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Various and Sundry - Action Figures, Health Insurance, Book Review, and Marriage Rights
Various and Sundry articles that I found interesting as I went through my email from the long holiday weekend:
Recycled Toys
August 29, 2007, Starwars.com (presentation by Ron Salvatore)
Toy "recycling" is a well-known practice in the toy industry. To keep production and tooling costs down, companies will occasionally borrow a figure, vehicle, or accessory from one of their previous lines to repurpose for a new line. Kenner Products, and later Hasbro, were certainly no strangers to this, and consequently repurposed many of the toys from properties such as Six Million Dollar Man, Steve Scout, Batman, and others to become part of their famed Star Wars lines. What's more, in the years since the original Star Wars toys were released, other toy properties like The Real West, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and the Batman movies have borrowed select pieces from our favorite galaxy to be re-imagined as a "sonic neutralizer", a Sherwood Forest, and a "Glamour Gals" stage, among others.
Collector Ron Salvatore recently discussed some of the toys recycled into or from the Star Wars lines as part of the Celebration IV and Celebration Europe collecting panels taking place last summer. Here is an overview of that panel...
There are two reasons why a toy company might want to recycle an old toy design. First, they don't have to incur any of the costs associated with tooling (creating the molds, etc), and second, there is a fast turn-around to get the product to market. Designing and creating a toy can take up to a year, and developing the steel tooling to produce the toy can be extremely expensive. Add to this the elevated risk of merchandising a movie in the first place -- success is hard to predict and the movie may not be in the public eye for long -- it becomes clear why many toy manufactures have taken this shortcut to market.
Believe it or not, there's a certain set of collectors who enjoy rooting out examples of recycled toys, especially those associated with a high profile line like Kenner's vintage Star Wars series. It's the thrill of discovery that drives them, as some of the rarest and oddest items were recycled. What's more, they can provide insight into the economics of the toy industry at the time (were they cutting corners, or stepping up to produce new product?) and even offer clues into the production process itself.
As many fans and especially collectors know, there was very little Star Wars product available when the film first hit in the summer of 1977 -- licensees such as Kenner Products came in relatively late to the game, meaning no new molded toy products would be ready for months -- actually, the next year. So, bowing to pressure from consumers, Kenner pulled out some of their old molds and began stamping them out with the Star Wars brand slapped on them.
Examples of products Kenner had previously released but were re-imagined Star Wars-style include the Dip Dots painting set, Playdoh, the Give-A-Show Projector, and others. The Star Wars hand-cranked movie viewer used the same mold as that of previous properties, but carried Star Wars footage in the interchangeable cassette.
Six Million Dollar Man's electric toothbrush was designed to allow users to see the "bionic" inner workings in the handle, which vaguely resembled a lightsaber hilt. Voila! Instant lightsaber toothbrush after the interior cardboard graphics were replaced with Star Wars art. Kenner changed up the interior graphics for their Empire and Jedi versions, and finally re-sculpted the handle for an Ewoks version in 1984.
Kenner's Six Million Dollar Man "CB Headset Radio Receiver" was magically transformed into a Star Wars AM Headset radio loosely resembling the ones worn by Luke and Han during the Star Wars gunport sequence from the movie. Kenner simply replaced the CB transceiver with an AM receiver, altered the color of the plastic, and slapped on some Star Wars stickers.
Like the CB fad of the '70s, vans were also featured prominently in the toy lines of the day. Kenner's SSP vans don't seem a likely candidate for the Star Wars line until you realize Star Wars-styled vans were getting plastered all over custom van magazines in 1977 and '78.
Admittedly, one of the laziest reissues from Kenner when it came to repurposing older toys was the X-wing Aces Target Game. Based on the earlier Aerial Aces Target Game, the reissue sported Star Wars graphics and a Death Star backdrop but kept the old World War I --style machine gun with signature drum magazine on top. Because of the relatively small investment Kenner made in the Star Wars version of the toy, they didn't really need to worry if it didn't become a strong seller -- which it wasn't. Because so few were sold, it has consequently become quite a rare item today.
For Kenner's early Star Wars 12-inch figure line, Leia's body was borrowed from Dusty, a doll representing a teenage girl with a line of changeable clothes. If you ever wondered why the Princess Leia doll had a comb, you can thank Dusty -- some inspired Kenner employee decided if it was good enough for a sprightly young girl on earth, it's probably good enough for a planet-hopping galactic princess as well.
The accessory-sharing didn't stop there, either. The 12-inch Luke figure borrowed Steve Scout's grappling hook, 12-inch Han borrowed boots from a doll based on the movie International Velvet, and goggles from The Six Million Dollar Man were slated for a 12-inch Han in Hoth outfit, which sadly was never released. Other toys based on prior Kenner releases included the Princess Leia Utility Belt, which featured a faux walkie-talkie modeled after a similar piece included with a Batman belt set.
Cancer Society Focuses Its Ads on the Uninsured
By KEVIN SACK, The New York Times, August 31, 2007
ATLANTA, Aug. 30 — In a stark departure from past practice, the American Cancer Society plans to devote its entire $15 million advertising budget this year not to smoking cessation or colorectal screening but to the consequences of inadequate health coverage.
The campaign was born of the group’s frustration that cancer rates are not dropping as rapidly as hoped, and of recent research linking a lack of insurance to delays in detecting malignancies.
Though the advertisements are nonpartisan and pointedly avoid specific prescriptions, they are intended to intensify the political focus on an issue that is already receiving considerable attention from presidential candidates in both parties.
