Category Archives: Science

Updated: Farewell Farrah

Celebrity, Healthcare, Pop-Culture, Science, Sex

I watched “Farrah’s Story” on NBC. I was expecting the worst. I watched, I guess, because Farrah Fawcett was such an icon.

There is already in-fighting over the production. To be expected.

The film follows Farrah’s diary, which is both poignant and quite well-written.

In its review, the New York Post makes a point I expected to echo here, but I’m not, because I did not get the sense that,

“It does not register with [Farrah] that her wealth and fame, which afford her private jets to Germany and an international team of doctors, are unavailable to the vast majority of cancer sufferers, and that, if not for her station in life, she would not have had extra time. She does not seem to wrestle, at all, with the notion that there may be some experiences best kept private, that the unintended consequences of oversharing can be a cheapening and coarsening of the most meaningful moments.”

Fair enough. (Update: May 17) The docudrama is in the tradition described above. However, one need not resort to such a formulaic verdict when the overall effect departs from the usual Oprah menagerie of moral degenerates. Fawcett is a nice lady; she was not over-dramatic or emotional.

One of the idiots that writes at Fox News.com dubbed Fawcett a “starlet” in what was a “straightforward” news story. The woman who pulled off “Extremities” and “Burning Bed” had become a bit more than a “starlet.” So, that was not entirely warranted, but maybe I just have a soft spot for someone who “came across as a nice Texan girl.”

Farrah’s Story was so obviously Farrah’s trip—her tribute to herself—and it worked.

However, if Fawcett meant to be an advocate for American patients, she failed miserably. The treatment modalities she availed herself of in Germany are banned in the US by the fascistic FDA. In the United States, legitimate, medical procedures are thus labeled “alternative treatments.” Decent advocacy would have broached this aspect of the disease and the treatment. I have no doubt that the problem of FDA approval—a process that kills—applies to other diseases and treatment options.

But mostly, not a word was said about the horrible, yet extremely rare, disease Farrah has: anal cancer.

Without wading into this indelicate topic, risk factors include:

* Being over 50 years old.
* Being infected with human papillomavirus (HPV).
* Having many sexual partners.
* Having receptive anal intercourse (anal sex).*
* Smoking cigarettes.

In 2008, there were only 5,070 new cases, and 680 Deaths. That would have been an important bit of information to impart to viewers. (Update: May 17) The FDA kills more people in a year by proscribing new treatments and new drugs.

Prevention follows from the risk factors.

* I first found out that heterosexuals engage in this perversion when I arrived in North America. I was already a married woman with a 12-year-old daughter. South Africa was a blissfully conservative country.

Updated: Meaningless Musical Chairs

Democrats, Elections 2008, Government, Media, Political Philosophy, Politics, Republicans, Science

The parties are exchanging spit:

MSNBC: “Republican Sen. Arlen Specter disclosed plans Tuesday to switch parties, bringing Democrats closer to the 60-vote supermajority they need to push Barack Obama’s agenda through the Senate.”

The imagery conjured by defections, or ideological spit swapping, between Republicans and Democrats, in my mind, is of two colossal, identical amoebas occasionally allowing their semi-permeable cell walls to open and merge with a biologically compatible, primitive organism. In fact, that’s the perfect, dynamic metaphor for our two-party system.

Although dyed-in-the-wool party parrots will disagree, based on fact, reality, and policy prescriptions, the differences between the parties exist along a continuum; are quantitative, not qualitative.

As I said in “The Commie Who Controls the Economy From the Grave”:

“How much to hand out; who to hand it to; which handout makes the best use of taxpayer money; do the Big Three submit a business plan with their bailout requisitions, or not—that’s the depth of the ‘philosophical’ to-be-or-not-to-be among Republikeynsians.”

Mercer in 2006: “What we have now is a cartel, the traditional ideological differences between the political parties having been permanently blurred.”

The solution?

Mercer in 2006: “Antitrust laws ought to be deployed, not against business, but to bust this two-party monopoly, which subverts competition in government and rewards the colluding quislings with sinecures in perpetuity.”

Update: Look at the bright side. The political developments have steered Commissar Keith of MSNBC away from lamenting, night after night, the damage water boarding has wrought on Abu Zubaydah’s bladder, to speculating how Specter’s defection will help his man Obama’s agenda.

Sully Sullenberger: Steel Worth Protecting

Feminism, Gender, Human Accomplishment, Intelligence, Science

Captain Chesley B. ‘Sully’ Sullenberger, III, to Ground Control: “Unable: We’re Going To Be In the Hudson.”

Those were the laconic, spare words of ‘Sully,’ as he calmly prepared to land Cactus 1549, an engineless passenger plane, in the Hudson.

