' are comprised
almost entirely of misspelled and grammarless complaints and lawsuit threats as infantile and misguided as the group itself.

Ok,
that's my rant, I'm really going to try to stay away from this whole
mess now. It makes me irritable. My pics for the top three: Blake,
Melinda,Jordin. In that order.

Get your elitist patriot propaganda off my treadmill

2007-03-30T10:40:00.000-07:00

Gone are the days when finishing a marathon is challenge enough. A woman is about to attempt the Boston on the international space station 210 miles above the Earth. Why not just do it in Boston, you ask? Well, two reasons really. One is that you don't really need to be in Boston to compete in the Boston. Two is that she's simultaneously trying to break the record for longest continuous time spent in space of any American ever.

An American astronaut will run this year's Boston Marathon on board the International Space Station.

Sunita Williams, 41, a US Navy commander, will be tied to a treadmill to combat the effect of weightlessness.

She qualified for a place by finishing last year's Houston Marathon in three hours 29 minutes and 57 seconds.

But she blasted off on board the Discovery space shuttle in December, prompting her decision to try to run the race in space on 16 April.

This is nice, I guess, to allow her to compete. I wouldn't begrudge her that chance since she's clearly qualified and has gone through a lot to make it happen. But, what's the point, exactly? Doesn't it turn into a completely different exercise when you're running in zero gravity? Even if you're strapped to a treadmill....no wind resistance, climate control, regulated oxygen level, maybe a cath, you could sort of float above the treadmill as the miles tick by. And doesn't the treadmill itself add a bit of fallacy to the whole thing by enabling you to be hyper aware and in control of things like your pace, incline (and note, no decline possible), stride, time, etc.? Plus, there will be no weight bearing which is pretty much what sets running apart from things like swimming and cycling (also, it seems to frustrate her complaint that she won't have a bath waiting at the end).

So what does the Boston Athletic Association have to say about the attempt? Well, Jack Fleming of the BAA is setting his own record for the most offensively misguided digs that could possibly be packed into one short sentence.

For Suni to choose to run the 26.2 miles (42.2km) in space on Patriots Day is really a tribute to the thousands of marathoners who are running here on Earth."

Ok, first, wtf does patriots day have to do with it? And second, I'm pretty sure this is not about the runners on earth. It's about running in space. She's doing it for herself, for the Navy, to set a record, but not for the people on Earth. There's not much remarkable or tribute-worthy about running on Earth anymore, precisely because of what she's doing.
This whole thing is a little strange - this performance, though obviously a test of physical and mental strength and stamina, really doesn't seem to quite count as running. Not only because of the things I alluded to above, it also raises a whole litany of potential injuries and difficulties that differ from those suffered by marathon runners:

Nasa has built a "vibration isolation system" to keep the space station steady as Ms Williams runs, but this places extra strain on the runner's hips and shoulders.

"That harness gets hard on her back and her shoulders or her hips," said the astronaut's sister, Dina Pandya.

"Her foot was going numb because the strap was on her hip so much."

I think my problem with this is that it's arbitrary and not really about 'running' the 'Boston' marathon. It seems suspiciously like a 'rally 'round the flag' publicity stunt. Apparently great lengths are gone to in order to accommodate qualifiers who can't actually be in Boston for the marathon. And the only example given is that US soldiers abroad are given the chance to compete by being sent care packages of finishing line, watter bottles, and trophies. Which is nice. But when did marathons become marketing billboards for Patriots Day and US troops and war and astronauts?

I have a plan that would fix everything without expanding the fiction.... that is without expanding it beyond what is clearly already acceptable. Instead of saying she's running the Boston marathon when she's actually 210 miles away from Boston, she should just say she's 'continuously' in outer space by fudging the detail that she spent a day in Boston...

But lest I miss a chance to exploit such a fine-tuned loophole, I'm going to complete the Boston Marathon by sitting on my ass for five hours strait finishing up my workshop papers. On Patriot's day of course. And to simulate running I will consume nothing but Gatorade and that Cliff goo until hour 4 when the sustinance stations close up.

"A little [alcohol] may be better than none...

2007-03-28T12:02:00.000-07:00

...but a lot is worse than a little." So don't be a lush.

Last year, with the support of the Unilever Health Institute in the Netherlands (Unilever owns Lipton Tea), a panel of experts on nutrition and health published a “Beverage Guidance System” in hopes of getting people to stop drinking their calories when those calories contribute little or nothing to their health and may actually detract from it.

Other items of note:

Coffee is truly majestical. Up to 30oz of coffee a day is advantageous w/ few downsides, but don't drink the expensive stuff like french-pressed or espresso....

Several good studies have linked regular coffee consumption to a reduced risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, colorectal cancer and, in men and in women who have not taken postmenopausal hormones, Parkinson’s disease.

Most studies have not linked a high intake of either coffee or caffeine to heart disease, even though caffeinated coffee raises blood pressure somewhat and boiled unfiltered coffee (French-pressed and espresso) raises harmful LDL and total cholesterol levels.

Caffeine itself is not thought to be a problem for health or water balance in the body, up to 400 milligrams a day (the amount in about 30 ounces of brewed coffee).

Mice prone to an Alzheimer’s-like disease were protected by drinking water spiked with caffeine equivalent to what people get from five cups of coffee a day. And a study of more than 600 men suggested that drinking three cups of coffee a day protects against age-related memory and thinking deficits.

Back to alcohol...

Moderate consumption — one drink a day for women and two for men — has been linked in many large, long-term studies to lower mortality rates, especially from heart attacks and strokes, and may also lower the risk of Type 2 diabetes and gallstones. The panel found no convincing evidence that one form of alcohol, including red wine, was better than another.

Coffee is even better than milk (but water still comes out on top).

[The panel] rated low-fat and skim milk third, below water and coffee and tea, as a preferred drink and said dairy drinks were not essential to a healthy diet. The panel acknowledged the benefits of milk for bone density, while noting that unless people continue to drink it, the benefit to bones of the calcium and vitamin D in milk is not maintained.

Tea.

Tea lowers cancer risk in experimental animals, but the effects in people are unknown. It may benefit bone density and help prevent kidney stones and tooth decay. And four or five cups of black tea daily helps arteries expand and thus may improve blood flow to the heart.

Soy milk.

“Fortified soy milk is a good alternative for individuals who prefer not to consume cow milk,” the panel said, but cautioned that soy milk cannot be legally fortified with vitamin D and provides only 75 percent of the calcium the body obtains from cow’s milk.

American Idol meets The Story of Orange

2007-03-27T20:27:00.000-07:00

Does anyone else think Sanjaya looked like the Sunbow fairy tonight?

beef hormones = infertility

2007-03-27T19:54:00.000-07:00

As a rule, I try to avoid being propaganda-ish, absolutist, or pushy, but this isn't far from the truth, turns out. As if the world needed another reason to be vegetarian.

Scientists have produced evidence to suggest that Europe was right to ban the beef industry from using growth promoters to increase yield.

A US study has linked use of the chemicals to damage to human sperm.

It was only a matter of time...

2007-03-27T18:50:00.000-07:00

Before blog commentators started making anonymous death threats.

Prominent blogger Kathy Sierra has called on the blogosphere to combat the culture of abuse online.

It follows a series of death threats which have forced her to cancel a public appearance and suspend her blog.

Ms Sierra described on her blog how she had been subject to a campaign of threats, including a post that featured a picture of her next to a noose.

I don't mean to make light of this but I'm actually surprised it doesn't happen more often.

And forgive me for being critical in the face of potentially grave circumstances, but this:

"I agonised about making this post but I hoped it would start a dialogue," she told the BBC News website.

