Because I messed up my first (only) marriage so badly, this NYT article caught my eye

December 31, 2010

The Happy Marriage Is the ‘Me’ Marriage

By TARA PARKER-POPE

A lasting marriage does not always signal a happy marriage. Plenty of miserable couples have stayed together for children, religion or other practical reasons.

But for many couples, it’s just not enough to stay together. They want a relationship that is meaningful and satisfying. In short, they want a sustainable marriage.

“The things that make a marriage last have more to do with communication skills, mental health, social support, stress — those are the things that allow it to last or not,” says Arthur Aron, a psychology professor who directs the Interpersonal Relationships Laboratory at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. “But those things don’t necessarily make it meaningful or enjoyable or sustaining to the individual.”

The notion that the best marriages are those that bring satisfaction to the individual may seem counterintuitive. After all, isn’t marriage supposed to be about putting the relationship first?

Actually, when presented like this, the idea hardly sounds counterintuitive.

Not anymore. For centuries, marriage was viewed as an economic and social institution, and the emotional and intellectual needs of the spouses were secondary to the survival of the marriage itself. But in modern relationships, people are looking for a partnership, and they want partners who make their lives more interesting.

 And in the best partnerships, each partner KNOWS they have free reign to use their own creative / intuitive skills and instincts to do what ought to be done with no recriminations if the immediate impact does not look so fruitful.

Caryl Rusbult, a researcher at Vrije University in Amsterdam who died last January, called it the “Michelangelo effect,” referring to the manner in which close partners “sculpt” each other in ways that help each of them attain valued goals.

Dr. Aron and Gary W. Lewandowski Jr., a professor at Monmouth University in New Jersey, have studied how individuals use a relationship to accumulate knowledge and experiences, a process called “self-expansion.” Research shows that the more self-expansion people experience from their partner, the more committed and satisfied they are in the relationship.
To measure this, Dr. Lewandowski developed a series of questions for couples: How much has being with your partner resulted in your learning new things? How much has knowing your partner made you a better person? (Take the full quiz measuring self-expansion.)

While the notion of self-expansion may sound inherently self-serving, it can lead to stronger, more sustainable relationships, Dr. Lewandowski says.
“If you’re seeking self-growth and obtain it from your partner, then that puts your partner in a pretty important position,” he explains. “And being able to help your partner’s self-expansion would be pretty pleasing to yourself.”

 This hardly sounds self serving.  Think of flora and fuana.  Flora and fuana flourish best where fresh water and sunlight are in abundance, and predators are few.

The concept explains why people are delighted when dates treat them to new experiences, like a weekend away. But self-expansion isn’t just about exotic experiences. Individuals experience personal growth through their partners in big and small ways. It happens when they introduce new friends, or casually talk about a new restaurant or a fascinating story in the news.

The effect of self-expansion is particularly pronounced when people first fall in love. In research at the University of California at Santa Cruz, 325 undergraduate students were given questionnaires five times over 10 weeks. They were asked, “Who are you today?” and given three minutes to describe themselves. They were also asked about recent experiences, including whether they had fallen in love.

After students reported falling in love, they used more varied words in their self-descriptions. The new relationships had literally broadened the way they looked at themselves.

“You go from being a stranger to including this person in the self, so you suddenly have all of these social roles and identities you didn’t have before,” explains Dr. Aron, who co-authored the research. “When people fall in love that happens rapidly, and it’s very exhilarating.”

Over time, the personal gains from lasting relationships are often subtle. Having a partner who is funny or creative adds something new to someone who isn’t. A partner who is an active community volunteer creates new social opportunities for a spouse who spends long hours at work.
Additional research suggests that spouses eventually adopt the traits of the other — and become slower to distinguish differences between them, or slower to remember which skills belong to which spouse.

In experiments by Dr. Aron, participants rated themselves and their partners on a variety of traits, like “ambitious” or “artistic.” A week later, the subjects returned to the lab and were shown the list of traits and asked to indicate which ones described them.

People responded the quickest to traits that were true of both them and their partner. When the trait described only one person, the answer came more slowly. The delay was measured in milliseconds, but nonetheless suggested that when individuals were particularly close to someone, their brains were slower to distinguish between their traits and those of their spouses.

“It’s easy to answer those questions if you’re both the same,” Dr. Lewandowski explains. “But if it’s just true of you and not of me, then I have to sort it out. It happens very quickly, but I have to ask myself, ‘Is that me or is that you?’ ”

It’s not that these couples lost themselves in the marriage; instead, they grew in it. Activities, traits and behaviors that had not been part of their identity before the relationship were now an essential part of how they experienced life.

All of this can be highly predictive for a couple’s long-term happiness. One scale designed by Dr. Aron and colleagues depicts seven pairs of circles. The first set is side by side. With each new set, the circles begin to overlap until they are nearly on top of one another. Couples choose the set of circles that best represents their relationship. In a 2009 report in the journal Psychological Science, people bored in their marriages were more likely to choose the more separate circles. Partners involved in novel and interesting experiences together were more likely to pick one of the overlapping circles and less likely to report boredom. “People have a fundamental motivation to improve the self and add to who they are as a person,” Dr. Lewandowski says. “If your partner is helping you become a better person, you become happier and more satisfied in the relationship.”

NYT article on getting the most out of technology (which only makes sense)

December 29, 2010

10 Ways to Get the Most Out of Technology

By SAM GROBART

Your gadgets and computers, your software and sites — they are not working as well as they should. You need to make some tweaks.

But the tech industry has given you the impression that making adjustments is difficult and time-consuming. It is not.

And so below are 10 things to do to improve your technological life. They are easy and (mostly) free. Altogether, they should take about two hours; one involves calling your cable or phone company, so that figure is elastic. If you do them, those two hours will pay off handsomely in both increased free time and diminished anxiety and frustration. You can do it.
 
