This Onion piece is a perfect satire.  These articles happen all the time!

Roberto Bolaño is just really coming into his own in English translation.  I’m reading the Savage Detectives right now, and it’s fantastic.

Read articles about him here and here, and read a new short story here.

And where should we direct our medical research?  This article is about the new “paradigm” of the “longevity dividend”–arguing that we need to research how to live long and that, well, we ought to be living a lot longer.

This, amidst worries of a death shortage and people getting way, way too old with no way to provide for them.  It reminds one of that scene from Gulliver’s Travels when he meets people who are immortal but they’re all still aged–blind, deaf, senile.  And they’re miserable.  But, a response:

Transhumanist George Dvorsky, one of the honchos responsible for the Betterhumans portal, did a quick run through of the objections to attempting to boost healthy human life expectancy, including the appeal to nature (death is natural therefore good); undesirable psychological consequences (long-lived people would be bored); and undesirable social consequences (nursing home world). If you want at thorough debunking of these and other objections to life extension, may I suggest that you read my book Liberation Biology?

Finally, theoretical biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey, critiqued the idea of the longevity dividend from the point of view of someone who is pushing for a more comprehensive research attack on aging itself. De Grey’s new book, Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs that Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime is out in September. De Grey said, “I am pessimistic about the longevity dividend, but I strongly support it.” Why pessimistic? First, he is not pessimistic about the prospects of increasing life expectancy. But De Grey is pessimistic about the idea that the way the campaigners for the longevity dividend want to pursue it will result in reduced medical costs. Why? Because he pointed out that American life expectancy has already increased by about seven years since 1960 and medical costs have obviously not gone down. Inherent in the idea of the longevity dividend is the notion of compressed mortality, that is, the period of decrepitude at the end of life will be shortened. De Grey argues that this not biologically plausible. Medical interventions can reduce the risk of death and disability at various ages, but eventually, frailty will come — it will just come later. As Murphy and Topel note, American men are about 6 years “younger” in 2000 than they were in 1970-a 55 year old in 2000 is equivalent to a 49 year old from 1970. Frailty may be unavoidable, but pushing it off for as long as possible is still a great idea.

Read it here.

Roman Catholic bishops in Connecticut have agreed to let hospital personnel give emergency contraception to all rape victims, reversing their decision days before a new state law requires it.

The church, which runs four of the state’s 30 hospitals, had fought the state law requiring medical personnel to give rape victims emergency contraception, sold as Plan B, even if the women are ovulating.

Church officials had said the treatment was tantamount to abortion and had been considering legal action, but they took a step away from that position Thursday, in a joint statement by the Catholic Bishops of Connecticut and leaders of the Catholic hospitals.

The hospitals will be allowed to provide Plan B without ovulation tests “since the teaching authority of the church has not definitively resolved this matter and since there is serious doubt about how Plan B pills work,” the statement reads. “To administer Plan B without an ovulation test is not an intrinsically evil act.”

Rudy G. doesn’t like that people judge him for his extramarital affairs.  I don’t like that either, actually.  What I don’t like about Rudy G. is the corruption, the egotism that affects his ability to lead, the focus on one tragedy as an indication of performance in a much more complicated job, the racial tension, and the nepotism.  If he cheated on his wives and his kids don’t like him, that’s his business.  But if he’s a corrupt politican, it’s mine.

Is pretty good, really:

As the Islamic observance of Ramadan comes to an end, the president of the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue has sent a message to the world’s Muslims stressing the duty of all believers to bear witness to the Almighty.

In his message, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran says that all believers, regardless of their faith, should share in “work in favor of peace, by showing respect for the convictions of individuals and communities everywhere through freedom of religious practice. ” Enlarging on that theme, he calls for “doing everything one can to reject, denounce and refuse every recourse to violence which can never be motivated by religion, since it wounds the very image of God in man.”

Cardinal Tauran’s message makes a special point of condemning terrorism, “which strikes blindly and claims countless innocent victims, is incapable of resolving conflicts and leads only to a deadly chain of destructive hatred, to the detriment of mankind and of societies.”

The French cardinal argues that dialogue between Christians and Muslims is “the tool which can help us to escape from the endless spiral of conflict and multiple tensions which mark our societies.”

An article in the LA Times about how religion can also stand up for good, and so pay attention all you neo-atheists!  Religion doesn’t just kill people.  I’d obviously agree, but I think that arguments like this are relatively unsophisticated.  I’d say the real problem is ideological commitment to certain goals to the extent that these goals are much more important than human lives–this can take the shape of Christianity, Islam, fascism, whatever.  This sense of transcendence is ultimately what religion is–not a set of core beliefs.  The author more or less agrees with me later on, but I still think that the discussion is ultimately fairly useless.  Can religion do both good and bad things?  Well, sure, so can knives.

So, I’ve got a friend who just started seeing a therapist, and while there are very many therapists who are excellent and approachable (I’ve had one!), there are also a whole lot who are bland and lifeless and, as a means of “reflecting” your feelings to encourage you to talk and solve your own problems, just come off as really annoying.  Like in this article!

if we want to keep fighting more wars.  An excellent point:

The next president, therefore, is almost certainly going to be an advocate of adding tens of thousands of soldiers and Marines. But setting aside where these fresh recruits will come from, given current recruiting woes, adding troops will have serious consequences that may not be obvious more than 13 months before the general election. And the consequences may not please antiwar Democratic primary voters. Committing to an expanded Army and Marine Corps implies spending a great deal of additional money on the military. But it also means the presidential candidates are choosing sides in an internal Pentagon dispute — and they are choosing the side that wants a military designed to fight another war just like the unpopular war the United States has been waging in Iraq since 2003.

Say what you want about his capacities as president of Poland.  He’s a good man, even a great one, for what he did in Solidarity.  Here are some lovely pictures.