"I never thought it would become so big or be this positive," she said.

While blogging feuds are common, she believes the campaign against her is more likely to be because she is a woman in the male-dominated technology world.

Coupled with the facts that she stopped her blog for a while and cancelled appearances, seems inconsistent with this...

"If you want to do something about it, do not tolerate the kind of abuse that includes threats or even suggestions of violence (especially sexual violence). Do not put these people on a pedestal. Do not let them get away with calling this "social commentary", "protected speech", or simply "criticism"," she said on her blog.

Another prominent blogger, author, and speaker, Roger von Oech has experienced similar troubles with public exposure:

One of the weirdest and spookiest packages I received was from a reader who had gone through "A Whack on the Side of the Head" and cut out many of the drawings in the book. He then cut out the eyes in the drawings and pasted the drawings on a piece of cardboard with the note: "These people all look dead. Do you like death, Roger? Would you like to be dead?" No return address. Just a cowardly act.

You shake your head, speak out against it, take preventive measures, and move forward.

Probably the numbers of celebrities and quasi-celebrities that make it through their 15 minutes without at least a few such threats is low. So was Sierra right to publicize the incident on an international scale? Will this make such behavior more or less likely in the future? Was she right to speculate that it's all about gender? Or is she at once hypocritically glorifying the cowards that do this kind of thing and crying victim at a time when feminism desperately needs a voice of bravery and maturity?

Probably when all is said and done, speaking up is a good thing. Exposing the issue and rallying people against something as potentially serious as death threats can result in positive change. The linked article reveals that at least one blogger has eliminated the option to post anonymously on his blog. It's a step.

But let's be frank, this episode has indeed put the perpetrators on a pedestal. Bad actors like this are not seeking fame in the sense that most of us understand it, they aim to invoke some perversion of respect and fear, rather than adoration. Look at John Mark Karr's false confession to the murder of JonBenet Ramsey. Any exposure at all feeds this culture. Public criticism and anger is not a deterrent, it's exactly what they're looking for. So what is needed, it seems, is exposure only insofar as it effects meaningful techniques to prohibit the behavior.

Lest anyone be confused, I am a fan of free speech, but I also think the 'time, place, manner' restriction is appropriate in circumstances like this. Though I also question the potential for effective enforcement of such a restriction in a medium like the blogosphere.

"Sweat equity may be the best social security"

2007-03-25T12:05:00.000-07:00

And maybe, in the case of me and my contemporaries, the only social security.
Inspiring...

84 year old triathelete:

[At age 54,] a stress test had detected an irregular heartbeat, and the doctor felt that sustained aerobic activity such as running — not Bell's old love, golf — would fix the problem.

Yeah, 'cause golf = NOT exercise. L, you should start running between tees. Or do a lap around the course every time you go OOB. It'll be like a drinking game. Only not.

He began logging 11 to 12 miles before work every day and began building an athletic r–sum– of 158 marathons and ultra runs, including 14 marathons in one year.

Before long, the father of three and grandfather of eight would set his sights on the most exalted "letterman's sweater" in the endurance sports world: A Hawaii Ironman finisher's T-shirt.

Today, he has 17 of them — 32 counting non-Hawaii Ironmans.

In 2003, at 80, he retired from Ironman competitions — but not from triathlon.

"My advice to anyone is simple," Bell says. "Keep moving. I call it the 'lawnmower theory.' If you leave a lawnmower out on the grass and it rains, you better get out and push that thing before it gets rusty.

84 year old marathon runner:

When Davis won the 75-to-79 age group in 6 hours, 3 minutes, even beating the men, the cat was out of the bag. She and her youngest daughter, Colleen Heublein, now 51, began training together in earnest, starting with a climb up Mt. Whitney to celebrate Davis' 80th birthday that August.

Eight months later, after running side-by-side the whole race, Davis dropped Colleen at mile 22 and won the 80-and-older age group at the 2003 marathon in an eye-opening personal record of 5:37:15, again beating all the 75-year-olds, men and women.
Since then, Davis has run five more marathons — three L.A.s and two San Diego Rock 'n' Rolls — and 10 half-marathons. Her time of 5:42:49 in 2005 was recognized as the fastest marathon in history for any 82-year-old in the U.S.

Davis says she can't afford to slow down. "I hear rumors of a woman up north who can run a sub-five marathon — and she's 84 too. She'd clean my clock if she came down here."

"My real secret is cod liver oil," she says. "When I was 12, it cleared up the terrible psoriasis we'd get in the cold New Jersey winters. Ever since, I've taken a couple spoonfuls of the cherry flavor nearly every morning — and haven't had an outbreak since."

...because nothing can hamper a marathon training program like.....psoriasis...? I wonder if that comes in vegetarian?

There are also stories about an 88 year old swimmer and a 94 year old cyclist. But I have to stop, I'm starting to feel like a slacker and have a strange craving to go hang out with the old people in the lap pool. Just to make sure I still got it.

Who needs underwear anyway?

2007-03-22T07:54:00.000-07:00

Three people made off with nearly $12,000 worth of bras and panties at a Victoria’s Secret at the Newport Center Mall here as customers milled about on Tuesday night.
In all, the police said, the take was $6,921 worth of panties and $4,905 in bras.

“That’s a lot of underwear,” said Lt. Edgar Martinez, a spokesman for the Jersey City Police Department.

Clearly this guy has never shopped at VS.

“That stuff is pretty expensive,” said Nancy Bochenek, 29, who works nearby at ISO, a risk-analysis company. She said she buys pajamas and panties there. “So a few bras?”
The theft was the latest in a run on undergarments at the store in Newport Center Mall, which investigators and employees said had become a popular target for thieves.

“Sometimes, there aren’t enough people on the floor,” he said, then added that he felt that a full-time security guard was needed.

Another employee said no one should be surprised at the appeal that women’s underpants hold for thieves.

"Underpants?" Seriously? Who says that?

Perhaps the garments wouldn't have to be guarded like fine jewelry if they weren't priced like fine jewelry.

"Cheap Wine Works Fine"

2007-03-22T07:50:00.000-07:00

Hell yeah it does. Particularly when it comes out of a box.

Said Julia Child: “If you do not have a good wine to use, it is far better to omit it, for a poor one can spoil a simple dish and utterly debase a noble one.”

And so we came to a new gospel: Never cook with a wine you wouldn’t drink.

But it is not always helpful in the kitchen....short of a wine that is spoiled by age, heat or a compromised cork, there are few that I categorically would not drink.

Enough said.

What is VFTW to do?

2007-03-21T12:24:00.000-07:00

If you're a proponent of the "Vote for the worst" conspiracy, you may have found yourself in quite the pickle last night. Sanjaya, this season's indisputable VFTW frontrunner simply dominated. So one can't help but wonder...will they pick a new 'worst' to vote for given the glut of votes sanjaya is likely to pull in after his uncharacteristically out of control and out-of-tune rendition of the Kinks' "You Really Got Me."

No, he's still their man.

And here's what they had to say about last night's performance:

Sanjaya's number tonight is 1-866-IDOLS-08 (1-866-436-5708). Dial it as much as you can between 10 PM and midnight (9 PM and 11 PM central), or if you have Cingular Wireless, you can also text the word "VOTE" to 5708. If you get busy signals, keep dialing. Vote for the full 2 hours for the highest impact. Sanjaya NEEDS our help and this is the big week so vote as much as you can. THAT WAS THE BEST DAMN VFTW PERFORMANCE IN THE HISTORY OF THE SHOW. We can't stop laughing.

