Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Didn’t Matter

Wapo opinion piece by a Navy man who experienced discrimination for being gay:

Once I joined the Navy, I was tormented by my chief and fellow sailors, physically and emotionally, for being gay. The irony of “don’t ask, don’t tell” is that it protects bigots and punishes gays who comply. Now, after a Youth Radio investigation of the abuses I suffered, the chief of naval operations ordered a thorough study of how the Navy handled the situation and is currently reviewing the document. I’m hopeful that the case will be reopened and top leadership finally held accountable for the lives they have ruined.

Attitudes are changing in the military but this is a sad story.

Retired NFL Players Have Higher Rates of Dementia

According to WaPo, dementia is more prevalent in retired NFL players over 50 compared to the regular population.

A study commissioned by the NFL to assess the health and well-being of retired players found that they reported being diagnosed with dementia and other memory-related diseases at a rate significantly higher than that of the general population.

The study also found a greatly increased rate of arthritis being reported by the former NFL players but found reduced rates of diabetes, heart attacks and strokes.

To have better physical health or to retain one’s wits? This is the question.

Eating Opah

So I had a Hawaian fish called “Opah” while in Idaho at the Cottonwood Grille restaurant. First have to say that this was a great place to eat if you are ever in Boise, ID. Great atmosphere and food. I generally have no use for beef or red meat selections. There are cows everywhere and I don’t have to travel 500 miles to eat prime rib. So I tend to go local or seafood.

Well, on the menu were a couple of intruiging seafood choices, Opah, and something else–a fish described as a deep Pacific fish. Let’s just say I’m not going to run into these options back in DC on regular basis. So I went for the Opah. 

So here’s the general deal with Opah. It was really moist and the flavor was very good. The problem with eating a fish once is that you can’t easily separate its flavor from the sauce. So I would need a couple more tries to ferret out its distinctiveness. But it was a delicious meal. 

Here’s what they look like:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

According to the linked website, these things range in weight from 60-200 lbs. Now my initial question when I see something that looks like this is, who came up with the idea that this would be delicious to eat?  Pretty gross, but I’m glad someone stepped up.

BTW, sometimes we think of fish eating as pretty obvious, but I note that Jared Diamond, in his book, Collapse, talks of the Greenland Viking population that died out of starvation in a couple of centuries becuase they had a taboo against eating fish.

“Elitist Kerry Did Better than Obama”

I ran into this letter(?) in the Tennessean about President Carter’s race comments and Obama.

Kerry, a wealthy liberal from Massachusetts, had little charisma. Four years later, we got a fiery Democratic candidate, self-made, up-from-the-working-class Barack Obama.

And yet, Kerry in 2004 got 10-20 percent more votes than Obama in 2008 throughout Appalachia, and the states of Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Tennessee. Kerry similarly fared far better in much of Alabama, Texas and Kentucky, compared to Obama.

Further, Obama only got 43 percent of all white people’s vote overall, in the wake of the last four disastrous years of Bush, and a weak Republican ticket.

How wearing a Nats Cap can be considered terrorism

Al Kamen of the Wapo had this funny piece about some who wore a Washington Nationals cap in Israel:

The long Washington Nationals season is finally crawling to a close. The chronic basement dwellers have outdone their prior haplessness and are on pace to lose 106 games, which would make them the second-worst Washington team in a century. (Thank goodness the Mets lost 120 games in 1962.)

Now it seems that being a Nats fan — and wearing one of those green Nationals hats — not only can be embarrassing but can even get you in a heap of trouble.

Take what happened when Tyler Allard, legislative assistant to Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.), wore the cap as he returned from a trip last month to Jordan and Israel. An Israeli airport security guard pointed to the hat with the curly W team logo and demanded with a tone of disgust, “Why do you wear that?”

“Good question,” his father, former longtime Senate aide Nick Allard, replied. “They are hopeless. They desperately need relief. You never know when they will hit, and because their defense is so bad, they suffer more than they can dish out. It’s not rational and I can’t explain why, but we are loyal and we love them.” The more he talked, the more upset the security folks became, Nick Allard reports. Their luggage was checked and rechecked, and they were quizzed by security.

