Undernews For September 15, 2010

Undernews For September 15, 2010

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WORD

You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred. - Woody Allen

HOW THE NEW YORKER, NY TIMES AND OTHER LIBERALS HELPED START THE IRAQ WAR

Michael Moore, Daily Beast - We invaded Iraq because most Americans¬including good liberals like Al Franken, Nicholas Kristof and Bill Keller of The New York Times, David Remnick of The New Yorker, the editors of The Atlantic and The New Republic, Harvey Weinstein, Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, and John Kerry¬wanted to.

Of course the actual blame for the war goes to Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz because they ordered the "precision" bombing, the invasion, the occupation, and the theft of our national treasury. I have no doubt that history will record that they committed the undisputed Crime of the (young) Century. ..

[But] I blame the Times more for this war than Bush. I expected Bush and Cheney to try and get away with what they did. But the Times¬and the rest of the press¬was supposed to STOP them by doing their job: Be a relentless watchdog of government and business¬and then inform the public so we can take action.

Instead, the Times gave the Bush administration the cover they needed. They could¬and did¬say, “Hey, look, even the Times says Saddam has WMD!”

Early liberal support for this war was the key ingredient in selling it to a majority of the public. I realize this is something that no one in the media¬nor most of us¬really wants to discuss. Who among us wants to feel the pain of having to remember that liberals, by joining with Bush, made this war happen?

MEG WHITMAN SPENDS $119 MILLION OF OWN MONEY TO BUY GOVERNORSHIP

It should be a felony but it isn't. . .

NPR - The Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday that Meg Whitman, the Republican nominee for California governor and former eBay CEO, now holds the record for personal spending on a U.S. political campaign ¬ $119 million.

The Times reported that she achieved the new record by giving her campaign an additional $15 million Tuesday. That additional bit of self-funding pushed her past the previous record holder, fellow billionaire New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg who spent $109 million to get re-elected last year.

POPE'S AIDE DISSES BRITAIN

BBC - A senior Papal adviser has pulled out of the Pope's UK visit after saying arriving at Heathrow airport was like landing in a "Third World" country. Cardinal Walter Kasper reportedly told a German magazine the UK was marked by "a new and aggressive atheism".

The German-born cardinal was quoted as saying to the country's Focus magazine that "when you land at Heathrow you think at times you have landed in a Third World country".
Vatican sources said Cardinal Kasper - who stepped down in July as the head of the department that deals with other Christian denominations - was suffering from gout and had been advised by his doctors not to travel to the UK.

INSTANT RUNOFF VOTING MAKES HEADWAY

Fair Vote -American support for IRV continues to grow. Notable new voices for IRV this month included MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, constitutional law professor Richard Pildes and Parade Magazine columnist Marilyn dos Savant. This November IRV will be on the ballot in elections in Maine's biggest city (Portland) and Tennessee's biggest county (Shelby). North Carolina will hold the first statewide general elections with IRV in American history, and its state board seems to be rising to the challenge well. Three California cities are using IRV for the first time, including Oakland (CA) in a hotly contested mayor's race.

SWAMOODLE REPORT

Sam Smith

Everything's a little different in Maine. Today I was in the waiting room of my dentist, when in walks a fiftyish woman who sits down and starts reading the Portland Press Herald.

Suddenly, she begins laughing. I look inquisitively at her and she explains that she had just found the story about how Men's Health Magazine had just rated Portland the 100th best city for sex.

"Shuut," she said. "What did they do? Send some folks up here to try to get some? How can they tell anyway?"

"Well," I said, "I understand they used things like the number of condoms sold and things like that?

She laughed again.

"Shuut, we're in the boonies here. We know who's got sex disease and who doesn't. Hell, everyone here knows who you can have sex with."

TASER TORTURE CAUSES HEART ATTACK

Alternet - A mentally ill man diagnosed with a bipolar disorder was tasered by two Minneapolis Police officers at a YMCA on Friday. The man was not armed but was struggling with police who had been called to the scene. The taser caused his heart to go into cardiac arrest. He is now in a Minneapolis hospital in critical condition after his heart stopped and he had to resuscitated at least twice:

STUPID NEWSPAPER EDITOR TRICKS

After a spate of angry reader letters, Richard L.Connor, editor of the Portland Press Herald in Maine, has apologized for printing a picture of local Muslims observing the end of Ramadan on September 11, without reference to the 9/11 attacks. We assume that the Press Herald will now also balance its future Christmas and Easter coverage with accounts of pedophilia in the Catholic priesthood and gory details of the Inquisition.

WORLD'S BACKUP GRAIN SUPPLIES DOWN TO 72 DAYS

Estimates for this year's global grain carryover stocks have fallen to 444 million tons, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's August 12th World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates report. This amount of grain remaining in the world's silos and stockpiles when the next harvest begins is enough to meet 72 days of consumption.

