We’re Sorry, Your Cancer Cannot Be Completed As Dialed

In a study that will be widely ignored by zealots, researchers have pretty well put away the junk science theories about cell phones. The so-called studies that showed cell phones caused "brain cancers" have been refuted by a very, very large scale study in Denmark. How large? 420,000 people large.

WASHINGTON - A huge study from Denmark offers the latest reassurance that cell phones don't trigger cancer. Scientists tracked 420,000 Danish cell phone users, including 52,000 who had gabbed on the gadgets for 10 years or more, and some who started using them 21 years ago.

They matched phone records to the famed Danish Cancer Registry that records every citizen who gets the disease — and reported Tuesday that cell-phone callers are no more likely than anyone else to suffer a range of cancer types.

The study, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, is the largest yet to find no bad news about the safety of cell phones and the radiofrequency energy they emit.

But even the lead researcher doubts it will end the debate.

"There's really no biological basis for you to be concerned about radio waves," said John Boice, a Vanderbilt University professor and scientific director of the International Epidemiology Institute in Rockville, Md. "Nonetheless, people are."

So Boice and colleagues at Copenhagen's Danish Cancer Society plan to continue tracking the Danish callers until at least some have used the phones for 30 years.

But, oh, do I remember the screaming headlines about cell phones and brain cancers not that long ago. And the screeching about EMF. And the screeching about trans fats. And the list goes on. And, as the researchers note, the true believers will continue to truly believe. While dialing their cell phones, no doubt.

Quick! Somebody Light A Match!

That's a pretty common expression that gets used when someone produces a particularly offensive bit of flatulence. However, take it from this woman's example, it is not a good idea to do that on an airplane.

Flatulence brought 99 passengers on an American Airlines flight to an unscheduled visit to Nashville early Monday morning.

American Flight 1053, from Washington Reagan National Airport and bound for Dallas/Fort Worth, made an emergency landing here after passengers reported smelling struck matches, said Lynne Lowrance, a spokeswoman for the Nashville International Airport Authority.

The plane landed safely. The FBI, Transportation Safety Administration and airport authority responded to the emergency, Lowrance said.

The passengers and five crew members were brought off the plane, together with all the luggage, to go through security checks again. Bomb-sniffing dogs found spent matches.

The FBI questioned a passenger who admitted she struck the matches in an attempt to conceal body odor, Lowrance said. The woman lives near Dallas and has a medical condition.

The flight took off again, but the woman was not allowed back on the plane.

"American has banned her for a long time," Lowrance said.

It is against Federal law to light a match on an airplane.

The AP Does It Again

And oddly enough, the New York Times is the one who carries the news straight this time.

The statements about the situation in Iraq came during exchanges with Senators Carl Levin of Michigan, the panel’s ranking Democrat and soon to be chairman, and John McCain, Republican of Arizona, during Mr. Gates’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“Mr. Gates, do you believe that we are currently winning in Iraq?” Mr. Levin asked.

“No, sir,” Mr. Gates replied, going on to agree with the senator that a political settlement is needed to end the blood-letting, and that the United States needed to convey “a sense of urgency” to the Iraqis about reaching an accord.

Mr. Levin said Mr. Gates’s remarks amounted to a “necessary, refreshing breath of reality.”

Senator McCain pursued the point about victory being elusive. “We are not winning the war in Iraq, is that correct?” the senator asked.

“That is my view, yes, senator,” Mr. Gates replied.

“And therefore the status quo is not acceptable?” Mr. McCain pressed.

“That is correct, sir,” Mr. Gates said.

He added that the United States is not losing the war, either. (Emphasis added)

The Associated Press, however reports it this way:

WASHINGTON (AP) - Robert Gates, the White House choice to be the next defense secretary, conceded Tuesday that the United States is losing the war in Iraq and warned that if that country is not stabilized in the next year or two it could lead to a "regional conflagration."

At the outset of his Senate confirmation hearing, Gates said he is open to new ideas about correcting the U.S. course in Iraq, which he said would be his highest priority if confirmed as expected.

That statement, at odds with their own headline incidentally, is patently not true. Since Gates flat out stated that the US is not losing the war. There is a difference.

That statement, at odds with their own headline incidentally, is patently not true. Since Gates flat out stated that the US is not losing the war. There is a difference.

