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There was a news report, on November 20, concerning two fingers and a tooth from 17th century astronomer Galileo Galilei that had been recovered. It seems that a Mr. Giovanni Targioni Tozzetti amputated the recovered right forefinger and thumb (which presumably held the pen that Galileo wrote down all of his scientific discoveries with) along with a tooth, the middle finger of the right hand and the fifth lumbar vertebra when, in 1737, Galileo’s body was moved from an unconsecrated grave to a mausoleum in the Florentine church of Santa Croce. The forefinger, thumb and tooth had been missing since the move.
Galileo’s problems began after 1610 when he became a vocal proponent of the heliocentric view that the sun was at the center of the planetary system, not the earth. This met with strong opposition from philosophers and the Catholic hierarchy, and two clerics denounced him to the Roman Inquisition in 1615. He was cleared of all offenses, but the Church denounced heliocentrism in 1616, warning Galileo not to support it; he promised to give up his views. But, in 1632, he published “Dialog Concerning the Two Chief World Systems,” which the Inquisition found to be subversive and heretic, and Galileo spent the rest of his life under house arrest. He died in 1642.
This makes the discovery of the lost fingers all the more interesting. The right middle finger has been reposing at the Institute and Museum of History of Science in Florence. Unnamed sources say that when the middle finger, fore finger and thumb were re-fitted on to the shriveled right hand, the unmistakable flipping of the bird sign was evident. It seems that, not only was Galileo the father of astronomy, the father of physics and the father of mathematics (and the father of three illegitimate children), he was the father of flipping the bird as this is the earliest scientifically confirmed case of this behavior. We now have proof that flipping the bird is indeed of Italian origin, and Italians and all those of Italian ancestry can take pride in this significant discovery.
So, who was the recipient of Galileo’s deathbed flip? It probably wasn’t the local priest; Galileo was buried in unconsecrated ground because he was branded a heretic, so there probably was no priest to attend to his death. My guess is that he knew that rigor mortis would preserve his last flip, so he most likely intended it for Pope Urban VIII, the Pope who approved his banishment. Since Urban VIII didn’t attend Galileo’s death or internment, he never knew of this insult (what good is an insult if the recipient doesn’t know of it?).
Which brings us to our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms in America: the Pittsburgh City Council gave approval to pay $50,000 to a man who was arrested for displaying one of his middle fingers to a Pittsburgh police officer. It seems that a Mr. David Hackbart gave a driver the view of one of his middle fingers when the driver yelled at him, not realizing that the driver was a police officer. Mr. Hackbart was arrested, but he later sued in Federal Court claiming that flipping the bird was protected by the first amendment to the Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people to display their middle finger.” Pittsburgh is willing to pay Mr. Hackbart the $50K rather than contest the suit in court; their attorneys probably agree with Mr. Hackbart, and may have used the same gesture at times. Sources claim that everyone in court, when the settlement was announced, flipped the bird at everyone else.
And to think, if it wasn’t for Galileo, people would have to use other means of expressing their anger and frustration, like guns. We can thank Galileo for the reduction in the murder rate in this country, along with his other minor accomplishments in astronomy, physics and mathematics.
On Saturday night, the U.S. Senate, by the barest of margins, voted to allow debate of its version of a health care bill. While this is a significant victory for the Democrats, it by no means guarantees that a Senate version of the House bill will emerge; there is still a long way to go before a combined Senate-House comprehensive health care bill winds up on President Obama’s desk for signature, if ever.
Two days before this historic vote, another vote took place; a jury in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida ordered Philip Morris USA to pay $300 million to an ex-smoker who claims she needs a lung transplant. In 1998, 46 states accepted $206 billion from the seven largest tobacco companies in a settlement that was supposed to pay the Medicaid costs for treating the illnesses attributed to smoking for the smokers in those states. Even though Florida was one of the states accepting the settlement money, its Supreme Court ruled that individuals could still sue tobacco companies, and they did not have to prove that nicotine was addictive, that smoking was a major cause of disease, and that tobacco companies hid those facts.
The plaintiff, Lucinda Naugle, 61, the sister of the former mayor of Ft. Lauderdale, was awarded $56 million in compensatory damages and $244 in punitive damages. She started smoking when she was 20 and quit when she was 45, which means she started smoking in 1968 and quit in 1993. These dates are important because the jury held her 10% liable and Philip Morris USA 90% liable for her condition.
