HinesSight

Do my telomeres look longer? (I'm taking astragalus)

About four years ago I shared my supplements list with a mildly- to un-interested world. Seems like a good time to do it again, since there's been some Big News in the non-prescription nostrums I take every day to keep disability, disease, and death at bay.

I've gone from 22 supplements to 19.

Gone are two algae oil sources of DHA and EPA, as I've replaced these with Ultimate Omega fish oil. Even though I'm a vegetarian, I decided that consuming fish oil was OK, karma-wise, since there doesn't seem to be an equally good non-animal source of omega-3 fatty acids.

Garlicin and gingko biloba bit the supplement dust. Vegetarian glucosamine was replaced by Celadrin, a joint health compound (that also contains some animal stuff) which has some decent research behind it. Pygeum and saw palmetto were dumped in favor of two prescription prostate-symptom-reducing drugs, dutasteride and tamsulosin (brand names: Avodart and Flomax; I take generics).

I added Super Zeaxanthin for eye health, and -- most recently -- Astragalus for telomere lengthening and general health promotion. Having telomeres that are as long as possible seems to be pretty important, according to anti-aging research cited in Scientific American.

Peter Pan stayed forever young in Neverland. In real life, some scientists are looking at telomeres, or regions of repetitive DNA at the ends of our chromosomes, to try to arrive at something like a real version of this story.

Telomeres consist of up to 3,300 repeats of the DNA sequence TTAGGG. They protect chromosome ends from being mistaken for broken pieces of DNA that would otherwise be fixed by cellular repair machinery. But every time our cells divide, the telomeres shrink. When they get short enough, our cells no longer divide and our body stops making those cells. Over time, this leads to aging and death.

Astragalus appears to slow down this process.

New York-based T.A. Sciences claims to be the only company in the world manufacturing a supplement in a pill form that has been lab tested and shown to stop telomeres from shortening, in hopes of halting the aging process. The product, TA-65, comes from extracts of the Chinese herb astragalus, which has been used for medicinal purposes for more than 1,000 years, says Noel Patton, chief executive officer of the company. 

I'd take TA-65, but it's freaking expensive: $219 for 30 capsules, but it looks like the cost could be $1,000 a month for a higher dosage. I'd like my telomeres lengthened, yet not that much. And there's good reason to be skeptical of what T.A. Sciences is up to. So I bought some Solaray Astragalus for $6.54 per 100 capsules through Life Extension.

Hey, if I feel like my telomeres are longer, maybe they actually are. (Please compliment me on my pleasingly lengthy telomeres if you see me in person; that'll help with my placebo effect.) Dr. Oz is big on astragalus, for what that's worth.

By middle age you’re not only feeling exhausted; your cells are also starting to wear out. The reason? Shorter telomeres. Every time a cell divides, a little chunk of telomere gets spent. When you run out of telomeres, the cell stops replicating. My secret cell supercharger is astragalus, an herb that’s been used in Chinese medicine for thousands of years. New studies suggest that a compound in astragalus can affect telomere length in cells. I recommend taking up to 1,200 milligrams of astragalus with a glass of iced coffee or green tea. The caffeine in these drinks naturally boosts metabolism, helping you burn calories.

Here's my updated supplement list. Like I said before, "Do your own research. Make up your own mind."

Acetyl-L-carnitine 620 mg
Align probiotic
Alpha lipoic acid 100 mg
Astragalus 400 mg 
Aspirin 81 mg
Bilberry fruit extract 120 mg
Celadrin 1050 mg
Cold-FX 200 mg
Co-Q-10 60 mg
DHEA 25 mg
Fish oil 1000 mg ("Ultimate Omega") 
Green tea extract 725 mg
Lutein 12 mg
Melatonin 1 mg
Multi-vitamin ("Doctor's Choice for 50-Plus Men")
Pomegranate extract 500 mg
Resveratrol 250 mg 
Super Zeaxanthin
Vitamin D 400 IU

More bureaucracy, please. The United States needs it.

Conservatives would have us believe that this country suffers from an excess of government regulation, bureaucracy, and restrictions on free enterprise.

Not true, as evidenced by how successful the German auto industry is. High profits. High wages. High involvement of the government in corporate affairs. 

In 2010, over 5.5 million cars were produced in Germany, twice the 2.7 million built in the United States. Average compensation (a figure including wages and employer-paid benefits) for autoworkers in Germany was 48.97 Euros per hour ($67.14 US), while compensation for auto work in the United States averaged $33.77 per hour, or about half as much as in Germany, all according to 2007 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For Germany-based auto producers, the U.S. is a low-wage country.

Despite German companies’ relatively high labor costs in their home markets, these firms are quite profitable.

...Workers in the German auto industry maintain high wages and good working conditions through two overlapping sets of institutions. First, in the auto industry, virtually all workers are unionized members of IG Metall, the German autoworkers’ union. With such union density, workers have considerable power to keep wages high.

...In addition to high trade union density supporting the power of German autoworkers’ wages, the German constitution itself includes a second mechanism for keeping employees involved in the decisions of the firm for which they work. The Works Constitution Act provides for the creation of Works Councils in each factory.

This morning I came across a more philosophical argument in favor of bureaucracies and regulations. Here's an excerpt from Bruce Robbins' essay, "Enchantment? No, thank you!" in The Joy of Secularism, a book I'm enjoying a lot.

Robbins notes that Max Weber recognized the power of "rationalization" to demoralize. But he says:

I, too, agree. The question is not whether it would demoralize us if it were the case; the question is whether it is the case -- in other words, how well the concept of rationalization does in the competition of many rival concepts to decide which best describes the world. I don't think it comes close to winning.

The paradigmatic institution of rationalization is bureaucracy. In the midst of a financial and economic crisis that is extraordinarily severe but historically far from unique, hearing news every day about the sufferings it has caused, we are reminded very forcibly of two things that we ought to have known before: that capitalism has more to do with the shape of our world than bureaucracy does, and that although capitalism also uses numbers, it is not a force for rationalization, but a force for chaos.

Faced with such wild, irresponsible, number-based imaginings as the derivative, bureaucratic regulation is very emphatically not a useful name for what's wrong with our world. It is something that we needed much, much more of.

Excellent point.

Hopefully voters will keep this in mind next November, when they face a choice between electing Republicans and returning us to the unfettered craziness of Wall Street that got us into our current economic mess, or endorsing a balanced Democratic approach of regulated capitalism.

