Recent updates to existing entries with no date-change

April 29 - Obama gives Hope to corporations - Truthdig, 4/29/08
April 29 - Lobbyist support to campaign     Various sources detailed
April 5   -  Obama and Mayor Daley
March 10 - What Hillary and Barack really said about Iraq War vote
March 7 - Canadian Press: Prime Minister Harper's Office said Clinton never gave Canada secret assurances, only Obama's campaign talked with them.
March 3 - Washington Post: The press awakens, questioning Obama.
March 3 - How Obama handles tough questioning today
March 3 - Obama and the NAFTA memo
March 3 - Rezko: NY times and The Guardian on lingering questions and Republican scrutiny.
March 3 - David Shuster reacts (video) to explanations of 6 wrong vote button presses by Obama.
Feb 29 - Lukewarm support of gay community
Feb 28 - A closer look at Obama's voting record
Feb 28 - How Obama rose in Illinois politics
Feb 27 - Actual source of Obama photo from Kenya recently disseminated
Feb 27 - The provocative race-card article by Sean Wilentz for The New Republic

That Iraq War Vote and the Judgment Factor

Who do we know who would have said this about Hillary ?

"She’s one of the toughest.  She’s got an extraordinary intelligence. And she is, she’s somebody who’s in this stuff for the right reasons.  She’s passionate about moving the country forward on issues like health care and children.  So it’s not clear to me what differences we’ve had since I’ve been in the Senate.

"I think what people might point to is our different assessments of the war in Iraq, although I’m always careful to say that I was not in the Senate, so perhaps the reason I thought it was such a bad idea was that I didn’t have the benefit of U.S. intelligence.  And, for those who did, it might have led to a different set of choices.  So that might be something that sort of  is obvious.  But, again, we were in different circumstances at that time:  I was running for the U.S. Senate, she had to take a vote, and casting votes is always a difficult test."

- Barack Obama
The New Yorker, November 6, 2006

Who said the following, in a speech before the 2002 AUMF Iraq Resolution vote?

---

"My vote is not, however, a vote for any new doctrine of pre-emption, or for uni-lateralism, or for the arrogance of American power or purpose -- all of which carry grave dangers for our nation, for the rule of international law and for the peace and security of people throughout the world."

---

Yes.  Clinton's full text made clear that she felt the Resolution before them was the one they could get at that point for avoiding war (if we had an honest president) because it threatened Iraq with war only IF Iraq would not allow inspectors.

To that end the Resolution worked and Iraq was allowing them, but Bush ignored the limitations of that Resolution and went to war despite not having the authority to do that within the language of that Resolution.

As most know now, Obama wasn't a U.S. senator yet, and in 2004 told Tim Russert (in defense of votes by Kerry and Edwards) that he himself could not be sure how he would have voted, not being privy to the papers they were given in the Senate.

His eloquent anti-war speech was made as a state senator of a very liberal anti-war district and at an anti-war rally. He now says it was a risky speech in 2002 because he was running for U.S. Senator, but that didn't happen until 2003-2004.

Since being in the U. S. Senate, he's voted in lockstep with Hillary Clinton on all things Iraq except that he voted for the confirmation of General Casey while she voted against it.  See concerns about his actual U.S. Senate voting record.

ASIDES: Re recent Iran vote (which Obama, alone among the presidential candidates, missed), I read that The "Iran Counter-Proliferation Act of 2007," which Obama co-sponsored on April 24, 2007, states that:

"The Secretary of State should designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as a Foreign Terrorist Organization under section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1189) and the Secretary of the Treasury should place the Iranian Revolutionary Guards on the list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists under Executive Order 13224 (66 Fed. Reg. 186; relating to blocking property and prohibiting transactions with persons who commit, threaten to commit, or support terrorism)."

The videoclip of Obama's Iraq war speech segment was not actual but a re-enactment by Obama for a tv ad for his campaign. Axelrod explains that there is no tape of that speech.  The unrecorded speech was given 3 months before he announced he would run for the U.S. Senate.

