Fernando Valenzuela. ESPN. NYT (archived).
As I’ve noted before, I am not a baseball fan, and I hate the Dodgers. But I remember Fernandomania. And I get the impression he was a class act.
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He stumbled on one of his most publicized discoveries accidentally, when he asked his undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley, to bring in a chemical of their choosing to undergo testing. All of the chemicals tested negative, except for one: contained in a bottle of hair dye a student had borrowed from his girlfriend.
Dr. Ames sent a lab technician, Edith Yamasaki, to buy out every type of hair dye at a local drugstore, and after extensive testing concluded that the dyes — used by more than 20 million Americans at the time — were very likely linked to cancer and birth defects.
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Later in his career, as Dr. Ames’s opinions about the dangers of man-made chemicals began to shift, his legacy in the environmental movement became more complicated.
He felt that some activists were overstating the risks of these chemicals and targeting chemical companies unfairly. He often said that he thought there was too much focus on substances that were technically mutagenic but that were no more likely to cause DNA damage than the “natural” chemicals found in fruits and vegetables.
“I don’t mean to suggest that there aren’t real problems with some synthetic chemicals, but the environmentalists are wildly exaggerating the risks,” he told The Times in 1994. “If our resources are diverted from important things to unimportant things, this doesn’t serve the public.”
I’ve known about this one for a few days, but was waiting for something I was comfortable linking to: Ward Christensen, early computer BBS pioneer.
Then, on Jan. 16, 1978, a blizzard hit Chicago, covering the city in 40 inches of snow and stranding Mr. Christensen at his home in the suburbs. He phoned Mr. Suess, suggesting that they use the time to start building their messaging system. He wondered if they should get help from other club members, but Mr. Suess argued that involving more people would slow the project down.
“Forget the club. It would just be management by committee,” Mr. Suess said, as Mr. Christensen recalled their conversation to The New York Times in 2009. “It’s just me and you. I will do the hardware, and you will do the software.”
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By way of Greg Ellifritz: Ed Lovette, trainer and gun guy. I have a copy of The Snubby Revolver, and would recommend picking it up if you find it used.
I also wanted to link this because Mr. Ellifritz’s post contains an excellent list of other books you should have in your gun library. I will say I have many, but not all, of them: some of them I am still trying to find. (And someone should get the rights to reprint that old Paladin Press stuff, like the Lovette and Cirillo books.)
As a side note, I haven’t forgotten about gun books. I’ve just been busy, and my dealer of choice has taken some time off. I do want to try to get up a post this week, but it is probably going to be shorter than usual. The books I plan to post about are all new books, available from Amazon (with one exception). And one of those books is also going to be an entry in the “Leadership Secrets” series, too.
Keep watching the skies.
I remember Fernando. He was the pitcher who looked towards the heavens in the middle of his windup. I recall he was well liked by both team mate and civic groups also.
I read about Ed Lovette a day or so ago, on Mas Ayoob’s blog at Backwoods Home magazine. Like I have mentioned before, maybe here, one of the worst things about getting older is seeing the people you look up to passing.
Tris fire retardent may have been one of those chemicals whose risks were exaggerated. Tris became a political bludgeon used by Democrats to attack a Republican administration. A congressional hearing was a TV circus.
Re Ellifritz writing that students in his class didn’t know who Ed Lovett was,, Lovett is relatively obscure. Many now are not familiar with the big names from our past. Even instructors at Gunsite thought that the picture of Bruce Nelson was Tom Selleck – and argued about it.
From the Ellifritz list, the first book to read for a good review of early training history is Cassidy.
I helped with some research a couple of years ago. Time and again, when we thought we had found someone new, he was already in Cassidy.
I am from Michigan and remember the huge problem of the fire retardant PBB that was inadvertently mixed with cattle feed. The cows that ate it were euthanized, but there were so many that they had to keep them in huge feed lots awaiting their tickets being punched. One of those places was about 4 miles from my house. This is significant because of what I learned about 5 years ago.
I have been taking a thyroid supplement for ages due to my own thyroid not producing enough on it’s own. I found out that PBB is what caused my thyroid to stop producing enough of the hormone that it is supposed to. I guess anyone who ingested dairy products in Michigan was exposed to it. But only a lucky few had a problem with it.
I have did not have any problems after starting on either synthroid/levothroid, but I did have some problems related to low thyroid function before starting on the supplement. I don’t know how many people here have the same problem, but no doubt that there are at least a significant number.
Pigpen:
I remember the PBB scandal pretty vividly, given how old I was.
Also, I apologize: for some reason, this got tagged as spam, even though you’re an approved poster. I rescued it when I was emptying the bin, but I was a couple of days behind doing so. I’ll try to keep on top of that more going forward.
One of the reasons why I wanted to post the obit for Dr. Ames, other than him being someone I’d heard of, is that he became somewhat famous later in life for being skeptical of chemical “harms”.
My recollection is that there were environmental extremists foaming at the mouth and acting like he was a traitor to the cause.