|
I paid $2 to attend a talk by a chiropractor on headaches. I get a three-day headache about once a month, which usually responds to some extent to pain killer. I'm interested in trying something new.
The guy seemed quite sensible. He works only on the top of the spine; he doesn't promise miracles. Quite a few people may get headaches because of a trauma--even some time ago, such as a car crash; and it could have been quite a low-speed crash. Most of the crowd were women. One asked about headaches that coincide with the menstrual cycle, or menopause; he said glandular problems are a separate subject. Another person asked about seizures; he said they should be seen by a neurologist. So far, so good.
Problems arose as the talk went on. Some people there had been to chiropractors. One lady said she got great results. One woman said all that chiropractors had ever done was a global adjustment of her entire head and neck; she was surprised that this guy was talking about individual vertebrae. He started up a fancy testing machine, and asked for volunteers to be tested. One woman was very gung ho. Her headaches are severe, and we could all see she had bad posture. This chiropractor started promising to work on her posture, saying it would take a long time.
He sounded vaguely threatening; if we don't get chiropractic treatment, we'll probably have a miserable old age. As for trauma as a source of trouble: the original trauma for all of us is childbirth (what about C-sections?), and children should definitely get chiropractic treatment. Chiropractic (or some other method that is part of his practice, including hypnosis, massage and acupuncture) can probably help with asthma and HD/ADD in children.
So I go to the web.
This Ph.D. calmly explains that there is definitely such a thing as Spinal Manipulation Therapy (SMT), and it definitely helps some people with specific aches and pains. It will either work in a few weeks, or not at all. It won't solve big problems like overall posture, much less severe illnesses. Lots of people, including some fully licensed medical practitioners, are trained in SMT, but the easiest practitioners to gain access to are probably chiropractors. Unfortunately, chiropractors collectively are neither scientific nor ethical in their approach. There is no study to show that any two chiropractors will make the same diagnosis based on the same x-ray or other tests; nor that they will apply the same treatment, even if they agree on the diagnosis. Some work on this or that specific vertebrae; some, as our fellow audience member reported, take the "shot gun" approach and work on the entire head and neck. Almost all venture out into other forms of "alternative" or "drug-free" medicine, claiming that this allows them to treat the whole person through an entire life--not just react to problems as medical doctors do. Few of these therapies produce consistent results.
Final warnings:
1. Have the problem evaluated by a medical doctor first. Have underlying serious illnesses ruled out before deciding that the problem is neuromusculoskeletal. Heart disease, cancer, kidney dis' ease, and other serious problems that need prompt medical care may manifest themselves as back pain and dysfunction. Don't allow an overzealous, inadequately trained chiropractor to keep you from prompt diagnosis and care. If the chiropractor recommends X-rays, have them done by a radiologist.
2. If you decide to try SMT, inform your doctor. Ask if there is any reason you should not have SMT (osteoporosis is one common contraindication). if not, ask for his or her help in locating the most skillful practitioner in the area (physiatrist, physical therapist, chiropractor, etc.). Some doctors feel that SMT hasn't been scientifically proven effective, but most are willing to go along with a patient who wishes to give it a try.
3. Remember that the main value of SMT lies in the rapidity of the relief it provides. If you have not experienced significant relief within three weeks, discontinue SMT. Do not submit to long-term care. Do not sign a contract. And do not accept the idea of preventive chiropractic care. Education about how to prevent back problems by safe lifting techniques, proper exercise, and ergogenics (analyzing and redesigning the workplace to avoid injuries) is valuable.
4. Avoid practitioners who:
* Appear overconfident or cultist in their zeal for chiropractic care
* Disparage regular medicine as jealously antichiropractic
* Criticize prescription drugs or surgery in an ideological manner
* Attack immunization, fluoridation, pasteurization, or other public health practices
* X-ray all of their patients, or routinely use full-spine x-rays.
* Use scare tactics such as claiming that the failure to undergo chiropractic care could lead to serious problems in the future
* Sell herbs or dietary supplements
* Perform colonic irrigations. These have no medical value and can be dangerous [23].
* Claim that subluxations exist and that their correction is important.
5. Children should not be treated by chiropractors. There are no childhood conditions that chiropractors are better qualified than physicians to treat.
The guy I heard committed a lot of these faux pas.