Dump Go Daddy -- I did it two years ago

Tomorrow is Dump Go Daddy Day. If you've got a domain name registered with GoDaddy.com, or some other Internet relationship with Go Daddy, I hope you'll ditch this company. 

Two years ago I flew the Go Daddy coop for Dotster, and haven't regretted the move. My reasons were different from why people are dumping Go Daddy now -- mostly because it supported a really bad proposed law, SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act, but it really is more like a Stop Free Speech Act).

Pleasingly, Go Daddy lost about 70,000 domains last week. May the Go Daddy exodus continue. Here's a video report of what's going on:

Another restaurant-reason why Salem drives me crazy

Geez. As if I needed any more reasons why Salem, a.k.a. "So-lame," keeps disappointing my health-conscious, vegetarian, organic, ethnic-food loving self.

A few days ago the Portland Oregonian reported that a mere forty miles or so to the north, in oh-so-cool Bridgeport Village, a vegan restaurant called Native Foods has opened. 

Need evidence that plant-based eating has gone mainstream? You'll find it at Bridgeport Village, where this outpost of a small California chain of vegan restaurants opened in November, smack in the middle of the suburban shopping center's busiest crossroad. The vibe is family friendly, as is the accessible menu of salads, small pizzas, burgers and sandwiches, along with comforting dishes like chili cheese fries, Buffalo wings and nachos. All the food is made to order, and many dishes feature "Native Meats," which are made out of plant-based proteins like tempeh, seitan and chicken and bacon substitutes made out of such things as soy, wheat and pea protein. It may sound like a science experiment at first, but the hearty flavors and textures should convince even die-hard omnivores. 

It looks great.

There's nothing like it here in Salem, Oregon's capital city, with a population of 150,000, 99% of whom apparently live for Subway, pizza joints, and the Olive Garden, or we'd have at least one restaurant like Native Foods, or Cafe Yumm.

Yeah, the Oregonian is right: plant-based eating has gone mainstream. But Salem residents will sit on the banks of the vegan/vegetarian river for as long as possible, gorging on double decker cheeseburgers.

Every week the Salem Statesman Journal, our local newspaper, reports in the Living section about restaurant news: openings, closings, renovations, and such.

My wife and I find it horribly depressing. There's rarely any news about eateries outside of the Salem tradition -- high calorie, unhealthy, uncreative, meat-focused. Hopefully this will change someday. For now, we'll just have to dream of the Native Foods vegan Rockin' Moroccan Bowl.

Rockin’ Moroccan Bowl
Your choice of tofu or Native Chicken marinated in our homemade Moroccan sauce with grilled veggies and quinoa. Topped with currants and toasted almonds. Chef Tanya gets the tofu version every time! 9.95

I will too. When I escape from Salem and make it to Bridgeport Village.

Plant magic mushrooms on your grave for loved ones to enjoy

I haven't spent much time envisioning how I'd like my dead body to be disposed of. But after listening to an episode of Philosophy Talk today, "Is Nothing Sacred Anymore?," I've got an interesting psychedelic option to consider.

Here's what a member of the audience said:

Hello, my name is Jay Monk. I'm from Willamette University. And first I'll apologize for the asking of this question about a taboo, but I really want to know what your thoughts are. If hypothetically, for my burial, I'd like to be buried in a plot of land that has been inoculated with psychedelic mushrooms, and then afterwards, in six months or however long, my friends and family take these as a celebration of my life in a wake ceremony, is that sacrilege?

Responses of the philosophers (the ones I could make out among the ensuing laughter):

What a good question! Leave it to the young to think of new ways to break... Wait a minute, these are edible mushrooms? Yes, yes, they have to ingest them to get high. Seems like a cool idea. This could be a celebration of somebody's life. One does have knowledge of rituals in which human beings are eaten as a way of passing on their powers to the people who eat them. And a kind of ritual, eating of the mushrooms that have grown on a person's grave is a mode of connection to that person's life, actually. It shows a kind of seriousness... Have you patented that, uh...

Great idea, Jay. It's terrific that a guy going to college right here in Salem, Oregon, my home town, had such a philosophically inspiring notion.

I had some personal acquaintance with psilocibin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, back in the 1960's. My memory of the experience is dim, but I'm confident that if any friends or family of a deceased person were still grieving after six months, a magic mushroom experience, courtesy of the grave site, would knock them into another state of consciousness. 

Graveyard soils apparently are conducive to mushroom growing. And Oregon is fertile ground for magic mushrooms. So I hope you will indeed patent your idea, Jay. Don't let a minor detail like the illegality of magic mushrooms stop you.

Our unreal (really!) 2011 Christmas Letter is unveiled

Every year I struggle, for a whole fifteen seconds or so, to come up with a theme for our Christmas Letter -- which we call, with marvelous political correctness, "Holiday Greetings from Laurel and Brian."

Once again it was easy to identify a zeitgeist for 2011. Unreal. Such has become our favorite way of handling reality: treat it as illusion. 

[Legal disclaimer: this only works with brain-stuff such as emotions, worries, fears, and such. Ignore a red traffic light and your results almost certainly will differ.]

So here's our totally unreal 2011 Christmas Letter, a.k.a. Holiday Greetings. Read it and you'll thrill, if you're easily thrilled, to photos of our favorite people -- us -- plus our favorite, not to mention only, granddaughter.

Plus, plus, Serena, our family dog who also enjoys pretending to be a canine that she's not.
Download 2011 Christmas Letter (PDF file)
Download 2011 Holiday Letter Word (Word file) 

Merry Christmas. May your ears, and other important parts of you, be as perky as Serena's in 2011.

Mailing Christmas cards still feels right to me

I'm a techno guy. I've got an iPhone, MacBook Pro, Roku, and Apple TV. Plus two blogs and Facebook/Twitter accounts. But today I mailed the last of my Christmas cards. Yes, mailed. 

As in where you pick up a card and envelope from a box, write your name and maybe some personal thoughts on the card, fold over a photo-filled Holiday Letter that you and your wife composed, place it inside the card, put the card inside the envelope, seal the envelope with a lick of your tongue, write the address of the person you're sending it to as legibly as your horrible penmanship allows, afix a Christmas-themed stamp to the upper right corner of the envelope, and place a return address label that a non-profit organization has sent you for this purpose in the upper left corner. 

