YudelLine

Sunday, June 24

“ Phranc, a self-described "All-American Jewish lesbian folksinger," has a meticulously groomed flattop and a fondness for spiffy bow ties. But she's also very much a lady -- a lady who loves her Tupperware.

“It's apparent in the lovely lilt of her voice as she sings, "I'll show you how to micro-steam," in her song "Tupperware Lady," and in the enthusiasm she brings to her plastic.

“"It's absolutely peerless, it has no competition," Phranc says with the quiet fervor of the true believer. "Other plastic products do not have a lifetime guarantee. And that's just one of the incredible features . . ."

“The onetime L.A. punk rocker turned neo-folk troubadour has become a top seller for Tupperware, and a documentary about her journey, "Lifetime Guarantee: Phranc's Adventures in Plastics," premieres at 7 p.m. tomorrow at Herbst Theatre as part of the San Francisco International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival.”

Yudel's Line: Is Lisa Udelson related? Perhaps. The Udelsons of Cleveland proved to be descendants of my grandfather's first cousin. Many other Yudelson clans -- not that ours is such a large tribe -- don't seem related at all.

Dealing with the Enemy: Firm's Iraq Deals Greater Than Cheney Has Said (Washington Post)

“During last year's presidential campaign, Richard B. Cheney acknowledged that the oil-field supply corporation he headed, Halliburton Co., did business with Libya and Iran through foreign subsidiaries. But he insisted that he had imposed a "firm policy" against trading with Iraq.

“'Iraq's different,'he said.

“According to oil industry executives and confidential United Nations records, however, Halliburton held stakes in two firms that signed contracts to sell more than $73 million in oil production equipment and spare parts to Iraq while Cheney was chairman and chief executive officer of the Dallas-based company.

“Two former senior executives of the Halliburton subsidiaries say that, as far as they knew, there was no policy against doing business with Iraq. One of the executives also says that although he never spoke directly to Cheney about the Iraqi contracts, he is certain Cheney knew about them.”

Friday, June 22

“What if the damsel in distress had a cellphone or Romeo had a pager? Modern gizmos make plotting a nightmare for writers.”

“ Malaria, a leading cause of death in the world, is not the ancient affliction it might seem but a relatively recent scourge that dates only to the era when human societies first practiced agriculture.

“That is the conclusion of Dr. Sarah A. Tishkoff, a population geneticist at the University of Maryland, and a team of others in the field after analyzing DNA changes in a human gene that confers resistance to the malarial parasite.

“The changes can be dated to roughly 8,000 years ago in the case of a gene variant widespread in Africa and to roughly 4,000 years ago in the case of a second version of the gene common among peoples of the Mediterranean, India and North Africa.”

Be Afraid: Cold Water Flow From Arctic to Atlantic Is Falling (NYTimes)

“ Scientists have detected a substantial drop in the last 50 years in the flow of cold deep sea water leaving the Arctic and pouring into the Atlantic between Iceland and Scotland. Climate experts say the obscure current, flowing south 2,000 feet beneath the surface, is one of the engines that drive the worldwide oceanic conveyer belt that also carries sun-warmed surface water north toward the pole. Because the outflow of cold deep water has diminished, the influx of warm surface water that usually replaces it also has to have declined. That decrease could explain a recent cooling of some coastal regions near the Norwegian Sea, said the authors of the study, which is described in today's issue of Nature. ”

Backgrounder: The Great Climate Flip-Flop (William Calvin in The Atlantic, 1/98)

“ ONE of the most shocking scientific realizations of all time has slowly been dawning on us: the earth's climate does great flip-flops every few thousand years, and with breathtaking speed.

We could go back to ice-age temperatures within a decade -- and judging from recent discoveries, an abrupt cooling could be triggered by our current global-warming trend.

Europe's climate could become more like Siberia's. Because such a cooling would occur too quickly for us to make readjustments in agricultural productivity and supply, it would be a potentially civilization-shattering affair, likely to cause an unprecedented population crash. What paleoclimate and oceanography researchers know of the mechanisms underlying such a climate flip suggests that global warming could start one in several different ways ”

Thursday, June 21

Those Were The Days: Jewish Women and Family Life (Encyclopedia of the Renaissance)

“One defiant, unnamed [Renaissance] Italian Jewish woman, according to her manuscript prayer book, began her morning blessings in Hebrew each day by reciting praise that God "had made me a woman and not a man" (Jerusalem Ms. 8* 5492), thus changing the traditional blessing in which a man expresses his gratitude.”

