Study Finds 25 Percent of World's Mammals at Risk of Extinction (previously published in Groundreport on October 6, 2008)

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) unveiled a dark new study today, detailing the potential permanent demise of 1,141 of the 5,487 mammals on earth.

If the findings in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species report were to be fulfilled, it would represent a catastrophic impact on the broader ecology and a cataclysmic acceleration of natural mammalian extinction rates.

According to PBS’ The Current Mass Extinction, “The typical rate of extinction differs by different groups of organisms. Mammals, for instance, have an average species ‘lifespan’ from origination to extinction of about 1 million years, although some species persist for as long as 10 million years…Given the average species lifespan for mammals, the background extinction rate for this group would be approximately one species lost every 200 years.”

Since 1500, at least 76 mammals have become extinct. This is a rate of thirty species vanishing every 200 years.

“Within our lifetime hundreds of species could be lost as a result of our own actions, a frightening sign of what is happening to the ecosystems where they live,” said Julia Marton-Lefevre, IUCN Director General. “We must now set clear targets for the future to reverse this trend to ensure that our enduring legacy is not to wipe out many of our closest relatives.”

We are living in a present-day mass extinction period that has likely been in motion for quite some time. As the fossil record demonstrates, living creatures have been decimated over much of the earth on five separate occasions in the past 500 million years.

But different species undergo different background extinction rates. For example, of the 10,000 known bird species, an estimated 130 have disappeared since 1500 – an extinction rate of roughly one species every four years. Meanwhile, The Global Amphibian Assessment (GGA) reported earlier this year that nearly 32% of all amphibian species are threatened. There are clearly broad declines among the general ecology.

A threat to 25 percent of mammalian species is troubling to the species in question and to the species that rely on mammals to propagate – however, it could be welcome news to insects. A 2006 study by the University of Washington cited an accelerating insect population, spurred by global warming.

Republican Discontent: Huckabee Down on McCain and Bush (originally published in Ground Report on September 26, 2008)

The debate between Senator McCain and Senator Obama tonight is on, but not without some damage to the Republican candidate – and to President Bush’s flailing credibility, for that matter.



So says Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee.



Huckabee stated yesterday that Senator McCain made a “huge mistake” in publicly announcing to suspend his campaign in the face of the financial crisis. “You can’t just say, ‘World stop for a moment. I’m going to cancel everything,” Huckabee said.



Huckabee’s comments come on the heels of a scathing editorial in the right-leaning Wall Street Journal on Senator McCain’s unusual decision.



This criticism comes among a dead heat in the presidential race between McCain and Obama, with the Democratic camp seizing on the opportunity to demonstrate McCain’s inability to handle more than one crisis at a time. The decision by the McCain campaign to participate in tonight’s debate also reflects a misdirected leadership, Democrats argue.



All in all, the Democratic argument is supported by Huckabee. The people need to hear from both candidates, he asserted in his comments. Obama’s camp agrees.



But Huckabee is also displeased with President Bush. The Bush administration’s demands to decide on the $700 billion bailout amounts to “holding the country hostage,” Huckabee said.



“I just think the American people ought to be screaming their lungs out, saying to Congress, not so fast. That’s our money you’re giving away,” said Huckabee.

Forget Palin: Will McCain Win the Hispanic Vote? (originally published in Ground Report on September 19, 2008)

In a dramatic break from the Democratic Party, Miguel Lausell has endorsed John McCain.

The move by the Puerto Rican businessman and longtime Democratic activist and fundraiser is a significant departure and a bruise for Senator Obama’s campaign, reminiscent of the erosion Senator Clinton faced in the waning days of her Democratic primary bid.

In a September 18, 2008 interview with The Wall Street Journal, Miguel Lausell said, “I find McCain to be a sound person and a man with a track record. I know where he is coming from.”

Mr. Lausell also added that he believes Senator Obama “doesn’t really regard the Hispanic community as important.”

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Hispanics comprised 15% of the overall U.S. population in 2006 – or 44 million people. The 2006 composition of Hispanic origin in the United States breaks out as follows:

Mexican 64%

Puerto Rican 9%

Central American 8%

Other Hispanic 8%

South American 6%

Cuban 3%

Dominican 3%

This is a very important community. It is important in terms of size and in terms of their impact on election strategy. Referencing a 2007 study from the Pew Hispanic Center, the Hispanic community represents a key swing vote: “Hispanics constitute a sizeable share of the electorate in four of the six states that President Bush carried by margins of five percentage points or fewer in 2004 – New Mexico (where Hispanics make up 37% of the state’s eligible electorate); Florida (14%); Nevada (12%) and Colorado (12%).”

In a campaign stop in New Mexico, Senator Obama urged Hispanics to get out and vote. “Don’t stay at home,” he told them.

But if Miguel Lausell’s departure is an indication of bigger erosion among Hispanic thought leaders, Senator McCain may be the happier candidate to see the Hispanic community at voting centers across the country.

On Pigs, Churchill, and Sarah Palin (originally published in Ground Report on September 14, 2008)

I understand that Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska, is a pig. I have seen pictures of her – both moving and still – and am not so sure.

This is a line of definition that Illinois Senator Barack Obama has drawn for me and for all of us. It is his mark. He has come to this line and come from it; had it written for him; spoken it himself. I have read it in the newspapers and on the internet, and I have heard it on the radio, and I have seen it on television and on YouTube. So it is.

And it is a dangerous line, drawn in lipstick.

Here’s how it seems to have gone down: Governor Palin, in speaking at the Republican National Convention and in accepting the Republican Vice Presidential nomination, portrayed herself in part as a hockey mom and said, “You know the difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull, lipstick.”

This may be why American football is my sport of choice.

A couple of days later, Senator Obama snickered to a group of supporters and said, “You can put lipstick on a pig…it is still a pig.”

I would have let her be a dolled-up pitbull. I would not have let her become a pig. But I am not running for a government position. So this is somewhat fun for me and for my clan of nihilists.

Newsweek recently featured Governor Palin. In the cover photograph, she rests a thick-barreled firearm on her shoulder, her hair piled casually on the crown of her head, a Fargo-like smile playing on her lips. The issue was called Palintology.

Paleontology is the study of the fossil record and of long-ago life. Because of this branch of science, I am certain that we can find the ancestors of pigs and of pitbulls in certain stone collections. This might make for an important parallel. Then again, paleontology is a celebration of the dead.

I must admit that our common Alaskan pig holds my interest. She could make a fine Vice President. I have mentioned this interest to my wife and to a few friends of the family. They have expressed a variety of concerns. But we’re cool now.

I closed the deal with a quote from Winston Churchill. A long time ago, he said, “Dogs look up to man. Cats look down to man. Pigs look us straight in the eye and see an equal.” I am not sure if this is true in the slaughterhouse. Regardless of the truth, I am uncertain that anything is equal.

