… a significant part of the population is willing to accept a glib soundbite as truth, in preference to a long catalogue of facts that happens to represent the truth …

Jeff Masters, Ph.D., cofounder of the Weather Underground website, has an excellent blog post detailing what Your Friendly Neighborhood Amoeba considers to be an alarming development in the Global Warming Wars:

A television advertisement proclaiming that more atmospheric carbon dioxide is good for the Earth.

Really. They should have come up with this ad thirty-five years ago, so that Woody Allen could have worked it into his movie Sleeper. The one that proclaims french fries and hot fudge sundaes to be health foods, and tobacco smoking the best thing you can do for your lungs.

The movie, in case you haven’t seen it (it is ancient history for you twentysomethings out there), is a farce.

So’s that ad. Or it would be, if the matter it addresses weren’t so deadly serious.

Briefly (and Masters does, um, a masterful job of explaining the details), the ad’s premise is that carbon dioxide is essential for plant life, and therefore more carbon dioxide means more plant life. Which is such a good and wonderful thing that We the People should be pumping all the profits into the fossil fuel industry carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that we can.

Only two problems with this scenario. The first (which Masters does not happen to mention) is that, if more carbon dioxide begets more plant life, then that ‘more plant life’ should suck up that extra carbon dioxide. Which should slow or stop the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. No such slowing has been observed. In fact, some scientists argue that humans have been dumping planet-changing levels of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, not since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution two hundred years ago, but since the dawn of agriculture, eight thousand years ago. And the plant life hasn’t caught up yet.

(This scenario, by the way, is consistent with the one that attributes most of the oxygen in the atmosphere, and the ecological calamity that oxygen pollution amounted to in Earth’s early history, to a thin layer of pond scum.)

The second, which Masters does discuss, is that recent increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide have been responsible for measured decreases in plant crop yields.

Still more alarming than the existence of the ad itself is the catalogue of concealed interests and outright dirty tricks that is associated with the production of the ad and its predecessors, the peddling of this public relations exercise to the world, and its acceptance by many, including those at the highest level of government. Dissing the real findings of science, and the scientists (often via attacks on persons rather than data) that have published these findings.

But then, the scientists (including Masters) are easy to diss. Their reasoning is hard to follow, and their message is bleak: we cannot continue as we are, and we cannot change things without giving up large chunks of what we see as inalienable rights, such as freedom of consumption, freedom of property, freedom of reproduction. From the mass of scientists, no Kirk has arisen to pull our Kobayashi Maru out of this Neutral Zone of our own making – and if one were to appear, she probably wouldn’t be able to afford the public relations firm that could effectively promote her discovery.

That makes We the People – we who, most of us, have been trained since birth to limit our attention spans to the length of a television commercial – susceptible to the soundbite. To the glib, pretty, and above all short message that our Kobayashi Maru can and will be saved, if we will only do as the message tells us. Without any evidence that the message’s sponsor has a starship to effect the rescue, never mind one with a tractor beam, warp drive, and photon torpedoes.

And with, in fact, compelling evidence that the fossil fuels industry is using the tactics of the tobacco industry. The tobacco industry, you’ll recall, used disinformation tactics to discredit scientific evidence that smoking and chewing are bad for you.

Maybe if we linked fossil fuels to smoking …

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

Clarke’s Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguisable from magic.
Amoeba’s Corollary: Sooner or later, someone will proclaim that all such magic is black.

In my previous post, Your Friendly Neighborhood Amoeba poked and prodded at the disconnect between the high level of official public concern over the current outbreak of 2009 H1N1 influenza and its actual impact on human health in these Untied States.

(The official public concern, I’m guessing, has some part of its basis in history: the influenza epidemic of 1918, also caused by a strain of H1N1 virus, came in waves, with later waves more deadly than the first.)

I was chagrined, to say the least, to discover a link to this post on a virulently anti-vaccination website. A clear case of foot in mouth pseudopod in cytostome disease. Fortunately:

A. The link was short-lived.
B. With all due respect, gentle readers, there aren’t enough of you for whatever happens here to make much of an impact. (I can only hope that the same is true for that other website.)

Wikipedia has what I consider to be an excellent page on the history, dynamics, and negative social impacts of vaccine controversies. It points out that vaccines have been, in human health terms, the best thing since sliced bread – and that, for one reason or another, various persons have had issues with sliced bread.

Including the English theologian Rev. Edward Massey, who argued, in 1772 (yes, the anti-vaccinationists have been around for awhile) that smallpox vaccinations represented diabolically-influenced defiance against the will of God.

No wonder Richard Dawkins considers God to be a delusion.

My principal concern is that, now as then, a significant part of the population is willing to accept a glib soundbite as truth, in preference to a long catalogue of facts that happen to represent the truth but don’t fit conveniently on a protest sign.

Even more worrying to me is the idea, implicit in the thoughts and actions of the conspiracy theorists, that the findings of science, like so many of the practitioners of magic in the current blitz of popular novels, are for sale to the highest bidder.

Such a view is consistent with the deconstructionist view of the world (all viewpoints are utterly dependent on the self-interest of the originator) that is now predominant.

But I think that, if science actually does devolve in this way, we are lost.

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Amoeba has just found out that, since April 2009 in the Untied States of America, about 4,000 people have died, and about 98,000 have been hospitalized, from influenza virus 2009 H1N1 (“swine flu”) and related illnesses.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the figures, I read, at least partly out of concern that too few of We the People are seeking to be vaccinated against this flu virus. Of course, a lot of those people aren’t seeking to be vaccinated because they’ve already tried, discovered that there was no vaccine to be had, and have given up …

Yo. People. Don’t quit on us, OK? We’ve got to keep a certain level of hysteria going on this swine flu business, or we’re going to lose the vaccine makers we’ve got to more lucrative pursuits, like making Viagra knockoffs, and we won’t have any vaccine for anybody. You gotta help us out here, gotta keep standing in line for this stuff.

