Blogged by Arnold Tuazon

You've Got To Watch This!

2010-02-23T14:58:00.004-05:00

It has been a while since my last blog post. I have been busy for the past few months. Anyway, I thought I would resume. And I thought the best way to resume is to post something very cool, interesting and totally unexpected.

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Zoe's First Dance Recital

2009-06-14T22:52:00.002-04:00

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

Hammarskjold Middle School Orchestra Concert

2009-06-07T13:27:00.000-04:00

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!

2009-05-31T15:48:00.002-04:00

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!

2009-05-30T23:24:00.002-04:00

Taiwan's New Solar Stadium - Amazing

2009-05-25T22:51:00.006-04:00

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

2009-05-16T00:33:00.004-04:00

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.

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

2009-05-04T00:20:00.005-04:00

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

2009-05-03T21:10:00.003-04:00

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

2009-04-27T17:56:00.001-04:00

The Beauty that Matters is Always on the Inside

2009-04-21T00:41:00.001-04:00

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

2009-04-19T13:43:00.007-04:00

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

2009-04-18T09:12:00.002-04:00

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

2009-04-18T08:56:00.002-04:00

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.

Noam Chomsky on Healthcare

2009-04-13T21:49:00.007-04:00

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

2009-04-11T22:39:00.002-04:00

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

2009-04-09T22:03:00.003-04:00

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!

2009-04-07T23:06:00.001-04:00

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

2009-04-07T23:04:00.002-04:00

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)

2009-04-05T00:00:00.004-04:00

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

2009-04-04T12:45:00.002-04:00

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)

2009-04-03T18:27:00.003-04:00

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?

2009-04-02T23:14:00.004-04:00

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

2009-03-30T09:00:00.003-04:00

Dedicated to my better half, Diana.

Happy 79th Birthday Auntie Aning!

2009-03-30T00:01:00.005-04:00

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)

2009-03-29T14:57:00.005-04:00

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

2009-03-29T13:20:00.002-04:00

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

2009-03-29T12:31:00.015-04:00

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

2009-03-23T21:49:00.003-04:00

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

2009-03-22T00:52:00.005-04:00

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

2009-03-21T14:16:00.004-04:00

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

2009-03-20T12:06:00.001-04:00

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

2009-03-18T23:26:00.006-04:00

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

2009-03-18T22:32:00.005-04:00

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

2009-03-17T23:58:00.003-04:00

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

2009-03-09T23:07:00.002-04:00

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

2009-03-09T22:32:00.003-04:00

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

2009-03-07T08:58:00.005-05:00

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

Solar Race Car

2009-03-02T18:28:00.006-05:00

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

2009-03-02T08:24:00.004-05:00

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

2009-02-28T22:54:00.005-05:00

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?

2009-02-28T14:14:00.000-05:00

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

2009-02-28T13:15:00.000-05:00

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

2009-02-27T12:38:00.000-05:00

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

2009-02-26T12:33:00.000-05:00

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

2009-02-26T12:32:00.000-05:00

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.

The Novelist in Wartime

2009-02-22T16:45:00.007-05:00

In this powerful speech, the great author explains his controversial decision to accept a literary prize in Israel and why we need to fight the System.

From Salon: The Novelist in Wartime by Haruki Murakami

I have come to Jerusalem today as a novelist, which is to say as a professional spinner of lies.

Of course, novelists are not the only ones who tell lies. Politicians do it, too, as we all know. Diplomats and military men tell their own kinds of lies on occasion, as do used car salesmen, butchers and builders. The lies of novelists differ from others, however, in that no one criticizes the novelist as immoral for telling lies. Indeed, the bigger and better his lies and the more ingeniously he creates them, the more he is likely to be praised by the public and the critics. Why should that be?

My answer would be this: Namely, that by telling skillful lies -- which is to say, by making up fictions that appear to be true -- the novelist can bring a truth out to a new location and shine a new light on it. In most cases, it is virtually impossible to grasp a truth in its original form and depict it accurately. This is why we try to grab its tail by luring the truth from its hiding place, transferring it to a fictional location, and replacing it with a fictional form. In order to accomplish this, however, we first have to clarify where the truth lies within us. This is an important qualification for making up good lies.

Today, however, I have no intention of lying. I will try to be as honest as I can. There are a few days in the year when I do not engage in telling lies, and today happens to be one of them.

Atlantis Found?

2009-02-21T22:42:00.007-05:00

This is very interesting and exciting!

From the Telegraph: Has Atlantis been found off Africa?

The network of criss-cross lines is 620 miles off the coast of north west Africa near the Canary Islands on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean.

The perfect rectangle – which is around the size of Wales – was noticed on the search giant's underwater exploration tool by an aeronautical engineer who claims it looks like an "aerial map" of a city.

The underwater image can be found at the co-ordinates 31 15'15.53N 24 15'30.53W.

Last night Atlantis experts said that the unexplained grid is located at one of the possible sites of the legendary island, which was described by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato.

According to his account, the city sank beneath the ocean after its residents made a failed effort to conquer Athens around 9000 BC.

Dr Charles Orser, curator of historical archaeology at New York State University told The Sun that the find was fascinating and warranted further inspection.

"The site is one of the most prominent places for the proposed location of Atlantis, as described by Plato," the Atlantis expert said. "Even if it turns out to be geographical, it definitely deserves a closer look."

Bernie Bamford, 38, of Chester who spotted the "city", compared it to the plan of Milton Keynes, the Buckinghamshire town built on a grid design. "It must be man made," he said.

UPDATE (2009-02-22): Google dismisses "Atlantis find"

Schubert: Arpeggione Sonata in A Minor

2009-02-21T15:56:00.001-05:00

The Arpeggione Sonata is one of my favorite Schubert compositions. It was written for a long extinct musical instrument called the "Arpeggione", hence the title of the song. Nowadays, this piece is played using the cello, guitar and double bass. What is so special about this particular video clip, is that two of my favorite musicians, Miklos Perenyi and Andras Schiff, are playing.

Miklos Perenyi is one of my favorite cellists. He is not as well-known as the others, but I really like him very much. I saw him perform live in Carnegie Hall in New York a decade ago, and liked him ever since. As for Andras Schiff, I love his interpretations of the Beethoven Sonatas. Most enlightening was his interpretation of the so called "Moonlight Sonata" (Sonata No. 14), one of the most misinterpreted pieces in classical music.

