Eideard

Martin Amis told the Guardian: “What we need to recognise is that certain lives fall into the negative, where pain hugely dwarfs those remaining pleasures that you may be left with. Geriatric science has been allowed to take over and, really, decency roars for some sort of correction.” He said his comments were meant to be “satirical”, rather than “glib”.

His stance on euthanasia had hardened since the deaths of his stepfather, Lord Kilmarnock, the former SDP peer and writer, in March aged 81, and his friend Dame Iris Murdoch, the novelist, in 1999, aged 79, two years after her husband revealed that she was suffering from Alzheimer’s.

“I increasingly feel that religion is so deep in our constitution and in our minds and that is something we should just peel off,” he said. “Of course euthanasia is open to abuse, in that the typical grey death will be that of an old relative whose family gets rid of for one reason or another, and they’ll say ‘he asked me to do it’, or ‘he wanted to die’, Amis said. “That’s what we will have to look out for. Nonetheless, it is something we have to make some progress on…”

In his interview, Amis said his step father had died “very horribly”. “He always thought he was going to get better. But he didn’t get better and I think the denial of death is a great curse.”

He said Iris Murdoch, whom he had known for a very long time , was “a friend, I loved her. She was wonderful. I remember talking to her just as it started happening, and she said, ‘I’ve entered a dark place’. That famous quote. Awareness of loss is gone, the track is gone. You don’t know the day you’ve spent watching Teletubbies; it just vanished.”

The pro-euthanasia pressure group Dignity in Dying said: “Like all too many people in the UK, Martin Amis has witnessed the bad death of a loved one.” But, it added: “Dignity in Dying’s campaign for a change in the law is not about the introduction of ‘euthanasia booths’, nor is it in anticipation of a ‘silver tsunami’. Our campaign is about allowing dying adults who have mental capacity a compassionate choice to end their suffering, subject to strict legal safeguards.”

Hear, hear.

I also suggest checking out the website of the Dignity in Dying campaign if you’re in the UK. In the U.S., there is Death with Dignity. Pretty much spot on.

The US government said it is planning to relax the ban on imported meats which prevents the sale of haggis.

The ban was introduced in 1989 because of concerns about the safety of British meat during the BSE scare.

On the eve of Burns night, the US Department of Agriculture said new regulations were being drafted, in line with international standards…

Jo MacSween, co-director of Macsween Haggis, said it would come as good news to expats and tourists.

“So they will be delighted that next time they come to visit they can not only take it back but hopefully manufacturers like us will actually start shipping it there too.”

Ms MacSween said sales of haggis were no longer confined to the Burns Night season in January.

The company has also diversified into products such as haggis nachos, she said.

Phew!

I’ve been able to order in frozen haggis from one of the butcher shops I used to frequent in Boston; so, I haven’t been entirely deprived. But, trying to convince my friendly neighborhood carniceria in New Mexico to produce this treat – even on a holiday season basis – is beyond possible.

The United States plans to appeal a federal judge’s dismissal of charges against five Blackwater security guards accused of killing 17 people in Baghdad in 2007, Vice President Joe Biden announced Saturday.

Speaking at a joint appearance with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani in Baghdad, Biden said he was “disappointed” with the ruling, and that the Justice Department would file the appeal next week.

“The United States is determined to hold accountable anyone who commits crimes against the Iraqi people,” Biden told reporters.

The September 2007 shootout in Baghdad’s Nusoor Square left 17 Iraqis dead and two dozen wounded. The killings led Iraq’s government to slap limits on security contractors hired by Blackwater, now known as Xe, and other firms…

Last month, U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina found that…the government has utterly failed to prove that it made no impermissible use of the defendants’ statements or that such use was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Each of the now-former guards — Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, Dustin Heard, Donald Ball and Nicholas Slatten — faced 14 counts of manslaughter, 20 counts of attempted manslaughter and one count of using a firearm in the commission of a violent crime.

One of the critical examples of change offered by the Obama administration over the Cheney-Bush crime syndicate.

The Dems in Congress who hadn’t the backbone to oppose a Republican fiefdom are still there. But, now, at least, there is some leadership to direct their limpid commitment to history’s advance.

Post-traumatic stress is estimated to afflict more than 300,000 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, but until now, it’s been labeled a “soft disorder” — one without an objective biological path to diagnosis.

That may have changed this week, after researchers at the University of Minnesota and the Minneapolis VA Medical Center announced they’d found a distinct pattern of brain activity among PTSD sufferers.

The team used magnetoencephalography (MEG), a brain imaging method that measures how the brain processes information.

They scanned the brains of 74 U.S. veterans with PTSD, and 250 civilians without the disorder, and say that by spotting specific brain biomarkers, they managed to accurately diagnose PTSD sufferers with 90 percent accuracy.

The study could be a breakthrough for the military, which has been scrambling to address a surge in post-traumatic symptoms among newly returning vets. Right now, troops are evaluated by mental health experts, but diagnosis is a crapshoot: Symptoms can take years to show up, and they vary from person to person, even among those exposed to the same traumas.

