Social Commentary
j7uy5 | April 21, 2007Maybe
I will turn on the TV next week:
face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">
href="http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003574260">'Devastating'
Moyers Probe of Press and Iraq Coming
By Greg Mitchell
April 19, 2007
NEW YORK (Commentary) The most powerful indictment of the news media
for falling down in its duties in the run-up to the war in Iraq will
appear next Wednesday, a 90-minute PBS broadcast called "Buying the
War," which marks the return of "Bill Moyers Journal." E&P was
sent a preview DVD and a draft transcript for the program…
j7uy5 | April 13, 2007From
Reuters Health Information, via Medscape (free registration rquired):
href="http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/555126">Jeb Bush
Joins Board of Tenet Healthcare
CHICAGO (Reuters) Apr 12 - Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, brother of
U.S. President George W. Bush, will join the board of Tenet Healthcare
Corp., the biggest publicly traded hospital company said on Thursday.
The move to appoint Bush, 54, comes as Dallas-based Tenet continues its
struggle to recover from a slew of scandals and lawsuits. Last year, it
settled with the U.S. Department of Justice for $900 million over…
j7uy5 | April 12, 2007From
CNN, et alia:
href="http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/04/12/white.house.email/">White
House: 'We screwed up' on deleted e-mails
POSTED: 4:35 p.m. EDT, April 12, 2007
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The White House "screwed up" by not requiring
e-mails from Republican Party and campaign accounts to be saved and is
trying to recover any documents that may have been deleted, a
spokeswoman said Thursday.
Just ask the NSA for copies. They probably have them.
j7uy5 | March 27, 2007According
to the Corporate Crime Reporter, at least 257
companies have "backdating problems." That refers to the
shady practice of backdating stock options, resulting in larger payouts
to those who receive compensation in the form of stock options.
But it isn't merely "shady:"
CORPORATE
CRIME REPORTERAt
Least 257 Companies Have Options Backdating Problems
21 Corporate Crime Reporter
14, March 26, 2007
At least 257 public companies have option backdating problems.
That’s according to a report released today by Glass Lewis,
the Denver, Colorado-based shareholder services and research firm.…
j7uy5 | March 26, 2007This
is depressing. Now the UK is misusing and distorting
scientific findings. I suppose it is contagious.
This pertains to the
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_survey_of_mortality_before_and_after_the_2003_invasion_of_Iraq">Lancet
study that found an estimated 50% increase in the risk of
death in the immediate aftermath of the Iraq war (2003-2004).
style="font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;">I
could understand Tony Blair or George Bush, or any other politician who
does not know anything about research methodology, making an
off-the-cuff statement questioning the…
j7uy5 | March 22, 2007What
can you say?
Arch Gen Psychiatry is one of those non-open-access journals that
publishes one free-access article in each issue. Usually the
free article is not particularly interesting; they do not seem to make
use of the open-access articles routinely to make material of general
public interest available to all. This is an exception.
At first, I was almost offended that this article was published.
Why bother to even pose the question? The question,
in this case, being whether there is any scientific basis for
distinguishing between torture and other bad things.
href="http://…
j7uy5 | March 17, 2007
I know people come here to read about psychiatry, mental health,
neuroscience, and political/social issues related to those topics.
No, scratch that, I have not idea why people come here.
But this post is straight politics. Well, it's
politics and a little sociological musing and opinion.
The
cartoon came in an email from the left-leaning Center for
American Progress. They rarely send me anything, so
I figure they figure this is a big issue. The cartoon is
window dressing. The article they link to is not.
href="http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/03/now_you_tell_us.html"…
j7uy5 | February 8, 2007This is a bizarre headline:
href="http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=2861168">Pentagon
Says Pre-War Intel Not Illegal. I found this item on Google
News, and it is one of many headlines on the subject:
href="http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/politics/16656221.htm"
id="r-1_1113380245">Pentagon office produced `alternative'
intelligence on Iraq;
href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7289295"
id="r-6_1113380245">Pentagon: Pre-War Intelligence Was Legit; and
others. But some are more to the point:
href="http://ca.today.reuters.com/news/…
j7uy5 | February 4, 2007Post-game comments. I understand the game was broadcast in 232
countries, and cybercast in six languages. Maybe it is
more than just another game, if it draws that much attention.
No, I take it back. Money always attracts attention. That
is why everyone pays attention to the USA in the first place. It
is not "our freedom," or culture, or even our foreign policy. It
is just the money.
j7uy5 | February 4, 2007I almost never watch football. But this year it is being
broadcast in High Definition TV. Looks great on my 36cm
screen. Pregame show was colorful and totally uninspired.
