Web Log Archive, February 24th through March 8th, 2008

Saturday, March 8th, 2008                      Happy Birthday, Patrice!

"Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing!" is a phrase usually attributed to football coach Vince Lombardi, (1913-1970).
[A corollary might be, "It's not how you play the game, it's whether you win or lose!"]

Recently, there has been much talk about Hillary Clinton's shifting campaign strategy, now that she has lost her front-runner status and appears poised to lose the Democratic Presidential nomination to 'upstart' Barack Obama. People have written about her 'scorched earth' or 'My Lai' or 'kitchen sink' strategies to wrest the nomination from her rival.
Just a few days ago, the Clinton campaign was accused of darkening a photo of Barack Obama (right). The implication, of course, is that the Clinton campaign is 'playing' on whatever racism might be rampant among voters.
But it's not clear that whatever darkening might have been applied to that photo (a video frame, actually) was a deliberate attempt to exploit racism...or merely an artifact of the production of such an ad.
Factcheck.org describes itself as "...a nonpartisan, nonprofit, 'consumer advocate' for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics." A summary of its analysis of this controversy reads, in part: "...without further evidence to the contrary, we see no reason to conclude that this (the apparent darkening of Obama) is anything more than a standard attempt to make an attack ad appear sinister, rather than a special effort to exploit racial bias, as some Obama supporters are saying."

This morning, at Safeway, I saw a piece screaming out from the cover of The Globe. Does anyone doubt that if Obama's rivals can depict him as a 'closet homosexual', then his political future is toast? Would Hillary encourage such mischief...if it were seen as her last chance to prevail in this contest?
Incidentally, there have been whispers for a decade that Hillary is a lesbian (and with Bill for a husband, who could blame her?), though no woman has ever come forward claiming to have mixed it up with her. (But, for that matter, neither has any man come forward.)   ^_^

"A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on!" is a phrase usually attributed to Mark Twain, (1835-1910).

Friday, March 7th, 2008                          Happy Birthday, Dawn!

"A man who is convinced of the truth of his own religion is never tolerant.
 In fact, he is unable to be tolerant.
 At best, he feels pity for the adherents of other religions, but usually it does not stop there.
 First, he'll try to convert those who believe in other religions.
 Then, he'll move on to hatred if that attempt at conversion is unsuccessful.
 Such hatred then leads to persecution whenever the might of the majority is behind it."

Albert Einstein, from a letter to Rabbi Solomon Goldman

Thursday, March 6th, 2008                               'Pardon me for living, but the graveyard's full!'

"All persons not having a plot in the cemetery are forbidden to die here.
 Offenders will be severely punished."
Mayor Gerard Lalanne, Sarpourenx, France

"The grave's a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace."
Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)

Wednesday, March 5th, 2008

"Most people, as they grow older, refuse to accept that there might still be things of which they had never heard! They cease to hope and believe that there might be anything new! Body and mind, like a husband and wife, do not often die together."
  Peter Ouspensky, 1878-1947

If you want to lose your faith, make friends with a priest. I ask you to believe nothing that you cannot verify for yourself.

Every one should constantly sense and be cognizant of the inevitability of his own death as well as of the death of everyone upon whom his eyes or attention rests. Only such a sensation and such cognizance can destroy the egoism that has swallowed up his essence, along with the tendency to hate others which flows from self-absorption.

The study of the roles a man plays represents a necessary part of self-knowledge.
 To see these roles...to know one’s repertoire, is to know a great deal.

George Gurdjieff, 1866-1949

Tuesday, March 4th, 2008

"In the United States, wealth is highly concentrated in a relatively few hands. As of 2001, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 33.4% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 51%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 84%, leaving only 16% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers)."
Professor G. William Domhoff, University of California, Santa Cruz

I don't argue with those who say that, whoever our next President is, things won't change much. The same wealthy, powerful people will still be 'pulling the strings' (of their puppets) while hedging their bets by bankrolling the nominees of both parties. Any politician who tries to do anything to redistribute the wealth of our country will not long keep his seat. My only hope is that the next Administration will keep us poor slobs supplied with things to laugh about 

And on that subject: don't you agree that, of the three left standing, Hillary inspires the most amusing political cartoon caricatures? Obama runs a quite distant second and, frankly, I've yet to see a depiction of John McCain that looks a thing like him! In the one below, for example, he looks like no one so much as Ted Kennedy!