GET A SMARTPHONE Why: Because having immediate access to your e-mail, photos, calendars and address books, not to mention vast swaths of the Internet, makes life a little easier.

How: This does not have to be complicated. Upgrade your phone with your existing carrier; later, when you are an advanced beginner, you can start weighing the pluses and minuses of your carrier versus another. Using AT&T? Get a refurbished iPhone 3GS for $29. Verizon? Depending on what’s announced next week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, get its version of the iPhone, or a refurbished Droid Incredible for $100. Sprint? Either the LG Optimus S or the Samsung Transform are decent Android phones that cost $50. T-Mobile users can get the free LG Optimus T.
 
STOP USING INTERNET EXPLORER Why: Because, while the latest version has some real improvements, Internet Explorer is large, bloated with features and an example of old-style Microsoft excess.

How: Switch to either Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome. Both are first-rate, speedy browsers, and both are free. It remains a tight race between the two, but Chrome has had the lead lately in features and performance. Both browsers include useful things like bookmark syncing. That means that your bookmarks folder will be the same on every computer using Chrome or Firefox, and will update if you change anything.
 
UPLOAD YOUR PHOTOS TO THE CLOUD Why: Because you’ll be really sorry if an errant cup of coffee makes its way onto your PC, wiping away years of photographic memories. Creating copies of your digital photos on an online service is a painless way to ensure they’ll be around no matter what happens to your PC. It is also an easy way to share the photos with friends and family.

How: There are many good, free choices. To keep things simple, use Picasa, Google’s service. After your initial upload — which may take a while, so set it up before you go to sleep — you will have a full backup of your photo library. And by inviting people to view it, privately, with passwords, you will not have to e-mail photos anymore. Anytime you have new pictures, upload them to Picasa, send a message to your subscribers, and they can view your gallery at their leisure.
 
GET MUSIC OFF YOUR COMPUTER Why: Because music bought digitally wants to be freed, not imprisoned in your portable player or laptop. It wants to be sent around the home, filling rooms like good old-fashioned hi-fi.

How: Using iTunes for your digital music? Buy Apple’s Airport Express for $99 and connect it to your stereo. When you play music on your computer, you can stream it to the Express and, therefore, your stereo’s speakers. Have an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad? Download Apple’s free Remote app and you will be able to control your music from anywhere in the house.
 
BACK UP YOUR DATA Why: Because photos are not the only important things on your computer. With online backup services, you do not have to buy any equipment; you just install software, which sits on secure servers and runs in the background, regularly updating a mirror image of all your files while you spend time on more important things, like confirming that Ben Gazzara really was the bad guy in “Road House” (he was).

How: Go to sosonlinebackup.com. Pay $80 a year. Install the software. Sleep easy.
 
SET UP A FREE FILE-SHARING SERVICE Why: Because while e-mailing yourself files is a perfectly decent workaround, there are easier, more elegant ways to move files around — and they do not cost anything, either.

How: Go to dropbox.com and set up a free account. You will then get an icon that sits on your desktop. Drag and drop files onto that icon, and they are immediately copied to the cloud. The free account gives you up to two gigabytes of disk space; 50- and 100-gigabyte are also available, but they cost $10 or $20 a month.

Set up your account on all your other computers, and they all have the access to the same files. You can set up shared, private and public folders, and apps for iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry and Android mean you can gain access to shared files from anywhere.
 
GET FREE ANTIVIRUS SOFTWARE Why: Because attacks on unwitting users are more widespread and tactics are growing more advanced.

How: Windows users should download Avast Free Antivirus. Mac users can download iAntiVirus Free Edition. Both applications will provide a basic level of security against a variety of so-called malware. And they cost zero.
 
GET A BETTER DEAL FROM YOUR CABLE, PHONE AND INTERNET PROVIDER Why:

Because it does not take much to get them to give you free (or cheaper) services. These companies are generally indifferent to customer needs, but they are quick to cough up discounts — if you ask.

How: Just call and ask — they will probably give you something. Other tactics: Measure your Internet speed, using dslreports.com/speedtest; if it is less than what you are paying for, ask for a free upgrade. Or ask to speak to the cancellation department. That usually scares them.
 
BUY A LOT OF CHARGING CABLES Why: Because you should never have a gadget’s battery die on you, and they are cheap. Smartphone user? Have a charging cable at the office, one in the car, and a couple at home. Laptops? Have enough chargers in the house, so you are not tethered to the den when the power runs low.

How: eBay. Search for what you need with terms like “original” or “oem” (original equipment manufacturer). You will often see accessories for as little as one-tenth their normal retail price. Buy them by the gross.
 
CALIBRATE YOUR HDTV Why: Because that awesome 1080p plasma or LCD TV you bought has factory settings for color, brightness, contrast and so forth that are likely to be out of whack. They need to be adjusted.

How: Order Spears and Munsil High Definition Benchmark: Blu-ray Edition, a DVD, for $25. Its regimen of tests and patterns will help you adjust your TV’s settings to more natural levels. After you use it, you may want to fine-tune the TV some more, but you can do so knowing you are getting the most out of your display.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: December 31, 2010
An earlier version of this article provided an incorrect URL for sosonlinebackup.com.

Another fine NYT piece in re: Alzheimer's Patients

December 31, 2010

Giving Alzheimer’s Patients Their Way, Even Chocolate

By PAM BELLUCK

PHOENIX — Margaret Nance was, to put it mildly, a difficult case. Agitated, combative, often reluctant to eat, she would hit staff members and fellow residents at nursing homes, several of which kicked her out. But when Beatitudes nursing home agreed to an urgent plea to accept her, all that changed.