Matt Gonzalez on Change we should avoid: Obama's voting record

A progressive's closer look at Obama's voting record.   Matt Gonzalez is a former president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and will be the running mate for Ralph Nader's quixotic quest for quadrennial attention but has some values common to a lot of us.  

" He reminds us again and again that he had the foresight to oppose the war in Iraq. And he seems to have a genuine interest in lifting up the poor.

But his record suggests that he is incapable of ushering in any kind of change I’d like to see. It is one of accommodation and concession to the very political powers that we need to reign in and oppose if we are to make truly lasting advances."

When Hillary Clinton voted against the CAFA (Class Action Fairness Act - fairness to businesses against class action suits), Obama joined Republicans in voting FOR it.  Democrats against this particular loss of protection for consumers included Clinton, Kennedy, Biden, Feingold, and Kerry.  This is the kind of Change we can expect to see more of.

When Clinton voted FOR capping of consumer credit interest rates at 30%, Obama voted AGAINST it.  As a result, Mike Williams of the Bond Market Association, which represents Wall Street firms, said that "Some assumed he would just go along with consumer advocates, but he voted with us on several points.  He understood the issue.  He wasn’t closed-minded.  A lot of people found that very refreshing."

His 'flexibility' was similar to what we saw with Exelon, in which he gave Exelon and the Republicans everything they demanded and left a skeleton of the remaining, revised "bill," which failed but was recently re-introduced in Illinois in its revised, useless version.  Nevertheless he told an Iowan audience he had passed a regulatory bill... "I did that just this past year."  If he believes what he told them, it's worrisome, and if he doesn't believe it, it's troubling.

Source of Obama photo from Kenya

The Obama photo from Kenya (in Somali-elder garb) was posted on the Free Republic site on February 23, 2008 and is apparently scanned from a periodical titled "Examiner," dated February 4, 2008.   This posting was made to the highly traffic'd, conservative Republican forum two days before Drudge ran the photo on Monday, February 25, and claimed he'd "obtained" it from a Clinton staffer email.

EXIF data shows the scanned photo was created February 23, 2008
using Microsoft Windows Photo Gallery and is stored at the Fotki site. The context is from a very misleading article.

The scan of that photo from the "Examiner" was first posted, in a cropped version on the day of the scanning, February 23, by "bannie".    "cmsgop" re-posted the full photo to other forum threads the next day (24th). This photo will have been much emailed during those two days.

The photo furor buried tv exposure of Clinton's main event that week - the foreign policy speech that same day at George Washington University, with endorsements by various generals, so was no favor to her camp.

Another copy of that photo has apparently, for some time, been part of a website story about his trip to Kenya in 2006 on the Hans-Geeska Afrika Online site, and Obama authorized a  video documentaryof that trip.

Finding just the right words...

Senator Obama tries to explain why a certain woman might "periodically" launch attacks (on him) when "feeling down" and wanting to, in this unique way, "boost her appeal." It's clever wording.

Updated Mar. 9, 2008     Obama Reference Set

---

The realities of corporate financing in any presidential election: (updated April, 2008)
Obama gives Hope to corporations - Truthdig, Apr 28, 2008
Barack Obama Inc.:  The birth of a Washington machine - (Harpers, Oct 26, 2006 issue)
Obama Campaign press release - response to Harper's article - Oct. 23, 2006
A Bit More on Barack - Harper's added detail for Obama campaign - Oct. 26, 2006.  This includes Obama's explanation that "We can do better than burdening businesses with cases of class-action abuse."
Obama and Exelon bill - New York Times, Feb. 3, 2008 - a bill which Obama-donor Exelon and Republicans weakened to allow NO regulatory oversight by state or local authorities -- that oversight having been the purpose of the bill.
Strangely, on the campaign trail Obama told an Iowa audience in December '07 that it was "the only nuclear legislation that I’ve passed ... I just did that last year."   The problem?  The bill never passed.  The defanged version was reintroduced in October '07.
Obama, Exelon and their consultant David Axelrod - an intro and report with links to full articles.
Lobbyist support to campaign     Various sources detailed - 4/29/08
Corporate contributions to campaign sorted by:
      Sector, Top Industries, Top Contributors (company bundling).

