Zoe's First Dance Recital

What: Zoe's First Dance Recital
When: June 13, 2009
Where: North Brunswick Township High School Auditorium

Hammarskjold Middle School Orchestra Concert

The Hammarskjold Middle School Orchestra, of which my son Zahir is a member, had their concert last 06-02-2009. Here are two of the 6 songs they played.

Schwanda the Bagpiper by Weinberger




1812 Overture by Tchaikovsky

The Most Moving Dance You'll Ever See!

The ballet pair of Ma Li and Zhai Xiaowei, she without an arm and he without a leg, is one of the most moving dances ever. See them in their dance entitled "Hand and Hand".

This Has Got To Be The Best Dance Moves Ever!

Taiwan's New Solar Stadium - Amazing

From Inhabitat: Taiwan’s Solar Stadium is 100% Powered by the Sun by Diane Pham

Taiwan recently finished construction on an incredible solar-powered stadium that will generate 100% of its electricity from photovoltaic technology! Designed by Toyo Ito, the dragon-shaped 50,000 seat arena is clad in 8,844 solar panels that illuminate the track and field with 3,300 lux. The project will officially open later this year to welcome the 2009 World Games.

Building a new stadium is always a massive undertaking that requires millions of dollars, substantial physical labor, and a vast amount of electricity to keep it operating. Toyo Ito’s design negates this energy drain with a stunning 14,155 sq meter solar roof that is able to provide enough energy to power the stadium’s 3,300 lights and two jumbo vision screens. To illustrate the incredible power of this system, officials ran a test this January and found that it took just six minutes to power up the stadium’s entire lighting system!






Read more here.

Harry, Louise and Barack

One of my favorite columnists and economists, Paul Krugman, has an interesting NY Times op-ed piece about Health Care Reform.

From the NY Times: Harry, Louise and Barack by Paul Krugman

Harry and Louise were the fictional couple who appeared in advertisements run by the insurance industry in 1993, fretting about what would happen if “government bureaucrats” started making health care decisions. The ads helped kill the Clinton health care plan, and have stood, ever since, as a symbol of the ability of powerful special interests to block health care reform.

But on Saturday, excited administration officials called me to say that this time the medical-industrial complex (their term, not mine) is offering to be helpful.

Six major industry players — including America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), a descendant of the lobbying group that spawned Harry and Louise — have sent a letter to President Obama sketching out a plan to control health care costs. What’s more, the letter implicitly endorses much of what administration officials have been saying about health economics.

Are there reasons to be suspicious about this gift? You bet — and I’ll get to that in a bit. But first things first: on the face of it, this is tremendously good news.

The signatories of the letter say that they’re developing proposals to help the administration achieve its goal of shaving 1.5 percentage points off the growth rate of health care spending. That may not sound like much, but it’s actually huge: achieving that goal would save $2 trillion over the next decade.

Continue reading...

Sunday Classical Music: Lalo Symphonie Espagnole, Op. 21, 1st Movement

Although Edouard Lalo is not one of the most immediately recognized names in French music, his distinctive style has earned him some degree of popularity. Symphonie Espagnole for Violin and Orchestra still enjoys a prominent place in violinists' repertoire, and is known in many classical circles simply as "The Lalo".

Violin: Vadim Repin
Conductor: David Robertson
Orchestra: Orchestre National de Lyon

Republicans: The Indulgent Parents

A very compelling essay about the rise and imminent demise of the Republican Party. If you follow American politics, this is a must-read.

From Dailykos: By Dana Houle

You've seen them. Maybe it's a friend or a sibling. Someone you see out in public. Maybe, even, you've pondered the past and recognize it might have been your parents, or maybe even you: indulgent parents. Parents who never set limits, never enforce boundaries. Parents who never tell their children no. And you know what happens. Their kids usually grow up to be monsters, or face a tough transition to adulthood, because they think everything should be handed to them on a silver platter. They can't understand why the world doesn't roll over for them the way their parents did. They often become embittered and disillusioned, and sometimes even nihilistic. And their parents often experience shame and regret, and feel like they've become hostage to the monsters they helped create.

In American politics, the spoiled children struggling to deal with a reality they don't like and didn't expect are those voters who make up the rightwing of the Republican base. The indulgent parents of American politics are the leaders, elected officials and apparatchiks of the Republican party.

It wasn't always so. The Republican party wasn't always hostile to progress, tolerance and good governance. After WWII, it still contained some retrograde elements who wanted to go back to 1928 and wipe out an expansive role for the federal government. But most top Republicans at least tried to live in reality and be responsible about governance. That began to change, however, after their landslide loss in 1964. The Goldwater insurgency marked the beginning of a long-term takeover of the GOP by the rightwing ultras who viewed the world through an unyielding ideological prism.

Continue reading here.

Rachel Maddow: Disambiguation of Torture

The Beauty that Matters is Always on the Inside

Perhaps, you have already heard about Susan Boyle's story. If you haven't, you should watch this video. Then, read the very nice and inspiring article about her below.

From the Herald: The Beauty that Matters is Always on the Inside by Collette Douglas Home

Susan Boyle's story is a parable of our age. She is a singer of enormous talent, who cared for her widowed mother until she died two years ago. Susan's is a combination of ability and virtue that deserves congratulation.

So how come she was treated as a laughing stock when she walked on stage for the opening heat of Britain's Got Talent 2009 on Saturday night?