Disregarding typical nursing-home rules, Beatitudes allowed Ms. Nance, 96 and afflicted with Alzheimer’s, to sleep, be bathed and dine whenever she wanted, even at 2 a.m. She could eat anything, too, no matter how unhealthy, including unlimited chocolate.

And she was given a baby doll, a move that seemed so jarring that a supervisor initially objected until she saw how calm Ms. Nance became when she rocked, caressed and fed her “baby,” often agreeing to eat herself after the doll “ate” several spoonfuls.

Dementia patients at Beatitudes are allowed practically anything that brings comfort, even an alcoholic “nip at night,” said Tena Alonzo, director of research. “Whatever your vice is, we’re your folks,” she said.

Once, Ms. Alonzo said: “The state tried to cite us for having chocolate on the nursing chart. They were like, ‘It’s not a medication.’ Yes, it is. It’s better than Xanax.”

It is an unusual posture for a nursing home, but Beatitudes is actually following some of the latest science. Research suggests that creating positive emotional experiences for Alzheimer’s patients diminishes distress and behavior problems.

In fact, science is weighing in on many aspects of taking care of dementia patients, applying evidence-based research to what used to be considered subjective and ad hoc.

With virtually no effective medical treatment for Alzheimer’s yet, most dementia therapy is the caregiving performed by families and nursing homes. Some 11 million people care for Alzheimer’s-afflicted relatives at home. In nursing homes, two-thirds of residents have some dementia.
Caregiving is considered so crucial that several federal and state agencies, including the Department of Veterans Affairs, are adopting research-tested programs to support and train caregivers. This month, the Senate Special Committee on Aging held a forum about Alzheimer’s caregiving.

“There’s actually better evidence and more significant results in caregiver interventions than there is in anything to treat this disease so far,” said Lisa P. Gwyther, education director for the Bryan Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at Duke University.

The National Institute on Aging and the Administration on Aging are now financing caregiving studies on “things that just kind of make the life of an Alzheimer’s patient and his or her caregiver less burdensome,” said Sidney M. Stahl, chief of the Individual Behavioral Processes branch of the Institute on Aging. “At least initially, these seem to be good nonpharmacological techniques.”

Techniques include using food, scheduling, art, music and exercise to generate positive emotions; engaging patients in activities that salvage fragments of their skills; and helping caregivers be more accepting and competent.

Changing the Mood

Some efforts involve stopping anti-anxiety or antipsychotic drugs, used to quell hallucinationspain or depression, addressing what might be making patients unhappy. or aggression, but potentially harmful to dementia patients, who can be especially sensitive to side effects. Instead, some experts recommend primarily giving drugs for

Others recommend making cosmetic changes to rooms and buildings to affect behavior or mood.

A study in The Journal of the American Medical Association found that brightening lights in dementia facilities decreased depression, cognitive deterioration and loss of functional abilities. Increased light bolsters circadian rhythms and helps patients see better so they can be more active, said Elizabeth C. Brawley, a dementia care design expert not involved in the study, adding, “If I could change one thing in these places it would be the lighting.”

Several German nursing homes have fake bus stops outside to keep patients from wandering; they wait for nonexistent buses until they forget where they wanted to go, or agree to come inside.

And Beatitudes installed a rectangle of black carpet in front of the dementia unit’s fourth-floor elevators because residents appear to interpret it as a cliff or hole, no longer darting into elevators and wandering away.
“They’ll walk right along the edge but don’t want to step in the black,” said Ms. Alonzo, who finds it less unsettling than methods some facilities use, bracelets that trigger alarms when residents exit. “People with dementia have visual-spatial problems. We’ve actually had some people so wary of it that when we have to get them on the elevator to take them somewhere, we put down a white towel or something to cover it up.”

When elevator doors open, Beatitudes staff members stand casually in front, distracting residents with “over-the-top” hellos, she said: “We look like Cheshire cats,” but “who’s going to want to get on the elevator when here’s this lovely smiling person greeting you? It gets through to the emotional brain.”

New research suggests emotion persists after cognition deteriorates. In a University of Iowastudy, people with brain damage producing Alzheimer’s-like amnesia viewed film clips evoking tears and sadness (“Sophie’s Choice,” “Steel Magnolias”), or laughter and happiness (Bill Cosby, “America’s Funniest Home Videos”).

Six minutes later, participants had trouble recalling the clips. But 30 minutes later, emotion evaluations showed they still felt sad or happy, often more than participants with normal memories. The more memory-impaired patients retained stronger emotions.

Justin Feinstein, the lead author, an advanced neuropsychology doctoral student, said the results, being studied with Alzheimer’s patients at Iowa and Harvard, suggest behavioral problems could stem from sadness or anxiety that patients cannot explain.

“Because you don’t have a memory, there’s this general free-floating state of distress and you can’t really figure out why,” Mr. Feinstein said. Similarly, happy emotions, even from socializing with patients, “could linger well beyond the memories that actually caused them.”

One program for dementia patients cared for by relatives at home creates specific activities related to something they once enjoyed: arranging flowers, filling photo albums, snapping beans.

“A gentleman who loved fishing could still set up a tackle box, so we gave him a plastic tackle box” to set up every day, said the program’s developer, Laura N. Gitlin, a sociologist at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia and newly appointed director of the Center on Aging and Health at Johns Hopkins University.

After four months, patients seemed happier and more active, and showed fewer behavior problems, especially repetitive questioning and shadowing, following caregivers around. And that gave caregivers breaks, important because studies suggest that “what’s good for the caregiver is good for the patient,” Professor Gwyther said.

Aiding the Caregiver

In fact, reducing caregiver stress is considered significant enough in dementia care that federal and state health agencies are adopting programs giving caregivers education and emotional support.

