News that tells you nothing

It is difficult to understand why newspaper editors think that their typical readers have more time to evaluate the truth of politicians’ claims [than] reporters who have a full time job to do such things. However [this] seems to be a widely held view, since so often articles are devoted to telling us what the politicians claim without including any effort to uncover what is true.

Today’s he said/she said in the Post and the NYT is about high gas prices. The Democrats are looking to take back tax breaks from the oil industry while the Republicans are pushing to “drill here, drill now.” It would have been useful to include a bit of analysis so that readers could judge the likely impacts of the two policies.

Dean Baker at Beat the Press goes on to provide the analysis, as he often does.

The last day of April should be a national holiday

It’s Willie Nelson’s birthday. He’s 78.

He is an American icon; his voice as comforting as the American landscape, his songs as familiar as the color of the sky, his face as worn as the Rocky Mountains. Perhaps that’s why Dan Rather suggested, “We should add his face to the cliffs of Mt. Rushmore and be done with it.”

He’s recorded 250 albums, written 2,500 songs, and for half a century played countless concerts across America and around the world. He’s been instrumental in shaping both country and pop music, yet his appeal crosses all social and economic lines. Sometimes he’s called an outlaw, though from Farm Aid to the aftermath of September 11, from the resurrection of a burned-out courthouse in his own hometown to fanning the flame of the Olympics, it is Willie Nelson who brings us together.

Perhaps Emmylou Harris said it best: “If America could sing with one voice, it would be Willie’s.”

American Masters

Not only that, but Cloris Leachman is 85 and Kirsten Dunst is 29.

Annie Dillard is 66 today. Ms. Dillard won the Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction for Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974). The New York Times has a page with links to several reviews and articles about Dillard and her works. (Eudora Welty wrote the review of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.) And Ms. Dillard has a web site.

Basketball hall-of-famer Isiah Thomas turns 50 today.

Dianna Agron is 25. And that fills me with Glee.

Furthermore . . .

Radio and television actress Eve Arden was born on April 30th in 1908. To my generation she was Our Miss Brooks, English teacher at Madison High. The show was on radio from 1948-1957 and TV from 1952-1956. Many considered it a breakthrough character for women. That’s Our Miss Brooks in the photo with Richard Crenna as Walter Denton and Gale Gordon as Principal Osgood Conklin.

Casey Jones wrecked his train on April 30th in 1900.

John Luther Jones from Cayce (pronounced Cay-see), Kentucky, famous to us through song as a brave engineer who romantically died trying to make up time. In truth, he crashed his locomotive at high speed into a freight train that was attempting to get out of the way on a siding. According to reports he failed to heed warning signals that were out. The accident took place early in the morning of April 30, 1900. Jones was the only fatality. Jones was known for his affability and his skill in blowing a train whistle. His engine wiper, Wallace Saunders, reportedly idolized the engineer. Saunders wrote the original song. All you might want to know can be found in this 1928 article.

George Washington took office as the first president of the U.S. on this date in 1789. His term began March 4th, but because neither the House nor Senate achieved a quorum until April, Washington’s unanimous election on February 4, wasn’t made official until April 14. Washington immediately departed Mount Vernon for New York to take the oath and was met along the way with parades and dinners in every little town. As James Madison noted, Washington was about the only aspect of the new government that really appealed to people.

Louisiana entered the union as the 18th state on this date in 1812.

Most fun line of the day

“[We] stopped by to see her … (she works in the same hospital) and they even had crumpets and tea for breakfast! Everyone was wearing fancy dresses and hats; one of their doctors came out of surgery and put her hat on over her scrub cap. They had the groom’s cake that William requested and it was pretty delish.”

Comment on a friend’s Facebook wall.

Measles in Arizona

A 50-year-old woman who had spent an hour in the ER at the same time as the Swiss woman caught the disease from her. Patient 2 got taken care of, went home, and started feeling feverish nine days later. She had difficulty breathing and thought at first she was having an asthma attack, so she went back to the hospital and was admitted for two days. That she had measles would not be discovered until six days after that.

While she was  in the hospital, Patient 2 unknowingly infected a 41-year-old health care worker who took care of her — and who was scheduled to get a measles-vaccine booster shot that very day, because the hospital was also caring for the tourist. Patient 2 also passed measles to an unvaccinated 11-month-old boy who was in the same ER while she was waiting to get checked for asthma, and to two unvaccinated siblings — 3 and 5 years old — who were visiting their mother on the same hospital floor after Patient 2 was admitted.

Patient 3, the health-care worker, passed measles to a 47-year-old woman in her emergency department — who later  ended up in an intensive care unit with measles pneumonia — and later to a 41-year-old man in his home. Patient 4, the toddler, gave the virus to an unvaccinated 1-year-old while they were both in the same pediatrician’s office. Five other people were infected somewhere in their everyday lives: a 2-year-old boy who had never been vaccinated and who also ended up in an ICU with seizures brought on by high fever; a 9-month-old and an 8-month-old, also unvaccinated; and two adults, 35 and 37, who might have gotten one dose as children, but had no documentation of receiving a second dose.

From What vaccine refusal really costs: Measles in Arizona | Wired Science.

Fascinating. And scary.