The Nannies Of New York - Part Two

Well, as I noted back in September, the New York City Health Department was considering a ban on trans fats. Today they enacted the ban.

The board, which passed the ban unanimously, did give restaurants a slight break by relaxing what had been considered a tight deadline for compliance. Restaurants will be barred from using most frying oils containing artificial trans fats by July and will have to eliminate the artificial trans fats from all of their foods by July 2008.

But restaurant industry representatives called the ban burdensome and unnecessary.

"We don't think that a municipal health agency has any business banning a product the Food and Drug Administration has already approved," said Dan Fleshler, a spokesman for the National Restaurant Association.

Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden said recently that officials seriously weighed complaints from the restaurant industry, which argued that it was unrealistic to give them six months to replace cooking oils and shortening and 18 months to phase out the ingredients altogether.

The ban contains some exceptions; for instance, it would allow restaurants to serve foods that come in the manufacturer's original packaging.

Trans fats are believed to be harmful because they contribute to heart disease by raising bad cholesterol and lowering good cholesterol at the same time. Some experts say that makes trans fats worse than saturated fat.

The panel also passed another measure that has made restaurants unhappy: Some that chose to inform customers about calorie content will have to list the information right on the menu. The rule would generally apply to fast-food restaurants and other major chains.

The problem here is the local banning of Federally approved products. This could become a real nightmare of patchwork requirements across the country. In effect, New York City's actions will have economic impact on the rest of the country as producers pass the costs of doing business in New York on to everyone. And as more and more municipalities impose differing requirements, the cost of meeting all of these will be passed along as well. There actually is a reason why certain things belong at the Federal level. There may well be a constitutional issue with this rule as it may well run afoul of the interstate commerce clause.

UPDATE: Jay at Stop the ACLU is also unhappy with this. He asks: "Whats next, chocolate?". That would bring villagers with pitchforks, Jay. But if they went after fruitcake, everyone would get behind them…..

Passports Released

Two American pilots who had their passports seized by the Brazilian courts have had them returned. The two men were the two flying a private jet that collided with a Brazilian airliner, causing it to crash. TC over at Leather Penguin has been following this story, I have not. But it does sound as if there is some very serious doubt as to their culpability in the accident.

The Federal Regional Court of the First Region of Brasilia said that it unanimously agreed to return the passports of Joseph Lepore, 42, of Bay Shore, N.Y., and Jan Paladino, 34, of Westhampton Beach, N.Y.

They can pick up their passports in 72 hours and leave Brazil, but must agree to return to Brazil for further inquiry and judicial action, the court said on its Web site.

The Americans were piloting a Brazilian-made Legacy executive jet when it collided Sept. 29 with a Gol Airlines Boeing 737-800. All 154 people on board the Gol flight were killed, while the none of the seven people on board the Legacy were injured.

According to the information TC has rounded up, the air-traffic controller was inexperienced and directed the private jet to the same altitude as the airliner.

NY Post Reports Hillary Is In The Race

The New York Post is reporting that Andrew Cuomo told them that Hillary openly declared herself to be in the race for the 2008 presidential nomination.

WASHINGTON - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday answered the question on everyone's mind - telling one New York lawmaker flat out: "I'm really going to go for this."

Clinton dropped the much-anticipated presidential bombshell during a blitz of phone calls to home-state lawmakers, as well as a top moneyman, Attorney General-elect Andrew Cuomo, and the Rev. Al Sharpton.

"She said to me, 'I'm really going to go for this. I'm going to make this effort,' " the New York lawmaker told The Post.

"She never said she was running for the presidency of the United States or if she was going to announce - or anything like that," the lawmaker said, quickly adding, "It wasn't a question that needed to be asked. It was an obvious conversation."

Not exactly unexpected given the flurry of activity lately.

“Disastrous For Journalists Everywhere.”

Mark Tapscott writes those words to describe what the fallout could well be if the Associated Press does not do something - at once - to ensure its credibility. He's writing about the apparently non-existent police captain that the AP has quoted repeatedly and their complete failure to do the one thing that would stop the controversy in its tracks: produce the man and prove he a) exists and b) is a member of the Iraqi police. (We already know that he is definitely not authorized as a spokesman.)