 This is so intuitive !

One, led by Mary S. Mittelman, a New York University dementia expert, found that when people who cared for demented spouses were given six counseling sessions as well as counselors whom they could call in a crisis, it helped them handle caregiving better and delayed by 18 months placing patients in nursing homes.

“The patient did not have fewer symptoms,” Dr. Mittelman said. “It was the caregiver’s reaction that changed.”

The Veterans Affairs Department is adopting another program, Resources for Enhancing Alzheimer’s Caregiver Health, providing 12 counseling sessions and 5 telephone support group sessions. Studies showed that these measures reduced hospital visits and helped family caregivers manage dementia behaviors.

“Investing in caregiver services and support is very worthwhile,” saving money and letting patients remain home, said Deborah Amdur, chief consultant for care management and social work at the Veterans Affairs Department.

Beatitudes, which takes about 30 moderate to severe dementia sufferers, introduced its program 12 years ago, focusing on individualized care.
“In the old days,” Ms. Alonzo said, “we would find out more about somebody from their obituary than we did when they were alive.”
The dementia floor was named Vermillion Cliffs, after colorfully layered rock formations formed by centuries of erosion, implying that, “although weathered, although tested by dementia, people are beautiful” and “have certain strengths,” said Peggy Mullan, the president of Beatitudes.

The facility itself is institutional-looking, dowdy and “extremely outdated,” Ms. Mullan said.

“It’s ugly,” said Jan Dougherty, director of family and community services at Banner Alzheimer’s Institute in Phoenix. But “they’re probably doing some of the best work” and “virtually have no sundowning,” she said, referring to agitated, delusional behavior common with Alzheimer’s, especially during afternoon and evening.

Beatitudes eliminated anything potentially considered restraining, from deep-seated wheelchairs that hinder standing up to bedrails (some beds are lowered and protected by mats). It drastically reduced antipsychotics and medications considered primarily for “staff convenience,” focusing on relieving pain, Ms. Alonzo said.

It encouraged keeping residents out of diapers if possible, taking them to the toilet to preserve feelings of independence. Some staff members resisted, Ms. Alonzo said, but now “like it because it saves time” and difficult diaper changes.

Family members like Nancy Mendelsohn, whose mother, Rose Taran, was kicked out of facilities for screaming and calling 911, appreciate it. “The last place just put her in diapers, and she was not incontinent at all,” Ms. Mendelsohn said.

Ms. Alonzo declined to pay workers more to adopt the additional skills or night work, saying, “We want people to work here because it’s your bag.”
Finding Favorite Things

For behavior management, Beatitudes plumbs residents’ biographies, soothing one woman, Ruth Ann Clapper, by dabbing on White Shoulders perfume, which her biographical survey indicated she had worn before becoming ill. Food became available constantly, a canny move, Ms. Dougherty said, because people with dementia might be “too distracted” to eat during group mealtimes, and later “be acting out when what they actually need is food.”

Realizing that nutritious, low-salt, low-fat, doctor-recommended foods might actually discourage people from eating, Ms. Alonzo began carrying chocolate in her pocket. “For God’s sake,” Ms. Mullan said, “if you like bacon, you can have bacon here.”

Comforting food improves behavior and mood because it “sends messages they can still understand: ‘it feels good, therefore I must be in a place where I’m loved,’ ” Ms. Dougherty said.

Now, when Maribeth Gallagher, Beatitudes’ dementia program director, learns someone’s favorite foods, “I’m going to pop that on your tongue, and you’re going to go ‘yum,’ ” she said. “Isn’t that better than an injection?”

Beatitudes also changed activity programming. Instead of group events like bingo, in which few residents could actually participate, staff members, including housekeepers, conduct one-on-one activities: block-building, coloring, simply conversing. State regulators initially objected, saying, “Where’s your big group, and what you’re doing isn’t right and doesn’t follow regulations,” Ms. Alonzo said.

Ms. Mullan said, “I don’t think we ever got cited, but it was a huge fight to make sure we didn’t.”

These days, hundreds of Arizona physicians, medical students, and staff members at other nursing homes have received Beatitudes’ training, and several Illinois nursing homes are adopting it. The program, which received an award from an industry association, the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging, also appears to save money.

Arlene Washington’s family moved her to Beatitudes recently, pulling her from another nursing home because of what they considered inattentive and “improper care,” said her husband, William. Mrs. Washington, 86, was heavily medicated, tube fed and unable to communicate, “like she had no life in her,” said Sharon Hibbert, a friend.

At Beatitudes, Dr. Gillian Hamilton, administrative medical director, said she found Mrs. Washington “very sedated,” took her off antipsychotics, then gradually stopped using the feeding tube. Now Mrs. Washington eats so well she no longer needs the insulin she was receiving. During a recent visit, she was alert, even singing a hymn.

That afternoon, Ms. Nance, in her wheelchair, happily held her baby doll, which she named Benjamin, and commented about raising her sons decades ago.

Ms. Alonzo had at first considered the doll an “undignified” and demeaning security blanket. But Ms. Gallagher explained that “for a lot of people who are parents, what gives them joy is caring for children.”

“I was able,” Ms. Gallagher said, “to find Margaret’s strength.”

Ms. Gallagher said she learned when approaching Ms. Nance to “look at her baby doll, and once I connect with the doll, I can look at her.”

She squatted down, complimented Benjamin’s shoes, and said, “You’re the best mom I know.”

Ms. Nance nodded earnestly.

“It’s good to know,” Ms. Nance said, “that somebody knows that you care.”

An excellent, informative NYT editorial in re: The GED

December 31, 2010

Success and Failure on the G.E.D.

