Fruit o' the Loon

2007-06-26T16:09:00.000-07:00

Fruit o’ the Loon
’07 Installment # 1

If I fail to annoy everyone, I’m sorry

LOON BOOK MINI-REPORT

“Theodore Rex” by Edmond Morris is a ponderous book. The paperback weighs about 2 pounds and 213 of its 772 pages are devoted to archives, bibliography, credits, and index. As you might imagine, it is a scholarly work. It is the second of a planned biographic trilogy of Theodore Roosevelt, and Teddy Rex covers only 8 years of his life—those while he was President. Morris is a gifted writer of elegant English, and, for the Loon, that is the salvaging grace of this book. It didn’t hurt that Teddy Roosevelt is easily, in my mind, the most interesting man to ever hold the Presidency. He had an unusual mix of characteristics and abilities. Off the top of the Loon’s forgetful head, a wholly incomplete list follows, speed reader, photographic memory, polymath, conservationist and environmentalist, war-monger, stoic of the first order, cunning politician, encyclical charismatic, outdoorsman, mountain climber, hunter and bird-watcher, combat soldier, empire builder, visionary, child-like, ambitious, honorable, privileged easterner by birth but self-made westerner by choice, sickly child, uncommon physical strength and courage with uncommon stamina as an adult, prolific writer author of 15 books and reader of 15,000, fair-minded, honest, scientist, and the list should go on.

All that said, the exercise of Presidential power, which is what this book is about, is not a subject on the Loon’s list of top ten interests. Agreed, Morris weaves in the personal Roosevelt with the political, and that, plus Morris’ grand use of language kept me plodding along. The book is also heavy in content; every sentence adds something, and so, a few pages each night before sleep were often all I could handle. This book was made possible because Teddy Roosevelt produced a prodigious volume of writings, most of which are were archived unedited No President before or since is in the same class with him in this regard. Further, the many flawed Presidents during the last of half of the 20th century have been leery of leaving such an incriminating paper trail. Teddy wasn’t cautious with his reputation, as he was the most popular and endearing President we have ever had, and he knew it. He could have had, for the mere asking, a 3rd term and, perhaps, a 4th, term as President, but he had declared that he would stand for President twice and no more. Not that he wasn’t sorely tempted to continue in power, but the dishonor of pledges broken was not a frivolous matter back then, and assets of character were precious and not to be easily sullied. My! My! How behavior in the mighty has changed.

The final book of the trilogy is being written now. It is Teddy’s biography from the end of his Presidency until his death—I will read it. Of the first two books, I recommend most the first, “The Making of Theodore Roosevelt” (His life until be became President), but if you are interested in reading gorgeous writing which give great insight into life in the United States while Teddy was alive (1858-1919), read all three.

NOTABLE QUOTES

“In war the fathers bury their sons; whereas in peace the sons bury their fathers,” Croesus.
Famous as the subject of the saying, “Rich as Croesus”, he was a 6th century BC King of Lydia, and the last of the line. Lydia was a small kingdom in what is now western Anatolian Turkey. The Loon thought you just might like to know that.

“It is all I have wanted to be since I was thirteen.” The reining Miss U.S.A.

These words she spoke while blubbering on TV, after she had been miraculously pardoned by the chief inquisitor and conveyor of all wondrous treasures, THE DONALD, and after she had been caught hard-partying while under age in New York City. The Loon understands fully how important it has become for young people to aspire to be famous. This young woman has made the grade, even though I do not know her name, nor want to, nor need to One can only wonder if she will founder on the rocks of fame, or right herself by shedding her unearned celebrity, and go on to actually do something, or even, perchance, to become a genuine person? The Loon is not filled with confidence at the prospects. Under age hard-partying in New York City is certainly not a credential in support of the label of infamy, but today, infamy is almost synonymous with fame. Today almost any form of recognition is desirable over anonymity. A recent article in “Psychology Today” noted that many young people have relinquished aspirations of accomplishing anything, and exchanged them for desires to be someone—“famous” is they word use.. A current major role model for those who desire to be famous is Paris Hilton who is primarily famous for being famous, and secondarily for being rich and having parents who have been, most likely, derelict in their parental responsibilities. “Sniff!” goes the Loon.
LOON JAZZ BOOK MINI-REPORT (Skip this if you were an addressee on the latest installment of “News and Views from the Hall LindyJazzMobile”—the address lists for Fruits o’ the Loon and News and Views from the Hall LindyJazzMobile have some overlap.)
“The Oxford Companion to Jazz” is a compendium of 61 essays on jazz. It was published in 2000, edited by Bill Kirshner, and the essay contributors include some of the most knowledgeable and gifted writers in the field of jazz journalism and criticism. The essay subject matter is protean; covering history, prominent players and singers, the role of instruments, national and international locales, and the types, styles, and movements in jazz, and it’s used in film and literature. It is a 6 pound 800 page paperback doorstop, but one of the most informative books on jazz I have ever read, and I will tell why. Each essay in this book covers a small segment of jazz using limited scope unconfused by the inherent complexity in the history of jazz and the plethora of interlocking styles in the music. Most books covering the entirety of jazz offer a skewed perspective depending on the musical preference of the author, and a history of the music is often condensed into one huge indigestible confusing story line. The history of jazz is not neat, and everyone has their own perceived Gospel about of the jazz plot line. I have mine. To wit, in one paragraph…just to prove it can be done.

Jazz arose sometime during the end of the 19th century and the start of the 20th century in New Orleans. It was played by men in racially segregated bands as a musical stew composed of field hollers, Ragtime, Blues, African rhythms and sensibilities, European music structure, and seasoned with a spritz of Spanish pepper. The stew lid blew off, and the music poured up the Mississippi River, and, after topping the levees in Memphis and St. Louis, it flooded into Chicago where Louis Armstrong changed everything. Polyphonic jazz became monophonic. Then the erupting stew spewed all the way to New York City from which racially integrated Big Bands spread like a benign virus throughout the east and middle of the United States playing a music known as “swing”. , best characterized by Bill Basie’s comment “I want four beats to every measure”. This pissed off the polyphonists. Charlie Parker then went to New York City and created BeBop a music which changed everything by changing the vocabulary of jazz. This pissed off both the swingers and the polyphonists, the latter which then became derisively known as Mouldy Figs and who finally assigned their music the name “Dixieland”. In the 1960s everything changed again as jazz became psychotic (actually “multipolyschizophrenic), with multiple personalities emerging, and when the stew lost its distinctive flava, it became Baskin Robins jazz with 33 personalities. A personality exemplified by John Coltrane (Spiritual) was followed by one taking jazz back toward its roots (Hard Bop) with another taking it away from its roots (Third Wave). Then Miles Davis created a commercial personality (Fusion), which was followed by a back to kindergarten jazz personality (Atonal), and then there were several cigarette ad jazz personalities (Cool, Lite and Free), all of which were superseded by an all-string acoustic personality (Django Jazz), several revivalist jazz personalities (Neo-Hot Jazz, Retro-Swing, and Messiah Wynton Jazz), and finally, by a Kenny G Jazz personality (Modern). All jazz is now played by racially segregated, but sexually integrated bands, as women now play every jazz instrument except for drums because it is unladylike to sit a bandstand all night with your legs spread wide apart.

This book contains a panoramic variety of jazz essays but with concise content, such as “Louis Armstrong”, “Ragtime Then and Now”, “Hot Music of the ’20s”, “Major Soloists of the ‘30s and ‘40s”, “The Avant-Garde from 1949 to 1967”. “Jazz and Dance”, “Jazz and Brazilian Music”, and “Jazz Drumming” with each essay uncluttered by the bewildering omnibus of what, where, how, and by whom which was then concurrent in jazz. Dig this, I even learned what Blues is and ain’t.

Read it, or be square--if you have 3 months to spare.

NOTE: I am conflicted about where to put a Jazz book report. Should it go in “Fruit’s o’ the Loon” where most of my book reports are found, or, because of jazz content, go in “News and Views from the LindyJazzMobile”? I am going to try to put this book report in both—If, that is, someone will please tell me how to do it without having to type the whole damned thing twice—something I am always loathe to do. Retyping is like washing dishes or making beds, repetitive work that men have never excelled at. BTW, I tried going to “edit” to do the “copy” and “paste” dealy thingy, but my autocratic computer wouldn’t allow it—the nerve of some machines.

Damn! I made it work. Do I hear a move for a resolution to make The Loon the Cyber-Tech King of the Universe?

THE LOON’S MINI-BITCH LIST

The Loon hasn’t been dancing for over 2 weeks, and the edginess born of inactivity has flipped him over into an Andy Rooney mode. To wit:

Why do the media give NASA get so much press to lobby the people for obscenely expensive and largely worthless toys in space. NASA is nervous because young people are completely engaged with You-Tube and Googleing hither thither and yon, and have become indifferent to NASA’s grand plan to build a new fleet of Orion Spacecraft, which can build a way-station on the moon, and then put a man on Mars. See, the youngsters of today are going to have to hoist the tax cost of Orions onto their backs someday, and so NASA is flacking like a side-show shill in a Carnie in order to sell the program. The United States did very nicely for almost 200 years without an American on the moon, and now we have to have one on Mars? Oh! The shame of it all, to be second to the Chinese on Mars. The Loon sez, “Bah! it’s just exorbitantly expensive jingoism, e.g.,” My rocket’s bigger than your rocket.”

Why in the newspaper society sections do doctors get a “Dr” title, but plebian socialites don’t rate a “Mr.” “Ms” or “Mrs.” title? With the recent advent of common family names as given names to both men and women, you can’t tell the gender of the plebeians, and you can’t tell the gender of the doctors either. It’s a lousy system.

Why don’t people use their real names on internet forums? They like to call their internet names “avatars” when they are really just aliases. Are they ashamed of who they are, or what they will write? If you send an unsigned letter to the editor of a newspaper or magazine, the editor should maybe read it, but never publish it. Why do internet forums allow incognito writers? Apparently, the answer is because they can’t stop them, and, perhaps, in the interest of the utter freedom for the internet, the forums shouldn’t insist on real names. However, a cautionary note: utter freedom is utter anarchy. Incidentally the Loon’s internet moniker is “mrmusichall”, but he always affixes “Allen Hall” to the bottom of all postings. He is so proud of himself.

Why do these pissy-little cell phones have to have so many teeny tiny buttons on their sides? The Loon doesn’t know what they are for, and it is almost impossible for Big-Fingers Loon to pick one up without making some damned function go off that the Loon didn’t want in the first place. If he wanted to know the time, he could look at my watch. If he wanted to take a picture, he could use my camera. He doesn’t want call waiting—Hell! He doesn’t even know what it is. He doesn’t want call conferencing—he likes to talk to one person at a time, if he has to talk to more than one person, he becomes even more than ordinarily confused. He understands and appreciates the value of cell phones, for safety, say, if he am hopelessly lost somewhere in a Home Depot, and for coordination of activities, say, when Rudy wants to summons him to dinner when he am more than 120 feet away. If he had my way, the only time when his cell phone would be on was when he wants to make a call. Truly, ever since he quit drinking, he seems to have lost the urge to talk. Both Rudy and he have a cell phone—that was his first mistake--and so, one or the other is ringing all the time. We are SO popular.

Why do people love all these so-called reality TV shows starring so-called celebrities? The “reality” is BS and people designated as celebrities** are now not only ice skating and dancing, they are in a show in which they are foisted off on us as real cops, in a show named “Armed and Famous”. Gimmie a break! The Loon will believe the celebrities are real cops when one is really shot by a real criminal. What’s next, celebrities as real brain surgeons? The only reality show starring celebrities the Loon would like to watch would be entitled “Lost (hopefully forever) on a Jungle Island with lots of Leeches, Giant Lizards with bacteria-laced flesh-dissolving bacteria in their saliva, and Rattle-headed Copper Moccasin Cobras with venom so poisonous that if the snake strikes at you and misses, you are gonna die anyway”.

** Would you please s’plain to da Loon who in the hell determines who is a celebrity? Some celebrities have never been celebrated for doing anything, and besides, da Loon have never heard of half of them. Does the last clause in the last sentence say more about da Loon as an out-of-the-know doofus, than it does about undeserving celebrities?

The Loon is fresh off two days of dance, and, as a result, much more mellow.

YET ANOTHER APPLICATION OF “THE LAW OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES”

Congress passed a law to make it possible for deaf people to use the telephone. The deaf person could type in a message and send it over the phone to an operator who would call the person to whom the message was intended and read it to them. For those of us who have many times tried in vain to reach a real person on the phone, just imagine the expense of implementing this law. Oh! It’s no where near the expense of making all public accommodation wheel-chair friendly, but still, hiring real people as telephone operators is not cheap. But forget the expense; the United States is a rich country, and part of that money is rightfully spent on making life easier for the disabled. However, this law allowing the deaf to you the phone is being primarily used by scammers, bunko- artists, drug-runners, money-launderers and the like. They have become the primary users of the new service because there is no record of their voices, and the law prohibits the operators from revealing to anyone the content of the messages. No Catholic Priest, no FBI agent and no local police detectives are allowed to know. And so, Congress has passed a law which could not have been better designed to make the business of crime easier and less undetectable. In defense of Congress, it has never been a body much concerned with “The Law of Unintended Consequences”, but, Hey! a just a tad of common-sense prescience would have helped here. Anyway they are going to have to cut the criminal use balls off of this law, that is to say, when ever they get around to it. Right now, many are absorbed with redecorating their new offices in D.C.

POTPOURRI

1. We in the United States should thank our lucky stars our immigration problem is largely with Christians from democratic Mexico. Consider for a moment, the European immigration problem which is largely Muslims from autocratic countries with a fondness for sharia law.

2. Correct the Loon if he is mistaken, but aren’t we undergoing a major bimbo eruption exemplified by Lindsey Loan, Nicole Ritchie, Paris Hilton, Brittany Spears, and the pair of ace ditzes, Jessica and Ashley Simpson?

3. For those of you who object to eating meat from cloned animals, the Loon welcomes you to consider this thought experiment. Let’s say you are a cannibal and you were given a present of the most delicious and tender human you have ever eaten, and after having consumed the whole human, you leaned that the human had an identical twin. Would you object to eating the twin?

Allen Hall. alias “The Loon”
January 1 2007, in sunny warm Punta Gorda Florida

2007-06-26T16:08:00.000-07:00

Fruit o’ the Loon
’07 Installment # 2

If I fail to offend everyone, I’m sorry.

SO SHOOT ME, ALREADY!

The Loon sent out the first installment of the 2007 ”Fruits o’ the Loon” four days early (on December 28, 2006). Four readers noticed; all these eagle-eyes should be CEOs of national accounting firms. Here is the Loon’s lame excuse. Rather than confess to the charge of calendarly dementia, the facts are these. Writing midway through the last FotL he doubted he had not enough copy to finish a final ’06 installment, and so, he labeled it prematurely as #1 ’07, but, alas, he erred—ain’t the first time—a brief boost of writing energy on the final installment finished it early, but he was then too pooped to go back and change it because he had already grown sick of reading it—half of writing…..is editing. And so….NOW you know the rest of the story. That’s the Loon's story and he ain’t agonna change it.

CRAZY AL’S NEWS DIGEST

MARIJUANA

It has been reported (don’t ask me by whom) that marijuana is America’s biggest cash crop. Since a couple of 40 gallon trash cans stuffed full of fresh harvested Mary Jane can sell (so the police say) for $75,000 on the street, which, incidentally, is the primary site for retail, “bigness” of the crop has nothing to do with bigness of the acreage planted, as much of marijuana is grown indoors. This indoor agriculture provides dramatic decorative houseplants, generous indoor production of pure oxygen, plus a nifty source of income from an off-the-books cottage industry. You don’t often get such a neat three-fur.

However, after Crazy Al pondered the vagarities of taxation for recreational commodities, he has come to believe that MJ should be legalized and taxed. For starters, if MJ is our biggest cash crop, there must be a booming demand for it. For nexters, Crazy Al once read the whole Bible and he can remember no Biblical prohibition against MJ. For second nexters, Crazy Al has never heard of anyone ODing on reefers. For lasters, why in the hell doesn’t the Gummint tax cannabinol like they do alcohol and nicotine? Government reason # 1 is that MJ has been reported to be the gate-way drug. See, MJ use leads to use of worse drugs. That might be true, since the same street peddlers sell all the illegal stuff. BUT, if you legalize MJ, then the street pushers can’t compete with every Circle K which sells reefers by the pack to every viper who walks in the door. Once legalized, anyone can plant MJ, and the extra supply brings down the retail price. If the government doesn’t get too greedy and set the tax so high that black-market MJ can compete, then store-bought MJ becomes the only retail supply. Taxation on nicotine must not be too high, because, when was the last time you heard of people buying black market roll-your-own cigarettes? Similarly, booze is taxed heavily. The Loon read somewhere long ago, that it costs fifty cents to distill a gallon of alcohol that goes into bottles full of good quality sippin’ hooch, but it costs fifty dollars to buy a gallon of good sippin’ hooch. The difference is soaked up by packaging, advertising, distribution, profits and, a big hunk by taxation. To be sure, there are still stills in them hills of Appalachia, but most of the hooch consumed in America is purchased across the counter or bar. So, if Crazy Al can assume that nicotine and potable alcohol are taxed at reasonable levels, (he would dearly love to know the total State and Federal tax takes for each*), he must assume that the government has the wherewithal and savvy to tax legalized MJ at a level to make it both economically available to every adult who wants it, and, at the same time, provide some money for the government coffers. Let’s examine all the benefits from Crazy Al’s ”Legalize and Tax” proposal. With money coming in from MJ taxes, he will have less taxes to pay. Prisons are able to release many prisoners and the courts will have fewer hopheads and peddlers send to the clank, which reduces government expenses, and reduce his taxes. The extra men available in the work force will cause a drop in labor costs (more supply makes prices fall—has it ever been otherwise?). The reduced cost of labor reduces the cost of every domestic products and services, and thus, cuts down on Crazy Al’s costs for everything. The MJ grown in the fresh air and pure sunshine is cheaper than MJ grown under “Gro-Lux” lights, and this reduces the demand on power, and thus reduces power rates, and that will reduce Crazy Al’s electric bills. The farmers can have an alternative crop, one which will grow in ditches and on bad ground, and this extra income will decrease the needed government support for farming, and so, Crazy Al’s taxes should, additionally, go down. Further, a ready supply of cheap domestic MJ would cut down on the illegal importation of MJ and this would reduce our negative balance of trade, and if that is corrected, it should reduce my costs of buying exported goods. The bottom line is this; once MJ is legalized, Crazy Al will become rich, and everything he buys will cost less.

* Can we presume that tobacco and alcohol annual tax dollar numbers are closely-guarded government secrets?

ETHANOL

Speaking of alcohol, specifically the non-potable form we can burn in cars which is commonly referred to as “ethanol”, there is a lot of semi-pseudo-misinformation out there about it. If you believe everything you read and hear, alcohol distilled from corn is the domestic energy panacea cure for many of our problems, e.g., our reliance on imported OPEC price-fixing cartel oil, and the fear that petroleum deposits will soon run out, leaving us in the dark, cooking over twig fires in the back yard, or sitting helplessly by the side of the road in our marooned SUVs.

Crazy Al has heard that it costs about as much in energy to produce ethanol as you get when you burn it. Where does this energy of production come from? Hey, what do you take me for, an agricultural or Industrial engineer? Crazy Al has no idea, but he is also told that the cost in energy to extract oil, ship it, and refine it into gasoline is cheaper by far than it is to plant corn, fertilize it, cultivate it, keep the pests from eating it and the weeds from taking over, harvesting it and then converting it into ethanol at an equivalency of energy with gasoline, and AT SOME DOLLAR NUMBER FOR THE PRICE OF CRUDE OIL,WHICH IS MUCH HIGHER THAN ANY WE HAVE HAD TO PAY….ever. Since Crazy Al believes in regulation of prices by the hidden hand of a free enterprise system of open and unfettered markets, he has to ask, “what EVER in the world is going on here? Well, the farm lobby is HUGE. Maybe not as huge as the building trades lobby or the Trial Lawyers lobby, but easily big enough to make law-makers open to suggestions for a renewable domestic energy source. Philosophically speaking coal, oil and gas are renewable—if we wait long enough, the plants and animals of today will die and become buried and ultimately become converted into coal, gas and oil, but when it comes to law-making and the money which lubricates it, philosophy is seldom considered, and, besides, Crazy Al isn’t called “crazy” for no reason.

Ethanol burns cleaner? Crazy Al has read that producing a gallon of ethanol will produce as much green-house gases as burning a gallon of gasoline.

Ethanol will reduce our reliance on imported energy sources? Crazy Al has read that if we convert to 100% ethanol for transportation, we will have to import natural gas. If we distill ethanol from all of our corn now in production, it will produce only a small fraction of our needs for transportation energy. Even if we turn all of our arable land into corn production for ethanol, we would not come close to being free from the use of petroleum products for energy.

Actually, if we could produce ethanol from corn stalks, we would be in energy Sweet City, but the problem is that we need mult-mega-tonnage quantities of enzymes to turn the cellulose in corn stalks into sugar which would allow the wonderfully provident yeasts to turn the sugar into ethanol. The science for the technology of economically producing all those tons of enzymes is still not available.

Ethanol can be siphoned from your car, and, in a pinch, used as a fair substitute for Vodka? Crazy Al knows there are ways to contaminate Ethanol so that the taxes from drinkable alcohol are not imperiled—the government is seldom happy about imperiling existing tax revenue streams.

Crazy Al is concerned that using most of our corn for ethanol production is going to drive up the cost of many of his staples of life, Corn Flakes, Corn Bread, and Tortillas, unless we import cheap Mexican corn which will increase our negative balance of payments—or something like that.

CANCER

Crazy Al cannot understand why everyone is so down on cancer. Hang on for a fast philosophical ride in support of cancer. To begin with, Crazy Al believes that everyone has to die of something, or has he inadvertently missed an important concept? Now that we are all living longer, why are we spending so much money on diseases that are usually the killers of the old and unproductive members of our society? Back in the caveman days, people died at a younger age. They died of infectious diseases (rampant flying shit-squirts), parasitism (malaria) mal-nutrition (failure of the berry and root crops), environmental privation (Ice Ages and the like), and worse, young succulent humans often died while being eaten by big hungry Saber-toothed Tigers. Today, those longevity-reducing forces are less evident. BUT, pragmatic ‘ol Ma Biology has to have some method of last resort to cull the old and unproductive, or else we would all live until, say, the next Ice Age. Think for a moment what coastal Florida would look like if everyone lived a lot longer. Stop thinking, I’ill tell you. You wouldn’t be able to move because of golf-cart grid-lock, and the new political party “Curmudgeons Forever” would infect national political judgment with “senile logic”, and, worse, the oldsters would overwhelm the newspaper Op/Ed pages with grumpy letters.

Okay! It is a given that all cancer isn’t alike. Sure, let’s continue to do research on cures for cancer of young people—they have long productive lives ahead. That is to say if we legalize Marijuana and keep them out of prison. And, by all means, let’s pour more money into curing breast cancer than curing prostate cancer, BECAUSE breast cancer hits women who are younger than men who get prostate cancer.

