October 2010 – Page 52

The Whine Heard Around The Fox Network

Daniel Larison skewers a Tea Party hero:

Santelli had no problem with the financial sector bailout, but vehemently complained about relief measures for debtors. To put it a bit crudely, it is the Santellis of the world who make people want to believe that there is some higher moral law or some divinely-instituted justice that holds everyone accountable, because in this world it is so very clear that there are two sets of rules: one for the powerful and wealthy, and another for the rest. Put another way, if the Tea Partiers desire fairness and a world in which reward depends on effort and talent, they shouldn’t have anything to do with Santelli, who cheered throwing their tax dollars at Wall Street and deeply resented far fewer tax dollars being directed towards relief for the middle class.

The BLT Community

A reader writes:

Oh my friend, it has gotten so much worse than that. Surely you have seen the newest gay acronym: LGTBQA (where Q = Questioning and A=Allied). Holy crap, just call it the "Non Straight" gang and have done with it. This is the kind of actual political correctness that needs to be decried.

Another writes:

I usually use the GBLT acronym myself, because it reminds me of a really good BLT.

We just need a vowel! Another:

Another reason homophobes, or those looking to incite them, use "homosexual" is because of the sub-conscious response to the word.

To those who say, "I don't care whom you have love, just do it in your own home," the term "homosexual" conjures images of the very thing they detest – same-sex intimacy and sex. The very thought of two men or women experiencing the physical component of love is enough to throw the bigoted masses into hysterics. Also, ho-mo-sex-ual has so many syllables to grotesquely draw out. With the right emphasis and accent, it just sounds dirty.

Another:

As a seminary student, while I agree with your reader's guess that the far right's use of the word "homosexual" betrays a desire to see it as only a psychological abnormality, I think it's far simpler than that for most . "Homosexual" is the word they see in their Bibles (nevermind that no word in the entire Greek and Hebrew corpus really translates as such; they don't care to hear this). "Gay" is their coworker or friend. "Homosexual" is what God despises in their minds. The same cognitive dissonance is leveled by their use of "illegal alien" instead of "the immigrant among you", which the Scriptures command us to look after with charity.

The View From Your CPAP, Ctd

A reader writes:

I am respiratory therapist and set people up on CPAPs all the time. It truly is amazing how many people are diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea and find some benefit from CPAP therapy. The main problem that I encounter is that during their sleep study they are told that they will sleep much better as soon as they get their CPAP. I tell all of my patients that it take a minimum of 6-8 weeks before they will truly be comfortable with the CPAP and sleep with it on all night. Some never get used to it, and for them, surgery is an option. But as Americans, we want relief right away.

Another writes:

I'm an otolaryngologist and head/neck surgeon, and I just read the post "The Dish At Ten: The View From Your CPAP" and there were some potentially misleading statements.

The first reader stated that his/her sleep study found 150 disturbances per hour (the correct term for that is respiratory disturbance index, or RDI. The apnea-hypopnea index, or AHI is actually used more often to assess the severity of sleep apnea). The reader found relief from a dental appliance (that's the term for intra-oral devices that put gentle traction on the lower jaw or the tongue). I find it hard to believe that someone with an RDI of 150 could be treated with a dental appliance alone; the sleep apnea is just too severe. It would be important to get a sleep study with the dental appliance in place to see how much it actually helped.

The second reader described a common operation called septoplasty, usually done because the thin bone and cartilage separating the right and left nasal passages are crooked. He/she was incorrect to say that we "don't use general anesthesia because it's too dangerous". In fact most septoplasties are done under general anesthesia (I do all my septoplasties under general) unless the patient is really sick and cannot tolerate it.

It is also incorrect to say that nothing can be done about the soft palate. In fact, most surgery for sleep apnea involves some sort of surgery on the palate, and septoplasty alone is usually not that effective. The back of the tongue is also a common site for obstruction in sleep apnea, and there are some techniques used there as well.

The big problem with surgery for sleep apnea is that it is difficult to determine who will improve. If someone has huge tonsils, we can usually be confident that they will do better if we do a tonsillectomy, but for most others it still is a challenge to predict the outcome. CPAP, when tolerated, is almost 100% effective. Weight loss helps too.

