MICHAEL O. ALLEN

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Brave choices about life

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Jessica Queller (Courtesy of Random House) Mastectomy Before Breast Cancer: One Woman’s Choice-In a new book, TV writer Jessica Queller faces up to carrying the BRCA gene mutation By Beth Brophy

In a new memoir arriving in stores this month, television writer Jessica Queller (Gossip Girl, Gilmore Girls, Felicity, One Tree Hill) recounts her personal encounter with medical science. Four years ago, after watching her mother’s struggle with breast cancer and painful death from ovarian cancer, Queller, now 38, tested positive for the BRCA-1 gene mutation, known as the “breast cancer gene.” She faced these terror-producing statistics: an 87 percent chance of developing breast cancer, a 44 percent chance of developing ovarian cancer—and the possibility of slashing both risks by 90 percent by choosing radical surgeries to remove her breasts and ovaries. Young, single, and hoping to get married and have children, Queller confronted excruciating life and death choices, detailed in Pretty Is What Changes: Impossible Choices, the Breast Cancer Gene, and How I Defied My Destiny (Spiegel & Grau). She spoke about them to U.S. News. Excerpts:

What is breast cancer? True life story Breast screening

You had a double mastectomy and have decided to get pregnant, through a sperm donor, and have your ovaries removed after you turn 40. How have people you know judged your decisions?

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April 1, 2008
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The sky might, er, fall

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Might Mobile Phones Kill More People Than Smoking Or Asbestos? by Christian Nordqvist, Medical News Today

A new study reveals that mobile phones (cell phones) may eventually be responsible for more human deaths than smoking or asbestos. Dr. Vini Khurana, an award-winning cancer expert (14 awards) from Australia, has published some grim study results. Khurana added that government and mobile phone companies should do whatever they can to immediately reduce people’s exposure to radiation.

Khurana, who carried a 15-month critical review of the link between mobile phones and malignant brain tumors, said using mobiles for more than a decade could more than double a person’s risk of developing brain cancer. He added that a ‘solid scientific study’ needs to be carried out on people who have been regular heavy users of mobiles for at least ten years.

Many say mobile phones have not been around long enough for us to make any firm conclusions about their safety. As most tumors (cancers) take about ten years to develop it has been hard to conclude one way or the other. However, we are now reaching a time when certain studies may soon give us some more compelling pointers.

Even so, as a result of previous studies, governments around the world have started telling their people to keep mobile phone usage down to a minimum. The French government has told its children not to use them, while the German government has told its citizens to use them as little as possible. Even the European Environment Agency has advised people to keep exposure down to a minimum.

While Khurana agrees that mobile phones can save lives in emergencies, he states that there is now a significant and growing body of evidence for a link between mobile phone use and the development of some brain tumors. As we move into the next decade Khurana says this evidence will become a reality.

He says that the incidence of brain tumors will grow significantly over the next decade, by which time there is not much that can be done for those who become ill.

Khurana says that the mobile phone danger to public health may be greater than that of asbestos and/or smoking. There are three times as many people globally who use mobiles regularly than there are regular smokers, Khurana points out.

According to the Mobile Operators Association, Khurana’s study does not present a balanced analysis.

— Dr. Vini Khurana
— Read what Khurana has written in more detail

Written by – Christian Nordqvist
Copyright: Medical News Today

April 1, 2008
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Smaller and smaller

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REUTERS/Kimberly White The Nokia N810 Internet Tablet sits on display at the Web. 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, California October 18, 2007.Nokia unveils N810 mobile Internet tablet for WiMax By Sinead Carew

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) – Nokia’s N810 mobile Internet tablet will be one of the first devices designed for a new high-speed wireless network that Sprint Nextel Corp will launch commercially in April.

Nokia on Tuesday unveiled a version of the handheld device, which has a 4.13-inch touch screen, for WiMax — the emerging wireless technology that Sprint is betting on for its next generation of high-speed services.