The problem is there appears to be no such person as Captain Jamil Hussein, at least not who is employed by the Iraqi police. The U.S. military says Hussein doesn't exist and has demanded that AP issue a correction. The Iraqi government says no such person is on its police payroll.

Things have gotten progressively worse for AP since those initial questions about "Hussein" were raised by U.S. and Iraqi officials. A firestorm of criticism has exploded in the Blogosphere as bloggers have researched the names of more than a dozen Iraqi- named sources of apparently doubtful credibility that have appeared in AP stories.

The suggestion among many of the bloggers is that AP is being had by Iraqis aligned with the insurgency who are posing as credible sources and are using the world's most respected wire news service to project to the world a flawed image of the conflict in Iraq.

AP’s response was initially to accuse its critics of having disreputable agendas. Then the news wire sent two as-yet unidentified reporters back to the scene of the alleged burning and turned up additional sources claiming to have witnessed the murders. AP also says it has verified Hussein's credibility and its reporters have talked with him in his office, with him dressed in his Iraqi police uniform.

Like so many other news organizations, AP believes it must rely upon Iraqi stringers because there is simply too much danger to risk sending its American regular staff reporters outside Bagdhad's Green Zone. Middle Eastern terrorists groups have a history of taking AP reporters hostage, including Terry Anderson, who spent nearly seven years in captivity in Lebanon.

AP further suggested the critics are trying to force the wire service to rely only on official government sources when doing so would compromise the credibility of its reporting.

What AP appears not to grasp is that the most serious questions about its credibility are already in the minds of millions of people, thanks in part to the bloggers, but also to the few mainstream media organizations that have covered the growing controversy.

The AP already has a real problem, but they appear not to grasp the seriousness of it. They continue to evade the real issue by accusing bloggers of having agendas. Well, duh. Of course we do. I, for one, would like to have honest reporting that I can rely on to tell the truth. Shouldn't that also be the AP's agenda? If not, who exactly has the problem?

Remember two years ago when bloggers raised questions about a "60 Minutes" segment led by CBS News Anchor Dan Rather? The segment was based on documents provided under strange circumstances by a mysterious source who has never been identified. Rather said the documents suggested President Bush received favored treatment by the National Guard in order to avoid service in Vietnam.

Within hours of the “60 Minutes” broadcast, however, bloggers were uncovering persuasive evidence that the documents were almost certainly forgeries. CBS convened an investigation by former AP President Lou Boccardi and former U.S. Attorney-General Dick Thornburgh. Boccardi and Thornburgh were unable to verify the documents. Rather retired.

It's time for AP to take the same sort of approach to resolve the Captain Jamil Hussein controversy. But there is one big difference between the present issue and the Dan Rather/"60 Minutes" ordeal - AP provides news to virtually every daily newspaper in America. AP is a cornerstone of the mainstream media. If AP's credibility is harmed, every news organization that uses its products also suffers.

Thus, AP should ask the American Society of Newspaper Editors to oversee the appointment and conduct of an independent panel of respected journalists and outside evidentiary experts to determine the truth behind Captain Jamil Hussein and all other sources similarly in doubt.

If the AP does not do something - fast - the erosion in confidence in them will snowball and begin to damage their customers as well. That is not a good thing for them, their customers or ultimately for the public at large.

Intrepid Floats Free

The USS Intrepid has been freed from the mud that held her fast only a few feet from the pier. After considerable work on the part of the US Navy and the Corps of Engineers, enough mud was removed to get the ship moving toward Bayonne, New Jersey where the aircraft carrier turned museum will undergo an overhaul.

"This old baby is moving," a joyous Intrepid Foundation President Bill White said aboard the vessel. Some crew members cried and gave each other high-fives and hugs. Onlookers ashore cheered.

After considerable effort, the aircraft carrier inched haltingly away from its anchorage. Finally, it began moving at about 3 to 4 knots, its pier growing more and more distant.

"Move baby, move baby!" the crew and passengers yelled. Then, "We did it, we did it!"

In the previous attempt, thick mud had proved too strong for six "tractor tugs" exerting some 30,000 horsepower. Another battle occured this time, too — the blue water was churned dark brown as tugboats strained to inch the giant vessel away from its longtime home.

