I noted that my judgmental reaction to another’s body was shaped by my coincidental assessment that surgeons work on conditions like that. Judgment conflates the body itself with the quality of work done on that body or the potential to have that work done. The possibility of fixing renders inescapable the question of whether or not to fix. Read more
Category Archives: Politics & Issues
Mutilated Afghan woman on the cover of Time
[T]here is an elision here between these women’s oppression and what the U.S. military presence can and should do about it, which in turn simplifies the complexities of the debate and turns it into, “Well, do you want to help Aisha or not?” Read more
Climate change and mass migration
Few actual environmentalists want anything to do with these [right-wing] parties, and there doesn’t seem to be anything comparable in the United States, though if global warming does put pressure on immigration, it’s certainly possible that green nativists could find a toehold here. Read more
A financial expert argues: Global warming is real
Why are we arguing the issue? Challenging vested interests as powerful as the oil and coal lobbies was never going to be easy. Scientists are not naturally aggressive defenders of arguments. In short, they are conservatives by training: never, ever risk overstating your ideas. The skeptics are far, far more determined and expert propagandists to boot. They are also well-funded. That smoking caused cancer was obfuscated deliberately and effectively for 20 years at a cost of hundreds of thousands of extra deaths. We know that for certain now, yet those who caused this fatal delay have never been held accountable. The profits of the oil and coal industry make tobacco’s resources look like a rounding error. Read more
The earth’s scars
Try to Praise the Multilated World
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
Read more
Links of interest: Can honey combat MRSA?
The researchers are hopeful that they can build on these initial findings to develop new uses for this potent ingredient in honey, and in light of an alarming trend of antibiotic-resistance, ultimately even put defensin-1 to use as an alternative to current antibiotics. Read more
Negative knowledge: Remembering Alfred Schutz
In practice there’s no reason to suspect that any particular piece of information is inadequate before it is revealed to be otherwise. But in theory there’s no reason to exclude anything from suspicion. It is characteristic of all interpretations, meanings, and values that they are never the last word. They are all potentially obsolete. Reality is not just occasionally precarious – it has no permanent foundations whatsoever. It is the nature of knowledge to be fragmentary and partial. This is the first and final, the ultimate source of anxiety.
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Having wounded the earth, we watch as she bleeds out
The gush of filth is a reminder that we have surrendered our independence to a technology we cannot master. … The challenge goes beyond oil slicks and moral revulsion. In the bigger picture, big oil has no long-term future: sooner or later the contemptible little sheikdoms that have arisen upon a pool of liquid greed will sink back into the desert. But why should BP and the emirs script the endgame? Read more
Understanding the Tea Party
National politics may well determine the future of health care. How to make sense of the angry rhetoric coming from the political right. While MSNCB runs antagonizing documentary footage of Joe McCarthy and Pat Buchanan, the New York Times publishes a thought-provoking essay by philosopher J.M. Bernstein. It’s called “The Very Angry Tea Party” (emphasis… Read more
Links of interest: Antibiotic resistance
Rising Plague (Brad Spellberg) Before getting to the numerous recent news items on antibiotic resistance and urinary tract infections, let me quote from Dr. Brad Spellberg’s Rising Plague: The Global Threat from Deadly Bacteria and Our Dwindling Arsenal to Fight Them. (In the following, “community-acquired” means an infection that begins outside a hospital, and fluoroquinolones… Read more
Overuse of antibiotics: A remote study (part 2)
The controversy about the overuse of antibiotics in raising livestock (see the last post) is background for an interesting scientific study that took place in the Galapagos. It looked at the spread of antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria among animals that were totally removed from antibiotics. Would antibiotic resistance become widespread in the absence of… Read more
Overuse of antibiotics: Follow the money (part 1)
Unlike climate change, where there’s a large contingent of denialists who spread doubt about the scientific evidence, no one denies that antibiotic resistance is a problem. There is controversy, however, on the question of just how much the widespread use of antibiotics contributes to the problem. The mechanism is not in dispute: If you expose… Read more
The oil spill: Why did it happen?
There’s a nice piece in The Atlantic on risk-taking behavior – something that applies to many aspects of life, not just how we treat the environment. (Emphasis added) How do such management disasters occur? The easy answer is, there’s a financial incentive for going forward, and a financial disincentive for holding back. Program managers are… Read more
Does astrology make predictions about climate change?