The society’s advertisements are unique, say experts in both philanthropy and advertising, in that disease-fighting charities traditionally limit their public appeals to narrower aspects of prevention or education.
But the leaders of several such organizations, including the American Heart Association, the American Diabetes Association and the Alzheimers Association, said they applauded the campaign’s message that progress against chronic disease would be halting until the country fixed its health care system.
As in the past, the heart association is using its advertising dollars these days to promote more rigorous exercise and healthier diets. The most recent cancer society campaign encouraged screening for colon cancer, including a memorable commercial in which a diner plucked — and then ate — a lima bean polyp from the intestinal tract he had carved in his mashed potatoes.
But John R. Seffrin, the chief executive of the cancer society, which is based here, said his organization had concluded that advances in prevention and research would have little lasting impact if Americans could not afford cancer screening and treatment.
“I believe, if we don’t fix the health care system, that lack of access will be a bigger cancer killer than tobacco,” Mr. Seffrin said in an interview. “The ultimate control of cancer is as much a public policy issue as it is a medical and scientific issue.”
The two 60-second television commercials that form the spine of the campaign make that point.
One features images of uninsured cancer patients, appearing hollow and fearful. “This is what a health care crisis looks like to the American Cancer Society,” the narrator begins. “We’re making progress, but it’s not enough if people don’t have access to the care that could save their lives.”
The other commercial depicts a young mother whose family has gone into debt because her insurance did not fully cover her cancer treatment. “Is the choice between caring for yourself and caring for your family really a choice?” the narrator asks.
Census figures released this week show that the number and percentage of people in the United States without health insurance rose last year, to 47 million and 15.8 percent. A 2003 study estimated that one of every 10 cancer patients was uninsured.
Other surveys have found that one of every four families afflicted by cancer, which is projected to kill 560,000 Americans this year, is effectively impoverished by the fight, including one of every five with insurance.
The cancer society plans to buy time on network and cable channels from Sept. 17 to Thanksgiving, said Greg Donaldson, the group’s vice president for corporate communications. There will also be advertisements in magazines and on Web sites.
With nearly $1 billion in revenues, the cancer society is the wealthiest of its peers and has spent about $15 million annually on advertising since 1999. By comparison, Geico, the automobile insurer with the “Caveman” advertisements, spent about $14 million on network advertising in the first quarter of 2007, according to TNS Media Intelligence, a tracking firm.
Advertising about the health insurance crisis is not uncommon among more broadly based medical organizations and other interest groups.
Last week, the American Medical Association kicked off a three-year campaign called “Voice for the Uninsured” that will begin with $5 million in advertising in early primary states. AARP, in conjunction with the Business Roundtable and the Service Employees International Union, recently began a similar effort called “Divided We Fail.”
This year, the cancer society formed a collaborative with the heart, diabetes and Alzheimers associations, as well as AARP, to promote awareness of the health access problem. The group adopted as common principles that all Americans deserve quality, affordable health care with transparent costs.
But the cancer society is the only disease-focused group ever to have dedicated advertising resources to the topic, said officials with other charities and with trade groups.“I’ve never seen anything like it before,” said Bill Novelli, chief executive of AARP and, in a previous career, a co-founder of the Porter Novelli public relations firm. “It’s taking a different tack for them.”
That a charity like the cancer society felt compelled to join the access debate reflects both the urgency and the resonance of the issue. Nonetheless, Mr. Donaldson said it was “risky business” for the tax-exempt group.
It steered away, he said, from promoting solutions that could be viewed as partisan, like mandatory insurance or single-payer government coverage. Rather, he said, the commercials are intended to urge action by the next administration, and to drive viewers to a Web site linked to the group’s advocacy and lobbying arm.
“We very much see a moral imperative to raising the discussion,” Mr. Donaldson said, “but we understand there’s a need to be appropriate.”
Cancer society executives said they had heard little dissent from volunteers and donors, and several regional officials said they supported the new approach.
But others called the campaign misguided. Valerie C. Robinson, a longtime board member of the Jacksonville, Fla., chapter, said expanded access to insurance coverage was “not our fight.”
“To me, it’s throwing away money that we could have put into providing free mammograms or free PSA tests or free colonoscopies,” she said.
Mr. Seffrin initiated the advertising campaign after being pushed by the society’s board to make faster progress toward its goals of reducing cancer death rates by 50 percent and incidence rates by 25 percent from 1990 to 2015. If trends continue, the actual reductions are projected to fall well short, perhaps by as much as half.
While the decline in death rates is accelerating, studies have shown that if cancer was diagnosed more in its early stages, the rates would fall faster. And new research is confirming that insurance status often determines whether a person’s cancer is diagnosed early or late.
One study published this year found that uninsured breast cancer patients were more than twice as likely to have their cancer diagnosed in late stages as those with private insurance. Other studies have found similar results with cancers of the larynx and mouth.
“The truth is we know what’s going to happen with cancer if we don’t intervene,” Mr. Seffrin said. “It will become the leading cause of death in the world, needlessly.”
Starting Over
By JENNIFER SCHUESSLER, The New York Times, September 2, 2007
THE WORLD WITHOUT US
By Alan Weisman. Illustrated. 324 pp. Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press. $24.95.
When Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” was published in 1963, the chemical giant Monsanto struck back with a parody called “Desolate Spring” that envisioned an America laid waste not by pesticides but by insects: “The bugs were everywhere. Unseen. Unheard. Unbelievably universal. ... On or under every square foot of land, every square yard, every acre, and county, and state and region in the entire sweep of the United States. In every home and barn and apartment house and chicken coop, and in their timbers and foundations and furnishings. Beneath the ground, beneath the waters, on and in limbs and twigs and stalks, under rocks, inside trees and animals and other insects — and yes, inside man.”
To Alan Weisman, this nightmare scenario would be merely a promising start. In his morbidly fascinating nonfiction eco-thriller, “The World Without Us,” Weisman imagines what would happen if the earth’s most invasive species — ourselves — were suddenly and completely wiped out. Writers from Carson to Al Gore have invoked the threat of environmental collapse in an effort to persuade us to change our careless ways. With similar intentions but a more devilish sense of entertainment values, Weisman turns the destruction of our civilization and the subsequent rewilding of the planet into a Hollywood-worthy, slow-motion disaster spectacular and feel-good movie rolled into one.
A journalist and author of three previous books, Weisman travels from Europe’s last remnant of primeval forest to the horse latitudes of the Pacific, interviewing everyone from evolutionary biologists and materials scientists to archaeologists and art conservators in his effort to sketch out the planet’s post-human future. In even the most heavily fortified corners of the settled world, the rot would set in quickly. With no one left to run the pumps, New York’s subway tunnels would fill with water in two days. Within 20 years, Lexington Avenue would be a river. Fire- and wind-ravaged skyscrapers would eventually fall like giant trees. Within weeks of our disappearance, the world’s 441 nuclear plants would melt down into radioactive blobs, while our petrochemical plants, “ticking time bombs” even on a normal day, would become flaming geysers spewing toxins for decades to come. Outside of these hot spots, Weisman depicts a world slowly turning back into wilderness. After about 100,000 years, carbon dioxide would return to prehuman levels. Domesticated species from cattle to carrots would revert back to their wild ancestors. And on every dehabitated continent, forests and grasslands would reclaim our farms and parking lots as animals began a slow parade back to Eden.
A million years from now, a collection of mysterious artifacts would remain to puzzle whatever alien beings might stumble upon them: the flooded tunnel under the English Channel; bank vaults full of mildewed money; obelisks warning of buried atomic waste (as current law requires) in seven long-obsolete human languages, with pictures. The faces on Mount Rushmore might provoke Ozymandian wonder for about 7.2 million more years. (Lincoln would probably fare better on the pre-1982 penny, cast in durable bronze.) But it’s hard to imagine an alien archaeologist finding poetry in the remote Pacific atolls awash in virtually unbiodegradable plastic bottles, bags and Q-tip shafts, or in the quadrillions of nurdles, microscopic plastic bits in the oceans — they currently outweigh all the plankton by a factor of six — that would continue to cycle uncorrupted through the guts of sea creatures until an enterprising microbe evolved to break them down.
As for the creatures who made this mess, the only residue of our own surprisingly negligible biomass — according to the biologist E. O. Wilson, the six billion-plus humans currently wreaking planetary havoc could all be neatly tucked away in one branch of the Grand Canyon — would be the odd fossil, mingling perhaps with the limbs of Barbie dolls.
Weisman knows from the work of environmental historians that humans have been shaping the natural world since long before the industrial age. His inner Deep Ecologist may dream of Earth saying good riddance to us, but he finds some causes for hope amid the general run of man-bites-planet bad news. At Amboseli National Park in Kenya, he takes comfort in the spectacle of Masai herdsmen living in carefully managed harmony with predators and grazers alike. In the 30-kilometer-radius “Zone of Alienation” around the Chernobyl nuclear plant, where some bridges remain too hot to cross 20 years after the 1986 meltdown, he finds eerie peace in the forests full of moose, lynx and radioactive deer. Watching from inside his protective suit as barn swallows buzz around the reactor, Weisman writes: “You want them to fly away, fast and far. At the same time, it’s mesmerizing that they’re here. It seems so normal, as if apocalypse has turned out to be not so bad after all. The worst happens, and life still goes on.”
So could we ourselves really simply fly away, leaving the rest of nature to slowly clean up our mess? Doomsday rhetoric aside, the fact is that nothing is likely to wipe us out completely, at least not without taking a good chunk of the rest of creation with us. (Even a virus with a 99.99 percent kill rate would still leave more than half a million naturally immune survivors who could fully repopulate the earth to current levels in a mere 50,000 years.) Not that some people aren’t trying to take matters into their own hands. Weisman checks in with Les Knight, the founder of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, which advocates gradually putting our species to sleep by collective refusal to procreate. After an initial panic, we would look around and see that the world was actually getting better: “With no more resource conflicts, I doubt we’d be wasting each other’s lives in combat,” Knight says. “The last humans could enjoy their final sunsets peacefully, knowing they have returned the planet as close as possible to the Garden of Eden.” (Apparently he never saw “Children of Men.”)
Weisman has his own flirtation with religious language, his occasionally portentous impassivity giving way to the familiar rhetoric of eco-hellfire as he imagines the earth’s most “narcissistic” species cleansed from the earth as punishment for its “overindulged lifestyle.” But Weisman stops short of calling for our full green burial, arguing instead for a universal “one child per human mother” policy. It would take until 2100 to dwindle to a global population of 1.6 billion, a level last seen in the 19th century, before leaping advances in energy, medicine and food production, but well before then we’d experience “the growing joy of watching the world daily become more wonderful.” And the evidence, Weisman writes, “wouldn’t hide in statistics. It would be outside every human’s window, where refreshed air would fill each season with more birdsong.”
