*** ANALYSIS and INSIGHT
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*** ORIGINAL ESSAYS by JONATHAN MARIN
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HE SAID
/ SHE SAID: Polygraph Evidence in Court Presents the idea
that courts should exclude, wherever possible before trial, any testimony
where a witness has tested "deceptive" , and that result is corroborated
by a "non-deceptive" result on the opposing side.
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HE SAID
/ SHE SAID: Paired Testing FAQ Presents and addresses common
questions and objections to the paired-test concept.
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HE
SAID / SHE SAID:Toward an ASTM Standard Presents the case
for an ASTM Standard to implement the paired-test concept.
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The
2 PER CENT SOLUTION: Toward Employee Ownership and Autonomy. An
approach to employee ownership and control of companies that is extremely
gradualist on its face, but whose dynamic in practice can produce socially
important results much sooner.
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DOWNSIZED
PEOPLE: Job Subsidies vs Income Support Much corporate downsizing
is cynical cost-cutting, whose benefits to the downsizing companies are more
than offset by costs elsewhere. Much of it, however, really does
reduce waste and "bloat". An income support program is the best way to balance
efficiency with fairness.
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BOOK REVIEWS:
Reviews that summarize the important points of important books.
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ADOPTIONOPOLY...The
Board Game You Play in the Dark is a satire, modeled loosely on the board
game "Monopoly", that skewers sealed records laws, and highlights the
frustrations experienced by adult adoptees who are trying to search for their
origins.
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TOXIC WELLS
NEW JERSEY is a parody of a Chamber of Commerce Brochure, that tries
ever so hard to put a positive spin on the mythical environmentally challenged
town that was the setting for the heartwarming Hollywood production "On Fuming
Pond" and the dramatic "A Sewer Runs Through It".
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The Bosnian
Civil War - Historical Background explains the historical background
of the enmity between the Serbs and Muslims of Bosnia, in terms of the two
groups behavior during three foreign occupations. [TEMPORARILY DISABLED]
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POPULATION
CONTROL: The KEY to ALL ENVIRONMENTALIST OBJECTIVES Is there a single
environmental cause which can hope to succeed in the long run, if the battle
for population control is lost? To paraphrase Ben Franklin: "All
Environmentalists Have Two Causes - Their Own, and Population Control".
Population control is synergistic with every environmental group's
"own issue".
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SCIENCE EDUCATION:
How to Make Learning Science Irresistable to Kids There are subjects
that kids find naturally fascinating - mysteries and disasters, dinosaurs
and outer space - without adult prompting. Taking advantage of these "hooks"
and working outward from them, it is possible to cover topics in all the
sciences, maintaing intense interest and motivation throughout.
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FARMING
THE PERMAFROST: How Public Education Defeats Reform Examines the
Realpolitik of public education - how the complex interactions of many
constituencies have made the institution nearly impervious to reform efforts
- and suggests a way out.
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THE CASE FOR HIGH NICOTINE TOBACCO The risks nicotine
poses to smokers are inherent in their addiction to it. The risks posed by
"coal tar" and other chemicals are not. Increasing the nicotine content of
cigarettes will reduce the danger to smokers' health.
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HOLIDAY
CELEBRATIONS and the JEWISH SOCIAL CONSCIENCE How personal
identification with oppressed people in the celebrations of Purim, Hannukah,
and Passover, contributes to the development of social conscience in children,
and to sustained commitment to Tikkun Olam in adults.
The government's decision to file criminal charges against
companies for "plotting" to develop high-nicotine tobacco (1) is truly bizarre.
In light of the prospective public health benefits of a high nicotine cigarette,
prosecuting the developers of a variety of tobacco which would provide smokers
with twice the nicotine, for a given load of tar and particulate, seems
tantamount to prosecuting Jonas Salk for working on his polio vaccine.
The hazard presented by a given nicotine load, alone, must
necessarily be less than the hazard posed by that same nicotine load _plus_
a load of tars and particulates. The amount present in cigarette smoke of
these constituents - which are the cause of smoking-related bronchitis,
emphysema, and cancer - currently exceeds the amount of nicotine by a factor
of ten. The risk of pulmonary disease is a linear function of the exposure
to these substances. Given what is known about the behavior of smokers in
general, and of smokers who use the chewing gum and patches to "cut down",
doubling the nicotine to tar-and-particulate ratio of cigarettes would reduce
smokers' risk of pulmonary disease by half.
