News You May Have Missed: Liquid Eel for Summer Refreshment

I drive a Japanese car, and I almost like sushi, but I don't think I'll be stocking the refrigerator with the latest Japanese creation:

TOKYO (AP) — It's the hottest season of the year in Japan, and that means it's eel season. So, bottom's up!

A canned drink called "Unagi Nobori," or "Surging Eel," made by Japan Tobacco Inc., hit the nation's stores this month just ahead of Japan's annual eel-eating season, company spokesman Kazunori Hayashi said Monday.

"It's mainly for men who are exhausted by the summer's heat," Hayashi said of the beverage, believed to be the first mass-produced eel drink in Japan.

Many Japanese believe eating eel boosts stamina in hot weather.

The fizzy, yellow-colored drink contains extracts from the head and bones of eel and five vitamins — A, B1, B2, D and E — contained in the fish.

...

Demand for eel is so high that Japan has been hit by scores of eel fraud cases, including a recent high-profile incident in which a government ministry publicly scolded two companies for mislabeling eel imported from China as being domestically grown.

... The $1.30 drink costs about one-tenth as much as broiled eel, but has a similar flavor.

Eel extract is also used in cookies and pies made in Japan's biggest eel producing town, Hamamatsu.

Yum. Eel cookies for dessert!

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Source: Associated Press. Slightly edited for brevity.

News You May Have Missed: Marksmanship Gets Personal

I am working on a serious post (really) but for today, here's a lesson in cultural differences, courtesy of Reuters. It's a story I'm confident you won't see on the NBC Nightly News:

If the video doesn't come up below, you can get it at this link.



(One of the inventor's names sounds like Bart Garrett, which adds an additional degree of humor for those of us who know someone else by that name. All the more so, because it's not hard to imagine him inventing something like this.)

News You May Have Missed: Retired Priests and Nuns Try a New Type of Spiritual Warfare

An Australian retirement home for retired Catholic clergy has started offering fencing lessons to its residents. Apparently, it's turning out to be a big hit, though some have expressed reservations:

"It's very unusual at our age," said 93-year-old Sister Delores Kirby, a retired nun of the Faithful Companions of Jesus order. "It's a challenge. I'm always a bit afraid I might fall over."

Read the article and see more pictures here.

News You May Have Missed: Bobaraba

The BBC has informed us of the latest dance craze in Cote d'Ivoire, West Africa. It's called Bobaraba, and it's driving women in the country to seek injections and creams to increase the size of their . . . no, not those. Those other things. Their, uh, . . . bums. You can read all about it here. Or you can just watch the video below.

For some reason, I find this hilarious. Maybe I need counselling?



My roommate Paul is from Cote d'Ivoire. He doesn't admit to doing this dance, but I have been wondering why he keeps the door to his room closed so much of the time.

How to Avoid Cancer Forever: A Loaf of Bread, and Jug of Wine, . . . but No "Thee"

News You May Have Missed: The Times of London has published a groundbreaking story which reveals for the first time that women cause cancer. Or something like that.

It seems the monks on Mount Athos in Greece have a remarkably low incidence of cancer. This probably has something to do with their diet, but it's hard to overlook the fact of their 60-minute daily morning Quiet Times and the absolute rule that no females are allowed anywhere on the island (unless they're cats). Check out the story here.

News You May Have Missed: Yorkshire Man Not Allowed to Buy Eight Pasties

No, not those pasties.

A pasty is a small savory pie with a filling of meat, potatoes, and onion. More about these coveted items can be found on Wikipedia.

But this isn't a cooking blog, it's a news item, and for that we turn to the U.K.'s Wakefield Express, which reports that a West Yorkshire man was threatened with the police for attempting to buy eight pasties at a supermarket. Apparently, the store has a limit of six.

Proving that British humor just sort of creates itself, check out the article here and be sure to watch the short video that accompanies it.

News You May Have Missed: The Einstein Award Goes To . . .

You may have guessed from my gun post that I'm no particular fan of firearms. But today I was sobered to read that even if all guns were confiscated, that wouldn't stop the carnage. Read on . . .

LAKE LUZERNE, New York (AP) -- A young man shot himself without using a gun.

Damion M. Mosher, who put bullets in a vise and whacked them with a hammer to empty the brass shell casings, was hit in the abdomen by one of the shots, authorities said.

Warren County deputies said they were called to Mosher's home in Lake Luzerne on Saturday afternoon after one bullet went about a half-inch into his abdomen. He was treated at Glens Falls Hospital and was released. No charges were filed.