I have heard that pigs could consume anything. And what is equal to the desire for universal consumption? It is likely best to keep secrets among omnivores. It has been suggested that hungry pigs in a pen offer a good environment for the disposal of a body. They will devour the entire carcass, including teeth and bones.

Ruby Schrecengost, spokesperson for the National Hereford Hog Record Association, told me that a hog could eat nearly anything. “The environmentalists won’t let them. They frown on that now.”

This could be a campaign slogan – or possibly a full-on movement. Let omnivores be omnivores. Well, maybe not all of them. But there should be some degree of choice. Just don’t tell the environmentalists.

But the question of choice itself is a pig, so we likely need to dress it up. I asked Ruby Schrecengost to provide some advice on how one might best dress up a hog. “They have to be washed,” she said. “Some people oil them. They don’t like to be oiled.”

Listening to the Noise – New View on Stem Cell Differentiation (originally published in Ground Report on May 28, 2008)

It is often comforting to think in linear terms and to believe that the universe operates in those terms; that complex processes are best discerned on a plane or when moving along a line; that the driver you are following will press the gas pedal when the light turns green – the irregularity of traffic patterns disassembling linear forecasting with a disconcerting regularity that questions the very idea of “patterns.” In fact, traffic patterns are infinite outcomes that are set in motion as responses to random changes in the environment.



They are reactions to motions in a moving environment.



A new study on stem cell differentiation, published in the May 22 issue of Nature, explores the influence of environmental interference and the “noise” that interference creates with respect to cell differentiation.



The conventional scientific view on stem cell differentiation holds that cells are instructed to progress along certain predetermined pathways. This linear position has long been dogged by the unknowns of gene expression noise – and biologists have been encountering that noise in laboratories around the world while trying to glean cures from the promises of stem cell research.



According to ScienceDaily, the new study “supports the idea that cells differentiate through the collective behavior of multiple genes in a network that ultimately leads to just a few endpoints – just as a marble on a hilltop can travel a nearly infinite number of downward paths, only to arrive in the same valley.” In this example, the marble chooses the path based on the terrain: it does not go through the terrain on pre-set coordinates.



“Nature has created an incredibly elegant and simple way of creating variability, and maintaining it at a steady level, enabling cells to respond to changes in their environment in a systematic, controlled way,” said Hannah Chang, a co-author of the finding.



Stem cell research offers broad potential for human civilization. In the same May 22 issue of Nature, UCLA researchers have announced their discovery of Leukemia stem cells, and there have been recent advances against paralysis and families of degenerative diseases with stem cell applications.



The key is in the understanding of the mystery of differentiation and the noise that this mystery speaks – and this new study advances that understanding.

Antimicrobial Personal Care Products and the Ecology – a Penalty in Cleanliness (originally published in Ground Report, May 20, 2008)

We have a rule in our house: showing up at the table with unwashed hands will set you back a dollar. Now while this infraction is likely not properly indexed to inflation, the penalty acts as a reminder that germs trump the more mindless eagerness to consume whatever calorific delights rest steaming on a plate.

But it appears that there is a higher order. Antimicrobial products may be more detrimental than previously considered.

Researchers at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University are investigating the active ingredients in common antimicrobial products and are coming to some disturbing conclusions.

“Our group has shown that antimicrobial ingredients used half a century ago, by our parents and grandparents, are still present today at parts-per-million concentrations in estuarine sediments underlying the brackish waters into which New York City and Baltimore discharge their treated domestic wastewater,” said Rolf Halden of the Biodesign Institute’s Center for Environmental Biotechnology.

At issue is the longevity of chemicals that have not been broken down or eliminated by wastewater treatment plants or by nature itself. The amplifying effect is demonstrated in shellfish, microorganisms, and other bottom feeders that are charged with cleaning estuarine beds.

“If we continue to use persistent antimicrobial compounds at the current rate, we are outpacing nature’s ability to decompose these problematic compounds,” Halden said.

While the issue is not at all abstract, it is – as all frontline research – largely academic.

How can the average household – that is increasingly familiar with the microbial world and concerned about the migrations of that small and determined microbial world – change its hygienic behaviors?

“The irony is that these compounds have no measurable benefit over the use of regular soap and water for hand washing,” offered Halden. “The contact time is simply too short.”

In 2002, a study conducted by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) – and presented at the 40th Annual Meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) – found that antibacterial soaps are no better at killing germs than regular soap.

The rise of antibacterial products is a reflection of inadequate usage of regular soaps. In studies conducted by the Harvard Health Letter, large numbers of people failed to wash their hands regularly or to dry them properly. These behaviors have yielded the idea that regular soaps do not adequately protect against germs.

While it is certainly understandable to seek protection against unseen microbial threats, it is far more calculating – in a long-term manner – to adjust to those same threats without undermining the estuarine ecology and the intricate food chains that we have yet to fully appreciate or to understand.

Processed Meats Are Carcinogens – Who’s Telling America? (originally published in Ground Report, April 13, 2008)

The World Cancer Research Fund recently announced that eating just one sausage a day increases the chances of developing bowel cancer by 20 percent. The recommendation from the UK-headquartered cancer charity amounts to an outright avoidance of all processed meats: bacon, ham, pastrami, hot dogs, bologna, sausage, pepperoni, beef jerky, liverwurst, and certain kinds of ground beef and meatballs.

The World Cancer Research Fund’s assertion effectively catalogues these meat products as carcinogens.

I asked a spokesperson for the National Meat Association to provide me with some guidance as to why these processed meat products should remain on store shelves, and he said that he had only heard of the report “tangentially” and pointed me to the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. However, I did not receive a return phone call from the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association in time for this report.

I have been jogging slap-footedly off and on – one of my sloppy attempts to burn off the residue from the many years of processed food products that I have consumed. But the aerobic activities I have long considered protection for the heart. Cancer is entirely another matter. While exercise certainly helps reduce the cancer risk, environmental cellular mutations – such as too much sun or poor food choices – are reflections of exposures.

Too many exposures eventually breed mutations.

Meat is a fabric of American culture, and processed meat products in particular are endemic to the society.

The cultural demand for processed meat products include everything from baseball parks to Fourth of July cookouts to the broad swaths of American breakfast, lunch, snack, and dinner choices. The breadth of availability of these products – and the volume of their consumption in the U.S. alone – is enough to support bowel cancer rates for generations. In 2005, the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council estimated that Americans would consume 150 million hot dogs on July 4th of that year alone – that is roughly one hot dog for every two people.

How many pepperoni pizza slices are consumed in a given day in America? How many bologna sandwiches are sent off in children’s lunch bags daily?

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine is now suggesting vegetarianism. “Vegetarians are about 40 percent less likely to get cancer than non-vegetarians, regardless of other risks such as smoking, body size, and socioeconomic status.”

Vegetarianism is not at all akin to apple pie and baseball in America. According to the Vegetarian Resource Group, only 2.5 percent of the U.S. population can be considered vegetarians. Given this, the likelihood of tofu dogs at the ballpark is quite slim.

