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Archive: OTHER

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Scott Adams

Scott Adams became famous (and extremely wealthy) as the creater and prolific author of the wildly successful Dilbert comic strips. (As an aside, my favorite of his characters has always been Dogbert, featured above.) However, underscoring the truth behind the cliche´ that wealth means little without health, Adams' life was badly degraded about a year and half ago due to an unusual illness. In a fascinating twist, he revealed recently that he may have come up with a remarkably creative cure.

As regular readers of my blog know, I lost my voice about 18 months ago. Permanently. It’s something exotic called Spasmodic Dysphonia. Essentially a part of the brain that controls speech just shuts down in some people, usually after you strain your voice during a bout with allergies (in my case) or some other sort of normal laryngitis. It happens to people in my age bracket.

I asked my doctor – a specialist for this condition – how many people have ever gotten better. Answer: zero. While there’s no cure, painful Botox injections through the front of the neck and into the vocal cords can stop the spasms for a few months. That weakens the muscles that otherwise spasm, but your voice is breathy and weak.

The weirdest part of this phenomenon is that speech is processed in different parts of the brain depending on the context. So people with this problem can often sing but they can’t talk. In my case I could do my normal professional speaking to large crowds but I could barely whisper and grunt off stage. And most people with this condition report they have the most trouble talking on the telephone or when there is background noise. I can speak normally alone, but not around others. That makes it sound like a social anxiety problem, but it’s really just a different context, because I could easily sing to those same people.

Read Adams' full account here

Forget the Moonwalk

Michael Jackson's famous robotic dance move was child's play when compared with the second performer below.

Rupert, the peT Rhino

"Rupey was our mode of transport. We used to ride around on him. He was safe enough, apart from at 5pm when it was his 'playtime'. You climbed a tree then, and the dogs scattered, and Rupey would put his nose down and charge around.

"One day, my sister was riding a bike and he went charging after her - my mum had a freak-out. But he did a beautiful side-step, came up to her and just nuzzled her. He thought he was one of the dogs.'

Read the full, amazing tale, and view more photos in The Daily Mail

David Attenborough

The legendary naturalist apparently has a new series airing on BBC1 in the U.K. One of the featured animals is the Tibetan fox pictured above. You can read more about the series (and the fox) at Inky Circus (thanks Katie!)

You may not have heard of him...

but Amitava Kumar paints a very interesting portrait of the Pakistani scholar and activist Eqbal Ahmad (1933-99) in The Nation.

Though best known for his eloquent speeches and lectures, Ahmad published with some regularity; his Selected Writings, edited by Carollee Bengelsdorf, Margaret Cerullo and Yogesh Chandrani, are now available from Columbia University Press. They shed light on guerrilla warfare, the cold war, the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, the nuclear tests carried out by India and Pakistan. There are more than fifty pieces: Some were written as op-eds, including for The Nation; a few were delivered as speeches; and several were published as scholarly essays.

Yet this collection, for all its riches, offers the merest hint of the scope of Ahmad's life. He may have taught at a small New England college, but he inhabited a large stage, and his adventures reflected a profoundly committed cosmopolitanism that has since degenerated into a more fashionable, and considerably less dangerous, seminar-talk in cultural studies courses on American campuses. During the early 1960s, while he was a doctoral student at Princeton and doing research in Tunisia, Ahmad rallied to the cause of Algerian independence and befriended a number of high-ranking FLN leaders exiled in Tunis. Upon his return to the United States in the mid-'60s, he became an early and impassioned opponent of the war in Vietnam and then, following the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, an outspoken advocate for Palestinian rights at a time when such a position was virtually taboo in the United States.

Read Kumar's full piece here

Anti-bacteriaL? Think again

Earth's environment is in large part the product of bacterial metabolism. Bacterial nitrogen fixation enriches the soil at no cost to us. And the photosynthesis that excretes oxygen and makes food for all life is carried out by the blue-green bacteria called cyanobacteria—both the free-living kind and those that became chloroplasts in the cells of algae and plants. These are just two of bacteria’s life-sustaining processes, invented at least 2 billion years ago. We should view them as the wisdom of the ancients.

