Quick Hitts

 

Social media sites are infested with sayings plastered into graphics files. Most of them are trite, cliché, and/or stupid. The few that aren’t are diminished by such treatment.

If you’ve got something worth reading, just write it in regular text. Plain text retains the power of your words.  Slapping them into a graphics file dilutes their impact, except for the easily impressed (i.e. stupid), who probably aren’t your audience anyway.

Another annoying meme, which fortunately seems to be dying out, is people holding up paper with stuff written on it, partially obscuring their face. I was going to do one myself, with the text saying how stupid the meme was and how it trivialized the messages. While I was writing the copy I wondered if someone else had already done it. A quick search found someone who had. Thank you, whoever you are.  You just saved me a lot of work. (Click to enlarge.)

 

The food police have fired another salvo in the war against food choice.  This on is aimed at meat, with this ridiculous article in the LA times. The headline reads “All red meat is bad for you, new study says.” They include a link to the study, which is uncommon in this type of propaganda. The abstract makes it makes it incredibly easy to debunk.

…the pooled hazard ratio (HR) (95% CI) of total mortality for a 1-serving-per-day increase was 1.13 (1.07-1.20) for unprocessed red meat and 1.20 (1.15-1.24) for processed red meat. The corresponding HRs (95% CIs) were 1.18 (1.13-1.23) and 1.21 (1.13-1.31) for CVD mortality and 1.10 (1.06-1.14) and 1.16 (1.09-1.23) for cancer mortality.

A quick lesson may help those unfamiliar with epidemiology. The first number is the Risk Ratio. 1.13 means a 13% increase in risk. 1.0 would mean zero increase. The number in parentheses is the confidence interval (CI). It’s not exactly a margin of error, but works the same way. The 1.13 number might really be 1.07 or 1.20 or anything in between. If the CI includes 1.0 the results are not statistically significant.

In this study the results were barely statistically significant. Combine that with the fact it was based on surveys (a problematic approach that introduces recall bias) and the fact that any RR less than 2.0 is suspect because of the limitations of epidemiology, and the study proves….NOTHING. Nothing at all.

The article was honest enough to include this acknowledgment of the problems with basing studies on surveys:

Carol Koprowski, a professor of preventive medicine at USC’s Keck School of Medicine who wasn’t involved in the research, cautioned that it can be hard to draw specific conclusions from a study like this because there can be a lot of error in the way diet information is recorded in food frequency questionnaires, which ask subjects to remember past meals in sometimes grueling detail.

Of course, epidemiology never proves anything. It can’t, nor is it designed to. It simply provides an estimate of a probability. Smartenized people know estimates this small mean nothing. So do the professionals in the field:

“As a general rule of thumb, we are looking for a relative risk of 3 or more before accepting a paper for publication.” – Marcia Angell, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine”

“My basic rule is if the relative risk isn’t at least 3 or 4, forget it.” – Robert Temple, director of drug evaluation at the Food and Drug Administration.

“Relative risks of less than 2 are considered small and are usually difficult to interpret. Such increases may be due to chance, statistical bias, or the effect of confounding factors that are sometimes not evident.” – The National Cancer Institute

“An association is generally considered weak if the odds ratio [relative risk] is under 3.0 and particularly when it is under 2.0, as is the case in the relationship of ETS and lung cancer.” – Dr. Kabat, IAQC epidemiologist

Note that numbers in this study are even lower than the nonsense second-hand smoke numbers Nicotine Nannies have used to vilify and marginalize smokers.

Pay attention, folks. You’re going to see more and more and more of this kind of junk science as the Food Fascists try to prevent you from making your own decisions about what you eat.

More Info:

Learn how epidemiology works.

 

We lost one of the great ones this week – Peter Bergman, the greatest comic most of you have never heard of. Peter was a member of Firesign Theatre, a four man troupe that created some of the funniest, strangest, and best comedy of the late sixties and early seventies. Although they’ve continued to release new material sporadically they’re best known for their earlier albums, including, “Waiting for the Electrician or Someone Like Him”, “How Can You Be Two Places At Once When You’re Not Anywhere At All,” “Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers” and “I Think We’re All Bozos on This Bus.”

Good comedy makes you laugh. There’s lots of it out there and it’s easy to find. Great comedy is rarer. It makes you laugh, and think, then, sometimes, change what you think. Phenomenal comedy, the rarest kind, makes you laugh and then, sometimes, changes the way you think. Firesign Theatre had that effect on a lot of us. As Richard Metzger puts it:

“I don’t think there is ANYTHING that defines who I was in high school more than being that kid listening to Firesign Theatre on headphones stoned out of my gourd. I think the way I think because of the Firesign Theatre. I phrase things the way I do because of the Firesign Theatre.  I look at the world the way I do because of them.”