Worldwide, the broad consumption of animal flesh across a society’s population is considered a luxury. America – as the global poster child for affluence and consumerism – can certainly be found at the pinnacle of such well-endowed societies.

Considering the dangers posed by processed meat products and the vast consumption of those products by the U.S. population, should the Food and Drug Administration or some other responsible and rightful government body step in and – at a minimum – sound the alarm?

Well, maybe not.

Meat is big business in America. IBISWorld pegged the U.S. meat, beef, and poultry processing industry at $150 billion in 2005. That kind of money can certainly buy silence.

On Threespine Sticklebacks and Other Reversals (originally published on Ground Report - May 18, 2008)

The threespine stickleback, a tiny freshwater fish native to Lake Washington, has gone retro.

In what researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center are labeling a case of “reverse evolution,” the species has reinstated a bony plated armor it once utilized to survive attacks from predators – and it has accomplished this reversal in an unusually fast period of time and in response to dramatic changes in its environment.

While evolutionary biology is not a linear process from “lesser” to “greater,” (as it is often conveyed, even in some scientific circles), the threespine stickleback’s reintroduction of a feature it once deployed against predatory threats should likely be celebrated instead for its agile adaptation to a rapidly changing environment.

Less can be said of the polar bear, for example, having very recently joined the endangered species list due in large part to the narrow scope of icy habitat it requires.

The plight of the polar bear is uniformly tethered to climate change, a macro-topic that has experienced a notable reversal of its own. Tom Knutson, a renowned meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s fluid dynamics lab in Princeton, New Jersey, has long held that the number of Atlantic hurricanes correlates to global warming through the amplified effect of an increasingly warmer ocean. His new study, published today in the journal Nature Geoscience, argues “against the notion that we’ve already seen a dramatic increase in Atlantic hurricane activity resulting from greenhouse warming.” In fact, his computer models now predict that by the end of the century Atlantic hurricanes will decrease by 18 percent.

Knutson cited the variable beyond the linear equation of warmer = more as “wind factors.”

There has been a good deal of intellectual investment on the part of the meteorological community around the warmer = more equation – and others have come out to dispute the new Knutson report. And while Knutson said his new computer model provides merely a “coarse overview,” it is a reversal nonetheless in his earlier predictive confidence.

The creation and deletion of equations and of truths defines the uncertain nature of science – and reversals, while sometimes painful, usually offer rewards in terms of meaningful insights. This is found often in the objective study of economics or of warfare – where the most disorderly retreats yield intellectual treasures that can be applied for future advancements.

It is a common misperception to equate a reversal to a loss. This is particularly true while one is in the midst of a struggle. Ask an oncologist about the cruelty of a prior “win” being overturned by an enigmatic foe – the reversal is experienced in the eyes of the consumed patient, and the emotion that is inevitably attached to that reversal colors it a most dark loss.

But follow the study of martial arts and reversals are raw opportunity.

We should likely thank the threespine stickleback for having taught us something. It has become less desirable for the predators that would happily devour it. In this regard, it has successfully gone from “greater” to “lesser.” It is an opportunist, but one that does not discard its prior lessons. And it is an antihero – a cunning collector of seemingly perishable losses for the greater and more sustainable wins, reversals for the bolder move forward.

Meat of The Matter - Housing Recession Piece

Recently, The Wall Street Journal ran a story on the U.S. housing recession that explained the crisis as a failure of the housing-for-all-citizens experiment. One of the key points of the WSJ piece was that not every American should own property - and that this population should simply rent.

This recession is particularly frustrating because it was born from irresponsible behavior and from sheer stupidity. And, like all pandemics, many intelligent and responsible people are getting caught up in the poor decisions of a disturbingly large population of folks that simply are not capable of making adult-like decisions.

It was under this influence that I wrote the housing bubble piece. While it had more opinionated perspectives than I would have liked to utilize, I still felt a need to get it out there.

http://www.groundreport.com/US/No-U-S-Housing-Bubble-Just-Poor-Financial-Judgment

Meat of The Matter - Obama Church/State Story

It has become all too engrossing - watching the democratic presidential candidates deconstruct each other. But the Reverend Wright story just kept pecking away at me; there was something there that was not really being explored. I kept thinking: why do these politicians go to such lengths to be photographed in pews; to be requesting of a Christian God to bless the country? Why this pursuit if we are indeed a secular society that brandishes our separation of church and state?

Senator Obama presented an additional concern. Given his near-socialist sensibilities, why would he bother with the attention of any minister? One could say that it is a "black thing," and many in the media did say just that. But it is more. I also read reports that Obama's choice of that particular church reflected more a pursuit of popularity - as that particular parish is the most popular among Chicago's African American community. That seems like a more apt political move.

But this is a broader issue - and one that the country is going to have to come to terms with if we are ever truly going to live up to our "melting pot" status. Can we be a beacon of freedom and liberty for the rest of the world (think of the Muslim and Hindu populations alone) if our elected establishment actively seeks courtship with Christian church leaders and other Christian communities?

I thought Obama had transcended that. He even wrote about it in his editorial to USA Today.

Check out the Obama church/state piece at GroundReport...

http://www.groundreport.com/Politics/Barack-Obama-and-the-Blurring-of-Church-State-Line

Laughter as Good Medicine – Biological Findings Proving Health Benefits

I recently caught a television report on the health benefits of adequate sleep. A number of volunteers were subjected to sleep deprivation – either through scheduled deep-sleep disturbances or through truncated sleeping hours. The discoveries from these studies provided alarming ties to everything from diabetes to obesity to national automobile accident statistics.

As we become increasingly familiar with our own biology and with the positive influences on the sustenance of our vast biological systems, health advocates and advisors continue to update the guidelines. The staples from the health establishment have long been centered on eating right and exercising, the science being grounded in what we intake and what we burn. Credit the endocrine system for teaching us that we also need roughly 8 hours of sleep daily – and proper sleep has been added to the optimum health roadmap.

Now it may be time for us to look more closely at the benefits of laughter. Since laughter has long been considered the best medicine, it is certainly worthy of the analysis.

“Laughter, along with an active sense of humor, may help protect you against a heart attack.” This statement is attributed to the very recent University of Maryland School of Medicine study on laughter and heart disease. According to the findings, “People with heart disease were 40 percent less likely to laugh in a variety of situations compared to people of the same age without heart disease.”

A serious disposition could introduce you to a chest saw. But what is it about laughter that brings comfort to the heart?

“We don’t know yet why laughing protects the heart,” said Michael Miller, MD, Director of the Center for Protective Cardiology at the University of Maryland Medical Center. “But we know that mental stress is associated with impairment of the endothelium, the protective barrier lining our blood vessels. This can cause a series of inflammatory reactions that lead to fat and cholesterol build-up in the coronary arteries and ultimately to a heart attack.”