Another:

My Dad's sleep apnea almost killed him. Over the last few years he had put on a significant amount of weight. In the Fall of 2009 he literally started to swell up. I finally convinced him to go to the hospital on Valentines Day 2010.

He was suffering from congestive heart failure and pneumonia. Within a day of being in the hospital he went into cardiac arrest and was put on a ventilator. Two months later – two bouts of respiratory arrest as they weaned him off the ventilator and a kidney failure chaser – he was out of the hospital. He was discharged 100 lbs lighter and with a CPAP machine.

The entire episode was brought on by 30 years of undiagnosed sleep apnea. Now he's the picture of health thanks to his CPAP.

Another:

I've been puzzled by the absence of "conservatism" in the discussion of remedies for sleep apnea. The more conservative remedies would be weight loss, dietary change and exercise, wouldn't you say?

Another:

Ok, I'm thinking sleep apnea is another self inflicted wound of fat America. If readers differ, please send pictures of skinny apnea patients wearing masks. I know the fatter I get, the more I snore – partners alert me. Just like every other damn part of our body, as we gain weight it sticks and we expand. In the case of the throat, it narrows the airway and creates loose flesh. I'm no doctor, so correct me if the painfully obvious ain't so.

I am tired of wasting medical dollars treating self-inflicted health conditions. Lung cancer from smoking. Heart disease from smoking and eating. Diabetes from a sugar diet. We all have to take financial responsibility for our actions and be held accountable by our health insurance. I don't want to contribute to smokers lung cancer care. I have a few habits I need to contribute a bit extra for too.

There is a connection between some sleep apnea and being overweight. But it's by no means the only cause. It can be caused by too muscular a neck, rather than too fat a one, as well as large tonsils, obstructed sinuses, or more than usual soft tissue in the throat and soft palate. The risk increases a lot if you have diabetes. And I think it's just hard to take a position that all behavioral-related illnesses should not be covered by insurance and others should be – because the judgment is often hard to make and sick people are still sick. Heart disease is by far one of the biggest health problems, for example, and is obviously connected in many cases to lifestyle – but may also be genetic or caused by other factors. But we cannot determine who is helped based on moral judgments. Ditto diabetes, which can be caused by many things, including a sugary diet.

The cost of treating sleep apnea, of course, is small compared with most diseases.

(Photo by Flickrite baslow)

Rick’s Left; My Right

Rick Hertzberg explains why he's a liberal:

I value political liberty and political rights (freedom of thought, speech, conscience, and the press, the right to vote, civil equality) more highly than economic liberty and economic rights (property rights, freedom of enterprise, freedom from want, economic equality). I’m in favor of progressive taxation and generous public provision of education, pensions, and health care. I think people should have enough to eat and a roof over their heads, even if they haven’t done much to deserve it. I reject the idea that the market is the singular bedrock of society while everything else is a parasitical growth. I want government to do something about environmental degradation and gross social and economic inequality. I’m a secularist and a supporter of equal rights for women and gays. And when it comes to wanting World Peace, I’m practically a Miss America contestant. So I’m a liberal.

My response would be, taking Rick's points in order:

I also revere political rights (freedom of thought, speech, conscience, and the press, the right to vote, civil equality) but regard them as underpinned by the emergence of the autonomous individual that modern economic liberty made possible. I believe in simple and flat taxation of income and consumption and a generous public provision of education (the key to opportunity), but I think the welfare state should remain a minimal safety net and means-test benefits for those who are in real need, not grant them to everyone regardless of wealth. I believe in universal better-than-bare-bones healthcare, but oppose the government controlling it, and would be fine with the wealthier buying more of it and thereby getting better treatment.

I don't believe in mandatory provision of food and shelter to those who have decided to be free-loaders, as opposed to the unlucky or incapable. I think the market is the least worst system of allocating wealth and creating growth without which no welfare safety net can be afforded. I think the government absolutely has a role in protecting public goods like the environment, but should do so with great modesty about the limits of its own wisdom. I believe government should only try to redress economic inequality if such inequality becomes so great it threatens social cohesion and stability. I'm a secularist because I am also a believer, think the state hurts faith, rather than enables it, and that Christianity is more authentic the further from actual power it gets. I believe in world peace but also believe that this can only be achieved by the threat of war at times, and that military action should be a very last resort – but a real one, against those who would threaten us or destabilize the world.

