The Dean Scream

The NPR show On the Media had a fascinating program in which Brooke interviewed Erica Seifert, author of The Politics of Authenticity. 2016 was supposedly the year of the “outsider”. History reveals that many candidates have run as outsiders, including Lincoln, Carter, and most remarkably Reagan while running for a second term. His deft ads portrayed him as someone never a part of Washington even as a sitting president. Cruz even as a sitting Senator and one who worked for a Republican president, argues he is an outsider because he’s against everything. (Eisenhower was perhaps the most legitimate outsider along with Ulysses S. Grant.)

The famous Howard Dean “scream” is featured in another one of the “On the Media” programs. Those of us old enough to remember the famous win in Iowa will remember the crash-and-burn of his campaign after the media played and replayed his supposed “scream” at the rally following his victory. The show brought in a media expert to explain why no one who was at the event remembered the scream, but everyone who watched on TV remembered nothing else. The producers were using a special microphone and it was intended to pick up only that voice of the speaker, eliminating the crowd noise. The audio technician was then supposed to mix in the crowd noise picked up from different microphones scattered throughout the auditorium to get a more accurate rendition of what happened. He didn’t do that, so the media was left with only Dean’s voice. The crowd noise was so loud that he had to yell and shout to be heard over it.

That famous scream was rebroadcast over and over, more than six hundred times accompanied by commentary that it would sink his campaign. Well, that’s just what happened. One theory as to why it was hammered on over and over was that Dean had said he would break up the large media conglomerates and they wanted him to lose, especially as an “outsider.” In fact, several media outlets said later that they wish that they had not done that that. It was overkill and totally unnecessary. But this is a case where a failure to do the technology correctly ruined a political campaign. No one blames the individual individual engineer for doing this deliberately, but failure to use the technology correctly destroyed Dean, whose campaign never recovered.

Fast Food and Dihydrogen Monoxide

The Washington Post had a rather flimsy story related to the dangers of “fast food” which they obliquely define as “processed food” which, in my mind, goes way beyond the “fast food” label. They explicitly define it as food sold in places without waiters. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/04/15/researchers-have-found-an-alarming-new-side-effect-from-eating-fast-food/]

After reading it, it appears to me to be just another scare story built on a fabric of weak associations. Given all the dangers from chemicals, industrial food processing, factory farms, etc., one would expect the life expectancy to have decreased; and yet, in the 1950s one could expect to live an average of 46.6 years; those born between 2005 and 2010 may reach in average an age of 67.6 years. Maybe all those harmful chemicals are really good for you. The suggestion of the study's authors "seems" to be that "fast food" as they define it is more subject to exposure from plastics during processing, yet as I look on the shelves in my cupboard I see graham crackers and whole grain cereal packaged in plastic and cans of vegetables (remember the BPA scares?). Buy frozen to avoid that? All frozen food is processed and delivered in plastic packaging. Milk is sold in plastic bottles. The study would have been much stronger had they compared the presence of phthalates in all foods, canned, frozen, restaurant, fast food, etc. and then looked for a cause-and-effect between phthalates and illness.

Next we'll be worried about dihydrogen monoxide in food (chemists may now start laughing). There is a direct correlation between the consumption of DHMO and death. Now that's really scary.

Fitbit: Another silly fad

No surprise. Turns out that the 10,000 step rule was an invention of a Japanese marketing company trying to sell a device that measured how many steps you were taking during a day and they made up the number. "In an attempt to capitalize on the immense popularity of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, the company Yamasa designed the world’s first wearable step-counter, a device called a manpo-kei, which translates as “10,000-step meter”. There is no science behind any particular number. There seems to be some agreement that exercise, perhaps 30 minutes per day, is healthier although as with the steps no one seems to ask what that means. If I exercise 30 minutes a day will I live a day, ten days, a year longer? Will it eliminate the risk of Alzheimer’s? Or, will it simply guarantee an extra year in a nursing home?

Indeed, most of the scientific studies that have been conducted to try to test whether 10,000 steps a day is optimal for health are themselves relatively arbitrary. They simply compare people who have done 10,000 steps a day with those who have done far lower numbers, such as 3,000 or 5,000, and then measure calories burned, blood pressure and blood glucose levels. [Source]

Everyone seems down on a sedentary lifestyle, but have they measured longevity (assuming that’s the ultimate goal), brain function (what if the sitting involves doing higher level mathematics?) or just watching Judge Judy. Cyclists get hit by cars, walkers get bitten by ticks and mosquitoes and catch all sorts of nefarious diseases, runners need knee replacements, and parachutists, well they occasionally go splat. And why, if millions are wearing these Fitbit devices, does the average lifespan keep falling. I know of no one ever getting injured sitting in his/her reading chair. And my cat lies around all day with no ill effects.

Review: The Dark Room by Jonathan Moore

Inspector Cain is called at 2 a.m. while supervising an exhumation by his boss Lt. Nagati who said she was sending a helicopter to speed him off to city hall. No other details. After his arrival, he's sent to the Mayor's chambers where he's asked to investigate a threat and some pictures sent to the mayor anonymously.

Turns out the casket contains the bones of more than one person, and one of them had been put into the casket while still alive. The mayor, meanwhile, denies any knowledge of the person and actions in the photographs, but Cain knows he’s lying, and he suspects that the contents of the casket and the blackmail of the mayor may be connected.

That’s all I’m going to say except that this is an outstanding police procedural, done the way they should be, with interesting characters and a super plot.

Review: Close Reach by Jonathan Moore

If you like books with nice sailboats as a character, strong women leads, and really nasty villains, you’ll enjoy this book. It’s perfect for a flight, perhaps not so good if you intend to sail to the tip of South America.

The plot involves former Pinochet ruffians, now on the run, who have made a business of capturing, torturing, and then killing anyone traversing around the Horn. Anchored at Deception Island, a rapidly awakening volcanic island, they “persudae” their captives to reveal bank account and other financial information. Their most insidious, however, involves health, DNA, and blood information in order to capture a specific person for a specific purpose that I won’t reveal. Let’s just say it involves the leader of the group and some surgeons.

As it happens when they overtake Kelly and her husband Dean in their rather amazing 70 ft yacht Freefall, they have bit off a bit more than they can chew in the character of Kelly who happens to be a surgeon. Turns out when pushed she can be as mean and evil as the bad guys.

Enough said. If gore turns you off, skip this one, otherwise a fast read. I’ll get others by the author.

Check out this bit about Deception Island: http://www.slate.com/blogs/atlas_obscura/2013/12/23/deception_island_is_antarctica_s_most_confusing_vacation_destination.html