Articles (biographical, topical, etc.)

• The Path to Power - Men's Vogue.  An attractive and interesting mind.
  
• Obama and Mayor Daley
  
• Washington Post: The press awakens, with many questions. Mar 3.
  
• How Obama handles tough questioning - Mar 3.
  
• A worrisome voting record, Feb. 28.
  
• Did Obama tell Canada not to worry about 'only...campaign rhetoric' in his NAFTA statements?  CTV reconfirms story,  names appearing: (1), (2).   NY Times: The Canadian Consulate's 1,300 word memo re conversations between counsel general Georges Rioux and Obama's senior economic policy adviser, Austan Goolsbee, obtained by AP.  "[Goolsbee] was frank in saying that the primary campaign has been necessarily domestically focused, particularly in the Midwest, and that much of the rhetoric that may be perceived to be protectionist is more reflective of political maneuvering than policy..."
    Mar 3.
  Mar. 7 - Upshot - Prime Minister Harper's Office said Clinton never gave Canada secret assurances, only Obama's campaign talked with them.
  The Associated Press's excerpts from the memo
  Per The Nation, "...The operative said it was just campaign rhetoric not to be taken seriously."
  
• David Shuster reacts (video) to Obama's pressing the wrong vote buttons on 6 occasions. Mar 3.
  
• How Obama rose in Illinois politics - an illuminating explanation but with too much emphasis on the envious author's own story, which isn't interesting. Feb 28
  
• Obama's lukewarm support of the gay community - Feb 29
  
• Source of photo from Kenya - who uploaded it, where, on Feb. 23.?
  
• How Obama eliminated rivals from ballots, using 'old politics' of Chicago.  Sometimes referred to as the Alice Palmer story.
      A conservative blog's spin on the story;  Washington Post's
      more friendly view
  
• In-depth and very controversial article by Sean Wilentz, for The New Republic, with his analysis of the use of racial dynamics in the primaries. Feb 27.
  
• CAFA - Class Action Fairness Act.  Obama voted for this anti-consumer bill.  Clinton, Kennedy, Biden, Feingold, and Kerry voted no.
  
• Obama also voted against capping consumer credit card interest at 30%.  Clinton voted for the cap.  The credit card companies deem him "reasonable."  See Obama's stated plans at his website..
  
• The Rezko relationship.  Obama not accused of illegal actions, only bad judgment.  Rezko trial begins March 3, 2008 - Prosecutor: Patrick Fitzgerald
  • Implications for Obama - Detailed, thoughtful story by Jeralyn Merritt, Feb. 26
    Chicago Tribune re Obama's differing versions of Rezko/home purchase circumstances.  Not forthright here.  Feb 19, 2008
  • Rezko ties - Chicago Sun-Times, by Tim Novak, Apr 23, 2007; much shorter intro, Jan 2008;  harrassing Obama;  Letters for Rezko
    
  • Rezko and Obama purchase - Kankakee Daily Journal,, Feb 19, 2008
    
  • NY Times: Lingering questions - March 3, 2008.
    
  • The Guardian (UK) story on likely Republican scrutiny of the Rezko relationship.
• Joe Conason's article for Salon about Obama's disinterested chairing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Subcommittee on European Affairs.
  
• Preparing for the Republican swiftboating - Larry C. Johnson,
        The Huffington Post. - Feb. 16, 2008.  Guilt by association (Ayers, Khalidi) is too McCarthyesque for me and a stretch in those cases.  But it's clear from blogs that this will be brought up in the General Election.
  

