Fruit o' the Loon '06 #22
Fruit o’ the Loon
’06 Installment # 22
If I fail to offend everyone, I’m sorry.
THE LOONSTER IS NOW A BLOGSTER.
Yes, he blogs, therefore he is. The blog is entitled, appropriately, “Fruit o’ the Loon” and you can get to it by going to Google (doesn’t everyone?), and then search for it by typing into the address line on the top of your screen (and not into the GOOGLE “search for” box in the middle of your screen (don’t ask me why) the following www.fruit-o-the-loon.blogspot.com If this doesn’t work, you may have to type in http://fruit-o-the-loon.blogspot.com/ and if this doesn’t work, either there is something wrong with your fingers, or your computer is stupid.
For those readers who enjoy masochism, hear this, the Loon intends to post on his blog all of the Fruits o’ the Loon from waaaaay back. Why is the Loon doing this? Well, he is not quite sure, but then, he is not quite sure about anything these days. BUT, don’t hold your breath waiting for the FotL archives to appear—we be traveling.
NOTABLE QUOTES
“Language is the most complex thing the human mind can do.” Erich Jarvis (The Loon thinks that using language is the most complex task that any animal’s mind can do, if, that is, you will allow that all animals have minds, and also, depending on our definition of “mind”.)
“The more open society becomes, the more an aristocracy of talent will replace an aristocracy of birth.” Francis Galton (cousin to Charles Darwin) However, “The talented retain many of the vices of aristocracy without its virtues.” Christopher Lasch (American historian). There’s a pairing of Yin/Yang quotes for you.
CRAZY AL’S NEWS DIGEST
1. LONGER LIFE THROUGH VINACULTURE CHEMISTRY, OR EVERLASTING LIFE WHILE MARKING TIME, OR BETTER YET, EVERLASTING LIFE IN THE BLOOM OF YOUTH.
A chemical in red wine may be the elixir of longer/everlasting/retrogressive life, depending on how much red wine you can drink and still keep your liver going long enough so you can live forever. Anyway, the chemical is called “resveratrol”. Why in the hell didn’t they name it “reversatrol”? Get it? It reverses the lethal effects of aging. But wait; there is the bonus kicker in this science item. You can exist on a steady diet to supersize-me MacDonald’s food 24/7/52 and still live longer if you get enough resveratrol—Hey! Mice did it. Alas! The Pope must be pissed, as here is yet another blow to the Catholic doctrine of “everything in moral moderation.”
All this resveratrol science work has been done in mice, which is nice for mice, but the potential use in humans has still to be worked out. However, it turns out that the longer living mice were given a very high dose of resveratrol. Ramping up the dose to humans, it appears, that in order to hope for increased life span even while you try to commit suicide using your jaws as a weapon at MacDonalds, the average human would have to drink something like 300 glasses of red wine each day. Now, I have known some people who would like to try that, all in the interest of science, mind you. They are selfless people who would readily endanger themselves in the cause of benefiting humankind through science, and I was one of them. But, that’s a story for another time.
Please excuse Crazy Al for carrying this to a ridiculous extreme, but let’s just suppose that in addition to a resveratrol pill per day actually slowing down the aging process, some number of pills per day would arrest it—Yes! Stop ageing altogether? Hey! frozen in time and appearance would not be so bad, even though we would then bankrupt the Social Security System (chronological age remaining the only determinant), and, worse still, insure that old Congressmen would remain in office in perpetuity. Say! Let’s go further, and suppose there is some extra number of pills per day which will reverse the aging process, and allow us all to return to a state of vigorous youth and pleasing appearance. Oh say, after acne, but before wrinkles. Wouldn’t that be great; we could look like our kids, but could still use our hard-won remembered senior cunning to whip them in a fair fight.
Well, anyway, the mainstream press jumped on this sci-item like a hungry Bassett Hound jumps on a greasy ham bone. Has the main stream press ever acted otherwise? You can bet Merlot grape vintners are rubbing their hands together in glee. See, of late, they can’t pay fickle Yuppie wine-tipplers to drink the fermented squeezings of the out-of-favor Merlot grape.