Mosher, 18, told authorities he was trying to empty the .223-caliber rounds to collect the brass casings for scrap.

Sheriff Larry Cleveland said about 100 other rounds that Mosher hit had "fizzled," but one was somehow sent with more force. It was unclear if the bullet ricocheted or hit him directly.

An employee of an Albany scrap metal company told The Post-Star of Glens Falls that the business pays $1.70 a pound for scrap brass shell casings.

Cleveland said Mosher's shells amounted to just a few pounds.

Lake Luzerne, at the southeastern edge of the Adirondacks, is 45 miles north of Albany.

News You May Have Missed: 737 Lands on Mumbai Sidewalk

An earlier blog referenced the precarious commute to work in Mumbai, India. Now, it appears that even airplanes get stuck in Mumbai's famed traffic. Read this linked article for details.

My favorite part of the article is where it says, "No one is clear about its owner, its destination and the reason why it is parked there but the young ones are having a field day. Not only them, but some homeless men even found the cargo hold of the plane good enough to be used as a makeshift kitchen. And some even strung a clothesline where the plane's wings once were."

Walt Disney may think it's a small world, after all, but some parts of it are clearly very, very different.

(The BBC's version of the story is here. It's best if you read the quotes with your "Indian accent.")

News You May Have Missed: Murder Rate Hits 90% in U.S.

I've been reading lately about abortion practices in India and China, where it's a well-known practice to abort baby girls (er, female fetuses), because parents are constrained by law or economics to have only one child, and boys are more valuable to the family. Girls are merely money pits. This practice is technically illegal, but it happens, it's no big secret, sonogram manufacturers knowingly provide the equipment for it, and nobody ever seems to be prosecuted for it.

India and China didn't invent eugenic abortion, however. The Nazis didn't either, but during their Reich it was public policy, not something done in secret, to eliminate imbeciles and cripples. The picture you see here, which I found on Wikipedia, is from that time period. It promotes a forced euthanasia program; clearly, the regime would have supported eugenic abortion, as well. Translated, the poster says, "This person suffering from hereditary defects costs the community 60,000 Reichsmark during his lifetime. Fellow Germans, that is your money, too." Why waste money on worthless persons? Eliminate them for the benefit of all.

Peter Singer at Princeton is (in)famous for advocating something similar, but I've always considered him to be a fringe idiot, not someone in the vanguard of public thought.

Maybe I was wrong.

In today's NY Times on-line, I read the following:

Sarah Itoh, a self-described “almost-eleven-and-a-half,” betrayed no trace of nervousness as she told a roomful of genetic counselors and obstetricians about herself one recent afternoon.

She likes to read, she said. Math used to be hard, but it is getting easier. She plays clarinet in her school band. She is a junior girl scout and an aunt, and she likes to organize, so her room is very clean. Last year, she won three medals in the Special Olympics.

I am so lucky I get to do so many things,” she concluded. “I just want you to know, even though I have Down syndrome, it is O.K.”

Sarah’s appearance at Henry Ford Hospital here is part of an unusual campaign being undertaken by parents of children with Down syndrome who worry about their future in the face of broader prenatal testing that could sharply reduce the number of those born with the genetic condition.

Until this year, only pregnant women 35 and older were routinely tested to see if their fetuses had the extra chromosome that causes Down syndrome. As a result many couples were given the diagnosis only at birth. But under a new recommendation from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, doctors have begun to offer a new, safer screening procedure to all pregnant women, regardless of age.

About 90 percent of pregnant women who are given a Down syndrome diagnosis have chosen to have an abortion.

Would you have guessed 90%? I'm flabbergasted. . . Particularly because this statistic comes from the NY Times, which is not exactly known for its pro-life advocacy. Elsewhere in the article we read such tidbits as:

Genetic counselors, who often give test results to prospective parents, say they need to respect patients who may have already made up their minds to terminate their pregnancy. Suggesting that they read a flyer or spend a day with a family [to learn what Down syndrome children are really like], they say, can unnecessarily complicate what is for many a painful and time-pressured decision.

So once again, the value of a human life comes down to the degree upon which it impinges on my own. We wouldn't want to "complicate" a "time-pressured" decision, would we? Somebody might have to miss a concert or a party or a business trip if forced to read a flyer or learn something more about the life they're considering terminating. How intrusive.

