SeniorJunior

[Update: In "Comments" at the bottom of this is a dramatic, first-person, poetic account of one man's experience in WWII. It challenges how any war is depicted, no matter how well it is done. It also challenges the "Greatest Generation" idea. Most of all it reflects how devastating war is to individuals. Read it.] Well Said There is the war (Iraq, Afghanistan and, God forbid, Iran) and "The War," Ken Burns' powerhouse World War II documentary. Being of an age that made me a kid during the actual WWII years, seeing the newsreels that Burns uses so effectively, knowing the relatives and neighbors with dead and wounded kids, doing the paper drives, living with rationing and the whole nine yards, I have the visceral response to "The War" of memories revived*. But beyond that I have an even more powerful response. I was pleased to find an articulate, passionate commentary that captured nearly every element of this other response of min...

Back from Extinction, or Just a Curtain Call? Yesterday, just outside our courtyard gate, sitting on a rock and trying to soak up some fine fall New Mexico sun, a baby horny toad! I was stunned. So I grabbed my trusty Cannon and shot this. Imagine me at 20 feet long, puny human! With all the news about them disappearing, I hardly knew what to do next. So I just moved the little darlin' to another rock less in the way of our foot and dog traffic. Should I have put it in a terrarium? Taken it to a toad conservatory? Shipped it to TCU? Finally I decided because we keep a chemical-free environment here in the mountains (7300 feet) it would be as safe here as anywhere. And clearly its momma and poppa were doing OK somewhere nearby. So I'm thrilled. Those "horned toads" are really lizards , but to me they are little dinosaurs, and to have some roaming the homestead is an honor.

An honest Rather mistake Dan Rather's $70 mil lawsuit against CBS might be something of a biggie in terms of defining "the corporate media," it seems. I strongly feel this label needs defining, since the Right blithely labels the very same companies "the liberal media." (Talk jockey Rush Limbaugh calls them the "drive-by media," confusing all but hardcore dittoheads.) The most exhaustive review of the whole Rather/CBS/Whitehouse/Pentagon substance is in Salon today (Sept 27, '07) as Sidney Blumenthal gets after it in gate . He addresses the point that has seriously bugged me ever since the "W stiffs his National Guard Service" story was smothered under allegations of one piece of evidence being bogus, the memo allegedly from Col. Jerry Killian. That point is that the story about Bush skipping his duty was true and proven by many other pieces of evidence. In the context of the whole "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" dirty tr...

Granted, not everyone loves brussel sprouts as much as I do. Truth is, this fellow will never become obese. Credits: Wife Dorothy the master gardener.

A young woman in good health caught a cold. She was a jogger, played tennis, biked and hiked with her boyfriend. In other words, she was more active physically than the average. But she caught a cold. Her eating habits were pretty much nominal American, some fast food, but not to excess. She was 5' 5" and weighed 130 pounds. Five years later she is obese, weighing 187 pounds. When she started gaining weight, she increased her physical activities and cut out most of the fast food. At 153 pounds she started giving up. Jogging became too hard. She looked ridiculous on a bike. Her growing hunger drove her to less healthy foods. All because she caught a cold. The specific cold virus she was unlucky enough to be infected by was adenovirus -36 . When America started porking up a few decades ago we started blaming our bad habits - with some justification. But TV, fast food, computer games, P.E. program cuts, et al aren't the entire problem, apparently. Check out this Science Ne...

Just as W is asking for another $50 billion for the Iraq war (the Iran war buildup?), Gary Trudeau hits the old nail on the head again. Have a giggle - or a gasp - by checking out this Sunday Doonesbury.

[As perhaps you can tell, I don't vent about the Iraq war very often, but this just steamed me up to venting pressure.] With the inevitable stay-the-course message coming in the "General Petraeus" (NOT!) September report, we should all ingest and digest this news : Dang! With over two million Iraqis already displaced by the war, the "Surge" is making things worser faster . And there's all the news about the inability of the current Iraq government to ever heal the sectarian hatred... Well, just add a bunch of salt to the coming news of "progress."

