"New York Sugar Party" Doesn't Have As Nice A Ring To It

Well, it has finally started happening. For the past month and a half we've enjoyed an atmosphere of relative dignity and progress in the political realm. We elected a decent man for president, we've watched him consistently pick qualified people for high administrative posts and a lot of former rivals have been making nice. Queue New York's governor David Paterson. That's right. In an era torn by war, poverty, epic laundry lists of corrupt leaders and their crimes, in a time when Americans are dying on emergency room floors because they're poor and Western travelers get gunned down in luxury hotels, David Paterson was brave enough to do what bored Democrats just can't ever seem to resist. Paterson began making a lot of noise about a non-issue, then created an intricate plan to legislate an unnecessary inconvenience into our lives because of it. This week, Paterson proposed an 18 percent tax on sugary drinks for the purpose of fighting childhood obesity. He even took out a quick editorial with CNN so he could pretend someone rational might support this silly plan. In short, Paterson likens modern-day childhood obesity with the prevalence of adult smoking from decades past. He throws around a lot of statistics and makes vague references to a series of Health and Wellness programs aimed at youth that will be funded by this new tax. The crux of Paterson's argument is that increased taxes on tobacco were significant in altering how much American's smoke, and that a similar tax on sugary drinks will have the same effect on how much kids consume products that lead to obesity. Where to begin? Maybe we should talk about the ridiculousness of comparing adults from fifty years ago to children today. Or maybe we ought to pause for a moment to consider the possibility that high prices weren't the reason adult tobacco consumption went from over fifty percent to less than twenty percent between 1958 and 2008, especially when so much of Paterson's data links to the most recent tax levied on tobacco in New York just this past June. Then there's his independent opinion source used to justify his new sugar tax, the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, which is about as reliable as basing your diet on the first Food Pyramids that were funded by unions of beef producers. But the part that snags the most for me about Paterson's plan is the bit about new health education programs for kids. How many times does it need to be pointed out that the most effective way to get kids to do what you want them to do most certainly does not involve making it a school requirement? Just ask the droves of kids who chose to engage in drug use how many of them went through D.A.R.E. The funniest part is that, even if Paterson's data is correct and his reasoning justified, this new tax and its ensuing health programs distract from the real cause of increased rates of obesity in America and its children. Too much soda isn't the issue, it's an entire lifestyle problem. An American child's high calorie diet isn't made any healthier by an educational system that forces them to sit for most of their day, if not just in school then at home doing busy work. I'd bet my left arm that a more active, hands-on education combined with some light daily exercise would be significantly more effective at curbing childhood obesity than some silly tax on Coke. Hell, data suggests it might even make our kids happier. So, please, everyone- Contact Governor Paterson and tell him to stop being a twit about this issue, especially at a time when we need people to have more faith in the competence of Democrats.

Swede Rock: Dead Man vs. Dungen

Given the increased access to world wide communications systems, listeners in the states can have bands revealed to them, that otherwise would have remained only names on the lips of those in the know – or just plain unknown.

I figure that the Örebro, Sweden band Dead Man is a case in point. I’d not ever heard their name, nor been aware that in 2003 they released a self titled disc on Crusher Records. Moreover, I had not a clue as to the fact that they released another disc, entitled Euphoria, earlier this year in May

The music on this latest disc reflects the group’s fascination with a few eras of bygone musics. There’s a bit of the old folk tinged psych added to the Swede’s swagger that works to their benefit. Americana is also a touchstone for these folks, but not in an olde tyme kinda way – kinda like the Band. Which is funny since the band was primarily comprised of Canadians.

Regardless of that cultural caveat, Dead Man is not going to wind up on any year end lists this year or next for that matter. Their music, while steeped in groups that all can appreciate, seems to lack a certain urgency that separates great acts from everyone else.

It’s not due to a lack of talent – but sometimes things just don’t work out.

But if you’re in the market for a Swedish rock act with a buncha American-psych influence, look no further than Dungen.

I remember them coming through my town a good four years ago, touring on Ta Det Lungt. Initially, I thought, why would I bother going to watch dudes play rock music with lyrics I had no hope of understanding?

I should have gone.

