MICHAEL O. ALLEN

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Apr 03
Love0

The church of Apple Inc.

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Analysts: iPhone shortage is 3G precursor by Stevie Smith – Apr 3 2008

Prior indicators would suggest the network enhanced 3G iPhone is on track for a retail arrival some time during the coming summer, but a growing shortage of the original, slower EDGE model have led to a rush of speculation regarding that scheduled release.

More pointedly, the ongoing depletion of iPhone stocks across the United States has prompted a wave of rumour suggesting that the enhanced 3G model could take retail stores by storm as early as next week.
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Apr 03
Love0

Really?

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Stop watches? Are they kidding? I didn’t even know they have a journal like this.

Sex Therapists: a Few Minutes Is Best By MEGAN K. SCOTT

NEW YORK (AP) — Maybe men had it right all along: It doesn’t take long to satisfy a woman in bed. A survey of sex therapists concluded the optimal amount of time for sexual intercourse was 3 to 13 minutes. The findings, to be published in the May issue of the Journal of Sexual Medicine, strike at the notion that endurance is the key to a great sex life.

If that sounds like good news to you, don’t cheer too loudly. The time does not count foreplay, and the therapists did rate sexual intercourse that lasts from 1 to 2 minutes as “too short.”

Researcher Eric Corty said he hoped to ease the minds of those who believe that “more of something good is better, and if you really want to satisfy your partner, you should last forever.”

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Apr 03
Love0

Shoulda said something sooner

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I mean, honestly. After all these years of drinking water because they tell me it’s good for me. Never mind, they say now:

Research debunks health value of guzzling water By Will Dunham, Wed Apr 2, 2008

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The notion that guzzling glasses of water to flood yourself with good health is all wet, researchers said on Wednesday.

Dr. Stanley Goldfarb and Dr. Dan Negoianu of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia reviewed the scientific literature on the health effects of drinking lots of water.

People in hot, dry climates and athletes have an increased need for water, and people with certain diseases do better with increased fluid intake, they found. But for average healthy people, more water does not seem to mean better health, they said.

Their scientific review, published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, is the latest to undercut the recommendations advanced by some experts to drink eight glasses of 8 ounces (225 ml) of water a day.

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Apr 01
Love0

Thinking and reassessing

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Jim Sleeper got me. We’d had our debates all those years ago but I was always fond of him. So, when we had our disagreements, it was a disagreement. I figured he believed what he believed and that was that.

But when we had lunch recently, after having been out of touch for several years, he intimated to me that he’d changed his mind about some of his old positions. He was not explicit and I did not challenge him. That would have been rude.

Mr. Sleeper has a piece at TPM Cafe now that absolutely blows me away. This is the thing. He was always a thinker, seriously assessing problems that afflict our society, especially when it comes to race, and the mind-bending ways that we go about not solving them.

Constraining us all to define our citizenship and even our personhood more and more by race and ethnicity in classrooms, workrooms, courtrooms, newsrooms, and boardrooms, today’s liberalism no longer curbs discrimination; it invites it. It does not expose racism; it recapitulates and, sometimes, reinvents it. Its tortured racial etiquette begets racial epithets, as surely as hypocrisy begets hostility. And it dishonors’ liberals’ own heroic past efforts to focus America’s race lens in the 1950s and ’60s, when conservative pieties about color blindness concealed monstrous injustices.

— Introduction to Liberal Racism, Jim Sleeper, 1997

In his TPM Cafe piece, he was taking a measure of Shelby Steele, a man I have no respect for but for whom, Mr. Sleeper, once upon a time, had high regards. Steele came out with a book, A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can’t Win, right before the presidential primaries and caucuses began.

His dismantling of Steele is so deeply thought out, so complex, yet methodical that it would not do justice to try and quote any passage without taking it out of context. It is a great read.

Some of Mr. Sleeper’s books, The Closest of Strangers and Liberal Racism: How Fixating on Race Subverts the American Dream, are available at Amazon.com. He wrote so well (and still does) about these issues that we really ought to go back and re-read what he said and reassess some of his observations about our society, our culture.

A good place to start, at least until you receive your books from Amazon, is Mr. Sleeper’s website at jimsleeper.com.

Apr 01
Love0

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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Apr 01
Love0

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

Apr 01
Love0

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.

Mar 29
Love0

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!

Mar 29
Love0

'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

Mar 29
Love0

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.