I hope you enjoy this music.

I love classical music as much as other types of music like Rock and Heavy Metal. Sometimes, I will post my favorite Heavy Metal songs for a change :).

Two Nuclear Submarines Collide at Sea

2009-02-21T15:54:00.000-05:00

Do you want a world free of nuclear weapons? Then you should read this.

From the Salt Lake Tribune: Dyer: Collision at sea raises question: Why were they carrying nukes?

A ship I once served in had a small brass plate on the bridge with a quotation from Thucydides, the Greek statesman, historian and seaman of the fourth century BC: "A collision at sea can ruin your whole day." It is still true.

In the North Atlantic Ocean, on the night of Feb. 3-4, at an undisclosed depth, the British nuclear submarine Vanguard and the French nuclear submarine Le Triomphant ran into each other. Both boats were "boomers," missile-firing submarines carrying sixteen ballistic missiles, each of which can deliver several nuclear warheads at intercontinental range.

The North Atlantic is the second biggest ocean in the world. The submarines are considerably smaller: around 475 feet long. So there they are, puttering along at six knots or less, with an entire ocean to play in, and freedom in three dimensions (they can go very deep if they want) -- and they run into each other. The damage was slight, but it ruined the day for two whole navies. How could they have been so stupid?

We have just been reminded that although the Cold War ended 20 years ago, all the nuclear weapons are still there. Not only that, but the submarine-launched ones are still out on patrol as if this were 1975. There is not a single good reason for them all to be doing this, but nobody has told them to stop. Why not?

Because you don't know what the future might bring? I didn't say scrap the subs tomorrow, but tie them up in port and stop this nonsense. If we all end up in a new Cold War one day, then okay, you can have them back, but why are they cruising around out there now?

And by the way, if you could all agree to stop these ridiculous patrols, it would be a useful step towards the more sweeping measures of nuclear disarmament that all the great powers say they want, and that President Barack Obama has adopted as a serious goal.

Obama is the first occupant of the White House since Ronald Reagan with the vision to imagine a future free of nuclear weapons, and unlike Reagan he's smart enough not to let the guardians of nuclear orthodoxy talk him out of it. He has a lot on his plate right now, but here's a step in the right direction that costs nothing: announce that the U.S. Navy will no longer run "combat patrols" with its nuclear missile-firing submarines, and invite the world's other nuclear weapons powers to follow suit.

After this little demonstration of folly, they'd all come along pretty promptly.

A Failed Hypothesis

2009-02-14T14:18:00.002-05:00

Back in 2002, when I first heard about the claims that vaccines that contain thimerosal (ethyl mercury - and I think most, if not all, of the vaccines contain this) cause autism in kids, I just simply refused to believe it. I just didn't believe that these life-saving vaccines can really cause autism in kids. If that is true, then all of my kids would have been autistic, since they all had vaccination shots (and lots of them) when they were babies and toddlers.

But of course, my sympathies go to those parents with kids who have autism and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). I know it is very challenging to take care of kids with this condition. Kids with this condition need very extraordinary loving parents. Many parents, faced with the challenge of raising autistic children, not unreasonably wondered whether there was something wrong with vaccines in the first place.

Last night, I found out that a special court has said that vaccine is not to blame for autism.

In a big blow to parents who believe vaccines caused their children's autism, a special court ruled Thursday that the shots are not to blame. The court said the evidence was overwhelmingly contrary to the parents' claims — and backed years of science that found no risk.

"It was abundantly clear that petitioners' theories of causation were speculative and unpersuasive," the court concluded in one of a trio of cases ruled on Thursday.

I also found this post from Respectful Insolence. It is a very long essay about the myth of the claim. But if you are interested to know more about this subject, this is worth while:

One of the most pernicious medical myths of recent years has been the claim, promulgated by a subgroup of parents of autistic children and facilitated by scientists of dubious repute, that somehow the mercury in the thimerosal (ethyl mercury) preservative used in common childhood vaccines in the U.S. until early 2002 causes autism. Although it had been percolating under the radar of most parents and scientists for several years before, this belief invaded the national zeitgeist in a big way in 2005, beginning with the publication of a book by journalist David Kirby entitled Evidence of Harm: Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic: A Medical Controversy. The fires of hysteria were stoked even higher by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who published a truly twisted and misleading piece of pseudojournalism and pseudoscience published simultaneously in Rolling Stone and on Salon.com entitled Deadly Immunity. Relying primarily on quote-mining of the transcripts of both a conference held Atlanta by the CDC to discuss the question of whether autism is related to thimerosal in vaccines and an Institute of Medicine report on vaccines while simultaneously misrepresenting the results of two studies by Verstaeten et al to paint a false picture of a government coverup, RFK Jr. almost single-handedly managed to stoke fears that vaccines were causing an "epidemic of autism."

I say "almost" single-handedly, because, unfortunately, he had help. Relying on the dubious research of a variety of investigators, such as the father-and-son team of Dr. Mark Geier and David Geier, whose prodigious output of badly designed studies emanating from a lab in their home in suburban Maryland, done using a rubberstamp institutional review board stacked with friends and cronies to approve the studies, and published for the most part in non-peer-reviewed journals, activists loudly insisted that mercury in vaccines was the cause of most autism. Others claiming to demonstrate this link include Boyd Haley, a chemist from the University of Kentucky, and a few other vocal scientists and advocates, who claim that autism is, in essence, mercury poisoning. Facilitating the dissemination of this message were reporters such as David Kirby, activists such as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and media personalities such as Don Imus. Indeed, some activists claimed that some vaccines were "poisoning" our children, even going so far as show photos of autistic children with the label "mercury-poisoned" underneath them on placards held aloft at protest rallies. They made quite a splash then, and still do to a lesser extent even today. There's just one problem.

The scientific data, taken in totality, do not support a link between mercury in vaccines and autism. Today yet another important study by Robert Schechter and Judith Grether was released published in the Archives of General Psychiatry entitled Continuing Increases in Autism Reported to California's Developmental Services System: Mercury in Retrograde1, that utterly failed to support the hypothesis that mercury in vaccines is an etiological factor in autism. It is yet another nail in the coffin of the medical myth that mercury in vaccines causes autism.