(Note: thank you, non-profit, for saying "Brian and Laurel HInes" on the labels; I'm still recovering from the trauma suffered to my male ego, when, a few years ago, we used labels that said "Mr. and Mrs. Laurel HInes".)

We seem to be getting fewer and fewer mailed Christmas cards with every passing holiday season. Emailed greetings are becoming more common. I'm not opposed to this. Reaching out and touching someone is a good thing to do, whether via a computer screen or paper. 

I simply enjoy sitting down at our dining room table and doing as my grandmother did, as my mother did, as my daughter does, and, probably, as my granddaughter won't do. By the time she's old enough to send out Christmas greetings of her own (she's four now), I suspect mailed cards will seem as archaic to her as notes delivered by carrier pigeon seem to me.

My heart says "that'll be a loss." However, what matters a lot to one generation often becomes a what's the big deal with that? to a following generation. 

Us baby-boomers grew up in a more tactile communication world.

Lifting a card out of the mailbox; opening the flap with a fingernail; unfolding the greeting with your hands; feeling the weight and texture of the paper; observing the marks on the card made by a pen held by a friend, relative, or loved one -- a text message, tweet, Facebook update, or email may convey the same information as a mailed card, but these just aren't the same.

Not even close.

At least, not for someone like me who has enjoyed getting and sending real Christmas cards for most of his sixty-three years (my babyhood and early childhood are either a blur or a blank to me).

Part of the allure of my habitual Christmas-card-sending ritual feels akin to the farewell scene that has taken place on the last show of most Survivor (reality TV) seasons -- where the three people who have managed to avoid being "voted off the island" pay homage to those who are no longer with them.

In my case, some of the people I thought of while addressing my cards are dead. When I send a card to a high school classmate, I think of two good childhood friends who were part of my life since first grade. They aren't any more, having died too soon. But they're alive in my memories, stimulated when I write out my home town, "Three Rivers," as I address a Christmas card.

Clicking on an email group wouldn't be the same.

I wouldn't remember that somewhere within that group is the zip code 93271, my mother's zip code for so many years. I wrote it on many letters to her after I left home. Picking up a pen and writing it on an envelope today felt so familiar. I only do it once a year now, when I mail a Christmas card to a woman nearly my age who, as a young girl, was our next door neighbor and now lives in her family home.

I picture her as she was while going through the motions of preparing the card for mailing. In my mind she hasn't aged a bit, because I haven't seen her in person for so long. At that moment nothing has changed: she's still six years old; I'm sixteen; my mother is alive. I'm sending a message to zip code 93271.

I know none of this is true. Yet in a way, it is.

That's part of the magic of a mailed, hand-addressed Christmas card. Perhaps I'll fall under the sway of purely electronic holiday greetings someday, but that day isn't now. I hope it won't be ever.

"Vancouvria" -- a great satire of Portland's boring neighbor

I don't know who made "Dream of the Suburbs," a terrific Portlandia-inspired satire that flings right-on barbs at Vancouver, Washington -- Portland's yawn-inspiring neighbor city across the Columbia.

Whoever they are, two thumbs-up to them. You nailed Vancouver!

[Update: through brilliant detective work I clicked on the name of the person who uploaded the video and discovered it's... Brighton West. Follow on Twitter here.]

Not that I've ever experienced Vancouver close up and personal myself. I've never felt a need to go there. I've got plenty of blah and boring right here in Salem. Along with an Old Navy store.

Watch the short video to get that allusion.

 

PolitiFact wrong about Medicare 2011 Lie of the Year

I'm disappointed in PolitiFact. The fact checking organization has given its LIe of the Year 2011 award to "Republicans voted to end Medicare." Today I emailed PolitiFact, expressing my disappointment with this choice:

I've been a big admirer of PolitiFact. I read your site every day and often refer to it on my blogs, where I try to base my opinions on facts rather than faith. But your Medicare "Lie of the Year" is deeply disturbing. Over and over I heard Democrats and Obama say "Paul Ryan wants to end Medicare as we know it." But you left out "as we know it," which alone makes your Lie award highly debatable.

Then there's the question of what Medicare is: a single payer plan with guaranteed benefits. Do you know anything about the recently released Wyden-Ryan plan? Apparently not, because Ryan's revised plan is considerably closer to the current Medicare, though as an option it now preserves traditional Medicare. Did you hear that last phrase: "preserves traditional Medicare."

In Ryan's new iteration of Medicare reform, he has agreed to preserve traditional Medicare along with a voucher system that provides premium support for private insurance. Yet your Lie of the Year award is based on Ryan's original plan preserving Medicare. Huh? Again, you really should have informed yourself about the Wyden-Ryan plan before you wrongly chose the Lie of the Year.

I realize that you're sensitive to criticism that PolitiFact is prone to political correctness and marketing considerations. But understand: when you make screwy rulings like this, your credibility takes a big hit. Like I said, I've been a big fan of yours. However, I'll never be able to trust PolitiFact like I did before. This isn't your best day, to put it mildly.

Lots of bloggers, columnists, and political commentators have been lambasting PolitiFact for this screwy decision. David Wiegel, Steve Benen, Jed Lewiston, Thom Hartmann, and Paul Krugman all make valid criticisms. I like Benen's analogy:

Medicare is a single-payer health care system offering guaranteed benefits to seniors. The House Republican budget plan intended to privatize the existing system and replace it with something very different — a voucher scheme. It would still be called “Medicare,” but it wouldn’t be Medicare.

It seems foolish to have to parse the meaning of the word “end,” but if there’s a program, and it’s replaced with a different program, proponents brought an end to the original program. That’s what the verb means.

I’ve been trying to think of the best analogy for this. How about this one: imagine someone owns a Ferrari. It’s expensive and drives beautifully, and the owner desperately wants to keep his car intact. Now imagine I took the car away, removed the metallic badge off the trunk that says “Ferrari,” I stuck it on a golf cart, and I handed the owner the keys.

“Where’s my Ferrari?” the owner would ask.

“It’s right here,” I’d respond. “This has four wheels, a steering wheel, and pedals, and it says ‘Ferrari’ right there on the back.”

By PolitiFact’s reasoning, I haven’t actually replaced the car — and if you disagree, you’re a pants-on-fire liar.

Here's my own biggest problem with PolitiFact's decision. A Lie of the Year should be unmistakably lie'alicious. Given how many falsehoods politicians spout every day, the absolute biggest grandest lie for all of 2011 should be obvious B.S.