Even readers who vaguely agree that there are “too many of us” (or is it too many of them?) may not all share Weisman’s brisk certainty that trading a sibling for more birdsong is a good bargain, just as those who applaud the reintroduction of the North American wolf may not quite buy the claim by Dave Foreman, a founder of Earth First!, that filling the New World’s empty über-predator niche with African lions and cheetahs is our best chance to avoid what Weisman calls “the black hole into which we’re shoving the rest of nature.” In the end, it’s the cold facts and cooler heads that drive Weisman’s cautionary message powerfully home. When it comes to mass extinctions, one expert tells him, “the only real prediction you can make is that life will go on. And that it will be interesting.” Weisman’s gripping fantasy will make most readers hope that at least some of us can stick around long enough to see how it all turns out.
Jennifer Schuessler is an editor at the Book Review.
The most touching "before and after" pictures I've ever seen:
Sean Fritz, left, and Timothy McQuillan, awaiting their marriage certificate at the Polk County Clerk’s Office.
Sean Fritz, 24, left, and Timothy McQuillan, 21, sealed their union in a ceremony performed by the Rev. Mark Stringer, right.
Iowa Permits Same-Sex Marriage, for 4 Hours, Anyway
By MONICA DAVEY, The New York Times, September 1, 2007
DES MOINES, Aug. 31 — From towns around the state, places like Cedar Falls, Ames and Cedar Rapids, same-sex couples converged on this city as early as dawn on Friday as word spread that a judge had overturned a state law banning gay marriage.
“Imagine this — right here in Iowa,” Amanda Duncan said as she and her partner of three years, Aleece Ramirez, filled out their application for a marriage license and put down $35. “Hopefully, this starts a fire that spreads to other places.”
The chance was fleeting. After four hours, Robert B. Hanson, the same county judge who had deemed the ban on same-sex marriages unconstitutional, delayed further granting of licenses until the Iowa Supreme Court decided whether to consider an appeal.
Still, national advocates for same-sex marriage pointed to the developments as significant. An issue that has largely been battled on the coasts in states like Massachusetts and California, they said, has made its way squarely to the more conservative middle.
“There are some people scratching their heads and saying, Iowa?” said Jon Davidson, the legal director at Lambda Legal, which worked on the case that led to the marriage applications here. “But this shows that there are lesbian and gay people everywhere who would like to get married.”
Opponents of same-sex marriage said they viewed the decision as a rallying cry, a reason that a federal amendment defining marriage is needed and a reason that an amendment to the Iowa Constitution, not just a statute, is needed.
“This is the misguided decision of one person,” Chris Stovall, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, which opposes same-sex marriage, said of Judge Hanson’s ruling on constitutionality. “I don’t think it represents at all what Iowa thinks. People across America and certainly in Iowa, in the heartland, understand that marriage is the union between one man and one woman.”
Massachusetts is the lone state that allows same-sex marriage. A handful of other states, including Vermont, New Jersey and Connecticut, allow same-sex civil unions. A few others, including California, allow other legal partnerships.
Judge Hanson’s ruling on Thursday, and the fallout on Friday, have also raised once more the issue of same-sex marriage among the presidential candidates who devote so much time in this state leading up to its early caucuses.
It is welcome for those candidates firmly opposed to or supportive of same-sex marriage, political experts said Friday, but has created an unwanted and thorny issue for those who have tried to walk a careful line somewhere in between.
“It really is a monkey wrench that sort of is thrown into the process for some of them,” Steffen W. Schmidt, a professor of political science at Iowa State University, said. “It’s potentially more dangerous for the Democrats, where the front-runners have been trying to finesse this issue.”
At least two Republican presidential hopefuls, Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas and Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, swiftly issued statements opposing the judge’s decision.
Mr. Romney called it “another example of an activist court and unelected judges trying to redefine marriage and disregard the will of the people.”
Asked about the ruling, Phil Singer, a spokesman for the campaign of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, spoke of civil unions, not marriages.
“Hillary Clinton believes that gay and lesbian couples should have the same rights and responsibilities as all Americans, and that civil unions are the best way to achieve this goal,” Mr. Singer said. “As president, she will work to extend benefits at the federal level to same-sex couples in committed relationships.”
Here, the brief flurry of applications for marriage licenses was low key. About 20 couples applied before a stay was granted. No protesters appeared. Few passers-by near the Polk County administration building said they were aware of the ruling.
The legal case here began in 2005 when six same-sex couples sued the county recorder, who declined to accept their applications for marriage licenses.
The question now goes to the State Supreme Court.
In the hours before the case was suspended, just one couple, Timothy McQuillan, 21, and Sean Fritz, 24, managed to obtain their license, and also to marry. Trailed by reporters, they raced around Des Moines in search of someone who could officiate at their wedding and found a minister who agreed to conduct the service.
“We had to get married — we’re at that point in our life,” said Mr. Fritz, who said he proposed to Mr. McQuillan in a parking lot after he heard about the ruling on Thursday night.
The men, who live in Ames, met on Facebook more than a year ago, Mr. Fritz said. Whatever the outcome of the legal case, he said, “As far as I’m concerned, I’m married in the state of Iowa.”
John Sarcone, the Polk County attorney, who is representing the county recorder’s office in the case, said the marriage could be considered legitimate. Ultimately, though, it, too, may depend on the decision of a higher court.