Well, folks, I hate to be quoting fairy tales at you, but this swine flu story has been at the top of the news for, like, a year now, and while there’s nothing pleasant about 4,000 dead, there’s something of a gap between that figure and the decimation of the population that was forecast in the first reports.

After all, in that same time period (extrapolating from 2005 figures), approximately 27,000 people lost their lives on the nation’s highways, and another 1.4 million were injured.

And I have seen no calls from the CDC for a vaccine against stupid drivers.

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

She: “But I took the ibuprofen!”

He: “The question is, where did you take it?”

She: “Ew.”

He: “On second thought, don’t answer that. So the fever hasn’t gone down?”

She: “No.”

He: “No relief from the cramps?”

She: “No.”

He: “Did you at least take a nap?”

She: “I tried, but everything that isn’t too hot or too cold hurts. And when I did doze off, somebody kept waking me up. Which is weird, because I’ve been alone in the house all day.”

He: “Hon, you’re a great cook and all, but you really shouldn’t try to make s’nores in bed. Let me see that bottle, will you?”

She: “OK …”

He: “No wonder!“

She: “What?”

He: “This is a cheap store brand. The ‘not-ready-for-prime-time’ stuff. The ibuamateurfen. We’ve gotta upgrade your pills to the first team …”

In case you haven’t already, go visit Quilly and wish her a speedy recovery.

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

We were making spaghetti sauce, and had gotten to the point of adding the seasonings when we discovered that we didn’t have all the herbs we needed. It was late and the stores were closed, so I went next door to try and borrow some …

Well, no.

What I’m really borrowing is the time since around 9 HST on the morning of 26 October, when Your Friendly Neighborhood Amoeba came within inches of becoming a somewhat large and rather messy hood ornament. That car pretty much had me dead to rights. And I don’t mean the 300-pages-and-a-book-deal, Kim Harrison / Charlaine Harris kind of dead, either.

If you live in southeast O‘ahu and wish to get to Chaminade University or the University of Hawai‘i at Mânoa by bicycle, you have a choice of routes.

You can take Waialae Avenue. Or …

You can take Waialae Avenue.

That’s because, between the mountains of southeastern O‘ahu and the deep blue sea, there is room for exactly one east-west road, the Kalaniana‘ole Highway. Which is almost as wide as its name. That one road morphs abruptly into the eastern end of O‘ahu’s (ahem) Interstate Highway System, from which bicycles are verboten. From this trap, there is but a single escape.

Waialae Avenue.

Which passes through a shopping mall, then rises 160 feet in two stages to the crest of a hill, which marks the beginning of a mile-long business district, at the end of which are the Chaminade and UH-Mânoa campuses along with two private high schools.

City planners, of course, recognized the needs of the bike riders who had no choice but to take this route to some of the busiest places in town, and designed the road with wide berms for the required riding lanes. Right?

Silly malihini.

The berms, where they exist at all, are narrow and full of potholes, drains, and other obstacles. Bicycles are, according to the rules of the road, vehicles just like buses, semis, and Hummers, so the sidewalks are legally off-limits. Not that it matters, because, at several places along Waialae Avenue, there are no sidewalks. Including one location, with neither berm nor sidewalk, in which traffic coming from the left (me) must merge with traffic coming from the right – at 60 mph straight off the (ahem) Interstate. All of this at a 10% grade going uphill.

The sidewalks that are in place are frequently narrow, even rougher than the street pavement (sometimes, they are mere dirt tracks) and are full of pedestrians and cyclists who either have never heard of the road rules or choose to ignore them. Pedestrians have died from being run over by bicyclists on sidewalks. Crede expertum: I lost a scientific colleague in precisely this way.

I am told that, in the vicinity of the UH-Mânoa campus, special road rules legalize bicycle operation on the sidewalks. See “pedestrians have died”, supra. My bike remains on the street, riding with the flow of traffic, like the vehicle it is in law and in fact. And where I am safer among the cars than among the heedless riders and wanderers on the sidewalks.

At least, that’s what I thought I was.

Have I mentioned yet that Honolulu is officially acknowledged to have the worst rush-hour traffic in the United States?

Which probably made the driver of the car Koko Head (east)-bound late for class. He – I know it was a ‘he’, I saw the whites of his eyes – saw a tiny gap in ‘Ewa (west)-bound car traffic, and gunned his blue sedan into a left turn across that traffic, into the Chaminade University access road.

And straight at Your Friendly Neighborhood Amoeba, who had already entered the intersection and was legally entitled to the right of way.

I believe the ‘defensive driving’ program instructors call this kind of thing “dead right”.

I still don’t know how we avoided contact. Some combination of me pedaling for dear life (duh) and his fancy wheel turning. Whatever it was, he’s not having to defend himself against a charge of vehicular homicide.

And I’m writing this blog entry on borrowed time.

I suppose somebody will ask what I’m doing on a bicycle at all, never mind on such a hazardous route as Waialae Avenue. Can’t I afford to drive?

Well, no, I can’t. On a practical level or a philosophical one. You may remember, I once figured out it would cost me around US$14 a day to own a car if it never left the driveway. Last I knew, Hawai‘i was in a recession so bad, the state has had to close the public schools. So how is it that all these people can afford to drive?

