The Dish

A reader sticks up for Mario Puzo:

No surprise there’s backlash against the inclusion of The Godfather. Academics and those who think of themselves as literary types can’t give credit to any novel that isn’t either “beautifully” written or previously endorsed by the academic/literary community. It’s easier to harp on sentences and metaphors than to talk about mythic story, plot, character, and theme. And the notion that the movie version of The Godfather was saved from the hack Puzo and created by Coppola’s genius is simply not borne out by facts. Coppola insisted the film be called “Mario Puzo’s THE GODFATHER” because Coppola recognized the power and importance of Puzo’s story. And Puzo co-wrote the screenplay.

I give a great deal of credit to Dr. Ferraro for being willing to think outside of the academic/literary box and giving credit to one of the greatest stories of the century. Most of the books on this list are snoozers, far removed from the reading tastes or interests of ordinary Americans.

Update from a reader:

Literary types!  Oh, noes!

First, it’s worth noting that the reader doesn’t defend Puzo’s writing.  S/he just tries to pretend it doesn’t matter by diverting attention from it to what the previous posts had already readily acknowledged: that The Godfather is a great story.  For my money, though, if something is going to be labeled the Great American Novel, it had better damn well be a great story and be fantastically written.  No amount of story greatness can make up for shit writing, and vice versa.

Nor does the writing need to be difficult or flowery to be great.  E.B. White never wrote a difficult or flowery sentence in his life, but his writing is, aside from the usual contrarians, universally praised for its elegance.  To take his most famous book, Charlotte’s Web is an American novel that has immensely powerful story, plot, characters, and theme; and the writing … well, it’s testimony to the wonderful roominess of the human mind that we can even think of what White did and what Puzo did as the same activity.

Richard Gunderman considers the benefits that an “exercise pill” – under development in Florida – might produce:

[W]e would recoup even more time than the two hours we actually spend on exercising. Think how many minutes we spend every week just talking ourselves into it, getting dressed for it, and driving to it. And what about all the after-exercise time – driving back home, showering, getting dressed again, and then sitting in the easy chair contemplating how tired and sore we feel or congratulating ourselves on what good care we take of ourselves.

He also imagines some setbacks:

Some might argue that exercise has benefits that extend beyond mere slimmer waistlines, lower blood pressures, and improved serum lipid profiles. They might point, for example, to the self-discipline required to exercise on a regular basis and lament the fact that Americans need no longer make such a concerted and sustained effort to remain trim.

Moralists among the naysayers might go even farther, attempting to portray the able-bodied among those of us who rely on the exercise pill as somehow lazy or undedicated. The most extreme might even argue that working hard at working out is good not just for the body but for the character, helping us to develop habits of short-term self-denial for the sake of longer-term benefits that they regard as an important feature of the most virtuous among us.

A reader pushes back on this post:

In 1999, shortly before my first child was born, a relative asked me to take a look at vaccine additives.  In a previous life, I designed investigations of Superfund sites.  I decided to approach this as if I were analyzing dangerous chemicals at a waste site. After a review of all vaccine additives, I decided to take a closer look at the amount of organic mercury in vaccines.  I approached my analysis much like the epidemiologists with whom I worked during my career in hazardous waste management.

What I found was astonishing.

Applying the dosage limits in the EPA’s IRIS database for methyl mercury, I discovered that the vaccine schedule was causing two-month old infants to be injected with 120 times the maximum amount of organic mercury.  Newborns and six-month-olds were also being injected with multiples of the maximum exposure level. While the EPA database did not have data for the exact type of organic mercury in vaccines, it made sense at the time to apply the numbers for the most chemically similar compound.

Since 1999, the FDA has spoken out of both sides of its mouth about ethyl mercury.  On the one hand, it was deemed dangerous enough to be removed from most childhood vaccines.  On the other hand, they have made interesting claims about ethyl mercury being relatively safe, when compared to methyly mercury, despite the fact there hasn’t been any significant analysis of it.  As of today, the EPA has not added ethyl mercury to the IRIS database.  My guess is that due to lack of data and analysis.

