creamy polenta with fresh corn

Leo and I have made this low-maintenance polenta twice now, and have been exceedingly pleased with the results both times. The original recipe called for buttermilk, creating a slightly sour polenta. I prefer the non-buttermilk variety, but both are tasty and have their virtues.

Prep time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 50 minutes
Serves: six

1 1/2 cups milk or buttermilk and 1/2 cups milk or buttermilk, reserved
4 1/2 cups chicken broth
1 1/2 cups polenta or stone-ground yellow cornmeal
1 tsp minced fresh rosemary
1 tsp minced fresh thyme
2 cups fresh corn kernels (approximately 4 ears of corn) OR Trader Joe's frozen flame-broiled corn
freshly ground black pepper
4 TBSP unsalted butter
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese

In a largepot, combine 1 1/2 cups of the milk with the chicken broth and bring to a boil. (Don't worry if the buttermilk looks like it's curdling — whisk it and it will be fine.)

In a slow stream, whisk the cornmeal into the liquid. Keep stiring until the polenta begins to thicken into a porridge, about 6 minutes. Add the rosemary and thyme and bring the polenta to a boil.

Turn down the heat as low as the burner will go and simmer for 30 minutes, stirring once every 10 minutes, until the polenta has become a smooth porridge. (Don't worry if a crust forms on the bottom of the pan.) Stir in the corn and the remaining 1/2 cup milk and cook for another 10 minutes or so, until the corn has heated through.

Season with pepper.

Stir in the butter and Parmigiano until melted and serve immediately.

feliz cumpleaños, ash!

We toasted Ash last Friday, enjoying sangria and tapas at Costa Brava. Our meal consisted of boquerones, pollo al ajillo, gambas al ajillo, aceitunas, chorizo, and patatas bravas. But the surprise hit of the evening came in the form of bacon-wrapped dates in a balsamic sauce.

Sangria by comment dit-on	Deep in conversation by comment dit-on

song of the cookies

I already chew gum at work. It keeps my mouth full, so that I don't graze on the chocolates, cookies, and other goodies that manage to end up in my office.

But if this stuff makes it to market, I would probably get some for that mid-afternoon period when I'm starting to get hungry and the cookies are calling out to be eaten.

Chew gum to help you slim
By Jo Willey
15/01/07

AN appetite-suppressing chewing gum which will stop the soaring obesity epidemic and save millions of lives is being developed by British scientists.

They have identified a drug, based on a natural hormone, which mimics the body’s “feeling full” response.

In what will be seen as a huge step towards curbing the spiralling scourge of obesity which threatens to cripple the NHS, researchers have fast-tracked the development of the drug.

They intend to produce a form which can be absorbed in the mouth – and then add it to chewing gum.

The hormone will also later be incorporated into a nasal spray, and an injectable treat-ment – similar to the insulin jabs used by diabetics – will be available in just a few years.

The research has huge significance for tackling the nation’s obesity crisis and will revolutionise the way that Britain, and the rest of the world, wages the battle of the bulge.

The leader of the research team, Professor Steve Bloom, has already admitted that a safe, effective treatment which can be given to a broad range of overweight patients – not just the seriously obese – is a potential goldmine.

The study was welcomed by the National Obesity Forum, which said the research into the hormone, pancreatic polypeptide, was “an exciting development”.

Chairman Dr Colin Waine said: “Pancreatic polypeptide is a naturally occurring substance and therefore one would expect that it would be relatively free of side-effects.

“This looks like a potentially exciting development.”

Early tests have shown that moderate doses of pancreatic polypeptide can reduce the amount of food eaten by healthy volunteers by 15 to 20 per cent.

Mice given the drug have lost 15 per cent of their body weight in one week.

Development of the hormone has now been given a major boost, with a £2.2million research grant from the Wellcome Trust.

Globally, there are now more than one billion overweight adults, according to the World Health Organisation. This includes at least 300million who meet the clinical definition of obese.

Money spent in Britain on anti-obesity drugs rocketed to £38million in 2005-6, up from £30million in 2004-5, with 23.5 per cent of women and 23 per cent of men classed as obese.

Forecasts warn that one in three British men will be dangerously overweight by 2010, with a total of 14mil-lion children and adults classed as obese.

In England alone, more than 30,000 deaths a year are caused by obesity, mainly due to heart disease and diabetes, and cost the NHS £1billion annually.

The epidemic shows every sign of growing worse as people continue to eat too much of the wrong foods and take insufficient exercise, meaning that the NHS faces a “ticking timebomb”.

The research team, from Imperial College London, is one of the first to benefit from a £91million initiative by the Wellcome Trust to help turn promising scientific ideas into real treatments.

The human body produces pancreatic polypeptide after every meal to ensure that eating does not run out of control.

But there is evidence that some people have more of the hormone than others, and becoming overweight reduces the levels produced. A vicious circle then results, causing appetite to increase.

Prof Bloom has studied a group of patients with a particular pancreatic tumour which causes them to generate more of the hormone.

Their bodies are kept permanently thin, yet they appear to suffer no ill-effects from the additional levels of the hormone.

“These people may have had high levels of pancreatic polypeptide for 10 or 15 years without showing side-effects,” said Prof Bloom. “In that sense, they have provided us with a natural experiment that suggests excess levels are safe.”

pollo con limón y ajillo (chicken with lemon and garlic)

Leo and I made this Spanish recipe this weekend and it was amazing. We served it with oven-roasted potatoes, sauvignon blanc, and a crusty baguette hot from the oven.

pollo con limón y ajillo by comment dit-on

Prep time: 5 minutes
Cooking time: 5 minutes
Serves: two to four

2 skinless, boneless chicken breast fillets
2 TBSP olive oil
1 shallot, finely chopped
4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 tsp paprika
juice of 1 lemon
2 TBSP chopped fresh parsley
salt
black pepper

Slice chicken breasts into thin strips, ensuring that the strips are no more than 1/2 inch thick. Heat the oil in a large frying pan. Stir fry the chicken strips with the garlic, shallots, and paprika over high heat for approximately 3 minutes, or until cooked through. After the shallots have caramelized, but just before they burn, add the lemon juice and parsley. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Serve hot with lemon wedges and garnish with flat leaf parsley.

Variation: use pork fillet and substitute green onions (the white part for the shallot and the green portion for the parsley).

Via "The Complete Spanish Cookbook" by Pepita Aris

birdbrain

My parents have an African grey parrot named Paco. African greys are known as the best mimics in the bird world and as very smart when it comes to birds in general.

Anyhow, my parents got Paco in 1982 and the bird is my nemesis. As a little kid, I was frightened that he'd bite me and I took to calling him names, like "nerd." He was straight outta the jungle when they got him and it took two years of affection, patience, and treats from them to tame him.

Paco and I still don't get along, but he does some pretty interesting things. Take, for example, this fact: If both the tv and the living room light are turned off (in either order), he'll say "goodnight" in my dad's voice and respond with "goodnight" in my mother's voice. He also loved to torture my dog. He'd say "sit" in my mother's voice, and the dog would sit, trembling all over because she was expecting a treat. Once the dog was in a total frenzy, Paco would say "up!" in my mother's voice. The dog would be drooling, and waiting for a treat to be thrown in the air, but it would never come.

I haven't lived at home for 14 years, but if Paco hears my voice, he immediately says "nerd." I stand by my assertion that it's not that he knows what I am, but that my voice triggers a set of vocab that I used back when I lived at home with him. Or so I hope ...

Parrot's oratory stuns scientists
By Alex Kirby, BBC News

The finding of a parrot with an almost unparalleled power to communicate with people has brought scientists up short.

The bird, a captive African grey called N'kisi, has a vocabulary of 950 words, and shows signs of a sense of humour.

He invents his own words and phrases if he is confronted with novel ideas with which his existing repertoire cannot cope - just as a human child would do.

N'kisi's remarkable abilities feature in the latest BBC Wildlife Magazine.

N'kisi is believed to be one of the most advanced users of human language in the animal world.

About 100 words are needed for half of all reading in English, so if N'kisi could read he would be able to cope with a wide range of material.

Polished wordsmith
He uses words in context, with past, present and future tenses, and is often inventive.

One N'kisi-ism was "flied" for "flew", and another "pretty smell medicine" to describe the aromatherapy oils used by his owner, an artist based in New York.

When he first met Dr Jane Goodall, the renowned chimpanzee expert, after seeing her in a picture with apes, N'kisi said: "Got a chimp?"

He appears to fancy himself as a humourist. When another parrot hung upside down from its perch, he commented: "You got to put this bird on the camera."

Dr Goodall says N'kisi's verbal fireworks are an "outstanding example of interspecies communication".

In an experiment, the bird and his owner were put in separate rooms and filmed as the artist opened random envelopes containing picture cards.

Analysis showed the parrot had used appropriate keywords three times more often than would be likely by chance.

Captives' frustrations
This was despite the researchers discounting responses like "What ya doing on the phone?" when N'kisi saw a card of a man with a telephone, and "Can I give you a hug?" with one of a couple embracing.

Professor Donald Broom, of the University of Cambridge's School of Veterinary Medicine, said: "The more we look at the cognitive abilities of animals, the more advanced they appear, and the biggest leap of all has been with parrots."

Alison Hales, of the World Parrot Trust, told BBC News Online: "N'kisi's amazing vocabulary and sense of humour should make everyone who has a pet parrot consider whether they are meeting its needs.

"They may not be able to ask directly, but parrots are long-lived, and a bit of research now could mean an improved quality of life for years."

getting my pap today

I Live Strong by Pockafwye

I'm seeing my gynecologist this afternoon. It's time for my annual exam and pap smear.

Yes, it's a hassle. But it's really not that big a deal. It's about as uncomfortable as a mild papercut and over in minutes. But I will have one every 12-24 months, no matter what. Here's why:

A friend of mine got great news this month. She's cancer-free after being diagnosed with endocervical cancer in October 2006 and having a radical hysterectomy on January 2, 2007.

It was caught relatively early, thanks to her annual checkup, so surgery was all that was needed to treat the cancer.