Some of the humor was so subtle and obscure just getting it made you feel smart. It took dozens of listens to catch everything. For instance, it wasn’t until my 12th or 15th listening of “Nick Danger, Third Eye” that I got the joke: “They’d never believe me now. My story had more holes in it than Albert Hall.” I felt triumphant for figuring it out and simultaneously stupid that it took me so long. (Note to younger generations – you have to listen to The Beatles to get it. In fact, you’ve got to listen to The Beatles to get a lot of the references in Nick Danger.)

They paid attention to the tiny details, even the fact we were listening to them on flat vinyl records. On side one of “How Can You Be Two Places at Once…” they say, “She’s no fun, she fell right over.” On side two:

NANCY: The whole world is spinning!

NICK: That’s lucky for us! If it were flat, all the Chinese would fall off!

(We hear the sound of Nancy falling to the floor.)

NICK: She’s no fun, she fell right over. Wait a minute…didn’t I say that on the other side of the record. Where am I? I better check…

(We hear a snippet from side one, played backwards.)

NICK: Oh, it’s OK, they’re speaking Chinese..

First, we laugh at the joke. Then we realize we’re listing to a flat record. Then it strikes us that it’s spinning. But there is yet another layer. One day, on the umpteenth listen, I wondered… I checked the position of the tone arm at that moment. I flipped the record and moved the tone arm in the same position. Sure enough, the part they’d played backwards on side two exactly matched its position on side one.

“How Can You Be Two Places At Once When You’re Not Anywhere At All” is not only one of my favorite albums of all time, it features one of my favorite album covers:

 

It’s been ripped off dozens of times, by dozens of people. Shortly after the fall of the USSR Abkhaz, a tiny disputed territory no one cared about, tried to raise money by printing worthless sheets of “collectable” stamps. For only $12.95 you could be the proud owner of a sheet of these:

Evidently the artist was in a hurry and no one checked his work. That peace symbol behind Lennon’s head? Yeah, it’s really a Mercedes Benz logo.

They peddled their stamps via full page ads, including one in the TV Guide. Their ad was on the right hand page. There was a story on the facing page about the series Red Dwarf being canceled. The headline was “Don’t Crush That Dwarf.” It was a beautiful jab at the rip-off – something few people would notice – a perfect Firesign style joke.

If you’re from my generation (commonly known Generation Old Farts) you probably know and love Firesign. The rest of you are in for the treat of discovering them for the first time. You can find most of their albums on GrooveShark. I’d recommend starting with Nick Danger, Third Eye.  Listen to it once to enjoy the obvious jokes, the ones you get right away. Then listen to it again and again to get what you missed. The more you listen, the better it gets.

More Info

Their Website

Richard Metzger’s Tribute to Bergman  At the end of the article there’s a great compilation of commercials they did for a local Volkswagen dealer. And yes, they were real commercials.

L.A. Times Obituary

If you like Firesign, you’ll like Teknikal Diffikulties, a podcast that captures the spirit and style of Firesign Theatre.

 

Amateur evil villains construct elaborate plans that require dozens of complex capers to work flawlessly. The best evil villains are far more subtle. They reach their goal with one single action, one domino they flick, almost casually, before sitting back to watch events inevitably tumble into completing their master plan.

Perhaps it was just luck, but I suspect Obama knew exactly what he was doing when he tipped a single domino: a federal demand that employer’s health insurance cover birth control. It’s triggered a series of events that makes the GOP look evil, which plays into his master plan of another four years to grow government and reduce liberty. (As opposed to the GOPs master plan to do the same thing.)

Covering birth control is a requirement that already exists in 28 states where Catholic businesses have complied without their world ending. But making it a federal mandate provided them with a platform to bitch and moan about being forced to act in a way that’s contrary to their morals.

They have no argument. The Catholic Church can not make any claims about their morals, because they have none. They ran the world’s largest and most successful pedophile ring for at least a half a century, and when it was exposed they responded by protecting (and sometimes rewarding) the perpetrator’s and vilifying the victims. Let’s be blunt – their priests literally fucked little children, over and over and over, tens of thousands of times, and the church still has not accepted the responsibility for their actions. Therefore, any claims they make about morality should be laughed at and then ignored.

Although this legislation feels good, I can’t find any clause in the constitution that says people should get free birth control, and I don’t like government mandates of any kind. So I have to say it’s a bad idea, no matter how much I enjoy pissing off the Catholic Church.

The left has made ridiculous claims about the price of birth control. I’ve heard claims that it cost $3,000 a year. Nonsense. Condoms are a dollar each. Using a diaphragm costs a few bucks a month. The Pill, depending on the type, costs between fifteen and fifty dollars a month. No one priced out of buying contraception.

On the other hand, it makes economic sense for health insurance companies to encourage birth control. Providing it is far, far cheaper than paying for a delivery of a kid that will also end up on the insurance plan.