How about a little thought experiment. Let’s say that all cancer disappeared tomorrow. Now, what has changed? Well, not much, aside from all the oncologists cross/training into cosmetic surgery, and there is suddenly a free-up of oodles of NIH cancer research money. Soon, however, we will discover that there are more old unproductive non-tax-paying people around. call it CG (Creeping Geriatricization) of the population. Soon the media will start a new increased drum-beat to cure cardiovascular disease in our lifetime (since the lifetime would be so much longer, the Loon thinks that there would be no big hurry about it). I can understand why people have a particular aversion to a disease in which traitorous cells eat them up from the inside, as compared to, say, cardiovascular disease which is more like acceptable “fair wear and tear”, even if it comes to “catastrophic failure” of vital parts.

GHOULISH OFFICE POOLS

The AP reported that a bunch of websites have erupted in which there is competition in predicting the dates of demise of lists of celebrities. Examples are “theghoulpool.com, cash4cadavers.com, and “youbettheirlilfe.com, and my favorite “flymetothetomb.com” for the “Old Blue Eyes Memorial Death Watch”. Some people think these morbid activities by people who obviously have too much free time, are in hideous bad taste. However, Zach Love, founder of “Stiffs.com” said “I’ve always been somewhat disdainful of how we deify celebrities. This seemed a perfect way to deflate that.” Crazy Al is 100% in Zach’s corner on this. And, you can win some money in the pools, but not enough, Crazy Al would hope, for contestants to put out contracts to snuff a celebrity. What a minute; let’s think about this. Even though Crazy Al can’t totally buy into to the comments of David Samuels, who wrote, “…the free-floating weirdness of American life will always escape any attempt to make us seem like a normal country rather than a furious human-wave on the farthest shores of reality” but, in all honesty, Crazy Al would chip in until it hurt for a hit on The Donald.

NOTABLE QUOTES

“I don’t believe in mathematics” Albert Einstein (You tell ‘em, Al)

2. “Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.” Albert Einstein

“Prejudice” has now acquired a bad reputation, but where, tell me, would we be without it? The practice of prejudging humans is certainly problematic, but consider what would happen if everyone who is presented with a need for a subjective decision had to go all the way back to rational ground zero to make a decision; instead of using their experience as a guide for making a decision? Say, you took Ibuprofen once and it made you break out in hives, and aspirin never did that. Should you be prejudiced against Ibuprofen? Should someone be able to whip a “Shame on you” because you were unfair to Ibuprofen, and did not give it another chance? Maybe you got a bad batch of Ibuprofen. Maybe you were temporarily sensitive to Ibuprofen. How do you know for sure that the next pill will give you hives? Gimmie a break; you would have to be crazy to not rely on prejudice to guide the decision to not take Ibuprofen.

ABSTRACT ART

The Loon has little use for any of it. He has been given to understand that abstract art is no representation of anything in the physical (real) world, but rather, the art is done to elicit emotional response. Given that the artist’s abstract work may be an expression of the artist’s emotion, be it, love of beauty, or rage at an unkind world, or even bewilderment at societal nonsense, but the Loon remains unconvinced that this is the case, but even if it is, the Loon believes that the emotion is not transferable in the abstract art to the viewer of the art. The viewer may have an emotional response to the art which is entirely different from that which the artist was trying to elicit. Agreed, few of us are willing to drip many colors of paint on a canvas on the floor, and then create emotion-laden abstract art by scrooching around in the paint with the seat of our Levis, but, let me put it to you this way. What better way to show emotion through art than to do it yourself? Whenever, the Loon hears anyone, including the artist, describe the meaning of a piece of abstract art, the Loon’s first impression is usually, “Say what?” To use a rather loose analogy, describing the meaning of abstract art is rather like the hopeless task of subjectively describing an orgasm, or, even worse, objectively describing an orgasm as a parasympathetic nervous system explosion—please, I have to ask, just what in the hell does that tell you?

Allen “The Loon” Hall
January 16 2007 in sunny warm south Florida—I thought you might want to know that.

2007-06-26T16:06:00.000-07:00

Fruit o’ the Loon
’07 Installment # 4

If I fail to offend everyone, I’m sorry.

POTPOURRI

OVER-TRAINING AND/OR OVER-EDUCATING STIFLES INDIVIDUAL ARTISTIC EXPRESSION? (This IS a contentious question)

Three areas of artistic expression (that the Loon can think of) seem to have suffered from too much training. They are fiction writing, jazz musicianship and Lindy Hop dancing.

Author Margaret Atwood has published in numerous forms, including poetry, short stories, children’s literature, thrillers, romance, criticism, and Sci-Fi. She explained, “I think I‘m this way because I never went to creative writing school and nobody told me not to. Nobody told me, ‘You have to specialize’ or ‘For heaven’s sake, control yourself.’” Does attending creative writing courses at Iowa State create lit-clones? No! but more lit-clones are made there than would naturally occur if writers just felt their un-aided way toward their muses. The Loon is no fan of the so-called modern novel—he has largely abandoned reading fiction. The Loon advises, let a thousand different literary flowers blossom, so he can pick the prettiest.

The Loon has come to realize that many of his favorite jazz musicians have been either “musical primitives” (those who usually start playing quite young, and cannot easily benefit from formal music training), or those who were largely, and perhaps voluntarily, self-taught. Let’s call those “musical stubborns”. Several self-starters come to mind, pianists, Gene Harris, Errol Garner and Dave McKenna; saxophonists, Charlie Parker and Scott Hamilton, drummer, Buddy Rich and guitarist Cal Collins. To me, each of these musicians is different in a pleasing way. They each have a unique and readily recognizable style of playing. That is not to say that all unique jazz stylists are self-taught, but those which are self-taught seem to have a more highly personalized way of playing. That is not to say that I enjoy the music of all self-taught jazz musicians, just that those I especially enjoy are often self-taught. Others have held the opinion that colleges known for education of jazz musicians are cranking out readily-interchangeable jazz-clones.

Lindy Hop is a “street dance”. A “street dance” is one which arises largely de novo, is assembled by an amalgamation of new movements and those of dances which proceeded it, and matures without being benefited (or stifled) by instruction. Lindy Hop originated in Harlem in the late ‘20s, flourished in the 1930s and 1940s, and then fell into disfavor along with the popular jazz (swing) which accompanied it. Lindy Hop was then dragged out of retirement and revived in the ’80s. It has grown slowly in popularity ever since. The dance has moved through a number of stages of neo-evolution, some of which depended on the influence of especially charismatic dancers, some of which depended on regional preoccupation with certain affected stylisms in the dance. The increase of popularity of Lindy Hop has been matched with a mirror increase in Lindy Hop instruction. As a result, Lindy Hop is now less of a “street dance” as it has been codified by instruction. Dare the Loon say “strait-jacketed”? To be sure, Lindy Hop has enjoyed or suffered a succession of stylistic waves which have swept over the dance. Let’s call these “clone fadisms”? Lindy Hop is organic and will evolve independent of anyone’s wishes. So, what’s the problem? Well, the problem is not with the entire dance which seems to be evolving en-mass, aided therein with improvement of individual dancer skills. However, improved skills do not directly relate to the creation of personal artistic styles. What seems to be lost in all of this instruction is the free expression of the individual dancer. Were the Loon crowned Grand Emperor Poobah of Lindy Hop, he would mandate that training must cease whenever a dancer reaches the intermediate stage. Dance teachers, flame me if you wish, and I know you have to make a living, but if you must hang on to your students in order to eat, please loosen up the style leash a little, by teaching the dance style-free. Dance teachers, read on. I have thrown you a bone with some meat still left on it. See, street dances which were largely unaided by instruction have come to be founts of individualism, both in types of movements and in stylistic expression. However, as in most things, there is a down-side. Street dances which have developed without training seem to hit a developmental wall. Each dancer achieves a personal style which becomes fixed in perpetuity, and then, the entire dance becomes evolution-proofed. He take-away message, controversial as it is, teachers grow the dance, they encourage students to the point where they can take off their 6-count training wheels, and to the degree that each individual teacher turns out students different in part from every other teacher, teachers promote variation in the dance. So, what is the Loon’s point?????? He can’t seem to remember—Golly! It’s such a long paragraph. Is the Loon way off base and about to be tagged out?

VOODOO, WISHFUL THINKING, SIGNS, OMENS, SUPERSTITIONS, AND MAGICAL POWERS

The Loon is heading for New Orleans, the only place he knows where you can easily buy Voodoo stuff, e.g., “going away powders” (powders which when sprinkled on the doorstep of a no longer pleasing lover, will make the bum lover go away). You can also buy other supernatural specifics, e.g., powders, potions or paraphernalia for a particular purpose (a little doll and some pins to make your boss uncomfortable, or a knife to put under the pillow of a woman in labor so her pain will be cut in half). However, if you unsure what specific to buy, you can always pick up some all-purpose “goofus dust”. All you need is some wishful thinking, or a spell to be cast, and then sprinkle the dust appropriately. Incidentally, the Loon owns a vial of “goofus dust”, so don’t tick him off.

Some people are always on the look-out for signs of good fortune, or for omens that the feces chunks are about to hit the fan blade. These ill-defined signs and omens seem to be impromptu roll-your-own superstitions, or, if you prefer, superstitions in the making. Some folks put great stock in superstitions, just as some people put great stock in Astrological predictions. The best Astrological de-bunker I ever heard was an exchange between two people, one an astrological believer and the other an unbeliever, and the believer didn’t know the birthday of the unbeliever. The unbeliever challenged the believer, by saying, “people born under different astrological signs are supposed to be distinctively different, and you know me pretty well. So, tell what sign I was born under?” The chances are 1 in 12 the believer could guess right, however, the first and second guesses where wrong. I would love to see a large study done in this same way, but alas, science has bigger and more important bones to gnaw-–or do they? Is it not the role of science to both seek the truth AND debunk that which masquerades as truth? Some folks say all this hokum is harmless? In a way, “yes”. In a way, “no”, but If hokum reduces the general acceptance of rational thought and argument, then hokum is, indeed, harmful. So THERE!

“GAY”, “BRIGHT” GIMMIE A BREAK!

Male homosexuals have commandeered the adjective “gay” as general name for themselves. Thus they have rendered largely worthless “gay”’s descriptive connotations. Similarly, Atheists are trying to commandeer “bright”, and by adding a suffix “s” to nounize it into a name for themselves. Look, Gays could have used any word they wished, why use one which falsely connotes that every gay is gay. Likewise, I doubt all atheists are smart, and so, they should choose another name. I am sad about the loss of the descriptive use of these words, and wish people would make up new words to name themselves, and leave the rest of us with a full measure of descriptive words—we need more, not less, adjectives. How silly does it sound it to call a “gay” sad or a “bright” dumb? Sorry, I’m just ‘specially fussy today.

CYNICISM

Much herein with is lifted from “True Nonbelievers” by Elizabeth Swaboda in the Nov/Dec “Psychology Today”.

There is a fine line between skepticism and cynicism, and only hard-core doubters know where it is. Cynics are getting a bad rap, not improved by Rick Bayan, who wrote. “The world belongs to people with IQs of 120. Anything much greater or lesser amounts to a liability.” He has a website “The Cynic’s Sanctuary” which is a home for disgruntled idealists, subversive wits, professional misfits, skeptical jesters, curmudgeons and misanthropes.” Some famous cynics are Nietzsche (was he ever), Dorothy Parker and Oscar Wilde. Cynics die younger of heart disease, probably uttering with their last breath “Oh! bless’d relief.”

Molly Ivins wrote, “It is hard to argue against cynics—they always sound smarter than optimists because they have so much evidence on their side. Speaking of Molly, she just passed, and while Molly and I shared few political views, I would give an arm for her gift of language. And she was funny. Indeed, she was to Texas as Lewis Grizzard was to Georgia. May they both R.I.P.

N’AWLINS—YA GOTTA LOVE IT

New Orleans sports beaucoup live music, and many bands have unusual names. Indeed, N’awlins provides a mother lode of “funny” band names. Soon as I get here, I glom a copy of the Friday paper with its weekly entertainment section, “The Lagniappe”, plus copies of the two free alternative weekly tabloids, “Where Y’at” and “The Gambit Weekly” so’s I can check out the band names. Here is a sampling: “Walter Wolfman” Washington and the Roadmasters”, “Kermit Ruffins and the Barbeque Swingers” (a good band), two more good ‘uns that we have danced to, "Johnny Angel and the Screamin' Demons”, and “Bobby Cure and the Summertime Blues”. And then there is “Kenny Holiday and the Rolling Blackouts”, “Zapf Dingbats”, “The Dear & Departed”, “Mickey and the Motorcars”, “Pig Pen and the Pork Chops”, “Elliot Cohn’s Cosmic Sweat Society”, “Danny Alexander & his Partners in Crime”, “Benny Grunch and the Bunch”, “Big Rubba Bubba”, “VaVaVoom”, “Schwartz and the Palace of Sin”, “Debi & The Deacons” , “Gal Holiday and the Honky Tonk Review”, “The Other Planets”, ”The Queers”, “Heart Attack”, “Chris Polechek and the Hubcap Kings”, “Monty Banks and the High Rollers”, "Geno Delafose & French Rockin' Boogies”, “3 Legged Dog”, “Reckless Kelly”, “Sheena and Swampdogs”, “John Sketch and the Dirty Notes”, “Big Head Todd”, The Hot Pots”, “Lips and the Trips”, “Balsawood Flyers”, Rockin’ Jerry and the Spice of Life”, “Jon Clarey and the Absolute Monster Gentlemen” and two who will entertain for the Vieux Doo Ball, “Billy Luso and the Restless Natives”, and Big Chief Bo Dollis and the Wild Magnolias”. Two bands we danced to this week were “David Brooks and the Syncopated Percolators” and “Palmetto Bug* Stompers”, which is a nifty sextet which harkens to street “spasm bands” playing early in the 20th century. Ya gotta love N’awlins.

* Palmetto Bug is the common name for Blattidae americana, the largest and most handsome cockroach found in the United States. A full grown Palmetto Bug can be almost two inches long, three and a half with the antennae, and they are found in abundance in south Louisiana. When The Loon worked in Covington Louisiana and was still drinking out of his mind, he used to catch Palmetto Bugs and put them in his secretary’s top desk drawer. (A public confession is good for the soul)

The craziness of the Mardi Gras parade season is upon the city; they call it “Cahnival (silent “r”). This year, Mardi Gras is on Tuesday Feb 20th, but the parades will start on Feb 3rd .I counted 50 parades slated for the New Orleans area, and some of the big ones have as many as 40 floats, and that’s not counting the marching bands, second lines, clowns, and Flambeaus who dance and prance for thrown money while holding flaming torches aloft.

The Feb 3rd kick-off parade is put on by the Krewe du Vieux, and topped off with an evening event, ”The Vieux Doo Ball”. Many Krewe of Vieux members will be variously ill-attired, some may have costume malfunctions, and others, doubtless, will don faux-moon plastic buttocks—it is cold here. The Krewe of Vieux is the anti-parade parade, rather like the “Doo Dah Parade” in Pasadena mocks the Rose Bowl Parade. Krewe of Vieux mocks the historic formal parades krewed by New Orleans socialites. Krewe of Vieux floats are drawn by mules, and the parade theme this year is “Habitat for Insanity”, a rip at the government’s tardy efforts at re-housing New Orleanians. This parade just drips satire; indeed the name of one sub-krewe is “Spermes, and Drips and Discharges”. Give you a feel for what is going on? There are 20 sub-krewes; one for each float, and they have a free hand to use a variety of attention getters, ranging from high “camp” to low blasphemy. Do people become upset and protest? Is a pig’s butt pork? But, please tell me, when was satire not designed to sting?

Another anti-parade parade is the 15th Annual parade of the Mystical Krewe of Barkus, a parade of pets which mocks the more famous parade of the Krewe of Bacchus. Mystical Krewe of Barkus favors thrown to the pleading bystanders who scream “Throw me somethin', Mistah.” (note again missing “r”) will be rubber dog turds. The Queen of this year’s Mystical Krewe of Barkus is a mongrel yaller bitch with one blue and one brown eye. Ya jus’ gotta love N’awlins.

New Orleans is dirty and the streets are all busted up; just like before Katrina. Some traffic lights are laying down on the job (in the gutter with lights still working); it is hell to find a street name sign facing the right way; people don’t mow their lawns; parking can be a travail (however, the N’awlins parking fairy has made his or her eyes to look down benevolently upon Rudy and I); some places in the French Quarter stink of sewage; you can’t hold a coherent conversation on the street for all that loud jazz pouring out of the clubs; Damn I love this town and have since 1955 when Little Bear, George and I drove 20 straight hours from Cape Girardeau Mo to be in New Orleans for the last weekend before Fat Tuesday. George and I fell asleep in our chairs at 2 AM in a joint listening to great jazz, and somebody stole our hats, but I still love this town. I lost my pregnant wife for 4 hours during a Fat Tuesday crush on Canal, but I still love this town. I’ve been threatened by cops to get my ass out of the street and onto the sidewalk, but I still love this town. There is an undercurrent of irreverence in New Orleans that seems to re-enforce my personality. Y’all stiff-necks stay away; I love N’awlins.

NOTABLE QUOTES (not to imply endorsement by the Loon)

1. “The things outsiders (outlanders) find absurd or threatening about California—the self-fashioned spiritual practices, the body-builder/action star Governor, the crazy diets, the junk bonds, the endless supply of new fictions, the UCLA and Palo Alto-born Internet—do share a certain grandiosity, a ridiculous desire to change the world, or at least ones self, Better not to admit to such ambitions, or so goes the story easterners love to repeat: the story of the disillusioned California dreamer.” James Fallow

This run-on soft vitriol was found in an article in “The Atlantic” and was about—can you believe this?—attempts to develop data-management programs. Does everyone have an attitude? Well, the Loon do, but it ain’t the same as James Fallow’s.

2. “Modernity, it turns out, built a metropolis with a form so unprecedented that residents and critics still refuse to consider it a real city; a suburb without a core—which is to say, not a suburb at all…” “The suburb is not, as Frank Lloyd Wright and others imagined a place to escape the city; it is the city….” “By the end of the 20th century more than half of all Americans were living in metropolitan areas of more than a million people.” This sideways slap at L.A. was also found in an article in “The Atlantic”. The Loon knows that you have to spend a little time in the ‘burbia run amok called L.A. in order to learn of its many charms. The Loon can provide a list on demand.

Allen Hall, the Loon
February 6, 2007, under a cloudless blue sky in New Orleans.

2007-06-26T15:50:00.000-07:00

Fruit o’ the Loon
’07 Installment # 3

If I fail to offend everyone, I’m sorry.

NOTABLE QUOTES

1. “Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them.” William E. (Bill) Vaugan, American author and columnist.

Vaugnan also wrote “A citizen…will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won’t cross the street to vote in a national election.”, and “If there is anything a nonconformist hates worse than a conformist, it is another nonconformist who doesn’t conform to the prevailing standard of nonconformity.” The Loon adds, Bill died in 1977; may he R.I.P.

2. “You know what I hate about people who criticize you? They criticize what you say, but never give you credit for how loud you say it, or how long say it.” Stephan Colbert.

The Loon knows just how he feels.

3. “It doesn’t take a Cornell West (who he?) to see the underlying racism involved when NBA players and hip-hop artists are categorized as thugs and gangsters. But, for some reason, it is still acceptable to make hurtful redneck jokes about the fans of country music and NASCAR. That’s yet another example of the sociological double-talk that indirectly feeds into this country’s festering racial tension.” LZ Granderson

The Loon questions the use of the word, “hurtful”.

4. “…beauty—whether in sculpture or in philosophy ---is a consequence of artistic and emotional discipline that leads to proportion, discrimination, and perspective. Accordingly, nothing is worse than excess of decoration, or of ardor.” This was taken from an article in the Jan/Feb ’07 “The Atlantic” and these are classic Greek values.

The author is anonymous, but the ideas belong to Thucydides. The Loon is borrowing shamelessly from that article to voice his concerns that the Western world is retreating into ardor, and into an age in which facts matter less than perceptions. It would appear that we are retreating toward the Dark Ages when what people believed was more important than what they knew, and passion with the resulting irrationalities are central to thought.

A SAMPLING OF MURPHY’S LESSER KNOWN LAWS

1. “Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he will sit in a boat all day drinking beer.” The Loon sez, file this under, “No man can fish while not drinking beer and chewing tobacco. The Loon preferred Budweiser, or anything cheaper, and Beechnut, but he could get along in a pinch (pun intended) with Red Man.

2. “Anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there is a 90% probability you will get it wrong.” The Loon sez, file this under, “Life ain’t fair, nor mathematics reliable”

3. “The things that come to those who wait are the things left by those who got there first.” The Loon sez, file this under “Garage sale wisdom.”

CRAZY AL’S NEWS DIGEST

1. PIZZAS FOR PESOS

“Dallas-based pizza chain, “Pizza Patron” has received death treats and hate mail for accepting pesos as payment for pizza.” (From the Jan 12 2007, “South Florida Sun Sentinel”) Crazy Al thinks it ain’t no body’s business but their own what species of payment anyone wants to take in payment for goods or services. It may make a mess of cash register receipts used to determine how much sales tax Pizza Patron owes Texas, but if Texas doesn’t care, why should anyone? However, Texas might take exception if Pizza Patron accepted labor or goods barter as payment for pizza—the State of Taxas would likely take a dim view of that.. Look, Crazy Al is no globe-trotter, but he has been around some, and in many countries he has visited, several forms of currency are accepted, albeit, foreign currency is usually discounted from a tad to a lot.

2. MEATLIFTING

Meat reached first place on the list of preferences for shoppers who use the five-finger form of discounting. According to the Food Marketing Institute “Meat was the is the most shoplifted item in grocery stores in 2005” Meat moved up when cold medicines containing ephedrine were moved to secure counters, but, unexpectedly, meat roared right by beauty care items to the top of the shoplifters top ten. Crazy Al is reluctant to read anything sociologically devious or sinister into this shift in theft preferences, but the grocers are fighting back by secreting security tags under the labels on packaged meat.

3. PARIS HILTON’S WONKY LEFT EYE (the rest of the story)

See, the “Daily Dish” avers (I paraphrase) that Paris Hilton had a left eyelid-lift 7 years ago which went awry, causing her cockeyed stare. Now she wants plastic surgery to fix the damaged eye muscles. Meanwhile Ms. Hilton is going against doctor’s orders by wearing blue contact lenses in her brown eyes, and thus further drying out her already dry eyes.” Crazy Al thought you might want to know about this tragedy and Paris Hilton’s continuing ocular travails. Sigh! sometimes bad things happen to essentially worthless people. But wait, let’s cut her some slack; she is still young, with plenty of time to turn her life around and do service to her fellow man. Sadly, Crazy Al is not filled with confidence at the prospects.

4. BANNED BY THE MAN

In the Jan 12 edition of the South Florida Sun Sentinel, Jonah Goldberg wrote an editorial entitled “Pastures of liberty fenced by bureaucrats”. Part of the lead line reads, “…a list of things that the New York City Council tried to ban—not all successfully—just in 2006 alone: pit bulls; trans-fats; aluminum baseball bats; the purchase of tobacco by 18-20 year olds; foie gras; pedi-cabs in parks; new fast food restaurants;…cell phones in upscale restaurants; the sale of pork products made in a processing plant in Tar Heel, N. C. because of a unionization dispute, mail-order pharmaceutical plans, candy-flavored cigarettes; gas station operators adjusting prices more than once daily; the Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus; and Wal-Mart. Washington D.C. extended the ban against smoking in bars, nightclubs and private clubs to cars in which children are passengers.” In 2005 a Pennsylvania legislator received national attention for his effort to mandate that all dogs must wear seat belt in cars.” Crazy Al thinks we are being annoyed, neigh, assaulted, by hordes of legislative mental midgets and busy-bodies. They bleed us of a free life in myriads of tiny ways, just as a thousand tiny cuts will free us of all our blood. Goldberg quotes Alex de Tocqueville, “It must not be forgotten that it is especially dangerous to enslave men in the minor details of life.” “It does not drive men to resistance, but it crosses them at every turn, till they are led to surrender the exercise of their own will.”