The moment the reality show's audience and judging panel saw the small, shy, middle-aged woman, they started to smirk. When she said she wanted a professional singing career to equal that of Elaine Paige, the camera showed audience members rolling their eyes in disbelief. They scoffed when she told Simon Cowell, one of the judges, how she'd reached her forties without managing to develop a singing career because she hadn't had the opportunity. Another judge, Piers Morgan, later wrote on his blog that, just before she launched into I Dreamed a Dream, the 3000-strong audience in Glasgow was laughing and the three judges were suppressing chuckles.

It was rude and cruel and arrogant. Susan Boyle from Blackburn, West Lothian, was presumed to be a buffoon. But why?

Read the entire article here.

Trip to Crayola Factory

Last Friday, Diana and I brought Zoe to the Crayola Factory in Easton, Pennsylvania. Zahir also came along with us.

Future of U.S. Depends on Torture Accountability

From MSNBC: Special Comment by Keith Olbermann

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Read Full Transcript here.

Top Ten Enemies of the Single Payer Health Insurance System

From CommonDreams.Org: Top Ten Enemies of Single Payer by Russell Mokhiber

Most people, when they arrive in Washington, D.C., see it for what it is - a cesspool of corruption.

Two reasonable reactions to the cesspool.

One, run away screaming in fear.

Two, stay and fight back and bring to justice those who have corrupted our democracy.

Unfortunately, many choose a third way - stay and be transformed.

Instead of seeing a cesspool, they begin seeing a hot tub.

The result - profits and wealth for the corporate elite - death, disease and destruction for the American people.

Nowhere does this corrupt, calculating transformation do more damage than in the area of health care.

Outside the beltway cesspool/hot tub, the majority of doctors, nurses, small businesses, health economists, and the majority of the American people - according to recent polls - want a Canadian-style, single payer, everybody in, nobody out, free choice of doctor and hospital, national health insurance system.

Inside the beltway cesspool/hot tub, the corrupt elite will have none of it.

They won't even put single payer on the table for discussion.

Why not?

Because it will bring a harsh justice - the death penalty - to their buddies in the multi-billion dollar private health insurance industry.

The will of the American people is being held up by a handful of organizations and individuals who profit off the suffering of the masses.

And the will of the American people will not be done until this criminal elite is confronted and defeated.

(Remember, virtually the entire industrialized world - save for us, the U.S. - makes it a crime to allow for-profit health insurance corporations to make money selling basic health insurance.)

Before we confront and defeat the inside the beltway cesspool/hot tub crowd, we must first know who they are.

Read more.

Noam Chomsky on Healthcare

Noam Chomsky is one of my favorite modern american philosophers. He is a political activist, prolific writer and lecturer. He is currently a Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

In the video below, which was taken on April 7, 2009 at the Orpheum Theater in Madison, Wisconsin, he spoke to a full-capacity crowd about why the Health Care Reform in the United States has taken so long.



To know more about Noam Chomsky, click here.

This Week in Science: Bonnie Bassler: Discovering Bacteria's Amazing Communication System

Bonnie Bassler discovered that bacteria "talk" to each other, using a chemical language that lets them coordinate defense and mount attacks. The find has stunning implications for medicine, industry -- and our understanding of ourselves.



About Bonnie Bassler: In 2002, bearing her microscope on a microbe that lives in the gut of fish, Bonnie Bassler isolated an elusive molecule called AI-2, and uncovered the mechanism behind mysterious behavior called quorum sensing -- or bacterial communication. She showed that bacterial chatter is hardly exceptional or anomolous behavior, as was once thought -- and in fact, most bacteria do it, and most do it all the time. (She calls the signaling molecules "bacterial Esperanto.")

The discovery shows how cell populations use chemical powwows to stage attacks, evade immune systems and forge slimy defenses called biofilms. For that, she's won a MacArthur "genius" grant -- and is giving new hope to frustrated pharmacos seeking new weapons against drug-resistant superbugs.

Bassler teaches molecular biology at Princeton, where she continues her years-long study of V. harveyi, one such social microbe that is mainly responsible for glow-in-the-dark sushi. She also teaches aerobics at the YMCA.

I wish I still have my old ukelele

When I was about 7 or 8 years old, my father bought me a ukelele as a birthday gift. (For those of you who don't know what a ukelele is: it is a small, four-stringed version of a guitar, which is about the size of a regular violin. It has long been associated with Hawaii. The word "ukelele" means "jumping flea" in English). I was so excited to learn how to play it. My father, who was a very good ukelele player himself, patiently taught me the basics. I used to practice playing the instrument for at least an hour or two each day after school and during weekends. I actually became very good at it. I had two ukeleles. I accidentally dropped my old one, so we bought a new one. I played the ukelele until I was 12, then I moved on to the regular guitar.

I was browsing Youtube videos last night, and chanced upon a very nice and soothing ukelele performance by ukelele legend Herb Ohta and his son Iwao. As I watch the video, I missed my old ukelele, and I wish I still have it.

I think I am probably going to end up buying a new ukelele - the musical instrument of my youth; reminisce the days when my father was still alive and the many happy days we've spent together as father and son with the ukelele.

Here are some ukelele music by ukelele legend Herb Ohta. Enjoy!