Heartfelt letter: Representative Heather Wilson U.S. Congress, House of Representatives Washington, DC Dear Rep. Wilson This is from the Wall Street Journal 9.14.07. I hope you are one of the lawmakers working on this. We have to close all the loopholes in paying taxes, for the good of the country. • The Situation: U.S. lawmakers are examining a tax perk enjoyed by hedge funds. • Background: Many of these funds lend money like banks but, unlike traditional lenders, often don't pay taxes on the profits. • Consensus? While some tax lawyers say these transactions are proper, others argue that many variants are legally dubious. Hedge funds, which control liquid pools of capital with little regulatory oversight, are a growing presence in the lending business. They increasingly take part in lending syndicates with traditional banks, often indirectly, and also make direct loans, frequently to riskier or smaller companies that may have difficulty obtai...

[UPDATE AT END] My Suspicious, eh? button was pressed when I heard such good corporate citizens as Dow, Bayer and Hexion Specialty Chemicals were fighting to suppress government regulations on one of their very profitable chemicals. They just might succeed, since their lobbyists are making sure the government (Health & Human Services) sees mostly industry-funded research. The stuff is BPA and is rife in plastic baby bottles, plastic-lined cans of food and lots of other plastic products like toys and sippy cups. In the studies not funded by the chemical companies, BPA is shown to have mucho bad impact on test animals; stuff like diabetes, ovarian cancer, prostate cancer, male reproductive problems, obesity, and behavioral changes stemming from imbalances in the endocrine systems. Its worst effects are on babies in the womb and those recently emerged therefrom. And - surprise! - " Other studies – mostly funded by the chemical industry – have claimed little or no effect of BPA...

I notice there are only two arguments from opponents to universal health care in the U.S. 1. There are long waiting lines for medical service in countries that have it. 2. We can't afford it. Both are mostly wrong. "Long wait" is a relative thing. How long do all those people in the U.S. have to wait if they have no coverage? They might wait until they are deathly ill and have to go to the emergency room. Talk about expensive care, and we all have to pay for it. "Afford it?" We who spend more money on health care than any other people on earth? And what do we get for all that money? 37th rank in the world in public health, that's what. I firmly disagree with the well-worn politicians' statement: “There is no single prescription to solving our nation’s serious uninsured problem”. There is a prescription that’s working quite well in many first world countries, which I am sure all those Senators, Congressmen and Administration types know all about. Let me...

Food and Fuel Should Not be in Competition OK, you know where I stand. Corn is not a very good feedstock for making ethanol. There is still a net negative energy exchange in manufacturing ethanol from Corn. Sugar cane and sugar beets are a lot better and they have a net positive energy balance. Look it up . And, weirdly, the whole grow-convert-use corn ethanol cycle is as bad for the environment as gasoline use. But the worst thing in the corn/ethanol equation is that corn is an important food . It's in hundreds of things we eat. Whole food chains are dependent on corn. The meat industry, including chickens, requires a lot of corn. Not only beef cattle, but dairy cows need corn. Corn being diverted to our new passion for ethanol (said passion involving a federal subsidy) is already raising food costs all over. Check out this rant . And it's worse than just higher prices in our supermarkets. It will likely mean starvation for those on the low end of the money pole. By our corn-c...

An article in yesterday's (6.25.07) Wall Street Journal (my favorite newspaper) suddenly jelled with several other things I have read in the last few days. The Headline: French Firm Vaults Ahead In Civilian Rocket Market . There was a launch last month of Arianspace's Arian 5 from France's spaceport in French Guiana. The Administrator of NASA - our guy Michael Griffin - was there and is quoted as saying the huge (20 stories tall) Ariane 5 is "probably the best in the world, very smooth and very impressive." ArianeSpace has "powered past" Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Tellingly, our guys "scoffed" at some of ArianeSpace's technology until they saw it work. That's one. That clicked with another story out today (6.26.07) about China taking a big step toward finishing the "longest sea bridge in the world." It's over 22 miles long and also has " the longest cable-stayed structure of its kind" as the center piece. T...