It seems that science is growing closer to being able to grow meat in a lab.
The piece is pretty fascinating. As Jonah Goldberg points out, the propsect of meat without animals raises fascinating questions:

...I am curious what the animal rights and eco-types would say to the proposition of lab grown meat -- assuming they could get past their deep luddism. After all, the suffering of farm animals would be sharply curtailed if not eliminated. Forests wouldn't need to be cleared for cattle and billions(?) of acres of forest land around the world could be allowed to revert to wilderness, improving the quality of our air and water.
Of course, even if we perfected the technology overnight (which we wouldn't), there are some obvious downsides: millions of farm animals would probably have to be killed since their would no longer be much economic utility in feeding them. Worse, billions of people around the world would have their traditional social, political and economic arrangements shattered. Our attachment to the land would be even more attenuated. Whole new quasi-religions and political movements would develop around the need to eat "authentic" meat. Anyway, it's an interesting topic for lazy-day pondering.

All true. But those questions pale in comparison to the most important one of all: would such laboratory-grown meat be kosher? Would stakes genetically from cattle and bison, without the intermediate steps of existence as a living animal and shechitah, be kosher? What about grown pork - would the non-existence as an actual pig be enough to render it kosher?
I need to research this issue a little more closely.

The latest issue of The New Yorker has a few great pieces.
First, Anthony Lane lets it rip in reviewing "Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers":

Onscreen, Jackson braids the two strands together, adding the tale of fellow-hobbits Merry and Pippin, who, in a twist guaranteed to make environmentalists spill their carrot juice for joy, are literally hugged by trees. We also get ... a flawless white horse that, if you give a little whistle, gallops in from nowhere, though only in slow motion. And lo, the name of this steed is Shadowfax, or, as it was told in the olden tongue, Palmpilot.
...Gollum, who guides Frodo on his quest, is white-skinned and blue-veined, like a moldering cheese, and his shrunken frame is topped by a triangular head with protruding eyes. Think of Ross Perot after ten years on the Atkins diet, and you're almost there.
...In essence, the worthy folk of Edoras, under their king Théoden (Bernard Hill), have retreated to Helm's Deep, where they are besieged by Orcs, Uruk-hai, and other evildoers who come bearing hard consonants. It is a close and vicious fight, but at last the long vowels of Théoden and Aragorn, aided by the soft fricatives of Gandalf, carry the wordy day.

Second, Robert Sullivan has a wonderful spoof of the New York Times' weekly real estate feature "If You're Thinking of Living In...," which profiles a neighborhood in the tri-state area:

Dan and Daniella Daniels plan to retire in Hob Nob. They love their home, which they have renovated twice in the past six years—first by adding three bedrooms on the second floor, and then, last fall, by tearing down the house itself and replacing it with an apartment on the Upper West Side. "This is a wonderful place to bring up kids," said Daniella, whose children come home from boarding school in Maine during the holidays each year. "I wouldn't leave here if you paid me, which is why we don't plan on going anywhere unless we get a really good price for our house."

(Thanks to Gawker for the link.)

Finally, David Remnick has a wonderful appreciation of the retiring Vaclav Havel:

Havel is a liberal—and, unlike many American liberals, he is proud to proclaim it. As he begins to make his exit, it is worth adding up what his liberalism has wrought. He helped bring freedom of the press, freedom of religion, and freedom of commerce to his country. The Czech Republic is a member of NATO and will soon join the European Union. Czechs (Slovaks, too) travel at their pleasure. But Havel has also, unlike some other European leaders, refused to renounce, or even flinch from, the potential of power, even armed power, in the name of security and justice. His government pushed (in vain) for the West to intervene more quickly and completely in Rwanda. He pressed for armed intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo. And now, in the age of stateless terrorism, he is unabashedly in favor, as he said in New York, of the principle that "evil must be confronted in its womb and, if there is no other way to do it, then it has to be dealt with by the use of force."
Among Havel's myriad achievements, one of the most lasting is that he has helped to reorder our thinking about artist-intellectuals and political influence. Who is left to prize the fevered delusions of Sartre and Pound, the selective political blindnesses of Aragon and Shaw, when there is the clear-eyed example of Havel? Who is left to question that a thinking person, profound and humane, can find a place in real politics, both in opposition and in power? Countless countries still seem doomed to autocracy without a homegrown version of its antidote. Havel's journey has shown a way out. He leaves the Castle having provided the gift of normalcy to his people, and having restored to many others the dimensions and vigor of the liberal idea.

Date/Time: Monday, 12/30 - 7:00 P.M.
Location: O'Flanagan's Ale House - 1591 2nd Ave. (between 82nd and 83rd)
At a mutually convenient time, we can move next door for some quality kosher dining at Va Bene. Or not, depending on what people feel like doing.
UPDATE: Here's another reason to come.

