May 14, 2008
APPARENTLY NOT A PARODY:
The McCain Doctrines (MATT BAI, 5/18/08, NY Times Magazine)
Among his fellow combat veterans in the Senate, past and present, he is the only one who has continued to champion the war in Iraq; by contrast, Kerry, Webb and Hagel have emerged in the years since the invasion as unsparing critics of American involvement there. (In a new book, Hagel, who voiced deep concerns about Iraq even as he voted for the war resolution in 2002, predicts that the war will turn out to be “the most dangerous and costly foreign-policy debacle in our nation’s history.”) This divide among old allies may be the inevitable result of a protracted war that has cleaved plenty of American households and friendships. But it may also be that the war is revealing underlying fractures among the Senate’s Vietnam coalition.There is a feeling among some of McCain’s fellow veterans that his break with them on Iraq can be traced, at least partly, to his markedly different experience in Vietnam. McCain’s comrades in the Senate will not talk about this publicly. They are wary of seeming to denigrate McCain’s service, marked by his legendary endurance in a Hanoi prison camp, when in fact they remain, to this day, in awe of it. And yet in private discussions with friends and colleagues, some of them have pointed out that McCain, who was shot down and captured in 1967, spent the worst and most costly years of the war sealed away, both from the rice paddies of Indochina and from the outside world. During those years, McCain did not share the disillusioning and morally jarring experiences of soldiers like Kerry, Webb and Hagel, who found themselves unable to recognize their enemy in the confusion of the jungle; he never underwent the conversion that caused Kerry, for one, to toss away some of his war decorations during a protest at the Capitol.
Not for nothing is Chuck Hagel considered one of the dumbest guys n the Senate (maybe the dumbest, since Rick Santorum lost). A rudimentary grasp of history would inform him that the democratization of Iraq should have occurred after WWI--along with innumerable other colonies that Wilson betrayed. Indeed, WWII, the cold War and the WoT are all just functions of what was actually the most dangerous and costly American foreign policy blunder.
As if that bit weren't funny enough though, the idea that John McCain is still a hawk because he had it so much easier than these other guys in Vietnam is just priceless.
TIME FOR OUR BETTERS TO EXPLAIN HOW THIS IS A WIN FOR MALIKI...:
Lebanese Cabinet Reverses Anti-Hezbollah Decisions That Sparked Fighting (Challiss McDonough, 15 May 2008, VOA News)
The opposition has been demanding a government of national unity that gives Hezbollah and its allies enough cabinet posts to wield a veto over any decisions.Political analyst Patrick Haenni of the International Crisis Group says since the fighting broke out, Hezbollah has confined its demands to the reversal of the two government decisions. "At the same time, you have temptation by Hezbollah allies to capitalize on its military action in broader political terms, meaning extending their vindications to the second level of the crisis, which is political participation, government, president, electoral law and things like this," he said.
FOR BUSINESS, THE PERFECT MARKET...:
The Reason for High Oil Prices: It's not a supply crisis that explains the sharp spike in oil prices. It's unregulated commodities markets and greed (Ed Wallace , 5/13/08, Business Week)
So how to explain the May 6 report from Reuters (TRI) that Goldman Sachs (GS) announced that oil could in fact be on the verge of another "super spike," possibly taking oil as high as $200 a barrel within the next six to 24 months? Forget the fact that few other oil analysts agreed with that position, "$200 a barrel!" was the major news story on oil for the next two days. Arjun Murti, Goldman Sachs' energy strategist, predictably laid the blame on "blistering" demand from China and the Middle East, combined with his belief that the Middle East is nearing its maximum ability to produce more oil. While the outside chance exists that Murti is right, his prediction certainly isn't backed up by the EIA's Short-Term Energy Outlook, or by Lehman Brothers' report from 10 days earlier. As for the Middle East being tapped out on oil production, there might be one more thing to consider.On May 2, the Friday before this prediction made news, Bloomberg had reported that Iran is again storing its heavy crude on tankers in the Persian Gulf because the country has run out of onshore storage tanks while awaiting buyers. Further, Saudi Arabia has extended discounts on its sour crudes to $7.45 for Arabian Heavy. Doesn't sound like there's any real supply problem with that grade of crude, does it?
It is an understatement to say that over the last five years the media have rained reports predicting an impending energy Armageddon. But those reports have tended not to disclose their sources—which often were individuals heavily invested in the oil futures market.
For example, Goldman Sachs was one of the founding partners of online commodities and futures marketplace Intercontinental Exchange (ICE). And ICE has been a primary focus of recent congressional investigations; it was named both in the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations' June 27, 2006, Staff Report and in the House Committee on Energy & Commerce's hearing last December. Those investigations looked into the unregulated trading in energy futures, and both concluded that energy prices' climb to stratospheric heights has been driven by the billions of dollars' worth of oil and natural gas futures contracts being placed on the ICE—which is not regulated by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission.
...is one with no free competition.
Omelette fit for brunch (Kim Honey, 5/14/08, Toronto Star)
Tortilla Española8 Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and sliced 1/8-inch thick (about 2 lbs[...])
1-3/4 tsp salt, divided
1/2 cup + 2 tbsp olive oil, divided
1 cup chopped yellow onions
1/3 cup chopped red bell peppers
1/3 cup chopped green bell peppers
1-1/2 cups prosciutto, diced [...]
10 large eggs
Toss potatoes with 1 teaspoon salt in large bowl.Heat 1/2 cup olive oil in large, non-stick frying pan over medium heat. Add potatoes. Cook, stirring occasionally, until potatoes soften but don't brown, about 5 minutes.