Even disease-causing bacteria—exceedingly rare despite the fear-mongering of marketers—play a part in ecological health. Anthrax spores, for example, float in the dust of over-eaten and sun-exposed fields, enter the lungs and blood of vulnerable or weak grazers, and kill them. Fields recover their vegetation. The grazers’ food supply is spared, the stability of the ecosystem restored.

Bacteria also sustain us on a very local, intimate scale. They produce necessary vitamins inside our guts. Babies rely on milk, food, and finger-sucking to populate their intestines with bacteria essential for healthy digestion. And microbial communities thrive in the external orifices (mouth, ears, anus, vagina) of mammals, in ways that enhance metabolism, block opportunistic infection, ensure stable digestive patterns, maintain healthy immune systems, and accelerate healing after injury. When these communities are depleted, as might occur from the use of antibacterial soap, mouthwash, or douching, certain potentially pathogenic fungi—like Candida or vaginal yeast disorders—can begin to grow profusely on our dead and dying cells. Self-centered antiseptic paranoia, not the bacteria, is our enemy here.

But in our ignorance, we also miss a larger lesson. Bacteria offer us evidence that health depends on community, and independence is an ecological impossibility. Whenever we treat isolated medical symptoms or live socially or physically isolated lives, we ignore warnings from our more successful planetmates.

Read the full piece by Lynn Margulis and Emily Case in Orion

(thanks to Abbas at 3 Quarks Daily)

Terse (and clever) summary

Thanks to Brian Topping (via Boing Boing)

If you keep gazing into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

Friedrich Nietzche

Mars, Bitches!

I don't know how many of you watched The Dave Chapelle Show when it was being aired on Comedy Central, but it featured some of the most funny, biting, social and political commentary produced in recent times. Here's a very good example, as Chappelle plays Black Bush:

Wolcott

The priceless James Wolcott recommends a couple of books in his most recent column. One of them, a collection of dance criticism, happens to have been written by his wife Laura. While writing about her book, Wolcott reminds us why it's so much fun to read his work:

Like Tynan, Randall Jarrell, and Kael at full sail, Laura (if I may call her by her first name, which I shall, since I just fed the cats) is even more toplofty in praise, as in her final essay "Assoluta," devoted to the irresistable force known as Veronika Part.

Read the full piece here

The Pain of Rejection

Most have felt it at some point in their lives, but this two-year-old Japanese boy got an awfully early start.

Hat tip to Neatorama

Healthy School Lunches?

Not so easy to implement in England, as it turns out.

ROTHERHAM, England — Five months after the celebrity chef Jamie Oliver succeeded in cajoling, threatening and shaming the British government into banning junk food from its school cafeterias, many schools are learning that you can lead a child to a healthy lunch, but you can’t make him eat.

The fancy new menu at the Rawmarsh School here?

“It’s rubbish,” said Andreas Petrou, an 11th grader. Instead, en route to school recently, he was enjoying a north of England specialty known as a chip butty: a French-fries-and-butter sandwich doused in vinegar.

“We didn’t get a choice,” he said of the school food. “They just told us we were having it.”

Read the full story in the NY Times

Now That's a Landslide

Flinstones and Funiculi Funicula

This may seem a touch incongruous with the rather serious nature of recent posts, but, what the hell...

Thanks to Neatorama

And the decline continues...

Yes, that's right: HP has introduced a camera feature which makes the subject appear slimmer. Just in time, too, as I didn't really feel like working out today. Seriously, though, can the U.S. possibly become any more of a caricature of itself?

Read all about this thrilling breakthrough at HP

Thanks to Robin at 3 Quarks Daily

The Housing Bubble, Visualized

View a magnified version here

What?

Some comic relief from the Defective Yeti:

ICE QUEEN

The Queen rubs the top of her head and makes the ow-that-hurts-air-through-the-teeth noise.

Me: What's wrong?

Q: I have a bump on my head and it's getting bigger. Feel it.

{I engage in some impromptu phrenology}

M: Wow, that's a good 'un. How did you get it?

Q: I got hit by a block of ice.

M: Did it knock you out cold?

Q: It's not funny.

M: Sorry. What happened?

Q: I wanted to pack our cooler for our weekend camping trip, so I went to the grocery store and bought a big block of ice. As I was walking back to the car I tumbled -- honestly I don't know what happened, I just suddenly went ass over teakettle -- and when I threw my arms up the ice flew into the air. Then, after I landed on my butt, the block of ice came down and hit me on the top of the head.