"This drop in world carryover stocks of grain to 72 days of consumption is moving us uncomfortably close to the 64 days of carryover stocks in 2007 that fueled the 2007-08 spike in world food prices," says Lester R. Brown, president of Earth Policy Institute.

A searing record heat wave, severe drought, and relentless wildfires in Russia and Central Europe have decimated the region's harvests. . .
"Rising temperatures and food security do not mix," notes Brown. "The situation in Russia gives us a preview of what could be in store if we continue to overheat our planet."

WASHINGTON POST LOBBIES FOR ITS CORPO-COLLEGES

Mike Smith, Change - For profit colleges are responding to some awful press¬which is frankly, well deserved¬by starting a lobbying war. They're fighting proposed changes that the Department of Education wants to enact to prevent colleges from making students take on too much debt in return for poor training. Federal aid would be cut off to colleges who broke the rules whether for profit or not.

The Washington Post Company has joined the fight against regulation with their chief executive meeting with Sen. Tom Harkin who will be leading the hearings on for-profit education. The New York Times explains that the Post Co. gets more than half of it's revenue (62%) from its Kaplan education business, so it's clearly in their interest to fight regulation that could hit their profits.

SAT SCORES HIGHLIGHT SCHOOL REFORM FRAUD

Fair Test - SAT college admissions scores show that “test-and-punish school ‘reform’ policies are leaving more children further behind, even when measured by other standardized exams,” according to Bob Schaeffer, Public Education Director of FairTest, the National Center for Fair & Open Testing. Schaeffer noted, “The data contradict the claim that more high-takes testing improves educational quality and equity.”

Overall SAT averages declined since the “No Child Left Behind” federal testing mandates went into effect. At the same time, gaps between whites and Asians, on the one hand, and historically disadvantaged minority groups, particularly African-Americans and hispanics, grew larger. ACT scores, made public last month, demonstrated comparable patterns. Scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress also indicate that educational progress has slowed in the NCLB era. . .

[Fair Test reports that for all students, SAT scores are down by nine points since 2006 with blacks and Puerto Ricans down 14 points. The only ethnic group to improve is Asians who are up 36 points]

“Proponents of NCLB and similar state-level testing programs promised that overall achievement would improve while score gaps would narrow,” Schaeffer continued. “Precisely the opposite has taken place. Policymakers need to embrace very different policies if they are committed to real education reform.”

Schaeffer added, “Fortunately, more and more colleges have recognized the folly of fixating on the narrow, often biased, information provided by standardized tests and moved toward test-optional admissions.” More than 840 accredited, bachelor-degree granting institutions will make admissions decisions about all or many applicants without regard to SAT or ACT scores.

WORD

Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it. - Andre Gide

In an age of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act -- George Orwell

Tell the truth and run -- George Seldes

Whoever tells the truth is chased out of nine villages -- Turkish saying

The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth" -- H. L. Mencken

It's easier to tell the truth than to lie, 'cause then you don't have to remember what you said -- Jerry 'Bama ' Washington

I don't know if it happened exactly like this, but I do know this story is true -- American Indian story teller

It takes two to speak the truth; one to speak and another to hear - Henry David Thoreau

All the durable truths that have come into the world within historic times have been opposed as bitterly as if they were so many waves of smallpox - H.L. Mencken.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either,
and modern literature a complete impossibility - Oscar Wilde

AMERICAN INDICATORS: THINGS THAT HAVE GOTTEN BETTER AND THINGS THAT HAVE GOTTEN WORSE

The Review has long kept track of factual changes in American life. Here is a simplified list. Details and sources

THINGS THAT HAVE IMPROVED

Record levels
Longevity

Since the 1990s
Women owned businesses
Latinos elected to office
Crime rates
Executions

Since the 1980s
Assets of families

Since the 1970s
Percent of blacks in college

Since the 1960s
Public approval of black-white marriages

Since the 1950s
Fatal motor accidents
Suicide rate
Heart disease
Infant mortality

Since the 1940s
Taxes

THINGS THAT HAVE GOTTEN WORSE

Record levels
Percent of homeowners behind on mortgage sets record
Percentage of Americans using food stamps
Housing starts
Trust in government
Average temperature

Since the 1990s
Consumer credit debt
Child poverty levels
Marijuana arrests
Summer employment for teens
Small businesses that provide health plans
Childhood mortality global rank
US share of world tourist market

Since the 1980s
Personal bankruptcies
Unemployment
Number in prison
Middle class debt
Time children spend playing
Increase in wealth of ten richest senators
Number of workers with defined pension plans
Number of black owned TV stations
Decline in number of corporations controlling most media
Defined pension plans
Income of richest Americans compared to average
Housing foreclosures
Foreign debt
Number of problem banks
Student loan debt
Per capita spending on prisons vs. schools
Percent of people in prison on drug charges
Number of friends as reported by Americans in survey
Police SWAT team deployments
Number of American adults attending arts and cultural events

