A Little Humor (I hope)

I went down to the canal with my bagel because I heard there was lox there.

I hear that McDonald's is opening another chain of restaurants. These new places are intended to compete with Hooter's, and they're going to be called McBoobs.

I was in a Greek-owned food store today and I saw that they had baby goat in the meat counter. I said, You've got to be kidding.

My grandmother always used to say that her biscuits were made from scratch. So I went to the store and I looked for scratch, but they didn't have any.

Copyright (c) 2011 by Richard Stein

A Little (English) Linguistic Oddity

Why is it that the smallest unit of pants (or jeans, shorts, etc.) is called a "pair"? Maybe, you might say, it's because a pair of pants has two legs. It might be like "a pair of scissors" and "a pair of pliers"; they both have two leg-like parts.

But, we speak of a pair of men's briefs—which has no legs at all.

Having come from people who were involved in the garment trade, I think I recall that in that business they might speak of "a pant."

Otherwise, it's just one of many, many little anomalies of English; and I'm pretty sure other languages have theirs, too.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

Again, Police Commit Crimes, Go Unpunished

In a famous case, a police officer had been videotaped repeatedly beating with his baton (aka nightstick) a man who had been stopped for a traffic offense. The traffic offender was handcuffed while being beaten 12 or 15 times.

The officer was convicted of criminal wrongdoing. Guess what his punishment was. Probation.

Another policeman was charged with bilking a 90-year-old man out of his home, worth $500,000, plus his savings. He was convicted, and sentenced. Guess what his punishment was. Probation!

Maybe the judge in that case was in the pocket of the Fraternal Order of Police (the police union).

There have been other cases as well, where a police officer receives little or no meaningful punishment. There seems to be a different standard of justice for policemen who break the law.

This is outrageous. Is this a third-world country, where instruments of the government can break the law with impunity, beating and robbing the ordinary citizen, just because they are police?

Update, March 20, 2013
A recent story in our local (Chicago) news is of an off-duty police officer from the suburb of North Chicago, IL. This man allegedly was driving the wrong way on a Chicago expressway and thus caused a crash that killed two young men. His blood alcohol level was twice the legal limit. Of course this suggests that he caused the crash ultimately because he was driving drunk.
This police officer is free on $500,000 bond. ("Free" may be theoretical because he is in the hospital.) The law requires that 10% of the bond be posted—thus, in this case, $50,000. The mothers of the two young men killed are outraged and assert that the police officer received lenient treatment (a low bond) because he is a policeman.
Another story, completely unrelated,in today's news makes me believe these two mothers are right. This news story is about a high school teacher accused of having sex with a student. His bond is $600,000. Thus the police officer who allegedly caused two deaths gets a lower bond than the accused teacher.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

The Enemy: Cheese

I've blogged several times about the problem of Americans' increasing weight and waists. This is a national medical problem of epidemic proportions, partly because overweight is correlated with increased risk for diabetes and other diseases.

Nutritionists and other medical experts have, naturally, been looking for causes and a lot of candidates have been proposed. And doubtless what is going on is more than one cause working at the same time.

A few causes of increasing overweight and obesity in America (and other countries) which I find plausible are as follows (not in any particular order):

• Our increasingly sedentary lives (e.g., more time spent with TV, computers, video games).
  
• Increasing size of the portions served in restaurants.
• Advertising for food (especially for fast-food chains) on TV. When food items are shown to us, it makes us want to get up and grab a snack.
• Increasing consumption of soft drinks which, with their high content of sugar (or high fructose corn syrup) are known to contribute an increasing number of calories to our diets.
• People eating more of their meals in fast-food restaurants, where the food is high in fat, sodium, and calories.

Now, I have another trend in our diets to propose as promoting weight gain: cheese. Cheese is mostly fat (from the milk it's made from), and fat is much higher in calories than the other nutrients (protein, carbohydrate, and fiber) or constituents of our food.

More and more of what we eat seems to have cheese in it or on it. Nowadays you almost can't get any sandwich with meat or poultry that does not also have cheese in it. On some restaurant menus, it's difficult to find dishes that haven't got cheese. Statistics show that cheese consumption has been increasing in America. (According to Wikipedia, US cheese consumption has nearly tripled between 1970 and 2003.)

Cheese added to a dish adds much more fat and calories than you might think. Those multilayer hamburgers, with several beef patties and several slices of cheese as well, have calorie and fat values that are almost beyond belief—like a day's worth (or more!) of fat and sodium.

So we are tempted by these restaurant offerings, and—guess what! We don't resist. Maybe we need to start to think twice when we're ordering our food.