There are other benefits to laughter as well; a good giggle session can help boost the immune system – as Mike Adams writes in his feature for Natural News: “At the biophysical level, laughter moves lymph fluid around your body simply by the convulsions you experience during the process of laughing; so it boosts immune system function and helps clear out old, dead waste products from organs and tissues. Remember that your lymph system doesn’t have a separate pump; your body needs to move around to properly circulate lymph fluid so that your immune system can carry out its natural functions. Laughter is a great way to support that.”

In these days of more virulent infectious disease and the myriad stress levels encountered in day-to-day life, it is a pleasant surprise to learn that something as enjoyable as laughing (relative to, say, consuming more broccoli) should be incorporated into the healthy living mix. But how can humor be incorporated into a given day? Dr. Miller offers this advice: “We could perhaps read something humorous or watch a funny video and try to find ways to take ourselves less seriously.”

Taking oneself less seriously may be a tall order for many of us – but a treadmill and a bottle of vitamin water are just pieces to the overall health package. If personal longevity is an important goal, then the plan very well may be to eat right, exercise, sleep well, and go to a stand-up comedy club.

Lufthansa’s “Professional Maneuver” – Is it Wise to Fly into Notable Surface Winds at Airports?

It is early March and a storm system is moving through. This is what the meteorologists tell us; they have moving moisture simulations and low-pressure markings and a lot of confidence. But the urgent and violent winds that push now against the windows and whistle in the gutters and bend the naked wintered trees are something more than a benign attribution – more than an act of “moving through.” They are gale force winds.

We listen to the gusts and the ticking of the joints that hold the house together, and we watch the taller trees succumb to the surging air’s assault. And I can hear the airplanes circling nearby Newark Liberty International Airport.

How are they going to land and why are they even thinking about it?

I recently took a propeller plane to Raleigh, North Carolina for business. I was not aware that propeller planes were used for intermediate distances in the Nuclear Age, and the landing experience was particularly “choppy” (to use the pilot’s aeronautical vernacular) due to the breezy conditions of the surface air in Raleigh. Since we had been asked upon boarding to spread about the cabin in order to better distribute the weight, I should have expected the kind of World War II era choppiness that we encountered in our disorderly descent.

But the planes above Newark are large commercial jets and the winds outside are fierce and random – and one has to wonder how the pilots and the air traffic controllers can assess and predict. How are the pilots confident that a strong wind gust will not hit their airplane in the vital seconds before touchdown?

The aeronautics industry refers to the sudden changes in wind direction or speed as “wind shear.” The term became a household word in the U.S. in the mid-80s after two significant airplane crashes were attributed to wind shear and were responsible for killing nearly 300 people. Something had to be done to identify and to maneuver through or around wind shear events.

The problem has not been fully solved – or really even solved at all. According to Boeing, “wind shear was the seventh most common cause of fatal jet accidents worldwide during the past 10 years.” However, there is a sense among certain authoritative circles that the wind shear issue is behind us and that technology introduced to commercial jetliners has overcome the safety question. Referencing NASA, “an adaptation of Doppler radar – the storm prediction tool used by many television meteorologists – sends a laser ahead of the aircraft to reflect energy from aerosols (minute particles) of moisture and to measure the motion of the moisture. This translates into wind speed, and pilots can use this information to be aware of changing conditions. Because of this radar, combined with computer generated alerts, wind shear crashes have all but been eliminated from the skies.”

Tell that to the passengers and crew of the Lufthansa jet that nearly crashed on March 2, 2008 after being broadsided by a violent wind gust while attempting to land at Hamburg. The video footage of this attempt can be found on Youtube.com, where the plane is seen coming in effectively sideways before dipping a wing into the ground and lifting off again hurriedly. While Lufthansa praised the pilots for their “absolutely professional maneuver,” the Associated Press reported on what is seen in the video footage – that “the left wing grazed the runway for a moment.” The question here likely is, why attempt a landing in gale force winds that were described by the Guardian as causing “chaos in Germany and other Central European countries over the weekend?” Is such an attempt a praise-worthy professional maneuver or is it foolishness?

So, we are left with another modern conundrum – coming to a collective understanding that we are subject to the randomness of unguided air displacement. The well-traveled among us can certainly share stories of experiences with tailwinds and crosswinds and headwinds – and these stories are at times uncomfortably harrowing. But have we come to an understanding on the dangerous decisions made between air traffic controllers and pilots during questionable turbulent wind events at airports worldwide?

According to Michigan Tech’s Geological and Mining and Engineering and Sciences Department, “the following three things are vital to the survival of an aircraft while experiencing extreme wind shear: altitude at which shear is experienced, the pilot’s experience, and type of aircraft.” Perhaps a fourth vitality should be included in this assessment: the decision of whether or not to go ahead with take-off or landing maneuvers in high wind environments. Or are those crashes catalogued by the airline industry under “pilot error?”

Why The United States Will Not Withdraw From NAFTA

Senator Barack Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton caused a stir with recent promises to rust belt voters that the United States would unilaterally withdraw from NAFTA unless certain environmental and labor concessions are addressed. In taking a closer look at the structuring of NAFTA and the history of the agreement, full withdrawal from NAFTA may not be necessary – as the environmental and labor issues have been fully considered. While in any trade agreement it is reasonable to review the parameters of the agreement over time to ensure fair compliance as needs and questions arise, NAFTA is an atypical trade agreement.



Since its incarnation more than a decade ago, NAFTA has benefited the economies of all three partners – and it is widely seen as a successful trade arrangement. According to the Office of the United States Trade Representative, NAFTA created the world’s largest free trade area. “The total volume of trade among the three NAFTA partners expanded from $289 billion in 1993 to $623 billion in 2003,” the US Trade Representative’s Office states. By wide measures, the agreement has been good for the American people. “Income gains and tax cuts from NAFTA were worth up to $930 each year for the average U.S. household of four.”



But NAFTA also represents a curiosity in scope. The DNA of the agreement is in the promotion of trade and the prospect of gains in overall North American continental and individual national commerce – and yet it is tethered to trilateral side arrangements on environmental and labor issues. Many of these straddling issues were born out of the U.S. congress at NAFTA’s inception, and the stickiest components are generally found in those side questions.



In 2000, a report from the U.S. Department of State summarized the history behind the issues. “Further environmental (and labor) assurances were needed to secure passage of NAFTA, and ultimately, the parties agreed to a side accord that promotes trilateral cooperation on environmental matters and includes provisions to address a party’s failure to enforce environmental laws.”



The U.S. Department of State report also highlights an oddity in the democratic senators’ recent comments in Ohio on pulling out of NAFTA entirely. “Candidate William Clinton endorsed NAFTA but promised to negotiate side accords on environmental and labor issues.” There was a very clear intent to establish these separate pieces on labor and on the environment – both of which are independently negotiable from the core NAFTA document. “In September 1993, the three NAFTA governments signed the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC), which includes provisions to address a party’s failure to enforce environmental laws.”



