Literacy on the Slippery Slope: Who Is Sigmund Freud?

I have commented before that education is more than math and science. Unfortunately, political solutions to provide better education in the United States have given short shrift to the arts. When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, America shifted its focus in learning to providing aide for military defense, neglecting poetry, art, reading, and music to a greater or lesser degree.

The following excerpts were gleaned from students in my humble hamlet over the past few years. They show a rather alarming drop in overall literacy.

“Taiwan is a form of martial arts.”

“Zimbabwe is a song one sings at summer camp.”

“Emily Bronte was a famous paleontologist who discovered the Brontosaurus.”

“Sigmund Freud was a famous brain surgeon in the 1950s.”

“A ‘shakespeare’ was a kind of Roman artillery.”

“ESP is one of America’s intelligence agencies.”

“Buddy Holly is a green plant people display at Christmas.”

“Global warming will only affect poor countries since they have no technology to combat it.”

“Time travel was invented by Einstein.”

“The Bible was written in the Middle Ages by Christian monks.”

While humorous, such statements by high school students in the twenty-first century must give one pause. “Teaching for the test”—competency tests—is one problem that contributes to such ignorance. Another cause high on the list is that too many teachers are in the classroom because they have majored in subjects they enjoy … but they don’t know what to do with their degrees after graduation, so they teach in order to bring in a paycheck.

I’ve said it before: We in a heap of trouble.

Picture: Public Doman

Gurning: Mental Health on the Cheap

I first saw a picture of a man gurning in Life magazine in 1966 and thought it was some passing fad, but gurning is an English tradition that goes back several hundred years. The annual gurning championship is held in Egremont, Cumbria in the UK. To gurn is to make a distorted facial expression.

Interestingly, the Japanese have a similar tradition, although it is practiced daily as a form of mental health. Many Japanese gather to laugh and make ridiculous faces because some research indicates that laughter and silly faces, forced or not, causes the body to release both endorphins and serotonin, the body’s natural “feel good” chemicals.

I’m not advocating that anyone put away his or her antidepressants. I’m not a Scientologist, just an iconoclast and a chronicler of the unusual. But the Japanese seem to be more aware of mental health than the rest of the world as exhibited by their work habits. Japanese companies incorporate times into the workday for employees to rest, exercise, stretch, cultivate bonsai, or do deep breathing. Maybe they’re onto something.

We in the west would probably scoff at such habits as daily gurning or stopping work to relax or act silly. It doesn’t conform to the Protestant work ethic, plus we take ourselves too seriously.

But maybe the people in Egremont know something we don’t. Just grist for the mill.

Pics: public domain

Synchronicity: Messages from the Universe?

Is the universe responsive to our thoughts and needs? Does a force beyond our comprehension—God, Source, Energy, or whatever you wish to call him, her, or it—send us messages?

Psychoanalyst Carl Jung formed the theory of synchronicity after treating a woman who had recurrent, disturbing dreams about a particular species of scarab beetle. The woman wasn’t making much therapeutic progress, but one day during a session, Jung heard a scratching at his window. Pulling back the curtain, he saw the exact kind of scarab beetle the woman had been describing—only the species wasn’t indigenous to the area. The woman was so impressed that she was finally able to get at the root of her problem. Jung began to speculate on the “non-random coincidence,” in which normal cause and effect doesn’t seem to be responsible for events.

Have you ever met someone from the past after thinking about him or her for no reason? Did he or she have some bit of information you needed to know? Has a song come on the radio (or a movie on TV) that was pertinent to some issue in your life? Have you ever taken a wrong turn in the car, only to find yourself somewhere that is more important than your original destination? Have you ever met someone on an airplane who had the exact same childhood experiences as you?

I once wrote a story that took place in Greenwich Village on Mercer Street. After finishing the story, I received a phone call—a wrong number—from Mercerville, New Jersey. There are about 5 billion telephones in the U.S., counting cell phones and company lines. A week later, I went to a bookstore to buy the Writers Digest Poet’s Market. The book was on the floor, open to the page listing a poetry journal published by Mercerville Community College in Mercerville, New Jersey. One of the poets listed as a past contributor to the journal had the same last name as a character in my story.