Let Crazy Al recount a few instances of journalistic science-sensationalism:
Back in the mid ‘60s there was a chemical used on cranberries which was good for cranberries, but caused cancer in mice. Sadly, this revelation hit the news right before Thanksgiving and what do you think happened? Yep! Thousands choked to death in those pre-Heimlich maneuver days, as they vainly tried to swallow drier-than-a-popcorn-fart turkey breast-meat. Oh! It was pitiful; fathers and husbands went down clutching at their throats, made worse when it was later reported, for anyone to get cancer from eating cranberries, it would require eating 6 boxcars full of cranberries.
Then, there was a chemical used on apples which did something good for apples but caused cancer in mice. Can you just imagine the howls of indignation coming from Washington State after the apple market had gone into the dumper, especially when it was later revealed that for a human to make sure they got cancer they would have to eat every apple in every Kroger store in America every day, or something like that.
Then recently there was the revelation that women who swallow semen have a lower incidence of breast cancer. Unfortunately, no estimate was made of how many gallons of swallowed semen would be needed take to insure a woman would never get breast cancer.
Look, do you think science reporters give a niggling thought to dose/effect curves, moral concerns or even pragmatism when they file these too-hot–to-pass-up-on stories? The takeaway message? Main-stream press science reporters are not to be trusted. They deal in sensationalism. They routinely fail to detail real risks or benefits. Crazy Al says, “Shame on them.”
2. BARBARA STRIESAND CONCERT TIXS GO FOR BIG BUCKS.
Oh my! Her Atlanta sing-a-long tickets sold for between $102 and $752, and that’s not the deluxe package containing complimentary binoculars and souvenirs costing as much as $1,800. Babs is smokin’ hot right now. Crazy Al is a tyro political consultant, but he does have a nifty suggestion for Babs….listen in….
“Hello Babs. This is Crazy Al. Yes, of course, it’s The Crazy Al. Look Babs, I want you to promise me you will think about something. Are you ready? Okay, would you consider inking an exclusive endorsement deal with Billary? Ha Ha! See, Bill plus Hillary equals Billary. Anyway, this is important. If you will agree to campaign exclusively for her, when she wins the Presidency and abandons her U.S. Senate seat from New York, she can cede the seat to you, in a quid pro quo-less deal, of course. What? Sure, you will have to establish residency in New York, but that's easy you rent an apartment there and say you live there. Wink. Girl, How easy is that? Anyway, here is the sweet part. When when you run for re-election ad infinitum, should you choose to be on resveratrol, and who won’t be, you can sing for re-election contributions. It’s the ultimate win-win deal, Babs. Look, the children of the ’60s can revisit their youth through your wonderful evocative songs, and you get the big bucks necessary to buy political TV ads of yourself singing evocative songs for the children of the ’60s. Don’t you just love the circular symmetry? Babs, all I want out of this is a job as political advisor, and maybe you could score me an occasional guest spot on the PBS Evening News. Babs, I’ll promise to dutifully carry your political water, and even carry Billary’s….if you really insist on that. This is a one-time-good-deal, Babs. Think about this, and get right back to me. Don’t wait, as I am working with Condi right now, and I don’t have to tell you she’s black, and so, you know she can sing those great old Mo-Town hits.”
3. MORT ZUCKERMAN EDITORIALIZED ON “A HOUSE DIVIDED”
Let the Loon cherry-pick quote some of what Mort wrote:
“Our national (political) conversation has become too polarized, too shrill, too inflamed, too predictable, too divisive, and altogether inimical to our national interest.”
“Conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans are both endangered species today, the ideological gap between the parties is growing, and the once large overlap between centrist Democrats and Republicans has virtually disappeared.
“Party primaries, with low voter turnout, have come to be dominated by ideologues supported by special-interest groups that fund negative advertising. Winning elections has turned more on getting out the base vote…”
“(Voter) Turnout is stimulated by wedge issues, which inflame the activists and often leave moderate voters unhappy at their choices.”
“Today, America has unprecedented responsibilities, but it is difficult for a superpower to discharge theses duties with its domestic political house in disarray.”