WiMax promises to blanket cities with mobile Web links that are five times faster than today’s speeds. Like the first N810, which went on sale in the fall, the new version will also work on Wi-Fi, a short-range wireless technology used in hotspots such in coffee shops.

“The difference with WiMax is that you can move out of that hotspot,” Mark Louison, head of Nokia’s North American business, said in an interview ahead of the CTIA annual U.S. wireless show in Las Vegas.

Sprint, which has been seeking outside funding to expand WiMax beyond an initial three markets, has promised to open the network to a wide array of devices, such as music players or cameras, which consumers could buy from any store. The three initial markets are Chicago, Baltimore and Washington, D.C. Sprint has said it would have 10 WiMax devices at launch.

Nokia, the world’s largest mobile phone maker, has trailed Motorola Inc and Samsung Electronics in the United States as it has won little business with U.S. carriers, which tightly control the phones that work on their networks.

There has been uncertainty about the U.S. future of WiMax. Sprint, which is losing customers from its existing service, has said it is re-examining its commitment to spend $5 billion on WiMax by 2010.

Sprint and Clearwire Corp, a smaller WiMax provider, are in talks to combine their WiMax assets in a venture with investment by other companies such as Comcast Corp, Intel Corp and Google Inc, sources familiar with the talks said last week.

Asked if Nokia would consider joining such a venture, Louison said: “Our business model is focusing on building devices and applications that run on devices … We’ve never invested in an operator.”

Even if the U.S. WiMax market evolves more slowly than expected, Louison said Nokia was confident it would find a market for the N810 overseas.

“WiMax is bigger than Sprint,” he said.

The WiMax N810 will be available from Nokia’s online store and its shops in New York and Chicago for $479, Nokia said.

(Editing by Maureen Bavdek)

© Reuters 2007. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.

April 1, 2008
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Not getting the Times

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Yesterday, the leading Democratic candidate for President, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, came to New York City to deliver a major speech on the economy right at the time when the economy appears to be teetering on the edge of a deep recession.

He was introduced by Mayor Michael Bloomberg who himself had flirted with making his own presidential bid as an independent. The two had breakfast. Then the Bloomberg gave Obama a rather warm introduction before his speech at Cooper Union. Obama came to the podium and said, essentially, luv you back, Mr. Mayor.

So, what did The New York Times put on its front page?

You guessed it, its own story on an interview it had with Sen. Hillary Clinton, (D-NY), about her healthcare plan.

Hello? Earth to The New York Times!

March 29, 2008
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'You Who . . .'

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1. ‘Voi ch’ascoltate in rime sparse il suono’

You who hear the sound, in scattered rhymes,
of those sighs on which I fed my heart,
in my first vagrant youthfulness,
when I was partly other than I am,

I hope to find pity, and forgiveness,
for all the modes in which I talk and weep,
between vain hope and vain sadness,
in those who understand love through its trials.

Yet I see clearly now I have become
an old tale amongst all these people, so that
it often makes me ashamed of myself;

and shame is the fruit of my vanities,
and remorse, and the clearest knowledge
of how the world’s delight is a brief dream.

–Petrarch, 1342

March 29, 2008
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Fagles, R.I.P.

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I remember carrying around Robert Fagles translation of Homer, dipping in occasionally.

Years later, I became enthralled when I came across a rare copy of Alexander Pope’s 1802 translation of “The Odyssey.” I paid too much money for it and spent seven times what I paid for it restoring the book. The two volumes sits on a shelf in my house now. I don’t dare open them, for fear of damaging them. I bought paperback copies of them and I read those.

Fagles, who managed somehow to make the classics readable, died this past week.

March 29, 2008
SIDEBAR
Translating Homer: To Each His Own Muse

Robert Fagles’s translations departed markedly from those of his predecessors, as shown below in the opening lines of “The Odyssey.”

Robert Fagles (1996)

Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns
driven time and again off course, once he had plundered
the hallowed heights of Troy.

Robert Fitzgerald (1961)

Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story
of that man skilled in all ways of contending,
the wanderer, harried for years on end,
after he plundered the stronghold
on the proud height of Troy.

