Today on Public Radio International's morning show, The Takeaway, host John Hockenberry, Detroit Free Press columnist Rochelle Riley, and I discussed how to avoid family fights during Thanksgiving. As I mentioned on the show, some amount of discord may be inevitable this year: from health care to climate change to gay rights, we're living in a particularly political time.

Like in War Games, the only way to win a political argument amongst relatives is not to play. But while you can head into Thanksgiving dinner determined to avoid any conversations about sensitive topics, you can't count on other members of your family to do the same. So if you want to keep the peace, you have a choice: you can either halfheartedly agree with whatever offensive (to you) nonsense (to you) that Aunt Sally is spewing, or you can try to artfully change the subject.

Of course, you could challenge Aunt Sally directly on her views about climate change, health-care reform, or whether or not H1N1 is a global conspiracy perpetrated by the pharmaceutical companies. Some families love nothing more than battling it out over turkey and mashed potatoes. For those who don't, we've provided a list of five all-important holiday dodges to get you from a dangerous topic to a less offensive one, still guaranteed to elicit a lot of opinions:

1) Health Care: Health care is not only incredibly complex and divisive, it can lead to discussions of an even more volatile topic, abortion. Instead, try to steer any medical conversations toward Charla Nash, the women who was brutally injured in a chimp attack. Nash's tragic story incorporates elements of health and medicine—she's currently living at the Cleveland Clinic full time, hoping for a face transplant; in the mean time she's relearning how to live without hands or a face. There's enough in her story to keep your family talking for hours.

2) Gay Rights: When someone starts to discuss the fight for gay marriage, talk about Adam Lambert: his humble beginnings on American Idol; his guy-on-guy kiss at the American Music Awards. By keeping the topic in the realm of pop culture, you may actually be able to have a low-stakes debate about gay rights. As Lambert himself pointed out, women have been performing similar stunts at award shows for years. Is this different? Discuss. And when things get too heated, switch to comparing the merits of Ellen vs. Paula.

3)  Sarah Palin: No matter how people feel about Palin, credulity that Levi Johnston is somehow still something of a celebrity is a point on which most Americans can unite. Bring up his Playgirl spread and watch the conversation go from politics to pornography.

Playgirl.com

4)  Barack Obama: President Obama is a unique position to anger both liberals and conservatives, both of whom feel he's on the wrong path. Michelle Obama, with a 63 percent approval rating, is a much safer subject. And her initiatives as first lady are all family friendly: starting a garden, supporting military families, wearing Banana Republic and J. Crew on a public stage.

5) The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: No matter how you feel about the war, you have to respect the service of the men and women serving overseas. Focus on that—then show your family the amazing online videos of soldiers reuniting with their dogs after serving a tour of duty: 

 6) Climate Change: Al Gore's recent appearance on 30 Rock will only lead to debates about whether Gore is an eco-savior or a false prophet and whether 30 Rock is still funny. Instead, bring up the meteorological styling of the tornado-chasing, Balloon-Boy-launching Henne family. Not only will everyone have something to say, chances are their family will make you appreciate how normal yours really is.

This is not how we recommend behaving every other day of the year. It's important to stand up for your beliefs and to be able to defend those beliefs articulately. But Thanksgiving is a different story: the level of discourse never gets beyond arguing over the very basic facts (Obama: Secret Muslim or not?), and very rarely will you change someone's mind over dinner.

Of course, if you are gay, or Sarah Palin, or a solider, it may be impossible not to get passionate—and personal—before the turkey is even out of the oven. But save for those situations, it's probably not worth taking on your sweet, frail, and totally sexist 86-year-old grandfather in a battle of oratory skill.

In other words: feel free to stand up for what you really believe in, but don't try to be a hero. Accept your family for the lovable, well-intentioned, ill-informed bunch that they are, pour another glass of wine, and try to make it through the night unscathed. 

When all else fails? Mention Twilight and let your teenage cousin do the rest.  

While many women do not think a screening test can be harmful, medical experts say the risks are real. A test can trigger unnecessary further tests, like biopsies, that can create extreme anxiety. And mammograms can find cancers that grow so slowly that they never would be noticed in a woman’s lifetime, resulting in unnecessary treatment.

