THE AGE OF FAIRNESS AND JUSTICE – by Gary Smolker

← A MODEST PROPOSAL FOR IMPROVING POLICE CONDUCT IN THE FIELD – by Gary Smolker

LOVE DOES NOT JUDGE

Jun 13

 

 

WE ARE LIVING IN THE AGE OF FAIRNESS

We are living in an AGE OF FAIRNESS, in an age of creativity, social fairness, racial fairness, inclusiveness, diversity, etc. etc.  It is a RENAISSANCE.

We have left the Stone Age.  We have left the DARK AGES.  We have left the ENLIGHTENMENT and the renaissance which followed the Age of Enlightenment and we have left the Age of Secularization which followed the Age of Enlightenment.

We have entered an age of rational compassionate fairness and religious ferocity.

Some people now realize (1) Black people are just people; (2) they are not an inferior race or a violent race of people; (3) they have suffered many grave injustices, including slavery, systematic anti-Blackness, and inequality of opportunity (a) for an education, (b) for employment, (c) for housing, and for health care.

Some people now realize (1) doing the right thing is just, is justice in action; (2) everybody wants justice; (3) justice is eternal; (4) evil is only temporary, evil doesn’t last; its not the light at the end of the tunnel that counts, it is the light within that counts.

WE ARE EXPERIENCING A TIPPING POINT OF SOCIAL CHANGE

Nearly 95% of the counties that have had protests in the past few weeks are majority white, 75% are more than 75% white.  The age group with the largest share of protestors was people under 35 and the income group with the largest share of protestors were those earning more than $150,000.00

THE AMOUNT OF CHANGE PROTESTS HAVE PRODUCED IN THE PAST FEW WEEKS

• In Minneapolis the City Council pledged to dismantle its police department.
• In New York, lawmakers repealed a law that kept police disciplinary records secret.
• Cities and states across the country have passed laws banning choke holds.
• Mississippi law makers voted to retire their state flag, which prominently includes a Confederate Battle emblem.

According to a poll from the Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation, one in five Americans said they had participated in a protest since the beginning of the Trump administration.

THE LARGER NUMBER OF PEOPLE PARTICIPATING IN THESE PROTEST MARCHES

In recent weeks, 15 million to 26 million people in the United States have participated in demonstrations over the death of GEORGE FLOYD and others.

The Women’s March in March 2017 had a turn out of about 3 million to 5 million on a single day.

The civil rights marches in the 1960s all together had hundreds of thousands of participants, not millions

Across the United States there have been more than 4,700 demonstrations, or an average of 140 per day, since the first protest began in Minneapolis on May 26, 2020. Turn out has ranged from dozens to tens of thousands in about 2,500 small towns and large cities.

On June 6, 2020, half a million people turned out in 550 places across the United States to protest against police brutality and for racial justice.

THE BIGGER PICTURE

According to a poll from the Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation, one in five Americans said they have participated in a protest since the start of the Trump Administration, and 19% said they were new to protesting.

[This post has been revised four times.  I began typing this post in May, 2020.  The above sections of this post were typed and added to this post on July 13, 2020.]

PRELIMINARY INTRODUCTION

This post is still a work in progress.

I have rewritten this post three times and I am now revising it for the fourth time.

This is the fourth revision of this post.

This post is still a work in progress.

I am still writing, editing, and revising this post because I believe it is vital to be pushing the conversation on the important social issues of (a) racial injustice,(b) racism, (c) protests against racial injustice, (d) law enforcement reform, (e) the shut down of the economy in the Unites States and other countries to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, and (e) Russia’s and China’s efforts to dominate the world and to destabilize and to destroy American society and the American economy.

People are feeling the pain of the coronavirus pandemic.

The pandemic effects (a) people’s health, (b) the health of the economy, and (c) how safe things are. and how safe it is to do things.

The pandemic exposed big problems of our time that connect [(a) health care, (b) race, (c) inequality, (d) racial injustice] and foundational personality traits [(a) empathy, (b) dignity, and (c) human decency] each of which have now become political issues

People are working tirelessly to advance civilization.