Why have the Boston Red Sox not won a World Series in 84 years...and counting?
In an effort to keep warm through this longer-than-usual (for a Yankee fan) baseball winter, I recently paged through a book that offers a partial answer to that question. In Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston, Howard Bryant (a sportswriter for the Bergen Record who grew up in Boston) details how, for many years after Jackie Robinson entered major league baseball, the Red Sox did not attempt to sign black players and passed up chances to sign players such as Willie Mays. Even after the Red Sox integrated, Bryant describes how, into shockingly recent times, the team has often made life difficult for its black players. Others such as Glenn Stout have also described how the Red Sox’s slowness to integrate contributed to its mediocrity in the 1950s and 1960s, but Bryant’s book goes further in explicating the residual effects of the team’s problems with race.
The Red Sox’s problems recruiting and keeping black players have been, first and foremost, a moral failing. But they were also, as the team’s fans probably realize, a bad business practice. A sports team’s business is to win, and - as Bryant notes - a team in a competitive environment such as major league baseball cannot ignore a talent stream as substantial as African-American players and expect to win championships.
Similarly, while the integration of major league baseball was most importantly a cessation of an immense moral wrong, it also expanded the talent pool from which baseball teams drew. As such, it introduced a competitive pressure upon teams. Those that adapted to the post-Jackie Robinson era succeeded at the expense of those that did not.
All this was, or should have been, understood at the time by those whose primary priority was to win. While Branch Rickey certainly deserves tremendous moral credit for providing the means for Jackie Robinson’s entrance into the major leagues, he was just as undoubtedly interested in the competitive advantage his team would derive. When the Dodgers combined black players such as Robinson, Roy Campanella, Don Newcome and Junior Gilliam with white players like Duke Snider, Gil Hodges and Carl Furillo, the result was a team that won six pennants in Robinson’s ten seasons. As Adam Smith might have predicted, the Dodgers’ self-interest was a moral force.
The National League generally followed the Dodgers’ example to a greater extent than the American League did, with the expected result: according to Bill James’ Win Shares method, there were 11 National League players in 1963 that were better than any American League player that year. (The contrast is especially stark because Mickey Mantle was injured for most of that season, but the general point remains true.). Probably not coincidentally, the National League dominated the All-Star Game in that era.
Even the mighty Yankees were forced to adapt the competitive pressure exerted by the integration of baseball. As Bryant describes, the Yankees’ record on race was almost as bad as the Red Sox’s for a long time. The Yankees’ first noteworthy black player, Vic Power, was judged too “flashy” and quickly traded away despite his talent. The star catcher Elston Howard met the Yankees’ criteria, but not many others did. In his book October 1964, David Halberstam describes how the Yankees’ neglect of the talent afforded by the integration of African-American (and by then, Latino) players into baseball contributed heavily to the downfall of the Yankee dynasty in the 1960s. (There were, of course, other contributing factors: the Yankee player-development system was starved for resources in the early 1960s and didn’t develop many good white players, either.) When the Yankees resumed winning championships in the late 1970s, the team included outstanding minority players such as Mickey Rivers, Chris Chambliss and, of course, Reggie Jackson (who satisfied no era’s definition of decorum). And, as Bryant describes, the current dynastic Yankees are a model of diversity in terms of players’ backgrounds. Lingering prejudice against groups of players is, practically speaking, incompatible with George Steinbrenner’s monomaniacal desire for championships, and such prejudice has accordingly been overcome. The Yankees’ most recent moves - the signing of Japanese outfielder Hideki “Godzilla” Matsui and Cuban defector pitcher Jose Contreras - perfectly illustrate how the demand for the best players has overcome any prejudice against groups of such players. While it would be nice to assume high-minded motives on the Yankees’ behalf, it seems like Steinbrenner’s insatiable appetite for championships deserves the credit for the overcoming of such prejudice.
None of the above is especially novel. What is not understood as often, though, is that competitive pressures analogous to the ones exerted by the integration of baseball a half-century ago (though not usually with the same moral imperative) continue to be exerted.
About 20 years ago, the Dominican Republic became a tremendous source of talent for baseball. Teams such as the Blue Jays and Dodgers took early advantage of that source and gained a competitive advantage. More recently, the influx of Japanese baseball players such as Ichiro Suzuki and Hideo Nomo has introduced a new source of talent, which has been best exploited by the Mariners and Dodgers. The Yankees’ most recent moves may be understood as a response to those pressures, in addition to the specific tactical benefits afforded by signing those players. By signing Matsui, the Yankees joined the competition for Japan’s best players and signaled that the team would not allow the Mariners and Dodgers to monopolize the talent from that source. Similarly, the signing of Contreras continued the Yankees’ efforts to take advantage of the too-few opportunities to sign Cuban players, which began with Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez and the ill-fated Andy Morales. (We can all hope for the future expansion of such opportunities, as a minor fringe benefit of the not-soon-enough downfall of Castro.)
No team that aspires to win a championship can afford to ignore any source of talent, including intellectual. Over 20 years ago, Bill James began popularizing certain principles and methodologies of statistical analysis with respect to players’ performances (which he dubbed “sabermetrics”). For a while, his work was mostly ignored by the baseball establishment. In recent years, though, a number of baseball executives – especially Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland Athletics - have begun incorporating many insights pioneered by James (and his successors such as Baseball Prospectus and Baseball Primer) into their management, with positive results. Most notably, Beane’s Athletics have made the playoffs for three consecutive years despite having a budget as low as any team in baseball. Baseball is currently being subjected to competitive pressure by the spread of sabermetrics throughout baseball management, and teams that adapt to that pressure will succeed at the expense of those who do.
One team that is adapting to the pressure is the Red Sox. The team has an owner who is familiar with the work of Bill James, and recently hired a 28-year-old general manager who is steeped in James’ work. Most notably, the Red Sox recently hired James himself as a special adviser – the first time James had ever been employed by a major league team in a permanent capacity, despite his influence on the sport. It would be obscene to equate the delay in hiring James to the prejudice suffered by African-American players before the integration of baseball, it seems apparent that one of the reasons it took so long for teams to hire James was due to his outsider status. Having never played or been involved in the game in any official capacity (though he recently has contributed some commentary to Major League Baseball's official website), James seemed to be outside the pool of acceptable baseball hires, despite his influence on the game. (Baseball teams have employed statistical consultants in the past, but none of them have had as high a profile or as much influence as James.) After 84 years…and counting, the Red Sox’s desire for a championship overcame any prejudice against hiring an outsider. And, as Bryant notes at the end of his book, there have been indications in recent years that the Red Sox are finally removing the last vestiges of racial and ethnic prejudice from their organization (an effort that began under the management of the much-maligned general manager Dan Duquette). The desire to do the right thing has surely been part of the Red Sox’s calculus in those efforts. The desire to catch the resurgent, hated Yankees, with their talent drawn from virtually every conceivable source, probably played a greater role. (Significantly, the Red Sox apparently tried as hard as the Yankees did to sign Contreras. While they did not succeed, similar efforts will undoubtedly pay off in the future.)
As Adam Smith noted, people’s attempts to satisfy their self-interest may have beneficial consequences to society. In the context of professional sports, a team’s desperate desire to win a championship might lead it to overcome prejudices which many people assume are immutable.