5. KIDNAP-PROOFING KIDS

The January 25, 2007 Charlotte (FL) Sun, contained a front page article reporting that Florida is passing out take-home kits to kids in school so the kids can submit a DNA sample from a mouth swab, and a fingerprint. This will give law enforcement an identification data-base should a kid be kidnapped. So far so good, but Crazy Al, wonders about so many things. He wonders if a kid should do this if the kid is contemplating a career in crime. Furthermore the article reported that 800,000 kids are kidnapped each year in the United States. Crazy Al questions that number. That roughs out at 2197 kids kidnapped per day. Doesn’t that seem too high? Further, If our population is now 300,000,000, and kids are about one fifth of those, then, there are 60,000,000 kids in the country and that means that one kid out of every 75 kids is kidnapped every year, or if a kid is defined as between 1 and 17 years of age, then each kid has a one in five chance of being kidnapped once while they are a kid. Math is not Crazy Al’s long suit, but this 800,000 number just doesn’t jive.

POTPOURRI

1. “DUH” MAGAZINE

Has anyone every heard of this periodical? If so, send me the info for subscription. I am stuck using dial-up service and can’t surf the web. See, an item in this morning’s newspaper reads. “…beverage studies tend to be biased when the money funding them comes from the beverage industry, according to an article published today in “Duh” magazine.” Are you intrigued? Crazy Al is.

2 DIAMONDS

My daughter who creates and sells jewelry tells me that the 2006 Holidays sales of diamonds were noticeably down. Hmmmm! Hollywood has taken up the cudgel against trade in “blood diamonds” and the violence associated with them by making a movie of the same name. Hmmmm1 Ya don’t suppose? Anyway, blood diamonds are those which are mined in West Africa in areas not under the control of DeBeers, the company which exercises an international cartel on rough diamond supply. In the bloody violent anarchy of West Africa, people are killed for diamonds, and those who kill to get the diamonds are often killed by others to get the diamonds, and people use the diamonds to buy guns to support insurrections or to shoot people who have diamonds. DeBeers can maintain its international cartel in rough diamonds, by virtue of making the largest and virtually the only market in rough stones. This keeps free-lancers from entering the diamond trade. You may be disappointed if you try to sell rough diamonds. If you become more than a nuisance, DeBeers will punish you by dumping stones on the market and depress the value of your diamonds. And so, you must sell to DeBeers. However, blood diamonds has been creating a publicity nightmare for the diamond trade, and so, the Kimberly Process was begun. It is supposed to provide provenance for diamonds and declares that they were purchased from reputable dealers, which is ridiculous on the face of it, as diamonds are fungible, and there it no way of discriminating blood diamonds from DeBeers diamonds. Given the international availability of diamonds, the DeBeers cartel has maintained an unnaturally high price of finished (cut) diamonds many times higher than they should be, but Hollywood was not at all concerned that diamond purchasers have been screwed for decades by an international cartel.

First is was furs, and now diamonds. What’s next, clothing textiles because they are manufactured in Chinese and Indian sweat shops? Can you say, “Unadorned naked celebrities.”? Well, folks, we are on our way, with Brittany, Paris and Sharon providing recent peeks at female celebrity pudenda, but my first exposure, so to speak, came at the expense of Carmen Miranda, when a photographer took a shot of as her, sans panties, as she was held aloft by a male dancer. What is there about celebrity which makes people forget their undies?

Allen Hall a.k.a. The Loon and Crazy Al
January 28, 2007 in chilly southern Florida—go figure.

2007-06-25T15:58:00.001-07:00

Fruit o’ the Loon
’07 Installment # 5

If I have failed to offend everyone, I’m sorry.

NOTABLE QUOTES

Political Correctness is a doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical, liberal minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.” Anon. The Loon includes this not for the opinion stated, not even for the florid tenor of language, but rather, for the imagery.

2. “One old friend is better than two new ones.” Yiddish Proverb, The Loon would agree,
provided the old friend had not become a “no count”.

NEW ORLEANS AFTERTHOUGHTS

The loon finds New Orleans eternally interesting, even fascinating. It is as close to a foreign city as we have in the United States, yet it is also utterly American. The native New Orleanian accent is redolent of that spoken in Brooklyn and upper New Jersey. The people are more than friendly, they are gregarious. On an extraordinarily pleasant day, Rudy and I stepped out onto the street after lunch in the French Quarter and the doorman of a hotel said, “This weather is so nice, I think I’ll get married again.” Where are you gonna go to hear something like that?

New Orleans has let one of the biggest private contracts ever, to keep the French Quarter streets clean, and it is working. Trash laden gutters, long an eyesore for fastidious tourists, are no more. Guys drive many little street sweeper machines, and guys walk around with pointy sticks and bags, and Voila! the streets are largely free of trash. Is it not miraculous what the private sector will do for money?

New Orleans is home to a large working class and a large artist class. The strategic shipping and petroleum industries in southern Louisiana require a considerable labor force, and that is why arguments to just abandon post-Katrina New Orleans were never taken seriously. And, one need only stroll about in the French quarter, the Garden district, Up-town and the Forbourg/Marygn and Bywater neighborhoods to appreciate the presence of a huge artist community. In addition to music, which everyone knows about, painting, sculpture, jewelry, needlework, and glass art studios abound. Further, New Orleans is a cherished home to many writers.

Of course, the city jealously guards its old architectural appearance. Many Katrina ravaged modest homes which I would have thought were certainly “tear-downs”, are having replacement clapboards lovingly fitted over the skeletons of old black moldy 2 by 4s, and ornamental cornices on shotgun houses* are considered precious. If you own a building in the French Quarter, and want to paint or repair anything, you must get permission from the Vieux Carre commission which rules on any alterations and even the color of paint you may use. For good or bad, more than any city in America, New Orleans is in love with it’s past.

* A shotgun house is a long thin house from front to back, so called because if you shoot a shotgun in the front door, you will shoot out the back screen door, and, like as not, kill everyone in the house. Shotgun houses are often duplexes set on deep lots with only about 30 feet of frontage, and many shotgun houses appear to have been longerated by the addition of multiple rooms onto the rear.

Residential and commercial New Orleans is being rebuilt—one house at a time, and one business at a time. Not all neighborhoods are coming back. Some are all but abandoned and in a state of arrested ruin, but in those neighborhoods which are struggling back, you can seldom drive a block without seeing a Dempsey dumpster on a front lawn, or a covey of worker’s trucks parked on the street. Indeed, almost half the vehicles on New Orleans streets are trucks—not ‘burb faux-cowboy pick-ups mind you, but working trucks, many pulling trailers full of rubble, building supplies or tools.

The proliferation of small communities of 24 foot long travel trailers continues. Often they are fenced and gated in parking lots and the trailers are lifted well off the ground so the external above ground sewer pipes have enough slope to drain. If they have a prolonged hard freeze down here, it will cause a constipated mess in the sewer pipes. Doubtless, most of these trailers are housing for construction workers. Rental housing is very tight and damned expensive in New Orleans, and on the 80 miles of Interstate10 between New Orleans to Baton Rouge (we drove it) truck traffic is thick day and night. In residential neighborhoods, it is hardly possible to be out of sight of a travel trailer parked on a front lawn. Some front lawns have two travel trailers. While some are temporary housing while the home is being worked on, it is apparent that some of these houses are now occupied, and the trailers are either grey-market rental housing, or housing for relatives or friends who have lost their homes.

I visited an old friend who lost his home in Mandeville, a small town on the north shore of Lake Pontchartraine. His one-story home was 5 feet above sea level on a bayou near the lake, and the storm surge brought the water up to about 5 feet above sea level, and so they had to take down the building. He said many non-evacuated families thereabouts lived for weeks in the same buildings where they worked. That is to say if they had buildings left to work in. Streets were impassible for several days due to down trees, and electrical power (in late August in southern Louisiana) was off for weeks. There were whole lakeside housing developments which were reduced to sodden flotsam—cars turned over, piles of wet furniture, insulation, roofing tiles and structural lumber piled up like jackstraws. The only buildings spared were those raised 10 feet on concrete pillars.

Rudy and I drove to Slidell (also on the north side of Lake Pontchartraine) to look at the house I rented for a year in 1974. It was a beautiful old place on Liberty Bayou, Built on 14 acres of Loblolly pine forest by a curator of the New Orleans’ Audubon Zoo as a summer house, It was then sold to jazz clarinetist, Pete Fountain, who sold it to Al Stone who was the project engineer for the Lunar Rover (that 10 million dollar one-of-a-kind taxi cab we flew to the moon and left there). Al then rented it to me. It was a large two story 3 bedroom square frame home with a large added kitchen. The first floor great space had a huge fireplace, and was lined with Pecky (worm-eaten) Cypress, a rare and expensive lumber today. Out back, there was a swimming and wading pool connected by a small water-fall. Other buildings included a screened pool house, a six stall horse stable and a shed. There were two small ponds and two improved pastures on the property. There was a barbeque pit, a shelter house, and a dock down by the bayou. There is nothing left of any of it. The only reason why we know we were on the site is because we saw the white plastic bones of a temporary greenhouse which had been there about 15 years ago. It was clearly the most elegant and memorable house I have ever lived in, and it makes me sad to think it has simply disappeared into the Katrina vortex.

CYCLIC EPIDEMIC PROPAGATION OF E-MAIL FORWARDS

Is it the Loon’s imagination or have the best of the internet forwards become both unduly reiterative and cyclic? It appears to me that when I see a new e-mail forward, usually a good joke, or piece of political cant, it often appears from multiple sources, and then, it goes away. Later, it reappears with another flurry of forwardings, and sometimes it can even recur once more. It is understandable why forwards have geometric propagation; it is sooooo easy to continue the e-contagion when you don’t have to make a copy, put it in an envelope, affix a stamp and take it to the mail box. The cyclic appearances of a forward is also understandable; when a forward reaches an addressee who has not seen it before, the natural belief is that it has not been around the cyber-horn before, and thus, the addressee starts another round of e-contagion. It’s like internet Influenza. Of the last 53 e-mails I have sent, only one was a forward, but of the last 53 e-mails I have received, only 9 were principally addressed to me, all the rest were forwards and some of these were repeaters. The Loon has a remedy. See, if these computers are so damned smart that they can detect spam, why can’t they detect previously received forwards, and automatically return them to the sender, informing the sender that the Loon has already received the forward. Is that too much to ask? Are there any gifted software scribblers out there who will volunteer to do this simple thing for the Loon?

DEAD PLAYBOY PLAYMATES

Every now and then the Loon will receive a titillating e-forward, e.g. a recent one entitled “Dead Playboy Playmates”. Well, maybe this was more morbid than titillating, as it listed the 30 now dead Playmates. Since the quarterly “Playboy” began in December 1953, there have been, by the Loon’s calculation, 257 playmates, (No! I have never subscribed), and since all were young women when they appeared in the magazine, none could be much older than, Oh! say, 75 today, and with a median age today of about 47. The mortality rate of 11% for this cohort of women, all of whom, obviously lived to be very Ahem! healthy in their early 20s seems high. This is what killed them; three died of suicide, five of drug overdoses, three of automobile accidents, two by homicide, seven of cancer, three of other natural causes, one in an airplane accident and the rest due to unknown causes. There must be some doubt that a control group of demographically similar non-Playmate women would suffer an equal or greater mortality rate. Further, consider this; the average age at death of the 30 Playmates was 47. This raises two questions: 1. What is there about being a Playboy Playmate which reduces longevity? And 2. Who beside the Loon has so much spare time on his (I presume they are all “his”s) hands, that he can gather or analyze this kind of data?

HANK BAUER DIED LAST WEEK

The Loon was in the French Quarter to see the parade of the Mystic Krewe of Barkus, a floatless parade spoofing the up-scale Krewe of Bacchus parade. Barkus krewe members are dogs; hundreds of dogs; all breeds of dogs; mongrel dogs being pulled in wagons by people; painted, uniquely clothed and artistically clipped dogs; almost all of which were well behaved—a few alarm “Woofs”, but not one dog fight, nor a canine disagreement. It was there that the Loon saw across the street a St. Louis baseball fan suitably attired in a Cards warm-up jacket. Crossing the line of parade (a no no) the Loon identified himself as a fellow Cards crazy. We shared the moment when Cards’ pitcher, Wainwright, froze the Mets’ Beltron, (who had worn out Cards’ pitching) with a monster curve on a 3 and 2 count with two outs and the winning Mets’ runs on base in the last of the ninth of the 7th game of the series. That curve made the Cards 2006 National League Champs and assured, in my mind, that they were destined to win the World Series. And, that which was destined came to pass. .Before we parted company, my fellow fan mentioned that Hank Bauer had died three days before. How in the hell could Hank Bauer die and me not know it? Memories flooded back. A mere Loon fledgling in waiting in St, Louis went to baseball games at Sportsmen’s Park early to see infield and outfield practice. Even after 25 years as an infielder in baseball and fast-pitch softball, the Loon still relished the regimented ritual of infield practice as a graceful form of sports ballet. The adolescent Loon adored watching major league outfield practice, three fungo flys to each outfielder, with one throw to second, one to third and one to home. Guys with cannon arms liked to have their fungo flies sent deep so they could show off their guns. Right fielders usually had the best arms as they had the longest throw, to third base. Hank Bauer was a right fielder and he had a gun. He was a Yankee but when he uncorked a really good throw in warm-up, usually to home, the St. Louis fans in the stands would go “Whooooooo!”. I played baseball with only one man who made it to the major leagues, Charlie Peete. He died in an aircraft accident after one year up with the St. Louis Cardinals. Charlie Peete had a gun. When he threw the ball, it made a boiling churning sound as it went through the air. Both Hank Bauer and Charlie Peete could “hang blurred ropes” from the outfield. The Loon has seen ‘em both do it.

PREVIEWS OF COMING ATTRACTIONS

The Loon has finished reading “Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon” by Daniel C. Dennett. It was one of the most difficult books the Loon has ever read, and writing a Loon’s Mini-Book Report will be equally difficult, but, brace yourselves, as it will be in the next FotL.

DISCLAIMER

You must know that a “Fruit o’ the Loon” is never finished; only abandoned. The process of writing takes a couple of weeks of gathering bits and pieces which pique an interest, and when it reaches a certain length, the Loon just get tired of picking at it like a scab, to cull jangling syllables and useless words. And when that happens, out it goes with the bits toward the top benefiting from repeated editing; while those toward the bottom are usually rife with raggedy-assed writing. This one is out of the oven—out it goes.

Allen Hall, the Loon
February 13, 2007 in post-tornado New Orleans

2007-06-25T15:56:00.001-07:00

Fruit o’ the Loon
’07 Installment # 6

If I have failed to offend everyone, I’m sorry.

CRAZY AL’S NEWS DIGEST

Surely most national news sources have picked up the item in New Orleans when a 17 year old kid got beat up in a fight with another kid, and when he went home, his mother gave him a gun, which he used to kill the other kid. Fueling this story, some news source found and printed a photo of the 17 year old kid in a celebratory pose holding a pistol in one hand and a wad of money in the other. The front page of the New Orleans Times Picayune carried a photo of the 17 year old kid in custody and cuffed. What the national news will probably not pick up is a letter to the editor which appeared later in the local New Orleans newspaper. The letter writer objected to the front page photo of the kid in custody, because…it would be prejudicial to his case? No. Because you should not publish a photo of a minor in custody? No. It was because other kids would see that he made the front page, and would think it was “cool”. Do we have Andy Warhol to thank for this?
Homeless sex offenders are housed in rolling concentration camps. The NIMBY issue is huge everywhere when it comes to where to house sex offenders, but Suffolk County NY is obligated by law to give them housing and also keep them away from “temptation and trouble”. So the county, using a “let’s all share the pain approach” puts 5 to 8 sex offenders each in FEMAish travel trailers, and then moves the trailers every two weeks to a new location on public land away from “temptation and trouble”. This almost insures they can’t get and hold jobs, but then, maybe Suffolk Co doesn’t want sex offenders working there. After all, Suffolk County is part of Long Island.

LOON MINI-BOOK REPORT (IF YOU WANT TO READ THIS THING; PRINT IT OUT; PUT IT IN THE BATHROOM OR ON YOUR BEDSIDE TABLE, OR YOU WILL NEVER FINISH IT.)

As promised, the book is “Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon” by Daniel C. Dennett. The Loon reads a newspaper everyday, and so, he has taken a renewed interest in religion.

Brace yourselves, this is a monster mini-book report, and since the Loon has no cherished dawg in Dennett’s fight, it is best to let Dennett do most of his own talking. The Loon will add, in and out of brackets, both pithy and pithless comments, as is his want, and if he dares. The 389 pages in this book took over 2 months read. The writing style is not easy, either that, or Dennett is so intelligent he is incapable of writing down to the Loon level. Or, to cut the Loon some slack; since we each lose 14 thousand neurons everyday due to wear and tear, at age 20 the Loon might have understood everything in the book, which is ridiculous since the book was published in 2006, and no one in their right mind would have had the nerve to publish a book like this in 1952.

Let’s get this out early, Dennett is an atheist, so if you are a believer, and don’t want to read any further, no problem, but the book is interesting, informative and fun, and this mini book report is even more fun, and it won’t take you 2 months to read it. If unusual ideas ring your chimes, read on.

The book is stuffed with heavy and beguiling ideas—love that—ideas that made the Loon’s synapses spark and sizzle. The book is also full of great quotes—also love that. I have viciously marked-up my copy with underlining and marginalia. This made me wonder what differences would there be between the markings-up in this book and those in a new clean copy read a year from now. Would there be more mark-upable passages because the Loon would be deeper into the ideas of the book, or different mark-upable passages because he had spaced-out while reading parts of the book the first time? Does anyone else ever do this--read a page, and then, wake up and realize that your eyeballs had been temporarily disconnected from your brain? Anyway, all passages in quotation marks are from the book.

Dennett is a philosopher. Scary? You betcha, ‘cause all philosophers, like all kids in Lake Wobegon, are above average, and some of them have brains which throb in resonance with celestial sine waves not felt by the likes of the Loon. Dennett is an American writing for American because “…America is strikingly different from other First World nations in its attitudes to religion.” He is using contemporary American Christianity as an example of religion because he is not a religion historian nor conversant enough with other religions.

Why did he write this book? In so far as the Loon can tell, there are two reasons. 1. To examine why religion* is a universal characteristic of all human cultures. Where did religion come from, why does it persist, and what evolutionary advantage can it provide?** 2. To plead that religions be studied with the same rigor used to study all other universal aspects of human culture, e.g. language, music, ancestor reverence, a taste for sweet stuff, visual art, and that triad of seemingly incompatible human behaviors; “cooperation” with and “altruism” toward non-kin, and, of course, that eternal bogeyman, “aggression”.

*“Religion” in this report and in Dennett’s book includes all aspects of spiritual belief found in humans, and is not limited to formal organized religions, large or small.

** WOW! Is that ever a third-rail idea; touch it and you die.

Dennett quotes others to make points. To the question that scientific study might be the ruination of religion, he quotes a fictitious character from The Simpsons, Ned Flanders “Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins a movie by telling you how it ends?” Dennett avers that science will not ruin religion, but it is a worrisome thing to rob humans of some of their dearest allusions, when they are thrown out along with delusionary bathwater. He objects to taboos against philosophical inquiry into religion with this. “Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned. --Anon”. And, central to the theme, “As every inquiry which regards religion is of the utmost importance, there are two question in particular which challenge our attention, to wit, that concerning its foundation in reason, and that concerning its origin in human nature. –-David Hume in ‘The Natural History of Religion.’”

As a philosopher, Dennett is duty-bound to explore every side of every feasible argument and since music, like religion, is a human universal, he asks us to share with him this thought experiment. “Might music be bad for you?” (now a paraphrase of Dennett) “How would we feel if Caltech scientists found indisputable evidence that music caused an increase in Alzheimer’s and heart disease, and that teaching music to young children knocked 10 points off their IQs? How would you feel if the government recommended that you restrict your intake of music (including elevator and mall music) to no more than one hour a day, and music instruction for children be curtailed immediately?” “Can you imagine the visceral defensive surge, ‘What does Caltech know about music?” “I don’t care if it is true! Anyone who takes away my music is in for a fight, because a life without music isn’t worth living” “I don’t care if it hurts others—we’re going to have music, and that is all there is to it.’” Now please substitute “religion” for “music” in the thought experiment to see what dangerous emotional ground he is advising we tread upon, but if you cannot even imagine that music is anything other than an unalloyed good, maybe you are likewise locked into a similar conclusion about religion.

(An Aside) Scientists (most notably Daniel Levitan’s “This is your Brain on Music”.) have postulated that the human tabula rasa for language and for music are similar, in that human infants are proto-wired to accept the grammar and syntax of any language as well as the cadence and sounds of any particular style of music. Children imprint on language and music by hearing it, and in so doing, they complete the wiring schematic in the brain, but the wiring for either language or music does not rely, in any way, upon the wiring for the other.

Inevitably, Dennett poses the question, what evolutionary value can be found in religion? If one could find that belief in a religion would allow the believers a greater ability to procreate, then that would genetically account for the widespread presence and persistence of religion. On the other hand, as Karl Marx put it, “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” and perhaps we have retained genes for a taste for sweet stuff and religion because both make us feel good.

Dennett draws a comparison between large formal religions and the modern business mode; it is an unflattering one. He also lists, “The three favorite…raisons d’etre for religion, (1) to comfort us in our suffering and allay our fear of death; (2) to explain things we can’t otherwise explain; and (3) to encourage group cooperation in the face of trials and enemies.” Dennett discounts them as characteristic of writings in the humanities and social sciences which offer “premature curiosity satisfaction.” Is it unfair to say that “ignorance is bliss”, when it might be shown that it is? The Loon believes that the big three pragmatic reasons for religion are more than just useful mental salve.

With respect to the history of religion, Dennett raises the possibility (if I understand him correctly) that religion grew out of an “ancestor reverence” meme***. And of course, the human invention of language and the concurrent cerebral hard-wiring for grammar, gave man, as distinct from other animals, as best we can determine, the ability to construct abstractions. Unlike Chimpanzees, humans can imagine a walking tree or an invisible banana, as well as “a menagerie of mythical creatures and demons. Since the monsters themselves have never existed, they had to be ‘invented’ either deliberately or inadvertently (the way languages were invented).”

*** a “meme” is an identifiable unit of human behavior which acts like a contagious virus, e.g. one teenager starts using the word “like” as an interjection, and before you know it, every teenager in the United States is infected with the “like” meme.

What is appealing about a benevolent omnipotent all-knowing God? Well, “all plots of all the great sagas, tragedies and novels, but also all the situation comedies and comic books, hinge on the tensions and complexities that arise because agents in the world don’t all share the same strategic information.” and so, only a nice guy who knows every thing and has the wherewithal to do anything, can work through the complications to fix things, and properly dispense justice and punishment.

The Loon wonders if there ever was, in fact, the storied wolf-boy, a child raised by wolves, and, if so, could such a child devoid of language ever imagine or know God?