And I have written that all efforts to thwart anthropogenic global warming are futile unless we start by slashing our use of resources, not by some token Hopen Hagen handwaving amount, but by three-fourths of present-day levels. I wonder if my blue sedan driver is one of those young people who enthusiastically attends “save the planet” rallies, then gets into his car – by himself – and drives home.

Besides. We keep hearing about how fat and unfit We the People are. It has always bothered me that people of a certain lifestyle – including many folk with whom I have worked – drive themselves back and forth from their jobs and then go off to some fancy gym or club “for exercise”. If I need exercise, I get as much of it as possible as part of the job or the commute. Anything else is rubbing it into the faces of those who have no choice about the “exercise” bit; they do it if they wish to eat.

So, in the morning, I will be back on the bicycle, back on Waialae Avenue. If I’m going to be on borrowed time anyway, I may as well see how much my credit will stand.

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Amoeba was engaged in world-saving pursuits (reading the sports scores online) when he happened upon this headline:

Doctors May ‘Fire’ Parents Who Don’t Vaccinate Children

Seems there’s a profit-making newsworthy standoff between patients who are convinced that vaccinations cause autism in children and physicians who:

(a) are convinced that they don’t;

(b) don’t want to get blamed (read sued) for outbreaks of the deadly diseases that currently are controlled by universal vaccination programs.

Vaccinations have been taking shots ever since they were invented in the mid-19th century, but especially since the first Gulf War, when an anthrax vaccine was blamed (wrongly) for causing the puzzling array of illnesses labeled “Gulf War Syndrome”.

But what drove me to the keyboard was a line in a Discover magazine article that I looked up to track those developments in the vaccine controversy that were important to the press.

A line that asked, in effect, how it could be that “science and so many citizens fell out of touch” on the vaccination issue.

Indeed, how is that large numbers of people will choose to believe the opinions of a Playboy bunny over a physician’s recommendation based on reams of heavily scrutinized data? Or those of a political vaudevillian over the long catalogs of facts supporting evolution and anthropogenic global warming?

Lots of people have expressed opinions on this phenomenon, and how to fix it. My views are perhaps more curmudgeonly than some.

1. Science is hard. Yes it is. There’s no point in sugarcoating this, as some folk try to do. Success in science requires both a vivid imagination and the disciplined reasoning skills to turn that imagination into useful work. The earlier that someone begins learning and exercising these skills, the greater the chances for success.

We don’t seem to have any difficulties applying this principle to kindergarten students who show promise in football.

But if that kid shows promise in science?

We slap a white coat on him and call him ‘mad’.

And the science teachers compete with the music, art, and history teachers for space at the bake sale tables, in the dwindling hope that the schools for which they work (for now) might teach something other than football.

2. Science does not pay. Science as a profession is almost entirely a creation of the 20th century. The “great men” of the 19th century upon whom most modern science is based (e.g. Banks, Darwin, Freud, Lyell, Maxwell, etc.) hardly ever got a government grant, never ran a bake sale. They paid for their researches out of their own pockets, either from independent wealth or from “real job” income, such as from medicine or the law. This history, I think, is one of the reasons why pay rates for most scientists are so low. Hell, We the People haven’t had to pay for science before, why should we now?

And why should a young person with talent in science go through all the trouble to learn the hard discipline that science requires, and suffer all the ‘mad scientist’ jibes, only to make less than most of his peers who have taken easier and less costly paths in life?

3. Science has lost its reputation for impartiality.

Perhaps the most important of the hard-learned (and hard to learn) principles of science is that the work of a scientist is to be openly published and just as openly critiqued. The scientist is trained, not to argue that a piece of work is correct, but to argue, with the coldest and most rigorous logic at her command, that a piece of work is not demonstrably wrong. With everyone in the room, including herself, trying to show just that.

And if the work is shown to be wrong, the scientist is expected to admit it.

It is this willingness to put the work, not the worker, foremost that has historically given science its reputation for impartiality. What, indeed, is a ‘mad scientist’ but one who has put himself first, and therefore can no longer see the flaws in his research because ‘he can do no wrong’?

Impartiality is easy to maintain when you’re a wealthy Victorian gentleman whose daily bread does not depend on the results of a particular experiment.

Today? When your company’s future, your laboratory’s, indeed your own, may depend on the results of a particular experiment – or what a particular client community perceives is the result of a particular experiment?

Corporate research findings are no longer openly discussed, and if they are published, they are presented, not by the scientists involved but by the company’s publicists – if the scientist does the presenting, she’s almost certainly been trained to be a publicist and is acting in that role. And an increasing number of research findings are corporate, as non-corporate funds have almost completely dried up (these days, the National Science Foundation struggles to fund 20% of the proposals submitted to it) and scientists try desperately to find a career path that has a small chance of repaying the costs of their special education – which may commence at age 22 and lead to a first real job at age 40. (With those job prospects, it really does amount to “special” ed.)

Corporate research puts (or is perceived to put) the corporation first, not the research. Much of the public is convinced that, therefore, the corporation is incapable of seeing the flaws in its work. And that makes all the corporation’s scientists ‘mad’.

Moreover. The introspective self-critique which has, for more than a century, been a centerpiece of scientific training is 180 degrees removed from what YFNA thinks is the main driver of present-day American political and social discourse: the emotive impulse. Just do it! Buy now! screams the ad campaign. Marketing 101: If the customer is allowed to think, you’ve lost the sale. Therefore, Jenny, don’t let the customer think. Carry him along in the waves of your emotion. Bury any logic in the torrent of your pronouncements, and he will be yours, Adolf.

So, how is it that science and citizens are out of touch?