Even before Ta Det Lungt, Dungen’s two earlier albums pointed towards rock based music of plentiful varieties – all of which I immensely enjoy. Their self titled disc as well as 2 (which has been re-released as Stadsvandringar) are both capable of being compared to either Dead Man releases, with Dungen coming out on top.

Not to disparage Dead Man – it seems as if they almost have the right combination of styles – but for rock music from the Swedes, check out a Dungen release before you take a listen to Euphoria.

New Study Finds that Some Breast Cancers Disappear

It appears that some breast cancers that are found by a mammogram screening may not be detected again raising the possibility that the natural course of some screen-detected invasive breast cancers is to spontaneously regress or simply disappear according to a team of researchers from Norway and Dartmouth Medical School.
"Some breast cancers will not continue to behave as cancers, even though they look like cancer under the microscope, and they grow and reach a size where they can be detected on mammograms," Jan Maehlen, MD, PhD, a study co-author, tells WebMD. "But if they had been left intact [instead of treated after detection], some will stop growing and shrink and disappear over a course of perhaps two years."
Published in The Archives of Internal Medicine, the study compared cumulative breast cancer incidence in groups of women ages 50 to 64 years old living in 4 Norwegian counties before and after the introduction of biennial mammography. The screened group went through 3 rounds of screening in 1996 through 2001. The controlled group made up of women in the same age group underwent a 1-time prevalence screen at the end of their observation period.
Results showed that incidence of invasive breast cancer was significantly higher in the screened group. In a 4 year period of time invasive breast cancer remained 22 percent higher in the group. Higher incidence was observed in screened women at each year of age. While 1,909 of every 100,000 women in the multiple-screened group had breast cancer, 1,564 of every 100,000 women in the comparison group screened only once did. "The conclusion that more than 1 in 5 invasive breast cancers is destined to regress without incident if not detected by mammography [the 22% figure cited in the study] is nothing more than an overreaching leap in logic," Robert A. Smith, PhD, director of cancer screening for the American Cancer Society, says in a prepared statement. Despite what the studies have shown, the American Cancer Society stresses that it is still extremely important to have routine mammograms performed for early detection of breast cancer that may not just go away on its own. Not all cancers will clear up and leave you with a clean bill of health on their own over time. "Breast cancer screening is a two-sided sword," Maehlen says. "Our results shift the balance towards harm and away from benefits. On one hand, a malignant tumor may be detected and treated somewhat earlier and this may decrease the risk to die by a few percent. On the other hand there is a considerable risk that a screening-detected lesion is a pseudo cancer." Interesting as all these findings are it is not in anyway advising anyone to pass up their routine exam out of fear of having a higher risk of getting breast cancer. Studies and research done by Maehlen's team is merely a stepping stone to further investigations of the concept of breast cancer spontaneously regressing and why it does so.  
 
 
 

Macallan and the 12-Year Argument

Macallan is one of the finest, most consistent go-to single malts for serious scotch drinkers. Since 1824, the various owners of the Macallan distillery in the Scottish highlands near the river Spey have been making what is, in my opinion, the epitome of what scotch should be. At least at the 12-year standard. Like a lot of scotch makers, Macallan generally markets to those who have the mind and the money to drink fermented prestige. That would explain the variety of rare and exceedingly old batches they've been trotting out over the past few years. They tout what they're calling "Macallan Fine and Rare", which is essentially a line of 30 to 70-year-old batches. In addition, there are now a variety of younger (8 to 30-year-old) scotches from the company that experiment with different varieties of barrel. Some are worthwhile, like the Fine Oak batches that take advantage of the mild but complex flavors lent to scotch by classic European wood. Others, like the 18-year Sherry Oak aren't really worth the price tag. 18-year-old scotches are in that odd middle period when they begin to become bold but haven't yet mellowed with age. The continental flavors lended to the spirit by the Sherry Oak only compound that problem. The consequence is a scotch that tastes too much like strong bourbon. While I love a good bourbon, I don't need to go looking for it in something that had to cross the ocean to land in my glass. The oldest, rarest and most expensive Macallan scotches are being released as part of their Lalique line, the first of which will be a dark 50-year. However impressive, a brand shouldn't be judged on its will and ability to sell a single malt in a crystal decanter that's older than most of the people who'll drink it. Rather, the baseline product, the one that the majority of their customers drink, should be the standard against which a scotch maker should be measured. I don't say this out of a populist petulance. Like in all things culinary, if the simplest, most common aspects of scotch aren't fundamentally good, the rest can't be either. This is why I humbly propose that, on all counts, the true elegance of scotch resides primarily in the younger iterations of a particular batch. At ages beyond 12, scotch takes on strong, prominent flavors. At 12, every element is equal. It is a time when it becomes possible to tell if the smokiness will blossom into a pleasant haze or something more reminiscent of cheap cigars. At 12, the hue leans either toward piss or gold, the body to balance or inappropriate sting. So, it is in full sincerity that I recommend Macallan's 12-year scotch as the premium brand of choice. Whether you're first learning how to drink it or have been a scotch enthusiast for years, skip the square bottle for a night and give Macallan a shot. Hell, they're not even paying me to say that, though I wouldn't turn down an endorsement deal paid in a case or two of their product.