NAAEC is a unique platform for Senator Clinton or Senator Obama to renegotiate environmental terms should either of them become president. In addition, a side agreement on labor – called the North American Agreement for Labor Cooperation (NAALC) – was established. In March 2004, UCLA’s Center for Labor Research and Education concluded, “The NAACL has failed to protect workers’ rights to safe jobs and is in danger of fading into oblivion.”



While there are numerous issues on NAAEC and NAALC grounds, each of these protocols – negotiated with the open knowledge of the Clintons in particular – stand as acceptable environments from which to launch further revisions and adjustments. Given this unique structure, there is no need to even suggest withdrawing from the NAFTA agreement – other than as an advantageous political appeal to the unionized rust belt, where labor costs have ballooned beyond the manufacturing thresholds that exist elsewhere in the United States and in the broader world.



The disassembly of NAFTA would amount to broad economic hardship and would be political suicide for any U.S. administration – and with NAAEC and NAALC in place, it is unnecessary to tamper with the centerpiece of NAFTA. On Senator Clinton’s campaign trail, former President Bill Clinton referred to Senator Obama’s White House bid as a “fairy tale.” The same moniker can be applied here. The dissolution of NAFTA is a broad-scale fairy tale.

The Collision of Populations, Tequila, and Other Poisons

We labor remarkably to hone our poisons.

I am watching Lou Dobbs on CNN and he is talking about immigrants and the crumbling status of the United States and the internal rot the American empire is enduring. A bloated border manager from a dusty Texas outcropping is featured in a discussion about the failure of various fences and fencing technologies. The federal government is abandoning the virtual fence application altogether – and this is troubling. Demographic profiles of Texas and California are put on screen and demonstrate an unsurprising composition of Latino populations in those states, and there is footage of people dropping over a tin-sheeted border demarcation and scampering off.

Mexico is expanding northward.

I think about the many reasons for one population growing into another adjacent one. The lead reason likely is found in a more macro view – a natural need to fill vacuums. This plays out on the kind of large scale that is reasonably overlooked by sociologists and politicians. These vacuums might be found in undesirable jobs or in excess food or in the general continuance of more basic responsibilities and less desirable habitats. And the expansion is unwelcomed – an odor among the cleaner and more regal indigenous people – as it is unwelcomed in other locales where the spores of other cultures are sprouting, as seen in Europe and in Africa and in Asia.

It must be better to cleave the grind of any two populations with some kind of formidable wall. Construction of anything is a stimulus. The side effects of division are concepts for mathematics.

I have consumed the Mexican sun – browned where I have been, humbled in the searing where the country bowed before me, opened in the crawl of the eastern white sand beaches and in the slow slap of the bluer water. I have negotiated nothing in markets where I am happily misunderstood, holding trinkets and bearing no fruit. In these loose and vagrant regards I am a nihilistic embodiment of Mexico’s long-toothed and sharp-edged agave.

There are four types of tequila. Blanco – commonly referred to as silver or white in the English tongue – is blue agave in its purest form. Blanco is clear and without the touch or delay of aging. In contrast, gold tequila is adulterated with colorants and flavorings. These gold tequilas are the cheaper tequilas used in many restaurants and found undulating in mixed drinks. Additionally, there are two aged varieties: reposada, an early barrel-aged product that gives off a golden hue – and anejo, highlighted by a minimum aging period of one year and identified in an amber color and in flavors that are dependent on the barreling.

The effort to produce these varieties demonstrates a broader equation: the energetic pursuit in tethering the poison is greater than the ties.

The process of producing tequila begins when the blue agave plant is ripe – usually eight to twelve years after it is planted. On average, a decade passes from germination to cultivation. The rough leaves are chopped away from the core, and the core – which weighs between forty and seventy pounds on average – is assessed for ripeness. Ripe cores are brought to the distillery where they are chopped up and set to roast. The roasting converts starches into sugars and the roasted cores are shredded and the resulting juices are pressed into fermenting tanks where select yeast recipes are added to convert the sugars into alcohol.

It takes roughly 15 pounds of agave core to make one quart of tequila.

I traded voicemails with Bill Ligas, public relations director for Barton’s Capitan tequila brand, and explained my intention as a writer for Ground Report to better understand what one tequila brand may have over another. He did not have anything for me, but Bacardi’s Corzo tequila staff pointed me to their PR agency, Harrison and Shriftman. According to a press release sent to me by Danielle Abraham at Harrison and Shriftman, Corzo was “created for stylish, urban trendsetters with a passion for sharing fun and innovation…” They go on to explain about the design of the bottle and of the overall experience.

I am uncertain if bottles and the experience of the trendsetting consumer are important.

It is the people with their rudimentary shears, toiling and cutting as they are – out there under the closer Mexican sun. They stay with me. The poison yield continues and the patient crop holders compile their chum and glasscutters are called to make bottles and on it goes. Where is the transcendent importance in this?

And so fences are embellished and rhetoric is refined – because the more concrete and the more immediate is more important. And some of us write about it and post it and look for fellowship. This is random and anonymous activity that is without reward.

We are rated by peers and ignored by the inebriated.

Can the New York Times Company Remain Viable and Relevant?

These are curiously masochistic days for the New York Times Company. Stumbling now into what will likely be a distracting proxy fight with an investor group that happens also to be their largest shareholder, there does not seem to be a correct decision coming from either their commercial or editorial divisions.

Last week, the New York Times Company announced an agreement with Tribune, Gannet, and Hearst to form Quadrant One – an online sales conglomerate designed to sell advertising inventory across the many local newspaper sites owned by the four media companies. The new entity has been described to the advertising community as an attempt to make it easier for advertisers to purchase online media across a broad swath of local markets, but in truth it is an arrangement that effectively wipes out the brand equity of the participating local newspaper sites. These local newspapers were clearly properties that the New York Times Company felt necessary to acquire way back when. To now put the local web components – and the individual futures of the local newspapers’ declining print businesses – into an anonymous commercial bucket with three other media companies that frankly the New York Times Company does not need is nothing less than admitting that the local properties have little value.

Dana Hayes, the interim CEO of Quadrant One – and full-time SVP of advertising sales for Tribune Interactive – spoke with Advertising Age. “Specific inventory will go into Quadrant One. Premium positions and units above the fold will go in,” he said. The most desirable online advertising inventory across New York Times Company’s local newspaper sites will be represented by competitors of the New York media empire – under the umbrella of providing an ease-of-use consultative service to national advertisers. The advertisers are, in turn, able to buy this inventory at rates that will likely reflect the dismissive nature of the Quadrant One establishment – in other words, rates that reflect a commodity.

But while questionable commercial decisions can be quietly corrected at a later date, grand editorial mistakes at a newspaper that was once considered a champion of integrity have longer-term consequences. The decision to run with the McCain story during this most important presidential election year may prove to be the New York Times’ biggest blunder.