Numerous studies have established that blood nicotine level
determines how much cigarette smokers smoke. These studies are the basis
for the NIH decision to declare cigarette smoking "addictive". Nicotine is
the substance that smokers crave; they smoke to satisfy the craving. Nicotine
is the active ingredient of legally available chewing gum and skin patch
products. Their nicotine enables users of these products to smoke fewer
cigarettes, thus satisfying their craving with a reduced load of tars,
particulates, and other dangerous constituents of tobacco smoke. High-nicotine
cigarettes would similarly enable smokers to satisfy their craving with fewer
cigarettes, reducing their exposure to the harmful substances at lower cost,
and with less disruption of well-established personal routine, than the gum
or the patches.
While nicotine can be poisonous, and even lethal, it is
not ordinarily dangerous at the modest dosage self-administered by cigarette
smokers. This is why people are able to safely use the gum and the patches.
The hazards posed by nicotine poisoning - occlusions due to vascular
constriction, and cardiac cramping and arhythmia - last only while blood
nicotine level is above a "red line" threshhold, and passes when it falls
below the "red line". Smokers smoke to maintain their blood nicotine level
within a "comfort zone" whose upper limit is ordinarily safely below the
"red line". Smokers who develop occlusive vascular disease may be endangered
by nicotine levels within their previously established comfort zone, but
it is other components of cigarette smoke - tars and particulates - which
initiate and aggravate vascular disease and create the vulnerability.
Smokers are further protected from nicotine poisoning by
their acquired tolerance; their "red-line" threshhold has risen to a higher
level. Several of the mechanisms of tolerance and addiction are well
characterized and understood.Some nicotine receptors, normally present on
the membrane surface of neurons, proliferate as an adaptation to recurring
high nicotine levels. When not "satisfied", the receptors initiate a chain
of chemical and electrical events, in effect crying out "Feed me! Feed
me!".
Acerylcholine receptors are also important to nicotine
addiction. Nicotine affects the cholinergic (post-synaptic) pathways not
by affecting the density or count of receptors, but by making them less
sensitive. Nicotine causes the firing neurons to produce more neurotransmitter,
which compensates for the receptors' reduced sensitivity, enabling the smoker's
brain to function properly when enough is present.(2) When nicotine deprivation
causes the quantity produced to return to "normal", however, that "normal"
amount of neurotransmitter isn't enough to make the deadened receptors work
properly. This probably at least partly explains tolerance (e.g. reduced
vascular constriction), and the memory problems and reduced mental acuity
of smokers in withdrawal and people who have quit, but is probably not the
primary source of cravings they experience.
The cravings are apparently primarily due to pathways involving
pre-synaptic glutamate receptors. These pathways' addictive and tolerance
mechanism is the mirror image of the cholinergic pathways' - i.e., nicotine
increases the receptors sensitivity to glutamate.(3)
Cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable serious
disease and death in the USA. No practical achievable advance would lower
the cigarette-related health toll as effectively as the commercial availability
of high-nicotine cigarettes. The number of lives that would be saved by the
commercial availability of such a product probably exceeds the number that
would be saved by a cure for AIDS. That the government has chosen to prosecute
companies for "plotting" to do this is beyond grotesque.
(1) Biotech Company Charged With Plot to Develop High-Nicotine
Tobacco
(New York Times Jan 7, 1998)
(2)Lester, R.A.J., and Dani, J.A. Acetylcholine receptor
desensitization induced by nicotine in rat medial habenula neurons.
J.Neurophysiol. 74:195--206, 1995.)
(3) A summary of research on the involvement of pre-synaptic
receptors in nicotine addiction is on the web at URL:
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/record21/record2104.14.html
Copyright(C) 1998 by Jonathan Marin
Original Satire
and Humor by Jonathan Marin
Ailanthus
- A Poem
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Last modified on Feb 20, 2000