Nearly 40 million Americans are locked into dead-end jobs because they do not have a high school diploma. A daylong exam called the General Educational Development test, or G.E.D., provides the equivalent of a high school diploma — and better chances in the job market — to those who pass it. Nearly 800,000 people take the exam each year, and about 500,000 pass.

But here is the stunning — and sad — truth about this exam: Success depends heavily on where you live. In Iowa, Kansas and Delaware, 90 percent or more of those who take the test pass. In Alabama, Mississippi, New York and the District of Columbia, less than 60 percent pass. 

What accounts for the difference? Preparation. States with low success rates do a poor job of prepping students for the exam. The reverse is true in states with high scores. In Iowa, for example, students take a diagnostic pretest, then receive instruction in their weak areas, then take a practice test. In 2009, 98 percent of those who took the test in Iowa passed the G.E.D. exam. 

Let us bow our heads in humble admiration for the emphasis the Great State of Iowa places upon educating their citizens!

The test is free in some states and costs as much as $400 in others. Either way, states should make sure people have a legitimate shot at success. 

A G.E.D. program developed by New York City’s Department of Education may help show New York State — and other states with poor test results — the way forward. The program uses innovative instructional techniques to make sure students are fully prepared. Over the last several years, the program has a pass rate of about 78 percent, more than 20 percentage points higher than the statewide rate. 

The city’s program has so impressed the American Council on Education, the nonprofit group that owns the G.E.D., that it will soon begin a pilot program in District 79, which deals with alternative schools and programs. Underwritten by a $3 million grant from the MetLife Foundation, this pilot program is intended to develop a model for educating more adults more quickly so they can pass the G.E.D. and move on with their careers. 

These improvements are timely because the G.E.D. test itself is about to get tougher. The new test, to be developed over the next several years, is being revised to conform to more rigorous educational standards proposed earlier this year by the National Governors Association and state school superintendents. 

These standards set forth ambitious new goals for what children should learn from kindergarten through high school and have already been embraced by most states. Among other things, they would require students to develop reasoning skills earlier in their educational experience and set higher, college-level standards in math, English and science.

For all these reasons, states — including New York — will need to invest much more heavily in programs that prepare people for the G.E.D. At stake is their economic future — and the country’s.

Gail Collins end-of-year quiz - What was important to Gail collins in the NYT the past 365 days

December 31, 2010

The End-of-the-Year Quiz

By GAIL COLLINS

I. Happy New Year! Besides the Times Square ball, the glorious American mosaic of things scheduled to be dropped around the nation on New Year’s Eve also included all but which one of the following:

A) The Brasstown, N.C., Possum Drop

B) Dillsburg, Pa.’s giant pickle

C) The Elmore, Ohio, Sausage Drop

D) Seaside Heights, N.J., first annual dropping of Nicole (Snooki) Polizzi

*****

II. Finish the quote:

1) After the lame-duck session, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said: “When it’s all going to be said and done, Harry Reid has

A) brought us together.”

B) eaten our lunch.”

C) eaten a lot of late-night pizza.”

*****

2) John Boehner, the incoming House speaker, broke into tears on election night and weepily announced: “I’ve spent my whole life chasing

A) the American dream.”

B) women.”

C) cars.”

*****

3) “Oh, my gosh! It’s so important,” Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts said sarcastically during a recent debate. “I’m glad I rushed back from our break to work on:

A) earmarks.”

B) food safety.”

C) tax cuts for the wealthy.”

*****

III. Identify the speaker:

1) “They cheat. They are serial cheaters.”

A) Senator James Risch of Idaho, speaking in opposition to a nuclear arms treaty with Russia.

B) Cuckolded former aide to Senator John Ensign of Nevada, on the Republican caucus.

C) Tiger Woods, on the golf tour.

D) Unsuccessful “Dancing With the Stars” finalist, on Bristol Palin’s family.

*****

2) “Balloons and ballrooms are not my thing.”

A) John Boehner, explaining his teariness at postelection victory party.

B) Bristol Palin, analyzing her ultimate defeat on “Dancing With the Stars.”

C) Harry Reid, describing his partying skills.

D) Andrew Cuomo, the new governor of New York, on his plans for a “new austerity” swearing-in.

*****

3) “There’s no one who wants this over more than I do.”

A) Mayor Michael Bloomberg on the New York City snowstorm.

B) President Obama on the 111th Congress.

C) Tony Hayward, the former chief executive of BP, on the oil spill.

D) Sarah Palin on filming the last episode of her reality show.

*****

4) “What I said was stupid, stupid, stupid.”

A) U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina of California after making fun of Senator Barbara Boxer’s hair.

B) Rod Blagojevich for saying he was blacker than Obama.

C) Christine O’Donnell for the “I am not a witch” ad.

D) Kate Middleton for announcing she and Prince William do not want any household help.

*****

IV. Multiple choice:

1) The Wall Street Journal reported that at least 15 percent of the incoming House freshman plan to:

A) Sleep in their offices.

B) Use the word “refudiate” in their official correspondence.

C) Twitter 24/7.

D) Try to get invited to Prince William’s wedding.

*****

2) John Boehner told Lesley Stahl that he can no longer visit public schools in his district because:

A) They’ve all been closed.

B) He hates that cloakroom smell.

C) He cries when he thinks of the importance of giving them a shot at the American dream.

D) He’s afraid he’ll be asked to spell “potato.”

*****

V. Match Republican presidential hopefuls with their 2010 achievements. (One hopeful gets two):

1. Sarah Palin

2. Haley Barbour

3. Tim Pawlenty

4. Mike Huckabee

5. Mitt Romney

6. Newt Gingrich

A) On a visit to Iowa, introduced his spouse to the audience as “my red-hot, smoking wife.”