The experience has changed her life, to be sure. Her survivorship includes sharing her story and what she learned in the process via a cancer photo journal. Here is a piece of it:

Originally I had decided to keep my cancer diagnosis just between friends and family, but now that I know where this path is leading me, it seems like sharing it might offer something to others. Like impressing on any women who see this the importance of annual checkups to catch such cancers early.

Thank you's go out to my friends and family for showing me so much support during this time. I am truly blessed.

Update 1/8/2007 - GOOD NEWS: I have had my surgery, and am now in the process of recovering from it. My doctor says they were able to remove all of the cancer, and it had not progressed to the lymph nodes. So I will not need chemo or radiation therapy. Thank you everyone for your kind messages of support, and your thoughts and prayers. They have been, and continue to be a comfort.

Much love to you, J. I'll be thinking of you in the exam room today.

do you bebo?

If you believe the pundits, MySpace is soooo over. Bebo's the new MySpace. It was the top search term in Google during 2006. Which means that Google will buy it. Or that Rupert Murdoch will.

See my profile.
Join if you want. Or not.

patterns, trends, and surprises

zeit·geist | Pronunciation: 'tsIt-"gIst, 'zIt | Function: noun | Etymology: German, from Zeit (time) + Geist (spirit) | Date: 1884 | Meaning: the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era.

I'm often fascinated by these kinds of metadata-gathering efforts. Google's 2006 year-end zeitgeist report is no exception.

• Some things were surprising and yet another affirmation that I'm bucking the pop-culture trend (I've never seen American idol, Project runway, or Dancing with the Stars and I feel no need to change that particular fact).
• Others were sobering (cancer is the third most popular search term in the Google News section).
  
• And some just made me laugh (check out all the references to Borat).

Google Press Center: Zeitgeist
A year’s worth of search speaks to our collective consciousness, and 2006 is no exception. To compile these year-end lists and graphs, we compared frequent queries this year against 2005 to see what sorts of things were top of mind. Click on all the tabs to learn something new — or confirm that you too reflect the spirit of the times. Except where noted, all of these search terms are global for Google.com.

Very interesting. But what would be really cool is the ability to generate our own comparisons ... next year, perhaps?


P.S. You don't have to wait until the end of the year for the zeitgeist. Check it out by country and by month at the Google Zeitgeist Center.

the line for the emotional roller coaster forms here

My friend Scott has had lots of misdiagnoses in the last month. Some are routine (car repairs) ... others, not so much (doctors told him that he had cancer when he had something else).

Read his "celebration of the first diagnosis being wrong":

* cracked exhaust manifold: $750
* having the exhaust shop call back and say that was the other civic hatchback, you just have a cracked tailpipe that needs welding: $50

* new blood test for multi-endocrine neoplasia that's only been on the market for 6 months and that your insurance doesn't cover : $900
* having the lab call back and say that your insurance actually does cover it after your co-pay and deductible: $200

* you face untold medical expenses because your surgeon's freaked out, neurotic assistant refuses to get a referral and authorization number from your insurance so you can see the orthopedic oncologist to treat your polyostotic fibrous dysplasia: $six figures?
* having the orthopedic oncologist's assistant call back and say that he's in your network and you're covered for 100% without any referral: $0

* you came in for appendicitis but you have cancer in your lung, both kidneys, and spine: you're fucked
* having them come back and say that, actually, you just have a rare, but treatable, benign bone disorder: priceless

the line for the emotional roller coaster forms here.


scott :)

Pain is necessary. Misery is optional.

velcome

Dracula's Castle Goes Up for Sale
Bran Castle is being offered for sale to the Brasov County Council by the U.S.-based owner, Dominic von Habsburg who is a descendant of the Romanian royal family June 23, 2005 in Brasov, Romania. The castle built by the Teutonic knights in 1212 was used briefly by Romanian ruler Vlad the Impaler who was partly the inspiration for Bram Stoker's novel Dracula. Passed through royal hands for many generations the castle was the principal home of Queen Marie whose grandson Dominic von Habsburg had the castle returned only in May of 2006 by the Romanian governmen. In preparation for Romania joining to the European Union the government has been handing back assets seized during communist rule. The castle is reported to be worth $25-million (USD).

oh behave!

I'm no Miss Manners, but I like to think of myself as reasonably housebroken.

As a tourist, I've made countless gaffes, but I suspect that when I move abroad, it will make sense for me to at least familiarize myself with how not to come across as a totally inept American. That way, if I am hated, it will be for where I was born, and not how I (mis)behave.

On second thought, I almost want to make the same mistakes as David Sedaris. Or to re-live portions of "Almost French" and "A Year in the Merde," two books that chronicle the misadventures of an Australian woman and an Englishman (respectively) who dealt with the cultural peculiarities of living in France.

France Polishes Its Politesse
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
January 11, 2007
PARIS

CHIC French diners eat asparagus with their fingers and sorbet with their forks.

The words “Bon appétit” should never be uttered at the start of a meal.

The polite passenger always says, “Bonjour” to the driver upon entering the bus.

And, bien sûr, the dinner guest must not leave the table in midmeal to use the powder room, and should she have to go, never, ever use the word “toilette” when asking a host for directions.

Mastering the rules of good manners never has been easy, even for the French.

Despite a centuries-old obsession with behaving well, the French are constantly relearning how to do it, and the last few years have witnessed both the degradation of civility and manners and a revival of interest in them.

On one level disrespect for authority is on the rise. Cars are burned and garbage is thrown out of windows in the troubled gritty suburbs. Verbal and physical attacks against teachers in schools are more widespread than they were a few years ago. Commuters are hit, seats are slashed, graffiti is written on Paris Métro cars.

But on another level is a desire to retain, encourage and even venerate what the French call “politesse.”

“It sounds bizarre, but with more and more acts of incivility, people are tolerating them much less,” said Frédéric Rouvillois, the author of “Histoire de la Politesse,” a scholarly tome that traces the history of good manners in France over the last three centuries. “There’s more awareness that courtesy and savoir-faire are useful and necessary tools in society.”

As part of the consciousness-raising, private sessions on proper table settings and dining habits are offered to Parisian ladies of leisure. The Paris transit authority is in the midst of a campaign of respect to improve the quality of travel for its passengers. Humorous posters hung last fall prodded travelers to muzzle their pets; use trash cans for their garbage; speak softly on their cellphones; avoid whacking their neighbors with their backpacks; and, of course, say hello and goodbye to conductors and ticket vendors.

In 2005, in response to complaints about interaction between patients and staff, the Hospital Federation of France began its first national advertising drive for politeness in public hospitals and nursing homes, with a list of rules for how to behave and the motto “Stay polite!”

The Ministry of Education has made good citizenship part of the national curriculum in high schools. The Ministry of Transportation designates an annual “day of steering wheel courtesy” to encourage polite behavior on the road.

“In a society more and more brutal, with deafening vulgarity, it is with delight that we are rediscovering the discreet charm of courtesy,” wrote Point de Vue, a weekly magazine that focuses on old families and the remnants of royalty, in an article some months ago on the return of good manners.

In the perfect French world, rules govern even the most mundane subjects: how to answer the telephone, how to greet a guest at the door, how to address a stranger, what to take to a dinner party, how to behave on the Métro.

“It’s like a sport, you have to train hard,” said Marie de Tilly, a rail-thin expert on manners, who teaches a two-hour course in Paris to women who pay $90 to attend. “But once you train and know the rules, it all comes naturally.”

All can be lost in that first moment of acquaintance, Ms. de Tilly told a group of French and American women during a session last month in a hotel room adorned in brocade and silk.

“In the first 20 seconds, others will judge your look, in the second 20 seconds your behavior and the third 20 seconds your first words,” she said. “There is a code. If you don’t follow it properly, it will be very, very hard to make a comeback.”

The class learns classic 19th-century behavior: for example, that the woman — not the man — extends a hand for a handshake. A married woman should fold one hand over the other at the table, the better to show off her jewels.

A box of chocolates is an appropriate gift when invited for dinner, to be deposited at the entrance with a gift card. Flowers can be sent either just before the dinner or, better, the following day. Wine is not an appropriate dinner gift. (It assumes that the host does not have good taste.) Always arrive at a dinner party 15 minutes late.

Only a country bumpkin would say, “Bon appétit” at the start of a meal. Foie gras should be eaten with a fork, never spread on bread. If a woman’s wineglass needs filling, she should play with it until her male neighbor notices and fills it.

It is best to avoid using the powder room at all, but if there is absolutely no choice, it must be done discreetly.

“When you are at the table, you never get up, never,” Ms. Tilly said. “You never use the word ‘toilette.’ When there is a break — the best time is after dinner when you leave the table — you can ask, very discreetly, ‘May I wash my hands?’ ”

Etiquette has trickled down to a more popular level as well. Last year the French television station M6 ran a reality show dedicated to the “conquest of savoir-faire.” Eight young Eliza Doolittles from working class backgrounds were sent to a French chateau for a month to prepare themselves for a ball. Some of them regularly ate with their fingers. One had never worn a skirt.

Coaches taught them to speak, move, dress and eat properly, even how to nudge large shrimp out of the shell with knife and fork. The winner secured a place for herself in opening the Louis XIV Ball, a gala event for “aristocratic” families held every June in a Paris hotel.

The most ambitious attempt to improve manners is Objective Respect, a campaign begun last October by the transit authority to help change the behavior of riders who, for instance, play loud music or eat messy food. “Passengers were complaining more about the lack of respect for the rules and that people no longer made an effort to get others to behave,” said Gilles Alligner, the director of communications at the transit authority. “So we decided to give the riders some responsibility and make them our partners.”

The transit authority has asked passengers to rank their pet peeves on an interactive forum on the Internet, answering the question, “What irritates you the most?” The most common complaint is the failure of riders automatically to surrender the seats near the doors and to stand when the train becomes crowded, allowing the seats to fold and thus create more room.

