Saturday Summary [finally]

In 2009 Elinor Ostrum won the Nobel Prize in Economics. Unlike the many men who've won in economic Ms. Ostrum did not study the competitive nature of economics; she studied economic cooperation. It takes a woman.

In fertility clinics where couples are able to choose the sex of their children, 75% choose girls.

For every two men who graduate from college these days, three women graduate from college. Let's have three cheers for women!!!

For a real change of subject: Three new books: Washington's Rules: America's path to Permanent War by A. Bucavich, Reasons to Kill: America Chooses War, R. Rubenstein, and The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris by P. Blimart all chronical why the U. S. has been at war almost uninterruptedly for 30 years. Shortly after I read this list I saw a cartoon which showed three generals sitting around a table. One was saying, "The good news is I think peace can be avoided."

The giant Tata Motor Company of India introduced an affordable automobile hoping to put less fortunate Indians behind a wheel. The Tata Nano only cost $2900; but it has been a flop, with only 509 sold. A rival small car called the Alto, priced at $6200 sold over 30,000 in the same period of time.

More finances: the Malibu, CA house that Bing Crosby bought for $2500 in 1920 was bought by Robert Redford in 1982 for $2 million. It's probably worth twice that today.

Finally in medicine: between January 2006 and January 2009 the high tech inplantible defibrilator heart device which costs $35,000 each was been implanted in 111,707 people at 1227 hospitals in America. A recent study showed that 25,000 of the people who had the device implanted did not need it.

Sorry to have so few pieces of good news to pass on the first of this year.

Saturday Summary {on Sunday]

Sir William Herschel was a musician before he became an astronomer, he composed and taught music. A contemporary of Handel, his music is still heard -- it was heard by me this week on the local classical music radio station. He gave it up and became one of the greatest astronomers. He had a philosophical and wide ranging mind, perhaps the first "modern" mind in astronomy. He was the first to realize that we might be able to see light of stars that have been dead for millions of years. th Caroline, Hershel's little sister [she was barely 5 feet due to childhood illness and a ill treatment], was his able assistant after giving up a possible singing career. She too discovered many new astral wonders, especially comets. She was a celebrity in her own right.

This week I read that of all the known universes we can now see and name [thousands of which the Herschels were the first to see] possibly three times as many exist beyond our ability to see them. The wonder of the galaxies is truly beyond imagination.

But down to earth, salt has come to my attention. Salt is used in almost all prepared foods, it serves to enhance taste, to preserve food, and to mask tastes we don't like [e.g., bitterness] which is why I put salt on grapefruit. We Americans eat too much salt. Mayor Blumberg of NYC wants to make people aware of how much they're eating. [Already on the fat and calorie front, he's passed a law that fast food places must display the calorie count of their items -- and believe me, I think twice at Starbucks when choosing a muffin or scone]. He is trying to make people equally aware of the salt in fast foods.

It's known that salt affects blood pressure and diuretics have been prescribed with high blood pressure medications for many years. It's less well known that salt's flavor can change the perceived "mouth feel" of foods some people think are icky, thus making, say tapioca pudding pleasanter and helping those who must eat pureed food because of swallowing problems get some pleasure out of their diet.

We know how important taste is and sometimes we don't think much about scent. But marketers are thinking about it a lot. They not only use those scent strips to advertise perfume [which all smell alike to me] and the scratch off dots to advertise various kinds of deodorizers, but they are thinking of ways to "odorize" billboards, say for a steak house, fill the air near by with the scent of charcoal and pepper. Note: almost all the chemicals used to produce artificial scents are allergenic and possibly carcinogenic. Might we say that some allergies and cancers are a by-product of advertising?

Saturday Summary

Forget about the old cliche, "all the gold in Fort Knox." America's biggest stash of gold is in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on Liberty Street, 2164 ounces of the shiny stuff valued at $93 billion.

From the sublime to the often embarrassing: Some hospital patients will go high fashion and no longer inappropriately exposed. Cleveland Clinic, one of America's most well known cancer hospitals has commissioned designer Diane Von Furstenberg design new hospital gowns for patients.

And good news for all we computer users. When Russian police announced they were investigating a man known as "the spam king" worldwide spam messages dropped by 50 billion a day. I wondered what happened to those ads for Russian-made Viagara.

Speaking of Spam, in this case the trademarked "food" that many think has disappeared -- but it hasn't! When that large cruise ship was disabled because of an engine room fire this week and refrigeration was cut off, helicopters dropped cases of Span so the passengers would have something to eat while they waited to be towed to shore. Not exactly the usual Captain's Table fare.

Seen only by invitation and then under hush-hush conditions, an abandoned subway stop somewhere in NYC [there are quite a few such stations underground] has been turned into a huge art gallery with mosaics covering the walls. Being there is illegal as is "defacing" such city property but it's said to be a very wonderful work of art.

Equally unseen except by those with special abilities, but apparently a real on another dimension, astrology physicists say two vast bubbles of energy have emerged [sometime in the last few billion years] from the center of the Milky Way galaxy. All the physicists are quite sure about is that they are not black holes of dark matter. This energy, we are told, is the equivalent of 100,000 supernova. It will take more than a week of contemplation for me to wrap my imagination around that piece of information.