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I don't have kids and probably never will. But you don't have to have kids to know that something about killing people to improve the gene pool and personal convenience is very, very wrong.

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I encourage you to read the entire NY Times article (you can register for free). There's actually a positive spin to what's happening, in the form of parents with Down Syndrome kids getting the word out that these are human beings worthy of love. I'm just sorry it's come to this.

Who Are These Bozos? "Religious Group Attacks Religion in Healthcare"

The following article reads like satire, but it's from Reuters, which doesn't do satire. Apparently, the "Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice" thinks that religion should play no role in health care decisions. When you read the article, you'll wonder where they think religion should play a role. In a church, perhaps, but you gotta wonder even about that.

Notice the loaded terminology used throughout by the "Coalition" (and Reuters). Religious belief is interfering with personal rights. People with religious convictions are "imposing their points of view," which we know is always a no-no (unless it's your point of view). All 5 justices who voted against partial-birth abortion are Catholic men (not just Catholics, mind you, but also men - highly suspicious). Health care practitioners are exercising a "'so-called' religious or moral objection" (if it's only "so-called," then what is it really?). Women facing "problem pregnancies" should be able to exercise choice ("I'm pregnant. That's a problem. I think I'll have an abortion."). Courts should not interfere with "reproductive health" decisions (what the hell does abortion have to do with a woman's "health"?). And so on.

What's more ludicrous? That some people spout off this fatuous nonsense, or that one of the most respected news wires chooses to publish it?

Here's the article, if you haven't already had enough. And if you think I'm making all this up, here's the link to the original article:


Religious group attacks religion in healthcare
Wed Apr 25, 2007 1:32PM BST
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A coalition of religious leaders took on the Catholic Church, the U.S. Supreme Court and the Bush administration on Tuesday with a plea to take religion out of health care in the United States.

They said last week's Supreme Court decision outlawing a certain type of abortion demonstrated that religious belief was interfering with personal rights and the U.S. health care system in general.

The group, calling itself the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, said it planned to submit its proposals to other church groups and lobby Congress and state legislators.

"With the April 18 Supreme Court decision banning specific abortion procedures, concerns are being raised in religious communities about the ethics of denying these services," the group said in a statement.

"They are imposing their points of view," Barbara Kavadias, director of field services for the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, told reporters in a telephone briefing.
She noted that the five Supreme Court justices on the majority in the 5-4 decision were all Catholic men -- Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Anthony Kennedy, Justice Samuel Alito, Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Antonin Scalia.

All were appointed by conservative Republican presidents who oppose abortion, including President George W. Bush.

The group also complained about Catholic-owned hospitals that refuse to sterilize women who ask for it, refuse to let doctors perform abortions and do not provide contraception.

"Doctors, pharmacists and nurses are also increasingly exercising a so-called 'religious or moral objection,' refusing to provide essential services and often leaving patients without other options," the group said in a statement.

CODIFYING RELIGION
"And now, to make it worse, the government is codifying these refusals, first through legislation and now with the recent Supreme Court decision, where five Catholic men decided that they could better determine what was moral and good than the physicians, women and families facing difficult, personal choices in problem pregnancies," it added.

The group includes ordained Protestant ministers, a Jewish activist, an expert on women's reproductive rights and several physicians.

"The threat comes from a few, but powerful, religions and a few ... powerful religious leaders who pretend to speak for all religions," said Larry Greenfield, executive minister of the American Baptist Churches of Metro Chicago.

"Health care decisions ought to be made freely, based on medical expertise and individual conscience," he added.

The group wrote up a series of guidelines and asked for all health care providers to implement them.

They include allowing doctors to use best medical practices, providing comprehensive counseling on sexual or reproductive health and an agreement to honor advance directives -- including "do not resuscitate" orders.

"Refusal to provide health care would be balanced by alternate service delivery so that no one would be victimized when another exercises his/her conscience," the guidelines read.
Marie Hilliard of the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia said she had grave concerns about the report.

"There is no recognition of the true meaning of the separation of church and state, which mandates that the free exercise of religion, including that of the provider, be respected," she said.

"What we have tried to avoid is to be coercive ourselves," Greenfield said. "We have tried to allow for the freedom of conscience of every participant in the health care system."

Between Friday and Sunday

Tombs and Wombs

While at the concert last week of Bach’s St. John Passion, I had a new thought – new for me, that is. The text from the book of John says that Jesus was laid in “a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid” (John 19.41). For some reason, it struck me that this is a parallel with his birth. He was born from a virgin womb, and He was buried in (and rose from) a virgin tomb. If there’s any theological significance to this, I haven’t yet figured out what it is. But it is a nice symmetry.


