Free-Speech, Kramer and the “N-Word”

Nov 28, 2006 | Dollars & Crosses

Black leaders challenged the entertainment industry, including rap artists, actors and major studios, to stop the use of the racial slur that triggered the scandal involving "Seinfeld" comic actor Michael Richards. The Rev. Jesse Jackson, a civil rights leader, and others said Monday they will meet with TV networks, film companies and musicians to discuss banning the racial slur that is a derogatory term for blacks. They also sought an effort by the public to stop using the term. ... Richards, who played the wacky neighbor Kramer on "Seinfeld," triggered outrage with a November 17 racial rant against two black men when he was heckled during a stand-up comedy routine at the Laugh Factory nightclub in West Hollywood. ... Richards has made several apologies, including one Sunday on Jackson's syndicated radio program, in which he has said he is not a racist and was motivated by anger.

At the press conference, comedian Paul Mooney said he has used the "n-word" numerous times during stand-up performances but will no longer do so after watching Richards' rant. "He's my Dr. Phil," the black comedian said. "He's cured me."

Asked about free-speech issues, Jackson said the word is "unprotected."

A white aide to Washington Mayor Anthony Williams who resigned after using the word "niggardly" in a conversation will be returning to city government, ending a flap over what critics derided as political correctness run amok. ... On January 15, Howard used the word "niggardly" -- a synonym for "stingy" -- in a conversation with two aides. Eleven days later, he resigned as rumors were spreading that he had used a racial epithet. ... But columnists and commentators pounced on the incident as yet another example of the ludicrous state of politics and race relations in Washington.

Discovery vs. Ignorance: The Difference Between Science and Religion

Nov 21, 2006 | Dollars & Crosses

[...] Scientists may scoff at people who fall back on explanations involving an intelligent designer, [Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson] said, but history shows that "the most brilliant people who ever walked this earth were doing the same thing." When Isaac Newton's "Principia Mathematica" failed to account for the stability of the solar system — why the planets tugging at one another's orbits have not collapsed into the Sun — Newton proposed that propping up the mathematical mobile was "an intelligent and powerful being." It was left to Pierre Simon Laplace, a century later, to take the next step. Hautily telling Napoleon that he had no need for the God hypothesis, Laplace extended Newton's mathematics and opened the way to a purely physical theory.

"What concerns me now is that even if you're as brilliant as Newton, you reach a point where you start basking in the majesty of God and then your discovery stops — it just stops," Dr. Tyson said. "You're no good anymore for advancing that frontier, waiting for somebody else to come behind you who doesn't have God on the brain and who says: ‘That's a really cool problem. I want to solve it.' "

"Science is a philosophy of discovery; intelligent design is a philosophy of ignorance," he said. "Something fundamental is going on in people's minds when they confront things they don't understand."

He told of a time, more than a millennium ago, when Baghdad reigned as the intellectual center of the world, a history fossilized in the night sky. The names of the constellations are Greek and Roman, Dr. Tyson said, but two-thirds of the stars have Arabic names. The words "algebra" and "algorithm" are Arabic. But sometime around 1100, a dark age descended. Mathematics became seen as the work of the devil, as Dr. Tyson put it. "Revelation replaced investigation," he said, and the intellectual foundation collapsed. He did not have to say so, but the implication was that maybe a century, maybe a millennium from now, the names of new planets, stars and galaxies might be Chinese. Or there may be no one to name them at all. ["A Free-for-All on Science and Religion", NY Times, November 21, 2006, ]

Snow Gray

Nov 21, 2006 | Dollars & Crosses

THE Bush administration has not been known for dramatic policy shifts, until last week. For while the US President was making tentative noises that Syria and Iran might have a role to play in salvaging something from the wreckage of Iraq, the previously unthinkable was already happening.

Damascus and Tehran have been talking to senior Washington diplomats and advisers about their role in creating some kind of stability in the region.