Since a Supreme Court decision sometime int e 1940s, corporations have had the legal status of "persons" and all the freedoms guaranteed to persons in the Constitution. It was only a small tweek in the definition that resulted in a more recent definition of corporations as "individuals" resulting in their freedom to make political donations anonymously, and that includes making many of those "infomercials" about political candidates that polluted our airways and eardrums up until election day last week. We had no way of knowing who was telling us what to think about who and which proposal. Were you an "informed voter?"

Saturday Summary

I read this week -- and I find it somewhat hard to believe -- that only 7% of the world has the climate and the tree species to enjoy the kind of autumn foliage that I have been gazing at the past few days. The article said only the northern US and southern Canada enjoys these days of glorious red-orange-gold above our heads. Surely part of Europe does also and so on around the world and then there's the southern hemisphere, South America, Australia and New Zealand, maybe they don't have the oaks and maples and beeches and so on. True or false, it's been a magnificent week and I haven't had my camera but I'm going to take it today and snap a few pictures.

From the sublime to the ridiculous: Don't you sometimes wonder what kind of people become judges? A judge this week refused to dismiss a suit that named a four-year old little girl who was riding her bike on training wheels on a sidewalk in New York and unfortunately ran into an elderly woman with a walker who fell and broke her hip. In fact a little boy who was riding beside her was also sued and his lawyer didn't ask for dismissal. Both mothers were present and are also names, which seems appropriate enough though still petty and money-grubbing of the plaintiff. Maybe the children shouldn't have been riding there but is every accident a reason to go to court? It is not against the law for children to ride trikes, bikes, scooters, or skateboards on the sidewalks in NYC.

Talking about little people and also New Zealand as above, filming of The Hobbit was in question because of an actors' union's demands for representation. Defenders of "Wellywood" [named for Wellington] marched in the streets protesting. Finally the legislature passed a ruling that local actors could work as independent contractors and did not have to join the union. So, hurray! Bilbo Baggins will fight Schmog, the dragon, in the same landscape where his nephew, Frodo, saved Middle Earth. Lord of the Rings is one of my all time favorite movies and books and I love The Hobbit too, almost as much as Winnie the Pooh. [That is true but I added it for the rhyme.]

Middle Earth is fictional but our real earth continues to reveal more and more of its wonders and wealth and leaves scientists and thinkers with new questions. Primate bones found in Libya have raised the question of just where life actually started, calling into question the presently accepted idea of central Africa being the original Garden of Eden. A bit less profound but interesting: in India a finding of much amber has revealed many previously unknown species of insects as well as bit of unknown plants embalmed in the hardened resins.

Saturday Summary

This is new news such as I rarely include but this looks pretty amazing. The newest bridge in the US, and now the longest concrete span in the Western Hemisphere, is over the Colorado River, and 900 feet above it, just south of the Hoover Dam -- a spectacular setting for the bridge: mountains, river, dam, lake -- wow!

From the new to the old: on average worldwide, one large ship is sunk every three days. Many of these are old ships from which most usable metal has been removed for resale but the ships still contain many pollutants. Of course, some of the sinkings are ships actively carrying cargo, but by no means are those the majority. Seems a human logical failure to think "out of sight, out of mind."

An ancient user of ships, Cleopatra, needs some rethinking in the minds of most of us who see a vision of Elizabeth Taylor when the name pops up. The real Cleo was not even Egyptian but Greek, and from the coins with her likeness, she wasn't a beauty although she was supposed to have been very witty and unusually wise [or maybe astute is the word] when it came to ruling her country. She even learned to speak Egyptian which none of her Ptolomy predecessors who ruled Egypt after Alexander the Great conquored it had bothered to speak the local language.

Not too far away from Egypt, but in the present, a peculiar sport is played in Yemen: camel jumping. 1,2, 3, maybe 4 camels are made to lie down side by side and then a broad jumper takes off to see how many camels he can leap over. The sport is generations old, played only by men, of course -- in fact women are rarely allowed to even watch.

But back to the US and a bit of history: In 1539 Hernando de Soto on his swing through the South introduced pigs to the continent. Of course a few managed to get free before they became bar-b-cue for the explorers. Today 38 states have problems with feral pigs, some 4 million of the estimated 8 million roaming woods and marshes, are in Texas where they are hunted both from the air and on ground. They do approximately $800 million in property damage a year. This of course has nothing to do with the many millions of domestic pigs grown for food on huge and tiny farms.

Finally a pre-Halloween story from the recent news. A woman in Costa Mesa, CA allowed a homeless woman to sleep in her car. The homeless woman died but the car owner did not report it to the police and continued to drive the car for some 3 or 4 months leaving the corpse in the passenger's' seat under a blanket -- creating a very foul smell and mummifying as time went by. The body was discovered when the woman left the car parked blocking another's driveway and the police were called about the car. People do the damnedest things!

Saturday Summary

The first aerial photograph taken in the USA was on October 13, 1860, a view of Boston from a hot air balloon by photographer James Wallace Black. He knew Nadar, in Paris, had done such photos and had to take developing chemicals aloft with him because the plates had to be treated immediately, so Black did the same. This photo is the oldest aerial photo now in the world. Soon afterward aerial photography was used for reconnaissance in the Civil War.