News You May Have Missed: Ahmadinejad, The Press, and Easter

When the 15 British sailors were released from Iran a couple days ago, the press uniformly reported that President Ahmadinejad said he was releasing his prisoners as an Easter gift. For example, the New York Times ran this AP version: "Irans's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said he had pardoned the sailors as an Easter holiday gift to the British people.”

That caught my eye, because I wouldn’t expect the president of Iran to care much about a Christian holiday.

What did he really say? MSNBC ran a longer version of his remarks, and they’re informative:

“Ahmadinejad said he had pardoned the sailors as a gift to the British people and to mark the birthday of Islam's Prophet Muhammed and Easter. On the occasion of the birthday of the great prophet (Muhammad) ... and for the occasion of the passing of Christ, I say the Islamic Republic government and the Iranian people -- with all powers and legal right to put the soldiers on trial -- forgave those 15."

“The occasion of the passing of Christ.” Would somebody please tell the press that the death of Jesus isn’t the definition of Easter?

(More about this story at GetReligion.org.)

News You May Have Missed: Drive-Through Passion Scenes for the Busy Contemplative

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 3/29/07:

Sandy Springs United Methodist will present drive-through Passion Scenes, 8-9 p.m. April 6 in the parking lot of the Hitson Memorial Center. Scenes will depict Christ's entry to Jerusalem, the Last Supper, Crucifixion, burial and Resurrection. Presented by the youth ministry. The church is at . . .

What's wrong with this picture? I'm reminded of the old Keith Green lyrics: "Jesus rose from the dead, and you can't even get out of bed" - or cars, in this case.

As we enter the week leading up to Easter, it'd be nice if we all could spare more than five minutes on our way somewhere else to think about what it all means.

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(And while we're at it, would anyone like to ridicule the photo at the top of this post? I can't think of anything sarcastic enough to capture my feelings adequately.)

News You May Have Missed: Muslims Debate the Propriety of Wife-Beating (And a German Judge Supports It)

As you'll read below, some Muslims argue that wife-beating is an acceptable last resort, when necessary to save the marriage. A civil judge in Germany last week agreed. But other Muslims disagree and are looking for new ways to translate the "beat" word that occurs in the Quran. Just thought you might like to know what the "religion of peace" is thinking about these days. (Link to the original NY Times article is here, or you can read the reprint below.)

March 25, 2007

New Translation Prompts Debate on Islamic Verse
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

CHICAGO — Laleh Bakhtiar had already spent two years working on an English translation of the Koran when she came upon Chapter 4, Verse 34.
She nearly dropped the project right then.
The hotly debated verse states that a rebellious woman should first be admonished, then abandoned in bed, and ultimately “beaten” — the most common translation for the Arabic word “daraba” — unless her behavior improves.
“I decided it either has to have a different meaning, or I can’t keep translating,” said Ms. Bakhtiar, an Iranian-American who adopted her father’s Islamic faith as an adult and had not dwelled on the verse before. “I couldn’t believe that God would sanction harming another human being except in war.”
Ms. Bakhtiar worked for five more years, with the translation to be published in April. But while she found a way through the problem, few verses in the Koran have generated as much debate, particularly as more Muslim women study their faith as an academic field.
“This verse became an issue of debate and controversy because of the ethics of the modern age, the universal notions of human rights,” said Khaled Abou El Fadl, an Egyptian-born law professor and Islamic scholar at the

University of California, Los Angeles.
The leader of the North American branch of a mystical Islamic order, Sheik Muhammad Hisham Kabbani, said he had been questioned about the verse in places around the world where women were struggling for greater rights, but most of all by Westerners.
Women want to be free “from some of the extreme ideology of some Muslims,” the sheik said, after delivering a sermon on the verse recently in Oakland, Calif.
[In Germany last week, a judge citing the verse caused a public outcry after she rejected the request for a fast track divorce by a Moroccan-German woman because her husband beat her. The judge, removed from the case, had written that the Koran sanctioned physical abuse.]
There are at least 20 English translations of the Koran. “Daraba” has been translated as beat, hit, strike, scourge, chastise, flog, make an example of, spank, pet, tap and even seduce.
“Spank?” exclaimed Professor Abou El Fadl, who has concluded that the verse refers to a rare public legal procedure that ended before the 10th century. “That is really kinky. That is the author fantasizing too much.”