Weird that they don't recognize that their meticulously-crafted surreptitious plans are crumbling around them. To be fair though, I still don't think sanjaya has a chance. Notwithstanding the conspicuous appearances of his super-hot sister in the audience with her super low-cut, super clingy tops. We get that he needs all the help he can get, but he's running out of cards and obviously quite desperate. On the other hand, this is the country that elected Taylor Hicks. And Bush.

But he's also caputred the hearts of pre-teen girls, which I can't understand. Perhaps it's because he sort of resembles a pre-teen girl.

Ashley Ferl, 13 from riverside, sobbed uncontrolably through Sanjina's performance last night, it was a little scary - watching it last night, I wondered for a while whether the cameras had mistaken claustrophobia or panicked fear or the news that her cat just died, for adoration. But apparently she really is that star struck.

The family obtained tickets on a website to attend a taping of “Smarter Than a 5th Grader” a day passage that included not just the taping of the show itself, but also the dress rehearsal of either “Grader” or “Idol.” The fates were kind, and the mother and daughter found their way to the “Idol” rehearsal, where Ashley’s waterworks began. Her prowess was quickly brought to the attention of “Idol” producers who summoned the clan to a ringside seat of honor at the final taping.

Sure, it's cute now, but wait 'til she's 25, in therapy 3 times a week, and taking 6 kinds of meds for being uncommonly emotionally disordered.

The Frog Princess revisited

2007-03-19T13:17:00.000-07:00

In response to stocious' comment earlier, which I think warrants a whole 'nother post...question was: will disney manage to create a black character with actual black features? Or will she look like black Barbie?

Princes "Maddy" is still on the drawing boards (film to be released in '09) but here is the latest:

I'd say she looks about as African-American as Pocahontas looks Native American and Mulan looks Chinese. And she sort of looks like tinkerbell in the frame on the right.

Brilliant comment on another blog said "What's next [for Disney] -- African-American executives?"

Would be hilarious if it weren't so true.

Aren't you involved in that?

2007-03-19T07:57:00.000-07:00

"When Rendering Decisions, Judges are Finding Law Reviews Irrelevant," goes the headline in one of today's TimesSelect articles.

Many law professors seem to think they are under no obligation to say anything useful or to say anything well. They take pride in the theoretical and in working in disciplines other than their own. They seem to think the analysis of actual statutes and court decisions — which is to say the practice of law — is beneath them.

I can't begin to count the number of times I've applied this same critique to law school lectures by these very same professors. It's especially true, I think, of professors and lectures in "the twenty schools in the top 10" where classrooms become sounding boards for normative policy arguments and the prof's next letter to the ALI or to Congress, the next amicus brief, and of course, the next law review article.

The upshot is that the legal academy has become much less influential. “I haven’t opened up a law review in years,” said Chief Judge Dennis G. Jacobs of the federal appeals court in New York. “No one speaks of them. No one relies on them.”

Well now that can't be true, the big selling point to prospective law journal members around here is "Whateverjournal is one of only 8 law reviews in the Supreme Court chambers" or in this court or that, or the most cited by other articles...someone must be reading them, right?

In the 1970s, federal courts cited articles from The Harvard Law Review 4,410 times, according to a new report by the staff of The Cardozo Law Review. In the 1990s, the number of citations dropped by more than half, to 1,956. So far in this decade: 937.

Patterns at other leading law reviews are similar. And the drop in the number of citations understates the phenomenon, as the courts’ caseload has exploded in the meantime.

Even when courts do cite law review articles, Judge Robert D. Sack said at Cardozo, their motives are not always pure. “Judges use them like drunks use lampposts,” Judge Sack said, “more for support than for illumination.”

The article blames searchable legal data bases, and blogs, which I think is fair. Though much of my experience with Lexis has been searching the journal databases for various research papers, law review articles are 'forbidden fruit' at the firm - which is to say they can be looked at but never used (and don't dare bill those hours).

To an extent, her plea has been answered by the Internet. On blogs like the Volokh Conspiracy and Balkinization, law professors analyze legal developments with skill and flair almost immediately after they happen. Law professors also seem to be litigating more, representing clients and putting their views before courts in supporting briefs.

And a nod to the hard-working journal members that spend upwards of 30 to 100 hours per semester diligently editing, scrutinizing, re-formatting, dealing with 'difficult' authors, managing the journal itself like a well-greased non-profit machine...

Judge Sack mentioned that he had written a number of law review articles. “I feel your pain,” he said. “As far as I can tell, the only person to have read any of them was the person who edited them.”

Sounds about right, but he forgot the submissions readers.

Bottomline, from personal experience: Journals are for resumes.

Professor and "Formidable Law Blogger" Ann Althouse weighs in in defense of the process, starting with a long-overdue counter-critique to the honorable Judge Jacobs et al.

[O]the theory that I've got some judge and law clerk readers, let me put in my request that they write their damned opinions in a quick, plain and accessible style. Because I'm getting pretty weary of their obfuscatory, evasive, rambling scribblings myself.

Do you feel sorry for the law review editors who work so hard on what the professors write? The editors still get their editing experience. They get their lustrous credential to put on that résumé that will land them the judicial clerkships where they will get more experience working on judicial opinions -- those lengthy, obfuscatory judicial opinions that fail to cite law review articles.

If the very persons who just spent two years working closely on law review articles don't find a way to work law review citations into the opinions they draft and edit, that says a lot about the value of what they chose to publish.

After three years of living, breathing, and trying to emulate these obfuscatory, evasive, and rambling scribblings, I am craving some black-letter. Luckily, I got an email today that my second PMBR shipment has been sent.

Disney is moving left...

2007-03-16T16:26:00.000-07:00

...by about an inch away from the very furthest point to the right.

No, Randy Newman isn't new. And if history is any teacher, I'm betting his theme song won't be either. But it will still be an academy award nominee. The princess in this one is black, which has never happened before.

Can you name a non-Hallmark holiday?

2007-03-13T18:48:00.000-07:00

The world needs more of these types of celebrations - selfless, non-commercial, uncontrovercial....

From the BBC:
"Elephant Day" is marked in Chiang Mai province in northern Thailand with
a feast for the elephants of banana trees, sugarcane and fruit.

From my mom (who it turns out did not discover the Large-billed reed warbler):

The Elephant Conservation Center
doesn't let tourists in on National Elephant Day because it's a vacation for
the elephants. Thailand used to have a cool flag with a white elephant
against a red background. Can you believe they changed it to mimic the super
powers, so now it's boring red, white and blue.

What year is it?

2007-03-13T14:49:00.000-07:00

Stark comes off as heroic and brave and highly controversial for something that maybe shouldn't be so extraordinary in this day and age.

Cue the jokes about godless politicians and Bay Area liberals.

Secular groups Monday applauded a public acknowledgment by Rep. Pete Stark that he does not believe in a supreme being, making the Fremont Democrat the first member of Congress — and the highest-ranking elected official in the U.S. — to publicly acknowledge not believing in God.

Being religious is apparently a safe harbor for being electable.

A USA Today/Gallup poll last month found that 45% of respondents said they would vote for a "well qualified" presidential candidate who was an atheist. Ninety-five percent said they would vote for a Catholic candidate, 92% a Jewish candidate and 72% a Mormon candidate.

Ok, blame the White House...

2007-03-13T10:03:00.000-07:00

...just not Bush.

The White House was deeply involved in the decision late last year to dismiss federal prosecutors, including some who had been criticized by Republican lawmakers, administration officials said Monday.

But the article makes sure to exculpate Bush from any wrongdoing.