So maybe I need to consider seeing an osteopath. They sounded a hundred years ago like chiropractors today; but they now work very closely with medical doctors. And they are skilled in SMT and other manipulation.
Perhaps not:
A hulking UN-chartered cargo ship, docked at a port in Somalia this week, was halfway finished unloading its 850 tons of corn and rice when a band of gun-toting bandits stormed aboard and forced the crew to take the ship to sea.
It was the second hijacking of a UN food-aid ship in four months in Somalia.
(Via Hit and Run).
One of our local Tim Horton's was held up last week. Does that count?
Probably not.
The conservatives who are supporting her, including Bush, probably think she will vote as follows:
1. Not to strike down Roe v. Wade. Doing so would split the Republican Party, and give too many opportunities to pro-choicers, secular humanists, etc. John Roberts, a Catholic, has said this decision is "settled law."
2. But: allow the states to make inroads on Roe. This is the way the Court has been going for years. Allow states to impose restrictions on access to abortion--especially for teenagers. There is probably room to strike down partial-birth abortion.
3. Look for a chance to oppose gay marriage. Even Anthony Kennedy, author of the Lawrence decision on gay sex, says he is not convinced the Constitution requires recognizing gay marriage.
4. Support torture--at least as long as Bush is president.
Why is this not enough for other conservatives? It must be true, as Pinkerton and others have said, that "movement" conservatives were looking forward to a real fight on principles. What about the whole jurisprudence of a right to privacy? Putting the states more in charge, say on campaign finance or famiy and medical leave? Cutting away at the Americans with Disabilities Act, or welfare benefits? Miers seems, from all we can tell, to be less curious about these things than almost any American with a white collar job. There is some talk she is "liberal on social issues"--or is it conservative on social issues (her evangelical credentials) and liberal on economic issues?
Perhaps not the greatest comparisons for defenders of the Harriet Miers nomination.
White: Top of college class academically, Phi Beta Kappa, Rhodes Scholarship, while excelling in three sports.
Combined Yale Law with playing professional football.
Distinguished military service in World War II.
Top of class at Yale Law, clerked with Supreme Court Justice.
After some years of private law practice, organized Colorado for JFK's presidential campaign in 1960.
As Deputy Attorney General under the Kennedy brothers, actually led 400 federal marshalls into a southern city in order to protect civil rights marchers.
And this was all before he actually served on the Court, and won many accolades while doing so. Here, here, and here.
Powell:
Both undergraduate and law degrees from the fairly modest Washington and Lee, but then a Master's from Harvard. He was known for his distinctive accomplishments while doing military service, and serving as Chair of the Richmond School Board. See here.
Had been President of the American Bar Association--Miers' organization, in a different era, at a higher level. Justice Anthony Kennedy: "Lewis Powell came to the Court with no previous judicial experience, but with a towering reputation as a mar-velous lawyer. He soon demonstrated to the Court and to the nation that the lawyer’s skill soon becomes the judge’s excellence."
For a brief comment on a number of Justices who had not been judges before, see here.
As for Sandra Day O'Connor, I remember the debate about her credentials. She had been a judge, but only at the state level. She had not written at length on any constitutional issue. No one foresaw her long, wild and wooly, "Sandy Says" opinions. But there was real accomplishment in her record--serving the public in a number of capacities, overcoming obstacles. She was a crony--but not of Reagan's, of Goldwater and other country club Republicans from Phoenix. She was probably recommended, or not opposed, by Rehnquist, who knew her from both law school and Phoenix. Above all, perhaps, there was more of an excuse for pushing ahead a somewhat less qualified woman in those days than there is today.
I bought a few novels by James Gould Cozzens many years ago, inspired entirely by a piece by Joseph Epstein.
I just re-read The Just and the Unjust.
Lots of good stuff here. As I mentioned to my Ethics class, Cozzens is on the side of the squares, a bit like Aristotle. For them I read a bit about the Calumet Club in a small town, requiring respectability and a bit of income in its members; being from an old family helps. Obviously no sane person would say every member of such a club has Aristotle's moral virtues, nor that no one outside it has them; but it's a start.
The protagonist is an Assistant District Attorney, who plays a role in a rare murder trial in a small town. The defence lawyer is much of a back-slapper and practical joker than our hero. This doesn't mean there is anything really wrong with him--we are told our hero is probably not demonstrative enough, a brooder who will occasionally offer an outburst with little reason or explanation. (Passive/aggressive, as we say now?) Still, the defence lawyer is a bit shady--less than a gentleman--and this helps him defend his clients with sincerity.
