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
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Saturday, March 22, 2008
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.
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.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
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?”
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?”
Saturday, March 8, 2008
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)