From 1966 through 1970, all packs of cigarettes carried the warning, “Caution: Cigarette Smoking May be Hazardous to Your Health.” This means that Lucinda Naugle was warned that cigarette smoking was a health hazard before she started smoking. From 1970 through 1985, all packs of cigarettes carried the warning, “Warning: The Surgeon General Has Determined that Cigarette Smoking is Dangerous to Your Health,” and from 1985 to the present, cigarette packs carry the message, “SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Smoking Causes Lung Cancer, Heart Disease, Emphysema, And May Complicate Pregnancy.” So, during the period Ms. Naugle smoked, she had to have known that smoking cigarettes was dangerous to her health, but she persisted anyway, presumably because of the addictive nature of nicotine. While Florida law allowed Ms. Naugle to sue without having to prove nicotine addictive and that tobacco was a major cause of disease, nobody forced her to start smoking.
Shouldn’t someone who knowingly does something dangerous be held accountable for their actions? Shouldn’t she be at least 50% liable for picking up a cigarette, lighting it, putting it in her mouth and taking that first addictive inhale? Wouldn’t someone who knowingly stepped off a curb in the middle of the block in front of a moving car be at least 50% liable if the car hit him/her, causing severe injury or even death? You wouldn’t hold the driver of the car 90% liable for the stupidity of the pedestrian, would you?
There is a ticking time bomb waiting for the health care bill to pass and for President Obama to sign into law: smokers. It is estimated that if a health care bill passes, it will cost this country anywhere from $840 billion to $1.4 trillion over 10 years to pay to cover the cost of health care insurance for the uninsured. Many of the uninsured smoke, and these smokers and their illnesses can potentially drive up the cost of health care even more than the estimates. Their prior health habits will not prevent them from receiving health care because the current House and Senate bills prevent insurance companies from excluding people based on prior health conditions. The cost for treating the lung cancer, emphysema, colon cancer, heart disease, low birth weight babies, and burn injuries (caused by smokers who set themselves on fire when they fall asleep while smoking) will fall on the rest of us. In some ways, it already has. We all pay higher health insurance premiums because of smokers who have health insurance, and we pay higher health insurance premiums because of those who don’t have health insurance and who use the emergency rooms as their primary care physician; all of those costs are passed down to us.
Making tobacco illegal won’t work; a black market will spring up to supply the addicts. There already is a black market that supplies cigarettes tax free or at reduced taxes; it’s called Indian reservations. Instead, laws should be passed or the current tobacco tax laws should be modified directing all tobacco taxes, federal, state and local, into federal and state Medicaid insurance programs.
Have the addicts pay for all or a significant portion of the medical care they will need, and allow them to continue to sue the tobacco companies. Maybe compassionate juries will allow them to recover the tobacco taxes they pay in the damages they win.
I was reading the script from the new comedy team, Walters and Palin (similar style and material to that of Burns and Allen), and I thought I would share some of their funnier material.
Straight woman Barbara Walters (I always think of her as Babwa Wawa, Gilda Radner’s right on impression) was discussing the issue of expanding Jewish settlements on Palestinian lands, to which Mrs. Palin (Gracie) replied, “I disagree with the Obama administration on that. I believe that the Jewish settlements should be allowed to be expanded upon, because that population of Israel is, is going to grow. More and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead. And I don't think that the Obama administration has any right to tell Israel that the Jewish settlements cannot expand.” (“Palin: Obama Wrong on Israeli, Afghan Policy,” Alan B. Goldberg and Katie N. Thomson, ABC News, 11/17/09).
Pretty funny, right? It would be, except Gracie is appearing on all of the TV talk shows, ostensibly to promote her new book, but really to give her a chance to promote her right wing evangelical views that she hopes will make people consider her a serious presidential contender. So, she knows that “Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead?” This is, of course, the evangelical Christian view, of which this former Catholic is now a proponent, that the Jewish state of Israel must be supported and protected, that Jews will return to Israel to fight Satan and his minions (the world’s Muslims) in the final battle on the plains of Armageddon. When this battle ends, any Jews left will be given the option of embracing Christ or wallowing in Hell, and all those who embrace Christ will go to Heaven. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it, but this is what Gracie and all those other evangelicals believe. I think if I resist going to Israel, if I hold out, I can postpone the ultimate battle. I’ll try.