Because science is so hard, that to most citizens it is indistinguishable from magic. Sir Arthur C. Clarke, ever the optimist, neglected, when he formulated his Third Law, to consider Amoeba’s Corollary:

Sooner or later, all magic is black.

Because the low pay of a science career discourages people with any sense of economic rationality from taking it up (or even from defending it – the money is with the opposition), and encourages everyone else in their perception of science as a black magical guild.

Because the loss of science’s reputation for impartiality further alienates it from a skeptical, nay fearful, public.

That scientific inquiry, properly conducted, is society’s best hope for improving the human condition doesn’t seem to matter.

It doesn’t make good media bites.

Or sell creationist rhetoric.

Or create false illusions that we can actually keep our Hummers.

Or market quack cures for autism.

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

The other day, I was relaxing during the intermission of a band rehearsal, when a bandmate comes up to me and says:

“One of my old buddies just won a Nobel Prize!”

Now, you probably know this already, but just in case you didn’t: the scientific Nobel Prizes (Physiology or Medicine, Chemistry, Physics) are something of a holy grail for scientists. Some of us anyway … let’s establish right now that the Nobel Prize Committee spares no thoughts for amoebae, or those who work on them. These prizes are for the folk who make Really Big Contributions to the health and welfare of We the People. Funded by the inventor of the principal means, pre-1945, of blowing We the People skyhigh.

Needless to say, hearty congratulations were in order. Especially since, in this particular case, my bandmate’s glory was not entirely reflected; he had participated in early phases of the work, and then chosen a different path for his career. Which is working right well for him.

In this case, the Really Big Contribution is an understanding (I’m oversimplifying here) of how cells, including human cells, sense how old they are, and, to a degree, control that aging. This understanding plays a role in (for example) understanding cancer. Which is, in essence, a bunch of cells that don’t age and won’t quit dividing even when the rest of the body (not to mention the chemotherapy and radiation treatments) tells them not to.

With this piece of information, Medicine will make strides towards curing cancer.

Eventually.

Which, to some people, isn’t good enough. The Nobel discoveries aren’t curing people now, so therefore “the Nobel Prizes have long since strayed from Alfred Nobel’s original wish” and why are we taking precious space away from Viagra advertisements to talk about them?

Behind every major scientific discovery, there are a thousand, if not ten thousand, assembled facts. Behind every Big Name in the sciences, there are a thousand Ph.D.s whose names are known only to the author indices of the scientific journals, but without whom the Big Names wouldn’t be. The lone scientist working in the wilderness and coming up with The Discovery was always something of a myth, and is even more so now, when significant resources in materials and personnel are necessary to make even the anonymous research findings possible, never mind those that make News.

It’s been written that the prime mission of today’s scientist is not to serve the community, but to keep the laboratory in funds. To a degree this is true. After all, we no longer deem it appropriate for science to be conducted only by independently-wealthy gentlemen, so we now have a cadre of professionals for whom The Mortgage Payment dictates the direction of the search for Truth.

But shall We the People strip the resources from a group of people whose efforts will make a difference in our ability to survive and thrive on this planet, even if we don’t understand those efforts, in order to promote those things that we think we do understand? American Idol, for instance?

About those resources. The three Nobel Prize winners will split a prize that (before taxes, I suppose) amounts to the grandiose sum of $US1.4 million.

Let’s see. If I have my arithmetic right, and if our Nobelers do some really hard bargaining with the suppliers, that $1.4 million will get the three of them one cruise missile each. Without the launcher.

Choices, choices …

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

“What you got there, dude?”

“Flyer came in the mail. About flu season.”

“And what are we supposed to be doing with flu season?”

“Sprinkling it on your linguine.”

“NOT.”

“You may as well, dude. If you don’t, someone will do it for you.”

“Dude, that’s gross.”

“Sorry to hear you say that, dude. We were going to the pub tonight. Now we can’t.”

“Why not? The pub won’t want anybody workin’ there spewin’ germs over the grub and brewskis. They’ll send the sickies home.”

“And those workers who stay home will pay the rent how?“

“With their sick days, of course.”

“Dude, you’re clueless. These people ain’t got no sick days. They go to work sneezin’ and sweatin’, or they won’t have no work to go to.”

“But that’ll spread germs all over the place!”

“It gets worse, dude. Say you’ve got a kid, and two parents – or, worse, one – bustin’ their guts to keep the kid in sneakers. The kid gets the flu. Says here in this flyer that the parents are supposed to keep Junior home. OK. Who’s going to get fired so that someone can stay home to watch the offspring throw up? Parents’re already sweating bullets over these damned furlough days. ‘The school’s closed and I can’t afford child care’ won’t cut no ice with a boss itching to cut payroll. The kid’s not dead, she’s going to school.”

“Dammit, dude, why don’t they just load up a bunch of helicopters with the virus, spray the entire city, and get it over with?“

“What? And deny a profit opportunity to the flu vaccine makers? And what makes you think that the big money dudes whose salaries are increasing while everyone else is getting the shaft, and who get all the sick days their extended vacations could ever use, would let anything like that happen?”

“But what about us, dude?!?“

“We hope that it’s the flu, dude, and not the plague.”

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Amoeba had an, er, interesting morning.

Before I tell you just how interesting, I’d better fill you in on the preconditions.

1. Whoever’s in charge of ventilation around here has either been sleeping on the job or has gotten sacked. Given the current economic situation of Hawai‘i and its long-standing reputation for bureaucratic efficiency – that’s a joke, son – it’s hard to tell the difference. It’s hot outside, because the trade winds aren’t blowing. And, it’s hot inside, because the air conditioning at work has failed and it might get fixed by Christmas if they can find the parts, and if they can run enough bake sales to pay for the parts, and if they can fill out enough forms to get permission to use the money from the bake sales to pay for the parts.