The Black protestor in the photograph above is carrying a sign which reads:

“Telling me that I’m obsessed with talking about racism in America is like telling me I’m obsessed with swimming when I am drowning.”

On July 4, 2020, at protests and counter-protests, in Richmond, Virginia, White Supremacists, Black Lives Matter people, and armed Black Men sang “God Bless America” together at the same time, at the same place.

TODAY: The citizens of the United States are intensely engaged in a propaganda thought control war – an ideology war about racism.

Getting history right is of great importance in present thought control wars.

INTRODUCTION

In the last two months, people living in the United States have lived through a series of convulsive events.

Before GEORGE FLOYD was murdered on May 25, 2020 the world, including the United States, was being battered by the Coronavirus pandemic.

One part of the world economy after another was shut down: people were literally locked down; people were ordered to shelter-in-place; businesses were ordered to close; businesses closed; schools were ordered to close; schools closed.

People’s lives and the business world was turned upside down in an attempt to prevent the spread of the Coronavirus.

This caused people to become extremely stressed out.

Forty million Americans had lost their jobs as a result of the lock-down before GEORGE FLOYD was murdered.

Then GEORGE FLOYD was murdered.

Then a video of the murder of GEORGE FLOYD was broadcast on social media.

Then the same video was broadcast on conventional media and news outlets.

The murder of GEORGE FLOYD, the callousness of the police officers responsible for his murder – their belief that they would suffer no consequences from the authorities – the man crushing GEORGE FLOYD’S neck for almost nine minutes staring straight into the cameras of bystanders who were taking videos and taking pictures of what he was doing – and the lack of an immediate response to GEORGE FLOYD’S murder by the Minneapolis police department was more than the world could take.

Then the local district attorney for the City of Minneapolis decided no crime was committed – that was more than the world could take.

People went into the streets to protest police brutality, social injustice and systemic social injustice.  They went into the streets to protest for racial justice.

After watching videos of GEORGE FLOYD being murdered, and hearing about and seeing additional videos of other black men being murdered while in police custody, it was universally believed – and universally agreed – that police treated black people as if black persons’ lives did not matter.

Intense protests and discussion of policing, racial injustice, racism, and white supremacy followed.

NBA superstar Michael Jordan treated:

“We must never turn our backs on senseless brutality. We need to continue peaceful expressions against injustice and demand accountability.”

People became sensitized to the words “racism” and “protest.”

Currently, the most searched words on Google are “racism” and “protest.”

Currently, the best selling book is Ibram X. Kendi’s book HOW TO BE AN ANTIRACIST.

People received videos that showed black and brown men and women being killed by a one white policeman or by a group of white policemen, people received videos showing the use of excessive force by police, and people received videos of events that took place at protests that followed.

HISTORY OF PROTESTS IN THE UNITED STATES

The United States has a history of protests – remember the Boston Tea Party.

Before the 13 British Colonies declared their independence from Britain, White Americans dressed as Indians stormed a British ship in Boston and threw its cargo of tea into Boston Harbor as way of protesting “taxation without representation” – taxes imposed on the American Colonials by the British government.

There were massive citizen protests against the Vietnam War during the Vietnam War.

HISTORY OF BEING LIED TO BY THEIR GOVERNMENT

Americans know their government lies to them.

That is what the Pentagon Papers [published by the New York Times and the Washington Post] lawsuit was about.

The American government lied to the American people about the Vietnam War.

The Pentagon papers exposed the governments’ lies.

The Nixon administration tried to stop publication of the Pentagon Papers.

The Nixon administration was unable to stop publication of the Pentagon Papers.

IT IS A TRADITION IN AMERICA FOR  PEOPLE WHO BELIEVE IN JUSTICE TO SPEAK OUT

While the Vietnam War was raging, people of all ages protested against the war at protest rallies.

Song writers wrote songs protesting the war.

Popular singers like Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Simon and Garfunkel, Crosby Stills Nash and Young (CSNY), and many other leading song-writers-singers wrote and sang songs protesting the Viet Nam War.

