Sandy Hook Mother's Radio Address, School Shootings, & Picoult's Nineteen Minutes

From yesterday's BBC article "Sandy Hook mother replaces Obama for guns radio address:"

The mother of a victim of last year's Sandy Hook shootings has replaced Barack Obama to deliver the weekly US presidential radio address.

Francine Wheeler, whose six-year-old son Ben was killed, used the nationally-broadcast statement to call for tighter gun controls.

Asking a citizen to deliver the weekly address is a highly unusual move. It comes as President Obama attempts to ratchet up pressure on the US Congress, which is due to debate new gun laws.

In an often emotional statement, Ms Wheeler recalled waiting for her son to return home following the shootings, and said the "tidal wave of anguish" resulting from that day had yet to recede. She said new gun laws were needed to prevent more deaths.

On the subject of school shootings, I have three novels to recommend. The first is Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult:

Bestseller Picoult (My Sister's Keeper ) takes on another contemporary hot-button issue in her brilliantly told new thriller, about a high school shooting.

Peter Houghton, an alienated teen who has been bullied for years by the popular crowd, brings weapons to his high school in Sterling, N.H., one day and opens fire, killing 10 people. Flashbacks reveal how bullying caused Peter to retreat into a world of violent computer games. Alex Cormier, the judge assigned to Peter's case, tries to maintain her objectivity as she struggles to understand her daughter, Josie, one of the surviving witnesses of the shooting.

I also recommend We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver:

Eva Khatchadourian is a smart, skeptical New Yorker whose impulsive marriage to Franklin, a much more conventional person, bears fruit, to her surprise and confessed disquiet, in baby Kevin.

From the start Eva is ambivalent about him, never sure if she really wanted a child, and he is balefully hostile toward her; only good-old-boy Franklin, hoping for the best, manages to overlook his son's faults as he grows older, a largely silent, cynical, often malevolent child...

The narrative, which leads with quickening and horrifying inevitability to the moment when Kevin massacres seven of his schoolmates and a teacher at his upstate New York high school, is told as a series of letters from Eva to an apparently estranged Franklin, after Kevin has been put in a prison for juvenile offenders.

And while the school shooting takes less of a prominent role in Empire Falls by Richard Russo, it's still a major part of an excellent novel. Here's the summary:

In his early 40s, passive good guy Miles Roby, the son of Francine's husband's long-dead mistress, seems helpless to escape his virtual enslavement as longtime proprietor of the Whiting-owned Empire Grill, the town's most popular eatery, which Francine has promised to leave him when she dies. Miles's wife, Janine, is divorcing him and has taken up with an aging health club entrepreneur.

In her senior year in high school, their creative but lonely daughter, Tick, is preoccupied by her parents' foibles and harassed by the bullying son of the town's sleazy cop—who, like everyone else, is a puppet of the domineering Francine. Struggling to make some sense of her life, Tick tries to befriend a boy with a history of parental abuse.

To further complicate things, Miles's brother, David, is suspected of dealing marijuana, and their rascally, alcoholic father is a constant annoyance. Miles and David's secret plan to open a competing restaurant runs afoul of Francine just as tragedy erupts at the high school.

Bali Plane Crash & DeMille's Night Fall

I posted about airliner glitches a few weeks ago but, thankfully, there haven't been any major crashes in the news since then.  That changed with a major crash yesterday.  The good news is everyone on board survived. 

Here's today's BBC coverage, "All survive after jet lands in sea off Bali Indonesia:"

An airliner has ended up in the sea off the Indonesian island of Bali after missing Denpasar airport runway, but all those on board survived.

Hospitals treated 22 people after the crash, which involved an Indonesian Lion Air plane carrying 101 passengers and seven crew. Photos posted on Twitter showed the jet with its fuselage cracked, sitting in water near rocks, with dinghies nearby.

The Boeing 737 was on a domestic flight from Bandung in West Java. It missed the runway reportedly from a height of 50m (yards) and landed in the ocean nearby. Terrified passengers made their way ashore through the shallow water in life jackets as police in rubber dinghies rowed out to rescue them.

A transport ministry official told BBC News it was too early to talk about what had caused the plane - a new Boeing 737-800 - to crash.

For a novel about a plane crash, try Night Fall by Nelson DeMille:

The book is centered on an investigation of the July 1996 crash of flight TWA 800, "when... a big Boeing 747 bound for Paris with 230 passengers and crew on board, exploded off the Atlantic coast of Long Island, sending all 230 souls to their deaths."