From the Washington Post:

NEW YORK, April 7 -- Vermont on Tuesday became the fourth state to recognize gay marriage, and the D.C. Council voted to recognize same-sex unions performed in other states. The two actions give same-sex marriage proponents new momentum, following a similar victory last week in Iowa's Supreme Court.

"I think we're going to look back at this week as a moment when our entire country turned a corner," said Jennifer C. Pizer, the national marriage project director for the advocacy group Lambda Legal. "Each time there's an important step forward, it makes it easier for others to follow."

The action Tuesday in Vermont came swiftly, surprising even some of the proponents of gay marriage who were still celebrating their victory last Friday, when the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriages could go ahead.

The two houses of Vermont's legislature voted last week for a same-sex marriage bill -- four votes short of a veto-overriding majority -- and Gov. Jim Douglas (R) vetoed it Monday. But Tuesday, several house members who voted against it last week switched sides to support the override, making gay marriage law.

The final vote was 100 to 49 to override the governor's veto. The initial vote last week was 94 to 52. Vermont has no mechanism for a citizen referendum to override the law.

"All of us are thrilled at the pace," said Jennifer Chrisler, executive director of the Massachusetts-based Family Equality Council, which advocates for gay rights. "This is a great day."

Read more here.

Iowa Supreme Court Legalizes Gay Marriage

From MSNBC:

DES MOINES, Iowa, April 3 - The Iowa Supreme Court legalized gay marriage Friday in a unanimous and emphatic decision that makes Iowa the third state — and first in the nation's heartland — to allow same-sex couples to wed.

Iowa joins only Massachusetts and Connecticut in permitting same-sex marriage. For six months last year, California's high court allowed gay marriage before voters banned it in November.

The Iowa justices upheld a lower-court ruling that rejected a state law restricting marriage to a union between a man and woman.

Read more here.

Sunday Classical Music: Brahms Double Concerto in A Minor Op 102, Vivace Non Troppo (3rd Movement)

Nothing can beat the excitement, thrill, energy, drama and romance from this Brahms classical piece. It may not be as well-known as the other Brahms concertos, but when it is played by two excellent musicians accompanied by a good orchestra and an excellent conductor, it attains the greatness of the more popular Brahms concertos.

Violin: Julia Fischer
Cello: Daniel Müller-Schott
Conductor: Christoph Poppen
Orchestra: Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken

I Have a Dream by Martin Luther King

On this the 41st Death Anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, I post his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. May we NEVER forget his contributions to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Every time I watch and listen to this speech, I end up misty-eyed.

The French are right (again)

In the United States, we almost always have some complaints against the French, but the French often turn out to be right.

From Salon.com: The French are right (again) by Joe Conason

If the world is no longer enthralled by the “old Washington consensus” of privatization, deregulation and weak government, as British Prime Minister Gordon Brown proclaimed at the London G-20 summit, then now it is surely time to reconsider what that consensus has meant for us over the past three decades. We could begin by looking across the Atlantic at the “social market” nations of Europe -- where support for families and children is less rhetorical and more real than here.

Most coverage of the summit failed to observe the stinging irony of the debate over stimulus spending that brought the United States into conflict with France and Germany. Today’s American demand that the French and Germans (along with the rest of wealthy Europe) should spend much more on government programs and infrastructure contrasts rather starkly with the traditional American criticism of Europeans for spending too much.

Not that the Obama administration’s complaint about the French and the Germans is necessarily wrong; the Europeans and especially France and Germany should overcome their fear of inflation and spend more to help relieve the global recession. But then we almost always have some complaint against the French -- and the French often turn out to be right, as they were when they objected to the invasion of Iraq.

So when the French and other Europeans note pointedly that their societies routinely spend much more than ours to protect workers, women, the young, the elderly, and the poor from economic trouble, they’re merely making a factual observation. (France spends as much as 1.5 percent of GDP annually on childcare and maternity benefits alone.) Different as we are in culture and history, we might even learn something from their example, now that the blinding ideology of the past has been swept away.

By now, most Americans ought to know that Europeans treat healthcare as a public good and a human right, which means that they spend billions of tax dollars annually to insure everyone (although they spend less overall on the medical sector than we do). What most Americans probably still don’t know is that those European medical systems are highly varied, with private medicine and insurance playing different roles in different countries. Expensive as universal quality care has inevitably become, as technology improves and populations age, the Europeans broadly believe in their social security systems -- because they provide competitive advantage as well as moral superiority.

Read more here.

Are raw veggies healthier than cooked ones?

Do vegetables lose their nutritional value when heated?

From Scientific American

Cooking is crucial to our diets. It helps us digest food without expending huge amounts of energy. It softens food, such as cellulose fiber and raw meat, that our small teeth, weak jaws and digestive systems aren't equipped to handle. And while we might hear from raw foodists that cooking kills vitamins and minerals in food (while also denaturing enzymes that aid digestion), it turns out raw vegetables are not always healthier.

Read more here.

Reminiscing with Songs: Forevermore by Side A

Dedicated to my better half, Diana.

Happy 79th Birthday Auntie Aning!

We would like to thank you for all the things that you have done for us, for which we will forever be grateful. We wish that you will have more birthdays to come! We love you very much!

Sunday Classical Music: Beethoven Violin Concerto, Rondo Allegro (3rd Mvmt)

The 3rd movement of this Beethoven violin concerto contains one of the most well-known violin rifts in classical music. This movement is my favorite part from this particular violin concerto. The video features korean violinist Kyung Wha Chung with conductor Klaus Tennstedt and the Royal Dutch Orchestra. The concert was performed in 1989. I picked this one because of the passion of her interpretation, plus the beautiful cadenza she did at the end. Enjoy!