In “Teach Your Children” CSNY warned we’re bound to repeat mistakes of the past if we don’t do our best to “teach our children well.”

“Teach YOUR children/ To believe and

“Make a world that/ We can live in.”

That song asks parents to teach their children to be kind … and to understand the why’s of our values.

“Four Dead in Ohio”, a CSNY song penned by Neil Young, is heralded as the the ‘ultimate protest song’ of the turbulent 1970s.

The lyrics evoke the utter shock and moral outrage felt by the Nation following the shootings of college students protesting against the Vietnam War on the Kent State College campus.

The chorus chant “Four Dead in Ohio,” coupled with the lyric line “Tin Soldiers and Nixon coming” refer to the Ohio National Guardsmen who shot and killed four students during the campus protest.

“Four Dead in Ohio” was banned from some AM radio stations because of the challenge to the Nixon Administration in the lyrics but received airplay on underground FM stations in larger cities and college towns.

WAKE UP AMERICA

In 1833 free black people were banned by the State of Alabama by law from living in Alabama.

Jim Crow laws have been common in the South – separate bathrooms for white people and black people, etc. – even after Sputnik was launched by the Soviet Union.

Lynching of Black People was common at the time Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.

From 1915 to 1970, almost six million black people fled the Jim Crow South for northern and western states

People in power – such as President Donald Trump – are trying to deny Black People and Brown People and Native American Indians the opportunity to vote by impeding the use of mail-in ballots.

THINGS ARE HAPPENING

LeBron James, NBA team owners, and stadiums are stepping in to make sure that BLACK people will get to vote in the upcoming elections.

Stadiums in which NBA games are usually played will be turned into polling places before elections take place later this year.

Lyft has committed to offering free rides or discounted rides to people who need transportation to get to voting places.

White People, Black People. and Latino People are demanding that police departments be defunded; that police conduct be changed; and even that police departments be disbanded.

People are demanding that police procedures be changed – that when police are deployed what they are allowed to do be tightly regulated.

Law enforcement reform has become a hotly discussed topic.

The City of Los Angeles’ city budget has been changed – the amount in the City budget previously proposed be allocated to the police department was reduced in the current city budget – as a result of these demands.

The County of Los Angeles’ budget has been put on hold while the County Supervisors study what is to be done with respect to the amount of money in the County’s budget that is to be allocated to the Sheriff’s Department.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has cut $1 Billion from New York City’s $6 Billion budget for the police department.

The Democrats in the House of Representatives have passed a reform bill which (a) restricts the use of choke holds, (b) bans no-knock police raids, (c) will create a police officer misconduct registry, (d) lowers the threshold to prosecute a police officer to “if they show ‘reckless disregard for someone’s life.'”

ASIDE: Police Officer Derek Chavin – the police officer who killed GEORGE FLOYD – already had 18 complaints lodged against him before he killed GEORGE FLOYD by kneeling on GEORGE FLOYD’S neck for almost nine minutes.

WHITE PEOPLE WERE SHOCKED TO LEARN BLACK PEOPLE FEARED FOR THEIR LIVES WHENEVER THEY SAW POLICE OFFICERS

A majority of Americans have come to believe that what happened to GEORGE FLOYD is part of a broader pattern of excessive police brutality towards African-Americans.

Information supporting that thesis keeps coming in.

White people have heard from multiple black sources that black mothers tell their children what to do when they see a police officer in order to stay alive.

White people have seen unarmed black men being killed by while police officers – either shot or strangled.

On June 29, 2020, the New York Times reported finding at least 70 people who had died while in police custody over the last decade, after saying [like GEORGE FLOYD said before he died] “I can’t breathe.”

WHITE SUPREMACY

Many people are fed up wit the concept of White Supremacy, the existence of White Supremacy, and the existence of monuments that celebrate White Supremacy.

People have started tearing down and defacing monuments which they feel glorify white supremacy.

People have successfully demanded that many statues honoring white supremacists be removed from public places.

STATUE HONORING THEODORE ROOSEVELT

The most famous statue to be removed is a statue of President Theodore Roosevelt.

