My Quiet Life

As usual, I’m a day late and a dollar short. I missed the news that Adam Kleinheider is out of WKRN. I think say uncle put it best:

sorry to hear it. If there’s anything I can do, let me know.

It’s offical: I have no use for WKRN.

That about sums it up. There was a time when Mike Sechrist was still there when he almost had me believing that even their local news might be worth watching again. Not so much anymore. So, I guess the local media’s experiment with “new media” is officially over. I can now continue watching cynically as local media implodes, atrophies and is replaced from the outside rather than from internal change.

Best of luck to ACK in his future endeavors, which I’m sure will be successful.

I think this woman is my new hero:

Go out and get some sun this weekend. It’s good for you:

… research into vitamin D is suggesting both a plausible answer to this medical puzzle and a heretical notion: that cancers and other disorders in rich countries aren’t caused mainly by pollutants but by a vitamin deficiency known to be less acute or even non-existent in poor nations.

Those trying to brand contaminants as the key factor behind cancer in the West are “looking for a bogeyman that doesn’t exist,” argues Reinhold Vieth, professor at the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Toronto and one of the world’s top vitamin D experts. Instead, he says, the critical factor “is more likely a lack of vitamin D.”

…

But perhaps the biggest bombshell about vitamin D’s effects is about to go off. In June, U.S. researchers will announce the first direct link between cancer prevention and the sunshine vitamin. Their results are nothing short of astounding.

A four-year clinical trial involving 1,200 women found those taking the vitamin had about a 60-per-cent reduction in cancer incidence, compared with those who didn’t take it, a drop so large — twice the impact on cancer attributed to smoking — it almost looks like a typographical error.

I’ll be right back, I’m gonna go chug a gallon of vitamin D milk.

The NHPP held a forum on the homeless with the Nashville mayoral candidates this week. They all agreed to do the NHPP’s “urban plunge” by August 2nd. In addition, there was a survey, the results of which are below:

(more…)

I was at my friend Chris’s place down the street on 2nd last night helping him with his laptop when there was a shooting right outside.. 3 people (only one of which was involved in the initial confrontation) were hit, but no one killed. One woman in his doorway got hit fairly badly in the side.

Chris says this is becoming a regular occurrence, a concern he has been trying to raise at various downtown residents’ meetings. He says the problem centers around “Mystic” which is an afterhours place on 2nd that also has a “teen night” on Sunday which makes it basically thug central, and that the fights are like clockwork. There’s no easy answer that leaps to mind for me — there are so many different elements in a situation like this — issues of race, local politics, downtown community growing pains, policing strategy (or lack thereof), and so on. Chris wants the club shut down, but admits it’s easier said than done. He also wants a bigger police presence. A friend of mine in the central precinct that was one of the first responders said they had a whopping 3 people on duty at the time. Lots of food for thought — more later, maybe, but for now there are pictures here.

UPDATE: I don’t know how reliable this is, but the lady that works at the shop downstairs at the Quarters (where the one lady was shot last night) said she heard that Mystic is already shut down. She said the mayor ordered it somehow (?)

I dunno if that’s legit, but I’ve never seen her happier!

Just heard via SistaSmiff that Terry McMillan died on Friday. I didn’t really know him beyond meeting him a few times, but my folks did. I saw him play with my dad a number of times in the Bullpen at the Stockyard back in the day. Amazing harmonica player.

Is the use of the term “rape” in the case of an 11-year-old delivering “severe vaginal trauma” (no other details were given) to a 14-month old appropriate?

Discuss.

An update in response to Rachel’s question explaining a little why I bothered to ask this question:

I’m not suggesting anything, necessarily — I don’t know enough about the case, really, since very few details were given, but that’s why I thought it was interesting that the word “rape” was used without much detail. I just wanted to throw the question out there to see what sort of responses I got. What I find interesting is that everyone focused on the violence and horrificness of the act to justify it as rape, and not questioning whether or not there was an element of sexuality. I.e. — was there sexual intent on behalf of the 11 year old? Was it mimicry? Was she a sexual abuse victim herself (probably, as noted above)? Would it still be rape if her violent act had been one of bodily mutilation in general (perhaps or perhaps not including the vagina). Does inflicting injury to a sexual organ alone make it rape?

This is purely an academic discussion, of course — one of semantics, but.. I think semantics are important with a word as powerful as rape — do we dilute its meaning as a word that has come to represent an endemic form of sexual violence that represents a real social problem if we apply it everywhere there are sex organs involved, regardless of intent? Probably not, but it’s worth thinking about.

CNN reports on the death of Peter Boyle, who is not merely “of Everybody Loves Raymond”. This reminds me of the trailer for some movie with Eugene Levy, and they were like “and starring American Pie’s Eugene Levy!!!”

35 years of comedy and he’s “American Pie’s Eugene Levy”.

A woman was kicked off a plane for breastfeeding her kid. This may sound insane, but she should know that you’re not allowed to fly with anything containing fluid, because it could be explosive.

But seriously: If I were ever in the position of even observing a woman getting kicked off a plane for breastfeeding her child, I am not sure if I’d be able to react with anything but sputtering, incoherent rage.

Brass Stables is no more (also club platinum). It was shut down for repeatedly and willfully violating the “three foot rule”. Good on them (for willfully violating the rule), I say. Civil disobedience isn’t as glamorous when it’s a seedy strip club, though, I guess.

You may think that you’re a responsible adult, capable of interacting with other adults in deciding an acceptable basis for your own sexual morality, but remember: you don’t! Big Brother Metro knows best!