Earlier today, MarketWatch labeled the New York Times an “embarrassment” and went on to say that the paper “lowered itself to the rank of shrill tabloid.” MarketWatch is a notable Wall Street voice – something the New York Times Company does not need under the backdrop of proxy fights and stock price declines. The stock was down more than 3% today alone.

While one could argue that MarketWatch sits at an opposite speculative pole to that of New York Times, the reliance on anonymous sources has brought universal media scrutiny to the editorial team at the paper. Bill Keller, the paper’s editor, is now publicly stating that he is surprised at the magnitude of the negative reaction.

In this era of consumer-generated editorial, rising blogger and independent writer influences, professional journalism is under siege – and the McCain piece did not help the profession. The New York Times Company exists on the foundation of its content; it has no other diversity in the company’s portfolio of offerings. The company’s future viability rests on the respect of its readership, and the McCain fiasco is putting a bad taste in the collective mouths of that declining readership.

And while it is true that the paper does brandish its leftist slant with a somewhat unsettling frequency, it is also true that the current presidential contest is unearthing a growing population of people who do not readily embody a particular party’s philosophy. It is not a large leap to assume that this population does not have the stomach for the creep of editorial perspective in what is otherwise deemed to be a reliable news source. For these reasons, independent and more neutral sources are continuing to take mindshare – and the share of advertising dollars – from the New York Times Company.

In these unstable times for the newspaper business, the implosion at such an esteemed journalism brand is remarkable. With the proxy fight on the horizon, one does not know for whom to cheer. It seems that the folks at the company may need to be saved from themselves.

Potions and Antidotes - What Cures the Hangover?

The hangover remedy is perhaps the one subject that invites the most derelict among us to confidently assess both the biology and chemistry at work in the act of poisoning the self - for the express purpose of creating a master potion that can be admired and remarked upon by the evening's survivors. Since the act of consuming alcohol is an act of self-inflicted poisoning, we should have the kind of elaborate antidotes one might find in a 16th century theatrical production. These are remedies built out of painful experiences - and before we can examine these morning-after miracles, we should understand a bit more about what determines the extent of the poison's damage.

Hangovers are built upon seven foundations.

1. The amount of alcohol consumed over time. The liver breaks down approximately one drink per hour. If you consume two drinks in the first hour, you enter your second hour with one full drink still fresh in your system. If you consume two more drinks in your second hour, then your third hour begins with two full drinks circulating in your blood - and so on.
2. Age. The older you get, the harder it is to recover. In general, a 21-year-old is going to fair much better after six SoCo & lime shots than a 40-year-old.
3. Weight. The lighter you are, the harder you fall. This is a brutal truth, and it is seen time and again in mismatched weight groups who are gathered at the bar and keeping pace with each other.
4. Genetics. Some of us are better able to digest the fermented juices. Genetic predisposition in favor of alcohol consumption is found particularly among European descendants.
5. Food ingested prior to imbibing. Drinking on an empty stomach allows for faster absorption into the bloodstream and is all too often a disastrous path.
6. Hydration. "With each drink, you effectively lose more water than you take in - and that leads to all sorts of problems, like a searing headache," writes Maureen Farrell in Forbes.
7. Congeners. These are the toxic chemicals that are formed during fermentation. In general, the darker drinks - red wine, bourbon, scotch - contain more congeners than the lighter options, like white wine, gin, and vodka.

The ideal cure for a hangover should look first to those seven foundations. Am I drinking too quickly? Is my drinking crowd considerably younger than I am - or notably heavier than me? These are somewhat easy to measure. The question of genetics is tougher, and there you simply have to look to yourself: how many drinks can I really handle to maintain a pleasant day tomorrow? Make sure you eat something before you go out - and ensure that you mix non-alcoholic beverages into the overall volume of fluids consumed, preferably water.

Hangovers can be prevented - or at least lessened - in the types of alcohol we select. Consume lots of red wine and you are going to be in trouble; stick with a high-end 100% blue agave tequila and you may emerge unscathed. Choice can go a long way in determining your morning.

But if prevention is thrown to the wind, what is the magic formula that can make the misery end? Well, this author has heard several over the years: a double espresso with an egg and some sugar; coconut juice (not coconut milk) and a lime; club soda and four dashes of bitters (whatever they are); on and on the creative chemists go. These examples each have elements of the four ingredients that compose the real remedy - headache pills, Alka-Seltzer, certain vitamins, and sports drinks.

Headache pills should only be taken at the onset of the hangover. It is a popular misconception that they should be taken on the night of the binging. If consumed before bedtime, aspirins will only cause your stomach to become more irritated when you really need to sleep and ibuprofen will mess with your liver when your liver is already overloaded.
Alka-Seltzer. The old plop-plop fizz-fizz model will put a ravaged stomach at bay.
Vitamin B, C, and E. Alcohol consumption of three or more drinks is actually quite damaging to the body. According to the Life Extension Foundation, "The consumption of alcohol results in the formation of two very toxic compounds, acetaldehyde and malondialdehyde. These compounds generate massive free-radical damage to cells throughout the body. The free-radical damage generated by these alcohol metabolites creates an effect in the body similar to that caused by radiation poisoning. That is the reason why people feel so sick the day after consuming too much alcohol." Referencing LEF again, vitamins B, C, and E are "nutrients that neutralize alcohol byproducts and protect cells against the damaging effects of alcohol."
Sports drinks provide more nutrient absorption than water and are additionally fortified with salt, a vital component in dehydration recovery.

There are two other popular hangover cures to avoid. It is commonly thought - among people that really do need to talk to somebody - that additional alcohol will help, but any more consumption during a hangover is just going to amplify the problem. It is also a mistake to consume coffee, as the last thing you want in your body is a diuretic.

While the best potion to ward off the crushing headache and queasy innards is really found in prevention, it is all too common that we will face that uncomfortable morning - and when that aching sun comes up, it is good to know that there are antidotes in the universe.

With Recession in Mind - Advice for Intelligent Job Seekers

An effective job search requires depth of thought in alternative planning and in networking. It is important to follow a unique and intelligent methodology that separates one candidate from the rest of the population. In this regard, there are three strategies that should be incorporated - creative research, horizontal networking, and vertical networking.

Few people take the time to employ creative research in their job search methodologies - and this is a mistake. Any job search first begins with some kind of core research - how big the company is; where it is headquartered; an understanding of the basic divisions; etc. Core research is the most basic and benign, but as one gets closer to reaching out to the company in question - the research has to become more creative.

Regardless of the desired division, hiring managers need to understand revenue streams - and an intelligent applicant will reflect some knowledge on revenue. This information is readily available for all publicly-traded companies. One creative way to access this information quickly is to keep an online stock trading account open. For example, Ameritrade offers an ideal depth of revenue information on any public company - and this information is key to providing more color on the financial stature of a particular firm.