Theodore Roosevelt was a eugenicist – a person who believed in the superiority of the white race.

People demanded that the statue honoring Theodore Roosevelt (statue pictured above) of Theodore Roosevelt on a horse and a Black Man and an American Indian beneath him  at the entrance of the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan be removed.

The American Museum of Natural History announced that it is going to remove the statute.

PROMOTING RACIAL INFERIORITY AND PROMOTING WHITE SUPREMACY

An intense discussion of the impact of what statues and names represent is on-going – which is a discussion of what constitutes promotion of white supremacy – what promotes the idea that the white race is superior to the black race, and/or what promotes the idea that people who belong to white race are superior to Native American Indians.

People have demanded that statues that celebrate Confederate Generals who fought to maintain slavery be torn down or removed because they glorify and honor the idea that black people are inferior to white people.

Native American People and other people have demanded that the name of the Washington Redskins NFL football team and the name of the Atlanta Braves MLB team be changed.

TREATMENT OF BLACK PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES

Above is a photo of the June 26, 1970 magazine cover of A Midwest Newspaper of Women’s Liberation.

The  quote (1851) in the photo above (copy below) was written by Sojourner Truth:

“The man over there says women need to be helped into carriages and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages or over puddles, or gives me the best place — and ain’t I a woman?

“Look at my arm!  I have plowed and planted and gathered into barns, and no man could head me — and ain’t I a woman.  I could work as much and eat as much as a man – when I could get it – and bear the lash as well? and ain’t I a woman?

“I have born thirteen children and seen most of them sold into slavery and when I cried out with my mother’s grief none but Jesus heard me – and ain’t I a woman?

On January 26, 2020 the New York Times published a op ed piece written by Caroline Randall Williams’ arguing that that statues of Confederate Generals ought to be torn down.

Her op ed piece begins:

” I have a rape color skin,

“My immediate white male ancestors were all rapists.

“I am the descendant of black women who were domestic servants and white men who raped their help.

“I am more than half white and none of it was consensual.

“White Southern men – my ancestors – took what they wanted from the women they did not love, over whom they had extraordinary power and then failed to claim their children.”

Ms Williams’ op ed piece was widely read.

BLACK PEOPLE DID NOT LIKE BEING SLAVES

 

The discipline of art history, with its deeply European roots, framework and model, is the most powerful and enduring apparatus of imperialism and colonization.

Its a brilliant fabrication, it is ethnocentric.

It has an ethnocentric theme, with a perverse hierarchy of objects drawn along a regimental axis which has astonishing implications.

Such objects and their styles are manifest the tastes of the elite and ruling classes.

It is a totalizing scheme in which all human made objects must find their appropriate place and the view of the elite classes becomes what one art historian has called the “brain of the earth’s body: the most thoroughgoing and effective imperialistic gesture imaginable.”

What is configured is an articulation of colonization and imperialism that allows colonization to subsist despite the end of direct colonization.

Hierarchies of race, gender and class are imposed, and the message is that so called natives, indigenous, inferior, subordinate, subaltern, and nonwhite people are to be conquered, catechized, dominated, variously exterminated, variously dislodged.

The question to ask yourself is: “How can we provide, discover and assess histories that are more plural, inclusive, multiple, diverse?

CORONAVIRUS

While the present on-going intense discussion of police brutality, use of extremely excess force in policing, reform law enforcement, and removal of statues of racists has been in progress, a relaxation of steps taken to prevent the spread of coronavirus has recently taken place in many states..

As result of recent relaxation of orders designed to prevent the spread of coronavirus — relaxation of stay in place orders, relaxation of wear mask orders, relaxation of limitations on business operation there has been an unprecedented climb in the number of coronavirus infections in the United States.

The number of coronavirus infections in the United States in the past two weeks surged 65 % – 41,000 cases nationwide, including one day records in Nevada, South Carolina, and Florida.

On Monday, June 29, 2020, Dr. Anne Schuchat, M.D. Principal Deputy Director of the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention said, “The coronavirus is spreading too broadly and too rapidly for the United States to get it under control.”