This was published in February 20, 2006. Since then, Democrats have won working majorities in both houses of Congress. The Senate Democratic majority is not nearly large enough to overturn a Presidential veto. As a result, we are now faced with an administration and legislature which are at political loggerheads. We are now faced with two outcomes: 1. Compromise, or 2. Gridlock. Which will it be? Crazy Al believes that we have become so politically polarized that compromise is almost impossible, but, golly! gridlock is not all that bad. Having no good law passed is much worse than not having a bad grand-standing pork-gobbling law passed.
No doubt, many of the new faces in the Congress will be political moderates who have been elected precisely because they were. What a surprise they will have when they join their still entrenched brethren who now are divided into two opposing armies, armies who will court-martial, and ultimately insure a dishonorable discharge for any turncoat moderates they discover hiding in their midst.
A LOON BOOK MINI-REPORT
“Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity: Get out the shovel—Why Everything you Know is Wrong” by John Stossel. This book has a bad sub-title—I object to the use of the word “everything”—for a simplistic book mostly about self-evident matters. e.g. a clueless media, a monster government, and consumer cons; plus weighty matters about which we can do nothing but fume, e.g. the power of belief, the perils of parenting, and unfair bashing of both fair and unfair business. The book did unravel some of the complexity about our current strained relationship with public schools, but that is not enough to fork out 25 bucks for an ’06 book which was written so it would be on the NYT Best Seller List—I’m sure it made it, these kinds of books always do. I cut out some pages and sent them to people so they too can fume, but for the rest of the book, I will get me out a shovel and bury it out back. Be gone Bad Book!
NORTH CAROLINA TRAFFIC
The Loon is no stranger to accident-induced traffic jams, construction snafu back-ups, and traffic-memory ogler slowdowns. Hey! He has been stuck creeping through Atlanta, Houston and Los Angeles, but, lemmie tell you this, the middle of North Carolina has too damn many cars and too few wide roads. Connecting the two central North Carolina tri-city areas—Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill and Greensboro/Winston-Salem/High Point*—are two Interstate Highways- (I-40 & I-85) and they are running on the same roadbed. If a driver sneezes while driving on that road, someone is liable to be late for work or dinner.
* Ever notice how many North Carolina cities are named after popular brands of cigarettes?
CONSTRASTING FACTS
Thirty-eight percent of the United State is wilderness; twenty-eight percent of Africa is wilderness.
THE NEWS; WHERE IT IS, AND WERE IT AIN’T
The Loon bought a half buck local newspaper in Latta NC--hadda stop there for gas. There was nothing in the paper but oooohings and aaaahings over the local football team. I ain't lying, NOTHING. At first I though someone had stolen the gut sections out of the paper, but no, it was just a 50 cent front page wrapped around a gapping journalistic void. To say the paper was not thick beggars the obvious as much as saying Paris Hilton has no class. The Loon has always made it a dutiful practice to buy the local rag, but his practice is about to change--the ubiquitous "USA Today", even at six-bits a copy, is starting to look a whole lot better.
In constrast, the next day the Loon bought a half buck news paper in Jacksonville FL, and it had both heft and news. Sure, there were plenty of shootings and knifings reported in town, but, dig this, the Op/Ed page carried side-by-side editorials by a brace of political pole attack bitches, .Ann Coulter on the distant right and Molly Ivins on the distant left, but incongruously, Ann's column was on the left side of the page and Molly's was on the right. Obviously, the Op/Ed page editor was asleep.
In further contrast, several days later, the Loon bought the Sunday edition of the “St. Petersburg Times”, one of the best newspapers in America, and certainly the best bargain (two-bits for a daily—half buck for a Sunday). The Sunday edition is as heavy as a fat goose, and even when you purge it of all the slick-paper colored-ads, it’s still as heavy as a thin goose. The writing is good, as are the funnies and op/ed pages. An ex-journalist friend, Pat Rini, informed me that the reason why they can make it so good and sell it so cheap is because of the large number of well-educated retired people in the area. These are people who grew up with a daily newspaper, and so, “The St. Pete Times’” circulation penetration is deep in the ‘Tamp bay area. And since its readers have disposable income, means that ad copy brings in oodles of dough, which pays for oodles of good writers, who write oodles of well-written copy. “The St. Pete Times” has not yet entered the American newspaper death spiral.
Allen Hall, the Loon
November 14, 2006, in sunny warm Punta Gorda FL
’06 Installment # 22
If I fail to offend everyone, I’m sorry.