Since the 1970s
Real income of the bottom of Americans
Top one percent share of all income
Ratio of CEO's pay to that of average workers
Mortgage delinquency percentage
Number of public hospitals down
Infection rate in hospitals
Percent with no health insurance

Since the 1960s
Births to unwed mothers
Childhood obesity
Decline in teachers who eat lunch with students
Decline in number of public elementary schools

Since the 1950s
The net worth of American households
Annual person savings rate for families
Ratio of the average executive's paycheck to the average worker's

Since the 1940s
Worst job creation for decade

Since the 1930s
Real unemployment

TAX CUTS FOR THE RICH PRODUCES SAVINGS, NOT SPENDING

Bloomberg - Give the wealthiest Americans a tax cut and history suggests they will save the money rather than spend it. Tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 under President George W. Bush were followed by increases in the saving rate among the rich, according to data from Moody’s Analytics Inc. When taxes were raised under Bill Clinton, the saving rate fell.

The findings may weaken arguments by Republicans and some Democrats in Congress who say allowing the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans to lapse will prompt them to reduce their spending, harming the economy. . . The analysis found some similarities across income levels in the 2001 and 2003 data. The wealthy and the remaining 95 percent of Americans both saved more of their incomes after the Bush tax cuts.

BIG COMPANIES PREFER TO RECRUIT FROM PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES

Time - According to a study conducted by the Wall Street Journal, the largest public and private companies prefer to recruit at large state schools rather than smaller, more prestigious universities. Top choices included Penn State, Texas A&M and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Only one Ivy League School, Cornell, made recruiters' most-wanted list. Many companies reported that they look for practical skills like engineering and business analysis rather than "soft" ones like critical thinking and communication. And for these real-world skills, recruiters skip more liberal arts-minded institutions.

CORN SYRUP CON CONCEIVED

Huffington Post - The makers of high fructose corn syrup want to sweeten up its image with a new name: corn sugar. The group plans to apply Tuesday to the Food and Drug Administration to get "corn sugar" approved as an alternative name for food labels.

Approval could take two years, but that's not stopping the industry from using the term now in advertising. . . .Renaming products has succeeded before. For example, low eurcic acid rapeseed oil became much more popular after becoming "canola oil" in 1988. Prunes tried to shed a stodgy image by becoming "dried plums" in 200

GLOBAL HUNGER DIPS

Reuters - The number of people in the world suffering chronic hunger has declined for the first time in 15 years, due to improving economic conditions and lower food prices, the United Nations' food agency said on Tuesday. But the World Health Organization warned flooding in Pakistan and Russia's drought threatened to spark a food crisis that could endanger the world's poorest people.

About 925 million people are undernourished in 2010, down from a record 1.02 billion last year, which was the highest number in four decades, the Food and Agriculture Organization said in a report.

READER CLIPS

CARTER'S SOLAR PANEL REFUSED BY OBAMA WHITE HOUSE

Mark Robinowitz - [Bill] McKibben is pretending not to know that George W Bush had a much nicer solar power system put on the White House in his first term, both solar hot water for the swimming pool and 9 kilowatts of electricity. While I'd be surprised if that was even one percent of White House electrical consumption it's just politics (ie. lying) for McKibben to pretend there isn't any solar power system there, now. Of course, Al Gore didn't put one up there when he was in the White House and partisan Democrats are embarrassed that it was GW Bush, the center of all evil, who did this instead.

Of course, McKibben is campaigning to lower carbon levels in the atmosphere to 350 ppm even though we passed that level years ago and it seems physically impossible for that reduction to happen without shutting down the entire economy and letting the dust settle for a generation or two (at least).The laws of physics are not subject to politics, not even liberal Democratic politics.

CLASS-SKIPPING CALCULATOR

Daver - I graduated Carnegie-Mellon University with two majors (Mathematics (Computer Science option) and Psychology) in 3 years, with a 4.0 average.

I don't believe I could have done it without skipping about 1/3 of my classes. (Quite often I was in the dorm reading the material instead, which was more efficient.)

Plenty of time for R&R too; an easygoing time - finest years of my life.

MAYOR DALEY'S WAR AGAINST MUSIC

Jim DeRogatis, Pop N Stuff - Greg Kot was quick out of the chute yesterday following the news that Mayor Richard M. Daley will not run for re-election with a damning story recounting the many ways that the like- father, like-son machine politician, so quick to trumpet this extraordinary city's other accomplishments, routinely displayed a tin ear to its unparalleled music scenes-that is, when his minions weren't actively setting out to destroy them. . .