This Week in Science: Relativity and Quantum Mechanics

From the New York Times: Sons of Atom by Peter Galison

The first quarter of the 20th century produced two theories, Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, that are still changing our universe.

With special relativity, Albert Einstein upended the long-understood meaning of time, space and simultaneity. With general relativity, he swapped Newton’s law of gravity based on force for curved space­time, and cosmology became a science. Just after World War I, relativity made front-page news when astronomers saw the Sun bend starlight. Overnight, Einstein became famous as no physical scientist before or since, his theory the subject of poetry, painting and architecture.

Then, with the development of quantum mechanics in the 1920s, physics got ­really interesting. Quantum physics was a theory so powerful — and so powerfully weird — that nearly a century later, we’re still arguing about how to reconcile it with Einsteinian relativity and debating what it tells us about causality, locality and realism.

Relativity leads to a world far from every day intuition. But relativity was still classical physics: classical in the sense that it was as causal, maybe even more so, as the physics of Newton. The relativist could defend the view that we could refine our local specification of the state of things now — that we could spell out what every last particle was up to — and then predict the future, as accurately as wanted. Back in the Enlightenment, Pierre-Simon de Laplace imagined a machine that could calculate the future. He didn’t know relativity, of course, but you could imagine a Laplace 2.0 (with relativity) that kept his predictive dream alive.

Quantum mechanics shattered that Laplacian vision. From 1925 to 1927, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, Max Born and many others made the theory into a toolkit that could be used to calculate how copper conducted electricity, how nuclei fissioned, how transistors worked. Quantum mechanics was easy to use, but hard to understand. For example, two particles that interacted might subsequently fly to opposite sides of the solar system, and still act as if they were dependent. Measuring one near Pluto affected measurements as the other zipped by Mercury. Einstein viewed this inseparability, now known as “entanglement,” as the fatal mark of the incompleteness of quantum mechanics: he sought a successor theory that would be local, realist and therefore complete.

Read more here.

Zoe at Nadia's Birthday Party

Yesterday, Zoe went to her friend and ballet classmate Nadia's Birthday Party at the Mega Movie Theater. They watched Dreamworks' Monsters vs. Aliens. During the movie, the girls were chatting and laughing with each other. They really loved the movie. After the movie, the kids were given a tour of the theater's projection rooms. They were all thrilled to see the big movie projectors. And then, finally, it was pizza and cake time!

Ending the Use of Capital Punishment

The world is moving nearer to ending the use of capital punishment, Amnesty International says, despite its latest report revealing a mixed picture.

I think this is good news. Do you agree?

From BBC News:  Death Penalty "Closer to Demise"

In its annual survey the group says 2,390 people were put to death in 2008, up from 1,252 in 2007. And 8,864 were sentenced to death, up from 3,347.

Of 25 nations using the death penalty in 2008, China was the most prolific.

But Amnesty said it was encouraging that just 59 nations retained the death penalty and so few actually used it.

The group's secretary general, Irene Khan, said such punishments as beheading, stoning and electrocution "have no place in the 21st Century".

Despite the rise in executions during 2008, she said there were reasons to be optimistic.

"The good news is that executions are only carried out by a small number of countries, which shows that we are moving closer to a death-penalty free world," she said.

'Worrying instances'

The group highlighted decisions by Argentina and Uzbekistan to abolish the death penalty in 2008.

And the fact that Belarus was the only European nation to carry out executions was also interpreted positively.

But Ms Khan said the "bad news" in the report, entitled Death Sentences and Executions in 2008, was that hundreds of people continued to suffer.

The report said China used lethal injection and shooting to execute at least 1,718 people.
But Beijing does not publish data on the death penalty.

Of the top-six countries in Amnesty's list, only the US (37) publishes statistics on the penalty's use.

The figures for the others are estimates based on what Amnesty has verified through media reports, rights groups and official statements.

Other groups frequently give much higher figures.

The other worst-offending nations on the list are Iran (346), Saudi Arabia (102), Pakistan (36) and Iraq (34).

Amnesty also highlighted "worrying instances" of some nations bucking a long-term trend away from the death penalty.

St Kitts and Nevis carried out the first execution in the Caribbean for five years, the group's report said.

And Liberia introduced capital punishment for robbery, terrorism and hijacking.

This Week in Science: Discovery of a Monstrous Jurassic Reptile of the Deep

From the New York Times: From Arctic Soil, Fossils of a Goliath That Ruled the Jurassic Seas by: John Noble Wilford

There were monstrous reptiles in the deep, back in the time of dinosaurs.

They swam with mighty flippers, two fore and two hind, all four accelerating on attack. In their elongated heads were bone-crushing jaws more powerful than a Tyrannosaurus rex’s. They were the pliosaurs, heavyweight predators at the top of the food chain in ancient seas.

Much of this was already known. Now, after an analysis of fossils uncovered on a Norwegian island 800 miles from the North Pole, scientists have confirmed that they have found two partial skeletons of a gigantic new species, possibly a new family, of pliosaurs.

This extinct marine reptile was at least 50 feet long and weighed 45 tons, the largest known of its kind. Its massive skull was 10 feet long, and the flippers, more like outsize paddles, were also 10 feet. The creature — not yet given a scientific name but simply called the Monster or Predator X — hunted the seas 150 million years ago, in the Jurassic Period.