Discuss.

The Cure For Homosexuality

Jamie Kirchick reports from Belgrade:

How does Petrovic and his team ("me and my friends," as he describes them) claim to cure homosexuality? Quite simply: Patients must cut out junk food from their diet, "drink a lot of water," "reject anything that is diarrhetic, alcohol, caffeine," engage in "physical activity," "rest [at] appropriate times." Plus, one "must think about good things." Oh, and receive regular enemas.

There's an audio interview with the "doctor" as well.

Christianism Exposed

A fascinating moment in a radio debate between Chris Coons and Christine O'Donnell:

"Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?" O'Donnell asked him. When Coons responded that the First Amendment bars Congress from making laws respecting the establishment of religion, O'Donnell asked: "You're telling me that's in the First Amendment?"

Yes, the crowd gasped. And I'm told I overstate Christianism in the GOP.

“But That’s It”

Fox's Brian "All Terrorists Are Muslims" Kilmeade, says he's sorry he misspoke, and keeps his job. Can you imagine if he'd said "All Terrorists Are Jews" or "All Terrorists Are Asian" – which is more offensive than Rick Sanchez's descent into anti-Semitism? It's official now, then: you can smear some groups but not others, if you want to stay in your job as a journalist.

They Got His Clothing Right

Zuckerberg takes on The Social Network:

Ben Heineman Jr. debates the unreality of storytelling:

[F]or me, one of the more interesting questions raised by the film is whether works of entertainment or art presenting themselves as real accounts of contemporary events owe fidelity, not just to story-telling, but also to a search for truth in a journalistic or historical sense. Certainly some of Sorkin's own statements suggest that he didn't want The Social Network just to be story-telling. And, if that is so, then he had an obligation to get closer to the facts.

But, if he did want pure fidelity to "story-telling" there was a different way to shape the movie, which has as its direct forebear the film many believe is the greatest ever made, Citizen Kane.

Orson Welles' classic was based on the life of William Randolph Hearst, but in the movie he was a fictional character, which allowed Welles great artistic license.What if Sorkin had fictionalized The Social Network, including its main character (Sam Kainenborg in homage to the past)? Wouldn't the film have been at least as powerful (perhaps with less of the hokey deposition by-play to trigger flash-backs) without the legitimate,and troubling, debate about the fairness of the portrayal?

Has Palin Peaked?

It’s not just Fiorina and Whitman. More pols are distancing themselves from her, even nutcase Sharron Angle. Her last joint appearance with an actual candidate was September 16. Maybe her alienation of independents is something people actually trying to get elected understand. Or maybe the people cannot be fooled for long:

An ABC News/Washington Post poll released today reflects that view. Sarah Palin’s seen as more interested in political division than in cooperation by 56-34 percent, and the Tea Party political movement gets a very similar 56-31 percent.

But Rubio will embrace her this Saturday.

The View From Your Window Contest: Winner #20

Vfyw-contest_10-16

A reader writes:

Alrighty, this is somewhere in Europe. Given the haphazard nature of the streets, this could be a medieval city, but the architecture is more modern. The red brick church with the stone neoclassical front indicates that it was probably built in the mid-1700s or later. The tower in the background on the left looks like this one in Delft, Netherlands, but the surrounding buildings don’t match up, and the city appears to be much larger than Delft. I’m going with Brussels, Belgium.

Another writes:

Constanta, Romania? Okay, here’s my logic: This city looks like Central or Eastern Europe, but there appears to be water in the background, and it strikes me as an inland body of water rather than, say, the Mediterranean. I thus looked for cities on the Black Sea, and images of Constanta appear to be similar. I’m sure that even if I’m right, someone else will come up with the exact address, but what the heck, I’ll give it a shot.