France has had an uneven history of manners. With the French Revolution, the republican passion for equality trumped the rules of gentility, which glorified hierarchy and differences of class and gender. Men had to be called “Citoyen” (Citizen) rather than “Monsieur.” The use of the familiar “tu” form of “you” replaced the formal “vous.”

The rise of the bourgeoisie in the 19th century swept in a new era of politeness, which declined during and after World War I. The brutality of the war made the rules of gentility seem meaningless. Another low point came with the May 1968 rebellion, which swept in an ideology that challenged all forms of authority.

Certainly, polls show an increase of interest in manners. Ninety-five percent of the French believe that being polite is an asset, according to an Ipsos poll last March. A poll in 2003 indicated that 70 percent of French parents place great importance on manners, compared with 53 percent in 1991 and 21 percent in 1981.

Some rituals of politesse die hard. Dueling may have been banned decades ago, but hand kissing has survived. The master has to be President Jacques Chirac.

Mr. Chirac clearly knows how to do it: he raises the woman’s hand to chest level and bends over to meet it halfway. Sometimes, as when he visited Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin last March, he cradles the hand in both of his.

“The French president,” a writer in the Swiss daily Le Matin commented last September after Mr. Chirac kissed Ms. Merkel’s hand once again, “can no longer meet a woman, either a star, a head of state, a first lady or a minister, without doing it.”

The practice, however, the writer added, “has nothing to do with protocol.”

quotable

"Come to the edge," he said.

They said "We are afraid,"

He said, "Come to the edge."

And they came.

And he pushed them

and

they flew!"

-G. Apolliance

Thanks, Cass

we can do better than this

As Leo put it:

i'm no economist, and i confess that i don't fully understand the interplay between all the factors involved in controlling growth and all that jazz, but i have to believe we can do better than this.

I heard a minimum wage story the other day on NPR that said real prices have risen since 1988 (adjusted for inflation), but the minimum wage hasn't. I was left wondering who feels the squeeze the most and who is pocketing the profits. Although I'm getting my MBA, I'm in the same boat as Leo on this topic.

Life at $7.25 an Hour: As House Prepares to Vote on Minimum-Wage Increase, Issue Is Complex for Those Who Earn, or Pay, That Amount
By David Finkel
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
ATCHISON, Kan. -- It was payday. Money, at last. Twenty-two-year-old Robert Iles wanted to celebrate. "Tonight, chimichangas!" he announced.

He was on his way out of the store where his full-time job pays him $7.25 an hour -- the rate that is likely to become the nation's new minimum wage. Life at $7.25: This is the life of Robert Iles, and with $70 in a wallet that had been empty that morning, he headed to a grocery store where for $4.98 he bought not only 10 chimichangas but two burritos as well.

From there he stopped at a convenience store, where for $16.70 he filled the gas tank of the car he purchased when he got his raise to $7.25; then he went to another grocery store, where he got a $21.78 money order to pay down some bills, including $8,000 in medical bills from the day he accidentally sliced open several fingers with a knife while trying to cut a tomato; and then he headed toward the family trailer 19 miles away, where his parents were waiting for dinner.

Today in Washington, the House is scheduled to vote on whether to increase the federal minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25. Passage is expected, with Senate approval soon to follow, and if President Bush signs the resulting bill into law, as he indicated he would, the U.S. minimum wage would rise for the first time since 1997, ending a debate about whether such a raise would be good or bad for the economy.

But even if the matter is settled in Congress, it isn't settled at all in Atchison, and Robert Iles's drive home is proof. Every stop he made on his ride home revealed a different facet of how complicated the minimum wage can be in the parts of America where, instead of a debatable issue, it is a way of life.

At the store where Iles works, for instance, the owner thinks the minimum wage should be increased as a moral issue but worries about which employees' hours he will have to cut to compensate.

At the store where he bought the chimichangas, the cashier who makes $6.25 worries that a raise will force her out of her subsidized apartment and onto the street.

At the convenience store where he bought gas, the owner worries that he will have to either raise prices, angering his customers, or make less money, "and why would I want to make less money?"

At the store where he got the money order, the worries are about Wal-Mart, which not only supports an increase but also built a Supercenter on the edge of town that has been sucking up customers since it opened three years ago.

As for Iles -- who keeps $70 out of every paycheck to cover two weeks' worth of food and gas and in a matter of minutes was already down to $26.54 -- his worry was as basic as how fast to drive home.

Drive too fast and he'd be wasting gas. But his family was waiting. And his chimichangas, best cooked frozen, were starting to thaw.

The Meaning of a Dollar
The debate about the minimum wage usually comes down to jobs. If Congress approves the increase, it will result in raises for an estimated 13 million Americans, or about 9 percent of the total workforce. That's a percentage that most economists agree would cause a modest increase in national unemployment. In Kansas, however, "it would have a fairly significant impact," said Beth Martino, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Labor. According to one independent analysis, 16 percent of the workforce, or 237,000 workers, would be affected -- and that doesn't include the 20,000 whose wages aren't governed by the federal Fair Labor Standards Act and earn the state minimum wage of $2.65. That rate, the lowest in the nation and unchanged since 1988, hints at the prevailing wisdom in Kansas about the minimum wage, which is that the only way low-wage earners will make more is through congressional action.

This holds true from Topeka, where the powerful Kansas Chamber of Commerce has long opposed any raise, to rural Mulvane, home of Republican state legislator Ted Powers, who says his futile effort three years ago to raise the state minimum wage resulted in his being branded a "dirty dog," to Atchison, a working-class city of 11,000 where the stores that depend on low-wage workers include one called "Wow Only $1.00!" This is the store where Robert Iles has worked for five years.

"Robert, would you help me a second?" Jack Bower, the owner, called to Iles soon after opening, as the line at the cash register grew. A onetime Wal-Mart vice president, Bower moved back to Atchison several years ago to teach and ended up buying the old J.C. Penney store, and now runs a business where the meaning of a dollar is displayed on shelf after shelf. The jar of Peter Piper's Hot Dog Relish? That's what a dollar is worth. The Wolfgang Puck Odor Eliminator that a customer was looking at as she said to a friend, "I just don't know how I'm ever going to make it. My ex-husband's not paying his child support"? That's a dollar, too, as is the home pregnancy test, the most shoplifted item in the store.

"This is not a wealthy community," Bower explained. "The thing is, a lot of people depend on this store."

Robert Iles has his own version of a dollar's meaning, learned last February when Bower took him aside and said he would be getting a pay raise to $7.25. "Okay," Iles remembers replying, wanting to seem businesslike. "But inside I was doing the cha-cha-cha," he said. "It was like going from lower class to lower middle class."

Soon after, he bought his car, a used 2005 Dodge Neon, and just about every workday since then he has spent his lunch break in the driver's seat, eating a bologna sandwich with the engine off to save gas, even in winter. An hour later, he was back behind the cash register, telling customers "Thank you and have a nice day" again and again.

And meanwhile, Jack Bower wondered whose hours he will cut if he has to give his employees a raise.

It's not that he's against raising the minimum wage -- "I don't think $5.15 is adequate," he said, adding that $7.25 seems fair -- but his profit margin is thin, and wages are his biggest controllable expense. So if wages go up, he said, hours will have to come down, and the question will become: Whose?

Will it be Neil Simpson, 66, who works six hours a day as a stockman, and then five more hours somewhere else cleaning floors, and takes care of a wife who is blind and arthritic?

Will it be Susan Irons, 57, who was infected with hepatitis C from a blood transfusion, is on a waiting list for a liver transplant and needs more hours rather than fewer?

Will it be Christina Lux, who is 22 years old and 13 weeks pregnant?

Will it be Iles?

"Attention, all shoppers," he said into the microphone. "We will be closing in 10 minutes. Please begin making your final selections." Ten minutes later, he was clocked out and back in his Neon. "My brand-new car," he called it proudly, and he explained how he was able to afford it on $7.25 an hour: a no-money-down loan for which he will pay $313.13 a month until 2012.

Small Business 'at Bottom'
Seven dollars and twenty-five cents an hour equals $15,080 per year, and out of that comes $313 for the car loan and $100 for car insurance, Iles said, going over his monthly bills. An additional $90 for the 1995 car with 135,000 miles on it that he is buying from a friend for his mother, $150 for the family phone bills, $35 on his credit card, $100 for gas, $100 toward the mortgage on the trailer. "That's about it. Oh yeah, $20 in doctors' bills," he said, and totaled it up on fingers scarred by surgical stitches. Nine hundred and eight dollars. "I bring home 900 a month," he said. "So I very rarely have any money for myself."

He parked in front of a store called Always Low Prices, which has the cheapest chimichangas in town.

Once it was a full-service grocery store with 28 employees. Then came word that Wal-Mart was looking for land for a Supercenter, and now it has become a bare-bones operation where the starting pay for its few employees is $5.50, and the manager wonders how the store will survive if wages increase.

"We're at the bottom. If the minimum wage went up, I don't know how we would make the cuts to cover it," Michelle Henry said. The lone salaried employee, she works 80 hours a week to make up for the lack of workers. "I have mixed feelings," she continued. "I know that people can't afford to live on $5.15 an hour. But on the business side, small businesses can't afford to pay it."

At the register, meanwhile, Shannon Wilk, 33, who makes $6.25 an hour, said that of course she would like to earn more money. It would help her. It would help her 18-month-old daughter. "It would be good," she said, "but also, for me, I live in income-based housing, and if I get a raise, my rent would go up, and I would lose my assistance." Even the tiniest raise would affect her, she said, and with nowhere to go, the last thing she can afford is a raise to $7.25.

In such an equation, the fact that she was working in Kansas was to her benefit. Atchison sits on the Kansas-Missouri border, and if Wilk worked a few hundred yards to the east, she would already be in jeopardy: In November, Missouri voters supported a ballot initiative increasing the state's minimum wage to $6.50, with an annual adjustment for inflation. Five other states had similar votes, with similar results, bringing to 29 the number that now require an hourly wage above the federal minimum. In the District the minimum is $7, in Maryland it's $6.15, and in Virginia it's $5.15.