As a result of the coronavirus millions of American who work for state and local governments will be layed off.

State governments, county governments, and city governments will be forced to further cut their payrolls in an attempt to balance government budgets in a time of decreased revenues and increased spending.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans who work for colleges and universities have already been layed off due to the absence of students on campus.

Those who depend on the spending of college students in college towns who have not already lost their jobs will lose their jobs if students due not return.

In rural college towns, such as Ithaca, New York, one out of two people’s jobs is dependent upon college student attendance at Cornell University and Ithaca College.

Recently, Cornell University announced in a 97 page reopening report that it plans to reopen.

When college campuses shut down, college student spending stops,

When college campuses shut down, it is a major economic disaster in cities that depend on college student spending.

When college campuses shut down it is a catastrophe for colleges and universities which depend on college enrollment fees and depend on revenue from collage dormitories.

Colleges and Universities which depend on revenue from college football, and other college sports will take a big hit..

The number of Americans who lost their jobs due to steps taken to prevent spread of coronavirus prevention climbed from 40 million at the time of GEORGE FLOYD’S murder (May 25, 2020) to 48 million today (June 29, 2020).

AS CORONAVIRUS RISES THE ECONOMY SINKS

We are no longer in charge of the economy, the coronavirus is.

The coronavirus and the murder of GEORGE FLOYD now govern how we look at things and how may of us act.

On June 30, 2020 the Wall Street Journal reported:

In Los Angeles officials estimate one in 140 residents is infected with COVID 19; a week ago the estimate was one in 400. Christian Ghaly, Director for Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, said the county could begin running out of hospital beds in the next few weeks.

Los Angeles officials have banned all July 4 fireworks displays and ordered beaches closed over the coming holiday weekend.

As Covid 19 rises the economy sinks.

Governors have no choice but to close more businesses as the infections spread.

Florida, Texas and California have reversed reopening measures in recent days, as Covid 19 infection rates and hospitalizations rise.

The State of New York has now imposed a 14 day quarantine on all passengers arriving from California.

SAUDI ARABIA

Out of concern for the spread of coronavirus, Saudi officials effectively cancelled this year’s hajj.

Only about 1,000 people will be permitted to make the pilgrimage to Mecca, compared with 2.5 million who did so last year.

EVERYONE SHOULD HAVE RESPECT FOR THE PEOPLE WHO PROTECT THEM.

Everyone agrees that they should have respect for the people who protect them.

Last week the Tucson Police Department released a video showing Carlos Ingram Lopez, a 27 year-old Latino man, being restrained face down for for 12 minutes by police officers in April.  He died shortly after.

Many Latinos across the United States are calling out police brutality against their communities, echoing similar calls by African-Americans.

Everyone in the United States is now asking:

1. Who protects them?
2. Do the police protect them?
3. How must police act in performing their duties?
4. What should be done to rid police departments of the scourge of racism?
5. What should be done to rid policemen, policewomen, and police departments from using excessive force?
6. How must we, the people and our government, act to protect the police and to protect citizens from the police
7. How must we and our government act to protect us from the spread of Covid 19>
8. How must government act to protect people and businesses from loss of income and other impacts of mass unemployment caused by business shut downs ordered by the government?
9. What restrictions should be imposed on businesses, social and religious gatherings, and protest rallies to prevent the spread of Covid 19?
10. What steps, in any, should be taken to promote (a) equality, and to promote (b) racial equality?

Currently, the Federal Aviation Agency does not require airline passengers to wear masks to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

Currently, the United States federal government does not require anyone to wear a mask to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

United States President Trump refuses to wear a mask to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

People question the leadership, intellectual integrity, vanity and immaturity of the top infectious disease expert in the United States, Dr. Anthony Fauci.

It is widely understood worldwide that the U.S. federal government failed and continues to fail in controlling the spread of the coronavirus.

Forty of the fifty eight states are currently seeing an increase in the rate of coronavirus infections.

The rate of new coronavirus infections in the United States is currently out of control.