B) Took six shots to kill a caribou that was, really, just standing there.

C) Continued to fail to explain why he drove to Canada with the family dog strapped to the roof of the car.

D) Said he doesn’t remember what the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said during a 1962 civil rights speech at his hometown because he was “watching the girls.”

E) Compared Democrats to Nazis; compared lower Manhattan mosque supporters to Nazis.

F) Family Christmas card said: “Guess which grandchild heard that Papa might run again?”

G) Demonstrated how to deep-fry a turkey on TV.

*****

ANSWERS: I: C (the Sausage Drop was canceled because of a lack of volunteers); II: 1-B, 2-A, 3-B; III: 1-A, 2-C, 3-C, 4-B; IV: 1-A, 2-C; V: 1-B, 2-D, 3-A, 4-G, 5-C and F, 6-E.

Giving Back the Tax Cuts

December 31, 2010, 11:00 am

Giving Back the Tax Cuts: A Guest Post

By IAN AYRES

My colleagues Jacob Hacker and Daniel Markovits have created a cool website called www.GiveItBackForJobs.org that not only includes a useful tool to let you calculate the size of your tax cut, but suggests that “Americans who have the means should collectively give back our Bush tax cuts, by making donations to organizations that promote fairness, economic growth, and a vibrant middle class.”  Here’s a post from the creators themselves that gives more details:

Giving Back the Tax Cut
Daniel Markovitz and Jacob Hacker

If a dysfunctional political process leads to bad fiscal policy — a pretty good first approximation of the current state of play in Washington and the tax deal it produced — what are ordinary citizens to do?  Can citizens make shadow fiscal policy that at least partially counteracts the government’s?

On the revenue side, this question raises the familiar specter of Ricardian Equivalence — the proposition that consumers internalize the government’s budget constraint and thus respond to government borrowing by increasing savings, nullifying the stimulative effect of public deficits.   That proposition has been much discussed of late, including in the blogs associated with this newspaper (see here). The best current thinking suggests that Ricardian Equivalence does not fully hold — private savings does not offset public borrowing one-to-one. Moreover, even if it did fully hold, a temporary increase in government borrowing would still retain a stimulative effect.  Even if consumers do save to offset the public borrowing, their savings will be spread over many years while the increased public spending enters the economy immediately, producing an economic stimulus.

But what about the spending side?  Suppose citizens think that government stimulus is unfairly and inefficiently allocated.  In the recent tax deal, modest support for middle class Americans was combined with massive tax cuts for the rich. This is unfair:  the rich don’t need the help.  It is also inefficient:  the rich will save rather than spend their tax cuts, so that cutting their taxes yields little stimulus per dollar of deficit.  Can citizens adjust their conduct to counteract such wrong policy?

We believe that they can and propose a mechanism for doing so.  The most fortunate citizens can convert their inefficient and unfair tax cuts into good fiscal policy.  Rather than saving their new-found after-tax income, citizens who can afford it should donate their tax cuts to charities that promote the kinds of stimulative programs that better government policy would provide.

We’ve built a website to help achieve this — www.giveitbackforjobs.org enables citizens to calculate their approximate tax cuts and, acting in concert, give them back to appropriate charities. Acting together matters here. First, each participant encourages others to join as well.  Second, by tying giving to tax policy, donors emphasize that they are not giving out of private grace, but from a shared sense of the obligations of citizenship.  They practice political philanthropy.

We’re not so naïve as to believe that all the tax cuts will be given back. But we are convinced that there are many, many Americans who have the means and the desire to encourage a better policy. By actually putting their money where their mouths are, they won’t just be helping out their fellow citizens and encouraging economic growth; they will also be signaling the need for a better public fiscal policy.

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Ian Ayres is a professor of law and economics at Yale. Follow @freakonomics on Twitter.

The Bloggers Elrig weither in on the Cowardice of Western Leaders (per Robert Fisk - the Independent)

Tuesday, 1 June, 2010

Robert Fisk: Western leaders are too cowardly to help save lives [Robert Fisk - The Independent]

I am foaming at the mouth - so I can't articulate words. Here's a column from Robert Fisk in the Independent.

Elrig
*********

Western leaders are too cowardly to help save lives

Has Israel lost it? Can the Gaza War of 2008-09 (1,300 dead) and the Lebanon War of 2006 (1,006 dead) and all the other wars and now yesterday's killings mean that the world will no longer accept Israel's rule?

Don't hold your breath.

You only have to read the gutless White House statement – that the Obama administration was "working to understand the circumstances surrounding the tragedy". Not a single word of condemnation. And that's it. Nine dead. Just another statistic to add to the Middle East's toll.

But it's not.

In 1948, our politicians – the Americans and the British – staged an airlift into Berlin. A starving population (our enemies only three years before) were surrounded by a brutal army, the Russians, who had erected a fence around the city. The Berlin airlift was one of the great moments in the Cold War. Our soldiers and our airmen risked and gave their lives for these starving Germans.

Incredible, isn't it? In those days, our politicians took decisions; our leaders took decisions to save lives. Messrs Attlee and Truman knew that Berlin was important in moral and human as well as political terms.

And today? It was people – ordinary people, Europeans, Americans, Holocaust survivors – yes, for heaven's sake, survivors of the Nazis – who took the decision to go to Gaza because their politicians and their statesmen had failed them.

Where were our politicians yesterday? Well, we had the ridiculous Ban Ki-moon, the White House's pathetic statement, and dear Mr Blair's expression of "deep regret and shock at the tragic loss of life". Where was Mr Cameron? Where was Mr Clegg?

Back in 1948, they would have ignored the Palestinians, of course. It is, after all, a terrible irony that the Berlin airlift coincided with the destruction of Arab Palestine.