Here is my short list of the ways Daley has actively hurt the music community:

The anti-rave ordinance, restrictive legislation written to curb a scene and a culture that city officials never spent a minute trying to understand.

The heavy-handed post-E2 crackdown on live music venues. . .

The attempts to pass a promoter's ordinance that would have made it nearly impossible for small, independent music boosters to sponsor . . .

Blocking the Smashing Pumpkins and the survivors of the Grateful Dead from playing in Grant Park (and Radiohead and Kanye West from playing in Millennium Park) . . . .

The destruction of Maxwell Street, a key location in the development of the blues, and a general disregard for this city's rich musical history and landmark sites in genres ranging from jazz to house music.

INTERNET CENSORSHIP PLAN MAY BE SNUCK THROUGH SENATE

Personal Liberty - Sensing Senators don’t have the stomach to try and pass a stand-alone bill in broad daylight that would give the President the power to shut down the Internet in a national emergency, the Senate is considering attaching the Internet Kill Switch bill as a rider to other legislation that would have bi-partisan support.

“It’s hard to get a measure like cybersecurity legislation passed on its own,” Senator Thomas Carper (D-Del.) told GovInfoSecurity.com. Carper is chairman of the Senate subcommittee with cybersecurity oversight.

Under instructions from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Senators Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) are working to combine their separate bills into one that can be attached to another piece of legislation, such as the Defense Authorization Act.

Lieberman let slip his real thoughts on the Internet Kill Switch in an interview with CNN’s Candy Crowley when he said, “Right now China ¬ the government ¬ can disconnect parts of its Internet in a case of war. We need to have the ability to do that, too.”

EDUCATION DEFORM: KILLING ARTS FOR KIDS

Kimberly Melton, Oregon Live - From Burns to Dallas to Portland, school districts say vanishing state revenue, rising costs and increased pressure to meet standardized testing benchmarks in subjects like reading and math are threatening to squeeze out courses in the arts, music, physical education and career education.

As the Dallas School District looked for ways to close a $1.3 million gap, the 3,200-student district and its school board made what they called one of their most controversial decisions -- eliminating elementary school music.

Portland Public Schools is eliminating at least 12 music teaching positions and Beaverton School District axed its small orchestra program. Last year, Ashland nixed the 5th grade strings program and Jim Tindall became North Wasco County School District's only certified librarian, serving five schools and 3,000 kids.

Sam Smith, 1986 - My own school experience of late has been with drama and sports. I have found in them advantages that are either absent or weak in my childrens' classroom learning or which have supplemented or strengthened what has occurred in the classroom; advantages that have led me to regard these activities not just as a source of sharing or pride, but as evidence that my sons' schools are doing what they claim. As in the classroom, not always has the lesson been learned, or learned well, but at least it has been taught.

In sports, my sons have learned to work in a group, to cooperate, and to understand and value their peers for a variety of reasons. In some cases this appreciation may come from their peers' skill, in other cases their determination, helpfulness, or supportiveness. They have learned that in real life the penalty for failure of effort may not merely be a bad grade and annoyed parents and teachers, but the disappointment of a whole group whose respect and friendship you seek.

While learning to try harder, they have simultaneous learned how to fail. I watch my sons' teams go down to defeat and think back to Little League years when a bad loss could cast a pall on the house for a whole day. No longer. They have also learned that success may not be an individual triumph at all, but a joint mystery, as with a soccer team that won its league championship not because it was blessed with stars but because this highly individualistic group of players developed a remarkable ability to make each other do better than they normally would and to become one for a common goal. It was more than a championship; it was a priceless lesson in the power of a community to raise itself up collectively.

Sports also teach the importance of concentration; they require the absorption and use of a wealth of small data under extreme stress and time limits. They teach respect and understanding of the human body. And at a critical time of learning about one's self, they can provide a confidence that may not be so easy to come by in other arenas.

Drama, like sports, requires a concentration equal to anything in the classroom. Like sports, functioning within a group is critical. Like sports, the lessons learned are not only applicable to traditional academic courses, but to becoming an educated adult.

One of these lessons is the ability to memorize. It is remarkable that, given the repeated need to memorize in school, so little time is spent developing the skill. One of the few places in school where one can learn how to memorize is during the production of a play.

Further, good drama teachers can introduce their students to sophisticated forms of character analysis that one would find in professional theatre schools. One of my sons was given an exercise that involved figuring out what the characters were really thinking while they were saying their written lines. This sort of study not only produces better actors and actresses but better English students. Once you have seriously acted a part in a play, whole new understandings await in your reading of other literature.

Drama also requires a level of perfection that can only come after one understands the importance of failing over and over again until you get it right. Even the brightest student, used to skimming material and spewing out the correct answer, can be brought to earth by this requirement. A good drama teacher will make even the best try to be better.

Finally, drama encourages the development of self-confidence at an especially timely moment. For both psychological and practical reasons, being able to "perform" may be one of the most useful things one learns in school.