“Everything we are finding is new to science,” said Jorn H. Hurum, a paleontologist at the University of Oslo who directed the excavations on the Arctic island of Spitsbergen in the Svalbard archipelago. He described new details of the find in a telephone interview last week.

Dr. Hurum said that in the Jurassic Period, Spitsbergen was covered by the then-temperate waters of a deep ocean. In 2006, the expedition began finding a variety of marine fossils, including pieces of the pliosaur skull, weathering out of a mountainside patrolled by polar bears. A year later, the university announced, the team came upon a flipper and much of the first pliosaur specimen.

But only after excavating the second specimen in last summer’s expedition and comparing the two were the scientists prepared to describe their findings about the huge pliosaur’s anatomy and probable physiology and hunting strategy. This was reported in recent science meetings, and Dr. Hurum said a full description would be published next year in a journal.

More here.

Sunday Classical Music: Vivaldi Concerto for Two Cellos in G Minor, KV 531

This concerto is one of my favorite Vivaldi compositions. In fact, I like this better than the Four Seasons. I hope you like it too. I am posting the best interpretation of the piece (in my opinion) that is available from Youtube.

Bruce Springsteen Interview

Bruce Springsteen is not only a great musician, but a truly good man. That's why he's one of my favorites.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Bruce Springsteen - Interview
comedycentral.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Important Things w/ Demetri Martin Political Humor

Happy 19th Wedding Anniversary Darling

Remember?

By Joanna Fuchs

Remember the first flush of love
that drew you powerfully together?

It still feeds the unassailable bond
that makes your marriage so secure.

Remember all the qualites about each other
you found so endearing?

They are still there,
and new ones create sweet surprises.

Remember thinking that this love
would last forever?

Your love has strengthened and grown
into eternal affection and admiration.

Years from now, you'll look back
at this anniversary,

And realize you love each other
more than ever.

Happy Anniversary!

Fossil Hints at Fuzzy Dinosaurs

From BBC News: A discovery in China has prompted researchers to question the scaly image of dinosaurs.

Previously, experts thought the first feathered dinosaurs appeared about 150 million years ago, but the find suggests feathers evolved much earlier. This has raised the question of whether many more of the creatures may have been covered with similar bristles, or "dino-fuzz".

The team describe the fossil in the journal Nature.

Hai-Lu You, a researcher from the Insitute of Geology in Beijing, was part of the team that discovered the fossil.

He told BBC News he was "very excited" when he realised the significance of what his team had found.

He described the filaments seen on the body of the new dinosaur, which the team has named Tianyulong confuciusi, as "protofeathers" - the precursors of modern feathers.

"Their function was probably display, as well as to keep the body warm" he said.
Dr You's team noticed that the filaments on the base of their dinosaur's tail were extremely long.

These, they suggest, might have evolved for show, and may even have been coloured.

"The world of dinosaurs would [have been] more colourful and active than we previously imagined," he said.

More here.

Dolphins Making Underwater Bubble Rings

Are you amazed by people making rings of smoke? Well, you must see this: Dolphins making underwater bubble rings. It is really amazing!

The Questions our Healthcare Debate Ignores

Why does every developed nation except the U.S. have universal healthcare? Why do they pay half as much in medical costs? Why are their infant mortality and longevity statistics superior?

From Salon.com: The Questions our Healthcare Debate Ignores by Joe Conason

As President Obama issued his call for reform of American healthcare, he must have been gratified to hear so many professions of good faith and civility from the political and commercial interests that have always opposed change. The health insurance lobbyists as well as the politicians who serve them all promised that this time would be different.

But amid all the reassuring blather, certain fundamental questions were not asked, as usual, because merely posing them might discomfort those same special interests and political leaders. Why do we spend so much more on healthcare, per capita, than other developed countries? Why do we achieve worse outcomes on several important measures than countries that spend far less? Why do we spend up to twice as much per person as countries that provide universal coverage while leaving as many as 50 million Americans without insurance?

The salience of those questions has grown over the past several decades, ever since President Truman first sought to create a universal health benefit program that resembled systems in Europe. Last month, the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development issued the latest in a long series of reports on our wasteful and cruel practices that ought to awaken a sense of national embarrassment. This highly topical study carried a deceptively bland title: "Healthcare Reform in the United States." Naturally, the mainstream media and punditry ignored its findings (although OECD reports promoting free trade often receive wide coverage).

More here.

President Obama Signs the Executive Order on Stem Cell Research

Transcript of the remarks by President Obama at the signing of the Stem Cell Executive Order and Scientific Integrity Presidential Memorandum 

(Emphases mine)

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. Please, have a seat. Thank you much. Well, I'm excited too. (Laughter.)

Today, with the executive order I am about to sign, we will bring the change that so many scientists and researchers, doctors and innovators, patients and loved ones have hoped for, and fought for, these past eight years: We will lift the ban on federal funding for promising embryonic stem cell research. (Applause.) We will also vigorously support scientists who pursue this research. (Applause.) And we will aim for America to lead the world in the discoveries it one day may yield.