UPDATE: David Pinto comments:

What killed the Yankees in the 1960's was:
1. Ownership by CBS, which didn't have the killer instinct for winning.
2. The implementation of the baseball draft, which prevented the Yankees from signing the best young players to bonuses. The baseball draft, like today's luxury tax, was an item specificially designed to end Yankee hegemony at the expense of player wealth.

Those factors help explain why the Yankees were down for so long, but they don't explain the team's initial sudden collapse in 1965 after winning the pennant in 1964. CBS bought the Yankees in November 1964, and the amateur draft began in 1965. If the team's development system had been in great shape at that time, it should have taken a while for CBS' ownership and the draft to bring down the Yankees. Those two factors could not have caused the Yankees to collapse immediately. It takes a while for drafted players to reach the major leagues, and if an organization is in decent shape, it takes a while for ownership to wreck it, even if they try hard - Peter Angelos' stewardship of the Baltimore Orioles is a good example.

A few points on what will probably be my last thimerosal-related post for a while.
1) Notwithstanding my P.P.S. below, I'm not going to do a major discussion of the merits of the existing studies on the link between thimerosal and autism. Even though I think the existing studies may be less flawed than Dwight Meredith or Wampum do, the scope of the disagreement is ultimately marginal: I don't think the existing evidence provides conclusive disproof of a link, and they do not argue that the existing evidence provides conclusive proof of a link.
2) Professor Mark Kleiman is threatening to dethrone Prof. Reynolds as Most-Favored Professor of Blissful Knowledge. (All that's lacking is the ability to generate a few thousand more hits with each link, a spot on his permalinks and a 50% rightward correction in political views, and the deal is sealed.).
Regarding the screwups identified in the Tax Notes piece noted below, Kleiman notes:

This is exactly the reason that complicated legislation shouldn't be pushed through without hearings. And these two mistakes suggest that Dr. Frist, the sponsor of the original amendment, Dick Armey, who has sorta-kinda acknowledged that he was responsible for pasting it into the Homeland Security bill, and the still-anonymous-but-widely-believed-to-be-Mitch-Daniels White House gnome who passed the word to Armey all failed to perform due diligence. (Unless, that is, it was their intention to deprive the families of the right to sue and "accidentally" leave them with no recourse whatever.) If you're going to short-cut the process, you ought to be certain you've got the substance right.

There's nothing that keeps the new Congress from fixing these problems. But the Lilly lobbyists, and their friends on the Hill, including the new Majority Leader, now have the huge advantage of the status quo. And Frist may not regard himself as being bound by the promises to undo the damage that Trent Lott made (and immediately started to back away from) to hold on to the Republican moderate votes he needed to pass the bill last session. The families and their friends are now in the position of begging the other side for whatever concessions it might deign to offer. Not a pretty picture.

I agree with most of Kleiman's first paragraph. I'm less cynical than Kleiman about the likelihood that the errors will go uncorrected and even more doubtful that the result was some sort of conspiracy to leave affected families no recourse. Bill Frist's original bill (PDF link) on the subject contained the appropriate conforming amendments to the Internal Revenue Code (click here and here). With that precedent, it does not seem likely (to me, at least) that passage of the appropriate conforming amendments would meet with much difficulty on the merits. It's further argument against sloppy, slapdash lawmaking, but not proof of some conspiracy to wholly eliminate families' recourse.

3) Does anyone know how long of a lag there is in the collection and reporting of figures on autism incidence? We have had almost three years of largely thimerosal-free vaccinations being administered to children in the U.S., and I would expect that the resulting data on autism incidence should begin showing up soon. But I don't know for sure how long it takes for the information to be collected and reported. If any of my new readers knows the answer, please let me know.

UPDATE: Dwight Meredith writes in response to the above question:

While we do not know how long it will take for the “natural experiment” to help us know whether or not thimerosal used in infant vaccines is is related to autism, we suspect that it will be a while. Although thimerosal was removed from infant vaccines in 1999, there are a number of reasons why the question will not be immediately answered.
First, autistic behaviors often do not present themselves until 15-24 months of age. Accurate diagnosis can take additional time once autisic behaviors are present.
Secondly, although thimerosal was removed from infant vaccines in 1999, as we understand it, the vaccines were not recalled and we do not know how many kids were vaccinated from multiple dose vials containing thimerosal after 1999.
Third, the best studies of incidence, (like the UC-Davis study) deal with school system and government program data. It takes a while for changes in incidence to filter upwards to those programs and it takes a while to collect and report the data. The U.C.-Davis study looked at data from 1987 through 1998. The final report was issued this year.
The collection and analysis of the data is tricky. States that have good autism programs are likely to attract families with autistic kids. Thus, the studies have to control for migration. They also have to control for severity of the problems so as to avoid reporting an expansion of the spectrum as an increase in incidence. Those factors add to the lag time.
We do not know when the results of the “natural experiment” will be available. Anecdotal evidence is likely to surface soon. Definitive data may take a while longer.

Meredith also has some other observations on the nature of autism that are worth checking out.

My post below has drawn a lot of attention, and many good comments, all of which I appreciate. Most notably, Dwight Meredith has responded in both the comments section and in a post on his own blog. Mr. Meredith's posts are models of how to rigorously argue a viewpoint on an emotional topic without allowing (justifiable) emotion to usurp reason. I regret not having followed his blog earlier, and a place will be made for his site in my permalinks in their next reorganization (which will occur sometime prior to the second Bill Frist administration).
As a tribute to Mr. Meredith's skills, I will not allow my own reasoning to unjustifiably succumb to his. Specifically, I want to address a few of the points he made in his post.