Another:

Y’know, this might actually be in Copenhagen. Wish I could find this scene via Google, though. The architecture matches, it’s very flat, there’s what looks like a big body of water in the background. The problem with the architecture is that it also matches so many other places. I saw towers and cathedrals exactly like that in Vilnius, Lithuania, which was my first guess, and searching for “copper domes” or cathedrals brought up some awfully similar places in Ireland. But, I’ve got to say something, and I can’t keep searching Denmark and Lithuania all night, so Copenhagen it is.

Another:

In the foreground is one of the beautiful courtyards at the historic Vilnius University (founded 1571) in Vilnius, Lithuania. The Old Town of Vilnius, where the university is located, is a beautiful, dense, well-preserved medieval city that has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Center. The steep roofs are typical of the cold and snowy Baltic countries. Vilnius is very much a city of churches (some of them turned into tractor factories or “museums of atheism” during the Soviet period), several of which you can see in the background of the photograph.

Another:

Riga, Latvia? I spent three days there with my brother four years ago. We shot guns in a former Soviet military encampment, ate a palate-cleanser made from balsam and liquid nitrogen and drew so few sober breaths during my time in Latvia that I’m surprised my mouth didn’t catch fire every time I lit a cigarette.

Another:

I think it’s Riga, with a view of Riga Cathedral. I was there in the dead of winter 2008, tracking down genealogical information for my grandfather. My first ancestor to immigrate to the US was a Jewish woman who left from the port there as a young teenager in the mid-1850s. She worked in a garment factory in Boston, married a man twice her age, and was widowed young with four children. My grandfather met her in the early 1930s, and was always impressed with her fortitude.

Another:

This is most certainly Prague. I don’t feel like finding the exact address, as I will not win, and I have no story to complement my guess. I had the floor of the hotel in Tromsø and the address in Talinn without result. I just greatly appreciate the “game”. For kicks I will say Melnická, Malá Strana 13, 4th floor, though as my Swedish fiancee (who is far more thorough than myself) is experiencing California at the moment.

Another:

I love this contest; it’s a way to indulge my wanderlust. I also teach two sections of a Freshman Writing class. We’re using a travel motif this semester; the readings and assignments are travel related. Since the class meets M/W, it has been easy to incorporate VFYW as the concluding bit of every 1:20 min class, and it makes the last 5 minutes zip by. Mondays we look at what was posted the previous Saturday; my students air their opinions and vehemently argue their differences. I try to point out what seem to be distinctive features of the photograph. My guess is as good as any of theirs. On Wednesdays, we check to see how wrong we were.

In both my classes today, the consensus was that this was Northern European (the churches, the ivy, the red sloping roofs; the medieval architecture in the foreground with modern-looking steel and glass buildings in the background etc.). In my 1:30 class, Eric declared confidently that it was Munich. Some basic googling suggests that he may be right. Someone will of course write in with the precise coordinates , and claim that he/she got married in that very church and their first grandchild was christened there last summer. Still, if it is Munich, or some comparable German city, please give a shout out to Eric.

Not Munich, but hi Eric. Another:

If this isn’t a photo of Bazylika Mariacka (St Mary’s) in Gdansk, Poland, I’ll be embarrassed. I spent Christmas Eve there in 1992. The view is from the south, I believe. Using google maps satellite view, I am thinking it might have been taken from the history museum.

Another:

My sister and I used to call them ADCs – Another Damn Church (or Cathedral or Castle) – first labeled when we were 16 and 18 years old and running amuck with two months of free rail travel and instructions from Mom to “absorb the culture.” We obligingly visited hundreds of ADCs over the next three summers (we were living in Brussels at the time) but I can’t say that I ever picked up the fine details that would help me suss out this particular set of churches – are there touches of gothic or are they Romanesque?

In any case, I feel like we are in the north and east of the continent, amongst a mostly Catholic population (three big churches on one street), with a hint of the Germanic among the buildings. It’s flat, so I’m guessing Poland. Given the out-of-the-way places of late, I avoided looking at the big cities and a quick google maps scan of a few mid-sized cities lead me to Gorzow, which might be close – but no time to really investigate as I’m sticking with my pledge not to devote more the 15 minutes to this addiction per week …

Another:

My intuition said Czech Republic. It wasn’t Praha or Plzen. I image-searched the cities nearby and thought of Krakow. Then I had to leave. When I came back home, my sister had identified the church towers. I was happy we’d found the spot. But… with a place that well documented (better than Cabanaconde!), I’m afraid we’ll have to get the very window right. 2D geometry hints at the tower. 3D imagination gets me to the floor I marked in the picture.