At this moment, the full promise of stem cell research remains unknown, and it should not be overstated. But scientists believe these tiny cells may have the potential to help us understand, and possibly cure, some of our most devastating diseases and conditions: to regenerate a severed spinal cord and lift someone from a wheelchair; to spur insulin production and spare a child from a lifetime of needles; to treat Parkinson's, cancer, heart disease and others that affect millions of Americans and the people who love them.

But that potential will not reveal itself on its own. Medical miracles do not happen simply by accident. They result from painstaking and costly research, from years of lonely trial and error, much of which never bears fruit, and from a government willing to support that work. From life-saving vaccines, to pioneering cancer treatments, to the sequencing of the human genome -- that is the story of scientific progress in America. When government fails to make these investments, opportunities are missed. Promising avenues go unexplored. Some of our best scientists leave for other countries that will sponsor their work. And those countries may surge ahead of ours in the advances that transform our lives.

In recent years, when it comes to stem cell research, rather than furthering discovery, our government has forced what I believe is a false choice between sound science and moral values. In this case, I believe the two are not inconsistent. As a person of faith, I believe we are called to care for each other and work to ease human suffering. I believe we have been given the capacity and will to pursue this research -- and the humanity and conscience to do so responsibly.

It's a difficult and delicate balance. And many thoughtful and decent people are conflicted about, or strongly oppose, this research. And I understand their concerns, and I believe that we must respect their point of view.

But after much discussion, debate and reflection, the proper course has become clear. The majority of Americans -- from across the political spectrum, and from all backgrounds and beliefs -- have come to a consensus that we should pursue this research; that the potential it offers is great, and with proper guidelines and strict oversight, the perils can be avoided.

That is a conclusion with which I agree. And that is why I am signing this executive order, and why I hope Congress will act on a bipartisan basis to provide further support for this research. We are joined today by many leaders who have reached across the aisle to champion this cause, and I commend all of them who are here for that work.

Ultimately, I cannot guarantee that we will find the treatments and cures we seek. No President can promise that. But I can promise that we will seek them -- actively, responsibly, and with the urgency required to make up for lost ground. Not just by opening up this new front of research today, but by supporting promising research of all kinds, including groundbreaking work to convert ordinary human cells into ones that resemble embryonic stem cells.

I can also promise that we will never undertake this research lightly. We will support it only when it is both scientifically worthy and responsibly conducted. We will develop strict guidelines, which we will rigorously enforce, because we cannot ever tolerate misuse or abuse. And we will ensure that our government never opens the door to the use of cloning for human reproduction. It is dangerous, profoundly wrong, and has no place in our society, or any society.

Now, this order is an important step in advancing the cause of science in America. But let's be clear: Promoting science isn't just about providing resources -- it's also about protecting free and open inquiry. It's about letting scientists like those who are here today do their jobs, free from manipulation or coercion, and listening to what they tell us, even when it's inconvenient -- especially when it's inconvenient. It is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda -- and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology. (Applause.)

By doing this, we will ensure America's continued global leadership in scientific discoveries and technological breakthroughs. And that is essential not only for our economic prosperity, but for the progress of all humanity.

And that's why today I'm also signing a Presidential Memorandum directing the head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to develop a strategy for restoring scientific integrity to government decision-making -- (applause) -- to ensure that in this new administration, we base our public policies on the soundest science; that we appoint scientific advisors based on their credentials and experience, not their politics or ideology; and that we are open and honest with the American people about the science behind our decisions. That's how we'll harness the power of science to achieve our goals -- to preserve our environment and protect our national security; to create the jobs of the future, and live longer, healthier lives.

As we restore our commitment to science and expand funding for promising stem cell research, we owe a debt of gratitude to so many tireless advocates, some of whom are with us today, many of whom are not. Today, we honor all those whose names we don't know, who organized and raised awareness and kept on fighting -- even when it was too late for them, or for the people they love. And we honor those we know, who used their influence to help others and bring attention to this cause -- people like Christopher and Dana Reeve, who we wish could be here to see this moment.

One of Christopher's friends recalled that he hung a sign on the wall of the exercise room where he did his grueling regimen of physical therapy. And it read: "For everyone who thought I couldn't do it. For everyone who thought I shouldn't do it. For everyone who said it's impossible. See you at the finish line."

Christopher once told a reporter who was interviewing him: If you came back here 10 -- "If you came back here in 10 years, I expect that I'd walk to the door to greet you."

Now, Christopher did not get that chance. But if we pursue this research, maybe one day -- maybe not in our lifetime, or even in our children's lifetime -- but maybe one day, others like Christopher Reeves might.

There's no finish line in the work of science. The race is always with us -- the urgent work of giving substance to hope and answering those many bedside prayers, of seeking a day when words like "terminal" and "incurable" are potentially retired from our vocabulary.

Today, using every resource at our disposal, with renewed determination to lead the world in the discoveries of this new century, we rededicate ourselves to this work.

Before I sign, I want to just note the people who are on the stage with me. In addition to our outstanding Secretary of Energy, Secretary Chu; we also have Dr. Patricia Bath; we have Dr. H. Robert Horvitz; we have Dr. Janet Rowley; Dr. Harold Varmus, who's going to be the co-chair of my President's Council on Science; we've got Dr. Michael Bishop; and we also have Dr. Peter Agre. So these are an example of the outstanding scientists who we hope will guide us through this process in the years to come.

And with them standing beside me, I'd also like to invite some of my colleagues from Congress who have done just such extraordinary work to share in the limelight, because you guys are still going to have some work to do, and -- but it's because of the leadership of so many of you across partisan lines that we've been able to accomplish so much already.