When they were finally cleared to board, Allard wrote in an e-mail, the head of the security detail said: “We do not appreciate your Hamas headgear.” Green apparently is a Palestinian “color,” Allard speculated, and the vaguely Arabic Nats logo might have been mistaken for an extremist emblem.

“What the Nats have done this season is almost unforgivable,” Allard notes, “but they are a long way from being mistaken for an organization capable of terrorizing the eastern division much less the Middle East. It’s tough being a Nats fan. Home or away.”

AIPAC vs J Street–The Battle of Jewish Lobbies

NY Times has this interesting piece on the new J Street Jewish advocacy group that is pushing a more liberal agenda.

Unwitting Birthplace of “Death Panel” Myth

Wapo has an article on the Wisconsin hospital that was the unwitting birthplace of the whole death panel fooliness.

LA CROSSE, Wis. — This city often shows up on “best places to live” lists, but residents say it is also a good place to die — which is how it landed in the center of a controversy that almost derailed health-care reform this summer.

The town’s biggest hospital, Gundersen Lutheran, has long been a pioneer in ensuring that the care provided to patients in their final months complies with their wishes. More recently, it has taken the lead in seeking to have Medicare compensate physicians for advising patients on end-of-life planning

[SNIP]

But the controversy has had most resonance where it arguably took root, in this town of 52,000 where nearly everyone of a certain age has an advance-care directive.

La Crosse became a pioneer in addressing end-of-life questions in the mid-1980s, after Hammes, a native of the city who has a doctorate in philosophy from Notre Dame, arrived at Gundersen as the director of medical humanities, charged with educating resident physicians about ethics. He noticed a “troubling pattern,” he said, in which family members struggled to make medical decisions, such as whether to continue dialysis after a stroke.

“We’d turn to the family and say, ‘We need your input. If your mother or father could speak now, what would they tell you?’ And the family would say, ‘If we only knew,’ ” said Hammes, 59. “I could see the distress. They were going to have to live with themselves, with the worry about making a mistake. This was unacceptable.”

The hospital began urging families to plan while people are healthy. For those who want help writing a directive, a physician will discuss the powers and limits of medicine and explain to family members what it means if they agree to serve as the “health-care agent.” They will also help people define the conditions under which they would no longer want treatment. Hammes said people often define this as “when I’ve reached a point where I don’t know who I am or who I’m with, and don’t have any hope of recovery.”

The directives are power-of-attorney forms that protect physicians and family members against liability, and the hospital makes clear to its doctors that they are expected to follow them. Today, more than 90 percent of people in town have directives when they die, double the national average.

The reliance on directives has an impact on the type of care people receive: Gundersen patients spend 13.5 days on average in the hospital in their final two years of life, at an average cost of $18,000. That is in contrast with big-city hospitals such as the University of California at Los Angeles medical centers (31 days and $59,000), the University of Miami Hospital (39 days, $64,000) and New York University’s Langone Medical Center (54 days, $66,000).

Those disparities are not explained just by the hospital’s end-of-life philosophy. Under Medicare formulas, Gundersen and other Upper Midwest hospitals receive lower reimbursements. The high-spending hospitals argue that they are also dealing with a more diverse and costly patient base.

I am young, very, very relatively speaking, and my wife and I have advanced healthcare directives. These directives are very necessary and more people should be encouraged to have them. However, with poiticians muddying the waters, we get this death panel nonsense.

Here’s a link to the Mayo Clinic’s page on Living Wills and Advance Directives. Then there’s this guide to Living Wills from a SUNY Buffalo page which looks fairly good. Of course, there’s Wikipedia on Advance Healthcare Directives. Also, any decent attorney will have a advance healthcare directive template and you can get one done fairly quickly. In fact, many bookstore have great books with all manner of forms that can help you get started with the process.

