Reason and Imagine

When the Brain Dies, That's It.

2008-06-19T21:59:00.000-07:00

If you are in the vast majority of the human race, you believe that death is not the end of consciousness, but the beginning of something called the afterlife. The question of exactly why you believe this never seems to come up, but let’s consider it now.

An interesting debate took place recently on this subject. Skeptic Magazine’s publisher, Dr. Michael Shermer, and New Age guru Deepak Chopra debated the case for an afterlife. It went about as you would expect. Shermer gave reasons for his views and Chopra spouted vague, poetical, nebulous nonsense. But read the full exchange at this link and draw your own conclusions. (I’m not sure how long they leave items up on their web site, but it should be archived under Debates, in the Reading Room section.)

http://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/debates/afterlife.html

There is no reason to believe in an afterlife. That is, no evidence supports such a belief. Of the billions of people who have died, none have ever come back to verify the existence of another plane of life. Mediums and psychics who claim to talk to the dead have never stood up to a rigorous investigation of their claims, from the time of Houdini onward. Generally one must be “in sympathy” or nothing happens. In other words, start out as a confirmed believer, or earnestly wanting to believe, and the psychic show will be much more impressive. It is similar to the situation with religion in general. For best results, start out at the beginning believing it all.

Ironically, huge numbers of people in the United States mix Christian religious belief with a belief in psychic mediums, although the former specifically forbids the latter. The Bible does not hold with “soothsayers,” not to mention ghosts, or any number of other paranormal scenarios with which 21st century Americans are obsessed.

Some claim the legendary Near Death Experience (NDE) as proof of an afterlife. We have all heard the stories of people in dire medical emergencies who say they “floated out of their bodies” and looked down at themselves on the operating table. Some could even identify the brand of the cigarette pack in the surgeon’s shirt pocket. Whatever “direct hits” are offered as proof to back up an NDE (and most are very vague on details) there is every reason to think that the phenomenon is a mix of false memories and stress on the brain. These people are near death, after all. They are not in the clear, crisp consciousness of ordinary daily life. Most significantly, NDEs have been replicated in healthy subjects in the lab by applying electromagnetic stimulation to certain parts of the brain. More details of this are to be found in Michael Shermer’s piece in the debate linked above, but to reiterate, NDE phenomena are not proof of an afterlife, or of anything other than stress on the brain.

Apart from these, some other points are mentioned by Deepak Chopra as evidence for an afterlife, which you can read about in the debate. None of his other points are any more convincing than NDEs and psychics. And indeed the vast majority of believers in the afterlife do not rely on such things to support their belief. So, why do we believe that we live on, post funeral?

As with most of life, it goes into the realm of psychology. We believe in the afterlife because we want to, and we want to because our ego would not have it any other way. The part of the mind called the ego is set up such that it cannot imagine or contend with there being a time when it is not present. The ego frantically rejects the idea that it will cease to be at some point. It is not set up to process such a reality. For the healthy human ego, death “does not compute.” We may understand intellectually that the case for an afterlife is shaky to the point of nonexistent, but we feel that there has to be something else. We feel that we will go on beyond death.

The reality is that every part of the mind, personality and consciousness, are contained within the gray matter of the brain. Head injuries and brain surgeries often result in an entirely different person waking up. Change the brain and you alter everything, because that is where every part of the human pattern of existence is housed. There is no separating the mind and body. We are our brains, and our brains do not survive death.

Nullity, or lack of space, time and consciousness, is unfathomable to us. People will say they can’t imagine not existing. And yet we experience it every night in the hours of sleep before dreams get underway. We lose all track of time and don’t know if we’ve been “out” for a few minutes or hours. The slightest bump on the head will take consciousness away, yet we can’t imagine that death would have the same effect.

This is not a sad thing to contemplate. Who would seriously want consciousness forever? An ego-maniac, maybe? Most descriptions of death speak of eternal rest, sleeping in the arms of the Lord, resting in peace. Vigorous pursuits seem to be for the land of the living. This afterlife we all belief in is most often described as an endless siesta in the sky.

People most often seem to see the afterlife as sleep, without consciousness of any kind. Nothing bad, nothing good – it is nothing at all. After death there is no existence, save for the memories of us carried by the living.

Muslims Against Sharia (?)

2008-06-17T15:14:00.000-07:00

One of the responses to my Fight The Smears post yesterday came from an organization called Muslims Against Sharia, and they made an interesting point. For me the most interesting part of their response was just learning that such a group exists. That would be http://muslimsagainstsharia.blogspot.com/

They have some mysterious aspects, but claim to be moderate, non-fanatical Muslims. They objected to the phrase on Obama’s new web site (http://www.fightthesmears.com/) which says. “SMEAR: Obama is a Muslim.” Their point is that it is an insult to all Muslims to describe calling someone a Muslim as a “smear.” They say, imagine a web site that said “SMEAR: John Doe is a Jew,” or a Christian or whatever. At first glance it would seem they have some justification in taking offense, but it’s not as simple as that.

Part of the smearing of Obama now underway in the US is the claim that he is secretly a Muslim, even as he publicly claims otherwise. Countless insidious avenues of thought are opened by this charge, which is why Obama’s enemies peddle it. In short, they are alleging that Barack Obama is in league with Muslim terrorists, that he is a secret Al Qaeda operative. That is a smear, and the right wingers pushing this lie have no problem with the fact that their evidence is either non-existent or as inconclusive as a blurry UFO photograph. Their only goal is to diminish the standing of Obama. Truth be damned. In my post yesterday I said that if one percent of the charges against Obama had any trace of truth, the FBI would be all over him and he would be thrown out of the US Senate. The simple, hard-to-ignore fact that the FBI is not concerned about Obama’s loyalty may be the best response to conspiracy theorists and smear-mongers.

If the web site had phrased the statement to say “SMEAR: Obama is a Secret Muslim.” it might have been a better communication. As it stands there is really no insult to Muslims here. To anyone who follows politics in the United States it should be very clear that the Obama campaign was responding to the false portrayal of him as a Muslim.

The feedback comments posted by readers on the Muslims Against Sharia site seem to be in line with what I have written here. A writer named Ben Main said, “It is a smear, not because there is anything wrong with being a Muslim...there isn't, but because it is a falsehood that is being used to make voters (intolerant voters) think negatively of a candidate.”

“BC” wrote in to say, “The same people who are insisting that Barack Obama is a Muslim are smearing Muslims as the source of evil in the world today. (Obama’s) page isn't offensive at all. What is offensive is the fact that "Muslims against Sharia" would manufacture this outrage rather than addressing real smears. Many anti-Muslim smears can be found in the comments of the "Atlas Shrugs" blog. Why would you blithely ignore these truly hateful attacks on your faith to draw attention to what is at worst Obama's assumption people understand the claims that he is a Muslim is part of a vicious campaign against him AND against Muslims?”

This new organization Muslims Against Sharia has some odd angles to it. Check out the review at www.freethinker.co.uk/2007/09/24/non-muslims-against-sharia/ and http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/ukcorrespondents/holysmoke/jan08/reformislam.htm A pretty good case is outlined therein for the MAS being merely a phony front group for some right wing American interests! The participation of the Atlas Shrugs blogger being right up there as Exhibit A. Indeed, that peace sign in the MAS logo smacks at least slightly of something the righties would come up with. Likewise, getting so bent out of shape about the Obama web site is puzzling.

Either they are phonies or they are courageously taking a stand against the terrorists dwelling among their own people. Surely Muslims who speak out against fundamentalist Islamic terrorism would face greater danger than would someone on the outside. The mysterious MAS site has extensive links to other groups they describe as moderate, anti-fascist Muslims, as well as a long list of groups who they say are merely claiming to be moderates, but are in fact fascistic. (That is, Islamo-fascistic, to use Bush’s term. Not the American, Plutocratic, corporate version of fascism.) The political world is a box of black mirrors especially at the international level, so who knows? Whether the MAS is for real or not, it is encouraging to see that there are some signs of progressive non-theocratic thought being expressed by Muslims on the internet these days.

Even among the hard-core jihadis there is division, apparently. Increasingly voices are being heard from that sector criticizing bin Laden. Leading the list would be Saudi cleric Salman al Oudah, whose sermons against the United States influenced bin Laden in the 1990’s. Sayyid Imam al Sharif, another high ranking cleric in fundamentalist Islam, and Norman Benotman, a one time leader of jihadist fighters in Libya, have spoken out against bin Laden’s methods. This kind of thing seems unthinkable in the jihadi world, but it does seem to be happening. Most significantly they are upset about the Al Qaeda campaign against innocent civilian targets, and the fact that so many of the victims turn out to be Muslims. Al Qaeda in Iraq has been slaughtering Muslims in vast numbers, with the effect that Sunnis in Iraq have turned against the terrorist outfit in droves.

If John McCain is reading, there are two main camps in the Islamic world, the Sunnis and the Shia. They often do not get along. Learn more at Wikipedia.org.