"We are the ones we have been waiting for"

Subtitle: Giving Credit Where Due

With the brouhaha today re recycling a major portion of someone else's speech (but delivering it better), I remembered being struck when listening to Obama the other day when he said, "We are the ones we have been waiting for" and thought 'THAT was a great line' and very well delivered.

That turned out to be the title of an Alice Walker book.

I wondered why he didn't just say, 'As Alice Walker has said...'

But then Walker's chapter credits June Jordan for that line.

Here's a website for June Jordan and one for her available books.

Irony? If his speechwriters had just credited it, he would have picked up even more of the female vote by drawing attention to her poem. It IS inspiring stuff.

Alice Walker's chapter from her book explains:

"It was the poet June Jordan who wrote "We are the ones we have been waiting for." Sweet Honey in the Rock turned those words into a song. Hearing this song, I have witnessed thousands of people rise to their feet in joyful recognition and affirmation. We are the ones we've been waiting for because we are able to see what is happening with a much greater awareness than our parents or grandparents, our ancestors, could see. This does not mean we believe, having seen the greater truth of how all oppression is connected, how pervasive and unrelenting, that we can "fix" things.

But some of us are not content to have a gap in opportunity and income that drives a wedge between rich and poor, causing the rich to become ever more callous and complacent and the poor to become ever more wretched and humiliated. . . ."

Obama's Familiar Quotations

With apologies to Bartlett's.



This set of videoclip comparisons begins with words used often by Obama when he's speaking in the South, including in Mississippi, where Obama explained his understandable reactions to the premature but strategically superdelegate-targeted idea of a duo-run, when Clinton said that the crowd "may" be able to get the two of them someday, depending on how things turn out.  My early dating of this entry is to place it with the Alice Walker entry, above.  She writes that she borrowed
"We are the ones we've been waiting for"  from June Jordan's (1980 poem), with attribution, and Maria Shriver draws attention to the Hopi Indians'  use of the phrase in Yr2000.

When I first heard the words, I thought they were especially apt, speaking to a sense of one's own power and responsibility to make change.  I was surprised to see that they had an interesting history but hadn't been attributed to anyone.  The video also uses the Visionaries' hip/hop song with that title (released Oct 2006).

The opening words of the videoclip (and those same words in Mississippi in March '08)  echo Spike Lee's portrait of Malcolm X, as spoken by Denzel Washington, in the powerful movie from 1992.   Obama enjoys cautioning these groups that "they're" trying to "hoodwink you ... bamboozle you" - not my own idea of 'new' politicking, and it actually plays with identity politics.

My sense of Obama has been that his politics tend to be "old," although he would like to shift into a form of  'better'  politics.  While much was made of the "Just words"  borrowing or emulation of Deval Patrick's older speech, which had been a response to similar criticism received in Massachusetts by Patrick, less familiar is the almost exact wording of the "your aspirations" passage, which Obama reads haltingly.  As you can see in the entry above, I've been bothered by his almost never attributing material he borrows from others.  The videoclip also compares his overall effect on crowds to evangelistic dynamics.

'New' concepts of Hope and Change?

I recently heard Barack Obama speak in bleak terms about the temptation of building a bridge back to the 20th Century by nominating Hillary Clinton.

Today I also saw complaints from Obama enthusiasts that Clinton has taken from her opponent the concepts of 'change' and 'hope.'

Then, on the same day, I see the Michelle Obama videoclip and text excerpt titled "For the First Time in My Adult Lifetime, I Am Really Proud of My Country."
    "What we have learned over this year is that hope is making a comeback.  It is making a comeback.  And let me tell you something -- for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country.  And not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change.  And I have been desperate to see our country moving in that direction and just not feeling so alone in my frustration and disappointment.  I've seen people who are hungry to be unified around some basic common issues, and it's made me proud."

    How long has she been an adult??