America's greatest waste of energy may be in the family garbage can. The food thrown out accounts for millions or billions of calories [units of energy --yes, not of fat or sugar] The additional waste of energy from food thrown out includes the energy to grow, transport, sell and cook that food. Think about it, consider more soups made from left overs, other ways to use up what you buy. By the way in an unofficial survey, several people asked to define "calorie" couldn't. So is there any point in listing the calories on menus? Don't most people thing bigger is better so that the new sandwich introduced by Burger King with over 2250 calories must be the best. Right?

The top selling drugs in the US today are antipsychotics, $14.6 Billion a year. They are taken by small children all the way through to geriatric people. These drugs also produce the largest number of law suits. We can say we are a mad nation, however you want to use mad.


In the USA there are 3 million drivers over 85. Their accident rate is 16% higher than other adult drivers. However, those under 25 have an accident rate compared to those over 25 of 188%, and these accidents more often kill people. Grampa may be an irritation on the road, but junior is a serious menace.

Zebras have not been domesticated although people have tried off and on. They are much more skittish than horses or donkeys and have an unpredictable and nasty temper. When they bite they hang on and don't let go. I for one think it's sad they are so untameable, can't you see John Wayne riding a zebra?

We know computers don't really have minds of their own even if sometimes it seems they do. They follow commands. For the British edition of Jonathan Franzen's new novel Freedom, the the computer was accidentally told to print an earlier draft, not the finished one. Several thousand copies had to be destroyed and the publication date had to be pushed back. Reviews suggest it's worth getting the final copy.

Saturday Summary #20

Twenty! Gee whiz! I think it's time to stop numbering, I'm beginning to feel repetitious although it's not.

First, sad and ironic: The tycoon who recently bought the Segway company [see picture above]-- the people moving invention -- was riding the rough terrain version on his estate in Yorkshire, England when he drove off a cliff and fell into a river and drown. Sometimes wearing a hard hat doesn't help.

More people moving: an ideal city, planned to be a mile square, is under construction in the desert near Abu Dhabi. So far only 3-1/2 acres are complete. It will have underground transportation in the form of programmable individual cars that will take you where you want to go with no further guidance from the rider.

More urban information: Italy has the most expensive electricity in the EU. More than 700 municipalities have erected alternate power systems [solar and wind] and are now making more power than they need. It seems that even their venerable and often beautiful cities, economics have trumped local "heritage preservation" -- something that is slowing the erection of wind turbines where I live on Cape Cod.

As for little creatures: We know about the upsurge in bedbug infestations, at least in the NYC area. In rural Maryland it is stink bugs that are causing problems. They eat the leaves and fruit in orchards. They are appropriately named and not only operate somewhat like skunks emitting a nasty scent when irritated, but smell more pungently if killed. They sometimes wander out of those orchards into lawns and even into houses. I do remember a few from my growing up years on an Indiana farm and I think I'd know their smell anywhere.

Slightly more cuddly creatures, coyotes,can now be found in 49 of the 50 states. DNA tests of coyotes who have only made their way to the Eastern seaboard in the last 30 or 40 years, show that they have interbred with wolves, presumably wandering through Canada on their way east. They are somewhat larger than Western coyotes, their coloring is more varied -- brown, gray, mixed -- and they not only hunt the usual small animals like gophers, mice, shrews, rabbits [and urban legend says house cats] but will hunt as a group and kill deer which western coyotes don't do. I am a bit jealous that most people I know claim to have seen a wild coyote but I never have.

Saturday Summary #19

Children between the ages of 9 and 12 who get regular aerobic exercise have larger basal ganglia than sedentary children. The basal ganglia is responsible for "executive function", controlling emotions. These children also have bigger hippocampi which are involved in complex memory. The two areas interact making the child more "reasonable." In terms of physically active, this is not talking about hyperactive children.

But what about adult brains? The anterior cingulate cortex is an area that reacts to physical pain. It has been found that it also reacts to emotional pain like acute embarrassment. Lately it's been found that acetaminophen which we know can blunt physical pain [we're talking Tylenol and generics here] has now been shown to also blunt emotional pain. So the next time you call your spouse by your boy/girl friend's name, take a Tylenol -- or maybe give your spouse the Tylenol.

But in terms of things you want to preserve forever, like childhood photos [home videos?] important papers, there is a Swiss bank that, for only $399, will store your memorabilia in a vault that is guaranteed to withstand nuclear attack.

"Bacha posh" is the Dari [and Afghan language] for a girl who is raised as a boy. This is a long established practice that cuts across social and economic lines. Families with several girls and no boys will dress one girl as a boy, send her to school, let her chaperons her sisters as a boy would, etc. The only twist is that when they find a husband for her, she has to take off the shalwar kemise and put on a skirt like the other girls and revert to all the strictures of being female. We can imagine what a psychological shock that has to be.

Dollar stores are thriving beyond the success of many other kinds of retail outlets, including the big box stores. They especially are selling food items and believe it's the "end of the month" problem of people running out of money before the next paycheck. Stores like Wal-Mart are attempting to compete by having many items packaged for them in smaller sizes so they can sell them at dollar store prices.

A story I liked but can hardly believe: in 1860 a possibly mad scientist had the idea that whalers could attach glass vials of prussic acid to their harpoon and quickly poison their prey. A ship off Iceland was equipped with such loaded harpoons, a whale was discovered, the harpoon shot accurately and it sunk deeply into the whale which immediately sounded [dived deep]. Within some minutes it floated back up to the surface, quite dead. The whalers on that ship were so appalled they chose never to use a poisoned harpoon again. I guess it took all the fun out of the hunt. Perhaps they also needed some Tylenol.