Overall, the report says, the modest benefit of mammograms — reducing the breast cancer death rate by 15 percent — must be weighed against the harms. And those harms loom larger for women in their 40s, who are 60 percent more likely to experience them than women 50 and older but are less likely to have breast cancer, skewing the risk-benefit equation. The task force concluded that one cancer death is prevented for every 1,904 women age 40 to 49 who are screened for 10 years, compared with one death for every 1,339 women age 50 to 74, and one death for every 377 women age 60 to 69.

Unless you’ve been in solitary confinement, you’re aware of the fact that Belle de Jour, blogger, former prostitute, and head of the Diary of a London Call Girl publishing empire has revealed herself to be Dr. Brooke Magnanti, research scientist at the Bristol Initiative for Research of Child Health.

When she’s not blogging about her past sexploits, she using her Ph.D. in informatics, epidemiology, and forensic science to research the effects of pesticides on children.  How’s that for an unexpected spin on the whore-with-the-heart-of-gold theme?  I’m kinda jealous of her, I have to admit.  Magnanti is like a year of feminist studies rolled into one.  I would have loved to be the first credible candidate for one of feminism’s holy grails:  the empowered sex worker—able to expose herself to patriarchal fantasies of male domination without becoming damaged goods. 

We may have to add her to our pantheon of saints right up there with Susan Faludi and Katha Pollitt. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a more level-headed and reasonable explanation for becoming a call-girl than this one by Magnanti:

“I couldn’t find a professional job in my chosen field because I didn’t have my Ph.D. yet. I didn’t have a lot of spare time on my hands because I was still making corrections and preparing for the viva; and I got through my savings a lot faster than I thought I would. … What can I do that I can start doing straightaway, that doesn’t require a great deal of training or investment to get started, that’s cash in hand and that leaves me spare time to do my work in?”

Is this woman a scientist or what?  Now before you go all ballistic and chastise either myself or Dr. Magnanti for our lack of moral fiber, let me add two things:  working as an escort is not illegal in the United Kingdom.  Yup, prostitution is above board in England—it’s the activities that make sex work a nasty dangerous enterprise that are illegal—no streetwalking, no pimps, no brothels.  Secondly, the idea that prostitution is the only commodified form of erotic activity is crazy.  Consider the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition for a moment—$6.99 and all you get is the illusion of female sexuality.  Magnanti may well be the rare woman who can, as Gloria Steinem put it to Vermont Woman, “experience sexuality as power.…It’s not sexuality that’s the problem, it’s whose sexuality and why?”  That’s also why I can love Belle de Jour and still condemn human trafficking, the prostitution of children, and pimping without appearing hypocritical or naive.

And lest you think I dodged the whole morality question, let me answer in more detail by punting to a smarter mind.  In Feminist Issues in Prostitution, Sarah Bromberg asserts that our stern disapproval of call girls stems “from an underlying assumption in conventional morality that involvement in prostitution will “necessarily” have degenerative effects on a person leading her to other criminal activities.…Prostitution is not a profound condition of degeneracy and in many instances it may be a self-regarding expression of a person surviving in the best way given their skills and opportunities.”  Take that, you Puritans!

So, I’m a big fan of Dr. Magnanti now; I might even buy her new book, Belle de Jour’s Guide to Men. I have a feeling her point of view might be more interesting than the play-hard-to-get, treat-men-like-untrainable-dogs claptrap we women usually get. [As it turns out, the start of chapter one hits the "men are like untrainable dogs" metaphor pretty hard. I guess some stereotypes are hard to break, even if you're a pioneering scientist/call girl.]

by Leigh Bond

Who says that women only like jerks? A new study published in the journal Science from Binghamton University and the University of Arizona adds yet another clue to the mystery that is female sexual selection.  "Mom was right," says the press release. "Nice guys don't always finish last."