The president did not call for the removal of any specific United States attorneys, said Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman. She said she had “no indication” that the president had been personally aware that a process was already under way to identify prosecutors who would be fired.

But Ms. Perino disclosed that White House officials had consulted with the Justice Department in preparing the list of United States attorneys who would be removed.

Is it supposed to somehow mitigate the problem that the President wasn't the first to suggest which specific attorneys would be 'replaced?' The White House and Justice Department, who appear to be trying to maintain the position that their decisions were reasonable, have really just shot themselves in the foot. By 'shielding' Bush this way, the administration seems to imply that the rest of the executive branch is responsible for some bad decisions.

“We continue to believe that the decision to remove and replace U.S. attorneys who serve at the pleasure of the president was perfectly appropriate and within our discretion,” Ms. Perino said.

“We stand by the Department of Justice assertion that they identified the seven U.S. attorneys who were removed, as they have said, based on performance and managerial reasons.”

Ok, performance-based firings...

In the other cases, though, the department at first denied that the dismissals were performance related, and then said they were, citing managerial problems, lack of aggressiveness and conflicts over seeking the death penalty or enforcing immigration laws.

Waffles anyone? And how is lack of aggressiveness and willingness to seek the death penalty or enforce laws NOT performance based? And what exactly are 'managerial problems?'

Another rationale for the firings cited the White House - failure to pursue voter fraud cases. Which is ironic.

And who had the idea initially? None other than the straw-woman would-be Chief Justice:

In early 2005, Harriet E. Miers, then the White House legal counsel, asked a Justice Department official whether it would be feasible to replace all United States attorneys when their four-year terms expired, according to the Justice Department. The proposal came as the administration was considering which political appointees to replace in the second term, Ms. Perino said.

Ms. Miers sent her query to D. Kyle Sampson, a top aide to Mr. Gonzales, the Justice officials said. Mr. Sampson, who resigned Monday, replied that filling so many jobs at once would overtax the department. He suggested replacing a smaller group, according to e-mail messages and other memorandums compiled by the Justice Department.

Next Steps?

This week, the United States attorney dispute will be aired on the Senate floor during debate over legislation to roll back a provision of the antiterrorism law that allows President Bush to appoint interim United States attorneys indefinitely.

Read: use grants of discretion and immunity for attorney firings as a consolation for rolling back antiterrorism legislation.

Oh, and subpoena Karl Rove. Schumer's on it? Great.

And lets get just one more thing strait...or at least one thing strait...prosecutors don't serve at the pleasure of the president - they serve the public.

More bad news...

2007-03-12T20:27:00.000-07:00

For those of us still inclined to believe in antioxidants and that wine is good for us and that one can live on luna bars (in other words, the very busy and the very stressed):

Why do humans and their primate cousins get more stress-related diseases than any other member of the animal kingdom? The answer, says Stanford University neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky, is that people, apes and monkeys are highly intelligent, social creatures with far too much spare time on their hands.

"Primates are super smart and organized just enough to devote their free time to being miserable to each other and stressing each other out," he said. "But if you get chronically, psychosocially stressed, you're going to compromise your health. So, essentially, we've evolved to be smart enough to make ourselves sick."

Here's how it works:

In the short term, he explained, stress hormones are "brilliantly adapted" to help you survive an unexpected threat. "You mobilize energy in your thigh muscles, you increase your blood pressure and you turn off everything that's not essential to surviving, such as digestion, growth and reproduction," he said. "You think more clearly, and certain aspects of learning and memory are enhanced. All of that is spectacularly adapted if you're dealing with an acute physical stressor--a real one."

But non-life-threatening stressors, such as constantly worrying about money or pleasing your boss, also trigger the release of adrenalin and other stress hormones, which, over time, can have devastating consequences to your health, he said: "If you turn on the stress response chronically for purely psychological reasons, you increase your risk of adult onset diabetes and high blood pressure. If you're chronically shutting down the digestive system, there's a bunch of gastrointestinal disorders you're more at risk for as well."

And the worst part? If we're smart enough to stress ourselves and each other out enough to inflict psychological and physiological harm, we don't even get to enjoy the smartness. Because stress prevents smartness.

"Furthermore, if you're chronically stressed, all sorts of aspects of brain function are impaired, including, at an extreme, making it harder for some neurons to survive neurological insults," Sapolsky added. "Also, neurons in the parts of the brain relating to learning, memory and judgment don't function as well under stress. That particular piece is what my lab has spent the last 20 years on."

And it gets worse for those of us planning to work for a firm next year or who are not religion.

According to Sapolsky, happiness and self-esteem are important factors in reducing stress. Yet the definition of "happiness" has less to do with material comfort than Westerners might assume, he noted: "An extraordinary finding that's been replicated over and over is that once you get past the 25 percent or so poorest countries on Earth, where the only question is survival and subsistence, there is no relationship between gross national product, per capita income, any of those things, and levels of happiness."

Surveys show that in Greece, for example, one of Western Europe's poorest countries, people are much happier than in the United States, the world's richest nation. And while Greece is ranked number 30 in life expectancy, the United States--with the biggest per capita expenditure on medical care--is only slighter higher, coming in at 29.

"The United States has the biggest discrepancy in health and longevity between our wealthiest and our poorest of any country on Earth," Sapolsky noted. "We're also ranked way up in stress-related diseases."

Japan is number one in life expectancy, largely because of its extremely supportive social network, according to Sapolsky. He cited similar findings in the United States. "Two of the healthiest states are Vermont and Utah, while two of the unhealthiest are Nevada and New Hampshire," he noted. "Vermont is a much more left-leaning state in terms of its social support systems, while its neighbor New Hampshire prides itself on no income tax and go it alone. In Utah, the Mormon church provides extended social support, explanations for why things are and structure. You can't ask for more than that. And next door is Nevada, where people are keeling over dead from all of their excesses. It's very interesting."

Religiosity in and of itself is good for your health in some ways, although less than some of its advocates would have you believe," Sapolsky said. "It infuriates me, because I'm an atheist, so it makes me absolutely crazy, but it makes perfect sense. If you have come up with a system that not only tells you why things are but is capped off with certain knowledge that some thing or things respond preferentially to you, you're filling a whole lot of pieces there--gaining some predictability, attribution, social support and control over the scariest realms of our lives."

So....any advice?

Some people clearly never can overcome it. But the same things that make us smart enough to generate the kind of psychological stress that's unheard of in other primates can be the same things that can protect us. We are malleable.

My take: We are only as malleable as we are effective at mind control. Let's just all move to Greece.

The continuing debate on antioxidants

2007-03-12T19:40:00.000-07:00

The claim:

Most long-term prospective trials have shown that using antioxidant vitamin supplements does not prevent heart disease or cancer, with the possible exception of prostate cancer.

In a study published last month in The Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers in Europe analyzed data from 68 large trials in which more than 232,000 adults were given antioxidant supplements.

In a subset of those studies, the scientists concluded, subjects taking vitamins A and E and beta carotene saw a slightly increased risk of death compared with those who did not take supplements. (Vitamin C had no effect on mortality, the team found.)

And the Opposition:

Dr. Stampfer and others say [the study's] analysis is methodologically flawed, because it includes data from widely heterogeneous studies, excludes data from hundreds of others for unclear reasons and does not try to detail the causes of increased mortality among supplement users.

“It just seems implausible that antioxidants should be killing you by several different means,” said Dr. Jeffrey Blumberg, a nutrition professor at Tufts. “I don’t buy it.”

Dr. Andrew Shao, vice president of the Council for Responsible Nutrition, a trade group for the supplement industry, said, “Most of these patients already had disease, so the conclusions simply aren’t relevant to a healthy population.”