In July 2001, Federal Anti-Terrorist Task Force detective John Corey, a brilliant, smart-ass detective last seen in Plum Island and The Lion's Game, accompanies his FBI agent wife, Kate Mayfield, to the fifth anniversary of the disaster. John, whose wife worked the crash in 1996, understands that Kate has brought him along because she doesn't buy the official finding of "mechanical failure" and wants him to mount his own investigation.

New Bipolar Disorder Treatment & Quick's The Silver Linings Playbook

I previously posted about bipolar disorder (in relation to Jesse Jackson Jr's shopping spree and his claim that he suffers from the disorder). Now the issue is in the news again due to a possible breakthrough in treatment.

From today's article in The Independent, "Genetic tests may help bipolar disorder patients:"

Scientists have identified a group of patients with a genetic predisposition to mental illness, opening up for the first time the prospect of personalised medicine in psychiatry.

Personalised medicine involves identifying groups of patients whose genes make them susceptible to certain diseases and responsive to certain drugs. Researchers from University College, London (UCL) studied 1,000 patients with bipolar disorder and found 1.7 per cent carried a mutation in an important brain receptor gene putting them at increased risk of the disease.

The findings suggest the patients with the mutation, called GRM3, could be treated with existing drugs which are not currently used for bipolar disorder.

For a novel about bipolar disorder, you might like The Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick:

Meet Pat. Pat has a theory: his life is a movie produced by God. And his God-given mission is to become physically fit and emotionally literate, whereupon God will ensure a happy ending for him -- the return of his estranged wife Nikki. (It might not come as a surprise to learn that Pat has spent time in a mental health facility.) The problem is, Pat's now home, and everything feels off. No one will talk to him about Nikki; his beloved Philadelphia Eagles keep losing; he's being pursued by the deeply odd Tiffany; his new therapist seems to recommend adultery as a form of therapy. Plus, he's being hunted by Kenny G!

Patenting Human Genes & Crichton's Next

From Thursday's Guardian article "US supreme court to decide if companies can patent human genes:"

The US supreme court will hear oral arguments next week to decide whether companies can patent human genes, in a landmark case which could alter the course of US medical research and the battle against diseases such as breast and ovarian cancer.

A coalition of scientists, cancer survivors, patients, breast cancer groups and professional medical associations, which has brought the case, will argue that genes are "products of nature", like organs of the body and should not be exploited for commercial gain. Such patents are illegal and violate the first amendment, they say.

They are challenging patents on two genes linked to breast and ovarian cancer owned by Myriad Genetics, a biotechnology company, because they say the patents have stymied research and the free exchange of ideas.

For a novel about gene patents, try Next by Michael Crichton:

Bestseller Crichton (Jurassic Park) once again focuses on genetic engineering in his cerebral new thriller, though the science involved is a lot less far-fetched than creating dinosaurs from DNA.

In an ambitious effort to show what's wrong with the U.S.'s current handling of gene patents and with the laws governing human tissues, the author interweaves many plot strands, one involving a California researcher, Henry Kendall, who has mixed human and chimp DNA while working at NIH. Kendall produces an intelligent hybrid whom he rescues from the government and tries to pass off as a fully human child.

Some readers may be disappointed by the relative lack of action, the lame attempts to lighten the mood with humor (especially centering on an unusually bright parrot named Gerard), and the contrived convergence of the main characters toward the end. Still, few can match Crichton in crafting page-turners with intellectual substance

Dino Embryos, Crichton's Jurassic Park, & Bakker's Raptor Red

From yesterday's Wired article "Chinese dinosaur embryo fossils are oldest found so far:"

The oldest fossilised dinosaur embryos found so far have been discovered by palaeontologists in China. With several of the embryos petrified at different stages of development, it offers a rare insight into exactly how dinosaurs developed inside eggs.

Also exciting is that the embryos appear to contain organic matter that hasn't been fossilised, which would be the oldest organic material ever found from a terrestrial vertebrate. The fossils -- which are thought to be either Massospondylus or Lufengosaurus -- have been dated as being between 190 and 197 million years old, the Lower Jurassic period.