THE LOONSTER IS NOW A BLOGSTER.
Yes, he blogs, therefore he is. The blog is entitled, appropriately, “Fruit o’ the Loon” and you can get to it by going to Google (doesn’t everyone?), and then search for it by typing into the address line on the top of your screen (and not into the GOOGLE “search for” box in the middle of your screen (don’t ask me why) the following www.fruit-o-the-loon.blogspot.com If this doesn’t work, you may have to type in http://fruit-o-the-loon.blogspot.com/ and if this doesn’t work, either there is something wrong with your fingers, or your computer is stupid.
For those readers who enjoy masochism, hear this, the Loon intends to post on his blog all of the Fruits o’ the Loon from waaaaay back. Why is the Loon doing this? Well, he is not quite sure, but then, he is not quite sure about anything these days. BUT, don’t hold your breath waiting for the FotL archives to appear—we be traveling.
NOTABLE QUOTES
“Language is the most complex thing the human mind can do.” Erich Jarvis (The Loon thinks that using language is the most complex task that any animal’s mind can do, if, that is, you will allow that all animals have minds, and also, depending on our definition of “mind”.)
“The more open society becomes, the more an aristocracy of talent will replace an aristocracy of birth.” Francis Galton (cousin to Charles Darwin) However, “The talented retain many of the vices of aristocracy without its virtues.” Christopher Lasch (American historian). There’s a pairing of Yin/Yang quotes for you.
CRAZY AL’S NEWS DIGEST
1. LONGER LIFE THROUGH VINACULTURE CHEMISTRY, OR EVERLASTING LIFE WHILE MARKING TIME, OR BETTER YET, EVERLASTING LIFE IN THE BLOOM OF YOUTH.
A chemical in red wine may be the elixir of longer/everlasting/retrogressive life, depending on how much red wine you can drink and still keep your liver going long enough so you can live forever. Anyway, the chemical is called “resveratrol”. Why in the hell didn’t they name it “reversatrol”? Get it? It reverses the lethal effects of aging. But wait; there is the bonus kicker in this science item. You can exist on a steady diet to supersize-me MacDonald’s food 24/7/52 and still live longer if you get enough resveratrol—Hey! Mice did it. Alas! The Pope must be pissed, as here is yet another blow to the Catholic doctrine of “everything in moral moderation.”
All this resveratrol science work has been done in mice, which is nice for mice, but the potential use in humans has still to be worked out. However, it turns out that the longer living mice were given a very high dose of resveratrol. Ramping up the dose to humans, it appears, that in order to hope for increased life span even while you try to commit suicide using your jaws as a weapon at MacDonalds, the average human would have to drink something like 300 glasses of red wine each day. Now, I have known some people who would like to try that, all in the interest of science, mind you. They are selfless people who would readily endanger themselves in the cause of benefiting humankind through science, and I was one of them. But, that’s a story for another time.
Please excuse Crazy Al for carrying this to a ridiculous extreme, but let’s just suppose that in addition to a resveratrol pill per day actually slowing down the aging process, some number of pills per day would arrest it—Yes! Stop ageing altogether? Hey! frozen in time and appearance would not be so bad, even though we would then bankrupt the Social Security System (chronological age remaining the only determinant), and, worse still, insure that old Congressmen would remain in office in perpetuity. Say! Let’s go further, and suppose there is some extra number of pills per day which will reverse the aging process, and allow us all to return to a state of vigorous youth and pleasing appearance. Oh say, after acne, but before wrinkles. Wouldn’t that be great; we could look like our kids, but could still use our hard-won remembered senior cunning to whip them in a fair fight.
Well, anyway, the mainstream press jumped on this sci-item like a hungry Bassett Hound jumps on a greasy ham bone. Has the main stream press ever acted otherwise? You can bet Merlot grape vintners are rubbing their hands together in glee. See, of late, they can’t pay fickle Yuppie wine-tipplers to drink the fermented squeezings of the out-of-favor Merlot grape.
