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PapaVox Archive: all of 2014

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December 30, 2014
“An economic system centered on the god of money needs to plunder nature to sustain the frenetic rhythm of consumption that is inherent to it. The system continues unchanged, since what dominates are the dynamics of an economy and a finance that are lacking in ethics. It is no longer man who commands, but money. Cash commands."

“The monopolizing of lands, deforestation, the appropriation of water, inadequate protection from agro-toxics are some of the evils that tear man from the land of his birth. Climate change, the loss of biodiversity and deforestation are already showing their devastating effects in the great cataclysms we witness.” -- Pope Francis, October, 2014
December 13, 2014
 
First off: Jeb Bush sending signals that he may be getting ready for 2016 presidential run.    ( * sigh * )
 
Science:
Cars:
Tech, Gear and Food:
Culture:
Law and Disorder:
October 31, 2014
Happy Halloween.
October 7, 2014

Halloween is coming:
Modern Life and Culture:
Science:
September 3, 2014

Science:
Technology:
Modern Life:
Gear:
Law and Disorder:
Finally, two comments on the latest Internets Uproar:
July 9, 2014

Sort of a weird day for me, away from the house early to work, back home mid-afternoon to make a very late lunch, trying to think nutrition instead of  resorting to "food right now" and also trying out the new speaker shelf I just installed on top of the TV...

... and somehow, "Doctor OZ" was on.

I never watch daytime TV; it's beyond brainless, and actually capable of lowering your IQ. But there was a new diet guru being interviewed, and she said something that clicked, and got me thinking.

Modern diets are rather static.

The diet we are evolved to eat is very dynamic, and based wholly on whatever we could run across as omnivorous pack primates.

She recommended eating foods in three "phases" over the week which will tend to trigger higher metabolic rates. Simplified:
  • Phase 1: carbs and fruits
  • Phase 2: higher protein
  • Phase 3: balanced with additional high-quality fats
It seems to work. She has a bestselling book that garners lots of praise from people who say it works for them. Doctors and nutritionists all seem to say, "It makes sense."

A 20 pound loss in 4 weeks is what she claims. Reviews seem to indicate that this is not an unreasonable expectation.

And she's not the only one that has been saying this: a respected sports nutrition body builder has been preaching this for years, and the guys he works with win competitions. Athletes are utterly pragmatic; if it doesn't work, they drop it and move on until they find something that works. This works.
 
At the very least, the diet consists of lots of healthy, fresh ingredients, no weird fad stuff, no nutritional deprivation, no starvation. So it is healthy.

So here's the pert, good looking, energetic young woman with the best selling book: Haylie Pomroy.

Here's a comparison between the sports nutrition guy and the Pomroy book: Joe Parrillo

And here's one of the essential ingredients to the sports nutrition approach that Pomroy leaves out: Medium Chain Triglycerides.

So, loyal and alert readers, what do you think?
June 25, 2014

Science:
Culture and Modern life:
Money: Law and Disorder: To Serve and Protect:
May 22, 2014
Change your ebay password. Do it now. Ebay just got hacked.
May 7, 2014
 
Science:
  • Standardized testing and schools as factories: Louis CK versus Common Core:  "The rise of standardized testing, standardized curriculum, and 'accountability' are part of the wider phenomenon of framing every question in business terms. In the modern world, the state is a kind of souped up business. That's why we're all 'taxpayers' [Ed: or 'consumers'] instead of 'citizens.' 'Taxpayer' re-frames policy outcomes as a kind of customer-loyalty perk. If your taxes are the locus of your relationship with the state, then people who don't pay taxes -- people too young, old, disabled, or unlucky to be working -- are not entitled to policy outcomes that reflect their needs.

    'Taxpayers' are the shareholders in government. The government is the board of directors. School administrators are the management. Teachers are the assembly-line workers. Kids are the product. 'Accountability' means that the product has to be quantified and reported on every quarter. The only readily quantifiable elements of education are attendance and test-scores, so the entire educational system is reorganized around maximizing these elements, even though they are only tangentially related to real educational outcomes and are trivial to game.

    The vilification of teachers and teachers' unions go hand-in-hand with this idea. At the heart of teachers' unions' demands is the insistence that teaching is a craft that requires nonstandard, difficult-to-quantify approaches that are incompatible with factory-style 'accountability.' The emphasis on the outliers of teachers' unions -- the rare instances in which bad teachers are protected by their trade unions -- instead of the activity that constitutes the vast majority of union advocacy -- demanding an educational approach that is grounded in trust, respect, and individual tutelage -- the 'taxpayer' types can make out teachers as lazy slobs who don't want to jog on the same brutal treadmill as the rest of us."
Health:
Culture:
The Economy:
Law and Disorder:
April 20, 2014
You load sixteen tons, and what do you get?
another day older and deeper in debt
St. Peter, don't you call me, 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store
Tennessee Ernie Ford Sings "16 Tons" which seems entirely appropriate for today's forgotten 100 year anniversary of  the Ludlow Massacre. Where Colorado Fuel & Iron Company (CF&IC) goons and militia hired by the Rockefellers murdered men, women and children for the crime of participating in a labor strike.