Such is the arbitrariness of state-by-state minimum wage laws that Wilk feels lucky to be in Kansas making $6.25 an hour while inside at the first grocery store across the Missouri state line, the cashier was ecstatic that she was in a place where her pay was going from $6.20 to $6.50, explaining, "That's 30 cents more I ain't got."

Iles handed over a $10 bill for his 10 chimichangas and two burritos. He stuffed the change deep in his pocket, and headed next to a convenience store owned by a man named Bill Murphy, who said that if he had the chance to talk to new House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, he would ask one question. "Where does she think the money will come from? And that is the question," he said. "My wages are going to go up 10 percent."

Unlike Jack Bower, who would compensate by cutting hours, Murphy said that in his two convenience stores there are no hours to cut. "I'm going to have to raise my prices," he said -- not only because his workers who make less than the new minimum wage would get raises but also because those who earn more would insist on raises as well. Employees at $7.25 will want $8.25. Those at $8.25 will want $9.25.

Economists classify such workers as the ones who would be indirectly affected by a minimum-wage increase. Of the estimated 13 million workers expected to get raises, 7.4 million are in that category. "You've created this entitlement," Murphy said he would tell Pelosi.

And yet he will pay it, he said, and compensate with price increases, which he worries will be inflationary, even though most economists say that won't happen. He will raise prices, he continued, because the only other option would be to earn less money, which he doesn't want to do because he owes $1.5 million on his businesses and wouldn't want to default.

"Now that might be a stretch in some people's minds, from giving a guy a raise to not being able to pay the bank, but that's the path I'm talking about," he said. Against such a dire backdrop, Iles put $17 worth of gas in his car.

"That'll be $16.70," the clerk said to him, and instead of correcting this, Iles gladly took the change.

Thirty cents, suddenly got.

The Wal-Mart Factor
Iles drove past the Atchison Inn, where starting pay is $5.15, past Movie Gallery, where it's also $5.15, and stopped in front of Country Mart, the fanciest grocery store in town, where high school students start at $5.15 and, according to owner Dennis Garrett, "some of them aren't worth that."

A few days earlier, Garrett had gotten a letter from a lobbying consortium called the Coalition for Job Opportunities, urging him to write Congress to protest the minimum-wage increase. It came in the form of a letter already written, to which he merely had to add his congressman's name and send it off to Washington. "We are very concerned," the letter began, and it was signed by 25 organizations.

The most conspicuous signature, though, was the one that wasn't there, that of Wal-Mart, the nation's largest private employer, with 1.3 million workers. Wal-Mart won't say how many of those workers earn less than what the new minimum wage would be, but if the Atchison store is an example, starting pay is $6 an hour.

Nonetheless, in October 2005, Wal-Mart chief executive H. Lee Scott Jr. said in a speech that the "U.S. minimum wage of $5.15 an hour has not been raised in nearly a decade, and we believe it is out of date with the times." He went on to say, "Our customers simply don't have the money to buy basic necessities between paychecks."

When it comes to Wal-Mart, however, just about any announcement that affects public policy is greeted with suspicion, and that has been the case with the minimum wage. Some have said that Wal-Mart, in need of good publicity, is supporting an increase for public relations reasons; others have declared it an attempt to drive small, independently owned stores out of business.

These suspicions exist in Atchison as well. As in many small communities, Wal-Mart defines local retail, and just as Always Low Prices had to retool itself, Country Mart was significantly affected by Wal-Mart's new food-stocked Supercenter several miles away.

What is Wal-Mart up to? What are its true motives? Like many others, Dennis Garrett wonders. He imagines public relations is part of it, but he didn't want to speculate on whether this was an attempt to put him out of business, except to say that raising some wages wouldn't do that. He'd reduce some hours, he said. He'd manage.

Yes, Atchison businesses would be hurt initially, but in the long run, if unemployment increases, those hurt the most would be the very ones Wal-Mart insists would be helped -- the customers, especially the younger ones, "the people who don't advance their education and need a job between the ages of 16 and 21, 22, 23."

In other words, many of the workers in Atchison, one of whom was now at Garrett's service counter buying a money order so he could pay bills. Even though Iles has a checking account, this is the method he prefers because if he were to pay by check, and the check were to bounce because of insufficient funds, the penalty would be devastating. A $25 fee would require more than three hours of work.

And where would those hours come from?

'It's Tough for Me'
So go the calculations of a $7.25 worker, now headed home.

"It's an old trailer," he explained earlier in the day.

The heat doesn't work, he said, and the water heater works sporadically.

One of the bedroom ceilings is caving in. He sleeps in the other bedroom, and his parents sleep in the living room because his father, who has diabetes and had to have several inches of one of his feet amputated, can't really get around.

Also, his father has leukemia. And is legally blind. And his mother, who once made $6.50 an hour as an aide at a nursing home, quit to take care of her husband.

"We're pretty much living off my money," Iles said, and in he went to cook them dinner, bring payday to an end and, the next morning, start the cycle again.

Life at $7.25. Should that be the minimum wage?

"Yes," Iles said.

Even if it hurts job opportunities for people like him, as Dennis Garrett had suggested?

"Yes."

Or causes price increases, as Bill Murphy had suggested?

"Yes."

Or damages businesses such as Always Low Prices?

"I mean, it's tough for me, and I'm already making $7.25 an hour."

Or causes Jack Bower to reduce hours for one of his employees? Perhaps for Iles himself?

"It's just so hard for people. I mean, it's hard," Iles said, and then he went to work.

"I think it'll be bad today," one of the workers suggested as the line at the Wow Only $1.00! cash register began to form.

"Well, it depends on your perspective," Iles said.

watching your money slip through your fingers

It turns out that crystal meth is causing euros to disintegrate:

Users of the drug crystal methamphetamine may be causing euro banknotes to disintegrate, German police have told Der Spiegel magazine.

Sulphates used in the production of the drug could form sulphuric acid when mixed with human sweat, they say, causing banknotes to corrode.

Drug users sniff powdered crystals through rolled up banknotes.

About 1,500 banknotes have crumbled after being withdrawn from cash machines, German banking officials say.

Now, the European media is obsessed with connecting euros and drugs.

I'm no mathlete, but I'm thinking that this study needs a larger sample. (Of euros, not cocaine.)

Cocaine on '100% of Irish euros'
By James Helm, BBC News, Dublin

One hundred percent of banknotes in the Republic of Ireland carry traces of cocaine, a new study has found.

Researchers used the latest forensic techniques that would detect even the tiniest fragments to study a batch of 45 used banknotes.

The scientists at Dublin's City University said they were "surprised by their findings".

Some of the notes had such high levels of cocaine on them that it is thought they were used to snort the drug.

Others had much lower traces and may have been cross-contaminated, perhaps in the wallets or pockets of users.

Growing cocaine use
The results fit with scientific findings from other countries such as the UK and Spain where cocaine has also been found on a high proportion of notes.

Cocaine particles stick to the cotton that is contained within the notes.

Cocaine use is thought to be growing in Ireland. Professor Brett Paul, whose paper was published in a journal of the Royal Society of Chemistry in the UK, said it demonstrated how widespread the use of cocaine is.

The study also found that higher value banknotes, such as 20 and 50 euros, were more likely to contain greater traces of the drug.

i guess this is where we part ways

As seen in this week's New Yorker:

Thanks, Leo

what makes a cartoon new-yorker worthy?

Check out the book: "The Rejection Collection" and some pieces of the Rejection Collection.

Very Fine Lines:
What Makes a Cartoon New Yorker-Worthy? Draw Your Own Conclusion.

By Peter Carlson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 24, 2006; D01

Two plumbers working on a sink with an alligator coming out of the faucet?

Yes.

Two drunks brainstorming about starting the Drinking Network?

No.

A guy with his hand chopped off pointing the way to the Islamic court?

Ahhhhhh . . . maybe.

It's Wednesday afternoon and David Remnick, the editor of the New Yorker, is picking cartoons. A few minutes ago, Bob Mankoff, the magazine's cartoon editor, entered Remnick's office carrying three wire baskets and 81 cartoons. The baskets are labeled Yes, No and Maybe. The cartoons are the ones Mankoff chose from the nearly 1,000 he received since the previous Wednesday's meeting. Now, with the help of Managing Editor Jacob Lewis, Remnick will decide which ones the magazine will buy.

He picks a cartoon out of the pile. It's by Roz Chast, the New Yorker's queen of modern neurosis. This cartoon is a gallery of fictitious "Excuse Cards." Smiling in anticipation, Remnick starts reading.

"You know, some of these are not great," he says, sadly.

"I like the concept of it," says Lewis.

"I'm not sure this is working," Remnick says and the cartoon goes into the No basket.

He picks up the next cartoon. It's another Chast: a mock front page of a tabloid newspaper, the "Arctic Enquirer," with headlines about salacious doings in Santa's workshop.

Remnick laughs. "Okay, let's take that," he says. It goes into the Yes basket.

He keeps going. No. No. Yes. No. Now he picks up a cartoon that's labeled "Good Shrink, Bad Shrink." A guy's lying on a psychiatrist's couch with a shrink on each side of him. One shrink is saying, "Face your demons." The other says, "Take a pill."

Remnick cracks up. "That'll be on every refrigerator in America," he says. laughing. It goes into the Yes basket.

No. Yes. No. No. Remnick picks up a cartoon of a corporate boardroom with a bunch of guys in suits sitting around a conference table with one chair occupied by a brain in a jar. The caption reads, "But first let's all congratulate Ted on his return to work."

" Ewwww!" Remnick says, half groaning, half laughing. "Bob!"

"It's great!" Mankoff says.

"It's horrible!" Remnick responds, laughing.

"What? A little brain in a jar?" Mankoff replies. "No animals were hurt in the making of this cartoon."

Remnick laughs. But he doesn't change his mind. "Not here," he says. It's a No.

Hey, wait a minute! Did you catch that? The guy laughs at the cartoon, but he still rejects it! It's good the cartoonists aren't watching. This would drive them crazy. Well, crazier. Constant rejection has rendered these geniuses half nuts already. In about 20 minutes, Remnick rejects 48 cartoons and buys 33 -- that's 33 out of nearly a thousand that came in this week! It's hard out here for a cartoonist.