The bottom line is that the FDA and the vaccine community have made at least one major mistake as the vaccine schedule has been expanded over the years.  And in my humble opinion, this is enough to question everything about the vaccine program. If we label every person who dares ask simple questions about vaccines a “diseased truther”, the vaccine program will likely go off the rails again, as it did during the 1990s.

A strong counterpoint from a recent NPR piece:

Thimerosal, which contains a form of mercury, was removed from most childhood vaccines in the U.S. and Europe more than a decade ago, amid public fear that it could cause autism. Several large studies later found no risk from the preservative and that removing it did nothing to change autism rates. Now the proposal before the U.N. has public health officials once again trying to reassure people that thimerosal is safe. Three separate papers in the journal Pediatrics argue against an international ban.

“This is critical,” says Dr. Walter Orenstein of the Emory Vaccine Center at Emory University, and an author of one of the papers. “Lives potentially would be lost if we banned thimerosal from vaccines.” Thimerosal keeps vaccines from going bad in parts of the world where other options, such as refrigeration or single-dose vials, aren’t practical.

The proposed ban is part of a larger effort to reduce exposure to mercury, which can affect brain development. And public health experts strongly support most aspects of that effort, Orenstein says. “But when it comes to thimerosal in vaccines, the benefits far outweigh any risks,” he says, adding that a ban could mean the return of diseases that used to kill millions of children each year in developing countries. “Pertussis or whooping cough could really resurge in these areas,” Orenstein says.

But Orenstein and other experts weren’t always so certain about thimerosal. In 1999, they asked vaccine makers in the U.S. to stop using the preservative in childhood vaccines. At the time, some parents of children with autism were alleging that the thimerosal in vaccines caused the disorder. Also, researchers realized that some children could be getting more mercury from vaccines than the Environmental Protection Agency deemed safe. So Orenstein says he and others erred on the side of caution. “At the time, we just didn’t know what the toxic effects might be or might not be,” he says. “And one of our concerns was, what if we did the studies and three years later found there was harm?”

The studies showed just the opposite, though. And scientists also determined that the form of ethyl mercury in thimerosal is far less dangerous than methyl mercury, the form found in seafood.

Derek Thompson argues that, for the TV industry, “live sports is the keystone keeping the roof from collapsing”:

Networks have recognized that sports has unique social currency in live viewing, and they’ve stormed the marketplace in the last few years, throwing egregious sums of money in exchange for exclusive deals. Those costs are trickling up. As Patrick Hruby explained, “big time sports are taking a minimum of $84.90” out of each family’s budget even if they don’t care about sports. This amounts to a “sport tax” on families forced to pay for something they don’t watch. Cable companies sensing this backlash are starting to resist new sports networks. There is even chatter about what would happen if sports existed on a separate “tier” that untied the Gordian Knot of TV.

In a follow-up, he finds that TV a la carte is likely to be more expensive than the bundle. Relatedly, Meghan Neal believes that Google could threaten the cable companies:

Google’s certainly been lining up the resources to offer an All Access television experience. It has original programming on YouTube, TV shows and movies on Google Play, and the Google TV software (albeit in need of a redesign) to aggregate and manage the content while also looping in online streaming sites like Netflix and Hulu.

That’s a decent hand, but Google Fiber is the ace up the sleeve. The high-speed broadband and digital cable service is available in select cities, already offers a robust lineup of channels, including, for an extra fee, HBO. As of now most people still have to pay Comcast or Time Warner for broadband internet, which incentivizes their cable packages. If the fiber-optic network spreads nationwide, it’ll be the biggest threat to the cable giants in decades.

Kirsten Salyer adds:

Just don’t cancel your cable subscription yet. Google had discussions with media companies about a similar service about two years ago, without luck, and it’s not clear how far along plans are today, or when it would launch. There’s no guarantee Google could get the licensing deals it would need to put together a service that could compete with cable and satellite providers. Media companies might be reluctant to upset existing contracts in favor of a new online service and are generally more likely to give the best prices to providers with large numbers of subscribers.