Yet when I first heard that PolitiFact had picked "Republicans voted to end Medicare" my reaction was, Huh? That's what they actually did.

As Benen said, the entire justification for PolitiFact's award choice rests on the word "end." Ryan and his fellow Republicans clearly wanted to change Medicare drastically. PolitiFact apparently had no problem with the Democratic mantra, "Republicans want to end Medicare as we know it." 

So how much of a difference is there between a supposedly false statement, "Republicans want to end Medicare," and this indisputably true statement, "Republicans want to end Medicare as we know it"? Do those four words, "as we know it," really create such a gigantic change from false to true that it justifies giving the first statement a Lie of the Year 2011 award?

This afternoon I stopped following PolitiFact on Twitter. With some 50,000 followers, PolitiFact probably won't notice. But it made me feel better, because PolitiFact blew it big time on this one.

At the least, "Republicans want to end Medicare" deserves a Half True ruling, as PolitiFact often gives on issues that can't be pinned down with factual exactitude. Yet in this case PolitiFact didn't give any leeway, failing to understand how subjective the word "end" is. 

Someone says, "I want to end my marriage." Right at that moment? In a few months? Next year? When the kids are grown up? Does it matter all that much what the precise time period is? Isn't the intention what's important?

Republicans want to end Medicare as we know it in ten years. If we won't be able to recognize Medicare in a decade, to me that sure sounds like the end of Medicare. I give PolitiFact a "mostly false" on this ruling.

Oregon's dry December -- caused by global warming?

Climatologists predict that extreme weather events will become more common as human-caused global warming intensifies. So I've been wondering if the really weird December weather here in the Pacific Northwest has anything to do with global warming.

There's a good chance that Portland will break the all-time record for least rainfall in December. I recall KGW meteorologist Rod HIll saying the record goes back all the way to 1876, or thereabouts.

New research presented at a recent American Geophysical Union meeting suggests there could be a link between the unusually long-lasting high pressure that has keep storms away from Oregon, and the loss of Arctic sea ice caused by global warming.

"The question is not whether sea ice loss is affecting the large-scale atmospheric circulation...it's how can it not?" That was the take-home message from Dr. Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University, in her talk "Does Arctic Amplification Fuel Extreme Weather in Mid-Latitudes?", presented at last week's American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

Dr. Francis presented new research in review for publication, which shows that Arctic sea ice loss may significantly affect the upper-level atmospheric circulation, slowing its winds and increasing its tendency to make contorted high-amplitude loops. High-amplitude loops in the upper level wind pattern (and associated jet stream) increases the probability of persistent weather patterns in the Northern Hemisphere, potentially leading to extreme weather due to longer-duration cold spells, snow events, heat waves, flooding events, and drought conditions. 

Now, so far there isn't conclusive evidence that this is happening, even though there's no doubt that the Arctic is getting warmer, greener, and with less ice.

But it sure seems reasonable to expect that losing Arctic sea ice equivalent to 44% of the size of the contiguous United States would, as Dr. Francis said, do something to the jet stream which normally funnels storms into the Pacific Northwest during the winter. 

Here's another excerpt from the Climate Progress repost of Jeff Master's Wunderblog piece:

The Arctic has seen a stunning amount of sea ice loss in recent years, due to melting and unfavorable winds that have pushed large amounts of ice out of the region. Forty percent of the sea ice was missing in September 2007, compared to September of 1980. This is an area equivalent to about 44% of the contiguous U.S., or 71% of the non-Russian portion of Europe. Such a large area of open water is bound to cause significant impacts on weather patterns, due to the huge amount of heat and moisture that escapes from the exposed ocean into the atmosphere over a multi-month period following the summer melt.

Cranky old man gripes about social networking

Growing old sucks.

As a 63 year old, I can tell you that the best thing about becoming Social Security eligible is getting monthly money from the government, paid for by the hard labor of people still working. Thank you, daughter!

Otherwise, I'm still trying to figure out what's so great about the "Golden Years."

Yes, I get a 10% senior discount at LifeSource Natural Foods here in Salem. That's one thing. Just about the only other obvious benefit of my geezer'ness is feeling freer to be a cranky old man, something that comes pretty naturally to me.

So I might as well vent about social networking gripes that have been building up in my not-quite-yet-senile psyche since I started blogging, Twittering, and Facebooking.

I started to blog back in 2003, which is about a hundred years in Internet time, given how fast things change in cyberspace. Blogging was cool back then. Now it's mostly the province of, well, cranky old men (and a few women) who write lengthy rants.

Five hundred words. Maybe a thousand words. Wow, that could be more than 5000 characters! Who's going to read something 35 times longer than a Twitter tweet? 

Me.

And other brilliant, intelligent, thoughtful, literary, cultured people who understand that not everything in the cosmos can be described in 140 characters. Nonetheless, daily I peruse my Twitter and Facebook feeds, even though I'm not really into these trendier forms of social networking, blogging being my primary passion.

Here's some reasons WTF? echoes so often in my brain when I fire up the Twitter and Facebook apps on my iPhone.

-- I don't get Foursquare. Or the whole deal of telling people what you're doing and where you are at the moment. I don't give a shit if you're at Joe's Bar and have just become the "mayor" of the place, or whatever it's called when you irritate more Twitter followers than anybody else who belongs to Foursquare and tweets "I'm at Joe's Bar." 

-- I also don't get it when someone fires off 35 Twitter tweets in a row, describing in 140 character bursts what's happening at a news conference, sports event, or whatever. Hey, get a free Blogger account and write a thousand word description of whatever you're so excited about. Twitter is supposed to be about brevity. 35 tweets is 34 too many in a thirty-minute time span. Send me one tweet saying "I'm live blogging X at URL Y." I probably don't care about X anyway, so this makes it a lot easier for me to ignore what you mistakenly believe your Twitter followers want to know about in excruciatingly tweety detail.

-- I'm not sure what I've done wrong with my Facebook account, but I'm sure it's Mark Zuckerberg's fault. For some reason I have no idea who most of my "friends" are. When I started up with Facebook I was desperate to have some friends, so I promiscuously sent out invitations to whoever Facebook suggested I should befriend, and I accepted friend requests from complete strangers. Now I scroll through my Facebook feed and think, "I'd care about your kid's birthday party if I had some clue who you are." I don't know how to unfriend people. I'm also afraid to in case this is a horrible social networking faux pas and they'll find out about it. Of course, since I don't know who you are, I guess I shouldn't care if you hate me.

