VOTE FOR AMY

One of the contestants on NBC’s The Voice is an alumnus of the same preparatory school I attended years ago (before my sudden Kafka-esque metamorphosis from human to cephalopod). Her name is Amy Vachal (class of 2007). This notice arrived in my email box this morning:

Amy Vachal '07 on NBC's "The Voice"

Now among the top 20 performers on the show, Amy finds out Wednesday if she will continue on to the top 12. 

During her audition, Amy's rendition of "Dream a Little Dream of Me" captured the hearts of all who were watching, including the coaches. Though Blake Shelton, Pharrell Williams, and Gwen Stefani all vied for Amy to join their team, she chose Williams and joined Team Pharrell. 

In the next round, the "Battle Round," Amy moved easily past the couple she faced, shining on stage as they collectively sang "To Love Somebody." 

"Amy, there's a delicate way about you and your approach to songs. I can only imagine people listening to your voice after having a really tough day. You just make everything feel like it's gonna be alright. You're amazing," said Williams, before declaring her the winner of the battle.

At the next stage of competition, Amy delivered a soulful rendition of Etta James's "A Sunday Kind of Love," and though her performance was not enough to earn Pharrell Williams's vote, she was eagerly "stolen" by Adam Levine, joining his team for the remainder of the season.

Vote Amy!

One Giant Step

Like most adolescent boys I had a strong interest in tropical Geography, but National Geographic has always been one of those magazines too beautiful and informative to throw  out.  Basements and attics around the world are still packed with moldering stacks of these magazines.  It's hard even to give them away, but that may change.  Rupert Murdoch has bought the place, it's no longer a not-for-profit corporation and thus the information it contains will no longer be above suspicion.  Of course it hasn't been the best place to see bare breasted women for a long time, but it's wonderful ability to present science to the masses without the taint of sales hype and politics is now gone as well. Murdoch has apparently already done a Trump and fired the award winning staff.

Will the famous yellow cover take on a new meaning?  Can we expect more stories about Atlantis, UFOs and alien abductions?  Will the next article about ancient Egypt be authored by Ben Carson of the hollow pyramids theory or Mike Huckabee of the 6000 year old Earth? I'm sue we'll hear no more about climate change or the decline of  bio-diversity and pollution.  I'm sure we will be treated to spectacular photography of the village in Kenya where Barack Obama was born and the women will be wearing shirts.

Again one of the icons of journalism has fallen to the scoundrels who own Fox News and soon will be sharing the same corporate motto Pontius Pilate made famous:  What is Truth?  It's one small step for the end times and one giant leap for ignorance.

Yesterday it was Poison, Today it's Medicine.

Am I going out on a limb by suggesting that a high proportion of what you read in the popular media as concerns health and nutrition ( and many other subjects to be sure) is untrustworthy?  I guess that depends on whether the tree is genetically modified and grown with non-bovine fertilizer.

All joking aside, remember when Coffee was "linked" to pancreatic cancer and should be avoided in favor of  soft drinks at breakfast time?  I do, it was back when some were trying to take Aspirin off the market because "tests showed" it to have no value.  If a cynic like me suggested, and I did, that The Coca Cola Bottling Company and the people who make non-aspirin anti-inflammatory drugs  had some part in conducting and interpreting those tests, names were called.  We can't trust big corporations unless they're conducting tests that vilify other corporations.  Somehow anything pretending to defame common assumptions has a good chance of being believed uncritically,  particularly when presented as something "they don't want you to know."  It makes us feel savvy and hip and part of something important.

Times change however.  We know how aspirin works now, and that it does work and that it has uses other than treating headaches. In some cases it can be lifesaving.  Coffee it seems, has medical benefits beyond getting you to the point where you can get dressed in the morning. It may even help you avoid pancreatic cancer and some dementias, and a recent study suggests regular, moderate intake may reduce risk of type 2 diabetes substantially.  It may also reduce Coca Cola breakfast sales just as aspirin, a product there's little profit in, cuts into Tylenol and Ibuprofen profits.