Should I win the book, I’ll share it with my sister!

Another:

It’s Krakow, Poland, 100% sure. It’s my mother’s hometown (she came to the U.S. in 1978, after marrying my father, a second-generation Polish American). First thing I noticed that triggered recognition was the color of the roofs, the same one I remember seeing there and no where else. From satellite images, you can tell the orange color is common. Next up, Mary’s Basilica, seen in the distance in the top left of the photo. It’s very famous for having two towers of different heights, and from the taller one, a trumpeter sounds the hour (interesting tidbit: the last note he plays is cut short to honor the death of the trumpeter who was shot by an arrow while playing as Mongol hordes were invading, I believe in 1241). So with that, you can also orient the view from the window (the church faces west, so the view must be coming from south of it).

It also must be on higher ground, suggesting to me Wawel Castle/Cathedral, home of dead kings, presidents, poets, other great Polish patriarchs, smok wawelski (the dragon who supposedly lived underneath it until tricked by a shepherd into eating a salted lamb which made him drink so much of the Vistula River that he popped), and most recently, comedians (Lech Kaczy?ski).

As for specific view, I think I’ve narrowed it down to within about 30 feet (or 10m), here. This is the VFYW contest I’ve been waiting for … a perfect excuse for staying in on Saturday night.

Another:

Beautiful photo! I’m addicted to this contest but haven’t been able to pin point the location, until today! The red roofs initially led me to Bavaria and all the beautiful cities in Germany. However I know many, many cities in Germany and across eastern Europe give off a “feel” like the one in the photo. So to narrow it down, I focused on the white church in the center. The fortressesque paired towers and copper spires look old and very unique. I did some searches for circular arches, paired towers, etc. and found it on the Romanesque Architecture Wikipedia page—the octagonal paired towers are that of the St. Andrew’s Church, in the Old Town district of Kraków, Poland! The larger baroque church behind it is the Church of Sts. Peter and Paul.

Based on where St. Andrew’s church appears in the photo (and the immense vineage on the building in the foreground) the photo appears to be snapped from the Wawel Royal Castle high up on Wawel hill. Attached is a photo of Wawel Royal Castle with a circle around the likely window. This makes me want to go to Poland (or, until I find a job, the G train to Greenpoint)!

Another:

The two churches in the center are St. Andrew’s (which dates from the 11th Century, thus not named for Andrew Sullivan) and the Church of Sts. Peter and Paul.

Another:

I think it’s the window in the attached image.

Now with this one you really had me going; I searched for 6 hours. I’ve been a Dish reader since 2002, but you’ve never me engaged like this. The moment I saw this picture it felt like home or very near home, but I didn’t know why (home is in Erlangen, Bavaria). So I tried to narrow it down.

It’s definitely European and it has this Habsburg look of many towns of the former Austrian empire. But I wasn’t sure. The first insight was the chimneys, there are too many of them, so it can’t be in southern Europe. It’s cold there sometimes; there’s snow and rain. I immediately thought that this was Prague but there are no similar churches or any view like this there. The next step was the colour of the roofs. There were a lot of metal roofs, in Germany or Austria metal roofs are rare. In France there are a lot of metal roofs but the town would look much more dense (I learned that from looking at hundreds of roof pictures). So at the end I settled for eastern Europe, somewhere in the former Austrian empire. I went to Google Maps, saw Krakow, Googled “Churches Krakow” and everything matched immediately.

Thank you for the fun. It’s the first riddle I solved with my 9-week-old daughter; she was sleeping on me while I googled chapels, churches and roofs of every Austrian town. If I win I’m going to visit the window with her. I wanted to go to Krakow anyway and now I have a memory to share.