Quantum physics says that matter is influenced—or responsive—to the position of the observer. (It’s called Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle.) Physics also says everything is bound together by a single, unifying energy. It’s as if we’re all on a cosmic conference call, but we have to listen carefully to hear the right speaker.

I started keeping a journal of unusual coincidences in my life. Some seemed to point me in a certain direction, while others remained a mystery. My journal is still active.

Do we get messages from the universe? If you wish to test this hypothesis, simply get paper and pen and then start paying attention to the people, places, and things around you.

Picture: Public Domain

Homeland Security Issues Warning about Pregnancy

The Department of Homeland Security, or DHS, announced on February 12 that police and other officials should begin to pay attention to pregnant women in case female terrorists use prosthetic devices to hide bombs. Does this mean that TSA employees at airports, some of whom are already under-trained yet full of self-importance, will be conducting OB-GYN exams?

I’m not saying that the above is impossible, but what exactly can police or the FBI start doing about it in a free and open society? Do we X-ray pregnant women, exposing unborn children to potentially harmful radiation? Do we pat them down? Make them expose themselves?

The DHS admitted there was no imminent threat to the United States, so why alarm the public or issue warnings that can’t be acted upon in any reasonable fashion?

TSA Employee: “How many to declare ma’am?”

Pregnant Woman: “How many what?”

TSA: “Children. Buns in the oven.”

Woman: “Twins, not that it’s any of your business.”

TSA: “Sex?”

Woman: “Yes, they were conceived the usual way.”

TSA: “Sex of the children, ma’am.”

Woman: “I don’t know.”

TSA: “Have the twins ever checked out any library books on incendiary devices?”

Woman: “Are you a moron?”

TSA: “I don’t make up the questionnaire, ma’am. I just ask the questions.”

Woman: “Our government dollars in action.”

TSA: “Amniotic fluid?”

Woman: “What about it?”

TSA: “You’re only allowed sixteen ounces.”

Woman: “Is this one of those shampoo things?”

TSA: “Yes, ma’am, and you’ll have to wear this fetal monitor during the flight.”

Woman: “Why?”

TSA: “Because of FISA. The government has the right to listen to all communication between unborns.”

Beware, fat men. You could be next.

(Picture realeased into public domain by its author)

Global Warming: Hunting Vampires Can Help Slow It Down

Well, vampire voltage, that is, which is the term scientists use to describe electricity that is being "sucked in" by appliances plugged into outlets but that are unused on a regular basis, if at all.

I became aware of this phenomenon after watching a show on The History Channel last Sunday called Six Degrees. Even though an appliance isn’t in use, it is still pulling juice from household wiring, and an unused toaster can account for approximately $60 a year on a household utility bill. I walked around my house after the show and discovered a stereo, a TV in the guest room, a radio/CD player, and an old PC and printer that had not been used in months. I can use the $300 for other things. I therefore killed the vampire voltage.

It is estimated that if everyone in the United States unplugged neglected appliances, fifteen coal plants could be shut down, thus preventing several billion tons of carbon emissions from entering the atmosphere.

It’s the least we can do at the grassroots level, right? If the earth's temperature rises only two degrees in the next ten years, we may be at a point of no return. That's not much time.

Picture: Public Domain

Blackberries, iPhones, and Walden Pond

In 1989, my brother gave me an HP 286. The millennium had arrived. I had a PC, although it wasn’t much more than a fancy word processor. Less than seven years later, people were using something called the Internet, a communication system originally used by the Department of Defense and “brought mainstream” by Al Gore.

Fast forward to 2008. We must have Internet access through our cell phones, which have morphed into Blackberries and iPhones. Why? The answer I favor most is comedian George Carlin’s reason for why we call each other in the first place: To make sure someone’s on the other end.

Prototype chips are now being implanted beneath the skin so that the human body can have a direct interface with technology. It is predicted that within twenty years, we will be able to receive email and phone calls through such chips. Sci-fi? Paralyzed individuals are already able to interact with computer screens thanks to microchips implanted within of their brains.

