Kitty Says Moo

This just in:

Mia Farrow has ended her hunger strike to show solidarity with the people of the war-hit Darfur region of Sudan, because of “health concerns”.

In a statement posted on her website the 64-year-old said: “I have been instructed by my doctor to stop my fast immediately due to health concerns.”

Of course, the point of a hunger strike is precisely that it does put the striker’s health at risk. The most devoted hunger strikers have died in the process, a move certain to bring embarrassment and change when directed against a humane opponent. And oh yes- people have to know you’re actually on a hunger strike.

I’m sure that upon learning of Ms. Farrow’s brief hunger strike Sudan President Omar al-Bashir was moved to say, “Mia who?”

I was listening to Terry Gross interview actor Gabriel Byrne, who appears in a drama about a psychotherapist entitled “In Therapy” when I was struck by something Gross said that struck me as, well, even dumber than usual. She was gushing over Byrne’s portrayal of a therapist, and uttered words to the effect that she would like to go into therapy herself, as it just looked so neat. It immediately occurred to me that this was sort of like watching ER, and saying you’d like to have an emergency tracheotomy or a heart transplant done on yourself as it looked so fascinating.

But then, the sort of therapy that Byrne mimes on his show and that Gross idealizes has always been more of a luxury of the moneyed classes than actual treatment for a disability. It’s just a wonderful, endless voyage of self discovery, and unlike traditional voyages of discovery, you don’t actually have to do anything other than sit in a chair and talk about yourself.

As I thought about that,I couldn’t help but be reminded of a witty quote from P.J. O’Rourke: “Earnestness is stupidity gone to college.”

Around 25 years ago the Chinese government started putting strict limits on how many children a couple could have. Couples- particularly in poorer regions- reacted by doing more sex determination tests and aborting females, since they wouldn’t be able to contribute as much financially to the family as would male children. And so, as you might expect, China now has a shortage of women, with perhaps 30 million more men than women of marriageable age. This in turn has led to increased social instability and an great rise in the kidnapping of women to be wives- more than 42,000 kidnapped women and young girls have been freed by Chinese police, and they’re probably only scratching the surface.

You would think that the rest of the world would have learned from this example. But then,. you probably didn’t account for all those utopian thinkers now being employed by Western governments, as the Times notes:

COUPLES who have more than two children are being “irresponsible” by creating an unbearable burden on the environment, the government’s green adviser has warned.

Jonathon Porritt, who chairs the government’s Sustainable Development Commission, says curbing population growth through contraception and abortion must be at the heart of policies to fight global warming. He says political leaders and green campaigners should stop dodging the issue of environmental harm caused by an expanding population.

A report by the commission, to be published next month, will say that governments must reduce population growth through better family planning.

Yet another academic who didn’t read Brave New World. Or perhaps he did, in which case I expect a lot worse coming down the pike soon.

Not, that’s not an insult from a tribe of nomadic Central Asian shepherds, or a song from the late night Cable TV edition of Sesame Street. It’s a genuine medical fact, courtesy of WebMD, and is #3 in a charming article entitled 5 Things You Didn’t Know About Your Penis. #1 is of course “Your Penis Does Have a Mind of Its Own”. As if we didn’t know that already.

Your tax dollars at work (from Ars Technica):

(The) Camera Phone Predator Alert Act (H.R. 414), introduced into Congress this month by Representative Peter King, Republican of New York. The bill’s text says that Congress has found that “children and adolescents have been exploited by photographs taken in dressing rooms and public places with the use of a camera phone.”

What’s King’s solution? One year after the passage of the Alert Act, all mobiles with cameras made in the United States must emit a “tone or other sound audible within a reasonable radius of the phone.” And the legislation would forbid manufacturers to program an option that would allow consumers to disable the noise.

If King’s proposal was actually enacted into law and signed by the President, it would be enforced by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, whose staff would have to figure out what kind of “tone or other sound” to force manufacturers to hotwire into their devices. The CPSC would also have to determine the aforementioned “reasonable radius.”

This isn’t a unique idea. There’s also been some discussion of requiring electric cars to produce a sound like an internal combustion engine in order to alert pedestrians- particularly blind pedestrians. The camera idea is, however, distinguished by being especially stupid.

Somehow I missed this great story from Discovery:

Nearly two pounds of still-green plant material found in a 2,700-year-old grave in the Gobi Desert has just been identified as the world’s oldest marijuana stash, according to a paper in the latest issue of the Journal of Experimental Botany.

A barrage of tests proves the marijuana possessed potent psychoactive properties and casts doubt on the theory that the ancients only grew the plant for hemp in order to make clothing, rope and other objects.

I was hoping there’d be something in the story about the 7th Century BC being the period when takeout food was invented in China, but no such luck. “Egg rolls… oh, yeah. Two of those. No, a dozen. And a bag of those dumplings…”

My favorite quote from the article:

Scientists are unsure if the marijuana was grown for more spiritual or medical purposes, but it’s evident that the man was buried with a lot of it.

Listening to Elizabeth Alexander read her poetry at the inauguration, I couldn’t held but think that the new President has yet to learn a lesson that I learned many years ago: Don’t hire someone just because you went to school with them. Not that much modern poetry is all that good, or even all that tolerable. Most seems to be really boring prose, broken up into irregular line lengths, with the odd colorful word thrown in for effect:

I went
to the bathroom
this morning
after
a night of drinking
and it was there
that I
polychromatically
decorated
the bowl

If you think writing this kind of bad poetry is easy, you should try it. I find I have to keep stopping myself from writing rhyming stanzas or being too clear. Granted, it flows easily from the pens of some- like our new President, whose undergraduate poetic stylings were featured in the New York Times:

Under water grottos, caverns
Filled with apes
That eat figs.
Stepping on the figs
That the apes
Eat, they crunch.
The apes howl, bare
Their fangs, dance,
Tumble in the
Rushing water,
Musty, wet pelts
Glistening in the blue.

The Times article notes that the poem above was featured in the Spring 1981 issue of “Feast,” a 51-page student literary journal that described itself as “a semi-annual journal of short poetry and fiction collected from the Occidental College community.” The Times article then adds that “The journal is no longer published”, to which I would add “to no one’s surprise.” Luckily for the rest of us, the President decided his core competencies lay in other directions.

You may recall that moment, twenty-some years ago, when Ronald Reagan made a joke before a press conference to the effect that “the bombing begins in five minutes.” He was poking fun at his supposed reputation as a warmonger, and it was a private joke shared with the Washington press corps. Or so he thought. By that night the remark was being carried by every newspaper and television network as though it were a serious declaration of war.

Yesterday, Hillary Clinton made what sounds like a serious threat to “totally obliterate Iran” should they fire nuclear weapons at Israel. (Reaction so far from the major media: None.)

In related news, Barack Obama, asked for his reaction to Jimmy Carter’s attempt to play diplomat with Hamas, said- and this is a direct quote- “Can’t I just eat my waffles?”

I think the Democrats are really spoiled for choice this time around.

Imagine, for a minute, that auto insurance was more like health insurance. What would that be like?

First of all, there’d be no deductible. Insurance would pay the first penny of every claim. It would also cover things that you expected to have to take care of, like yearly oil changes, brakes, tire replacement, wiper blades, and so forth. You couldn’t just buy liability insurance, or just liability and fire and theft. All policies would have to cover collision, too, with no deductible.

States would pass laws mandating that these things were covered. You couldn’t opt to get a simpler policy that would cost less. Some states would mandate that all auto insurance policies would also have to cover any mechanical problems, regular detailing, tuneups, and some custom parts.

Of course, this would make it extremely expensive. A lot of unions would negotiate car insurance into their employment contracts. Many people wouldn’t buy insurance at all, figuring that the chance of needing it was pretty slim. And some states would allow you to buy auto insurance to cover a pre-existing mechanical problem or collision damage. This would push the cost of insurance even higher, as policies would have to cover the full cost of the existing liabilities as well as any yet to come.

Insurance would also be required to cover alternative car treatments- practices that weren’t approved by the manufacturers but were popular with a growing number of car owners. Things like installing crystals in the car to focus energy, and having an expert choose the right color for your car.

Of course, with all this money being tossed around, automotive malpractice would be a major concern. Most mechanics would have to carry a lot of insurance, which would be reflected in their charges, as would the cost of their insurance overhead. They’d spend a lot of time writing up justifications for replacing headlights and changing oil, using manufacturer’s replacement parts instead of generic parts and so forth.

No doubt many politicians would demand that the government should take over the auto insurance business, as well as the car repair business, like they do in some other countries. Sure, there might be some waiting times for repair- and some cars might be deemed not worth repairing, but everyone would get the same treatment.

That would be pretty bizarre, wouldn’t it?

Now imagine that medical insurance was more like auto insurance.

People would cover their expected or planned medical costs themselves. Insurance wouldn’t pay for checkups, or inoculations, or maternity care. There’d be a reasonable deductible for all drugs and care. You’d only draw on your insurance for really big and unexpected medical hosts, like hospitalization, surgery, serious illness- expenses that exceeded, say, 4-5% of your annual income. Most doctor visits would be paid for with cash. There’d be very little paperwork. YOung people in good health would decide that medical insurance was a pretty good bet, since they could get it very cheaply.

Now that would really be bizarre.

Hilary Clinton has been citing a trip she made to Bosnia as proof of her foreign affairs bona fides, noting that it was in a war zone, and they were warned that “there might be sniper fire.”

Perhaps. But if so, why was she bringing along Sinbad, Cheryl Crow, and daughter Chelsea? Personally, if I were a soldier or foreign service officer posted to, let us say, Bagdhad, I doubt my first instincts would be to take along a comic, a singer, and my teenage daughter.