Dealing with Cancer

One of my favorite writers, Mary Elizabeth Williams, has been documenting her life with Stage 4 Melanoma in a series of extraordinary blog posts at Salon. Williams has written about how to talk to someone with cancer, and how to talk about cancer if you have it.

The post that moved me the most was her initial piece about what she’s doing to combat cancer. Williams is trying an experimental treatment and doing everything in her power to help others learn about her condition, in the hopes of contributing something to the science surrounding melanoma. May her strength continue to give others strength, and help them to face an uncertain day:

I am an experiment. And as the experiment continues, I intend to keep sharing it with you, giving you my take on what it’s like to both grapple with a potentially fatal illness, and to stand on the front lines of a treatment that just might revolutionize cancer care. Right now, I have a light, speckled rash all over my body, a condition I hope a new steroid cream will correct. My gums sometimes bleed. I have a slick, oily taste in my mouth, one that rendered the birthday cake my family made for me recently all but inedible. Yet when my daughters grandly marched it out from the kitchen, I smiled gamely and posed for pictures. Then I made a wish. Not just for me, but for all of us living here in Stage 4, and for all those yet to someday get that devastating, life-changing phone call. Let all this be worth it, I thought. Let it work. And I blew out the candles.

Does Teaching Make Humans Unique?

Discover magazine explores whether or not the ability to teach makes humans a unique species:

If you’re a college student reading this during a lecture because your professor is boring you out of your mind, you may not consider teaching a very big deal. But when you consider everything that goes into one person teaching another, it’s a remarkable behavior. Consider what it takes for you to teach a child how to tie her laces, or write her name in cursive, or skip a stone. She has to watch you do the action and store a representation of that action in her brain. She also needs to listen to you, to understand why a twist of the fingers or the flick of a wrist is important to the procedure. You, the teacher, have to watch her try it, recognize when she gets it wrong, and explain how to do it right. Just as importantly, you have to help the child understand why learning a particular action matters–so that she won’t cut her foot, so that she could throw a stone across the pond, and so on.

Should Stephen Glass Get a Second Chance?

Stephen Glass was a journalist who fabricated a wealth of materials for features that he wrote for publications such as The New Republic and Rolling Stone. His crimes were dramatized in the solid journalistic thriller, Shattered Glass. Glass is now trying to become a lawyer in California, but the Bar association there is…reluctant. Jack Shafer explores whether or not Glass has learned his lesson:

Glass ‘s legal struggle to join the bar goes back almost a decade. According to court filings, Glass passed the New York Bar Examination in 2000 and applied for admission to the bar in July 2002. But he withdrew his application on Sept. 22, 2004 after the bar notified him he would not likely be approved on moral character grounds. He moved to California that fall and passed its bar exam in 2007, but the Committee of Bar Examiners rejected Glass on moral character grounds in 2009. The committee holds that Glass has not rehabilitated himself, waiting more than 11 years to fully list and identify all of the fabrications in his journalism.

A Network Called The Internet

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has published a letter from 83 engineers who helped to create the internet. Their mission: stop SOPA.

To date, the leading role the US has played in this infrastructure has been fairly uncontroversial because America is seen as a trustworthy arbiter and a neutral bastion of free expression. If the US begins to use its central position in the network for censorship that advances its political and economic agenda, the consequences will be far-reaching and destructive.

Having Your Hand on the Brass Ring

New York magazine has an interview with Suzanne Sena, who plays fictional news anchor Brooke Alvarez on The Onion News Network. Suzanne was a finalist in the audition to replace Kathie Lee Giffords as Regis Philbin’s co-host. She expounds on her biggest regret of the situation:

The $40 million paycheck I didn’t receive. It was an absolute highlight of my career, but I’ve had many more highlights since then, and the Onion is definitely one of them. To me, it was having my hand on the brass ring and then losing it, but it taught me so much.

I can’t imagine being so tantalizing close to a $40 million payday, then having it slip away. Would I be able to psychologically bounce back from that? Not sure, but the fact that Suzanne has is certainly encouraging.

The Problem with Mitt’s $10,000 Bet

Last night at the Republican debate, Mitt Romney bet Rick Perry $10,000 that Romney’s book did NOT state that the Massachusetts health care mandate was a wise choice for the rest of the company. Romney, who is worth somewhere in the range of $150 million, wanted to let everyone know that he was SERIOUS about his position.

Democrats are already rejoicing at this apparent gaffe, which even spawned a Twitter hashtag last night. One analyst made the point that weeks from now, voters may not remember WHY Romney made the $10,000 bet. But they’ll almost definitely remember that number. In Iowa, where the first caucus will be held in January, it’s predicted that this won’t go over well.

In my opinion, Romney went wrong by making the bet too believable. Even though the bet was kind of meant to be a joke, it was entirely plausible that a man of Romney’s wealth could in fact make such a bet. He needed to go big or go home. Bet $5 billion, or bet $5. $10,000 sounds like an impressive amount to many Americans, where the median income is roughly $40,000, but Romney made it sound like he makes that much money in a day and could easily part with it. Not terribly presidential.