Ibanez comments on D-sabr's

From mariners/index.html#35448">Geoff Baker's fine blog. No, that's not right; it's not a "fine" blog: it's a great blog. It's hard to think when you're scoffing ;- ) and Baker is the guy in Seattle who remains calm, cool, and collected no matter how hotly debated an issue is. Baker even-handedly, and open-mindedly, wants to give the other attorney a chance after the prime facie case we sabertistas have thrown out there. At the same time, Raul is a lot more practiced at covering a 94 fastball than he is at rhetoric. Perhaps Dr. D will, presumptuously, translate Rauuuuul's rough-hewn thoughts into a more sabr frame of reference ... .
Ibanez is aware of some of the conversations that have taken place in the blogosphere about whether the Phillies were foolish to have given him so much money ...
These conversations have taken place only in the last week or so. Obviously a lot of Mariners read all you guys avidly.
"Number one, with sabermetrics in general, it's a statistical probability thing,'' he said.
I don't think Ibby meant to say it this way; if he did, the above statement would admittedly have no value. Let's stipulate that this is not the most articulate start to the case-for. Batting average is a statistical probability thing. All stats are, including Rauuuul's HR and RBI as relating to his contract. But also, what say we lay off the ad hominems. It's very poor form to attack the arguer, rather than the argument. "Of course Raul hates the metrics, they say he's terrible" ? ... is both weak, and obnoxious. Whether it's Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton or Raul Ibanez, you don't get to throw out the argument just because you got somebody to laugh at the arguer. It's still going to be your responsibility to answer the arguments themselves. .
"And the way they come up with the defensive measurements, or ratings, is flawed. It's as flawed as the Gold Gloves. One of the reasons is, they don't consider things like ballpark factors, defensive positioning or alignment for certain hitters.''
Raul is on the right track here, IMHO. The world is a super-complex place. You move an outfielder from one ballpark and team to another ballpark and team, and his defensive ratings not only might, but usually DO, change. Outfielders' numbers DO fluctuate based on the variables around them. Adam Dunn, last season, had average-solid defensive numbers in LF -- after several years of lousy numbers in LF. Skeptics will shrug and dismiss Dunn's solid statistical performance last year. But this misses the point: HOW could defensive stats have measured Dunn to be a quality LF last year? I mean, WHAT went wrong with those metrics in 2008? D-metrics are far more volatile than we admit. It's not enough to just quip, "well, 3 out of 4 years, they were bad, so there's NO evidence to say he isn't putrid." This utterly fails to deal with the problem of, why did those last 160 games measure out the way they did?! Was Raul given a section of the outfield that made him look statistically weak, so that Ichiro could run down more balls? Who knows. That's the kind of thing Raul is hinting at here. You tell me that you counted it up, and Raul cost us -18 runs with the glove in 2008? I might, or might not, buy that. But even if I do, that is a long way from saying that in some other park, with some other set of teammates, behind some other pitching staff, you guarantee me he'll cost another 18 next year. This is not a quibble. A good portion of those defensive numbers are due to circumstances -- some visible, and many invisible. .
Ibanez added that most of the people taking down the statistics that measure defense are doing so "off a television'' and are "not equipped to assess talent on the baseball field.''
This makes more sense than people give it credit for. Imagine a 3-on-3 basketball game. By the end of the afternoon, your two teammates are going to understand extremely well, how good your defense is or isn't. People measuring your defense from the stands, with cameras and spline charts, aren't going to see everything that your teammates see. ...Now, I'm not saying that those spline charts are useless, either. But as always, Dr. D urges respect for the complexity of the problem. Raul's teammates -- and bosses -- DO respect his defense a lot more than the stats do. That is precisely what gives me pause for thought as to how confident we saberdogs can afford to be. Raul's case-against is, if a little rough-hewn, still on the right track, IMHO. Cheers, jemanji .................. image: http://newscoma.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/smitphu008001ozzie-smith-198...

