(Advt in Scientific American, October, 2009, p 95.) 

Resveratrol is conjectured to be a partial explanation for he “The French Paradox,” the puzzling fact that people in France enjoy a high-fat diet yet suffer less heart disease than American and live significantly longer lives (in some cases up to 40%). 

But don’t you try to drink yourself healthy, because it would take 50 bottles a day! 

Hmmm. The French manage to get less heart attacks by drinking wine but we Americans have to buy an expensive pill? MAYBE IT’S BECAUSE WE DRINK CALIFORNIAN WINE!!! 

The Department of Erudite Bafflegab. 

When the NY Times gets caught with its collective pants down, the resulting “explanations” exhibit some of the highest ego-salving nest-feathering genius the urban literatti can conjure up.

Here is the NY Time’s Public Editor’s (ombudsman) straight-forward complaint: 

When the Senate voted to cut off all federal funds to Acorn, there was not a word in the newspaper or on its website. When the New York City council froze all its funding for Acorn and the Brooklyn district attorney opened a criminal investigation, there was still nothing. 

Here is his description of Times’ editors’ convoluted justification: 

Finally, on Sept. 16, nearly a week after the first video was posted, The Times took note of the controversy, under the headline, "Conservatives Draw Blood From Acorn, Favored Foe." The article said that conservatives hoped to weaken the Obama administration by attacking its allies and appointees they viewed as leftist. The conservatives thought they had a "winning formula.” 

Dean Baquet, the Washington bureau chief, said, "We did not ignore the Acorn story, so I don't think it's fair for people to say we blew it off." The paper's follow-up coverage has included a profile of O'Keefe, a report on a House vote to deny funds to Acorn, and an article on the In­ternal Revenue Service's decision to drop Acorn from its volunteer tax assistance program. Baquet said people need to keep Acorn in perspective with other Washington stories: health care, two  wars and the deep recession. 

So, the NY Times formula seems to be: 

1. Deny the complaint (“I don’t think it’s fair for people to say we blew it off.”)
2. Misdirect by calling their tardy coverage a “follow-up report.” (In other words they were following-up everyone else.)
3. Complain that, anyway, the story was not that newsworthy (“people need to keep Acorn in perspective..”)

Medical Scandal of the Decade

“Drug companies & doctors—a story of corruption.” That’s the title of a major article in the current (January 15, 2009) edition of The New York Review of Books. Written by Marcia Angell, former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, this article describes the complete breakdown of the FDA and the medical profession when it comes to the testing and endorsement of new drugs. 

As the major drug companies are caught continuously skewing drug test results by quashing negative results and allowing to be published only a few positive results, they gladly pay a few million dollars in fines (or even 3/4 of a billion in one case) for drugs with sales of billions of dollars a year. Another cute trick is to find a new miracle drug that works better than a placebo (at least some of the time) but is never compared to an existing, much cheaper drug that works as well—or better. 

Then, out come the marketing geniuses, creating new “diseases” out of whole cloth. Shy? Oops, they’ve already got a new pill for that. 

Doctors who conduct drug efficacy tests or who serve on drug review boards barely bother to hide the huge incomes they are paid by the very companies whose drugs they are reviewing. Or they do hide them and when caught, shrug them off. (None have ever been punished.) And do it again. And again. 

On the few occasions that attempts have been launched to curtail this rampant corruption, each one is bravely announced, and then quietly dies on the vine. 

Worth reading if only to show that, just like Christopher Hitchens’ claim that “religion poisons everything,” so do we learn from this article that in the medical profession, money poisons everything. Everything.

Guess what this full page ad in The Economist is peddling. (28Jun08)

Give up? Korean Airlines. "From departure to arrival, the world is a step closer with Korean air." (Or did I miss something? Maybe this Is this their new stewardess uniform?)

Gillette Fusion razor

If you watch the TV ads, you'd think they were about to sell you a cold fusion reactor to power your home. Instead, they're talking about a razor with five (5) closely spaced blades. Does it work?  Well, think about it. All those blades are sharp, so if there's hair in the way, they'll cut it. But if the first or second blade get the stubble, what do you need the 3rd, 4th and 5th blades for? Or aren't the blades that sharp after all? The one thing you do know is that in order to work, each blade has to drag itself across your tender skin. Dragging five blades across your face can't be smoother than dragging two. And, indeed, in my experience, it isn't. Even the battery vibrator does nothing to make the blades cut better. But it does distract from the increased razor drag, so you think you're getting a smoother shave. Ah, the wonders of marketing....