Ms. Bakhtiar, who is 68 and has a doctorate in educational psychology, set out to translate the Koran because she found the existing version inaccessible for Westerners. Many Jewish and Christian names, for example, have been Arabized, so Moses and Jesus appear in the English version of the Koran as Musa and Issa.
When she reached the problematic verse, Ms. Bakhtiar spent the next three months on “daraba.” She does not speak Arabic, but she learned to read the holy texts in Arabic while studying and working as a translator in Iran in the 1970s and ’80s.
Her eureka moment came on roughly her 10th reading of the Arabic-English Lexicon by Edward William Lane, a 3,064-page volume from the 19th century, she said. Among the six pages of definitions for “daraba” was “to go away.”
“I said to myself, ‘Oh, God, that is what the prophet meant,’ ” said Ms. Bakhtiar, speaking in the offices of Kazi Publications in Chicago, a mail-order house for Islamic books that is publishing her translation. “When the prophet had difficulty with his wives, what did he do? He didn’t beat anybody, so why would any Muslim do what the prophet did not?”
She thinks the “beat” translation contradicts another verse, which states that if a woman wants a divorce, she should not be mistreated. Given the option of staying in the marriage and being beaten, or divorcing, women would obviously leave, she said.
There have been similar interpretations, but none have been incorporated into a translation. Debates over translations of the Koran — considered God’s eternal words — revolve around religious tradition and Arabic grammar. Critics fault Ms. Bakhtiar on both scores.
Ms. Bakhtiar said she expected opposition, not least because she is not an Islamic scholar. Men in the Muslim world, she said, will also oppose the idea of an American, especially a woman, reinterpreting the prevailing translation.
“They feel the onslaught of the West against their religious values, and they fear losing their whole suit of armor,” she said. “But women need to know that there is an alternative.”
Religious scholars outline several main threads in the translation of “daraba.”
Conservative scholars suggest the verse has to be taken at face value, with important reservations.
They consider that the Koran holds that force is an acceptable last resort to preserve important institutions, including marriages and nations. Some scholars have accused some Muslims of trying to make the verse palatable to the West.
“I am not apologetic about why the Koran says this,” said Seyyed Hossein Nasr, an Islamic scholar who teaches at George Washington University. The Bible, he noted, addresses stoning people to death.
Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian whose writings underpin the extremism of groups like Al Qaeda, published extensive commentaries about the Koran before he was hanged in 1966.
Islamic tradition states that Muhammad never hit his 11 wives, and Mr. Qutb considered a man striking his wife as the last measure to save a marriage. He cited the prophet’s horror at the practice by quoting one of his sayings: “Do not beat your wife like you beat your camel, for you will be flogging her early in the day and taking her to bed at night.”
The verse 4:34, with its three-step program, is often called a reform over the violent practices of seventh century Arabia, when the Koran was revealed. The verse was not a license for battery, scholars say, with other interpretations defining the heaviest instrument a man might employ as a twig commonly used as a toothbrush.
Sheik Ali Gomaa, the Islamic scholar who serves as Egypt’s grand mufti, said Koranic verses must be viewed through the prism of the era.
The advice “is always broad in order to be relevant to different cultures and in different times,” he said through a spokesman in an e-mail message. “In our modern context, hitting one’s wife is totally inappropriate as society deems it hateful and it will only serve to sow more discord.”
A caller on a television program in Egypt recently asked the mufti if he should stop sleeping with his wife if she was causing discord, the spokesman said. The mufti replied that the measures in the verse were meant to bring harmony, not to exact revenge.
More liberal commentators, particularly women, say the usual interpretation reflects the patriarchal practices of the Arabian peninsula.
This school holds that the sacred texts have become encrusted with medieval traditions that need to be scraped off like a layer of barnacles. Some Saudi women have been trying to do this by emphasizing the public role played by Aisha, one of the prophet’s wives, while the Asma Society gathered Muslim women from around the world in New York last fall to explore the establishment of a female council to interpret Islamic law.
Some analysts hold that the verse cannot be rendered meaningfully into English because it reflects social and legal practices of Muhammad’s time.
“The whole idea is not to punish her,” said Ingrid Mattson, an expert in early Islamic history at the Hartford Seminary and the first woman to be president of the Islamic Society of North America. “It is like a fear of sexual impropriety, that the husband takes these steps to try to bring their relationship to where it is supposed to be. I think it is a physical gesture of displeasure.”
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company