-=-=-=- Time-tunneling to the past when people were 'different' -=-=-=-

Excerpts from a speech about Hope and Change

Tonight I want to talk with you about my hope for the future, my faith in the American people, and my vision of the kind of country we can build, together.
. . .
I have news for the forces of greed and the defenders of the status quo: your time has come--and gone. It's time for a change in America.
. . .
This election is about putting power back in your hands and putting government back on your side.  It's about putting people first.
. . .
That's why I'm so committed to making sure every American gets the health care that saved my mother's life, and that women's health care gets the same attention as men's...
. . .
If you want to know where I come by the passionate commitment I have to bringing people together without regard to race, it all started with my grandfather.
. . .
Frankly, I'm fed up with politicians in Washington lecturing the rest of us about "family values."  Our families have values.  But our government doesn't.
. . .
Our people are pleading for change, but government is in the way.  It has been hijacked by privileged, private interests.
. . .
When I am your President, the rest of the world will not look down on us with pity, but up to us with respect again.
. . .
or if, like the great civil rights pioneer Fannie Lou Hamer, you're just plain old sick and tired of being sick and tired -- then join us, work with us, win with us. And we can make our country the country it was meant to be.
. . .
[Bush] has never balanced a government budget.  But I have, eleven times.
. . .
We will build an American community again.  The choice we offer is not conservative or liberal.  In many ways it's not even Republican or Democratic, It's different.  It's new.  And it will work.
. . .
We'll say: Everybody can borrow the money to go to college.  But you must do your part.  You must pay it back -- from your paychecks, or better yet, by going back home and serving your communities . . . caring for the sick, or working with the elderly or people with disabilities, or helping young people to stay off drugs and out of gangs, giving us all a sense of new hope and limitless possibilities ...
. . .
It's also about our common community.  Tonight every one of you knows deep in your heart that we are too divided.
. . .
It is time to heal America.  And so we must say to every American: look beyond the stereotypes that blind us.  We need each other.  All of us, we need each other.
. . .
Them, and them, and them.  But this is America.  There is no them;  there is only us.  One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty, and justice, for all.
. . .
We can seize this moment, we can make it exciting and energizing and heroic to be an American again.  We can renew our faith in ourselves and each other, and restore our sense of unity and community...
. . .
But I cannot do it alone.  No President can.  We must do it together.  It won't be easy and it won't be quick.  We didn't get into this mess overnight, and we won't get out of it overnight.  But we can do it--with our commitment and our creativity and our diversity and our strength.  I want every person in this hall and every citizen in this land to reach out and join us in a great new adventure to chart a bold new future.
. . .
. . . a country of boundless hopes and endless dreams; a country that once again lifts up its people, and inspires the world.
. . .
I end tonight where it all began for me:  I still believe in a place called Hope.

--- Bill Clinton, July 16, 1992
      Excerpts from his speech accepting the nomination

===
Full speech here.

Da Vinci's The Last Supper Up Close at Home

Da Vinci's The Last Supper in Detail - described here. Per the AP,

Officials put online an image of the "Last Supper" at 16 billion pixels — 1,600 times stronger than the images taken with the typical 10 million pixel digital camera.

The high resolution will allow experts to examine details of the 15th century wall painting that they otherwise could not — including traces of drawings Leonardo put down before painting.  The high-resolution allows viewers to look at details as though they were inches from the art work, in contrast to regular photographs, which become grainy as you zoom in, said curator Alberto Artioli.

Other excerpts:

The work, in Milan's Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, was restored in a painstaking effort that wrapped up in 1999 — a project aimed at reversing half a millennium of damage to the famed artwork. Leonard painted the "Last Supper" dry, so the painting did not cleave to the surface in the fresco style, meaning it is more delicate and subject to wear.
...
Even those who get to Milan have a hard time gaining admission to see the "Last Supper." Visits have been made more difficult by measures to protect it. Twenty-five visitors are admitted every 15 minutes to see the painting for a total of about 320,000 visitors a year. Visitors must pass through a filtration system to help reduce the work's exposure to dust and pollutants.

