Dem lawmaker smacks Cheney: ‘Political diarrhea of the mouth’

News that puts a smile on the new year. Read the rest of this post...

Scientists uncover new details on Tasmanian devil cancer

Whether there will be enough time to save the species from extinction is hard to say. The cancer has wiped out 70% of the population in a relatively short period of time.

The surprise finding, reported in Friday's edition of the journal Science, has led to development of a test to help diagnose this tumor.

Next, scientists are hunting the mutations that turned these cells rogue, work they hope could one day lead to a vaccine to protect remaining Tasmanian devils, or perhaps treatments.

"The clock's ticking," lead researcher Elizabeth Murchison of the Australian National University said by phone from Tasmania. "It's awful to think there could be no devils here in 50 years because they're dying so quickly."

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World to end May 21, 2011

From the SF Chronicle:

The number 5, Camping concluded, equals "atonement." Ten is "completeness." Seventeen means "heaven." Camping patiently explained how he reached his conclusion for May 21, 2011.

"Christ hung on the cross April 1, 33 A.D.," he began. "Now go to April 1 of 2011 A.D., and that's 1,978 years."

Camping then multiplied 1,978 by 365.2422 days - the number of days in each solar year, not to be confused with a calendar year.

Next, Camping noted that April 1 to May 21 encompasses 51 days. Add 51 to the sum of previous multiplication total, and it equals 722,500.

Camping realized that (5 x 10 x 17) x (5 x 10 x 17) = 722,500.

Or put into words: (Atonement x Completeness x Heaven), squared.

"Five times 10 times 17 is telling you a story," Camping said. "It's the story from the time Christ made payment for your sins until you're completely saved.

"I tell ya, I just about fell off my chair when I realized that," Camping said.

Uh huh. Read the rest of this post...

My belated Christmas Eve photos

This year our friends Coco and Wilhelm kindly invited us over for a feast on Christmas Eve. Everything was perfect, and as we always do, we had a great time with plenty of laughs. On Christmas day Joelle and I hosted a big meal at our place, and I struggled to even think of food and wine as our guests were due to arrive at 1PM the next day.

Besides being a food geek, I admit that I completely enjoy a formal table on special occasions and this one was amazing. Coco reached into his special storage for his special collection and everything was just right. I have a hard time saying "no" to great food so I was in major trouble in Christmas Eve. In fact, even with the lousy weather today it's time to get back out on the bike to work off the meal from a week ago. Well worth it though.

First off, the traditional creche.


Our host, Coco. He's camera shy so it wasn't easy snapping a photo of him. Coco prepared the dinner and set the table. Absolute perfection!


Our friend Wilhelm starts the evening by pouring the Champagne. He's one of my cooking friends who always likes to try something new in the kitchen. I regularly use his German "mustard soup" for parties and he kindly brings me Bavarian German mustard. He also hand delivers white asparagus from northern Germany during the season and despite local beliefs, the northern German white asparagus is hands down the best in the world. Period.


As we've come to expect from our friends Coco and Wilhelm, another stunningly set table. Coco is French old school in a very good way, and presents the most beautiful table arrangements every time. For this meal, he outdid himself and was up at 7AM to start organizing the Christmas decorations for our dinner. Even though Coco is not an oyster person (they're a big Christmas tradition in France), he still presented this perfect plate of oysters, shucking all 48 of them by himself. Di-vine!


A close-up of the table setting. The celadon plates are quite old as are the glasses. We both love celadon, so it was fun eating on these antique dishes.


Jojo and our friend Serge having a laugh as the plate of foie gras with fig arrives (foie gras is another huge holiday tradition over here). It was about this time we started to feel a bit stuffed but how can you pass on this?


A beautiful stuffed chapon (capon) with purée de marrons (chestnut puree) on one side and purée de céleri-rave on the other.


And finally, the ice cream Bûche de Noël. I'm not much of a cake person - especially the traditional bûche with icing, or just about any cake with icing - but this cute little ice cream bûche with the Christmas tree inside was lovely.
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What those new-fangled airport full-body screeners can really do

The administration has ordered another 150 full body scanners to go to airports around the country, with another 300 to be purchased by 2012. I'm divided, because while I'd rather not blow up, I'm also somewhat leery of undergoing a full strip search at the airport (unless the TSA guy is really hot). And to give folks an idea of what we're talking about, I went around the Web and gathered examples of the scans this new technology makes of your body. I've enlarged the photos a bit (since only really small ones were onine), and sharpened them a bit. My favorite one is the one where they covered the man's private parts because it was so graphic. As Mike Signorile tweeted the other day:

New term for 2010: Airport anorexia: Irrational fear of anticipated full-body scan. U know ppl will be purging days before a flight.

Oh, and my second favorite part of the story is how TSA promises there will be no way the machine will be able to make copies of your nude body. Uh huh. Because no one at TSA has a cell phone.


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Hangover 'cures' from around the world

Click through to see them all. The Mongolian cure sounds the least appealing of them all but the US Prairie Oyster doesn't sound very appealing either. What about lots of water? Too simple?

And here's John's personal favorite:

Italy
Large quantities of strong, homemade espresso.

Yours? Read the rest of this post...

Friday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

Happy New Year. By now, it's 2010 all over the world. 2009 is so yesterday.

New laws take place around the country today. Marriage equality begins in New Hampshire, making it the fifth state to give that right to same-sex couples. In D.C., we have to pay a nickel for every plastic or paper bag provided by a store. California bans trans-fat in all restaurants.

Besides lots of football and the NHL game being played outdoors in Fenway Park, this should be a slow news day. But, we expected Christmas to be a slow news day =- and we had that attempted act of terrorism on the flight to Detroit.

Let's get 2010 rolling... Read the rest of this post...

Getting the poll results you want

Happy New Year to everyone from Paris. Hope everyone had fun last night celebrating. We had a quiet dinner at home last night and barely stayed awake until midnight. Real party animals, indeed. Yesterday I blogged about the article which talked about the optimism for 2010. Later in the day another media outlet (CNN, maybe?) had the same story but focused on the negative side of the report. Compared to the last poll a few years back, there was less optimism. Same story, different focus. Not quite the same but it reminded me of this great clip from the old BBC comedy, Yes, Prime Minister. Read the rest of this post...

US health check for the past decade

Some success but also plenty of failure. The new plan is to scale back which doesn't sound good on the surface, though maybe more realistic goals are the way to go.

So how did we do? By many measures, not so hot. There are more obese Americans than a decade ago, not fewer. We eat more salt and fat, not less. More of us have high blood pressure. More of our children have untreated tooth decay.

But the nation has made at least some progress on many other goals. Vaccination rates improved. Most workplace injuries are down. And deaths rates from stroke, cancer and heart disease are all dropping.

As we move into a new decade, the government is analyzing how well the nation met the 2010 goals and drawing up a new set of goals for 2020 expected to be more numerous and — perhaps — less ambitious.

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Happy New Year

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