President Obama Takes Questions at GOP House Issues Conference

Obama and the Public Option

Today's Glenn Greenwald post links to Ezra Klein's post about the question of whether Barack Obama campaigned on the public option. It's rather a question of semantics. Perhaps the public option was not a major theme of his campaign, but it or what was called a public program was certainly in his campaign.What's the difference?

As of today, what Organizing for America has for the Obama Plan includes a public option.

This is in regards to Obama's recent statement: "I didn't campaign on the public option."

Bill White for Governor

Bill White, former mayor of Houston, is running for governor of Texas. His campaign website doesn't mention it, but he is running as a Democrat. I guess White wants to present himself as non-partisan, but probably as well it still must not be politically safe to be proud of being a Democrat in Texas. Anyway, I'm glad White is running. He is a strong candidate with a very good record as mayor of Houston. I think he should be competitive against the Republican candidate, either current governor Rick Perry or Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson.

The original reason for this post was to link to White's commencement speech to Rice University graduates in 2006. At the time I watched the speech on C-Span, I was somewhat moved by seeing someone so openly promoting public service. It was one of the most stern but also most inspiring commencement speeches that I have ever seen. I've been a stronger admirer of White since.So finally, here is a link to it. Unfortunately, I can't embed it into this post.

Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle

I was referred to this talk by a friend. It's quite an indictment of our capitalistic society that has become delusional about reality.

What Darwin Never Knew

PBS's NOVA had an excellent show on Darwin, evolution, natural selection, DNA, etc. the other night. It has a nice short biography of Darwin and his scientific discoveries and scientifically political challenges of his time. It goes into Darwin's theory of natural selection and then to more recent knowledge about DNA (what Darwin never knew). The new stuff for me was the information about the hierarchy of genes. There are genes that make stuff (creating the proteins that make our eyes, brain, limbs, etc.). There are genes that act like switches turning on or off the other genes, and then there are genes that control the switch genes.

The web site linked above itself appears to have further interesting information on evolution and DNA.

Challenging the President

Ryan Grim of HuffingtonPost.com takes up the challenge from President Obama to identify any gaps between what Obama campaigned on and the policies that his administration have supported since his taking office. Some pointers in the article to remember.

Bone Vitality

For some reason I was awake and listening to the People's Pharmacy on KERA 6am Saturday morning. I hardly ever listen to this show in part for the obvious reason, but I felt fortunate to listen to this one. It was on bone vitality. The first guest was medical journalist Michael Castleman who with a coauthor recently came out with the book Building Bone Vitality: A Revolutionary Diet Plan to Prevent Bone Loss and Reverse Osteoporosis.

At least in the radio show, Castleman's main point was that taking calcium supplements Or drinking alot of milk has not been shown to make much of a difference in bone vitality. Rather, a diet with plenty of fruits and vegetables plus exercise is the best prescription for maintaining strong bones. The reason is that there are other nutrients besides calcium that are necessary for bone health (I think manganese and phosphorus were a couple mentioned), and one gets these from fruits and vegetables.

Also pointed out was that a diet high in animal protein causes the blood to become acidic, and this causes calcium to come from the bones to maintain a ph balance in the blood. I first read about protein leeching calcium from the bones 20 years ago during the early days of my vegetarian period. Perhaps this view is gaining traction.

The second guest on the show was Walter Willett, MD, DrPH, and a chairman of the nutrition department at Harvard's school of public health. He was of course more politically non-committal about Castleman's claims, particularly about animal protein, but he didn't refute Castleman's calcium claim. He was behind a diet with plenty of fruits and vegetables. What nutritionist wouldn't be?

One small negative about the show is that Joe Graedon, one of the show's hosts, seemed to distance himself from Castleman's protein claim ("it's out there") when talking with Willett. Yet when he and his wife Terry were talking to Castleman earlier, there wasn't any skepticism expressed on either hosts' part. A little two-faced I thought.