Mr. Meredith argues that I am "quick to declare that no link between thimerosal and autism has been shown and that there is no such link." I don't agree, at least with the second part. I do not think that the current evidence shows a convincing link between thimerosal and autism, but that does not mean that no such link exists. It just means it hasn't been shown yet. I'm glad that several studies are currently being done to explore the issue further.
Mr. Meredith then reads my post as implying that "the entire issue is driven by greedy lawyers eager to bankrupt Eli Lilly." Not the entire issue, but part of it. More specifically, that is an excellent summary of why I think the recent amendment to the Homeland Security bill was substantively appropriate in its own right. I don't argue that the lawyers created the concerns regarding thimerosal, though I wouldn't be surprised if they try to fan the flames of such concerns even if convincing scientific evidence emerges against such a link.
Mr. Meredith also refers me to Wampum, another interesting read. She notes that, in apparent contradiction to the CDC's officially sanguine view of thimerosal, the Bush administration has agreed to release certain documents in connection with the issue, including internal CDC documents which purportedly state that "mercury in children's vaccines is a potential source of neurological damage in children including ADD/ADHD, speech and language delays and other neurological disorders including autism."
We should all look forward to the revelation of whatever evidence is found in those documents. We should note, though, that the CDC documents referred to in the release are apparently the ones obtained by Safe Minds, an autism activist group, via the Freedom of Information Act. The New York Times Magazine article about the thimerosal issue notes in an aside that those CDC documents were "far from conclusive evidence" of a link. (Again - it's not proof of no link; just not clear proof of a link (assuming the Times' report is accurate).)
Finally, Mr. Meredith concludes:
We have been fighting battles in the area of autism for some time now. So far, money and politics has always trumped science and kids. For once, we should forget about politics, blame, potential liabilities, campaign contributions and other factors. Put all that stuff aside. Forget which side wins and which side loses. Sides suck. We should simply provide the scientists with all available information and plenty of money so that they can save our children.
I couldn't agree more.
And I assume one of my correspondents agrees as well. He identifies himself as a "parent of an autistic child and an active fundraiser for biomedical research into autism." He e-mailed me to describe "how angry I was that this group of trial lawyers was so active at trying to suck resources away from the research and into their pockets in the name of a phony connection between thimerosal and autism. Frankly, I wish whoever added that provision to the Homeland Security bill would come forward so I could express my appreciation."
Unfortunately, resources are never infinite. We should certainly pursue whatever leads appear promising, but not be afraid to reallocate scarce resources if those leads fail to deliver on their promise.
P.S. A tax lawyer friend e-mailed me an interesting article about the amendment that appeared in Tax Notes. Unfortunately, the article is only available by subscription.
The author is openly hostile to the amendment on both procedural and substantive grounds. Nothing new there. But then he adds a kicker:

But a funny thing happened on the way to the forum. Our lawmakers forgot a lot of law. Without amending the Internal Revenue Code, it is not possible for the vaccine-injury amendments to tap revenues from the fund to serve their intended purposes. Internal Revenue Code section 9510 establishes and provides the rules for operation of the Vaccine Injury Compensation Trust Fund. Sections 4131 and 4132 describe the 75-cents-per-dose excise tax that feeds the fund.
Specifically, there appear to be at least three drafting problems. First, section 9510(c)(1)(A) requires that any money disbursed from the trust fund must be in accordance with the Public Health Service Act as in effect on October 18, 2000. Because the Homeland Security Act did not amend that section, no funds can be distributed for the thimerosal cases or any cases newly covered by the amendments made by the Homeland Security Act.
Second, under section 9510(b)(3) if any amounts in the trust fund are used for ineligible purposes, the Treasury Department must cease paying funds (from excise tax revenues) into the trust fund. That is a poison pill. If any funds were paid to thimerosal victims, transfers for all vaccine-injury cases would be cut off.
Third, the Homeland Security Act does not alter the definition of taxable vaccine in code section 4132(a). That does not affect the disbursement of funds under section 9510, but it does raise the question of linking trust fund costs with trust fund benefits. If the fund's purposes are expanded to include cases against manufacturers of vaccine components, should the trust fund tax base be expanded to include separate taxation of components? (If so, that could be problematic given that the current taxable unit for the excise tax is "per dose." How would a shipment of vaccine preservative be taxed?) Or could it be ! argued that components are already effectively taxed under the current law's levy on the final product?
If Congress gets around to making code changes to amend the VICP as intended by the Homeland Security Act, it will have to consider those issues.

Oops! As the author concludes: "[T]his is a great case study in how Washington works . . . and how it doesn't." (Ellipses in original.)

P.P.S. I hope to respond to Meredith's and Wampum's criticisms of the existing studies soon.

All NY bloggers - and any other bloggers who happen to be in NY at the time - please take note of the following two-part, ecumenical opportunity.
Date/Time: Monday, 12/30 - 7:00 P.M.
Location: O'Flanagan's Ale House - 1591 2nd Ave. (between 82nd and 83rd)
At a mutually convenient time, we can move next door for some quality kosher dining at Va Bene. Or not, depending on what people feel like doing.
Come one, come all. RSVP by comment or e-mail.

The number of children with autism seemingly has increased dramatically in recent years. Many people have speculated that vaccinations - specifically the MMR vaccine - are causing the increase, but that allegation has not held up to scrutiny.
Recently, there has been much publicity given to allegations of a more specific link between vaccines and autism - specifically, the preservative thimerosal, which contained mercury in excess of the EPA standards for exposure and was included in vaccines given to children until 1999.
In the recently-passed Homeland Security bill, someone (Bill Frist, speculates Hesiod) inserted a provision at the last minute insulating makers of thimerosal from most of the lawsuits.
This last-minute insertion into the law has drawn much ire. Aside from general good-government concerns, the caricature of evil Republicans protecting big corporations such as Eli Lilly from the consequences of causing autism in children is far too tempting to pass up.
TAPPED has a short post on the subject which perfectly encapsulates that view, noting as an aside that the subject involves "medicines that apparently gave children autism."
There's only one problem: the caricature is probably wrong.
1) I would never want to be in the position of Dwight Meredith, father of an autistic child who wonders if sheer idiocy on the part of vaccine manufacturers and the medical establishment is responsible for his son's autism. I could certainly never deal with the topic with the level head that Mr. Meredith displays. But even Mr. Meredith is careful to note:

It is important, however, to stay focused on what is actually known about the relationship, if any, between mercury in vaccines and autism. There have been no studies of which we are aware that demonstrate that thimerosal in vaccines causes autism. Thus, it would be wrong, or at least premature, to conclude that vaccines have caused autism in any child.
Some, however, have suggested that there is no evidence of a link between thimerasol and autism. That is also not true. The increase in the incidence of autism in California coincides with the increased exposure of children to mercury in the form of thimerasol in vaccines. Mercury is known to cause brain damage to some kids at some level of exposure. That is evidence of a link but it is in no way conclusive evidence of causation.