So thank you very much, everybody. Let's go sign this. (Applause.)

(The executive order is signed.) (Applause.)

Zoe's Snow Day

Zoe all bundled up for snow day, 03/02/2009!

Solar Race Car

From Wired: MIT Unveils 90 MPH Solar Race Car By Chuck Squatriglia

MIT's latest solar race car might look like a funky Ikea table with a hump, but don't laugh. It'll do 90 mph and is packed with technology that may end up in the hybrids and EVs the rest of us will soon be driving.


The university's Solar Electric Vehicle Team, the oldest such team in the country, unveiled the $243,000 carbon-fiber racer dubbed Eleanor on Friday and is shaking the car down to prepare for its inaugural race later this year.

"It drives beautifully," said George Hansel, a freshman physics major at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the team. "It's fun to drive and quite a spectacle."

Eleanor is slated to compete in the tenth World Solar Challenge, a seven-day race across nearly 2,000 miles of Australian outback.

Vehicles competing in the endurance race may look hopelessly impractical, but the competition is a test bed for batteries, motor technology and power-management systems that may eventually appear in hybrids and electric vehicles. Like Formula 1 and other big-budget motor sports, the solar challenge helps develop some of the vehicles we see in showrooms.

More here.

Snow Day

Title: Let It Snow
Artist: Dean Martin



Good morning!

You must be wondering why I am posting this song. Well, we are having a snow storm in the Northeastern US today. The forecast says 6 - 8 inches of snow. It is really coming down now. There must be at least 6 inches of snow on the ground right now in our area here in Central New Jersey. Schools were suspended last night due to inclement weather. So the kids were celebrating. Kids love snow days. Meanwhile, I am working from home.

Oh, Zoe would love this snow. She will get to make snow angels again, and go sledding in the backyard with her brothers, and throw snow balls at them. It is going to be a fun day for the kids.

Tender Surrender by Steve Vai

How's this for a change: I am not posting classical music today. Well, not exactly, and you will find out later.

I wonder if you would enjoy one of my favorite guitarists - Steve Vai - performing Tender Surrender, a truly great roller coaster ride of a song. This song is particularly great because of the slow, gradual manner in which Vai builds the song. The song reaches a dramatic climax at which point Vai performs a superb solo and from there he returns to the mellowness of the beginning.

I have been a fan of Steve Vai since I saw him in the movie Crossroads back in the mid 80s. He was the Devil's guitar player that Eugene Martone (Ralph Macchio) played against in a climactic guitar duel.

Please enjoy Tender Surrender and the Crossroads Guitar Duel.





If you watched the Crossroads Guitar Duel, you may have noticed that Eugene Martone (Ralph Macchio) played Paganini Caprice #5 to finally beat Steve Vai in the guitar duel. Well, that Paganini is classical music :). Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the video clips.

Wanna Lost Weight?

From Scientific American: Weight-Loss Winner: A Diet High in Fiber, Low in Calories

Some say the secret to losing weight is forgoing greasy, fatty foods like French fries; others swear that shunning carbs in favor of all-protein grub is key. Many popular weight loss plans recommend that dieters consume specific ratios of fat, protein and carbohydrates. (The Zone diet, for instance, prescribes 40 percent carbs, preferably complex carbs like veggies and whole grains, 30 percent protein and 30 percent fat). But a study published today in The New England Journal of Medicine suggests that the smartest way to lose weight is to eat heart healthy foods (think: Mediterranean diet—lots of veggies and fish, limited amounts of red meat) and reduce your caloric intake.

"Reduced calorie, heart-healthy diets can help you lose weight, regardless of the proportions of fat, protein and carbohydrates," says study co-author Catherine Loria, a nutritional epidemiologist at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute in Bethesda, Md.
The researchers, led by Frank Sacks, a professor of cardiovascular disease prevention at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, focused their study on 811 overweight and obese adults ages 30 to 70 in Boston and Baton Rouge, La. ("Overweight" includes those with a body mass index (BMI) between 25 and 29.9; people are considered obese if they have a BMI over 30. The BMI is a standard index used to gauge body fat based on a person's height and weight.)

The study subjects were divided into four groups, each assigned to a special diet. One group ate a "low-fat, average-protein" diet (20 percent fat, 15 percent protein, 65 percent carbs); a second consumed a "low-fat, high-protein" diet (20 percent fat, 25 percent protein, 55 percent carbs); a third followed a "high-fat, average-protein" diet (40 percent fat, 15 percent protein, 45 percent carbs); and the remaining group ate a "high-fat, high-protein" diet (40 percent fat, 25 percent protein, 35 percent carbs). All four regimens were heart-healthy (low in saturated fat and cholesterol) and included 20 grams (0.7 ounce) of daily dietary fiber. For each study participant, the researchers calculated personalized daily consumption levels ranging from 1,200 to 2,400 calories per day.

When the researchers measured the body weight of the participants at various points over two years, they found that all four groups were shedding roughly the same number of pounds over time.

"No matter which way you look at it, there were no [statistically significant] differences between any of the groups," Loria says. At six months, the average total weight loss for all of the groups was approximately 14 pounds (6.5 kilograms); by the end of two years that number had dipped to about nine pounds (four kilograms). "A lot of times in these weight loss studies, people tend to regain," notes Loria, adding that she will now study strategies that help people keep lost pounds off.