The South Dakota state legislature recently passed a resolution urging public schools to teach global warming as merely one of many scientific theories, definitely not a proven fact. The resolution cited a number of significant, interrelated dynamics affecting “world weather,” including “climatological, meteorological, astrological, thermological, cosmological, and ecological” factors. It’s a good thing they pointed… Read more
Novartis gender discrimination verdict: Guilty as charged
The Novartis gender discrimination trial has concluded, and damages have been awarded to the plaintiffs. Novartis must pay $3.4 million in compensatory damages and $250 million in punitive damages. Highlights of the trial’s testimony included the behavior of one manager, Brian Aiello, who asked female sales reps to sit on his lap while he showed… Read more
What musical instruments convey about social class
Here’s an interesting observation on the associations between musical instruments and social class. It’s from Paul Fussell’s Class: A Guide Through the American Status System (emphasis and paragraph breaks added). There seems no place where hierarchical status-orderings aren’t discoverable. Take musical instruments. In a symphony orchestra the customary ranking of sections recognizes the difficulty and… Read more
A generation obsessed with material wealth
From Tony Judt’s Ill Fares the Land: As recently as the 1970s, the idea that the point of life was to get rich and that governments existed to facilitate this would have been ridiculed: not only by capitalism’s traditional critics but also by many of its staunchest defenders. Relative indifference to wealth for its own… Read more
Links of interest: Organic food
Organic Foods Slideshow: To Buy or Not to Buy Organic (WebMD) A slide show with advice on when to buy organic and when it’s OK to use conventionally grown fruits and vegetables. Peaches, apples, peppers, strawberries, pears, grapes, broccoli, and more.. Organic: What it means on different products (Los Angeles Times) Is the extra dollar… Read more
The new Chinese middle class and syphilis
In his recent book on the financial crisis, John Lanchester mentions China’s unprecedented economic growth, which has created a “hugely expanding, highly consuming new middle class.” China’s [middle class] went from 174 million to 806 million, arguably the greatest economic achievement anywhere on Earth, ever. Chinese personal income grew by 6.6 percent a year from… Read more
Antibiotic resistance genes in soil microbes
We’ve known for years that antibiotic resistant bacteria (ARB) are increasingly a problem in hospital settings. As the recently published (and excellent) book Superbug describes, ARB are also increasingly common in the community – in sports teams, prisons, and on pig farms, for example. A recent study finds that antibiotic resistance is on the increase… Read more
Are married people happier? Are parents?
These research findings, of course, fly in the face of our cultural dogma that proclaims it impossible for people to achieve an emotionally fulfilling and healthy life unless they become parents. And that’s a problem, because the vast majority of American men and women eventually have children, yet conditions in our society make it nearly impossible for them to reap all the emotional benefits of doing so.
Scientists confront political attacks on climate change
There’s a wonderful letter (PDF) in Science signed by 255 members of the National Academy of Sciences. It’s titled “Climate Change and the Integrity of Science,” and it’s not simply about climate change. It argues that politically motivated attacks on climate change threaten the very integrity of science. As the lead signer points out, since… Read more
Do children really need chocolate baby formula?
Should parents use chocolate milk to bribe toddlers to eat their vegetables? Mead Johnson’s chocolate-flavored “Toddler Formula” has received a decidedly mixed reaction from blogging moms, ranging from outrage to gratitude. Read more
Do houseflies spread antibiotic resistance?
There was a one-day Congressional hearing last week on antibiotic resistance and industrial agriculture. Members of congress were looking for evidence that would link agricultural use of antibiotics to human illness. One Republican specifically asked for research done in the US, implying European studies would not be good enough. Medical experts from the CDC and… Read more
Are you distracting a driver?
Are you ever just a little bit nervous when someone calls you while they’re driving? Maybe you should be. Distracted driving takes two. These public service ads are from Bangalore, India. Without the text (“Don’t talk while he drives”), they simply seem shocking. But they certainly accomplish their intent of getting your attention and making… Read more
Jack Abramoff and healthcare lobbying
Alex Gibney is probably best known as the director of Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. He also produced the documentary Money-Driven Medicine, based on Maggie Mahar’s book of the same name. Gibney’s latest work is Casino Jack and the United States of Money, a documentary about the lobbyist Jack Abramoff. The video excerpt… Read more
The financial crisis: Blame it on the collapse of Communism
Why did the global economy collapse so suddenly, seemingly without warning? Economic experts and political analysts continue to offer explanations, but sometimes an outsider’s viewpoint can be especially illuminating. John Lanchester is a British novelist (The Debt to Pleasure) who stumbled on his insights into the financial collapse while researching a novel. The result is… Read more
Can one communicate in a world of truthiness?
Anonymous Liberal captures the frustration of the current political scene in a post called “An Army of Trumans.” In this Bubble World, it is an accepted truth that our President is a bumbling ignoramus who can only string together a coherent sentence if he uses a teleprompter (which, apparently, other politicians don’t use). I can… Read more
Pig dignity: Animal welfare in Europe
The European Parliament, the governing body of the EU (European Union), met last week to consider (among many other things) a new animal welfare action plan. Last December animal welfare became a core value for the EU, right up there with opposing discrimination, promoting gender equality, and protecting human health and welfare. The new animal… Read more