Freezing Cookie Dough

It's the time of year when everyone is baking cookies for holiday entertaining. One of the best ways to make sure to have enough cookies (since it's impossible too many), is to use your freezer.

Right now, I'm going to talk about freezing cookie dough for baking at a later time; I'll talk about freezing baked cookies later. You can easily freeze cookie dough for many kinds of cookies, and, properly stored, cookie dough will keep in your freezer for as long as six weeks.

Some cookie dough freezes better than others. Delicate cookies that are made with a liquid batter don't fare well; avoid madelines and merringues, for instance (both are fine for freezing after baking. These cookie doughs freeze well: shortbreads, sugar cookies, snickerdoodles, chocolate chip/toll house types of cookies, peanut butter, refrigerator cookies/roll cookies.

  • Double-wrap dough before freezing. Either wrap the dough in plastic wrap and then place in a zip lock bag, or line a small plastic freezer-safe container with plastic wrap, fill it almost to the top with dough, drape the excess plastic wrap over the top, and seal the lid tightly.
  • Make sure to date and label the container or bag, noting the kind of cookie dough, and the oven temperature for cooking the thawed dough.
  • A day before you plan to cook the cookies, defrost the dough in your freezer; then follow the instructions in the recipe for baking them.

Freezing the entire batch of dough does mean you need to plan ahead, allowing time to defrost the dough, and you need to cook all the cookies at once, but there's a "short cut" method you can use with some cookie dough.

  • If the cookie is one that you make by placing "drops" of dough from a spoon onto a cookie sheet, cover a cookie sheet with foil or cooking parchment, then "drop" the dough by spoonfuls, but go ahead and fit as many as you can on the sheet.
  • Instead of putting the cookie sheet in the oven, pop it in the freezer for a few hours, or overnight, so the individual balls of dough freeze.
  • Remove the frozen lumps of dough from the cookie sheet, and place in air tight containers, or freezer bags. When you get ready for fresh cookies, remove as many as you need from the freezer, and bake them.
  • You'll want to adapt the specifics to your cookies and recipe (keep an eye on them the first time) but in generally frozen cookies take 10-15 minutes to bake on a cookie sheet lined with cooking parchment, at 350 degree F.

Next up? How to freeze baked cookies.