I think one of the problems is that when studies first started to uncover the correlation between antioxidants and health, researchers made the mistake of assuming there was a causal relationship. When really the healthy people were not healthy because they took vitamins. They took vitamins cause they were healthy. And probably did a lot of other healthy things too. But once the cat was out of the bag - well, we all know how much we love a quick fix.

In hindsight, it was naïve of scientists and consumers to hope that the relatively short-term addition of one or two antioxidants would be enough to counteract decades of poor diet and inadequate exercise, not to mention the genome.

This article follows a 12 pg essay by a nutritionist published in the times a few months ago touting the benefits of eating whole foods. The gist was that when we eat processed foods, we're eating food that has essentially already been digested and our system gets flooded with sugar and doesn't know what to do with it all. Hence, love handles. Whereas eating whole foods enables us to digest antioxidants, etc. the way nature intended.

Despite the proliferance of fad diets and endless reams of conflicting information, the bottom line always seems to be the same:

The good news is that a diet rich in fruits and vegetables contains literally thousands of antioxidant nutrients. Prevention begins in the kitchen.

Would that we all had the kind of lifestyle that allowed us to go into the kitchen to do more than microwave a frozen pizza. And would that vegetables tasted like baileys and ice cream. And that Splenda was really made from sugar and made the whole world look like a scene from Big Fish.

More from Moschella, Master of Logic

2007-03-11T16:05:00.000-07:00

Waffling like a pro.

Compare this....

William E. Moschella, principal deputy attorney general, said that each of the dismissed prosecutors was a "talented lawyer." He said the firings could have been handled better too, but sharply denied anyone was pink-slipped out of retaliation or for base political motives.

With this...

"If a judgment is made that they are not executing their responsibilities in a manner that furthers the management and policy goals of departmental leadership, then it is appropriate that they be asked to resign so they can be replaced by other individuals who will."

In other words, they weren't fired for their base political motives. They were fired because their base political motives were not aligned with those of departmental leadership.

So they weren't fired for what their base political motives were - they were fired for what their base political motives were not? Still, I don't think this exactly exonerates the justice department.

You start to realize that PhD is useless when...

2007-03-10T16:48:00.000-08:00

Researchers at the University of Leuven recently concluded the "Royalty Society B' study (pretentiousmuch?); the outcome came at great expense and involved 176 test subjects, relentless game-playing, and world-renowned academic and empirical expertise. The result? Before I tell you, keep in mind that the study has not yet been peer reviewed and we can't be sure that the conclusions are reliable, but here it is...

Men are distracted by beautiful women.

Men about to play a financial game were shown images of sexy women or lingerie.

The Proceedings of the Royal Society B study found they were more likely to accept unfair offers than men not been exposed to the alluring images.

The suggestion is that the sexual cues distract the men's thoughts, preventing them from focusing on their task - particularly among those with high natural testosterone levels

Was anyone confused about this? Is this really press-worthy modern science? I would posit that the grant was made and the stories were written for the simple reason that it gives everyone an excuse to talk about sex without feeling perverted or inappropriate. What is the obsession?

And it is an obsession, why else would any respectable university sanction what appears to be a scientific process modeled on methods of a 3d grade science class? We've seen that the more testosterone a guy has the more dramatic the distractive effect of a woman is. So how did they measure the subjects' levels of testosterone? Did they use a blood test? A pee-in-a-cup test? No, they used the technologically advanced and supremely accurate method of measuring the guys' index and ring fingers to see which was longer. A longer ring finger means testosterone at the 'high' level.

All you guys are checking out your hands right now, aren't you.

Does the same go for women?

The researchers are conducting similar tests with women. But so far, they have failed to find a visual stimulus which will affect their behaviour."

Curious. I wonder if it's possible that women have less testosterone then men. Also curious is that the study rather needlessly restricted the scope of their potential findings by excluding gay men from the subject pool.

Any concluding words?

"If a man is being asked to choose between something being presented by an attractive woman and an ugly man, they might not be as dispassionate as they could be."

This was the very last statement in the article. While true, it doesn't really have anything to do with the study. The findings suggests only that the man would have an easier time understanding the ugly man's presentation than the presentation by the woman. The reason he chooses the attractive woman's idea has nothing to do with how well he understands the presentations.

I'm guessing, I mean I'm not a doctor or anything and could be totally full of crap. But I have a feeling not.

Reasonable minds may differ

2007-03-10T11:46:00.000-08:00

I get a little annoyed when things like this show up in my inbox from friends and family members who know I'm not religious.

"With hurricanes, tornados [sic], fires out of control, mud slides, flooding,
severe thunderstorms tearing up the country from one end to another, and
with the threat of bird flu and terrorist attacks, "Are we sure this is a
good time to take God out of the Pledge of Allegiance?" - Jay Leno

This
showed up among a collection of other inspirational messages in an
email from a family friend entitled 'Sayings to think about.' I know
they mean well and it doesn't offend me or enrage me enough to call
them up and give them my two cents. But it does make me wonder how,
when they send these emails (forwards typically, I average about dozen
a week) trying to persuade us heathens to believe in God, as if a
belief is something you could 'try harder' to have, how the glaring
circularity of the messages doesn't occur to them.

I saw this the other day, and my instantaneous willingness to get behind it made me wonder if I was being a hypocrite.

Four years ago Mr. Ball,
the executive director of the nonprofit Evangelical Environmental
Network, and his wife, Kara, drove thePrius from Texas east across the
Bible Belt in a provocative stunt that, in keeping with the core
mission of his organization, awakened evangelical churches to the
threat of global warming. It also awakened Americans to the existence
of the human hybrid known as a Green Evangelical.

But
upon further reflection, I don't think my support is hypocritical, I
haven't changed my position on Christianity or global warming. I just
like that people are getting excited enough about the environment and
the pri -i(?) to make a difference, however that inspiration manifests.
These people are doing more good for the ultimate beneficiaries than a
lot of athiest vegan activists I know.

It
turns out that Jim and Kara Ball spend a lot of time thinking not just
about what Jesus would drive, but also about how his people should wash
their clothes, light their bathrooms, clean their windows, shop for
groceries and furnish their living rooms — the day-to-day elements of
what some Christian environmentalists call “creation care.”

“We
like to buy used — we do that intentionally,” Mr. Ball said, surveying
a desk, television cabinet, dining room table and end tables that the
couple bought at their favorite thrift shop in rural Maryland, run by a
Navy veteran named Bill. “Our stuff doesn’t necessarily match, but it goes enough.”

At
the nonprofit I worked with a few years ago, we thought of ourselves as
non-elitist quasi-purists and were well aware that our dedication and
passion was not shared by everyone. Or by very many people at all. We
were surrounded by groups (and sometimes legislators) both more and
less liberal than we were who picked every battle, refusing to
compromise, figuring one win would outweigh the damage to themselves
and their cause wreked by what many viewed to be irrational stubbornness
or extremist tactics. Our observations of these litigious, costly, and
ultimately unproductive dealings taught us that it's often a good idea
to keep bridges intact, even if those bridges lead to a place you would
never ever go.

For example - we were an environmental group
and often found our interests aligned with those of hunting
enthusiasts. While there is not much in this world that I consider more
grotesque and inhumane than hunting, the fact that uniting with an
enemy would increase the chances of defeating a 3d party enemy was
undeniable. Damage to reputation is also a consideration, but we
weren't an animal rights group, we were working for the same thing
which was conservation.