“Scholars have uncovered a comically variegated profusion of ancient ways of delegating important decisions to uncontrollable externalities. Instead of flipping a coin, you can flip arrows (belomancy) or rods (rhabdmancy) or bones or cards (sortilege), and instead of looking at tea leaves (tasseography), you can examine the livers of sacrifice animals (hepatoscopy), or other entrails (haruspicy) or melted wax poured into water (ceromancy). Then there is moleoscophy (divination by blemishes), myomancy (divination by rodent behavior), nephomancy (divination by clouds), and of course the old favorites (still commonly used today) numerology and astrology.” Incidentally, the Loon noticed more artists and less quackers (palmists and tarot readers) in New Orleans’ St. Louis Square last week. Have we turned the corner from Nonsense Avenue onto Rational Boulevard? May we all hope so.

Under the heading “Shamans as hypnotists” Dennett quotes one of Hollywood’s foremost philistines, Samuel Goldwyn, who said, “Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist should have his head examined.”

“…just as some of the features of written languages are clearly vestigial traces of their purely oral ancestors, some of the features of organized religion will turn out to be vestigial traces of the folk religions from which they are descended.” “Every folk religion has rituals—they are expensive, energy and time consuming, they often waste food, and may even be dangerous. And so the question become, for what purpose? The explanation might be that divination or shamanic healing requires them, and, “Once they are established on the scene for these purposes, they would be available to be adapted--exapted (Stephan Jay Gould’s term) for other uses.” Hmmmm! an interesting concept.

At this point, we are at page152. Only 237 pages to go. Remember the admonition that this was going to be a monster mini-book report?

Toxoplasma gondi is the causative organism of the disease Toxoplamosis. It is a single celled parasite which infects the brains of mice to makes them change their behavior from being afraid of cats to taunting cats. This, of course, gets the mice eaten by cats, which is what the parasite needs, so it can infect the gut of the cat, and then be spread in cat poop to other mice. Thus, by example, it is explained why behavior may not always be under personal rational and willful control. It may be an unlikely leap of logic, but Dennett poses the following. “Languages have enslaved our poor brains and made us eager accomplices in their own propagation!” Exclamation point? I should say. The Loon is disturbed by this, but unlikely to fall mute, or start watching TV with the sound turned off, but I have unsuccessfully threatened, on occasion, to declare a talk-free day.

About the birth of secrecy in religion, Dennett quotes a modern seer, Andy Rooney,” Those to whom his word was revealed were always alone in some remote place, like Moses. There wasn’t anyone around when Mohammed got the word, either. Mormon Joseph Smith, and Christian Scientist, Mary Baker Eddy had exclusive audiences with God. We have to trust them as reporters—and you know how reporters are. They’ll do anything for a story.” Hey Andy, who demands that God has to draw a crowd before he speaks?

Under “Domestication of Religions” Dennett quotes Elaine Pagels, in “The Gnostic Gospels”. “We now begin to see that what we call Christianity---and what we identify as Christian tradition—actually represents only a small selection of specific sources chosen from among dozens of others. Who made that selection and for what reasons? Why were these other writings excluded and banned as ‘heresy’? What made them so dangerous?” The Loon sez that three contentious questions in a row are way too many, and evidence of a contentious mind at work.

“Domesticated animals are less intelligent than their wild counterparts—because they can be. Their brains are smaller.” Does this mean that humans do their thinking for them, in exchange for their milk and their muscle for labor and food? “Ten thousand years ago, (at the dawn of animal domestication), humans and their domesticated animals were 1% of the terrestrial vertebrate biomass. Today they comprise 98 percent.” Hey! the Loons sez that humans are doing pretty good for primates which have been domesticated by dogs, cats, sheep, goats, swine, cattle, poultry and horses. It seems like a commensural win-win deal. Domesticated non-humans animals get to proliferate and become more stupid, and we humans can proliferate and become less hardy….and maybe more stupid too, because we can be…we don’t have to go out and hunt, gather and scavenge. Hmmmm!

Dennett seems to draw a loose analogy between large religions and kleptocracies (governments run by thieves) but to do so he cleverly quotes Jarred Diamond, who writes about chiefdoms. “At best, they do good by providing expensive services impossible to contract for on an individual basis. At worst, they function unabashedly as kleptocracies….transferring net wealth from commoners to upper classes…Why do commoners tolerate the transfer of the fruits of their hard labor to kleptocrats?” Now back to Dennett in quotes “There are four ways that kleptocrats maintain power. 1. Disarm the populace and arm the elite. 2. Make the masses happy by redistributing much of the tribute. 3. Use force to promote happiness by maintaining public order and curbing violence. 4. Construct an ideology or religion justifying kleptocracy.” This is a dim, but perhaps realistic, view of organized society.

About the effect of prayer on God, Dennett, shamelessly, again goes for another Andy Rooneyism, “the Pope traditionally prays for peace every Easter and the fact that it has never had any effect whatsoever in preventing or ending a war never deters him. What goes through the Pope’s mind about being rejected all the time? Does God have it in for him?”

Dennett makes a distinction between people who believe in belief and those who truly believe, and he claims that many more believe that the belief in God exists than really believe in the presence of God. Further, he makes a distinction between people who believe “free will” exists and those who believe in the belief that “free will“ exists. He quotes physicist Paul Davies who defended the view that belief of “free will” is so important that it may be ‘a fiction worth maintaining.’”

About a certain type of religious hard-core he writes. “If anybody ever raises questions or objections about our religion that you cannot answer, that person is almost certainly Satan. In fact, the more reasonable the person is, the more eager to engage you in open-minded and congenial discussion, the more sure you can be that you’re talking to Satan in disguise! Turn away! Do not listen! It’s a trap!” Der Loon sez, it goes both ways, many atheists will quickly aver that religion is nothing but a conspiracy, a spell cast into the minds of the people by church leaders.

About the phenomenon of mega-churches, Dennett quotes Alan Wolf from “The Transformation of American Religion; How we actually live our lives” Wolf writes “…those who fear the consequences of a return to strong religious belief should not be fooled by evangelicalism’s rapid growth. On the contrary, evangelicalism’s popularity is due as much to its populism and democratic urges—its determination to find out exactly what believers want and to offer it to them—as it is to certainties of the faith.” The Loon stands mute, because he never been to a mega-church, but my daughter goes to one because she is lost in the crowd and if she misses church, no one will ask her where she was. This is a form of church lite, religion without fellowship.

About the mystery in religion. Dennett quote Rappaport “If postulates are to be unquestionable, it is important that they be incomprehensible.”

(Comment) this books suffers mightily from the absence of footnotes.

Under the heading “Does God exist?” Dennett quotes Voltaire, “If God did not exist, it would be necessary for us to invent him.”

“What can religion do for you” Dennett has a quartet of quotes.
Religion in the shape of a mind-cure gives to some of us serenity, moral poise, and happiness and prevents certain forms of disease as well as science does, or even better in a certain class of persons.” William James. The Loon stands in awe of William James, but is wary of a sentence twice containing the word “certain”.
“No one dares suggest that neon signs blinking messages that ‘Jesus Saves’ may be false advertising.” R. Lawrence Moore
“Pray—to ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in the behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.” A definition provided by Ambrose Bierce
“In a dangerous world there will always be more people around whose prayers for their own safety have been answered than those whose prayers have not.” Nicholas Humphrey

About research on Religion, “One strand in the current wave of research on religion raises a fundamental issue, in undeniable terms Studies are now underway on the efficacy of intercessonary prayer, (Dennett now quotes Robert Longman) ‘praying with the real hope and real intent that God would step in and act for the good of some specific other person(s) or other entity.’” The Loon would like to read that study, especially about how it was constructed and how it was objectively measured, and did those who were being prayed for know they were being prayed for and was there a control group who got no prayer but knew they could have been included in the group to be prayed for, and were there two other groups of people neither of which knew anything about the study but only half of which were prayed for, and was this a double-blind study, one with assessors of prayer effectiveness blind about which people where in which study group.

Under the heading “Morality and Religion” Dennett is cagy by relying on an utterly simplistic quote from Steven Weinberg, “Good people do good things, and bad people do bad things. But for good people to do bad things—that takes religion.” The Loon detects no closing of the loop with a discussion of why bad people do good things. Anyway, it appears to be a cheap shot against religion. Another cheap shot is “(Many religions) are impressed with the truth-finding power of science when it supports what they already believe.”

Under sacred values, Dennett quotes W. H. Auden wry comment. “We are here on Earth to do good to others, What the others are here for, I don’t know.”

In an obvious plea for rationality, Dennett writes, “No God that was pleased by displays of unreasoning love would be worthy of worship.” Further he quotes Emerson who wrote. “The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide.” Emerson, it must be noted, was opinionated to a fault.

About the relative worth of people, Dennett offers this. ‘Consider for instance the example of contemplative monks who devote most of their lives to the purification of their souls and the rest to the maintenance of the contemplative life-style to which they have become accustomed. In what way, exactly, are they morally superior to those people who devote their lives to improving their stamp collection or golf swing? It seems to me that best that can be said of them is that they stay out of trouble, which is not nothing.”

In response to Cobb County GA putting stickers in textbooks that evolution is a theory, Dennett objects with the following. “Nobody put stickers in chemistry or geology books saying that the theories they contain are theories, not facts.”

About defense of the faith, Dennett (who is obviously a quoting maniac) quotes Avery Cardinal Dulles, (the Loon paraphrases) “Apologetics” is the rational defense of the faith….in the past it was supposed to rigorously prove that God exists, Jesus was divine and born of a virgin, and so forth, but it fell into disrepute…(because) it was under suspicion that it promised more than it could deliver and manipulated evidence to support the desired conclusions.” It did not always escape the vice that Paul Tillich called “sacred dishonesty” The Loon knows it is a stretch between belief that there are 12 foot long alligators in the New York City sewers, to belief that Jesus is a genetic haploid (with only one set of maternal genes), but you can find people who are vociferous in their defense of both premises. .

About the eternal turmoil found in science, Dennett writes, “…the cutting edge of science up close looks ragged and chaotic, a bunch of big egos engaging in shouting matches, their judgment distorted by jealousy, ambition, and greed, but behind them, agreed upon by all the disputants, is the massive routine weight of accumulated result, the facts that gives science its power.”

In this age of non-judgmental relativism and a plethora of available religious belief, at what age, the Loon would like to know, should it be permissible to expose a child to a single religion?

Whew! The Loon is exhausted, but there you have it; as disjointed a book as I have ever read, but gefult mitt ideas; a mixed bag of rageous, outrageous, deniable and undeniable ideas. If you have read this whole mini (Ha!) book review, let the Loon know, and he will send you a golden hero’s star for your calendar.

BOOKS-A-PLENTY

The Loon cashed in Christmas present gift certificates at Barnes and Nobel and Amazon, to restock his book larder. He is now well-fixed with reading. The list of a dozen books in waiting follows, not in the order of preference—the books alone will determine their order, and, indeed, if they will be read at all.

“Stranger in the Forest: On foot across Borneo”. By Eric Hanson (a gift from friend, Ron)
“From Beirut to Jerusalem” by Thomas L. Friedman, (a gift from friend, Pat). The Loon is underway in this book, and now he understands why Friedman is one of only a few columnists who writes anything worth reading about the Middle East. Friedman lived there long enough to know and understand the ferocious political, religious and social tensions found there.
(Comment: listing the two previous books as gifts is not a sub-liminal plea to send me books, but if you do, (Hint! Hint!) Each one will have a chance to enchant me. They will be read or not read based entirely each one’s merits. The Loon is not an “equal opportunity” reader.
“The Last Little Citadel: American High Schools since 1940), by Robert Hampel, This is a 1986 book gleaned out of a two buck bookstore box. It too has been started, and since the Loon was in high school for some time* between 1946 and 1950, Hampel’s description of early high schools seems “on the money”. FYI, other books of interest about high schools are “The Shopping Mall High School: Winners and Losers in the Educational Marketplace”, by Powell, Farrar, and Cohen.

* The Loon didn’t graduate from high school; the minor offenses of juvenile delinquency plus repeated truancy and smoking in the locker room made him a three time loser. Later, when his mind underwent rational reorganization and reformation, he got hisself a GED. “Government Equivalent Diploma”, but he can’t prove it ‘cause he done lost the paper some’ers.

4. “David Brinkley: A Memoir” by (who else?) David Brinkley.
5. “Seal Team Seven”, a paperback novel about good guys in rubber suits riding in rubber boats and killing bad people, by Kieth Douglass. The Loon is going to save this for when he gets depressed; war seems to buoy the Loon’s spirits.
6. “The Lyre of Orpheus”, a novel by Robertson Davies, who is a fine Canadian writer, but this book always seems to settle to the bottom of the pile as others I fancy more percolate to the top—The Loon will give it one more year, and then, if not read, it becomes a gift to a library somewhere. Do others share revulsion at tossing books in the trash?
7. “Generation of Vipers;” a 1942 book written by Philip Wylie with the longest book sub-title I have ever seen. “A survey of Moral Want; a Philosophical Discourse suitable only for the Strong; a Study of American Types and Archetypes and a Signpost on the two Thoroughfares of Man, the Via Dolorosa and Descensus Averano, together with sundry Preachments, Epithets, Moodal Adventures, Political Impertinence, Allegories, Aspirations, Visions and Jokes, as well as certain Homely Hints for the care of the Human Soul.” Oh yes! The Loon could use some hints for care during those long dark nights of the soul. Anyway, see, the Loon wasn’t kidding about a humungous sub-title.
8. “50 Things You Are Not Supposed To Know” by Russ Kick (I finished it in one night, and it is not worth reading)
9. “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins. This is a new controversial book creating both steam and the stench of brimstone.
10, “The Undercover Economist: Exposing why the Rich are Rich, the Poor are Poor, and why you can never buy a decent used car” by Tim Harford
11. “Culture Warrior” by Bill O’Reilly, another of today’s hot tomes. I hope he writes well, as the Loon suffers ideologues poorly.
12. “Body and Soul” by J. P. Smith, a bookstore freebie-bin novel about jazz and murder in France (I think). Letchaknow later.

LEXICOLOGY

Which is the proper term “Starter Castles” or “Mini Mansions”?

Allen Hall, the Loon
February 22, 2007, in warm sunny Dallas.

2007-06-24T10:16:00.000-07:00

Fruit o’ the Loon
’07 Installment # 7

If I have failed to offend everyone, I’m sorry.

NOTABLE QUOTES

1. Virtuoso cellist, Pablo Casals was 94 and still practicing three hours a day and when someone asked him, “Why do you still practice three hours a day?” He replied, “I’m beginning to see some improvement.” The Loon used to own a saxophone, and, with it, the crazy illusion that someone might someday pay money to watch him blow his breath down into it. But alas, the Loon has a jittery mind, one which could not tolerate the tedium of practice. To carry the thought further, the curmudgeonly Loon tolerates poorly five things: boredom, TV preachers, politicians talking, advertisements of almost any kind, and something else which has temporarily slipped his mind. I see the Cherokees have voted to de-list* all Cherokees who have any African-American blood. This made me wonder if the Cherokees would similarly vote to de-list all Cherokees who have European-American and Asian-American blood. What does this has to do with Pablo Casals? Nothing, but, Hey! The Loon already told you he has a jittery “can’t-stay-on-task” mind.

*A fancy word meaning” throw out of the tribe”

2. “The most important thing in music is what is not in the notes.” Pablo Casals 1878-1973

3. “Fighting for Peace is like Screwing for Virginity” reported to have been written in the men’s room of The Bayou in Baton Rouge, LA**.

** The original was reported to have been written over the urinal at the Wright Field Officer’s Club in Dayton Ohio, and read “Fighting for Peace is like Fucking for Chastity”

CRAZY AL’S NEWS DIGEST

New York City is going to the Rodents? There were rats seen frolicking after hours in a NYC KFC/Taco Bell restaurant, and a beaver was sighted in the Bronx River. Look, Crazy Al understands that almost anything even slightly unusual in NYC is considered newsworthy, but gimmie a break. Talk about your slow news day.

“46 Nations support ban on cluster bombs” Crazy Al seems to remember reading that some Pope some time way back declared the crossbow illegal as a weapon of war. Why? Apparently it was just too easy to kill people with a crossbow. Something or other about crossbows in war not being sporting enough. Also, Crazy Al has heard that shoulder-fired 50 caliber rifles (Yes, Hillary, there are such things) are not to be fired at people, but only at vehicles and such. Crazy Al may have to look up the definition of “War”?

“Obama gets warm welcome in Austin” This headline was under a photo of Obama wearing a black cowboy hat. Several crucial questions come to mind. Was he given a black cowboy hat? Or, was he offered a choice between a black cowboy hat and a white cowboy hat? If he had the choice, why did he prefer the black Cowboy hat? What does all of this say about America? Crazy Al is going to have to think some more about this.

Anna Nicole, and Brittany, Pleeeze! Enough already! Spread the notoriety around; millions of American young people in the “look-at-me” generation are desperately in need of it. These young people are “special”, and why should they believe otherwise, when they have heard “you are special” like a mantra for lo these many years. Five psychologists (perhaps known as the “Gang of Five”) did a study which collected and analyzed 16,475 interviews of college students from 1967 and 2006 in order to determine the level of narcissism. Is it any surprise that the level is rising? Nope! See, teachers have been pumping generous amounts of “self-esteem” sunshine up special little asses ever since the 1980s

“South losing senior appeal” This was headline for an article about the 75 year old and up retirees who are leaving the south for harsher climes up north. The net effect of population migration for the south is negative. Between 2000 and 2005, 121,000 left the south and 87,000 early boomers arrived. Strangely the article lists several causes but not the weather. Crazy Al, sez many of the ones moving north have been through one or more hurricanes, and don’t s’pect they’s gonna go through ‘nother, but, on the other hand, the retiring Boomers are mostly hurricane-naive. In an allied story, weather weenies are predicting a return of el Nina with its accompanying return of high hurricane frequency in the Atlantic. Animals get uneasy right before an earthquake; can oldsters have some extra-sensory prescience about hurricanes?

“Garlic study deflates (the) herb’s health claims” and “Antioxidants not tied to longevity, study shows” Crazy Al wants to know what was wrong with the studies which showed that Garlic lowered blood cholesterol levels, and antioxidants would make you live longer? And, why should we trust these new studies more? Well, I suppose we will just have to limp along with Garlic curing heart disease, cancer, infections and mosquito bites, and antioxidants keeping cells from dying. Is it an illogical leap to conclude that if your cells never die, why should you?

In yet another folk myth exploded (maybe), a headline reads, “Study: Immigrants do not increase the U.S. crime rate”. It seems that those men born inside the U.S. are five times more likely to be incarcerated than those born outside the U.S. The study was conducted by “The Immigration Policy Center” an Immigration advocacy group in Washington. Crazy Al wants to go on record as favoring immigration, and favoring the rule of law, and that is all he is gonna say about any of it.

Found in a residential Jerusalem neighborhood: Jesus’ bones in a box, his wife, Mary’s, bones in a box, and Jesus’ son, Judah’s, bones in a box” If you think Crazy Al is going to comment on that, you must think he is really crazy. However, I will make one prediction; if retiring Christian Boomers try to move into that Jerusalem neighborhood, they better get going soon, because property values are going to skyrocket.

THE LOON’S SECRET LIFE AS AN AMATEUR HERPETOLOGIST (ACTUALLY, A SNAKE LOVER**)

**. He loves their cute little licky tongues, loves their unblinking serious eyes, loves that skin which is cool to the touch. He’s serious, but, as you may have guessed, also weird.

Everyone gets a nickname at summer camp. The Loon’s was “Nature-Lover” All the other boys were carving sticks with their pocket knives. The Loon carved his thumb to the bone, and so, he then did what he really wanted to do all along, try to capture a Blue-tailed Skink. He never did, but he captured a few Blue-tailed Skink tails. From such humble beginnings a zoologist was born. He then climbed trees to gather the cocoons of large moths, and collected snakes and Box Turtles-- the lady upstairs, Mrs. Goeke, told me I would get warts if I touched the snakes and turtles—the collection included a dozen Box turtles and a bunch of Garter Snakes, and so, Mrs. Goeke, ostensibly fearing a neighborhood epidemic of warts, paid some villain to steal all of my reptiles one dark night. From such beginnings, there developed a persistent dislike for bitchy yahoo ladies who lived up-stairs.

Naturally, the Loon wanted to work in the Reptile House at the St. Louis Zoo. Unfortunately zoo curator, George Vierheller***, said 13 year olds can only work selling bottled soda at the concession stand. What could he do? Anyway, during breaks at the concession stand, he went up to the Reptile House to chat-up the reptile curator, Moody Lentz, and bond with the snakes.

*** The sole Principal Curator of the St. Louis Zoo for the first 40 years of its existence.

The Loon’s early hero was herpetologist, Raymond L. Ditmars who collected animals for zoos from all over the world, and who wrote several entertaining books. The one which caught the Loon’s imagination was entitled “The Making of Scientist”. Now the Loon was strolling down his life path, or so he thought. However, a mild attack of juvenile delinquency, a job as a Coca Cola truck driver, and a stint in the Air Force as a teletype operator, diverted him from his life road into one cul-de-sac after another. He got back on the road later, sort of, but, by then, he was distracted by a series of unforeseen events; an education, a marriage, three kids and a bunch of jobs. The Loon is still searching for snakes, but has not found boo—too damned busy running around the country dancing and scribbling out these Fruits o’ the Loon.

Back in the day, the three best zoos were the London Zoological Garden, which had the largest collection of animals, the San Diego Zoo which had a climate favorable for creating outside natural environment enclosures for animals, and the St. Louis Zoo which had the second largest collection of animals, some unique barrier-free enclosures for viewing animals, and free admission (always).

The Loon is not altogether a zoo freak, but he has gone to zoos in Nagoya Japan, Hanover Germany, Bern Switzerland, Washington D.C., San Diego, Cincinnati, Minnesota, Lincoln Park in Chicago, and San Antonio where they have the world’s finest collection of exotic hoofed animals as breeding pairs.

When the Loon was working in Germany he had the distinct privilege of autopsying an Atlantic Bottle-nosed Dolphin, but that is another long, scientific edifying and humorous story—later!

While working in Covington LA, the Loon has a pleasant afternoon lunch with Norman Jones, who was an Army Master Sergeant, and, as an aside, he was THE international authority on caged non-human primates. Norman knew the locations, ages, personal idiosyncrasies, and names of every caged Gorilla, Orangutan, and Chimpanzee (Bonobos included) in the world. This information, and a lot of other germane information, he kept inside his head. Norman had a large round head. The reason why the Loon was invited to this lunch with Norman Jones was because, at the time, the Loon was the staff pathologist for a U.S. Navy study on impact and vibration injury using eight mature Chimpanzees and a bunch of volunteer young Marines. The Marines where trying to get out of duty in Viet Nam, the Chimpanzees, press-ganged into the study, were trying to get out of their cages. A young Marine is a formidable creature, but a mature Chimpanzee is even more formidable and, even if sober and not angry, can be unpredictable and damned dangerous. But, I am getting away from my story—back to the snakes.

Working in southern Louisiana was a God-sent. The area is rife with snakes. Where the Loon lived, there were plenty of snakes: Salt and Pepper snakes, Black Snakes, and one of the most interesting of all domestic non-poisonous snakes, the Hog Nosed Snake which will hiss menacingly and spread out like a Cobra if threatened, but if that doesn’t work, it will play possum by pretending to go into a seizure and die, and while doing so shit all over itself. This then presents a predator with a loathsome meal. We had Cottonmouth Water Moccasins in the pond and, and colorful Copperheads slithering though the pine needles. The Loon loved it. He was 42 years old and he went wading out into the southern Louisiana swamps, ostensibly to trap crawfish to eat, but in reality, he went to catch snakes. This, however, it did not make him a hero in the eyes of his wife and three daughters.