Sam Smith, 1995 - Pat Greer, the principal of my children's elementary school, in a speech twenty years later to a global cultural diversity conference in Australia, explained her approach:

"While the 1970s can be characterized as a decade where shared decision-making was not evident in schools, John Eaton school was different . . . Parent involvement and shared decision-making is alive and thriving at John Eaton School. And our students are thriving, too. Why? Because together with our staff, parents, community and students we have created a community of learners where students and staff alike are secure enough to take risks and dare to do things they never imagined they could . . .

"John Eaton School is child-centered. That means that we value and build on the strengths that each and every child brings to our school and to our classrooms. That is especially important to us in our multicultural environment. Our learning environment builds on the heritage and background of all of our children. The result is that our students are eager, curious students, students who are focused on learning and are responsible for their own learning. Long before children put pencil to paper, or fingers to computer keys, they are encouraged to think about what they are learning. Our emphasis is learning by doing, not rote memorization. We also stress relevancy; what students learn is relevant to their daily lives."

The curriculum at the school was colored by two impressive biases. One was a prejudice towards writing. The kids were always writing something: diaries, plays, stories, speeches, advertisements. The school clearly understood the shortest route to good writing: do it. The other emphasis was the arts, particularly drama and music. With excellent teachers and adequate time, the kids threw themselves into their projects as though Broadway rather than high school was the next step. The encouragement came right from the top - not only from the principal but from Mr. Urqhart, her administrative assistant, who - dressed in his most colorful suit - would sing a single applause-stirring number in his mellow bass voice in each of the big shows - the only adult permitted to thus intrude.

I became conscious of how serious the dramatic side of Eaton was one day as I was taking a group of 4th graders home from an event. One kid stepped carelessly into the street and a companion called her back, saying, "Be careful, you could ruin your whole life that way.' Another added, "yeah, or even your career." Once safely in the car, there commenced the sort of surreal debate that only the young can withstand. The topic (clearly involving the stage rather than the lesser trades) was: what is more important - your life or your career?

BABE RUTH, BARRY BONDS AND JAY WALKERS: REAL AMERICANS

Bill James, Slate - The central theme of Babe Ruth's life, which is the fulcrum of virtually every anecdote and every event of his career, is that Babe Ruth firmly believed that the rules did not apply to Babe Ruth. . . . He was caught using a corked bat, which was not a big deal to the league authorities because they didn't understand what you could do with a corked bat, and he very probably continued to use corked bats for much of his career. Ruth knew perfectly well that he wasn't supposed to eat eight or 10 hot dogs between the games of a doubleheader, but he did it anyway. . .

What I am trying to get people to face is the cast of mind that made Babe Ruth what he was. It was not very different from the cast of mind that made Barry Bonds who he was, or made Roger Clemens or Ted Williams who they were. I myself am a stubborn, sometimes arrogant person who refuses to obey some of the rules that everybody else follows. I pay no attention to the rules of grammar. I write fragments if I goddamned well feel like it. I refuse to follow many of the principles of proper research that are agreed upon by the rest of the academic world. An editor said to me last year, "Well, you've earned the right to do things your own way." Bullshit; I was that way when I was 25. . .

It is a very American thing, that we don't believe too much in obeying the rules. We are not a nation of Hall Monitors; we are a nation that tortures Hall Monitors. We are people who push the rules.

AMTRAK LACKS TERRORISTS TO SCARE YOU, SO IT WILL TRY TO FILL THE GAP

We've been doing random searches for years. None have been in response to particular threats. It's more to show force - Amtrak spokesman Cliff Cole

THE ACCORDION IS NOT A PUNCHLINE

J.D. Considine, Globe & Mail, Canada - The accordion is not a punchline. It often seems that way, particularly in the post-rock-and-roll era. . .

It’s not as if the instrument is universally scorned. Accordion plays a lead role in Norteno and Tex-Mex music, where soloists such as Flaco Jimenez and the late Esteban (Steve) Jordan were stars, and also in Louisiana zydeco music, which was essentially invented by accordionist Clifton Chenier . ..

“It’s got a bad rap because it wasn’t part of the establishment canon,” says Pauline Oliveros, 78, a composer and accordionist who teaches at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. “The accordion was invented in 1840, and this is after the classical period, the baroque period, and so on,” she says. “It was designed to be played as a portable instrument, so that took it out to the working people’s neighbourhoods. So it has a class prejudice against it.”. . .

Sam Smith, DC Diary, 1970s - One of the nicest things that happened over the holidays was that my youngest son asked me whether I still had my accordion. It was the first time in about two decades that anyone had inquired after my accordion and even then it was only with derision. The accordion is an orphan instrument not unlike the oboe, which has been called an ill wind that nobody blows good. It is an instrument so derogated that one of its affinity groups is known as the Closet Accordion Players of America. And it is an instrument that, six months after our marriage, brought my wife running down to the basement crying, "I can't believe you have one of those" after I had discovered it behind some boxes and taken it out for a spin.