Company web sites are somewhat obvious places to visit when doing research, but going deeper into their media sections will usually yield some good nuggets of information. The media sections are usually found in the About Us areas - and here the applicant is looking for press releases, collected news stories, and anything that features quotes from company employees. When reading these documents, seek quotation marks - and who is attributed to the given remark. In future conversations with hiring managers, a reflection on an interesting quote made in these pages will yield a good amount of respect for the job candidate.

Social networks are a wonderful source for creative research. Linked-In and Facebook are the best properties in this regard. Linked-In will provide details on where a prospective hiring manager went to school, where they worked before, how many industry connections they have, how long they have been with the company, etc. This is extremely valuable information. Facebook demonstrates another color of the rainbow by yielding information on lifestyle interests - sports, books, travel, etc. These are great conversation pieces - and, when reflected upon, demonstrate a prospective candidate's determination and resourcefulness.

Networking horizontally with peers is fundamental to an effective job search. Industry events offer opportunities to build relationships with colleagues at other companies, and much can be learned about corporate cultures from these exchanges. It is not uncommon for peers to be aware of opportunities throughout the industry or to point the job seeker toward an effective recruiter. Peer relationships can have further benefits when it comes to references, and the horizontal network that is established will likely be with the candidate for the full term of a career.

Vertical networking is often overlooked by those that are seeking another job. This is a longer-term approach, but one that is built on a great platform. It is usually established a full year before an active job search is underway. Looking up the chain, it is smart to identify a mentor - and to work with this person on projects that will have exposure to others in the industry. These projects and these mentors will often offer clues and insight into other areas of responsibility that may or may not be of interest to the job seeker. Delving into an approach like this can lay the groundwork for a very effective job search - as there is an identification with the mentor and/or the projects at hand. Of course, should any of the people that make up the vertical network move on to other opportunities elsewhere, a fine contact database for the candidate is born.

Vertical networking down the chain should not be ignored. Many direct reports have friends in other companies, and these relationships may be of interest. Direct reports may also have relationships with customers that can yield valuable data on a future prospect. While this approach is somewhat tricky and depends largely on the relationship with the direct reports in question, it can set up some solid introductions for a future prospect.

Searching for a job is not always fun, but the above methodologies should make it more effective.

In a 2008 Recession, Look to Internet Media Companies

2008 is clearly going to present more discomfort in the financial markets - with the leering potential for an ugly recession on the horizon across the broader economic landscape. The credit crunch in the U.S. financial institutions - and the necessary discipline those institutions must exercise with over-extended consumers - is starving out the same spend-happy populations that usually feed corporate profits. This cycle will hit certain sectors harder than others. On the most basic level, any purchase that can be deemed unnecessary will likely suffer first. Examples of this include many product offerings in consumer electronics and technology.

However, should one choose to play the stock market in the 2008 recession, internet media companies might be one area to examine more closely. The curiosity about internet media is that the fragmentation is so extreme that predictive models employed in other sectors have zero value when utilized here. When referencing the internet, people are willing to talk about bubbles bursting again - and that is certainly going to happen with the many start-ups and ill-conceived business models out there - but the right brands with the right characters behind those brands will thrive in a recession.

The general media sector has long needed to go through a correction - and 2008 may provide that correction in the form of a recession. The television business - now in a costly writers strike - has made very little progress in evolving. Speaking to the advertising side of the business, the existence of Tivo alone is a ridiculous factor in the viability of tv networks to grow revenue. Nielsen - the media measurement company responsible for tv ratings - has begun issuing different measurement terms for advertisers to better understand viewership of their commercials. The learnings from the Nielsen change have had huge impact on many big name cable networks. Given this - and the Tivo effect, whereby consumers are bypassing television advertising altogether - the return on investment (ROI) in television is increasingly not there. Throw in a recession, and advertisers are going to have to look elsewhere.

On the print side of the business, material costs are going higher. Inflationary pressures on paper are notable - as more demand for wood products globally takes its toll. These back-end increases in costs are affecting newspapers and magazines alike. It is also becoming more costly to satisfy delivery demand. With oil prices at record levels, the cost to ship a magazine or a newspaper from one location to another is affecting the business model. Circulations are dropping, and subscription costs and advertising costs are rising. And like television, advertisers are asking for more accountability - and this is something that print and television properties cannot provide.

Accountability and interaction are unique to internet advertising - and both are achieved at advertising investments (cost-per-thousand or CPM) that are considerably more reasonable. As the sickle of recession swings its way through the general media environment, more money will shift from the traditional print and tv sources to the more intelligent internet media companies. Consumer trust and recognition of select internet media firms will play an important role as well. As 2008 also represents a presidential election year, those trusted internet media sources will see a greater share of advertising dollars through even the leanest economic cycle.

2008 may remind us of the old Chinese curse: may you live in interesting times. These are interesting times - and if stock picks are of importance, a closer look at the web should be taken.

This Season’s Mean Mycoplasma – Sketching Our Turn With Atypical Pneumonia

The hacking cough is dry this morning – as it was last night and the full and mirthless day before. It is a brittle tapping, meted out in brutal increments from a virgin chest cavity – the thinning rap like that of a taut drum prattling in a cold vacuum. My son is eight years old, and he is in his fifth day of fever and pneumonia. It is the last week of December, and the days and nights everywhere else are dancing in the smiling lights and the happy tick toward another new year.

When the cough comes it does so to wake him and to buck him apart. It has been with us now for a long enough time for it to be referred to as “his cough.” His cough is unproductive. His doctor tells us this. We are given the character of his cough and what we are to expect from it. His cough is a protest and a noise; it is a compression and an irregular release of compressions; it is a thoughtless hammering-on; it is hungry and it is wanting in its hunger.

His cough has made his eyes seem pinned in their darkened lids, and he looks at me with the hesitant knowledge that I hold a combination of everything and nothing in my bottles of antibiotics and Mucinex and cough suppressant and Advil. I am a shuffling pharmacy and an amateur scientist. I am a small dispenser of public knowledge and nervous humor and I am the universe. But we are living through the question – what is this bug that resists the syrups and the coated pills and the remedies?

“Dad,” he asks between the kick of unexpected half-coughs.
“Don’t talk.”
“Am I getting better?” His hair is greasy, slick now with new sweat. His lips are cracked – layered in dead lip debris, dusted in white crust, with lasting orange markings at the corners of his chapped mouth from the few ounces of Gatorade that was forced into him.
“I don’t know,” I say.
He gives me nothing because I have given him nothing. I am raising him in nihilism, and the blank vapid ether that we are both breathing needs noise and color and shape. We seem to realize this together and accept it together. It may be that we can draw on facts, be comforted in the most uncomfortable facts; that we can pull on this full breast together and find inebriation in its nourishment.
“You need to drink,” I tell him.
“I am drinking.”
“Water doesn’t count. The Gatorade has sugars and things called electrolytes. Your body needs these things. Your cells – the little cells that you are made of – need these things.”
“I don’t like the Gatorade. It smells like wax.”
“That’s the pneumonia tricking you. Don’t listen to it.”
He does not look at me when he says this next thing, and I can see ruinous thoughts settling in his face. “Why is it so mean?”