When George asked Gracie about Afghanistan, Gracie replied, “To listen to McChrystal, to listen to the appointee that President Obama asked for, the advice from, McChrystal gave the president the advice and said, 'We need essentially a surge strategy in Afghanistan, so that we can win in Afghanistan. And that means more resources, more troops there.' It frustrates me and frightens me -- and many Americans -- that President Obama is dithering around with the decision in Afghanistan.” (“Palin: Obama Wrong on Israeli, Afghan Policy,” Alan B. Goldberg and Katie N. Thomson, ABC News, 11/17/09).
I would think that, as the mother of a son who has served in the Infantry in Iraq, she would be happy that we finally have an executive who will spend some of his time “dithering around with the decision in Afghanistan” before he sends anymore troops into that meat grinder; she should appreciate that after the impulsiveness of the last occupant of the White House, John Wayne Cheney. Yes, President Obama did ask for advice from General McChrystal, and he got it, but he also asked for advice from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Vice President, the Secretary of State, the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, and a multitude of others so he could dither and make the correct decision. Keep your panties on Gracie, and we’ll all get his decision.
Gracie concluded, “The people there, the government there, should be able to take over and to have a more peaceful existence there for the people who live there -- without American interference, if you will.” (“Palin: Obama Wrong on Israeli, Afghan Policy,” Alan B. Goldberg and Katie N. Thomson, ABC News, 11/17/09). When I was a boy and used to watch Burns and Allen, Gracie was so funny in her vacuous way (some say she was really the brains behind the brilliant comedy team). She retired in 1958, and then she died in 1964, only to be reincarnated in Wasilla, Alaska, just vacuous.
Doesn’t Gracie sound so presidential? She certainly has a way with words, doesn’t she?
Say good night, Gracie.
Attorney General Eric Holder and President Obama are hell bent on trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks (I have to say alleged, because, even though he has admitted his role after 183 water boardings, he hasn’t received his day in court), in U.S. Federal Court, and in New York yet, the scene of his alleged greatest crime. Holder said that it would be justice for New Yorkers if Mohammed were to be tried in New York, the site of his crimes, but others disagree.
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who unlike his New Orleans counterpart, Mayor Ray Nagin (who had plenty of time to prepare for disaster in New Orleans but instead buried his head in the muck while Hurricane Katrina destroyed large parts of his city, leaving most of his constituents destitute and homeless), rushed to the 9/11 disaster site to oversee the rescue and recovery efforts, disagreed with Holder: “In this particular case, we’re reaching out to give terrorists a benefit that’s unnecessary,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.” “In fact, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, when he was first arrested, asked to be brought to New York. I didn’t think we were in the business of granting the requests of terrorists.” (“Giuliani: New York trials show Obama is soft on terrorism,” Mark Sappenfield, The Christian Science Monitor, 11/15/09). Mr. Obama’s supporters would disagree; they would view this as confidence in the American legal system, a system that has produced convictions of terrorists 100% of the time when they were tried in U.S. Federal Court in New York
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It is estimated that 27,360 American men will die of prostate cancer in 2009. That number represents about .028% of the adult male population (in 2000, there were 98.9 million men 18 and older living in the United States). The CDC estimates that about 4,000 Americans have died from the swine flu so far this year, out of 22 million who have contracted the illness, and a total U.S. population of 310 million, or about .0013% of the population (.018% of those who have contracted the swine flu), yet the swine flu is a deadly pandemic worthy of public and government panic while prostate cancer is regarded as nothing to get excited about.
The Journal of the National Cancer Institute reports that there has been an increase in the diagnosis of prostate cancer in recent years due to the common use of the PSA (prostate specific antigen) test, but those increases may not have led to increases in the cure rate
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President Obama is reportedly close to a decision to stop his dithering and advance new military and foreign policies regarding Afghanistan. Supposedly, there are four scenarios that are being considered, with modifications of one of them to come before the final decision is made around Thanksgiving.