Just ask Matthew Diffee. At 36, he's one of the New Yorker's star cartoonists, creator of the classic drawing of Che Guevara wearing a Bart Simpson T-shirt, which has become a hot-selling T-shirt itself. But the man is practically punch-drunk from repeated rejection.

Every Tuesday, like most of the New Yorker's four dozen regular cartoonists, Diffee submits a batch of about 10 cartoons.

"And if you're really, really funny that week," he says, "you'll sell . . . one cartoon! That's a 90 percent rejection rate."

On a bad week, the rejection rate is 100 percent.

This makes for a lot of ego-battered cartoonists. It also makes for a lot of rejected cartoons, many of them very funny. Which is why Diffee recently published a book called "The Rejection Collection: Cartoons You Never Saw, and Never Will See, in the New Yorker."

It's a group of cartoons drawn by 31 New Yorker cartoonists and rejected by Mankoff or Remnick because they were a little too . . . well, one cartoon, by Drew Dernavich, shows a doctor handing his patient a rubber glove and saying, "Give a man an exam and he'll be healthy for a day; teach a man to examine himself and he'll be healthy for a lifetime."

"It's funny to see something drawn by somebody who's in the New Yorker, but it's way too crude to ever be in the New Yorker," Diffee says. "To me, the funniest element is that this guy actually submitted this. W hat was he thinking?"

"The Rejection Collection" is hilarious, Remnick says. "But," he adds, "I did not find myself saying, 'I wish I took these cartoons.' Maybe a few, but very few. I think a lot of these cartoons were purposely submitted knowing they wouldn't get through, and they did it for the hell of it. They know there are certain limits. There's a language limit, a grossness limit, a juvenile limit."

Remnick hates rejecting cartoons. He really does. "There's a heaviness about it," he says, sighing heavily. "Because you're conscious that a certain number of people are waiting on pins and needles to see if they've got a cartoon in that week. It's hard. We're pretty much the only place that runs cartoons consistently, and we run maybe 15 or 20 a week. It's a really tough way to make a living."

Humor Percolator
Here's how Matthew Diffee makes his living: Every morning, he sits down with a cup of coffee, a black Pilot pen and some blank sheets of white paper, and he starts thinking.

"I'll think of something," he says. "I just thought of a barn. What about a barn? A barn raising? Amish people? What about Amish people? They have those beards without mustaches. What would an Amish guy who had a mustache say to a guy who didn't? Those are ideas, but they're not good ideas. So you leave the Amish and you think: corn. And you come up with some bad corn ideas. But maybe one of the bad corn ideas combines with one of the bad Amish ideas and out of the blue, something comes to you."

He's in Washington to promote "The Rejection Collection," and he's sitting in a coffee shop cranking up on caffeine and explaining how cartoons are born. Years ago, he says, he was thinking about the phrase "I was in a different place then."

"I wrote down that phrase and I thought, 'How can I make that funny?' " he says. "And months later, I was thinking about pirates: They walk the plank. They have a hook for a hand. Well, what else could they have instead of a hook? You go through the options. It has to be about the size of a hook. You can't use a broom or a canoe paddle. So it has to be a garden tool or a kitchen utensil. And I thought: A spatula is kind of funny."

Presto! He drew a pirate with a spatula for a hand and the caption, " I was in a different place then." And the New Yorker bought it.

Diffee started drawing cartoons in the late '90s, when he was living in Boston and failing to make it as an artist or a stand-up comic. His first cartoon won a contest sponsored by the New Yorker, and Mankoff encouraged him to submit more. For a year, Diffee submitted 15 cartoons a week, every week.

"I sold four," he says.

That's four out of about 700.

The next year he did a little better. He sold eight.

Now, Diffee lives in Brooklyn and has a contract with the New Yorker, which buys about two dozen of his cartoons a year. He won't say how much his contract pays him -- and Mankoff won't reveal what the magazine pays for cartoons -- but he's getting by.

"I'm not saving money," he says, "but I'm paying my New York rent."

On Tuesday mornings, Diffee goes to Mankoff's office to drop off his latest batch and schmooze with the other cartoonists who've come to drop off their batches. A dozen or so will go to lunch at a restaurant called Pergola des Artistes and talk shop.

"If you expect a lot of one-upping each other in a Gag-o-Rama, you'd be disappointed," he says. "We have serious conversations on how to draw duck feet or whether a duck is funnier than a penguin. And there's a level of bitterness that we're not selling as much as we should."

He pauses. "Sometimes somebody will say something funny and you'll see a bunch of people do this -- " He reaches into his pocket for a pen and paper. "And somebody'll say, 'I claim it!' "

Do You Get It?
Remember the "Seinfeld" episode about the New Yorker cartoon?

Elaine doesn't get the cartoon, so she shows it to Jerry and George, and they don't get it either. Somehow she buttonholes the editor of the New Yorker and demands that he explain it. But he can't.

"Cartoons are like gossamer, and one doesn't dissect gossamer," he says, lamely.

The episode was funny because sometimes New Yorker cartoons really are baffling. It was even funnier if you knew that the script was written by Bruce Eric Kaplan, a TV writer who also draws cartoons for the New Yorker -- cartoons that he signs BEK. Brilliant cartoons that are sometimes, if truth be told, a bit baffling.

Mankoff, who has been cartoon editor at the magazine since 1997, knows that sometimes people are befuddled by New Yorker cartoons. "We don't do focus groups. We don't find out ' Does everybody get it?' " he says. "And sometimes people don't get it. Sometimes it's because we made a mistake. Sometimes it's because the reference is very elusive."

Picking cartoons isn't as easy as it looks. "The funniest cartoon is not necessarily the best cartoon," says Mankoff. "Funnier means that you laugh harder, and everybody's gonna laugh harder at more aggressive cartoons, more obscene cartoons. It's a Freudian thing. It gives more relief. But is it a better joke? To me, better means having more truth in it, having both the humor and the pain and therefore having more meaning and more, uh, uh . . . " He searches for a word, then finds it: "poetry."

Mankoff, 62, is a cartoon philosopher and a cartoonist. He's the guy who drew the oft-reproduced classic of a businessman looking at his datebook as he talks on the phone, saying "No, Thursday's out. How about never -- is never good for you?"

He is also a cartoon entrepreneur. He's the creator of the Cartoon Bank, which sells New Yorker cartoons in every conceivable permutation. You can buy books of New Yorker cartoons about cats or golf or baseball or business or technology or teachers or shrinks. Or you can buy "The Complete Book of New Yorker Cartoons," a massive tome that includes two CDs that, taken together, contain all 68,647 cartoons that had run in the magazine before the book was published in 2004. You can also buy framed prints of every New Yorker cartoon, plus T-shirts, notecards, games, even a shower curtain, so you can look at cartoons when you're naked, wet and soapy.

"Bob is a marketing genius," says Sam Gross, who has been drawing cartoons for the magazine since 1969. "He sells those cartoons on everything but mint jelly."

"Let's look at yesterday, " Mankoff says. He swivels his chair and taps on his computer. The screen fills with the record of yesterday's sales at the Cartoon Bank. "Yesterday we did $26,000," he says, happily.

And the cartoonists get a cut of the action. "On a framed print, an artist might get, say, $60," he says. Some artists have made as much as $100,000 from a popular cartoon.

"Your cartoon that appears in the New Yorker has a life after life," he says. "We pay you for the cartoon and you get royalties. Are you going to be a millionaire? I don't think so. But you can make a decent living."

Rejection Perfection
Looking a tad cartoonish with his scraggly gray hair and his hangdog face, Mankoff flips through a huge pile of cartoons.

"No," he says, tossing one aside.

"Nah," he says, rejecting another.

"Not funny enough," he grumbles, flipping faster. "Definitely not . . . No way . . . Not here . . . Not now . . . Not on my watch . . . Not your day . . . No . . . No . . . For God's sake, no! . . . A thousand times no!"

This isn't real life, thank God. It's a movie, a short called "Being Bob," with Mankoff playing himself as The Rejecter, killer of cartoonist's dreams. It debuted at a New Yorker event last year and now Diffee's showing it at Politics and Prose, the Washington bookstore, where he's promoting "The Rejection Collection."

When the movie ends, he opens the floor to questions.

"Does Mankoff ever laugh?" somebody asks.

"I've never seen it happen," Diffee says, lying about his pal for the sake of a laugh. "He has snickered. But that was because the cartoon was bad and he'd seen it before."

He tells the story of the year he sent in 700 cartoons and sold four.

"And for some reason, I kept doing it," he says. "Some people don't. They have other options, maybe."

A kid comes to the microphone and asks, "Do you get frustrated a lot?"

"How can you tell?" Diffee asks.

That gets a laugh.

"Yes, I get frustrated a lot," he admits.

But that's not necessarily a bad thing. "If you have a pessimistic outlook on life, you'll probably do better," he tells the kid. "If you think nine out of 10 of your ideas will be rejected, you'll work harder."

It's the power of negative thinking -- the perfect philosophy for New Yorker cartoonists and any other poor souls who are frequently clobbered by rejection.

Via Susan G.

a stumbling block in converting women to islam

What is (and isn't) allowable when it comes to beating one's wife under Shari'a (Muslim law).

In other words, don't leave any evidence.


Via Susan G.

if you've got a blacklist i want to be on it

I'm not sure what rock I've been living under, but I just got familiar with Billy Bragg's solo work.

He's a British musician known for his blend of folk, punk-rock, and protest music. He has been active for over 20 years since his early career as a regular contributor to anarchic UK live rock show The Tube. His music is a combination of poetry and political comment, with a dash of romance. He has collaborated with many other musicians, including Johnny Marr of The Smiths, protest folk singer Leon Rosselson, R.E.M., Less Than Jake, Kirsty MacColl, and Wilco. He, along with Paul Weller and others, was a leading member of UK left-wing musicians pressure group Red Wedge in the Thatcher-dominated 80s.