I WANT Snowball the Cockatoo ! or his dancing lessons

I just love this rockin' cockatoo parrot and his steps!  He loves that beat!

Choreography's tricky too.  Snowball's taught himself (per the video description) to dance to the Back Street Boy's "Everybody" and he, sorta, sings too :-)   Simon, don't miss this one!
There's even a mohawk.

Per the videoclip, he's "a medium sulphur crested Eleanora cockatoo living at the Bird Lovers Only Rescue in Schererville, Indiana."

"Healthiest packaged foods" (for women, but ...)

"100 Best Foods list" per Women's Health Magazine.

While the magazine's target crowd is non-males, I imagine the products listed as tasty, disease-fighting and lean-mean recommendations here might work for men too.  

Verbier Festival videos online until Aug 31

The VERBIER Festival 2007 concerts are being made available for viewing, free, in high-definition video on the Net, on-demand, accessible only until August 31, 2007.  Fast Internet access (cablemodem, DSL, etc) is required to access the streams though.  medici-arts.tv is providing the technology.

    The pairing of Martha Argerich and Lang Lang is the most unusual item.  Details here.

    Other soloists include Nelson Freire, Evgeny Kissin, Helen Grimaud, Thomas Quastoff, Nelson Goerner, Hillary Hahn, Joshua Bell, and too many others to name.
    Up-to-date online-program info/changes

I'm in love

Dog with a heart, well, two.

This adorable pup is likely to be worth a lot of $$ but I bet he won't be sold, at least not for a few days.  Emiko Sakurada and Heartkun live in northern Japan, where Emiko has bred a thousand chihuahuas.  

Does the iPhone meet expectations?

{UPDATE 8/12/07 - User reviews at CNET (652 today): Avg rating 6.4}
{UPDATES 7/24/07 - (1) Apple shares down 6% after disappointing iPhone sales numbers.   (2) iPhone is seriously hackable per a story in The Guardian today.  They've advised Apple, who needs to plug that up.}

6/26/07 - Well, I haven't been following this, not being very trendy, but saw the NY Times writeup and video today by its funny tech guy, David Pogue, who's not a bad actor, either -- well, for a tech reviewer!  Sure had ME laughing.

He basically says that the iPhone matches most of its hype.

Other things:

• The phone is extremely easy to use.
  
• The iPhone is SMALL and doesn't even need a case.
  
• There is no video-mode (hey, primitive phone!).
• And no way to send a picture taken to someone else's phone tho' you can send it to someone's email.
  
• Internet is fast if you're in a Wi-Fi hot spot, but its own network will make you wish for a dialup, he says.
  
• No Flash or Java, so most web videos won't work, but YouTube will.
  
• ONLY AT&T will work with iPhone - special deal between Apple and AT&T.
  
• He adds that AT&T's reception is, well, not good, and clarity of the phone is average.
  
• There's no memory card expansion for storage
  
• The battery starts to lose capacity after 300-400 charges and you have to send it back to Apple for the replacement, for a fee.  By that time, first-on-block buyers will be looking for the latest xphone anyway.
  
• Apple will offer free software updates on this phone in the meantime.
  
• While he says the camera is not good in low-light, few cameras are and it does better than other 2-megapizel cell phone cameras, from what I've seen.

I've also read that it won't directly download music from a wireless network; instead users need to transfer music from their computers.

In reading about its many first-time mobile phone features, I couldn't quite picture it all, so the video (which starts out like an Apple Ad Plus) shows you how it works and it's pretty amazing.  By the end of the video, it's not quite the AdPlus that it started to be, but I imagine it will sell well anyway, although $500 or so is pretty hefty considering what it can't do, including not being able to directly download music via a wireless network

Nevertheless, very impressive what Apple did, though I'm not trading in my Samsung A990 yet.
    Here's his interactive graphics detailed look at the phone itself.