"This study dispels the long-held idea that a low-fat diet has an advantage over other diets," says Christopher Gardner, a nutrition scientist at Stanford University School of Medicine, who was not involved in this research. The only downside of this or any weight loss trial for that matter, he notes, is that people do not always stick to the diets assigned to them. (The study authors acknowledge that many participants failed to meet their target fat–protein–carb ratios, even though they were given regular counseling and feedback from nutritionists throughout the two-year period).

More here.

Solving a 17th Century Crime

Forensic anthropologists at the National Museum of Natural History find answers to a colonial cold case.



From the Smithsonian Magazine: Solving a 17th Century Crime by Joseph Caputo

The boy does not have a name, but he is not unknown. Smithsonian scientists reconstructed his story from a skeleton, found in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, buried underneath a layer of fireplace ash, bottle and ceramic fragments, and animal bones.

Resting on top of the rib cage was the milk pan used to dig the grave. "It's obviously some sort of clandestine burial," says Kari Bruwelheide, who studied the body. "We call it a colonial cold case."

Bruwelheide is an assistant to forensic anthropologist Douglas Owsley. After more than a decade of cases that span the centuries, the duo has curated "Written in Bone: Forensic Files of the 17th-Century Chesapeake," on view at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History through February 2011. The exhibit shows visitors how forensic anthropologists analyze bones and artifacts to crack historical mysteries. "The public thinks they know a lot about it, but their knowledge is based on shows like ‘Bones' and ‘CSI,' so they get a lot of misinformation," Owsley says. "This is an opportunity for us to show the real thing."

More here.

Lingerie Trade in a Twist

This is a pretty interesting article. More on the jump.

From BBC News Middle East: Saudi Lingerie Trade in a Twist

It would be bizarre in any country to find that its lingerie shops are staffed entirely by men.

But in Saudi Arabia - an ultra-conservative nation where unmarried men and women cannot even be alone in a room together if they are not related - it is strange in the extreme.

Women, forced to negotiate their most intimate of purchases with male strangers, call the situation appalling and are demanding the system be changed.

"The way that underwear is being sold in Saudi Arabia is simply not acceptable to any population living anywhere in the modern world," says Reem Asaad, a finance lecturer at Dar al-Hikma Women's College in Jeddah, who is leading a campaign to get women working in lingerie shops rather than men.

"This is a sensitive part of women's bodies," adds Ms Asaad. "You need to have some discussions regarding size, colour and attractive choices and you definitely don't want to get into such a discussion with a stranger, let alone a male stranger. I mean this is something I wouldn't even talk to my friends about."

In theory, it should be easy enough to get women to staff lingerie shops, but parts of Saudi society are still very traditional and don't like the idea of women working - even if it's just to sell underwear to each other.

More here.

Macropinna Microstoma: A deep-sea fish with transparent head and tubular eyes

Researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute recently solved the half-century-old mystery of a fish with tubular eyes and a transparent head. Ever since the "barreleye" fish Macropinna microstoma was first described in 1939, marine biologists have known that its tubular eyes are very good at collecting light. However, the eyes were believed to be fixed in place and seemed to provide only a "tunnel-vision" view of whatever was directly above the fish's head. A new paper by Bruce Robison and Kim Reisenbichler shows that these unusual eyes can rotate within a transparent shield that covers the fish's head. This allows the barreleye to peer up at potential prey or focus forward to see what it is eating.

Deep-sea fish have adapted to their pitch-black environment in a variety of amazing ways. Several species of deep-water fishes in the family Opisthoproctidae are called "barreleyes" because their eyes are tubular in shape. Barreleyes typically live near the depth where sunlight from the surface fades to complete blackness. They use their ultra-sensitive tubular eyes to search for the faint silhouettes of prey overhead.

Although such tubular eyes are very good at collecting light, they have a very narrow field of view. Furthermore, until now, most marine biologists believed that barreleye's eyes were fixed in their heads, which would allow them to only look upward. This would make it impossible for the fishes to see what was directly in front of them, and very difficult for them to capture prey with their small, pointed mouths.

More here.

Obama is really serious about Health Care Reform

During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama said that he was serious about health care. It looks like he is really very serious. Just look at his health care budget. I am really impressed.

President Obama is proposing to begin a vast expansion of the U.S. health-care system by creating a $634 billion reserve fund over the next decade, launching an overhaul that most experts project will ultimately cost at least $1 trillion.

The "reserve fund" in the budget proposal being released today is Obama's attempt to demonstrate how the country could extend health insurance to millions more Americans and at the same time begin to control escalating medical bills that threaten the solvency of families, businesses and the government.

Obama aims to make a "very substantial down payment" toward universal coverage by trimming tax breaks for the wealthy and squeezing payments to insurers, hospitals, doctors and drug manufacturers, a senior administration official said yesterday.

Embedded in the budget figures are key policy changes that the administration argues would improve the quality of care and bring much-needed efficiency to a health system that costs $2.3 trillion a year.

By first identifying a large pot of money to underwrite health-care reform -- before laying out a proposal on who would be covered or how -- Obama hopes to draw Congress to the bargaining table to tackle the details of a comprehensive plan. The strategy is largely intended to avoid the mistakes of the Clinton administration, which crafted an extensive proposal in secret for many months before delivering the finished product to lawmakers, who quickly rejected it.