In this Bubble World, it is an accepted truth that our President is a bumbling ignoramus who can only string together a coherent sentence if he uses a teleprompter (which, apparently, other politicians don't use). I can understand a world in which Obama's political opponents mock him as a being too professorial or out-of-touch or arrogant. But unintelligent? Inarticulate? I don't know how to deal with that. It's like mocking John Boehner for being pale. ...

In Bubble World, cutting taxes actually raises revenue. In Bubble World, "the market" will magically solve all of our health care problems and true "freedom" is defined by one's ability to be denied health coverage for pre-existing conditions. ...

Absence of racial, but not gender, stereotyping in Williams syndrome children (Current Biology)

Raising a child with Williams Syndrome (NPR)

Andrew O'Hagan on Self-Helponauts: You have only one chance to be happy (London Review of Books)

Harnessing older people as a resource in the coming population crash (Salon - Be prepared to close obnoxious loud audio ad on loading)

Daily Kos interviews Maryn McKenna, author of Superbug: The Fatal Menace of MRSA (Daily Kos)

Hospital patients most likely to carry MRSA: Long-term elder care, HIV-infected, kidney dialysis (HealthDay)

Putting bacterial antibiotic resistance into reverse (Physorg)

Dying man sells advertising space on his urn (Associated Press)

BBC News has a lengthy discussion of the implications of the treaty for animal experimentation. And here's the complete Animal Welfare Action Plan, which was presented on April 19.

Seeking to capitalize on animal welfare sentiment during an election campaign, the UK's Labour Party announced: "And we will maintain our proud record on improving animal welfare, including the ban on fox hunting." How British.

The British tabloid The Sun broke the story last week and featured it prominently day after day. It congratulated itself on "a victory for The Sun" when Primark announced it would no longer sell the item. Meanwhile, its front page headlines generated considerable sales and not just among readers who were concerned with protecting the innocence of childhood. More often than not, the headlines drew one's attention to the "Paedo" (pedophile) angle on the story (as in "Paedo bikini banned" and "Paedo Heaven on High Street.") The Sun is known for its coverage of issues such as Don't grow up too soon, Miley, complete with photos that encourage the very behavior the text claims to criticize.

The grounds for cancellation are often flimsy at best. A 2007 California investigation of a WellPoint subsidiary looked at 90 randomly selected cases of dropped insurance. There wasn't a single case where the evidence indicated the applicant had intentionally omitted or misrepresented anything.

Farhad Manjoo describes his experience with one such desk in a New York Times article. He tried out the GeekDesk, which comes in two models, selling for $749 or $799 (plus $110 shipping to the 48 states). Not cheap. It includes an electronic motor that adjusts the height with a flick of a switch, from anywhere between 26" and 46.5".

You can find inexpensive versions of the adjustable-height desk, such as this one I found at Best Buy, but you have to do the adjusting manually. That means removing your computer and monitor and possibly everything else accumulated on your desktop, then putting everything back after you change the height. Right there, that's an impediment to alternating between sitting and standing with any frequency.

WOMAN, 79 (LOOKS 78), Upper West Side pseudo-intellectual, Europe 4 years, wants man's company occasionally for chamber concerts, lectures, meals. Platonic.

I'd love to meet this woman. I imagine her life as a Henry James novel written by Oscar Wilde.

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Advertising for love in Victorian times

Hat tip to a relatively new blog, Medicina - Videos, consejos [advice], material de lectura relacionado a la medicina, which seems to have quite a few posts on mesothelioma, most of them in English.

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To make more money

Steven Pearlstein, writing in the Washington Post, points out that the passage of health care reform may have convinced Democrats that the perfect really isn't the enemy of the good (a Voltaire phrase now associated with Ted Kennedy). Republicans may be ready to acknowledge that if they attempt to kill another piece of important and historic legislation simply to be ornery, they will miss out on significant concessions they could have won. Pearlstein puts the chances of passage at only 50-50, however.

Agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services need to draft regulations that govern implementation. This is where lobbyists can exert their influence. There's a summary of this activity in an article today from The Associated Press.

Voters can participate in the action too. Conservatives are pushing for ballot initiatives that will block the individual mandate: the requirement that most people purchase health insurance in 2014. If conservative initiatives draw large numbers of supporters to the polls, the 2010 election may allow Republicans in Congress to scale back the impact of health care reform.

In my view, this confluence of feelings can work in shifting the public mood, as seems to have happened. When there is no internal pushback against crafted FNC [Fox News] propaganda, and when the Democrats seem unable to craft any coherent political message below the presidential level, you do indeed create a self-perpetuating fantasy that can indeed rally and roil people. But the abstract slogans against government, the childish reduction of necessary trade-offs as an apocalyptic battle between freedom and slavery, and the silly ranting at all things Washington: these are not a political movement. They are cultural vents, wrapped up with some ugly Dixie-like strands.

When they propose cuts in Medicare, means-testing Social Security, a raising of the retirement age and a cut in defense spending, I'll take them seriously and wish them well.

Until then, I'll treat them with the condescending contempt they have thus far deserved.

Related posts:
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Obama on race and the Tea Party
Our only language is English
Reaction to health care: A step backwards
The Supreme Court and health care repeal politics
Olbermann on the damage done by "death panels"
Keith Olbermann & the Fight against Death
Health care: Reminding people of death triggers irrational emotions
Were "death panels" a teachable moment for palliative care?

The article includes explanations for the recent increase in obesity, observations on contempt for the obese (including "fat porn" TV shows), acknowledgement that weight loss is not simply a matter of will power, and an assessment of the political obstacles that make solving this important problem so difficult.

Scarring, stuffy noses, headaches, and sleep aids

You might think that products sold without a prescription would have no harmful side effects. Or at least that they'd be useful. That's not always the case.

When Michael Steele, Chairman of the Republican Party, was asked if the health care plan represented socialism, he replied: "Yes. Next question."

In a recent Bloomberg National Poll, 90 percent of those who favor the Tea Party said the US was "verging more toward socialism than capitalism."

Tomorrow night (April 14) Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit educational organization behind Sesame Street, will present an hour-long special on losing a parent. It airs on PBS at 8:00 PM ET/PT (check local listings).

Katie Couric will host the special. Her daughters were two and six years old when she lost her husband 12 years ago. The program, called When Families Grieve, is designed to aid communication between adults and children on this difficult subject.

Sesame's outreach initiatives harness the power of the Sesame Street Muppets to aid the communication between adults and children through strategies and language that are child-appropriate and useful for the whole family.