Another example - a certain dean of a
certain public law school embarked a few years ago on a fundraising
campaign that was initially unpopular because it entailed securing significiant
amounts of private funding for a school that purports to be very
protective of its reputation as being public interest-oriented. But
today I don't see any of the students complaining about the new library
or Aeron chairs.

I'd like to now share some advice one of my wise colleagues
was once good enough to share with me, and that is: "Fuck 'em." This
advice applies in many contexts but here I suppose "'em" would be those
who would question your loyalty and passion when really you're just
doing whatever it takes to get what you want. There may be a fine line
between compromise and being a pushover or a sell-out. But I think
there is a line.

Conflict waivers anyone?

2007-03-09T11:09:00.000-08:00

In another brilliant move by the administration:

IRS staff has been cut by a fifth over the last decade. At the same time, Congress has made increased the complexity of the CODE. In a recent formal notice, the agency has said it lacks resources to issue as much guidance as taxpayers are seeking.

The answer?

Let the lawyers write the CODE so they wont need to ask for guidance!

The logic behind this new policy proposal is consistent with Captain Destruction's prior legislation aimed at curbing wildfires by leveling forests (see the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003).

This is like asking hackers to write encryption software...and then sending the hackers back out into the world to do what they do. It's like sanctioned hacking.

The Internal Revenue Service is asking tax lawyers and accountants who create tax shelters and exploit loopholes to take the lead in writing some of its new tax rules.

The pilot project represents a further expansion of the increasingly common federal government practice of asking outsiders to do more of its work, prompting academics and other critics to complain that the government is going too far.

They worry that having private lawyers and accountants draft tax rules could allow them to subtly skew them in favor of their clients.

“It’s not the fox guarding the hen house, it’s the fox designing the hen house,” said Paul C. Light, a professor of political science at New York University, who studies the f ederal work force.

What say you, IRS?

Donald L. Korb, the I.R.S. general counsel, defended the plan, saying in an interview that he believed that the pilot project was “not changing this process one iota.”

Well stated. But there is one change that could have some interesting implications, which is that the law will be different. Oh, and that the changes will be made by corporate attorneys. Korb must've just skimmed this part of the plan. Lawyers don't get around the CODE by exploiting the process. Ok, no that's not true but you know what I mean. I mean that's not the only way they get around the CODE.

“Whoever’s pen the first draft comes out of has a big advantage,” said Dr. Graham, [who has a PhD in Statements of the Obvious and] who ran the Office of Regulatory and Information Affairs for the White House before becoming dean last week of the graduate school at RAND, the nonprofit research organization.

Several regulation experts and tax lawyers warned of dangers if the tax police must enforce rules written by those skilled at devising tax-free paths through the maze of the Internal Revenue Code.

I'm not really sure what they're implying here. If they're trying to say there's a risk that unscrupulous lawyers will take advantage of this plan by changing the subtleties of the CODE fo favor their clients, I'm deeply offended. I don't know any unscrupulous tax lawyers and this is just plain irresponsible, Matt.

But then, a voice of reason rings out:

Gary D. Bass, executive director of OMB Watch, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization that tracks the Office of Management and Budget, warned that the Bush administration was turning over too much government responsibility to those it is supposed to be keeping an eye on.

“Why don’t we just privatize Congress and outsource the development of our laws?” he asked.

Indeed, why not? I love this country. Where you can criticize your government without fear of persecution, where you can follow whatever religion you like without fear of unequal protection (as long as it's some denomination of Christianity), you can marry whoever you'd like (wait, scratch that), and where corporate tax lawyers write the tax laws (this one's true). And if that wasn't enough, the implications of this greatly improve my chances to get a good grade in int'l tax this semester.

Bush is a Moops

2007-03-08T18:39:00.000-08:00

Our president landed in San Paulo, and to the great surprise of absolutely no one...

some 10,000 people spilled out along one of the city's broadest avenues, in
the heart of the financial district, banging drums, waving red flags
and carrying banners reading "Bush Go Home".

At least 20 people were hurt in clashes between demonstrators and riot police.

Demonstrators
threw rocks, fireworks and homemade "potato bombs" - made from
gunpowder wrapped in foil - at some of the 4,000 police patrolling the
streets during Mr Bush's visit.

Riot police responded by firing tear gas and lashing out with their batons.

So why all the fuss? Is it Iraq?

Yes,
in part, but it's also about (what else?) fuel. Together with Columbia,
Brazil produces 70% of the world's supply of ethanol (bio-fuel) which
powers 8 out of 10 cars in the country. The accord Bush is pushing
would make ethanol an internationally traded commodity and promote its
production in Central America and Caribbean.

Sounds ok so far....

But the cultivation of sugar cane which is used to make ethanol is water intensive and responsible for stripping the Amazonian rainforest. Plus, the production process is concentrated in the hands of a few powerful families and corporations.

I
was wondering how Bush jumped so suddenly (like a gazelle, one might say) and
absolutely behind bio fuel recently. This article and the Brazilian
response to his first of several stops in that part of the world make
it fairly evident that this is just one more opportunity to control
supplies of wealth abroad by oppressing foreign citizens and the last of our natural resources.

Ok,
I have to get back to a paper about another gem brought to us by The
Administration of Destruction. It's on the Restatement (1st) of Archaic
Corporate Law, Only Tweaked a Little to Pad the Paychecks of Accountants
and Lawyers and to Drive Small Businesses Under Act of 2002 (commonly
referred to by its acronym:SOX).

Just pick a scent you won't get sick of. And apply in bursts.

2007-03-08T17:53:00.000-08:00

Just in time for the mother of all memory tests (too bad BarBri didn't attach a business practices patent to this idea before word got out):

Scientists studying how sleep affects memory have found that the whiff of a familiar scent can help a slumbering brain better remember things that it learned the evening before. A rose bouquet — delivered to people’s nostrils as they studied and, later, as they slept — improved their performance on a memory test by almost 15 percent.

No freaking way.

The brain is thought to process newly acquired facts, figures and locations most efficiently in deep sleep. This restful state usually descends within the first 20 minutes or so after head meets pillow, and it may last an hour or more, then recur later in the night. The researchers delivered pulses of rose bouquet during this slow-wave state; the odor did not interrupt sleep, and the students said they had no memory of it.

But their brains noticed, and they retained an almost perfect memory of card locations. The students scored an average of 97 percent on the card game, compared with 86 percent when they played the concentration game and slept without being perfumed by nighttime neuroscience faeries.

Evidently, olfactory sensing pathways lead more directly to the hippocampus than visual and auditory ones. Who knew? So we'd be way better off inhaling those PMBR flashcards than just staring at them. Where do I get a nighttime neuroscience faerie? Is that like a sprite?

In the News

2007-03-07T12:04:00.000-08:00

Ten or twelve of us tax types were sitting around one side of a conference table this afternoon in a classroom that for the past three years I had assumed was a broom closet but that turned out to be more of a sanitarium cell, waiting for our prof (who was lost somewhere in the building) talking about the day's top news items - specifically, Coke Plus and Harry Potter's nude role in Equus (because really, how else could you follow an act like Harry Potter?) (I'm serious, I think this was a good move)
when one of my classmates laid down the thinly veiled accusation that the world is paying insufficient attention to the recent wave of US attorney firings. I agree, but things seem to be at a stalemate. So far, the response from the justice department has been, predictably, a nonresponse:

A Justice Department official acknowledged to the House Judiciary Committee that the dismissals could have been handled better. The official, William E. Moschella, a top aide in the deputy attorney general’s office, told the committee: “These U.S. attorneys could have been informed at the time that they were asked to resign about the reasons for the decision. Unfortunately, our failure to provide reasons to these individual U.S. attorneys has only served to fuel wild and inaccurate speculation about our motives, and that is unfortunate because faith and confidence in our justice system is more important than any one individual.”