In recent years he has broadened his audience thanks to his involvement with Wilco on the album Mermaid Avenue and its follow-up Mermaid Avenue Vol II.

After listening to the song "Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards" (1988) a lot this weekend, I got "Must I Paint You a Picture, The Essential Billy Bragg."

His sound: Think busking folk singer skewering pop culture and spouting lefty politics — in a delightful, lilting English accent.

Meanwhile, here are the lyrics for "Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards." They're useful when deciphering his thick English accent.

It may have been Camelot for Jack and Jacqueline
But on the Che Guevara highway filling up with gasoline
Fidel Castro's brother spies a rich lady who's crying
Over luxury's disappointment
So he walks over and he's trying
To sympathise with her, but he thinks that he should warn her
That the Third World is just around the corner

In the Soviet Union a scientist is blinded
By the resumption of nuclear testing and he is reminded
That Dr. Robert Oppenheimer's optimism fell
At the first hurdle

In the Cheese Pavilion and the only noise I hear
Is the sound of someone stacking chairs
And mopping up spilt beer
And someone asking questions and basking in the light
Of the fifteen fame filled minutes of the fanzine writer

Mixing Pop and Politics he asks me what the use is
I offer him embarrassment and my usual excuses
While looking down the corridor
Out to where the van is waiting
I'm looking for the Great Leap Forwards

Jumble sales are organised and pamphlets have been posted
Even after closing time there's still parties to be hosted
You can be active with the activists
Or sleep in with the sleepers
While you're waiting for the Great Leap Forwards

One leap forward, two leaps back
Will politics get me the sack?

Here comes the future and you can't run from it
If you've got a blacklist I want to be on it

It's a mighty long way down rock 'n roll
From Top of the Pops to drawing the dole

If no one out there understands
Start your own revolution and cut out the middleman

In a perfect world we'd all sing in tune
But this is reality so give me some room

So join the struggle while you may
The Revolution is just a T-shirt away
Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards

lorena's pumpkin muffins

Lorena made these for a birthday last month and I couldn't stop eating them.

Prep time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 20 minutes
Makes 12 muffins

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour (or 1 cup all-purpose flour + 3/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour)
1 1/4 cups sugar
1 TBSP baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground or freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground allspice
1/8 tsp cloves
1 cup pureed pumpkin (fresh or from a can-- don't use pumpkin pie mix!)
1/2 soy milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil (or 1/4 cup apple sauce + 1/4 cup oil)
2 tablespoons molasses
1 cup chopped fresh or frozen cranberries

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Lightly grease a twelve-muffin tin. Sift
together flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and spices. In a separate bowl,
whisk together pumpkin, soy milk, oil and molasses. Pour the wet ingredients
into the dry and mix. Fold in chopped cranberries. Fill the muffin cups
two-thirds full. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in
the center comes out clean.

From "Vegan with a Vengeance"by Isa Chandra Moskowitz

quotable

Good luck, Nina!

"Fate loves the fearless."
-James Russell Lowell

for the good of the country

Yesterday, Nancy Pelosi made history as the first woman elevated to Speaker of the House. I'm glad that she's in the post, not just because she's a woman, but because she's a woman whose values and stances on political issues are almost identical to my own. You go, Nancy!

Why are so many Conservatives afraid of Nancy Pelosi? As my friend Sharon says:

They have painted her as a demon. She is, after all, a good Catholic girl — even attended a Catholic university. She had five children in six years (can you say family values, folks?). She fights against poverty and for the underprivileged (correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Jesus do that?). She’s hard working and willing to compromise for the common good. She believes in social justice. Excuse me, but where is Satan in all that?

She's gone from the kitchen to the Congress and is pledging to work with the minority "for the good of the country."

And, yes, I'm glad that it's now two bullets (or one very well-placed bomb) that separate a woman from the Presidency.

my u2 top ten list

Inspired by Omer's Bono-mullet-bashing post, I had to think long and hard about my U2 top ten list. The top ten change every so often, but here's what I'm feeling at the moment. And, yes, I couldn't keep it to ten, once I got started.

1. Bad (Wide Awake in America version)
2. All I Want Is You (Extended b-side single version)
3. Pride (In the Name of Love)
4. With or Without You
5. One
6. Running to Stand Still
7. New Year's Day
8. Can't Help Falling in Love (Okay, it's a cover. But it's spine-tingling in just the right way)
9. Where the Streets Have No Name
10. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
11. Sunday Bloody Sunday
12. I Will Follow
13. Bullet the Blue Sky
14. Two Hearts Beat As One
15. 40
16. In God's Country
17. Everlasting Love (cover)
18. Redemption Song (cover)
19. The Sweetest Thing
20. Love Comes Tumbling
21. Dancing Barefoot

I draw the line somewhere around here for the next tier. I didn't actually buy any albums after Zooropa (but got some as gifts) , so I'm not as familiar with the latest stuff. I'm fine with that.

1. So Cruel
2. The First Time
3. Ultraviolet (Light My Way)
4. Acrobat
5. Angel of Harlem
   
6. God Part II
7. Heartland
8. Love Rescue Me
   
9. Stay (Faraway So Close)
10. Beautiful Day
11. Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home)
12. Zooropa
13. Numb
14. The Unforgettable Fire
15. Dear Prudence (cover)
16. Help (cover)
17. Gloria
18. Seconds
    
19. Stories for Boys

i'm gonna live forever

Well I'll be damned. If this is true, I'm gonna live forever. After all, I've been in school for all but the first four years of my life. And I am ridiculously social.

A Surprising Secret to a Long Life: Stay in School
January 3, 2007
By GINA KOLATA

James Smith, a health economist at the RAND Corporation, has heard a variety of hypotheses about what it takes to live a long life — money, lack of stress, a loving family, lots of friends. But he has been a skeptic.

Yes, he says, it is clear that on average some groups in every society live longer than others. The rich live longer than the poor, whites live longer than blacks in the United States. Longevity, in general, is not evenly distributed in the population. But what, he asks, is cause and what is effect? And how can they be disentangled?

He is venturing, of course, into one of the prevailing mysteries of aging, the persistent differences seen in the life spans of large groups. In every country, there is an average life span for the nation as a whole and there are average life spans for different subsets, based on race, geography, education and even churchgoing.

But the questions for researchers like Dr. Smith are why? And what really matters?

The answers, he and others say, have been a surprise. The one social factor that researchers agree is consistently linked to longer lives in every country where it has been studied is education. It is more important than race; it obliterates any effects of income.

Year after year, in study after study, says Richard Hodes, director of the National Institute on Aging, education “keeps coming up.”

And, health economists say, those factors that are popularly believed to be crucial — money and health insurance, for example, pale in comparison.

Dr. Smith explains: “Giving people more Social Security income, or less for that matter, will not really affect people’s health. It is a good thing to do for other reasons but not for health.”

Health insurance, too, he says, “is vastly overrated in the policy debate.”

Instead, Dr. Smith and others say, what may make the biggest difference is keeping young people in school. A few extra years of school is associated with extra years of life and vastly improved health decades later, in old age.

It is not the only factor, of course.

There is smoking, which sharply curtails life span. There is a connection between having a network of friends and family and living a long and healthy life. And there is evidence that people with more powerful jobs and, presumably, with more control over their work lives, are healthier and longer lived.

But there is little dispute about the primacy of education.

“If you were to ask me what affects health and longevity,” says Michael Grossman, a health economist at the City University of New York, “I would put education at the top of my list.”

Graduate Student Finds Answer

The first rigorous effort to decide whether education really changes people so they live longer began in a most inauspicious way.

It was 1999 and a Columbia University graduate student, Adriana Lleras-Muney, was casting about for a topic for her doctoral dissertation in economics. She found an idea in a paper published in 1969. Three economists noted the correlation between education and health and gave some advice: If you want to improve health, you will get more return by investing in education than by investing in medical care.

It had been an inflammatory statement, Dr. Lleras-Muney says. And for good reason. It could only be true if education in and of itself caused good health.

But there were at least two other possibilities.

Maybe sick children did not go to school, or dropped out early because they were ill. Or maybe education was a proxy for wealth, and it was wealth that led to health. It could be that richer parents who gave their children everything, including better nutrition, better medical care and a better education, had children who, by virtue of being wealthy, lived longer.

How, she asked herself, could she sort out causes and effects? It was the chicken-and-egg problem that plagues such research.

The answer came one day when Dr. Lleras-Muney was reading another economics paper. It indicated that about 100 years ago, different states started passing laws forcing children to go to school for longer periods. She knew what to do.

“The idea was, when a state changed compulsory schooling from, say, six years to seven years, would the people who were forced to go to school for six years live as long as the people the next year who had to go for seven years,” Dr. Lleras-Muney asked.

All she would have to do was to go back and find the laws in the different states and then use data from the census to find out how long people lived before and after the law in each state was changed.

“I was very excited for about three seconds,” she says. Then she realized how onerous it could be to comb through the state archives.

But when her analysis was finished, Dr. Lleras-Muney says, “I was surprised, I was really surprised.” It turned out that life expectancy at age 35 was extended by as much as one and a half years simply by going to school for one extra year.

Her prize-winning paper appeared in Review of Economic Studies. And she ended up with a job as an assistant professor at Princeton. Now, others papers have appeared, examining the effects of changed laws on compulsory education in Sweden, Denmark, England and Wales. In every country, compelling children to spend a longer time in school led to better health.

“You might think that forcing someone to go to school who does not want to be there may not be the same thing as going to school because you want to,” Dr. Lleras-Muney said. “That did not seem to be the case.”

Not everyone was convinced.

Victor Fuchs, a health economist at Stanford, points out that it is not clear how or why education would lead to a longer life.

And, he said, there are other mysteries. For example, women increased their years of schooling more than men have in recent decades. But men are catching up with women in their life spans.

And it might be expected that after a certain point, more years of school would not add to a person’s life span. That, however, is not what the data shows. The education effect never wanes. But most researchers say they are swayed by Dr. Lleras-Muney’s work and the studies in other countries. That, though, leaves the question of why the education effect occurs.