Monday, March 3rd, 2008                  "God does not play dice." Albert Einstein

From the early years of the twentieth century, the 'uncertainty principle' has been an axiom of physics. Even if you flunked freshman algebra, the principle is not hard to grasp in its most general form: all observations/measurements of the behaviors/properties of an object involve some interaction with that object and that very interaction/measurement affects the observed/measured behaviors/properties of that object. 
In the 'macro world' of our five senses, this principle may (usually) be ignored without consequence but, as one attempts to observe/measure very small things (like electrons and other sub-atomic particles), the prediction of our senses ('common sense') breaks down in the face of  'wrong' or bewildering results. Now...if one attempts to observe/measure the behavior of large numbers of small things, then common sense predictions once again become reliable. All objects observable by our senses are made up of large numbers of small things and, so, whatever uncertainty there might be in the 'micro world' is swamped by a statistical certainty and, hence, is not observable. But enough of this.

I've often mused about whether there is some analog to the uncertainty principle at the root of all human interaction. I've considered the matter along a continuum at which one end is a person alone ('interacting' only with himself) and at the other is that same person interacting with 60,000 others at, say, a sold-out professional football game. It's not easy to say when 'self-awareness' begins in a human being but we can all agree that, at least by age three, nearly all people have a well-developed sense of where they leave off and the rest of the world (with other people in it) begins. That is, they regularly distinguish between themselves and somebody else. 
Analyze, for a moment, your own behavior when watching a movie you've never seen before by yourself vs. watching that same movie with someone else...or with several (or a few hundred, in a theater) 'someone elses'. Clearly, it is impossible to watch any movie for the first time both by yourself and with others. I mean, once you've watched it, you've watched it and you can't go back and watch it again as if you hadn't watched it. Got it? And so, in this quite trivial example, there lies an uncertainty as to how your reaction to your first viewing of this movie was a function of whether or not (and with or without whom) you watched it with. 
What started my ruminations on this subject was not so much taste (of which 'there's no accounting for') in movies...or songs but, rather, the observations of my own behavior and the behavior of others in groups; groups like families, bands, students in a classroom and employees in  a company. I've come to the less-than-startling conclusion that the larger the group, the more confident one can be that one's own inclusion (or behavior) within the group does not substantively affect the behaviors/properties that one observes. In simpler terms now: we can safely assume that our attendance or non-attendance at that pro football game will have no effect upon either the outcome of the game or the comportment of the crowd. One might as well be a 'fly on the wall'...a well-worn saying that people use in various contexts to describe a situation in which one's presence both goes unnoticed and is not a factor in what transpires.
Far more interesting are human interactions in groups of more than one but (much) fewer than several thousand. For it is in a small group (like a married couple) that the presence or absence (as well as the behavior) of a given individual is likely to have a strong effect on 'outcomes'.
One of my bosses ('Richard'), many years ago in a huge petroleum company, had a personality that, simply speaking, annoyed people. I am certain that he never wanted to annoy anyone! Nothing, in fact, was more important to him than that he be liked! Yet everywhere he went, he found himself squabbling with people. It was the darndest thing! One afternoon, as he returned from a visit to Corporate headquarters in The City, he sat himself down in my office and commenced to ruefully describe a brief encounter he had just had with a shopkeeper (of antiques, or some such). I wasn't surprised to hear that the encounter ended badly...to hear that he left the shop to the sound of shouted insults from the keeper (whom he had only just met)! Richard ended his narrative with a phrase that has stayed with me all these years.
He said, 'Sometimes I think it's me!'