Saturday Summary #18

The word "bling" hadn't been invented in 1987 when Liberace died of AIDS; but his lifestyle was the very essence of bling; the rhinestone covered piano, the mirrored Rolls Royce and his costumes, on and off stage! He shimmered and glittered and sparkled when he moved. His shiny effects are on display in a museum in Las Vegas where he epitomized the over the top bling of the place. But the light is going out; the museum will be closed. From an attendance of 450,000 a year it's now down to 50,000 a year. His fans are dying off and lately it seems even the idea of bling is getting tarnished. Ho-hum.

Freak wind storms occasionally attack certain areas of New York City. This week hundreds of trees, from young saplings to grand old historic trees in Queens and Brooklyn were uprooted. One woman was killed when a big one feel on her car but otherwise people were all right only the trees were lost. Two years ago an equally freaky wind uprooted about 500 trees in Central Park but most of the rest of the city was okay; a couple of years before I moved from there, a wind storm attacked the trees of Riverside Park -- not a very big park but vulnerable to wind off the Hudson -- felling a couple of hundred trees. In a different environment homes would be ruined, but the solid bulk of the buildings in New York protects the people [their purpose of course] It's sad to see trees disappear in an urban environment where they are such a necessary visual softener in the landscape.

Austria, which is a landlocked country about the size of Maine, is 2/3rd Alpine. The Austrians love their mountains and welcome tourists to share their outdoors. They have approximately 680 high peaks, 13,660 miles of downhill ski trails, over 10,000 miles of cross country ski trails and over 500 high mountain huts. I have been there and can attest that the there are also mountain restaurants one chances upon where a hearty bowl of soup and a cool beer is a great treat for a hiker or skier.

Wikipedia, as we know, can be added to and amended by anyone with information. Recently pranksters amended the biography of one Judge Roger Vinson by including the "fact" that he is great outdoorsman who has shot three grizzly bears and had their stuff ed heads hung in his courtroom to show offenders what a tough guy he is. In fact,he has never hunted,let along killed a bear. Judge Vinson isn't happy with his bio.

Also not happy with Wikipedia are the heirs of Agatha Christy. In the 50+ years The Mousetrap ran in the West End of London, the actor who played the character who "done it" would always step out at curtain call time and ask the audience not to ruin the show for others by revealing the end. For the most part London critics and audience honored this injunction all those years so approximately 10 million people had the thrill of being surprised at the end. But on Wikipedia the plot is summarize and the ending reveled for anyone to read. Boo-hisss!

Saturday Summary #17

Camels were introduced into Australia in the 1840s to carry goods in the desert. Then railroads were built and many camels were let loose in the wild. They thrived and multiplied. 80% of the indigenous plants tasted good to them, they destroied water holes and fences. Now the Government wants to cull half of the wild camels; an entrepreneur or two wants to turn them into steaks. The most likely market would be in Saudi Arabia or other Middle Eastern countries that already have a taste for camel. We American have been introduced to emu burgers, maybe we're next -- the meat is low in cholesterol.

Plumpy'nut is a nutritious paste that comes in foil packets, its base is peanuts to which basic nutrients are added. It was invented by a French doctor named Briend as a way to provide nutrition to malnourished children and is distributed by UNICEF and other food aid NGOs. It is literally a life saver. Dr. Briend has the patent but takes no income from the product which is manufactured largely in Africa. A packet a day has been something of a miracle for many children. It tastes good too.

More about food: The largest percent of the food eaten by American is produced by four giant companies, JBS, Tyson, Cargill and Nat'l Beef Packaging. 89% of the smaller hog farms have disappeared in the last 30 years, 40% of the cattle ranches are gone. One result of factory animal farming is nitrate filled run-off into water ways all over the central part of the country. And considerable stink in some regions as well.

In fact, "dead zones" exist in US coastal and Great Lakes waters -- these are areas with so little oxygen fish and plants cannot live there. The largest is in the Gulf of Mexico. In the '80s it was 2500 sq. miles. in '09 [before BP oil spill] it had grown to 12,719 sq. miles. Large dead zones are developing off Oregon and Washington as well. These are largely due to the waste and fertilizer run off.

On a lighter note, it's about time for the world's largest annual fair: Octoberfest in Munich, Germany. 5 to 6 million people attend the 16 day blow out. I think the amount of beer consumed is so staggering figures weren't published, likewise for wursts eaten.

Women in the Army [approx. 15.5% of soldiers] are going to look spiffier. Until now they have had to make do with uniforms designed for men; finally the Army plans to have woman sized and shaped uniforms designed and made -- they will recognize that women have breasts not just chests, and usually hips broader than their waists.

Apparently the media mongering madman who wanted to burn Korans today has been muzzled -- after doing all the damage he could to America's shaky credibility as a tolerant country. However, the US Dept. of Defense is going to do it's own book burning -- well quieter destruction, having bought all 10,000 copies of the first edition of "Operation Dark Heart", a memoir by a former intelligence officer who spills some dark bits the Defense people think the American people in general don't need to know about. What we don't know is the scary part.