The department said recently that the prosecutors had been fired for performance problems or for failure to carry out department policies. But some Democrats have charged that the dismissals were intended to squelch corruption investigations or replace independent-minded prosecutors.

Notice how slick Moschella is, all this talk about the importance of faith and confidence in our justice system almost made me not notice that he's not only blaming his victims, but also calling them selfish.

In other news...

This photo, taken by Erik S. Lesser, was under the headline: Clinton & Obama Unite in Pleas to Blacks. Fake smiles all. This reminds me of one of those West Side-esque musicals where the two gangs group up on both sides of the stage and do some singing and dancing just before the fight. This is the singing part. Why is Obama refusing to hold hands like everyone else? I think it shows lack of commitment. Or maybe it's some subliminal hands-dirty confession about his investing habits.

This bird, thought to be extinct for 130 years, was recently found in a sewage treatment plant in Thailand.
The bird goes by the stunningly inappropriate name, Large-billed Reed Warbler. As it turns out, my mother, a bird watcher, is in Thailand right now. On a bird watching trip. And I would not put it past this group to brave a sewage treatment facility for this kind of find. I hear developers partying in the streets - new mitigation plan under the ESA: forget old growth and wetlands, just make sure your subdivision has an open-air sewage treatment facility.

Onward...but to what?

2007-03-06T19:01:00.000-08:00

I have three homes away from home. One is the law school. One is the gym. And the other is Starbucks. I am an unapologetic regular, various branches have provided the venue for a panoply of minor but cumulatively integral events in my life: social dates, business meetings, a breakup, interviews, more study hours than I care to remember, I was in one this morning when the Libby jury verdict was broadcast... and the day after Chairman Howard Schultz wrote his recently exposed and misguidedly celebrated memo to CEO Jim Donald, I spent just over six hours in one of the (only) two branches in Davis, CA. I wish I could say it was my own private protest in solidarity with Mr. Schultz and all the baristas who are no longer having 'intimate experiences' with patrons because the espresso machines that replaced the La Marzoccas are too high. But I wasn't. I was there for the coffee, the plush chairs, the most productive study time of the week, I guess you could say I was there for the 'Starbucks experience.' And I wasn't disappointed.

Schultz masterfully plays both sides of the fence in his memo, defending decisions he had a hand in making as being good business at the time they were made and then condemning them in hindsight. In addition to the La Marzoccas, Schultz mourns the loss of fumigation-by-roasted beans at the hands of new flavor-lock packaging.

Schultz is valiantly trying to reinvigorate the 'magic' of Starbucks by calling for the return of the shorter, slower espresso machines, making their merchandise more functional than artful, getting the scent just right. I get that he's referring to the 'overall experience, the feel of being in a trendy, indie coffee shop where the beans are organically shade grown and roasted to order right behind the counter, where everyone knows your name - but his tactics seem miscalculated and are not likely to mitigate the company's most pressing problems which involve not aesthetics, but involve fair trade, environmental and corporate responsibility, social accountability, workers' rights (globally), and the risk of becoming a symbol of oppressive world domination by a multinational corporations that profit by selling addictive products and imparting mass externalities upon the environment and their labor forces. Oh, wait.

I'm not pro or anti big box/corporate America per se. I'm pro environment, pro worker's rights, pro fair trade, anti anticompetetive practices, pro social and corporate responsibility...If these are the issues changing my wait from 2 to 10 minutes, I'm happy to accommodate. But don't do it so I can watch the milk being steamed.

Schultz seems to be barking up the wrong tree. And the tree is so wrong that I wonder if he's not mounting a strawman mea culpa to divert attention from the company's real problems by 'confessing' that the stores aren't as cozy as they could be and that he's really sorry and you saw the memo, he's working on it. Give 'em a break. If it's not a strawman, then I still maintain it's the wrong tree - If you ask the 16th person in line who has to stand outside in the 30 degree morning, propping the door open with her new leather 3.5'' knee-highs while she clutches an umbrella in one hand and her 'tote' in the other what she thinks of the new espresso machines, she'd probably say "what new machines...those are new?" and upon being apprised of Schultz's dilemma, she'd probably prefer them because they're faster. And don't get me started on the scent. Where are these warehouse-sized, wind tunnel-ventilated Starbucks stores where the opening of one of the new flavor lock packages doesn't instantly saturate the air with the unmistakable smell of - is that coffee? Can we be sure?

But I do have to hand it to Schultz for sweating the small stuff. He's outing himself on subtleties that most patrons don't notice. I've worked in foodservice. I've seen corporate headquarters drive franchise chains into the ground by refusing to release their deathgrip on what Schultz terms "cookie cutter"-ness, blaming instead well-intentioned managers who try to salvage what's left of brand loyalty as they go down with the ship by daring to give a customer a combo that's (gasp!) not on the menu. But consistency isn't what ultimately does a business in, in fact there's something to be said for predictability in a chain (and no amount of coffee bean smell or chats with the baristas are going to fool Starbucks customers into thinking they're not standing in a chain store, even for a second) which is that customers know what to expect when they walk in the door. I do think Starbucks is consistent. But they are consistent with a good product and I don't think the sameness is what's causing problems. Those of us who would rather have a leisurely time of watching our morning coffee being made clearly have some time on our hands and are welcome to drive 'out of our ways' to a place that does that. I'm not saying that's not me once in a while. I'm just saying that on the days that I don't have that kind of time, I'm glad I don't have to choose between being late to class and falling asleep in class.

Recommendations:

One thing Starbucks could do to attract those corner cafe dwellers is to expressly differentiate it's store types, like 24 Hour Fitness clubs - you have the typical Starbucks stores, and then you have Starbucks "Cafes" that bring back the heritage and passion that are apparently missing, Starbucks "Active" would sell all the functional products the French baristas can think up. They've already started this 'preference discrimination,' in a sense, by popping up inside supermarkets. There are Starbucks vending machines in my law firm, on every floor. No 'down home' plush chair feel there, but if you can get the customer a good, reliable product with that kind of convenience, run with it. The problem with this idea of course is that Starbucks would inevitably be accused (as if it hasn't been already) of removing every last niche and shred of viability of potential competition. The company could effectively stomp out the genuine heritage it seeks to copy by following this advice.

So for the real recommendations.

You need to have more than two items on the menu come in below $3.50
Turn the music down. Seriously. It's not that good.
Don't try to pass of grocery store staples like yogurt and water at a 237% markup. We know what you're up to.
If you do nothing else - bring the free wireless.

From William Hung to Paul Kim

2007-03-05T08:30:00.000-08:00

Why does it always have to be about race? Trying to demystify the conspicuous absence of Asians from the platinum pop star ranks, Navarro looks to industry moguls and recent case studies like American Idol. But without much success.

"People in the music industry, including some executives, have no ready explanation, but Asian-American artists and scholars argue that the racial stereotypes that hobble them as a group - the image of the studious geek, the perception that someone who looks Asian must be a foreigner - clash with the coolness and born-in-the-USA authenticity required for American pop stardom."