A Christian Progressive Happy Birthday to Charles Darwin

2009-02-13T08:56:00.004-05:00

Yesterday, February 12, marked the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin. The naturalistic view of life that Darwin introduced during his time has changed the way we see our world. His controversial theory of evolution through natural selection has survived for 150 years, amidst the constant deluge of attacks from conservative religious groups and theologians, and has become the foundation of the many new biological sciences we know today.

I found this very interesting article on the Washington post yesterday about a christian progressive's view of Charles Darwin. It talks about the clash between Theology and Darwinism. It is a very good article, and well worth reading.

From the Washington Post: A Christian Progressive Happy Birthday to Charles Darwin

In my own work as a Christian progressive, I have found evolutionary biology, and especially the Human Genome Project, a source of rich dialogue between theology and science. As we celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, however, the norm for the relationship between religion and science is anything but productive and respectful. Instead, anti-Darwinist views in conservative and even moderate-to-conservative Christianity have been increasing, especially in the last quarter century.

As a Christian, an advocate of human rights, and a person strongly committed to democratic ideals, I believe Darwin's work was of consummate importance for human progress. I further believe that religious progressives need to speak out more directly against a religious campaign against evolutionary biology. We need to say clearly that this targeting of evolution by conservative Christianity is far more political in origin than it is purely theological.

There is no doubt that Darwin's legacy in science has been vast; the theory of natural selection that gave rise to the Darwinian revolution underlies both theory and method in science. The Darwinian upheaval is just this: the origin of species is bottom up, through natural forces, rather than top-down and fixed like conservative Christian theology in particular would contend.

This is where all the trouble arises. The idea that human life is continuous with other creatures and indeed with the whole planet is a profoundly destabilizing idea for religious and political practices of dominance and control. This whole struggle is more about politics than it is about abstract issues like religious faith and secularism. In the 200 years since Charles Darwin's birth, this has changed very little.

Happy Birthday Chuck!

2009-02-12T23:53:00.000-05:00

Today marks the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin. The naturalistic view of life that Darwin introduced during his time has changed the way we see our world. His controversial theory of evolution through natural selection has survived for 150 years, and has become the basis or foundation of the many new biological sciences we know today. Olivia Judson of the New York Times on the great man.

Before the “Origin,” similarities and differences between species were mere curiosities; questions as to why a certain plant is succulent like a cactus or deciduous like a maple could be answered only, “Because.” Biology itself was nothing more than a vast exercise in catalog and description. After the “Origin,” all organisms became connected, part of the same, profoundly ancient, family tree. Similarities and differences became comprehensible and explicable. In short, Darwin gave us a framework for asking questions about the natural world, and about ourselves.

He was not right about everything. How could he have been? Famously, he didn’t know how genetics works; as for DNA — well, the structure of the molecule wasn’t discovered until 1953. So today’s view of evolution is much more nuanced than his. We have incorporated genetics, and expanded and refined our understanding of natural selection, and of the other forces in evolution.

But what is astonishing is how much Darwin did know, and how far he saw.

Read Olivia Judson's opinion piece on the NYT here. It is very good.

Daniel Deronda: A Victorian novel that's still controversial

2009-02-12T23:52:00.007-05:00

I found this piece today about a book by George Eliot that I have read a few years ago and very much enjoyed.

From the Guardian

George Eliot's final novel, Daniel Deronda, was also her most controversial. Few had a problem, upon its publication in 1876, with its portrayal of yearning and repression in the English upper class. But as Eliot's lover, George Henry Lewes, had predicted: "The Jewish element seems to me likely to satisfy nobody."

Deronda was the first of Eliot's novels to be set in her own period, the late 19th century, and in it she took on what was a highly unusual contemporary theme: the position of Jews in British and European society and their likely prospects. The eponymous hero is an idealistic young aristocrat who comes to the rescue of a young Jewish woman and in his attempts to help her find her family is drawn steadily deeper into the Jewish community and the ferment of early Zionist politics.

What Goes Around Comes Around

2009-02-08T17:04:00.003-05:00

I think you might be inspired by this story. It is really really good.

One day a man saw an old lady, stranded on the side of the road. Even in the dim light of dusk, he could see she needed help. So he pulled up in front of her Mercedes and got out. His Pontiac was still sputtering when he approached her.

Even with the smile on his face, she was worried. No one had stopped to help for the last hour or so. Was he going to hurt her? He didn't look safe; he looked poor and hungry.

He could see that she was frightened, standing out there in the cold. He knew how she felt. It was that chill which only fear can put in you.

He said, 'I'm here to help you, ma'am. Why don't you wait in the car where it's warm? By the way, my name is Bryan Anderson.'

Well, all she had was a flat tire, but for an old lady, that was bad enough. Bryan crawled under the car looking for a place to put the jack, skinning his knuckles a time or two.. Soon he was able to change the tire. But he had to get dirty, and his hands hurt.

As he was tightening up the lug nuts, she rolled down the window and began to talk to him. She told him that she was from St.. Louis and was only just passing through. She couldn't thank him enough for coming to her aid..

Bryan just smiled as he closed her trunk. The lady asked how much she owed him. Any amount would have been all right with her. She already imagined all the awful things that could have happened had he not stopped.

Bryan never thought twice about being paid. This was not a job to him. This was helping someone in need, and God knows there were plenty who had given him a hand in the past. He had lived his whole life that way, and it never occurred to him to act any other way.

He told her that if she really wanted to pay him back, the next time she saw someone who needed help, she could give that person the assistance they needed, and Bryan added, 'And think of me.'

He waited until she started her car and drove off. It had been a cold and depressing day, but he felt good as he headed for home, disappearing into the twilight.

A few miles down the road, the lady saw a small cafe. She went in to grab a bite to eat and take the chill off before she made the last leg of her trip home. It was a dingy looking restaurant. Outside were two old gas pumps. The whole scene was unfamiliar to her. The waitress came over and brought a clean towel to wipe her wet hair. She had a sweet smile, one that even being on her feet for the whole day couldn't erase. The lady noticed the waitress was nearly eight months pregnant, but she never let the strain and aches change her attitude. The old lady wondered how someone who had so little could be so giving to a stranger. Then she remembered Bryan .

After the lady finished her meal, she paid with a hundred dollar bill. The waitress quickly went to get change for her hundred dollar bill, but the old lady had slipped right out the door. She was gone by the time the waitress came back. The waitress wondered where the lady could be. Then she noticed something written on the napkin.