It is a colorful event

Under cool, gray skies billions watched from outside Westminster Abbey and on television worldwide as 1900 invited guests inside witnessed as Prince William and his longtime girlfriend Kate Middleton were married in one of the largest events in London in decades. A little over an hour after they arrived at the Abbey to be married, the couple emerged on a red carpet and onto the streets to a peal of bells and into a horse-drawn carriage, heading toward Buckingham Palace. The prince had married what the British call a commoner; now the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (titles granted by Queen Elizabeth II). The couple stepped out onto a balcony a short time later to greet the enormous crowd along the Mall – a tradition at royal weddings. They kissed for the first time in public as a married couple as a cheer went up from the crowd. — Paula Nelson (36 photos total)

The Big Picture – Boston.com

The ‘S’ word won’t go away

Sunday is May 1st for crying out loud.

.TODAY…PARTLY CLOUDY. WINDY. AREAS OF BLOWING DUST IN THE
AFTERNOON. HIGHS IN THE MID 70S TO LOWER 80S. SOUTH WINDS 20 TO
30 MPH INCREASING TO WEST 25 TO 35 MPH IN THE AFTERNOON. GUSTS UP TO
50 MPH.
.TONIGHT…MOSTLY CLEAR. WINDY. LOWS IN THE MID 20S TO LOWER 30S.
WEST WINDS 25 TO 35 MPH DECREASING TO 10 TO 15 MPH AFTER MIDNIGHT.
GUSTS UP TO 50 MPH.
.SATURDAY…MOSTLY SUNNY. MUCH COOLER. HIGHS IN THE UPPER 40S TO MID
50S. WEST WINDS 10 TO 20 MPH.
.SATURDAY NIGHT…PARTLY CLOUDY. COLDER. LOWS 15 TO 25. NORTHWEST
WINDS 10 TO 20 MPH IN THE EVENING.
.SUNDAY…PARTLY CLOUDY. SLIGHT CHANCE OF RAIN AND SNOW SHOWERS IN
THE MORNING…THEN SLIGHT CHANCE OF SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS IN THE
AFTERNOON. HIGHS IN THE UPPER 40S TO MID 50S. EAST WINDS 10 TO
15 MPH IN THE AFTERNOON.

Best lines of the day

Many people who oppose the monarchy do so because they view it as anti-democratic, an antiquated system that preserves and glorifies privilege and social inequality. My reason for opposing it is rather different: I see it as a form of cruelty to the people at the very heart of it. It is – or ought to be – a basic human right that each person should be free to choose their own path in life, according to their interests and abilities. We should all be free to choose our profession, our partner and our beliefs for ourselves; William, for all his wealth and privilege, had his role in life mapped out for him before he was even born. Not for him the excitement of choosing his future career; not for him the option of marrying anyone not considered ‘suitable’ by the establishment; not for him the freedom to reject religious belief. And not for him, either, the freedom to opt for a quiet wedding on a Bahamian beach or a simple ceremony in a location close to his and his bride’s hearts.

Paula Kirby- On Faith – The Washington Post

What Has More Germs Than a Toilet Seat?

You may not want to know.

What Has More Germs Than a Toilet Seat:

Other notables:

From The Atlantic Wire

Lest we make too much of the racial angle

The Right trashes all Democrats . . .

“As far as Clinton goes, in fact, calling him white trash who didn’t know his place was pretty mild, almost a compliment. Rightwing Republican operatives slimed him as a sleazy land speculator, a drug dealer, a drug addict, and even a murderer. His wife, of course, was a… lesbian (which to them is something to be ashamed of . . .).”

tristero at Hullabaloo

The Uses of Guantánamo

Here are some of the reasons we’ve held people at Guantánamo, according to files obtained by WikiLeaks and, then, by several news organizations: A sharecropper because he was familiar with mountain passes; an Afghan “because of his general knowledge of activities in the areas of Khost and Kabul based as a result of his frequent travels through the region as a taxi driver”; an Uzbek because he could talk about his country’s intelligence service, and a Bahraini about his country’s royal family (both of those nations are American allies); an eighty-nine year old man, who was suffering from dementia, to explain documents that he said were his son’s; an imam, to speculate on what worshippers at his mosque were up to; a cameraman for Al Jazeera, to detail its operations; a British man, who had been a captive of the Taliban, because “he was expected to have knowledge of Taliban treatment of prisoners and interrogation tactics”; Taliban conscripts, so they could explain Taliban conscription techniques; a fourteen-year-old named Naqib Ullah, described in his file as a “kidnap victim,” who might know about the Taliban men who kidnapped him. (Ullah spent a year in the prison.) Our reasons, in short, do not always really involve a belief that a prisoner is dangerous to us or has committed some crime; sometimes (and this is more debased) we mostly think we might find him useful.

Amy Davidson has much more.

Nothing but links

Wonderful piece from Joe Posnanski — Daughters and Roller Skating.

You absolutely should read One In A Billion: A boy’s life, a medical mystery. It won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting and is fascinating. It’s three parts (see the left column at the link for the three). You may need some tissues.

Modern war fighting technology still requires good human judgment — Anatomy of an Afghan War Tragedy.

That’s it for now.