Fight The Smears

2008-06-16T20:42:00.000-07:00

FightTheSmears.com is a new and very welcome effort from the Obama campaign to respond to the onslaught of “swiftboater” lies, slanders, and gross bearing of false witness that has gone on against this candidate since he first emerged from the Democratic pack. It promises to be a growing, on-going project, and it asks that you forward attack emails and otherwise inform the campaign about unfair attacks that are launched against Obama as you learn of them. That email address is watchdog@barackobama.com.

If you ever read political message boards you may be aware of one of the current threats against the campaign. According to rumor (which was spread by Rush Limbaugh among others) there is a video tape that will be released “in August” which shows Michelle Obama hurling racial slurs at the pulpit of Trinity United Church of Christ. The right wing blogs are in a lather of anticipation, waiting for this doomsday video to be launched on the internet later this summer. But there is one small problem with the tape. It lacks existence.

There is no such tape. So says the Obama campaign, in the lead-off item on the new web site, www.FightTheSmears.com. Michelle never spoke from the pulpit at Trinity and never used the racial slurs that are claimed. One would have to assume the campaign would know about something like that if it was true, and why would they deny it if it was indeed a video that was coming out? On the other hand, there is plenty of reason for ethically-challenged Republicans to claim that such a tape exists, and to claim it now. They don’t care that no such tape will be released. They just want to plant an image in the public mind of Michelle Obama ranting racial insults. It doesn’t matter that there is no such tape, and the incident never happened.

In saying that it will be released, months from now, and in saying over and over how incendiary it is, they plant the idea that Michelle is anti-white, which is all they wanted. By August nobody will be talking about the “tape” anymore, they will have moved on to other hooey. But the impression made by these lies will remain with some people.

Fight The Smears is a listing of familiar falsehoods about Barack Obama. The whole Muslim myth is there, and is shown to be without evidence. Barack’s Birth Certificate is displayed on the site, as is video footage of him Pledging Allegiance to the Flag. One very interesting smear against him is the tactic of lifting passages out of context from his book, changing words here and there, or even making up entire quotations to make him look bad. These Republicans realize that many people will not have read the book, and are unlikely to go plowing through it looking for the quotes mentioned. Some people will take the smear-peddlers at their word, and will swallow the misquoted material hook line and sinker.

This raises questions about the sheer cynicism involved in this kind of fraudulent campaigning. Like, why would people want to support an ideology that can’t win clean? Why would you want to support a cause that insults your intelligence to this extent? Why would you ever trust this “swiftboater” mentality, especially after so much of what they say has been shot down on the web site? And this is not the only web site shooting them down. Snopes.com would be another. It is the ultimate urban legend museum on-line. They have an extensive file of the junk spread about Sen. Obama. Check out http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/obama.asp

Many of the smears about this candidate are allegations that he is in league with terrorists. The myths that he is a Muslim play off of this. They are trying to push the notion that Obama is not merely a bad candidate - he is an actual enemy combatant against the United States! The dark insinuation is that he is an agent of Al Qaeda. People believe this. Apparently they never stop to consider that if one percent of the stuff that is alleged about Barack Obama was true, the FBI would be all over him and he would be booted from the US Senate, not to mention the presidential campaign. But of course, the FBI is not after him. The only ones making these claims against Obama are ideologues of the far right, like Limbaugh and some lesser known names mentioned on the Fight the Smears site.

It’s the familiar Karl Rove, Lee Atwater brand of campaigning, and if you can’t win on the issues it may be all that’s left. There is considerable risk in it, though, because if you can’t shore up your wall of garbage with some facts, there is a strong chance of it collapsing on you.

America Reads Formulaic Fiction Or None At All

2008-06-09T20:23:00.000-07:00

A front page item in today's (June 9th, 2008) Boston Globe backs up a lot of what I had to say in my blog on May 10th. Americans are reading less, and the dwindling, aging few who do crack a book twice a year insist on the same hoary old formula they have been reading for thirty years.

Globe staff writer David Mehegan opens by saying, "In an age when reading for pleasure is declining, book publishers are increasingly counting on their biggest moneymaking writers to crank out books at a rate of at least one a year, right on schedule, and sometimes faster than that."

Crank out that formula, in other words. This becomes clear later in the article.

The book industry in this country is in trouble to a cataclysmic fare-thee-well. Oh, computer manuals and true-crime pot-boilers are doing fine. More books than ever are printed every year, but they are science texts, or some variety of non-fiction. Hardly a criminal rampage can take place in America that is not immortalized (exploited) as a book or movie. And we will read voraciously about the lives of powerful people, politicians and billionaires. The tonnage of books on the life of Hillary Clinton would founder an aircraft carrier. Dubious "self help" tomes and paranormalist hooey round out the intellectual smorgasbord of your fellow citizens. By contrast, literary fiction is dead on arrival, it being merely skillful writing that tries to explore the actual drives of human behavior that make up this world we're in.

The Globe article, Writers Feel the Heat of Publishers' Presses, primarily deals with the reality that big conglomerate publishers want more and more "blockbusters" from their most commercial writers, preferably a book a year. David Mehegan says,

"In the various suspense genres - serial killers, international conspiracy, romance suspense, and traditional detective fiction - the public's memory can be short."

It was interesting to see confirmation of something I have long suspected. Serial killers are now a fully fledged entertainment category in the United States. They comprise a multi-billion dollar industry, including all the non-fiction books and documentaries along with the fiction, movies, and television. The demand for them is obsessive. We positively cannot get enough serial killers in the USA. They rank right up there with war in terms of popularity as an entertainment form.

If you can rehash the deranged mentality of a thrill killer on paper, or if you can deliver the five hundred-thousandth treatment of a hard-boiled cop, or a sexy-but-hard-as-nails lady executive, or a square-jawed square-brained military super-hero, or some other cliche' that threatens no surprises at all, you may have promise in the sphere of contemporary American Letters. As for me, I stand by what I wrote on May 10th --

The ultimate blame for the state of literary life in America lies with the people themselves. They will not read books, and many cannot read above kindergarten level. The average adult American reads at the fifth grade level. Mostly we chase pixels on a screen. That is the extent of intellectual and emotional life for the vast majority of us. The small minority who will read a couple of books a year insist on the same hoary old formula-caked authors they have been reading for decades, or at least the same old formula. There are more snow leopards in the world than adventurous readers.

Where does this leave me? Forget about that, where does it leave the truly great new writers coming of age in this environment? Where does it leave you, and the literary culture of this country? We don't have a literary culture in this country any more, and it shows.

Great Filter or Great Pumpkin? Which is More Likely?

2008-06-07T13:01:00.000-07:00

The Phoenix Lander currently scratching away at the frozen surface of Mars will not conclusively answer the question of whether life ever existed there. If it digs up a scoop full of squirming bugs it will not be capable of telling that's what they are. But it can say whether organic chemicals are present, and finding those would enormously increase the odds for life existing off the Earth. The Phoenix mission of analyzing Martian soil will be on-going this summer.

This latest visit to Mars led to an interesting theory being put forth by Nick Bostrum, Director of the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University. It was just echoed by Alan M. MacRobert of Sky & Telescope Magazine. The idea is that of the Great Filter.

It's an explanation for why we don't see any evidence for technically advanced extraterrestrial life, even though most scientists think life exists elsewhere in the universe. One would think at least some ETs would have evolved to the point where common courtesy would call for introductions to be made. Other solar systems formed by the billions, many eons before we came along. Assuming life developed on those countless planets, why have none of them made their presence known? Bostrum imagines that something must prevent life from becoming star travelers. If not, surely some intergalactic traffic would have arrived at our fruit stand by now.

Exactly what is filtering out all the space-faring alien races he doesn't say. It could be any number of things. But something, or plural things, are preventing alien life from getting around or even sending signals. He mentions the notion that with technical advance comes societal stresses that could lead the alien races to implode. Bostrum has the dark idea that the Great Filter may be waiting in our future, to filter us out. Certainly mankind's future is not assured, and any number of events could wipe us out, including catastrophic war. Either life itself is rare (and lack of life is the Filter, which we have gotten through) or life is common in space but with some kind of fatal flaw built-in, that prevents it from traveling abroad. Bostrum even says finding microbes on Mars would be bad news for mankind, as it would indicate that primitive life is common, and thus the Great Filter cannot be a lack of emerging life, but something else that we haven't survived yet.

This theory of the Great Filter has some weaknesses. The main problem is assuming too much about alien life. Few subjects call for more of an open mind than that one. Alien life could be almost anything. What constraints should we ascribe to an ancient alien race?

Bostrum assumes that alien life, billions of years in advance of us, would surely have sought us out by now. Why would he make such a wild, speculative leap? Maybe ETs could not care less about us and our "desirable" planet.