2. Hawai‘i, as all the advertising assures you, is a tropical paradise. See “hot”, supra. See also “bugs”. The battle is neverending. Roaches, and flies, and termites, and ants, and lizards, and (of course) centipedes are all trying to horn in on your spa … What’s that? Lizards aren’t bugs? Hey. They bug me, especially when I have to shake them out of my shoes in the morning. Doesn’t that count?

Where was I? Oh. Yeah. We’ve established, I trust, that YFNA’s current place of residence is, at present, both hot and buggy. We can now proceed to the, ahem, interesting events of this morning.

Which began around dawn after a hot, fitful night made hotter and more fitful by the sunburn I got doing my normal bike ride from work (a surprise I really didn’t need). I opened my eyes, not without a certain reluctance, and promptly wished I’d kept them closed.

Because there was a swarm of little black spots hovering in the corner of the bedroom, next to the window. Buzzing around as a swarm of gnats would, or (far worse) as a swarm of winged ants would.

I lay there for several minutes watching this swarm, gathering strength of body and soul to do what needed to be done. Which was to inspect this latest plague, which showed no signs of going away any time soon, and figure out what to do about it.

At last, I hauled myself out of bed and stumbled over to the corner. I had no clear plan of attack – nothing to catch or swat the bugs with, not even my glasses with which to see them with any clarity – but I figured “get over there, and something will turn up, first let’s get an idea of what we’re dealing with.” So I got to the window and …

Nothing.

Well, not quite nothing. A couple of specks lingered long enough in front of the windowsill to assure me there was nothing insectoidal about them. In fact, there was noting substantial about them.

See spots. See spots run. Run, spots, run.

I didn’t see them again. In fact, I didn’t see much of anything the rest of today except Quilly, who was making sure that I had a fan at my back and water in my glass.

She must have had a word with somebody upstairs while she was at it, because the trade winds came back today, as well.

Now, if she can only do something about the a/c in my office …

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Amoeba first heard about Wendell Potter about a week ago.

In case you, like me, have been cooped up in a Petri dish and haven’t heard the news until now, Potter is the former health insurance industry executive who, one fine day in 2007, came face to face with the consequences of the policies that he had been helping to sell to We the People. He went to a “health fair” near his home town in Tennessee, and found a fair chunk of the 47 million citizens of these Untied States who do not have health insurance lined up, third-world style, to receive medical treatment from volunteer physicians working out of tents, horse stables, the street.

Two years later, presumably after having ensured himself a comfortable retirement from the proceeds of his princely insurance-executive earnings, he left the industry and is currently engaged in critiquing the firms that once thought him worth penthouse apartments and luxury seats in private jets.

Those critiques are beyond sobering. Much of the press has focused on Potter’s epiphany story. It fits nicely with the theme that the medical system in the USofA is collapsing on account of the greed of a few big, bad men.

YFNA was far more intrigued by Potter’s account of the medical loss ratio. That’s the ratio of payouts (medical claims) to earnings (premiums). That number has to be less than 1 (100%), or the outfit conducting the business is losing money and will eventually go bust. Not even the U.S. Government can afford a medical loss ratio greater than 1 for long.

According to Potter, the medical loss ratio for the health insurance industry in the early 1990s was around .95. In 2009, it’s below .80. In other words, only five cents per dollar of income was set aside for running the company and (of course) profits twenty years ago. Now, it’s twenty cents on the dollar.

Did the insurance company executives decide on their own to do this? Hell, no. This development was forced on them by people who own stocks, who would drop those stocks in a New York minute if the companies failed to squeeze every copper of profit out of their operations. Even if that means dropping coverage for people on the verge of expensive life-saving care, by any means necessary. Even if that means forcing 47 million American citizens to get their health care in horse stalls.

And who, you ask, owns these stocks that are driving the insurance companies to behave in such an immoral manner?

The people who manage your 401k. The ones you’ve likely been bitching about because they lost so much of your money in the last six months.

Yes, dear reader. It’s easy to cast blame for the mess American health care is in on the “mighty” few – when the fault actually lies with that fellow / gal you see in the mirror every morning. As usual.

Way back in September of 2006, the Dudes were forced to confront the realities of health care in these Untied States. Not much has changed …

============

“Ahh … s…!!”

“Expletive deleted to you too, dude. Where the hell’d you learn to sneeze like that?”

“Just tedding you how I feel, dude. Ahhh …”

“Well, think of something cleaner. You want to get us flagged?”

“I don’ staht feerling bedda soon, ain’t gon’ be kickin’ me off the web. Won’ be he’ to kick. We fin’ any doc’s yet?”

“Yeah. Now ask if we can afford any of ‘em.”

“Huh? Wha’aya mean ‘can’ afford’? Wha’s this $250 a mon’ we’re payin’ out for insudance?”

“$250 my ass. Try $325. And a 30% co-pay for everything on top of that.”

“WHAT THE F[mmmfffmmffmmmm]?!?”

“I told you to clean it up, dude! Yech. Read.”

“Can I scream?”

“In your condition? I wouldn’t recommend it. I already have enough washing up to do around here.”

“Soddy. But … ahhh .. s…!!”

“Gesundheit!!”

“Too la’, dude. Wha’ do they thingk they’re messin’ wid? Gas prices?”

“Might as well be. It’s all about shareholders. Profit margins. Make money or else. SOS.”

“I tho’ it was abou’ health, dude! Don’ we have a right to see a doc’ when we get sick?”