Of course, mom was probably not discussing the mating habits of bugs. Researchers in this study observed the effects of a controlled group of male water striders – both aggressive and low-key, and their sexual relations with the females in the group. According to the study led by Omar Tonsi Eldakar of the University of Arizona’s Arizona Research Laboratories, groups of “gentlemen” water striders mated with  more females than did groups of the “psychopath” suitors. The research contradicts previous laboratory studies finding sexually aggressive males more successful at reproducing, said Eldakar. In previous studies, the females were blocked from leaving the areas populated by the sexually aggressive males; this study showed that actually given a choice, the females would leave whenever the jerk bugs came around - the nice bugs got the girls.

What does this have to do with you? Almost nothing. Find out why, after the jump. 

An ordained Baptist chaplain and army captain, Roger Benimoff spent two tours of duty in Iraq and months between deployments counseling soldiers in the U.S. During his career, he provided spiritual guidance to American soldiers through crises of faith, bereavement, and trauma until he himself broke down. While training and working as a chaplain at Walter Reed during the height of its crisis, Benimoff was diagnosed with chronic PTSD and spent months of treatment at some of the facilities where he trained as a caretaker. NEWSWEEK's Eve Conant has tracked Benimoff's experiences over the years, starting with his time at Walter Reed, and recently in a book about his experiences, Faith Under Fire. Benimoff retired from the army earlier this year. He spoke with Conant from Dallas, where he is a hospital chaplain, about what might have happened in Fort Hood, how the military families will cope with tragedy on the homefront, and why the army pushed him so far he had to leave.

Is "contact" or "secondary" PTSD a genuine problem?

Oh yes, definitely. I didn't have much time to counsel before I was deployed—I had only three weeks active duty before going over—but I would debrief my soldiers in Iraq all the time about events I was not present at. I remember when Eagle Troop had lost a soldier to a sniper and I did the CISD [Critical Incident Stress Debriefing]. I still have those images in my head. Or when one of Fox Troop's tanks went over a land mine. The soldiers told me about how the IED blew through their tank, how the driver's body was completely destroyed, how it was like spaghetti, and they were desperately trying to pull him out of the driver's seat while their command told them to leave the scene. They didn't leave him behind. But the tension of that, and their descriptions of that moment stay with me. When Eagle Troop lost a sergeant to an RPG, they told me about running into the hospital, seeing Iraq soldiers vomiting on the stairs after what they had just seen—walls covered in blood, brain matter on the floor. These images don't go away and I wasn't even there that day.

It's hard to draw too many conclusions right now, but we do know this: Thursday night, authorities shot and then apprehended the lone suspect, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan. A psychiatrist who was set to deploy to Iraq at the end of the month, Hasan reportedly opened fire around the Fort Hood Readiness Center, where troops are prepared for deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. And though this scene is a most extreme and tragic outlier, it comes at a time when the stress of combat has affected so many soldiers individually that it makes it increasingly difficult for the military as a whole to deploy for wars abroad. In an abrupt news conference, Lt. Gen. Robert Cone, the top commander at Fort Hood, said in response to the shooting that authorities would "increase the security presence" on the military base. On the surface, it seemed like a logical enough plan. But it makes one wonder how much any kind of lockdown will either get at the root causes of soldier stresses or better prepare them for more battle.

The H1N1 vaccine shortage isn’t just frustrating. It’s unleashing an ethical and emotionally-charged debate about people’s shot-worthiness. Back in August, the CDC announced recommendations on who should be first in line for vaccination. The list: pregnant women, caregivers for babies under 6 months, health-care workers, anybody 6 months to 25 years old, and people with health conditions like asthma and diabetes. But we all know that vaccine distribution hasn’t gone perfectly—lines have been long, supplies have run out, and, yes, some Americans have gotten the shot when they shouldn’t have.

All of this blew up into a vitriolic exchange on a local moms bulletin board in Washington, D.C., after a mother said she’d gotten vaccinated at a Virginia clinic even though she didn’t qualify. And she urged other moms to do the same to protect their kids. Hello swine-flu mommy wars. One woman called her selfish. (And there were choicer words, too.) Another warned there would be a “day of reckoning” for people like her. And this: “To the people who have gotten the H1N1 vaccine and are not in the CDC priority groups—WHAT YOU DID IS DISGUSTING. YOU ARE DISGUSTING.”