{Pause}

Q: What?

M: Nothing, I'm just waiting for the part of the story that's not funny.

The fantastic Lyrebird

From a classic David Attenborough segment...

Watch it here

Hissssss....

Billmon takes a thorough look at the real estate bubble:

...now that the downward wave of the cycle is well-entrenched, the Fed is going to have to move relatively fast to keep the "soft landing" scenario from smashing into the runway. But experience teaches that the Fed rarely shifts from tightening to easing fast enough to head these kind of things off -- the fall of 1990 and the summer and fall of 2000 being two case studies in point.

My guess is that the Southern California market (along with the New York metro market and the South Florida market and a few other places where the bubble got well out of hand) are going to "auger in," as the test pilots used to call it. They've soared too high, and the Fed isn't going to be able to move quickly enough to catch them because national growth and inflation conditions aren't going to let it.

But whether the bust is national, as opposed to just regional, may depend as much or more on our Chinese benefactors as on the Fed.

The chain of causation is somewhat perverse: The Fed's recent decision to at least pause in its tightening campaign has put downward pressure on the dollar, which is forcing the People's Bank to buy dollars to protect the "crawling peg" with the renminbi, said dollars then being reinvested in the Treasury market, which drives long-term yields down, which pulls mortage yields down, too.

As long as that particular windfall lasts, the prospects for a soft landing to the national real estate bubble look reasonably good -- that is, as long as the regional real estate busts, plus the overextended state of the American consumer and the mysterious reluctance of U.S. firms to funnel their bloated profits into capital spending, don't tip the national economy over into a recession.

Read Billmon's full post at his Whiskey Bar

BBC Radio Documentary

As I've mentioned before, one of the (relatively) untapped treasures of the internet experience is the ability to listen to very high quality radio programs at will. BBC offers the best array of such programs, and their current documentary feature is a fine example.

Wandering religious players that teach and act out religious plays are common in many cultures and in the remote villages of Spiti in Himachal Pradesh in India close to the border with Tibet the Buchen players have long been the highlight of village life. They are the last of Tibet’s wandering religious actors.

In BREAKING THE STONE Patrick Sutherland experiences the true face of Tibetan Buddhist life at a performance in the Pin Valley. It is an extraordinary religious ritual, a form of exorcism done for the benefit of the village or household who request it. During the ritual the head Buchen strips to the waist, pierces his throat with a metal skewer, and does a sword dance to the sound of cymbals. He takes the weight of his body on the sword tips placed under his belly, his armpits and occasionally his eye sockets. The performance culminates in the smashing of a huge boulder on the main actor's chest.

Bu-chen translates as Great Son. The Buchen are the Great Sons or desendants of Thang Thong Gyalpo. Thang Thong Gyalpo was a real historical figure in 14th century Tibet, dubbed the Leonardo da Vinci of Tibet. He was an engineer who built an iron suspension bridge which still stands, rust free in Tibet, established a monastery, is credited as the founder of Ache Llamo, the Tibetan Opera but was also a yogin and figure of myth and mystery.

BBC Radio homepage

Link to this particular show

A Template for "Progressive Faith"

Dr. Bruce Prescott, Executive Director of Mainstream Oklahoma Baptists, has written a truly excellent post on what "Progressive Faith" should consist of.

I think progressive faith to has at least ten characteristics. It is conscientious, chastened, hopeful, strong, humble, growing, questioning, dialogical, active and interdependent.

Prescott thoughtfully expands on each one of those characteristics here

MASSIVE OIL SPILL RESULTS IN IMPROVED WILDLIFE VISCOSITY

It's an old story, but given the exceptional quality of the headline, I've decided to resurrect it.

From (where else?) The Onion

Energy Producing Roads

This is a prime example of the sort of creative thinking which can help to radically alter our current petroleum-centric energy mindset.

ROADS and driveways could be turned into huge solar panels to heat houses and offices using an invention inspired by sheep on the west coast of Scotland.

An Ullapool company will tomorrow install the first road energy system in the UK in its own car park. The system takes advantage of heat absorbed by tarmac, to convert roads and other tarred areas into solar panels.

It generates energy to cool buildings and roads in summer and heat them in winter. Other benefits include not having to salt roads in winter, halving maintenance to tarmac and reducing emissions.