This issue has served as a springboard to highlight other conservative attacks on women. For years I’ve been harping that the actual difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is trivial, but the GOP seems determined to prove me wrong on at least one set of issues: they hate women. At least, women who don’t stay home and squirt out babies for them.

There is legislation pending in some of the toothless states that will mandate rape for women who seek early term abortions. The law will require that their doctors rape them with medical instruments. How sick is that?

Almost as sick as Rick Santorum’s view of women. Not only does he preach that birth control between married people is wrong, he thinks that if a woman gets pregnant from rape, that fetus is a gift from god. I know his god is a dick, but come on.

The capper to this caper was Rush Limbaugh running is mouth and slandering a woman who merely wanted to testify in favor of this regulation. You’ve all heard what he spewed, spew that was over the top even for him. It resulted in a massive boycott movement against his sponsors. As of this writing seven major sponsors have pulled their ads from his show. Rush has responded with a lukewarm non-apology apology.

Lefties are delighted, convinced this is the beginning of the end of Rush. Silly people. His fifteen million fans are impervious to logic, reason or compassion for anyone other than Rush himself. Consider that while he was celebrating the War on Some Drugs and preaching the evils of drug use, he was sucking down so much hillbilly heroin he blew out his own hearing. His fans responded to his hypocrisy with…sympathy, mostly.

This entire series of events creates a picture of the Republicans as the party that despises women, a picture that’s difficult to dispel, especially when fresh examples keep hitting the front pages. And somewhere, sitting in the shadows of a darkened room in the White House, smoking a clandestine cigarette and perhaps petting a white cat, Obama is laughing a loud, evil laugh. “Muh Haw Haw Haw Haw Haw!” His plan is working perfectly.

Many years ago some of us were sounding the warning that once the Nicotine Nazis mastered their blueprint for vilifying and marginalizing smokers, other nannies, with different agendas, would use that blueprint to force compliance with their cause. Those predictions have come true, and now the country’s foremost nanny movement wants to control our diets.

Before reading the rest of this article, please take a few minutes to read this column.

Done? If you’re Smartenized, your bullshit meter is smoking.

When Ronda Storms, a Republican state senator in Florida, is accused of nanny-state-ism for her efforts on behalf of a sane diet, it’s worth noting.

Note his choice of words: “A sane diet.” By implication anyone who disagrees must be insane.

And as someone who has called for the defunding of an educational Planned Parenthood program and banning library book displays supporting Gay and Lesbian Pride Month, she is hardly in her party’s left wing.

Trying to pin her to the left or right is a distraction, a complete waste of time and a perfect illustration of the false dichotomy driving American politics. She’s not right wing or left wing. She’s a Big Government, Big Nanny Statist. (I keep repeating this in hopes that it will sink in: We need to stop arguing about left vs. right. The discussion should be about government vs. liberty.)

Yet she makes sense. “It’s just bad public policy to allow unfettered access to all kinds of food,” she told me over the phone.

Let that sink in for a minute. Unfettered access to a variety of foods is bad public policy.  She wants  public policy (which is a nice way of saying Big Brother) to limit our choices to foods that meet her approval.

Mr. Bittman thinks that makes sense.

The argument for limiting the use of food stamps to actual food is consistent with established policy.

Ah yes, the old “we’ve always done it this way” argument. That’s compelling if you’re a statist, but not if you’re a grown up who wants to make their own decisions.

All of this is part of the bigger question: How do we regulate the consumption of dangerous foods?

He’s not asking if we should regulate our choices.  He assumes we must. His only concern is finding the most efficient way to do it.

There is no such thing as dangerous food. Danger comes from over consumption of otherwise harmless food. No matter how much fat or calories or other scary bogymen are lurking in a plate of Fetechini Alfredo or a Big Mac, occasionally indulging in them is harmless.

Last year a brigade of parents stood watch outside a corner store in North Philadelphia in an attempt to prevent their kids from buying junk food.

A group of adults, dressed as authority figures, stood outside a convenient store and intimidated children to keep them from buying candy, and chastise them if they did.  How would you feel if your children had been subject to such harassment?

Mr. Bittman finds this praiseworthy.

We need the government on our side.

There it is. The demand for Big Brother to step in and make all this mandatory.

It must acknowledge the dangers caused by the most unhealthy aspects of our diet and figure out how to help us cope with them, because this is the biggest public health challenge facing the developed world.

The kind and benevolent government must step in and “help us cope.” Not just provide information or encourage us to make the “right” choices, but “help” us cope with the horrible burden of choosing what we eat. Let us bask in the warmth of the helpful, loving hand of Big Brother, and pretend it never turns into a fist.