Boston Globe's article on Setup and monthly charges
Pogue's answers to oft-asked questions.

Will be updating this page with less-fashionable info soon :-)

Videos from Cliburn Competition at YouTube

The Van Cliburn Foundation is now offering, on YouTube, content from its DVD, Encore!  -  in six 9-minute chunks  (YouTube 10 min. max).

James Conlon explores the relationship between the concert pianist's internal world and the composer's score - with the finalists of the Twelfth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition as his examples - and examines what makes one interpretation so different from another..

    I just found them and so far have most enjoyed, #5 with Roberto Plano playing the Dvorak Quintet in A with the Takacs Quartet (3 minutes in) and #6 with Kobrin, especially at 07:15.

The Cliburn International Competition for Outstanding Amateurs is being more or less documented via YouTube this week.  The finalists will be chosen tonight and will play tomorrow.
  Our hometown guy, Ken Iisaka, got a nice review in the Star Telegram this morning:

Berg's ravishing Sonata No. 1 was poignantly interpreted (by memory!) by California investment analyst Ken Iisaka.

While we're on the subject of DVDs and piano music, Argerich fans might want to take a look at newly available DVDs by Martha Argerich
    And for those who enjoy chamber music, here's a very highly recommended (10/10) Archduke and Ghost CD by the Freddy Kempf Trio while I'm at it.   Click to see more on Argerich and Kempf.

Lucy in the Sky and She's Leaving Home

Who were they?  Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds wasn't (just) about LSD?  From the many leaving homes (the most poignant song by the Beatles alongside Eleanor Rigby, for me), who was the one whose story inspired She's Leaving Home?

Meet Lucy Richardson Vodden and Melanie Coe via The Times, UK.

Lucy, now a 43-year-old housewife from Surrey, was a classmate of John’s son, Julian, at Heath House nursery school in Weybridge. Her moment of fame came in 1967, when Julian came home from school with a drawing of a girl surrounded by stars. John asked him what it was. “It’s Lucy, in the sky with diamonds,” Julian said.
. . .
Ms Coe, who came home safely after a week and now lives in Spain, said: “I love the song but I can’t sit and listen to it. It’s too painful for me.” After a day out with her new boyfriend she felt a sense of anticlimax – “the sky was black and everything felt so dark and dreary” – and jumped on a bus to get away. She first heard the song when working in a Play-boy club. “I thought, ‘That sounds just like me.

See the article for the full story and other events or sights that inspired some of the songs.
Three that stand out for me are:

• A Day in the Life was written after Lennon’s friend, Tara Browne, an Irish heiress related to the Guinness family, died in a car crash [*]
• The name Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was inspired by the psychedelic bands of the US West Coast.
• Lovely Rita is McCartney’s tribute to a retired traffic warden.  The song was also sparked by a news article

* Note the first comment below the story also

Here's to Sgt. Pepper!

Piano: Cats on the keys

Nora I & II, plus
Prokofiev and the Love of One Orange

Warning to the Lang Lang averse, go watch something else after Nora does her sensitive thing with the keys.  These are for fun for those so inclined.

• Nora cats around on the piano. I love this video.
• Nora does chamber music and actually listens to her partner
•  
• Lang's Prokofiev as street fighter with fancy footwork
• Lang and his right-hand training device

Study: Brain causes high blood pressure, not heart

Brain, not heart, causes high blood pressure: researchers - April 14, 2007

...scientists said that hypertension, which can lead to heart attacks, strokes and kidney damage, is an inflammatory vascular disease of the brain rather than the heart, as previously thought.

They discovered that a protein located in the brain, JAM-1, trapped white blood cells, which can then cause inflammation and obstruct blood flow, leading to poor oxygen supply to the brain.
. . .
The associate medical director of the British Heart Foundation, Professor Jeremy Pearson, said: "This exciting study is important because it suggests there are unexpected causes of high blood pressure related to blood supply to the brain.
. . .
The findings are to be published in the next edition of medical journal Hypertension.

