some years ago my wife, daughter and I were flying to Seattle. As we boarded, our daughter, then about 10 or so, looked into the flight deck with interest, and was asked if she wanted to come in for a look. Of course she did, and my wife and I went to our seats. Part of the reason we were going to Seattle was for a Suzuki music camp for our daughter, so she had her violin in hand. What happened next was the crew asked her about her instrument, and she opened the case and showed her (then new) violin to them, and they asked if she would play a piece. Evidently someone flipped a switch, because as the last bunch of passengers were boarding, over the loudspeaker came violin music, in fact one of the pieces our daughter knew - in fact as we listened, we realized it was her. A little later she came walking back, full of interest about the flight deck, and we said "nice playing" She went "huh?" and we said - someone put you on the PA. And not just to the plane, but into the tower as well, by later reports. She was surprised, but pleasantly so. And the audience was thoroughly appreciative.

the hormones involved are most likely dopamine and epinephrine, not testosterone. Maybe a little norepinephrine, too.

at least on a population basis. I'm an epidemiologist, and one of the annual meetings I go to includes "round tables" where you can sit and explore an unfamiliar topic with some people who really know an area. I went to one a few years ago, and I forget the exact title, but the thought was "What disease do we have to worry about wiping out large numbers of people worldwide in a short span of time?". All of us at the table already knew it's not something to be afraid of on an indiviudal basis, like Ebola, which simply doesn't have the transmissability chops to pose a population threat - even AIDS/HIV or tuberculosis take a lot of exposure to hop to a new host, so those bugs tend to be slow burners.

There were a couple of guys from the CDC's Department of Really Scary Diseases there as the round table experts, and as you've guessed, on a population basis the greatest potential for large numbers of deaths fast - say 250 million per year - is from flu. And we're not taking a scary, 1918 variant or anything - just a basic new strain to which most of the population does not have antibodies.

you can make those criticisms.

When your symphonies get performed by the London Phil, like Beethoven's, you can make those criticisms.

When you write novels like Hemingway, you can make those criticisms.

When you can play the violin like Joshua Bell or sing like Jessie Norman, you can make those criticisms.

As a former customer of Pacific Bell, then Southwest Bell, now AT&T - but wait, wasn't AT&T broken up decades ago as a monopoly? In my humble opinion, a prime reason we have these TBTF (too big to fail) corporations is because mergers have been encouraged by the regulators, and one looked-for effect of these mergers may indeed have been to position a given corporation such that as a TBTF company, they could feel confident of government help if needed, or maybe even if not needed.

We in the western world tend to view the world in compartments, just as in medicine we specialize in different portions of the anatomy. East Asians tend to take a view that is more inclusive, not dividing things up so much. Based on that supposition, I wonder if Wen's comments have any relationship to the little kerfluffle last week over the Chinese trawlers approaching the US navy group off the China coast.

does not copy from print news - while my morning LA Times said absolutely nothing about a resolution to Calfornia's state budget crisis, Andrew Leonard had a nice article, online early Thursday morning, about the final compromise reached in the wee hours of Thursday morning. So, again, contrary to your assertion, Gary, Andrew is using his resources, not print because it hasn't happened yet, to break a story put together through his own primary connections and through being awake and on top of this story. The LA Times "staff" posted the story to the website at 7:10 am, and do mention how Maldonado's open primary measure benefits Maldonado, while Andrew does.