-18 runs? Well, maybe, Anton

In Part II, let's talk for a bit about Raul's most effective argument: that many of the subject-matter experts have declared him defensively sane. . === Fun to Write and to Read, Dept. ===
He also feels that some of the people looking at the numbers have already figured him a below average defender in their minds and discount anything good that he does. "Some of those biases that are pre-determined biases come into that mindset,'' he said. "Those are things that I'm going to have to continue to battle throughout my career. But if you go around the game, and you ask the players, you ask quality major league scouts, you ask managers, they'll tell you I'm the type of player they want on their team.''
FWIW, I personally have NEVER agreed with the idea that Raul has terrible footspeed. Raul doesn't run badly. He comes around 3B pretty hard on a single. Raul has a legitimate complaint that the Seattle blog-o-sphere gets carried away with itself, once it decides it has found an ankle to gnaw. As Anton Ego put it in Ratatouille, " In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read." The Seattle blog-o-sphere has had a lot of fun with Raul, and in having its fun, might it have gotten biased? Of course it could have. Raul calls them on the baloney. Can you blame him? Again and again, I read M's fans saying weird things like, Raul couldn't run out of his own shoes if Adam Dunn were chasing him. I don't get it. Raul is in awesome shape and he picks 'em up and lays 'em down pretty good. Granted, the jumps look questionable. I see the crack of the bat, look over at Raul and he's only halfway up to running speed. I am not saying the guy's a good fielder. . === Expert Witnesses for the Defense === No idea why this point does not gain more traction than it does in Seattle:
Obviously, the Phillies thought enough of Ibanez's outfield defense to make him an everyday fielder and pay big bucks for it. "And if you look at the list of teams bidding for me, the ones that were the most serious tended to be in the National League,'' he said. "They didn't seem to have a problem with me playing the field.''
You have to assume that you are a lot smarter than the clubs paying out the 8-figure contracts, if you are going to insist that Manny's, and Ibanez', and Dunn's, defense is canceling out half their production. And the fact is, ML teams in the 21st century have way, way better data than we do. I have NEVER seen an Anton -- we're using the parody in fun, and including ourselves in it -- calm down and contemplatively ask the question, "WHY did the great Pat Gillick not consider this -18 number important?" . === Where's the Team of Nine Paul Blairs? === I saw a cool quote to the effect of, "it's nice to see a team that realizes that running down balls in the gap is as important as hitting them there," or somesuch. This sounds great, and it is pithy and I like it.  :- ) ... but if the idea is that defense is half of a player's value, the idea is wrong. There has never been a great manager who wanted 9 Paul Blairs as opposed to 9 Ted Williamses. 9 Ted Williamses would, demonstrably, score 12 runs per ballgame. But having 9 Ted Williamses out there on defense would not combine with average pitching to give up 12 runs a game. ...Six? maybe? Seven, conceivably, but not 12. 9 Teddys would score 12 per game and give up 6 or 7, and win what, 120, 130 games. His lousy defense is NOTHING compared to his great offense. Apply the same to an Adam Dunn, who is the poster boy for nice offense and 'putrid' defense. Nine Dunns would score you 7.5 runs per ballgame. Yet, he could be the very worst defender in all of organized baseball, and there would be no way for him to combine with average pitching to give up 7.5 runs per game. Nine Dunns -- no matter how badly you calculate their defense -- would give you a contender. And it's not like Dunn is a great hitter. ................ That is because IN GENERAL, the variance between one defender's effectiveness, and another's, is much less than the variance between one hitter's effectiveness and another's. (Part of the reason is that pitchers are part of the equation in the top half of the inning.) Excellence in defense is important, but it is not as important as excellence in hitting. The tendency in Seattle, to view defense as ultra-, ultra-important ... the tendency to view an 80-OPS glove man as being just as valuable as Manny Ramirez or J.J. Putz ... is off track. And 30 major-league GM's, with their saber staffs behind them, will agree with me on that. Defense is important, but let's not fall too madly in love with it. Earl Weaver didn't. Bobby Cox didn't. John McGraw didn't. Great managers use defense as the third or fourth string to their bows. . === Critical Mass, Dept. === Obvious caveat: if defense -- or OBP, or the bullpen, or HR, or speed, or anything -- is bad ENOUGH, you can reach the point to where it needs to be fixed. We're not saying there might not be a team whose DER desperately needs to be fixed. There might, and maybe Seattle's one of them. But you could say the same about (say) a team's bullpen. It doesn't mean that two relief pitchers are as important as all the position players together. You can hit a point of critical mass, where a given component of a system is SO weak that the whole system breaks down.   It doesn't mean that you've proven that component is the most important. ............... I don't mind seeing "-18 runs defense" next to Raul Ibanez' name, if we're not dogmatic about it, and if we realize that under other circumstances, it might be different. But I'd also like to see it acknowledged that most ML teams don't put as much stock in our numbers as we do. Cheers, Dr D ................ image: http://www.fantasykat.com/ch/Images/e/ego02.jpg