This underlies a passage about having a sense of humor: "Though a sense of humor was generally spoken of with approval, and a man was pitied for lacking one, Abner supposed that he must lack one himself. When he saw a sense of humor in action, it always seemed to Abner a lucky thing, since somebody had to do the work of an unappreciative world, that a certain number of people could be relied on to lack it."
I'll have to remember that when we come to "wit" (the old comedy was better than the new comedy) in the Ethics.
The defence lawyer pull off a bit of a coup. He practically begs the jury to carry out jury nullification. Although the facts are pretty clear, the real reason the accused are on trial for first degree murder is that they were part of kidnapping. The ringleader eventually shot their captive, and this was probably not really planned or intended by the two who are on trial. (One of them may have fired the second shot into the victim, but this is doubtful; no one suggested that the second accused did any shooting at all). The novel is set in the 1930s, so this demonstrates the old law (then new?) of felony homicide. If a homicide was committed during another felony, as a direct result of the felony, then all those guilty of the felony could be charged with murder for the homicide. The lawyer asks the jury to reject this reasoning, and apparently they do. They find the two guilty of second-degree murder; maximum 20 years, whereas their erstwhil accomplice who testified against them, and was less involved in planning the kidnapping than they were, will get life for pleading guilty to first-degree murder. The prosecutors and judges expected convictions, so that the judge could then impose the death penalty. All of them seem to regard this as the just outcome, which was denied them by the jury.
The defence also raised the issue of a confession extorted by a skillful beating by the FBI. Such practices eventually led to the famous "rights of the accused" cases, especially Miranda, which Rehnquist as a young man said he opposed, but as an old man he voted to uphold.
In the last pages, to my surprise, the lawyers and judges are tending to oppose capital punishment altogether.
"There is always a little satisfaction in seeing the professionally just, reformers and clergymen, judges and prosecutors and police officers, set back."
Abner sees the chance to become District Attorney, and to groom a younger man as his assistant. "He was unexpectedly made aware of the pleasure of patronage. It was, he saw, a fairly pure pleasure. If it made him feel good to be able to give what was plainly so much wanted, the good feeling was at least in part the good feeling of being able to adjust the fallings-out of a too impersonal and regardless chance so that the deserving got some of their deserts...the one real pleasure, when all was said and done, of power."
As Abner gains self-knowledge in the course of the novel, one thing he seems to conclude is that he is not so different from Harry, the slippery but skillful--and, in his way, hard-working, defence lawyer.
Two views impress me the most:
1. Bush and Rove may be determined to prevent Roe v. Wade from being overturned. If it were overturned, there would be tough fights on abortion in many states, and this could split the Republican Party between social conservatives and economic conservatives. Both Roberts and Miers may be part of this strategy. (Ezra Klein on Tapped).
2. Miers is a stealth candidate--on the social issues, and abortion in particular. She may not have much authority to persuade other members of the Court, but a vote is a vote. (Garance Franke-Ruta more recently on the same blog). See also John Dickerson on Slate: the all-important voice of James Dobson, and Ms. Miers' church in Texas.
I'm onto Walker Percy now. I tried Love Among the Ruins, but I find it unreadable. A machine that reads all kinds of things about the soul and happiness? Please. I've been charmed by The Second Coming for years, but I think it's too much the cliche: older man/younger woman. The Percy novel where pro-choicers are running a day care, molesting the children and poisoning the water, is Republican politics at its nuttiest.
But The Moviegoer: now there is a novel. Maybe Percy was finished his best work when he was about 55?
It's sad and beautiful. I'm not sure I understand it. A lot of it is simply cherchez la femme. The sudden trip toward the end that gets Jack in so much trouble with his aunt is actually Kate's idea, and he probably had assumed that Kate was letting her mother--Jack's aunt--know about it. Yet when he is chewed out, he says none of this. He is loyal to Kate. He probably loves her (certainly intends to marry her). He knows she has some degree of mental illness, and he doesn't want to force her to admit what happened, or even admit that they have been introducing themselves as engaged. If she wants out of the engagement, he wants to be sure she can just get out. So there is maybe love, gallantry, friendship, looking out for her. The guy at the end of Daisy Miller flunks a love test; Jack passes one.