Bostrum assumes that our telescopes would have spotted alien traffic moving through the cosmos by now. But we can only barely make out the extra-solar planets themselves. As far as we can see, there might be vast armadas of ET spacecraft zipping around out there. Or maybe they don't travel that often. Or maybe they teleport wherever they go. Bostrum admits that our monitoring of radio frequencies, as in the SETI Project, is only in its infancy. So how can he assume we would certainly have proof of ET but for the presence of a Great Filter, nipping them all in the bud?

For that matter we cannot assume that UFOs are never real, we can only say that there is no good reason and no good evidence to think they are real. Eyewitness testimony, despite its excellent track record on getting people hanged, is the weakest evidence around; yes, even if it comes from a certified airline pilot who was definitely sober. Radar is far from foolproof, too. And there are glaring logic gaps in the world of the UFO buff. Governments, for example, would almost certainly know if the UFOs were real, and contrary to what the buff's believe, governments would have no reason to conceal the fact. There is no motive for a government cover-up of UFOs, not to mention the impossibility of multiple nations and militaries successfully keeping something like that a secret. Beyond that, UFOs as reported have a man-made feel about them. Metallic space ships with port holes and blinking lights are too human-like to be the work of superhuman aliens. And the aliens themselves are always described as humanoid, or human-shaped, when that shape evolved due to conditions on Earth, and would be highly unlikely elsewhere.

The vast distances of outer space defy description outside of math formulas, and even those would be kind of long. You can't say that one grain of sand on one side of the Super Dome and another grain of sand on the other side of the Super Dome can represent distances between extra-solar bodies, because the Super Dome isn't big enough for that. Neither is Louisiana, or planet Earth itself. Intergalactic distances are mind-bending. The average person cannot get a handle on how far away other galaxies are.

This reality, among others, weakens the theory that we would be aware of intelligent aliens in space. It is also one of many factors that skewers the notion of UFOs.

Our Moment in History

2008-06-03T19:44:00.000-07:00

I never intended to devote so much of this blog to politics, but these are times of great potential. Senator Obama has just sealed the Democratic nomination and there is a real chance now to reverse the plutocratic trends that have been constricting our society for decades. In fact, that psychological barrier has been breached now whether Obama wins the election or not. His campaign has achieved that much without taking office. There will be no more tolerance of Bush League abuse and neglect of the average citizens for purposes of cuddling corporate fat cats. This is repudiation of the neo-conservatives and it is going to stick.

As for the Iraq war, Obama pledges to be as careful in getting us out as Bush and Bushies were careless in getting us in. There would be a phased withdrawl from Iraq under Obama, no "cut and run" chaos. But the Iraqi government is going to have to step up and take over running that country. We are not going to referee a civil war in Iraq indefinitely. Beyond that, Obama can be trusted not to put us into new wars for the hell of it, or to offer corporate America a gusher of profiteering. War would again become a last resort under President Obama.

In domestic matters the non-millionaires of the United States would have a voice for the first time in eight years. Actually it has been longer than eight years if you include the time that Bill Clinton was shut down due to the impeachment circus and the Republican Congress of his second term. There will be a middle class tax cut under Obama, made possible by raising taxes on those earning over a quarter million a year. "Trickle Down" has failed, so let's try "Bubble Up." Let's have some relief for the vast numbers of people in America. As much as it will break the heart of Rush Limbaugh, let's have it.

Obama wants to regain the edge in science that made this country great in the first place. It was not religious fundamentalism that built the American economy, it was scientific excellence, and much of that research and development was underwritten by the federal government. NASA science alone has given mankind the micro-chip. (It is always hilarious to read internet message board writers whining about what a waste of money NASA is, when the computer they are typing their junk on would not have existed without NASA science.) Expect a flowering of scientific breakthroughs in the Obama years.

Expect a more intelligent and humane atmosphere overall, from the top down. It is hard to chart the full value of that. How do you put a dollar value on the massive rebirth of idealism?

What you can do is remember always that if Obama is elected president, the mentality that gave you the neo-con world will stop at nothing to derail him. More baloney, more hooey, more psychological games will be shovelled up on the American people than ever before in our history. Barack Obama did not take lobbyist money to run for president. He was financed by hundreds of thousands of small donations from regular citizens. He owes the fat cats exactly nothing, and they will be doing whatever they possibly can to destroy him. More than any other recent president, Obama will need the strength of the people backing him up.

Let's elect him, and let's keep him strong in the face of those who would do us wrong.

Obama Leads on Substance, Real Issues

2008-06-02T20:39:00.000-07:00

In a May 29th Pew study, Barack Obama is shown holding a wide lead over John McCain on the most crucial issues voters will be considering this fall. Most importantly, Obama is preferred to McCain by almost twenty percentage points on general handling of the economy. By similar margins of 17% and 18% Obama leads McCain on the issues of energy policy and healthcare. Somehow McCain clings to a statistically insignificant 3% lead over Obama on the subject of Iraq, but that has melted down from 12% just since April. And voters in the polls are consistently saying that Iraq is not going to be the big issue this year - the economy will be. John McCain has famously stated that he “does not know much about the economy.”

Meanwhile the Democratic primary season may be drawing to a close just in time to save Hillary Clinton from coming completely unglued. She is starting to show signs of psychological imbalance that ought to prevent her from ever being president. The latest episode being her stated intention to wrest super-delegates away who have already pledged to Obama. Her manic sense of entitlement to the presidency is now fully scary. We should have guessed we were in trouble with this one when she announced in 1992 that she and Bill would be having a “co-presidency.” In any case, she is not helping the Democratic cause as she hammers away at the person who will certainly be the nominee.

In this blog it has been said more than once that there is only one problem for Barack Obama, and that is the Jeremiah Wright deal. Obama is being unfairly blasted for offensive things that somebody else said. The Wright episode serves as a vent for all racist feelings in the United States. It goes without saying that issues, ideas, honor and integrity all go out the window as this mindless subject is rehashed again and again.

The “Swiftboating” process is well underway. Those who can’t beat Obama on the issues are hoping that a hefty serving of baloney will carry the day for them in the end.

If you read internet message boards and listen to talk radio you find yourself wondering – What are they not trying to pin on Barack Obama? He is a Muslim they say (still) and he is a “secret sleeper agent” for the Muslims. He attended twenty years of ranting, raling anti-American sermons at Trinity United Church of Christ (which is not a Muslim mosque, but let’s not split hairs here) and every sermon there was as vitriolic as those three snippets we saw on video tape. Obama is also a Godless Communist and a New World Order Anti-Christ. Worst of all, he’s black, and he will consign the country to black supremacists if elected.

That’s some of the milder stuff. It gets paranoid from there.

The 75,000 (SEVENTY FIVE THOUSAND) mostly white people who attended a campaign rally for Barack Obama in Oregon recently were not concerned that he is black. They don’t blame him for statements made by other people. And if he was “buddies with terrorists,” as one message board writer recently accused, the FBI would be after him and he would not be in the United States Senate.

Obama has the best policies of any candidate in this race. In terms of ideas on the issues, there really is no contest.

Follow The Path Of Marx! (Groucho Especially, But Harpo Too)

2008-06-01T20:02:00.000-07:00

Young people need to watch Marx Brothers movies. It's like Vitamin C, or Zinc. There is a minimum requirement of this for proper health.

As with the case of the Beatles, the Marx Brothers product was originality at the outer end of the spectrum. The Marx Brothers, in their best moments, transcended ordinary reality. They became like demi-gods of comedy, standing apart in space and time. These things must be experienced. Like with the Beatles, there is enough top quality material from the Marx Brothers that an altered state of mind opens up. Some new zone of the brain switches on, and you're not entirely in this world any more.

Unfortunately for the young people who would benefit most from this experience, there is a certain amount of work to do to get to the good stuff. A certain amount of patience is required, because this magic comes to you from the distant past. The first Marx Brothers movie came out in 1929! Next year will be the 80th anniversary of The Cocoanuts. These are all extremely old movies, and while the comedy may be timeless, the film stock is not. The sound track will crackle and sputter at times. (Sound in movies was brand new!) Some scenes will have a sharper focus than others. My favorite Marx Brothers movie, Animal Crackers, rates about a seven out of ten in terms of the quality of the best print available. It is a testament to how funny this thing is that I am willing to screen it for friends and otherwise watch it multiple times when it has the condition problems it does. But the barrage of chaotic, surreal comedy in Animal Crackers becomes amazing if you can get through the grainy old film that contains it.

Think of it as going back in time. Old movies are the closest thing we have to time travel. You are literally looking at people from another era. A little kid in the movie may have died of old age by now. Your grandparents may have seen the movie on their first date. Styles and standards are radically different in our day and age. That quality alone makes the old black and white movies interesting, some more than others. But when you find a creative genius from a past generation, that can be intriguing.

It would be good if the best clips of the Marx Brothers could be assembled in one package. That would be a cosmic experience, much easier to get young people to watch. As it stands there is not just the problem with the grainy old black and white film and the fuzz on the sound track. The Marx Brothers movies also suffer from some 1930s film-making traits that have not stood the test of time.

