pick one

Which of the following is the real The New York Times quote of the day:

(A) "If you want to scare the American people, what you say is the bill’s about partial birth abortion. That’s empty political rhetoric trying to frighten our citizens."

(B) "If you want to scare the American people, what you say is the bill’s an amnesty bill. That’s empty political rhetoric trying to frighten our citizens."

(C) "If you want to scare the American people, what you say is there's a war on terror. That’s empty political rhetoric trying to frighten our citizens."

(D) "If you want to scare the American people, what you say is there's a gas shortage. That’s empty political rhetoric trying to frighten our citizens."

Answer: who cares? It's all empty political rhetoric and that's the way we like it. We're Americans. OK, it was B. Full story here: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/30/washington/30immig.html

Personal Responsibility

An article in today's Times sets forth scientific research into obesity that indicates being over weight is determined by your genes. The article is quite interesting and provides some useful insight into how the body works and how it responds to changes in eating habits and weight gains and losses, but it is clearly an example of science in a vacuum. The sample sizes may be large enough enough and may provide results that are consistent enough to be statistically significant, but the fact is that they simply don't account for the public health realities of obesity.

There is no doubt in my mind that genes play a large role in determining your body type, including your metabolism. In some areas that role is probably exclusive and in others it is probably much weaker. There are most likely people who are genetically predisposed to have extreme problems with obesity. But genetics cannot explain the demographic trends of obesity.

Genetics cannot account for the disproportionate effect that obesity has on the poor, or for the increase is obese children. These are cultural and societal problems, not just genetic ones.

Genes Take Charge, and Diets Fall by the Wayside

"There is a reason that fat people cannot stay thin after they diet and that thin people cannot stay fat when they force themselves to gain weight. The body’s metabolism speeds up or slows down to keep weight within a narrow range. Gain weight and the metabolism can as much as double; lose weight and it can slow to half its original speed."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/08/health/08fat.htm

happy mother's day

There is nothing more inspiring than when you are out for a jog feeling pretty good about your fitness level & performance when a woman passes you . . . going uphill . . . pushing a jog stroller . . . with twins.

The Fire is Burning

The Arcade Fire is no longer an underground sensation or one of those bands where people say "oh yeah, they sound familiar." I first heard of them in the fall of 2006 and they didn't immediately grab me. At the time I was more skeptical of semi-electronic sounding music and preferred being able to listen to each instrument in turn. They vocals on the songs I heard also seemed a bit obscured, which doesn't generally suit me.

It was the following spring or summer that I learned - listening to their first full length album "Funeral" on the metro to and from work and internships. Their music has something special and I still can't quite put my finger on it.

Friday night I saw them in concert for the first time. They played DAR Constitution Hall here in D.C., which is not one of the better places to see a show. Having come up on the Allman Brothers and then Phish and Widespread Panic, I am accustomed to seeing concerts where there aren't a great deal of stops between songs and the songs are generally between 6 and 8 minutes, so it was difficult to adjust to shorter songs with longer stops after each song. The 80 minute set is what I'm used to being the first set, not the whole show.

But all that said, the show was great. The energy in the room started to coalesce about half way through and the band did a nice job building momentum into the end of the show and the encore. If you have a chance to see them live, I highly recommend it.

Their records, however, absolutely must be on your shelf. No collection is complete without them. This could be the best band of the decade.

Even more taken than I was, a writer from the Washington Post characterized the band as "a sort of modern-day art-rock answer to Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band" and found "an undeniable grandeur and a thrilling vastness to the songs . . . but it's no empty bombast: In the studio and especially in concert, Arcade Fire's emotional music plays as deeply meaningful, soul-stirring art."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/05/AR2007050500995.html

Here are 2 mp3s from their show in New York on February 17 of this year. The first is a bit slower and close to spoken word. The other is not:

My Body is a Cage

Keep the Car Running



* I should recognize that the brothers who lead the band are from Texas, although they moved to Canadia before forming the band.

tit for tat

I'm not sure what Ms. Goodling expected to happen when she declined to go before Congress and lie for her boss, but we all could have seen this one coming:

Justice Dept. Announces Inquiry Into Its Hiring

By ERIC LIPTON and DAVID JOHNSTON

WASHINGTON, May 2 — The Justice Department has begun an internal investigation into whether a former senior adviser to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales improperly tried to fill vacancies for career prosecutors at the agency with Republicans loyal to the Bush administration, department officials said Wednesday.