Add onions, peppers and prosciutto. Cook 10 minutes until potatoes are tender and ingredients well blended. Transfer to colander placed over bowl and drain off liquid. Clean pan.
In large bowl, beat eggs. Stir in potato mixture and add 3/4 teaspoon salt.
Return pan to medium heat. Add 2 tablespoons olive oil; pour in egg mixture when oil is very hot. Tilt pan so eggs evenly cover bottom. Reduce heat to low. Cook, shaking pan once or twice, until omelette has set, about 10 minutes.
Cover pan with large plate. Invert so omelette is cooked side up on plate. Slide back into pan and cook other side until lightly browned, about 5 minutes.
Slide omelette onto plate. Cool to room temperature before slicing.
BEING MANNY:
You'll see it all over ESPN tonight, but Manny Ramirez just made a brilliant over the shoulder catch, stopped himself by climbing the outfield wall, high-fived a fan while he was up there, came down and doubled the runner off first. Even the other players ran to the cameramen to watch replays.
DEAD BABIES TRUMPS GENDER:
NARAL backs Obama, angers Emily's List (Mark Murray, 5/14/08, NBC: First Read)
But NARAL's endorsement didn't please Emily's List, the pro-choice, Democratic group backing Clinton. “I think it is tremendously disrespectful to Sen. Clinton -- who held up the nomination of a FDA commissioner in order to force approval of Plan B and who spoke so eloquently during the Supreme Court nomination about the importance of protecting Roe vs. Wade -- to not give her the courtesy to finish the final three weeks of the primary process," said Emily's List president Ellen Malcolm. "It certainly must be disconcerting for elected leaders who stand up for reproductive rights and expect the choice community will stand with them.”
Abortion is just one of many issues where Ms Clinton sounds emotionally distant, whereas Senator Obama sounds like he'd volunteer to smack the kid's head on a rock..but only because he cares so much...
FOR THE SAME REASON ABORTION IS LEGAL:
U.S. cigarette legislation overlooks menthols and critics ask why (Stephanie Saul, May 13, 2008, NY Times)
Some public health experts are questioning why menthol, the most widely used cigarette flavoring and the most popular cigarette choice of black American smokers, is receiving special protection as Congress attempts to regulate tobacco for the first time.The legislation, which would give the Food and Drug Administration the power to oversee tobacco products, would try to reduce smoking's allure to young people by banning most flavored cigarettes, including clove and cinnamon.
But those new strictures would exempt menthol - even though menthol masks the harsh taste of cigarettes for beginners and may make it harder for the addicted to kick the smoking habit. For years, the public health authorities have worried that menthol might be a factor in high cancer rates in blacks.
WHICH IS HOW OPPOSING THE GAS TAX HOLIDAY IS BAD POLITICS (THOUGH GOOD POLICY):
Is Obama Too Far Left on Taxes?: Centrist Democrats to Obama: Bring Tax Talk to Center (TEDDY DAVIS, May 14, 2008, ABC News)
The centrist Democratic group instrumental to former President Clinton's rise to the White House in 1992 has some advice for Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.: get to the center, starting with taxes."In the fall, our nominee will have to do what John Kerry had to do in the 2004 debates, which is turn to the camera and say, 'No, I will not raise taxes on people making less than $200,000,'" said Bruce Reed, the president of the Democratic Leadership Council, in an interview with ABC News.
Running on tax cuts was just one of the ways Bill Clinton got to GHWB's Right.
THEY NEED HIM MORE THAN HE NEEDS THEM:
McCain seen as cure for House Republicans (Stephen Dinan, May 14, 2008, Washington Times)
In the wake of their third special election loss in three months last night, House Republican leaders are rushing to embrace their presumptive presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain, as their hope for staving off disaster in November."Candidates who hope to succeed must show that they're willing and able to join McCain in a leading movement for reform," House Minority Leader John Boehner, Ohio Republican, said in the wake of Democrat Travis Childer's victory in Mississippi's first congressional district — a seat that had been firmly Republican.
Seats like the one lost last night will be particularly easy for Maverick to carry on his coattails in November, but the goal should be regaining the majority in the House.
CAUSED BY MALIKI, CURED BY SADR:
A shaky truce takes hold in Sadr City (Associated Press, May 14, 2008)
Army Lt. Col. Steven Stover, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said Tuesday that the Sadr City fighting was caused by "special groups," Shiite factions that have broken with cleric Muqtada Sadr. Many are said by the U.S. military to have been trained and armed by Iranian forces. Iran denies the allegations.Nevertheless, pro-Sadr clerics negotiated the new cease-fire, and one said Tuesday that it was taking hold and would be enforced.
Thus speaketh the law in Sadr City.
ENTIRELY TYPICAL NOT TO HAVE MADE A SHOW OF IT:
President George W Bush quits golf in honour of the US soldiers killed in Iraq (Daily Telegraph, 14/05/2008)
US President George W Bush has revealed that he quit playing golf in 2003 out of respect for the families of American soldiers killed in Iraq."I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal," Mr Bush said in an online interview for Yahoo and Politico magazine.
"I don't want some mum whose son may have recently died to see the commander-in-chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them."