At some point in every one of these movies somebody bursts into song. Usually it is a young couple, and usually the song they sing is purest cheese. In Animal Crackers the singing bit is not so bad because the lyrics to the song are amusing and the girl they found for the love interest is funny in her own right. On most other Marx outings the song passages are dated as hell, and it is hard to imagine a modern teenager sitting through it. It's the same with a lot of the other scenes where the brothers aren't on the screen. Some of this footage is amusing, but a lot of it just doesn't make it. This is a real shame when you consider it is a barrier keeping modern youth from experiencing these cosmic comics.

The Marx Brothers were like cartoons come to life. Along with the fact that they looked preposterous, their act offered cerebral wit (from Groucho) in a weird mix with silly, slapstick comedy and puns from Harpo and Chico. Nobody has attained this style since, though you can see elements of the Marx Brothers screwball comedy in Will Farrell and any number of modern comedians. The Airplane series had a Marx Brothers feel, as did Mel Brooks' films. Groucho's insult humor inspired Don Rickles and countless others.

The Marx Brothers made some lame movies along with their classics. The problem was they went on too long in their careers, and lost their edge. Their later movies were not so good. Tragically, these are the films that have crystal clear prints, so they are all that some people know of the Marx Brothers.

At least one Marx Brothers web site exists, and several tribute pages are to be found elsewhere on the web. You can find biographies of the Brothers there, which make for fascinating reading. (They emerged from abject poverty.) Turner Classic Movies can be counted on to show the films, uninterrupted except by singing. The legacy of the Brothers is being archived, but is it being experienced as widely as it should, especially with young people? Oddly enough, the great hope may be YouTube.com, as it is a vault of short clips where you can see the best of the material without the singing paramours. Sometimes some context is lost and a scene is not as funny as it would be if you had seen the fifteen minutes that came before. Still, it beats the hell out of losing the Marx Brothers to the passage of time.

Here are some scenes, to get you started :

www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmXOBKQ6A1E&feature=related

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Psa9BZ3qgzg&feature=related

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dsw9jYU_rJI&feature=related

You Can't Eat Racism

2008-05-27T20:15:00.000-07:00

The candidacy of Barack Obama continues to lay bare the lowest layers of racism in the United States. There are very few significant policy differences between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, but people who have been demonizing and excoriating Hillary in the most hateful ways since 1992 are now enthusiastically supporting her, only in order to oppose the black guy. It really is that intellectually lame. They oppose Obama because he's black. For that matter, right winger Alan Keyes couldn't get past square one in the Republican Party for the same reason.

Very few people will openly admit to racist reasoning, and the excuses that are trotted out as cover for opposing Obama are so faulty it would be funny if the country's situation was not so dire. There is really only one rallying point against Obama, one, count 'em, one reason why large numbers of people oppose him. That reason is the non-issue of Jeremiah Wright. People seize onto the few video-taped temper tantrums of that preacher and throw out all the ideas they have heard from Barack Obama. There have been some other guilt by association attacks against Obama, too, with far shakier connections than the Jeremiah Wright deal. We also hear talk about Obama being inexperienced, but this ignores the lack of experience of so many great presidents prior to taking office. Abe Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy had no particular depth of experience behind them when they went in.

To reiterate, there is no other significant problem that the Obama campaign faces apart from Jeremiah Wright's video freak out. Obama's own words make sense, and he offers the country the change in direction it needs. Jeremiah Wright is the "swiftboat" of this year's campaign. People who think one inch deep and stop (Pat Conroy's phrase) will need no other reason to oppose Obama. Guilt by association has thus been carried to levels never seen in history.

It doesn't matter that Obama himself never said those offensive words. It doesn't matter that he denounced them, and said Wright was living in the past. It doesn't matter that he later broke off all ties with Wright when the reverend continued his insulting ways at the National Press Club. It doesn't matter that this cranky preacher made only three sermons that contained offensive content. (No others have ever been shown, but right wing talk radio paints the picture of Barack Obama and his family sitting transfixed for twenty years listening to such rants.) It doesn't matter that Obama said he wasn't present for those three sermons, which is not hard to believe when you consider that Wright sometimes gave a dozen sermons a week.

Obama said the vitriolic sermons on the videos do not represent the Jeremiah Wright he knew for so many years, and certainly they don't represent his own thoughts. This should be obvious to anybody who reads the words that really do originate with Barack Obama. This man is a student and a teacher of the US Constitution, and believes passionately in that document. He wants to move the entire country forward, not just the top 1% of the top 1% and their cronies and hangers-on. He even wants to advance the quality of life of the struggling working class whites who are slamming him at present.

Probably the most pathetic part of this whole situation is that blue collar whites are voting against Obama, thus putting racism ahead of their own economic self interest. At the time of this writing John McCain and George W Bush are holding a meeting behind closed doors (no regular citizen types allowed) with corporate Plutocrats to heap up money for the fall campaign. They couldn't significantly fill the Phoenix Convention Center so they moved it to a smaller location.

Barack Obama recently drew 75,000 people to a rally in Oregon. That crowd, overwhelmingly white, represents one of the largest campaign rallies in American history, but Obama packs them in by the thousands wherever he goes. Ranting preacher or no ranting preacher, Obama has registered record breaking numbers of people to vote this year, many of them first time voters. Most importantly, his campaign is financed, mightily, by small donations from regular citizens. Barack Obama is not in the pocket of fat cat lobbyists. He is indebted to nobody except the American people. His opponent cannot make that claim.

Still, working class whites cannot bring themselves to vote for a black man, no matter what ideas he espouses, and no matter what good he might achieve for them. The problem for these blue collar bigots is that you can't eat racism.

Chances are there will be enough Hillary voters who will join with the major movement of Obama supporters and independents, and we will have a Democrat in the White House in January. Congress is going to be noticeably more Democratic, that's for sure. It is good news that is dampened slightly by the reality that huge numbers of Americans are so small-minded and petty they would vote against their own economic interests to reward the party that gave us an unnecessary war, just to reject a candidate for being black.

If you have never visited the Obama campaign, check out www.BarackObama.com/

Letterboxing, Civilized Fun In Barbaric Times

2008-05-26T11:15:00.000-07:00

Letterboxing, or Questing as it is sometimes called, is a quietly exploding outdoor gaming phenomenon that offers hope for civilized folk in this era of sterile corporate entertainment and mega-violent video idiocy. So many positive elements of human nature are at play in this unique hobby, it warrants all the attention it can get.

In essence letterboxing is a treasure hunt game, in which clues are given on-line for finding the "letterbox," which is any watertight container capable of holding a logbook and a custom made rubber stamper, and maybe an ink pad. This inspired madness began in the deep woods of Dartmoor, England, in 1854 when a tour guide named James Perrott placed his business card in a bottle, pushed it into a dirt embankment, and invited his friends to find it. Some did, and left their cards in the bottle. Today tens of thousands of sometimes obsessed letterboxers prowl the countryside of the English speaking world and beyond, following clues to find a hidden goal. They carry rubber stamps of their own, with which they will mark the book, maybe also writing an inscription. Then they use the stamp left by the placer of the letterbox to mark their own book, as proof they had been there. (That is, if they find the letterbox.)

Every aspect of the process is colored by the imagination, and often the genius, of its practitioners. The people themselves drive this hobby. The rubber stamps are usually hand carved, and can be works of art. The books themselves are sometimes quite fancy. The clues above all reflect the personality of the player. They can be humorous, poetic, plain, maddening, straightforward, or as obscure as the location of the letterbox itself. Rules are few. You don't place the letterbox in a dangerous or restricted location, and the clues offered need to actually work in reality.

Numerous appealing factors come to mind for letterboxing.

Apart from the basic clue-chasing treasure hunt angle, the game can be customized into infinity. It is great fun for children, and makes for memorable family outings. Adult versions involve sophisticated clues, and couples might play it on dates. The game involves being out in nature, usually in a beautiful location, as opposed to the "vast wasteland" of television. Getting some exercise is part of it. The hobby is safe as long as you use your common sense. For instance, there is no danger of sexual predators using letterboxing to lure victims, because there is no way of knowing when or if a person might arrive at the site, or how many would show up.

No corporate sponsors are involved, and none needed. In fact, very little money is needed unless you want to travel to exotic locations or use an engraved golden letterbox. (Not recommended.) The internet is not even necessarily required, if you set up your own personal networks for play, the clues can be delivered by mail or verbally. Most letterboxers in North America post their clues at www.LbNA.com/ This hobby is happening right now, in all fifty states, and around the world.

Definite social possibilities exist through the creation of teams, clubs, andever-expanding networks, or you can go out by yourself and do it. Orienteering and compass skills are part of the more advanced levels of play, but you can keep it quite simple and have a blast.

