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781213 Tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures
(Lycidas by John Milton)


Without making too obvious a play for your sympathy, I do have to tell you that tonight I have been specially let out of custody for this broadcast.

I was only allowed to be here on condition that A) I wouldn't use the privilege to make an escape attempt and that B)
That the BBC officially undertook to deliver me back immediately that the show was over.

Which just goes to show you how strict some of these health farms are these days.

Just like everybody else who's ever wound up inside one, I never really believed this could happen to me.

Nevertheless just a scant couple of weeks ago there I was standing on a weighing machine in the commandant's office. And while he was looking through my dossier he said to me, "You seem an educated man. What makes you do such things?"

Now I said, "It's just something inside me I suppose sir. All my life I've desired beautiful things. "

And he said, "What sort of beautiful things?"

I said, "You know, roast potatoes, baked bean sandwiches, rice pudding with hot marmalade."

He gazed down at what the scale was registering. And he said, "Look what it's got you. A hopeless addict. When you walk out of here I promise you one thing. You'll have kicked the habit. The hard way. Cold turkey."

And I said, "With hot chestnut stuffing?"

He sighed and turned to his chief dietician, Nurse Duggans, the one we called the Enforcer."

And he said, "Book him. Block eleven."

Well, thirteen days I've done there now. And I can tell you this. If you've never been at a health farm, you just never believe what happens to people there. Those inmates, or UMCOWS as they're called. That's for the initials U M C O W Standing for Upper Middle Class Middeweight. They'll go to any length in their cravings for calories.

One middle-aged estate agent suddenly went berserk from hunger and they caught him trying to inject raspberry ripple ice cream into a main artery.

In the exercise yard the incorrigible eaters, on the outside they may be solicitors, bank managers, marketing executives, but here they're just known as the heavy mob. And what they're made to do is stand there doing running on the spot for sometimes as long as seven, eight minutes.

The only thing that sustains your sanity is that the sheer hunger keeps making you drop off to sleep. And in those hunger sleeps you get the most fantastically sensual dreams. One night, I remember, I dreamt I was running barefoot through a field of fried chips.

Now I don't want to make this too much of a sob story but mainly because although I have to go back there tonight, actually not only am I due out tomorrow, but on the way here my family managed to smuggle me a whole half carrot, inside which I found a note giving me the most stupendous good news.

While I'd been inside, two restaurants have opened in our high street. One is a French bistro whose dessert folly styles a whipped cream meringue pudding that's so enormous that portions are served from a small forklift truck. While the other is an Italian pretoria which features not just spaghetti, cannoli, fettuccine and lasagna, but a brand-new dish which combines all four of them.

There are so many calories, apparently, that they only can be counted on an eight-digit calculator.

So, as I say, don't waste too much of your sympathies on me because although it's back to diced turnip tonight, t omorrow, ah tomorrow, tomorrow the French puds and pastas new

Denis Norden
December 13, 1978

Every three months, I give my dog a beef-flavored chew that kills any ticks that bite her. She has also been vaccinated against Lyme disease. Why don't these options exist for people?

"It's funny, in Lyme disease, animals have so many more options than humans do," said Dr. Linden Hu, a professor of immunology at Tufts University School of Medicine. That includes several Lyme vaccines, as well as oral and topical tick-prevention medications.

Safety concerns and doubts about public acceptance have hindered the development of these types of drugs for people. But with rates of Lyme and other tick-borne illnesses increasing in recent years, researchers are exploring new (and old) options, and a few are now being tested in human clinical trials.

Between 1999 and 2002, there was a human vaccine for Lyme disease available in the United States. The drug, called Lymerix, was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1998 after clinical trials deemed it safe and effective for preventing infection with Lyme-causing bacteria.

Shortly after people started receiving the shots, reports of side effects emerged, most notably symptoms of arthritis. Federal officials didn't find evidence that the vaccine was unsafe, said Dr. Erol Fikrig, an infectious disease expert at the Yale School of Medicine, who was involved with developing the drug.

But the reputational damage had been done. Sales of the Lyme vaccine plummeted, and in 2002, GlaxoSmithKline, which manufactured the drug, pulled it from the market.

The Lyme vaccines that currently exist for dogs are similar to the one that was developed for humans. Both vaccines work primarily by prompting the immune system to create antibodies to a protein called OspA, which is produced by the Lyme-causing bacteria that are transmitted through tick saliva. When a tick ingests a dog's blood, the antibodies kill the bacteria residing in the tick's gut, preventing them from causing an infection.

In recent years, Pfizer, Valneva and Moderna have developed two new vaccines for humans that target the same OspA protein, though other aspects of the shots have been changed from the original version, Dr. Fikrig said. Both vaccines are being tested in clinical trials, and results are expected in a few years.

The other main prevention methods for pet owners are topical and oral treatments. These drugs, called acaricides, get distributed through the animal's body after they're swallowed or applied to the skin and kill ticks, along with fleas and mites, when they bite. A major advantage is that they protect against multiple tick-borne infections, not just Lyme disease.

For many of these illnesses, a tick must remain latched onto its host for a day or two to cause an infection, said Dr. Janet Foley, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of California, Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. "So as long as you can kill that tick within hours, you'll abort the possibility of transmitting anything like Lyme disease."

While both oral and topical medications are toxic to ticks, they've largely been proven safe for dogs. However, Dr. Hu said that to his knowledge, few thought of investigating whether humans could use them as prophylactics against tick-borne infections until recently. An acaricide's "toxicity for ticks is far, far, far greater than its toxicity for mammals," Dr. Foley said. But, she added, it's understandable that people may be concerned about a drug that suffuses the body with a toxin just in case they get bitten by a tick. "I think that there wouldn't be much market for that," Dr. Foley said, though that's "pure speculation," she added.

One small drug company, Tarsus Pharmaceuticals, is betting that there might be such a market. In collaboration with Dr. Hu, it is testing whether an oral acaricide used in some veterinary tick medicines, called lotilaner, is safe and effective in people. (The drug was also recently approved as an eye drop for humans, to treat eyelid inflammation caused by mites.)

"We actually are one of the few examples of bringing a medicine from the veterinary side to the human side," said Dr. Bobak Azamian, the co-founder, chairman and chief executive of Tarsus Pharmaceuticals.