NOW WE'RE GETTING SOMEWHERE:
Lebanon: Islamic Sunni Groups Start Military Bloc to Confront Hezbollah Sawan al Atbah, 5/14/08, Asharq Al-Awsat)
Former Lebanese Deputy Khalid al-Dahir has revealed that the Islamic Sunni movements in north Lebanon have started to form a political and military bloc capable of confronting what Hezbollah had done in Beirut and other Lebanese areas.Dahir told Asharq Al-Awsat, "We held today(yesterday) a meeting away from the media, which included at least 50 hawks from the Islamic leaderships and was aimed at taking action against the coup of the so-called Hezbollah militia. We agreed on an escalatory and programmed campaign to reject the attack on the Sunnis, the mufti of the republic, the ministers, and the deputies, and in particular Deputy Saad al-Hariri."
The Salafists are the common enemy of America and the Shi'a.
IT'S GOOD POLITICS...:
Iraqi prime minister in Mosul to direct offensive against Sunni militants (The Associated Press, May 14, 2008)
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki arrived in the northern city of Mosul on Wednesday to supervise a military offensive against al-Qaida in Iraq called Lion's Roar, a defense ministry spokesman said.Maliki's flight to northern Iraq mirrors a similar trip he took almost two months ago to the southern city of Basra, where government troops fought radical Shiite militias. That fighting spread to the Shiite slum of Sadr City in Baghdad, where a cease-fire to end that fighting was only reached on Monday.
...to show up and take credit for the ones you can win, but avoid the ones you lost.
NOTHING COSTS MORE THAN IT USED TO:
Consumer prices rise smaller-than-expected 0.2% (Reuters, May 14, 2008)
So-called core prices, which exclude volatile food and energy, were up just 0.1%, half the increase analysts had forecast.
PRE-PACKAGED AMERICANS:
Studies show immigrants are assimilating (San Diego Union-Tribune, May 14, 2008)
First, despite what many of us like to think, previous waves of immigrants – from Germany, Italy or Ireland – were in no great hurry to dissolve into the melting pot. Instead, in many cases, they tried to hold on to their native languages, heritages and customs even while impressing upon their children the need to learn English in order to succeed in this country.Second, there is a stack of evidence suggesting that recent immigrants are assimilating. In fact, some studies find that the immigrants of today, who are likely to come from Asia and Latin America, are actually blending into our society more quickly than did their counterparts a century ago.
That stack of evidence got a little bigger this week with the release by the Manhattan Institute of its first annual Index of Immigrant Assimilation. The study, authored by Duke University professor Jacob Vigdor, examined three types of assimilation: economic, cultural and civic. He also looked at more than 100 immigrant groups. He found that Mexican immigrants have relatively low rates of economic and civic assimilation, but that they're actually more culturally assimilated than immigrants from China, India or Vietnam. He also found that, contrary to stereotype, immigrants from developed countries do not necessarily assimilate better than others. And, in one of the most disturbing findings, he also learned that immigrants who speak English don't necessarily do better economically than those who don't. Better news was that America's capacity to assimilate immigrants is stronger than ever.
CLOSE TO GRASPING IT:
An NRO Q&A: Don’t Freak Out: Bjorn Lomborg speaks climate sense to nonsense. (Kathryn Jean Lopez, 5/14/08, National Review)
Lopez: What could the planet do instead of Kyoto?Lomborg: We need to make carbon-emissions cuts much easier. The typical cost of cutting a ton of CO2 is about $20 right now — but we know that the damage from a ton of carbon in the atmosphere is about $2. We need to reduce the cost of cutting emissions from $20 to somewhere nearer $2.
We can achieve this by spending dramatically more researching and developing low-carbon energy. Ideally, every nation should commit to spending 0.05 percent of its gross domestic production exploring non-carbon-emitting energy technologies — be they wind, wave, or solar power — or capturing CO2 emissions from power plants. This spending could add up to about $25 billion a year, but it would still be seven times cheaper than the Kyoto protocol, yet increase global research and development tenfold. All nations would be involved, but the richer ones would pay the larger share.
Today, solar panels are ten times more inefficient than the cheapest fossil fuels. Only the very wealthy can afford them. Many “green” approaches, right now, do little more than make rich people feel like they are helping the planet.
We can’t solve climate change by just forcing more inefficient solar panels onto people’s rooftops. The solution is to dramatically increase R&D so that solar panels become cheaper than fossil fuels sooner. Imagine if solar panels became cheaper than fossil fuels by 2050 — we would have solved global warming then, because switching to the environmentally friendly option wouldn’t be the preserve of rich Westerners.
Caps and taxes are just a way of forcing the private sphere to do the R&D instead of having central government do it.
THE UNIVERSALIST VS THE TRIBALIST:
Can McCain appeal to Hispanic voters maintain? (RUBEN NAVARRETTE JR., 5/14/08, THE UNION-TRIBUNE)
For many conservatives, John McCain is not their favorite Republican. They think he's built a career at their expense, painting them as fools and bigots. They resent his holier-than-thou attitude. And they're not inclined to trust anyone who has been so fawned over by the national media.Curiously, a lot of liberal Democrats feel the same way about McCain. He isn't their favorite Republican, either – but it's because they know he'll be tough to beat in November. They would have preferred to run against someone more extreme and easier to demonize. That's not John McCain. [...]
In 1998, while Texas Gov. George W. Bush made headlines for earning an impressive 49 percent of the Hispanic vote in his re-election, McCain walked off with an unheard-of 65 percent in his Senate re-election bid. Six years later, he did even better, earning around 70 percent of the Hispanic vote.