Capitalism can be a dirty business. Those of us old enough to remember how cigarettes prevented colds and flu might by now have begun to lament that our schools don't seem to teach critical thinking or the application of logic in  everyday life.  It can often appear that hardly anyone knows what science is much less to respect it as a way to get at the truth, but  Capitalism has no morals. You sell things any way you can and hyperbole, Gerrymandered evidence and captious arguments are the rule.  Is it true that aspirin is worthless while Tylenol is safer and more effective?  No.  Is it likely that you'll hear from Johnson & Johnson  that it is the leading cause of acute liver failure in the United States, causing 60,000 emergency room visits every year: that it is the leading cause of liver transplants in England?  Not unless the government makes them do it and that of course would be "too much regulation."  Is anyone touting the "no-Tylenol lifestyle?"  I don't think so and I think the reason is that no corporation profits from bashing acetaminophen.

But we Americans are outrage junkies and all we need is a story plausible to the average man, a bogeyman or villain and a way out that usually consists of buying what the outrage monger is selling.
We scan the papers and watch the news and worst of all we look at YouTube and the blogs for new outrages every day. I admit I'm one of those people. Righteous indignation is better and cheaper than Cocaine and harder to kick - and it fills blog posts.

Flattering egos by offering an "in-crowd" membership, like enraging the public, is a major component of every sales campaign but do we blame them or do we blame ourselves for our gullibility and ignorance?  It doesn't seem we do. It's more likely we will defend our mistaken choices.  We'll  try to race that 700 hp Dodge with our 200 hp Nissans and our Ultimate Driving Machines and we'll have a good reason to ignore the results and try again when the inevitable occurs. We will never get a colonoscopy but we'll avoid "processed" meats. We will remain suspicious of aspirin and Alar and insist  that rusty nails cause tetanus.  We'll insist our candidate isn't a crook when he's caught red handed, that our non-Alar apples taste better and make us feel good.  We'll ignore the dangers of "organic" fertilizers loaded with heavy metals, because of course it's "natural."  Most of all we'll simply ignore or shout down unfashionable criticisms of our cherished beliefs.  After all we're animals.  We're Natural, unprocessed and organic - how could that be bad?

The Longer You Stare - The Enigma of Certainty

"Wenn du lange in einen Abgrund blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein"

-Friedrich Nietzsche-

If you stare long into the abyss, the abyss will also stare into you.

_____________________________

The longer you stare into this image, the more zombies will appear.  Try it.  It's true.

Or is it?  Do we see shadowy figures or do we see zombies -- particularly the kind of Zombies invented by Hollywood and the Walking Dead comic books? The kind that doesn't exist. The power of suggestion is slippery and can be as hard to perceive clearly as those blurry phenomena we find things of our own making in -- of our own imaginations, prejudices and fears.

So when we have those little epiphanies, those spiritual moments that hint at unseen noumena; how genuine is our perception and how much of what we're prompted by our culture and experience to see appears to our eyes?  Krishna, Christ or Chuckwu look back at us, whispering like Enki from behind the wall. 

In fact no matter how you blow the image up, you can't say from what you see that they are zombies any more than you can know just what zombies look like outside of  fictional representations.  We see the same phenomenon when we see the face of God in the window, the face of Jesus in a rust stain or pattern of mildew on old wallpaper. We have no idea what those people looked like, but we swear to it, it was Mary and she was a virgin and wore a shawl.  It's the power of suggestion and our culture is at heart an encyclopedia of suggestion and meme.  

How much do we bring to what we see? Two crossed lines will mean something different to a Hindu than to a Christian.  That applies to what we see in others' faces, to what we taste when we're told what we're tasting, whether it's true or not.  One person in a room gets sick.  how many others feel bad and how soon?  How much better will that wine taste when the "expert" raves over it?   How fast will that placebo cure your headache?  Often faster than the Aspirin. 

Eating breakfast, I stare into the granite counter top.  A thousand faces stare back.