“I thought maybe having your head filled up with phlegm instead of the usual empty space would make you smarter. Guess I was wrong. You got as much ‘right’ to health care in this country as you do to a mansion in Malibu. That was the way it was in the Stone Age, and that’s the way it is now. Bring cash. Or stay home.”

“Man, those doc’s mus’ be livin’ real high off all this money.”

“Sure. The ones treating Bill Gates. Or Terrell Owens. The ones treating you and me? Last one I saw spent the entire visit, all 30 seconds of it, bitchin’ and moanin’ about how hard he had to work for so little. I’m surprised he had time or energy to look at me. Hell, I’m surprised I got out alive.”

“You’ not makin’ me very happy, dude. If the doc’s ain’ gettin’ the money, who is?”

“Can you say Viagra?”

“No’ (cough, cough) now, dude. Why don’ we have national health care, like Obama wants? So we don’ have to go through this?”

“Won’t work.”

“Who says?”

“The New Zealanders, for one. They had national health care back in the 80s, but the country couldn’t figure out how to give everybody what they wanted without long waits, short service, and physicians quitting or cracking up. And the rich got tired of waiting so they set up on their own. The rich got richer and everyone else got the shaft. Sound familiar?”

“Wors’ an’ wors’, dude! Wha’s O Ceallaigh gonna do now? He’s gettin’ a bit long in the tooth, y’know.”

“Oh, he’s got it all figured out. Carries these.”

“Sax … i … tox … Wha’s tha’, dude? Wrinkle pills? Li’ botox or somethin’? OC tryi’ not to ge’ ol’?”

“Y’might say that. No, they ain’t wrinkle pills. But believe me, they’ll cure what ails him. And he won’t be asking his great-great-grandchildren to be paying his medical bills.”

“But wha’ abou’ me, dude?”

“We google ‘the flu’, dude. And hope.”

“Swine flu, dude?”

“Did not.”

“Did … don’ do dis to me, dude!!”

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2006, 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

So now we hear, that, in 2008, two security staffers working in the clubhouse of the Boston Red Sox professional baseball team were fired for possession and use of anabolic, androgenic steroids. All involved have denied any connection between the staffers and Red Sox players. Nevertheless, coming on the heels of the Ramírez/Ortiz revelations, the news is ominous.

Even more ominous is the attitude of the commentator featured (featured) by ESPN in response to the story:

Nobody cares about the steroid use from six years anymore. Nothing is going to happen unless caught again. They were not banned in 2003 at the time, so sorry, no championships are going to be taken away, no asterisks are going to be used, baseball games are still going to be played today, so stop your whining and deal with it.

“So what”, right? Riiight. Tell it to the kids.

When the Mitchell Report on steroid abuse in professional baseball came out, a couple of years ago, the Red Sox escaped attention. What did not escape attention was that George Mitchell, the “Mitchell” of the Mitchell Report, was a once and future Red Sox employee. Wonder what he’s thinking now …?

The below, from Felloffatruck Publications, was originally posted on 16 December 2007.

===============

On the day after the Mitchell Report detailing the scope and extent of “steroid“, HGH, and other illegal performance-enhancing drug abuse in American Major League Baseball was released, I heard the lead author of the report, George Mitchell, speak to the press.

I was listening to a radio news report, so I didn’t hear all, or even most, of what Mitchell had to say. What I did get to hear was enough. Mitchell, in effect, blamed baseball’s drug crisis on the Commissioner, the team owners, the players, and the union representing the players.

My first thought: You forgot someone.

After all, as anyone who has spent more than five minutes listening to sports talk radio (and yes, my hand’s up) has heard, any time the topic of how We the People can tolerate Alex Rodriguez making as much money in a day as a university professor, or any four full-time McDonald’s employees, make in a year comes up, “baseball is a business”.

“And a business exists for why, dude?”

“To make money, dude.”

“And where does that money come from?”

“From the people who buy stuff from it, dude.”

“So if people were really pissed off about baseball players using performance-enhancing drugs …”

“Baseball’d go broke. Dude.”

“And is it?”

“Hell, no.“

Dude. Indeed, when the press asked Bud Selig what the impact of the Mitchell Report would be, his reply was “We expect to break attendance records again this coming year.”

So tell me again why we’re prosecuting Barry Bonds, instead of handing him a medal for promoting The American Way Of Profit?

For that’s what we’re doing, any time we go to the ballpark, or turn the TV or the radio or the computer to the game, or buy My Favorite Team’s Official Gear, or even mention the Curse of the Bambino – or the Billy Goat – in a blog. We the People are voting for steroids in baseball.

Yes we are. Forget polls and sanctimonious pronouncements. The only – the only – way to get steroids out of baseball, not to mention the rest of professional and amateur sports, is to stop supporting those sports. To make them go broke unless and until they clean up their acts.

Every once in awhile, I would hear a caller on sports talk radio call for a boycott of sports for this reason or that. And the station hosts would immediately come down on that caller like the proverbial ton of bricks. “It won’t work. If you don’t want your seat, someone else’ll take it. Why hurt yourself for nothing?” Of course they would say those things, they like their money too. I wonder if they even take any callers like that any more? Somebody lets that idea onto the airwaves, it could hurt the station’s bottom line. No faster ticket to poverty for a sports salesman announcer.

Or a university professor, for whom the success of his school’s football team is his last hope of ever getting his leaky, burned-out building fixed.

Dammit, there are times when I like nothing better than to watch a good game. But I haven’t set foot in a stadium since that day in 1981 when I sat next to a faculty wife in a famous university’s gridiron house. An opposing player had crossed the 50-yard line during a game that the home team was winning 33-0, and she was angry, yelling for her side to “Spear him! Spear him!” Yes, spearing is illegal, and it has killed people.