"If she doesn't move, we are going to jump in and push her," a former crew member, 84-year-old Joe Kobert, said on the Intrepid's deck before the behemoth began to move on Tuesday.

The smaller boats moved the ship stern first — by its tail-end — into the center of the Hudson River, then nudged the bow until it was parallel with the shore and began heading downstream.

Finally!

Electable or Not?

Pam Meister has a column up over at American Thinker which uses an admittedly limited informal poll to ask whether women would vote for Hillary Clinton if she runs for president. Pam isn't trying to say this is a scientific poll, but it presents a couple of really interesting viewpoints.

Conducting polls can be an excellent way to collect information, but pollsters don't get into the minds of the respondents. It's all well and good to find out if people will vote for a particular candidate, but it's much more interesting to discover why or why not. When it comes to the possibility of women voting a woman into the highest office in the land in the most powerful country in the world, it's probably more instructive to ask real women how they feel about Hillary. Many of us know what the celebrities and pundits think, but they are a minority. What do your neighbors think? What does your mother think? 

Here, you'll see a non-random sampling of answers to the following question I asked: Would you vote for Hillary Clinton in 2008? Why or why not? The respondents are of varying ages, backgrounds, and political beliefs. Let's take a look at what average women are saying:

Cindy, 33: I would not vote for Hillary Clinton. The Whitewater Scandal, coupled with her decision to stay with her philandering husband, are [sic]the biggest strikes against her for me. She is not a positive female role model in my book.

Julie, 45:  I am not opposed to voting for Hillary.  I do not have a definite answer, as I vote for the best "man"/team and not knowing her running mate or who she would run against, I cannot give you an answer. Although I think it is high time for a woman president, I would not vote for a woman who I did not agree on political views just to get a woman in office.

There are quite a few others, go over and take a look. Some of the baggage Hillary carries will cause problems for her, as several of the opinions point out.

Jingle Bats!

The Animal Uprising™ has unleashed a Christmas offensive aimed at infiltrating their attack squadrons into the homes of unsuspecting merrymakers. Yes, they're sneaking bats into homes on Christmas trees.

NIPOMO - A Nipomo woman got bitten by a bat hiding in a Christmas tree delivered to her home.

Sheila Kearns received the tree Sunday from Holloway's Christmas Trees in Nipomo.

While decorating the tree that night, Kearns got two puncture wounds in her right wrist when she reached inside.

She thought she had been pricked by pine needles.

But Monday morning, Kearns noticed the bat hanging in her home and called the tree farm.

Animal control officers came to Kearns' house and picked up the bat.

Officers told Kearns to check herself for possible bites. When they saw the puncture wounds, they confirmed the woman had been bitten.

Carl Holloway, of Holloway's Christmas Trees, says he puts bats in his trees to get rid of insects, without having to use chemicals.

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard strongly urge people to check Christmas trees thoroughly before bringing them into your house. We generally whack the heck out of the tree with a bat (baseball variety, not flying mouse) first. Although this does not improve the looks of the tree, it does insure that any bats (flying mouse variety) are not hitching a ride. Happy Holidays!

The Hungry Streets

It would appear that the streets of Brooklyn are the hungry streets. No, this isn't social commentary, we mean the streets themselves are hungry. Yesterday, they ate a woman.

The woman, 64, fell into a sinkhole about 5 feet by 2 feet wide and about 5 feet deep in front of a house in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn.

Firefighters rushed to the woman's aid, using metal hooks to pull concrete chunks off her before strapping her to a stretcher and removing her from the hole.

The woman, who had just picked up her two grandchildren from a nearby dance school and gone to a grocery store, was taken to a hospital Monday evening and was expected to be OK, firefighters said. She chuckled when they commented on how her groceries had spilled into the hole, they said.

Mean and hungry streets. Here's a picture of hungry streets.

Wall Street Declining?

This is some very, very bad news. If the US continues on the path is is on, Wall Street may no longer be the dominant financial center in the world. That would be a disaster for the US. And it is all the fault of some of the "reforms" put in place after the Enron debacle. John Fund reports in the Opinion Journal.