Quack, Quack

The ad calls it the DR. PUHARICH EMF PROTECTION - NATURAL FREQUENCY TESLA WAVE CHIP FOR YOUR WATCH,  What's a Tesla wave?  I've never seen a description that didn't sound like double talk intended for very, very non technical people and full of denunciations of "Orthodox" science. It's one of the claims having to do with free energy or perpetual motion or the like that got Tesla scorned by serious science, or at least until the Internet and it's faith-based hipsters came around and made him sort of an offbeat hero again.  Anyway the ad tells us it's also an "EMF/ ELF stress shield" which is basically gibberish and a bit pretentious since it's a small square of copper you put into your watch to shield you from things that don't exist. True, a large grounded copper box would shield you from EMF at any frequency if you were inside it, but putting a piece of copper in your watch gives you a watch with a piece of copper inside and nothing else.

In a way it's similar to the "Translator Amulet" which consists of a few randomly selected electronic components: I see some small carbon film resistors,

a ceramic capacitor, a couple of molded Mylar caps, a Germanium 1N34 diode in a DO-1 package all soldered together in a fashion that might make a 4 year old -- or an American new-age doofus think it's a radio.  It isn't. "Natural frequencies" means nothing other than to evoke the modern longing for nature and things natural and the fear of the new. It doesn't do anything  and it doesn't have to, in order to do what the seller claims it does.

"The Translator helps to understand angelic messages, communications from the higher self, your guides, and it helps in channeling. This is the vertical aspect - between the higher and lower vibrational realms. It also works horizontally - around you, on this level and this reality. It helps you to understand what is being said, what is being communicated in this realm, person to person, animal or plant - through words, images, music, sound or otherwise. This Quantum device helps you to understand what is being communicated, with trust, openness and keen intuition".

Ordinarily one wouldn't have to explain to people that this bit of ad captandum vulgus escapes being outright fraud only because the description is gibberish and claims of helping you understand or avoid or rid yourself from what doesn't exist are hard to refute.  At least it's "artisinal"  I can't refute that.

It's called quackery and it's an ancient practice as old as religion and probably older than what we sometimes call the oldest profession. It's also called Shamanism and it's alive and growing faster and faster with the power of the Internet and the decline in scientific literacy and critical thought.  I used to collect late 19th and early 20th century technology which included a few quack-medical items, like "violet ray" and high voltage shock coils.  The  former was sold to cure almost anything and had attachments which would, when turned on, glow in the dark. It regrew hair, cured skin conditions and a certain one could be inserted in various orifices for purposes I don't want to know about. Needless to say it didn't work. Needless to say they sold millions of these things. Needless to say lack of evidence was not an impediment to sales.

 The Electro-Medical Shocking Coil or a "Faradic Battery" was a very popular item a hundred years ago when electricity was still mysterious and frightening (perhaps it still is) and it was sold to cure things like Neurasthenia, a disease of mostly "sensitive" and intelligent people -  or so the health  hipsters of yore titled themselves.  Working stiffs were said to be immune to it. Of course the disorder doesn't exist any more than do Tesla waves or ELF stress fields, so it's hard to accuse the sellers of quackery with fraud  -- and besides all these quack devices had countless customers who swore by them and mocked the "orthodox" and closed-minded detractors. There was never a lack of "experts" and studies and anecdotes to reassure them of their elite status.  Some call it the Barnum Effect, others the Whole Foods business plan. Nonetheless, the cultic aspects of consumerism are quite powerful.  Flatter the masses and the masses will follow you with open wallets.

eBay abounds with "detox" machines you put your feet in which remove unspecified toxins you don't have in some pseudo-scientific way.  foot pads, foot baths and pieces of duct tape to remove those "toxins' we love to believe in and rid ourselves of,  as the ancients once performed rituals of purification. Enemas, "cleanses,"  magic bracelets and rituals have evolved to take on the white coats of science while rejecting scientific method with prejudice, fable  and anger.

Impurity, impiety and sin are made-up things that have plagued us for eons and power and riches have accrued to those who told us we were tainted and sold us stuff to make it go away.  Those who told us the world was in decline from some golden past have shaped the course of history and proof to the contrary be damned.  Nothing has changed.  People are easily frightened in this world of randomness and easily sold quackery in both verbal and mechanical and chemical form and he who can sell the cure will have customers and fanatical followers.  The fear doesn't have to be real the malady doesn't have to be real and the cure doesn't have to be real, such is the power of suggestion and the power of belief.