There were so many wonderful entries for Krakow, but we have to pick one. So the winner of this week’s contest was the first of two previous correct guessers to submit a Krakow entry. He writes:

Ok, after getting cities right twice and not winning, I am going to be super specific, even though I imagine hordes have beaten me to this. The view is from the Wawel Royal Castle (or Zamek Królewski na Wawelu) overlooking where the streets Podzamcze and ?wi?tego Idziego intersect (roughly where the foliage covered building and the clay-colored roofed building adjoin). The window itself is in the smaller of the two towers near the bulge in the wall – let’s say the middle of the three windows shown in that tower in this photo.

If I can win this contest once, I think I can stop caring so much!

Congrats, and we will get a Blurb book out to you shortly. Below are some of the more memorable entries for Krakow. One reader writes:

What luck! I’ve never been compelled to try my hand at this contest, but I just recently returned from a trip to Prague, L’vov and Krakow on break (I’m currently studying abroad in Moscow). I was in Krakow not three days ago; in fact, when this VFYW was posted at noon eastern time, I was entering my 18th hour on a Ukrainian motorcoach to Prague. So, to my surprise and delight, the sight of the Peter and Paul Church immediately gave me flashbacks of seeing it from the belltower of the Wawel Cathedral. It looks very much like my picture of the cathedral, only closer, and it looks like the photographer is lucky enough to live in Krakow.

Another:

I absolutely love the city. I lived there in 1998 for a couple of months. Last summer, I faced the disappointment of returning and seeing how much sex tourism has taken off there. It was nowhere near becoming the bachelor-party capital of Europe when I lived there. I still think it would be a good place to settle, but I’d probably spend most of my time in the Planty park that surrounds the downtown area (jump out this window and walk a little bit to the left to get there). Thanks for the picture, it brought back some nice memories.

Another

Just a cool story from my own travels: As a white, Jewish 21-year-old New Yorker backpacking through Krakow in March 2002 by myself, among the incredibly friendly people of Krakow was a fellow New Yorker – a black Puerto Rican who had moved to Krakow to teach English after having seen his family torn apart by crime. We met in an internet café on what was to be my last evening in Krakow, but very quickly, I decided to extend my stay for an extra day. During those 24 hours, I got a tour of some of the parts of the city that were definitely not on my itinerary. I’ll never forget the fantastic little restaurant in an alley off the main square featuring live jazz and some of the best food and beer (love Zywiec) I’d ever had. I haven’t spoken to or heard from him since.

Another:

That’s my partner’s hometown! We play this game every week but never send in our guess. The view is from the northern wing of Wawel Castle. It’s probably from a window of one of the 2nd floor State Chambers, specifically the Sala Pod Ptakami (The Hall Under the Birds). This room is lined with painted gilded leather and birds dot the ceiling.

The middle of the picture features the twin white limestone towers of St Andrew’s Church on Grodzka Street, which is next to the larger, domed, red brick Lesser Basilica of St Peter and Paul. Further away you can see the Dominican Church; it has the partial gray-green patina copper roof that appears to blend with the roof of St. Mary’s Basilica at the Main Market Square. On the horizon to the far right you can see the “Szkieletor”, a 300 ft unfinished Soviet-era high rise office building dating from 1975. It’s now a gigantic billboard.

By the way, we live in Andrew’s native country (England) because we couldn’t legally be together in our homes in the US or Poland. We have an official Civil Partnership in California but it’s not recognized by either the US government or Poland. That document is accepted by the UK government (Conservatives, Labor, and Liberal Dems), who are all more than happy to let us live in peace and equality in London.

Another:

I spent a long weekend in Krakow in April 1997. I went to visit a friend who was living with his girlfriend in the old Jewish district of Kazimierz, which lies south of the area in this photograph. I believe the photo was taken from Wawel Castle.

Some happy memories: bar hopping in Kazimierz, listened to Klesmer music in the old ghetto, visiting the old Jewish cemetary, wandering the deserted, dark streets of old Jewish quarter in the early morning hours. My friend and I visited Oskar Schindler’s factory, which was not marked by anything except a plaque to 3 Australian crew of a bomber which crashed into the factory in 1944.

Krakow was a mix of Catholic and Jewish heritage, a history of scholarship combined with anti-Semitism, and a tough working class culture which was ascendant during Communist times and which was losing its power as Poland geared up for the new century. I found it to be a sad but hopeful place, on the cusp of something new.