Dueling movie reviews

Michael Phillips, a Tribune arts writer, says, in `Zorro' slashes logic of movie ratings system, that The Legend of Zorro is basically a bad movie with way too much violence for its rating. Phillips, in fact, uses it as Exhibit A for why the current movie rating system should be reworked.

But in this review by Christopher Lyon at pluggedinonline (spoiler alert!), which is aimed at nice, Christian families interested in maintaining traditional values, Lyon finds things to like about it. He has some qualms, which he spells out. But overall, he seems to think it's OK.

This is another reason I like DVDs. You can preview a movie before sharing it with someone, and you can fast forward with your eyes closed if you have to ;-).

Fingerprints may illuminate life in the womb

From New Scientist Breaking News - Fingerprints may illuminate life in the womb, by Alison Motluk, NewScientist.com news service (November 30, 2005):

Fingerprints may provide important clues about life in the womb, and may even become useful as predictors of disease risk. US researchers, in Atlanta and New York, have now shown that differences in fingerprints between the thumb and little finger are associated with likelihood of developing diabetes later in life.

A person’s fingerprints are set for life by around the 19th week of gestation, roughly halfway through a normal pregnancy. Most organs, including the pancreas, are also formed by that time. Henry Kahn at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and colleagues decided to look at quantitative differences in ridges between the first and last fingertips – the thumb and pinkie.

The team speculated that any disturbances during their formation might also say something about the state of the pancreas, and possibly the likelihood of a person developing diabetes as they age. Diabetes results from the failure of the pancreas to produce insulin, or enough insulin, which the body needs to help it take up glucose.

The researchers studied 569 Dutch people, some of whom were in the womb during the Dutch famine of 1944 and 1945, dubbed the “hunger winter”. Kahn and his team tested the volunteers’ glucose tolerance – a measure which is abnormally high in people with diabetes – and also counted the number of ridges on their thumbs and little fingers by rolling the inked digits onto paper...

Full article

A good name for a cookbook author...

My day job is cleaning and pricing used books. I just came across one called The Citrus Cookbook, by Josephine Bacon. What a nice name for a cookbook author, I thought. :-)

So then I went around the Internet to see what the prices were running, and found that Josephine Bacon is also the author of


Cooking the Israeli Way.

An Israeli cookbook by somebody named Bacon? It seems a little incongruous, somehow...

Good news, bad news for diabetics

The bad news is that if you have overly high blood sugar it's likely messing with your brain.

The good news is that the neurons themselves don't seem to get damaged too much, so the changes might be reversible. At least, that's what of one group of researchers hopes, based on preliminary research.

From Rockefeller University - Newswire:

The estimated 1 million people in the United States with type 1 diabetes know that uncontrolled high blood sugar can attack the body’s organs. New research from Rockefeller University’s Bruce McEwen and colleagues at the University of South Carolina shows that the brain is one target of the disease, and that diabetes’ effects on it may be reversible.

[snip]

The changes McEwen and colleagues saw in one protein, synaptophysin, which is important for synapse function, indicates that not only have the connections between neurons in the hippocampus been reorganized, but the reorganization is more extensive than scientists previously thought. These alterations may explain why complications of diabetes and also the effects of high levels of glucocorticoids often include problems with memory and other cognitive impairments.

The results show, however, that, in spite the alterations in brain circuits, there was little damage to the neurons themselves; meaning that if the right measures are taken, the changes may be reversible....

Another Phony Marriage Ring Busted

From an AP story, carried on Fox (emphasis added):

...Chinese and Vietnamese nationals were charged up to $60,000 to marry American citizens to obtain green cards, authorities said. Couples were provided with fake wedding photographs, joint tax returns and even love letters.

[snip]

ICE launched an investigation into the Orange County-based ring three years ago after authorities began to notice U.S. citizens who were seeking green cards for more than one spouse. Operation Newlywed Game resulted in 44 people -- mostly Chinese- and Vietnamese-Americans -- being indicted on charges including conspiracy, misuse of visas and marriage fraud....

This is so sad.