-- Along this line, everybody who sends me LinkedIn invitations: STOP! I have no idea what Linkedin is, other than it has something to do with business networking. I'm retired. I don't even like to think about working, much less get involved with somebody else's actual working. Unless you can give me free Apple products I have no interest in furthering your career. What's especially irritating is that I continue to get Linkedin emails for months, reminding me that I haven't responded to a request from somebody I don't know to get involved with a social networking service that I don't care about. 

Well, I'm almost up to 700 words of griping. I lost the Twitter crowd about 650 words ago, so I'm probably only talking to myself now. But, hey, that's what blogging is all about.  

Wyden-Ryan Medicare reform plan looks interesting

Knee-jerk reactions. They're a big part of what makes politics so dysfunctional in this country.

We need to resist making snap judgements about the plan to reform Medicare unveiled today by Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon and Republican Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.

Yes, that Paul Ryan.

To progressives, he's evil incarnate. To conservatives, he's the second coming of Ronald Reagan. In truth, he's just Paul Ryan. A person. With ideas to improve Medicare. Which is who Ron Wyden also is. A person. With ideas to improve Medicare.

Basically, by offering seniors a choice: stay in the current government-run Medicare system, or join a private insurance plan with the same defined benefits as the public plan. Read all about it on New York Times, Politico, Washington Post, Oregonian.

This is far different from what Ryan initially proposed, which would have largely privatized Medicare, a.k.a. "ending Medicare as we know it" in liberal-speak, or "saving Medicare for future generations" in conservative-speak.

There's no doubt that big changes have to be made in Medicare. I say this as someone who will be eligible for Medicare in less than two years. I'm looking forward to ditching Blue Cross. Everyone I know who is on Medicare likes it.

My family doctor, though, says she loses money on every Medicare visit, and I believe her. This is one sign, among many, that Medicare needs some major fixing.

In his book, "Comeback America," David Walker, former head of the Government Accountability Office, says that Medicare had a financing gap of about $38 trillion as of January 1, 2009 -- five times greater than Social Security's shortfall. Probably the gap is even greater today.

But I'll admit that when I saw Paul Ryan's name in the first news story I read about the Wyden-Ryan Medicare reform plan, my intuitive reaction was "This must be a bad idea." Then I read some details about it and thought, "Hmmmm. There's some things to like here."

(I was a health planner and policy analyst for about fifteen years, so I know quite a bit about our health care system.)

For sure, though, Democrats and Republicans are going to retreat to their usual corners and come out swinging at each other when debate on the Wyden-Ryan plan begins. Per usual, rationality, facts, and respectful discourse will take a back seat to political posturing. 

We can only hope that things will be different in 2013, when the Wyden-Ryan plan may become proposed legislation.

The pair said they would not draft legislation. With Congress at an impasse over more immediate deadline matters, such as the extension of a temporary payroll tax cut, Ryan said he does not expect action on major issues such as Medicare until a new Congress is seated in 2013.

“There’s no point in drafting legislation if you know it’s not going to pass,” Ryan said. 

I don't have a problem with offering a defined Medicare benefits package through both the current federal program and private insurance plans. This would be an interesting experiment. Conservatives believe that almost always the private sector can provide services better than government can.

OK. Let's see if this is true with Medicare.

If private insurers can offer seniors the same health services for a lower cost, great. I bet they can't, given their much higher administrative costs. But offering Medicare enrollees a choice between a government and private plan doesn't scare my progressive psyche.

However, what's good for Medicare should be equally good for the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare"). As a condition for going ahead with the Wyden-Ryan plan, Democrats should demand that a public option be added to the Affordable Care Act, as progressives wanted when the legislation was being debated.

Lastly, here's a thought experiment for readers with different political persuasions.

If you're a progressive, imagine that this Medicare reform plan had been unveiled by Senator Ron Wyden and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (a left-leaning Representative). If you're a conservative, imagine that it had been unveiled by Representative Paul Ryan and Jim DeMint (a right-leaning Senator).

Would your opinion of the plan be different, if both of the sponsors had shared your personal political views? Probably. That's human nature. We have a hard-wired tendency to identify with our own "tribe." But this bias can be overcome. 

It needs to be, if the United States is to overcome the extreme divisiveness that hinders our country from moving forward on resolving pressing problems. Kudos to Wyden and Ryan for giving it a try.

How to contact Lowe's and complain about Muslim bigotry

Up to now my wife and I have had good feelings about Lowe's. But the company has pulled ads on a reality show about Muslims after caving-in to bigots.

The North Carolina-based retailer last week withdrew its ads from the hour-long show that follows the lives of five Muslim families from Dearborn. The decision coincided with pressure from conservative issues groups including the Florida Family Association, which claimed the TV show was “propaganda that riskily hides the Islamic agenda's clear and present danger to American liberties and traditional values.”

Here's a link to the contact us page on the Lowe's web site. I just used it to send the company this message:

Your web site says you're dedicated to diversity and inclusion, but apparently you agree with the extreme Christian group that got you to pull ads from a TV show about Muslims. So why should my wife and I trust you? We just bought a dishwasher from Lowe's. We wish we hadn't. Be assured that the next time we have a choice where to buy an appliance, we won't choose Lowe's. Please explain, if you can, how your supposed values of "inclusion and diversity" match with your caving in to bigotry.

l'd also complain to the Florida Family Association, but right now their web site isn't working because they claim it's being attacked. Wow, what a non-surprise. Hate is being protested. 

You also can contact Lowe's via their Facebook page post about the controversy. It's a pitiful explanation of why they pulled the ads.

Individuals and groups have strong political and societal views on this topic, and this program became a lighting rod for many of those views. As a result we did pull our advertising on this program.

Great. You gave in to bigots after they raised a stink. Well, maybe Lowe's will realize that they'll lose a lot more business by supporting bigotry, than by standing firm on the company's supposed commitment to diversity and inclusion.

Books are made to be highlighted and written in

Jeez, just what I needed...another outrage that demands my attention, energy, and blogging time to complain about.

I've already got my hands full with climate change, cougar hysteria, Republican filibustering, and getting Cafe Yumm to come to Salem.

Now I'm forced to react to an opinion piece in yesterday's Oregonian that was horribly, insanely, unforgivably wrong:

Douglas Yocum's ridiculous "Spare the scribbles and leave those pages pristine." Is he serious? Is this a joke, a put-on?