Web sites for the game are endless, but at the top of the heap you will find - atlasquest.com, letterboxing.org/america, letter-boxing.com, and by all means letterboxingonhorseback.com/

Left at the Y-shaped dogwood tree and proceed with care. Thirty six paces and you're almost there.

2008 National Indie Excellence Awards

2008-05-10T19:20:00.000-07:00

A stunning development happened yesterday for me. That book of mine, mentioned above, won a Finalist prize in a national book competition.

Tales of Real and Dream Worlds placed as a Finalist in the Short Story Fiction category of the 2008 National Indie Excellence Awards. It's the leading award for books that originate outside of the conglomerate presses. Everyone here at Paper View Books is jubilant. This is my first book after all, and as the name of the award indicates, this is recognition at the national level.

I have had numerous very positive reviews for the book, about fifteen of them, but they were all small media. I found it difficult to obtain reviews from the larger outlets, due to the fact that they would not acknowledge my existence. It's not easy to do business with people who will not talk to you, return letters or emails, or take a cursory look at what you have. My book could have been the single greatest book in the history of the English language for all these guys knew.

I self-published Tales of Real and Dream Worlds. Yes, this means I bear the Mark of Cain, or Mark of the Beast, or the Scarlet Letterhead, or something, but I finally saw it was self-publish or have nothing. The "traditional route" of publishing is simply dead, at least if you are a new writer. I am not new to writing, nor can I say I am new to the business anymore, having lost more years than I care to mention offering Tales of Real and Dream Worlds and my novel to the Sphinxes of the American publishing industry.

Imagine an industry of total silence, and of course, this is a "Communications" industry. They will not talk to you, will not respond to letters or emails. Guidebooks are published at high prices that will give you some of the requirements of the various publishing firms, and you may be able to send them a manuscript. You will wait six months for a response, which will come from an intern who "reads slush pile." That's the massive heap of manuscripts every agent and publisher has, just short of fire code dimensions, which an intern or office worker skims and rejects, or rejects without reading at all. The slush piles are real, and they are evidence that we have the worst of both worlds -- In this passionately anti-intellectual society where nobody reads, every third chucklehead is peddling a book manuscript.

The above applies only if you can locate a publishing house that will work with new writers at all, under any circumstances, or one that is not specialized to the point of absurdity, or one that will accept material that is not "agented."

Need an agent? Best of luck to you. They are as hard to get as the publisher itself, and they take a whopping cut of the pie. You also run the very real risk of finding only an incompetent or fraudulent agent. Literary agents are not licensed or regulated. Anybody can call himself a literary agent. Scams are in such abundance that there is a web site called Predators and Editors that tries merely to keep a running tally of them. It is the same as the situation with talent agent scams and art school scams. There is a vast division of the army of con artists dedicated solely to preying on aspiring creative people.

I took on the odious stigma of the self-published. To be fair, the disdain for self-publishing is no longer as severe as it once was; most books in print are micro-press or self-published, and never mind the roll call of classical authors who started out self-publishing. My home town daily newspaper would not review my book because it was self-published. Likewise with the two hip-and-cool alternative weeklies.

The ultimate blame for the state of literary life in America lies with the people themselves. They will not read books, and many cannot read above kindergarten level. The average adult American reads at the fifth grade level. Mostly we chase pixels on a screen. That is the extent of intellectual and emotional life for the vast majority of us. The small minority who will read a couple of books a year insist on the same hoary old formula-caked authors they have been reading for decades, or at least the same old formula. There are more snow leopards in the world than adventurous readers.

Where does this leave me? Forget about that, where does it leave the truly great new writers coming of age in this environment? Where does it leave you, and the literary culture of this country? We don't have a literary culture in this country any more, and it shows.

The award means I will crank up a new promotional effort for this, my first book, before moving on to the next one. Tales of Real and Dream Worlds by Bart Stewart is available at www.Amazon.com and www.BarnesandNoble.com, or you can order a signed copy for $12 from my web site, www.BartStewart.com. Excerpts from some of the Tales are available there as well.

If I hit the big time you'll have a collector's item.

An Election Derailed By Pointless Nonsense

2008-05-05T21:00:00.000-07:00

Dangerously high levels of cynicism fill the air as the most promising presidential candidate in a generation is being knocked out of contention by what amounts to abject idiocy.

Senator Barack Obama, whose well chronicled life is a testament to the American Dream, and who has easily the best ideas of any of the three candidates in this race, has lost all momentum and is being overtaken by the machine politics of the Clintons. There is one, count 'em, one reason for this state of affairs. Obama is being punished for statements made by someone else.

Jeremiah Wright is the one and only reason Obama is not having a cakewalk to the presidency right now. Let's not have any pretensions that the remark about Pennsylvania voters being bitter played more than a microscopic part in this. As presidential candidate bloopers go, that was nothing. And none of his policy positions are driving his demise. They are the same as they were when he was riding high in February. No defensible reason exists for the voters' rejection of Obama.

His preacher threw some temper tantrums at the pulpit. Three tantrums, to be precise, out of a thirty year career. Had there been more than that Fox would have shown them. As it was there were three carefully edited snippets supplied to Matt Drudge by individuals who preferred to remain anonymous. Oddly enough, some of the content of the clips was entirely correct and true, such as when Wright bellowed that Hillary Clinton does not know what it is like to be a black man and have taxi cabs refuse to pick her up in the rain, or when he hollers that rich white people control America. It is factual that Hillary does not know what it is like to be black, and that corporate fat cats of a caucasian extraction do indeed control America.

Wright also said some inexcusably vile and wrong stuff, such as that the US government developed AIDS as a weapon. (For anyone out there harboring that urban legend in their heads, samples of AIDS-infected tissue exist that pre-date the modern era of computer science.) The main Wright blow-up is the one where he said "God damn America" after going through a long list of historical outrages that were edited out of the snippet. Obama says he wasn't there for any of these three sermons, which is believable when you consider Wright gave more than a dozen sermons a week.

Had it been a white Republican candidate who sought the backing of an extremist fundamentalist right wing clergyman, there would not have been the slightest blip on the radar. That kind of thing is accepted. The most revered Reverend Pat Robertson routinely produces some of the weirdest malarkey imaginable, and he once came within a hairsbreadth of being the Republican nominee for president. The truly dangerous cult leader Sun Myung Moon has enormous influence over conservative American politics, through his money and mouthpiece newspaper the Washington Times. Moon has said any number of anti-American, anti-Christian statements over the years. No prob. Our "values" can accommodate all of that.

Obama has denounced the offensive statements of Wright. When Wright kept them coming recently at the National Press Club, Obama broke all ties with him entirely. What more is he supposed to do? The right wing radio demagogues are painting a picture of Obama being under the thrall of a ranting anti-American Reverend Wright, when they aren't hinting darkly that he is a Muslim secret agent, or an atheist commie. They really need to settle on one or the other, after the eight years of abuse their credibility has gone through.

Here the situation reaches a state that is more urgent than the entire fate of the 2008 presidential campaign. This goes to the future viability of democracy itself. It is as we watch the Obama campaign sink not from honorable debate of the issues, but under irrelevant junk about Jeremiah Wright, we start to think about how frequently this kind of thing happens in American politics, and how consistently the American people are suckers for it. Which is to say, each and every time, without fail.

The first President Bush got elected due to the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag, which some schools had stopped reciting. That, and his opponent's practice of granting furloughs to felons, which many governors of both parties do, proved to be the decisive issues for American voters in the presidential election that year.

Son of Bush got elected the first time on a garland of warm 'n fuzzy TV image ads which told us very little about him except that he was a pious Christian. He posed as a moderate for the campaign, and as president delivered the most extreme ideological right wing government in a century. The following 2004 election hinged almost entirely on the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth.

In America the highest office goes to the candidate "you would rather have a beer with." Tabloid newspaper junk that would insult the intelligence of a hamster takes on gigantic importance. The process almost could not possibly be handled in a way that was more stupid or anti-intellectual. The disgrace to the founding principals of the country is beyond glaring, even as the claims to patriotism reach ranting levels. The latest example being the flag lapel pin. Obama doesn't wear one, you know. He is regularly castigated for this. Someone really needs to market a six by ten inch lighted flag lapel pin that plays the Marine Corps Hymn and has a little sign under it that says "I AM A PATRIOT." If you are only wearing the tiny little flag, you're suspect.

Jefferson said democracy relies on an educated, informed, participating citizenry. In the absence of that, democracy falls, he said. What he did not have in mind was an electorate as malleable as Play-Doh to whatever psychological machinations are applied to them.

I-40

2008-05-01T19:25:00.000-07:00

The drive from Las Vegas to Charlotte was something less than epic, but still remarkable. Easily the most striking feature of the whole journey was the mind-bending immensity of open land in the western United States. Hour after hour of high speed travel through Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma revealed nothing but an unimaginably vast, empty landscape. Oddly there were no wind turbines visible from I-40 except in Texas and Oklahoma. Towns were out there, off of the highway, but let it be said that we are not hurting for space in this country (or elsewhere in the world). What is missing is water. A breakthrough in water desalination technology would change this world like nothing else, yet you never hear any mention of research work happening in this most crucial field.