According to the company, early clinical trials of lotilaner - provided to people as a pill, not a beef-flavored chew - showed that it was about 90 percent effective at killing ticks that bit the participants both on the day they took the medication and 30 days later. No major safety concerns have surfaced during the tests, Dr. Azamian said.

Still, it will be several years before any of these medications might be considered for F.D.A. review. And even then, said Dr. Hu, "it's always a wild card how people are going to feel about it."

Dana G. Smith

The old man was in rare form, and he had picked a fine place for it.

The Lido is a tree-covered island about eight miles long and a few hundred yards wide that forms the eastern boundary of the Venice lagoon. In the first week of September 1971, John Ford came to the Lido, to the arabesque Excelsior Hotel, to be honored by the Venice Film Festival.

He was a frail, seventy-seven-year-old man in poor health who invariably contrived to give the entirely correct impression that he was not to be trifled with. On the boat from the airport, he had been plagued by a fussy attendant in the private vaporetto. "Water a bit choppy, sir?" the attendant had inquired. "Fancy saying that to an admiral in the Navy," he shot back.

And now there was a critic at the door of his hotel room, come for his scheduled interview. Barbara Ford, her father's traveling companion and handler, politely told the critic that the interview might not be possible; Daddy was being inconvenienced by some sudden stomach trouble. "Come in, come in," yelled Ford from the lavatory. "I can deal with two shits at once."

Scott Eyman "Print the Legend: The Life and Times of John Ford" (1999)

Auditory Problems

Auditory challenges are often cited as the #1 sensory challenge among individuals with autism/Asperger's. There are two kinds of auditory problems: 1) sensitivity to loud noise In general and 2) not being able to hear auditory detail, such as discerning one voice among other sounds, or hearing the hard consonant sounds of words. An auditory sensitivity to noises, where sounds hurt the ears, can be extremely debilitating. Sound sensitivity can make it impossible for some people on the spectrum to tolerate normal places such as restaurants, offices, and sports events. These extreme auditory problems can occur in both nonverbal individuals and those who are very high-functioning with marked intelligence and language capabilities, such as college-educated people with Asperger's.

Auditory training therapy is useful for some people. In auditory training, a person listens to electronically distorted music a couple of sessions a day for ten days. The music sounds like an old-fashioned record player that is speeding up and slowing down. AT helps some children and adults, yet has no effect on others. The main improvements seen in those that it helps include reducing sound sensitivity and increasing hearing of auditory detail. For many children, getting their auditory input under control results in improved concentration, fewer behavior issues, and gives a chance for other therapies and learning situations to take hold. Some people with more minor auditory challenges use earplugs or music headphones to block out distracting or painful sounds, things such as chairs scraping on the floor in the cafeteria, the constant ringing of telephones in a busy office, or maneuvering through a crowded airport. Earplugs must never be worn all the time; this can cause the individual to become even more sensitive to sound. They need to be off at least half of the day, but can be used in noisy places such as shopping malls or the gym.




An Integrated Approach to Treatment

Severe sensory sensitivity can be a MAJOR barrier to learning in children, and in employment and socializing as the child grows and becomes an adult. My own sensory problems are minor nuisances, but for others, they can literally wreck the person's life. There are many highly inrelligent adults with ASD or Asperger's, with brilliant minds in their field, who have such severe sensory issues that they cannot tolerate a normal job environment. They must either find ways to work independently from home, where they can control sensory input, or remain largely unemployed. Employers are beginning to understand sensory issues and some will even make accommodations when the needs of the person are explained. However, on the whole, we as a society have far to go in appreciating the challenge of living with sensory issues that most people on the autism spectrum face daily.

Teachers and parents should look closely for sensory issues in a child or young adult. Recurring behavior problems often have a sensory issue as the root cause of the behavior. If a sensory issue is suspected, a consultation with a good Occupational Therapist should be the next step. These individuals are trained to recognize sensory issues and then develop a customized program for the child. Interventions such as deep pressure, slow swinging, and games involving balancing work best when they are done every day.

Sensory issues are daily issues. If the services of an OT are available for only half an hour each week, parents and teachers should visit the session and ask the OT to show them what to do the rest of the week. For children, a combination of sensory therapies such as sensory integration from an OT, auditory training, and visual interventions coupled with other treatments works best. Special diets help some children with their sensory issues; improvements are seen not just in tolerating different textures and types of food, but also in other sensory areas as well. With older children and adults, a little dose of a conventional medication may reduce sound sensitivity if less invasive methods have proven unsuccessful.

Temple Grandin "The Way I See It: A Personal Look at Autism & Asperger's" (2011)

The Pences Visit Manhattan

By Douglas McGrath

Governor Mike Pence was having a romantic dinner with the love his life, Mrs. Mike Pence, at the Red Lobster in Times Square. The Governor knew that as Vice-President he would have to attend foreign banquets, so he and Mrs. Pence were trying to broaden their palates. Luckily, they had already found a couple of dishes at the Red Lobster which they liked. Governor Pence was saying a blessing over their chicken wings and mozzarella cheese sticks when the first three notes of "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross" chimed on his phone, signaling a text. As he read it, Mrs. Pence popped a sizzling cheese stick into her mouth and blew out little puffs of steam. "Look at me!" she said gaily. "I'm a steamboat!"

But the Governor didn't laugh. Mrs. Pence took his hand and said, "What's wrong, helpmeet?"

"I've been called to Trump Tower.

It's an emergency."

Outside Donald Trump's penthouse, the Governor was frisked by Secret Service agents. Pence found contact between men not involved in sports natural, but he knew it was necessary for the safety of the nation. He was so patriotic that he often insisted on being patted down two or three times in a row, faster each time.

As he entered the penthouse, he saw Ivanka doing crunches while she watched an exercise video made for the Trumps by Vladimir Putin. Eric was at a mirror, filing his teeth into sharp points, and Donald, Jr., was on a step-ladder, combing the mane of a trophy lion. Any hair that came out was placed in a silver bowl, to be used for Trump's daily weave.

"Where's your father?" Pence asked. "My Fuhrer, I mean, my father is asleep," Donald, Jr., answered.

"At this hour?"

He nodded. "We put a tranquillizer in his Big Mac. We need to talk to you alone. Mike, you've seen the polls. Dad's freaking out. When he got the numbers this morning, he collapsed and started thrashing around, knocking things over and sort of - What would you guys call it?"