Patrick Healy and Michael Cooper contributed reporting from New York.
Recycled Toys
August 29, 2007, Starwars.com (presentation by Ron Salvatore)
Toy "recycling" is a well-known practice in the toy industry. To keep production and tooling costs down, companies will occasionally borrow a figure, vehicle, or accessory from one of their previous lines to repurpose for a new line. Kenner Products, and later Hasbro, were certainly no strangers to this, and consequently repurposed many of the toys from properties such as Six Million Dollar Man, Steve Scout, Batman, and others to become part of their famed Star Wars lines. What's more, in the years since the original Star Wars toys were released, other toy properties like The Real West, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and the Batman movies have borrowed select pieces from our favorite galaxy to be re-imagined as a "sonic neutralizer", a Sherwood Forest, and a "Glamour Gals" stage, among others.
Collector Ron Salvatore recently discussed some of the toys recycled into or from the Star Wars lines as part of the Celebration IV and Celebration Europe collecting panels taking place last summer. Here is an overview of that panel...
There are two reasons why a toy company might want to recycle an old toy design. First, they don't have to incur any of the costs associated with tooling (creating the molds, etc), and second, there is a fast turn-around to get the product to market. Designing and creating a toy can take up to a year, and developing the steel tooling to produce the toy can be extremely expensive. Add to this the elevated risk of merchandising a movie in the first place -- success is hard to predict and the movie may not be in the public eye for long -- it becomes clear why many toy manufactures have taken this shortcut to market.
Believe it or not, there's a certain set of collectors who enjoy rooting out examples of recycled toys, especially those associated with a high profile line like Kenner's vintage Star Wars series. It's the thrill of discovery that drives them, as some of the rarest and oddest items were recycled. What's more, they can provide insight into the economics of the toy industry at the time (were they cutting corners, or stepping up to produce new product?) and even offer clues into the production process itself.
As many fans and especially collectors know, there was very little Star Wars product available when the film first hit in the summer of 1977 -- licensees such as Kenner Products came in relatively late to the game, meaning no new molded toy products would be ready for months -- actually, the next year. So, bowing to pressure from consumers, Kenner pulled out some of their old molds and began stamping them out with the Star Wars brand slapped on them.
Examples of products Kenner had previously released but were re-imagined Star Wars-style include the Dip Dots painting set, Playdoh, the Give-A-Show Projector, and others. The Star Wars hand-cranked movie viewer used the same mold as that of previous properties, but carried Star Wars footage in the interchangeable cassette.
Six Million Dollar Man's electric toothbrush was designed to allow users to see the "bionic" inner workings in the handle, which vaguely resembled a lightsaber hilt. Voila! Instant lightsaber toothbrush after the interior cardboard graphics were replaced with Star Wars art. Kenner changed up the interior graphics for their Empire and Jedi versions, and finally re-sculpted the handle for an Ewoks version in 1984.
Kenner's Six Million Dollar Man "CB Headset Radio Receiver" was magically transformed into a Star Wars AM Headset radio loosely resembling the ones worn by Luke and Han during the Star Wars gunport sequence from the movie. Kenner simply replaced the CB transceiver with an AM receiver, altered the color of the plastic, and slapped on some Star Wars stickers.
Like the CB fad of the '70s, vans were also featured prominently in the toy lines of the day. Kenner's SSP vans don't seem a likely candidate for the Star Wars line until you realize Star Wars-styled vans were getting plastered all over custom van magazines in 1977 and '78.
Admittedly, one of the laziest reissues from Kenner when it came to repurposing older toys was the X-wing Aces Target Game. Based on the earlier Aerial Aces Target Game, the reissue sported Star Wars graphics and a Death Star backdrop but kept the old World War I --style machine gun with signature drum magazine on top. Because of the relatively small investment Kenner made in the Star Wars version of the toy, they didn't really need to worry if it didn't become a strong seller -- which it wasn't. Because so few were sold, it has consequently become quite a rare item today.
For Kenner's early Star Wars 12-inch figure line, Leia's body was borrowed from Dusty, a doll representing a teenage girl with a line of changeable clothes. If you ever wondered why the Princess Leia doll had a comb, you can thank Dusty -- some inspired Kenner employee decided if it was good enough for a sprightly young girl on earth, it's probably good enough for a planet-hopping galactic princess as well.
The accessory-sharing didn't stop there, either. The 12-inch Luke figure borrowed Steve Scout's grappling hook, 12-inch Han borrowed boots from a doll based on the movie International Velvet, and goggles from The Six Million Dollar Man were slated for a 12-inch Han in Hoth outfit, which sadly was never released. Other toys based on prior Kenner releases included the Princess Leia Utility Belt, which featured a faux walkie-talkie modeled after a similar piece included with a Batman belt set.
Cancer Society Focuses Its Ads on the Uninsured
By KEVIN SACK, The New York Times, August 31, 2007
ATLANTA, Aug. 30 — In a stark departure from past practice, the American Cancer Society plans to devote its entire $15 million advertising budget this year not to smoking cessation or colorectal screening but to the consequences of inadequate health coverage.
The campaign was born of the group’s frustration that cancer rates are not dropping as rapidly as hoped, and of recent research linking a lack of insurance to delays in detecting malignancies.
Though the advertisements are nonpartisan and pointedly avoid specific prescriptions, they are intended to intensify the political focus on an issue that is already receiving considerable attention from presidential candidates in both parties.