This is not to advocate the sprawling of homo sapiens across more pristine land, just to point out how much land is available. Not all of it is beautiful enough to make the cover of the Sierra Club newsletter. Some of it is just empty land, unoccupied due to its lack of water. The recovery and reuse of lands already build up with abandoned constructions would be the better way to accommodate the population. But the fact remains that in the United States we have open land in a staggering abundance.

Judging by what was coming across the radio for most of the trip we also have an intellectual desert in the United States, more barren than any stretch of the Mohave. In some sections pressing the Seek button on the radio tuner revealed six fundamentalist Christian stations in a row, and this was on the FM band. Spiritual giants were hard to come by, however, and you could make a case that actual Christians were scarce on these stations, too. Anyway, a more mean-spirited, paranoid, anti-intellectual bunch of money-grubbers would be hard to find. The level of conformity displayed in the broadcasts would be on par with that of the polygamous cult members who were in a pre-trial status for child abuse at the time, not far from where I-40 passes through.

Some of the statements made during these broadcasts were outrageous to the point that it became clear there really needs to be an accounting for it. There needs to be a monitoring of what is being spewed out on these evangelical and political broadcasts and a reporting made of it to the larger public, who may not be aware of just how crazy it gets. Accountability is one of the things these guys howl about, so, fine. Let's have some of it for them. It is definitely tragic to contemplate the enormous numbers of Americans for whom there is no other viewpoint being offered but that of these ultra right wing programs. Maybe we can get Radio Liberty to start some broadcasts here in the States.

The Arizona meteor crater made for a powerful few minutes. Another awe-inspiring moment occurred right before going in to see it, when the sign came into view saying that the admission ticket would be $15.

The crater is almost a mile wide and over five hundred feet deep. It was formed fifty thousand years ago when a chunk of rock and iron calculated at one hundred fifty feet across slammed into the featureless desert doing about eleven miles a second. It mostly vaporized on impact, though some residual gravel penetrated thousands of feet into the ground. The dust cloud that shot into the upper atmosphere altered the atmosphere of the entire planet for a little while.

An alternative theory is that the crater was carved by Noah's Flood.

A Little Road Trip

2008-04-16T13:58:00.000-07:00

This state of the art blog will be on hiatus for a few days as I undertake a cross-country move. After 15 years I am leaving Las Vegas (Just because 15 years is a lot of Vegas). I will be in Cape Cod for the summer, and after that ... It depends a lot on what the cat drags in.

I will let you know how the drive went and what I saw or thought about on this epic voyage across the USA. I'm taking I-40 from Nevada to North Carolina, where I will stay for a short while before heading north.

While I'm away plow back through some of those older blog entries! There's some good stuff in there!

Until next time, drive carefully, especially those of you heading west on I-40.

~ Bart

Food Inflation?

2008-04-14T17:54:00.000-07:00

The price of food (you know food) is going up at a faster rate than at any time in the past 17 years, according to an article in the Associated Press today. Food price inflation was 4 percent for the year 2007, almost twice what it has been over the past 15 years. This is according to the US Department of Agriculture, where they are predicting that 2008 will be worse, with prices rising 4.5 percent. The political fallout from this should almost equal the reaction of Americans to the writers’ strike curtailing new episodes of their favorite TV shows. It may even approach the impact of the semi-finals of American Idol.

Or, who knows, maybe this one will become an even bigger deal than that. People living paycheck to paycheck or on fixed incomes are going to face some choices this year. Some choices will be easy, like voting Democrat instead of Plutocrat. Others will involve figuring out what to cut so there is enough money left over for food. Several tactics come to mind for getting through hard times at the grocery store. Submitted for your approval -

Eliminate the high cost of “convenience.” You will save enormously every month just by doing your own prep work and eliminating anything that smacks of “convenience.” Eat at home instead of restaurants. For variety and socializing have picnics and cook-outs. The bottom line is buy a new cookbook and start preparing your own meals. And skip the frozen “convenience” dinners. They contain very little food for what you are paying. The cost of those little veggies alongside that delicious “entrée” works out to hundreds of dollars a pound! Prepare your own frozen dinners made from scratch and take them to work in reusable microwavable plastic containers. Hot meal or not, always pack your own home-made lunch. If you don’t know how to prepare food, learn how. The money you save will be more than worth it. Besides, cooking can be fun.

Skip vending machines. The mark-up on that vending machine junk food is orbital. If you must have snacks buy them in bulk and bring some with you. Your best bet overall is to wean yourself off of sodas and sugary crap altogether. Try other kinds of snacks. Pretty much anything will beat the vending machine.

Eat less meat. You can get plenty of protein from beans and nuts and certain other veggies. Produce is cheaper than meat and at certain seasons of the year it gets even cheaper. This is not to enter the debate on vegetarianism, only to say that you can save a lot of money by eating meat only a few times a week instead of every day. Fish and poultry are cheaper than beef, and meat is cheaper if you buy it in larger pieces and do the cutting yourself. You pay a whopping premium for the supermarket or processing plant to cut your meat for you. Just by cutting it yourself you save hundreds of dollars a year!

Buy generic or “store brand” food. This store brand stuff is often made in exactly the same factory as the famous brand name. (This also holds true for gasoline.) The difference is that the big brand name has advertising, which is what made it famous. You pay for that advertising. Experiment with the store brands and see what you think of them. Many are just as good and much cheaper. Although they do not have Spiderman on the label you can see him elsewhere.

Buy day-old bread and freeze it. Bread is perfectly good after twenty four hours but it is sold at half the price. Freeze the bread and it will be good much longer than you are likely to let it sit there. (Don’t refrigerate bread, freeze it or keep it on the shelf.)

Pick your own produce! Visit http://www.localharvest.org/ to find the location of farms and food co-ops in your area where you can visit and pick your own. It is a fun thing to do (even makes a nice date) and you save immensely over the store.

Buy nonfat dry milk powder and mix it up. Depending on how much milk you use you could save a bundle.

Coupons are for real. They will save you money. The Internet has endless coupon sites. Free samples, too. Of course you usually have to register, with an email address at least, meaning you will be getting spam emails Consider setting up a free email account just for couponing. (Don’t give them your phone number or extensive personal data.) Then just enter coupon in the search engine, or maybe the name of an item for which you want coupons.

There are many varied reasons for this situation of food inflation. China and India are experiencing explosive growth in their economies and now have a demand for meat that wasn’t there before. American food exports, such as corn, are at record levels since the weak dollar has made them cheaper. The domestic supply of corn is thus reduced, meaning higher prices for us here.

The interesting factor is Ethanol. Is it the villain (super-villain?) we sometimes hear that it is? Corn Ethanol production means less corn available for the food supply, with the resulting higher prices we see. It hikes the price of meat as well, since corn is what the live stock is eating. Also soy bean acreage is being cut back to make room for more and more corn, so the price of soy is inflating.

The sky is not falling, and we have been through much worse, but reason and imagination will be required in the coming years as much as ever before.

Ronald Reagan in His Own Words

2008-04-13T23:44:00.000-07:00

It would be interesting to know the number of times Republican candidates have invoked the name of Ronald Reagan in this election year, compared to the number of mentions they made of George W. Bush. Most likely Reagan would have another landslide win.

You could make a case that Ronald Reagan was an old time actor who was picked up by corporate America, especially defense contractors, in the 1950s and made into a mouthpiece for their interests. You could say Reagan was interested in promoting plutocracy more than anything else. You could say that his greatest accomplishment, bringing down the Soviet Union, was done more in service to his corporate fat cats than to American civilization as a whole. After all, Red China was every bit as repressive and dictatorial as the USSR, however they did business with big American companies, so they were not considered to be an "Evil Empire."

But Ronald Reagan was the Great Communicator. Let him speak for himself.

"Unemployment insurance is a pre-paid vacation for freeloaders."
--California Governor Ronald Reagan, in the Sacramento Bee, April 28th, 1966.

"...a faceless mass, waiting for handouts."
--Ronald Reagan, 1965. (Description of Medicaid recipients.)

"We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry every night. Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet."
--Ronald Reagan, TV speech, October 27, 1964

"A tree's a tree. How many more do you need to look at?"
--Ronald Reagan, Governor of California, quoted in the Sacramento Bee, opposing expansion of Redwood National Park, March 3, 1966

"I don't believe a tree is a tree and if you've seen one you've seen them all."
--Governor Ronald Reagan, in the same Sacramento Bee, September 14, 1966

"All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk."
--Ronald Reagan, Republican candidate for president, quoted in the Burlington (Vermont) Free Press, February 15, 1980.
(It is closer to 30 tons of waste per plant per year.)

"Because Vietnam was not a declared war, the veterans are not even eligible for the G. I. Bill of Rights, with respect to education or anything."
--Ronald Reagan, in Newsweek, April 21, 1980. (Wrong again.)