The calmer posts said she wasn’t at fault: at least some health-care workers at the clinic, they reported, were encouraging people to get the vaccine while they could—even if they weren’t in one of the priority groups. But that’s not supposed to happen, at least not until more ample supplies of vaccine are available. Moms aren’t the only ones at war. A report that Goldman Sachs and other big New York companies have received vaccine has some people up in arms, even though Goldman says it’ll provide it only to high-risk groups. And then there’s the news that Gitmo detainees will get vaccines, too. House Republican John Boehner isn’t too happy about that—and neither are a lot of other people.

Now, CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden is pulling out his megaphone and trying to bring some order. In a letter sent to state and local health officers and released by the CDC today, Frieden said, “It is more important than ever to focus on ensuring equitable access to the vaccine for the priority groups.” He went on to ask local health officials to review their plans immediately and “work to ensure that the maximum number of doses is delivered to those at greatest risk as rapidly as possible.”

Frieden does a good job walking the line between thanking public health officials for their hard work—they are, after all, on the receiving end of vaccine frustration—and making it clear that they need to abide by the recommendations. Now it’s up to the vaccinators to listen.

Read the entire letter after the jump.

Michael Goldsmith, the baseball fan who penned the NEWSWEEK My Turn column that became a game-changer for major league baseball, died this week at the age of 58.

Goldsmith suffered from and finally succumbed to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. Also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, the degenerative condition robbed the Hall of Famer of his life and robs 30,000 Americans at any given time of their ability to walk, speak, and eventually breathe. It's a rare disease—striking two out of 10,000—but a brutal one, agonizing for those who suffer from the disease and those who love them.

Gehrig is the most famous face of ALS, but it was Goldsmith who suggested, in a NEWSWEEK My Turn column that ran on Nov. 1, 2008, that baseball join the fight in a more public and organized way:

Major League Baseball has never taken comprehensive action against ALS. Defeating ALS will require the same type of determination, dedication and drive that Gehrig and Cal Ripken demonstrated when they set superhuman records for consecutive games played. With this in mind, why not make July 4, 2009, ALS-Lou Gehrig Day? Dedicate this grim anniversary to funding research for a cure; every major- and minor-league stadium might project the video of Gehrig's farewell, and teams, players and fans could contribute to this cause.

The column soon caught the attention of  The New York Times and MLB Commissioner Bud Selig, and the plan Goldsmith envisioned was put into action. On July 4  this season, the 70th anniversary of  Lou Gehrig's "Luckiest Man" speech, players wore commemorative patches. ALS groups sold awareness buttons, and ballparks played video of Gehrig's noble farewell on the JumboTrons. Goldsmith was honored at Yankee Stadium that day, throwing out the ceremonial first pitch. His family later recalled how much he savored that experience—despite his being an Orioles fan.

Selig issued a statement about Goldsmith's passing, saying he was "deeply saddened" and offering his condolences. Game 5 of the World Series, played last night in Philadelphia, was dedicated to Goldsmith's memory.  Throughout the game, fans were encouraged to donate to ALS charities by visiting the MLB blog 4ALS Awareness. According to the George Vecsey, who wrote about Goldsmith's NEWSWEEK column in the Times, "Commissioner Bud Selig said Goldsmith believed in the power of one person to make an impact, and he promised that Goldsmith’s aspirations would continue to be honored."

It would be a tribute to both Gehrig and Goldsmith and a testament to the enduring power of sports, teamwork, and camaraderie if baseball took that "comprehensive action" Goldsmith suggested. It's worth noting that the Philadelphia Phillies, who are currently trying to battle their way out of a 3-2 deficit against the Yankees in the World Series, have raised more than $11 million in the past 25 years through their charity work with The Greater Philadelphia ALS Society. A baseball-wide campaign to actively fight ALS and support those who suffer from it would go a long way to aid the cause and to bring back some lost dignity to America's pastime.

Aside from being a baseball fan, Goldsmith was the Woodruff J. Deem professor of law at Brigham Young, and a husband, father, son, and brother. We at NEWSWEEK offer his friends and family our deepest sympathies.