On the subject of unknown facts: Japan, known for reverence toward ancestors, seems to have lost 234,000 of their over-100s, many of whom are receiving pensions. Careful scrutiny of records shows that at least 77,000 of the missing people are over 120, and 888 over 150. Someone decided that couldn't be right and started looking carefully. Among the things they found was a mummified man thought to be 111, the oldest person in the prefecture of Saga. According to his daughter and granddaughter he went to bed after a family fight in the late 1970s and never came out of his room. Nobody seems to have checked on him but the did cash the pension checks. Such stories are multiplying, No one over 120 has spoke up and made his presence known.

Saturday Summary #16

186 elderly and middle-aged chimpanzees have been living on Alamagordo AF Base in New Mexico in geodesic domes in a tropic-like habitate for about 10 years. They were retired there after years as lab subjects. Now scientist want to put them back to work in new tests for a vaccine against hepatitis C. One observer said, "These chimps have given up their freedom, their bodies, their health and their children to research." It's not unlike recalling, again and again, national guardsmen for deployment to the Middle East.

Not only in the Middle East, with it's oil fields, but all over the world the total extent of oil pipe lines is over 136,000 miles -- long enough to circle the globe 14 times. Breaks and oil spills are so common they rarely make the news.

More or less in that part of the world, in Amritsar, India a Sikh temple runs a free food kitchen that serves up to 80,000 people A DAY and often twice as many each weekend day. All the labor is volunteer. They have a roti [flat bread] maker/baker device that is 20 feet long which begins by grinding the grain and eventually spits out fresh bread; it runs almost continuously. People are served a vegetarian plate with dal [lentils] and rice

Meanwhile back in the US: On average people get 1.5 hours less sleep a night than people did a century ago. 1 in 5 people claim to have insomnia. The NIH spends $260 million a year on sleep research, while Ambien and Lucasta each spend that much on TV advertising in one season. FFI [fatal familial insomnia] is one of the rarest diseases known; it affects only 46 families in the world -- usually in their 50s the affected people begin to be unable to sleep at all. They die within a year. Lab rats which are totally sleep deprived also die very quickly. Said Dr. Wm. Dement, a retired sleep researcher, "As far as I know, the only reason we sleep that is really, really solid is that we get sleepy." As a poet said, "the world is too much with us," -- when we're awake.

Sarcopenia is a disease in which strength of muscle declines, it is comparable to osteoporosis, loss of bone mass. Both are natural processes of aging. Thus a 60 year old man has 30% less muscle strength than he had at age 30. Women's strength declines even faster, at 60 they have 50% less strength than at 30. Both osteoporosis and sarcopenia can de delayed, although not entirely avoided, through diet and exercise.

The great majority of physical and mental research on which we base our perception of what is normal [and/or possible] for human beings is done by scientists in developed countries, essentially North American and Europe, their subjects are in those same countries -- thus most of what we presume to know about the mental and physical characteristics is based on only about 30% of the people in the world. This is somewhat analogous to the now much deplored [but not entirely reversed] practice of reaching scientific and medical conclusions based only on tests involving men and not women. It follows that how we define "normal" is skewed and, in fact, arrogantly First World-centric.
And a bit about a still remembered 97 pound weakling, once named Angelo Siciliano, who made himself into Charles Atlas. At the height of his celebrity he was invited to all sorts of events, including to a birthday party for FDA at the Waldorf Astoria hotel, and a party in Paris given by Elsa Schiaparelli [at which he stripped off his shirt to show his chest]. He was on radio with Fred Allen and Eddie Cantor, on TV with Bob Hope. Among people who purchased [and presumably used] is dynamic-tension body building program were Joe Dimaggio, Rocky Marciano, King George VI of England and Mohandas Gandhi! More recently the system has been endorsed by Arnold Schwartzenegger. The system which originally, in the '40s, sold for $29.95 has avoided inflationary pricing and today costs all of $49.95. Also, apparently, he was a really nice guy, a family man who lived a straight-arrow life, if he suffered sacropenia, it wasn't evident. Sometimes I like to end on a positive note.

Saturday Summary #14

For many, many people going to the movies means eating popcorn. The large tub in an average theater contains 20 cups of popcorn which is 1200 calories, and 980 mg of sodium, 60 grams of saturated fat; the small size is 11 cups of popcorn, 670 calories, 550 mg sodium and 29 grams of saturated fat. Maybe you ought to switch to Twizzles?

A bit of data that makes me feel good even though I no longer live in NYC [where I was a regular jaywalker]: jaywalkers were the least often in pedestrian accidents [I knew this -- we actually LOOK where we're going[. The pedestrians most often hit were the ones who wait for the Walk light and cross only at the cross walk. They were not hit by taxis nearly as often as by private cars, and those cars were nearly always driven by men.

This leads us to people with criminal records, of which there are, in the US, 47 MILLION. Prosecutors win 90% of their cases [don't get me started on the public defender system]. And 90% of the people in the US who require confinement due to mental illness are in prisons, not mental hospitals.

While our justice system is far from perfect, Saudi Arabia can be vicious; the eye for an eye verdict has been ordered by a judge in the case of a man who attacked another with a cleaver leaving the victim paralyzed due to an injured spine. The attacker will have his spinal cord damaged at the same place and will be paralyzed in the same way.

