evanmorris.com

In His White House, Giuliani Says, His Wife Might Have a Very Visible Role as Adviser - New York Times

Asked by Ms. Walters how much of a role Mrs. Giuliani would have in his campaign, Mr. Giuliani said, “As much as she wants.”

Asked if she would be involved in policy decisions, he said: “To the extent she wants to be. I couldn’t have a better adviser.”

As for cabinet meetings, she would sit in “if she wanted to,” Mr. Giuliani said, adding: “If they were relevant to something that she was interested in. I mean, that would be something that I’d be very, very comfortable with.”

Mrs. Giuliani, who used to work as a nurse and a pharmaceutical sales representative, said that “if he asks me to,” she would attend White House policy meetings, “and certainly in the areas of health care.”

Which wife would that be, Rudy?

I must say that the possibility of having a former pharmaceutical sales rep shaping national health policy sets my heart aflutter.

Speaking as someone who was a resident of NYC for most of Rudy's tenure as Mayor, I wouldn't vote for him for pigeon feeder. America's Mayor? Gimme a friggin' break. Giuliani is a twisted little control freak with a history of screw-ups and self-serving publicity stunts dating back to when he used to accompany Al D'Amato on drug raids dressed up like a cross between Mad Max and that motorcycle guy from the Village People.

As for 9/11, he was directly responsible for the fact that the FDNY radios couldn't communicate with the NYPD or their own commanders from inside the towers. That cost lives.

And as for fighting terrorism, how smart was it to put the city's emergency command center in 7 World Trade Center, when the towers had already been attacked once by terrorists? Not very.

Then there's his encouraging the worst shoot-first cowboy tendencies of the NYPD Street Crimes units.

And how come his little buddy Bernard Kerik isn't in jail?

Oh wait, this just in:

Federal prosecutors have told Bernard B. Kerik, whose nomination as homeland security secretary in 2004 ended in scandal, that he is likely to be charged with several felonies, including tax evasion and conspiracy to commit wiretapping.

Kerik's indictment could set the stage for a courtroom battle that would draw attention to Kerik's extensive business and political dealings with former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who personally recommended him to President Bush for the Cabinet. Giuliani, the front-runner for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination according to most polls, later called the recommendation a mistake.

Yeah, Rudy. You've made a lot of them.

Posted by evan at 1:25 AM | Permalink

Brain stimulation may curb MS spasticity

Last Updated: 2007-03-30 14:05:19 -0400 (Reuters Health)

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Magnetic stimulation of the brain (transcranial magnetic stimulation or TMS) may help relieve "muscle spasticity" in people with multiple sclerosis, Italian researchers have found.

Spasticity is a form of muscle overactivity. A spastic muscle becomes stiff or rigid and resists being stretched out.

Dr. Diego Centonze, from the Universita Tor Vergata in Rome, and colleagues tested various high- and low- frequency TMS protocols in 19 people with MS and spasticity of the legs.

They report in the journal Neurology that a single treatment session with either low frequency or high frequency TMS had no effect on spasticity.

With multiple applications of high frequency TMS over a 2-week period, however, significant improvements in spasticity were seen. Moreover, the benefit persisted for at least 7 days after the last treatment session.

This study shows that magnetic stimulation of the brain "modulates spasticity" in patients with multiple sclerosis. Further studies are warranted, they conclude.

SOURCE: Neurology March 27, 2007.

It's worth a shot. My left calf muscle has been seized up most of the time for several weeks. And last night my hand cramped so badly -- for no reason whatsoever -- that I was reduced to pounding at it with the other hand like Doctor Strangelove.

Posted by evan at 10:47 PM | Permalink

defective yeti: Incredible Illusion!!

Posted by evan at 11:38 AM | Permalink

Tonight The Word Detective Online passed the two million "unique visitor" (i.e., not counting repeat visitors) mark. And that's counting only since 1999, four years after the site went online.

Now you all have to buy a teddy bear.

(Thanks to Dave Aton, who pointed this out to me right before it happened. I'd probably have noticed months from now.)