Manuscript found in an Encyclopedia: A reminder that not everything worth reading can be found online -- though most things worth saying have been said before.

Is That Chutzpah? Suit: YU Prof Not Frum Enough (NY Jewish Week)

“In a legal action that puts the rightward shift of Yeshiva University into the spotlight, the school was slapped last week with a $6 million suit for discriminating against an administrator because she is not an Orthodox Jew.

“The suit, filed in Manhattan Federal Court, alleges that the university forced Diane Persky to resign in January 2000 from her position as assistant to the dean of female students at the Sy Syms School of Business in order to replace her with an Orthodox woman.

“She said that when her boss, Harold Nierenberg, an Orthodox Jew who is dean of the Syms school, “effectively pushed me out of my job, he asked me my opinion about a possible replacement and said the woman [under consideration] has one up on you in that she is frum [observant].”

“The woman who was hired to replace Persky is an Orthodox Jew “with less academic qualifications and less experience than plaintiff,” said the suit.

“ “The decision to deny plaintiff promotion to assistant dean was motivated by Fisher’s and Yeshiva’s determination that plaintiff was not ‘frum’ or religious enough, or appeared stereotypically non-Orthodox, in violation of her rights to be free from discrimination based on religion in the terms and conditions of her employment,” said the court papers.”

Yudel's Line: Certainly a fitting conclusion to Norman Lamm's presidency of YU, during which he quite profitably separate the image of "America's oldest and largest university under Jewish auspices" from the reality of a yeshiva increasingly separate from, and irrelevant to, the rest of the Jewish community.

Case in point: An ad that ran in The New York Times not long ago. Headlined "The Faces of Yeshiva," it featured four students: two women, one Asian, one Black. That's funny: none of my Yeshiva classmates looked like that.

Worth Quoting: Solidarity, Revisited (Forward editorial page - 2nd item)

“More than a few critics of the Reform movement, which canceled its teen tours earlier this month, raise images of alleged American Jewish inaction during the Holocaust to emphasize their belief that today's Jewish community must spare no effort to stand with Israel during its current difficulties.

“At the same time, critics also insist that the Reform cancellation was unnecessary because Israel is essentially a safe tourist destination these days, however it might be portrayed in the sensationalist American press.

“There's a paradox here. If the dangers to Israel are so grave as to warrant comparisons to World War II, how safe can it be for vacationing American schoolchildren? On the other hand, if Israel is essentially not in danger, but merely facing a flare-up of endemic tensions with its neighbors, why the urgent need for solidarity? ”

Wednesday, June 20

“The dispute pits religious freedoms against a neighborhood's right to be free from organized churches, businesses and other institutions.

“"If we meet every Monday evening for a Monday night football party, that's OK," said Rabbi Konikov, who leads the prayer meetings. "But if the same group of people come over to pray, that's illegal. That's obviously unconstitutional."”

Interrupting your dinner from around the world: How Bangalore, India is becoming a center of global telemarketing.

Friday, June 15

She Don't Want No Sick Kids in Her Family Values: Dr. Laura Tackles Tourette Syndrome (tourettenowwhat)

“On the May 22nd "Dr Laura" show, the host, Laura Schlessinger, PhD, received a call from "Michelle," who had a dilemma because her sister wanted to exclude her own nephew with Tourette's from a family wedding celebration. Initially, Dr Laura insisted to Michelle that she should basically stay out of it -- "have no opinion." But, once Dr Laura heard that the child had Tourette Syndrome, she completely reversed herself and stated that Michelle had "picked the wrong sister" to support. One of her justifications was, "I'm going to come to your party and just scream, 'F-YOU, F-YOU, F-YOU' every five seconds and see if you want to invite me back."

“This insensitive response, contradictory to the "Dr Laura" show's professed family values, resulted in discussions throughout the internet and "a *lot*" of letters to the "Dr Laura" show from persons with Tourette syndrome. Her response was in direct contradiction to her first position that the caller should not take sides, and to her statements about the importance of family in weddings.”