The Fine-Tuning of G and Other Natural Constants

The gravitational constant, in terms of force, is "set" at:
G = 6.674 * 10 (-11th power) * N * (m/kg)(2nd power).
In layman's terms -- helpful, since I'm a layman :- ) -- there is a certain "amount of pull" between two objects with mass. We refer to this "amount of pull," or "attractional force," as gravity. How hard do objects pull together? It is in proportion to the products of their masses and is inversely proportional to the squares of the distance between them. In other words, the Sun would pull on Jupiter much harder than the Earth pulls on the moon, but you also have to factor in distance: Jupiter is much farther away in this comparison. This is a fairly simple relationship (not measurement) and is referred to as Newton's constant. Newton understood the relationship that he diagrammed, but of course did not measure its strength or weakness. Another way to speak of the strength of this constant was given in the January 5, 2007 issue of Science (page 74), where J. B. Fixler et al described the gravitational constant as
G = 6.693 × 10?11 cubic meters per kilogram second squared, with a standard error of the mean of ±0.027 × 10?11 and a systematic error of ±0.021 × 10?11 cubic meters per kilogram second squared
So, as the amount of force a weightlifter is exerting can be measured by the pounds on the barbell, the amount of force that gravity is exerting can be described as above. ................... What you might not have spent much time reflecting on is this: is that the amount of this pull could have been "set" to a stronger or weaker force. A man who weighs 200 lbs. might have weighed 205 if the attractional force were stronger, or 195 if the pull had been weaker. Silly to spend your time thinking about things like this? Interest in such questions -- "What if the speed of light were 10 times slower or faster?" -- has set the Einsteins and Newtons apart from other scientists. A man who weighs 200 lbs. might very easily have weighed 1,000,000 lbs, in fact, if the strength of the gravitational constant had been "set" to a strength comparable to that of other natural constants. Meditate on that for a few minutes ... :- ) ................ At first glance, science students tend to assume (intuitively) that if the natural constants were different, then everything else would have simply evolved differently to accommodate. For example, if gravity were 1,000 times stronger, then men "weighing" 200 lbs. would simply be strong enough to move around despite weighing as much as a building. That, or perhaps life would evolve only on much smaller planets. Nothing could be further from the truth. There are many ways in which even the smallest changes to the natural forces would make any life impossible. The "tuning" of the gravitational constants -- the "tweaking" of these constants so as to "enable" the existence of living organisms that feed, breathe, grow, and reproduce -- is one of the oddest phenomenon of the universe we observe. Astrophysicist Hugh R. Ross, Ph.D (reasons.org) lists dozens of such tunings of natural constants and physical balances, including:
magnetic field
  • if stronger: electromagnetic storms would be too severe; too few cosmic ray protons would reach planet’s troposphere which would inhibit adequate cloud formation
  • if weaker: ozone shield would be inadequately protected from hard stellar and solar radiation
atmospheric pressure
  • if too small: liquid water will evaporate too easily and condense too infrequently; weather and climate variation would be too extreme; lungs will not function
  • if too large: liquid water will not evaporate easily enough for land life; insufficient sunlight reaches planetary surface; insufficient uv radiation reaches planetary surface; insufficient climate and weather variation; lungs will not function
level of supersonic turbulence in the infant universe
  • if too high: first stars will be of the wrong type and quantity to produce the necessary mix of elements, gas, and dust so that a future star and planetary system capable of supporting life will appear at the right time in cosmic history
    • if too low: first stars will be of the wrong type and quantity to produce the necessary mix of elements, gas, and dust so that a future star and planetary system capable of supporting life will appear at the right time in cosmic history
    ... and 151 other fundamental "tunings" with respect to life on Earth particularly. But perhaps the freakiest, and most cognitive-dissonant, of all of these "tunings" occurs in the gravitational constant, with respect to the Big Bang. See G and the Big Bang

    Benefits of Colonoscopy Seen More Limited?

    Cancer of the colon is one of the most common causes of deathfrom cancer, coming in just behind lung cancer, among the many types ofcancer that affect men and women. Most cancers of the colonbegin as polyps which are small, slow-growing, mushroom-like growthson the inner surface of the colon. The purposeof colon cancer screening is to detect and remove growths beforethey invade and spread. 
     
    A colonoscopy screening is performed to inspect the entire colon througha flexible tube. Becausecolonoscopy is also the most expensive, inconvenient, and riskiesttest, it is important to know whether colonoscopy reduces thechance of dying of colon cancer. Researchers performed studies to find out whether the colon cancer death rate is lower in people who had a colonoscopy performed.
     
    Previously believed that screening for colorectal cancer through a colonoscopy prevents up to 90 percent of deaths studies now indicate that the number is closer to only two-thirds. Further studies show that only those with malignancies that occur on the left side of the colon benefit from preventing death through colonoscopy procedures.
     