They asked for:
  • recognition of the union (the CF&IC basically told the worker's elected representatives to drop dead)
  • an 8-hour work day (they were being worked until they dropped from extreme exhaustion  -- and had terrible accidents)
  • the right to elect their own check-weighmen (because CF&IC weighmen cheated them constantly)
  • payment for "dead work" (while they were required to stand at the ready to work, but not used)
  • a 10 percent increase in wages on the tonnage rates (their pay was pitifully low)
  • the right to trade in any store (the company stores were ridiculously overpriced)
  • choose their own doctors (the company would rather let a cheap, disposable worker die than spend money on medicine, and Company doctors didn't believe in "Black Lung")
  • choose their own boarding places (company housing was ridiculously overpriced)
  • enforcement of Colorado mining laws (which the CF&IC completely ignored)
  • abolition of the company guard system (where, if you annoyed a boss, they simply beat you into submission.)
What they got was machine-gunned and burned.

The Wikipedia entry.
A New Yorker article published yesterday.
Photos from the Colorado Historical Archives. 
April 5, 2014
 
Science:
Culture:
Money in politics:
Secrecy:
Official misconduct:
And finally this: torture is evil. It is the definition of evil, it is the hallmark of utterly despotic and corrupt regimes, it is the absolute proof that the most reprehensible tyrants in human history were insane monsters. But that's not enough for the US Congress; it must also be proven to be "ineffective" in gaining useful intelligence. David Ignatius: A tortured debate between Congress and the CIA. And in case you didn't know, everybody KNEW it was ineffective. All along. In every instance. Without exception. In fact, it makes us, as a nation, less safe.
March 18, 2014

Amidst all of the highly improbable theories about what may have happened to Flight MA 370, an experienced pilot named Chris Goodfellow now applies Occam's Razor to the event, and he has a perfectly mundane, perfectly reasonable explanation of what most likely happened. His scenario doesn't require terrorists, nefarious plots by the pilot or crew, space aliens, hijacking by remote Blackberry, or other forms of fanciful wild speculation: Chris Goodfellow - Google+ - MH370  A different point of view. Pulau Langkawi 13,000…
March 4, 2014
 
Science and health:
Modern life:
Law and Politics:
February 6, 2014

Health: 
Science and tech:
Politics:
  • (Rant mode on.)
  • Oh, Please: the Rich have become massively richer since Ronald (Rich) Reagan was hired by the GOP to institute serfdom in America, mostly by royally screwing the working class for an entire generation, and now the very idea that it may be time to give the working Citizen an even break means: poor people are Nazis, and Rich people are pitiful, delicate, fragile persecuted victims, in desperate need of protection and emotional understanding, and possibly hugs and milk and cookies. Venture Capitalist Compares Liberal Fight Against Gross Inequality To Kristallnacht. There are some cogent reasons as to how this idiotic and deeply offensive viewpoint has come to be: The Brittle Grip, Part 2. But it is still being tossed about as if it were true: Rich Man Doubles Down On Warning That Poor People Are Basically Nazis. So how about this, you Uberwealthy Ruling Elite Heartless Entitled Privileged Overlord Arrogant Bastards: how about you "allow" the working class to get an even break for a change. Just an even break, that's all. Just a decent wage for a decent day's work, and a chance to send our kids to college, oh and give our pensions back, and keep your money-grubbing bejeweled Wall Street Corporate hands off our Social Security, and release your death grip on the GOP in particular and Congress in general, and go cry into your crystal martini glasses inside your walled-estate palaces, and learn how to be just a little tiny bit less rich and powerful.
  • (Rant mode off.)
American History:
Law:
February 1, 2014
 
From the website, What’s the Most Important Lesson You Learned from a Teacher?

What Malone Said, by David Dobbs
 
I started studying the violin in my 30s, working with a warm, intense teacher named Malone. After 5 years he put Bach’s D minor partita in front of me. “We’ll start with the Allemande,” he said. He put the music on the stand and talked me through the first movement, pencilling in bowings and fingerings, occasionally demonstrating how to get through some rhythmic puzzle, and sent me home. I practiced hard all week and came in ready to play about half the first page.

He stopped me on the second note. “Please put down the violin,” he said. I did.

“You’re skipping through that first D. I know it’s just a fucking little sixteenth note, but you have to play the whole thing. I don’t even mean the time. You’re actually giving it enough time. But you’re playing over it instead of through it. You have to play right through the center of it. It’s a leading note, but it’s not just a step into the room. It is the room, and you have to put us there. Play it. Play through every single note in the piece.”

I started to reach for the violin. He held up a hand.

“Wait,” he said. “This is Bach. And Bach, more than any other music, and these pieces, more than any other Bach, is music complete. This doesn’t just mean it’s beautiful. This means you can play this music all your life, even just this Allemande, and no matter what you do, it will expose you. It will expose everything you are and everything you’re not. It will expose everything you can do and everything you can’t. It will expose everything you’ve mastered and everything you’re scared of. And I don’t mean just about the violin. I mean about everything. It’ll show all that today and it’ll show all that when you play it again in 10 years. And people who know music, who’ve seen you play it both times, they will see you play it and know who you were and who you’ve become.

“There is nothing you can do about this. Or actually there is only one thing you can do about it. And that’s to play the fucking music. To not play scared, even if you’re terrified. To not rush. To not short anything. Inhabit this thing. Play it full.”

He took a deep breath, let it out slow, and gave me the tiniest hint of a smile. “Okay,” he said, and nodded at my violin. “Play.”

David Dobbs writes on culture and science for the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Neuron Culture, and other places. He’s working on his fifth book, The Orchid and the Dandelion.
God Bless You, President Obama.

For the first time in 30 years, I now have affordable health insurance -- including dental -- thanks to Obamacare.
https://www.healthcare.gov/
Tuesday, January 14, 2014

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