James Baker, the former Secretary of State leading a task force of Washington's "wise men" to try to find the most palatable policy options available is acting as a proxy for the administration as it tries to persuade Iran to put pressure on Shi'ites to compromise while also pressuring Syria to use its influence with the Sunni leaders of the insurgency.

The US's new willingness to engage Iran was demonstrated when Baker recently had a three-hour dinner with Tehran's ambassador to the UN. ...

Although the US is not officially speaking with either Damascus or Tehran, Baker's talks point the way towards a future in which it is compelled to shift direction in private, even if it continues to take a hard line publicly.

Baker himself has repeatedly argued that "it is not appeasement to talk to your enemies". Even so, the remaining hawks in the administration ask what possible carrots the US can offer Syria and Iran - the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism - in return for their help in Iraq that would not themselves negate key elements of American foreign policy.

The Baker view, however, has at least one powerful ally in the administration. Robert Gates, nominated to replace Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defence, is also in favour of talks with Iran and Syria. Gates, who is currently serving as a member of the Iraq Study Group, will now advocate engagement from inside the administration.

Former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger, a frequent adviser to President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, has concluded that the United States must choose between stability and democracy in Iraq -- and that democracy, for now, is out of reach.

The Rational Basis of Happiness: Ellen Kenner on iTunes

Nov 19, 2006 | Dollars & Crosses

The Scientific Pros and Social Cons of Calorie Restricted Diets

Nov 15, 2006 | Dollars & Crosses

[...]Seat belts, vaccines, clean tap water, and other modern miracles have dramatically boosted average life expectancies, to be sure—reducing annually the percentage of people who die before reaching the maximum life span—but CR alone demonstrably raises the maximum itself. In lab studies going back to the thirties, mice on severely limited diets have consistently lived as much as 50 percent longer than the oldest of their well-fed peers—the rodent equivalent of a human life stretched past the age of 160. And it isn't just a mouse thing: Yeast cells, spiders, vinegar worms, rhesus monkeys—by now a veritable menagerie of species has been shown to benefit from CR's life-extending effects. Despite the mounting evidence, however, the link between CR and longevity remained for many years a medical curiosity, its implications for human health intriguing, certainly, but unexplored.

[...] In 1991, however, the proposition was simplified somewhat when a team of eight bioscientists sealed themselves up for a two-year stint inside a giant, airtight terrarium in the Arizona desert—and promptly discovered that the hypothetically self-sustaining ecosystem they'd settled into could barely grow enough food to keep them alive. This revelation might have doomed the experiment (known as Biosphere 2) but for the fact that the team's physician, UCLA pathologist Roy Walford, had been studying the Calorie Restriction phenomenon for decades and convinced his fellow econauts that—as long as they all ate carefully enough to get their daily share of essential nutrients—a year or two of near starvation wouldn't hurt. When at last the Biosphere 2 crew emerged from their bubble, tests proved them healthier in nearly every nutritionally relevant respect than when they'd gone in, and the case for Calorie Restriction in humans was no longer purely circumstantial. ["The Fast Supper", Julian Dibbell, New York Magazine]

Nutritional Wisdom with Joel Fuhrman M.D.

Nov 15, 2006 | Dollars & Crosses

Joel Fuhrman, M.D. is board-certified family physician and graduate of The University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. A nationally recognized nutritional expert, Dr. Fuhrman is also the author of several acclaimed books including; "Eat To Live", "Disease Proof Your Child", "Cholesterol Protection For Life", and "Fasting and Eating for Health". Dr. Fuhrman's books have helped thousands to lower cholesterol, reverse diabetes, and lose weight. As a former world class athlete and coach, Dr. Fuhrman was a member of the United States International and World Figure Skating Team, winning medals in pair skating on both the national and world levels. He has dedicated his life career towards understanding nutritional science applying it in his medical practice. Over the years, Dr. Fuhrman has helped thousands of patients lose weight permanently and achieve dramatic recoveries from "so-called" irreversible diseases via nutritional excellence.