Reflections  

What's past is prologue — It was mid-March on the campaign trail when the story broke: Sen. John Edwards, running for the Democratic presidential nomination, and his wife Elizabeth announced that her breast cancer, thought cured, had recurred, metastatic to bone. She would likely have to undergo chemotherapy, an often painful and debilitating procedure, in which the close presence and assistance of loved ones can make all the difference. So Sen. Edwards faced one of the most difficult decisions of his political career: just which doctors would he sue for malpractice now that his wife's cancer has come back? — Ross Levatter

We the sheeple — Scientists at the University of Nevada announced recently that they have created the world's first human-sheep hybrid which, although it has the body of a sheep, has semi-human organs. The goal of their research is to hasten the day that animal organs can be transplanted into humans. They say the sheep have 15% human cells and 85% animal cells, but I'm more of a glass-half-full kind of guy. I say that making humans that are only 85% sheep is a step in the right direction. — Tom Isenberg

"Local Couple Survives Long, Bloody Fight With Lion" — Now that's a headline! — the headline to a terrifying story with twists, turns, gore, and triumph. Well it happened, and I'll tell you exactly how. But there's something even more amazing than the couple's stubborn struggle to avoid being consumed by a wild beast. It's the fact that the press can write boring headlines and stories about such a topic as this.

Here's one: "Hiker Saves Husband From Mountain Lion."

Read that headline in the Dallas Morning News and you will assume that the hiker said "Boo!" to a lion 20 yards away, or waved a bandanna, or honked the horn of her car. Or perhaps she did what all the experts advise: stand tall and wave your arms.

But no. In fact, she didn't see the lion until it had her husband's head in its mouth. In fact, she was walking just ahead of her husband when the incident happened. In fact, she was 65 years old and he was 70. All these facts, and many more, are exciting and interesting, but oddly, none of them made it into the headline.

Many of the interesting facts failed to make it into most of the other published stories, either. I had to piece it together. They were hiking. They heard nothing. They saw nothing. Without warning, the lion attacked from behind. Mr. Hamm went down face first. The lion shortly began to remove Mr. Hamm's scalp. Mr. Hamm, his head still in the lion's maw, fought back, as did his wife. She screamed at the lion. She grabbed a big stick and began hitting it on the back, then on the head. Again and again, harder and harder: she hit it so many times, so hard, and for so long that her arm got tired. She hit it until she could barely lift the stick.

Still partly inside the lion, Mr. Hamm suggested that she take an ink pen from his pocket and stab the cat in the eyes. She did so. She stabbed until the pen broke. "That lion never flinched," she said. "I just knew it was going to kill him."

She got the stick again and jammed it into the lion's snout. Finally the cat dropped Mr. Hamm, stepped back, and faced her with its ears pinned back. She thought it would kill her. Instead it disappeared into the brush.

They feared it would return. They had to get help fast, but Mr. Hamm was losing a lot of blood . . .

Well, you get the idea; it's a hell of a story. How can you write a lousy headline with such a story? For that matter, how can you write a lousy story with such a story?

I think something is wrong with our journalists. Most of them write poorly, and in the same way. How does that happen? Did they learn it in school? Are there no individuals among them ready to break the unwritten rule against good writing?

In this case, most of the journalists had to add something like this: "Mountain lion attacks are extremely rare. From 1890 to 2006 there have only been 17 verified mountain lion attacks in California."

What they don't tell you is that twelve of the verified attacks occurred between 1990 and 2006. Is there a trend? Five in a hundred years, then twelve in sixteen years, many of the attacks fatal. They also don't tell you that "attacks" doesn't include the incident in San Diego County when for several terrifying minutes a lion aggressively confronted a woman on horseback, or the time in Los Angeles County when a lion grabbed a 120-pound dog from a man's backyard and jumped over a six-foot fence with it, or any of the reported attacks that aren't verified by Californian officialdom.

Write a good headline. Recount the most interesting facts, with vigor. Pick out a trend. Simple. But all of this seems beyond the talents of the men and women who write our newspapers. — Michael Christian

Robbing the rich to give to themselves — One of the selling points of our state and federal tax system is its egalitarian redistribution of wealth. For marketing purposes, whether wealth redistribution is a legitimate function of government or the tax codes are truly designed with egalitarianism in mind is only relevant to honest, i.e. unsuccessful, politicians. This bastardization of Robin Hood is a hit with voters.

What are the prospects for genuine tax reform? A recent study entitled "Egalitarian motives in humans" may shed some light on the issue.

The researchers assigned 120 subjects to groups of four, and gave each subject a number of tokens. The number of tokens varied within the group — some subjects were born rich and some were born poor. Each subject knew the state of his finances and the states of all the others' finances. Tokens could be spent either to increase or decrease the wealth of another participant, or they could be saved. In all groups the general pattern was that the rich gave to the poor and the poor spent their tokens to confiscate more tokens from the rich. It seems that egalitarianism (and spite) are near-universal motivations.

Those who tend to view the metaphorical glass as half empty may conclude this study confirms the futility of hoping for tax reform. And those who view the glass as half full? I can't be sure — someone's confiscated most of my drink. — Mark Rand

Bush: Middle East Solution Imminent WASHINGTON — President Bush said he was urging the U.S.-backed government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Malaki to enter into a trade agreement with the Iranian government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in which the two countries would exchange the last letters of their names. That would mean, he pointed out, that U.S. troops would then be completely out of Iraq, as many Democrats have been demanding, and would be right in the middle of Iran, as the more rabid and frothing elements of the Republican party have been demanding. Iraq would have a relatively stable, Shiite-dominated government in control of the whole country, a major aim of U.S. policy, while Iran would have a leader with a much shorter, more pronounceable name who has not yet publicly denied any well-known facts of history. Bush further proposed that the entire Mideast region become known from now on as the Midwest, since it is actually to the west of many places just to the east of it, which would make its chief problems the misfortunes of the Chicago Cubs and the lack of a really good restaurant in Indianapolis, while the Midwest, which is, he pointed out on a map, mostly in the eastern half of the United States, would become the Mideast, and a peace settlement could then be very quickly reached between Iowa and Ohio. Turning to Europe, Bush also strongly urged Slovakia and Slovenia to negotiate a similar agreement to trade differing areas of their names, "just for the hell of it." — Eric Kenning

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