The society’s advertisements are unique, say experts in both philanthropy and advertising, in that disease-fighting charities traditionally limit their public appeals to narrower aspects of prevention or education.
But the leaders of several such organizations, including the American Heart Association, the American Diabetes Association and the Alzheimers Association, said they applauded the campaign’s message that progress against chronic disease would be halting until the country fixed its health care system.
As in the past, the heart association is using its advertising dollars these days to promote more rigorous exercise and healthier diets. The most recent cancer society campaign encouraged screening for colon cancer, including a memorable commercial in which a diner plucked — and then ate — a lima bean polyp from the intestinal tract he had carved in his mashed potatoes.
But John R. Seffrin, the chief executive of the cancer society, which is based here, said his organization had concluded that advances in prevention and research would have little lasting impact if Americans could not afford cancer screening and treatment.
“I believe, if we don’t fix the health care system, that lack of access will be a bigger cancer killer than tobacco,” Mr. Seffrin said in an interview. “The ultimate control of cancer is as much a public policy issue as it is a medical and scientific issue.”
The two 60-second television commercials that form the spine of the campaign make that point.
One features images of uninsured cancer patients, appearing hollow and fearful. “This is what a health care crisis looks like to the American Cancer Society,” the narrator begins. “We’re making progress, but it’s not enough if people don’t have access to the care that could save their lives.”
The other commercial depicts a young mother whose family has gone into debt because her insurance did not fully cover her cancer treatment. “Is the choice between caring for yourself and caring for your family really a choice?” the narrator asks.
Census figures released this week show that the number and percentage of people in the United States without health insurance rose last year, to 47 million and 15.8 percent. A 2003 study estimated that one of every 10 cancer patients was uninsured.
Other surveys have found that one of every four families afflicted by cancer, which is projected to kill 560,000 Americans this year, is effectively impoverished by the fight, including one of every five with insurance.
The cancer society plans to buy time on network and cable channels from Sept. 17 to Thanksgiving, said Greg Donaldson, the group’s vice president for corporate communications. There will also be advertisements in magazines and on Web sites.
With nearly $1 billion in revenues, the cancer society is the wealthiest of its peers and has spent about $15 million annually on advertising since 1999. By comparison, Geico, the automobile insurer with the “Caveman” advertisements, spent about $14 million on network advertising in the first quarter of 2007, according to TNS Media Intelligence, a tracking firm.
Advertising about the health insurance crisis is not uncommon among more broadly based medical organizations and other interest groups.
Last week, the American Medical Association kicked off a three-year campaign called “Voice for the Uninsured” that will begin with $5 million in advertising in early primary states. AARP, in conjunction with the Business Roundtable and the Service Employees International Union, recently began a similar effort called “Divided We Fail.”
This year, the cancer society formed a collaborative with the heart, diabetes and Alzheimers associations, as well as AARP, to promote awareness of the health access problem. The group adopted as common principles that all Americans deserve quality, affordable health care with transparent costs.
But the cancer society is the only disease-focused group ever to have dedicated advertising resources to the topic, said officials with other charities and with trade groups.“I’ve never seen anything like it before,” said Bill Novelli, chief executive of AARP and, in a previous career, a co-founder of the Porter Novelli public relations firm. “It’s taking a different tack for them.”
That a charity like the cancer society felt compelled to join the access debate reflects both the urgency and the resonance of the issue. Nonetheless, Mr. Donaldson said it was “risky business” for the tax-exempt group.
It steered away, he said, from promoting solutions that could be viewed as partisan, like mandatory insurance or single-payer government coverage. Rather, he said, the commercials are intended to urge action by the next administration, and to drive viewers to a Web site linked to the group’s advocacy and lobbying arm.
“We very much see a moral imperative to raising the discussion,” Mr. Donaldson said, “but we understand there’s a need to be appropriate.”
Cancer society executives said they had heard little dissent from volunteers and donors, and several regional officials said they supported the new approach.
But others called the campaign misguided. Valerie C. Robinson, a longtime board member of the Jacksonville, Fla., chapter, said expanded access to insurance coverage was “not our fight.”
“To me, it’s throwing away money that we could have put into providing free mammograms or free PSA tests or free colonoscopies,” she said.
Mr. Seffrin initiated the advertising campaign after being pushed by the society’s board to make faster progress toward its goals of reducing cancer death rates by 50 percent and incidence rates by 25 percent from 1990 to 2015. If trends continue, the actual reductions are projected to fall well short, perhaps by as much as half.
While the decline in death rates is accelerating, studies have shown that if cancer was diagnosed more in its early stages, the rates would fall faster. And new research is confirming that insurance status often determines whether a person’s cancer is diagnosed early or late.
One study published this year found that uninsured breast cancer patients were more than twice as likely to have their cancer diagnosed in late stages as those with private insurance. Other studies have found similar results with cancers of the larynx and mouth.
“The truth is we know what’s going to happen with cancer if we don’t intervene,” Mr. Seffrin said. “It will become the leading cause of death in the world, needlessly.”
Starting Over
By JENNIFER SCHUESSLER, The New York Times, September 2, 2007
THE WORLD WITHOUT US
By Alan Weisman. Illustrated. 324 pp. Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press. $24.95.
When Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” was published in 1963, the chemical giant Monsanto struck back with a parody called “Desolate Spring” that envisioned an America laid waste not by pesticides but by insects: “The bugs were everywhere. Unseen. Unheard. Unbelievably universal. ... On or under every square foot of land, every square yard, every acre, and county, and state and region in the entire sweep of the United States. In every home and barn and apartment house and chicken coop, and in their timbers and foundations and furnishings. Beneath the ground, beneath the waters, on and in limbs and twigs and stalks, under rocks, inside trees and animals and other insects — and yes, inside man.”
To Alan Weisman, this nightmare scenario would be merely a promising start. In his morbidly fascinating nonfiction eco-thriller, “The World Without Us,” Weisman imagines what would happen if the earth’s most invasive species — ourselves — were suddenly and completely wiped out. Writers from Carson to Al Gore have invoked the threat of environmental collapse in an effort to persuade us to change our careless ways. With similar intentions but a more devilish sense of entertainment values, Weisman turns the destruction of our civilization and the subsequent rewilding of the planet into a Hollywood-worthy, slow-motion disaster spectacular and feel-good movie rolled into one.
A journalist and author of three previous books, Weisman travels from Europe’s last remnant of primeval forest to the horse latitudes of the Pacific, interviewing everyone from evolutionary biologists and materials scientists to archaeologists and art conservators in his effort to sketch out the planet’s post-human future. In even the most heavily fortified corners of the settled world, the rot would set in quickly. With no one left to run the pumps, New York’s subway tunnels would fill with water in two days. Within 20 years, Lexington Avenue would be a river. Fire- and wind-ravaged skyscrapers would eventually fall like giant trees. Within weeks of our disappearance, the world’s 441 nuclear plants would melt down into radioactive blobs, while our petrochemical plants, “ticking time bombs” even on a normal day, would become flaming geysers spewing toxins for decades to come. Outside of these hot spots, Weisman depicts a world slowly turning back into wilderness. After about 100,000 years, carbon dioxide would return to prehuman levels. Domesticated species from cattle to carrots would revert back to their wild ancestors. And on every dehabitated continent, forests and grasslands would reclaim our farms and parking lots as animals began a slow parade back to Eden.
A million years from now, a collection of mysterious artifacts would remain to puzzle whatever alien beings might stumble upon them: the flooded tunnel under the English Channel; bank vaults full of mildewed money; obelisks warning of buried atomic waste (as current law requires) in seven long-obsolete human languages, with pictures. The faces on Mount Rushmore might provoke Ozymandian wonder for about 7.2 million more years. (Lincoln would probably fare better on the pre-1982 penny, cast in durable bronze.) But it’s hard to imagine an alien archaeologist finding poetry in the remote Pacific atolls awash in virtually unbiodegradable plastic bottles, bags and Q-tip shafts, or in the quadrillions of nurdles, microscopic plastic bits in the oceans — they currently outweigh all the plankton by a factor of six — that would continue to cycle uncorrupted through the guts of sea creatures until an enterprising microbe evolved to break them down.
As for the creatures who made this mess, the only residue of our own surprisingly negligible biomass — according to the biologist E. O. Wilson, the six billion-plus humans currently wreaking planetary havoc could all be neatly tucked away in one branch of the Grand Canyon — would be the odd fossil, mingling perhaps with the limbs of Barbie dolls.
Weisman knows from the work of environmental historians that humans have been shaping the natural world since long before the industrial age. His inner Deep Ecologist may dream of Earth saying good riddance to us, but he finds some causes for hope amid the general run of man-bites-planet bad news. At Amboseli National Park in Kenya, he takes comfort in the spectacle of Masai herdsmen living in carefully managed harmony with predators and grazers alike. In the 30-kilometer-radius “Zone of Alienation” around the Chernobyl nuclear plant, where some bridges remain too hot to cross 20 years after the 1986 meltdown, he finds eerie peace in the forests full of moose, lynx and radioactive deer. Watching from inside his protective suit as barn swallows buzz around the reactor, Weisman writes: “You want them to fly away, fast and far. At the same time, it’s mesmerizing that they’re here. It seems so normal, as if apocalypse has turned out to be not so bad after all. The worst happens, and life still goes on.”
So could we ourselves really simply fly away, leaving the rest of nature to slowly clean up our mess? Doomsday rhetoric aside, the fact is that nothing is likely to wipe us out completely, at least not without taking a good chunk of the rest of creation with us. (Even a virus with a 99.99 percent kill rate would still leave more than half a million naturally immune survivors who could fully repopulate the earth to current levels in a mere 50,000 years.) Not that some people aren’t trying to take matters into their own hands. Weisman checks in with Les Knight, the founder of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, which advocates gradually putting our species to sleep by collective refusal to procreate. After an initial panic, we would look around and see that the world was actually getting better: “With no more resource conflicts, I doubt we’d be wasting each other’s lives in combat,” Knight says. “The last humans could enjoy their final sunsets peacefully, knowing they have returned the planet as close as possible to the Garden of Eden.” (Apparently he never saw “Children of Men.”)
Weisman has his own flirtation with religious language, his occasionally portentous impassivity giving way to the familiar rhetoric of eco-hellfire as he imagines the earth’s most “narcissistic” species cleansed from the earth as punishment for its “overindulged lifestyle.” But Weisman stops short of calling for our full green burial, arguing instead for a universal “one child per human mother” policy. It would take until 2100 to dwindle to a global population of 1.6 billion, a level last seen in the 19th century, before leaping advances in energy, medicine and food production, but well before then we’d experience “the growing joy of watching the world daily become more wonderful.” And the evidence, Weisman writes, “wouldn’t hide in statistics. It would be outside every human’s window, where refreshed air would fill each season with more birdsong.”