True scientific tests of medicine and medical devices include a control group given placebos and of course the results invariably show much support for the empty pill and non-functioning device.  Harvard Medical School has a program for placebo studies and so do their hospital affiliates.  The placebo, the suggestion prove that the power of the mind is strong.  People leave faith healers and places of miracles like Lourdes convinced they're cured - at least for a while -  and they will defend such things assiduously while the purveyors use their stories to continue the business.

Billions believe that prayer can effect changes in nature contrary to evidence, People will go to war to defend their tribal name and description of deities who don't exist.  Parents let their children die because scientific medical practices aren't "natural" and don't fit the beliefs the power of suggestion cemented in their minds.  They turn to quack medicine because doctors are bogeymen and Big Pharma is out to poison us.  They vote for policies that have failed to work and repeatedly.

Are we still no more than the upright apes that evolved on the savannas of Africa?  Do we still believe in magic and shamans and mysterious forces even if we've dressed them differently?  I think the ape answers that question every day.

Uncle Sam's Lobotomy by Clay Bennett

Pass the Twinkies Please

Oh you're American?  Please don't tell us about your diet.

It's a sentiment you'll hear in many places in the world. We're seen as narcissistic and hypochondriacal, and when it comes to diet and health, we're rather evangelistic too. It happens all the time. You'll meet someone and in the first few minutes they'll assault you with how they eat this and not that, which things are filled with this toxin and that, and how this causes cancer and that will make you impotent.  Of course it's pretty safe to say that none of it's true, because nearly everything you read about health and nutrition is produced by scare mongers: diet book doctors, supplement pushers and others with mysterious agendas. Real science: valid conclusions from valid studies? They're often surrounded by as impenetrable a husk of gullibility as  a coconut -- and besides, very, very few of us are trained to derive much from the edited data we're given.  I read "studies show" and I can be sure there wasn't really a study that showed anything conclusive at all, but just a  a stew of anecdote, speculation and salesmanship.

We seem to enjoy bogus information of all sorts and to inflict it on innocent victims ad libitum, without regard to how badly and long ago it's been debunked.  Why else would we persist in our Low fat Vs. Low Carbohydrate, Vs. Low calorie feuds?  Talk calorie consumption to an Atkins Man?  Forget it, even if he weighs 400 pounds, he's sticking to the faith.

A few years ago I went on a severely calorie restricted but balanced diet and lost about 50 pounds in a few months. Many annoying ailments seemed to disappear but wouldn't you know it, I couldn't show up slender at any old haunts without being lectured by one overweight person or another about how I should have gone on their diet instead. What else can it be but religion and you know how well religion and fact go together. Somehow the Atkins devotees annoy me the most with their carbcarbcarb and calories-don't-count cackling. It's pointless to point out the Twinkie diet in which a professor of Human Nutrition at KSU went on a reduced calorie diet of Twinkies and doughnuts and lost a lot of weight.

I ate a bit more sensibly but eating 900 calories a day of anything will produce results and I'm here to tell you. It's not the 5 calories of breadcrumbs on that fried chicken putting the pounds on you and eating the triple bacon chili cheeseburger without a bun isn't going to help much either. But listen to me lecture - it's like I've learned nothing.  It's the calories, dummy. It's not the mysterious properties of grain or gluten or corn syrup or " processed" foods or any of  "the seven foods you should never eat" or anything else on Fox News for that matter.


So says the medical profession and no I'm not talking about Dr. Atkins or Doctor Oz or Doctor Bonker for that matter.  A recent meta-study published in The lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology  says the data indicates that: whether it's  high fat, low fat; high carbohydrate, low carbohydrate: there's no statistically significant difference.  It's the calories, dummy.  Will information like that ever get past the hucksters, the pill pushers, the hustlers wearing Dollar Store lab coats or gyrating in Yoga pants to pounding music?  Hell no.  They love to tell you information is being suppressed by evil giant corporation, but you know the Diet Guru industry is a huge one too and there's nobody holding them to any standards at all.  Pills kill.

Eat half of  what you do now and feel the difference -- and don't worry, be happy,  Eat well but eat less.

On The Road

Headlines on the Bloomberg Web site today include the Blockbuster:

Can Detroit Beat Google to the Self-Driving Car?
Inside GM's fight to get to the future first.