I remember when John McEnroe rose to prominence in professional tennis. Because at that point, I stopped watching tennis, and have never gone back to it. Because John McEnroe’s artistic temperament was more than a match for his athletic talent. Not for him the unruffled demeanor of a Björn Borg – born of a father who, at the first sign of a thrown racket, grounded his son and made it absolutely clear that any repeat would doom forever his dreams of playing the game. A game in which manners mattered.

Why? Because its inventors, and the inventors of similar games, recognized that sporting events are rituals. Specifically, ritualized combat. Rituals that connect us with the other animals on this blue sphere, all the way back (at least) to the cartilaginous fishes of 450 million years ago. Rituals that permit the stronger of two contestants to be identified without exposing both to potentially lethal attacks except when absolutely necessary. Rituals whose rules serve to minimize the risk of mayhem, murder, war.

Well, screw the rules. John McEnroe would express himself.

And American tennis boomed.

Pete Sampras in his prime most likely would have given John McEnroe a good ol’-fashioned whupping on the tennis court.

But Pete Sampras played like a gentleman.

And American tennis went broke. Pete who??

Yes. When We the People call for spearing hapless opponents, or 73 home runs a year out of a bottle, or thrown rackets and F-bombing referees at a tennis match, or chest-bumping and F-bombing referees at an NBA game, or for Terrell Owens to pull his cell phone out of his pocket in the end zone after scoring a gridiron touchdown, we are voting in favor of all of these things. All of which stretch the rules of the rituals. No stretching? Boring! And it’s only boring – a moving target, constantly moving towards the bleeding edge – that can lead to a sporting event going broke.

Trouble is, when the rules of ritualized combat break down, there’s only one thing left.

The real thing.

Tell me again, how much was the Bush Administration asking us to pony up to support the war in Iraq? This week?

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2007, 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

In December 1919, after a series of on- and off-the-field incidents that had to make you wonder what the reform-school orphan was taking, the Boston Red Sox professional baseball club sold pitcher/outfielder George Herman Ruth to the New York Yankees. As every citizen of Red Sox Nation knows, Babe Ruth led the then-moribund Yankees to fame and fortune, while the Red Sox pinballed from “hard luck” to disaster. Thanks to the notorious “Curse of the Bambino“, the Red Sox wouldn’t win a [gasp, choke, wheeze] “World” Series until 2004 – 85 years after Ruth was dealt to New York (and 86 years after their previous Series win).

In July 2008, after a series of on- and off-the-field incidents that had to make you wonder what the Dominican superstar was taking (vide infra), the Red Sox traded outfielder Manuel Aristides Ramírez Onelcida to the Los Angeles Dodgers. As every citizen of Red Sox Nation knows, Manny Ramírez is part of a newly-minted baseball juggernaut in Los Angeles, while the Red Sox struggle to score runs, and appear to be headed for a new Slough of Despond, a new Curse – The Curse of the Mannino.

But this new Curse threatens to take away, not only the future, but also the past. The past that, so the city of Boston used to think, had finally exorcised the Bambino’s curse. The past that includes two World Series wins – wins that were, it now appears, made possible only by illegal injection.

In a poignant – and prescient – article back in May 2009, sports columnist Bill Simmons (of ESPN) imagined the agonies of having to explain to his son how it was OK for the Red Sox to win the 2004 Series when at least two of the team’s headline stars (Ramírez, David Ortiz, Pedro Martínez) were cheating. In May, Simmons was speculating, based on the 50-game suspension for substance abuse that Ramírez was then serving. Today (30 July 2009), what Simmons entitled “his worst nightmare” seems to be coming true.

Or maybe it’s his second worst nightmare.

After all, the son, instead of peppering his father with barbed questions, could have shrugged his shoulders and said, “So what?”

That’s what a lot of folk who write in to the sports websites have been saying about this revelation, indeed the whole “steroids in sports” topic. At least, those folk whose comments the sports websites will let you see. “So what? Who cares what these guys are shooting, so long as we get to see the home runs on SportsCenter. Bring on the homers!”

A horrible attitude, you say? Careful that what you say matches what you do.

Do you go to professional baseball games? Do you watch them on television, follow their websites online, sign up for Red Sox Nation? You’re saying “So what?” to the steroid issue. Along with the millions of people who have been hearing all about it and have still been packing the stands and driving the TV ratings up. Unless you live in New York, where the damned gall of the stadium owners finally got to be too much for even you to swallow.

Do you wring your hands with the preacher at church about the plight of sweatshop workers, and shop at Wal-Mart and Target anyway? You’re saying “So what?” to those $1 a day sneaker makers.

The professionals in business are professionals for a reason. They know how to make money. They know that a million pious words are instantly negated by one swipe of the magic plastic. They will sell you that balloon mortgage because they know they can.

And it’s not their fault. Because, not only can they, they have to. Or the people who own stock in their company will sniff an infinitesimal drop in the company’s profits (read their dividends), and drop those stocks like primed grenades. Bring on those homers, baseball guys, or we’re watching football gridiron. Or American Idol.

There is, has been, and will be a lot of pious folk blaming The Big Cheeses for steroids in baseball, the economic downturn, all that stuff. It’s not their fault.

It’s ours.

And, your friendly neighborhood Amoeba suggests, it will continue to be our fault. Unless and until the day comes that sports owners field teams in which the players are clean of drug cheaters, rapists, racketeers, etc. etc. Because crime doesn’t sell.

Until the day comes that supermarket checkout stands stock Scientific American because that magazine sells, and Cosmopolitan doesn’t.

