Fruit o’ the Loon
’07 Installment # 9

If I fail to offend everyone, I’m sorry

CRAZY AL’S NEWS DIGEST

1. “A rat crawled into an old man’s mouth and died.” That’s it; Crazy Al is too flummoxed to even comment about this.

2. “Prisoners live longer”. The US Justice Department reported that prisoners in state prisons live 20% longer than people their same age in the general population. And, black inmates suffer a death rate one half of what it is on the outside.” Well, Duuuuuh! On the average, cats confined inside houses live longer than cats that go out of doors sometimes, and those cats live longer than feral cats. Look, you take away death by coyote, death by poisoning, and death by Pontiac Disease (cats run over by Pontiacs), and, whattayaknow, cats live longer indoors. Ramping analogous to prisoners, if you separate them from malicious people with guns, keep them out of Pontiacs, give them a balanced diet, free medical care, and free the use of State provided exercise facilities, and…. hell yes, they live longer.
In an allied piece, The West Tennessee Detention Facility is flacking for their prison, advertising that they have larger and cleaner jail cells, 79 TV channels, peaceful bucolic scenery, and “dorm of the week” contests where the winners get to stay up all night, watch a movie and eat cheeseburgers and pizza. This video advertising is targeted at California prisoners who can opt to be “out sourced” (so to speak) because California prisons are overcrowded. The mind boggles.

Crazy Al has to confess that he is glomming items from Chuck Shepherd’s “News of the Weird”. The Texas news has been tres bland of late.

HOME DEPOT SUCKS; LOWES RULES

Home Depot stores are dirty; it is difficult to get anyone to physically accompany you to find the product you want to buy, and they hire people who do not speak English. Lowes is not that way. Nuf said!

NATIONS FOUND ON THE BALSAMIC PENINSULA

Let’s see, there is Lower Vulgaria, Elbonia, and Outer Slobbovia—The Loon is so silly.

REVERANCE FOR LIFE

Albert Schweitzer believed in it. He was a talented musician, a physician and a humanitarian. He refused to kill bugs. That should be good enough for the Loon, but the Loon wonders what Dr. Schweitzer would do if he found a bunch of ants floating on top of the milk in his cereal bowl? Yeah! Al how ‘bout that? Avoiding all-out anticide, the Loon squishes only those ants seen on the kitchen counter. Since ants find food by following scent trails left by other ants, the Loon supposes that it must give hungry ants pause to experience the horror of running into the squished remains of one of their brethren right in the middle of a scent trail.

Buddhists, it is told, also have reverence for life, except, it seems, on occasions when human comfort or safety butts heads with spiritual authority. There was a recent newspaper account (and you know we must believe every news account found in the papers) of Mayasian Buddhist monks issuing a death sentence for fire ants that have infested their Buddhist temple for years. Patience always has its limits, but how did the Monks get away with this? Simple, they out-sourced the work to spiritually misguided Buddhists, and let them kill the ants. The Loon would rank these spiritually misguided Buddhists as sub-human hit-men, or should that be hit-men for sub-humans?

Back in the ‘70s, in Thailand, there was an epidemic of rabies in stray dogs. When it was suggested that the strays should be shot, the local constable refused because it was against his religious beliefs to do so. When it was suggested he put out poisoned meat for the dogs as a way of slightly divorcing the poisoner from act of poisoning but the Constable again refused. However, the constable suggested the following alternative. Poisoned meat and unpoisoned meat could be put out, and then the dogs can decide which they will eat. File this under pragmatism triumphs, or the pure of heart gotta keep their hands clean some kinda way.

And then, there is this unverified story heard long ago about Korean locomotive engineers turning their headlights off at night, because if they kill someone on the tracks, but didn’t see it happen, they would be free of both guilt and sin.

The Loon wonders how much Buddhists suffer when they clean the bug splats off their windshields? The Loon wonders about a lot of things—what else, tell me please, has he to do?


NOTABLE QUOTES

1. “Is a reader of the Loon called a Loonatic?

Gabrielle, 2007

“It appears we have appointed our worst generals to command forces, and our most gifted and brilliant to edit newspapers! In fact, I have discovered by reading newspapers that these editor/geniuses plainly saw all my strategic defects from the start, yet failed to inform me until it was too late. Accordingly, I’m readily willing to yield my command to those obviously superior intellects, and I’ll, in turn, do my best for the Cause by writing editorials – after the fact.”

Robert E. Lee, 1863

3. “You are like a crazy bear lost in a swamp.”

Bruno Tonioli (judge on “Dancing with the Stars) describing Billy Ray Cyrus’ Cha-cha. The Loon adores the imagery, but, Hey! Bruno, that’s really cold
.

4. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.”

Upton Sinclair

5. “In which ever way a democratic system may be sick, terrorism does not heal it; terrorism kills it. Democracy is healed with democracy.

Virginio Rognoni, Italian prosecutor

6. “Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities most monstrous, and like a ship without a rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such
persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason, and the mind becomes a wreck.”

Thomas Jefferson

7. “Study the past if you would define the future.”