ACE HARDWARE VS HOME DEPOT (A COMPARISON)

It is not often that the Loon goes into an Ace Hardware to buy esoteric hardware such as a right–handed Murphy pin, a 40 mm mini-blivit, or some weird type of light bulb that Ace doesn’t have what he want. And, he usually can promptly get a guy in a red shirt to take him right to what he need. The Loon does not have that same experience at Home Depot stores where he seldom finds a person to help him, and if he does get the attention of workers, they don’t take him to what he want, but rather, they tell him where to go. Often it is to the wrong aisle (once he asked three workers and got directions to three different aisles). AND, while a Home Depot store has a lot of stuff, they seldom have what the Loon wants. What’s goin’ on here, Ace Hardware stores are little bitty, and Home Depot stores are huge? Well, perhaps the difference lies in the fact that each Ace Hardware store is privately owned, and each Home Depot store is owned by a huge corporation which has, apparently, overpaid its executives, not hired enough people, and seldom carries what the Loon needs. This is what the Loon calls a revolting development.

Allen Hall, the Loon
March 5, 2007 in sunny warm south Texas, ‘n don’t y’all fugit it.

2007-06-22T15:00:00.001-07:00

Fruit o’ the Loon
’07 Installment # 8

If I have failed to offend everyone, I’m sorry.

UNITED NATIONS MEMORIAL WALL

It commemorates all those who died in the Korean War (a.k.a. U. N. Police Action), and who served under the aegis of the United Nations. The wall was dedicated October 24 2006. It contains over 40,000 names The United States contributed 35,000 dead, and, to complete our contribution, 103,000 Americans were wounded during the Korean War. The Korean War wall is largely unknown in this country, mostly because it is in the United Nations Cemetery in Pusan, South Korea, but also because that war ended ingloriously in a draw.

A privately funded Korean War Project Newsletter (for American Korean War Vets) started up in the December 1998, but had to shut down for a couple of months in 1999 due to lack of funds, Then last year, again, it went el foldo. It has been since resurrected by contributions, largely because of an AP story in November 2006 which was picked up by American, Korean, Japanese and Taiwanese news agencies. I hope some of the contributions for the newsletter came from South Koreans, as their economic prosperity is due, in no small part, to the outcome of that war, and they need look no farther than the fate and lives of their North Korean brethren to appreciate their own good fortune. So much for a war which ends with an inglorious draw.

The Korean War Project e-newsletter now goes out to over 40,000 addressees. The Loon is one of them*. A popular section in the newsletter is best entitled “Letters to the Lost”, those written by veterans posting obituaries, those trying to hunt down military buddies, and those making inquiries about the location of friend’s graves. Some of the letters are not easy reading.

* The Loon doesn’t want to give a wrong impression. He was in the military during the Korean War, but not in Korea. The closest he came was Nagoya Japan. And so, he is worse than a REMF (which is the military acronym for “Rear Echelon MF”) The Loon was more like a “RRREMF” (“Really Remote Rear Echelon MF”)

HOUSTON LIVESTOCK SHOW AND RODEO

The 75th Annual Houston Livestock show and Rodeo runs for several weeks. The rodeo is flacked as the world’s largest, and that's believable. Rudy and the Loon were spotted tickets by our daughter, Britt and her husband, Giancarlo. We attended the rodeo with them, friends and 57,000 of our closest Texas acquaintances. We had great nose-bleed seats to watch dwarfs in chaps get thrown off disagreeable miniature Brahman Bulls and tiny fractious bucking horses, however, we got a closer look at the man vs. beast mayhem via video re-plays on a giant TV screen—something Rome coliseum fans never had. Sniff! Can I hear a big round of applause for technological progress? Rudy loved the barrel racers; I liked the chuck wagon races—they reminded me of my boyhood Saturdays spent watching oater movies starring Skipalong Hotspurs. We ate barbeque, cruised the livestock stalls, petted some unusual cute rabbits and briefly hit the carnival. Our daughter, Britt and Giancarlo took one of the vomitorium carnie rides—not the Loon; he don’t fancy paying to have violence visited upon his aged self. .This was our youngest daughter, Britt’s, 40th birthday party—something to give a father a bad case of “NO-WAY!” denials”

The blue ribbon champion steer went at auction for $300,000, $85,000 of which went to the 13 year old FFA girl who raised the steer—the rest went to charity. Imagine this scenario; the rich philanthropist who bought the steer had it slaughtered and put in his freezer. (A fat steer will yield about 35% packaged meat. This fat steer looked to be about 2,000 pounds X.35 = 700 pounds of beef in the freezer, at an average of about $400 a pound.), The rich guy then throws a backyard barbeque for friends, and grills some Texas-sized battleship-burgers (three-quarter pounders) and then, tells the friends that they are each eating a $300 hamburger? Yassir! Everthin’ is big dowahn hair in Tex-ahss.

VEHICLE FUEL—THE LOON’S PRIMER

1. A newspaper guy, Loran Steffy, bought a Chevy Suburban which ran on either gasoline or ethanol. He found that $1.92/gal. E85 was slightly more cost efficient than $2.20/gal. gasoline.
2. Burning a years worth of E85 in his Suburban produces 6,500 less pounds of emissions, than if he burned a years worth of gasoline. Wow! The Suburban doesn’t weight that much.
3. E85 is vehicle fuel which is 85% ethanol, and I haven’t the slightest idea what the other 15% is, but you can rest assured that it renders E85 undrinkable and also unhome-stillable into White Lightening
4. E85 is subsidized by the government at $.51/gal, which means that ethanol could not now compete with gasoline without the subsidy. Who knows what the future holds for petroleum prices.
5. There are not too many stations which now sell E85; Minnesota has perhaps the most, Texas much fewer. Hey! Minnesota has corn; Texas has oil wells.
6. Even if all of our arable acreage was used to raise corn, and all the corn was used for the production of ethanol, we still would not have enough E85 to run all our motor vehicles, and we would have a dire shortage of tortillas.
7. Ethanol faces other economic restraints, it now takes 71 units of energy to make 100 energy units in ethanol, while it takes only 6 units of energy to make 100 energy units in gasoline/diesel
8. Cheap oil is running out, which does not mean that expensive oil is not still available in large quantities.
9. In a free-market economy, which is what we would have if the government stayed out of the way, price will drive fuel preference. In a perfect world of the future, ethanol will be produced more efficiently from wood chips and other relatively worthless cellulose sources, thus costing much less energy to produce. See, the Loon apologizes for beggaring the obvious, but corn has to be sowed, cultivated and harvested by fuel-using machinery. It has to be fertilized and kept free of weeds and bugs by herbicides and insecticide, all of which cost energy to produce. New technology marvels notwithstanding, future petroleum will be much more costly to extract. And when that happens, E85 may economically compete with gasoline/diesel without a government subsidy. The removal of the ethanol subsidy will sadden the farm bloc, but gladden OPEC. When E85 is more economically efficient than diesel/gasoline, E85 will become the fuel of choice. This will sadden OPEC, but gladden the Greenies. Hey! Even in a governmental-meddling, highly-modified-free-market economy, any change will produce winners and losers.
10. When the fuel emissions in the air are reduced, the greenhouse effect will be reduced. It will get cold. There will be mass migrations out of Minnesota. The polar ice cap will thicken. Polar Bears will be gladdened, and clap their furry paws together. The sea level will drop. Pricy ocean shore dwellers in Palm Beach and Malibu will still be in sight of the ocean, but only barely, however they will have lots of beach to play on. For a peek at the future, come to Houston where rickshaws are in competition with taxis. The fuel of preference for rickshaw drivers is fat**
** Fat yields 2.25 times more energy than either of the other two fuels for the human engine, carbohydrates and proteins.
11. Don’t take the Loon’s word for any of this; you can look it up yourself.

LOON MINI BOOK REPORT

The book is a slim paperback entitled,” Stranger in the Forest: On Foot Across Borneo” by Eric Hansen, a man who harbored an obsession for walking across Borneo. Borneo is a large island with no interior roads, and is mostly covered bu tropical rain forest and some of the most primitive tribes on earth, Hansen did it in1986 taking only what he could carry. When he got to the other side (it took him 4 months) he decided to walk back across Borneo, and he did that too. All told, he traveled about a thousand miles in Borneo. I hate to rat him out, but he cheated, as he often traveled with the natives in long dugout canoes. However, he mostly walked through steaming jungles replete with lots of leeches, wild pigs and snakes, but no McDonalds or Big 6 Motels. If adventure can be defined as glorified inconvenience, Hansen went to heroic extremes to inconvenience himself. He made many friends with the natives, but some considered him to be the ultimate evil incarnate that had come to take the blood of innocents. He got his penis pierced….twice. It’s the custom there…the ladies seem to like the addition of scar tissue. Most often he walked with nomadic native guides. Otherwise, he would have been lost, but not for long, as he would have quickly starved to death.

This book was a well-written adventurous account of one man’s absurd and almost insane struggle against overwhelming odds (think The Odyssey).

The Loon found two interesting features in this book:
Ample evidence that hunter-gatherers are remarkably resourceful and live in the “now” They must live off what they can kill or find. They know what is good to eat, and what is poisonous, what is medicinally appropriate and what is not. Time of day is important to them, as are the seasons, but otherwise “time” means nothing to them. A journey has a start and an end, but no duration. They are creatures of the moment.
Ample evidence that man is not a uniformly introspective. Hunter-gatherers do not think like westerners. They spend all of their waking hours using their senses. It is vitally important for them to be constantly cognizant of their surroundings. No idle musing for them as they amble through the countryside. They are not philosophical people who weigh ideas and concepts, and balance facts with beliefs. We are clever but vulnerable omnivores which evolution has robbed of many redeeming instincts, and so, when faced with subsistence survival, we must be eternally pragmatic. Safety and survival requires primitive natives they be constantly and entirely aware of their environment; that is how they learn, and holds the only hope for survival.

Some examples of barter equivalents used in Borneo are: one stick of chewing tobacco = 5 rice meals. One shotgun shell loaded with buckshot = a day of labor, or one year in jail if the police catch you with it. 375 shotgun shells = one full grown buffalo. Forty heaping teaspoons of mixed colored seed-bead = one old Indonesian head-hunting sword.

The Loon’s friend, Ron, gave the Loon this book, and the Loon knows not what for, but it damned sure didn’t make the Loon lust to walk across Borneo. If you want the book, say so, and it will soon be in the mail.

ANOTHER LOON’S MINI BOOK REPORT

Thomas Friedman’s “From Beirut to Jerusalem” is mandatory reading for anyone who wants to understand the forces at play in the struggle over that ancient strip of desert known as Palestine, nee The Promised Land, and by easy extension, to understand social and political pathology in the entire Middle East.

Friedman lived for several years in Beirut during the major “troubles” there, and in Israel during an intiifadi. Friedman is a Jew born in Minnesota who now writes for the New York Times, and he has made it his business and life work to understand what makes the Middle East tick; I think most American believe they understand the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, I know I did. Hey! It’s simple; Jews and Palestinians both want the same ground. That is true, but from that point, the complexity explodes as geological, political, ethnic, religious, class and tribal allegiances come into play. No place are these fine distinctions more evident than in Lebanon during their civil war, when dozens of militias were fighting dozens of other militias. It was almost every Beirut neighborhood against all other Beirut neighborhoods.

The Palestinians are not unified. Some have a beef because they and subsequently several generations have been displaced from what were their homes in what is now Israel. Some still live in Israel.Others have never lived anywhere in Palestine. Some are devout Muslims, others are not. They have their own hawks and doves, as well as ethnic, religious and tribal affiliations tracing back centuries.

Further, and even more complex, Jews are divided into subsets by where they live (e.g., in Tel Aviv or in the occupied territories), by religious sentiment (orthodox, conservative or reformed churches), by ethnicity, (e.g., native Israelis, or returning diasporic peoples from Russia, Spain, Ethiopia, Germany, etc.), by age, (older Jews belonging to the heroic generation of the 1967 war, and the younger generations looking toward a western worshiping vision of a modern Israel), and political (hawks or doves).

Overlay this complex stew with class. The Jews populate the upper classes, and are technologically adept, while the Palestinians are the lower classes who do the scut work for the Jews.

Freidman objectively explains the roles of American Jewry, United States governments, and Middle East Muslim countries as they have affected the Israeli Palestinian conflict.

Friedman deftly teases out the adversarial interplay over time, explaining how and when sea-change political shifts occurred. He points to the lost opportunities, and finally, in an added chapter, predicts the future and gives advice to both sides. And, most important, he gives equal measures of hell to both the Jews and Palestinians when they deserve it, and he reserves special venom for obstructionist leaders for both the Jews and Palestinians.

When it comes to the Middle East, Friedman is the only columnist the Loon cares to read, as he appears to be the only one, who does not gather information while sitting on his ass in New York City or Washington D.C. He goes to where he wants to write about.

This book is from friend, Pat, and it is already promised to friend, Gene. Go to Amazon for an el.cheapo paperback copy—the words, though smaller, are the same; and that’s a promise.

Allen Hall, The “gurgle” Loon
March 14, 2007, and suffering a deluge in Houston—5&1/2 inches in two days, with more on the way.
.

2007-06-21T08:34:00.000-07:00

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?

2007-06-20T17:03:00.000-07:00

Fruit o’ the Loon
’07 Installment # 10

LOON MINI-BOOK REPORT

As advertised, here is the Loon’s take on “In Search of Memory: Emergence of a New Science of Mind”, by Eric R. Kandel.

For starters, Kandel won a 2000 Noble Prize for his work to learn just how a memory can be created, stored and recovered in a mind, and how a mind can be created in a brain which is, Voila! only the sum of its neurons (functional brain nerve cells) and their connections to one another, and how those connections allow neurons to talk to one another. However, Kandel fell short of completely understanding how a memory can be created, where it is stored and how it can be recovered, but he came closer than anyone else, and he has cast considerable illumination on the functions of mind as biological processes, and helped flip off the light switch on Freudianism and other semi-quacky Psy-hocus-pocuses. Kendel started out a psychiatrist, but when he saw that schizophrenics didn’t get better, he saw the science light, and the light was good, and so, he decided to start back at block A to study the functions of individual nerve cells as related to memory, and stopped listening to people lying on couches telling him about what they thought was going on in their minds—like HA! they even or ever knew. I use the analogy that psychiatrists trying to cure mentally ill people by talking to them, is like auto mechanics trying to fix a car engines by talking to the engines. Anyway, the book is essentially a compelling compilation of Kandel’s life-long studies on nerve cells in Aplysia californica a giant marine snail, because they have really big nerve cells, and not too many of them.

The book is also Kandel’s autobiography from the days when he and his family escaped Vienna before the Nazi’s could get them. It is a matter of record now, that Austrian Nazism was far more virulent than German Nazism. For Jews, Vienna lost its appeal as a city of culture, beauty and tasty pastries, and became a horror and a death camp. Kandel came to America and prospered as a scientist; our gain and Europe’s loss—the European legacy from Nazism has long legs indeed. Kandel was born in 1924 and this book was published in 2006 when he was 82 years old.

Chapter one contains the following:

“Although the size and structure of the human brain has not changed since Homo sapiens first appeared in East Africa some 150,000 years ago, the learning capability of individual human beings and their historical memory have grown over the centuries through shared learning—that is, through the transmission of culture. Cultural evolution, a nonbiological mode of adaptation, acts in parallel with biological evolution as the means of transmitting knowledge of the past and adaptive behavior across generations. All human accomplishments, from antiquity to modern times, are products of shared memory accumulations over centuries whether written records or through a carefully protected oral tradition. The new science of mind attempts to penetrate the mystery of consciousness, including the ultimate mystery: how each person’s brain creates the consciousness of a unique self and the sense of free will.”

One of the ultimate mysteries in neuroscience is “consciousness” and one of the ultimate fantasies is “free will”, so sayth the Loon. No one has come close to unraveling the mystery of “consciousness”, and, when you think about it, “free will” is more like “free wish”. It is rationally difficult but emotionally easy to aver that we can do whatever we want, when, in fact, almost always we are like machines following scrupulously the scripts written into our individual warm-ware, when prompted by the unforeseen rolling cascade of external events. Come on! Let the Loon hear denials from all you folks with inalienably endowed “free wills”.

On another level, the book tells the history of normal nerve cell function (physiology), and the Loon would be a big-time liar if he implied he understood all of it. However, the story is an intriguing one, one which puts another few bricks into what has come to be an unassailable wall of evidence that behavior is inextricably linked to biology.

Kandel confesses that science is now helpless to study consciousness. He writes, “Science as we currently practice it is a reductionist, analytic view of complicated events, while consciousness is reducibly subjective; such a theory lies beyond our reach for now.” “According to Nagel, science cannot take on consciousness without a significant change in methodology, a change that would enable scientists to identify and analyze the elements of subjective experience.” “What science lacks are rules for explaining how subjective properties (consciousness) arise from the properties of objects (inter-connected nerve cells).”

The book has abundant clarifying visual material; including gross and microscopic photographs, graphs, charts and drawings.

Does anyone with an un-scratched scientific itch want the book? First one who asks gets it.

NOTABLE QUOTES

“Never ascribe to conspiracy that which can be explained by incompetence.”
(attributed to) Napoleon

“A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have.”
Thomas Jefferson

“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. They inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.”
Winston Churchill

“Democracy must be more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.”
James Bovard (civil Libertarian)

SWAMI LOON FEARLESSLY PREDICTS THE OUTCOME OF THE ’08 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

Newspapers have provided irrefutable early evidence of the electibility (read “popularity”) of the several candidates. It is a horse-race for cash*. Based on early campaign war chest returns, Swami Loon predicts the following…

Obama for Prez and Hillary for Veep for the Dems. The two early money favorites got out of the gate fast. Obama’s popularity now stands at $24.8M (mostly wee contributions) and Hillary’s popularity is not far behind at $19.4M (mostly gross contributions) for a combined whopping $44.2M.

Mitt for Prez and Rudy for Veep for the Repubs. Mitt’s is up with the front runners with a popularity standing at $20.7M (mostly hot Mormon money), while Rudy is stuck on the rail a with a measly $13.6M, but to be fair to Rudy, McCain is taking money away from him. Anyway, Mitt/Rudy’s combined popularity standing is now a respectable $34.3M, but they could overtake Obama/Hillary if only McClain would be gracious enough to either have or fake a thunderbolt stroke.

And so…. (Drum roll, please) Swami Loon predicts the popularity poll winners for the Presidency/Vice Presidency will be Obama/Hillary over Mitt/Rudy by $9.9M, (if you doubt me, check my arithmetic). This correlates to 56% of the popular vote for the Dems, and only 44% for the Repubs—how this relates to Electoral College votes, only God knows. And while Swami Loon is thinking about this, just where in the hell—anyway-- is this phantom Electoral College located? Look, the Loon wants to know where he has to go to wave protests placards and shout attention-getting slogans.

* Admittedly, campaign war-chest totals for TV ads are not exact one to one indicators of popularity, but it is the most reliable indicator we have right now. If anyone wants to suggest a superior criterion of predicting electability, Swami Loon would like to know what it is.

WHAT IS THE VALUE OF HUMAN LIFE?

It was $10,000 back in the Dark Ages when the Loon was in the military, but then, he didn’t have to pay the insurance premiums. It’s probably more now for the average GI, but likely not by much. A civilian life is often worth whatever a lawyer can get for it in court, but I’m guessing the going rate for civilians is between $85,000 and a $1M, depending, of course, on the civilian, the lawyer, the jury, and the circumstances. If the circumstance was the 9/11 attack, the average rate was around $1.2M per life. The lives of the 7 astronauts killed in the Columbia disintegration are worth an average of $3.7 million. From this can we establish a rough scale of the value of human life? Gis near the bottom, unless killed in combat which gives you a boost now (note: no boost in WW-II, and I know that for sure), average citizens are next highest (and it’s smart to get a Rottwieller for a lawyer), NYC office workers who died in a man-made catastrophe are up near the top (that’s so several airlines will not be sued out of existence, like what happened to the American small aircraft manufacturing business), and NASA astronauts are on top.

CRAZY AL’S NEWS DIGEST

John Edwards’s Haircuts

Would you vote for a man who comes from aw shucks North Carolina but gets two (not one) $200 haircuts in California? Methinks he be thinking way too much of his appearance. Hey! He already has extra-white straight teeth (I suspect he uses those tooth-whitener strip thingies); he’s got a killer salon-tan, and a bunchy of expensive suits (I’ll bet they are Hickey Freemans which start at the price of a week long cruise in the Caribbean). I wonder if you can buy a discrete halo in California. Anyway, John Edwards is nice—he even describes himself that way. “Nice” will get you far in politics, and nice hair don’t hurt.

But let’s concentrate on the cost of his haircuts. Crazy Al once had a neighbor in Columbia Missouri, by the name of, Russ Taylor. Russ valued any differential price in terms of ten cent draft beers (cuz he knew a bar where you could buy ‘em). So, if I said, “I’m not going to drive a mile across town just to save 80 cents”, he would remind me, “That’s eight draft beers.” Back then, eight draft beers was ample incentive to get Crazy Al to drive a mile across town. Now I know full well that a California haircut can be purt near perfect, but putting to work the emotionally irrefutable Russ Taylor economic logic, John Edwards blew 3,600 draft beers**by getting those two haircuts in for $400 when he could have got them for about 20 bucks each in North Carolina.***

** Assuming, idealistically, that somewhere in this great country of ours, there must be one joint where you can still buy a ten cent draft beer.

***In the interest of full disclosure, Rudy cuts what is left of Crazy Al’s hair, but if he got one on a military base, he’d have to fork over 9 bucks, plus tip, and then, he’d have to listen to Rudy bitch plenty about how bad it was. Gotta ask you this. If you had only as much hair as Crazy Al, could you really get a bad haircut?

Dog Tail Wagging as a Measure of Emotional State of Mind

If a dog is happy, it will wag its tail farther to the right. If a dog is not happy, it will wag its tail farther to the left. That it’s a fact. Would Crazy Al lie to you? He’s a veterinarian, and so, he knows more about dogs’ tails than you do, but if you read the New York Times Tuesday science section, you would know as much as Crazy Al. .

PREVIEWS OF COMING ATTRACTIONS

A Loon mini-book report on “The Underground Economist: exposing why the rich are rich, the poor are poor---and why you can never buy a decent used car!” by Tim Hartford And, the Loon would add, why there are so damned many Starbucks coffee shops, and why it is hard to find a ten cent draft beer. Stay tuned for the answer to these vital “whys” and others. It will change your outlook, and add to the heft of your purse.

Allen Hall
April 24, 2007 Dayton Ohio, in gorgeous spring weather.

2007-06-19T13:09:00.000-07:00

Fruit o’ the Loon
’07 Installment # 11

If I fail to offend everyone, I am sorry.

WARNING! This FotL is way too long, and not too good. Further, since the Loon is so disorganized, and sick of this thing, it is probably eat-up with typos and mal-grammar, and, worse still, some of the good stuff comes last. As a result, his recommendation is “Do not read this; and wait for a better one.” However, if you are an economist, and want a few yaks, read the Loon’s mini-book report on “The Underground Economist”.

HOW MUCH HOUSE IS TOO MUCH?

Someone sent me a forward of a video showing a realtor’s tour of a very large, rambling, very modern house tricked-out with many expensive goodies, and sited on prime three ocean-front lots in Orange County, California. The house was priced to sell at $75M.