The Scotsman - Business - Dollar doubt pushes gold above $500

Gold has hit its highest price in 18 years, and China's being cited as one of the reasons. (China, I notice, is cited as the reason for a lot of things lately.) Platinum has topped $1,000 an ounce, with predictions that this year mining and recycling won't provide enough to meet demand. Alastair Jamieson, Consumer Affairs Correspondent for The Scotsman, has some details. (Did you know, for instance, that gold demand usually picks up this time of year, not only due to Christmas gift sales, but also because of the Indian wedding season?)

511 America's Traveler Information Telephone Number

It looks like more and more locations in the United States are getting "511" service established for travel information. More information here and here. Many states have their own 511 websites, also.

TripCheck - Road Cams, Road & Weather Conditions in Oregon - ODOT

It wasn't easy driving home from work tonight. There wasn't much snow, but it was swirling through the air and along the road surface to beat the band, making visibility rotten. The wind gusts were strong, but seemingly from several directions at once.

A little while ago, my husband heard on the radio that a local high school sports team is probably going to face four hour delays on the highway coming home. This was shortly after he talked on the phone with a business associate he expected to see tomorrow or so - an associate who reports he is snowed in up in northern Idaho, his truck abandoned for the time being after it went off the road. He called a friend who had a snowmobile, he said, and got to safety that way. Maybe this weekend he'll make it down, he says. Maybe.

So it seems a good time to start rounding up good links to road reports, starting with Oregon.

Book note: The Generous Years, by Chet Huntley

Speaking of Chet Huntley (see the post before this one), his book The Generous Years: Remembrances of a frontier boyhood is a pretty good read, and not at all what I expected, having only known the man from his night after night newscasts with David Brinkley. The Huntley-Brinkley Report and I started out in life at about the same time, which means that I didn't know what it was like to live in a world without it. It was a shock, I remember, when Huntley retired.

We played at putting on our own Huntley-Brinkley reports, complete with the signature sign-off - Good night, David / Good night, Chet/ Good night, Fill-in-name-here (repeated however many times it took to take care of the whole group of kids). It could get pretty ridiculous, which was the point. We were playing.

When that newscast ended, it was like an era ended with it.

The Generous Years appears to be out of print, but there are quite a few used copies floating around for sale yet.

While we're on the subject of deceased broadcasters, remember Lowell Thomas? He wrote some fairly interesting books between broadcasts himself...

The Rapid City Journal : Governor says power outages could continue for days

From Chet Brokaw (no, really, that's his name - and I don't know if he's named after Chet Huntley and Tom Brokaw - no clue, none), of the Associated Press:

PIERRE -- Biting winds and heavy ice from a winter storm cut power to much of eastern South Dakota, and service in some areas might not be restored for a few days, Gov. Mike Rounds said Tuesday.

The storm that struck Sunday and Monday and is the worst in a nearly a decade to hit eastern and central South Dakota, he said. Visibility was often cut to zero, and blocked roads have kept utility crews from determining all of the damage, the governor said.

"They simply don't know because they haven't been able to get out and assess exactly how much of their lines are down," Rounds said.

Dusty Johnson, a member of the state Public Utilities Commission, said about 40,000 customers remained without electrical power Tuesday morning.

[snip]

"It is really going to be slow going. There has been some pretty significant damage done all across the eastern part of the state," Johnson said. "The fact that it is so widespread and dispersed geographically makes it difficult to be able to get crews out to everywhere they need to go."

The governor and other officials said they were focusing on getting people whose homes are freezing into the 62 shelters that have been set up throughout eastern and central South Dakota. The National Weather Service predicted that temperatures in the area will remain below freezing for at least a week, and electricity will not be restored to some areas for a day or two, they said.

"I cannot emphasize enough that this situation is not over," Rounds said....

Full article

The Rapid City Journal: Norwegians welcome holiday season at annual Lille Norge Fest

Lefse. Krumkake. Cool ethnic costumes. I'm jealous.

"Bruce Willis comes out fighting for Iraq's forgotten GI heroes" - Sunday Times

Sarah Baxter, reporting in The Sunday Times (UK), November 27:

ANGERED by negative portrayals of the conflict in Iraq, Bruce Willis, the Hollywood star, is to make a pro-war film in which American soldiers will be depicted as brave fighters for freedom and democracy.