The coin flip: the Bears win. That's the tenth coin flip in a row
won by the NFC team. Commentator notes that the odds of that are
1 in a thousand. Actually, it is two to the tenth power, which is
1024.
j7uy5 | February 2, 2007This is just strange. Not profound, just strange. The same
newspaper on the same day carries two headlines on the same subject:
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/02/business/02cnd-jobs.html?ex=1328072400&en=c3b7312ad38409ce&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss">
Jobs Growth Slows but Remains Strong
href="http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Wall-Street.html?ex=1256184000&en=f75f0bb8b4799a79&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland">Stocks
End Mixed on Lackluster Jobs Data
Jobs Growth Slows but Remains Strong
By JEREMY W. PETERS
Published: February 2, 2007…
j7uy5 | January 26, 2007I tend to be skeptical of causes or organizations that include the word
"truth," as in
href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Swift_Boat_Veterans_for_Truth">Swiftboat
Veterans for Truth.
But I suppose that if one side does it, the
href="http://scienceblogs.com/worldsfair/2007/01/this_is_all_about_the_truth_a.php">other
can, too; so, here goes: "Truth".
j7uy5 | January 23, 2007Great idea: create a "volunteer civilian corps" that would give
Americans the opportunity to contribute their valuable skills, to take
the stress off the regular military.
Translation: let's hire mercenaries, who'll think they're getting a
good deal, making $100,000 a year, while getting shot at; even though
their corporate bosses make millions, sitting in their executive
leather chairs. Great idea: increase the profit incentive for
starting a war. Move the Clock another minute closer to
midnight.
That is my strongest impression of the State of the Union Address.
Which, by the way, had…
j7uy5 | January 17, 2007"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" is one of those trite sayings
that we've all heard "a million times." Certainly, is is
commonplace for persons to have differing opinions on matters such as
the attractiveness of others. Sometimes, though, I've noted a
tendency for peer groups to work toward a consensus about what
constitutes attractiveness.
It turns out that there is a complex psychology behind this, and it has
to do with social context.
href="http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=scienceNews&storyID=2007-01-17T005428Z_01_L16822716_RTRUKOC_0_US-SCIENCE-ATTRACTION.…
j7uy5 | January 16, 2007This thing has fascinated me since I was a teenager, when my father had
a subscription to the
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_of_the_Atomic_Scientists"
rel="tag">Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists. I read it every
time. They are the ones who keep the famous
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_Clock">Doomsday
Clock.
Now, we hear that
href="http://news.aol.com/topnews/articles/_a/scientists-to-move-doomsday-clock/20070114093009990001">the
Clock is being changed:
Also the website
for the Bulletin is being changed.
Right
now, this is the only thing there…
j7uy5 | December 28, 2006CNN has a
href="http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/americas/12/27/brazil.anorexia.ap/index.html">report
about a cluster of deaths from Anorexia, in Brazil.
The subject has become a morbid fascination for
Brazilians, and is even the theme of a popular TV soap opera. It has
also touched off a debate within Brazil's fashion industry that has
long presented the rail-thin model as the paragon of female beauty.
The objection I have is that the article provides the heights and
weights of the women at their time of death. I don't think
there is any way that the journalists or editors would know…
j7uy5 | December 28, 2006This
adds to my respect for Gerald Ford.
Ford: Bush made 'big mistake' on Iraq
justifications
11:07 p.m. EST, December 27, 2006
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In an interview never before published, former
President Gerald Ford said President Bush and his chief advisers "made
a big mistake" with their justifications for the Iraq war.
Ford made the comments in a four-hour interview in 2004 with Washington
Post reporter Bob Woodward...
Ford was regarded as a man with a quiet style who was not quick to
criticize, Woodward and others who worked with him said on "Larry
King."
Ford requested that Woodward…
j7uy5 | December 27, 2006I have a confession to make. I once voted for a Republican
Presidential candidate. That candidate was Gerald Ford.
Why? Several reasons. For one, it was my
first time voting, so I was not very good at it yet. Two,
even though I was upset about the pardon of Nixon, and unimpressed by
his handling of the economy, I thought he was sincere and honest.
Three, I thought he had been chosen deliberately to be a
noncontroversial "placeholder" president; not someone who was
interested in a power grab.
One of the areas where some liberals and some conservatives agree is
this: concentration…
j7uy5 | December 9, 2006So far, I have resisted commenting on the report of the Iraq Study
Group. But this is too good to pass up. From
href="http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2006/12/nothing_can_mat.html">DeLong,
who got it from
href="http://myalteregospeaks.blogspot.com/2006/12/s-r-t.html">Alter
Ego, comes a precious quote from a
href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/12/20061207-1.html">Presidential
press conference:
Q Mr. President, the Iraq Study Group said that
leaders must be candid and forthright with people. So let me test that.
Are you capable of admitting your failures in the past…