The idea was conceived 15 years ago while Dutchman Henk Verweijmeren was travelling between Achiltibuie and Lochinver and noticed sheep sitting on the road, which had been warmed by the sun.

Mr Verweijmeren said: "It started making me think and the idea just grew further and further."

Read the full article in The Scotsman (via MetaEfficient)

And in other news...

I thought that you might like to know that Takeru Kobayashi, the astonishingly small (160lbs.) eating machine, successfully defended his Nathan's hot dog eating championship on Coney Island this past weekend. AP provides the bizarre details:

[Kobayashi] set a new record by devouring 53 3/4 frankfurters in 12 minutes to win the annual Independence Day hot dog eating competition on Coney Island.

[It was] his sixth straight title in the event, held at the original Nathan's Famous hot dog stand on Brooklyn's seashore. He broke his own record of 53 1/2 hot dogs, set at the same competition two years ago.

Kobayashi's nauseating triumph was witnessed by thousands of raucous spectators who jammed the streets in front of the hot dog stand a block from the famed Coney Island boardwalk.

On-Line dating

Many Americans – and certainly a very big majority of younger Americans – use on-line dating sites. They really are very efficient, and their success is no surprise. At the same time, however, there is that one, significant factor, which even photographs can't insure: physical chemistry. This is why it's always a good idea not to become too excited about the potential of a budding on-line relationship until you meet your match in person. One of my favorite comedic bloggers, Henry E. Panky, has written an amusing account of one of his Match.com dates:

I woke up this morning to the desperate scrabbling of some critter trapped inside my bedroom wall - and that reminded me of my recent Match.com date with Daphne. As you know, we have been trading increasingly tender emails and photos. She's a "well-rounded (!), late thirty-something Vice President of healthy appetites (!), ready to settle down and raise a passel of rusty-butted kids with a stable, romantic and tax-protesting Libertarian." And I, of course, am a "boyish, salt-of-the-earth go-getter of independent means who loves to laugh, play the didgeridoo on my sailboat with my golden retriever, breed snow-white Lippizaners, and buy expensive unmentionables for my assy biffer." Oh, we wrote back and forth as excited as teenagers, burning up the ether with our ballooning passions.

Regarding the "independent means" part - don't forget, Z, I still have two weeks of unemployment left. I felt the vasectomy conversation was best left to later, I do love lacy undies and the white lie about Lippizaners were for the sake of her fantasy life, not mine. You know how women like horses.

But then, when we finally met, things somehow went awry from the very moment I snuck up behind her at the restaurant, squealed like a pig, and reached up under her skirt to smartly pinch her bottom (nice!). Spinning around, her lovely eyes had been filled with a rich turbulent mélange of mixed emotions, though horrified terror was unquestionably predominant (if I've seen it once, I've seen it a million times). At first, she pretended not to believe I was me! She waved around my Match.com photo, sobbing and jabbing it with her forefinger - this was a slightly Photoshopped promo shot of Russell Crowe (whom I'm told I resemble: in fact, it was Daphne who mentioned the resemblance). I responded with hearty, Santa Claus-like hilarity.

Read Henry's full post here

Spam line of the day

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Hedge Fund malfeasance: Hold on to your hats (and wallets).

While the New York Times did recently feature a front-page story about possible insider trading at one of the country's largest hedge funds, Pequot Capital Management, a closer look at the case suggests that the problem may be both systemic, and very dangerous.

From The Columbia Journalism Review, which quotes Gary Aguirre, a lawyer who worked on the case until last fall:

"I believe our capital markets face growing risk from lightly or unregulated hedge funds just as our markets did in the 1920s from unregulated pools of money-then called syndicates, trusts or pools," writes Aguirre. "Those unregulated pools were instrumental in delivering the 1929 Crash....There is growing evidence that today's pools -- hedge funds -- have advanced and refined the practice of manipulating and cheating other market participants."

"Fixing the SEC so it can protect investors and capital markets from hedge fund abuse will not be an easy task," writes Aguirre. "Powerful interests want the SEC to stay just the way it is or, better yet, to become even weaker. Those interests are not just the hedge funds. They include the financial industries that are receiving tens of billions of dollars in revenues from helping hedge funds cheat other market participants or close their eyes to the carnage."

Read the full CJR article here

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