Reverse Alzheimer's memory loss?

Reversing Alzheimer's memory loss may be possible

By Will Durnham (for Reuters, April 30, 2007)
. . . Neuroscientist Li-Huei Tsai of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said [in a phone interview], "We show, I believe, the first evidence that even if the brain suffered some very severe neurodegeneration and the individual exhibits very severe learning impairment and memory loss, there is still the possibility to improve learning ability and recover to a certain extent lost long-term memories."
. . .
Tsai and colleagues reported in the journal Nature, the memories probably remained in storage but could not be accessed or retrieved due to the brain damage
. . .
Previous research has shown that regular mental stimulation such as reading or playing a musical instrument may reduce one's risk for Alzheimer's. And a stimulating environment also has been shown to improve learning in mice.
. . .
After exploring the biological mechanism behind the improvement in mice placed in [an] enriched environment, the researchers tested on the mice a class of drugs called histone deacetylase, or HDAC, inhibitors.

Memory and learning improved in the mice, similar to improvements caused by environmental stimulation, the researchers said. They said this indicated such drugs represent a potential way to treat people with conditions like Alzheimer's.
. . .

Debunked: Cell phone effect and Einstein quote re disappearing bees

Seth Borenstein clears the air of bad buzz on cell phones and imaginary Einstein quote.
(For some basic info on bees, here is a bit more than most will want to know, but I found it interesting since I once had a bee colony in the walls of my home.)

AP - Associated Press May 4, 2007 update

. . . [there were] erroneous reports blaming cell phones for the honeybee die-off, which scientists are calling Colony Collapse Disorder.
. . .
The scientist who wrote the paper, Stefan Kimmel, e-mailed The Associated Press to say that there is "no link between our tiny little study and the CCD-phenomenon ... anything else said or written is a lie."
. . .
[ Re the Einstein quote ]
First, Einstein probably never said it, according to Alice Calaprice, author of "The Quotable Einstein" and five other
books on the physicist. . . .

Jeff Pettis, at U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, points out he can't get a cell phone signal in the remote areas where hives are generally held, and he points out that some food is wind-pollinated, so there'd be food left.

=======
BUT, just TWO days earlier, Seth Borenstein's AP story of May 2
started off with this:

"Unless someone or something stops it soon,
the mysterious killer that is wiping out many of the nation's honeybees could have a devastating effect on America's dinner plate, perhaps even reducing us to a glorified bread-and-water diet."

Here's a radio discussion, by several university researchers, of the vanishing bees dilemma.

Aspirin

Aspirin reduces overall cancer and mortality rates - Reuters Health, by Megan Rauscher.   This is a story on findings reported Apr 16 at the annual gathering of American Association for Cancer Research by Dr. Aditya Bardia of Mayo Clinic College of Medicine.
    It should be pointed out this is a study of 22,507 postmenopausal women in the Iowa Women's Health Study who were followed for up to 12 years.
    Excerpts:

"The regular use of aspirin, but not other nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), is associated with a reduced incidence of cancer and cancer-related death, particularly among former smokers and those who never smoked.

NSAIDs include commonly used analgesic drugs, such as ibuprofen and naproxen, that are usually available over-the-counter.

'Our ... study ... looked at the association between aspirin and non-aspirin use, and overall cancer incidence and mortality, in a comprehensive fashion, and also evaluated the results by smoking status,' the lead researcher said.

Regular aspirin use, compared with no aspirin use, was associated with a 16-percent lower risk of cancer and a 13-percent lower risk of cancer death, the team reported.

The inverse association between aspirin use and the risk of cancer and cancer-related death was strongest among former smokers and those who never smoked compared with current smokers, although this fell short of statistical significance.

Aspirin use also appeared to protect patients against coronary heart disease and the overall mortality rate.

NSAID use, on the other hand, was not associated with cancer incidence or death, heart-disease death, or mortality from any cause. ...