Archive for 2010

PUTTING SEX in context.

BEST BOOKS of 2010.

PUSHING BACK: So on the way home from the gym on Sundays, I often catch a bit of Zorba Paster’s medical show, from Wisconsin Public Radio, which WUOT broadcasts. He’s an interesting guy, and it’s a good show, but today he got an interesting email from a listener. Apparently in an earlier show he had mentioned the calories in a Big Mac meal and then snarkily added that, of course, no Public Radio listener would ever eat at McDonald’s. The listener emailed to note that McDonald’s has lots of healthy foods, and implicitly took him to task for snobbery, too. Paster apologized quite handsomely. I think, though, that it was a small manifestation of the Oikophobia that is all too common on NPR, and I’m glad somebody wrote to point it out.

FASTER, PLEASE: Scientists turn skin into blood. “In an important breakthrough, scientists at McMaster University have discovered how to make human blood from adult human skin. The discovery, published in the prestigious science journal Nature today, could mean that in the foreseeable future people needing blood for surgery, cancer treatment or treatment of other blood conditions like anemia will be able to have blood created from a patch of their own skin to provide transfusions. Clinical trials could begin as soon as 2012.”

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: “It is a source of continual astonishment to me that pilots — many of whom, it should be pointed out, are military veterans who possess security clearances — are not allowed to carry onboard their airplanes pocket knives and bottles of shampoo, but then they’re allowed to fly enormous, fuel-laden, missile-like objects over American cities.”

IN THE MAIL: From Andrew Klavan, The Identity Man.

PERCENTAGES: “In the midst of a resounding national rebuke at all levels of government, the Democrats have been taking some solace in having held the Senate. But to put the Republicans’ Senate gains this week into perspective, Republicans won an even higher percentage of Senate races than House races (they won 65 percent of the 37 Senate races, versus approximately 56 percent of the 435 House races). And, counting Lisa Murkowski as still being a Republican (a spokesman for her campaign says the Alaskan would caucus with the GOP if she beats Joe Miller in their still-undecided race), there have been only two elections since 1950 in which Republicans have gained more Senate seats than the six they gained in 2010.”

This kinda undermines claims that the Tea Party cost the GOP the Senate.

PROF. JACOBSON: Will Democrats Shut Down The Government? “That seems to be the question the media does not want to ask. Instead, it all is about whether Republicans have taken a government shut down, or at least a refusal to lift the debt ceiling, off the table. This meme has it backwards.”