Most political observers don't expect McCain to match those numbers in a national election, but half of that – 35 percent – is a definite possibility. With that kind of support among Hispanics, McCain could win the White House.
He'll beat W's number.
MORE:
Obama needs to be cautious with Latinos (GEBE MARTINEZ | 5/14/08, Politico)
Republican presidential candidate John McCain — going against the grain of his party’s conservatives — used Cinco de Mayo to reach out to Latinos and unveil a new Spanish-language website.Clinton got more popular votes than Obama in Arizona, California and Texas, and she won the Nevada caucus because of her huge margin of support among Latinos.
So Obama’s delicate courtship of the Hispanic lawmakers — who favor Clinton by a 4-1 ratio — underscored how vital Latinos will be in picking the next president. When Obama comes calling again, Hispanics will demand that Latino faces and issues be at the forefront of the Democrats’ fall campaign.
Compared with Clinton, Obama will have to work at winning Latino support “probably twice as hard to have significant success,” said Sen. Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat and key Clinton ally.
NOTHING CAN GO WRONG...GO WRONG...GO WRONG...:
'Entire generation wiped out' as China counts toll of earthquake on nation's one-child families (Daily Mail, 14th May 2008)
Fears were mounting today that almost an entire generation may have been wiped out in the China earthquake as the death toll leapt to at least 20,000.China's one-child policy, an attempt to curb the nation's soaring population, means the quake will have robbed many families of their only hope of a future.
With thousands caught in school buildings as the quake struck in the middle of Monday afternoon, children are among its most conspicuous victims.
And people wonder why conservatives are at war with Reason?
IN OTHER WORDS...:
What can Boris learn from the classics?: The new London mayor, Boris Johnson, has been accused of lacking experience and political nous, but he has always boasted one qualification for government - a good grasp of Latin, Greek and classical history. So just what lessons can a modern politician learn from antiquity? (Finlo Rohrer, 5/14/08, BBC News Magazine)
WATCH WHAT YOU SAYJohnson is not alone among modern politicians to have suffered controversy because of a tendency to talk volubly when it might have been better to remain circumspect.
In the classical world there was a great value placed on not saying too much. Many of the great aphorisms that have made it to the present day are the most pithy. "Veni, vidi, vici" or "I came, I saw, I conquered" - famously uttered by Julius Caesar - has been drummed into many a British schoolchild's head.
As Plato once said: "The wise man speaks because he has something to say, the fool because he has to say something."
But the masters of classical pithiness were the Spartans of Greece. It is said Philip of Macedon once sent a hostile message to the Spartans saying something along the lines of "if I bring my army down to Sparta, I will knock down the walls and kill everybody". The Spartan oligarchs reportedly sent back the one-word reply "if".
PRETEND TO BE STUPID
Supporters of Johnson have long denied that he has affected silliness in order to disguise his considerable intellect. But this was not unknown as a tactic in the ancient world.
"They conceal their wisdom, and pretend to be blockheads, so that they may seem to be superior only because of their prowess in battle." So Socrates, as quoted by Plato, described the Spartans.
And pretending to be stupid is supposed to have saved the life of the emperor Claudius when all his relatives were being murdered in a political merry-go-round.
...ape W.
May 13, 2008
You can stream the new Death Cab for Cutie, Narrow Stairs at AOL's Listening Party.
SUCH A MASSIVE WIN...:
Clinton posts dominating W. Va. win (BILL NICHOLS, 5/13/08, Politico)
West Virginia had 28 delegates at stake, to be awarded proportionally according to the popular vote.According to the Associated Press, Obama began the day with 1,875.5 delegates, to 1,697 for Clinton, out of 2,025 needed to clinch the nomination at the party convention in Denver this summer.
...could provide a nice moment for her to concede.
YOU WANNA BE WHERE NOBODY KNOWS YOUR NAME:
The Mysteries of the Suicide Tourist: Why the same things that attract millions of happy visitors to New York—the glamour, the skyline, the anonymity—also draw people from around the world to kill themselves here. (Phil Zabriskie, May 11, 2008, New York)
In a sense, New York City is unremarkable when it comes to suicide. According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, 32,637 people died by suicide in the United States in 2005, the most recent year for which figures exist. It’s the third leading cause of death for Americans ages 15 to 24, the fourth leading cause for Americans 18 to 65. New York State had the country’s third-lowest per capita suicide rate in 2005 (6.2 per 100,000); only New Jersey (6.1) and Washington, D.C., (6) had lower rates. (Montana tops the list, with a rate of 22, followed by several other western states.) Between 1990 and 2004, suicide rates in cities such as Miami, Las Vegas, Sacramento, and Pittsburgh dwarfed New York’s, according to a report called “Big Cities Health Inventory 2007” from the National Association of County and City Health Officials. Of the cities included, only Boston, Baltimore, and Washington ranked lower in 2004. Within the city, Manhattan had a rate of 7.6 suicides per 100,000 people in 2005, higher than the other boroughs (Brooklyn had the fewest, at 4.64), but lower than many upstate regions.Recently, however, researchers stumbled on a striking fact about suicides in New York: A surprising number of people who kill themselves in the city come here from out of town, and many appear to come expressly to take their own lives. In a report published last fall called “Suicide Tourism in Manhattan, New York City, 1990–2004,” researchers at the New York Academy of Medicine and Weill Cornell Medical College found that of the 7,634 people who committed suicide in New York City between 1990 and 2004, 407 of them, or 5.3 percent, were nonresidents. More strikingly, nonresidents accounted for 274, or 10.8 percent, of the 2,272 suicides in Manhattan during that time (the numbers did not include college students, who were considered residents for the purposes of the study). The researchers didn’t look at comparable data from other cities, but, says the study’s lead author, Charles Gross, “One in ten people that commit suicide in Manhattan don’t live here. That’s a big chunk.”
