Feeding tubes — Long before today, the had taken on a circus-like component to its extremities. But now, five days after the legal battle had supposedly ended, it resumed, and is now headed again to the Supreme Court. And today, Jesse Jackson conferred with the brother of the man whose presidential victory last fall he called invalid. Reverend Jackson met with Governor Jeb Bush today as part of his effort to get Florida lawmakers to intervene. It doesn't seem to have worked. The state Senate in session today without any discussion of reviving a bill that would have ordered Mrs. Schiavo's feeding tube put back in. A federal court in Atlanta all but inviting Schiavo's parents to file another appeal, turned them away again for a fourth time. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled it won't step into the Schiavo case, noting Congress and the president shouldn't have stepped in either...And, then, half-way around the world, totally coincidentally, the same subject becomes a headline in a totally different context. . The Vatican confirmed this morning that, to "improve caloric intake," John-Paul II is being fed via a straw, through his nose. It is a fairly common procedure for elderly patients, especially those who have had recent throat surgery, or recurring throat problems. The Pope has both.
9-1-1 cry for help — Aeneas and Julie Hernlen were shot and killed early Monday morning in the bedroom of their home in Volusia County, Florida. The suspect was a man who thought Mr. and Mrs. Hernlen had fingered him for drug activity. It is a nightmare — a moment when the most fundamental component of society, vanished. Police learned about the shootings because the person that discovered the bodies called 9-1-1. She knew to call 9-1-1 even though she was just five-years-old. Aeneas and Julie Hernlen were her parents. Listening to the tapes of that call, is hard — hard because of the tragedy, hard because of the intrusion. Police say the Hernlens had not given investigators any information on their apparent killer, a man named David Edward Johnson. They found Johnson at his home hours later — dead, an apparent suicide.
Baseball doctor distortion — It has happened again, only this time it isn't one of baseball's 30-team managers. It's the medical adviser for the entire sport. The man who testified to Congress on the whole steroid scandal has created a scandal of his own. In a New York Times article, it was revealed that — the Universidad Autonoma de Guadalajara, in fact. But the New York Times reported today that Dr. Pellman has quote "repeatedly" claimed he got his medical degree from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. In fact, he got the degree officially in Guadalahara — Pellman only spent one year as a resident at Stony Brook. But wait, there's more. Dr. Pellman — who had great difficulty testifying correctly about the details of baseball's new steroid policy — also claimed, to Congress, that he is an "associate clinical professor" at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Not so senior! It turns out he's an assistant clinical professor — doesn't sound like a big difference. But an Associate teaches at the school, while an Assistant — that's just an honorary position, held by thousands.
Toxic tattoos — Twenty years ago, a tattoo meant one of three things: you were either in the Navy, in a Motorcycle Gang, or very drunk in the vicinity of a tattoo parlor. Mom used to warn us about getting tattoos. Two decades back, most of us stopped listening and tattoos got cool. They may turn out to be more than just an aesthetic risk, now, they may actually pose a health risk. , among other dangerous toxins. The FDA did, however, step in last summer when the agency issued a warning about a cosmetic ink used for permanent make-up that was causing health problems. A spokesperson for the FDA says today if the science shows there is a serious problem, the agency may step up its surveillance of the industry.
Call of the wild — The great impersonators who can virtually re-create somebody else's manner of speaking have come in the form of David Frye, Rich Little and Harry Shearer. And then, of course, there is Dumbo, Jumbo, and Babar. . That is the tentative conclusion of researchers writing in the journal "Nature" — as reported in the science section of the New York Times. An African elephant at a Swiss Zoo has learned how to make a chirping sound usually made only by Asian elephants. And Umlaika at the Tuh-savo National Park in Kenya makes a noise unlike any made by any other elephant, kinda like the low rumble of one of those heavy trucks you can hear on the street or the highway even a mile or two from your home. That's because — the theory goes that's what Umlaika wants it to sound like. She's re-creating the sound the trucks make on the Nairobi-Mombasa highway, which runs just about two miles away from where she lives.