I'm no expert, but it seems that Mr. Meredith may be too generous to the evidence of a link between thimerosal and autism. The CDC hasn't heard about it yet, and an unnamed friend of Mark Kleiman cites other evidence. Chemist Derek Lowe argues against the plausibility of a link between thimerosal and autism (click here and scroll up for more). Here's a study from The Lancet (free registration required) which reaches the following conclusions:

Overall, the results of this study show that amounts of mercury in the blood of infants receiving vaccines formulated with thiomersal are well below concentrations potentially associated with toxic effects. Coupled with 60 years of experience with administration of thiomersal-containing vaccines, we conclude that the thiomersal in routine vaccines poses very little risk to full-term infants, but that thiomersal-containing vaccines should not be administered at birth to very low birthweight premature infants.

At the very least, TAPPED's offhand statement that the thimerosal-preserved vaccines in question "apparently gave children autism" is a massive overstatement, which doesn't stand up to even a cursory reading of the evidence. A stronger link may be proven (especially since, as Meredith notes, a test will occur naturally based on the fact that thimerosal was eliminated from vaccines after 1999), but the current evidence doesn't seem to provide anything close to a reliable link.
2) As Mark Kleiman's friend notes:

When Congress established the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program in 1986, it was a rare legislative acknowledgment that the tort system is incapable of serving the public interest. At the time, you may recall, vaccine manufacturers were leaving the industry, vaccine prices were skyrocketing, and vaccination rates were falling sharply. VICP created a no-fault system for vaccine-related injuries. The system is inevitably imperfect, but it's clearly served the public interest. Vaccine prices and availability improved; the number of lawsuits plummeted; program costs have been modest ($110 million a year for pre-1988 injuries; an excise tax of 75 cents per dose for post-1988 injuries); and compensation to genuine victims has been non-trivial (VICP has paid over 1500 claims averaging just under $1 million per).
But of course the trial lawyers despise no-fault systems, and in thimerosal they see an opportunity to bypass and undermine VICP. They claim that thimerosal-related injuries (if there are such things) should not be covered under VICP because the injuries don't stem from the vaccine proper but from a "contaminant." They're suing the thimerosal manufacturers, who are not covered under VICP. They're aggregating millions of claims of $1000 or less because VICP precludes suits for > $1000. And so on.
Undermining VICP can't possibly serve the public interest. Thimerosal has already been phased out of childhood vaccines. There's an effective system in place for dealing with vaccine injuries; if there is credible evidence of thimerosal-related damage, then victims should fight to have the relevant adverse events added to the VICP vaccine injury table.
There's no reason to be believe that courts can deal with this. Juries routinely accept junk science when faced with heart-rending individual cases. (E.g., epidemiological evidence does not support a link between silicone breast implants and autoimmune disease. Some solace to the bankrupt manufacturers.) The threat of huge awards and litigation costs leads to settlement of meritless cases. (Last year, the vast majority of asbestos settlements were paid to unimpaired claimants.) Plaintiffs shop for judges that have been elected by the trial lawyers and for jurisdictions (in, e.g., WV, MS, and TX) that have absurdly pro-plaintiff rules. The record shows that in mass tort situations, legal costs typically absorb 50% - 80% of judgment and settlement dollars. And the 20% - 50% that trickles down to victims and "victims" is distributed in arbitrary and unequal fashion.

I have little to add to this. Even Kleiman admits: " That the tort system does a miserable job of handling medical injuries is too clear to be worth arguing about."
Even if you believe that pharmaceutical companies are profiteering, heartless entities which deserve to be humbled - and worse, heavily regulated (I think that's a fair summation of the editorial line at The American Prospect ), wouldn't it be proper to have evidence of truly harmful malfeasance before subjecting the companies to "bet-the-company" litigation? (No one remotely familiar with the history of mass torts can deny that lawsuits such as the thimerosal-vaccine claims have the potential to destroy any company, regardless of size. Ask Dow Corning, W.R. Grace, etc.) "Due process" and all that stuff.
I agree that it was sleazy to amend the law in the last-minute, anonymous fashion at issue. But the ideas behind the amendment were perfectly defensible - and its sponsors should not have been afraid to defend those ideas. That fear was the true scandal.

UPDATE: Thanks to TAPPED for the kind words. And they do paraphrase the issue correctly, though they should say that thimerosal "was" often added to vaccines, as it has been mostly removed due to the concerns raised about potential mercury poisoning (which formed the basis for the lawsuits at issue).
A couple of notes, as long as I'm revisiting the topic. First, I was struck by the following observation in the New York Times piece about the controversy:

On July 7, 1999, at Halsey's urging, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Public Health Service released a statement urging vaccine manufacturers to remove thimerosal as quickly as possible and advising pediatricians to postpone giving most newborns the birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine. The decision, which helped to create vaccine shortages and led some babies to become infected with hepatitis B... (Emphasis added)

That consequence helps show that the removal of thimerosal was not a costless decision. I do not know if there have been any good studies done to estimate the number of babies who contracted hepatitis B but would not have done so if thimerosal-preserved vaccine had been administered. But in theory, if further studies show no link between thimerosal and mental incapacitation, the costs of removing thiremosal from vaccines may be shown to have outweighed the benefits.
Second, TAPPED reiterates:

The real scandal here, such as it is, is that that someone friendly to Eli Lilly stuck a provision in the homeland security bill to exempt Lilly from tort lawsuits just in case there turns out to be such a link.