Kathy, after all, had been raised in Milwaukee and too many of her friends had taken accordion lessons at Lo Duca Brothers and then stood on risers at the Milwaukee Auditorium with 200 similarly possessed youths playing interminable choruses of tunes like "Lady of Spain."

My curiosity about the accordion went back to college days when I played drums with Larry Yanuzzi, already so proficient a musician that he had the stage name of Larry Vann. Larry actually played a Chordavox, which was not really an accordion at all, although it looked like one, since electronics had supplanted the need to push and pull the bellows.

Later, when I was getting interested in the piano again after a disastrous childhood introduction, I was assigned as navigator on a Coast Guard cutter and bought an accordion as my sea-going piano. I would practice on the bridge -- the only space far enough from the rest of the crew -- while on duty in home port.

The accordion player's right hand is directed to a small keyboard, the left manipulates up to 120 buttons that play the bass notes and chords. On my accordion, the C note button has a small inset fake diamond to provide a tactile clue to home base. The buttons above and below it are not the next notes in the C scale, but rather five notes distant based on the scale of the lower button. Thus the buttons immediately above C are G, D A, and E. From each root note there extends a diagonal row of buttons which play the major, minor, seventh, and diminished versions of the chord.

The five note gaps are anything but arbitrary; in them lie some of the most profound magic of music, part of a journey around what is called the cycle of fifths. In fact, the history of western music is in part that of exploration ever further around and across this circle. If one is playing an accordion, it is also a trip ever further away from the little button with the fake diamond inset.

Despite some years of piano lessons, I had little sense of the true structure of music. I was unable to absorb it intellectually. But as I pressed the little black buttons, I soon became aware of what was going on. What had been, at the piano, a seemingly arbitrary collection of notes revealed their meaning in my left hand. With surprising frequency, the buttons I needed to push were close to each other and part of a pattern. I thus discovered that there was, after all, a system, as I learned music theory through my fingertips.

I also learned why the accordion was no longer so popular. If you play a simple folk song you will perhaps use only the C, G, and D chords, but if you are playing modern jazz you may be hopscotching around the cycle of 5ths in a manner that would be extremely difficult on a squeeze box. Further, as music developed so did the number of chords. You will not find a button for a C augmented 9th chord on an accordion. It is an instrument best suited for traditional music faithful to traditional rules.

After the Coast Guard, my accordion rested untended. Even after I gave up drums entirely in favor the piano, it only came out occasionally. One of the few paid gigs in which I used an accordion was a 4th of July parade in Hyattsville, Maryland. I had protested to the leader of our band that I couldn't really work a whole parade on accordion, but he pointed out something I had missed having never been in a marching band: in a parade you really only need to know one or two tunes. So I played "Maryland My Maryland" and "Bill Bailey" 62 choruses each on a trailer pulled by a John Deere tractor. Then the accordion went back into the basement.

Now it will soon by going to San Francisco . . .I'm glad my Scandalli will play again. A soundless instrument is like an empty house. After all, if you had 120 buttons including one with a fake diamond, mother-of-pearl decoration, a case lined in shiny blue velvet, and the ability to play endless choruses of "Lady of Spain," would you want to end up silent in somebody's basement?

THE ANTI-KORAN CROWD WOULD HAVE HATED THIS COUNTRY'S FOUNDERS

Ted Widmer, Boston Globe - As usual, the Founders were way ahead of us. They thought hard about how to build a country of many different faiths. And to advance that vision to the fullest, they read the Koran, and studied Islam with a calm intelligence that today’s over-hyped Americans can only begin to imagine. They knew something that we do not. To a remarkable degree, the Koran is not alien to American history ¬ but inside it.

No book states the case more plainly than a single volume, tucked away deep within the citadel of Copley Square ¬ the Boston Public Library. The book known as Adams 281.1 is a copy of the Koran, from the personal collection of John Adams. . . . It tells an important story, and reminds us how worldly the Founders were, and how impervious to the fanaticisms that spring up like dandelions whenever religion and politics are mixed. They, like we, lived in a complicated and often hostile global environment, dominated by religious strife, terror, and the bloodsport of competing empires. Yet better than we, they saw the world as it is, and refused the temptation to enlarge our enemies into Satanic monsters, or simply pretend they didn’t exist.

Reports of Korans in American libraries go back at least to 1683, when an early settler of Germantown, Pa., brought a German version to these shores. Despite its foreign air, Adams’s Koran had a strong New England pedigree. The first Koran published in the United States, it was printed in Springfield in 1806.