To what extent, however, do we wish to embrace this technology in everyday life? My grandmother used to pick up radio stations on the fillings in her teeth. It drove her nuts. At 82, she wasn’t fond of listening to James Brown singing “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag.”

In Walden Pond, Henry David Thoreau wrote, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

The essential facts of life. If George Carlin is correct, we’re in a lot of trouble.

Picture: Public Domain

Mind-Body Healing: Cellular Memory

Western medicine has been far more accepting of mind-body healing in the last ten years thanks to Dr. Bernie Segal, Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer, and others. People with positive, enthusiastic mindsets have higher rates of remissions and cures from various diseases.

There is fascinating new research that documents a phenomenon called cellular memory. (The documentation is by scientists and physicians, not Madame Zozostra.) It seems that memory is not localized within the cells and neurons of the brain, but rather is contained in every cell within the body.

Transplant patients have drawn the most attention in relation to this phenomenon. A sixteen-year-old heart transplant patient recalls some of the lyrics to a song written by the donor. A non-smoker receiving a kidney suddenly has the inexplicable urge to buy cigarettes after receiving the organ from a heavy smoker. For no apparent reason, a patient wants to take up painting after receiving a cornea transplant from a deceased artist. A woman actually changes her sexual orientation after a bone marrow transplant.

The best theory to explain these cases (and many others) suggests that the DNA throughout the body remembers each and every experience we’ve ever had. Considering the tens of trillions of cells in the human body, it isn't surprising that our bodies can carry so much information, both healthy and unhealthy. This also explains why various kinds of psychological trauma can continue to be triggered for years (PTSD being the best example).

The bottom line is that each and every thought we have affects our personalities and our health for good or ill. It also explains why reprogramming negative thoughts often results in healing or remission of disease. We have the ability to re-balance our cells with healthy energy so that they remember what it’s like to function normally. If this sounds like new age nonsense, consider that psychiatry has known for years that depression, anger, and unresolved emotions are quite capable of targeting various organ systems, and stress is now considered the number one trigger for all disease.

The next time you want to curse someone in traffic, it might be wise to recall that the anger is going to be stored somewhere in your body. Medically, it pays—literally and figuratively—to stay positive and happy. It's a goal, of course, since we're only human, and sometimes being angry is a normal, healthy response. Repression can be equally destructive. Just remember: your body is listening to everything.

Picture: public domain.

Random Acts of Kindess

Can a single kindly gesture help change the world? I became a believer after seeing the movie Pay It Forward. One act of kindness can send ripples across the world, although we may never see the end results of something that is seemingly inconsequential. Consider the following.

1) The door is held open for a man walking out of a bank. Because he doesn’t have to push on the bronze door plate, his eyes fall on a section of the sidewalk where he normally wouldn’t have looked. He sees a one dollar coin and figures it’s his lucky day.

2) Since it’s his lucky day, he buys a lottery ticket. He doesn’t win the jackpot, but does have enough winning numbers to snag $500.

3) He then visits his unemployed niece, who is having trouble meeting her mortgage payments. Foreclosure looms. “What the hell,” he figures. He gives his niece the five hundred bucks.

4) The sheriff arrives with a FORECLOSED sign but doesn’t put it in the niece’s front yard since she shows him a receipt from her bank, where the loan officer says her payment has earned her another month.

5) The sheriff looks in the distance and says, “Technically, I’m still supposed to put this sign up, but let’s pretend I never got the order to come out here today. Paperwork is always getting lost or delayed, right?.” He pauses. “Say, you interested in bein’ a secretary at my brother’s tile and flooring store?”

6) She sure is, and the sheriff’s brother loans her enough money to finish catching up on her mortgage payments, agreeing to withhold a little of her paycheck every month until he is repaid for the loan. The brother is a nice guy, the salt of the earth.

7) Because she doesn’t have to move, the niece is able to keep her son in the same high school he has been attending, where the boy has always excelled. Because his grades stay high, he gets a scholarship and goes to college. Eventually, he becomes a doctor.