Let Crazy Al recount a few instances of journalistic science-sensationalism:
Back in the mid ‘60s there was a chemical used on cranberries which was good for cranberries, but caused cancer in mice. Sadly, this revelation hit the news right before Thanksgiving and what do you think happened? Yep! Thousands choked to death in those pre-Heimlich maneuver days, as they vainly tried to swallow drier-than-a-popcorn-fart turkey breast-meat. Oh! It was pitiful; fathers and husbands went down clutching at their throats, made worse when it was later reported, for anyone to get cancer from eating cranberries, it would require eating 6 boxcars full of cranberries.
Then, there was a chemical used on apples which did something good for apples but caused cancer in mice. Can you just imagine the howls of indignation coming from Washington State after the apple market had gone into the dumper, especially when it was later revealed that for a human to make sure they got cancer they would have to eat every apple in every Kroger store in America every day, or something like that.
Then recently there was the revelation that women who swallow semen have a lower incidence of breast cancer. Unfortunately, no estimate was made of how many gallons of swallowed semen would be needed take to insure a woman would never get breast cancer.
Look, do you think science reporters give a niggling thought to dose/effect curves, moral concerns or even pragmatism when they file these too-hot–to-pass-up-on stories? The takeaway message? Main-stream press science reporters are not to be trusted. They deal in sensationalism. They routinely fail to detail real risks or benefits. Crazy Al says, “Shame on them.”
2. BARBARA STRIESAND CONCERT TIXS GO FOR BIG BUCKS.
Oh my! Her Atlanta sing-a-long tickets sold for between $102 and $752, and that’s not the deluxe package containing complimentary binoculars and souvenirs costing as much as $1,800. Babs is smokin’ hot right now. Crazy Al is a tyro political consultant, but he does have a nifty suggestion for Babs….listen in….
“Hello Babs. This is Crazy Al. Yes, of course, it’s The Crazy Al. Look Babs, I want you to promise me you will think about something. Are you ready? Okay, would you consider inking an exclusive endorsement deal with Billary? Ha Ha! See, Bill plus Hillary equals Billary. Anyway, this is important. If you will agree to campaign exclusively for her, when she wins the Presidency and abandons her U.S. Senate seat from New York, she can cede the seat to you, in a quid pro quo-less deal, of course. What? Sure, you will have to establish residency in New York, but that's easy you rent an apartment there and say you live there. Wink. Girl, How easy is that? Anyway, here is the sweet part. When when you run for re-election ad infinitum, should you choose to be on resveratrol, and who won’t be, you can sing for re-election contributions. It’s the ultimate win-win deal, Babs. Look, the children of the ’60s can revisit their youth through your wonderful evocative songs, and you get the big bucks necessary to buy political TV ads of yourself singing evocative songs for the children of the ’60s. Don’t you just love the circular symmetry? Babs, all I want out of this is a job as political advisor, and maybe you could score me an occasional guest spot on the PBS Evening News. Babs, I’ll promise to dutifully carry your political water, and even carry Billary’s….if you really insist on that. This is a one-time-good-deal, Babs. Think about this, and get right back to me. Don’t wait, as I am working with Condi right now, and I don’t have to tell you she’s black, and so, you know she can sing those great old Mo-Town hits.”
3. MORT ZUCKERMAN EDITORIALIZED ON “A HOUSE DIVIDED”
Let the Loon cherry-pick quote some of what Mort wrote:
“Our national (political) conversation has become too polarized, too shrill, too inflamed, too predictable, too divisive, and altogether inimical to our national interest.”
“Conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans are both endangered species today, the ideological gap between the parties is growing, and the once large overlap between centrist Democrats and Republicans has virtually disappeared.
“Party primaries, with low voter turnout, have come to be dominated by ideologues supported by special-interest groups that fund negative advertising. Winning elections has turned more on getting out the base vote…”
“(Voter) Turnout is stimulated by wedge issues, which inflame the activists and often leave moderate voters unhappy at their choices.”
“Today, America has unprecedented responsibilities, but it is difficult for a superpower to discharge theses duties with its domestic political house in disarray.”
This was published in February 20, 2006. Since then, Democrats have won working majorities in both houses of Congress. The Senate Democratic majority is not nearly large enough to overturn a Presidential veto. As a result, we are now faced with an administration and legislature which are at political loggerheads. We are now faced with two outcomes: 1. Compromise, or 2. Gridlock. Which will it be? Crazy Al believes that we have become so politically polarized that compromise is almost impossible, but, golly! gridlock is not all that bad. Having no good law passed is much worse than not having a bad grand-standing pork-gobbling law passed.