Moving to less gruesome medical matters, neurologists now think that Lou Gehrig did not have AML [amyotropic lateral sclerosis] after all -- it's the disease we call "Lou Gehrig's Disease". In fact many diagnoses of AML may be wrong. The sort of disease Lou Gehrig had seems to be caused by concussions such are often suffered by athletes, especially football players, as Gehrig was in high school and college. He was famous for playing with injuries and is known to have concussions at various times. AML is a different disease, the cause of which is still unclear. Medical knowledge is constantly in flux. Furthermore the unknowns far outweigh what is known.

In today's paper an article about how patient's feeding tubes and IV tubes are frequently mixed up and that the mix ups are rarely reported beyond hospital's in-house statistics, although several people have died because of it. The two apparently look almost identical. Food pumped into a view is like plugging it with concrete says the article, chaos ensues and if not discovered soon leads to death. I've had numerous medical people say to me "stay out of hospitals if you possibly can."

A social change in China -- when a large manufacturer laid off many white collar workers in a downsizing move, several dozen of them gathered outside the factory one morning in their usual work clothes, then at a signal all put on tee shirt with a protest message printed on them. They were almost immediately arrested and hustled into five waiting buses to be taken to jail. This suggests some subtext: someone had tipped off the police, this is the first known protest of white collar workers, someone tipped off the international media because this was on the front page of the NYTimes. China may still repress protest and dissent but it will be seen around the world.

Finally the latest social stigma in NYC [and I'm glad I don't live there right now] is the shunning of people who are trying to deal with infestations of bedbugs. It started [at least as reported] a few years ago with the critters in a popular hotel near Madison Square Garden and they've spread to both public and private places, including at least on movie theatre. Bedbug sniffing beagles can be hired by worried people. But those who, through no fault of their own, live with the biters are not invited to parties, are often not even hugged by their friends as people are terrified of accidentally carrying them home. And to return to the justice system, since bedbugs are known to be in some jails, lawyers chose to meet with their [out of jail] clients in coffee shops instead of allowing them into their offices. We've heard that the meak will inherit the earth but really, the cockroaches and bedbugs will.

Saturday Summary #13

An iceberg broke off of Greenland's larger glacier creating an island four times as large as Manhattan. It is taller than half the height of the Empire State Building and contains enough water to keep the Hudson and Delaware Rivers flowing for three years. And it's all fresh, clean water!

Sonia Gandhi, head of the Congress Party in India has proposed that the "right to food" be a universal law of the land. Just in India's eight poorest states, in 26 of Africa's poorest countries. We in the developed world don't even think about whether having food is a right -- we take it for granted and eat far more than we need for good health.

On the subject: doctors in some clinics are prescribing "farm"aceuticals -- Actually writing prescriptions for people to eat fresh fruit and vegetables.

Speaking of growing things: in the arid sections of the south of France lavender has long been one of the few cash crops that grows in that soil and climate. They produce 70% of the world's lavender which amounts to 15 tons of scented oil for perfume on every 1000 acres. Synthetic oils have been produced and threaten the market for real lavender these days. But the beautiful fields have also served as an attraction for tourists.

Other attractions for tourists that are becoming increasingly popular in Europe, especially France and England, are slag heaps from coal mines that have been covered, planted with grass which is kept watered and wet and used as ski slopes year round. Other slag heaps have been turned into paraglider runways, ampitheaters and even bird sanctuaries.

Being the director a world class museum can be a very cushy job. Not only do the directors of the Metropolitan Museum, the Museum of Natural History and the Museum of Modern Art get very large salaries all are provided with free housing -- the MoMA condo is in the tower above the museum, the others' large apartments are within very easy walking distance. And they don't have to pay tax, for some reason, on this perk.

Of course, I'm sure, everyone knows about my favorite incident of the week -- the airline steward who lost all cool, cursed out the passengers and his job, on the public PA system, pushed the emergency chute and slid out of the plane, ran to his car in the employee parking lot and drove home. Soon, of cosure, he was arrested and is unlikely to fly again. The part I like best is the vision in my mind's eye of him sliding down the chute. It's as good as get-aways in action movies. And I'm not sorry the passenger got cursed out for getting up and opening the overhead bin - I've always felt irked by those people who think that's going to get them someplace faster than the rest of the passengers.

Saturday Summary

[Computer is in the shop so I'm using my daughter's. Shorter than usual bit because I couldn't read all the things I usually do.]

One day the paper was chock full of bad news about big corporations: No surprise that BP has been covering up its blunders for years. Then there's Glaxo-SmithKlein pharmaceuticals that knew for some years that Avandia, the diabetes drug, kicked up the normally high risk for heart attacks. And the Catholic church's cover up and slow response to sexual abuse by priests seems to bother them less than the possibility of allowing women into the clergy. Some days it just gets piled on like the heat and humidity of these summer days.

The Lacross team or the Iroquois Nation got stuck in the airport and did not make it to the world lacross games because they were traveling on passports, legally issued, of the Iroquois Nation, not the USA. They weren't allowed out because there was a strong possibility they would not be allowed back in. These are NATIVE Americans ... of course the States doesn't have a sterling record in the treatment of their people.

Starlings which number about 200,000 birds, mostly in the Eastern US are not native. 100 starlings were introduced to Central Park at the time of the construction of the Shakespeare Garden, near the Delacourt Theatre where free Shakespeare in the Park is presented. The garden contains only flowers and herbs and trees that are mentioned by Shakespeare. Someone wanted to have the birds the Bard talked about also.