IDOLS

The people tearing down statues, attempting to tear down statues, and demanding removal of statues are forcing us to ask ourselves:

1. Who are our idols?
2. Who should be our idols?
3. What does a statue represent?

The majority of American voters support demonstrators against police brutality.

Many Americans see President Trump as being out of touch with the concept of racial justice.

Many Americans see President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as not understanding the difference between rewriting history and adding a new perspective to history by adding the experience of nonwhite people in the historical narrative.

The people in favor or tearing down or removing statues see statues as a standing memory which supports and honors white supremacy ideas and ideals.

They say the monuments must be torn down to strip the people honored of their laurels.

They say the statues are an emotional investment white people have in a legacy of hate.

The people who tear down and/or ask for monuments to be removed, mantra is:

“Do you mean to honor the oppressors at the expense of the oppressed ?

“If so, you have an emotional investment in a legacy of hate.”

People have been awakened through protests, and efforts to tear down or remove statues, to complaints about police brutality, racial injustice and systemic racism.

Protests in the United States have had a significant impact on our psyche.

On July 1, 2020, the Fort Lauderdale Police Department released nine minutes of body cam footage showing police officers laughing and celebrating after shooting protestors with rubber bullets during a May 31, 2020 protest against police brutality after the killing of GEORGE FLOYD in Minneapolis.

Fort Lauderdale Police Chief Rick Maglione said, “our officers were dealing with the chaos of a developing situation.”

The cover of the June 22/June 29, 2020 TIME Magazine bears the headline: “THE OVERDUE AWAKENING.”

The cover of the July 6/July 13, 2020 TIME Magazine bears the headline: “AMERICA MUST CHANGE.”

THE MEANING OF LIFE

Before the events described above took place one out of three Americans were suffering from being in an extreme state of stress and anxiety.

They still are.

At least one out of three Americans are suffering from the trauma of fear of the unknown.

At least one in three Americans are in a state of  clinical depression.

Almost all Americans today cannot tolerate differences of opinion.

Their “nerves have been frayed.”

They are in a highly emotional state.

They are maxed out mentally.

The meaning of their life has been turned upside down by recent events.

Many forces are at play.

The amount and type of trauma being suffered by each individual depends upon such factors as:

• the color of their skin;
• their political beliefs;
• their social beliefs;
• where they are physically located – whether their local businesses have been burned down or looted and/or whether their local businesses are boarded up;
• whether they have personally been victimized by prejudice or bias;
• whether or not they are an immigrant, and if so their status as an immigrant;
• whether or not their parent is an immigrant
• their level of education,
• their social status,
• their income and their wealth;
• their age and whether they are retired or working; and
• whether they are employed or not.

IMPACT OF RACE PREJUDICE

The energy, momentum and motives of the people responsible for the current uproar about social justice differs from person to person.

The reactions to the uproar about social justice also differ from person to person.

If you are a Japanese American it might rub you the wrong way and it might be extremely irritating to you that Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s (FDR’s) picture is on all dimes in the United States.

FDR was the President who guided the United States through the Great Depression and World War II.

While FDR was president the U.S. government forced the relocation and internment of thousands of Japanese-Americans to detention camps during World War II.

The interment of Japanese-Americans was the culmination of the federal government’s long history of racist and discriminatory treatment of Asian immigrants and their descendants which had begun with restrictive immigration policies in the late 1800s.

At the time of internment, only three percent of Japanese-Americans were considered direct threats to U.S. security.

Two-thirds of the prisoners in the camps were native-born American citizens.

WAR RELOCATION AUTHORITY

On March 18, 1942, the federal War Relocation Authority was established to “take all people of Japanese descent into custody, surround them with troops, prevent them from buying land, and return them to their former homes at the close of war.”

John J. McCloy, Assistant Secretary of War, remarked if it came to a choice between national security and the guarantee of civil liberties expressed in the Constitution, he considered the Constitution just a scrap of paper.

HUMAN IMPACT

In the immediate aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack, more than 1,200 Japanese community leaders were arrested, and the assets of all accounts in the U.S. branches of Japanese banks were frozen.

