Progressive Wednesday

And end to AIDS might be on the horizon.

According to a recent article posted on the website for Channel 11 out of Atlanta, there might be some very strong hope for the future of an AIDS vaccine:

The world could have a new vaccine designed to kill the AIDS virus in as little as three to four years according to an Atlanta-based group working on the vaccine.

It is a scientific advance that could save tens of millions of lives, and it is being developed on the campus of Emory University.

I’m a bit confused about how this vaccine works, but you need to bear in mind that I really have no idea how a smoke detector, my microwave, or aspirin works. I don’t even know how the next tissue pops up out of a box of Klennex when you grab one to blow your nose.

But apparently, the vaccine employs a “decoy virus” which contains minuscule amounts of HIV, amounts so small no one would actually get AIDS from the injection. This sets up “memory cells,” which would attack the actual virus should you become exposed. In a scientific nutshell:

The vaccine works using a one-two pharmaceutical punch to prime the body then kill the virus.

“It raises both antibodies that can block the virus and it raises white blood cells called t cells that can kill the virus infected cells,– said [Dr. Harriet Robinson, Ph. D., of the Emory Vaccine Center].

I hate to build up false hope, but steps like this on a small level (according to the article the lab where this powerful work is getting done is smaller than my garage), where progress, at times surprisingly, seems to be made.

How important could this next step in defending and treating AIDS be? Well, according to ADVERT, an international AIDS charity, “the UNAIDS/WHO AIDS Epidemic Update [estimates] around 37.2 million adults and 2.3 million children were living with HIV at the end of 2006.” Combined that would be like every single person in California having HIV. Or everyone in Canada and New Zeland put together. Or all of Spain.

Let’s hope, and pray, and hope some more that there’s an end in sight.

To keep yourself informed about HIV and AIDS, just click the red ribbon. Remember, friends, knowledge is progress.

Norwegian political pandering

One of the things that bothers me most about our current political system, or at least many of our current politicians, is how little they ask of their constituents. We spend trillions on a war of choice, all while cutting taxes, especially for upper income households, without providing adequate equipment for our troops. We re-up a Farm Bill that over-subsidizes corn even though our government knows about its enormous negative impact on our environment, health, and economy. We are encouraged to indulge in huge vehicles and drive as much as we want in spite of the fact that gas prices are outrageous and we are destroying our environment with each firing of a piston.

I'm not one to wait for my government to tell me what to do and neither should you be. But it would be nice if a politician took a stance on an issue, even or especially one that is unpopular, because they knew it was right, rather than because it would get them reelected.

Politicians in other countries do it. Sometimes they even get reelected. In Norway, for instance, they not only require that their cars be more fuel efficient and ask that their citizens be more environmentally conscious, but, according to Reuters:

No car can be “green,” “clean” or “environmentally friendly,” according to some of the world’s strictest advertising guidelines set to enter into force in Norway next month.

“Cars cannot do anything good for the environment except less damage than others,” said Bente Oeverli, a senior official at the office of the state-run Consumer Ombudsman.

Well said, Bente.

So you can't even advertise a vehicle as “environmentally-friendly– in Norway. The article lists several more reasons; most of them even make sense. But the point is that they are taking action based on something that they believe to be right, rather than worrying about who they might upset.

So what can we do about it? Well, first, don't wait for your government to tell you to do the right thing. And next time someone holds an opinion different than you own, keep an open mind. If enough people do it, we might get some sensible progressive political solutions rather than just sycophantic pandering. Heck, you might even be able to tell one politician from another.

 Photo by this Norwegian.

This Wednesday: Corn, from Ascorbates to Zein

Problem:

What's better than an ear of sweet corn rolled in butter and sprinkled with salt and pepper on a warm summer evening, your whole family celebrating the beautiful day by eating dinner on the back deck? Okay, some of you might not like the seemingly endless flossing that must succeed this indulgence if you don't want that stuff stuck between your teeth, or the flies buzzing around the cobs tossed on the ground, or the “slurp-chomp-smack– sound that Uncle Billy makes while getting half in his mouth and half in his beard, but it tastes good and has become a staple of the American summer diet.

And that's all right. An ear or two each week during the summer isn't going to make you fat by itself or destroy our air, water, soil, economy or politics. It's the corn you don't know about that will.

.

Make Progress:

Corn is everywhere. If you walk into a grocery store and pull something off the shelf at random, there is about a 70% chance that it will have corn or a corn derivative in it. The plastic bag they put it in when you leave is made from corn. The carpet on the floor as you walk out? Yep, corn. The tires, spark plugs, and fuel in your car? Made from the same thing you eat at the movie theater.

