This week's Zelda's Inferno exercise: (from Karla) pick a movie that has influenced or inspired you in some way, and use that as a starting point in some fashion...I ended up with more of a short essay than a poem, but hey, the point of these exercises is that if you have words on the page, you win.

I was seven years old, in third grade, the year Star Wars came out. I can remember my father taking me taking me to see it at the Patterson one fall evening, joking not to tell my teacher that he'd kept me out late.

For the rest of my childhood, the question I asked myself in various situations was, "What would Luke Skywalker do?" It was the ur-myth of my boyhood, the pattern to countless inner monologues. Playing at being the heroes of Star Wars was our ritual, one more meaningful to us than the bit with the wine and the wafer on Sunday.

I was thirteen, about to enter high school, on the verge of manhood of a sort, when Return of the Jedi came out. I remember waiting in line with my best friend to see it, and as we filed in to the theater, we passed my middle school music teacher just coming out. We chatted for a few seconds about the film -- perhaps one of the first times I spoke with an adult as an equal.

We watched the film, and I saw my childhood hero come to within a hair's breadth of falling over into his anger in an attempt to protect someone he loves, and my childhood ultimate villain redeem himself at the last minute: a morality play more meaningful than anything teachers or priests had offered me.

And this is why sometimes when people ask me about why I practice karate, I want to say that it's the closest thing I've found to Jedi training.

As if Big Pharma's constant bribery of physicians wasn't distorting health care enough, it seems we have to watch out for the junk food makers too: AOL News reports on a deal between the American Academy of Family Physicians and Coca-Cola to have Coke fund "educational materials" about soft drinks for the academy's web site.

Academy CEO Dr. Douglas Henley said Wednesday that the deal won't influence the group's public health messages, and that the company will have no control over editorial content. He said the new online information will include research linking soft drinks with obesity and will focus on sugar-free alternatives.

But critics say the Coke deal will water down the advice.
"Coca-Cola, like other sodas, causes enormous suffering and premature death by increasing the risks of obesity, diabetes, heart attacks, gout and cavities," Harvard University nutrition expert Dr. Walter Willett said in an e-mail.

He said the academy "should be a loud critic of these products and practices, but by signing with Coke, their voice has almost surely been muzzled."

...

Dr. William Walker, public health officer for Contra Costa County near San Francisco, likened the alliance with ads decades ago in which physicians said mild cigarettes were safe.

...

The Coke deal is not the only corporate alliance for the family physicians group. In 2005, it received funding from McDonald's for a fitness program. And its consumer Web site includes advertising for a variety of products, including deli meats and air freshener.
Henley said the Coke deal is worth six figures, but he and a Coca-Cola spokeswoman declined to elaborate.

...

Coca-Cola is among several corporate contributors to the American Academy of Family Physicians Foundation, a separate philanthropic group. These contributors include many drug companies, McDonald's, PepsiCo and a beef industry group.

The health care debate has stirred up a lot of general discussion of government provided services. One that often comes up is public schools.

It is an article of faith among many conservatives that private schools do a better job of educating students for a lesser cost than public schools. This is what drives their argument for school vouchers: government is inefficient, so let's just give the money to private schools who will do a better job at a tuition cost that's less than public school per-student spending.

But as it turns out, this is another case where reality has a liberal bias. Private school tuition doesn't measure per-student spending, because private schools usually get grants or subsidies from other sources.

A Washington Post analysis of Education Department data and public tax records found that some of the area's top private schools spent thousands of dollars more per student than what they charged for tuition. At Maret School, for example, high school tuition was $26,820 for the 2007-08 school year. That year, the school spent $32,359 per student. At Potomac School in McLean, the gap was even larger, with tuition at $25,890 and spending at $35,665.

Secular private schools spent $20,100 on each student in the 2007-08 school year vs. $10,100 in public schools. Nonparochial Catholic schools tended to spend roughly the same as public schools. It's conservative, non-Catholic Christian schools that spend less -- $7,100.

The expensive private schools do a good job of educating students, but what about less expensive ones? They don't do so well. Rutgers University associate professor Bruce D. Baker has conducted the first extensive study of public and private school costs and quality:

“On average,” Baker explains, “the private schools studied spend more than public schools in the same metropolitan areas (and nationally), although some spend much less. Some private schools have lower pupil-to-teacher ratios than public schools, while others have comparable ratios. Some have comparable teacher salaries, and some pay their teachers much less. And, some have teachers with stronger academic qualifications than public school teachers, while others have teachers with weaker academic qualifications.”

What’s “most striking” about such patterns, Baker observes, is that they are largely explained by religious affiliation alone. Christian Association Schools have the lowest spending, the lowest salaries, teachers with the weakest academic records, and the highest pupil-to-teacher ratios. Moreover, earlier research concludes that these schools have the lowest student test scores. Catholic schools tend to approximate public schools in all these areas. Hebrew schools and independent day schools (generally not religiously affiliated) have higher spending – often substantially higher – and this is reflected in these resource categories.

This week's Zelda's Inferno exercise: a wordlist poem, from a wordlist generated around the theme guilt:

parents crime sex oogie secrets regret taboo Jesus anger lies judgment conscience condemn fear indulgence prohibition vices expectation shame compulsion

indulging the angst:

"regrets, I've had a few"
looking back in fear and judgment
and wondering if it's too late
if it's all been wasted
expectations of where I should be by now
the occasional shame of loneliness
and anger at the universe,
the eternal cry of Jesus, "why have you abandoned me?"

and so breathe
and return to this moment
and allow the light to shine through
and let go the compulsion to think, "it would all be better if only..."
and let go of condemnation
and come back to the small still point of ease
where all is holy and luminous

So here's the context of this musing: Earlier this year, I met, and fell hard in love with, an extraordinary woman. I've known a lot of women over the years, but I've never been with anyone who made me feel the way she does -- not just being in love (I've been down that path a few times), but a strong and definite feeling this is someone who could be, should be, a life partner.