A fairy tale? Naïve? Can someone holding a door open at a bank result in someone going to medical school? All I know is that when money was tight a few years back, I got a check from a stranger, money that saved my house and enabled me to keep custody of my son, who is now majoring in classical guitar.

If you want to know more about the small things you can do to change the world, I encourage you to visit Random Acts of Kindness Foundation and subscribe to its newsletter, which is full of inspiring stories. They also have a message board with great ideas on how you can make a difference.

Picture: Public Domain

Clinton and Obama: How Stubborn is the Democratic Donkey?

NOTE: I anticipate changing the name of this blog soon, but the URL will remain the same, and all links will therefore still work. I hope my subscribers (thank you, folks!) will continue to stop by for my iconoclastic ramblings on life in the 21st century.

Anyway, I had the following thoughts while watching election coverage on Super Tuesday. It seems that the pundits are jumping onto the following ideas faster than WWF wrestlers onto a buffed-up comrade. Perhaps my true calling is punditry, which is a word I’d love to write after “Occupation” on official forms.

Here’s the scenario: Obama and Clinton will continue to split delegates so that the super-delegates will decide the nominee at a brokered convention. Translation? The same old back-room politics will choose the nominee with wheeling and dealing and schmoozing since the super-delegates are politicians and party big wigs. And if we’re talking party “machine politics,” we’re probably talking Hillary as the nominee.

But if the Democratic National Convention is indeed “brokered” in the back room in favor of Hillary, African American voters are going to feel neglected. The result might well be that they stay home next November in the general election, angry that their votes and participation didn’t count. Paradoxically, the poll numbers indicate that the reverse is not true for Hillary supporters. Obama is more likely to get votes from whites and women (the raw data shows that he can indeed form this coalition) than Hillary is likely to get votes from disenchanted blacks.

It’s speculation, of course (and this is a nonpartisan post), but Obama himself has hinted that the above events could play out in November, not because he will discourage anyone from voting, but because he knows the mindset of the party base in general.

A brokered convention splits the party, but even worse, it amounts to voter nullification regardless of who gets the nod. Millions of people will have stood in long lines in bitterly cold weather to choose the nominee, to be a part of the process. And many are first-time voters. So what will the lesson be? That they don’t count. It’s the super-delegates in the back room who are the king—or queen—makers.

There are only two questions the Democrats should ask themselves if their choice comes down to the convention: Who is electable based on demographics, and do they really want to alienate the very people they are attempting to help: the poor, the unemployed, single mothers, the uninsured, vets, and the like? Given W’s record, this could well be the year of the Democrats … if they can stand behind their own ideals of fairness.

Picture: Public Domain

The Superbowl: A One Night Stand

A writer is a diagnostician of the world’s ills, an observer of fact, a maker of metaphors. So what is a writer to make of the Superbowl and its surrounding fanfare?

For one, it’s an opportunity to have a big blowout party without tidings of comfort and joy as a side dish, like last’s month’s Christmas Eve gatherings. We can hurl four-letter words at the quarterback without Aunt Edna stabbing us with her crochet needles. We can also look for wardrobe malfunctions at halftime without feeling too much guilt.

Football is also a game about real estate, about war. Each team wants the other’s end zone and will resort to various degrees of violence to possess it. It is an acceptable ritual during which we can exorcize our territorial hostilities without being tried as war criminals. It is vicarious, cathartic.

When I was a kid, baseball was the national pastime, and the World Series was the big ticket. We hid transistor radios in our backpacks so we could listen to the games at recess. We hung on every pitch, every swing of the bat. But the times they are a changin’.

These days, football has usurped the place of baseball, signaling a change in our national psyche. My own theory for this paradigm shift is that sports is a metaphor for sex. We’re impatient. We want results fast, and personal commitment to the outcome is short-lived. The Superbowl is over in one night after sixty minutes of regulation play. Baseball games are long, and the World Series can take up to seven games to complete over a nine-day period.

Draw your own conclusions.

Picture: Public Domain

Global Warming, Dairy Queen, and Big Rigs: Lawsuits or Lack Thereof

Warning labels always make me laugh. Take Viagra, for example. “Always consult a doctor if you have an erection lasting longer than four hours.” So does this mean that a couple should set an alarm clock? Everything is fine at three hours and fifty-nine minutes, but oh boy, at four hours and one minute, call 911—and fast!

A misprint on one label said the following: “Do not take if you are pregnant or nursing, or think you might be pregnant or nursing.” Are some women unaware that they’re nursing?

I purchased a box of crackers at one of those super-duper shopping clubs, like Sam’s or Costco. The side panel on the box said: WARNING: CHOKING HAZARD. So what does one do with the crackers? Use ‘em for coasters?

My bottle of sleeping pills says, WARNING: MAY CAUSE DROWSINESS. Sure glad the company cleared that up. I was beginning to wonder why I slept all night.

My favorites are the warnings on pain meds, admonishing me not to operate heavy machinery after ingesting the pills. Yep, after I sprain my back or break an arm, that’s my first impulse—to climb aboard a bulldozer and do some construction work.

My TV instruction booklet says to turn off the set during severe weather. My local TV station tells me to always stay turned for updates during severe weather. Surely the left hand does not know what the right is doing.

It’s all because we live in an age of constant litigation, I suppose. Everyone has to be warned of everything, such hot coffee at McDonald’s. But then why doesn’t Dairy Queen have to warn customers about potential brain freeze?

Ironically, we are constantly warned about global warming even though no one does much about it. Trucks roar down the highway, spewing clouds of exhaust into the air from the pipes over their cabs, causing motorists behind them to turn off the AC for five minutes. I don’t want to breathe all that smoke on the highway, but where are the warnings on the sides of big rigs about the health of my lungs? Why can’t I sue a semi for failing to warn me about emphysema? There are many things killing planet earth in 2008, but you won’t see or hear any warnings about them. The warnings are reserved for cracker boxes.

Life puzzles me.

Picture: Public Doman

Tech Support: Calling Cox, Charter, AOL, AT&T, and Dell in India

Calling India is bad enough, what with trying to understand the dialects while explaining that the widget on your new Dell isn’t “widgeting” like it should. Getting tech support is like getting canned telephone responses or receiving email from an auto-responder. Whatever you have to say will fall on ears twelve thousand miles away, ears that just don’t get it.

Another true story from the files of NewsDive:

Last month my internet service went out. I called the provider and had to listen to a five-minute automated self-help menu before talking to a customer rep who told me to reboot my computer and perform several other ministrations, such as checking to see whether everything was plugged in and all connections were secure. I still didn’t have service after performing these holy rites.

Not all reps are created equal, so I called back in order to talk with Suribanda instead of Chakramandu, telling her that I had already tried to the reboot fix.

“I am sorry for your having a problem today, sir,” she said. “What I’d like you to do now is reboot your computer.”

“Been there, done that, Suribanda. Not gonna do it again.”

Suribanada and I never hit it off, so I called a third time. By then, I’d figured out how to bypass the automated menu more quickly. When the alluring female American voice said, “It sounds like you’re having a problem, is that right,” I just made animal noises into the phone: “Ogcarklelupowiiiiiiingshick.!”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t understand that response. Please hold for our next representative.”

I was connected with Raj.

“Raj, ole buddy, I’ve called twice before and here’s the deal. Everybody in my neighborhood using your company has lost service—everybody—so don’t tell me to reboot my PC. It’s an area-wide problem, okay? Just check to see whether there’s an outage in my zipcode.”

“I’ll be happy to assist you,” said Raj, “but first let me ask you to reboot your computer.”

“Rabbastinkrifflenoooooooo!” I cried, hanging up.

An NBC report this week said companies are slowly bringing these outsourced jobs back to America because of customer dissatisfaction. I wonder if it will make any difference, though. Nothing ever gets fixed, regardless of whom one speaks with. The companies know they have us by the shorthairs. There are no complaint departments to call, and “contact us” emails go unanswered.

Gone are the days when we had rotary phones. If they went on the fritz, you went to a neighbor's house and called Myrna the operator (she worked downtown), who would send out a lineman named Tex in about an hour.

Picture: Public Domain