"I have flown twice over Mount St. Helens. I'm not a scientist and I don't know the figures, but I have a suspicion that one little mountain out there, in these last several months, has probably released more sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere than has been released in the last ten years of automobile driving or things of that kind."
--Ronald Reagan, quoted in Time magazine, October 20, 1980. (Mount St. Helens released about 2,000 tons of sulfur dioxide per day at its peak. Cars produce 81,000 tons per day.)

"Growing and decaying vegetation in this land are responsible for 93 percent of the oxides of nitrogen."
--Ronald Reagan, quoted in the Los Angeles Times, October 9, 1980. (According to Dr. Michael Oppenheimer of the Environmental Defense Fund, industrial sources produce 65 to 90 percent of the oxides of nitrogen in the U.S.)

"Approximately 80 percent of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation. So let's not go overboard in setting and enforcing tough emission standards for man-made sources."
--Ronald Reagan, quoted in Sierra, September 10, 1980

"I've said it before and I'll say it again. The U.S. Geological Survey has told me that the proven potential for oil in Alaska alone is greater than the proven reserves in Saudi Arabia."
--Ronald Reagan, Detroit Free Press, March 23, 1980.
(According to the USGS, the Saudi reserves are 17 times the proven reserves in Alaska.)

"Why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity?"
--Ronald Reagan, campaign speech, 1980

"It's silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the jungles of Vietnam when we could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home by Christmas."
--Ronald Reagan, candidate for Governor of California, Fresno Bee, October 10, 1965

"I have a feeling that we are doing better in the war [in Vietnam] than the people have been told."
--Ronald Reagan, Los Angeles Times, October 16, 1967

"...the moral equals of our Founding Fathers."
--President Reagan, describing the Nicaraguan contras, March 1, 1985

"Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal."
--Ronald Reagan, quoted in Time, May 17, 1976

"I know all the bad things that happened in that war. I was in uniform four years myself."
--President Reagan, interviewed April 19, 1985.
(Reagan spent World War II making Army training films at Hal Roach Studios in Hollywood.)

"We think there is a parallel between federal involvement in education and the decline in profit over recent years."
--President Reagan, USA Today, April 26, 1983

"What we have found in this country, and maybe we're more aware of it now, is one problem that we've had, even in the best of times, and that is the people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless who are homeless, you might say, by choice."
--President Reagan, Good Morning America, January 31, 1984

"I would have voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964."
--Ronald Reagan, Los Angeles Times, June 17, 1966

"I favor the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and it must be enforced at the point of a bayonet, if necessary."
--Ronald Reagan, Los Angeles Times, October 20, 1965

"Politics is just like show business. You have a hell of an opening, coast for a while, and then have a hell of a close."
--Ronald Reagan to aide Stuart Spencer, 1966

"He has the ability to make statements that are so far outside the parameters of logic that they leave you speechless."
--Patricia Ann Reagan (now Patti Davis), talking about her father, in
The Way I See It.

If Everything Goes 100% Perfectly in Iraq from Now On

2008-04-10T00:21:00.000-07:00

This will still prove to have been an unnecessary war, entered into for purposes of grabbing oil and establishing permanent military bases. The Republicans desperately want to shift the focus away from our entry into the war, and concentrate instead on the state of shaky pacification that exists there at present. But if not another shot is ever fired in Iraq, the question remains – Are we prepared to reward a political party that gave us this cosmic calamity? This war was entered into for no good reason. Are we supposed to shrug that off? If we do, what does that say about us? And if we do, can we not expect more such wars of conquest in the future?

The current Senate hearings with General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker have been illuminating, if not as rancorous as some in the media had hoped for.

John McCain managed to continue displaying his confusion over Sunni and Shiite Muslims. McCain believes that Shiite Iran is supporting Sunni Al-Qaeda. This is not the case, and in the past when people corrected him on it he has admitted it was not the case. But McCain can’t seem to let go of the idea, or the propensity for “senior moments.” His most recent befuddlement on this score came during these current Petraeus hearings, but McCain has expressed this wrong idea five times now on the campaign trail. Maybe one of his staffers should sit him down and gently go over with him that there are two main factions in the Muslim world, Shiite and Sunni, and they are often at war. They do not “support” one another. They are in a shooting war in Iraq. They do not like each other. Getting this fundamental fact straight would serve to bolster McCain’s claim to be a foreign policy mastermind, which would be a help to him him since he has said he doesn’t know much about the economy.

Barack Obama continues to speak about a phased withdrawl from Iraq. He clearly does not favor a chaotic or precipitous “cut and run” exit, as the Grand Old Party accuses. Hillary Clinton's plan more closely fits that description. Obama wants the Iraqi government to stand up as we stand down. The Iraqis will be made to do so in an Obama administration, as he believes we cannot babysit them forever. Iraq is costing us $12 Billion a month, for nothing. We cannot afford this in perpetuity, which is the time frame the Republicans have for the adventure. McCain’s wisecrack about being in Iraq for 100 years was not a one-time blooper. He has said this repeatedly during the campaign.

Obama’s time table is a reduction in troops right away and no American military bases in Iraq within ten years. That is the plan going in, and realities on the ground will determine how fast we get out. The permanent bases will not be happening with Obama. Clinton would remove most or all US troops within six months come hell or high water. This does leave the prospect of American troops having to return to deal with an expanded war between those two Muslim groups that Senator McCain keeps confusing. In the case of an Iraqi conflict expanding into a regional Middle East war, the United States would have no option but to go in and try to end it, no matter who is president. This is the reality we face.

Obama’s way makes the most sense of the three, as is the case with other issues.

In 1980, when Jimmy Carter launched the rescue mission to recover our hostages in Iran, the helicopters crashed in a sandstorm. The mission was thus a disaster, and Carter did something that a Republican president would find unimaginable. He went on TV the next morning and took full responsibility for the loss. (Not that he caused the sandstorm.) Mostly due to the Iran fiasco the Democrats were ousted from power and the flag-flapping, Bible-waving “neo-con” era began.

In Bush’s diversion from Afghanistan into Iraq we have a catastrophe that dwarfs anything from Carter’s time. This black hole we currently face is without precedent. If Americans reward the Republican party for its entry into Iraq, then truly all bets are off for the future. We will be in uncharted waters, philosophically, and anything could happen.

We cannot forget the Empire-building, profiteering mentality that went into launching this "war of choice" (as Pat Buchanan called it). The honchos of the Bush administration, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and others were pushing for a ground invasion of Iraq even during the Clinton years. Two former Bush officials have said this administration came into office on Day One with a top priority of finding a pretext for invading Iraq. It is not cynical to suspect that invading Iraq may have been the entire reason for launching the Bush candidacy for president in the first place. Click here for a much longer essay dealing with this in detail.

http://www.bartstewart.com/iraqandpnac.html

In 2000 we elected the candidate we would “rather have a beer with,” which was ironic given Bush’s alcohol problem. Eight years later, let’s choose the person for the highest office based on the quality of ideas they espouse for dealing with our problems. The better choice will be the Democrat, not the Plutocrat.

Are Smaller Houses the Answer?

2008-04-07T16:32:00.000-07:00

From time to time we encounter a concept that seems heavily pregnant with promise. Not many are at the dimensions of the Space Elevator, http://www.spaceward.org/elevator2010 which will transform the human race like nothing else in history. But the Small House Society has an elegant and efficient answer for a lot of what ails us.

Here is the proposition. The design plan of the average house is larded with wasted space. You pay for that space, of course, every cubic inch of it. This gross inefficiency also impacts the environment through the increase in heating, cooling and lighting of unused space, as well as more “sprawl” of houses on the landscape. The solution is simple. Move out of the Museum of Empty Space and buy a smaller house.

Many people have multiple rooms they never use. Even a house that’s “just the right size” is generally inefficient in its design, to say the least. There now exists an entire political movement addressing this issue. The Small House Society is at the center of this new way of thinking about living space. Their web site http://www.resourcesforlife.com/small-house-society/ is a hub for designers, owners, and advocates of small home living.

As the name implies they are promoting houses built to the scale of what one actually needs for living space. The materials used to build the small houses are the same high quality as in big homes. No plastic and aluminum trailer here. The square footage may be the same as a trailer, but these structures are sturdy. That being said, they are small.

After the initial psychological shockwave passes (the smallest of these structures are practically at the scale of campers) we start to see the possibilities. A human being only uses about twelve square feet of space at any one time, so a house can be fairly tiny and work out quite well. A house the size of a one bedroom apartment can be engineered to be entirely livable for two people. The bed folds up onto the wall. The kitchen is not a warehouse of unused gadgetry, but is more like the kitchen on a boat, designed for cooking and saving space. The stockpile of clutter owned by most people does little but drain their resources anyway, so it could go away and not be missed.