Whenever the Loon sees something like that, a cascade of thought floods to mind.

One day, long ago, when the Loon was a pre-teener in St. Louis a lady came rolling by his house in a long black chauffeur-driven limousine, this, an uncommon occurrence in the West End of St. Louis. The Loon turned to his friend and remarked, sagely “I wouldn’t want that car.” The Loon’s far sager friend responded with, “That’s not a car; that’s a way of life.” Out the mouths of St. Louis West End preteens sometimes comes wisdom.

When The Loon first saw photographs of the Taj Mahal, and was told the purpose of the building (it was built for one woman), he was (maybe) a little wiser, and thought “What a monumental waste of money, effort and materials” (or some “sour grapes” thought like that). He was offended by the excesses represented by it, just as he remains offended by the excesses inherent in the Pyramids of Giza. The Loon is offended by the Taj Mahal, the Pyrimids of Giza and that $75M house, because they are all, in the Loon’s wanky opinion, monuments to ego. If he is wrong here, please set him straight. Hey! Nothing wrong with a healthy ego, everyone who can afford one, should have one, but building monuments to ego is “Sniff” just too too crass. .

Don’t misunderstand; the Loon is not alleging he is morally superior to wealthy people. And, he is no socialist. He would never interfere with anyone’s right to build and live in that $75M house. If (fat chance that) the owner gave the Loon the right to live in, but not own that $75M house, the Loon would be in a quandary, and might refuse the offer. Hey! He already has two houses and one has wheels under it. See, living in that house might make the Loon uneasy, as he really dislikes the thought that people might be impressed with the Loon, because he lives in a $75M house. Worse still, he might begin to think he is really something. The Loon is so weak. Every time the Loon has come into any unearned money, he has not behaved responsibly—the first time, he bought a tacky Buick convertible. Isn’t it good to recognize one’s flaws?

The Loon’s kids have often asked why he doesn’t play the Lottery. He told them if he wanted the State to have more money, he would give it to them, but his biggest fear with the lottery is that he might win and that would ruin his life The kids laugh and say, “Just give us the money.” To which, he replies, “Sounds easy doesn’t it? It might ruin your lives.” The Loon is serious. If he hit the Lotto, he might lose his social bearings, such as they are. Old true friends might tend to avoid him because they wouldn’t want him to think they were calling or seeing him because he was now ripe for a “touch”. If one of your close friends was to hit the lottery, would you wait until they called you first? New friends would be suspect. The Loon would need an unlisted telephone number (for privacy, don’t you know?) no, and have everyone think he is an idiot for not doing what they think he should intelligently do with the money. He would have to pick up every check or be thought niggardly, but if he did pick up every check wouldn’t that make other people think he was acting like a “big spender”? People might fawn over him, and before long, he might start to fawn over himself. He would have to lock his doors or move into a fortress community. He would entertain fantasy worries that his kids or grandkids might be kidnapped for ransom. During the last 21 summers at our little Minnesota lake cabin, the Loon has only locked the doors when we are going to be away for 24 hours or more and once for three days while some crazy man was at large thereabouts after he shot another guy in the face with a 20 gauge shotgun. Otherwise, the doors have remained unlocked day and night. The Loon would like to leave the doors unlocked.

There is nothing quite as toxic as unearned wealth to compromise someone’s life, and the lives of others. A recent example is the guy who won the lottery, and then gave his granddaughter $2,000 a week allowance and 4 cars—she attracted the wrong kind of friends—it doesn’t take Dick Tracy to guess that might happen—she got herself a bad drug habit, and she died soon thereafter. This just one example of the untidy excesses of the neauvoux riche, that while uncommon, are publicized so broadly they have become a cliché.

P.S. However, the pure-of-heart Loon wouldn’t mind living in the gate-keeper’s cottage of the $75M house, if, and only if, he had pool rights, and he would even settle for swimming during off-hours.

P.P.S. Ya know, the Loon could be wrong, and Andre Agassi could be right when he said, “Image IS…(pause for emphasis)…EVERYTHING.”

LOON MINI-BOOK REPORT

“The Underground Economist; Exposing why the rich are rich and the poor are poor--and why you can never buy a decent used car” by Tim Harford is one of the most readable books on the dismal science of economics the Loon has ever read—well, actually, it may be only the second book on economics the Loon has ever read.

First, let’s answer the questions posed in the subtitle.

The reason behind why the rich are rich and the poor or poor is simple; the rich have more money than the poor. However, since all matters economic are a function of relationships and therefore relative, it is probably better to be the median poorest person among the 25% poorest people in Houston, than to be the median richest person among the 25% richest people in Mogadishu. However, as Hardford points out, poor nations are poor because they don’t save, don’t invest and don’t educate their people. Harford failed to mention if this simple formula includes the oil-rich autocracies in the Middle East. Anyway, the reason why poor countries don’t save, invest or educate is because their rulers don’t want that to happen—the rulers are content to steal everything from a stable poor population rather than stealing more from a more wealthy population but run the risk of dealing with a more uppity prosperous population. We in the United States seem to be saving less money, investing less, and generally doing a poorer job of properly educating our youth. There, the gauntlet is at your feet—pick it up at your peril.

Hartford, says “the reason why you can never buy a decent used car” is because only the owner knows the “real” condition of a used car, prospective buyers usually don’t, and the best used cars are usually not found on the general used car market.

It may be premature to reveal my new-found knowledge which affects the price of everything, but, in the interest of making this short, here I go. “Price” is the essence of economics, which makes it an altogether human science, but you seldom get that impression when talking to an economist.

The Power of Genuine Scarcity. There are only so many NYC residences which look out over Central Park, but there is great demand for them. Ergo, the price of those residences is astronomical vis a vis other equally nice residences in NYC. Demand for anything scarce increases the price. George Bernard Shaw said that the professions were all conspiracies against the laity. Why is that so? Well, the professions form conspiracies to limit their members, and thus retain the power of scarcity, however given the ubiquity of lawyers in the United States, you might deduce the legal profession has lost their power of scarcity, until, that is, you hire a lawyer.
The Power of Contrived Scarcity. The reason why popcorn at the movies is priced like that of prime rib is because they can sell a lot of it at that price, but can’t sell any if it was priced like the best Black Sea Sturgeon caviar. AND, most important, because THERE IS NO WHERE ELSE TO BUY POPCORN IN A MOVIE HOUSE, but then, you already knew that. So I suspect movie house guys have formed a cabal to monopolize the supply of movie house popcorn. Doesn’t that make you furious? Doesn’t that make you want to squirrel popcorn in your pockets when you go to the movies?
The Power of exclusive knowledge. Perfect markets are perfect if and only if, everyone is privy to the information which affects prices. Go ahead; just try to find a perfect market. Still prices are important, even essential, in any market which claims to be free. Prices tell us what things will sell for, not what they should sell for. How would you like to go in Starbucks and ask for a “small” cup of decaf, and have the nicey coffee person ask, “Okay, what will you pay for it?” You do not know, but they do that it cost for them about 95 cents for a cup for a coffee, and so. if you don’t say “a buck thirty-five”, or more, you ain’t gonna get your coffee. Of course you could haggle, and without posted prices, that is what the world does, and most of the world haggles even when there are posted prices. Haggle Schmaqggle, if you say you will pay not more than 95 cents for the coffee, you got damned little chance of getting your coffee, and like as not, you will be held in contempt by the nicey coffee person for not having the common sense to understand the acceptable range of prices for coffee at Starbucks. This is the way things are in the haggling world.
The Power of Externality Charge. Levies and tariffs are externalities. Hartford claims that no economist will agree that a net good accrues from any barrier to trade, and even if everyone in the world raises barriers to trade, we would still be better off if we had none, and the world would be worse off. Protectionism, in any form, is simply allowing the well-being of a minority of people to impose higher prices on everyone.

The Loon is no economist, smarty-pants or otherwise. And so, he will not try to snow you with semi-bogus profundities Rather, find below are some interesting idea/fact snippets from the book.

1. The cost of extracting oil in Alberta Canada is $15/barrel. The cost of extracting oil in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait is $2/barrel, and so, now you know why there are so many oil tankers plying the briny seas.

2. “The average urban gang member works for about $10/hr, and, in any 4 year period, is arrested six times, shot twice and killed once.” Two questions come to mind. Does this mean that the gang member work force has a 100% turnover every 8 years? And, this seems like a lousy job, but then, the Loon asks how many gang members put in 40 hour weeks?

3. “The people most harmed by new immigration are the previous group of immigrants who find their wages nailed to the floor (by the new immigrants).”

4.. “In Britain, government-run religious schools often have the best academic records, so atheists take their children to church every Sunday in order to get good references from priests and get their children into these schools.”

5. If you are not willing to spend ten bucks and put in a half hour to install a smoke detector, you will increase your chances of dying in a fire by about one in a million.

6. “Each year, one in three people change jobs and one in seven people move.” And, realtors get rich.

7. Since the principles of economics drive price in everything, Hartford writes, “If environmentalists could argue their points from an economic standpoint, much of the moral tone would drain out of the environmental debate, but the environment itself would be much more effectively dealt with.”

8. The reason why you cannot get insurance against getting fired or pregnant is cuz it’s easy to get fired or pregnant. Why didn’t the Loon think of that?

9. “Someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” Oscar Wilde’s definition of a cynic, but now commonly applied to economists.

10. Edward O. Wilson (A very intelligent man) opined that “within a few dozen generations all human beings would be the same, in a sense that whether in London of Shanghai or Moscow or Lagos, the same racial mix would be found.” Let’s see, that would come in around the year, 2527.

11. “…the relationship between low wages and low productivity is an extremely close one.” Productivity is the amount of goods and services one person can produce, and if it is cheaper to have 20 poorly-paid illegal immigrants haul concrete in wheelbarrows than to bring out one concrete pumping truck, the 20 will do it, but their wages will be poor and their productivity will be lousy.

12. Ronald Reagan was reported to have said, “There should be a game of Trivial Pursuit for economists, with 100 questions and three thousand answers.” The science is driven by relationships, and if you slightly change one variable, all the other variables are affected.

I know I promised to tell you why there are so damned many Starbucks Coffee Shops, and why you can’t buy a 10 cent glass of beer, but I lied.

Good book, fun to read, and not at all depressing. Anyone want it? If so, say so.

GETTING THE POLITICS OUT OF POLITICS

Never thought li’l ‘ol Iowa would find a way, but they have taken away from the politicians the right re-draw the State congressional district borders. The primary reason why we have 90+ % re-election of U.S. Representatives is because in all States but Iowa, the pols of the party in power in the States get to realign the borders of their congressional districts in order to protect their champion pork-getters. In the old days it was called “gerrymandering”; today it is known as “job and pork protection”. Every state should find a way to prohibit gerrymandering. It is either that or demand term limits, or, (as an economist might say) on the third hand, we could just kneecap all second term U.S.Congressmen for Christ.

THE MAIN MID-AMERICA INTERSTATE CHOKE-POINT

Four interstate highways converge and cross the Mississippi River on a single bridge in downtown St. Louis. Interstate Highways 44, 55, 64, and 70 meet on that bridge. Meanwhile, the St. Louis government quibbles about whether to build another bridge. There are bridges north and south of the city which carry the circumferential interstates I-270 and I- 255, but if some terrorist or road repair crew closes down the downtown bridge, it is going to booger-up mid-America Interstate traffic something fierce.

A LOON’S (FOUR STAR) LITERARY RECOMMENDATION

“Aunt Ruby’s Down Home Trailer Park Cookbook” by Ruby Ann Boxcar* is a cornucopia of double-wide delights, such as Anita Biggons' El Diablo Dip-O, Kitty Chitwood’s Slut Puppies, and Sister Bertha’s Old Rugged Cross Cake. The Loon’s most favorite no-nonsense recipe comes from “The Fits and Cravin's Cookbook”. It’s “Rack-o-Spam”, and recipe reads, “Score the top of a 2 pound can of Span; bake in a 375 degree oven for one hour; garnish with something; slice and serve.

* To order Ruby Ann’s book, go to www.RVbookstore.com

CRAZY AL’S NEWS DIGEST

The New York Times reported that surgeons removed a woman’s gall bladder through her vagina. Putting aside (for a moment), the social needs for such a procedure (thus giving you readers something to look forward to), Crazy Al imagines a scenario at the subsequent autopsy of this woman by a pathologist who is unaware that part of her innards had been removed via cryptic vaginal surgery. The pathologist finds evidence of surgery to remove a gall bladder, but no abdominal scars, and he is puzzled. Depending on his beliefs, he or she might assume that the woman had been relieved of a diseased gall bladder by divine intervention.

Speaking of assumptions, Crazy Al is assuming, of course, that trans-vaginal colicystectomies will not become commonplace—an assumption poorly taken in this age of intense interest in blemish avoidance and body perfection, via nose bobs and other incognito-inducing surgeries, straightened teeth, Brittany-clear complexions, and pleasing body contours, the latter achieved by surgical (Ahem!) augmentation and/or diminishment. Dig this; Indian surgeons removed a patient’s diseased appendix through his mouth. Excuse me, aren‘t the mouth and appendix found at opposite ends of the patient? Is it the idea to make surgery as difficult as possible, something like trying to have sex while standing up in a hammock?

One must wonder just why a gall bladder is removed through the vagina. The doctors dutifully reported that the procedure “decreased pain and recovery time by not cutting sensitive abdominal muscles.” Well golly, this indicates the vagina is less sensitive than abdominal muscles. Does Crazy Al detect a faint clanging coming from his BS detector?

Continuing on the thread about pathologist bewilderment, Crazy Al’s Veterinary School class once was required to watch a film entitled, “Harvest of Human Body Parts” (Don’t ask me why.) Since bone is part of reusable stuff, the film showed how the middle of the thigh bone was taken out of a cadaver. Once out, the thigh was stabilized by driving wooden dowels into each end of the severed thigh bone, and then, after the dowels were wired together with what appeared to be a clothes hanger wire, the thigh muscles and skin were sutured shut. This constitutes part of a cosmetic autopsy? Anyway, one wag in the back of the room remarked, “I can just see some archeo-pathologist digging that guy up 2,000 years from now, and wondering if 20th century surgeons really thought they could fix a broken leg that way.”
.
Also, dig this; surgeons are now practicing up on their blemish-free surgery by taking out appendices, spleens, stomachs and kidneys through the mouths or vaginas of pigs. It’s just such stuff as this which makes Crazy Al crazy. .

Allen Hall a.k.a. The Loon and Crazy Al, and all three are getting crazier every day.
April 29, 2007, in Sunny Dayton Ohio

P.S. Did you know that cable TV is the greatest time-waster since the advent of the personal computer? Or, is it the other way around?

2007-06-18T15:31:00.000-07:00

Fruit o’ the Loon
’07 Installment # 12

If I fail to offend everyone, I’m sorry.

LIST OF CONTENTS;

Newspapers, I love em’.
Notable quotes.
Loon’s Mini-Book Report.
Suspicions confirmed.
Who are these imposters?
Preview of coming attractions.

NEWSPAPERS, I LOVE ‘EM

The Loon is privileged to cruise around the country half of each year, and get to read oodles of newspapers. Some of them are good; some are not, but the worst to them are a damn sight better than the best TV news. And the not-in-real-time newspaper ads can easily be ignored. And, you can take the newspaper into the bathroom. And, you can clip items out of the newspaper and annoy your friends with the clippings. Is the Loon starting to sound like Andy Rooney? He hopes so, and he should as the Loon is the current secretary of the Old Goats Society, nee Old White Billy Goats Philosophy and Garage Door Repair Society, a small but powerful national brotherhood of curmudgeons. Andy doesn’t belong, but he should.

While in Dayton Ohio, the Loon read both the New York Times and the Dayton Daily News every day. What a difference; if he stays away from all politically-freighted news and cherry-picks the editorials, the New York Times doesn’t tick him off, and it offers a wealth of interesting, well written and deeply researched features, items, stories, and editorials. The Dayton Daily News does not. The NYT in Dayton is free of slick paper ads, and the DDN is not. The NYT covers the world well; the DDN covers a couple of counties well. The NYT cost a buck, the DDN a half-buck. Of course, scoring a free DDN at the Loon’s mother-in-law’s house makes bearable the extravagance of a daily NYT. But, as bad as the DDN is, the Loon has to read every paper he gets his hands on, because you never know what you may find in any paper. To wit:

The Loon glommed a copy of “The Onion” (A National Weekly devoted to outrageous satire and wry humor), and he found the following startling headlines and lead lines.

“White-On-White Crime Claims Life of Accounts Receivable Supervisor”.
“Extra Slanty Italics Introduced For Extremely Important Words” and “demi-semibold type-face for writers who ‘kind of, but not really’ want to accentuate subheadings.”
“NFL’s New Code of Conduct” contains the following provisions: ”To discourage players from associating with known felons, the Bengals-Ravens games has been cancelled, and neither will play the Raiders. Although the code of conduct will be extremely strict, players will be required to fabricate stories about their potential for violence in order to maintain the NFL’s street cred.

Today’s free-association ramble (with religious overtones) is prompted by the NYT sports page: The Yankees are getting a long over-due comeuppance, Joe Torre is probably going to church every day, and someone should quick put a BP cuff on George Steinbrenner to keep him from prematurely entering MLB owner’s heaven—where ever in the hell that might be. .The Cardinals beleaguered pitching staff has permanently lost a pitcher to an auto accident—would a kind God further conspire against the Card’s repeating as World champions? Shaq can take a rest, as an up-start hustling Bulls team, fed full-up with devout prayers, sent Shaq for a short vacation. Would a God-fearing NBA Commish allow the next season to start the Tuesday following the end of the NBA's at-long-last super-duper final championship series? The devil incarnate, Randy Moss, is on the road again, to offer his adroit malevolency to yet another team—a word to Randy—“Yo' shit won’t sell in Christian New England. NASCAR rednecks are outraged that Jeff Gordon disrespected their Deity, Dale Earnhart, by out-winning him. Care to guess how this makes Richard Petty feel? A Notre Dame quarterback has been nicked $20M in the latest NFL draft from what he had hoped he would get, and the Catholic God is reported to be highly annoyed.

Of course, the Loon could have discovered the same stuff in the DDN, but it would not have been any fun, nor likely goosed him into writing this nonsense.

BTW, MLB’s current premier flake-case, Manny Ramirez, is offending the New England faithful, but as long as the Bosox remain in first place, Mammy’s sacred blanket dispensation remains open-ended.

File this under “baseball fans are insane” Francisco Giants fans believe Barry Bonds is baseball’s second coming; Babe Ruth being the first. Where does that put Hank Aaron?

The Loon is now in MN and must read the Strib (Minneapolis Star Tribune) because? He is so far west of Minneapolis they don’t sell the St. Paul Pioneer Press, and you could never buy a NYT in the wee burgs hereabouts. The Strib is not much of a newspaper right now, and they have recently vowed to cover more local news—yawn!

But, back to baseball—the Loon’s mind is in a temporary thought cul-de-sac. Found in a recent copy of “Pulse” a minor alternative-press weekly freebie newspaper was an editorial entitled “Stadium 1, Democracy 0”. See, Carl Pohlad owns the Minnesota Twins baseball team. Carl Pohlad is rich (sorry about the redundancy). Carl has “about” $2.5B which places him about # 70 on the Forbes list of the 400 richest people in America. Carl wants a new baseball stadium with more fancy high-ticket sky-boxes (what else), and he wants it paid for by the people (naturally), BUT, the people have been dragging their feet. In all referenda so far the people have told Carl, Not just, "No!” but "Hell No!” Seventy percent don’t want public money going to build a stadium for Carl. Politicians, noting the results of these referenda, have run on the promise “no public money for a new stadium for a billionaire”, but you how politicians become weak in the promise-knees when wooed by contributions for their re-election funds, and so, the wobbly-kneed Pols have tried, time after time, to sneak a public-financed stadium past the nodding people, but, every time, the people have awakened and screamed when they found that Carl’s fingers were in the public till. That is, until now, the Carl/Politico Cabal has recently slipped a new stadium past the people. It is reported, that Minnesota has a law which requires a public referendum for projects over $10M. It may be a bad law, but it is a law. The new stadium will cost $550M, and the 30 year notes the people will have to retire may push the number to $1B for the people’s house built for Carl, and this was done without a referendum. The Loon is pissed. There jus’ ain’t no justice
=
NOTABLE QUOTES

“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” De Suess

“The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they are okay, then it’s you.”
Rita Mae Brown

And a paraphrased corollary,”Think of your three best friends. If at least one of them is cuckoo, then you’re okay.” Ron Kerans

“…he seems to have been blessed with an incapacity for shame, a gift for which he had many occasions to be thankful.” Robert Greenfield describing Timothy Leary

“…psychiatry became one of the instruments of soft coercion which liberal societies use to keep their citizens in line.” Eli Zaretsky

LOON’S MIN-BOOK REPORT

(CAUTION: If you are not a baseball fan, skip this, or you will be bored our of your gourd)

The book is “This Ain’t Brain Surgery: How to Win the Pennant Without Losing Your Mind” by Larry Dierker. Larry was a damned good pitcher for 13 years for the Houston Astros, a color-guy announcer for seven years for them, and, the Astros field manager for 5 years. He had a winning record as a pitcher, and once was voted the NL MVP. And, while managing, the Astros won their division all but one year, and he was once voted the NL Most Valuable Manager. Even though he regrets that he didn’t get into the Hall of Fame, he admits that he didn’t have the numbers. Nor did he get in a World Series, and he regrets that too, but he is lucky to have stayed in Houston for all but one year of his 40 year long career in baseball, and, as a result, he is revered there. And rightly so, he is a very intelligent but humble man, and, I believe exemplifies everything which is good (no nonsense and workmanlike) about Houston Baseball. The Houston Astros did retire his number—good for them. I believe that, no one, before or since, has put more of himself into Houston Baseball than Larry Dierker….however, Craig Biggio’s name does come to mind.

Last month Rudy and the Loon had dinner with Larry and his wife, Judy. Larry pestered the Loon, so what could the Loon do? Actually, we had dinner with my daughter’s friend, Ray (and his daughter), and since Ray is a friend of the Dierkers, they joined us. If the Loon had not said to Larry “I grew up in St. Louis. I’m a Cardinals’ fan. So you don’t have to be nice to me if you don’t want to.” the Loon doubts that the subject of baseball would have come up during our two hours at dinner. As it was, only a few sentences were spoken about our national pastime. Larry is very pleasant company, and has the biggest hand ever the Loon has shaked, er, shaken (or is the “shooken”?). Anyway, he could probably palm the Loon’s head, and, big as Larry is, lift the Loon off the floor. He wears Hawaiian shirts, and drives a woodie (look it up).