Yudel's Line: You've got to admire a woman brave enough to take a stand against a sick 12-year-old kid -- and in the process, reveal something very profound of contemporary Conservatism, a movement so desperate to appear "compassionate" that it's even willing to boast about its own compassion.

My take on this is that Dr. Laura -- like the rest of the 'Toward Tradition' crowd -- has gotten so deeply mired in her hatred of "Liberals" that she's become a knee-jerk opponent. Having conviced herself that Democrats and moderate Republicans are part of an anti-American, anti-family conspiracy to destroy Western Civilization, she's decided that all of their actions are evil. So off she goes to fight inclusion in all of its forms, including trying to wrangle an invitation for an embarassing nephew.

I imagine that when the Republicans discover that many of us liberals are actually hard-working taxpayers, they'll decide that hard work and tax paying are part of the problem. Oops, I forgot -- judging from the Bush tax plan, they already have.

Uultimately, Dr. Laura reminds me of a French Marxist supporting the Japanese Red Army gang out of some grouchy anti-Americanism. Sure, she's a dangerous, mind-warping apologist for evil. But really, she's increasingly a silly caricature of herself.

Eve's Line: I just think that Dr. Laura is so offended by the idea of swear words that that's all she can think of when someone mentions Tourette.

(As the article above points out, coprolalia is present in only 10 to 15 percent of persons with TS; Dr. Laura never asked her caller whether the kid in question suffered from that syndrome.)

Ann Landers would have been a better choice of an advisor, but I think when people call Dr. Laura instread of Ann Landers, they get the answer they're looking for.

Science of the Saints: The bodies of many medieval Catholic saints and martyrs have resisted decay for centuries (Discover.com )

“Saint Zita is one of the Incorruptibles— the name given by medieval Catholic clergy to the astonishingly preserved bodies of saints, martyrs, and beati, the blesseds on the road to canonization. Through the centuries, the faithful have revered these bodies as signs of divine intervention, unquestionable proof that they were God's holy servants in life.

“... In the face of science, the roman Catholic Church has now virtually abandoned the notion of incorruptibility. It no longer accepts physical preservation as one of the two miracles required before a saint can be recognized by the Pope.”

“A microalgae was engineered to use glucose as its primary energy source instead of sunlight. The algae, as do most plants, normally gets its energy through a photosynthesis process that requires sunlight.

“Converting the algae so that it thrived in darkness was accomplished by splicing into the plant a human gene that directs the movement in a cell of glucose.”

Yudel's Line: OK, so tell me why this isn't like Ice-Nine?

“THE Colosseum, the huge Roman amphitheatre used for animal shows and gladiatorial combat, was built with the spoils of the sack of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem, a new archaeological find suggests.

“...Emperor Titus inaugurated the Colosseum in AD 80 with 100 days of festivities, but his father, Vespasian, had first opened it in AD 79, shortly before he died, when it was still unfinished.”

Wednesday, June 6

“The federal agency charged with ensuring the stability of the nation's power system gave California the go-ahead to deregulate its electric utilities despite critical flaws evident to its own experts. And once deregulation was under way in 1998, the agency did little to police the state's market, even though it has a legal obligation to ensure that prices are ``just and reasonable.''

“Far from being the innocent bystander that top federal officials portray, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has played a central role in California's deregulation disaster, weighing in more than 80 separate times with orders approving, revising or rejecting parts of the plan.”

It's Still About Power: New market overwhelms U.S. agency - Probe into rising prices falls short (San Jose Mercury News)

“FERC lacks enough qualified employees to make sure that the savvy players in the nation's highly complex, new electricity markets are not artificially driving up prices.

“The agency's collegial relationship with companies it regulates makes it reluctant to demand crucial market data. It shuns the use of subpoenas and did not back up California when the state issued subpoenas.

“Energy companies have derailed probes with a phone call, but when one complained about a document leaked to the media, FERC interrogated 40 employees about it.”

And Speaking of Power.... Great Moments in Executive Compensation: Pacific Gas and Electric (Slate)

“Pacific Gas and Electric is asking a federal bankruptcy court to allow it to give $17.5 million in bonuses to its top management team, including nearly $1 million to PG&E Chairman Robert Glynn (thereby doubling Glynn's current salary).