It will be based on the exploits of the heavily decorated members of Deuce Four, the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry, which has spent the past year battling insurgents in the northern Iraqi town of Mosul.

Willis attended Deuce Four’s homecoming ball this month in Seattle, Washington, where the soldiers are on leave, along with Stephen Eads, the producer of Armageddon and The Sixth Sense...

Full article

hat tip: Dr. Sanity

The Teaching Company - Free Holiday Lectures

I just got notice by e-mail that The Teaching Company is providing two more free lectures to all comers. Christmas in Victorian Britain and Christmas in 19th Century America will be available until December 31 for streaming or download.

A Muslim's journey from Afghanistan to Albuquerque

Dr. Hashemi Osman writes about his life, in Afghanistan, Morocco, and in America, in the current issue of Crosswinds Weekly. Fair warning: I don't expect the link to stay good very long - this is at a weekly publication that uses general urls. In a day or two, in other words, it will take you to a different article than it does today.

Osman is the author of the autobiography


Escape from the Claws of Death.

Note: This post replaces the draft copy I accidentally posted before...

Update: For whatever reason, I'm having trouble linking to the cached version of the article, which I found by searching for "crosswindsweekly.com" and "osman". When I try to do a usual link, shortened, with writing over it, I lose the link. When I try to do an end run by listing the whole url it blasts my sidebar out of existence... Ah, yes, just another little bit of technical expertise I haven't picked up yet...

Update: Try going here and following the link. Let's see if that works.

More stories from around America

Banner tourism year keeps up - The Pacific Business News reports that the state of Hawaii is having a very good year for tourism.

...The visitor count, 591,503, was a record for October, and came despite slower Japanese arrivals. Both domestic and Canadian traffic posted strong increases.

[snip]

Cruise visitor traffic is up more than a third from last year, with 29,659 flying to Hawaii to board cruise ships and another 13,811 sailing to Hawaii on cruise ships.

Year-to-date visitor spending is up around the islands...

Campaigns for U.S. Congress begin for both parties - David Mann, writing in The Kentucky Standard Online, reports that Democrats have found a military combat veteran to take on incumbent Congressman Ron Lewis in the race for Kentucky's second Congressional District. The Democrats are pushing both Mike Weaver's combat experience and his conservatism.

Oshkosh Northwestern - The roads less disheveled - The city of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, put an emphasis on road repair in the late 1990s, and it's beginning to pay off, according to Alex Hummel of The Northwestern. This may not be worth mentioning, you think - except that when I was in grade school I was in a plane that made an emergency landing there, and then had one brake fail but not the other one. Very exciting, spinning around up on one wing is, especially when your mother panics and tosses you out of the plane while it's still up on the wing threatening to do cartwheels. My injuries were minor, silly really, but I fell in love with the firemen who came to our rescue. Ever since I've held a soft spot in my heart for Oshkosh. So, if it's had a reputation for bad roads, but city leaders are fixing that problem, I'm happy to tell people about it, for the sake of my childhood heroes. :-)

WWE 2006 | 3rd Annual Workshop on the Weblogging Ecosystem: Aggregation, Analysis and Dynamics

Just so you know, there are people who study the dynamics of the blogosphere. There's an international conference coming up for ecosystem experts in May in Edinburgh - in conjunction with WWW-2006, the 15th Annual International World Wide Web conference. More here and here.

hat tip: BlogPulse

Jockey Gary Stevens retires

Gary Stevens started in Idaho, not too far down the road from where I lived in Oregon - both of us calling the Treasure Valley home at that time - so I have to admit I that I cheered pretty loudly out of plain old hometown spirit when he started making a name for himself at the big tracks, in a big way.

He rode his last race this weekend. See USATODAY.com - Jockey Stevens finishes second in last race. According to that article, he finished with 5,005 wins in his career. I can't get my head around that many races, much less that many wins.

For more on Stevens, see his Hall of Fame entry at National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame, or see his write-up at IMDb. (He portrayed George Woolf in the movie Seabiscuit.)