The New York City chief medical examiner’s office won’t release the files it allowed the NYAM researchers to review. But an informal survey of suicides in New York over the past twenty years reveals a bleak tapestry of out-of-towners who took their own lives.
It's all skyscrapers [and cars] are good for and the soul-killing atomization of the urban setting makes for an ideal venue.
THERE ARE CERTAIN THINGS GOD DIDN'T WANT US TO DO...:
The Uneven Playing Field (MICHAEL SOKOLOVE, 5/11/08, NY Times Magazine)
If girls and young women ruptured their A.C.L.’s at just twice the rate of boys and young men, it would be notable. Three times the rate would be astounding. But some researchers believe that in sports that both sexes play, and with similar rules — soccer, basketball, volleyball — female athletes rupture their A.C.L.’s at rates as high as five times that of males.Anthony Beutler, a major in the U.S. Air Force and a professor at the School of Medicine of the Uniformed Services University in Bethesda, Md., is among the cadre of doctors, scientists and researchers trying to crack the code of A.C.L. injuries. In 2001-2, he was a sports-medicine fellow at the Naval Academy, where he served as the physician for the women’s soccer team. Seven women were lost that season to A.C.L. ruptures. Beutler, already immersed in A.C.L. research, was still stunned. “I thought to myself, What in the heck is going on here?” he said. Last season, the women’s team at Navy suffered three torn A.C.L.’s. “They thought that was great, a fortunate year,” he told me. “Think about that. Just three. It’s bizarre.”
Men also tear their A.C.L.’s, most frequently in football and from direct blows to the leg. But even football players, according to N.C.A.A. statistics, do not rupture their A.C.L.’s during their fall seasons at the rates of women in soccer, basketball and gymnastics. The N.C.A.A.’s Injury Surveillance System tracks injuries suffered by athletes at its member schools, calculating the frequency of certain injuries by the number of occurrences per 1,000 “athletic exposures” — practices and games. The rate for women’s soccer is 0.25 per 1,000, or 1 in 4,000, compared with 0.10 for male soccer players. The rate for women’s basketball is 0.24, more than three times the rate of 0.07 for the men. The A.C.L. injury rate for girls may be higher — perhaps much higher — than it is for college-age women because of a spike that seems to occur as girls hit puberty.
If you are the parent of an athletic girl and live in a community that bustles with girls playing sports — especially the so-called jumping and cutting sports like soccer, basketball, volleyball and lacrosse — it may seem that every couple of weeks you see or hear about some unfortunate young woman hobbling off the field and into the operating room. The first time, you think: What a stroke of bad luck. But you figure it won’t happen to your daughter because, after all, what are the odds?
After a couple of more A.C.L. tears in the neighborhood, you get worried and think, Gosh, we must be in a really bad cluster for these injuries. Why here? But in all likelihood, what you are witnessing is not a freakish run of misfortune but the law of averages playing out.
The Injury Surveillance reports include commentary as well as data, and in 2007 the authors stated that an A.C.L. rupture is “a rare event” and advised against making too much of the tears sustained by male and female collegiate athletes across a range of sports. But a young woman playing college soccer can easily generate 200 exposures a year between her regular season in the fall, off-season training in the spring and club play in the summer. Plenty of younger players, girls in their early through late teens, will accrue well in excess of that number between their high-school seasons, their club seasons — which often run year-round — and multigame tournaments on weekends and soccer camps in the summer. (The same is true in other sports in which girls play school and club seasons, including basketball, lacrosse, volleyball and field hockey.)
So imagine a hypothetical high-school soccer team of 20 girls, a fairly typical roster size, and multiply it by the conservative estimate of 200 exposures a season. The result is 4,000 exposures. In a cohort of 20 soccer-playing girls, the statistics predict that 1 each year will experience an A.C.L. injury and go through reconstructive surgery, rehabilitation and the loss of a season — an eternity for a high schooler. Over the course of four years, 4 out of the 20 girls on that team will rupture an A.C.L.
Each of them will likely experience “a grief reaction,” says Dr. Jo Hannafin, orthopedic director of the Women’s Sports Medicine Center at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York. “They’ve lost their sport and they’ve lost the kinship of their friends, which is almost as bad as not being able to play.”
Marshall says he feels a sense of urgency, because without a better understanding of the injury, the situation will get worse in coming years with the great numbers of girls playing sports — and the frequency and intensity of their play. In 1972, at the dawn of Title IX, about 300,000 girls participated in high-school sports. The number is now three million. Thirty thousand women played college sports pre-Title IX; about 205,000 now play.
“We’re studying an elite population at the service academies, but the big concern for me is the girl down the street who wants to play soccer on the rec team or the travel team,” Marshall told me. “They’re ripping their knees up, and they shouldn’t be. There’s got to be a way to prevent it. And we’re really on the up curve of this, because it’s still relatively recent that girls played sports in these large numbers. . . . So if you think we have a problem now, 10 years from now we’ll have a much bigger problem.”
...girls playing soccer is two of them.