Posted by evan at 10:44 PM | Permalink

Yes, that's right, a teddy bear wearing a tiny Word Detective t-shirt.

Of course you want one.

Posted by evan at 1:59 PM | Permalink

For some reason I seem to be unable to post comments on my own blog. Thank you, Movable Type.

In any case, all our cats and dogs are fine so far, thanks, although the dogs are a bit peeved that we won't feed them canned food until this is all sorted out (if ever).

I think it's interesting that the manufacturer of the pet food refuses to name the supplier of the wheat gluten. What makes anyone think that the same tainted ingredient (i.e., RAT POISON) isn't going into, oh, Dinty Moore Beef Stew? Humans being, on average, 15-30 times the weight of their cats, the effects might be sub-clinical but still definitely deleterious.

Posted by evan at 12:05 PM | Permalink

One of a series of Linux promotions made by Novell, pointing out that it can be easily run on either a PC or a Mac.

Posted by evan at 12:41 AM | Permalink

United Press International - Rat poison found in pet food

NEW YORK, March 23 (UPI) -- Rat poison caused the deaths of U.S. pets that ate tainted food from Canada and the death toll is expected to rise, ABC News reported Friday.

A source told ABC that wheat imported from China and used by Menu Foods in nearly 100 brands of cat and dog food contained a rodentidicide called aminopterin.

The discovery was made by scientists at the New York food laboratory in Albany, ABC said. Details were to be officially released later Friday.

Millions of cans and pouches of wet food manufactured by Menu Foods were recalled last week.

It is not certain that the aminopterin is what caused the animals' deaths or if it was the only foreign substance found in the food, ABC said.

Aminopterin is illegal to use as rat poison in the United States but is used as a cancer-fighting drug, the source said.

The number of pets dying of acute kidney failure traced back to the food is expected to swell, doctors at New York's Animal Medical Center said.

"I was shocked and surprised -- acute kidney failure is not a common problem," veterinarian Cathy Langston said. "I've already heard about 200 cases, and so I bet that there are probably going to be thousands."

Many news sources are still reporting ~15 deaths, which is absurd.

Posted by evan at 4:03 PM | Permalink

The good news (I hope) is that I have re-enabled comments on this site. I had turned them off because of a deluge of spam. We shall see.

The bad news is that in the process of cleaning out all the old spam I managed to nuke every comment ever posted here. Sorry about that.

Posted by evan at 8:22 PM | Permalink

Popular dog, cat food recalled after kidney failure, deaths - CNN.com

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A major manufacturer of dog and cat food sold under Wal-Mart, Safeway, Kroger and other store brands recalled 60 million containers of wet pet food Friday after reports of kidney failure and deaths.

An unknown number of cats and dogs suffered kidney failure and about 10 died after eating the affected pet food, Menu Foods said in announcing the North American recall. Product testing has not revealed a link explaining the reported cases of illness and death, the company said.

See article for brands affected. It's not just "store brands" -- Nutro is in there.

Posted by evan at 2:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

So I see that if I Google my name I get about 54,000 hits. Even given that maybe a third of those refer to me (a fact I find very distressing for some reason), that still leaves a lot of people sporting what I like to think of as my name out there.

But, as I have pointed out before, I happen to own the evanmorris.com domain. And I plan to keep it.

But I also have, and this is where things get interesting, the only other plausible "evanmorris" domain, evanmorris.net. Yeah, there's an evanmorris.info and an evanmorris.org out there, but ".org" is for organizations and ".info" is for losers. Evanmorris.us? Please. Evanmorris.name? Sounds like the start of an Abbott and Costello routine.

Now, I notice that a large number of Evan Ms out there are, shall we say, lucky children. Daddy is a hedge fund manager, Mommy is a senior partner at some big scary law firm, that sort of thing. Bravo, well done. And little Evan plays soccer at Greenwich Country Day or the like, and will go to a good college and probably end up an investment banker.

But when it comes time for not-me-Evan to stretch his golden wings and start his very own boutique firm trading in Martian oil futures, OH NO! The cupboard will be bare, domainwise, because Mom and Dad forgot to buy evanmorris.net from that cat farmer in Ohio back in 2007. Weeping, wailing, and enough resentment to fuel years of therapy will ensue.

