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Totally Out of Whack

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None of These Bozos Will Make It to the White House

None of These Bozos Will Make It to the White House

There are currently so many GOP candidates for the Presidency that they could not fit into any vehicle smaller than the trailer of an eighteen-wheeler. Frankly, I don’t think I can name them all from memory. All I know about them is that they tend to say a lot of stupid things, which the echo chamber of the press magnifies until it seems that there is only one political party: The Tea Party.

As for Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, no one really likes her. I don’t like her. Martine despises her. She is probably more competent to run our country than any of the Klown Kar Republicans. But she knows that everything she says will be drowned out by cries of Benghazi! E-mail! Foundation money! Why, I wouldn’t even be surprised if Faux News reveals that she had a torrid affair with Monica Lewinsky, and they probably have the dress to prove it!

Our political process has become so toxic that the only reason I vote is that I know that, if I didn’t, some Evangelical Jesus child molester will win. Gone is any Roman sense of duty. I will trudge down to the polling precinct by myself, thinking dark thoughts, while crowded church buses full of rednecks vote en masse.

Nattering Nabobs of Negativism

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It Seems That Most Politics Is Driven by Hate

It Seems That Most Politics Is Driven by Hate

The phrase is from the late Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, referring to the news media. I think, however, in today’s poisonous climate, it refers to most populist politics. According to an article in the current edition of The New Scientist entitled “We Are What We Vote,” we find the following paragraph:

Research in the past few years using information on brain structure and function from MRI scans, psychological responses, eye-trackers and behavioural genetics, shows that individual political orientations are deeply connected to biological forces that are usually beyond personal control…. Despite initial incredulity—people like to believe political opinions are rational responses to salient events—the evidence that political preferences are linked to systems that often involve subconscious is growing. An admittedly simplistic but useful summary of this research is that human emotions are grounded in biology, and politics is grounded in emotions.

If you are left-leaning, a look at Raw Story or Salon.Com will send your blood boiling based on what such fear totems as Ted Cruz, Sarah Palin, and Rush Limbaugh are saying. If, on the other hand, your news source of preference is The Drudge Report or RedState.Com, you will find articles bemoaning attacks on liberty, gun ownership, and fundamentalist religion. The intention is generally to make you feel outrage and hatred.

For each article by a reasonable commentator, there are typically half a dozen or more pieces excoriating “the enemy.” If it is hard to get away from knee-jerk reactions, it is partly because, amid all the clickbaiting, there are all too many examples in the mainstream media.

There is even an entire news network dedicated to fear and outrage. Do I have to name it, or can you guess?

Is This a Valuable Talent?

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This Makes Zero Sense to Me

This Makes Zero Sense to Me

Among the children of my friends, I am famous for being totally uninterested in computer gaming.Today, while driving home from work, I heard a news story on NPR that almost made me rear-end an Acura. Robert Morris University in Chicago is offering a full athletic scholarship in the video game League of Legends. If your child has wasted hundreds of hours exercising his thumbs (but not his brains) on a fantasy computer game, he is entitled to a scholarship that will pay 50% of tuition and 50% of room and board. (Excuse the pronouns: Women also are eligible for the award.)

What the university is doing is making a computer game equivalent to a sport. Not that I have any particular love of college athletics (I was in the band), but I am wondering why an accredited university should be encouraging an activity that will most likely be considered out of date in about three weeks. At least football, track, and maybe even baseball will continue to exist, I do not expect the same of any computer gaming product now on the market. (Well, maybe chess….)

I see this as opening scholarship chances for skateboarding (that’s been around for half a century), in-line skating, Razor-Scootering, pogo sticks, and other forms of “physical” activity indulged in by youthful slackers. We could make awards based on smart phone handling while crossing a busy intersection or texting and vaping while driving in reverse. The possibilities are limitless.

Now that Robert Morris University got its name in the news media by this stunt, I wonder what could be next.

 

 

Ebola’s Four-Legged Victims

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How Do You Say “Quarantine” to a Dog?

How Do You Say “Quarantine” to a Puppy?

One of the odder manifestations of the ebola hysteria in the United States is that we now have separate news stories about the pets of people who are undergoing quarantine. For instance, we have this CNN news story about ebola survivor Nina Pham being reunited with her dog. When we look at the news stories underneath this one, and presumably less important, we come to realize that stories about pets that may (or may not) have ebola is a story that has legs. (Four to be precise.)

It is tragic when one considers not only the human toll of the disease, but its ravages on goldfish, lizards, turtles, and even pet rocks belonging to its victims. Take, for example, the fate that befell Rocky (below), a pet stone belonging to a healthcare worker who succumbed in Sierra Leone.

Rocky, a Victim

Rocky, a Victim

We have learned that, after its master passed on, Rocky was unceremoniously thrown into a pile of wild lithic rubble where his unique talents are no longer appreciated. The cute facial expression that was painted on Rocky has since worn off from abrasion and water damage, and Rocky is now just another anonymous rock.