The book is a delightful read. Larry has a deft command of the language, with a breezy style and sense of humor which made the book read like a can’t-put-it-down novel. A list of chapters and their epigrams are instructive and fun:

Spring training—it sucks, but there are places in Florida which will serve beer to underage players. .
Opening Day—is exciting, like opening presents on your birthday.
Pitching—“You pay all that money to great big fellas with lots of muscles and straight stomachs. And they (pitchers) give them a little bit of this, and a little bit of that, and swindle ‘em. Casey Stengel. For the Loon, this is the most edifying chapter of the book. Larry explains some of the mechanics of pitching and much of his philosophy, and, for a baseballphile, these are holy writs because they contain not easily obtained information; he explains well, and he makes perfect sense.
Managing—“Of the basic managerial skills, passion, character, brains and wisdom—the least valuable, at least as a guiding virtue, is intelligence.” In baseball, as in the rest of life, brains are a good servant but a poor master.” Thomas Boswell. Great quote, but the Loon doubts the entire quote came from Boswell as he died in the 19th Century. Here again, the Loon was fascinated as Larry explains with abundant examples, his philosophy (and rationale) of managing, including managing people as well as managing situational baseball.
Broadcasting—“Last night I failed to mention something that bears repeating.” Ron Fairly (Former outfielder and broadcaster). This chapter is full of wit, and lists some of the dos and don’ts of broadcasting—an art in itself. Larry thinks the best ever baseball announcers and interviewers were Vin Scully and Jack Buck
Umpires—“When I am right, no one remembers, when I am wrong no one forgets.” Doug Harvey, National League Umpire. Larry is fair with the umpires who try to be fair, but exposes the weaknesses inherent in the art as it is practiced.
Scouts—they are like bass players. They don’t get no respect, but almost every band worth a damn has to have a good one. They, in no small part, provide the bedrock of raucous baseball humor.
Farm System—“Rickey had both money and players. He didn’t like to see the two of them mix.” This was said by Chuck Conners, baseball prospect and actor, about baseball executive, Branch Rickey
Trades—“The reason why it is so hard to make a deal is everyone wants to give you a biscuit for a bag of flour.” Ellis Clary, Veteran Scout.
Cheating—“The tradition of professional baseball has always been agreeably free of chivalry. The rule is, ‘Do everything you can get away with.’” Heywood Broun. The Loon suspect this was penned, not by the father, but rather, by the son, Haywood Hale Broun. The Loon met the son once; he was a principal in the game of American Squash, and a principled man of the first order. He irrevocably resigned his life membership in the United States Squash Racquets Association after he had a dispute with a monumental asshole (and lawyer) who headed up the organization.
La Vida—“In baseball, you are supposed to sit on your ass, spit tobacco, and nod at stupid things (the manager says.)” Bill “Spaceman” Lee. This chapter is about the arcane life of baseball, a subset of irrational behavior perpetrated by well-paid athletes. BTW, Bill Lee is the spiritual father of Manny Ramirez.
The Big Seize—“Open a baseball player’s head, and you know what you will find? A lot of little broads and a jazz band.” Former baseball manager, Mayo Smith. In this chapter Larry describes when he had a seizure in the dugout due to mini-blow-out in a vascular tangle in his brain. The surgeons went in, and fixed it, but they didn’t find any little broads nor a jazz band, and they said they only boogered up a part of the brain which doesn’t control any vital function. Hmmm!
Out of it—this epilogue relates how Larry was dismissed after a notably successful run of 5 years of managing, and, to Larry’s credit, it is told without malice.

This is one of the best baseball books the Loon has ever read, and he has read way more than a few. It has a liberal sprinkling of wit spread over the top of cogent explanations of the behavior of athletes playing a very difficult game The answer is “NO”, Larry didn’t promise the Loon anything if I thumped the tub for his book—Hey! the Loon didn’t even know Larry wrote books until after the dinner, nor did the Loon even imagine any baseball player ever wrote a book all by hissef’.

No, you can’t have the book….now. It has been sent to a most fervent baseball fan, and the Loon’s grade school classmate and childhood baseball teammate, Nate Goldstein. If you want it bad, but are too cheap to buy it off Amazon.com, then snivel and whine some, and the Loon will have Nate mail it to you.

SUSPICIONS CONFIRMED

A. Traffic ticket distribution ain’t fair*

1. An out-of-town driver stopped by local police has a 51% chance of being fined, vs., 30% for a local driver, and the fine for an out-of-town driver is $5 higher.
2. The State Patrol tickets out-of-State drivers 28% more often than in-State drivers.
3. Women are more likely to get off with a warning, but the gender advantage disappears around age 75.

* Based on a study of 29,752 tickets issued during two months in Massachusetts—(Massachusetts is a small State. Doesn’t that seem like too many tickets?)

B. People’s eyes really are bigger than their stomachs. This from a book entitled “Mindless Eating” which is a primer on behavioral economics, or something like that.

If given free, five-day-old, stale, rubbery popcorn at a movie, the people who got the biggest tubs of popcorn ate the most.
People will eat more Tomato Soup if the bowl is large, and people will eat even more if the bowl is rigged with a secret tube at the bottom which keeps replenishing the Tomato soup.
3. People eat more food off big plates than small ones, and drink more from short wide glasses than tall ones.

WHO ARE THESE IMPOSTERS?

The internet sez that “Allen” is the 240th most popular given name; Hall is the 26th most popular surname, and there are a total of 530 other Allen Halls in the United States.

PREVIEW OF COMING ATTRACTIONS

A Loon’s mini-book report on “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins.

Allen Hall, a.k.a. The Loon
May 17, 2007, on Lake Sylvia

2007-06-17T15:31:00.000-07:00

Fruit o’ the Loon
’07 Installment # 13 (The unlucky Installment)

If I fail to offend everyone, I’m sorry. (A reader recently noted that the Loon has done little offending of late. Please, give the Loon another chance. Let the Loon see if he can’t improve on that dismal record. You want “edge”? The Loon’ll give you “edge”…..read on.)

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

1. Christopher Hitchens, a man who infuriates half the people, and so, is rightly numbered among the Loon’s heroes.
2. Michael Crichton, another Loon hero, one who advocates hard science over fuzzy consensus. Well, there goes the other half.
3. Loon’s (offensive) Micro-Book report of an offensive book.
4. Loon’s Hemi-Micro-Book Report on another offensive book
5. Notable Quotes.
6. Previews of coming attractions.
7. Postscript.

1, CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

It has been offered that Hitch is our Galileo, but let’s please agree to prefer that he should be our H.L Mencken.(1880-1956), may his irreverency rest peacefully, Mencken’s, that is. One of the kindest but most untrue verbal assaults ever on Mencken was that he was a buffoon. The Loon looked it up, and Mencken ain’t one. Def. #1 is “One who amuses others by tricks, jokes, odd gestures and postures. #2. “One given to coarse or undignified joking.”

Let me offer a brief paean to Mencken using his own words:

“The virulence of the national (U.S.) appetite for bogus revelation.”
“The public…demands certainties….But there are no certainties.”
”The great artists of the world are never Puritans and seldom even ordinarily respectable.”
“Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.”
“The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.”
“No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence (or taste) of the American people.”
“The difference between a moral man and an honorable one is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.”

Mencken savaged the American bourgeoisie; he called them “the booboise”. It is easy to pick on the powerful, but to make fun of the middle class made Mencken an elitist. He might wear the epithet proudly. However, Menken’s spears flew everywhere; he was after everyone. He generously spread his spite around. He was part of America’s precious national conscience during the first half of the 20th century. Mencken, as does his spiritual son, Christopher Hitchens, took plenty many names, and kicked plenty much ass.

But, times have changed and the middle-class must now be protected from predations by elitists, because? You see, a certain inalienable primal truth resides collectively in the middle-class. That’s bunkum, and the Loon, who was born, raised and stays firmly ensconced in the middle class, can say that without (much) fear of reprisal. The Loon likes it in the middle class because it is eternally interesting there. If he were in the lower class, he would be bored, and if he were in the upper class, he would really be bored.

But, let’s return to, our national savior, Hitchens. Religion used to be taboo, but since 9/11, much attention has been focused on religion(s). Many books have been sold. Many TV Sabbath GasBags have engaged in bloviating during Intellectual food-fights using religion as a subject. Much worthy and unworthy celebrity has been gained, by both those defending religion and those condemning it. Hitchens is an atheist, and, to some, worse, as he is an antitheist—yep he’s against all religions. He wrote “Mormonism: A Racket that Became a Religion”. And he cannot understand why the United States did not defend our ally Denmark when she was beset by Muslims who wanted the entire country held accountable for the drawings of one cartoonist. Hitch is hell on irrationality, hell on pomposity, and reserves special venom for those who use their religious position to spout bigotry and nonsense. He said, “you can get away with the most extraordinary offenses to morality and truth in this country if will just get yourself called Reverend.” When the Reverend Jerry Falwell died, Hitch wrote a scathing malediction of the man. The waves in the journalism pond are still tearing at the shores of gentile writing (Blogs too). Today’s Mpls Star and Tribune Op/Ed page carried Hitch’s more inflammatory comments about Falwell, and the paper even featured a photograph of Hitch (GASP!) taking a drag on a cigarette.

This is unthinkable, even ghastly, as MN is currently undergoing a soul-searching inquiry prior to limiting smoking in the State to the deep forests of the Boundary Waters—Whoops! That’s no good, as the deep forests of the Boundary Waters are now being incinerated by a sonnovabitchin’ big fire. Further Minnesota subtle forces for behavioral guidance and management do not want children to witness fashionable cultured people smoking in movies. Anyway, I think Hitch would be against curtailing the rights of smokers (He’s against most everything—one of his most beguiling characteristics is dogmatic uniformity of purpose). I doubt he cares if smokers give non-smokers lung cancer with second-hand smoke. And while the Loon is on a mini-crusade to annoy people, the Loon’s background in scientific dose–effect as it relates to a cause of cancer informs him that for anyone to get lung cancer from second-hand smoke, would certainly doom almost every smoker to die of lung cancer and quickly too. The Loon believes the scientific data will support him, but we are now out of the realm of science in that regard, and deeply into the realm of faith, AND telling any non-smoker that smoking is okay is like telling them that their dog is ugly. (Note: the Loon doesn’t smoke….now) And, while I am on the subject, have there been any studies on the effects of third-hand smoke? Say, like the hideous toxic effect of a mother carrying her husband’s cigar smoke in her own miasmic breath into the nursery of an infant. What about the sinless innocents—who will speak for them?

Hitch is a reformed Trotskyite and an iconoclast of the first order. He’s anti (let me count the other ways) socialism (now), fascism, monarchism, and Mother Teresa. His heroes are George Orwell and Thomas Jefferson, and he is a believer in the Enlightenment values of secularism, humanism and reason, and he didn’t think Ronald Reagan was very smart. He accused Bill Clinton of being a rapist and serial liar. He believes that the world is caught in a war between secular democracy and theocratic fascism. He wrote the book,”God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything” Talk about catching hell afterwards, but his hell-wether courage has encouraged a flood tide of similar books. Hitch has recently ripped Cindy Sheehan as a person on his bad persons-list. Meanwhile, Hitch’s one time colleague and friend Alexander Cockburn, claims Hitch drinks too much, and says about Hitch, he is “a truly disgusting sack of shit.” What is there about a skeptic which warrants that kind of vitriol? Hitch admits to drinking heavily. In 2003 he wrote that his daily intake of alcohol was enough to “kill or stun the average mule.” Hitch was born in England and emigrated to the U.S. long ago, but only recently became a citizen. His grandmother just recently informed him that he is Jewish. He often goes to the podium in blue jeans. Does this give you a well rounded feel for the fellow?

2. MICHAEL CRICHTON

Here is another in the latter-day pantheon of Loon heroes, albeit a lesser one. While he lacks the intellectual gravitas of Hitch, he WAS invited to give a lecture at the California Institute of Technology, which means he is not exactly intellectual chopped liver. It was there Crichton savaged the current flavor of environmentalism. Look, let us make us a comparison. If Christian faith provides a fount of moral guidance*, what then does modern environmentalism provide?

* This is a concept under review—see below for the Loon’s offensive book report on an offensive book. Hey! The Loon told you he was going on a rip to try to win your disaffection.

Crich (doncha just love the Loon’s terms of familiarity?) is 6 feet 9 inches tall, graduated summa cum laude from Harvard, graduated from Harvard Medical School, became a Visiting Lecturer in Anthropology at Cambridge University in England, did a post-doctoral fellowship study at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla California and was Visiting Writer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Meanwhile he was scribbling out 13 Sci-Fi thriller novels, and dabbling in movies and TV programming. What a guy!

His thesis de jour is that the floodtide of environmental consensus is log-rolling our citizens (and scientists), and the fact book is not closed on the human-induced global warming crisis (with the skeptical emphasis on “crisis”). In no particular order, his grumpiness is being caused by: 1. People who think they can predict future weather with any accuracy. 2. The belief that consensus constitutes truth. 3. His observation that environmentalism has abandoned science, and has instead been adorned with all the dogmatic trappings of religion. 4. He is pissed at the magazine “Scientific American” because it attacked Bjorn Lomborg’s book “The Skeptical Environmentalist”. (Note: It may be sour grapes, but the Loon, who used to be a subscriber to SA, ain’t gonna read it no more, and it has nothing to do with the fact that the Loon never understood anything written on pages 3 through X for any article in the magazine, a confession of inadequacy the Loon will freely make.) Anyway, Crich and the Loon seem to have come to some common ground in the belief that skepticism is a useful human characteristic, and some skeptics have served us well by being strong in the face of fierce consensus. Care for some examples?

e.g., Galileo (the earth really does go around the sun—and always has. Whoa! This did not make bossy church leaders happy, as it undermined faith-fact that earth was the center of the Universe), Drs Gordon, Holmes and Sammelwiess (Childbed fever can be cured by simple sanitation—it took 50 years, and the lives of thousands of mothers, for the consensus to come to its senses), Dr. Joseph Goldberger (Pellagra is caused by a vitamin deficiency, while the consensus roared on for 20 more years, and wasted the lives of thousands of poor people, because the consensus was unable to accept the politically incorrect fact that people in the southern United States were mal-nourished.)

Once was that science was both a boon and much admired; the nadir probably occurred in the 19th century—and it has been all downhill from there. Nowadays our relativistic society views science as just another opinion among many, and just another source of power, and, in a sense of fairness, science gets no advantage, and must try to hold its own in a nation awash in magical mysticisms, and powerful consenses, wonky and otherwise.

All praise the skeptics for they are occasionally correct, and so, while Al Gore may be correct, I am constitutionally incapable of trusting anyone who writes a book which implies that the author knows the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Crich’s current crusade might be entitled, “An Inconvenient Doubt”.

Disclaimer: while not altogether abandoning Crich, (he is a brother skeptic), the Loon was dismayed after reading all 25 pages of the transcript of a one hour conversation between Crichton and Charlie Rose, one in which Crichton seldom said anything important, while he mostly just backed and filled away from criticism. Does he have Feet of Clay? Well….perhaps dusty toes.

In conclusion, can we make a distinction between a skeptic and a cynic? A skeptic is a valuable, even precious, member of our society because he or she continues to ask the important but unpopular questions that other dear hearts are loath to ask. A cynic is a low-down, no-count, dirty, misinformed, opinionated piece of crap. That said, our modern society is relentlessly pushing our precious skeptics toward the abyss of cynicism. Can I please hear a long and rousing round of applause for skepticism, which is an essential asset so necessary for dealing with used car salesmen, and is also of much value in the wider world? Or, you are free to tell the Loon that he is FOS.

3. LOON’S MICRO-BOOK REPORT

The book is “The God Delusion”, by Richard Dawkins, and the report is micro, because the less written the better. See, Dawkins tries to prove that God doesn’t exist, and show that those who believe that he/she/it/them do(es) exist are deluded. It is notoriously difficult to prove a negative, but, be that as it may, he is engaged in folly, as 95% of Americans profess to being religious, and, in this country, that usually means the belief in an omnipotent all-knowing higher power, who goes by the name of God. Dawkins is an atheist. Atheists don’t need to read the book. Almost all people who have a firm belief in God won’t read the book. This leaves only the precious few agnostic fence-riders for Dawkins to sway.

The book is well written; but so heavy with content, that I could only do it justice by reading it in the middle of the night. You know, at those times after midnight but before dawn when you awake and start thinking about matters you really don’t want to think about. In the quiet of night with no chores pressing, (and no mental multi-tasking) I was able to crawl slowly through this book, with the serendipitous benefit that the dense text soon put me back into sound sleep. But, I persevered…because I bought the book, it wasn’t cheap and it did have its lighter moments. E.g.,

“When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion.” This was written by Robert M, Persig, author of “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” Are you offended yet? Well, read on.

“The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

NOMA, is the invention of Stephan Jay Gould (may his intelligent restless deluded soul rest in peace), NOMA stands for “non overlapping magisteria” which means that the magisteria of science which covers the empirical realm, does not overlap nor cut any ice with the magisteria of religion which is confined to questions of ultimate meaning and moral values, and vica versa. So…that isn’t so light. So…sorry.

Biologist E.O. Wilson disagreed and wrote tersely, “the real war is between rationalism and superstition.”

Filed under “all things are relative” Imagine a barefoot Dark Age peasant in sack cloth just met you dressed in a Brooks Brothers suit and Gucci shoes while you were carrying a cell phone and a laptop. Would you not be a living God to him?

Fred Hoyle wrote or said, “…the probability of life originating on earth is no greater than the chance that a hurricane, sweeping through a scrap yard, would have the luck to assemble a Boeing 747.” Divine intervention or dumb luck, take your pick. Talk about long odds and luck. Think about this. If any of your thousand and thousands of progenitors had died before procreating, you would not exist. If just one had died as an infant, you would not be here. Further, before you were conceived, you did not exist—yep! All your initial atoms were scattered hither thither and yon, and after you are gone the same thing applies. Mark twain said” I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.” However, we are constantly replenishing our living stuff with recycled stuff. If you drink a glass of water, for sure, you will have just ingested some molecules of water which went through William Shakespeare’s bladder. Do the arithmetic. Want some more luck? Archeo-anthropologists estimate that ancient man was limited by harsh environment to a group of perhaps 50,000, and pressed hard against the eastern shore of Africa by drought and famine. Fifty thousand may seems like a lot, but that was a tight squeeze for man, and had the 50,000 all perished, I can guarantee you that humans would not have come this way again…..ever.

Dawkins wrote, “One of the truly bad effects of religion is that it teaches us that it is a virtue to be satisfied with not understanding.” It didn’t help that last night I watched the film “Inherit the Wind” which was the Hollywood version of the Scopes monkey trial in Tennessee. Fairly or unfairly, this film casts a bad light on fundamental Christian religion.

One of the best parts of the book was the author’s discussion of the ubiquity of religion and possibilities of how and from whence they arose. If there is but one God, he sure has offered us a Chinese Menu of religious belief, and new religions pop up like mushrooms in the springtime. And then, there is the almost universal belief by man that there is a mystical higher power.

Of course Dawkins is hell on the Bible. E.g., The Old Testament God was not a nice guy, as he spared only Noah and his family, and then drowns everyone else on earth. Hey! God, if there ever was over-kill, that was it. Of course, Dawkins challenges the notion that moral conduct accrues from religion.

Dawkins takes issue with parents who indoctrinate their children into the parent’s religion while the kids are young. Here we are awash in a floodtide of western relativism where much is personal and relative, and thus a wide spectrum of behavior and belief is acceptable, yet it is difficult to find Christian, Muslim or Jewish parents who are willing let their children defer a decision and grow up free of church dogma so they may be able to pick their own religion once they are able to make an independent informed decision. I read in the paper the other day about a mother who called the cops on some men who came into a public park to talk to children about religion. Maybe the men had a better religion than the mother Who will ever know? The cops ran them off.

Dawkins writes, “Even if it were conclusively demonstrated that belief in God’s existence is completely essential to human psychological and emotion well-being, even if all atheists were despairing neurotics driven to suicide by relentless cosmic angst – none of this would contribute the tiniest jot or tittle of evidence that religious belief is true.” So there you have it, Dawkins’ thesis, but he is not a mean man, and he does agree that religion is perhaps the great and universal source of solace and comfort for man.

Sorry…it wasn’t nearly so micro as I thought it would be. The report just got away from me.

4. LOON’S HEMI-MICRO-BOOK REPORT

The book report is Bill O’Reilly’s “Culture Warrior”. See I thought I needed some balance from all the atheism, and so, I started this book. But, I only got in 25 pages before I had to quit (hence the” Hemi” we will have to wait to see if the “micro” also applies). I know, 25 pages hardly warrants a “hemi” but the book got badly reiterative in the first 25 pages, so what could I do? O’Reilly’s thesis is that the United States, and indeed the Western world, is in a war between traditional values (whatever they are, but they are all good) and secular progressive values (which are all bad, real bad, real real bad). End of report. Please don’t jump on my case for a lack of balance—See, I am plumb wrote out right now. And besides, I have been catching flack for loooooong “Fruits o’ the Loon”.

If anyone wants either or both of the two reviewed books, just ask—first one who asks gets ‘em.

5. NOTABLE QUOTES

“People in the Middle East have Irish Alzheimer’s. That is when a person forgets everything but their grudges.” Charlie Munger

6. PREVIEWS OF COMING ATTRACTIONS

A blessed return to Crazy Al’s News Digest.

7. POSTSCRIPT

Okay, it’s a given; this FotL is way over the top, but please don’t send a mob with a rope and flaming torches to string up the crazy irreverent Loon. THINK! Hey! the Loon might return to a state of sanity, benevolence and grace—no one is beyond redemption, or so we are led to believe.

Allen Hall, The LO—oddle oddle--ON
May 26, 2007 on sylvan Lake Sylvia

2007-06-16T18:42:00.000-07:00

Fruit o’ the Loon
’07 Installment # 14

If I fail to offend everyone, I’m sorry. (this from a slightly more mellow Loon)

Table of Contents.
1. Crazy Al’s News Digest.
a. Air Guitar
b. Sharks Kill Men—Men Get Even.
c. Babs’ Tour Redux
d. Politics—It’s Hopeless
2. Notable Quotes.
3. Loon’s Mini-Book Report (“David Brinkley: a Memoir”. It gets a Loon 4 star rating)
4. Previews of Coming Attractions

CRAZY AL’S NEWS DIGEST.

Air Guitar

Yes, it’s time, once again, to hold the United States’14 individual regional Air Guitar Contests. The regional winners advance to the Nationals in New York City, and the winner there goes to Finland for the International Air Guitar Championships. It costs $12 to go see people not play guitar in the local regional contest here in the Twin Cities I am compelled to mention that every week you can go to a joint right here in the Twin Cities and see two guys play real guitars real good for the price of a drink. Is the Loon’s bias showing? But, how silly of him, Air Guitar is not about music, it is about pretending to play music on an entirely fictitious and invisible guitar ( one made of air) in way so unusual that you can win a contest. Unduly judgmental? Judgmental? Yes. Unduly? No. Nope! ain’t never been to an Air Guitar contest, n’ hope to never go, however, the Loon is curious and does have some questions….and suggestions.

Let’s assume there are some rules which make the contest fair for everyone. Must the contestants all pretend to play a designated make and model of guitar? If so, that’s patently unfair and prejudicial. Look, what if a contestant actually plays a lap steel guitar; and since he already knows how, why couldn’t he pretend to play one in the contest? Oh! I know he would have to dress “funny” and be extra animated, and he probably wouldn’t win, but don’t you think an animated air lap steel guitarist in a Bozo Clown costume would provide some pleasing variety in a contest which is likely to be full of white guys dressing like Mick and not playing invisible Fender Stratocasters?

The Loon assumes the contestants not playing guitar are doing so while accompanying a recording of an actual guitarist playing actual music. This would make it more entertaining for the audience, but, think about this. Since the judges will be people, and people always have some bias about the music they prefer, to keep the contests strictly about not playing guitar, don’t you think it would preferable for all Air Guitar Contests to use deaf people as judges? What if some guy shows up with a real guitar with no strings? Shouldn’t that constitute disqualification? I think so, and the rules should explicitly state that all guitars not played must be constructed exclusively of air and nothing but air, picks included, even though this may be considered nit-picking. Look, all subjectivity should be wrung out of the contests. After all, this is serious; a Universal Championship could be a trampoline to launch a professional career in Air Guitar.