WHY AN EX-POLICE CHIEF IS VOTING TO LEGALIZE POT

Joseph D. McNamara, SF Chronicle - California voters have a chance on this November's ballot to bring common sense to law enforcement by legalizing marijuana for adults. As San Jose's retired chief of police and a cop with 35 years experience on the front lines in the war on marijuana, I'm voting yes.

I've seen the prohibition's terrible impact at close range. Like an increasing number of law enforcers, I have learned that most bad things about marijuana -- especially the violence made inevitable by an obscenely profitable black market -- are caused by the prohibition, not by the plant. . .

LESS THAN HALF OF BLACK MALES GRADUATED FROM HIGH SCHOOL ON TIME

NPR - A new study from the Schott Foundation for Public Education found that only 47 percent of black male students entering high school in 2003 graduated in 2008. For white males, the graduation rate was 78 percent.

Dr. John Jackson, the foundation's president and CEO, tells NPR's Guy Raz that those numbers are dismal largely because of the lack of resources in schools with high black populations. He says that when young black men are given opportunities to learn in schools with more resources, they perform well.

LOCAL HEROES: REFUSING TO ANSWER QUESTIONS AS A PRECONDITION OF RETURNING TO ONE'S HOMELAND

Hit & Run - Reason contributor Paul Karl Lukacs describes a recent experiment in asserting his right to remain silent at the San Francisco International Airport:

"Why were you in China?" asked the passport control officer, a woman with the appearance and disposition of a prison matron.

"None of your business," I said.

Her eyes widened in disbelief.

"Excuse me?" she asked.

"I'm not going to be interrogated as a pre-condition of re-entering my own country," I said.

This did not go over well. She asked a series of questions, such as how long I had been in China, whether I was there on personal business or commercial business, etc. I stood silently. She said that her questions were mandated by Congress and that I should complain to Congress instead of refusing to cooperate with her.

She asked me to take one of my small bags off her counter. I complied.

She picked up the phone and told someone I "was refusing to cooperate at all." This was incorrect. I had presented her with proof of citizenship (a U.S. passport) and had moved the bag when she asked. What I was refusing to do was answer her questions.

While being detained, Lukacs learned that he is listed in a government database as a guy who thinks "there's some law that says you don't have to answer our questions." Ultimately, he reports, "It took half an hour and five federal officers before one of them acknowledged that I had a right not to answer their questions."

HOW TO CLOSE THE DOOR ON PEACE

Sam Smith - When Bill Clinton's efforts at a Mid-East peace didn't work out towards the end of his administration, he declared the efforts there a failure and then George George Bush showed he didn't care. As a result the case for freelance violence quickly strengthened and people simply forgot that peace was still possible. Within a year of the Mid East peace 'failure' we were faced with an alternative called 9/11.

Now Hillary Clinton has declared that talks between the Israelis and Palestinians may be the last chance for peace in the area. Once again we are being set up for something worse than non-peace. Like, say, an Israeli assault on Iran.

In fact, there should be only two states of peace negotiations in these situations: underway or successfully completed. A declaration of failure too easily becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

THE COSTS AND BENEFITS OF IMMIGRATION

Edward Schumacher-Matos, Washington Post - In 1909, at the height of the last great immigration wave, when immigrants reached a peak of almost 15 percent of the U.S. population, they made up about half of all public welfare recipients. They were two-thirds of welfare recipients in Chicago.

In the country's 30 largest cities, meanwhile, more than half of all public school students were the children of immigrants. They were three-fourths in New York. . .

The truth is that unauthorized immigrants are probably a net burden on taxpayers in the short term, but only if you consider education as a cost and not as an investment in the nation's future, as it was seen a century ago. . .

Economists overwhelmingly agree that the unauthorized contribute to the nation's economic growth -- and thus income for most Americans, though wages for unskilled workers suffer. None of this is to say that we should allow illegal immigration. . .

The study found that an immigrant high school dropout -- which characterizes nearly half of today's unauthorized people -- received $89,000 more in services than he paid in taxes in his life. But an immigrant with at least some college -- a quarter of today's unauthorized -- gave $105,000 more than he got. For the high school graduates left, those who arrived during their teens or earlier were slightly profitable for the government, while the children of those who arrived later paid off the small deficit of their parents.

So, the main question may be: Are they deserving? Look around you at the people whose European-born ancestors were on the dole and overcrowding schools a century ago. You decide.

CHEST COMPRESSION STACKS UP WELL VS. DIFIBRILATORS

Med Page Today - Chest compressions prior to defibrillation are just as good as immediate treatment with an electrical defibrillator for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, according to analysis of pooled data. In some respects, chest compression may even be superior . .Pascal Meier, MD, of the University of Michigan, and colleagues reported in BMC. "Based on our study, current guidelines emphasizing early defibrillation still are important," Meier said in a statement. "However, since the outcomes with the chest compression-first approach were not inferior and might be even better in the long-term, and in case of longer response times, this study may have an impact on future guidelines." Still, survival rates for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest are low, hovering at about 7.6% over the last 30 years, the researchers noted.