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My son has a red belt in Shotokan karate. It is an achievement that has come after repetition and correction – over and again – correction and repetition, like an ocean smoothing a stone. The Shotokan discipline strives for perfection through repetitive action and the incorporation of diverse katas, which are themselves an increasingly complex series of movements that demand still more repetition in order to be fully understood and mastered.

Over the course of this schooling, he has been asked to break a variety of pine boards, each new one thicker than the last. When the wood does not give, he is asked to throw another strike and then another, his knuckles at times pinker and fleshier in their swelling – the knock of his small bones against the unforgiving square thwacking in a tight echo across the length of the dojo. It is a physical world in need of breaking.

I think of the times he has been stopped there and steadied there in his simple white gi – the times he was asked to imagine a different plane and could not see it. He had been there and not been there – it had been suggested that he be beyond there. And it is the same now. The thing that needs to be broken is not tangible – and yet it is the truer obstacle.

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I am sitting on his mattress in the dark, listening to his short breathing. He is curled up and baking in the hot wrap of his skin. I have forgotten why I am holding a towel, but I have wrapped it around my forearm as if I intend to repel some aggressive animal. Little makes sense – and horribly most of it does. The drugs are not working. I have taken the time now to learn more.

His cough has an identity. It is known in medical circles as Mycoplasma pneumoniae.

According to the CDC, Mycoplasma pneumoniae sends 100,000 Americans to the hospital every year. Its incubation period is one to four weeks, so it is carried quietly. It is the leading cause of pneumonia in school age children, and its trends are unknown.

It is a very small bacterium – one that lacks cell walls. Mycoplasmas are members of the class Mollicutes, which means soft skin. Without a cell wall the organism is resistant to the effects of penicillin and other beta-lactam antibiotics, which disrupt bacterial cell walls. The genetic code of Mycoplasma pneumoniae is more similar to mitochondria than to other bacteria. According to The American Lung Association, “Mycoplasmas are the smallest free-living agents of disease in humankind, unclassified as to whether bacteria or viruses, but having characteristics of both.”

The bacterium causes what is known as atypical pneumonia – a longer fevered sickness with unproductive coughing and general malaise as key features. On a website created for Middlebury College to better understand the Mycoplasma pneumoniae bug, Katherine Howard writes, “There are 5 recently proposed (and controversial) associations between mycoplasma infections and human disease: AIDS, malignant transformation, Gulf War Syndrome, Crohn’s Disease, and Rheumatoid arthritis.”

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I find paper and draw characters that represent white blood cells and characters that represent bacteria. They face each other – in my crude animation – prepared as they are to fight. The fight is demonstrated in violent scribbling lines, irregular slashes and arcs, wide and unstable loops and scores and strikes and stabs. Each white blood cell wears a gi. They drink Gatorade and eat toast, slurp soup and down spooned medicine. At first, the white blood cells lose and die in numbers – and the darker and uglier bacteria cheer. But then the nourishment kicks in, and the white blood cells are awarded red belts. There is a conclusive re-gathering, and the bacteria are routed. This is the storyboard that plays out.

He coughs through his nose, lets me fill another plastic cup with orange-flavored Gatorade. He cracks a small smile. This is all he has, all I can give him. We play it out together and again, repetition and correction – again, correction and repetition.

Handguns, Long Guns, and the Second Amendment – a Supreme Court Decision on Meaning

“A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

This is the second amendment. While it is not over embellished in the tortured bloom of legal English more reflective of its era, it has succumbed to the gray shades of our times and to the scrutiny of a more convoluted and complicated nation.

After considerable debate in the lower courts over a desire by the District of Columbia to institute a sweeping gun ban, the Supreme Court very recently decided to reopen discussion on the meaning of the second amendment. On November 20, 2007, Gun Owners of America issued a press release. “The decision by the Supreme Court to rule on the DC gun ban gives them an historic opportunity to return to the original meaning of the second amendment,” said Gun Owners of America’s Executive Director, Larry Pratt in the release.

But what is a reasonable definition of the arms we have a right to keep and to bear? The DC ban is a comprehensive look at guns in the home – inclusive of both handguns and long guns, such as shotguns and rifles. Long guns do not typically face the same scrutiny as handguns in most states, and this makes the DC ban more aggressive than prior firearm regulations.

It is reasonable to accept bans on certain arms. One can assume that rocket launchers and hand grenades – while arms that might be found in the arsenal of roaming post-apocalyptic militia – are not appropriate for the current American household. Additionally, it is commonly agreed that swords and switchblades are items that beg for confiscation. But handguns and long guns are different matters, and it has long been considered that the second amendment is speaking specifically to them.

The National Rifle Association has forever held that long guns satisfy two reasonable purposes – the right to defend the home and the freedom to hunt wildlife as permitted by law. These are modern amalgamations of the second amendment, as crime and leisure hunting were not on the minds of the Bill of Right’s authors; our founding fathers were more concerned with tyrannies and the potential for aggression from the warring imperialist nations then lurking in the world. However, this modern adaptation seems sound. Should a criminal kick in your door, there is nothing like the sound of a shotgun’s shlick-shlack as the shells slip into their chambers. The DC ban crossed this line and prompted the Supreme Court to take another look.

But what about handguns? According to the Violence Policy Center’s Handgun Ban Backgrounder, “Although handguns make up only 34% of firearms, approximately 80% of firearm homicides are committed with a handgun.” The original DC ban centered on handguns exclusively, as the city had wrestled anxiously with violent crime. A 2006 report from the Legal Community Against Violence, titled Regulating Guns in America, details the effectiveness of the DC handgun ban: “A 1991 study documented the effectiveness of Washington DC’s law banning handguns. Following the enactment of the ban in 1976, there was a 25% decline in homicides committed with firearms and a 23% decline in suicides committed with firearms within the District of Columbia. No similar reductions were observed in the number of homicides or suicides committed by other means, nor were there similar reductions in the adjacent metropolitan areas in Maryland and Virginia.”

The second amendment does not appear to have taken too much of our well-studied and violent present culture into account. Conceived in a time when plumbing had yet to be invented, how prescient can we now expect the Bill of Rights to be? Much of the famed document was written in reaction to a since-extinct monarchy – with an explicit desire to not repeat the ills of that monarchy. While the Supreme Court will have much to deliberate, (it would be a side-note curiosity to understand their definition of “militia” in these post-9/11 days), the second amendment may very well be showing its age.

As weapon technology advances, it seems reasonable to keep some of these deadly items out of the hands of the general population. Many in the anti-gun establishment are seeking compromises that constitute bans based on gun barrel lengths. The decision – for now – is in this generation’s Supreme Court.