I don't know how old these scholars are, or whether they've ever been to California, or whether they've checked out Pier 1 or junior miss clothing lines lately, or the date of choice among white males ages 18-35, but the geeky stereotype seems to be waning, at least within the segment of the population that patronizes the 'pop' page in the itunes music store. The geek factor probably doesn't do all the work of explaining the glut of Asians on the billboard charts. The scholars forget the stereotypes born of the obligatory karaoke scene in any movie featuring an Asian character whether a blockbuster or strait-to-dvd and from music videos that trickle in through various media from that side of the world. I also think Asians have a very different 'tonal quality' (thank you Paula) than mainstream pop artists. The big mystery may not be a racial issue, per se, but rather a mismatch of the Asian pop sound to what Americans have grown to expect in that genre. Pop in America is power ballads, cross-over rock or country, loud, in your face, belt it out 'till we can't really tell if you're singing or yelling so make sure you get some vibrato in there. I don't think I've seen an Asian singer do this - quite to the contrary, they usually have a soft, wispy sound that is 'foreign' to American pop fans.

"The roster tilts heavily toward mixed-race Asians whose looks are racially ambiguous..."

I'd say this is true across the race board. Unless you're a white female blond-haired, blue-eyed pixy, or a british version of Johnny Depp, purebreads seem to be disfavored in showbiz. Exotic is in.

Taboos can be broken by pop artists, make no mistake. Take Chavez's story. Just don't look for it to happen in the US anytime soon where we have a whole genre for taboo called "alternative."

A few miles away...

2007-03-04T21:10:00.000-08:00

In Guatemala, Officers' Killings Echo Dirty War, reads the headline, as if it happened this morning. My sister, who's on a Fullbright in Guatemala, working for the UN, and teaching elementary school children, told me about this a while ago.

Last month, 3 Salvadoran congressmen were killed on a road in Guatemala, "It did not take the authorities long to find the culprits: they were Guatemalan police officers, and their unmarked police car had a tracking device that proved they were at the scene."

They confessed and claimed to have thought their victims were drug dealers and were sent to a maximum-security prison. Four days later they were found dead. The police publicly accuse rioting gang members, though inmate witnesses say the assassins were military personnel who went through seven locked doors to where the imprisoned officers were kept and killed them unfettered by prison guards.

"The whole episode has exposed to the world the rampant police corruption, lawlessness and drug trafficking that plagues much of Central America, and Guatemala in particular."

Bush will arrive next week. The article makes it sound like he's going to address the corruption and trafficking, but my sister said it has to do with free trade. How diplomatic. Having just finished watching Hotel Rwanda before reading this article, I have less faith than usual that our administration is capable of doing anything moral or militarily effective.

Pictures above were taken by Orlando Sierra/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images

Those below were sent by my sister last week - above is Antiqua Congreso, below are the Quirigua Ruins

Of byproduct camps and spandrels

2007-03-04T07:36:00.000-08:00

"Religious belief is an outgrowth of brain architecture that evolved during early human history."

This is one thing that scholars studying the evolution of religion can agree on, reports Hening in the NYT Magazine today. Brilliance. Lest I leave any question as to my religious leanings.

"'Natural selection made the human brain big,' Gould wrote, 'but most of our mental properties and potentials may be spandrels - [...spandrels?] that is nonadaptive side consequences of building a device with such structural complexity.' The possibility that God could be a spandrel offered Atran a new way of understanding the evolution of religion."

This whole (long) article is one brilliant soundbyte after another. But I'm reminded from somewhere over to my right that you can't prove a negative. I'm dubious.

OMG!

2007-03-03T12:19:00.000-08:00

This might be the cutest thing I've ever seen in my life.

Taking the Bar is henceforth sexy

2007-03-02T18:45:00.000-08:00

Particularly the California Bar. Or so implies a new documentary artfully titled, "A Lawyer Walks Into a Bar." It follows 6 people in last summer's effort to pass the 'most notorious' of bar exams. I'm a huge fan of clever titles and this one is really good, though it clearly hopes that it won't occur to us that it's mostly aspiring lawyers walking into the bar. I particularly like the warning on the film's homepage, truer words have never been spoken:

WARNING: Excessive computer usage can cause eye strain, finger injury, neck soreness, buttock fatigue, weight gain, general redness and irritation, halitosis, and possibly death.

Can't find it on Netflix but that's probably a good thing. I don't think I should watch it (or read anything else about the exam really) until after I manage positive results.

Here's a WSJ blog entry on the flick - the comments are so juvenile, makes me wonder how there are any lawyers or CPAs at all in CA.

The film has predictably not escaped ridicule. For example, Seth makes the excellent comment on QuizLaw that the story may actually be interesting if it's anything like his bar summer of "drinking, naked Texas co-eds," and (he adds, repeatedly, much to my relief and inspiration), "a lot of drinking."

Mean Mr. Mustard calls it, appropriately I think, "a new addition to my list of Things For Which the World is Definitely Not Crying Out." This post also came as a relief - after all, is it really such a big deal? I think this may all just be a product of an untrammeled proliferance of voyeurism. I can't say that I haven't contributed my fair share to that phenomenon.

My thoughts are that the film will be watched with uncommonly rapt attention by a very very small subset of the population. Myself included. I doubt that it will have a following on the scale of the "Hoop Dreams" contingency, but you never know - as we found out last month, the Academy is a sucker for atypical Oscar contenders.

A strange passage begins...hopefully a passage...

2007-03-01T19:03:00.000-08:00

Fair warning, my life for the next five months is going to be a lot of the same. A lot on the closing days of law school and then on to living, breathing, sleeping the California bar exam. I'm joining the ranks of bloggers on these topics not because I feel like it's some kind of rite of passage (maybe a little) but because I have searched and searched for some redeeming or inspiring words about the process I'm embarking on and find nothing but the same old stuff... "worst summer of my life, panic attacks, insanity, isolation, lots of tears, ..." I can't promise what follows will be any better but I can hope for a new, hopefully healthier perspective, (we'll see if it lasts). After all, it's not the most monumental thing any human has ever accomplished, and hopefully won't be a defining moment in my career. Other reasons for what follows are to chronicle happenings and issues of interest, to vent, to opine, and hopefully to exercise some creativity; as they say, if you want to be a writer, you have to start writing. I don't think Blogger is what "they" had in mind but seems a good place to start, given that I'll be too tied up for much else until August. I don't intend this to be about the bar forever, but as I said, you will have to excuse the ensuing few months of what promises to be monotony.

A bit of background: As I mentioned, I'm finishing my last year of law school, it's been a long three years and as I enter the final hours I'm finally realizing the little things I should've been doing all along. Of course at the very end it all becomes clear - the best ways to outline, how easy it really is to distill what the prof is going to test, how useless it is to read all the editorials, how important it is to enjoy your friends and make free time. This is one of those experiences that infuses you with humility and makes you less selfish. Probably not nearly on the order of something like having a kid (though I wouldn't really know), but close enough to notice a change. And the cliche is true - I now know what they mean when they say 'think like a lawyer' - it means it's easy for you to come off looking like a jerk at dinner parties by pointing out all the logic gaps and minutiae in day-to-day conversation. Sadly it may also mean that more often than not you don't look like a jerk because at these dinner parties you're surrounded by people who revel in such minutiae. It means a few times a sentence you can combine three straightforward words into one that no one can understand - either because it's got five syllables or because it's in latin or because it's an acronym or a code section. It means being a perfectionist and non-commital, and totally paranoid.

So are you glad you did it? I get this a lot. Here's my answer, every time: if I had known then what I know now, what the personal experience would entail (which may not be typical for a variety of reasons - but then again, is anyone's law school experience really 'typical?') I would not have gone. I would've turned around and become a journalist or personal trainer or some type of admin or an accountant. But I don't regret doing it - I know this sounds inconsistent but what I mean is that I'm glad I bounded blindly forward. Truly. From the little I've seen it's a good and vast profession that will provide opportunities, open doors, intellectual stimulation, potential to 'do good' in the world. And of course, financial security. But I guess this all depends for now on the bar.