This former ace F-4 fighter pilot is so obviously of the right stuff. This is what it means to be a man—in the traditional sense. Silent, steely, short-on-words and ego, big on humility, ability, and reliability. The kind of guy who’s the best at what he does and almost always comes through for you.

There is a deep lesson here about the value of an endangered virtue: manliness. You see it in older men like Sully. They have that deep voice, the slight swagger no amount of politically correct taming can subdue, and they do their jobs to perfection.

Then there is the New Man. I described him here:

“I was stocking up on groceries at Fred Meyer when I heard this fretful falsetto. ‘Honey, look at these ingredients. Oh my God. Check the percentage of trans fats. It’s outrageous!’ The fussing, believe it or not, was coming from a man. He was hopping up and down on spindly legs, beckoning his wife excitedly. I quickly moved on, thanking my lucky stars that the spouse had gravitated automatically to the hardware section of the store, and was itching to move on to Home Depot.”

“Whenever I venture out, I encounter this not-so-new breed of man. Typically, he’ll have a few spoilt, cranky kids in tow, and a papoose strapped to a sunken chest. He’ll be laboring to make the outing to Trader Joe’s a ‘learning experience’ for the brats—one that every other store patron is forced to endure. This generic guy oozes psychological correctness and zero manliness. He’s not necessarily effeminate, mind you. Rather, he’s safely androgynous, and most certainly not guy-like in the traditional sense. As personalities go, he and the wife are indistinguishable.”

It’s rather alarming: everywhere around me—and on television—the prototypical father, in his early 50s, late 40s, is often more Sully-like than his son. The latter is the New Man: high voice, pudgy face, sensitive mannerism. Unattractive.

Ladies (“mature” ones, at least), who would you rather date, Chris Cillizza of the trendy eye-wear and affectatious mannerism, or Tom Brokaw? (Old-style gentlemen also seem to stick with their sweethearts until death do them apart.)

All the above is why I, personally, find men in the writing profession (with exceptions, naturally), especially bloggers, particularly off-putting. (And a man who blogs shoulder-to-shoulder with his wife is like a man who bakes with her. You just know he’s puny in spirit and petty.)

And not solely because we writers are often ego-bound, self-centered, and unable to get beyond ourselves–vices that are particularly ugly in a man. Rather, I like men who can do what I can’t do. I like that my husband manipulates for a living concepts I cannot fathom.

Don’t get me wrong; I did well at math, but I had to work at it (hard working is another manly trait). And I loved post-graduate level statistics, which I aced. But there is no comparison between the level of math required for the soft subjects—business, economics, statistics—and the hard and applied sciences. The latter is beyond me. Physics, astrophysics, and electrical engineering—manipulating the laws of nature for a living—which is what goes into a thorough understanding of physics and electrical and aerospace engineering: that awes me, because it is beyond me. (The old boy won’t even read this blog unless forced to; or if we’re arguing and he wants to check up on what I’ve been up to. GRIN)

Since I’ve already meandered from the topic, and the Main Man: In his fascinating book, America’s Half-Blood Prince: Barack Obama’s Story of Race and Inheritance, Steve Sailer comments on the intelligence of Obama versus that of his Ivy-League, physicist half-brother. Unless I misunderstood the IQ Ace, he believed these values would be comparable.

I disagree. Granted, I assert this based on gut, not numbers. But since Steve, I believe, did not provide a citation for that particular snippet, I’m willing to bet that Obama is unable to master the level of abstraction required by a, presumably, top physicist such as his half-brother. I can do law; I can’t do physics, astrophysics–or design, calculate, and calibrate the stuff that goes into a cell phone. I don’t buy the theory of differing, but equal, intelligence. Such intelligence egalitarianism in just a PC way of elevating more common, attainable abilities. There are many more lawyers than physicists.

In any event, the steel that is Sully is worth protecting (as opposed to protectionism for American steel and steel workers).

Sans Sunspots, Global Cooling Could Be Next

Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Pseudoscience, Science

Regular readers of Barely a Blog will remember Phil N. Baldwin’s ground-breaking essay featured on this site last year about sun spots and global warming.

Do read or reread “Global Warming: CO2, Sunspots, Or Politics?”

Others are catching on, albeit slowly. Space Daily is reporting (in fractured syntax and grammar) that the sun has entered what appears to be a period of solar inactivity. “Solar activity refers to phenomena like sunspots, solar flares and solar eruptions.”

“Solar physicists … have observed a longer-than-normal period of solar inactivity. In the past, they observed that the sun once went 50 years without producing sunspots. That period coincided with a little ice age on Earth that lasted from 1650 to 1700.”