There were tears in her eyes when she read what the lady wrote: 'You don't owe me anything. I have been there too. Somebody once helped me out, the way I'm helping you. If you really want to pay me back, here is what you do: Do not let this chain of love end with you.'

Under the napkin were four more $100 bills.

Well, there were tables to clear, sugar bowls to fill, and people to serve, but the waitress made it through another day. That night when she got home from work and climbed into bed, she was thinking about the money and what the lady had written. How could the lady have known how much she and her husband needed it? With the baby due next month, it was going to be hard....

She knew how worried her husband was. As he lay sleeping next to her, she gave him a soft kiss and whispered soft and low, 'Everything's going to be all right. I love you, Bryan Anderson.'

There is an old saying 'What goes around comes around.'. Today I shared with you this story, and I'm asking you to share it with your friends.

Good friends are like stars....You don't always see them, but you know they are always there.

WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND

Obama Signs SCHIP into Law

2009-02-07T18:01:00.007-05:00

Last Thursday, February 5th, I was overjoyed when I read in the morning paper that President Obama signed the bill reauthorizing the SCHIP into law. SCHIP is the State Children's Health Insurance Program. The law is designed primarily to help children from families that do not currently have health insurance. Uninsured children under the age of 19, whose families earn up to $36,200 a year (for a family of four) are eligible. For the 45 million in the United States that currently do not have health insurance, this is great news indeed. By the way, this SCHIP law had been vetoed by George Bush twice during his administration. I wonder what he was thinking.

I think the signing of this SCHIP reauthorization into law is a great first step towards the ultimate goal: Universal Health Care reform in the United States. Perhaps you are not aware that the United States is the only industrialized nation in the world that does not guarantee access to health care as a right of citizenship. 28 industrialized nations have single payer universal health care systems, while 1 (Germany) has a multipayer universal health care system like President Clinton proposed for the United States. I really wish that Universal Health Care in the United States would become a reality very soon.

Here are President Obama's remarks transcribed, which are really very good (emphases mine):

Today, with one of the first bills I sign – reauthorizing the Children’s Health Insurance Program – we fulfill one of the highest responsibilities we have: to ensure the health and well-being of our nation’s children.

It is a responsibility that has only grown more urgent as our economic crisis has deepened, health care costs have exploded, and millions of working families are unable to afford health insurance. Today in America, eight million children are still uninsured – more than 45 million Americans altogether.

It’s hard to overstate the toll this takes on our families: the sleepless nights worrying that someone’s going to get hurt, or praying that a sick child gets better on her own. The decisions that no parent should ever have to make – how long to put off that doctor’s appointment, whether to fill that prescription, whether to let a child play outside, knowing that all it takes is one accident, one injury, to send your family into financial ruin.

The families joining us today know these realities firsthand. When Gregory Secrest, from Martinsville, Virginia lost his job back in August, his kids lost their health care. When he broke the news to his family, his nine year-old son handed over his piggy bank with $4 in it, and told him, "Daddy, if you need it, you take it."

This is not who we are. We are not a nation that leaves struggling families to fend for themselves. No child in America should be receiving her primary care in the emergency room in the middle of the night. No child should be falling behind at school because he can’t hear the teacher or see the blackboard. I refuse to accept that millions of our kids fail to reach their full potential because we fail to meet their basic needs. In a decent society, there are certain obligations that are not subject to tradeoffs or negotiation – health care for our children is one of those obligations.

That is why we have passed this legislation to continue coverage for seven million children, cover an additional four million children in need, and finally lift the ban on states providing insurance to legal immigrant children if they choose to do so. Since it was created more than ten years ago, the Children’s Health Insurance Program has been a lifeline for millions of kids whose parents work full time, and don’t qualify for Medicaid, but through no fault of their own don’t have – and can’t afford – private insurance. For millions of kids who fall into that gap, CHIP has provided care when they’re sick and preventative services to help them stay well. This legislation will allow us to continue and build on these successes.

But this bill is only a first step. The way I see it, providing coverage to 11 million children through CHIP is a down payment on my commitment to cover every single American. And it is just one component of a much broader effort to finally bring our health care system into the twenty-first century.

That’s where the Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Plan that is now before Congress comes in.

Think about this – if Congress passes this recovery plan, in just one month, we’ll have done more to modernize our health care system than we’ve done in the past decade.

We’ll be on our way to computerizing all of America’s medical records, which won’t just eliminate inefficiencies, save billions of dollars and create tens of thousands of jobs – but will save lives by reducing deadly medical errors. We’ll have made the single largest investment in prevention and wellness in history – tackling problems like smoking and obesity, and helping people live longer, healthier lives. And we’ll have extended health insurance for the unemployed, so that workers who lose their jobs don’t lose their health care too.

Now, in the past few days I’ve heard criticisms of this plan that echo the very same failed theories that helped lead us into this crisis – the notion that tax cuts alone will solve all our problems; that we can address this enormous crisis with half-steps and piecemeal measures; that we can ignore fundamental challenges like the high cost of health care and still expect our economy and our country to thrive.

I reject these theories, and so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change. So I urge members of Congress to act without delay. No plan is perfect, and we should work to make it stronger. But let’s not make the perfect the enemy of the essential. Let’s show people all over our country who are looking for leadership in this difficult time that we are equal to the task. Let’s give America’s families the support they need to weather this crisis.

In the end, that’s really all that folks like the Secrests are looking for – the chance to work hard, and to have that hard work translate into a good life for their kids. I’m pleased to report that their story had a happy ending – it turned out that Gregory’s two sons were eligible for CHIP, and they are now fully covered, much to his relief. I think Gregory put it best when he said: "Kids look at us and think ‘they’ll take care of us.’ That is our job – to keep them safe and healthy."

That’s what I think about when I tuck my own girls into bed each night. That is what I want for every child – and every family – in this nation. That’s why it is so important that Congress passes our recovery plan – so we can get to work rebuilding America’s health care system.

It won’t be easy – and it won’t happen all at once. But the bill I sign today is a critical first step. So I want to thank all the state and local officials, advocates and ordinary citizens across America who’ve fought so hard to pass it. I want to thank all the members of Congress who have worked so tirelessly, for so long, so that we could see this day. And I want you all to know that I am confident that if we come together, and work together, we can finally achieve what generations of Americans have fought for and fulfill the promise of health care in our time.

Thank you.

Meet Ahmed the Dead Terrorist

2009-02-02T00:29:00.001-05:00

I introduce you to Jeff Dunham, the upcoming new stand-up comedian on the scene. He was in the Tonight Show with Jay Leno a few weeks ago. I think he is going be the next big stand-up comedian. I just love his Ahmed the Terrorist act. Watch it. It is just hilarious!

[Warning: The 1st clip (the short version of the act), I would say, is for grown-ups only. If your kids are reading this post with you, you may want to ask them to go away first before you hit the play button. Hahahaha. But the 2nd clip (the long version of the act) is fine.]

This type of hilarious stand-up comedy act is just what I need after a long day in the office. Do you like stand up comedy?

Planning to Visit China?

2009-01-28T22:48:00.007-05:00

Thanks to my friend Armand for sharing these with me. Talaga namang sumakit ang tiyan ko sa katatawa!!!

IF YOU ARE PLANNING TO GO TO CHINA FOR VACATION, I JUST WANT TO ORIENT YOU ON HOW TO READ AND INTERPRET SIGNS THERE...

KAPAG ITO ANG SUMALUBONG SA IYO SA AIRPORT, ABA'Y DAPAT LANG NA MATUWA KA!!!

DITO KASI, DI LANG ASO ANG DELIKADO!!!

DITO, MARAMI KANG MAKIKILALA.... IBA-IBANG KLASE TALAGA!!!

SA MGA FANS NI FRODO AT SAM, MADAMI KAYONG MABIBILING LIBRO DITO....

E KUNG GUSTO MO LANG NAMAN....

MAY NAUNTOG NA NGA YATA EH... SABI NA KASING DAHAN DAHAN ANG PAG-UNTOG EH!!!

ETO MEDYO NAGULUHAN DIN AKO... MASASAKTAN BA AKO KUNG DI KO IPE-PRESS O BAKA MASAKTAN AKO KUNG IPE-PRESS KO.... HMMMM... BAHALA NA KAYO MAG-DECIDE KUNG SUSUNDIN NIYO ETO O ANO....

SIGURO NAMAN, OBVIOUS NA ETO... LIBRE NA NGA EH....KAYA DAPAT LANG SIGURO!!!

ETO, IWASAN NIYONG PUMUNTA DITO AT MALUNGKOT DITO!!!

PARA SIGURADO, DI BA???

HAHAHAHA, ANO BANG GUSTO MONG REAKSYON KO DITO...GAWIN BANG BOTE ANG LATA?!!

SA MGA GUSTONG MAGPAKAMATAY, DITO DAW KAYO PUMUNTA!!!

ISIPIN NIYO MUNANG MABUTI KUNG KAYA NIYONG KAININ ITO HA!!!

GAWA RAW ITO SA CHINA, KAYA ILAYO NINYO ANG MGA ANAK NINYO!!!

BAWAL TAPAKAN, NATUTULOG DAW ANG DAMO!!!

ANO DAW?? BAWAL YATANG MAG-YOSI SA LOOB ANG TINAPANG BISITA BA?

IHULOG NYO DAW ANG ANAK NYO NG DAHAN-DAHAN!!!

DITO MURA ANG PATABAS NG PAA!

HOY ITULAK MO RAW PARA BUHAY KA!

TEKA...... DI KO YATA KAYA ITO AH..... BASTA IPUWESTO NIYONG MAIGI ANG SILYA AT PANATILIING MALINIS ANG MESA PAGKATAPOS NIYO MAMATAY!!!

MALINAW NA BA?!!

Zahir and Rockband 2

2009-01-24T21:47:00.015-05:00

Last year, I promised Zahir that I would give him a Rockband 2 Special Edition as a Christmas gift if he did very well in school. Not only did he do well in school, but he exceeded all our expectations. We received calls from all his teachers telling us how excellent he is in school. Of course, my wife and I were very proud of him. He really worked very hard, and so, he got his Christmas wish - Rockband 2 Special Edition. He was very happy. He has been playing Rockband 2 for 4 weeks now, and he has become very good at it, especially with the guitar.

Last night, I saw Zahir playing Rockband 2 online with his friends. While he was playing, her younger sister, Zoe, was dancing along with the tunes. I thought this would be nice to put on tape, so I took my video camera and started videotaping what the two kids were doing. Zoe, was doing all sorts of moves, including some breakdancing moves and some ballet moves. Then my other son, Zyd, came and started teasing Zoe about her dancing. But Zoe just kept on dancing and wasn't affected by what her brother Zyd was saying to her. The kids had a good time.

Barack Obama Oath of Office

2009-01-20T23:52:00.000-05:00

I was in the office watching the inauguration on television when Barack Obama took his oath of office. My feeling was of great joy that the almost impossible thing had happened. I was a big supporter of the Obama candidacy, and now that he became the 44th President of the United States of America, I felt very proud of America electing a man of african american heritage, a man of integrity and good background, and a man with a great vision for America. It gives me great hope that many great changes are going to happen within the next four years of his administration. Today was indeed a very special day, not only for America, but for the entire world.

Transcript of Barack Obama's Acceptance Speech

And here's the reaction from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Very funny!!

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Changefest '09 - Obama's Inauguration

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Martin Luther King Day

2009-01-19T16:19:00.010-05:00

Today is Martin Luther King Day in the US. Schools are closed as well as government offices, as the nation celebrates and commemorates Martin Luther King's birthday.

From Democracy Now!: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1929-1968

Today is Martin Luther King Day. He was born 80 years ago, on January 15th, 1929. He was assassinated on April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was just thirty-nine years old.

Tomorrow, more than four decades after Dr. King’s death, Barack Obama will take his oath of office to become the 44th president of the United States and the first African American president in US history. The Reverend Joseph Lowery, a civil rights icon who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Dr, King, will deliver the benediction at the inauguration ceremony. Obama accepted the Democratic party nomination on the 45th anniversary of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, arguably his most famous address.

While Dr. King is primarily remembered as a civil rights leader, he also championed the cause of the poor and organized the Poor People"s Campaign to address issues of economic justice. Dr. King was also a fierce critic US foreign policy and the Vietnam War.

Watch Democracy Now! Video here.

Dvořák Anyone?

2009-01-17T14:46:00.005-05:00

"I am a simple Czech musician" - This was how Antonin Dvořák always described himself when asked what he does for a living. To me, he is one of the greatest musician of all time. There is a reason why his music is still played and listened to this day a century after his death. His music is simply beautiful and powerful.

I was introduced to Dvořák's music when I was invited to see a concert in Carnegie Hall in 1997. It was Miklos Perenyi performing with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Miklos Perenyi played Dvořák's Cello Concerto in B Minor that night. When I heard it, I instantly became a Dvořák fan.

I love Dvořák's music so much that even my ringtone is a Dvořák: Slavonic Dance No. 2 in E Minor (watch video below to get an idea of how my ringtone sounds like). Everyone in my office loves my Dvořák ringtone. They say it is very beautiful and unique! They have never heard such a ringtone before. Check it out. Maybe you'll become a Dvořák fan yourself.

Who is your favorite musician?

Dvořák's Slavonic Dance No. 2 in E Minor performed by Itshak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma with Seiji Ozawa conducting.

Dvořák's Cello Concerto in B Minor performed by Yo-Yo Ma with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra with Kurt Masur conducting. (Note: This is only part 1. If you want to watch the rest, please go to Youtube and do a search for this piece.)

It's Zahir's Turn

2009-01-17T01:18:00.003-05:00

This is a clip from the Hammarskjold Middle School Orchestra Winter Concert last December 16, 2008. My youngest son, Zahir, is a member of this orchestra, which is composed of 6th and 7th graders. In this clip, they performed Tequila by Chuck Rio. The piece was arranged by Paul Lavender. Zahir also plays the violin, just like his older brother, Zyd.

CJHS Orchestra Winter Concert

2009-01-11T16:44:00.007-05:00

As I promised, here are clips from the Churchill Junior High School Orchestra Winter Concert last January 6, 2009. My son Zyd is a member of this orchestra. He plays the violin. This orchestra is composed of young musicians from the 9th grade. The kids did an excellent job!

Here, they performed the River Song by Keith Sharp

Here, they performed the Sinfonia in D Allegro Moderato by Mozart

Here, they performed The Idylls of Pegasus by Richard Meyer

A Tale of Two Nobel Nations

2009-01-11T11:38:00.003-05:00

From Democracy Now!: A Tale of Two Nobel Nations

The days are short here in Stockholm, which is so far north that winter daylight is limited to about four hours a day. But the city is buzzing with visitors, media and activities, for the Nobel prizes are being given this week. While the Nobels recognize lifetime achievements in medicine, chemistry, physics, literature, economics and peace, and Sweden is a paragon among progressive, social democracies, there is another side to Sweden and the Nobels that warrants a closer look.

Alfred Nobel made a fortune as an inventor, principally for his invention of dynamite. He died in 1896, leaving most of his fortune to endow the Nobel prizes. Nobel lived in a time when European rivalries and wars were the norm. He believed the destructive power of his inventions could promote peace. He wrote to his lifelong friend, peace activist Bertha von Suttner, who would win the Nobel Peace Prize almost a decade after his death, “Perhaps my factories will put an end to war even sooner than your Congresses; on the day when two army corps will be able to annihilate each other in a second, all civilised nations will recoil with horror and disband their troops.”

Read the entire article here. It is really good.

Bill Moyers on Mideast Violence

2009-01-10T22:36:00.003-05:00

Bill Moyers reflects on the recent violence in the Middle East. PLEASE NOTE: This essay contains video and images of the Israeli and Palestinian casualties including children - in Gaza as well as the Pulitzer prize-winning photo of the nude Vietnamese girl running from napalm bombing. Some viewers may find the images disturbing, but they are in context and germane to the subject matter. For more: http://www.pbs.org/billmoyers

Something to Think About

2009-01-08T01:09:00.003-05:00

From butterfliesandwheels.com: Is there evidence for that?

Do we need empirical evidence to warrant thinking that telling children that people suffer torment in hell forever is harmful and bad? I don't think so. There are things that we know without evidence. For instance we know that telling people they are stupid or ugly or boring or generally repulsive is bad. We also know that bad news is bad, so we know that it's bad to tell people bad news if it's not true - we know it's bad to tell someone: 'your cat/dog/best friend/mother/child is injured and in terrible pain' if that's not true.

We don't need evidence for that. It's part of how the world is. Imagine telling a child: 'Your cat is caught in a trap, it's crushing her leg in its jaws, she's howling in pain, we can't get her out' when it's not true. There's no way to look at that and think it's good or not too bad or neutral. Even if we knew for a fact that it would do no lasting psychic damage at all (and how would we know that?), it would still be bad. Even temporary mental anguish is bad.

Time to Reboot America

2009-01-07T17:07:00.007-05:00

The New York Times: Time to Reboot America by Thomas Friedman

My fellow Americans, we can’t continue in this mode of “Dumb as we wanna be.” We’ve indulged ourselves for too long with tax cuts that we can’t afford, bailouts of auto companies that have become giant wealth-destruction machines, energy prices that do not encourage investment in 21st-century renewable power systems or efficient cars, public schools with no national standards to prevent illiterates from graduating and immigration policies that have our colleges educating the world’s best scientists and engineers and then, when these foreigners graduate, instead of stapling green cards to their diplomas, we order them to go home and start companies to compete against ours.

To top it off, we’ve fallen into a trend of diverting and rewarding the best of our collective I.Q. to people doing financial engineering rather than real engineering. These rocket scientists and engineers were designing complex financial instruments to make money out of money — rather than designing cars, phones, computers, teaching tools, Internet programs and medical equipment that could improve the lives and productivity of millions.

For all these reasons, our present crisis is not just a financial meltdown crying out for a cash injection. We are in much deeper trouble. In fact, we as a country have become General Motors — as a result of our national drift. Look in the mirror: G.M. is us.

That’s why we don’t just need a bailout. We need a reboot. We need a build out. We need a buildup. We need a national makeover. That is why the next few months are among the most important in U.S. history. Because of the financial crisis, Barack Obama has the bipartisan support to spend $1 trillion in stimulus. But we must make certain that every bailout dollar, which we’re borrowing from our kids’ future, is spent wisely.

Read the entire article here. It is really good.

Churchill Orchestra Winter Concert

2009-01-07T12:26:00.005-05:00

Last night, my son Zyd with the Churchill Junior High School Orchestra performed their winter concert. The kids did an excellent job. I will post a video soon.

Who would you like to be? Hitler or FDR?

2009-01-06T21:48:00.001-05:00

Here is a clip of an exchange between Ann Coulter, right-wing pundit, and Al Franken, famous comedian (now Senator-Elect from the state of Minnessota beating Republican and now former Senator Norm Coleman) that really made me laugh out loud.

Carolyn Porco: Fly Me to the Moons of Saturn

2009-01-05T22:50:00.004-05:00

I have always been fascinated by space and the universe. When I was a kid, I used to dream of becoming an astronomer. I read a lot about astronomy and the history of space exploration. I have been following the achievements in these fields very closely. One of the latest achievements was the inter-planetary space mission to Saturn called the Cassini-Huygens Project.

This is an excellent video about Cassini, the most ambitious inter-planetary space mission ever launched. It was created using clips from Planetary Scientist Carolyn Porco's speech at the Pop!Tech innovation conference. Carolyn Porco shows images from the Cassini voyage to Saturn, focusing on its largest moon, Titan, and on frozen Enceladus, which seems to shoot jets of ice.

Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso by Saint-Saens

2009-01-05T22:02:00.003-05:00

Janine Jansen's performance of the Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso by Charles Camille Saint-Saens at Waldbühne in Berlin in 2006 is my favorite interpretation of this classical piece. I wish that I or any of my kids could play this classical piece the way Janine Jansen plays it. I am sure it would take lots and lots and lots of practice. I was listening to it this morning. Well, I thought you might want to listen and watch it also. Enjoy!

My other favorite interpretation of this classical piece is Maxim Vengerov's. Maxim Vengerov is one of my favorite virtuoso violinists. However, I do not have a video of his performance of the Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso. I do have a link to a recording. Click here to listen to the Vengerov interpretation.

Back to School

2009-01-05T09:32:00.000-05:00

The kids are back to school after their holiday vacation. I am sure that the kids would have delayed it if at all possible. Adrian remarked that it is back to the boring days again. Zahir and Zyd don't think so. They love going to school. Of course, Zoe is very excited to resume her Ballet class. She missed her ballet teachers Miss Vicky and Miss Jamie and can't wait to go back.

Pinoy Joke Time

2009-01-04T20:34:00.002-05:00

I took this footage on Christmas Day. We had a party at home to celebrate Adrian's 18th birthday and Uncle Jun told this funny joke:

My Dear Galileo Galilei

2009-01-04T19:18:00.009-05:00

The Language Guy: My Dear Galileo Galilei

My Dear Galileo Galilei, "It gives me great pleasure to inform you that we have reconsidered your case. A small mistake was made by our Vatican astronomers in the determination of the relationship between the earth and the sun. It was an easy mistake to make. I'm sure you will agree, since it was obvious to all that the sun moves from East to West in our skies whilst we remain in place. We regret that you were put in prison and that you were forced to recant under the threat of torture. As a result of the discovery of our mistake, it is our determination that you should no longer be confined to your home."

That wasn't the only mistake the Vatican made in the case of Galileo. They didn't much like his atomistic view of the universe. In recent decades the Vatican has tried to undo their mistake. Pope John Paul II blamed the Church's error on "tragic mutual incomprehension." This concession was beneath contempt since Galileo certainly understood the position of the Church. I suspect the church understood what Galileo was saying as well. Otherwise, why jail him, threaten him with torture in order to force him to recant, and then confine him to his house?

Read the entire article here

Darwin's Living Legacy - Evolutionary Theory 150 Years Later

2009-01-03T22:12:00.012-05:00

From Scientific American: Darwin’s Living Legacy - Evolutionary Theory 150 Years Later

A Victorian amateur undertook a lifetime pursuit of slow, meticulous observation and thought about the natural world, producing a theory 150 years ago that still drives the contemporary scientific agenda.

When the 26-year-old Charles Darwin sailed into the Galápagos Islands in 1835 onboard the HMS Beagle, he took little notice of a collection of birds that are now intimately associated with his name. The naturalist, in fact, misclassified as grosbeaks some of the birds that are now known as Darwin’s finches. After Darwin returned to England, ornithologist and artist John Gould began to make illustrations of a group of preserved bird specimens brought back in the Beagle’s hold, and the artist recognized them all to be different species of finches.

Sponsor of the Federal Pell Grant Program Dies

2009-01-02T20:00:00.009-05:00

From the Washington Post Obituaries: Former R.I. Senator Claiborne Pell, 90

Claiborne Pell, 90, a six-term Rhode Island Democrat who rose to be chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, died Jan. 1 at his Newport, R.I., home. He had had Parkinson's disease since 1994.

A Yankee Brahmin and former Foreign Service officer who was virtually unbeatable at the polls in a largely Catholic, blue-collar state, he was best known for his sponsorship of the 1972 program that has helped 54 million low- and moderate-income students attend college. He also sponsored the legislation that founded the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities.

Read the news article.

Happy New Year 2009!

2009-01-01T00:30:00.000-05:00

From Sydney Harbor

From New York Times Square

Can Other Faiths Lead To Eternal Life?

2008-12-28T15:53:00.003-05:00

Pew Research Center: Many Americans Say Other Faiths Can Lead to Eternal Life

A majority of all American Christians (52%) think that at least some non-Christian faiths can lead to eternal life. Indeed, among Christians who believe many religions can lead to eternal life, 80% name at least one non-Christian faith that can do so. These are among the key findings of a national survey conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life from July 31-Aug. 10, 2008, among 2,905 adults.

Adrian Turns 18

2008-12-25T07:00:00.003-05:00

Eighteen Christmases ago today, we had the most adorable baby boy. He weighed 6 lbs 9 ounces. On our first night home from the hospital we stayed awake to watch over him and protect him. 18 years later, the desire to watch and protect him is still present. However, he has grown into an incredible young man, one we couldn't be more proud of and with great anticipation, we are excited to see what is in store for him in the next chapter of his life.

You Must See This!