 

Riding the News Cycle Without a Helmet

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Follow the News Cycles If You Must ... But Don’t Get All Tangled Up in Them

Follow the News Cycles If You Must … But Don’t Get All Tangled Up in Them

In yesterday’s post (“Terrorism Made Easy”), I suggested that the news orgies indulged in my the media—especially cable news—make it extraordinarily easy for terrorists to get us all in a dither with a minimum amount of effort.Today, I plan to go one step further: Stay away from the news as much as possible. It’ll only mess you up.

Now there were times when the news affected my travel plans: I would not go to Guatemala during the dictatorship of Efraín Ríos Montt in the 1980s, I would not visit Peru during the Sendero Luminoso insurgency of the 1980s and early 1990s, and I would not go to El Salvador today because of the Mara Salvatrucha criminal gang. Oh, and there’s some parts of Mexico I would shy away from because of the narcotraficantes (namely the states of Tamaulipas, Veracruz, Sonora, Monterrey, and Michoacán).

That said, I lose track of Middle East skulduggery because there is so much of it that I confuse the incidents one with the other. Nor is it important to know the number of car bombs in Baghdad, the casualties at Kobani, the Hamas-Israel pissing match, the piracy and banditry of Somalia, the endless repercussions of Benghazi, or even the weirdness of North Korea’s non-interaction with the world. Because I read the paper, I have a rough idea of what is happening. The details are just a tad excessive.

I work with a really nice bookkeeper who listens to the news and all the pundits on her long drive to work. All the badness, of which there is an endless amount, has the effect of making her depressed. I suggest that she listen to nice music instead, either the classics at KUSC or new wave at KTWV.

Remember one thing about the news: They are trying to make you hooked on all this global negativity so you keep coming back for more, and maybe even buy all the crapola the sponsors want to unload on you. Skip a few news cycles. Maybe read the paper instead, or a weekly news magazine (if there still is one), or even the Internet. When things get too bad, I’d rather put on some J. S. Bach or Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

As my old hero Ghoulardi (about whom I will write more in the next week or so) said, “Cool it with the Boom-Booms!”

 

Terrorism Made Easy

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What Would I Do If I Were a Terrorist?

What Would I Do If I Were a Terrorist?

What if I were one of the black hats for ISIS, ISIL, or whatever they’re calling themselves this week, I would have the world gelid with fear at relatively little cost to myself. Let’s face it, the “Dark Side” is a powerful draw for disaffected young people around the world. One can get an almost endless supply of young Arabs, Americans, Europeans, and Canadians who would be willing to blow themselves up—and take any number of innocent victims with them.

Given the way the news media around the world operate, any single incident is multiplied as if with endless mirrors for weeks at a time. Look at Benghazi: It’s still going strong for over two years. Then there’s the occasional beheading of an American or a European, interspersed with car bombs at Shia shrines. It doesn’t take much to have Faux News and their imitators spinning their heads in unison with a warning siren at max volume. One dire incident shades into another, and with relatively little effort, the whole thing looks like its continuous dripping evil spreading all over the world.

Great Symbolism! Really Evil!

Great Symbolism! Really Evil!

I’m not telling the terrorists what they don’t already know. The reach of our media stretches around the globe, so the bad guys know exactly how frightened, ill-informed, and chickenshit we are. I would not be surprised if the world spends ten trillion dollars in the next couple of months trying to eliminate ISIS or some other terrorist group de jour. In the process we are actually arming them.

Isn’t that what judo is all about—using your opponents’ strength against them? Hijacking their weapons while deciding on the next terrorist incident to occupy the news media, their anchors, pundits, and wingnut entertainers.

I must say: It’s really quite elegant.

 

Letting Entertainers Control Your Thinking?

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They Make Money from Your Indecision

They Make Money from Your Indecision

We live in a country in which we increasingly let paid entertainers do our thinking for us. As a result, we are advocating our favorite stand-ins against the entertainers we don’t like. It could be as simple as watching Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert, laughing, and leaving the whole argument as, “What you said!” Or it could be as nefarious as chewing our fingernails in fear listening to Glenn Beck (above) or Sean Hannity and going to bed angry.

Remember: These people are all well-paid entertainers. They aim at a particular demographic and work on them so as to keep them coming back for more.

I used to be very upset with these fake pundits, particularly those on the right. If you go back and look at my earlier postings are the tags “conservatives,” “republicans,” or “tea-party,” you will find that I had spent a lot of time getting exercised by people who were just doing what they were paid to do. Rush Limbaugh doesn’t care whether I hate his guts, no more than the actors who played James Bond villains like Auric Goldfinger or Ernst Stavro Blofeld care whether audiences detested them. These guys are all paid villains. It’s what they do for a living.