Don't ruin books by writing in them. 

More books probably are ruined at Christmas than any other time of the year. Instead of buying a gift card, parents, grandparents and friends jot down a holiday greeting in the front endpapers of the book. 

This is a no-no.

...Sadly, there are worse book sins than signatures. Some owners deface books by writing on the edges, scratching notes in the margins, underscoring or leaving check marks so information can be found easier at a later time. 

Argh! 

Hey, Douglas, Argh! back at you. I hope this drives you crazy -- photos of my copy of one of the best 2011 non-fiction books, Daniel Kahheman's terrific "Thinking, Fast and Slow."

I highlight passages on almost every page.

Plus, I write notes on blank pages in the back of the book. Just like my mother did. Just like I hope my daughter does. And just like I'll be teaching my granddaughter to do as her "book-defacing" (according to Dwight) duty.

Books are made to be highlighted, marked-up, written-in, annotated, whatever. Reading isn't passive. It is active, the more active the better.

I use my highlighter to put "!" marks by passages I like or agree with. In the margin I also put "?" by passages I don't like or disagree with. Sometimes "!!!" or "???" Like I said, my mother was a habitual book scribbler, and I'm proud to be continuing the tradition.

But like I said, maybe Douglas isn't serious. I can't believe he is, because every book lover I've known has considered pages to be a conversation pit, not a lecture hall. Reading isn't passive listening; it is a conversation between the author and me.

I enjoy talking back with my highlighter and pen. I'm pretty sure almost every author of the books I read appreciates my conversing with him/her. If Douglas doesn't, tough. 

Feel free to comment on this blog post if you read it, Douglas. You can even print it out and scribble "Stupid!" all over it. I won't mind.  

Every nation agrees to cut greenhouse gases

What are global warming deniers going to do, now that every country in the world has agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions?

OK, more accurately every nation has agreed to work on a future agreement that would commit them to binding greenhouse gas reductions. But that's still a heck of a lot better than doing nothing, a reason to smile about the Durban climate change conference.

And it leaves those deniers without any place to lay their anti-science heads.

One hundred and ninety-four countries signed on to the Durban agreement. That, Wikipedia tells me, is the entire roster of member states and observer states in the United Nations. So no matter where global warming deniers go, they'll be in a nation that affirms the reality of human-caused climate change.

Somehow I suspect they'll manage to carry on, though. Now it just will be tougher for them to justify their ridiculous conspiracy theories. 

How is it that Al Gore and his merry band of left-wing One World environmental activists have managed to convince every country in the entire world that action needs to be taken to cut greenhouse gas emissions? 

Wow, that's a lot of power.

Al Gore must be able to control the governments of China, Israel, India, Russia, Brazil, Bhutan, Saudi Arabia, and all the other nations on Earth -- plus the United States. But, hey, reality, reasonableness, and facts don't matter to climate change deniers. 

Science supports a progressive political agenda

Nice! 

The voice that speaks inside my head couldn't do anything but agree with Alex Rosenberg's conclusion near the end of his book, "The Atheist's Guide to Reality:" modern science leads to a left-wing ideology.

Like a lot else that Rosenberg says in his provocative book, this statement was jarring. Usually the scientific method is considered to be above politics. Scientists deal with objective facts about the world, while politicians mess around with subjective values.

Yet Rosenberg perusasively backed up his words. This pleased me, given that I'm both a progressive and an admirer of science. I've always figured there were good reasons for liberal political positions. Learning how they are based in reality helps explain why Republicans have become so anti-science.

The core fact that connects science with progressive politics is determinism.

Now, lots of people don't accept that almost everything in existence is under the sway of natural causes and effects. They either believe some supernatural force steps in from time to time to make stuff happen (miracles, divine grace), or that we humans have free will to do what we want, even if other entities don't.

However, there's no demonstrable evidence of either the supernatural or free will, which leads Rosenberg to say this ("scientism" is how he speaks of a scientific world view):

The key to scientism's radical political agenda is its commitment to determinism. Above the level of the smallest numbers of fermions and bosons, the universe is almost totally deterministic. That means that everything we do is just the consequence of the laws of nature and events in the distant past.

It's not up to us what went on before we were born, and we have no choice about what the laws of nature are. Therefore, none of the present and future consequences of the ways the laws worked with the past to bring about the present are up to us. That includes all of our actions and everyone else's too. So no free will anywhere.

This means that rich people -- the 1%, in today's parlance -- don't have a moral justification for refusing to share their wealth with the other 99%. They didn't earn or deserve their riches, because nothing in life ever is earned or deserved.

Admittedly, this way of looking at the world takes some getting used to.

It flies in the face of our intuitive feeling, "I can do what I want." Yet I started off this post by saying I couldn't help but agree with Rosenberg: given the laws of nature and the experiences that have shaped my brain, how I reacted to his statements about science and left-wing ideology was fully determined.

As is how you react to what you're reading in this blog post. As is how a billionaire came to have the net worth that he or she enjoys. As is how a poor person ended up without enough money to live on.

Humans appear to be hard-wired to prefer fairness, equity, and cooperation over unfairness, inequity, and conflict. Rosenberg describes how natural selection led Homo sapiens to become such a species. Given that our ancestors couldn't compete physically with larger, tougher animals on the plains of Africa, working together cooperatively was key to our evolving into the dominant mammals we are now.

So combine determinism and a core morality that values fairness, equity, and cooperation, and you get a science-based progressive political agenda.

Inequalities, even large ones, between people are morally permissible, perhaps even morally required, when these inequalities are earned. It's because you earned your rewards in life that you deserve them. That's why you have a right to them and why taking them away is wrong. It is this part of core morality that Ayn Rand objectivists, libertarians, and other right-wingers tap into when they insist that taxation is slavery.

The trouble with such arguments is that nothing is earned, nothing is deserved. Even if there really were moral rights to the fruit of our freely exercised abilities and talents, these talents and abilities are never freely acquired or exercised. Just as your innate and acquired intelligence and abilities are unearned, so also are your ambitions, along with the discipline, the willingness to train, and other traits that have to be combined with our talents and abilities to produce anything worthwhile at all.

...So, scientism plus core morality turn out to be redistributionist and egalitarian, even when combined with free-market economics. No wonder Republicans in the United States have such a hard time with science.

In a popular You Tube video, Elizabeth Warren (who is running for Senator in Massachusetts against Scott Brown) made a similar argument. At about the one minute mark she says, "There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own, nobody."