And speaking of flying creatures, a certain species of firefly in the Smokey Mountains has worked out synchronicity of light shows -- the males band together by the thousands and blink in unison to attract females who might not notice a long individual somewhere in the woods sending his signals. This doesn't happen with other groups of fireflies as far as is known.

But we humans love sparkle too. Singer Kathy Perry has dressed in some odd outfits but for a recent red carpet even, she was demure and tasteful in a pink chiffon dress -- that is until she flicked a switch hidden in the bodice and set to blinking some 3200 LED lights sewn in strips just beneath the chiffon.

Stay cool, all. Remember the snows of winter.

Saturday Summary #8

No, Mark Twain [Samuel Clemens] was not, as some have said,"Col. Sanders without the chicken." From age 70 until he died at 74, he dictated to a stenographer a half-million word autobiography. Between half and a third of it has not yet been published but will be starting with volume 1 of 3 this year. Said he "...all sound and sane expressions must be let out." meaning his opinions about many topics from soldiers who he called "uniformed assassins" to Wall Street bankers and much in between. It's been 100 years and many will still be appalled at his opinions.

Deserving Twain-like invective: illegal trafficking in protected animals and their body parts worldwide is a $5 billion business. One little noticed example: Central Asian falcons are being captured and sold to Arabic sheiks who love fox hunting with them. And then there are all those Chinese, and other Asian men so concerned about their sexual potency, they pay well for medicines made of body parts of tigers, bears and other endangered animals. Another example are the chiru, the Tibetan antelope killed by the thousands by poachers in a huge nature reserve. These are the animals with the finest wool in the world from whose belly hair shahtoosh shawls are woven for very rich women, so light and fine a shawl 3x10 yards in size, can be passed through a normal finger ring. They sell for thousands of dollars and have been a status symbol far beyond pashmina.
While many hunt and kill animals, humans continue to love them, even in robotic form. "Paro" is a robotic baby harp seal used in nursing homes to soothe upset patients. He has soft white fur and big eyes that open and close. His many micro sensors make him paddle and purr when he is stroked gently, and chirp in indignation when he is handled roughly or upside down or dropped.

Another soothing activity that is actually good for your health is called by the Japanese "Shinrin-yoku" which means "woods bathing" -- or to us, a stroll in the wood. Not surprisingly, it lower blood pressure and increases immune function. Try it; you'll like it.

Try not to think, when you're walking in the woods, walking down a street or at a crowded event about the fact that many people are getting permits to carry concealed hand guns. The State of Utah will issue such permits to anyone, anywhere in the US whether or not they live [or ever have even been in] in Utah, after they pass a gun safety program and can show the certificate. [Believe me, I have often ridden the NY subway and looked at groups of rowdy young men and wondered if any had concealed -- illegal -- guns. Not a happy state of mind.]

We HAVE advanced a bit from our savage past. 800,000 years ago early humans made flint tools to help them tear meat from carcasses partly eaten by hyenas who, in turn often had scavanged the same carcasses from saber toothed tigers. Ponder the food chain ... now there are secretive restaurants in some cities that will prepare almost any endangered animal for those willing to pay the price.

But let's be a little less drear and frightful. The movie The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, is written, in the U.S., as I just did, with the apostrophe between the T and S. Which in my eyes means there is one hornet in the nest which is very unlikely and not very dangerous. In Great Britain they are a little more careful with the English language [if they aren't who will be?] and write it "Hornets' Nest". God save the Queen's English!

Saturday Summary #7

Hot and dry: The Sahara [the word means dessert, so to say "the Sahara desert" is redundant just as it is to say "ATM Machine"] is 35 million square miles which is a big as the 48 United States. The Saler de Uyumi [Salt Dessert] of Bolivia is the highest dessert in the world at over 13,000 feet. In far western China is the Takla Maklan desert, the name means "you go in, you don't come out."

I'd rather "arise now and go to Innisfree" -- an Irish blogger says that the "lake isle of Innisfree written about by Yeats is not the little island tourists are taken to which is too rocky to even have a "bee loud glen" but rather a large and more difficult to reach island in the same lake called Church Island. Being a poet of exquisite sensitivity, three syllable Innisfree sounded far better than flat olf one syllable Church.

As for bees: 7 of Germany's airports keep bees on their grounds and regularly test the honey for toxins in order to monitor air pollution. They give the honey away.

The Chinese have developed a taste for American almonds as a snack food which their ads say "impart a healthy and radiant life". They also like our pecans and walnuts and actually import over $737 million worth of nuts a year. And we thought they only exported to us.

Financially speaking, Matt Taibbit writing in Rolling Stone Magazine described Goldman Sachs thus: "A great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly sucking its blood from anything that smells like money."

I'd like his take on this bit of nastiness: Trailers that FEMA provided for survivors of Katrina were found to have so much formaldehyde in their materials that a federal judge declared them unfit for long term human habitation. Those trailer are now appearing all along the Gulf coast as housing for BP spill clean up volunteers. And about clean up volunteers, of the many who went to Valdez to help with that clean up in 1989, almost all are dead today.

On a lighter note, interesting words most of us will never need to use referring to the phases hair follicles go through during growth: anagen is the phase of growth, catagen is a regressive phase, telegen is a resting phase and exogen means pushing the hair out during catagen. These aren't usually found on the "new word a day" calendars.