Imagine living with only what you need. Imagine a simplified life. Imagine not being “the janitor of your possessions.” Then imagine living it on a floor plan of these dimensions. Better start at the bottom of this list.

· micro home, 40 square meters / 131.23 square feet
· compact home, 60 square meters / 196.85 square feet
· miniature home, 80 square meters / 262.47 square feet
· tiny home, 100 square meters / 328.08 square feet
· little home, 120 square meters / 393.70 square feet
· small home, 140 square meters / 459.32 square feet
· efficiency home, 160 square meters / 524.93 square feet
· reduced size home, 180 square meters / 590.55 square feet

If you have trouble with that, try picturing your expenses being reduced by the same percentage as your floor plan. Consider what it must cost to heat and cool a space like that. Now think about the cost of building a new small home for yourself. Some of them can be had for fifty grand. The smallest are less than that For many people these are life-changing amounts of money saved, all due to eliminating what was wasted space to begin with. If later the need arises for an office or baby’s room, the small houses are designed for easy add-ons.

The price tag is effected by the materials you use, the size you decide on, and other factors like who you choose to build the house. The most cost-effective way to acquire the house is to buy plans from one of the designers at the site http://www.resourcesforlife.com/docs/item518 and have a local contractor build it. When you are saving this much money on the house itself you may want to buy more land to have around it.

The proverbial cozy cabin, it’s an idea whose time has come.

It's Life or Death for the Internet

2008-04-02T23:16:00.000-07:00

While I deplore cliches, we are standing at a crossroads.

Ben Scott of the public interest group Free Press phrases it more specifically.

"There have been policy moments in the past when the market has been shaped by decisions made in Washington -- radio in the 1930s, television in the 1950s and cable in the 1980s. That moment is now for the Internet."

He is talking about upcoming government decisions regarding Net Neutrality. This is the name for preserving the Internet as we know it. At present, you and I can set up web sites and receive the same grade of service as giant corporations. If our government throws away Net Neutrality the people lose the Internet, and it becomes owned by fat cats. This is the reality. Your individual or small business web site would get a slower Internet, essentially a second class citizen’s Internet. For many it would mean the end of their business, and for many organizations it would mean the stifiling of their message.

We have come to take it for granted that the Internet will endure and serve as a portal to the world for all of us. Apparently that will not be the case without an epic fight. A case in point is Comcast, an Internet Service Provider that has conceded it slowed down the content of the BitTorrent file sharing site over its network. If the government does not act to preserve Net Neutrality the level playing field of the familiar Internet will vanish and Plutocracy will score a major victory over the minds of Americans. Our Internet would start to resemble the censored, manipulated version of the web that China has. This is not an exaggeration. The stakes really are that high.

As of this writing, the Congress and the Federal Communications Commission are debating how much power the giant telecommunications companies, like Comcast, will have over the Internet. This is the moment in history that is your time to raise hell. Get together with your friends and start churning out the postcards, emails, telegrams, and phone calls to The Federal Communications Commission, Washington DC. Also write your senator, and your representative in the House. The message is straightforward.

Preserve Net Neutrality.

Enforce an Open Access Internet.

They will know what you mean. Just show them that you mean it.

A well-crafted letter to the editor of your local newspaper wouldn’t hurt, either. Before you write it, study up on the details of the issue at www.savetheinternet.com/

The Free Press web site is www.freepress.net/

This is only one of the most important issues for American civilization going forward. Let them hear from you.

April Fool's Day at Loch Ness

2008-04-01T20:35:00.000-07:00

The swan-like “head and neck photograph” of the Loch Ness Monster was snapped seventy four years ago today. In all likelihood there is almost nobody in the civilized world who has not seen it. What is surprising is that the myth of Nessie had only been around for about a year prior to that monster of an April Fool’s prank by London gynecologist Robert Wilson. Far from being the timeless legend that supposedly dated back to Saint Columba, there are no traceable reports of sightings of any unusual animals in Loch Ness prior to 1933. And no other year had as many sightings recorded as 1933.

Dr. Wilson always refused to talk about his astonishingly famous photograph. After his death his son came forward to say that his father had hoaxed the photo with a toy dinosaur. There is nothing but water surrounding the figure in the photo, so there is no way to gauge it for size or even to verify that it was in Loch Ness. But this picture (along with a blurry, less memorable image from a certain Hugh Gray) lifted the Nessie story out of local Scottish newspapers and launched it as one of the greatest myths of the 20th century. In three quarters of a century, only UFOs have come close to the status of the elusive critter of Loch Ness. And it was all started by a small group of eccentrics pulling pranks and telling tall tales.

There never could have been a Loch Ness Monster legend without the dedicated promotional work of one Alex Campbell, local employee of the Ness Fisheries Board. Campbell had the title of Water Bailiff, and for decades patroled the lake checking the fishing permits. In 1933 he wrote an anonymous letter to the editor of the Inverness Courier, which began, “For generations Loch Ness has been credited with being the home of a fearsome-looking monster...”

This was the very first mention of anything of the sort.

One might not think so, judging by the monster literature and television documentaries. They invariably say that the first reported sighting of a strange animal in that lake dates back to Saint Columba in the early Dark Ages. All the writers and producers recycle the same stories over and over. It was not until 1983, the fiftieth anniversary of the myth, that the first skeptical writer attempted to actually track down some of these historical nuggets. That would be Ronald Binns, whose book The Loch Ness Mystery Solved is worthy of a book search on Amazon to pick up a copy. The Binns’ book is as readable and enjoyable as detective fiction, and is easily the best researched work on the Ness story. But it has been allowed to go out of print, even as the mindless promotional books get reprinted and reprinted for future generations.

The Saint Columba story comes from the biography entitled Vita Sancti Columbae, written by Adamnan in 565 A.D. There are two primary problems with it. First, this ancient story book on the saint is little more than a laundry list of fantastic creatures, miracles, and supernatural stories of every sort. It contains all manner of bizarre beasties being killed or driven off by the holy man. To pluck this one account out of the lot and present it as some kind of evidence for Nessie is a stretch to say the least. But aside from that, had anyone bothered to read the original text, they would have seen that the incident was not said to have happened in Loch Ness at all, but in the River Ness, a totally separate body of water! The River Ness is a very shallow flow, separated from Loch Ness by Loch Dochfour. It has never been deep enough for navigating.

Mostly you get the Saint Columba story as your proof of a long background of monsters at Loch Ness. A few other incidents from past centuries are mentioned in the literature, but they turn out to be in the same vein as this one. Either they are exaggerations of already wild myths or they are untraceable altogether. Amazingly, Ronald Binns found no mention of a monster in Loch Ness prior to 1933. And there were certainly plenty of opportunities for sightings. Far from the remote, unpopulated zone described in monster books, the Ness area has been occupied for centuries, and was a major tourist attraction in the Victorian Age. Binn’s makes his strongest point by shooting down Alex Campbell’s unsupported statement that the lake had been known for generations as home to a monster.

Campbell’s promotion of the myth was zealous, in print, radio, and later television, from 1933 throughout his long life into the 1980's. No other person has had as many sightings of Nessie as Alex Campbell. (Eighteen). No other person has ever had so many close up, detailed sightings as Campbell. While the average monster sighting is of a dark shape in the water at a distance of a quarter mile, Campbell’s always sounded more like a scene from Jurassic Park. Oddly, Campbell never once had a sighting when he wasn’t alone, and never once had a camera with him to confirm his story. He is still regarded by the monster faithful as the Grand Old Man of the mystery, but what many fans do not know is that the monster is not the only enigma of Loch Ness that Campbell believed in. Campbell also claimed that Loch Ness is haunted by the ghost ship of St. Columba, which appears every twenty years. The ship looks like a Biblical craft, and glows.

In the 1960’s the dubious Dinsdale film of a grainy blob moving along the far shore of Loch Ness led to the formation of the Loch Ness Phenomena Investigation Bureau. This was a volunteer organization of young people who numbered one thousand at its peak, and included Ronald Binns. Its purpose was to maintain a sustained surface observation of Loch Ness from dawn to dusk, with cameras, and verify the monster’s existence. This organized effort was carried out in warm weather months for a period of ten years. Its results were exactly — zero. Dredging of the loch’s bottom for carcasses is another effort that was carried out for ten years. Results — zero. Don't count on finding many mentions of this extensive work in the paranormalist literature.

This blog entry is a shortened version of a much longer essay and review of the Binn’s book. Check out http://www.bartstewart.com/logicandnessie.html if you have any interest in the mystery, or even if you don’t, because the story of the psychology of this myth is as compelling as any unknown animal ever could be. The Nessie myth is a classic of the kind that we see time and time again. The same wishful thinking, gullible approaches, sloppy research, hoax, fraud, and cheerful nonsense that gave us the multi-million dollar Nessie industry is to be found in other areas. (Unfortunately)

The weird and wacky story of the Loch Ness Monster is in fact a priceless tool for teaching critical thinking skills.