IF DICE-K WAS WORTH $50 MILLION TO A LOADED SOX STAFF...:
Dice-K 2.0 (Jim Caple, ESPN)
In addition to his extraordinary talent on the mound, Darvish is a demographer's dream: young, 6-foot-5 and slender, with the sort of strikingly exotic face that is seen more often in Calvin Klein ads than on baseball cards. Features like this -- a blend of his Iranian father, Farsad, and his Japanese mother, Ikuyo, who met (where else?) in the U.S. -- are practically sui generis in Japan.The full family name is Darvishsefad. Yu's grandfather was a travel agent in Iran who encouraged Yu's father to explore the world, partially by finishing his high school education in the United States. Farsad did and went on to college in Florida, where he played soccer -- or at least he did until 1979, when Iranian students stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran, kidnapped 52 embassy workers, changed the course of American politics, launched Ted Koppel's career into orbit and instantly made things rather unpleasant for young Iranians studying in America.
"My coach put me on the bench for two years," Farsad says without any apparent bitterness. "But then again that made me strong, because I never gave up. I told Yu once how it was, because in the sports world there are people who won't like you."
Farsad eventually wound up at Eastern Washington University in the small town of Cheney, Wash., which is where the Seahawks used to train each summer. "When I was working in the cafeteria, I used to watch them carry two trays -- one was a milk tray, one was a food tray, so it was very huge," he recalls. "And, of course, I cheered for the Seahawks."
Sadly, though, Farsad missed out on the Stan Gelbaugh era when he and Ikuyo moved to Japan to raise a family in Osaka. The Darvishes spoke English at home for the first three years of Yu's life until Farsad gained proficiency in Japanese. Yu visited Iran twice as a child but says the country has had no influence on him: "I'm Japanese. I grew up as a Japanese. I'm 100 percent Japanese."
Which is not to say that is how others view him. Darvish starred at the Koshien national high school baseball tournament -- like Dice-K, he threw a no-hitter in the event -- but Nippon Ham somehow was the only team that drafted him (the Japanese draft system allows multiple teams to choose a player). Just as Farsad felt discrimination in America, Yu's Iranian background in a very homogenous society, Valentine says, prevented at least one team from drafting him. "My scouting director here didn't think he was what our fans really would like to root for," Valentine says. "That scouting director is no longer with us."
Darvish's enormous popularity clearly proves that director's view was completely wrong.
Yet his background is an issue. "[The Japanese] really do like to have their star players from their community, from their prefecture, from their area in the country and, lastly, at least from the country," Valentine says. "And sometimes when a guy isn't of the same model as every other guy, there are some old heads in the country [thinking], 'I don't want that guy on our team.'"
Nippon Ham has a reputation for signing players considered untouchable by other teams. This past winter, for example, the team signed Kazuhito Tadano, the pitcher who appeared in a gay porn movie while in college and briefly pitched for the Cleveland Indians. If any team was going to sign Darvish, who also had a reputation as being a little wild and undisciplined in high school, Nippon Ham would be the one.
And Darvish began his pro career in Japan with an American manager, Hillman. "When he was drafted his father was outstanding," Hillman says. "He said, 'Trey, he's all yours. I know that you'll treat him like he was your own son.'"
Darvish progressed quickly and steadily with the Fighters. He lowered his ERA from 3.53 as a rookie in 2005 to 2.89 in 2006 to 1.81 last year. But the 2007 season ended on a down note. Despite allowing only one run in the final game of the Japan Series, Darvish took the loss when the opposing team pitched a perfect game. He is 5-1 with a 1.46 ERA so far this season. "Yu is tremendously gifted, and he's developed a great work ethic," Hillman says. "I didn't have a lot of conversations with Yu, because there wasn't a need for it. He understood that he needed to start working harder. Actually, after the 2006 season, he was so dedicated and committed to his workout program that he [chose] to forego the team trip to New Zealand."
"I don't need much motivation," Darvish says through an interpreter. "I'm never satisfied until I win all the games and have an ERA of 0.00. I want to throw a faster fastball. I want a sharper curve. I want to improve all my pitches."
Most observers feel he either is already as good as Matsuzaka or soon will be. "I think his numbers in Japan are going to be equally as phenomenal as he continues to move on, barring injury, as Dice-K's were in Japan," Hillman says. "He's got a different type of frame. Dice-K's got a more powerful frame, but Darvish has looser levers and a taller frame with more whip, and I think that gives him an opportunity to have more powerful and more electric secondary pitches as well as a fastball.
"The curveball is just not fair. Honestly, it's just not a fair pitch."
When Ichiro first came to America, rumors flew that there was a $1 million bounty for a naked photo of him, and he took the rumors seriously enough to dress in a private section of the clubhouse. Darvish, on the other hand, willingly posed nude for a magazine last year (though it did not reveal his genitals). He was embroiled in a national controversy when he was caught smoking a cigarette (gasp!) while still in high school. He clearly has grown comfortable with public, ahem, exposure since then, so much so that one night last season he promised his fiancée that he would win the game so he could use the postgame news conference to announce their impending wedding and her pregnancy. To cultivate his image, he hired an agent who normally represents entertainers. In a humble society famous for the expression "the nail that sticks up is hammered down," Yu is cocky enough to say things such as, "On a scale of 1 to 10, I can bring a 10 to any important game."
Hillman compares Darvish's marketability to Tiger's and MJ's. "He understands how cool people think he is. He understands the adulation and the mystique." [...]