"Foaming," Eric said. "Look, we wanted Dad to run for President. But not because he'd be a good President. We just want to get him out of the company. If you think he sucks as a candidate, you should see him try to run a business."

Ivanka shook her head. "A monkey with a high fever has better business sense than he does," she said. ''And, if he loses, he'll be back at the office, spewing out ideas - oh, God ... " She curled up on the floor and started rocking back and forth.

Eric put the file down, bit a piece of paper, and smiled at the row of neat little holes. "We're softening his message to help with the groups he's offended, which include ... um ... "

"Everyone but the Klan," Ivanka said. "But we have no hope if our own party won't support him," Eric said. "We chose you for V.P. because the establishment loves you. So get them in line, and maybe we can win this thing."

Back on Fifth Avenue, the Governor called Paul Ryan. "Paul, I want to talk to you about Donald Tr- Hello? Hello?" It was funny - ever since he accepted the Party's nomination as Vice-President, he lost calls all the time. Trump told him it was because the phones are made in China.

He redialed, but the call went right to voice mail. Ryan must be trying him back, he thought. While Governor Pence waited, he looked around at the citizens of Manhattan. What a strange, sad city! Given how many people he saw wearing black, he figured that there must be funerals going on all the time. He assumed that the deaths were caused by starvation - even the wealthy-looking women he saw barely weighed ninety pounds.

But, as he studied these people, he noticed that many of them were on their cell phones. There were lots of people of different races, some from lands where they grow terrorists, and a good number of them were confused about their gender - women with short hair and army pants, men in colors that God intended only for flowers. Why did they have phone service and he did not? Surely, the Lord would take away the sinners' service before his?

The Governor froze as he realized: maybe it's not the service. Maybe people are deliberately hanging up on me BECAUSE OF TRUMP.

He found himself outside St. Patrick's Cathedral. Before he joined Mrs. Pence's megachurch, he had been a Catholic. How fondly he remembered the games he'd played with Father Molloy. He went inside and asked God if he and Trump had a chance. Not hearing anything, he opened a Bible for guidance. His eye fell on Mark 15:30 - "Come down from the cross and save yourself"
m
He knew then that there was no hope. Yet he did not despair. He thought of Mrs. Pence back in their room at the La Quinta Inn and Suites. She would be in her Lanz flannel nightgown and blue lace cap, preparing their nightcap of warm beef bouillon. They would figure out the future as a married couple should, with him deciding and her obeying. She would sit at his feet and play her guitar until nine-fifteen. That was bedtime, and they would drift off to sleep with the comfort of being man and wife - the real kind, the only kind that counts when you get to Heaven.

The New Yorker, October 10, 2016

Stone Walls Do Not a Prison Make
(from a poem, "To Althea, from Prison" by Richard Lovelace in 1642)

I'm not really terribly anxious to get home tonight because my wife isn't SPEAKING to me.

We're having what we call a coof. When I do something frightful my wife doesn't HURL things at me, we don’t talk.

And I'm in one at the moment. It's terribe really. Actually, today is my wife's birthday. That's the trouble. She's forty-… uh. She's fortunately going to have a voice. She knows I always give her presents.

Actuall, I DON'T always give her presents. I usually give her a gift.

You see I have a very old-fashioned attitude towards giving presents. Rather generous you might think.

But I believe in that old maxim, that's better to give than to receive. So, I like to RATION my giving.

Just so I don't get all the pleasure.

But I'm quite generous. I let HER give and get the pleasure on my birthday.

On her birthdays I like to give her a GIFT every nine years, and a PRESENT every ten. Because there's a whale of a difference between a gift and a present.

A GIFT is something fundamentally unnecessary, fundamentally useless. And it's bought in a shop marked gift shop.

Actually, a couple of years back I did give my wife quite a, certainly a USEFUL gift. It was one of those gimmick writing things that writes underwater and doesn't leak on planes and you don't have to refill for months. It's called a pencil. But it WAS marked happy birthday. With the initials H.B.

On the other hand, a present, every ten-year present has got to be something really. A present is a present. It's useful.
It's good. It brings a GLOW to the cheek of the receiver.

It's a thing like one of those super electric sewing machines. Where the needle dances a little hornpipe and then you get a buttonhole. Whether you wanted one or not.

That's a present. Now this birthday my wife's birthday today. I had one all lined up. I have this local chap who had the most BEAUTIFUL little bedside clock. It was a French carriage clock. It was ABSOLUTELY lovely. And I made a deal with the chap. Because my wife wanted, I KNEW she wanted for the bedroom. Something feminine. Something which suited her. And this seemed ideal.

I went to collect it yesterday. Unfortunately, it had started going again and he'd raised the price.

And there I was YESTERDAY with no present for TODAY.

As I was walking back across the village I suddenly noticed a poster. There was an old water mill near us and they were having an auction there of the contents.


Not only the milling equipment, but also the house effects BEDROOM furniture and effects.

I thought that's it.

So yesterday afternoon I nipped along there. And it was absolutely full of people bidding.

And I saw an attendant in a brown coat so I grabbed him and I said, "Come with me because I don’t know these auctions."

And we went into the crowded room and I looked round. And this chap, I could hear him, he was auctioneering the actual grindstones, these sort of eight feet granite things that churn the thing up.

And I looked around at them and I noticed, just above my head a COPPER warming pan.

I said to the chap, "That's just the thing."

And in my excitement, I pointed up at it.

Now when you're at an auction, it is MOST essential that you don't raise your right hand.

Well, I bought it. A pair of eight-foot granite grinding wheels. Grindstones. FORTY-TWO pounds, fifteen.

Got a lorry and got them home. Put them in the garage.

And this morning when my wife woke up I said, "I got you your present."

She said, "Is it something feminine? Is it me?"

I walked into the garage. Two eight-foot grindstones.

As I say There's a cool song. Gentlemen, do be careful at auctions, I mean, don't buy things like this.

Believe me, they may sort of scrape by as a GIFT, but I do assure you, stone wheels, do not a present make.


Frank Muir
670704

John Ford went to Hawaii for a short vacation after finishing Young Mr. Lincoln, and returned in mid-June 1939 to begin Drums Along the Mohawk. When the company arrived on location in Utah's Wasatch Mountains, the weather refused to cooperate; Frank Baker remembered six consecutive days of rain beginning the day he arrived, with Ford refusing to speak to him for weeks as punishment. Ford named Henry Fonda "Director in Charge of Entertainment," and Fonda organized a series of songs in three-part harmony around the campfire at night. Every evening at 9:30, a bugler would walk into the woods and blow a quiet taps.

A new addition to the crew was propman Joe Behm, who had to undergo the usual hazing. Behm met with Ford to show him some of his designs for props, and Ford barked, "What do you want me to do? Prop the show for you?" Behm made some conciliatory noises, and Ford responded by telling him that his work showed imagination and that he, Ford, would okay everything the propman wanted to do, sight unseen.

Once they got to the location, Ford's first request of Behm was that he get a baby grand piano for the recreation tent. Behm was stunned; if Ford had told him this in Hollywood, they could have just loaded a piano onto the trucks bringing the rest of the equipment, but where was he supposed to get a baby grand in southern Utah?

It was, of course, a test, which Behm passed splendidly. He made a trip down a long, winding road to Cedar City and went door to door until he found a resident willing to rent their piano to the film company.

Ford's next request was for a Model T for a gag shot that, he hoped, would elevate Darryl Zanuck out of his chair in the screening room. Behm found the car, Ford got his shot, and Zanuck was suitably amused. Unfortunately, the film's production manager was not. One day at lunch, he yelled at Behm for unauthorized expenditures for pianos and cars, then ordered the piano sent back to Cedar City.

When Ford found out that the piano had been sent back, he asked why, then immediately sent for the production manager. "This is your company, you're the boss, no one countermands your orders," Ford began. "You've questioned my integrity, you sent the piano back, you criticized Mr. Behm for following my orders "

"But Skipper," said the hapless production manager.

"Don't Skipper me. I'm Mr. Ford to you. I want to clarify this situation; I'm running the company. When I give an order it's followed. Bring back that piano - now!"

The production manager told Behm to get the piano, but was promptly interrupted by Ford. "I don't think you heard me straight. YOU bring the piano. Mr. Behm is through for the day. And another thing: you're barred from my set." Loyalty had been rewarded, arrogance punished, and a clear line of authority established-the actors didn't make the picture, nor did the producer, and especially not the production office. Ford made the picture.


Scott Eyman "Print the Legend: The Life and Times of John Ford" (1999)

Auditory Problems in Autism

Anyone who has attended one of my presentations knows that it is my opinion that sensory issues are a big part of behavior problems in children with autism. I, myself, have many sensory issues, and one that affects me the most is hearing/sound.

When I was a child, the ringing of the school bell hurt my ears; it felt like a dentist's drill hitting a nerve. This is common among the autism population. The sounds that are most likely to hurt the ears are high-pitched, shrill, intermittent sounds, such as fire alarms, smoke detectors, certain ring tones on mobile phones, or the screech of feedback from a microphone. Once a child experiences the pain associated with certain sounds, he is not soon to forget it. Subsequently, a child may have a tantrum and refuse to enter a certain room because he may be afraid that the fire alarm might go off, or that the assembly microphone might screech again. Even if it happened months and months ago, and even if it only happened one time, he may take action to avoid feeling that pain again. Sometimes sound sensitivity can be desensitized by recording the offending sound and allowing the child to initiate the sound at gradually increasing volume. Problems with sound sensitivity are very variable. A sound that hurts the ears of one child may be attractive to another. Parents and professionals need to be good detectives and watch for dues from the child about what auditory sounds are troublesome.

Temple Grandin "The Way I See It: A Personal Look at Autism & Asperger's" (2011)

At the turn of the millennium, the government in Glasgow, Scotland, appeared to stumble on a remarkable crime prevention strategy. Officials hired a team of Glaswegian contractors to beautify the city by installing a series of blue lights in various prominent locations. In theory blue lights are more attractive and calming than the garish yellow and white lights that illuminate much of the city at night, and indeed the blue lights seemed to cast a soothing, ethereal glow. Months passed and the city's crime statisticians noticed a striking trend: the locations that were newly bathed in blue experienced a dramatic decline in criminal activity. Just as the West Midlands police force clamped down on crime with billboards depicting human eyes, the blue lights in Glasgow, which mimicked the lights atop police cars, seemed to imply that the police were always watching. The lights were never designed to stem crime, but that's exactly what they appeared to be doing.

Word of the miraculous constabulary power of blue light traveled quickly. The police force in Nara Prefecture, Japan, installed a series of 152 blue lights at several crime hot spots. The crime rate fell by an impressive 9 percent , but the blue lights had other, unanticipated benefits: the suicide attempts that plagued Japanese train stations and crossings ceased altogether - not a single attempt was reported along the Central and West Japan Railway Company lines between 2006 and 2008. Even littering and garbage disposal seemed to decline in blue-lit areas, and blue lights were hailed as a panacea for several of society's most stubborn ills. Some enterprising minds even suggested replacing standard lights at gang hangouts with the pinkish lights that dermatologists use to inspect teenage skin for acne. What better way to encourage teen gang members to disperse than to emphasize their flawed complexions?

Amid the jubilation, researchers began to question the link between the blue lights and the range of reported benefits. Some suggested that the blue lights were brighter or attracted more attention than yellow and white lights, which merely displaced crime, suicide attempts, and littering to more dimly lit locations. Though researchers continue to question whether the lights were beneficial because they were blue, or rather because they attracted attention, several rigorous studies have shown that the color blue has remarkable effects on the human body.

In one study, two researchers visited a sawmill in Montreal, Canada.

Sawmill workers grade freshly cut pieces of timber and then cut the graded timber into boards for construction projects - exacting tasks that impose high costs when the workers make mistakes. Many sawmills operate through the night, and workers are sometimes forced to alternate between day and night shifts. This schedule wreaks havoc on a worker's circadian rhythm, the same biological pattern that causes jet lag when people travel from one time zone to another. Seasoned international travelers know how difficult it is to resist the urge to sleep when jet lag takes hold, and that same state of exhaustion causes countless accidents among shift workers. The researchers approached one such group and suggested an inexpensive, novel remedy: exposure to blue-green light. Blue-green light waves are the shortest visible light waves, and they trigger a range of biological functions that regulate circadian rhythm. Natural light is rich in these blue-green short waves, which is why sunlight is an excellent natural cure for jet lag. To test their theory, the researchers purchased a series of special lights that bathed the night-shift workers in a blue-green glow as they worked. When the shift ended the following morning, the workers wore special amber glasses to block out all blue and green light, thereby confusing their bodies into believing that they were working during the day and leaving work at night. The effects were remarkable. By the fourth day of the trial most of the workers felt more alert, as their error rate declined from 5 percent to just 1 percent.

Few people alternate between night shifts and day shifts, but a similar problem is said to affect millions of people across the world: seasonal affective disorder (SAD), or the winter blues. People who suffer from SAD tend to become depressed and listless for long periods during the winter, which also explains in large part why the disorder affects only 1 percent of Floridians but 10 percent of New Hampshirites. Among the many proffered solutions, blue-green light therapy stands alone as perhaps the least intrusive, and sufferers can purchase special lamps and light bulbs for little more than the cost of a standard desk lamp. The good news is that dozens of researchers have documented the effectiveness of the remedy, which has the same effects as genuine sunshine: diminished depressive symptoms and renewed energy. This research is generally sophisticated and rigorous, but color therapy began as a far less meticulous pursuit.


Adam Alter "Drunk Tank Pink" (2013)

Ask Well
I get frequent hangnails, and they hurt. Is there anything I can do to speed up the healing process?

A bad hangnail can ruin your day. Swelling, throbbing, tenderness - that tiny skin tear can cause considerable pain.

"There are a lot of nerve endings in the fingers, so the skin is very sensitive," said Dr. Amanda Zubek, an assistant professor of dermatology at the Yale School of Medicine.

Hangnails usually go away on their own, but experts say there are ways to speed up the healing process and to protect your fingers against them. A hangnail isn't actually a hanging nail - or even a nail at all.

"Hangnail is a funny term," said Dr. Ida Orengo, the chair of the department of dermatology at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. "It's really a small piece of skin next to the nail."

Indoor heating combined with colder weather can cause dry, flaky skin, Dr. Zubek said. This makes hangnails more common during dry winter months and in arid climates.

Harsh chemicals from cleaning supplies or nail polish remover can also increase your risk of a hangnail, said Dr. Shehla Admani, a dermatologist at Stanford Medi-cine Children's Health.

And while manicures might keep your nails looking nice, Dr. Zubek said they can sometimes set you up for hangnails. "A lot of times, the manicure technician will try to push the cuticles back, which can weaken the connection between the skin and the nail," she said.

Our cuticles help protect against infection, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, so it's best to leave them alone.

If you do find yourself with a hangnail, Dr. Orengo recommended softening the skin around your nail by soaking your fingertips in warm water or in a solution of warm water and white vinegar, which can help stave off bacteria. The ratio of warm water to vinegar should be about three to one, Dr. Orengo said - so if you're making a cup of solution, add a quarter cup of white vinegar to three-quarters of a cup of water.

Once your skin feels soft, she said, you can snip off the hang-nail. After trimming the hangnail, Dr. Zubek recommended applying an ointment like Aquaphor or Vaseline to the resulting wound. This will help keep your skin hydrated and protected as it heals, she said. Ointments tend to trap in moisture better than lotions or creams, and they're less likely to cause allergic reactions than over-the-counter antibiotic ointments like Neosporin, Dr. Zubek said.

If you don't have a tool to trim your hangnail, Dr. Zubek recommended covering it with ointment and a bandage until it heals usually in around three to five days - to avoid further tearing it as you use your hand.

"Each time it gets caught on something, it's going to get more traumatized and become a larger wound than what you started with," she said.

A neat trim can help, but all of the experts warned against trying to rip or bite off your hangnail instead. "This could tear off your hangnail further than you in-tended, which will cause more injury," Dr. Zubek said. And using your teeth to bite it off could introduce infection-causing bacteria, she said.

Keeping your hands moisturized goes a long way in staving them off, Dr. Admani said. She recommended applying cream or lotion throughout the day, especially after you wash your hands.

"Any time you wash your hands, even with very gentle soap, you're stripping your skin of its natural moisture," she said. Reapplying moisturizer after a hand wash and choosing a mild soap without strong fragrances, which can irritate your skin, could help.

Dr. Zubek recommended using a more intensive moisturizing regimen before going to bed, including applying a thick moisturizer or ointment and then wearing cotton gloves while you sleep. This will help the skin on your hands absorb the moisturizer, Dr. Zubek said.

If you notice redness, swelling or pus around the hangnail, Dr. Orengo said, you might have an infection and should see a doctor to figure out if you need antibiotics.

"A hangnail alone is not a sign of infection," Dr. Admani added. But if you're not sure, a doctor can usually tell.

From there, your doctor can determine what kind of infection you have and the best way to treat it, whether that's with oral or topical antibiotics or with a special antiseptic soak.
Caroline Hopkins

Neighborly
By Paul Rudnick

(Mrs. Burgus sued Rush, Dr. Braun and her insurance company over claims that he and Dr. Sachs had implanted false memories in her head. They settled out of court in 1997 for $10.6 million. "I began to add a few things up and realized there was no way I could come from a little town in Iowa, be eating 2,000 people a year, and nobody said anything about it," Mrs. Burgus told the Chicago Tribune in 1997. The Times. )

My name is Margaret Jo Stinson, and I'd like to share my own perspective on this sort of thing. I live in Birchberry, Nebraska, population two hundred and thirty-eight, and my neighbor of more than fifteen years is Teresa Krell, who is sweet as a bug. Every morning, on my way to work at my boutique, Stinson's Yarnables, Crochet Caddies & More, I wave to Teresa, who just yesterday was sitting on her porch in her housecoat and slippers, picking her teeth with what appeared to be a human femur.

I have no interest in cannibal-shaming anyone, and, again, Teresa couldn't be more friendly. On Halloween, she always hands out gift bags stuffed with treats, including what she calls "cinnamon pinkies." Last Christmas, we worked side by side at our church bake sale, with me contributing my signature whole-grain walnut-chive biscuits, and Teresa generously donating more than fifty cupcakes, frosted with buttercream and decorated with sprinkles, love, and molars.

I'm not saying that Teresa leads a satanic cult in her finished basement, but, when I asked her about the large duct-tape pentagram on her laminate flooring, she explained, "It came to me in a dream where I attended junior college and my art teacher was Walter Beelzebub, who purchased my soul in return for a pre-owned Chevy Equinox and one of those sectionals with cup holders." Not my business. Sometimes after midnight I hear wolves howling and voices chanting, "Serve the Dark Lord and buy him twenty-four-roll packs of paper towels at Costco," but then I remember that Teresa gets Hulu and sometimes falls asleep with her flat-screen on. I chatted with Pastor Meersman about whether satanic worship is real, and he offered me a cup of tea and asked if I ever checked the menu at Olive Garden for Genuine Tuscan-Style Lungs.

Of course, with Ozempic and all, everyone's always counting calories. So, when I saw Teresa putting a batch of skulls in her recycling bin, I said, "But how do you stay so trim?" Teresa told me, "It's all about portion control and letting my kids have the spleen." Did this disturb me? Not really, but I did notice that Teresa hadn't separated her bubble wrap and Styrofoam takeout containers from the blood-spattered nuns' habits. I thought about suggesting OxiClean, which gets out even stubborn grass stains, but just then Teresa lightheartedly called out, "Margaret Jo - catch!," and I found myself holding a foot that still had a Croc on it.

I decided to do a Google search about cannibalism and human sacrifice, and you know what? It turns out that those are America's third and fourth most popular rainy-day activities, right after board games and before matricide. I wondered what I'd do if I came home and found my teen-age daughter Kayleigh and her friends KayLee and Kayleen snacking on their pep-squad captain, Kaylette, and I decided at least they wouldn't be glued to a bunch of screens. I asked Kayleigh if she ever feels pressured to experiment with nontraditional Lunchables, and she just rolled her eyes and said, "Geez, Mom, it's called healthy eating. Get a life. Or an ear that hasn't been treated with pesticides."

Live and learn. At today's book club, Teresa suggested that we read a how-to guide called "Dismemberment for Dummies," and it looks interesting, although I still haven't finished last week's novel, which Teresa calls "a real page-turner," about a woman who murders her neighbor with a snowblower, sells the torso on eBay as a collectible, and falls for a handsome widowed farmer because she admires his warm smile and all the crumbling outbuildings on his isolated property. I also just saw that Teresa seems to be growing horns and a tail, but when I asked about them she shook her head, grinned ruefully, and said, "Menopause. You'll see."

So the moral is, when you come across a discarded buttock while Weedwacking, or if you catch yourself thinking, What would it be like to become immortal if it meant feeding on entrails, maybe seasoned with Entrail Helper?, don't be too hard on yourself. I've got to skedaddle and answer the door, because I can see Teresa wearing a hazmat suit and ringing my bell, alongside everyone in our spin class, and they're carrying pitchforks and napkins. As Teresa once told me, small towns are just gift baskets filled with solid values and homemade cobbler that screams.

For the landmark chase scene across the flats, Ford took the crew and John Wayne - the other actors were all shot back at the studio in front of a process screen - to Muroc Dry Lake near Victorville. Ford followed Wayne's recommendation and hired Yakima Canutt, who had been working with the actor on Poverty Row for years, as primary stuntman and wrangler. When Canutt walked into Ford's office, he was greeted with "Well, Enos, how are you?" Canutt was immediately on his toes, for very few people knew his real name - Yakima was a nickname from his days as a champion rodeo rider.

Although Ford had been planning to jettison a sequence in which the stagecoach has logs strapped to it for a river crossing, Canutt assured him it was do-able with a classic piece of movie magic: the logs were hollo props, and the coach was actually towed across the river by an underwar cable hooked to a truck. Ford was so pleased by the result that he gave Canutt carte blanche to design the stunts.

Canutt had a tractor dig up about fifteen acres of the lake bed to soften the soil for the stunt falls. Canutt came up with the classic and still remarkable sequence in which he, as an Indian, transfers from a horse to the teampulling the stagecoach. Wayne fires from the top of the coach and Canutt falls, dragging his feet on the ground, holding on to the harness between the two lead horses. Wayne shoots again, and Canutt lets go, allowing the stagecoach to pass over him.

The space between the horse's hooves was only three feet, and Canutt was a big man, nearly as large as John Wayne. It was mandatory that the horses be running absolutely straight, and even then, there was very little margin for error. "You have to run the horses fast," Canutt said, "so they'll run straight. If they run slow, they move around a lot. When you turn loose to go under the coach, you've got to bring your arms over your chest and stomach. You've got to hold your elbows close to your body, or that front axle will knock them off." Canutt had chosen a section of the lake bed that had not been softened up, so the stagecoach wheels would not sink into the ground any more than was absolutely necessary.

Ford was using three cameras on the camera car. Because he didn't like to rehearse stunts, feeling it made them look too polished, he asked Canutt about speed. "How fast will that team be traveling" he asked Canutt. "I don't want any mishaps." Canutt figured thirty-five to thirty-seven miles an hour.

At the conclusion of the stunt, Canutt, a good showman, added a little tag: as the coach passed over him, he rolled over, tried to get up, then collapsed again, just to show the audience that it hadn't been a dummy.

Canutt walked over to the camera car to find Ford leaning against it, looking at the ground. One of the cameramen said he'd probably missed the tag, a second wasn't sure, and a third thought he'd gotten it. Canutt volunteered to do it again. "You know I love to make money."

Ford looked up. "I'll never shoot that again," he said flatly. "They better have it."

Ford broke one of direction's primary rules by switching the position of the camera during the chase scene from right of the stagecoach to the left, thereby making it appear that the stagecoach had changed direction. It's the sort of thing audiences rarely notice, but critics always do, and Ford, defensive as always about any perceived shortcoming, had a commonsense explanation: "It was getting late and if I had stayed on the correct side, the horses would have been back-lit, and I couldn't show their speed in back light. So I went around to the other side where the light was shining on the horses. It didn't matter a damn in this case. I usually break the conventional rules - sometimes deliberately."

In spite of the dangerous stunts, everything worked the first time. As the production wrapped up, Ford called Canutt into his office and told him. "You can go home and put this in your notebook. Any time I'm making an action picture and you're not working, you are with me."

At the wrap party, Bert Glennon, Ford, and Canutt were talking when editor Otho Lovering announced that he'd looked at all the footage and thought Ford had one of the best Western pictures ever made. "Yes, thanks to Yakima Canutt," blurted Glennon. Canutt saw Ford glaring at Glennon and later told him that he'd cut both their throats. Ford never called Canutt to work for him again; the only times Canutt worked on a Ford picture - a stunt on Young Mr. Lincoln, and directing a third unit on Mogambo - he was hired by the studio.

Scott Eyman "Print the Legend" (1999)

Auditory Detail

Even though children and adults with ASD can easily pass a standard hearing test, they often have difficulty hearing auditory detail. When I was little, I could understand what people were saying when they spoke directly to me, but when adults talked fast, it sounded like gibberish. All I could hear were the vowels, and I thought that grown-ups had their own "grown-up" language. Children who remain nonverbal may be hearing only the vowels and no consonants.

My speech teacher helped me hear the consonants by stretching them out. She would hold up a cup and ask me to say "c-c-c-u-p-p-p." She alternated between saying "cup" the normal way and stretching it out. If there was a lot of background noise I had difficulty hearing. Eye contact is still difficult for me in noisy rooms because it interferes with hearing. It's like my brain's wiring lets only one sense function or the other, but sometimes not both at the same time. In noisy rooms, I have to concentrate on hearing. Some children will learn better if the words are sung instead of being spoken. When I was little we did lots of musical activities.

As an adult I took a number of central auditory processing tests and was shocked at how poorly I did. Words like "life boat" and "light bulb" were mixed up. I did poorly on the dichotic listening test where I had a man talking in one ear and a woman talking in the other ear. When I had to attend to my left ear, I was functionally deaf. However, both of my ears tested normal in the simple hearing threshold test. I also had difficulty discriminating between two short sounds that occurred dose together. For example, a one-second sound followed by a half-second gap and then another one-second sound is perceived as a single sound. Normal people can discriminate which sound has a higher pitch, and therefore their brain registers two sounds. I cannot do this because the sounds blend together.

Parents and teachers working with children with ASD need to be aware of these auditory processing difficulties. Sometimes a child's behavior can be a direct result of his or her lack of auditory processing skills, rather than disobedience or what may look like "acting out" behaviors. Imagine how you would (or would not) function if you heard only parts of words, only vowels, or only certain tones. How much important, relevant information would you miss every day, every hour, every minute?

A child who has difficulty hearing auditory detail will benefit from the use of visual supports, such as written words on flash cards, written instructions, or written homework assignments. He may need to hear and read the word at the same time for comprehension to take place.

Temple Grandin "The Way I See It: A Personal Look at Autism & Asperger's" (2011)

A man was recently arrested after an apparent theft gone wrong at a supermarket in Canada. Authorities say he tried to steal more than $2,000 worth of toothpaste. Pictures posted online show two bags in a plastic wagon filled with tubes of Sensodyne. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police in North Vancouver tweeted, quote, "We think he was trying to make a clean getaway." OK, sure, or he'll be the flossiest accused toothpaste bandit ever.

When Pola Negri finally arrived in Hollywood, she knocked 'em dead. She bought herself a white Rolls-Royce upholstered in white velvet and equipped with ivory door handles and dashboard. When she went for a ride, she placed an enormous white fur rug across her lap, and took along her two white Ras-Sian wolfhounds, one sitting on each side of her. Her chauffeur was dressed in an all-white uniform unless it was raining, and then he wore black. She wrapped herself in ermine and chinchilla and mink and draped herself with diamonds and rubies and emeralds and sat up straight in the back, staring stonily ahead, drawing all eyes. (She also kept a pet tiger on a leash, and frequently paraded down Sunset Boulevard with him.) She had her dressing room decorated exclusively with Chinese furnishings, and insisted the floor be strewn daily with fresh orchid petals. Her wardrobe was dramatic, either black silk, black velvet, or sable, or the opposite white silk, white chiffon, and ermine. She started the fad for toenails painted fire-engine red. Furthermore. she had the guts to chase a man, and once she caught him, she knew how to conduct a torrid love affair twenties-style, worthy of the plots of her movies. Both Charlie Chaplin and Rudolph Valentino became her lovers. Chaplin couldn't take the heat and begged out as soon as he could, but Valentino could match her style, having had considerable training with other women who knew how to get attention. (For years, everyone assumed that the famous "woman in black" who showed up annually at Valentino's grave was Pola Negri. Who else, they figured, would think up a dramatic scenario like that, and who else would have the nerve to pull it off, year after year? How-ever, it wasn't really her.) Among Negri's other lovers was rumored to be Adolf Hitler, but this idea was put to rest by Negri's wardrobe mistress, who scoffed,

Jeanine Basinger "Silent Stars" (1999)

I can remember the frustration of not being able to talk at age three. This caused me to throw many a tantrum. I could understand what people said to me, but I could not get my words out. It was like a big stutter, and starting words was difficult. My first few words were very difficult to produce and generally had only one syllable, such as "bah" for ball. It was like a big stutter. I can remember logically thinking to myself that I would have to scream because I had no other way to communicate. Tantrums also occurred when I became tired or stressed by too much noise, such as horns going off at a birthday party. My behavior was like a tripping circuit breaker. One minute I was fine, and the next minute I was on the floor kicking and screaming like a crazed wildcat.

I can remember the day I bit my teacher's leg. It was late in the afternoon and I was getting tired. I just lost it. But it was only after I came out of it, when I saw her bleeding leg, that I realized I had bitten her. Tantrums occurred suddenly, like epileptic seizures. Mother figured out that like seizures, they had to run their course. Getting angry once a tantrum started just made it worse. She explained to my elementary school teachers that the best way to handle me if I had a tantrum was not to get angry or excited. She learned that tantrums could be prevented by getting me out of noisy places when I got tired. Privileges such as watching Howdy Doody on TV were withdrawn when I had a bad day at school. She even figured out that I'd sometimes throw a tantrum to avoid going to class.

Temple Grandin "Thinking in Pictures" (1996)

George W Bush" "We've had triumphs. Made some mistakes. We've had some sex uh setbacks." And what could a media adviser do with a politician who, in an attempt to praise dogs and his wife, managed to insult both: "It has been said by some cynic, maybe it was a former president, 'If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.' We took them literally that advice as you know. But I didn't need that because I have Barbara Bush."

Even when his handlers tried to make a speech goof-proof, Bush managed to snatch incoherence from the jaws of clarity. During his reelection campaign, when polls suggested, with some justification, that he lacked empathy, his speechwriters fed the stage direction (message: I care) into the teleprompter to remind him to read the next line with something approximating human emotion. Instead, he read the stage direction aloud, robotically emitting the non sequitur MESSAGE I CARE to a confused audience.

Andy Borowitz "Profiles in Ignorance: How America's Politicians Got Dumb and Dumber" (2022)

The Concessions of the Weak are the Concessions of Fear
(Edmund Burke, Parliament member, colonial sympathizer, 1775 )

Said by Edmund Burke, statesman, orator, all-around good egg.

Now, would you believe that I said this at the top of my voice only last week without a syllable altered in a trolley bus.

The reason WHY came into my mind because I'd just come from a meeting with a man who'd summoned me to him. And he said, "I've heard you on this program on the wireless where it said that you are a member of the society of the RSVP, which is the Royal Society for the Verification of Proverbs.

Which is a thing I HAVE spoken about at great length from this program. It's the sort of Society where I do things like taking a bull INTO a china shop and seeing actually what happens.

And he said, "We have got out. We specialize in educational toys. We have got out this do-it-yourself proverb-verifying children's kit. I'll show you one. What's more I would like you to be the very first customer of it since it's a mere thirty bob. And I'm sure you'd like to own one."

And he brought out this small cardboard box and gave it to me. And I opened it. And there were two pebbles inside. That's all.

So I said, "You said this was educational toy."

He said, "Hours of fun and pleasure. And learning all the while."

I said, "What do you do?"

He said, "Well take one stone. Take one of these pebbles."

I took one.

He said, "Press it. Press it."

I pressed it

He said, "Stamp on it."

I stamped on it.

He said, "Put your full weight on it."

I did.

He said, "Well. Can you imagine a child doing that?"

I said, "Teach him what?"

"No blood is there?"

So, I said, "No. That would hardly occupy a healthy child for any length of time."

He said, "Of course not. The child has to have exercise. Exercise out in the open air. Take this pebble up to the top of one of your hills. A high spot. Put it at the top. Let it roll. Follow it down. The little legs, the little muscles tightening. Get to the bottom. No moss. Child finds out for HIMSELF this way, you see."

I said, "I think you're ON to something here. Just tell me. You have TWO pebbles in this."

He said, "Yes. The other one serves not only as a spare or a replacement because children do lose things. Also in itself, just by being there it teaches the child the verification of anoher proverb. There is more than one pebble on the beach."

I said, "I'll take it."

I paid over the thirty bob. And I was RUSHING it over to Frank Muir's to show him this bargain.

I was sitting in that trolley bus. And I was looking at it. And it suddenly occurred to me. I'd paid thirty bob for a small cardboard box with two pebbles inside.

And it was at this MOMENT of realization that I suddenly proclaimed, "The Concessions of the Weak are the Concessions of Fear."

And when the arresting officer asked me why I had chosen this particular statement of this particular eminent eighteenth century politician.

Because it was at this point that I realized that I too had been a bit of a Burke.

Denis Norden
670704

Ask Well

I keep seeing ads for hydrogen-infused water. Can these products do anything for my health?

One woman on TikTok said that it had cured her sore throat and fever. Another wrote that it can help you lose weight, increase energy and strengthen your immune system.

Drink hydrogen water, some product advertisements go on to say, and you'll 'enjoy reduced pain and inflammation, improved gut health, superior hydration, in-creased endurance, a better mood and even slowed signs of aging.

Hydrogen water is made by simply adding more H's into your H20. But when it comes to its purported health advantages, researchers are skeptical.

"For almost every study that's shown a benefit, there's another study that questions the benefit," said Dr. Mitchell Rosner, a kidney doctor who specializes in fluid and electrolyte disorders at UVA Health in Charlottesville, Va. Here's what we know.

Hydrogen water is often packaged in sleek drink pouches or aluminum cans. Some brands sell dissolvable hydrogen tablets to plop into water, or high-tech bottles that you fill with regular water and then infuse with hydrogen by pressing a button.

Some of these drinks, also called hydrogen-rich and hydrogen-infused water, have added flavors or electrolytes, but the basic product involves regular water plus hydrogen gas molecules, or H2, mixed in.

Because hydrogen molecules are extremely small, they easily dissolve in water, said Dr. Gagandeep Dhillon, an assistant medical director at the University of Maryland Baltimore Washington Medical Center.

Hydrogen is so small and light that it also easily escapes water, Dr. Dhillon said. To ensure the molecules stay put, some brands package their product in special aluminum containers or recommend drinking their product within 30 minutes of opening it.

All water molecules have two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, as shown in its chemical name, H20. But once those atoms combine into one water molecule, Dr. Dhillon said, our bodies can't make use of the hydrogen and oxygen separately.

The idea behind hydrogen water is that the accessible hydrogen molecules - ones not bound to oxygen - can enter our body's cells and generate an antioxidant effect. Dr. Rosner said. Most of the touted health benefits, which also include enhanced exercise performance, speedier injury recovery, clearer skin and fewer allergy symptoms, come from the idea that hydrogen has antioxidant effects.

The science backing the health claims of hydrogen-infused water is shaky at best, said Henry Jay Forman, an emeritus professor of gerontology at the University of Southern California. Scientists already disagree about whether supplementing your diet with extra antioxidants can improve your health, he said.

Few studies supporting the drink's benefits have been performed. And they are small and often contradictory. In one 2020 study of 16 male athletes, researchers found that hydrogen-infused water improved the race times and fatigue levels of the four slowest runners but not of the four fastest runners in the group. But a 2021 study of 37 trained and untrained cyclists had different results. Only the trained cyclists benefited from hydrogen-rich water in terms of endurance, speed and fitness when compared with the untrained cyclists.

"More studies are needed to see if drinking hydrogen-infused water can reduce inflammation, aging or disease," said Tamara Hew-Butler, a sports medicine researcher at Wayne State University. Still, some people say they feel benefits from the water. Dr. Forman said this might be because of the placebo effect, in which people feel better because they believe it works.

Although the benefits are murky and drinking too much water can be dangerous, Dr. Rosner said that hydrogen-infused water wasn't linked to any serious health risks. "Everything I've read seems to say there's no downside," he said. The Food and Drug Administration considers it to be "generally recognized as safe," as long as the hydrogen molecules make up no more than 2.14 percent of the drink.

Hydrogen-infused water can be expensive, which is why both Dr. Rosner and Dr. Forman said it might not be worth it without more proven benefits.

"If you have $100 and want to improve your health, you're probably better off buying $100 of fresh fruits and vegetables than wo cases of hydrogen water," Dr. Cosner said.

Caroline Hopkins