Dr. Lleras-Muney and others point to one plausible explanation — as a group, less educated people are less able to plan for the future and to delay gratification. If true, that may, for example, explain the differences in smoking rates between more educated people and less educated ones.

Smokers are at least twice as likely to die at any age as people who never smoked, says Samuel Preston, a demographer at the University of Pennsylvania. And not only are poorly educated people more likely to smoke but, he says, “everybody knows that smoking can be deadly,” and that includes the poorly educated.

But education, Dr. Smith at RAND finds, may somehow teach people to delay gratification. For example, he reported that in one large federal study of middle-aged people, those with less education were less able to think ahead.

“Most of adherence is unpleasant,” Dr. Smith says. “You have to be willing to do something that is not pleasant now and you have to stay with it and think about the future.”

He deplores the dictums to live in the moment or to live for today. That advice, Dr. Smith says, is “the worst thing for your health.”

An Observation on the Street

In the late 1970’s, Lisa Berkman, now a professor of public policy at the Harvard School of Public Health, took a part-time job at a San Francisco health care center. It drew people from Chinatown and the city’s Italian neighborhood, North Beach, as well as from the Tenderloin district, a poor area where homeless people lived on the streets and mentally ill people roamed. And she noticed something striking.

“In Chinatown and North Beach, there were these tightly bound social networks,” Dr. Berkman recalls. “You saw old people with young people. In the Tenderloin, people were just sort of dumped. People were really isolated and did not have ways of figuring out how to make things work.”

A few years later, she was haunted by that observation. She had entered graduate school and was studying Seventh-day Adventists when she began to wonder whether the standard explanation for their longer lives — a healthy, vegetarian diet — was enough.

“They were at decreased risk from many, many diseases, even ones where diet was not implicated,” Dr. Berkman says. And, she adds, “it seemed they simply had a slower rate of aging.”

Seventh-day Adventists, like the people in Chinatown and North Beach, had “incredibly cohesive social networks,” Dr. Berkman notes. Could that be the clue?

Thirty years later, studies have borne out her hunch.

The risks of being socially isolated are “phenomenal,” Dr. Berkman says, associated with twofold to fivefold increases in mortality rates. And the correlations emerged in study after study and in country after country.

Yet, Dr. Berkman adds, there was that perennial question: Did social isolation shorten lives or were people isolated because they were sick and frail and at great risk of death?

She knows that sometimes ill health leads to social isolation. But, Dr. Berkman says, the more she investigated, the more evidence she found that social isolation might also lead to poor health and a shorter life by, for example, increasing stress and making it harder to get assistance when ill.

But researchers also warn that their findings that education and, to a lesser degree, social networks, may directly affect health do not necessarily mean that other hypotheses would also hold up. The cautionary tale, health economists say, is the story of the link between health and wealth.

Over and over again, studies show that health is linked to wealth. It even matters where a person lives.

For example, in a new analysis of Medicare beneficiaries, Stephanie Raymond and Kristen Bronner of Dartmouth College find that the lowest death rates are in the wealthiest places. So in San Francisco, with a per capita income of $57,496, just 4.16 percent of Medicare beneficiaries die each year. But in Tuscaloosa, Ala, whose per capita income is $24,257, the annual death rate was 5.97 percent.

Race was not a large factor.

“If you control for where people live, the disparities between black and white mortality rates become much smaller,” said Jonathan Skinner, a Dartmouth health economist.

An obvious explanation is that wealth buys health. And it seems plausible. Poorer people, at least in the United States, are less likely to have health insurance or access to medications.

But Dr. Fuchs says, then why don’t differences between rich and poor shrink in countries where everyone has health care?

“All you have to do is look at the experience of countries like England that have had health insurance for more than 40 years,” he says. “There is no diminution in the class differentials. It’s been the same in Sweden. It’s true everywhere.”

In fact, Dr. Smith says, the wealth-health connection, at least among adults, goes in the wrong direction. It is not that lower incomes lead to poor health so much as that poor health leads to lower incomes, he found.

A Skewing of the Numbers

Sick people tend to have modest out-of-pocket medical expenses, but often are unable to work or unable to work full time.

The result can be a drastic and precipitous and long-lasting drop in income. As the ranks of middle- and upper-income populations become depleted of people who are ill, there is a skewing of the data so healthy people are disproportionately richer.

That effect emerged when Dr. Smith analyzed data from the National Institute on Aging’s National Health and Retirement Survey, a national sample of 7,600 American households with at least one person aged 51 to 61.

If someone developed cancer, heart disease or lung disease — which will affect about a fifth of people aged 51 to 61 over the next eight years — the household’s income declined by an average of more than $37,000. And its assets — its wealth — fell by $49,000 over the ensuing eight years, even though out-of-pocket medical expenses were just $4,000.

Dr. Smith also asked whether getting richer made people healthier, an effect that could translate into a longer life. It does not, he concluded after studying the large increases in income during the stock market surge of the 1990s.

“I find almost no role of financial anything in the onset of disease,” Dr. Smith says. “That’s an almost throw-you-out-of-the-room thing,” he confesses, but the data, he and other economists insist, is consistent.

Income, says Dr. Preston, “is so heavily influenced by health itself.”

Much More Than Genes and Luck

As director of the National Institute on Aging, Dr. Hodes often speaks to policy makers, giving briefings on the latest scientific findings. But, he and others say, all too often there is a disconnect.

There are some important findings: Health and nutrition early in life, even prenatally, can affect health in middle and old age and can affect how long people live.

For the most part, genes have little effect on life spans. Controlling heart disease risk factors, like smoking, cholesterol, blood pressure and diabetes, pays off in a more vigorous old age and a longer life. And it seems increasingly likely that education plays a major role in health and life spans.

And then there is the question of what to do. It might seem logical to act now, pouring money into education or child health, for example.

But scientists often say they would like good evidence beforehand that a program that sounds like it would make a difference, like keeping students in school longer, really works. And if the goal is longer and healthier lives, is that the most cost-effective way to spend public money?

There are just so many questions remaining, says Richard Suzman, a program director at the National Institute on Aging. Even studies showing that, for many people, the die may be cast early in life, do not reveal how best to make changes.

“We have only a vague idea of when and where early experience links to old age or when and where to intervene,” Dr. Suzman says.

“When it comes to changing things,” says Dr. Skinner, the Dartmouth economist, “we are in uncharted territory.”

wishful thinking

Dammit. Why am I always the last one to know?

The Global Consciousness Project at Princeton runs a network of Random Event Generators (REGs) around the world, which record changes in randomness during global events. The results show that human consciousness can be measured to have a global effect on matter and energy.

So, some folks thought that they'd see if a synchronized global orgasm would be measureable.

WHAT?
Synchronized global orgasm

WHO?
All Men and Women, you and everyone you know.

WHERE?
Everywhere in the world, but especially in countries with weapons of mass destruction.

WHEN?
Winter Solstice Day - Friday, December 22nd, at the time of your choosing, in the place of your choosing and with as much privacy as you choose.

WHY?
To effect positive change in the energy field of the Earth through input of the largest possible surge of human energy a Synchronized Global Orgasm. There are two more US fleets heading for the Persian Gulf with anti-submarine equipment that can only be for use against Iran, so the time to change Earth’s energy is NOW!

Mark your calendar for the Second Annual Global Orgasm for Peace on December 22, 2007.
Via Dykes to Watch Out For

wookin' pa nub

It's a new year and time for a new you. Better yet, if you're single, it's time for a new you + a new special someone.

Given my experience in the online dating world, several friends have asked me for advice on the subject. All I have to say is: Match had numbers, but was teeming with the unwashed masses. Nerve lacked a critical mass (where I live). I never tried eHarmony, Craigslist, or Yahoo Personals. And although it's hilarious, the operative word when it comes toGoogle Romance is irony, sweet effing irony.

In the end, I chose OK Cupid on the advice of a friend because it had lots of people that seemed to match my demographic. The site itself was quirky, irreverent, fun, and completely gratis. I'm very pleased with the results.

music on the brain

I find this fascinating.

Music of the Hemispheres
By CLIVE THOMPSON
December 31, 2006
Montreal

“Listen to this,” Daniel Levitin said. “What is it?” He hit a button on his computer keyboard and out came a half-second clip of music. It was just two notes blasted on a raspy electric guitar, but I could immediately identify it: the opening lick to the Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar.”

Then he played another, even shorter snippet: a single chord struck once on piano. Again I could instantly figure out what it was: the first note in Elton John’s live version of “Benny and the Jets.”

Dr. Levitin beamed. “You hear only one note, and you already know who it is,” he said. “So what I want to know is: How we do this? Why are we so good at recognizing music?”

This is not merely some whoa-dude epiphany that a music fan might have while listening to a radio contest. Dr. Levitin has devoted his career to exploring this question. He is a cognitive psychologist who runs the Laboratory for Music Perception, Cognition and Expertise at McGill University in Montreal, perhaps the world’s leading lab in probing why music has such an intense effect on us.

“By the age of 5 we are all musical experts, so this stuff is clearly wired really deeply into us,” said Dr. Levitin, an eerily youthful-looking 49, surrounded by the pianos, guitars and enormous 16-track mixers that make his lab look more like a recording studio.

This summer he published “This Is Your Brain on Music” (Dutton), a layperson’s guide to the emerging neuroscience of music. Dr. Levitin is an unusually deft interpreter, full of striking scientific trivia. For example we learn that babies begin life with synesthesia, the trippy confusion that makes people experience sounds as smells or tastes as colors. Or that the cerebellum, a part of the brain that helps govern movement, is also wired to the ears and produces some of our emotional responses to music. His experiments have even suggested that watching a musician perform affects brain chemistry differently from listening to a recording.