Here is an advertisement for a retirement home for retired military officers. An old duffer hauling his beloved in a kid's wagon.  Oh, how comfortable she is. Oh what an "exceptional quality lifestyle" they are experiencing. Oh what a disastrous message!  What advertising executive can possibly have recommended this ad to his client? For the answer, read the copy. It can't have been penned by anyone who makes his living writing English. It was written by someone with a (barely) high school education. Then there's the highly sophisticated "Life is good when it's all about you." Good Lord, even a parody couldn't be this ridiculous. (I'm surprised it wasn't headlined: "The Good life--Me, Me, Me.")

Does  EVERY Manufacturer Have to Chisel and lie?

What do you think you're buying when you read this OceanSpray label below? "100% Cranberry Blueberry 'Organic' juice"?

Ha--Foolish you. You forgot to read the fine print.

What these masters of prevarication are saying on their label is that the cranberries and blueberries in the juice are "100%"  100% What? They didn't have space to tell you that--the "Organic" label must be too big..  And the type that tells you what you actually are buying is--of course--miniscule. But get out your magnifying glass and see the sorry truth--the truth the FDA forces them to print. Otherwise their deliberately misleading label would remain uncorrected. 

So there it is.  "Another juice" is the biggest component of this "100% Cranberry Blueberry." OceanSpray can barely admit what the other content is--juice from another mystery fruit flavored with cranberry blueberry juice. But of course their crafty lawyers can't even put that fact into a normal English sentence--which would be "100% real white grape juice flavored with  100% real cranberry and blueberry juice."  Far too much emphasis on the major component of this flavored juice--the identity of which is found not on the front label but only on the legally required back label list of ingredients ("organic white grape juice from concentrate"). Good Work OceanSpray.  We stupid consumers always appreciate being made suckers of by a company we trust.  

Here is the official Ocean Spray defense:  

"At Ocean Spray, there is nothing more important than the relationship we have developed with our consumers and we would never intentionally mislead them. (2)

"All our 100% juice products contain 100% juice.  But unlike Orange Juice, cranberry juice is not naturally sweet.  In fact, similar to lemon or lime juice, cranberry juice is much too tart to drink straight.   This means that it must be sweetened to make it palatable.  We either sweeten with added sweeteners, or in the case of our 100% products we sweeten with other juices.

"The Ocean Spray® Premium 100% juice line consists of several flavors, and only the primary fruits used are pictured on the label.(1) The juices added as sweeteners are listed on the ingredient panel. For example, the cranberry variety uses cranberry as its primary flavor,(3) thus “cranberry” is the only fruit featured prominently on the label.(4)  The other juices blended with the cranberry are for sweetening purposes and they also help to enhance the natural flavor of the cranberry. [Emphasis added.]

"We are continually looking at our labels to be sure that they provide all the information consumers need to make educated purchases.  Please be assured that these labels comply with all government regulations.  If we find, through discussions with our consumers, that we are not providing adequate information, we will make necessary changes. "

The Ultimate Gadget--a Cell phone Jammer !

Just think of the the thrill, the sense of justice served, by turning-on your own look-a-like cell phone that is actually a cell phone jammer. Think of the silent appreciation of your fellow sufferers enduring the loud-mouth blather of some self-important prig ordering his long-abused minions about--and proud of it!  Imagin the choked bluster as he sees you (pretending to be) chatting cheerily while his Very Important Call has been cut off in mid sentence with at "No Service" notice.  Aaaah, the downright pleasure of it--and all for only $220. ('Course it's illegal in the US and most other countries.) (New note: More powerful cell phone jammers are routinely used in Afghanistan to block the locals from alerting evil doers to Allied presence.

Beauty and Fashion Models

Here is a website that should be required viewing for every female between the ages of 8 to 80, and every male from birth.  It shows what the most beautiful men and women in the world look like when photographed and--after it has been expertly retouched--what the printed photo looks like.  Wow-what a revelation. But what a crushing blow to human fantasy.  Why, unretouched, those women look just like--our girl friends and wives!

Go to the website, then:

Click on "Portfolio"

Click on "Agree"

Click on "Before/After"

Select a thumbnail

Click on  "To see Before" and the photo changes to the unretouched version.

Sex-Partner Search Engines

Looking for true romance--or just want to fool around? Internet search engines today provide surfers with pretty much anything imaginable. 
And now they can plow through 15,334,302  profiles of men and women who are seeking one of two things (and that's just in the US of A):  Most of the men want a sex partner and offer possible romance as a sweetener; most of the women want "a Long Term Relationship," and offer sex as the bait.

www. AdutlFriendFinder.com is a huge sex-partner search engine.  Who frequents that very active site, and what do they get out of it?  Click here for the latest dope.