To be continued. 

Sunday, March 2nd, 2008

"The evidence is not completely in as to the communicability of the disease. But while much has been said that is reassuring, the moment has not yet come when men and women of science are unanimously agreed that AIDS cannot be casually communicated. 
Everyone detected with AIDS should be tattooed in the upper forearm, to protect common-needle users, and on the buttocks, to prevent the victimization of other homosexuals."

William F. Buckley, (1925-2008), in an Op-Ed piece for the New York Times, March 18th, 1986

Saturday, March 1st, 2008                                 Happy Birthday, Mr. Weir!

All that glitters: "Before I knew it, I was on the floor and under a pile of people. It's not worth it."
Anabel DeJesus, New York City

Barack Obama is gonna start losing support among Latin scholars if he doesn't soon learn that 'criteria' is a plural noun! And he's gotta practice pronouncing Massachusetts! It's NOT 'Massatuchets' (fer the luv uv Jesus)!

Hillary Clinton is gonna start losing support among English grammar snobs if she doesn't soon knock it off with 'ya know'! Work on it!

Oops! Toilets on Indian trains usually have holes that open directly onto the tracks. "She was on the  track for almost two hours. We do not expect such children to survive." 
Dr. Gautam Jain

Friday, February 29th, 2008

As an invertebrate (^_^) reader of obituaries (who also prides himself on keeping current with pop literature), it was fitting that I should commence to read Jessica Mitford's 1963 muckraking classic: The American Way of Death. [And besides: I found a free copy at our local recycling center.]
Described by one reviewer as a book that chronicles, "in exhaustive detail, the concerted efforts of American funeral providers to wring as much money as possible out of the bereaved," the book feels like it was written forty-five years ago if for no other reason than that inflation over these many years has taken the 'gasp' factor out of Ms. Mitford's references to, say, a '$10 dinner'...as if that were an extravagance! By the time she herself died (in 1996), $10 would hardly, any longer, get someone through a McDonald's drive-in line. [Her mention of a 'typical new home' for $15,000 is simply depressing.]
Yet, for all its 'anachronicities', the book remains a brisk and fun read! 

Those of us who do faithfully read the Irish Sports Pages will often see phrases such as, 'In lieu of flowers, the family requests donation to the ASPCA (or to some other do-gooder organization likely favored by the deceased).' It turns out that too many flowers arriving at the funeral home or at the home of the decedent create issues of clutter for the funeral director and challenges of disposal for the family. Of what I was not aware is that the American floral industry has long and vigorously lobbied newspapers (with threats of lost advertising revenue, when necessary) and funeral homes to reject such 'please omit' requests in all paid obituaries and when settling on service arrangements! You see, a sizeable fraction of floral sales involve obsequies. In response to such pressures, many newspapers do make it their policy to refuse to print 'no flowers' requests! Makes sense, huh?  The authoress, by way of making her point, quotes from a full-page advertisement in a funeral industry trade publication sponsored (in the early '60's) by the Florists' Telegraph Delivery (FTD) Association: 

PLEASE OMIT . . . WHAT?

What will they want to omit next? Ministers? Music? All but the plainest caskets? When does a funeral service stop comforting the bereaved---and become merely the mechanical fulfillment of an obligation? Once you start subtracting warmth and human feeling, where do you end---and what do you have left?
Think it over.
And the next time a client asks you about "Please Omit," remember that you and your florist friends serve the bereaved best by understanding their needs better, perhaps, than they may do themselves. 
Your experience, your common sense and any good psychologist will tell you that most grieving people should have the extra warmth and comfort of living flowers. At an emotional moment, 'please omit' may seem like a simple solution to a torturing problem. It does not and cannot, however, serve the memory through the years. 
That's why you're so right to recommend sympathy flowers and a full funeral service. They pay tribute to the life accomplishments of the deceased, and bring comfort to the bereaved when they need it most. 