Alexander Pope (1726)

The Man, for wisdom’s various arts renown’d,
Long exercis’d in woes, O Muse! resound.
Who, when his arms had wrought the destin’d fall
Of sacred Troy, and raz’d her heav’n-built wall. . . .

George Chapman (1616)

The man, O Muse, informe, that many a way
Wound with his wisedome to his wished stay;
That wanderd wondrous farre when He the towne
Of sacred Troy had sackt and shiverd downe.

March 29, 2008
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A misnomer

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I can’t say that I’ve ever spent much time pondering why they call this class of computer electronics ‘smart phone,’ but now that John Lancaster mentions it . . .

Here’s Mr. Lancaster:

There is no getting around the fact that the things sound demoralisingly nerdy. To the lay consumer, what “smart” means is “horribly complicated, unnecessarily over-specified, dominated by features no sane person will ever use, liable to do ruinously expensive things to your data tariff without your realising until too late, and weirdly bad at everyday stuff like, you know, making phone calls”.

I want an i Phone, of course, but not at the going rate. The writer had one and marvels at what’s coming down the pike:

So the task for the manufacturers is to make smartphones as simple-seeming and easy as possible, and let the features sort of sneak up on the user – and one way round this is to make the interface as intuitive as possible, so the underlying complexity is hidden. That way, non-nerds will buy them. Engineers need careful handling if they’re to do this right: consider the VCR, for instance, which over time got more rather than less complicated, so that nobody over the age of about 30 could make one work.

LG has had a good go at this and the KF600 menu structure is about as clear and helpful as anything apart from Apple’s iPhone. It uses two screens, the lower one a sliding touch screen with four-way arrows, and the menus are context-sensitive and interactive in a helpful way: so when you’re playing music, they’re play and pause controls; when you’re scrolling through contacts, they’re to do with ways of contacting people, and so on. The phone puts few obstacles in the way of actually being used. I had to RTFM a couple of times, but nothing untoward. And call quality is OK – not fabulous, but OK.

As to whether the phone will win converts, I’m not so sure. My first ever smartphone was an iPhone, and it’s a marvel of usability – but it also makes me keenly aware of just how miraculous these phones are about to be, a year or two down the line, when they have 3G and GPS that really, truly works. That, for the lay user, will mean broadband everywhere, all the time, and that your phone knows exactly where you are. That will seriously rock.

March 29, 2008
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Not so midas

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If you’re Apple, I would have to think this is probably not a problem you want to be having.

I want my own macbook pro oh so bad. But, is this a problem I should be taking into consideration? My personal experience with Apple is that the products are very good quality and that they’ve taken care of any problem that I’ve had with products promptly. But I’d rather not have the problem in the first place.

As this Guardian article notes, it’s a long-standing problem and caused the demise of one cool apple product, the cube computer.

March 29, 2008
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‘Renewing the American Economy’

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Text of Sen. Barack Obama’s speech at Cooper Union in New York on Friday, March 27, 2008, as prepared for delivery and provided to The New York Times by his campaign.

I want to thank Mayor Bloomberg for his extraordinary leadership. At a time when Washington is divided in old ideological battles, he shows us what can be achieved when we bring people together to seek pragmatic solutions. Not only has he been a remarkable leader for New York –he has established himself as a major voice in our national debate on issues like renewing our economy, educating our children, and seeking energy independence. Mr. Mayor, I share your determination to bring this country together to finally make progress for the American people.

In a city of landmarks, we meet at Cooper Union, just uptown from Federal Hall, where George Washington took the oath of office as the first President of the United States. With all the history that has passed through the narrow canyons of lower Manhattan, it is worth taking a moment to reflect on the role that the market has played in the development of the American story.

The great task before our Founders that day was putting into practice the ideal that government could simultaneously serve liberty and advance the common good. For Alexander Hamilton, the young Secretary of the Treasury, that task was bound to the vigor of the American economy.
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March 27, 2008
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