What is "Race"?

In the vast majority of cases there is not the slightest disagreement about who belongs in which race. Children can distinguish race unerringly by the age of two or three. Nature is parsimonious and does not often endow its creatures with senses to distinguish things that do not matter. An inborn ability, acquired at a very early age, of who are “our people” and who are not is essential to group survival.  

Everybody knows what a "racist" is, but what is the "race" they're shouting about? What is race? The psychological community asserts with some vigor that race is a social construct--in other words, we made it up. But they are famous for jumping in where they have no more standing than any other know-it-all. Biologists have finally re-entered the fray--keeping a very low profile (Hell hath no fury like a leftist scorned).  Here is a rare collection of counter-evidence to the fatuous claims of the social construct ideologues.

Think you can walk a straight line--with your eyes closed? I couldn't. Try it in an open field or parking lot. I aimed for a distant flagpole, closed my eyes and walked straight as a die--until I bunked into a goal post.  My "straight" path was a semi-circle with a diameter of only 70 yards!!!

"Aliens" on Planet Earth

Any sentient aliens discovered on Earth-like planets MUST be similar to humans in every regard . Think about it for more than one instant: If Darwin is right, evolution continually results in animals perfecting themselves in their adaptation to their environment.  If a distant Earth-like planet is found, Darwin's laws must work on it exactly as they have here on Earth.  Thus, given the same length of time, biology must result in sentient creatures as well-adapted as us--eyes up high for maximum distance vision; two eyes for stereoscopy, the brain case high near the eyes (which are a direct extension of the brain matter), a sniffer and taster also near the brain.  Bipedal works best for locomotion and raising the eyes up high. Highly specialized hands with opposable thumbs are necessary to build artifacts (such as weapons).

This being so obvious, why is the SETI cult not doing an extensive analysis of the differences among Earth-native sentient beings? Pigmies, Masai, high-altitude Peruvians and Tibetans, Asians, Nordics, etc., etc.? There is probably as as much variation in those sentient natives as we will ever find on other Earth-like planets.

But, are there any other sentient aliens in this galaxy?  Here is an informed viewpoint that is unexpectedly pessimistic. (And an excellent book.)

A slip knot that really works (The "Surgeon's Shoelace" knot)

Tired of tying your shoes and boots with "slip knots" that either don't slip, or are too complicated?  here is a slip knot that really works and is easy to tie.  I learned it from Ehrhard Wall, a customs agent in Berlin. (This, and other shoe/boot knots are described at Ian's Shoelace site.) 

• We start with a completed bow knot. The orange is the part that does the holding (or goes around your boot).  The blue bow will be folded back through the main hole as shown in the next photo (right).

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Another Face on Mars.

This photo shown on the NASA Rover website shows a real face--not that of a tired monkey.  The exerpt here has been colorized only to point out the regal profile--no details of any kind have been added or removed.  The actual uncolorized photo is shown below. (This deep intellectual skill--to be able to make out images in random scenes--has been given a name!  "Pareidolia.")

TV "news" programs that palm-off dated footage as recent imagery.  The same footage of Michael Jackson arriving for his trial was shown day after day, with the broadcasters conveniently forgetting to mention that the footage was days old.  The biggest ancient footage scam? The shots of Terry Schiavio ( the woman who has been comatose for over five years).  Day after day, week after week, ALL the TV "news" broadcasters discussed her fate while showing footage that was at least ten years old --as if to suggest that this was her current state. (The footage showed her with her eyes open.)  Why, other than that they are too lazy and feel you, the viewers, are too stupid to know the difference?  Because they are making a conscious effort to push the point of view that she should not be taken off life support--witness her semi-conscious state.  The only cure (and this should be mandatory for all news imagery): Visible on-screen date-stamping of all news footage shown over the air. (If they are able to stamp footage as “live,” let then stamp old footage with its date.) 

[Ed note: The world is listening.  Finally, in the last week of Mrs Schiavo's life, some of the newscasts did date their footage.  It was at least five years old.]

Is Society being poisoned by Krispy Kreme & Coca-Cola?  Over the past 50 years the sales of carbonated soft drinks and donuts have sky-rocketed.  So--following a 30 year onset delay--has the national incidence of diabetes and a grossly overweight population.  In fact, diabetes (and its frequent precursor–glucose intolerance) has reached epidemic proportions. The cosmic question is, is our diabetes epidemic caused by the large amount of  sugar that soft drinks and pastries now add to our diet? (Click here to read what the NY Times has to say about the surprising danger of excess sugar even to those who have not yet become glucose intolerant.)