Corn advocates love to flaunt the list of products made from corn. And don’t get me wrong; I’m all for using every bit of the plant in order to minimize waste. But we don’t grow so much corn because it can be used for so many things; we use it for so many things because we grow so much corn. The government subsidizes corn more than any other crop, so people grow a lot of it. So we find new uses for it. So we need more, subsidize more, and grow more. It’s a vicious (and, to some, delicious) cycle.

But there are things that the government and the growers of this miracle crop aren’t telling us.

• Learn
• Eat
• Install

Photo by this corn-loving picture clicker.

Learn:

With most issues, progressive or otherwise, people usually realize that a problem exists or at least that improvements can be made. We squabble over whether or not it's worth fixing, how to go about doing that, how important the issue is, what side effects our actions might have, etc. But at least we know that there is a problem. Not so with corn. Here are some of the impacts the over subsidizing and overproduction of corn has on our society, in bullet form for your convenience:

• Corn is the most subsidized crop in our country. From 1995-2005, over 51 billion dollars were given to farmers in the US of A, more than twice that of the next closest crop.
• Cows are ruminants whose stomachs are designed to eat grass, not corn. They are given antibiotics to stave off infection until they go off to slaughter. This promotes antibiotic-resistant bacteria that can be transmitted to humans that eat corn-fed beef.
• Corn strips the soil of more nutrients than any other mainstream crop and therefore requires much more fertilizer and pesticides, and consequently, more gas and oil to produce.
• Hormones and antibiotics given to cows to make them grow faster and bigger end up in our meat, soil, and water.
• Corn acidifies a cow's stomach, providing a haven for bacteria like E. Coli. Most of these animals are raised in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) where these diseases are easily spread.
• Compared to 1970, farms (which grow corn) today produce 500 more calories per person each day. We pack away an average of 200 of those calories.
• By many formulas, ethanol made from corn burns nearly as much fossil fuel, if not more to produce the crop as it would to just burn it in our car. Ethanol made from other plants such as sugar beets is much more efficient. Making ethanol is good; making it good is better.
• High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) is the most common sweetener in the country. It is cheaper and easier to make than sugar from beets or sugar cane. But (there's always a “but– ), it doesn't stimulate the pancreas to make insulin or leptin to let us know when we are satisfied. The result? We crave more, eat more, get fatter, and get sicker. We are literally subsidizing obesity.
• Many scientists are now attributing the latest honeybee die-off to chemical pesticides used in fields of sweet corn.
• Corn is Iowa’s number one crop. Iowa has the earliest Presidential Primary. Need I say more?

.

Eat:

We won't tell you to stop eating food with corn or corn derivatives in it; that wouldn't be reasonable. But a few changes in our eating habits would certainly lower the need for corn. This site has a list of additives, preservatives, etc. that are made from corn. There are about 600, and the list is not exhaustive. It would be tough to cut these out completely (imagine being allergic to corn), but just knowing how much corn is in your ice cream might make you think differently the next time you're at the grocery store.

This horse is so dead that it's totally decomposed, but we're gonna beat its bones anyway. Buy organic food. Being organic doesn't necessarily mean that there is no corn in it (corn can be grown organically), but generally there is much less corn used to process organic food. Plus, organic food tends to have ingredients spelled out more fully, making it easier to sidestep corn products. For more info on the benefits of organics, click here.

There are 38 ingredients in McDonald's Chicken McNuggets. That's scary enough, but 13 of them are directly derived from corn, and a dozen or so more are processed with corn products. A Big Mac contains corn-fed beef and has high fructose corn syrup in the bun and sauce. And that large Coke has 310 calories from corn. Another reason to stay away from fast food.

Finally, consider buying grass-fed meat. It's leaner, free of antibiotics and hormones, and much less likely to contain E. Coli, fungus, or other contaminants. Here is a list of suppliers in your state, or you can have it shipped to your home. Supporting businesses that go against the grain (pardon the pun) to provide a product that is ethically superior is a big part of progressivism.

.

Install:

I've been going on and on about how bad corn is for our economy, our bodies, our land, our air, our water, and even our politics. Hopefully it isn't all starting to taste like corn-fed chicken by now, but in case it is, I'll offer up a good thing that corn can be used for: heating your house.

Corn stoves and furnaces are becoming increasingly popular because they are cheap to run, clean burning, and über-efficient. Unlike with ethanol, the energy you save with a corn stove vastly outweighs the energy used to make that small amount of corn. In term of dollars and cents, a corn furnace can save you over $1,000 bucks a year, depending on where you live. But does it get hot enough? Well, they're controlled by a thermostat, just like any other modern heater, and if you turn it up high enough it'll get as cozy as a sauna.