Most everyone says if Darvish is posted, the bidding will easily top the $50 million the Seibu Lions received in exchange for the rights to Dice-K. After that, Johnson says, "The sky is the limit as to where the big-money teams would go." Given the usual escalation in baseball contracts, it isn't crazy to think the negotiating fee could go to $75 million.While America is a verboten subject, Iran is not. Farsad Darvish says he is involved with a program to promote baseball in his native country, and Yu wants to help bring the game -- President Bush's favorite sport -- to Iran. "Yes, of course, because Iran is my father's country, I'll help him make baseball popular there," Yu says. "I know how much it means to him."
...what would Darvish be worth to a weak Yankee one?
Tapioca Pudding With Strawberry-Rhubarb Sauce (Contra Costa Times, 05/13/2008)
FOR THE PUDDING:¼ cup quick-cooking tapioca
6 tablespoons sugar
3 cups milk
2 eggs, well-beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
FOR THE SAUCE:
1 basket (1 pint) strawberries
½ pound rhubarb, cut in ½-inch widths
6-8 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons fresh orange juice
1. To make pudding: Combine tapioca, sugar, milk and eggs in a saucepan. Let stand 5 minutes. Cook over moderate heat, stirring constantly, until mixture comes to a rolling boil. Immediately remove from heat, transfer to a bowl and stir in vanilla extract. Let cool without stirring, then cover and chill. Pudding will thicken as it cools.
2. To make sauce: Hull and quarter strawberries. In a saucepan, combine strawberries, rhubarb, 6 tablespoons sugar and orange juice. Bring to a simmer over moderate heat, stirring to dissolve sugar. Cover, adjust heat to maintain a gentle simmer and cook until fruit softens and forms a sauce, about 10 minutes. Watch carefully to make sure mixture doesn't boil up and spill over the pan. Uncover, stir well, then taste. Add up to 2 tablespoons
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more sugar if necessary, then transfer to a bowl to cool. Cover and refrigerate until cold.3. To serve, put a generous tablespoon of strawberry rhubarb sauce in each of 6 balloon wineglasses or compote dishes. Top with ½ cup tapioca. Any leftover sauce may be refrigerated for up to a week.
SOMEONE OUGHT TO DO A POLL...:
The Big Race: Obama and the psychology of the color barrier. (John B. Judis, 5/28/08, The New Republic)
Many social scientists had long rejected the possibility that humans might harbor unconscious attitudes different from their conscious behavior. But, in trying to explain the persistence of racial prejudice, political psychologists were forced to hypothesize different levels of awareness and motivation. On the highest level was public moral reflection guided by social norms--which led to Trent Lott being pilloried when he famously said in 2002 that, if Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond had been elected president, the country could have avoided "all these problems." Beneath this, however, was a realm of knee-jerk opinion that might contradict a person's moral reflections; and still beneath that were unconscious attitudes, which, like a person's knee-jerk opinions, were often at odds with his or her public moral reflections. If racial prejudice persisted, it was on these deeper levels.Political psychologists devised new tests to uncover these sentiments. First, they crafted survey questions aimed at unearthing what they called "symbolic racism," "modern racism," and, most recently, "racial resentments," which ascribe to blacks as a group certain negative attributes or undeserved advantages. For example, researchers asked respondents whether they agreed or disagreed with statements such as "It's really a matter of some people not trying hard enough; if blacks would only try harder they could be just as well off as whites" or "Over the past few years, blacks have gotten more economically than they deserve."
Experimenters then inserted questions like these into the American National Election Studies (ANES), extensive biennial surveys funded by the National Science Foundation. The answers revealed a degree of racial resentment that wasn't apparent from more explicit questions about racial bias. In 1986, for instance, 59 percent of respondents agreed that blacks were not trying hard enough (only 27 percent disagreed), while 67 percent thought blacks should work "their way up ... without any special favors." Psychologists David Sears and Donald Kinder, as well as others, found that this racial resentment was the single most important factor--more important than even conservative ideology or political partisanship--in explaining strong opposition to a host of government programs that either directly or indirectly benefited minorities. Of course, that doesn't mean there couldn't be principled conservative opposition to government-guaranteed equal employment or urban aid. But, according to the political psychologists, racial resentment played the largest role in fueling public skepticism.
The answers also revealed which groups within society continued to harbor racial resentment. With the help of Harvard doctoral student Scott Winship, I looked at the levels of racial resentment in ANES data from 1988, 1992, and 2000 (the questions were omitted in 1996). What Winship and I found was that resentment was highest among males rather than females, the middle class rather than the wealthy or poor, those lacking a college degree, those who worked in skilled or semi-skilled blue collar jobs or as laborers, and residents of small towns in the Midwest and South. Does that profile sound familiar? It's more or less a description of the white working-class voters who have spurned Obama and with whom John Kerry and Al Gore had trouble. The only groups that didn't evince racial animosity toward blacks were voters with post-graduate degrees and, of course, African Americans. Hispanics were nearly as prejudiced as whites, and a group labeled "other" that includes Asian Americans was even more so--a partial explanation, perhaps, for why Obama fared so poorly among these groups in California. Clearly, racial resentment persisted--just in a more nuanced form.
In fact, the structure of this modern racism was even more complicated than the ANES data suggested. In a study published in 1995, four psychologists from Indiana University recounted taking a group of subjects who had earlier taken the racism test (the questions had been interspersed among scores of other questions) and giving it to them again. This time, however, a black experimenter conducted some of the tests and a white experimenter the others. The psychologists discovered that, when the interviewer was black, white respondents scored substantially lower on the racism scale than before. This meant that gut-level reactions could be easily influenced by moral reflection and social norms. What psychologists needed was a method of measuring prejudice that elicited immediate emotional reactions rather than the products of deliberation.