Beyond that, Jack is forced to listen to his aunt's whole speech about how men in her life used to have some gallantry about them; now they apparently don't, and he is exhibit A. He seems to agree with her that the modern world is contemptible; but he can't agree with her reasons or worldview. He is just as convinced as any moviegoing cretin that his aunt's old aristocratic world is dead. So he criticizes modern people for their malaise, or their passive acceptance of it, or their emphasis on sincerity as if this were the only virtue--but it's not clear what he has to offer instead. Love of Kate, of one good (fragile) woman? So in a way his aunt is right--even if he had better reasons than she knows for the Chicago trip, he is one of the modern people she finds contemptible? But he is ... something. More thoughtful? The way he treats Kate and her illness--in a way, unsentimentally--shows that he at least knows how to admire and live with people who are (despite everything) made of good stuff?
I don't know.
"In fact, there is nothing more to say to him. The best one can do is deflate the pressure a bit, the terrible romantic pressure, and leave him alone. He is a moviegoer, though of course he does not go to movies."
Lots of New Orleans--the novel unfolds basically over carnival week, one crewe and parade after another, and ends at the end of Mardi Gras, "fat Tuesday." Lots of social gradations: Cajuns from the swamp who have made it in the city pretend to be Creoles. The Smiths, Jack's lower-class Catholic relatives, live like Cajuns, or at least can revert to living in a fishing hut right over the swamp, eating whatever they catch. Jack's date, a nice Protestant girl from the South: "'I surely didn't know people ate crawfish!'--by which she means that in Eufala only Negroes eat crawfish." The blacks who still function as faithful retainers to old Creole moneyed families somehow show by face and voice that they refuse to be servile--they somehow go right to the edge of impertinence, without crossing over. And if the whites want to be waited on, they put up with this, all their lives.
Fathers who run away, and fathers who want to. I've been working on family histories, and my grandfathers were, to some extent, runaway fathers. When my aunt saw this suggestion in print about her father, she was indignant.
I must admit, I found this funny. The main focus is on Richard Perle, and whether (as part of Hollinger purging itself of allegedly corrupt executives and board members) he will face further law suits, and perhaps criminal charges. But there is kind of a passing shot against David Radler, who has plea bargained, and may have already blabbed in great detail about Perle and others. Via Atrios.
Radler... is a notorious germaphobe and hypochrondiac, according to an ex-colleague.
During his years traversing the country as an executive for Black's Hollinger International, he refused to stay in any hotel other than the Four Seasons. A source related the tale of when, years ago, company execs were on a road show meeting with prospective investors in a Four Seasons-less Cincinnati.
When meetings wrapped up, Radler insisted the group fly back to Chicago and then return to Cincinnati for more meetings the next day — rather than stay in a non-Four Seasons.
[blockquote]On the company's Challenger jet, Radler stocked pantries with antibiotics and cleaning supplies. And when he arrived in Toronto during the SARS scare, Radler de-planed wearing a surgical mask. "It was a flying pharmacy," said a source. "He'd better be working in the prison laundry."
As "The Has Been" on Slate:
The real looters, Reed suggests, caught in reckless acts of desperation, are the Republicans in Congress.
But walk a mile in their shoes and ask yourself: Amid that atmosphere of chaos and moral breakdown, who among us would not have grabbed every scrap for our district that we could?
[snip]
How could looting go on in the most indebted country on earth? Instead of condemning desperate individuals, we should lay blame where it belongs: on the failure of local leaders who should have known better.
Even now, those leaders are refusing to take responsibility or change their ways. Tom DeLay—whose performance, most would agree, has been a disappointment from the outset—warned that reopening the highway bill to cut pork would invite others to put still more pork back in.
That is our deepest fear: that the looting will happen again. Too many of the greatest offenders don't even consider it looting—they call it "borrowing."
Never Again: While we commend this new effort to learn from past mistakes, the most important lesson is to take all necessary steps to prevent disaster in the first place. This time, leaders must be willing to take the drastic measure that some experts have urged for years: an immediate, mandatory evacuation of Congress before it's too late.
A complete evacuation will not be easy. Some members cannot afford transportation. Some will need money to get by. Force may be necessary for those who insist on staying put.