But it is a fact that it is ordinary people, activists, call them what you will, who now take decisions to change events. Our politicians are too spineless, too cowardly, to take decisions to save lives. Why is this? Why didn't we hear courageous words from Messrs Cameron and Clegg yesterday?

For it is a fact, is it not, that had Europeans (and yes, the Turks are Europeans, are they not?) been gunned down by any other Middle Eastern army (which the Israeli army is, is it not?) there would have been waves of outrage.

And what does this say about Israel? Isn't Turkey a close ally of Israel? Is this what the Turks can expect? Now Israel's only ally in the Muslim world is saying this is a massacre – and Israel doesn't seem to care.

But then Israel didn't care when London and Canberra expelled Israeli diplomats after British and Australian passports were forged and then provided to the assassins of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. It didn't care when it announced new Jewish settlements on occupied land in East Jerusalem while Joe Biden, the Vice-President of its erstwhile ally, the United States, was in town. Why should Israel care now?

How did we get to this point? Maybe because we all grew used to seeing the Israelis kill Arabs, maybe the Israelis grew used to killing Arabs. Now they kill Turks. Or Europeans. Something has changed in the Middle East these past 24 hours – and the Israelis (given their extraordinarily stupid political response to the slaughter) don't seem to have grasped what has happened. The world is tired of these outrages. Only the politicians are silent.

Diplomatic storms

*Goldstone report, November 2009

Israel launched Operation Cast Lead in December 2008 with the declared aim of halting rocket fire from Gaza into Israel. More than 1,400 Palestinians were killed in the three-week conflict along with 13 Israelis. The South African jurist Richard Goldstone's report into the conflict found both Israel and the Hamas movement that controls the Strip guilty of war crimes, but focused more on Israel. Israel refused to co-operate with Goldstone and described his report as distorted and biased.

* The al-Mabhouh assassination, January-May 2010

Britain and Australia expelled Israeli diplomats after concluding that Israel had forged British and Australian passports used by assassins to kill a Hamas commander in Dubai. Israel has neither confirmed or denied a role in the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in his hotel room in January. Britain said such misuse of British passports was "intolerable". Australia said it was not the behaviour of "a nation with whom we have had such a close, friendly and supportive relationship".

*Settlements row, March 2010

Israel announces plans, during visit by US Vice-President Joe Biden, to build 1,600 homes for Jews in an area of the West Bank annexed by Israel. The announcement triggers unusually harsh criticism from the United States. Washington said it damaged its efforts to revive the Middle East peace process. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the project was an insult. Netanyahu said he was blindsided by planning bureaucrats and apologised to Biden. Today's meeting with Barack Obama at the White House, called off by Mr Netanyahu so he could return home to deal with the flotilla crisis, was supposed to be another part of the fence-mending between the two allies.

*Nuclear secrecy, May 2010

Israel, widely assumed to have the Middle East's only nuclear arsenal, has faced renewed calls to sign a global treaty barring the spread of atomic weapons. Signatories of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) last week called for a conference in 2012 to discuss banning weapons of mass destruction throughout the Middle East. The declaration was adopted by all 189 parties to the NPT, including the US. It urged Israel to sign the NPT and put its nuclear facilities under UN safeguards.