I'm not just getting this information from the endless loop of internet articles with as much credibility as an Exxon-Mobile representative talking about the effects of fossil fuels on global warming. Our photo editor, James B. Robinson, swears by his corn stove. And he doesn't exactly live in Texas. Try Lake Placid. My wife and I honeymooned there. It's cold.

Here's a good site with lots of information on corn stoves and furnaces, how much they cost, where you can get them, how much you'll save, where you can get the corn– ¦ the whole nine yards acres. If we are going to contribute to the endless cycle of overproduction begets over-subsidization begets overproduction, we should at least do so in the smallest, most energy-efficient, and most progressive way.

Oh, I almost forgot. Installing that corn stove will get you a tax rebate, if that pushes you off the fence and into the corn field.

This treatment's not just “for the dogs–

Being married to a veterinarian who absolutely loves her job means that I get some of the most interesting “pillow talk– that one could imagine. I think it could only be more interesting if she were a CIA agent. I'm not outing her; she doesn't work for the CIA (at least, I don't think). Some of what I hear about when I pretend to understand what the H-E-double hockey sticks she's talking about, are the newest treatments being developed for humans that are already being used on animals.

Last week, she pointed this one out which I found on MSNBC.com:

Human volunteers (are) testing a vaccine for melanoma – ” a potentially fatal skin cancer that strikes 60,000 Americans a year.

The human results at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center are not in yet, but a few blocks away in New York at the Animal Medical Center, veterinarians heard about the vaccine and asked to try it in dogs.

What makes this study so intriguing (other than the fact that it is curing cancer) is that the vaccine was originally intended to reduce the likelihood of reoccurrence of melanoma in patients that have already been treated for the skin cancer. But when the treatment was used on a dog that currently had the fatal disease, the dog:

Underwent complete disappearance of his tumor. Since then, more than 100 dogs have been treated– ¦ The vaccine works so well that the U.S. department of Agriculture is about to license it as a treatment of melanoma in dogs.

It'll take some time before it's deemed safe for regular treatment of human melanoma, but it's nice to know what's on the medical horizon. It's also nice to know that the newest acquisition of our family (pictured – right) will have a better chance of living a full and healthy life, and that his kind could help his partner in crime (left) do the same.

The big three, part iii.

Well, here we are: another Monday, dear readers. So, as we did the last two weeks, we’re going to offer up a triptych of art for your eyes and ears, brains and, hopefully, hearts.

.

I really don’t want to write much about this video of…what I guess I’d call “performance art” at its most witty and whimsical. And I’ll say this: I’m glad there are people out there doing this kind of thing.

.

* * *

Here’s a lovely and energized poem by Frank O’Hara simply called “Song.”

O’Hara, a curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City from 1960-1966, wrote with an urgency on par with folks like Gertrude Stein and Walt Whitman. Unlike the former, his poems tend to make a bit more logical sense. Unlike the latter, his poems tend toward something more intimate. In his poetics manifesto, O’Hara wrote:

I went back to work and wrote a poem for [a] person. While I was writing it I was realizing that if I wanted to I could use the telephone instead of writing the poem, and so [my poetic philosophy] was born. It's a very exciting movement which will undoubtedly have lots of adherents. It puts the poem squarely between the poet and the person, and the poem is correspondingly gratified. The poem is at last between two persons instead of two pages.

As a writer, I applaud and adopt this sensibility whenever possible. And there’s some odd correlation for me between his philosophy and his early death (he was 40) after a sand buggy accident on Fire Island.

.

SONG

.

Did you see me walking by the Buick Repairs?

I was thinking of you

having a Coke in the heat it was your face

I saw on the movie magazine, no it was Fabian's

I was thinking of you

and down at the railroad tracks where the station

has mysteriously disappeared

I was thinking of you

as the bus pulled away in the twilight

I was thinking of you

and right now

.

* * *

So, since it is Monday, why not close things off with a rock-till-you-freaking-drop tune called “Monday.” In case you’re new to the site or suffer from some sort of one-track-mind-ism (and you’re train is still boarding at the station), I dig on Wilco. That alt-country/avant-rock outfit is my Disney World. And here’s video of them kicking the aforementioned rocker from their sophomore effort, Being There. The footage, I should mention, comes to us from I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, a documentary by Sam Jones of the band recording then touring on their post-modern masterpiece, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

Clergyman Charlie: On Smoking

One of the most contradictory things I see is people who are protesting air pollution while smoking.  I guess that points out how inconsistent we humans really are.