Increasingly, Hong Kong and London are the places where companies are finding it easier and cheaper to list their shares and raise capital. Last year, of the 25 largest initial public offerings in the world, only one took place in America. This year, Hong Kong is likely to end up as the No. 1 market for stock offerings world-wide.

Perhaps the top culprit in New York's relative decline as a trading center is the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate accountability rules that were put in place in 2002 in the wake of the Enron and WorldCom scandals. Henry Tang, Hong Kong's financial secretary, couldn't be more blunt on the good fortune Sarbanes-Oxley has brought his city. "Our success is giving [Treasury Secretary] Hank Paulson a few raised eyebrows," he told a delegation from the Fraser Institute, a Canadian free-market think tank, last week. "Thank you, Mr. Sarbanes and Mr. Oxley," he said, referring to Democratic Sen. Paul Sarbanes and GOP Rep. Mike Oxley, the law's chief sponsors.

While some of Sarbox's rules make sense, its Section 404 has had unintended and damaging consequences. Section 404 requires corporate executives to certify their financial statements and internal controls personally. Audit fees for Fortune 1000 companies have more than doubled on average. Worse, the rigid and cumbersome rules are driving away business without significantly improving corporate governance. "Managers are increasingly losing their appetite for risk and innovation," says Hank Greenberg, former chairman of the insurance giant AIG.

No wonder that last week a blue-ribbon panel of 22 top U.S. financial and political figures issued a report saying that a more flexible way to police corporate behavior would be to emulate the London Stock Exchange's "watchdog" unit, which uses broad principles to ensure compliance with ethical standards. The focus should be on ensuring a company's financial soundness rather than entangling a corporate executive or its auditors in litigation, which cause its stock price to plummet overnight. Hal Scott, a Harvard law professor and member of the panel, told the New York Post that the corporate controls in Sarbox don't exist anywhere else in the world, and compliance costs "are absolutely killing the U.S. in terms of maintaining listings dominance" in world markets. "If we correct it, we have been told to expect an almost immediate turnaround in listings."

Unintended consequences. Look, nobody wants to see another Enron. But frankly, I always thought the personal certification thing was stupid on the face of it. That we are killing our ability to compete with rules like that will be a long-term disaster for the US. If the Wall Street dominance erodes, so does the long term economic growth. There has to be a better way to do this, one that does not cost the US this kind of damage. It is in the best interests of this nation as a whole to fix this before those unintended consequences yield permanent reduction in tax revenues. This should not be a partisan issue. Both parties should see the wisdom of keeping tax revenues maximized.

UPDATE: More about the report here, including a link to the report itself (huge file warning on that, though).

Less = More? Or Does It?

The Washington Post reports that there is an initiative underway to actually teach less math in schools. The concept is being pushed by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. While at first this may sound like a weird way to improve math instruction, the idea is narrow the number of concepts taught at each grade level in order to improve mastery of those core subjects.

It says the typical state math curriculum runs a mile wide and an inch deep, resulting in students being introduced to too many concepts but mastering too few, and urges educators to slim down those lessons.

Some scholars say the American approach to math instruction has allowed students to fall behind those in Singapore, Japan and a dozen other nations. In most states, they say, the math curriculum has swelled into a thick catalogue of skills that students are supposed to master to attain "proficiency" under the federal No Child Left Behind mandate.

The report urges teachers to focus on three broad concepts in each grade and on a few key subjects — including the base-10 number system, fractions, decimals, geometry and algebra — that form the core of math education in higher-achieving nations. Some are calling Focal Points the most significant publication in the field since the 1980s.

R. James Milgram, a Stanford University math professor who is among the harshest critics of U.S. math instruction, said the 41-page report aligns teaching "with what is being done with unbelievable success" in other countries. The curriculum would teach a few topics intensely and have students master them and move on rather than teach many topics briefly and repeatedly over several years.

In the fourth grade, for example, Focal Points trims the list to three essential skills: multiplication and division; decimals; and two-dimensional shapes.

Virginia lists 41 "learning expectations" for fourth-grade math students in its statewide Standards of Learning. Maryland lists 67 in its Voluntary State Curriculum. The District has 45 standards.

This actually sounds like a good idea. Frankly, my own experience has been that a lot of repetition is required to really internalize math concepts. I think of it as being a lot like learning a foreign language. One needs to drill the grammar over and over to get it right. The danger here is that with a reduced number of concepts being focused on, will teachers also cut back on class time devoted to math? I think that might be the only pitfall to the approach.