 

Very true. Scientifically true.

(My previous posts about Rosenberg's book, on my other blog, are here and here.)

Senate Dems should get tough on GOP filibustering

The bizarre Senate filibuster rule needs to be consigned to the Trashbin of Crappy Ideas. I got confused trying to make sense of the Wikipedia article about it. Which is why the filibuster is so wrong: democracy should be straightforward, transparent, easy to understand.

Elections are won by the candidate who gets the most votes. Control of the House and Senate is determined by which political party has the most candidates elected. But in the Senate, majority rule is dumped in the crapper. 

Nowadays it takes 60 votes, rather than 51, for the Senate to do anything significant, because Republicans have decided that obstructionism is their best bet for making sure Obama is a one-term president.

To hell with what's best for the country. To hell with majority rule. The Republican party is determined to use the filibuster to stop just about everything Obama and the Dems propose.

Most recently: a well-qualified nominee to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, filibustered. A well-qualified nominee to be a federal judge, filibustered. Not to mention all the policy proposals, such as an extension of the payroll tax holiday, filibustered.

Only in the United States is such insanity tolerated. Most countries have a parliamentary system where if a party gains control, the executive and legislature branches get to pursue the policies they campaigned on. If voters don't like the results, they get voted out in the next election.

But somehow this country tolerates minority rule in the Senate. Ezra Klein tells us how little of a minority it takes to stop anything happening in Congress.

  Gail Collins joins the anti-filibuster ranks today, and brings some numbers.

U.S. population: 307,006,550.

Population for the 20 least-populated states: 31,434,822.

That means that in the Senate, all it takes to stop legislation is one guy plus 40 senators representing 10.2 percent of the country.

In practice, the filibuster isn't used by a coalition of tiny states representing 10.2% of the population. But it could be!

And that's a reminder that the Senate is already undemocratic. Adding the supermajority requirement is like sprinkling tacks on a road that's already filled with potholes.

What really irritates me is how Senate Democrats play along with the Republicans in keeping the filibuster rule, even as they castigate the G.O.P. for using it.

Why?

Because they want to be able to be equally obstructionist if the Dems lose control of the Senate. And that's a terrible reason to do something: not because it's a good thing to do, but just to be able to do what someone else did, even though it was wrong when they did it.

Plus, Democrats are much worse at obstructing than Republicans are. Witness this wishy-washy quote in a Politico piece about recent Republican filibusters. The story starts out with:

The White House and Senate Democrats are issuing a blunt warning to Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his fellow Republicans: You live by the filibuster, you’ll die by the filibuster.

Yet then we read:

If they return to the minority, Democrats say they won’t arbitrarily filibuster legislation because of a pure political vendetta.

...Asked whether he’d do the same to McConnell if Republicans take the majority, Reid said tersely: “We’ll see what happens next year.”

Wow. That must terrify Republicans.

Democrats say "We'll play nice, even though the Republicans didn't. Maybe we'll use the filibuster like the G.O.P. did; maybe we won't." And so the Senate continues to fiddle, while the country burns.

In some ways, literally.

NY Times "Election 2012" app is great for political junkies

Ah, another source to feed my political addiction: today the New York Times sent me an email about its new Election 2012 app. I fired up my iPhone, downloaded the free app, and instantly thought Sweet!

The app will look particularly sweet to me, because I'm forking out $15 a month for unlimited online access to NY Times content. Many features of the app work even if you're not a paid online subscriber, but after I put in my log-in info I was able to access everything.

Like I said before, I'm happy to pay. It'd be horrible if the NY TImes went bankrupt, leaving news in the hands of clueless bloggers who wouldn't have any facts to found their rants on. And this Election 2012 app shows that the Times is committed to offering even more value for that $15 a month.

It's impressively designed. The main sections are "News," "Opinion," "Election Guide" (great summary of polls which meet the paper's methodological guidelines), and "Multimedia." The sole focus, naturally, is politics and political goings-on. 

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the News section has an all sources option. This took me to several internal NY Times sites like FiveThirtyEight, plus the politics section on mobile web sites of quite a few excellent news sources: Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, MSNBC, The Atlantic, etc.

Great idea, New York Times. And great execution. Here's a Mashable post about the Election 2012 app.

Sadly, Jon Huntsman joins the anti-science GOP candidates

I hereby take back my praise of Jon Huntsman. No longer is he the only sane Republican presidential candidate. Huntsman now has joined the ranks of anti-science climate change deniers in his quixotic quest to replace Barack Obama.

Jon Huntsman, who slammed Rick Perry over the summer for not trusting scientists on climate change, has now developed his own doubts.

...Huntsman said he still supports the idea of a scientific consensus but is not yet endorsing the conclusion that climate change is happening and caused by human activity.

That leaves a grand total of zero moderate GOP presidential candidates, which must make Democratic strategists happy. 

Note to Huntsman: the World Meteorological Association recently issued a press release that said:

“Our role is to provide the scientific knowledge to inform action by decision makers,” said WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud. “Our science is solid and it proves unequivocally that the world is warming and that this warming is due to human activities,” he said.

Reality. It's so inconvenient when you desperately want to be president.

Danger warning! -- people and dogs sighted in Salem park

Watch out, residents of Salem, Oregon. Be warned. Danger is afoot in city parks, including the popular Minto-Brown Island park which has almost 900 acres of open and wooded areas, with many trails.

People and dogs have been sighted in the park! So be extremely cautious around them. These pose the greatest risk to you.

Cougars, not nearly so much.

So don't worry about a recent cougar sighting at the Minto-Brown Island park. Focus on the much greater danger you face from two other species: Homo sapiens and Canis familiaris, people and dogs.

I've done some research to quantify the relative risk of being killed by (1) a person, (2) a dog, and (3) a cougar. These United States statistics cover 2001-2010, the previous ten years.

There were 162,230 homicides during that decade, an average of 16,223 per year. In 2010, ninety percent of the killers were men, according to the FBI. Fifty-three percent of murder victims were killed by someone they knew; a quarter were slain by a family member.

The lesson: if you spot a man in a park, be fearful. Especially if you know him. Males you've met before are the most dangerous killing creatures any human will ever encounter. 

Dogs are considerably less likely to kill you. Still, 263 people were slain by dogs over the last ten years, an average of 26 per year. 

What about cougars?