Toward that end, they devised tests that measured racial attitudes without subjects knowing what was happening or being able to adjust their responses to social norms. In a study that appeared in 1989, University of Wisconsin psychologist Patricia Devine flashed words on a screen faster than her subjects could recognize them. Some of the words, like "blacks," were associated with African Americans; others were neutral. She then asked subjects whether a person's actions in a deliberately ambiguous story about a customer wanting his money back signified hostility or not. After words associated primarily with African Americans were flashed, the subjects rated the person's actions decidedly more "hostile" than after predominately neutral words were flashed. This suggested to Devine that terms associated with blacks were priming unconscious stereotypes about aggressiveness or hostility.
Another kind of test--known as an implicit association test--used the time it took to complete word association exercises to unmask stereotypes. Psychologists would ask subjects to associate positive and negative adjectives with African American and European American faces by pressing different keys on a computer. At each interval in the experiment, subjects would be told which kind of adjectives to pair with which subject. If a subject regularly took longer to pair positive words with a black face than he did negative words, that indicated unconscious racial bias.
Using data from more than 15,000 self-selected subjects who took the test on a website, psychologists Anthony Greenwald, Mahzarin Banaji, and Brian Nosek found that the same sorts of respondents who had registered higher on the racial resentment scale were more inclined to associate negative adjectives with an African American face. For instance, subjects who had not graduated from college displayed more prejudice than those who had. Men also were more prejudiced than women.
In addition, according to questions they answered before taking the test, there was a sharp disparity between what subjects said they believed and what the test showed. For instance, only 32 percent of high school graduates said they favored whites over African Americans, but in the test 64 percent did. This disparity suggests that, in answering questions about what they believed, subjects opted for prevailing norms over private sentiments. They did not want to appear racist, even though, at some level, they were.
...that just asks likely voters what ethnicity Mr. Obama is. It wouldn't be surprising if a significant percentage don't know.
BOOKS R GOOD:
I wanted to let you know about our White Sale which goes through May 31st.
For more information, please visit: http://cup.columbia.edu/sale/23
We are offering up to 80% off on more than 1,000 titles in all subjects. (There are some really great deals).
I hope this will be of interest to you and your readers. Please feel free to pass the word to friends and colleagues.
Thank you and please let me know if you have any questions.
Best,
Columbia University Press
www.cup.columbia.edu
ONCE YOU CONCEDE THAT FORCING INNOVATION WORKS THE REST IS EASY:
McCain’s Assault on Reason (Roy Spencer, 5/13/08, National Review)
What worries me is the widespread misperception that we can do anything substantial about carbon emissions without seriously compromising economic growth. To be sure, forcing a reduction in CO2 emissions will help spur investment in new energy technologies. But so does a price tag of $126 for a barrel of oil. Finding a replacement for carbon-based energy will require a huge investment of wealth, and destroying wealth is not a very good first step toward that goal.
We have wealth. Our enemies have carbons. It's not a hard call even if you use only Reason.
THAT'S WHAT GOD GAVE US STEERING COLUMNS FOR:
France to introduce breathalyser tests in bars (Hugh Schofield, 12/05/2008, Daily Telegraph)
France is to introduce compulsory breathalyser tests in late-night bars and clubs as part of a new effort to cut down on road deaths.The announcement by the environment minister Jean-Louis Borloo came after a particularly bloody holiday weekend on the roads with 19 people killed.
"I am going to introduce a decree in cabinet under which all drink outlets that stay open till two in the morning will have compulsory electronic breath-tests, so that everyone can test his own situation as he leaves," Mr Borloo said yesterday.
When I was in college they were going to put one in the Pub--yes, colleges used to have their own pubs--until the Administration heard about the contest to see who could blow the highest number.
Gennie's pie is peanut butter perfection (JOYCE SÁENZ HARRIS, 5/12/08, The Dallas Morning News)
ROSEMARIE'S PEANUT BUTTER PIE IN HOMEMADE CRUST2 cups flour (divided use)
½ teaspoon plus 1 pinch of salt (divided use)
¾ cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar (divided use)
½ cup shortening
2 to 3 tablespoons ice-cold water
3 egg yolks
2 ½ cups milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ cup smooth peanut butter
1 cup whipped cream
½ cup roasted unsalted peanuts, chopped
Pie shell: Sift together 1 ½ cups flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt and 2 tablespoons sugar. Cut in shortening until it resembles corn meal. Add water, 1 tablespoon at a time, tossing with fork until moist enough to hold together. Shape into a ball. Wrap in wax paper and refrigerate 1 hour.
On lightly floured board, roll out chilled pastry dough until large enough to line 9-inch pie pan. Dust top of rolled dough lightly with flour, line pan, then prick dough all over with fork. Flute edges and place in freezer 15 to 20 minutes.
Preheat oven to 450 F. Bake until golden brown, about 10-12 minutes, and cool.
Filling: Combine egg yolks, pinch of salt and milk and mix well. Place in heavy saucepan and cook over low heat, stirring until warm. Combine 3/4 cup sugar and 1/2 cup flour in bowl; gradually add to milk mixture in saucepan, stirring constantly until thickened. Boil 1 minute. Remove from heat. Stir in vanilla and peanut butter. Let cool slightly.
Pour filling into cooled pie shell. Chill thoroughly. Top with whipped cream and garnish with chopped peanuts.