Dr. Levitin is singular among music scientists for actually having come out of the music industry. Before getting his Ph.D. he spent 15 years as a record producer, working with artists ranging from the Blue Öyster Cult to Chris Isaak. While still in graduate school he helped Stevie Wonder assemble a best-of collection; in 1992 Dr. Levitin’s sensitive ears detected that MCA Records had accidentally used third-generation backup tapes to produce seven Steely Dan CDs, and he embarrassed the label by disclosing it in Billboard magazine. He has earned nine gold and platinum albums, which he tucks in corners of his lab, office and basement at home. “They look a little scary when you put them all in one place, so I spread them around,” he said.

Martin Grant, the dean of science at McGill, compares Dr. Levitin’s split professional personality to that of Brian Greene, the pioneering string-theory scientist who also writes mass-market books. “Some people are good popularizers, and some are good scientists, but not usually both at once,” Dr. Grant said. “Dan’s actually cutting edge in his field.”

Scientifically, Dr. Levitin’s colleagues credit him for focusing attention on how music affects our emotions, turf that wasn’t often covered by previous generations of psychoacousticians, who studied narrower questions about how the brain perceives musical sounds. “The questions he asks are very very musical, very concerned with the fact that music is an art that we interact with, not just a bunch of noises,” said Rita Aiello, an adjunct professor in the department of psychology at New York University.

Ultimately, scientists say, his work offers a new way to unlock the mysteries of the brain: how memory works, how people with autism think, why our ancestors first picked up instruments and began to play, tens of thousands of years ago.

DR. LEVITIN originally became interested in producing in 1981, when his band — a punk outfit called the Mortals — went into the recording studio. None of the other members were interested in the process, so he made all the decisions behind the board. “I actually became a producer because I saw the producers getting all the babes,” he said. “They were stealing them from the guitarists.” He dropped out of college to work with alternative bands.

Producers, he noted, were able to notice impossibly fine gradations of quality in music. Many could identify by ear the type of amplifiers and recording tape used on an album.

“So I started wondering: How was the brain able to do this?” Dr. Levitin said. “What’s going on there, and why are some people better than others? And why is music such an emotional experience?” He began sitting in on neuroscience classes at Stanford University.

“Even back then, Dan was never satisfied with the simple answer,” said Howie Klein, a former president of Reprise and Sire Records. “He was always poking and prodding.”

By the ’90s Dr. Levitin was disenchanted with the music industry. “When they’re dropping Van Morrison and Elvis Costello because they don’t sell enough records,” he said, “I knew it was time to move on.” Academic friends persuaded him to pursue a science degree. They bet that he would have good intuitions on how to design music experiments.

They were right. Traditionally music psychologists relied on “simple melodies they’d written themselves,” Dr. Levitin said. What could that tell anyone about the true impact of powerful music?

For his first experiment he came up with an elegant concept: He stopped people on the street and asked them to sing, entirely from memory, one of their favorite hit songs. The results were astonishingly accurate. Most people could hit the tempo of the original song within a four-percent margin of error, and two-thirds sang within a semitone of the original pitch, a level of accuracy that wouldn’t embarrass a pro.

“When you played the recording of them singing alongside the actual recording of the original song, it sounded like they were singing along,” Dr. Levitin said.

It was a remarkable feat. Most memories degrade and distort with time; why would pop music memories be so sharply encoded? Perhaps because music triggers the reward centers in our brains. In a study published last year Dr. Levitin and group of neuroscientists mapped out precisely how.

Observing 13 subjects who listened to classical music while in an M.R.I. machine, the scientists found a cascade of brain-chemical activity. First the music triggered the forebrain, as it analyzed the structure and meaning of the tune. Then the nucleus accumbus and ventral tegmental area activated to release dopamine, a chemical that triggers the brain’s sense of reward.

The cerebellum, an area normally associated with physical movement, reacted too, responding to what Dr. Levitin suspected was the brain’s predictions of where the song was going to go. As the brain internalizes the tempo, rhythm and emotional peaks of a song, the cerebellum begins reacting every time the song produces tension (that is, subtle deviations from its normal melody or tempo).

“When we saw all this activity going on precisely in sync, in this order, we knew we had the smoking gun,” he said. “We’ve always known that music is good for improving your mood. But this showed precisely how it happens.”

The subtlest reason that pop music is so flavorful to our brains is that it relies so strongly on timbre. Timbre is a peculiar blend of tones in any sound; it is why a tuba sounds so different from a flute even when they are playing the same melody in the same key. Popular performers or groups, Dr. Levitin argued, are pleasing not because of any particular virtuosity, but because they create an overall timbre that remains consistent from song to song. That quality explains why, for example, I could identify even a single note of Elton John’s “Benny and the Jets.”

“Nobody else’s piano sounds quite like that,” he said, referring to Mr. John. “Pop musicians compose with timbre. Pitch and harmony are becoming less important.”

Dr. Levitin dragged me over to a lab computer to show me what he was talking about. “Listen to this,” he said, and played an MP3. It was pretty awful: a poorly recorded, nasal-sounding British band performing, for some reason, a Spanish-themed ballad.

Dr. Levitin grinned. “That,” he said, “is the original demo tape of the Beatles. It was rejected by every record company. And you can see why. To you and me it sounds terrible. But George Martin heard this and thought, ‘Oh yeah, I can imagine a multibillion-dollar industry built on this.’

“Now that’s musical genius.”

THE largest audience that Dr. Levitin has performed in front of was 1,000 people, when he played backup saxophone for Mel Tormé. Years of being onstage piqued Dr. Levitin’s interest in another aspect of musical experience: watching bands perform. Does the brain experience a live performance differently from a recorded one?

To find out, he and Bradley Vines, a graduate student, devised an interesting experiment. They took two clarinet performances and played them for three groups of listeners: one that heard audio only; one that saw a video only; and one that had audio and video. As each group listened, participants used a slider to indicate how their level of tension was rising or falling.

One rapid, complex passage caused tension in all groups, but less in the one watching and listening simultaneously. Why? Possibly, Dr. Levitin said, because of the performer’s body language: the clarinetist appeared to be relaxed even during that rapid-fire passage, and the audience picked up on his visual cues. The reverse was also true: when the clarinetist played in a subdued way but appeared animated, the people with only video felt more tension than those with only audio.

In another, similar experiment the clarinetist fell silent for a few bars. This time the viewers watching the video maintained a higher level of excitement because they could see that he was gearing up to launch into a new passage. The audio-only listeners had no such visual cues, and they regarded the silence as much less exciting.

This spring Dr. Levitin began an even more involved experiment to determine how much emotion is conveyed by live performers. In April he took participants in a Boston Symphony Orchestra concert — the conductor Keith Lockhart, five of the musicians and 15 audience members — and wired them with sensors to measure their state of arousal, including heart rate, body movements and muscle tension.

At one point during the performance Mr. Lockhart swung his wrist with such force that a sensor attached to his cuff went flying off. Dr. Levitin’s team tried to reattach it with duct tape, until the conductor objected — “Did you just put duct tape on an Armani?” he asked — and lighter surgical tape was used instead.

The point of the experiment is to determine whether the conductor creates noticeable changes in the emotional tenor of the performance. Dr. Levitin says he suspects there’s a domino effect: the conductor becomes particularly animated, transmits this to the orchestra and then to the audience, in a matter of seconds. Mr. Lockhart is skeptical. “As a conductor,” he said, “I’m a causatory force for music, but I’m not a causatory force for emotion.” But Dr. Levitin is still crunching the data.

“It might not turn out to be like that,” he said, “But wouldn’t it be cool if it did?”

Dr. Levitin’s work has occasionally undermined some cherished beliefs about music. For example recent years have seen an explosion of “Baby Mozart” videos and toys, based on the idea — popular since the ’80s — that musical and mathematical ability are inherently linked.

But Dr. Levitin argued that this could not be true, based on his study of people with Williams syndrome, a genetic disorder that leaves people with low intelligence. Their peak mental capacities are typically those of young child, with no ability to calculate quantities. Dr. Levitin once asked a woman with Williams to hold up her hand for five seconds; she left it in the air for a minute and a half. “No concept of time at all,” he said, “and definitely no math.”

Yet people with Williams possess unusually high levels of musical ability. One Williams boy Dr. Levitin met was so poorly coordinated he could not open the case to his clarinet. But once he was holding the instrument, his coordination problems vanished, and he could play fluidly. Music cannot be indispensably correlated with math, Dr. Levitin noted, if Williams people can play music. He is now working on a study that compares autistics — some of whom have excellent mathematical ability, but little musical ability — to people with Williams; in the long run, he said, he thinks it could help shed light on why autistic brains develop so differently.

Not all of Dr. Levitin’s idea have been easily accepted. He argues, for example, that music is an evolutionary adaptation: something that men developed as a way to demonstrate reproductive fitness. (Before you laugh, consider the sex lives of today’s male rock stars.) Music also helped social groups cohere. “Music has got to be useful for survival, or we would have gotten rid of it years ago,” he said.

But Steven Pinker, a cognitive scientist at Harvard known for his defense of evolutionary psychology, has publicly disparaged this idea. Dr. Pinker has called music “auditory cheesecake,” something pleasant but not evolutionarily nutritious. If it is a sexual signal for reproduction, then why, Dr. Pinker asked, does “a 60-year-old woman enjoy listening to classical music when she’s alone at home?” Dr. Levitin wrote an entire chapter refuting Dr. Pinker’s arguments; when I asked Dr. Pinker about Dr. Levitin’s book he said he hadn’t read it.

Nonetheless Dr. Levitin plugs on, and sometimes still plugs in. He continues to perform music, doing several gigs a year with Diminished Faculties, a ragtag band composed entirely of professors and students at McGill. On a recent December afternoon members assembled in a campus ballroom to do a sound check for their performance that evening at a holiday party. Playing a blue Stratocaster, Dr. Levitin crooned the Chris Isaak song “Wicked Game.” “I’m not a great guitarist, and I’m not a great singer,” he said.

But he is not bad, either, and still has those producer’s ears. When “Wicked Game” ended, the bass player began noodling idly, playing the first few notes of a song that seemed instantly familiar to all the younger students gathered. “That’s Nirvana, right?” Dr. Levitin said, cocking his head and squinting. “ ‘Come As You Are.’ I love that song.”