If that was indeed the expected progression of events - i.e., if lawsuits would follow evidence of a link - I'd agree. But in reality, the lawsuits have been filed by the dozen long before any such link had been established (check out this search result for an indication). This is not atypical for the mass-tort context, either. With that in mind, it's harder to see the amendment as illegitimately depriving legitimate claimants of recourse; I'd even argue it's closer to an attempt to maintain neutrality while studies are performed to establish whether or not the link exists. (I'd argue that if studies show such a link, Congress may well repeal the amendment. But that's a different argument.)

What if Christmas was a Jewish holiday?
Have you ever wondered what the classical halakhic sources would say regarding the laws of the holiday?
Me neither. But someone has:

4. THE TREE MUST BE BRIGHT GREEN. BRIGHT RED, or a mixture of green and red, IS ALSO ACCEPTABLE FOR A XMAS TREE,11 BUT BROWN IS NOT. THERE MAY BE ONE BROWN SPOT NEAR THE BOTTOM OF THE TREE,12 BUT IN THE TOP HALF OF THE TREE, EVEN ONE BROWN SPOT WILL INVALIDATE THE TREE. A TRULY PIOUS PERSON WILL MAKE SURE TO BRING ALONG A XMAS TREE EXPERT WHEN HE GOES TO LOOK FOR HIS TREE.13

The authors of this piece really know their stuff. (A special prize goes to whomever knows why the above paragraph is a mixture of capital and lowercase words. Click here for a hint.)
The funniest part of the piece, by far, is the Hebrew letter of approbation from Santa Claus.

(Via Megan McArdle.)

I know I'm very late to the Trent Lott pile-on, but anyone who praises Strom Thurmond's 1948 segregationist campaign deserves what he gets.
Josh Marshall has broken much of the story, including laying out Lott's record of neo-Confederate activism in excrutiating detail. (Liberal blogger Atrios has also come up with some good nuggets.) Just as noteworthy, the clamor for Lott to go has ben led by conservative bloggers and media (see the last week's worth of posting on InstaPundit and Andrew Sullivan for most of the appropriate links.) Some of the best pieces have come from National Review Online - click here, here and here for examples.
Probably the most eloquent explanation of why Lott must go was provided by Charles Krauthammer:

This is not just the kind of eruption of moronic bias or racial insensitivity that cost baseball executive Al Campanis and sports commentator Jimmy the Greek Snyder their careers. This is something far more important. This is about getting wrong the most important political phenomenon in the past half-century of American history: the civil rights movement. Getting wrong its importance is not an issue of political correctness. It is evidence of a historical blindness that is utterly disqualifying for national office.

Josh Marshall and others have raised the troubling point about Lott's history:

The truth is that everyone who's sentient and even remotely keeps up on politics has known about this stuff for years -- at least since the last Trent Lott-segregation scandal broke back in late 1998. Sad to say, everyone just agreed not to pay attention, not to care.

Why, in fact, did this latest gaffe erupt and hopefully end Lott's career as a political leader, while his awful history did not? Why was this the last straw?
I can think of a couple of contributing factors:
1) Lott's case reminds me a lot of Pat Buchanan's gradual implosion in respectability over the last decade. For years, there was copious evidence of Buchanan's bigotry, but the DC political-media establishment couldn't emotionally comprehend that the nice man they dealt with regularly actually believed such hateful things. Eventually, the evidence became too great to ignore.
2) For better or (mostly) worse, the majority of the American body politic will put up with a certain amount of mud-wallowing to get elected. Such a candidate may earn a certain amount of amnesty if he: a) goes through some motion of repudiation and b) signals that on some level, he doesn't really believe in the merits of the objectionable beliefs. (This is the obverse of Paul Krugman's column today; the objectionable candidates also have to signal to the more tolerant majority that they don't really believe in the objectionable tactics they're using.) Lott repudiated the CCC group in the past, grudgingly though it was. When he then makes the statement at thurmond's party, in a non-campaigning context, it dispells any disavowals he has ever made and recasts all his prior objectionable acitivities - as evidence of his beliefs rather than mere tactics. That's why Trent Lott looks much different now than he did last week.
As Josh Marshall noted:

Much of the wobbly coverage of this story (and much of the deep unease over this among conservatives) stems from fact that this obviously wasn't some misstatement or hyperbole or slip of the tongue. It's what the guy believes. You can tell that from just listening to his words. And it's clear from the man's long history of hobnobbing with neo-confederate wing-nuts and general nostalgia for the pre-civil-rights era South. It's even painfully, and belatedly, clear from his weird unwillingness to utter even a pro forma condemnation of segregation. It's what the guy believes.

Hopefully Lott will resign this afternoon.

What a serendipitous day for those three misunderstood nations!
Iraq has given VX nerve gas to al-Qaeda.
North Korea announces it is reactivating its plant for nuclear weapons.
And now it is revelaed that Iran has two secret nuclear sites, ideal for making atomic weapons.
Undoubtedly, just another day at the office for those three countries.

1) Glenn Reynolds has recently reported an apparent increase in urgency among state public health officials charged with dealing with smallpox, among other horribles.
In the last day, the following two items are also being reported:
2) President Bush has decided to revive a nationwide smallpox vaccination program, beginning with soldiers and emergency personnel and eventually extending to the entire country.
3) Apparently Iraq has recently supplied VX nerve gas to al-Qaeda.
I suspect there may be a connection between items 1-2 and 3.