    "While colonoscopy remains the gold standard for evaluation of the colon, our study sheds light on some of the real-world limitations of this practice for screening and prevention," lead author Dr. Nancy Baxter, from the University of Toronto, said in a statement. The large bowel extends from the rectum up the left side of the abdomen, across, and down the right side to the cecum, or junction with the small intestine. Although the entire colon should be inspected during a colonoscopy, the cecum and the right side of the colon can be difficult to reach during insertion of the colonoscope. The biggest limitation was the lack of information in the computerrecords about the purpose of the colonoscopy: to screen peoplewho had no symptoms of colon cancer or to evaluate symptomsthat could be caused by colon cancer. The other limitation isthat people were not randomly assigned to get a colonoscopy. Therefore,it is not possible to say that a colonoscopy is a cause of a lowerdeath rate from colon cancer. The current study, based in Ontario, Canada, included more than 10,000 patients who were diagnosed with colorectal cancer between 1996 and 2001 and died from the malignancy by the end of 2003. Each patient was matched to five "controls" who did not have colorectal cancer. Overall, 9.8 percent of controls had undergone a colonoscopy compared with only 7.0 percent of the patients who died of colorectal cancer, the researchers report in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Complete colonoscopy (that is, to the cecum) was associated with a 67 percent reduced risk of death from left-sided colorectal cancer, but was not associated with a significant reduction in deaths from right-sided disease. One reason for this may be that the colonoscopies were not as complete as reported, or were hurried, Dr. David F. Ransohoff, from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, suggests in an accompanying editorial. He comments, "Colonoscopy is an effective intervention, but as Baxter and colleagues suggest, we must realize that current evidence is indirect and does not support a claim of 90 percent effectiveness." Ransohoff adds that, in advising patients about colonoscopy, "we should be realistic and cautious when talking with them about the magnitude of both benefits and risks."
     

    The Raveonettes: Love in Black

    I'll admit, when I first heard Danish noise rockers The Raveonettes, I was dismissive. 2001's quickie intro to the band, Whip It On, is pretty exhilarating. It sounds like surf rock from a post-apocalyptic future. Despite its energy, it plays more like a single song broken up into movements than an album of distinct tracks. 2003's Chain Gang of Love definitely has a unique sound, but the lack of variety was a major turn-off. I guess that's what you get when you pick up an album on which every track is deliberately written in B-flat major. Admittedly, the project initially pursued by Sharin Foo and Sune Rose Wagner didn't lend itself to wide diversity. They sought to combine the simplicity of poppy, half-sincere doo-wop with the sometimes abrasive and always consuming noise of bands like My Bloody Valentine and The Jesus and Mary Chain. To that end, I suppose the Raveonettes succeeded. After Chain Gang of Love I didn't really pay attention to The Raveonettes. A while later, I heard some good things about 2005's Pretty in Black. While they were never among my favorites, I liked the band enough when I first heard them to give them another shot. Imagine my shock when I started Pretty in Black and heard an acoustic guitar on the opening track, "The Heavens". What follows is a much clearer version of the noisy outfit from Chain Gang, both literally and in artistic vision. Pretty has the band more overtly embracing its inspiration by covering standards like "My Boyfriend's Back" and even featuring a guest vocal by The Ronettes' Ronnie Spector. Pretty In Black was a good and necessary transition for The Raveonettes. Mixed with the band's more frenetic side, the result is 2007's Lust Lust Lust, by far their strongest recording to date. As if to encapsulate the feel of the entire album, the first track "Aly Walk With Me" has moments of careful restraint that lead into earshattering noise. All in all, it's great to hear The Raveonettes when they're not in a hurry to get wherever it is they're going. Some of the songs are upbeat, some wallow in a pretty deep melancholy, most strike a balance between the two. The low point is on "You Want The Candy", which just seems repetative and ill-fitting. Aside from that, I wouldn't toss any other song on the album. Like so many other bands that carve out a one-of-kind sound, The Raveonettes have written themselves into a crossroads. If the evolution of their style continues, their next album could be a truly transcendent piece of music. Of course, they could always stagnate and churn out a few more same-sounding records for the sake of their die-hard fans, or else call it quits to pursue other projects. For now, we'll have to accept speculation and tide ourselves over with the ironically kitschy holiday season EP Wishing You A Rave Christmas. Sharin and Sune will be heading back out for a small US tour in January and will hopefully explore some new territory beyond the other EP's from the past year.

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