Until the day comes that television news programs actually report the news, because in-depth reporting of the roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict sells, and fourth-hand rumors of possible child molestation by a priest who was 90 years old in 1956 do not.

As it is, we now have the world that we have made for ourselves. A world of baseball players who have learned that the ka-CHINGs of the cash registers easily drown out the screams of agony from parents whose children have died from steroid abuse. That it is how it is, is no one’s fault but our own.

And we can all go to hell in it together.

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

Patient: So you think you can help, Doc?

Physician: Yes, I think so. Here’s a prescription for the pain you’ve been experiencing.

Patient (reads): As … pi …

Physician: Occasionally you’ll get heartburn from taking these, so we’d better get you to take these antacids to counteract that.

Patient: OK. Can I go …

Physician Hang on. Your cholesterol readings are high, that could be contributing to what you’re feeling. And besides, you’d be at increased risk of heart attack or stroke if we left this alone. So you’d better take this medication too.

Patient: Criminy! The price on this one will induce a heart attack!

Physician: Well, I considered an anti-anxiety medication, but I was beginning to think you had enough … Oh! I knew I was forgetting something. The anti-cholesterol medication means you can’t have grapefruit juice, so I’ll need to make sure you get a vitamin C supplement. Here.

Patient: Where?! I’m out of pockets!

Physician: Right. You’ll need a calendar and one of these dispensers, so you can keep track of all these pills. Including this one, which will help ensure that you absorb the vitamins OK. But be sure you manage the dosage just right, or you could experience neuralgia.

Patient: Which is?

Physician: Pain …

Patient: Doc, wouldn’t it be a whole lot better for everybody if I just went home and died?

Physician (horrified): Not for me!

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

“Yo!”

“Yo ho!”

“Yo ho ho …”

“And a beer. What’s got you so jolly, Roger?”

“Have you heard about the swine flu?”

“The swine what?“

“The swine flu!“

“Did not.”

“Did!“

“Did not!“

“Did … what the hell are you talking about?!?“

“Whatever it is you’ve got in that bottle. It’s supposed to be pink elephants, not flying pigs.”

“Of course pigs fly. Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of Pigs In Space?“

“Omygawd. Gimme shelter from pigs on the wing.”

“You need shelter from the ones on the ground, too. That’s what I’m trying to tell you!”

“They landed already? We’re being invaded?“

“Yeah. By pig germs. Influenza germs.”

“Oh! That flu! Why didn’t you say so in the first place? I knew a guy once, he was immune or something, and everybody was mad at him because of it.”

“How come?”

“They said he couldn’t get a grippe.”

“Friend of yours?”

“No. Your first cousin. Last I heard, everybody was worried about chicken flu. How come we’re sweatin’ pigs all of a sudden?”

“Well, I got an idea …”

“Alert the media!!“

“I’m going to save your life and ignore that. But only ’cause my story needs an audience. You remember this guy Jesus, right? How this sicko comes up to him one day, and Jesus yanks a pack of demons out of him and dumps them in a herd of pigs? And then the pigs all run off a cliff and drown themselves?”

“Yeah?”

“Those demons are getting their revenge …”

“Well, you go ahead and waste your time on your conspiracy theories. I’m more worried about Porky Pig.”

“Porky Pig?”

“Yeah. You know what happens if he gets the swine flu, don’t you?”

“What?”

“Abadeah-badeah-badeah-badeah-ba-That’s all, folks!”

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

The other day, blogger buddy Thom discovered the fat version of Michelangelo’s famous statue of David. Yes, that David. The one who slew Goliath and became King of Israel, in the process putting the neighbors into a snit over his occupation of the West Bank.

I tracked the original image back to an advertising campaign for the German Olympic Sport Federation, back in November 2007. The message of that campaign was, “If you don’t move, you get fat.” Sometime during 2008, the tale surfaced in the blogosphere that the original ‘David’ made a two-year tour of American museums, and returned to Italy in its (ahem) enlarged state.

Man. You don’t want to mess with the American diet, if Big Macs can turn even solid rock into the Pillsbury Doughboy. No, folks, I mean the marble, not the abs. We all know already what Big Macs can do to abs.

The “American obesity epidemic” moral is clear, and there have to be a million places on the Web where you can read all about it. But not here. Because, when I saw “fat David”, a number of thoughts came to mind that did not drive me to my nearest health-food profiteers outlet, despite my increasingly uncanny resemblance to the, er, revised version of the statue.

The professor, for instance, who, he told me, had complete confidence that, in the event of a famine, he would outlive me (I was much skinnier in those days), because of his ability to store fat during times of plenty.

The island cultures that value stouter women, and praise the husband who can keep his spouse heavy as the best possible provider – because he had protected his family, in the best available way, against times of dearth.

The Venus figurines of antiquity, most of which portray women whom we now would label as morbidly obese – perhaps because they were well-enough nourished to deliver and nurse healthy babies.

To be sure, the health risks that we now associate with being overweight are unlikely to have been any different in the past. However, you may have noticed that most of these risks – heart attack, stroke, atherosclerosis, diabetes, respiratory distress, certain cancers – are expressed in people over the age of 50. Through most of human history, the person who survived the various wars, diseases, accidents, birthings of children, and (most particularly) famines long enough to reach the 35th birthday had already attained a ripe old age. The elder who died at 55 of a coronary was a veritable Methuselah.

Which means that, for the five (out of seven) billion of us who have reasonably ready access to the appropriate technologies (have you thanked a scientist today?), we obsess over scales and body mass indices, and shower money on multibillion-dollar medical, diet, and health-food industries …

… to combat a trait that has evolved in humans over millions of years to confer a survival advantage.

Yes I will have fries with that. Small.

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.