Of course, a study of 74 vets is only a start. Next up, the researchers want to evaluate 500 vets, alongside 500 civilians, to further validate their findings.

It’s a start. I lived and worked with PTSD-afflicted veterans all the way back to WW2 – through a long period when the Veterans Administration wouldn’t even admit it was an ailment.

Overdue.

Plump sort of spy that should be ready first

Police in the UK are planning to use unmanned spy drones, controversially deployed in Afghanistan, for the “routine” monitoring of antisocial motorists, protesters, agricultural thieves and fly-tippers, in a significant expansion of covert state surveillance.

The arms manufacturer BAE Systems, which produces a range of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for war zones, is adapting the military-style planes for a consortium of government agencies led by Kent police.

Documents from the South Coast Partnership, a Home Office-backed project in which Kent police and others are developing a national drone plan with BAE, have been obtained by the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act.

Golly. You mean the British government wasn’t keeping the public informed?

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Photographers fed up with being stopped and searched by British police under the country’s terrorism laws gathered in London to protest against the practice.

Waving placards with the message, “I am a photographer, not a terrorist,” about 2,000 photographers called for more leniency from the British police.

The slogan is the name of a group set up to campaign against certain sections of Britain’s Terrorism Act 2000, which was designed to give police greater powers to fight terrorism.

Photographers say they have been unduly targeted by Section 44 of the Act, which allow officers to stop and search people, regardless of whether they have reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing…

A small number of police watched the protest Saturday in London’s Trafalgar Square, but they maintained a low profile…

Britain’s terrorism laws were dealt a blow last week when the European Court of Human Rights ruled that stop-and-search powers under Section 44 of the Act were a breach of human rights.

The British government is appealing the decision, saying the powers are an important tool in the fight against terrorism.

British coppers probably had dozens of their own photographers – taking pictures of the photographers.

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

A bird living on the coast of the US is the world’s most promiscuous bird, say scientists.

The saltmarsh sparrow, a bird that lives in the marshes of Connecticut, was found to have extreme levels of multiple mating.

The researchers found that 95% of females mated with more than one male during each nesting period.

This unusual behaviour could be a survival mechanism due to coastal flooding, researchers say…

“We found that nearly every clutch of eggs was the product of more than one father, and that within broods it was extremely common for any two siblings to have different fathers,” says Professor Chris Elphick from the University of Connecticut…

“We were not surprised to find some level of promiscuity,” he says. “But we were quite stunned at just how extreme the rate was…”

I wonder if there is any sort of survival mechanism associated with promiscuous humans? Or if, in fact, you might compromise your chances of survival, eh?

A dozen years into the “1 to 1″ computing movement’s push to pair every schoolchild and teacher with a laptop, studies show the students in these programs outperformed their peers in traditional classrooms, according to researchers.

Students who have participated in 1:1 computing report higher achievement and increased engagement, according to findings of studies published in a special issue of the Journal of Technology, Learning and Assessment, published by Boston College’s Lynch School of Education.

The journal’s January 2010 edition represents the first-ever collection of peer-reviewed research articles examining the impacts of providing every teacher and student their own laptop computer in school — typically known as “1:1 computing…”

Damian Bebell said that across all of the studies contained in the journal, one common link is clear: the value of teachers committed to making 1:1 computing work.

All of the studies that examined the impact of 1:1 computing on student achievement found that students in the 1:1 settings outperformed their traditional classroom peers on English/Language Arts standardized tests by a statistically significant margin. Study authors also reported on evidence of increased student motivation and engagement, as well as changes in teachers’ instructional practices.

Any geeks surprised?

A soldier who joined the French Foreign Legion after he was rejected by the British army on medical grounds is in line to be received into the Légion d’honneur for his bravery.

Alex Rowe, from Gloucestershire, was turned away by British recruiters as a teenager because he had a detached retina but, determined to follow a military career he signed up for the Légion étrangère, which accepts troops from any country.

Now 43, Rowe has served in the Gulf, the former Yugoslavia and has just returned from Afghanistan, where he earned his award after fierce fighting against the Taliban.

His mother, Jennifer…revealed that Rowe is to be received into the Légion d’honneur, the order established by Napoleon to recognise extraordinary service by military personnel and civilians…

Despite his history of visual problems, Rowe was first made a sniper and was known as a top marksman.

He was previously awarded for bravery while serving in Sarajevo after braving sniper fire to run across a city plaza and shield a mother and daughter from a hail of bullets. In all, his mother said he had already received four awards for bravery.

In Afghanistan he has been fighting alongside Britons, dozens of Russians, and others from as far as Algeria and China. He was involved in a gunbattle recently in which 10 comrades were gunned down.

My respect for courageous, brilliant members of any military is no surprise to regulars here. Day-by-day, the easiest way to distinguish between traditional conservatives and the occasional brain-dead right-winger who wanders in the door is understanding that many of us who fight against unjust and criminal wars don’t roll over and play dead just because we’re confronted with war.

Alex Rowe, I salute you.

Thanks, Liz