No doubt, many of the new faces in the Congress will be political moderates who have been elected precisely because they were. What a surprise they will have when they join their still entrenched brethren who now are divided into two opposing armies, armies who will court-martial, and ultimately insure a dishonorable discharge for any turncoat moderates they discover hiding in their midst.
A LOON BOOK MINI-REPORT
“Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity: Get out the shovel—Why Everything you Know is Wrong” by John Stossel. This book has a bad sub-title—I object to the use of the word “everything”—for a simplistic book mostly about self-evident matters. e.g. a clueless media, a monster government, and consumer cons; plus weighty matters about which we can do nothing but fume, e.g. the power of belief, the perils of parenting, and unfair bashing of both fair and unfair business. The book did unravel some of the complexity about our current strained relationship with public schools, but that is not enough to fork out 25 bucks for an ’06 book which was written so it would be on the NYT Best Seller List—I’m sure it made it, these kinds of books always do. I cut out some pages and sent them to people so they too can fume, but for the rest of the book, I will get me out a shovel and bury it out back. Be gone Bad Book!
NORTH CAROLINA TRAFFIC
The Loon is no stranger to accident-induced traffic jams, construction snafu back-ups, and traffic-memory ogler slowdowns. Hey! He has been stuck creeping through Atlanta, Houston and Los Angeles, but, lemmie tell you this, the middle of North Carolina has too damn many cars and too few wide roads. Connecting the two central North Carolina tri-city areas—Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill and Greensboro/Winston-Salem/High Point*—are two Interstate Highways- (I-40 & I-85) and they are running on the same roadbed. If a driver sneezes while driving on that road, someone is liable to be late for work or dinner.
* Ever notice how many North Carolina cities are named after popular brands of cigarettes?
CONSTRASTING FACTS
Thirty-eight percent of the United State is wilderness; twenty-eight percent of Africa is wilderness.
THE NEWS; WHERE IT IS, AND WERE IT AIN’T
The Loon bought a half buck local newspaper in Latta NC--hadda stop there for gas. There was nothing in the paper but oooohings and aaaahings over the local football team. I ain't lying, NOTHING. At first I though someone had stolen the gut sections out of the paper, but no, it was just a 50 cent front page wrapped around a gapping journalistic void. To say the paper was not thick beggars the obvious as much as saying Paris Hilton has no class. The Loon has always made it a dutiful practice to buy the local rag, but his practice is about to change--the ubiquitous "USA Today", even at six-bits a copy, is starting to look a whole lot better.
In constrast, the next day the Loon bought a half buck news paper in Jacksonville FL, and it had both heft and news. Sure, there were plenty of shootings and knifings reported in town, but, dig this, the Op/Ed page carried side-by-side editorials by a brace of political pole attack bitches, .Ann Coulter on the distant right and Molly Ivins on the distant left, but incongruously, Ann's column was on the left side of the page and Molly's was on the right. Obviously, the Op/Ed page editor was asleep.
In further contrast, several days later, the Loon bought the Sunday edition of the “St. Petersburg Times”, one of the best newspapers in America, and certainly the best bargain (two-bits for a daily—half buck for a Sunday). The Sunday edition is as heavy as a fat goose, and even when you purge it of all the slick-paper colored-ads, it’s still as heavy as a thin goose. The writing is good, as are the funnies and op/ed pages. An ex-journalist friend, Pat Rini, informed me that the reason why they can make it so good and sell it so cheap is because of the large number of well-educated retired people in the area. These are people who grew up with a daily newspaper, and so, “The St. Pete Times’” circulation penetration is deep in the ‘Tamp bay area. And since its readers have disposable income, means that ad copy brings in oodles of dough, which pays for oodles of good writers, who write oodles of well-written copy. “The St. Pete Times” has not yet entered the American newspaper death spiral.
Allen Hall, the Loon
November 14, 2006, in sunny warm Punta Gorda FL
posted by Allen Hall at 1:16 PM
1 comments