AMERICA'S ENDLESS STATE OF EMERGENCY

Anti War - In a letter issued to the heads of Congress, President Barack Obama announced yet another one year extension of a State of National Emergency which has been going on in the United States since September 14, 2001. . . Established in 1976, the National Emergencies Act grants certain powers to the president during times of emergency. Amongst the law’s primary purposes was to prevent a US president from creating an open-ended state of emergency.

Ironically however the law provides for the annual renewal of an existing state of emergency with only a notification of Congress required. This has meant, in a state of open-ended warfare, Presidents Bush and Obama have been able to maintain a state of open-ended emergency anyhow.

RECOVERED HISTORY: WERE THE RUSSIANS HIDING A NUKE IN DC?

Hugh Sidey, Time, 2001 - In late July 1961, President Kennedy, just back from the grim Vienna summit with Khrushchev, asked me to dinner in Palm Beach. After daiquiris and Frank Sinatra records on the patio, his three guests and I gathered around the table for fish-in-a-bag, a White House recipe. Between lusty bites, Kennedy told the story of Khrushchev's anger over West Berlin, the island of freedom in the Soviet empire's East Germany. "We have a bustling communist enclave just four blocks from the White House," I noted, meaning the Soviet embassy. Kennedy paused, fork between plate and mouth, and said, "You know, they have an atom bomb on the third floor of the embassy." Aware of J.F.K.'s love of spy stories, I said something like, "Sure, why not?"

No, Kennedy continued, it was his understanding that the Soviets had brought the components of an atomic device into the building in inspection-free diplomatic pouches and assembled it in the upstairs attic. "If things get too bad and war is inevitable," he said, "they will set it off and that's the end of the White House and the rest of the city." I laughed. Still suspending his bite of fish, Kennedy said, "That's what I'm told. Do you know something that I don't?" No sign of mirth. The conversation moved on.

LADY GAGA: THE END OF THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION?

Camille Paglia, Sunday Times UK - Although [Lady Gaga] presents herself as the clarion voice of all the freaks and misfits of life, there is little evidence that she ever was one. Her upbringing was comfortable and eventually affluent, and she attended the same upscale Manhattan private school as Paris and Nicky Hilton. There is a monumental disconnect between Gaga’s melodramatic self-portrayal as a lonely, rebellious, marginalised artist and the powerful corporate apparatus that bankrolled her makeover and has steamrollered her songs into heavy rotation on radio stations everywhere.

Photos of Stefani Germanotta just a few years ago show a bubbly brunette with a glowing complexion. The Gaga of world fame, however, with her heavy wigs and giant sunglasses (rudely worn during interviews) looks either simperingly doll-like or ghoulish, without a trace of spontaneity. Every public appearance, even absurdly at airports where most celebrities want to pass incognito, has been lavishly scripted in advance with a flamboyant outfit and bizarre hairdo assembled by an invisible company of elves.

Furthermore, despite showing acres of pallid flesh in the fetish-bondage garb of urban prostitution, Gaga isn’t sexy at all – she’s like a gangly marionette or plasticised android. How could a figure so calculated and artificial, so clinical and strangely antiseptic, so stripped of genuine eroticism have become the icon of her generation? Can it be that Gaga represents the exhausted end of the sexual revolution? In Gaga’s manic miming of persona after persona, over-conceptualised and claustrophobic, we may have reached the limit of an era. . .

BREVITAS

WSBTV, GA - DeKalb County is suing a local farmer for growing too many vegetables, but he said he will fight the charges in the ongoing battle neighbors call “Cabbagegate.” Fig trees, broccoli and cabbages are among the many greens that line the soil on Steve Miller’s more than two acres in Clarkston, who said he has spent fifteen years growing crops to give away and sell at local farmers markets. In January, Dekalb County code enforcement officers began ticketing him for growing too many crops for the zoning and having unpermitted employees on site.

3 News, New Zealand - A Norwegian radio journalist quit on the air after complaining about her job and saying she wouldn't read the day's news because "nothing important has happened" anyway. Pia Beathe Pedersen accused her employers at the regional radio station of public broadcaster NRK of putting too much pressure on the staff. Pedersen said in the live Saturday broadcast that she was "quitting and walking away" because she "wanted to be able to eat properly again and be able to breathe".

HOW TRANSIT PROJECTS FAVOR BANKS AND DEVELOPERS

THE AMERICAN COMPUTER MUSEUM

SEIU SUPPORTS CALIFORNIA POT MEASURE

NAZI BRIEFING BOOK REVEALS PLANS TO INVADE BRITAIN

ENDS

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