Yes, this is conjecture.  But what if the huge amount of sugar added to our diets by the soft drink and pastry industries is alone the cause of our nation's diabetes and fat epidemic?   Should we treat soft drinks and donuts like cigarettes–-which are hugely enjoyed but also lead to deadly long-term health problems?  Is the psychological addiction to sugar to be treated as harshly as the physiological addiction to nicotine?  (Is there any difference?)  If these two industries are discovered to be the cause of the problem, brace yourselves for a massive (and very well-financed) campaign demanding “proof,” citing "Irreparable financial damage,” along with cries of “Big Brother, socialism,” etc.  It will be a hell of a battle.

Gore-Tex® fabric does not "breathe."

The earliest Gore-Tex did breathe because it really did have millions of tiny holes. But that experiment failed because the holes became contaminated with body oils, thus reducing the surface tension of impinging water and permitting it to penetrate too easily. The second generation Gore-Tex is an air-tight permeable membrane made of cellophane: you can make a balloon out of it. Since the common usage of the word "breathe" is to pass air, Gore-Tex doesn't breathe at all. It can pass  a small amount of water vapor under certain conditions. Not enough to let a hard-sweating person remain dry, and not at all when the temperature of the Gore-Tex fabric drops below freezing. "Guaranteed to keep you dry"? When you get soaked with your own perspiration thanks to Gore-Tex's air-tight nature -- use their guarantee certificate to help mop up the sweat. [See Summit magazine, May-June, 1984, vol 20, No 3 for the first article ever published questioning the the Emperor's Gore-Tex clothes. It was submitted to all US outdoor magazines; each editor quickly added that it was not rejected because of advertising pressure. Oh, no. Most said it was not balanced enough. Let's see, thousands of pages of double-truck ads lying about the efficacy of Gore-Tex and a single article pointing out the emperor's lack of clothes, and they are screaming for balance? God bless the ladies at Summit magazine who agree to publish it. (Such is the power of BIG advertisers over sniveling outdoor magazine editorial "ethics.")]  

Why are toilets designed differently in Europe than in the USA and Japan? In America and Japan, flushing cleans the bowl nearly every time (even with the new "double-flush" toilets in the States -- you have to flush them twice to get everything down -- but in the end the bowl is empty and clean). Every toilet in Europe has a toilet brush next to it, to let the user wipe the bowl clean after flushing. And too often, floaters don't get flushed down at all! The answer is in the ancient design: The European toilets are merely chamber pots "modernized" by adding a huge slosh of water into the bowl, with the hope that this sloshing will somehow do the job. The American and Japanese toilet swirl the water in, which cleans the side walls and helps to funnel the contents into the center of the small whirlpool, and suck them out. (And yet, Europeans designed the Concorde!!)

  Chiropractic Science: "Then the nurse returned with the key to the code. When we determined which trials involved glucose and which involved fructose, there was no connection between ability to resist and whether the volunteer was given the "good" or the "bad" sugar.  When these results were announced, the head chiropractor turned to me and said, "You see, that is why we never do double-blind testing anymore. It never works!"   ( See:http://quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/ideomotor.html )

 [Ed note: E. W.'s biopsy did show prostate cancer.  His treatment is described here.]

Extracting information from data is one of the most interesting of intellectual feats. It was this lure that attracted me to the examining the Mallory & Irvine mystery: so much data, so little information. The New Scientist magazine has described the famous Wllm Fitch Cheney magic trick that extracts a maximum of information from what seems like an impossibly small amount of data. Here is the trick:

Pick any five cards out of a deck and hand them to my assistant Esmerelda. She will reveal to me one card after another until I see four of them. I will then tell her exactly what the fifth card is.

You can do this trick anyway you like: even select the exact cards you want Esmeralda to show (but not the order) and, given the set-up above, I will be able to tell you the fifth card.

This feat, of extracting precious information from limited data has huge significance in cryptology and everyday life. Bridge is a good example, in which expert players try to glean, after a bit of bidding, who has which cards.

In day-to-day intercourse, have we not ever wondered how rumors start when by all accounts, no information has leaked out? True, no information may have leaked, but data certainly has. The secretary did not announce the information that she is in love with her boss; but a split-second loving glance at him was all the data the switchboard operator needed to see.