Happy 4th of July all -- if you go somewhere, drive carefully and don't let the kids play with the fireworks.

Saturday Summary #5

"They're not rats. They're underground squirrels." This week the NYTimes asked subway riders to send in photos of rats in the NY subway system. They received many photos and also received many emails from people who like the rats like the wildlife on the tracks. The MTA periodically poisons rats even though they acknowledge they will never eliminate them.

Perhaps we are becoming for compassionate to other sensate creatures. In 1990 only 6 states had felony penalties for animal cruelty, today 46 states do. Some police forces are training their officers to recognize that animal cruelty is frequently associated with family violence.

Since the recession hit 2-ply toilet paper has outsold 1-ply toilet paper. Recently a super soft 3-ply paper has been for sale. Says a Quilted Northern exec, "People like affordable luxuries in bad times." -- if people weren't quite so willing to flush their extra dollars down the drain the recession might end sooner.

California spends an annual $216,000 on each child in the criminal justice system. They spend an annual $8,000 for each child in the Oakland School system. [Can anyone in California add 2 and 2?]

Every day there are 50,000 storms on the planet. This number is thought to be increasing due to global warming.

Sasquatch or Big Foot is not only reported in the forests of the Pacific Northwest. This week a man named Potter in the mountains of western North Carolina reported investigating a grunting noise in his backyard and saw a ten foot tall man-beast had become tangled in his dog's chains. "The thing had beautiful yellow hair and a yellow beard," he said. He scared it away, "I rough-talked him and said, 'You get away from here.'" and poked him with a stick. When reporting this to the police Potter asked if it would be considered murder if he shot the being should he return and attempt to come up on the porch. [Maybe he could just add a few four-lettered words to his rough-talk and scare the thing away permanently.]

"Women universally aren't keen on men's body hair," says an exec at Remington which is introducing a new shaver for men. A product researcher says, "You haven't lived until you've been in the bathroom with a man watching him shave all his body parts."

If men learn to rid themselves of body hair maybe no one will need the new drug that Boehringer Ingelheim, the Germany company, hopes to introduce. So far it's not even approved but they are placing advertisements to make women aware of a problem called hypoactive sexual desire disorder, HDSS is popularly known as "not tonight, Honey, I've got a headache."

A worker at Southwest Cargo Planes opened three misaddressed boxes and found 45 human heads. They were supposed to be delivered to a university laboratory for research. Apparently body parts are often shipped via air cargo. I wonder if the guy had nightmares after that experience.

Perhaps email is going the way of the pony express and the nearly moribund US postal service. At a Consumer 360 conference this week, a Facebook exec reported that only 11% of today's teenagers use email. The other 89% keep in touch with friends and family via telephone texting and social networks like Facebook and Twitter. [When we can no longer communicate in more than 100 words at a time, will literature and philosophy wither like wheat in a drought?

Saturday Summary #4

The oldest leather shoe ever found was uncovered by an archeologist in Armenia and was about 5500 yeas old, it laced up the front as today's shoes do. Only the right was found.

Biblical manna is a phenomenon that still exists although just what it is doesn't seem to have been proven yet: it may be sap extruded by plants and grasses during the cool of night or the excrement of tiny bugs that eat that sap. [Yuck!] It is still gathered and used as a food additive which gives a sweet-salty flavor to foods.

Millionaires in the US are not as thick on the ground as newspapers make us think they are. In fact they are, comparatively, a much greater percentage of the population other places: In Singapore with population of 4.7 million people, 11.4% of households are millionaires; Hong Kong with a population of 7.1 million has 8.8% millionaires, Switzerland with population 7.6 million has 8.4% millionaires, Kuwait with a population of 2.8 million is 8.2% millionaires, Qatar with only 840,000 people has 7.4% millionaires, and it's downhill from there.

Speaking of rich people in the US: Mayor Michael Bloomberg of NYC is worth about $18 billion [with a B] and is a truly generous guy who not only gives through a private foundation to many causes but is generous to his ex-wife and eve has established a half million dollar trust fund and bought a condo for an ex-girl friend.

A Columbus, Ohio woman had sextuplets, by C-section; the birth was attended by 50 physicians. The babies are so small they'll probably remain in the hospital about 3 months. Sextuples have been born only about 200 times in the history of the US. [How did they crowd 50 doc in one OR, never mind what's happened to privacy]

An article in the NYTimes about why salt is used so liberally in processed foods quoted an unidentified food exec as saying that it's needed to disguise the "wet dog hair" taste of certain foods. It was also noted that the salt, along with generous amounts of sugar and fat in snack foods is known to be an addictive combination that means you can't "eat just one" chip, cookie, nacho, cheese doodle, etc.

Meanwhile Kelloggs which used to say that one of their breakfast foods helped prevent hyperactivity in children was legally stopped from making that claim but then began saying that Rice Krispies boost the "immunity". Now the FDA has nixed that claim. [Maybe they can say that Tony the Tiger will teach your kids to growl louder when they sneak up on their baby sisters and make them cry.]

Since the soccer World Cup games have opened, we can remember a quote from no less a thinker than Jean Paul Sartre [remembering that the rest of the world calls soccer "football"]: "In a football match everything is complicated by the presence of the other team." [Every week I seek a little profundity and I would rather turn to a real philosoopher than to Yogi Berra]