The Same Old Song And Dance

Anne Applebaum reminds us that the byzantine world of the KGB is alive and well and living in London. The murder of Alexander Litvinenko has exposed something to the general public that really has been obvious for some time now. Old KGB operatives are popping up all over the place doing any number of bad things.

In other words: Though we don't know who killed Litvinenko, we have learned that London is a more exciting place than we thought it was. We have learned that the complex plots of Dostoevsky novels merely reflect Russian reality. And we have learned that the old KGB lives on in new guises.

Or rather — we have been reminded that the old KGB lives on in new guises, because in fact we have known this for some time. True, the old employees no longer belong to a single all-powerful institution. Some ("the stupidest," according to Oleg Gordievsky, the former double agent) have stayed with the agency, joining either the domestic service (FSB) or the foreign intelligence bureau (SVR). Others went into business, some joining the security entourages of new Russian millionaires, some becoming Russian millionaires in their own right. Still others, to put it bluntly, went into organized crime. And some — President Putin is the shining example here — went into politics.

Despite their widely varying fates, it has long been perfectly clear that many of these old comrades continue to work together in mutually profitable ways. As far back as 1999, for example, a group of Russian-born bankers was caught laundering money through a New York bank, probably using information obtained, one way or another, by Russian intelligence. Since then it has become clear that a number of Russia's largest companies were launched with money from mysterious sources, and a number of former KGB officers have shown up at the helm of businesses and banks, too.

Of course this same mutually profitable relationship will also make it extremely difficult to find Litvinenko's real killer. After all, this set of post-KGB relationships is nothing if not complex: There are conspiracies within conspiracies, agents of agents of agents, people who pretend to be acting on behalf of a particular oligarch or Chechen insurgent who are actually acting on behalf of someone quite different. It is possible that Litvinenko was murdered by "rogue secret policemen," as the British press suspects. It is also possible that the "rogue secret policemen" were working for someone who worked for the Kremlin, or someone who worked for a Russian oligarch, or who worked for a Russian oligarch who worked for the Kremlin.

There is so much conflicting information about the whole situation right now that it is almost impossible to sort out exactly what happened and who was involved. Applebaum points out that one cannot know if some of the information being published is not, in fact, disinformation leaked by interested parties. In other words, its just like the bad old days with the KGB all over again.

More About The Moon

The Washington Post has more detail on the moon base that NASA is proposing.

The effort was presented as an unprecedented mission to learn about the moon and places beyond, as well as an integral part of a long-range plan to send astronauts to Mars. The moon settlement would ultimately be a way station for space travelers headed onward, and would provide not only a haven but also hydrogen and oxygen mined from the lunar surface to make water and rocket fuel.

NASA officials declined to put a price tag on what will clearly be an extremely expensive venture. But they said that with help from international partners and perhaps space businesses, the agency would have sufficient funds to undertake the plan without any dramatic infusion of new money.

If the project goes ahead as planned, it would return humans to the moon for the first time since 1972.

NASA Deputy Administrator Shana Dale said the agency met with hundreds of scientists, potential international partners and space businesses over the past year to discuss lunar options — most pressingly, whether the plan should be based around a series of sorties to the moon or a permanent outpost and later settlement. The conclusion, she said, was that an outpost would be the best both for science and to prepare for exploration deeper into space.

Scott Horowitz, chief of lunar exploration, said: "The lunar base will be a central theme in our going forward plan for going back to the moon in preparation to go to Mars and beyond. It's a very, very big decision, and it's one of the few where I've seen the scientific community and the engineering community actually agree on anything."

That's a big plus, I suspect. That and getting other nations and private businesses involved very early will help ensure that this project moves along quickly. However, the Post does mention the one thing that has been nagging at me about this as well. Congress may not be willing to fund it sufficiently. (The last moon program was cut short without finishing the planned missions. Because Congress cut the funds.)

UPDATE: About Congress cutting the funds. Not as the cut and paste comment spammers are trying to tell the story.

UPDATE: So far two commenters directed over here from Daou Report have been banned. I will continue to do so to people who cannot follow the comment policy.