Apparently this isn't the world it used to be. It's definitely a world where millions will wait outside in the snow to buy the latest i-Gadget even when last weeks model is in their pocket, but we're keeping cars far, far longer than once we did. You can drive home in a 700+ horsepower car, in a car that does 230 or more miles per hour and gets mileage equal to my old /68 VW.  In fact we're in a golden age of American performance and engineering and we don't know.   No sir, your 200 HP Nissan isn't a race car.

Some people still like to drive. Some people grew up when the number one aspiration was a car and the number two goal was something cool enough to turn heads at the drive in:  the Drive In everything that was, from theaters to restaurants to, believe it or not, liquor stores. We didn't hang out at WiFi hotspots in malls. It was at Henry's Hot Dogs or Big Daddy's Drive in with car hops and looking to impress the girls and an occasional contest of acceleration.  Real girls that is and in person, not on line. Tinder was still something you started a fire with.

The worst thing anyone could show up in was an "economy car."  Sure, I remember buying and pumping gas at 26.9 and the price of fuel didn't matter but guys like me studied cars the way the nerds did homework and the jocks memorized sports statistics. My friends and I built go-karts with lawnmower parts in 8th grade and went on to customize cars, swap and rebuild engines  and the best thing anyone could wish for was to hear someone who knew say "hey, that guy can drive!"

What kind of people want a car that drives itself, controlled by satellites and computers and government regulations in soulless safety and always in constant contact and a play list?  Sorry, you'll take away the steering wheel, the handlebars, the shift lever from my cold dead fingers  but you'll have to catch me first.

Is this a case of industry spending a fortune on something that won't sell?  Or is this a case of a country that's lost it's soul?  Will my grandchildren read "On The Road" and wonder why Kerouac didn't take the bus or dream about a little electric Japanese cliche on wheels that drives itself while you stare at a little screen texting your "friends?"  Indeed why go on the road at all when there's Google Earth?

Sorry, that's not "the future" to me any more than today is the future once envisioned in generations of Science Fiction.  If it's a country of driverless, cubicle dwelling, commuting urban virtual reality, Facebooking hipsters with "devices" it's not my country and that's a warning, not a prediction. Look for it. Listen for it somewhere off that regulated futureroad road packed with little electric safety bubbles shaped like running shoes or backwards hats whispering along, bumper to bumper at 25 MPH. Do you hear that rumble, way out on the highway?  That long, lonesome highway?

Bubh a Buh Bye, Speaker Boehner!

Given an inch, Paul Ryan just became new House ruler.  May the Great and Mighty Cthulhu shed His grace on thee and and drown this hood for the common good ... and all that nada dada.  

Arguing With Fossils

As guest columnist for a local newspaper (a Scripts publication), I share the same opinion space with other local writers such as Fay Vincent and Stanford Erickson.  Fay Vincent is best known as a former CEO of Columbia Pictures and Commissioner of Major League Baseball.  Erickson is lesser known but thinks of himself as greater known (and unassailable subject matter expert on everything).  Now retired and resting on their laurels, Messrs. Vincent and Erickson are waaay past their prime -- and far more reactionary than expected.  Here is the gist of my argument with them:

Selected from:

Examining the role of religion in ‘the American Way’

by Fay Vincent

I grew up in New Haven, Connecticut, as did Norman Lear, though I never knew him until I became the chief executive officer of Columbia Pictures. I had admired from a distance his pioneering work as the creator of such remarkable television shows as “All in the Family.

When he called me sometime in the early 80s and asked to see me, I was eager to meet him. I found him totally charming. He was easy to listen to because he was funny and self-deprecating.

Yet he made clear he had a serious purpose in mind. He told me he and others among his friends had become concerned about what they believed was a serious challenge to “the American way.” He asked me to help confront the threat. His diagnosis of the problem was briefly stated.

He and his associates believed it was wrong and dangerous for the growing number of conservative right-wing evangelicals to use their religious views to affect their political positions and voting. He proposed to combat the threat by setting up a new foundation he called “People United for the American Way.”