The inquiry focuses on whether the former adviser, Monica Goodling, sought to determine the political affiliations of job applicants before they were hired as prosecutors — potentially a violation of civil service laws and a break with a tradition of nonpartisanship in the career ranks at the Justice Department.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/03/washington/03attorneys.html


And I sure am excited to learn that the biggest richest most complex tax evaders don't get audited because they are too big rich and complex. Now that's something to set your sights on:

I.R.S. Curtails Many Audits in Tax Havens

By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

WASHINGTON, May 2 — The Internal Revenue Service is curtailing audits of many people who use offshore tax havens, even when agents see signs of tax evasion, because agents fear they cannot meet a three-year deadline for finishing an examination, Congressional investigators have found.

In a report to be released on Thursday, the Government Accountability Office found that I.R.S. agents are so hobbled by “dilatory tactics” by offshore taxpayers and other problems that it takes almost two and a half years to complete a typical audit.

Many I.R.S. agents told the G.A.O., the investigative arm of Congress, that the “safest way” was often to stop an audit prematurely and sometimes to refrain from starting one in the first place.

The I.R.S. reported that almost $300 billion in investment and business income was moved out of the United States in 2003. Analysts at the Joint Committee on Taxation have estimated that the annual outflow has shot to more than $400 billion since then.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/03/business/03tax.htm

not as easy as it seems

at first blush, even the NRA agrees that people who have been involuntarily committed and deemed mentally ill or a danger to them self or others should not be able to purchase guns. Indeed, it is a rare thing that the NRA supports a restriction on gun sales, or individual's right to purchase guns, so this must be a no-brainer right?

I'm not sure. Of course, it is already illegal for people falling within these categories to purchase guns. The problem lies in reporting by state agencies who are bound by state privacy laws. With the events at Virginia Tech fresh on everyone's mind and conscience, there is a new push to enforce these laws by creating or giving full effect to the national data base against which background checks are performed. That is something I do not support.

There should not be a federal law that preempts state privacy protections, especially for the mentally ill. There should not be a federally centralized list of all the crazy people in the country. If you want to buy a gun, then I think you give up certain privacy protections and one of those is being forced to divulge your mental health history.

But I do not want to buy a gun, and I do not want my name or anyone else's name in that database. Being put in a database is an infringement on your privacy, and you should not be forced to do that so that other people can buy guns more quickly. This returns us to the world of a couple day waiting period - it could even be an overnight or several hour thing. Each state would be networked and when you want to buy a gun, the dealer sends out the request and any states that have you on their list respond.

Privacy Laws Slow Efforts on Gun-Buyer Data

By MICHAEL LUO

WASHINGTON, May 1 — Momentum is building in Congress behind a measure that would push states to report their mental health records to the federal database used to conduct background checks on gun buyers.

But a thicket of obstacles, most notably state privacy laws, have thwarted repeated efforts to improve the reporting of such records in the past and are likely to complicate this latest effort, even after the worst mass shooting in United States history at Virginia Tech last month.

Federal law prohibits anyone who has been adjudicated as a “mental defective,” as well as anyone involuntarily committed to a mental institution, from buying a firearm. But only 22 states now submit any mental health records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, against which all would-be gun purchasers must be checked.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/02/us/02guns.html

see also http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/02/AR2007050200282.html


in other news, this is why I try to stick with Organic foods as much as possible:

Millions Of Chickens Fed Tainted Pet Food
Risk to Consumers Minimal, FDA Says

By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 2, 2007; A01

At least 2.5 million broiler chickens from an Indiana producer were fed pet food scraps contaminated with the chemical melamine and subsequently sold for human consumption, federal health officials reported yesterday.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/01/AR2007050102071.html