Most people are more afraid of cougars than of their fellow humans or dogs. But they shouldn't be. Cougars killed just 3 people in the United States from 2001-2010. That's an average of .3 per year.

So you're 54,000 times more likely to be killed by a person (probably a man) than by a cougar. And you're 87 times more likely to be killed by a dog, than by a cougar. This is why, if you value your life, people and dogs should be feared much more than cougars.

Unfortunately, irrationality reigns when it comes to wildlife. Why? Seemingly because they're wild. We're used to seeing men and dogs in parks. Cougars are rare, so people freak out when one is sighted.

Today's Salem Statesman Journal had a great letter to the editor on this subject from Linda Bierly. I heartily agree with her. Thanks for stimulating this blog post, Linda. 

Regarding the recent possible cougar sighting in Minto-Brown Island Park, while it is always prudent to be aware of one's surroundings, cougars have not demonstrated a threat to humans in Oregon.

Top predators such as cougars and wolves are critical to ecosystems. Without these keystone species, ecosystems collapse and degrade. Lack of top predators is the true threat to all species.

Park visitors have much more to worry about from other threats surrounding parks, including the drive to the park, other human park users, off-leash dogs and especially, inadequate funding for Salem city parks.

— Linda Bierly, Salem

Wildlife Services kills a family dog -- we need to kill that useless agency

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services is a horribly misnamed agency. It doesn't provide services for wildlife, it kills them. Needlessly. Expensively. Wastefully. And not just wildlife: family pets also.

Recently the McCurtain family in Gresham, Oregon suffered the heartrending loss of their dog, Maggie. Wildlife Services killed Maggie. Probably illegally (the family is suing Wildlife Services). Definitely incompetently.

Predator Defense tells the sorry tale.

Imagine a federal wildlife agency setting deadly "instant-kill" traps within 45 feet of your suburban back yard where your children play. Imagine that one of those government-set traps kills your beloved dog and no one returns for the trap, or to even say they're sorry.

This sounds like the kind of government abuse and secrecy one would see exposed on "60 Minutes," and it should be. However, that is not the case in Gresham, Oregon, a suburb of Portland, where the government has made every effort to intentionally hide such a tragedy.

The agency responsible? Wildlife Services, a division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Animal, Plant, and Health Inspection Services.

Wild Earth Guardians has exposed Wildlife Services for the incompetent, dangerous, environmentally clueless animal killing machine that this government agency is. Read "War on Wildlife," or at least the two page executive summary. 

There's also a good overview of what Wildlife Services does wrong on the Predator Defense web site.

But why read? Watch a You Tube video.

Doug and Denise McCurtain movingly describe how their beloved family dog, Maggie, was killed in their own back yard by Wildlife Services. Lots of statistics can be cited about how Wildlife Services recklessly kills birds, coyotes, and other animals (including pets) for no good reason. Those facts are important.

The McCurtain's experience, though, cuts through the abstractions. Here's the down to earth truth about how cruel Wildlife Services is: "Maggie's Story."

Watch it, then do what Predator Defense suggests: email "60 Minutes" at 60m@cbsnews.com and ask them to do a story on Maggie's killing and Wildlife Services. If we can cast enough light on Wildlife Services, hopefully it will be defunded as a useless agency.

 

Dance tip is a life lesson: seek quality, not quantity

Learning ballroom dancing with a partner is a cheap way to get some psychotherapy. A dance instructor usually charges less than a counselor. Plus, you get to listen to music and have fun while you're getting insights into yourself.

I've blogged about my fascination with leading and following, which touches on the core of male/female relating. But today my wife and I had a dance lesson that focused on how I relate with Me, an even more intimate relationship.

We've been taking some private lessons with Salem's Debra Seeck, also known as Mz. Jitterbug. She's given us some good Salsa and Swing tips, along with pointing out to me how I need to do a much better job of listening to the music and recognizing a rhythm.

Today, though, Debra started off by challenging my basic dancing attitude.

"I've watched you at a social dance, Brian. You're worried about keeping up with other dancers who can do more moves than you. You compare yourself with them, and that distracts you from focusing on the only person you should be relating to: your wife, your partner."

I nodded. I agreed. This wasn't exactly news to me.

But Debra was talking about my skewed attitude toward dancing in a fresh fashion. Her passion about relating on the dance floor -- with your partner, through the medium of music -- got through to me.

"I'd much rather dance with a guy who only knows a few moves, but is into the music, and most importantly, into me while we're dancing, than with a man who does a lot of flashy stuff, preoccupied with trying to look good, who lacks musicality," she said.

"You've got four minutes with your wife while a song plays," Debra added. "It's all about her. Don't pay attention to anyone or anything else. None of us knows when death will come. Maybe this will be your last dance. You don't know. Make it special. Make it real. Be there for her, even if you're just leading a few simple moves."

Beautiful. 

Debra had me pegged. I'm not very musical, though I have a decent sense of rhythm when I pay attention to a beat. I'm competitive. And I like to learn new dance moves, even when I haven't mastered the ones I already know.

Isn't this a lot like life? Not just my life. Almost everybody's life. 

We aren't content with doing just a few things well, rather than many things mediocrely; with having just a few intimate friends, rather than many shallow acquaintances; with enjoying just a few pleasurable material goods, rather than gobs of needless clutter; with embracing the here and now as it is, rather than an imagined past or future.

Quality. Not quantity. 

This is really the essence of what dance instructor Debra was trying to get across. (Which reminds me of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," since quality is a recurring theme in the book.)

Marcel Proust sagely advised, "The voyage of discovery is not seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes." Which is another way of saying, It isn't so much what we do, but how we do it, that's key to a satisfying life. 

And to satisfying dancing. One of our Argentine Tango instructors was fond of saying, "Tango is simple. It is walking with a woman so she will fall in love with you." (At least for as long as the song lasts.)

Today, before we got going on the dance floor, Debra showed Laurel and me a You Tube video that she liked a lot. It's of Nicholas King and Cameo Cross winning the Jack and Jill 2011 US Open Swing Dance Championship.

Debra explained that "Jack and Jill" is when two competitors are randomly assigned and don't know what music they'll be dancing to. So this requires strong leading and following skills, since the dancing isn't choreographed. Debra loved how Nicholas is totally focused on Cameo. In return, she trusts him completely, as evidenced by some pretty amazing moves that she flows smoothly with.

Have a look. This is how dancing should be danced, and living should be lived.