His new institution would raise money to try to persuade voters that political actions should not be linked to religious beliefs. He argued it was wrong for evangelical leaders such as Jerry Farwell, Pat Robertson and others to preach to their growing audiences that their vibrant Christianity should be used to elect officials who would be in a position to translate this religious fervor into government policies. Such policies would adversely affect what Norman termed “the rest of us.”

His fervor was apparent, and he argued his case well. When he paused, I asked him if he was Jewish.

“Are you kidding me?” was his reply, so I reminded him of the intense criticism directed by Jews and others against the Catholic Church for its failure to speak out during the reign of the Third Reich, as Jews were being so viciously persecuted. The church was pilloried precisely because, I claimed, it failed to link its moral and religious convictions to political action to defend those being so horribly mistreated.

(skip)

Our meeting ended gracefully, and I never heard from him again. His new foundation soon became a powerful liberal force in our political life. I thought of Norman when attacks were made on Dr. Ben Carson for his view that a radical Muslim who supports Sharia law would not have his support for president of the United States. Criticism of him centers on the belief that the American way is not to consider the religion of a candidate.

(skip)

The American Way is not to ignore religious beliefs, and Lear was wrong to argue such beliefs should not inform political activity. In my view, religious beliefs that would likely result in corrosive political policies should be considered by voters.

Even in a freedom-loving nation, policies wrapped in religious garb must be exposed. Dr. Carson was correct to contend some religious views must be disqualifying.

Recently, Erickson posted a letter in support of the above.  Here is my reply:

Fay Vincent’s commentary (“Examining the role of religion in ‘the American Way’”) is hardly worthy of the word ‘treasure’ as Erickson claims.

I refer to Mr. Vincent’s hijacking of history to score cheap political points, and Mr. Erickson’s presumption that he -- and he alone -- is the true champion of the Jewish people, a champion more true and blue than any Jew:

“I asked him [Norman Lear] if he was Jewish.  ‘Are you kidding me’ was his reply, so I reminded him … of the Third Reich, as Jews were being so viciously persecuted” (Fay Vincent, Oct 7, 2015).

“Something I do not understand is why Jewish poeple [sic] in this country do not understand that! [sic] when most Christians do” (Stanford Erickson, Oct 2, 2015).

“I am a strong supporter of the Nation of Israel. I am just surprised that some Jewish people are not” (Stanford Erickson, Oct 9, 2015).

Why am I so hot under the collar over these postings?  I resent the implication that an honest difference of opinion means disloyalty towards Israel -- that Erickson can dismiss opposing viewpoints with such ugly derision. But first, a brief digression:

Lost in the pages of history is a lesser known author, philosopher and college professor living in Prague when the Nazi army occupied Czechoslovakia.  Few letters or literary works survive apart from anecdotal accounts handed down by word of mouth – until the trial of Adolph Eichmann revealed his fate.  According to trial testimony, Eichmann ordered the SS to stop a deportation train headed for Auschwitz and execute by firing squad a 'nettlesome agitator for human rights’ aboard that ill-fated train.  This 'nettlesome agitator’ was my great-grandfather.

The legacy of my great-grandfather does not belong to Messrs. Vincent or Erickson: It belongs to me.

Perhaps Messrs. Vincent and Erickson never experienced anti-Semitism: I have.

Perhaps Messrs. Vincent and Erickson find it incomprehensible and unthinkable for any Jew to defend the human rights of any Muslim: I disagree.

Messrs. Vincent and Erickson embrace the views of Ben Carson, a man who plays the Hitler card to advance his political agenda; a man who rationalizes the discriminatory treatment of Muslims – contrary to the letter and spirit of the Constitution; a man who trades on appeals to prejudice to discredit and disenfranchise an entire people. In short, Ben Carson represents the very opposite of what my great-grandfather lived and died for.  The antidote for fascism is not demagoguery, pandering and more fascism.

Fay Vincent hijacks history and opportunistically trivializes the Nazi era – as if the Holocaust were Brand X breakfast cereal repackaged for an ugly purpose.  Most especially, I resent Erickson’s self-righteously smug, sanctimonious, and repugnant attitude.

“I never heard from him [Norman Lear] again” (Fay Vincent).

 No wonder!