And, for some reason, the poor woman is confused enough to like me back. But after a lot of thought and discussion, she has decided that right now there is not space for this relationship in her life. But, if circumstances change...no guarantees, but the possibility of there being a chance down the road is not excluded.

And so I'm holding on to hope.

So I've been contemplating the nature of hope recently. I mean, hope is supposed to be a 100% positive thing, right?

But the problem is that hope draws us out of the present moment. Hope is always about the future, and if we attach to thoughts of the future we're lost. As Zen teacher Charlotte Joko Beck wrote (in her book Everyday Zen: Love & Work):

autumn leaves are falling
but this is not death
for the tree blooms again

instead each
red orange gold burst
a spectacular "farewell until we meet again"

"I must go now, for a while" says the life in each tree,
"go inside and sit, that I may burst forth in the spring,
and so I leave you this salute as a token of parting
and a promise of return"

The H1N1 insanity continues: CBS News reports that the CDC advised states to stop testing for H1N1 flu and stopped counting individual cases back in July.

While we waited for CDC to provide the data, which it eventually did, we asked all 50 states for their statistics on state lab-confirmed H1N1 prior to the halt of individual testing and counting in July. The results reveal a pattern that surprised a number of health care professionals we consulted. The vast majority of cases were negative for H1N1 as well as seasonal flu, despite the fact that many states were specifically testing patients deemed to be most likely to have H1N1 flu, based on symptoms and risk factors, such as travel to Mexico.

...

With most cases diagnosed solely on symptoms and risk factors, the H1N1 flu epidemic may seem worse than it is. For example, on Sept. 22, this alarming headline came from Georgetown University in Washington D.C.: "H1N1 Flu Infects Over 250 Georgetown Students."

H1N1 flu can be deadly and an outbreak of 250 students would be an especially troubling cluster. However, the number of sick students came not from lab-confirmed tests but from "estimates" made by counting "students who went to the Student Health Center with flu symptoms, students who called the H1N1 hotline or the Health Center's doctor-on-call, and students who went to the hospital's emergency room."

California, for example, looked at 13,704 specimens from "swine flu" patients -- and found that 86% did not have influenza, 12% had non-H1N1 flu, and only 2% had H1N1.

We've previously mentioned how only a small percentage of "flu" cases are actually influenza, and how the CDC's figure of 36,000 flu deaths a year is fantasy.

There's a statistic I've been hearing a lot lately: according to the CDC, 36,000 Americas die from the flu every year. Mostly I've been hearing this from (well-intentioned) people pushing flu vaccination.

(Please note that this figure is about the regular seasonal flu, not the H1N1 strain, and -- except for one note below -- I'm not commenting on H1N1 here.)

Now that's a heck of a figure. 36,000 a year? If that's right, then every two years more Americans die from flu than were killed in Vietnam -- there are 58,195 names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall.

2,993 people were killed in the 9/11 attacks: if the 36,000 figure is right, every year the flu is a dozen 9/11s.

Now, that seems odd. I'm too young to know anyone who died in Vietnam, but I knew two people who died in the 9/11 attacks. Of course, that's a non-random distribution -- I live on the East Coast -- but I don't think I know anyone who's died from the flu. If in my adult life I've lived through 240 9/11's worth of flu deaths, it seems like I ought to know somebody affected. These numbers don't seem to make sense, and my skeptic bone is starting to itch.

So where does this 36,000 figure come from? Do they actually test people who die from flu-like symptoms for the influenza virus and count them? Well, no. According to their own website, "CDC does not know exactly how many people die from seasonal flu each year."

And they also admit that the 36,000 figure is not deaths caused by flu, but "flu-related" deaths:

Seasonal flu-related deaths are deaths that occur in people for whom seasonal influenza infection was likely a contributor to the cause of death, but not necessarily the primary cause of death.

Keep this in mind as you hear about deaths supposedly from the H1N1 pandemic: most of these will never be verified by any hard evidence that H1N1 infection was the primary cause of death. Instead, the more people think the H1N1 is a killer, the more they will attribute ambiguous deaths to H1N1. It's the same principle that makes the Law of Fives work.

So the CDC's 36,000 figure is not based on actually counting deaths caused by flu, but based on the use of a statistical model to guess at the number of "flu-related" deaths, because otherwise they'd get (in their opinion) too low of a count:

It's bad enough that many institutions in our society won't recognize a loving relationship unless you have a permission slip from the state, but when the state refuses to issue those permission slips to same-sex couples, here's what happens: Lisa Pond died alone in a strange city while bigoted hospital staff kept Janice Langbehn, her partner of 18 years, and their kids away from her. And despite the fact that Janice had durable Power of Attorney and Living Will documents showing her legal authority to make end-of-life decisions for Lisa, the courts have approved Jackson Memorial Hospital's actions.

This week's Zelda's Inferno exercise: use a metaphor that likens the self to an inanimate object, and consider what this means to aspects of your personality.

I am a prime number
unfactorable -- breakable, to be sure, but not cleanly

you will not understand me
as a product of others

the only factors that make me
are the One and myself

there are infinitely many of me
scattered throughout space

but no clear pattern links us
only predictable statistically

simply defined, yet
still mysterious after years of study