I have two recommendations for novels about dinosaurs. First, Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton:

An astonishing technique for recovering and cloning dinosaur DNA has been discovered. Creatures once extinct now roam Jurassic Park, soon-to-be opened as a theme park. Until something goes wrong...and science proves a dangerous toy.

A lesser-known novel that I would also recommend is Raptor Red by Robert T. Bakker:

Revolutionary paleontologist Bakker...has written a novel that might be subtitled "A Year in the Life of a Dinosaur," as he tells the story of Raptor Red, a giant carnivore of the Early Cretaceous period.

Having lost her mate in a botched hunting attack, Red (so-named because of the red stripe on her snout distinguishing her from other raptor species) joins forces with her sister and her sister's three chicks to survive in a world of hostile natural forces.

Bakker manages to mix scientific theories -- some of which are definitely on the cutting edge -- with a rip-roaring narrative. Perhaps even more miraculously, he has created a sympathetic nonhuman heroine without anthropomorphizing her into a Disney character.

1984 Sikh Massacre Trials & Mistry's A Fine Balance

There have been new developments in India's investigation of a 1984 massacre of thousands of Sikhs.

Here's yesterday's BBC article "1984 India riots: Congress leader Jagdish Tytler probed:"

A court has ordered the reopening of a case against a Congress Party leader for his involvement in anti-Sikh riots in 1984.  Jagdish Tytler was originally cleared by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

More than 3,000 Sikhs were killed in 1984 after the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Activists accuse Congress of turning a blind eye to the killings and inciting mobs. Mr Tytler denies any wrongdoing.

Lakhwinder Kaur, whose husband was killed in the riots, challenged a 2009 CBI report, arguing that the testimonies of two key witnesses had not been recorded. "The court today gave directions to the CBI to record the statements of the witnesses who had [allegedly] seen Tytler lead the mob," Harvinder Phoolka, lawyer for one of the riot victims, told reporters.

For a novel about the massacre and the events leading up to it, try A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry:

The setting of Mistry's quietly magnificent second novel (after the acclaimed Such a Long Journey) is India in 1975-76, when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, defying a court order calling for her resignation, declares a state of emergency and imprisons the parliamentary opposition as well as thousands of students, teachers, trade unionists and journalists. These events, along with the government's forced sterilization campaign, serve as backdrop for an intricate tale of four ordinary people struggling to survive. Naive college student Maneck Kohlah, whose parents' general store is failing, rents a room in the house of Dina Dalal, a 40-ish widowed seamstress. Dina acquires two additional boarders: hapless but enterprising itinerant tailor Ishvar Darji and his nephew Omprakash, whose father, a village untouchable, was murdered as punishment for crossing caste boundaries. With great empathy and wit, the Bombay-born, Toronto-based Mistry evokes the daily heroism of India's working poor, who must cope with corruption, social anarchy and bureaucratic absurdities. Though the sprawling, chatty narrative risks becoming as unwieldy as the lives it so vibrantly depicts, Mistry combines an openness to India's infinite sensory detail with a Dickensian rendering of the effects of poverty, caste, envy, superstition,corruption and bigotry.

Pickpockets & Nakamura's The Thief

From yesterday's BBC story "Paris Louvre shuts as staff strike over pickpockets:"

One of the world's most visited museums, the Louvre in Paris, did not open on Wednesday because of a protest by staff over pickpockets. Staff at the museum said thieves, some of them children, were targeting both employees and tourists.

Two hundred workers took part in a strike organised by the SUD union, according to AFP news agency...

"There have always been pickpockets at the Louvre and in tourist locations in Paris, but for the last year-and-a-half the gangs have become increasingly violent," said museum supervisor Sophie Aguirre.

"Their modus operandi has become more complex. Nothing can stop them."

For a novel about a pickpocket, try The Thief by Fuminori Nakamura:

The Thief is a seasoned pickpocket. Anonymous in his tailored suit, he weaves in and out of Tokyo crowds, stealing wallets from strangers so smoothly sometimes he doesn’t even remember the snatch. Most people are just a blur to him, nameless faces from whom he chooses his victims. He has no family, no friends, no connections.... But he does have a past, which finally catches up with him when Ishikawa, his first partner, reappears in his life, and offers him a job he can’t refuse. It’s an easy job: tie up an old rich man, steal the contents of the safe. No one gets hurt. Only the day after the job does he learn that the old man was a prominent politician, and that he was brutally killed after the robbery. And now the Thief is caught in a tangle even he might not be able to escape.