Update, July 23, 2011
I recently read an item in Nutrition Action HealthLetter, the publication of the Center for Science in the Public Interest (the people who periodically make the news with, for example, their exposés of movie-theater popcorn) that said precisely the same thing, about the prevalence of cheese in restaurant menu offerings. But remember, you heard it here first. They also say that the dairy industry persuaded restaurants to add cheese to their menu offerings.
And I want to confess, I love cheese--but maybe not in or on everything. I like to snack on cheese by itself, or eat it in a sandwich. Once in a while I'll sprinkle grated cheese on my pasta or use cheese in cooking. But I have cut way, way down, and also I sometimes buy reduced-fat cheese. (Some of them are pretty good.) But maybe I should be worrying about the sodium in cheese as much as the fat.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

Bad News on Greenhouse Gases

The news a couple days ago said that targets for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions have not been met. On the contrary, they've risen, rather than fallen. The figures for greenhouse gas emissions for 2009 were 5 percent higher than the figures for 2008. And thus the "tipping point," the time by which something has to be done before there is an irreversible problem, is coming sooner than had been thought (I think the original date was 2020).

So it looks like Mankind has not been taking this problem seriously enough. This calls into question, in my mind, whether Man is going to prove to be smart enough to avoid wiping himself out.

Well, actually, we do not really know what the consequences of global warming will be, beyond the simple fact that ocean levels will rise and that will cause flooding of coastal areas (and even of whole nations in the case of some small Pacific island nations). Of course that will be a disaster, and clearly we have not even been looking closely at just what that scenario will involve, because we haven't seen anything that would scare us enough, that would jolt us into more energized (or maybe I should say "panicky") action.

I wrote, in another posting, that I was reassured, in my view of humanity, by the fact that we have thus far not blown ourselves and each other up with atomic and hydrogen bombs. The statistics are that the US has produced 70,000 nuclear bombs—which could have destroyed the world several times over. Currently, "The USA and Russia each have 2,000 to 2,500 nuclear weapons on hair trigger alert right now." That sounds encouraging, as to our having enough wisdom to avoid destroying each other; but (to go on to give the bad news): first, the same article (http://www.rense.com/general47/global.htm) also says that's only the number on hair-trigger alert.

The five major nuclear powers currently have more than 20,000 nuclear warheads in their arsenals. . . . But this does not include a number of intact Russian nuclear warheads of indeterminate status--possibly as many as 10,000. Of the more than 30,000 intact warheads belonging to the world's eight nuclear weapon states, the vast majority (96 percent) are in U.S. or Russian stockpiles. About 17,500 of these warheads are considered operational.

Also,

There have almost been accidental nuclear wars several times in the past. There can be an accidental nuclear war anytime.

I suggest reading this article (link above). To include more of it would be getting off my subject. Maybe my bottom line vis-à-vis nuclear weapons is that the jury is still out. So maybe even there we should not heartily declare "Well we were sensible enough to avoid disaster"; and it's less clear that we're going to do the right and necessary things to avoid a global climate crisis.

Copyright (c) 2011 by Richard Stein

Some Points about Cars--Particularly, Are American Cars (Finally) Good Enough?

First, latest vehicle crash test results from the IIHS (Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, an insurance-industry body) show that many small car models fare very well in crash tests. This means that people who have been choosing enormous vehicles like SUVs because these large vehicles are perceived as safer in a crash, can start to consider smaller and more economical vehicles.

Second, a new government window sticker on new cars will begin appearing on 2012 models (and on all cars starting with the 2013 model year). It not only shows city, highway, and combined fuel economy ratings for that vehicle; but will also show (1) expected fuel costs over 5 years; (2) a numerical ranking which indicates how that car compares to other vehicles; and (3) another ranking that gives an indication of that vehicle's environmental impact.

I am particularly happy to see number 3 above, because I don't think that very many car buyers give much thought to the environmental impact that the vehicle they're buying is going to have. But even without the new ranking, there's one very simple fact they might consider: greenhouse gas emissions from a vehicle are proportional to the fuel consumed. Simply put, lower gas mileage (more gas used) means more greenhouse emissions.

Third, domestic cars seem to be getting better—and they had a long way to go, in terms of assembly quality and performance characteristics.

Let's look back quite a ways: There was a popularity for foreign, and particularly British sports cars, starting perhaps around the late 1950s and continuing for maybe two decades. This is supposedly due to American servicemen discovering some of these cars when they were overseas, around the end of WWII, and maybe even bringing them home. These cars offered better performance than American cars and were just more fun to drive.

Now, an important fact to keep in mind: When I talk about performance I'm not just talking about a car having zippy acceleration or higher top speed. Many foreign models also showed better handling characteristics: better cornering, better braking, more responsive steering.

For decades American cars lagged in these qualities (and American car buyers often did not pay attention to them, either). American cars had soft suspensions (springing) that made for a soft but wallowy ride—these cars' noses would dive under braking and they would roll during cornering—which implies poor handling during an abrupt maneuver such as in an emergency. American car makers believed that was what American car buyers wanted--a soft ride even if achieved at the expense of handling characteristics. Intrinsically, the two—ride and handling--are mutually exclusive, although more sophisticated, and inevitably more expensive, suspension designs permit good handling characteristics with less compromise of ride comfort.

Over the years American cars have come to incorporate some more sophisticated mechanical designs, both in their engines and in their chassis. But even when a U.S. car model was based on a European model—and I could give a number of examples of this, from the last 10 or 15 years—that European chassis, with its better handling characteristics, would be "dumbed down" for the American market—that is, ride characteristics would be made softer, sacrificing the car's handling qualities.