Camp Katrina: Murder and Shame in the Arab World

For those of you who have been looking for a Muslim perspective not associated with mad bombers and their apologists, Phil at Camp Katrina has invited guest blogger Amal Chaaban to write a post every Sunday. Her November 27 post is Murder and Shame in the Arab World.

More stories from around America

It's time for another batch of hidden-in-plain-sight stories from smaller papers from around the United States.

Rifle rolls out the red runway - Heidi Rice reports in The Citizen Telegram that folks from the town of Rifle, Colorado, are trying to get the word out to pilots that their airport has been upgraded in recent years and they would be happy to have more business. They've even been handing out coffee mugs and cell phone holders, etc., embossed with the slogan "Request Rifle." On the other hand, they want people to know that they aren't trying to compete with the airports at Eagle or Aspen...

The Columbia Ball begins the debutante season Nov. 23 - I've never lived in an area that had debutantes, and sometimes I forget such places exist. But The Columbia Star of Columbia, South Carolina, notes that the first local ball of the season was held Thanksgiving Eve. I look at the pictures, and rather suspect that at that age I would have loved to have had a chance to dress up and get noticed in the paper looking my best. (Whether I could have handled the pressure is another matter - but I hear that debutantes get training in that sort of thing...)

Cutter Storis to be decommissioned - Megan Holland of the Anchorage Daily News reports that a Coast Guard cutter is being retired after six decades of service. No, correction, it is slated for retirement - in 2007! OK, I can't resist an excerpt (or two):

The Coast Guard cutter Storis is so old it was built with cork insulation instead of fiberglass. The tangle of pipes and wires wandering the 63-year-old vessel's hidden regions can pose a mystery to crewmen.

And if its engine were to break down, the only place to look for a replacement would be in a museum, the Coast Guard says.

The Kodiak-based Storis, the oldest ship in the service's fleet, will be decommissioned in 2007, the Coast Guard announced last week. The cutter Munro, currently homeported in Alameda, Calif., will fill in for it as a faster, better-equipped fisheries enforcement and search-and-rescue vessel until a new ship is built for Alaska waters, the Coast Guard said.

The upgrade is part of the Coast Guard's multiyear $19 billion to $24 billion modernization of its aircraft and cutters that began in 2002.

[snip]

Cutters, which are what the Coast Guard calls its bigger vessels, have relatively long service lives compared to other military machinery and vehicles. According to a recent U.S. Government Accountability Office report, medium-endurance cutters like the Storis have average service lives of 30 to 49 years, depending on their size. But "The Queen of the Fleet," as the Storis is called, has been in service more than six decades.

No decision has been made as to what will happen to the 230-foot cutter after it is decommissioned, the Coast Guard said. The Storis could be mothballed, scrapped, sold or donated to become a museum.

In a press release, Vice Adm. Harvey Johnson, commander, Coast Guard Pacific Area, said, "Storis has been a gallant workhouse for the Coast Guard since World War II and has earned an honored place in Coast Guard history."

Launched in September 1942, the vessel played a role in World War II, and the stories accumulated in the decades since. Thousands of Coast Guardsmen have served on it...

That ought to get you started...

An easy way to find the sorts of stories that the big guys ignore is to go to US Newspaper List. A high percentage of smaller papers use a general template over and over, issue after issue, which means there are no links to a specific story - which can be rather frustrating from a blogging point of view - but there's some good reading and interesting perspectives to be had if you'll take the time to browse.

Addition: Storis history, specs, pictures. This says that the ship's name is a Scandinavian name taken from an Eskimo word for "great ice". She was commissioned as an ice patrol tender. In 1972, she underwent major renovation and was converted from a light icebreaker to a medium endurance cutter.

The Weblog Awards: Nominations - Best of the Top 1751 - 2500 Blogs Archive

I hate to admit this, but I got nominated for Wizbang's The Weblog Awards: Best of the Top 1751 - 2500 Blogs clear back on November 15 and, uhm, ahem, didn't notice until today when I checked my stats.

At this point, nominations are closed but finalists haven't been announced.

My thanks to Sherry at Semicolon for nominating me. I'll try very hard to not let it go to my head.

This is not to say that I won't let everyone and sundry know if I wind up being a finalist, mind you, but I will try very hard not to be too obnoxious about it.