Can nice guys finish first?

The Los Angeles Lakers basketball club were widely expected to sweep the New Orleans this month, on their way to a possible third consecutive NBA championship, but on Sunday were torched by the smallest player on the court, Chris Paul.

Lakers' fans focused blame on the Laker's big man Pau Gasol, who put up a measly eight points, less than half his average. One friend told me Pau was "monitoring" the game.

Pau was roughed up, flagrantly fouled once, and repeatedly hit in the face, but took no offense on Sunday, in his classic nice guy style.

Paubloodied

The sportswriters covering the team marveled this morning at his niceness in adversity, writing of how he had been "blamed for everything but the destruction of the Roman Empire," but still stayed kind.  

Can a nice guy finish first? 

It's an enduring question, and the kind of question that basketball, which reveals character in the moment as well or better than any other sport, can actually answer. 

In the last two years, Pau put the question to rest twice. But he'll have to face it again tonight. 

Surgeon resigns post for encouraging semen for women

The editor of an American College of Surgeon's publication has been forced to resign for remarks considered sexist.

He wrote, from his post atop a bastion of male privilege, on Valentine's Day, that semen is good for women, bodily and emotionally, better even than chocolate. The argument focused on semen's physical powers; as evidence, he cited a couple of studies. 

That's what makes it sexist, surely, the lack of consideration to women themeslves. As if they were just bodies to be manipulated, and not individuals, with their own minds and thoughts. 

But back to semen for a moment. Was the good doctor wrong on the science of semen? 

What did he say? 

It’s been known since the 1990s that heterosexual women living together synchronize their menstrual cycles because of pheromones, but when a study of lesbians showed that they do not synchronize, the researchers suspected that semen played a role. In fact, they found ingredients in semen that include mood enhancers like estrone, cortisol, prolactin, oxytocin, and serotonin; a sleep enhancer, melatonin; and of course, sperm, which makes up only 1%-5%. Delivering these compounds into the richly vascularized vagina also turns out to have major salutary effects for the recipient. Female college students having unprotected sex were significantly less depressed than were those whose partners used condoms (Arch. Sex. Behav. 2002;31:289-93). Their better moods were not just a feature of promiscuity, because women using condoms were just as depressed as those practicing total abstinence. The benefits of semen contact also were seen in fewer suicide attempts and better performance on cognition tests.

For the full text of the column, see the Detroit Free Press link above, or this one from RetractionWatch. 

The Detroit Free Press medical columnist notes that the study cited apparently hasn't been replicated, although it's often discussed in the media.

This well-known column in Scientific American delves into the same study, and others showing helpful results to the organism from application of semen, without disrespecting the science.

It's funnier, though. 

Regarding the 2002 study, one might speculate that the positive effects of the application might have something to do with a relationship, and not a, um, product? 

Yet and still Surgery News not only pulled the column from the web, but then went on and retracted the entire issue! 

Are surgeons sexist, or are we Americans prudes? Or both? 

Sperm_cell

Still destroying the climate, but having less fun

Because Americans are driving less, mostly due to the recession (total greenhouse gas emissions are down a pretty stunning 6%, the Energy Information recently reported) the federal government doesn't have the money it needs to fully fund its highway program. But still, all the politicians agree that raising the gas tax is off the table, even though it hasn't been changed since l993. 

Matthew Iglesias, a famous lefty blogger who usually hides his idealism behind his intelligence, sighs:

You don’t win the future by cutting back on your physical infrastructure out of fear of taxing pollution. Just saying. 

But Toles understands what the politicians — and the public — are thinking: 

Climatedisgruntlement

A Streetcar Named Desire, by Thomas Hart Benton

The Notebooks of Tennessee Williams, as compiled, databased, and published by Margaret Bradham Thornton, are one of the most astonishing acts of scholarship I have seen (and I have seen plenty). 

One example: Here's a painting called Poker Night, by Thomas Hart Benton, based on what we know of as A Streetcar Named Desire, given as a present by David Selznick to his estranged wife Irene. 

Just a footnote in this book. 

Streetcarbybenton

Diablo Canyon for Dummies (by Steve Brodner)

Though I'm not crazy about web videos, this is a real charmer, and a good primer about Diablo Canyon, which supplies much of central CA with power. 

http://www.slatev.com/media/swfs/SlateGroupPlayer.swf
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Because both a local Republican and a Democratic Congressperson have made an issue of PG&E's amazing lack of competence regarding this plant, PG&E has put off asking regulators to license the plant to continue operating until 2045. 

The top 400 pay less, so you can get their trickle-down

According to the ever-factual Think Progress, back in the halcyon days of my youth, the top 400 taxpayers in this country paid nearly half the taxes in his country. And yet lived well, I imagine:

Top400vsaveragefamtax
Now ordinary folk pay more, they pay much less, and yet despite all the alleged increased trickle-down we're still mired in the deepest economic downturn in, I think, my lifetime.

Coincidence? 

Rachel Carson on how to introduce children to nature

At a lecture attended recently by a thousand or so people at UC Santa Barbara, the great E.O. Wilson was asked an open-ended question about introducing children to nature.

Wilson took it as a "how to" question.

RachelCarsonFWS He mentioned that he was "one of two living persons who worked with Rachel Carson," and made a joke about about it being one of the few advantages of his decrepitude. 

Unfortunately, he had a frog in his throat, and although I recorded the talk, I can't make out the exact words. But he did go on to describe briefly what Rachel Carson thought was the way to introduce kids to nature, which deserves its own prominence: 

[This picture, from an interesting Conservation Heroes site, discusses Carson's years with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and identifies the older figure, evidently, as Rachel Louise Carson.]

This is what Carson said: 

Take a child to the seashore. Point out a few tidepools. Give them a bucket. Tell them to go see what they can find, and let them come to you with what they find. And then you tell them all about what they’ve discovered…

What does the GOP really want in the budget showdown?

According to TPM, the sticking point in the budget stalemate is not a number of billions cut from the overall budget, but funding for family planning, not to mention preventing the EPA and other agencies from protecting the nation's natural health. 

According to OMB Watch, the GOP has attached riders restricting everything from funding of White House officials on global warming, health, and the automobile industry, to restricting Federal lunch programs, wetlands preservation, stewardship conservation, and, of course, the regulation of greenhouse gases. 

The GOP in the House has already voted to prevent the EPA from regulating soot, cement emissions in Texas, the oil industry in Alaska, not to mention the restoration of the San Joaquin River, Endangered Species Act provisions in the Delta, coal ash, mountaintop removal, all are prohibited, as well as overfishing protection programs administered by NOAA, and, as they say in advertising, much much more. Boy will this keep the lawyers busy, should it pass, in any form. 

All this despite countless polls showing that protecting the environment is popular with the public.   

Some have taken to calling GOP's crusade against the EPA the Dirty Air Act.

Amazing to me the eagerness with which the Republican party throws their complete and total support to polluting. Guess I'm still not cynical enough for this century.