The big question is: why are no prominent Democratic leaders talking this way? The old shark leader is largely toothless now, lazily floating in warm, shallow water, waiting for his minions to bring him fresh meat. But now the minions are also losing their edge: they greedily gorge on whatever they find, without thinking of bringing back the best carcasses to the leader, for the good of the team. Why can't the Democrats take advantage? If anything they are circling the wagons around ideological true believers more than ever, listening to the echo chamber, and plaintively crying: "Why aren't we popular?" (See Kaus; stroll down to "In Defence of Good Policy").
Robert D. Kaplan is an interesting writer. He totally believes the U.S. is at war with a more or less united terrorist enemy, with battlefields all over the world. He is impressed at the flexibility the U.S. military has shown in fighting these battles--he insists that hearts and minds must be won, and building infrastructure, and helping communities, are just as important as making war.
In his piece in the Atlantic, he says in the Philippines, all the good work done by Americans is threatened with being undermined by the Philippine government. In Afghanistan, the Pentagon is falling back into its old habits of central control and spit and polish, instead of letting Special Forces work in creative ways.
He just seems to take for granted that as long as the U.S. has unquestioned good intentions, they can't be blamed for anything that happens anywhere, even if bad outcomes seem to be the direct result of their actions.
This is backed up th Bernard-Henri Levy in the same issue, "In the Footsteps of Tocqueville, Part IV." Especially his interview with Francis Fukuyama, trying to understand why Fukuyama differs from his friends, and perhaps fellow neo-cons, on Iraq.
These people are strange, is the gist of what he says to me.
They've spent their whole lives preaching against giving too much power to the government. They told us to beware of the naivete of the social-engineering specialists who purported to be able to eradicate American poverty witih one wave of their political wand. And then they lost all perspective as soon as it was a question of eradicating such poverty, along with the roots of despotism, 6,000 miles away. And they have complete faith in a political decision when it's an issue--as a nation and a government are being constructed--of winning not just the war but also the peace.
.... Fukuyama tells me that these people are to him--theoretician that he is of the inevitable triumph of democratic order--what Lenin was to Marx: by trying to act like angels, behaving as if time were not an issue, they condemn themselves to acting like idiots.
The problem with neo-conservatives is not, as Europeans think, their lack of a moral center or their cynicism. On the contrary, it's an excess of morals. It's the victory of mysticism over politics. They're noble spirits who don't do enough actual politics.
I wonder how much of it goes back to the divorce between the neo-cons and the Democrats. The first step, in the 60s, may have been a neo-con backlash against the excesses of the Great Society: let's use the new social science, along with common sense, and assess what actually works instead of throwing money at problems. (The journal The Public Interest). After many years. Clinton, coming out of the DLC, practically steals "welfare reform" from the Republicans--except that for many Republicans, influenced by Charles Murray, it isn't enough to reform welfare or any program. They have a kind of contempt for government. Bill Kristol partly made his name as a political activist with a fax campaign that said: no universal health insurance, no matter how attractively packaged; the most that is needed is tort reform.
Then, in the 70s, more and more of the foreign policy issues. For neo-cons, the U.S. should never retreat or apologize--almost by definition, any foreign intervention by this country is good, even if some people get hurt along the way. They despise the McGovern wing of the Democratic Party, and then Carter. They love Reagan's talk about identifying evil enemies, and then fighting them. They can fairly be accused of consistently over-stating the threat posed by the enemies of the U.S.; not that they want to lie the country into war, exactly, but they have to overcome their fellow countrymen's Spartan reservations about war. (Various versions of the Committee on the Present Danger, Team B, the high-grade crap about Iraq).
They want the occasional messianic zeal of the Republicans, but they really just want to apply it to foreign policy. More and more, to raise money and get ahead, they have to smile at parties and pretend to care about evolution and condoms. (Levy is funny on Bill Kristol and moral issues including capital punishment. "Don't jump to the conclusion that I believe in it, he seems to be saying. That's just the deal, you understand--supporting a crusade for moral values is just the price we have to pay for a foreign policy that we can defend as a whole.")
Although the Bushies are mostly getting grey, they are kind of like young Reaganites--believing Reagan's fire-breathing speeches, on both taxes and war, while ignoring his very cautious actions, which were really typical of an aging Republican.
|
Search This Site
Syndicate this blog site
Powered by BlogEasy
Free Blog Hosting
|