I don't mean to make light of the subject, though.  Addictions are hard to break, and it is difficult for a person who has not been addicted to sympathize with those who are so bound by a bad habit.

It is too bad that people get “hooked– on nicotine in the first place.  Some young people think it is very grown up to smoke.  I'm reminded, when I hear that, of the comments made by a psychologist who explained that sucking was an infantile comforting action, and that really those who smoke to relax or release tension are reverting to infancy, not moving toward adulthood.

When I was growing up, it was not known that nicotine could cause cancer.  But people with common sense knew that one's lungs were meant for air, not for smoke.  Our football coach would not allow his players to smoke; he knew they didn't have the “wind– they needed for running and strenuous activity if they were smokers.

Is this a moral issue?  It really is.  The Scriptures say that our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. (I Corinthians 6:19)  We are to keep our bodies healthy so as to glorify God through them.  Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, in favor with God and with man. (Luke 2:52)  That's intellectual, physical, spiritual, and social growth.  That's our model.

When I read that cigarette companies intentionally added more nicotine to their products so as to cause people to be addicted, I am incensed.  Aren't you?  Angry enough not to let them do that to you?

Of course people can easily become judgmental.  A person who criticizes smokers may be someone who eats too much, or spends unwisely.  We each have our own weaknesses to control.  And God calls us to freedom, not to slavery to any unhealthy passion.  (Galatians 5:1)

Don't be quick to judge the smoker, or think you are better than he.  Your own bad habit may be worse than his, especially if it is feeling self-righteous.

Well, how do you quit, if you are hooked?  I'm no expert in that.  Maybe there are different ways that work for different people.  One person said to brag to everyone you knew about how you had stopped and would never smoke again, and to do that so brazenly that the ridicule you would face if you started smoking again would be so painful you wouldn't dare do it.

One of my least favorite radio personalities is Rush Limbaugh, but sometimes when I am on a long drive and getting sleepy I love to find him on the air because he makes me so angry I wake up.  One day he was bragging about giving up cigarettes, and saying he had absolutely no problem in doing that and couldn't understand people who were so weak they had a problem with it.  Once he made up his mind, that was it. But then he told us he would never give up cigars!  I think he hadn't given up his nicotine fix at all.

I do know that bad habits can be broken. If a person is determined and seeks whatever help he or she needs, from counseling, a doctor, or just going cold turkey, and if one makes it a matter of prayer, God will help.  How great is your God?  If God is for us, there is nothing we can not do.  (Philippians 4:13)  We have to put our focus on something else, distract ourselves from temptation, concentrate on what is good.  Put your mind on the good things!  (Philippians 4:8-9)  Call upon God.  And our God will deliver us.

If you really take the time to look up and read the Scripture passages I've listed in this column, and concentrating upon them each day, I think that will help.

I love the “Praise Chorus– that has words something like this:

Lord prepare me, to be a sanctuary
Pure and holy, tried and true.
With thanksgiving, I'll be a living
Sanctuary for You.

May it be so for every reader of this column.

Don’t Shake; Take a Break.

Let me start this post by saying that I believe my daughter to be the easiest child on the planet to raise. At two years old, she puts herself to bed a night, insists on feeding herself, and will frequently stay in her crib after waking up for an hour without making a peep. Heck, she can even put in and start a DVD without any help.

But even our beautiful angel has had her moments, especially when she was an infant, when she would test her parent's patience with a half-hour stint of crying, prompting a walk around the outside of the house with a fistful of hair. In fact, there has never been a child born who didn't cry for what seems like hours and often for no apparent reason.

Unfortunately, when many parents with short tempers frequently resort to an unintentional, often deadly, and largely overlooked form of child abuse. According to the American Humane Association:

Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS) is a form of child abuse that results from violently shaking an infant or from abusive impact to an infant’s head. Between 1,200 and 1,600 of the nation’s children suffer from SBS each year.

Congressional findings estimate that between one-quarter and one-third of SBS victims die as a result of their injuries, while one-third suffer permanent and severe disabilities, including traumatic brain injury, paralysis, seizures and loss of hearing or vision.

In response, Congress has introduced the Shaken Baby Syndrome Prevention Act of 2007. It purpose?

To enable the Secretary of Health and Human Services to develop a national public health campaign that would inform the general public, new parents, child care providers, health care providers and social workers about the risks and dangers associated with SBS.

Here's a petition you can add your “digital John Hancock– to. For the sake of my child and yours, but most likely for the sake of thousands of children you'll never meet or even hear about, sign the petition. I mean, they’re children. If you want to go a step further, call your Representatives. Here's their info. But most importantly, put the baby down and grab a pair of headphones. As bad as it seems for you, imagine what it's like for the baby.