To uneducated yokels who have been “left behind” in dying rural areas, they are calls to action coming as if from the mouths of angels. Scores of our fellow Americans have been killed because people with a tenuous grasp on their sanity have decided to pick up their guns and take direct action. Rush didn’t tell them to shoot anybody. Glenn didn’t do it, nor did Sean. Even Wayne La Pierre of the NRA didn’t give his blessing. They’re innocent of all wrongdoing, while these poor loonies are surprised that people not only hate and fear them (instead of showering them with candy and flowers) but want to see them receive the maximum punishment.

The danger of using stand-ins to do all our thinking for us is that we could make the mistake of thinking the whole world believes in what their particular set of entertainers say. When they suddenly discover how divided we are, it could come as a serious shock.

So, Democrats, watch Faux News for a while just to see the snake oil that is being sold to the feeble-minded. And wingnuts, stay up late and watch Stephen Colbert or Bill Maher just to see that people may think differently from you.

Take away those blinders, and see the mess we’re in!

 

A Week of Very Very Bad News

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Omigosh, Where Do I Begin?

Omigosh, Where Do I Begin?

Every once in a while, all the bad news seems to clump up at one time. If you spend a lot of time following this news, you will feel very very bad and have to take some pharmaceutical products that are unlikely to do you any good. For those of you who have been consulting a sage on some remote mountaintop over the last seven days, here’s a brief summary of what has been clogging the pipes:

  • That Malaysian plane that was shot down by the Russkis or their BFFs is still in the middle of a battle zone, and investigators have been told the area is now mined. How’s that for hiding evidence?
  • Somebody did something to some Israelis or Hamas members, so the Israelis went and killed a couple thousand Arabs while Hamas still lobs cherry bombs and hammerheads into Israel.
  • Ebola is spreading like wildfire. For the sake of justice, we are bringing some afflicted Americans back to the States, where Donald Trump will be emptying their bedpans and giving them sponge baths.
  • Immigration? Congress does a bunk and gives Boehner another reason for a very public faceplant. Wait a sec, we’re paying those clowns to take apart the Legislative Branch of the U.S. Gummint?
  • Drought-stricken California is in even worse shape, now that the UCLA campus was flooded by several million gallons of water after a water main break. Is there any certainty that USC was not involved?
  • The stock market has taken a giant dump while we still consider investing in such ad-driven media as Facebook, Twitter, and SnapChat. Wait, don’t advertising budgets suffer first when the economy goes south?

You can laugh at anything—provided that you concentrate on cultivating your garden rather than bearing the world’s unsolvable ills on your back.

 

Television IS News?

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Look What’s Popping Up on TV News Websites?

Look What’s Popping Up on TV News Websites?

It was bound to happen sooner or later. Now that the same corporations that own television news also own popular television series.One can’t look at CNN.com or NBCNews.com without running into articles about the latest developments in “Man Men,” “Breaking Bad,” or even the dwindling “American Idol.” That never used to happen before. Even Salon.Com, which insofar as I know, is unaffiliated with any entertainment producers, is heavily interlarded with references to popular shows.

Since I have deliberately abandoned television programming over ten years ago, all these references in the news mean nothing to me. They end up as descriptions of cultural phenomena that are meaningless to me. In no case do I ever become interested enough to see what all the hoopla is about. I think the last time I tried was a few years ago when I rented the first season of “The Sopranos” from Netflix. I thought it was all right, but not good enough to maintain my interest.

Instead of television series, it would be interesting to see more news articles about books. That occasionally happens on Salon.Com, but almost never on the mainstream media websites. Oh, well, you can always come here and look at what I am reading. You are bound to encounter quite a few books. I have made a commitment to Goodreads.Com to read 106 books this year. So far, I am 16 books ahead on my goal. Maybe I should alert CNN?

It’s the Miracle Food!!!

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You Must Eat Three Pounds of Kale a Day to Thrive

You Must Eat Seven Pounds of Kale a Day in Order to Survive!

Okay, so I lied, both in the title of this posting and the caption to the photo above. I’m sure kale is as good for you as any number of other greens which have tended to be ignored. And, to my mind, kale is by no means the tastiest of the bunch. If I had my druthers, I would select Swiss chard which I use in most of my soup recipes. It’s not as bitter as kale, and probably just as good.

In fact, I used NutritionData.Com to do a comparative analysis of 1 cup of cooked, boiled, drained, without salt kale and Swiss chard. Click on either of these and you will learn more than you ever needed or wanted to know. The important thing to remember is this: Kale is not a miracle food, but like all greens is good for you.

Kale is now riding the high horse of newspaper-sanctioned prosperity, until such time as the media discovers that it causes cancer, beri-beri, pellagra, dengue, and leprosy. In the meantime, I suppose you could continue to eat your seven pounds of kale daily, not neglecting all the other vitamins and minerals your body needs to function.

I am sure that, any day now, I will see kale capsules available on the nutritional supplements shelf of your local pharmacy. Each 1,000 MG capsule will run you $3.95; and you should take three a day, one with each meal. Or you’ll be able to get kale oil. Feel free to rub it all over your skin and see how it changes your coloration to dark green. And how healthy is that?