The four possible scenarios being considered, according to Andrew Bast in a November 11 article in Newsweek (“Options on the Table, Andrew Bast, Newsweek, 11/11/09) are
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Sarah Palin’s new book, “Going Rogue,” by Lynn Vincent, the editor of the evangelical magazine “World” should be hitting bookstores shortly. Those who have gotten their hands on advanced copies report the book to be more of an attack on the campaign staff of failed presidential candidate Senator John McCain than a revelation of anything new in Mrs. Palin’s life. However, facts checked by the Associated Press reveal some interesting bending of the truth.
Just to remind everyone of Mrs. Palin’s proclivity to sort facts to suit her view of the world, we only have to remember her belief that she could see Russia from Wasilla. That, and her visits to Canada to conduct preliminary talks for a gas pipeline, gave her extensive foreign policy experience when she was running for the Vice Presidency, so she claimed. Then there was her statement, during the presidential campaign, that she knew more about energy production and conservation than anyone because 1) she was the governor of Alaska, and 2) she negotiated the deal that resulted in the building of a pipeline which would bring Alaskan gas through Canada to the lower 48 states. While it was true that she was the governor of Alaska, for less than two years, there was no deal or gas pipeline; a native tribe in the Yukon was demanding royalties for allowing the pipeline to pass through their territory, and the issue hadn’t been settled. Also, the Alaskan legislature was investigating whether there were ethics violations involved in awarding the contracts to build the pipeline; it seems that there was no open, competitive bidding to build the pipeline, that the contract was awarded to TransCanada Corp., and the leader of her pipeline team was a former lobbyist for a subsidiary of TransCanada Corp. But, these are only minor, right, so let’s get to the truth bending that the AP dug up from the book
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The American Cancer Society, long a proponent of early screening for cancer, especially breast cancer and prostate cancer, is about to switch its position and call for less screening for those two cancers.
It is basing its decision on a report published by Dr. David Brawley in the Journal of the American Medical Association which showed that there has been a 40% increase of breast cancer diagnosis and a doubling of early stage cancer diagnosis, but only a 10% decline in cancers that have spread beyond the breast to the lymph nodes and other parts of the body. The results for prostate cancer are similar. The conclusion being drawn from this is that all of the money being spent on early diagnosis is not producing a positive outcome
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When I was 17, my father tried to commit suicide by taking an overdose of a pain killer he had left over from some dental work. I was just starting college (I had an academic scholarship), and I felt angry and betrayed. Two years prior to this incident, he suffered a massive heart attack, and then he lost his job. My mother had him committed to the Veterans Administration Hospital in Northport, New York, for treatment, and we had no income. My grandmother moved in with us, temporarily, to help support us with her pension and Social Security payments, and I worked part time to provide extra money to my mother.
I didn’t get to see my mother very much, what with school, my job, and her visits to my father; I didn’t visit my father because of my anger. Instead, I would go around the block to talk to my aunt Betty, my father’s youngest sister. I would tell her of my anger with my father, my sense of his abandonment of his family, and my anger with his abuses; my father had always been very abusive verbally, physically and psychologically, magnifying any childhood indiscretion way out of proportion
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I wonder what Chelsea Burnett Sullenberger III, “Sully” as he is now known to the world, would say about the performance of first officer Richard Cole and captain Timothy Cheney during Northwest Flight 188 on October 21 from San Diego to Minneapolis-St. Paul; the plane overshot the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport by 150 miles and had to execute a series of maneuvers to satisfy ground controllers and the Air National Guard that someone who knew how to fly an Airbus A320 was at the controls to prevent being shot down.
Messrs. Cole and Cheney claimed to the FAA and Northwest officials, who tried repeatedly to reach them during the flight, that they were not napping, as some have speculated, and they also denied they had any alcoholic beverages to drink prior to and during the flight, but were using their laptops to access the new flight schedule for pilots of the merged Delta and Northwest airlines, to check on future assignments, or at least try to understand the schedule. They claim that they became so engrossed in reviewing the schedule, that the flight time just passed by quickly, and they were not aware of the alarms and radio messages from panicked controllers and officials. That’s what they claimed, anyway. So, how does a captain and first officer, who have more than 31,000 hours of experience between them, make such a serious judgment error
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Comment by Schmoozer
on TCFB's Turn Back The Clock In Sports History---November 23rd
Schmoozer
Schmoozer