This battle isn’t just starting, folks.  It’s in full swing and gaining momentum. Studies that equate sugar with crack cocaine have been published. Cities like LA are preventing fast food restaurants from opening or operating. The FDA has conducted an armed raid, guns drawn, on the Amish for the horrible crime of selling fresh, healthy raw milk to willing customers. Mars Inc. has just given into Michelle Obama’s arm twisting and is not only reducing the size of regular candy bars, but also completely eliminating king size bars.

All of us need to wake up, learn about these weasels and their cause, and fight and oppose and discredit them at every opportunity. Unless, of course, you want bureaucrats writing and regulating every menu in the country.

…this is the biggest public health challenge facing the developed world.

And people like him are the one of biggest challenges to liberty in a free world. They must be stopped.

Other Info

F. Paul Wilson’s short story Lipidleggin’ predicted the current mess way back in ’78. with Wilson’s permission, I recorded it as a Quick Hitts podcast.

The Water Of Love Method

My kids inherited my dislike of getting up in the morning. When they were little getting them out of bed for school was a daily battle. It started with me opening their bedroom doors and telling them to get out of bed. It usually ended with everyone yelling at each other.

Then I accidentally created the Water Of Love Method which left me amused and them merely annoyed. And out of bed. And slightly moist.

One morning, after asking them to get up failed, I took a glass of water into one of their rooms. I dipped my fingers in it and sprinkled water on my daughter while singing Dire Straits’ “Water Of Love.” She reacted as if I was flinging acid on her. I just dipped and flipped, dipped and flipped, while singing and telling her I’d stop as soon as she was standing up. She put her feet on the floor and said “I’m up.”

“Nope,” I said as I administered another sprinkle. “You have to be standing.” She stood up and I stopped immediately, then went to her sister’s room and repeated the process.

On the first day it took about two minutes each for them to get out of bed, which was quite an improvement over fifteen minutes of yelling and threats. The second day it took about a minute.

Five days into the experiment I started walking up the stairs with my glass of water, singing “Water of Love.” They were at the top of the stairs before I was, both saying “daaaaaaaaaad!”

From then on all I had to do was sing that song, often from the bottom of the stairs, and they’d be out of bed in seconds.

When I shared this with some other parents they said they tried it and it didn’t work. It turned out they were just dumping an entire glass of water on their kid. That left them out of ammo, and the kid knew it. The result was a drenched kid who was still curled up under the covers.

The sprinkling method works much better, is more fun to do, and you end up with a kid who is merely damp.

Novice artists are often appalled by the idea of constraints. “I’m going to ignore the rules and create something completely outside the box!” (A cliché that reveals a complete lack of creativity.) They don’t realize the boxes are there for a reason, and working within them could make them more creative, not less.

For instance, if someone is trying to write or perform a blues song, they have stay within some rather strict constraints. Working within them is like dancing in a room – you have to change direction before you hit the wall, but have a great deal of freedom within the room’s constraints. Stray outside the boundaries of what defines the blues and suddenly you’re not playing the blues any more. You’re playing something else, maybe something good, but it ain’t the blues.*

Listen to Dave Brubeck’s “Time Out” – the whole album, not just “Take Five.” Brubeck was experimenting with uncommon time signatures. The musicians working within those constraints created something amazing. Without those constraints they probably would have created Just Another Jazz Album, something that was good, but not a masterpiece.

Unconstrained writing is, unfortunately, frequently presented on forums and social media sites. Entire long messages are written in texting style: “OMG, Im goin 2go2 my bros 2c my rents 4 xmas. LOL.” If you have the audacity to comment on their “style” they’ll usually respond with something like: “B cool bro, ts is the wa I rite. UR 2 old to 2B tellin me how 2 rite. Go eat sum dog food or sumptin LOL” Their insistence on avoiding constraints annoys most readers and gives them the impression the writer is not too bright. That impression is correct 96.4% of the time.

Before I started the Quick Hitts Podcast in 2005 I listened to a lot of other podcasts, taking careful note of things I didn’t like. I thought most shows were too long. The content was good, the production and presentation was fine, but the author/performer spent on way too much time talking about their subject. Knowing I was likely to make the same mistake I imposed my own constraint: every Quick Hitts would be ten minutes or less. I can easily ramble on forever about any subject that interests me. The time limit forces me to boil down my thoughts into a demi-glace. I often break this rule, sometimes going as long as fifteen minutes, but attempting to stay within that constraint is what keeps the show pithy.

(To the folks who have been asking when the next episode will come out: No, I haven’t podfaded, not entirely. I have a few ideas in the queue and will get to them sooner or later. Probably later.)

If you feel that your writing or your music isn’t as good as it could be because you’re bound by convention and restraints, try turning that thought around. What can you do to impose more restraints or tighter restraints? Give it a try, and you may find that well of creativity you’ve been searching for.