Thursday, February 28th, 2008

On January 17th of this year, the New York Times published a story about a story in the New England Journal of Medicine alleging that:

"The makers of antidepressants like Prozac and Paxil never published the results of about a third of the drug trials that they conducted to win government approval, misleading doctors and consumers about the drugs’ true effectiveness." 

The NYT article is worth reading (in spite of the fact that it was accompanied by an obtusely-worded 'Correction' inserted some days later by the editors of The Times). In summary, the article makes the not-surprising point that researchers working for a company that has already invested millions of dollars in a product are more likely to share (i.e., publish) studies which cast that product in a favorable light than they are to publish studies which cast that same product in an unfavorable light.
I mean: duh!
Curiously, even among the studies that the companies' researchers did choose for publication, the efficacy of Prozac/Paxil compared to placebos was not overwhelming: it was only about 60% for the drugs vs. about 40% for the placebos!
Statistically significant? Probably. Conclusive? Hardly! 
But once these drugs were given FDA approval, put on the market and plugged into the American advertising machine, they soared in popularity! Once again: no surprise here, for just as people are eager to believe flattering comments made about them, so are people likely to be taken in by advertising that appeals to their hopes and wishes. Pimply-faced teenagers are eager to try 'miracle acne cures'. Overweight individuals are eager to embrace extravagant, but baseless, claims advanced by purveyors of 'fat-buster' pills and seaweed diets. Balding men have long been fair game for hair growth tonics. People with issues of low energy and sluggish digestion are easy marks for hucksters selling herbal laxatives and coffee enemas. [Poor people are more likely than rich people to play the Lottery (though one's chances of winning may only be slightly enhanced by playing).] 
And so it is with people who are sad, anxious and dissatisfied. Why wouldn't they choose to believe that taking a drug (even for the rest of their lives) will give them the peace of mind that has eluded them? A prescription from a licensed physician becomes their imprimatur. Of course this drug will help!
I've been heartened in recent months to hear a fresh dialogue emerge on the very subject of sadness. Take, for example, one Eric G. Wilson, the author of a book entitled Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy. Describing himself as congenitally sad, he goes on to hypothesize that an evolutionary 'purpose' may be found in sadness and depression. I hear other spokespersons rail against 'pathologizing sadness'...the point being that being sad is an integral part of being human...of being real!

Anyway...at least one disinterested research group has re-analyzed the available data, incorporating the heretofore excluded (i.e., unpublished) studies, and come to some stark and troubling conclusions which have now been published in a journal by The Public Library of Science.

Wednesday, February 27th, 2008

Tuesday, February 26th, 2008

There is no compelling evidence that taking vitamins and/or mineral supplements improves the physical health of anyone who eats a 'reasonable' quantity and variety of foods. But this absence of data has not prevented the manufacturers and marketers of  'health supplements' from thriving in a multi-billion dollar annual market (in the United States alone). The 'trick' is telling people what they already  want to believe: that one's chances of  living a longer and more vigorous life can be improved simply by ingesting certain nutritional concentrates. Usually (but not always), the consumers of these 'life-enhancing' products do no harm to themselves or to others. They are merely making 'expensive urine' and, after all, one can credibly argue that if someone feels better taking certain pills, then some cost is justified. I, myself (though mindful of the lack of any rational motive to do so), do take one B-complex tablet and as much as 750 mg of Vitamin C daily.  

Monday, February 25th, 2008

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
  And the day is dark and dreary.

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
  And the days are dark and dreary.

Be still, sad heart, and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
  Some days must be dark and dreary.

Sunday, February 24th, 2008

He's baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!

"If the Democrats can't landslide the Republicans this year, they ought to just wrap up, close down, emerge in a different form. You think the American people are going to vote for a pro-war John McCain who almost gives an indication that he's the candidate of perpetual war, perpetual intervention overseas?  You think they're going to vote for a Republican like McCain, who allies himself with the criminal, recidivistic regime of George Bush and Dick Cheney, the most multipliable impeachable presidency in American history?"

Ralph Nader 

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