This was supposed to be an extended discussion of this year’s candidates for the Hall of Fame.
After working on it for several days and only gotten to half of the viable candidates after several pages, I’ve decided that less is more.
For a more comprehensive look at the candidates, check out Aaron Gleeman’s outstanding overview, with both basic biographical and statistical information on each candidate, as well as an assessment of each candidate’s case. I won’t try to repeat his efforts (i.e. I will free-ride on his)
As mentioned below, David Pinto recently noted an e-mail exchange between us. What prompted my original e-mail to Pinto was that this year’s ballot has an exceptional number of borderline candidates, as opposed to having one or two sure inductees and many clearly unqualified ones, which seems to have been a more common pattern in recent years.
Rob Neyer has made a similar observation:
What's amazing about the current Hall of Fame ballot is how many viable candidates there are, candidates about whom we can argue.
Personally, I would vote for only six players on the ballot (I'll name them later). But I believe I might be wrong about five or six others, and there are still more candidates who have their rabid supporters, and wouldn't be among the most undeserving Hall of Famers if they were elected. There are 33 players on the ballot this time around, and 19 are viable candidates according to at least somebody's standards.
Those 19 players are Bert Blyleven, Gary Carter, Dave Concepcion, Andre Dawson, Steve Garvey, Rich Gossage, Keith Hernandez, Tommy John, Jim Kaat, Don Mattingly, Jack Morris, Dale Murphy, Eddie Murray, Dave Parker, Jim Rice, Ryne Sandberg, Lee Smith, Bruce Sutter, and Alan Trammell. Every one of those 19 players has a decent argument on either analytical premises or based on historical precedents (or both).
I think the current playing environment is distorting the current voting on two levels:
1) Due to the offensive explosion since the mid-1990s, the batting statistics of the current candidates seem superficially less impressive when compared to active players. Specifically, Gary Carter’s numbers – properly regarded as historic in his context – pale besides Mike Piazza’s, and don’t impress as much as they should when compared to Ivan Rodriguez or even Javier Lopez. Dale Murphy’s MVP numbers of the mid-1980s look pedestrian now. Same for Jim Rice; people have focused on his difficult relationship with sportswriters in attempting to explain why he hasn’t been elected, but I think the changed offensive climate is as responsible. (Analysts such as Bill James have pointed out that Rice was very overrated, but I don’t think that the BBWAA voters are using that argument. It’s a case of doing the right thing for the wrong reasons.) Had Eddie Murray not cleared 3,000 hits or 500 HRs, he may have had to wait a while for induction as well.
2) To a lesser extent, the increased concentration of saves in one pitcher and increased specialization of closers over the last 15 years has hurt the prior generation of great closers in the voting – both because the career leaderboards are rapidly being re-written, and that 35 saves isn’t nearly as big of a deal as it was 20 years ago. Examples include Gossage, Sutter, Dan Quisenberry and even Tom Henke.
In short, I would definitely vote for Blyleven, Carter, Gossage, Murray, Sandberg, Trammell, Kaat and John. I would probably vote for Dale Murphy as well, and one surprise candidate who’ll be described below. But there is no candidate out of the 19 listed above whose selection would be a travesty.
I’ve retained one of my original extended discussions, regarding Gossage and Sutter:

Rich Gossage and Bruce Sutter make for a fascinating joint discussion. They were probably the two most feared “firemen” of their time (the term “closer” not commonly used at that time). Gossage’s career was much longer, in part because he bounced around as a back-of-the-bullpen type for a decade after he was no longer an All-Star. And he wasn’t too bad, even in those years. (Contrast that with Steve Carlton’s last couple of years, for example.) Sutter’s career was basically wiped out by arm injuries approximately five minutes after signing a “lifetime” contract with the Atlanta Braves. Oops.
Under Win Shares, Sutter’s 1977 season ranks as barely better than Gossage’s best season (also 1977) by a 27 to 26 margin. Sutter and Gossage each had 3 seasons of over 20 Win Shares. Their primes basically overlapped, and I think it was generally accepted that Sutter was slightly better at their peaks. In the original edition of his Historical Baseball Abstract (published in 1986), Bill James ranked Sutter #1 among relievers for peak value, with Gossage #2. Part of that reputation is probably due to the fact that Sutter closed out four consecutive All-Star games during the time that the NL won every year, and made the American Leaguers look like a bunch of Little Leaguers in the process.
The story is often told about how Sutter’s second-half fades in 1977 and 1978 due to overwork inspired Cubs manager Herman Franks to restrict Sutter’s use to save situations, thus creating the modern “closer” role. I’m not sure if there’s more to the story than that, but if it is true, it may indicate Gossage’s superiority. Gossage pitched over 130 innings in relief 1975, 1977 and 1978 (not to mention 225 innings, along with 15 complete games, in 1976 in an ill-advised experiment as a starter) and was none the worse for wear. After an injury sustained in a famous fight with Cliff Johnson cut short his 1979 season, Gossage’s workload was more reasonable for the rest of his career, but his effectiveness did not seem to be compromised by extensive use the way Sutter’s was.
Based on durability and length of career, I’d pick Gossage over Sutter, and I’d feel comfortable voting Gossage to the Hall of Fame. But the question is whether Sutter qualifies as well. I’ve probably gone back-and-forth on Sutter more than any other candidate on the ballot. At the moment, I probably wouldn’t vote for him based on brevity of career. But I could easily go the other way. Was Bruce Sutter the Sandy Koufax of relievers – i.e., were his peak accomplishments of sufficient magnitude to outweigh his short career? The answer may be “yes.” Yes, I know closers are overrated (though that was less true when they pitched 100-130 innings as Sutter did, as opposed to today’s 65) But Sutter has a reasonable claim to being the best reliever of all time, judged on his peak. If a player can reasonably be called the best ever at his position – including closer - for any length of time, I don’t think we can complain if that player makes the Hall of Fame.
In fact, I just convinced myself. I’d vote for Sutter as well.

David Pinto refers to an e-mail dialogue we have had regarding this year's ballot and first-ballot inductees generally.
His information regarding historical patterns of first-ballot inductees is very enlightening. However, he drops in the following conclusion:

As time goes on, I believe the percentage of first time ballot elections will continue to rise until we have about 90% of players being elected on their first try.