2008-12-24T15:50:00.001-05:00

Monks under the Vow of Silence performs Handel's Hallelujah

Christmas Traditions

2008-12-24T15:47:00.000-05:00

Why even Santa Claus in the first place? Why December 25th? Why Christmas cards? It’s all here, or at least quite a few of those traditions that we embrace over Christmas.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

2008-12-24T15:41:00.002-05:00

Title: Let It Snow

Artist: Dean Martin

I love Christmas music but especially ones that aren’t particularly about Christmas at all. Maybe it’s the years of being in the choir and singing Silent Night, Joy to the World, O Come All Ye Faithful. Give me something bouncy and fun over solemn and reverent every time.

This song always makes me smile and I love Dean Martin’s voice. What is your favorite holiday music?

First Major Snowfall of the Winter

2008-12-20T15:38:00.000-05:00

We had our first major snowfall of the winter yesterday! I woke up at around 7:00am, looked out the window and there it was. The street was all white, covered with about 4 inches of snow. Dina and the kids were already up. The kids were busy preparing to go to school, and Dina was cooking breakfast. I was pretty sure, the kids wished that there was no school. They were checking on EBTV to see if there was an announcement from school. But there was no announcement. They were a little disappointed indeed. I didn’t have to get out of bed until later. I worked from home yesterday. I was also planning to take the car to the shop for an oil change, but I decided to reschedule my appointment. I was pretty sure, the roads would be a mess; and they were.

The Ice Is Melting

2008-12-19T15:22:00.003-05:00

A report issued by NASA this week concludes the rate of ice loss in the cryosphere is continuing to accelerate:

Between 1.5 trillion and 2 trillion tons of ice in Greenland, Antarctica and Alaska have melted at an accelerating rate since 2003, according to NASA scientists, in the latest signs of what they say is global warming. NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, or GRACE, mission uses two orbiting satellites to measure the “mass balance” of a glacier, or the net annual difference between ice accumulation and ice loss.

When ice melts, the surrounding air or water cools down, basic thermodynamics. It would be ironic if that cooler air and water from excess northern melt were to work their way south a little farther and a little earlier in the season than they otherwise would have, and maybe even help fuel an occasional localized snow or ice storm, which right-wing climate change skeptics, especially those bearing a borderline pathological obsession with Al Gore, would then seize on as evidence that global warming is … well not sure exactly. Somewhere vaguely between massive inexcusable scientific error and fraud, to an infinitely scalable global conspiracy between a tightly woven cabal of nations who can’t agree on something as scientifically basic as what units of measurement to use for a common lug nut. And the wingers will do it, apparently, without a care or thought in the world of the difference between the NASA GISS 125 year global average temperature trend and related volumes of empirical data Vs. cherry picking poor comparisons or the sprinkling of snow they had on their drive way last Tuesday morning.

Caroling

2008-12-14T16:20:00.000-05:00

Today, we went caroling at the following nursing homes: Sunrise Assisted Living, Care One and Summerhill Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. We have been caroling in these homes for the last 4 years. The residents and staff already anticipate our annual caroling performance, and they were very happy to see us. I noticed that there were less people in Sunrise this year; lesser than last year. I can only guess that some of them may have been transferred to other homes or some of them may have already passed away. There were new faces in the audiences this year too.

Ysaye Sonata No. 3 - Ballade

2008-12-14T15:15:00.002-05:00

The Sonata No. 3 - Ballade by Eugene Ysaye is one of my favorite virtuoso violin pieces, and Maxim Vengerov’s interpretation thereof is the best interpretation that I have seen and heard so far (in my opinion). I have yet to see or hear a better interpretation. I watch this video every now and then. Maxim Vengerov was just unbelievable in this video. This was during his performance of the Sibelius Violin Concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Daniel Barenboim. If I am not mistaken, the concert was given in 1996. His performance of this concerto was so amazing that the audience would not stop clapping. They wouldn’t let him go, and so he performed not only one encore piece, but two beautiful ones for them. This was one of the two encore pieces (the other one was a beautiful performance of the Bach Partita No. 3 Sarabande, which I might also post here). I hope you enjoy it.

A discussion on the Definition of Marriage and on Gay Marriage

2008-12-10T16:22:00.001-05:00

I was watching The Daily Show with Jon Stewart last night and one of the segments was a poignant discussion on the definition of marriage and on gay marriage. In the last eight weeks since the Nov. 4 Presidential Elections and the passing of California’s Prop 8, this has been the hottest topic in all media. I thought this discussion between Jon Stewart and former republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee was a very interesting one.

Caroling Begins

2008-12-07T16:28:00.003-05:00

Our Filipino-American Community of Corpus Christi begins its Christmas Caroling today. Our first engagement for this year is at Birchwood Nursing Home in Old Bridge, NJ. Christmas Caroling has been a tradition of the group for many years. Dina and I were invited to join about 4 years ago, and so we have been doing this for 4 years now. The members of the group are mostly from East Brunswick and surrounding towns like Spotswood, Old Bridge and South River. The group is composed mainly of old and middle-aged couples. I think Dina and I are the youngest couple in the group. There are about 15 couples who are committed to the caroling. We start practice usually on the 3rd Tuesday of November and every Tuesday thereafter. We sing the traditional christmas songs that are very familiar to everyone. After all, we are not professional singers. We just love to share whatever small talents we have to the residents of the nursing homes within our area. We enjoy doing it. It is a lot of fun especially when we see happy smiling faces in the audience. We love it when we see the residents clap and sing with us. It surely gives us great pleasure, and I am sure this is why the group keeps doing it year after year. I am sure we bring good tidings of great joy to these people. Next Sunday, we have four engagements - three nursing homes is East Brunswick and one in Old Bridge.

Here is a picture of the group practicing a song at Eddie Sideco’s home (see if you can spot Dina).

Dina, Zoe and me at the lobby of the Birchwood Nursing Home after our caroling performance there.

Welcome To This Blog

2008-12-01T01:44:00.000-05:00

I thought you might want to know what is going on with the Tuazons. So, I created this blog.

From time to time, I will post some news about my family, new photos, new videos, new activities and perhaps just about anything that I have on my mind that I wish to share with you like my favorite music, review of the latest movies I have seen, books that I have read, subjects that I am very passionate about, my thoughts, my inner-most feelings, etc. With this blog, you will get to know me and my family better. I will try to post new items on a daily basis if possible. So please do check back as often as you like, and feel free to provide comments and suggestions.