But when you think about it, what is the hell so special about not playing guitar? Not playing guitar obviously has appeal. If not, why are the contests held every year? But, why don’t they broaden the appeal and hold a “Air Instruments Olympics” with contests for, say, Air Tenor Saxophone? If you don’t think that would exciting, just consider someone not playing tenor saxophone in the style of Big Jay McNeeley? And how about Air Bassoon? The Loon can tell you a damned funny story about a bassoonist pretending to play. Or Air Fiddle, or Air Zither? Or, for novelty, wouldn’t it be hoot to see Air Piano not played by a motionless contestant who is accompanying a recording of John Cage’s famous silent composition 4’33"? Talk about existential. In an Air Instrument Olympics, the contest for each instrument not played would crown a champion of that particular instrument not played. And here is a great kicker-- wherein all the winners of each instrument not played contests would compete for a Grand Championship of not-played music--kind of like what happens with steers at the National Livestock Show, or dogs at the Westminster Dog Show.

And, to further broaden the appeal, why not hold the Lip-Synching contests at the same time? Sure, I know you couldn’t use deaf people for judges, but aren’t Air Instrument not playing and Lip Synching closely allied artistic talents?

Competitive not playing and not singing is strenuous, so it wouldn’t be fair for women to have to compete with men. It makes sense to have competitions for both men and women, and juniors too. If the national powers regulating not playing and not singing want to broaden and preserve the art of not playing and not singing, they will have to encourage youngsters to improve and raise their standard by entering competitions.

The Loon wonders if there are any venues around where people can just go enjoy not playing or not singing? You know, a place where not playing music or not singing can be done in a social setting? Hey! Not every Air Instrumentalist and Lip Syncher wants to enter a contest.

Sharks Kill Men—Men Get Even

The Loon has it on good authority that sharks kill 4 men each year (on the average), but man retaliates by killing between 26 and 73 million sharks each year. Let the Loon go on record as saying he deplores group punishment, and this group punishment stretches proportionality to an absurdity, but, on the other hand, he secretly holds the notion, “that’ll teach those sharks”, and we must hope that the 4 man-eater sharks were among those we kill. Doubts prevail about that, however we must be sending a strong message to the sharks by culling their numbers, but maybe not. Do you wonder how many sharks there are? There must be bunch if men can catch and kill between 26 and 73 million every year. But maybe the male and female sharks are making more than 27 to 73 million new sharks each year. Say, doesn’t 27 to 73 million seem like an overly wide spread for an estimate, or does the Loon have his skeptometer dialed way too sensitive?

Babs’ Tour Redux

Yes indeedy, Barbara Stiesand is on tour again, international too. That’s two years in a row—Babs must have some political contribution promises to keep. Tour tix prices are steep. In Italy, they run from $200 to $1,200, or rather they would have been, but the price-conscious Italians told her “Vamoosa!”. So she packed, and went to Switzerland, where they are not so reluctant to pony up the jack. Last year she toured the U.S. and the average tix price was $298, so what are the Italians complaining about? The 2006 tour grossed $92.5M. Yep! Babs be smokin’ hot.

The Loon will give it to her, she has the purest bell-like voice of any singer in his recollection, her enunciation is crystal clean, she knows just what to do with a lyric, and she doesn’t scream-sing—what a pleasure--but, if you think the Loon is gonna cough up $200+ to sit through several hours of a Baby Boomer Love-in, you be bad bad mistaken. Besides, “Sniff”, Babs ranks second, behind The Stones for gross tour take. Where in the hell are the Baby Boomers getting all this money?

Politics—It’s Hopeless.

The Loon used to think that since he was a liberal on most social issues, and a conservative on most economic issues, he had something in common with folks at both political poles. You know, the Loon was a benign creature called an "Assyderm*, with an ass’s ass on one end, and a pachyderm’s ass on the other*, and thus, he had entre to both polar camps. Forget it! The Loon is a pariah. Worse, he is treated as an apostate by both camps. Seldom in the Loon’s lifetime, and he is eat up with old, has he witnessed so much rampant political truth—damn! It’s almost religious. THAT’S IT, why didn’t I see it before—we are in a POLITICAL CIVIL WAR. The rabies of polar politics is infecting almost everyone and their virus laden saliva is causing an epidemic of brain malfunctions. . AND, there is no one in the poltical middle. Small wonder, as who is going to vote for a moderate—we seem to want ravenous meat-eaters for politicians. The buzz word factories are working 3 shifts 7/12. One pole is progressive, the other is traditional. One pole claims to be the champion of reason, the other the champion of human values. I no longer know what these terms represent, but it is no longer important to me, as…. (drum roll please)

The Loon hereinwith issues an ENOUGH ALREADY manifesto, calling for a moratorium on political e-forwards. Send me no more, I don’t care if they are so funny they made juice run out of your nose, and put a stitch in your side. Any residual political sense of humor has been long ago leached out of the Loon. This moratorium will expire August 1, 2008. That should give the Loon enough time to determine who not to vote for, and why.

* An Assyderm cannot bite, but it can shit on you from either end.

2. NOTABLE QUOTES.

“Hypocrisy itself does great honor, or rather justice, to religion, and tacitly acknowledges it to be an ornament to human nature. The hypocrite would not be at so much pains to put on the appearance of virtue, if he did not know it was the most proper and effectual means to gain the love and esteem of mankind.” Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English politician and writer. The loon can only add, “WOW! Joe, that’s r e a l heavy.”

“Political correctness is a doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical and radical minority, rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end!” Anonymous (This little acerbic gem was found on the internet which provides a continually replenished mother-lode of unattributed quotations.)

“A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.” Edward Abbey (Right On! Ed)

3. LOON’S MICRO-BOOK REPORT

The book is “David Brinkley: A Memoir” by (who else?) David Brinkley, and it’s a good un’. It reads like a good novel, but without a plot**. It is written just like David talked i.e., spare, well-accented, honestly and punctuated with dry wit. It was published in 1995, but that’s okay, as he was probably too old to make sense of the world since that time, and he infers as much in the book. By the way, he died in 2003 at age 83.

** Hey! It’s a memoir not a biography, but given the agonal literary convulsions in the modern and post-modern novel…sigh!...(mini-editorial to follow) the disjointed stream of consciousness in this book could easily be a novel, but without, aside from David himself, any well-developed characters, but if you are modern enough as a novelist, who the hell needs characters? Do you detect a negative bias against modern and post-modern literature? Ubetchursweetness you do. Hey! The Loon must find a way to annoy fans of artistic modernity—all of which suck. The fans too, however they may not know how they err, or why. Anyway, David chooses his memoirs wisely.

David was a journalist by training, by profession and by inclination, and the Loon liked him about as well as any of those who transmogrified into TV talking heads. Besides, he never gave the impression he was impressed with himself. He has some great stories to tell about the famous the self-infatuated, the powerful, and he is not easy on himself, as he reveals those actions which shamed him. He acknowledges that his success was facilitated by good fortune at being in the right place at the most propitious moments. That said, he sells himself too cheaply.

If you want the book, say so, and it will be in the mail and free to you the next day. Gotta get rid of some of these books. Otherwise, the Loon’s wee studio will collapse into the lake under weight of Hard Backs.

4. PREVIEWS OF COMING ATTRACTIONS.

There are none. Waddya want from me? Do I look like Nicodemus?

Allen Hall,
May 29, 2007, on Lake Sylvia

This FotL is going to be shut down early. People have complained about long FotLs, and short FotLs, and since I must annoy someone, and am loathe to constantly annoy the same people, this FotL is popped out prematurely after a short gestation period.

Fruit o'the Loon '07 #15

2007-06-15T14:20:00.000-07:00

Fruit o’ the Loon
‘07 Installment # 15

If I fail to offend everyone, I’m sorry. (PRINT THIS OUT, OR BE ANNOYED BECAUSE IT IS TOO LONG—THE LOON GOT CARRIED AWAY.)

TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Erratum
2. Crazy Al’s News Digest
3. A Trio of Loon Micro-Book Reports
4. Potpourri
5. Previews of Coming Attractions

1. ERRATUM.

A. In the last line of the text in the ’07 #14 FotL, please change the rhetorical question, “Do I look like Nicodemus?” to read, “Do I look like Nostradamus?” (All those ‘….mus guys sound alike) FYI, (You know what’s coming next) Yes, the Loon is set to offer a wealth of worthless information simply because he has no job, nor any pressing chores. So….here we go.

Nicodemus, or Nick to his friends and acquaintances, one of whom was Jesus, was a Pharisee. A Pharisee was a Jew who had rebelled against the faith of his time, which is, when you think about it, Loonish behavior. Nick helped Jesus, and so, Nick is now a Saint in two Christian faiths. As a result, it would be difficult for the Loon to be confused with Nick. Further, Nick was a member of the Sanhedrin, a group of men who formed the combined equivalence of our U. S. Supreme Court and Congress, in which case, the Loon would not want to be confused with Nicodemus.

Nostradamus (1503-1566), on the other hand, was a clever, even sly, fellow (very Loonish, you might say?). He published a book which used quatrains to make predictions about events using language so obtuse that one could use almost any interpretation one wished to justify the opinion that a Nostradamus prediction had, indeed, come true. The ways to become a world class prognosticator, a.k.a. prophet, are to predict everything possible, and then forget all about the predictions which did not come true, OR make predictions using obfuscatory language that make manifold interpretations possible, thus increasing the number of predictions. Nostradamus was a world class obfuscator, and he has enjoyed a cult following to this day, and especially now in the United States where Woo-Woo Science* has become a mainstay of popular thinking. Nostradamus has been called evil, a fake and insane—Loonish characteristics all. Hey, the Loon does sort of look like Nostradamus except the Loon has no beard….yet

* e.g., Oh! Let me count the ways: Crystal Rubbing; UFO sightings and visitings; Parapsychology (e.g. bending spoons with the mind); Astrology (Nostradamus was a top-notch astrologer); Numerology; the Readings of Tarot Cards, Tea Leaves, and Bones Castings; Transcendental Meditation (The Loon practiced TM during his male climacteric. At the same time, he dressed sporty, with a white belt and shoes, and his hair combed forwards into bangs. The Loon believes a public confession serves as balm for the damaged soul); Palmology; Visiting the dead through mediums; Witchcraft; Voodoo; Horoscopy; ESP; plus sundry occult street magic galore.

B. In the last FotL, please change “Barbara”, as in Streisand, to read “Barbra”. Damn! The Loon must be slipping. Everyone in the important parts of the world knows that Babs is short for Barbra. How could the Loon….unforgivable…….Mea culpa.

2. CRAZY AL’S NEWS DIGEST

A. The Plastic Pink Flamingo Lawn Ornament Supply has been restored

Plastic Pink (What other color would they be?) Flamingo Lawn Ornaments are back in supply. Glory be praised. Crazy Al heard that the Plastic Pink Flamingo Lawn Ornament company had gone el-foldo del mundo, and all existing Plastic Pink Flamingos would naturally rise in value (when supply dries up, prices get juicy) until the sad sad day when the Loon could no longer afford a pair to surreptitiously plant on some deserving friends’ lawn. Hot News! The rights to make the sweet kitschy pink lawn ornaments has been sold, and a factory is up and running in up-state New York. Oh! Blessed Day.

Crazy Al remembers when the Plastic Pink Flamingo Lawn Ornament market was tight. They were hard to find back in 1986. That year my boss came to town and the two of us drove north of Chicago to make a business call on an (unnamed) pharmaceutical company run by profligate idiots. As we turned to go into their parking lot, I saw a guy by the side of the road selling Plastic Pink Flamingo Lawn Ornaments out of the trunk of his car. I stopped the car, and when my boss asked “Why are you stopping? I replied, “I need a pair of flamingos.” My boss then yelled in horror, “No, someone might see us.” Such is the power of Plastic Pink Flamingo Lawn Ornaments.

B, The Post Office is practicing bad faith again.

Yep, they raised the price of a first class letter by two cents. Look! It’s crazy for Crazy Al to go to the post office for a stamp every time he wants to mail a letter. Agreed? But, what in the hell is a first class stamp purchased before it is used? Is it not an implied contract between me and the Post Office? In exchange for 39 cents you give them for a stamp, they must mail one first class letter anytime you wish? But No! The contract can be rendered null and void by them, but never by me. Look, let’s just say I bought a whole roll of 39 cent stamps a while back; the Post Office then raised the price of a first class letter 2 cents, and I, in fit of pique, walk into the post office and declared “These don’t work anymore, I want to trade these in, one for one, for 41 cent stamps” Don’t you think a lawyer could make a sound case for this breach of implied contract?

C. Biosphere 2 is sold at a lo-oxygen fire-sale price.

Remember back in 1991 when a rich guy, by the name of Ed Bass spent $200M to build Biosphere 2 (Earth being “Biosphere 1”). He built it in the Arizona desert (Naturally, as all manner of cuckoo ideas are hatched in the desert southwest—maybe the sun bakes their brains.) Anyway, it was a 3.15 acre enclosed, air tight, completely self-sustaining environment in which 8 humans and their friendly delicious animals provided carbon-dioxide, poop and urine for the plants which then reciprocated generously by providing veggies for the humans and animals to eat, plus oxygen for the humans and their animals to breath. Does the term “perpetual motion machine” pop into mind? Biosphere 2 was a big deal, built to fulfill grand expectations about the possibility of space travel, to prepare for life in a degraded earth atmosphere and to scratch an environmental scientific itch. When it was first opened, or rather, closed, there was a great to-do. When all the water, dirt, bacteria, insects, plants, animals and humans were placed inside, they had a Whoopla party, for the great sealing of the doors. They invited the press and all the malleable attending scientists, who, it might be said, were attracted to Ed Bass’ money as bears are to honey.

Things went along fairly well for a while, but then, it became apparent that, while the plants were more than happy with the environment and provided lots of bananas, the uncooperative plants were soon shorting the oxygen needs of the humans and animals. But, since bad science and solid faith make good bed-fellows, it was just too difficult for Ed Bass to give up on the grand ideological system. And so, they pumped in a little sniff of oxygen (twice) and let the PR bandwagon roll on like a juggernaut. It was later learned that the bacteria were profligate with their use of oxygen. Then to their shock, they found the carbon–dioxide levels were fluctuating all over the place, and they secretly installed some CO2 scrubbers. Then, since Biosphere 2 was in the desert southwest, a place which in summer is hotter than the gates of hell, the inside crew of Biospherians (dontcha just luv it?) were in what amounted to a big-assed greenhouse, and things could get a little stuffy in there. So, it was finally revealed that they were using three times as much energy for air conditioning to cool down Biosphere 2 than they were getting from the solar panels. And, where was this extra non-Biosphere energy coming from? Hang on, you shall soon know. Then the insects died, (who knows why), except, that is, for the desert tramp ants which somehow got inside and were doing fine. Crazy Al, who has often parked his motor home in the desert southwest, could have told them that would happen. Then there was a plague of cockroaches. And, sadly, it was revealed that electricity for Biosphere 2 was not totally provided by the sun’s sweet free rays on solar panels, but rather, by burning natural gas at the going rate. Hey!...wait…let’s don’t fly off the scientific handle here and get judgmental. So….there were a few problems with the system; glitches which could be corrected by minor engineering tweakings. Armed with experience, they furloughed the Biosperians inside, and installed a second group of Biospherians, but that experiment too would come a cropper. Yep! More bad news.

The Biospherians found it hard to get along with the support staff outside. An apt analogy is how miffed combat infantry can become with REFMs, most notably the hated supply weenies. The outsiders on the on-site management team were falling into two warring camps, the science guys and the business guys—where have we heard this before? Rumors were floated about secret food caches inside. That’s understandable and forgivable since the crew of eight Biospherians were subsisting on a diet of not enough bananas, peanuts, and sweet potatoes, and thus, were losing weight. The biospherians began to eat the emergency food supplies. Armed guards finally ousted the on-site management people. Two disgruntled former Biospherians, in an unbelievable act of sabotage, vandalized the project by throwing open the doors, and thus, Gasp! violating (Yes! violating) the enclosure. Somebody then ratted this out to the press, and all was lost.

A psychological post-mortem examination of the Biospherians revealed, once again, as if we needed more evidence, a few unpleasant characteristics often found in humans confined in close quarters, e.g., prisons, schools, the Antarctic Research Station and, of course, the Biosphere. The Biospherians split into two groups which became implacable enemies—tribalism in miniature?—and it was 10 years before the adversaries spoke to one another again. There was lousy morale; more than enough for everyone. Where once there was buoying enthusiasm and promise, now all was rancor. Leaders were dismissed. Biospherian crew Captains were chastised. (Yes, dear hearts, each Biospherian crew had a Captain. I wonder if the Captain could perform marriages.)

As if this story isn’t already curiouser and curiouser, apparently the original idea for the Biosphere resulted from improvisational theater, and according to Marc Cooper was cooked up “by a clique of recycled theater performers that evolved out of an authoritarian—and decidedly non-scientific---personality cult.” i.e., the group on Synergia Ranch, a spot in the desert under the auspices of The Institute of Ecotechnic, which is as august a name as you will find, however is was shown in a CBS documentary to be nothing more than an art gallery and café in London.

This funeral of this misbegotten foray into environmental science finally made some biz types happy. See, the Biosphere was sited on 1,650 acres in north exurban Tucson, an area which has now traded the “ex” for “sub”, and a development company bought the whole shebang for $50M. Let’s see, that roughs out at $6,500 an acre; not too shabby for Arizona ‘burb property north of Tucson. A planned community and a resort hotel is in the works for the property, but the development company says it will keep Biosphere 2 tours going for about 20 bucks a pop, so that hard-core-greenies in despair might visit their violated Shangri-La; where social scientists might wish to do a retro-study on effect of human hubris on biological science, and others curious enough to drop a double sawbuck can have a place to go mourn or exult—whichever.

In the interest of honest attribution, Crazy Al read a report of the sale of the Biosphere property in the June 6 edition of the Minneapolis Star and Tribune. Some additional facts came out of Crazy Al’s admittedly faulty recollections, and the remainder came straight out of Wikipedia (where on earth did the word, “Wikipedia” come from? Was there ever a Mr Wiki? You readers owe me answers.) There is an obligation to list credits, as we now live in an age when truth in the written word has become almost an anachronism. Sports story editor, Glenn Stout wrote this. “Once upon a time, I believed everything I read until given a reason not to. Now, I question everything I read and look for reasons to believe.” Crazy Al cautions that skepticism makes perfect sense during this imperfect age.

3. A TRIO OF LOON MICRO-BOOK REPORTS

A. “Unrestricted Warfare: How a New Breed of Officers Led the Submarine Force to Victory in World War II”, by James F. DeRose.

This is an authoritative exceedingly well-researched book on this subject which has spawned a huge number of books (44 by my count). The sub-title is a bit misleading, as the book is completely about WW-II submarine warfare in the Pacific, and specifically, about the exploits of several notable U-boats in the Pacific fleet. If you like books about submarines—the Loon do—this one will not disappoint. It is all true, and full of high drama. This book is the definitive monograph on the subject.

B. “How to Get Out of the Rat Race; and live on $10 a Month” by the Herters, George and Berthe.
.
It was self published in 1975, and is a little charmer of a paperback, full of wry political and social commentary, and outdoorsy advice such as; how to prepare and cook Owl (Geo. prefers it over Chicken Hawk); how to mark a trail using toilet paper; how to live with a bitch; and offering a warning to never pull a string hanging over the bar in an Alaskan tavern. The book is out of print, and hard to get, and, No! You can’t have my copy. The Loon has given away too many already. You do not need this book, but to have one lying on your coffee table would likely provide a lively conversation-starter for a party.

C. “Moneyball: the Art of Winning an Unfair Game.” by Michael Lewis.

This is one of the most important books ever written about professional baseball, and one of the most readable. It is akin to a gripping page-turner novel, with a juggernaut plot, some mystery, and well developed characters, but this no novel. It is the true story of how several open-minded, determined, scientifically-inclined men used economics and statistics to consistently win with a major league baseball team in a poor, small market town (Oakland), and with the second lowest player salary budget in baseball. And in so doing, these baseball revolutionaries revealed the ancient, incestuous, group-think prevalent in professional baseball scouts, announcers, coaches, managers, front offices, owners and even Hizzoner, the Commissioner. To my chagrin, the book shames color commentator, Joe Morgan, he being one of my erstwhile heroes. Let’s cut Joe some slack. Joe began his color commentator career perfectly. He has a good speaking voice, but is not a blabbermouth. He has a good mind, a deep respect for baseball and has always been an astute student of the game. But somewhere along the way, he contracted the Tim McCarver virus, and thus, began to create case-hardened opinions about the game, and then, sadly, he fell deeply in love with his own opinions. Big mistake.

If you’re a baseball fan, and you don’t read this book, Abner Doubleday’s ghost will slap you upside the head.

Yes, the Loon has been wracked by a paroxysm of recent reading, and no, it’s not to escape—at least he doesn’t think so.

4. POTPOURRI

Yale Professor, Harold Bloom, claims that Don Quixote gave birth to the modern novel, a literary form which is now dying. He recommends children read the “Alice” books by Lewis Carroll. He thinks the Harry Potter books are rubbish, and the fact that 350 million have been sold is adequate indictment of the world’s descent into subliteracy. Hey! Harold, tell us how you really feel.

The reasons why Toyota has surpassed GM in car sales are easy to understand. It is because Toyota can make better cars than GM, and for less money and sell them for more money than can GM.

George Will laments the recent uncommemorated passing of the bicentennial of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s birth on February 27th 2007. That is also the Loon’s birthday, and the Loon did try to write poetry 20 years ago, but alas, nothing of value came of it. Even his limericks sucked. Anyway, Longfellow, (the American Shakespeare?) gave us so much; “Ships that pass in the night.” “Life is real! Life is earnest.” “footprints on the sands of time,” “Let the dead Past bury its dead!” “ In this world a man must be either anvil or hammer.” “Into each life some rain must fall.” (Which, if the Loon is not mistaken, found its way into the lyrics of a song.) “Under the spreading chestnut tree, the village smithy stands.” “by the shores of gichee gummee” and “Listen my children and you shall hear/Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.” George’s lament reads. “The melancholy fact that the 200th birthday of the poet who toiled to create the nation’s memory passed largely unremarked is redundant evidence of how susceptible this forward-leaning democracy is to historical amnesia.”

5. PREVIEWS OF COMING ATTRACTIONS

A Loon book review of “God is not Great; How Religion Poisons Everything”, by Christopher Hitchens, who is ranked # 5 on a list of 100 public intellectuals, and is a courageous curmudgeon. It’s a wowzer of a book, guaranteed to piss-off 95% of all people, and especially those who are fearful of dying. This is the first time ever that the Loon has found himself reading a book which was concurrently rated #1 on the NYT non-fiction Best Seller list.

Allen Hall
June 7 2007, On Windy Lake Sylvia. Windy enough to blow over a rotten Basswood tree which took out the electric lines to the Loon’s wee studio. Excuse me, Is it something I wrote?

Fruit o' the Loon '06 #22

2006-11-14T13:16:00.000-08:00

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

I Blog, therefore I am

2006-11-01T12:05:00.000-08:00

These are my first blog-words. May whatever diety is now in charge have mercy on my soul. I will be posting a "Fruit o' the Loon" about twice monthly. My epigram is "If I fail to offend everyone, I am sorry." And so, let the flaming begin.

Allen Hall, a.k.a The Loon