Even readers who vaguely agree that there are “too many of us” (or is it too many of them?) may not all share Weisman’s brisk certainty that trading a sibling for more birdsong is a good bargain, just as those who applaud the reintroduction of the North American wolf may not quite buy the claim by Dave Foreman, a founder of Earth First!, that filling the New World’s empty über-predator niche with African lions and cheetahs is our best chance to avoid what Weisman calls “the black hole into which we’re shoving the rest of nature.” In the end, it’s the cold facts and cooler heads that drive Weisman’s cautionary message powerfully home. When it comes to mass extinctions, one expert tells him, “the only real prediction you can make is that life will go on. And that it will be interesting.” Weisman’s gripping fantasy will make most readers hope that at least some of us can stick around long enough to see how it all turns out.
Jennifer Schuessler is an editor at the Book Review.
The most touching "before and after" pictures I've ever seen:
Sean Fritz, left, and Timothy McQuillan, awaiting their marriage certificate at the Polk County Clerk’s Office.
Sean Fritz, 24, left, and Timothy McQuillan, 21, sealed their union in a ceremony performed by the Rev. Mark Stringer, right.
Iowa Permits Same-Sex Marriage, for 4 Hours, Anyway
By MONICA DAVEY, The New York Times, September 1, 2007
DES MOINES, Aug. 31 — From towns around the state, places like Cedar Falls, Ames and Cedar Rapids, same-sex couples converged on this city as early as dawn on Friday as word spread that a judge had overturned a state law banning gay marriage.
“Imagine this — right here in Iowa,” Amanda Duncan said as she and her partner of three years, Aleece Ramirez, filled out their application for a marriage license and put down $35. “Hopefully, this starts a fire that spreads to other places.”
The chance was fleeting. After four hours, Robert B. Hanson, the same county judge who had deemed the ban on same-sex marriages unconstitutional, delayed further granting of licenses until the Iowa Supreme Court decided whether to consider an appeal.
Still, national advocates for same-sex marriage pointed to the developments as significant. An issue that has largely been battled on the coasts in states like Massachusetts and California, they said, has made its way squarely to the more conservative middle.
“There are some people scratching their heads and saying, Iowa?” said Jon Davidson, the legal director at Lambda Legal, which worked on the case that led to the marriage applications here. “But this shows that there are lesbian and gay people everywhere who would like to get married.”
Opponents of same-sex marriage said they viewed the decision as a rallying cry, a reason that a federal amendment defining marriage is needed and a reason that an amendment to the Iowa Constitution, not just a statute, is needed.
“This is the misguided decision of one person,” Chris Stovall, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, which opposes same-sex marriage, said of Judge Hanson’s ruling on constitutionality. “I don’t think it represents at all what Iowa thinks. People across America and certainly in Iowa, in the heartland, understand that marriage is the union between one man and one woman.”
Massachusetts is the lone state that allows same-sex marriage. A handful of other states, including Vermont, New Jersey and Connecticut, allow same-sex civil unions. A few others, including California, allow other legal partnerships.
Judge Hanson’s ruling on Thursday, and the fallout on Friday, have also raised once more the issue of same-sex marriage among the presidential candidates who devote so much time in this state leading up to its early caucuses.
It is welcome for those candidates firmly opposed to or supportive of same-sex marriage, political experts said Friday, but has created an unwanted and thorny issue for those who have tried to walk a careful line somewhere in between.
“It really is a monkey wrench that sort of is thrown into the process for some of them,” Steffen W. Schmidt, a professor of political science at Iowa State University, said. “It’s potentially more dangerous for the Democrats, where the front-runners have been trying to finesse this issue.”
At least two Republican presidential hopefuls, Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas and Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, swiftly issued statements opposing the judge’s decision.
Mr. Romney called it “another example of an activist court and unelected judges trying to redefine marriage and disregard the will of the people.”
Asked about the ruling, Phil Singer, a spokesman for the campaign of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, spoke of civil unions, not marriages.
“Hillary Clinton believes that gay and lesbian couples should have the same rights and responsibilities as all Americans, and that civil unions are the best way to achieve this goal,” Mr. Singer said. “As president, she will work to extend benefits at the federal level to same-sex couples in committed relationships.”
Here, the brief flurry of applications for marriage licenses was low key. About 20 couples applied before a stay was granted. No protesters appeared. Few passers-by near the Polk County administration building said they were aware of the ruling.
The legal case here began in 2005 when six same-sex couples sued the county recorder, who declined to accept their applications for marriage licenses.
The question now goes to the State Supreme Court.
In the hours before the case was suspended, just one couple, Timothy McQuillan, 21, and Sean Fritz, 24, managed to obtain their license, and also to marry. Trailed by reporters, they raced around Des Moines in search of someone who could officiate at their wedding and found a minister who agreed to conduct the service.
“We had to get married — we’re at that point in our life,” said Mr. Fritz, who said he proposed to Mr. McQuillan in a parking lot after he heard about the ruling on Thursday night.
The men, who live in Ames, met on Facebook more than a year ago, Mr. Fritz said. Whatever the outcome of the legal case, he said, “As far as I’m concerned, I’m married in the state of Iowa.”
John Sarcone, the Polk County attorney, who is representing the county recorder’s office in the case, said the marriage could be considered legitimate. Ultimately, though, it, too, may depend on the decision of a higher court.
Patrick Healy and Michael Cooper contributed reporting from New York.