Bad, bad, Mom and Dad. You'll spend five grand on the kid's 16th birthday bash, but won't spend that much on his internet future? And, since we all know that the internet is the future of everything, you might as well enroll little Evan in rehab right now.

So, here's your chance, Mom and Dad. Invest in the little nipper's future. Submit your bid to evan@evanmorris.com.

Posted by evan at 5:35 PM | Permalink

Science hopes to change events that have already occurred

Ever wish you could reach back in time and change the past? Maybe you'd like to take back an unfortunate voice mail message, or rephrase what you just said to your boss. Or perhaps you've even dreamed of tweaking the outcome of yesterday's lottery to make yourself the winner.

Common sense tells us that influencing the past is impossible -- what's done is done, right? Even if it were possible, think of the mind-bending paradoxes it would create. While tinkering with the past, you might change the circumstances by which your parents met, derailing the key event that led to your birth.

Such are the perils of retrocausality, the idea that the present can affect the past, and the future can affect the present. Strange as it sounds, retrocausality is perfectly permissible within the known laws of nature. It has been debated for decades, mostly in the realm of philosophy and quantum physics. Trouble is, nobody has done the experiment to show it happens in the real world, so the door remains wide open for a demonstration.

It might even happen soon. Researchers are on the verge of experiments that will finally hold retrocausality's feet to the fire by attempting to send a signal to the past. What's more, they need not invoke black holes, wormholes, extra dimensions or other exotic implements of time travel. It should all be doable with the help of a state-of-the-art optics workbench and the bizarre yet familiar tricks of quantum particles. If retrocausality is confirmed -- and that is a huge if -- it would overturn our most cherished notions about the nature of cause and effect and how the universe works.

[much more at link]

Posted by evan at 1:03 AM | Permalink

MIT to put its entire curriculum online free of charge

In 2002, when MIT decided to experiment with placing course contents on the Web for open access, the university's officials knew they were breaking new ground and had no idea how the effort would be received.

On Tuesday, school officials revealed plans to make available the university's entire 1,800-course curriculum by year's end. Currently, some 1.5 million online independent learners log on the MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) site every month and more than 120 universities around the world have inaugurated their own sites for independent learners. MIT has more than 1,500 course curriculums available online to date.

[more at link]

Posted by evan at 11:46 PM | Permalink

FT.com / Who left the Wags out?

... Is it true that a word needs to have been in use for 10 years before it can make it into the OED? It is only a rule of thumb, Diamond says; the editors exercise their judgment. “But underlying the 10-year rule of thumb is something that points to how philosophically different the OED is from other dictionaries, and that is our responsibility not just to tell you what a word means but to give you a historical perspective on it. That’s the reason we won’t be publishing ‘Wag’ any time soon, because we want to see what happens to it.”

Still, says Diamond, if a new word does become commonly used and understood in a wide enough context, if its meaning has stabilised and if the word shows no signs of fading away, the 10-year rule may be bent - as it was for “chav”, which was published in the online OED in 2006, only eight years after its first verifiable use in 1998.

Surely, though, people were using “chav” colloquially before 1998? Very likely they were, Diamond says, but unless someone can provide hard, documentary evidence, “we can’t do anything about it, because one of our principles is that everything we cite must be verifiable. We can’t just have someone saying: ‘I was using this in 1992.’” The spoken word is no use if it goes unrecorded - although, interestingly, an internet quotation may be usable if it can be printed out and kept in the archives.

From an interesting and engagingly-written article on the current state of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Posted by evan at 11:05 PM | Permalink

Scientists say nerves use sound, not electricity

The common view that nerves transmit impulses through electricity is wrong and they really transmit sound, according to a team of Danish scientists.

The Copenhagen University researchers argue that biology and medical textbooks that say nerves relay electrical impulses from the brain to the rest of the body are incorrect.