Now we're starting to get U.S. cars with decent handling, whether based on European chassis or not. People who value good handling qualities can be glad that now we can get Detroit cars that are more equivalent to European cars.

Let's look at some models that Chevrolet has offered. Their small model at one point was the Cavalier, which was regarded as not a very good car by the automobile press.

That model was followed by the Cobalt. Evidently the Cobalt was better than the Cavalier, but maybe still not good enough, because now we hear that the Cobalt's successor, the Cruze, is better than the Cobalt was.

And Chrysler, until this year, had been offering a model called the Sebring, which was almost universally said to be not a very good car, in many ways. Now the Sebring has been replaced by the 200—which evidently is substantially better than the Sebring but maybe still not good enough.

So I wonder why, in so many cases and for so many years, Detroit—which must know how to make a good car, and undoubtedly employs an awful lot of very competent engineering talent--has been content to make "better but still not good enough" cars. GM (maker of Chevrolet) might just be wising up; and Ford, too, has been bringing out good cars. Chrysler is lagging behind the other two.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

The People vs. the Republicans

The Republicans are getting some backlash which is much deserved, in my opinion. The shining example recently occurred when Kathy Hocul, a Democrat, defeated the heavily-financed Republican candidate in a special election for the Congressional seat in the 26th District of New York State.

All eyes were on this election, and it was viewed as very largely a referendum on Medicare: That is, the defeat of the Republican is thought to have been because the Republicans are now perceived to favor cuts in Medicare, since the federal budget proposed by Republican budget-writer Paul Ryan would cut Medicare benefits.

Now, seniors (those who benefit from and who are literally the beneficiaries of Medicare) tend to be conservative in their voting, particularly on social issues. But they are a well-organized lobby, and when it comes to even threatening their government benefits (or, I should say, entitlements), they will get their backs up.

So, if the election which Hocul won really was a referendum on Medicare, I am glad that, for once, a popular message has been sent to Republicans. (Let's hope they get the message. We'll only know that they did when they begin to moderate some of their positions. You'd think they'd perceive what is in their self-interest, but they have not always been smart enough to do so.)

In my view, too often the "man in the street" does not, cannot, perceive that the Republican party is the representative of wealthy individuals and corporations. Corporate interests (made all the more influential since the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, which removes restrictions on corporate political contributions) buy the votes, in Congress, through their army of highly paid lobbyists, and through out-and-out contributions to those candidates' election and re-election. Thus, Republican legislators are unabashedly beholden to corporate interests, which tend to have interests contrary to those of the public.

The Medicare thing should make people realize that they Republicans pretty generally have no sympathy for the poor, the elderly, the unemployed--anyone for whom a more compassionate government provides a "safety net." The latest example—more recent than Paul Ryan's to-hell-with-Medicare budget—is that Republicans now want to cut funding for the FDA (Food and Drug Administration), which is charged with keeping our food (and medicines) pure and safe. In a rather typical example of their very odd logic (to put it mildly), the Republicans claim that reducing the funding to the FDA—which already lacks adequate resources to inspect food producers and processors, so that we have had numerous outbreaks of food-borne illness like Salmonella—will somehow contribute to, rather than undermine, the safety of the food which every single American must eat. Evidently it's again that extreme free-market thinking that says, Just leave them alone (free from regulation and other government "interference" such as inspections) and they will do the right thing, and we'll all be better off. How absurd. Any time—and let's acknowledge that this happens, often—that the corporate bottom line conflicts with what benefits customers and the public, you know which gets put first by the corporations—and by their Republican lackeys in Congress.

Update/Correction, May 26, 2011
1) The election which Hocul won was indeed regarded as a referendum on the treatment of Medicare in the Paul Ryan budget proposal because Hocul's opponent had specifically endorsed the proposed Medicare changes.
2) It was not exactly correct to say that the Ryan budget proposal would cut Medicare. Ryan's idea is to replace government-run Medicare with private insurance. This is in line with far-right ideological notions that Medicare and even Social Security are "socialist" programs, that everything should be left to the private sector and as little as possible administered by the government. Going back at least to Ronald Reagan, conservatives have been telling us that government is bad, or is bad as long as it is as big as it is--never mind that they themselves are part of "government." Somehow the inconsistency does not occur to them. "Oh yes, the body politic is evil and too big, so I guess (being part of it) I'll cut my arm off."

Update, May 26, 2011
Tim Pawlenty, a possibility for the Republican presidential nomination, has announced he supports Paul Ryan's Medicare proposals. Is he too stupid to have learned from the Hocul election? Of course I don't mind if any particular Republican, or even the whole party, self-destructs.

Update, May 27, 2011
Here I mention, for the third time, the Citizens United decision. I gave an incorrect impression, that that decision permits corporate contributions directly to candidates. It does not; rather, it permits corporations to fund, for example, advertising on issues rather than candidates. (Thus we see TV "public service announcements" that advocate for or against a certain position or proposed law, and their sponsorship by corporations or industry trade groups is disguised by a statement such as "Paid for by Citizens for Such-and-Such.") However, in today's news, a judge has ruled that corporate contributions to candidates are legal.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein