While You Were Sleeping

“Ted Kennedy was a deeply religious person, a devout and routinely observant Roman Catholic. I know this from media accounts. It was never part of his political persona. His religion was personal and private, although no less deeply felt for that. As an atheist I don’t understand it, but I respect the way he wore his faith. His older brother, John, had made it a matter of principle and point of personal honor to keep his religion and his role as public servant separate, and his younger brothers Bobby and Ted followed suit. I never heard him invoke God or religion for political reasons. Or for any public reasons, for that matter. The difference in our religious views — which was vast — was never a barrier.”

One of the editors of Effect Measure remembers Ted Kennedy, devout Catholic and committed secularist.

— From London.

As most of you have probably already noticed, journalist and NYTimes columnist Nicholas D. Kristof is doing a remarkable job of reporting on this whole healthcare debate.

His latest column is about his friend, whose beloved husband began to show signs of dementia and was diagnosed with a degenerative illness that would require lifelong care.

“The hospital arranged a conference call with a social worker, who outlined how the dementia and its financial toll on the family would progress, and then added, out of the blue: ‘Maybe you should divorce.’”

She did. She had to. Because of this fucked-up healthcare system, she was left with no other choice than divorce the man she still loves.

If you haven’t yet, I suggest you also read Mr. Kristof’s op-ed from last week, titled ”Health Care Fit For Animals,” in which he recounts the moral dilemma of a former insurance company PR officer who quit after 20 years of successfully lobbying against a reform. Why? Because he found himself “agreeing with” most of the arguments put forward in Michael Moore’s film, Sicko.

My favorite nugget from that one:

“One Blue Cross employee earned a perfect evaluation score after dropping thousands of policyholders who faced nearly $10 million in medical expenses.”

First-world nation, huh.

— From London.

… With professionals to help you rehearse if you get there before 11am.

Go on. You know you want to.

— In The Londonist, from London.

A team at the University of New South Wales studied a soprano’s ability to pronounce certain vowels while singing high notes. Everyone who’s had a bit of voice training will tell you: certain sounds make it almost impossible to rise to high pitches at reasonable volume, while others make it a walk in the park. It’s a physical thing. Try it.

I was wondering why anyone would waste time trying to demonstrate something any soprano can feel in her vocal cords, until I got to the part where they studied one of Wagner’s operas to show that the man understood this problem (perhaps because he could hear some of the words he wrote being massacred) and stubbornly refused to let high notes make his precious lyrics incomprehensible. He was deliberate, the computer tells us. You don’t say.

We all knew he was obsessive, but by reading the librettos and analyzing which syllables are chosen for which notes, you would, apparently, see the lengths to which he went. An issue, they add, Beethoven never fully grasped (considering his deafness, I’m not entirely sure he is the best composer to compare Wagner to in this respect - but fine, I’ll shut up now).

An amusing read from Seed Magazine.

— From London.

The antitrust authority of the country where three private TV networks belong to Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and three other channels, state-owned, are effectively controlled by him as well, is investigating Google News because, erm, it’s supposedly taking advertising revenue away from Italian newspapers.

Genius.

— In Bloomberg, from London.