[more at link]

Posted by evan at 2:09 AM | Permalink

"Don't discuss polar bears": memo to scientists

Polar bears, sea ice and global warming are taboo subjects, at least in public, for some U.S. scientists attending meetings abroad, environmental groups and a top federal wildlife official said on Thursday.

Environmental activists called this scientific censorship, which they said was in line with the Bush administration's history of muzzling dissent over global climate change.

But H. Dale Hall, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said this policy was a long-standing one, meant to honor international protocols for meetings where the topics of discussion are negotiated in advance.

The matter came to light in e-mails from the Fish and Wildlife Service that were distributed by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Center for Biological Diversity, both environmental groups.

Listed as a "new requirement" for foreign travelers on U.S. government business, the memo says that requests for foreign travel "involving or potentially involving climate change, sea ice, and/or polar bears" require special handling, including notice of who will be the official spokesman for the trip.

The Fish and Wildlife Service top officials need assurance that the spokesman, "the one responding to questions on these issues, particularly polar bears" understands the administration's position on these topics.

[more at link]

Posted by evan at 1:29 AM | Permalink

It's a bit hard to see detail in this, but there are about 40 birds of various kinds chowing down on our dime here. Somehow the little ... fellows ... manage to scarf up about 25 pounds of sunflower seed and corn every week.

And they get very angry if we let the feeder run dry. Seriously, they sit out there and shriek.

Not in the picture are the rabbits, squirrels, possum and probably deer who visit at night.

Posted by evan at 8:04 PM | Permalink

Now that I've said that, of course not.

It melted by mid-afternoon.

Posted by evan at 7:16 PM | Permalink

No U.S. Backup Strategy For Iraq - washingtonpost.com

During a White House meeting last week, a group of governors asked President Bush and Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, about their backup plan for Iraq. What would the administration do if its new strategy didn't work?

The conclusion they took away, the governors later said, was that there is no Plan B. "I'm a Marine," Pace told them, "and Marines don't talk about failure. They talk about victory."

Pace had a simple way of summarizing the administration's position, Gov. Phil Bredesen (D-Tenn.) recalled. "Plan B was to make Plan A work."

Posted by evan at 11:58 PM | Permalink

Salon.com Life | Oprah's ugly secret

Oprah's ugly secret
By continuing to hawk "The Secret," a mishmash of offensive self-help cliches, Oprah Winfrey is squandering her goodwill and influence, and preaching to the world that mammon is queen.

By Peter Birkenhead

Mar. 05, 2007 | Steve Martin used to do a routine that went like this: "You too can be a millionaire! It's easy: First, get a million dollars. Now..."

If you put that routine between hard covers, you'd have "The Secret," the self-help manifesto and bottle of minty-fresh snake oil currently topping the bestseller lists. "The Secret" espouses a "philosophy" patched together by an Australian talk-show producer named Rhonda Byrne. Though "The Secret" unabashedly appropriates and mishmashes familiar self-help cliches, it was still the subject of two recent episodes of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" featuring a dream team of self-help gurus, all of whom contributed to the project.

The main idea of "The Secret" is that people need only visualize what they want in order to get it -- and the book certainly has created instant wealth, at least for Rhonda Byrne and her partners-in-con. And the marketing idea behind it -- the enlisting of that dream team, in what is essentially a massive, cross-promotional pyramid scheme -- is brilliant. But what really makes "The Secret" more than a variation on an old theme is the involvement of Oprah Winfrey, who lends the whole enterprise more prestige, and, because of that prestige, more venality, than any previous self-help scam. Oprah hasn't just endorsed "The Secret"; she's championed it, put herself at the apex of its pyramid, and helped create a symbiotic economy of New Age quacks that almost puts OPEC to shame.

Much more at link, long but definitely worth clicking through the ad.

Posted by evan at 11:15 AM | Permalink

An Open Letter to Microsoft: Re-Release Windows XP : Christopher Null : Yahoo! Tech

... This time you don't have an escape clause: You can get a new PC with Vista Home Basic, Vista Home Premium, Vista Business, or Vista Ultimate. But it's all Vista, and it's all got the same problems. Only some versions have more of them.

Posted by evan at 4:14 PM | Permalink