Chris Floyd's Empire Burlesque

Obama's Selective Outrage: Rage Against Russia, Silence at Indian Injustice

Written by Chris Floyd
Thursday, 30 December 2010 19:09
The sham trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky in Russia is rightly being protested by those who have a right to do so: Russians in Russia, where more than a thousand people braved the batons of Kremlin storm-troopers to decry the travesty of justice in his recent conviction on more trumped-up charges. You do not have to warm to Khodorkovsky himself, a former oil oligarch who fell out with the power structure that enriched him, in order to denounce the thuggish authoritarianism that his persecution represents. I have courageous friends among those standing up in public against this injustice, putting their own bodies and livelihoods on the line, and I salute them, and all those standing with them. There are, however, those denouncing the injustice of the Khodorkovsky trial who have absolutely no right to do so. Prominent among these, of course, is the Obama Administration, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the lead. Clinton, the foreign policy spokesperson for a government now raining death by drone on hundreds of civilians inside the sovereign territory of an American ally (among many other unjust and inhumane acts), thundered against the Kremlin for allowing "the rule of law [to be] overshadowed by political considerations." The grand poo-bahs of the Potomac lined up to condemn the Russian government for its barbaric treatment of Khodorkovsky -- even while their own government was subjecting a 23-year-old soldier to KGB-style torture for the "crime" of telling the truth about outrageous atrocities committed by the American government in the course of an act of aggression that unleashed -- and empowered -- a living hell that has left more than a million people dead, and is still killing around 4,000 innocent civilians every year. Hillary Clinton voted to authorize this act of hyper-barbarism; Barack Obama has called the "surge"  of death squads and ethnic cleansing that kept the war going "an extraordinary achievement." The brave citizens and residents of Moscow who came out to denounce Khodorkovsky's show trial deserve all praise for their moral courage; but these bloodstained hacks of the Beltway have no standing whatsoever to inveigh against the offenses of other regimes. The Obama administration has been loud in its denunciations of the Kremlin's perversion of justice to carry out a political vendetta. But what have these stalwart champions of human rights said about the life sentence given last week to Indian human rights activist Binayak Sen? What have we heard from the Nobel Peace Laureate, Barack Obama? What have we heard from Hillary Clinton? Not a single word. As the Guardian reports, Sen is a "celebrated human rights activist and medical doctor, has worked for more than three decades as a doctor in the tribal-dominated areas of the state of Chhattisgarh in central India, working for people denied many of the basic services that the state should provide, such as health and education." The people he works among are among the poorest on earth. Sen is also an avowed practitioner of non-violence, walking in the path of Gandhi. Sen is also a leading civil rights activist, who has spoken out repeatedly and forcefully against the depredations of the state government, which has launched savage "counterterrorism" operations the Maoist movement spawned by the dire poverty. These "counterterror" methods include the creation of a deadly paramilitary force, the Salwa Judum, or "Purification Hunt.' As Jawed Naqvi reports in Dawn, "the Judum was founded not so much to track or hunt down Maoist rebels as to clear the passage of local resistance groups to enable corporate access to Chhattisgarh’s largely untapped mineral resources." Sen's chief "crime" seems to have been his vocal opposition to the state-run militia's atrocities. The official charge was that he visited an elderly prisoner who is alleged to be a Communist, and carried letters from the prison for him. As Naqvi notes, the "evidence" against Sen was threadbare, circumstantial and in some cases obviously fabricated, just as in the Khodorkovsky case. What's more, Sen was charged under an ancient law originally imposed on India by its British colonial masters. As Kalpana Sharma notes in the Guardian: More than 150 years ago, the British introduced a law in India designed to check rebellious natives. In 2010 this law has been used by an independent India to check activists who question government policy. Section 124A of the Indian penal code was introduced in 1870 by the British to deal with sedition. It was later used to convict Mahatma Gandhi. ..Sen worked among the poorest and most deprived people in India, the Adivasis. The Maoists have also established their base in the tribal belt stretching through the heart of India. Their concerns are similar; their strategies diametrically opposite. ..Denied bail for two years, Sen was finally allowed out on bail last year. On December 24, a case that on all counts was weak and based on hearsay and circumstantial evidence, concluded. Sen was found guilty of sedition and other charges, and sentenced to life imprisonment. They gave a life sentence to a man who has never raised a violent hand against the state or another human being. (He only narrowly avoided a death sentence for another charge: "waging war against the state.") A life sentence -- under a colonial law. This is the "democracy" praised by Barack Obama just a few weeks ago during a state visit to India, where he made sure to be seen paying homage to Gandhi -- whose mantle of moral courage Obama himself claimed during his acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize, declaring: As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King's life's work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence. I know there is nothing weak, nothing passive, nothing naive in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King. But moral force means nothing when there is money to be made -- from the corporate exploitation of Chhattisgarh's resources or, in Obama's case, from hawking $5 billion worth of death machinery from America's war profiteers to the Indian government. Protests against Sen's sentence have broken out all over India. The injustice has also provoked denunciations across the world. Even the imperial house organ, the Washington Post, published a decent news story about the case on Wednesday. (Obviously the main editors are still off enjoying the holidays.) The article, by Emily Wax, actually provides some good context to the Sen case, the larger machinations behind it, and even -- gasp! -- some understanding of how generations of poverty, despair and exploitation can give rise to an "insurgency": In a case that has prompted denunciations by international human rights groups and scholars, prosecutors said Binayak Sen, 60, had aided Maoist rebels in rural India, visiting Maoist leaders in jail and opening a bank account for a Maoist, charges that Sen denies. Human rights activists allege that police planted evidence and manufactured testimonies, and Indian judges have criticized the Dec. 24 judgment. Soli Sorabjee, a former attorney general, called the ruling shocking. "Binayak Sen has a fine record," he said. "The evidence against him seems flimsy. The judge has misapplied the section. And in any case, the sentence is atrocious, savage." Sen, a pediatrician, has worked for decades to help people displaced by violence and government land seizures in India's mineral-rich regions. Despite the country's booming economy, hundreds of millions of Indians remain mired in poverty - a stubborn inequality that has helped fuel a deadly Maoist insurgency in as many as 20 of India's 28 states. ...en, who was arrested in 2007 and was not granted bail for two years, says he was targeted solely because he was a vocal critic of the government's use of armed groups to push villagers out of mineral-rich forest areas. His sentencing comes as major economies, including the United States and China, are seeking access to India's growing markets - a sign of the country's emergence as an economic superpower. I'm afraid if Ms Wax keeps writing like this, addressing actual realities, she will soon find herself out of a job. For it is surely the pursuit of "access to India's growing markets" -- for well-connected elites, of course -- that has led to the Peace Laureate's voluminous silence on the case of Dr. Sen, and to the lack of reaction from the world's scolding schoolmarm, Hillary Clinton. Wax even slips this passage into the article: an observation that has growing resonance not only in India: "Anyone in India who dissents or questions the superpower script is ostracized," said Kavita Srivastava, national secretary of the People's Union for Civil Liberties, of which Sen is a vice president. "Sen's arrest is happening because this government is extremely anti-poor. Our much-praised 9 percent growth is coming at the cost of displacing millions of people with land that is being given away for mining and corporate development." Wax concludes her piece with these damning quotes: "Binayak Sen has never fired a gun. He probably does not know how to hold one," historian Ramachandra Guha wrote in the Hindustan Times. "He has explicitly condemned Maoist violence, and even said of the armed revolutionaries that theirs is an invalid and unsustainable movement. His conviction will and should be challenged." Sen's wife, also a doctor, said in an interview that she is launching an international campaign to do just that. "He is a person who has worked for the poor of the country for 30 years," Ilina Sen said. "If that person is found guilty of sedition activities when gangsters and scamsters are walking free, well, that's a disgrace to our democracy." Yes, when gangsters and scamsters -- and brazen war criminals -- walk free, it is indeed a disgrace to democracy. A disgrace in India, a disgrace in the thug state of Russia -- and a damnable disgrace in the United States of America, where hypocritical poltroons mouth empty pieties in their highly selective protests against injustices that pale before the crimes they are committing.