“The worry is that if it doesn't fork over the cash, the California utility will have trouble retaining the crack team that ran it into the ground!”

Wednesday, May 16

THE BUSH TAX CUT IS A LIE, PART 1. Going for Broke (Paul Krugman in The New Republic)

“The fiscal predictions that enable Bush to pay for his tax cut and contingency fund are not mere errors but deliberate efforts to deceive the public. The Bush administration understands better than anyone that if its math were honest, its tax cut could never pass.

“The Bush gap consists of three parts. First, the budget projections on which the administration's numbers are based are misleading: Although they purport to show the surplus that will materialize under "current policy," they do no such thing. Second, the administration underestimates the size of the surplus we ought to be running to meet our coming Social Security and Medicare obligations. And, finally, the administration lowballs the budgetary impact of the tax cut itself.”

THE BUSH TAX CUT IS A LIE, PART 2 Going for Gold (Jonathan Chait in The New Republic)

“And so the tax cut's advocates have produced a series of distortions, misrepresentations, and outright lies intended to convince Americans that the tax cut primarily benefits the poor and the middle class, or at least to demonize those who would suggest otherwise. It's important to expose those distortions, but it's even more important to understand that they are not the tax cutters' real argument. Their deeper argument--which goes largely unspoken--is that government should not, by rights, help the poor and the middle class at the expense of the rich. That is the larger debate that should frame the struggle over the president's tax cut. And it's the one the cut's architects are determined not to allow...

“Republicans actively desire that the tax burden of the poor not be alleviated.

“Why not?

“Because they believe, with some justification, that as taxes on the middle and lower classes fall, government seems like a better and better deal to these voters, turning them into Democrats.

“Conservatives whisper fearfully of this prospect. "With the lower- to middle-income taxpayers paying so little," a spokesman for the conservative Tax Foundation told The Washington Post last year, "there won't be pressure" for tax cuts. Before Bush unveiled his tax cut plan, National Review explained why he should avoid cutting taxes for low-income workers. "Taking still more people off the tax rolls might look good today," the conservative organ advised, "but it creates political headaches tomorrow: People who pay next to nothing for big government are easy pickings for the tax-and-spend party."

“The calculation here is almost admirably devious. On one hand, Republicans need to promise working stiffs a tax cut to win their votes; but they must never actually deliver on this promise, because then the stiffs would cease to vote Republican. As the example of the waitress making $20,000 per year illustrates, Bush has straddled this dilemma skillfully, claiming that he is wiping out the tax bills for low-income workers while actually doing nothing for them at all.”

THE BUSH TAX CUT IS A LIE, PART 3 True Lies (Jonathan Chait in The New Republic)

“In an editorial at the National Review Online, Jay Nordlinger attacks the cover of the new issue of The New Republic. Reproduced at right , it says that President Bush is lying about his tax cut. It's not Bush who's lying, charges Nordlinger, but TNR....

“What makes the editorial so remarkable is that there is not a single paragraph, not a sentence, not a word addressing the substance of our arguments. Go ahead. Read it for yourself....

“The editorial reveals a mindset that has taken hold among conservatives in recent years. As the Democratic Party has moved to the center and captured the popular position on most issues, Republicans have been able to win mainly by personalizing politics. (Clinton, of course, made this very easy.) Conservatives like to think of lying as a reflection of personal character that, almost by definition, has no bearing on public policy. Thus, misstating the cost of your mother-in-law's dog's medicine is evidence of pathological mendacity, but lying about who gets your tax cut is of no consequence at all.

“In enumerating Clinton's lies, National Review takes care to point out that that the former president "really lied, not in the New Republic sense." Actually, The New Republic uses the word "lie" in the fairly straightforward sense, meaning an untrue statement of fact. The question, then, is: What does it mean to lie in the National Review sense? It must mean an untrue statement that has no relationship to policy. The only other possible answer is an untrue statement by someone who isn't Republican.”

Thursday, May 10

“The government outsources the war on drugs so it can point fingers at the private sector when the body bags start pouring in.”

[YudelLine Home] [Archive Home]

What do you think? (C) 1999-2001 Larry Yudelson. Web design by YudelCom Communications