I'm not sure why he believes that, but I don't think it's true. I think that a large part of what makes for first-ballot inductees is the timing of when players retire. Even though the large backlog of deserving candidates has essentially been cleared away, as Pinto notes, there's no reason it can't be replenished to a degree - enough so that 90% just seems far too high.
More specifically, I think that Pinto doesn't account for the historical factor that Bill James alluded to in the 1986 Abstract when he developed his system for predicting HOF induction based on historical patterns, and in his book on the Hall of Fame: voters (especially the Veterans Committee) have historically not adjusted sufficiently for extreme playing conditions. What that means is that as the players who compiled their stats in today's hitter-happy era retire (and assuming that conditions move somewhat closer to a center, which is already happening), many of today's hitters, with their gaudy stats, may eventually gain induction into the Hall as time passes and voters forget the historical context (especially if the Veterans' Committee continues in any substantial form). That forgetting may take time, which may lead to players getting in after a while on the ballot (and it will also take time to sort through the many players likely to retire with vaguely similar and inflated stats).
Later tonight or tomorrow, I hope to post more on this year's candidates for election

As many of you may already know, one of the chief weapons inspectors now beavering away in Iraq has, shall we say, an unusual resume. This topic was made for Mark Steyn, and he doesn't disappoint.
The only comparable thing I've ever read was P.J. O'Rourke's incomparable beginning to the chapter on agricultural policy from his book Parliament of Whores, which I will not recap since children and rabbis allegedly read this blog. (But it's worth the price of purchase.)

The New York Sun has an interesting retort to those who argue that New York City government is too lean to cut.

The Israeli journalist Akiva Eldar, by way of complaining that the Israeli attacks have destroyed the capacity of the Palestinian security forces to keep an allegedly imminent peace, writes in Ha-aretz:

Assume for a second that Amram Mitzna is elected prime minister and a few months later signs an agreement that puts an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Also assume that his government does evacuate the isolated settlements and the Palestinians agree to leave Gush Etzion and of course the Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem...

Eldar reminds me of the economist in the following desert-island joke:

Three guys are alone on a desert island: an engineer, a biologist and an economist. They are starving and don't have a thing to eat, but somehow they find a can of beans on the shore.
The engineer says: let's hit the can with a rock until it opens.
The biologist has another idea:
"No. We should wait for a while. Erosion will do the job."
Finally, the economist says:
"Let's assume that we have a can opener".

This could be extrapolated into a larger point about those who assume that electing Mitzna or some other unilateral Israeli gesture short of suicide will magically erase the events and ramifications of the last two years. I'll leave it at this for now.

A report in Ha'aretz cites this article from the Kenya Daily Nation stating that the terrorists who blew up the Israeli-owned resort in Kenya and tried to shoot down an Israeli airliner were Iraqis with ties to al-Qaeda.
The Kenya paper has the following damning allegations:

Kenya's security agencies were warned four times of an impending bombing a clear eight months before last week's suicide attack near Mombasa...
They were told a terrorist mission was planned at the Coast;
that a bomb had been smuggled into the country;
the names of the terror group linked to Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda movement that was responsible;
and they were even given the names and pictures of two Iraqi terrorists who planned to enter Kenya from Somalia to carry out the attack.

If true, this certainly does not reflect well on Kenya's security services (although it should make commiserating with the CIA and FBI easier at future security conferences). The independent commission recently formed to investigate 9/11 should examine the Kenyan paper and use it as a model if similar neglect comes to light (though I doubt it will; more on that later).
But perhaps more importantly, this is the first allegation
I'm aware of linking Iraq to the attacks. Could this be the "smoking gun" linking Iraq to al-Qaeda that skeptics have insisted on seeing before approving of war with Iraq, or do attacks after 9/11 not count? And even if the terrorists were Iraqis and Iraqi state involvement is demonstrated, will the usual suspects argue that attacks against Israelis are somehow different? ("Yes, such attacks are inexcusable when directed against any party, whether Israeli or Palestinian, but we must not lose sight of the fact that the conflict occurs in a political context...") I think I know the answer; after all, Saddam's underwriting Palestinians who murderer innocent people usually hasn't been cited as a casus belli.

UPDATE: This Newsweek piece contains the following quote from an Israeli intelligence source:

An Israeli security official also said that authorities had stopped two Palestinian cells in the past year whose members were trained in Tikrit, Iraq, in a plot to fire missiles at airliners taking off from Tel Aviv airport. "We know these ideas [hitting airplanes upon takeoff] originated in Iraq," he said.

This article in Salon asks why books cost so much, and implies that the costs have increased dramatically in recent years.
Except they haven't. As the author notes:

When the prices of hardcover books are adjusted for inflation, they turn out to have remained fairly flat between 1975 and 2000.
Nonetheless, for those who remember the 1970s, the escalation in prices does appear substantial. Figures obtained from R.R. Bowker, the company of record for information about the publishing industry, show that, from 1975 to 2000, the price of the average hardcover book of fiction went up 200 percent to $24.96. Average prices for hardcover poetry and drama books increased 211 percent to $33.57. Nonfiction hardcovers went up 123 percent to $40.29. The largest increase was in the juvenile category, which climbed 227 percent to arrive at the current average of $18.40.
Still, adjust these figures for inflation and you get a different story, says Robert Sahr, an associate professor of political science at Oregon State University who studies media coverage of complex matters such as budgeting and economic policies. He found that the cost of hardcover fiction in real dollars had actually gone down 2 percent, while poetry and drama and juvenile categories had risen only a few percentage points. Nonfiction hardcovers had decreased in real price by 27 percent.
"I'm not very surprised," Sahr says. "Trade books are one of the clearest examples of a completely discretionary purchase. They have to be price-sensitive."
So why imply that the nominal increase is meaningful, when in the same breath you've shown that it isn't?

The New York Times has been taking plenty of abuse lately for sloppy, agenda-driven news coverage. (This correction is a stunner when viewed against the original story (especially the headline), even by Times standards.)
But in the spirit of Chanuka and Thangsgiving, we should take a moment to appreciate the Times' virtues as well. Specifically, I hereby call for a one-day moratorium on NYT-bashing in the blogosphere. Any paper which publishes a lead editorial with this headline can't be all bad.

Chalk up another entry in the "famous last words" file. At the risk of further fattening it, this week should provide more & (possibly) better blogging.