 

NIV going Gender Inclusive

Via Huffington Post, the New International Version (NIV) bible is going gender inclusive.

The top-selling Bible in North America will undergo its first revision in 25 years, modernizing the language in some sections and promising to reopen a contentious debate about changing gender terms in the sacred text. The New International Version, the Bible of choice for conservative evangelicals, will be revised to reflect changes in English usage and advances in Biblical scholarship, it was announced Tuesday. The revision is scheduled to be completed late next year and published in 2011.

[snip]

But past attempts to remake the NIV for contemporary audiences in different editions have been plagued by controversies about gender language that have pitted theological conservatives against each other.

The changes did not make all men “people” or remove male references to God, but instead involved dropping gender-specific terms when translators judged that the original text didn’t intend it. So in some verses, references to “sons of God” became “children of God,” for example.

Supporters say gender-inclusive changes are more accurate and make the Bible more accessible, but critics contend they twist meaning or smack of political correctness.

I suppose this is pretty huge. I don’t suspect this move will be as controversial as it would have been 20 years ago. Now when they bust out with the vertical inclusiveness, i.e., God as She, that will get interesting.

Golddigging, marrying money and the evolutionary impulse

MSN article on Do Smart Women Marry Money? Marrying the financially fit fits in with the Darwinian impulse of survival of the fittest. Of course assuming that the financially fit are usually the smartest, healthiest, and thus better looking homo sapiens on the planet.

Young women, here is some advice:

Don’t throw your hot, youthful selves away on young, financially unproven men. They may never become successes, and if they do, they’ll probably just chuck you for younger models when you’re too old to successfully compete again in the marriage marketplace.

Instead, marry rich guys while you’re still taut enough to snag them. They may dump you, too, but at least you’ll have nice, fat divorce settlements with which to pursue true love, or the pool guy, whoever comes first.

Notice I didn’t say it was good advice.

But that is the gist of a new book, “Smart Girls Marry Money: How Women Have Been Duped Into the Romantic Dream — and How They’re Paying for It,” by Elizabeth Ford and Daniela Drake.

“Rather than pursuing love, we suggest pursuing a lifestyle with a man you like, or admire and enjoy,” they write. “But in any case, he should be a man with resources.”

Then there’s this:

That reminds me of another chestnut: “If you marry for money, you will surely earn it.”

Kerry on continuing Kennedy’s Legacy

Time has a nice sweet article on Kerry looking to protect Kennedy’s legacy.

The first task will be the cause of Kennedy’s life: health-care reform. Kerry has been watching the coverage following Kennedy’s death, and he worries about progressives using Kennedy’s passing as an excuse to dig in their heels on the inclusion of a public option, a key point of contention. Senate Republicans have said they will not vote for a bill with one in it, arguing that the creation of a public plan to compete with private insurers is the first step to socialized medicine; House progressives have said they will not vote for legislation without such an option to ensure affordability.

“Teddy was in favor of a public plan and Teddy would’ve fought for a public plan on the floor of the Senate,” Kerry bristles. “Teddy would’ve probably found a way to have a vote, and if he’d lost the vote, he’d have moved on. That’s how you legislate. You don’t block. You don’t stop anybody from expressing their point of view. You’ve got to move on and then you live with the vote, I mean, that’s what Teddy would do. And if there were absolutely no way of getting it done, Teddy would find a road. If it meant changing it or working it through, he’d do that.”

Kennedy’s legacy, Kerry says, is one of reaching across the aisle, of not making the perfect the enemy of the good, as Kennedy liked to say. “I learned that really early on when I first got to Washington and Teddy would invite me over to the house and I would go to dinner and there’d be [Utah Republican Senator] Orrin Hatch and [Virginia Republican Senator] John Warner, [Alaska Republican Senator] Ted Stevens and a couple of other guys,” Kerry says. “And so hopefully people will go back to Washington with a renewed sense of focus of how we can get done what we need to get done and take the lesson of reaching across the aisle and bipartisanship that Ted brought with him.”