Confucius


LOON MINI-BOOK REPORT

On the recommendation of “FotL” reader, Pat Rini, the Loon bought and read “A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper”. It is a slim paperback (212 pages + or – zero pages. See, it’s working) It is written by John Allen Paulos (same guy who wrote:”Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences” and “Beyond Numeracy: Ruminations of a Numbers Man”) This book was written on or about or before, but not after1995—the Loon is feeling so much more precise. Ordinarily the Loon doesn’t like to read anything written by men using three full names. The Loon has only two names—he was born during the Great Depression and his Old Man didn’t have a job. Hey! Everything was scarce in the depression, so get it out of your head that the Loon has an inferiority complex, or even an inferiority simplex. Anyway, three names or no, this is one great book.

This guy writes very unlike a mathematician (the common assumption is they can’t write for boo), and he is funny (another surprise). This book hits flat dab in the middle of one of the Loon’s major annoyance centers. He hates it when a newspaper scientific article quotes numbers, but doesn’t note where the numbers came from, doesn’t give sample size for percentages, or doesn’t give any idea of the inherent variability in any derived number. Hate it! Hate it! Hate It!

Under the heading of journalistic ambiguity Paulos quotes, as example, a hilarious letter of recommendation.

“You write to ask me for my opinion of X, who has applied for a position in your department. I cannot recommend him too highly nor say enough good things about him. There is no other student of mine with whom I can adequately compare him. His thesis is the sort of work you don‘t expect to see nowadays, and in it he has clearly demonstrated his complete capabilities. The amount of material he knows will surprise you. You will indeed be fortunate if you can get him to work for you.”

About test scores, appropriateness of tests, and hiring bias, he writes,

“The basic unit upon which our society or, indeed any liberal society (‘indeed’ is a sure sign of something pompous coming up) is founded is the individual, not the group.” The Loon is not sure that this is true in our multicultural-diversity–is-everything society, but ya gotta admit, it sounds good, and since the guy is a mathematician; he is smarter than we are.

Under “SAT Top Quartiles Scores Decline” They have been declining steadily since the 1960s, and he points out that multiple methods used to boost scores by actually educating students or raising the the scores by institutional jobbing the test have all proved failures at stemming the rising tide of ignorance. Woe, woe and more woe. However, he points out that there is a tight correlation between the increasing percentage of High School graduates who are taking the test and the declining test scores. You can believe or not whether increasing numbers of extra dumb students taking the test has lowered the average test scores, but as Paulos points out, “correlation” is often confused with “cause”.

Under a lack of definition for criteria, he points out that newspapers have quoted estimates on the numbers of homeless people in the United States ranging from 200,000 to 7,000,000, including, the Loon surmises, all numbers in between and possibly a few beyond, (the Loon is learning), but judicious probability allows you to just about rule out the “at” numbers, just as you can rule out that your body temperature is “at” 99.6 degrees Fahrenheit.. Dig this; the percentage of homosexual men in our population has been reported variously in the newspapers, from 1% to 20%, (again, the wise should rule out the extremes, and, for sure, the “at”s) but what you won’t find is a description of the criteria used for inclusion or exclusion. Double shame on newspaper weenies...

Under the section: “Science Medicine and the Environment” he uses an epigram by Will Rogers “It ain’t what you don’t know that counts. It’s what you know that ain’t so.” And under ”Ranking Health Risks; Experts and Laymen Differ” (a notorious disparity) Paulos calls the laity position, the “Dyscalculia Syndrome.” And, newspaper accounts are often riddled with undefined, poorly-understood but emotionally-laden hot-button terms, e.g. carcinogens, radiation, pesticides. About “pesticides” (which, I’m sure you will agree, are chemicals which kill bugs), biochemist, Bruce Ames has estimated that each of us ingests 10,000 times (about?) more natural pesticides than man-made pesticides; e.g., those natural bug-killers in Basil, mushrooms and peanuts. What does that prove? If we don’t die of pesticide toxicity we are not bugs? But, Damn! 10,000 times is a lot, depending, of course on how much man-made pesticides we ingest, which is plenty if you read alarmist science reports in the newspapers. The Loon can do without Basil, but how ‘bout if he cuts back on mushrooms and peanuts?

The book is gefult mitt examples of how newspapers misinform by using illogical inferences, or by either selecting numbers without merit, or numbers with dubious merit because they are free of an adequate explanation of from whence they came.

Buy this book. Read this book. It will make you a better person. Besides, it’s cheap (used) on Amazon—that’s where the Loon got his. He will give his away—first one who asks, gets it.

The book’s take away message? Kill a newspaper science reporter for the Loon, but also, do it for Einstein’s sake.

SELECTED BUMPERS STICKERS

1. Live every second like your ass is on fire

2. Support your independent everything.

3. I’m so happy, I could poop a rainbow.

4. Ted Kennedy’s car killed more people than my gun.

5. Evolution is a theory, kind of like gravity


PREVIEWS OF COMING ATTRACTIONS

A book report on “In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind” by Nobel Laureate, Eric R. Kandel


Allen Hall, a.k.a. The Loon, a.k.a. Crazy Al
April 7, 2007, In Dallas, where it is snowing—would the three of us lie to you?