On March 31, 1942 Japanese Americans along the West Coast were ordered to report to control stations and to register the names of all family members.

They were told when and where they should report for removal to an internment camp.

Japanese Americans were given from four days to about two weeks to settle their affairs and gather as many belongings as they could carry.

In may cases, individuals and families were forced to sell some or all of their property, including businesses within that period of time.

Nearly 2,00 Japanese Americans were told that their cars would be safely stored until they returned.

However. the U.S. Army soon offered to buy the vehicles at cut-rate prices and Japanese who refused were told that the vehicles were being requisitioned for the war.

Between 1942 and 1945 a total of ten internment camps were opened, holding approximately  120,000 Japanese Americans for varying periods of time, in California, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Arkansas.

INTERNMENT CAMP SHUT DOWN

On  December 18, 1944, the government announced that all relocations centers (internment camps) would be closed by the end of 1945.

The last of the camps was closed in March 1946.

With the end of internment, Japanese Americans began reclaiming or rebuilding their lives.

RACIAL PREJUDICE

A presidential commission in 1982 identified race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership as the underlying causes of the government’s interment program.

Above information about internment camps obtained/taken from Encyclopedia Britannica.

ACA – 5

Many Japanese-Americans fear that allowing affirmative action (to achieve racial justice) will adversely effect their children.

An amendment to the Constitution of the State of California (ACA – 5) is set to go on the ballot in November, 2020.

The purpose of the amendment is to void a law that makes it illegal to use race as a grounds for admission to state universities.

Japanese American parents have signed a petition against enactment because they fear if admission to UCLA and UC Berkeley is not based on the academic excellence of the applicant, their highly academically successful children will be discriminated against – they fear their children will have a lower chance of gaining admission to a public university in the University of California system.

ACTIVATING REAL CHANGE

While Black Lives Matter leaders and followers are working tirelessly to advance civil society, let’s protect ourselves from doing stupid things because of mindless anger.

Let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water.

Although it is important to put an end to use of excessive force by police it is at least as important to to be protected from violent crimes committed by thugs and for firemen and police to be able to respond to emergencies and to not live in fear..

My research assistant has reported to me:

Before the murder of GEORGE FLOYD, a black police officer Mohamed Noor in the Minnesota police department MURDERED a white woman, Gustine Damond.

Her family was awarded $20 million in damages for her wrongful death in 2018.

Mr. Noor was sentenced in 2019.

A grave danger of being beat up and robbed by black thugs in Minneapolis was well known before Frye (the mayor of Minneapolis before GEORGE FLOYD was murdered by four Minneapolis) was elected mayor of Minneapolis.

While I was writing this post, my research assistant sent me videos of black thugs beating up and robbing white people on a street corner in Minneapolis before GEORGE FLOYD.

EASY CHANGES TO MAKE IN POLICING

It has been reported to me that up to 20% of many cities’ annual city budgets come from revenue generated by fines related to traffic violations written by policemen.

Someone other than an official policeman can write up a ticket for being parked in a parking space after expiration of time paid for at a parking meter.

There is no need for policemen to write up parking meter expiration of time violations.

Running traffic lights — going through a red light — can be monitored and “caught” with cameras located at intersections instead of by a policeman stationed near a stop sign or traffic signal.

Traffic stops routinely made by policemen and policewoman riding in patrol cars need to be regulated.

Traffic stops by a police officer should not be allowed to escalate into a police officer killing an occupant in the vehicle stopped.

But they do so often that black parents instruct their children what to do if they are stopped by a policeman while they are driving a car in order to avoid being killed by that police officer.

People should not be afraid when they see a policeman in a police vehicle.

Do you know anyone who is not frightened when they see a police car near their own car while they are driving their automobile?

All police officers should be required to attend a six hour course, at least once a year, in which “racism” is defined, in which it is explained in no uncertain terms that racism is bad, in which it is made abundantly clear that racial profiling is not permitted, and in which it is made clear that police are supposed to treat people in as friendly manner as they would like to be treated by their neighbors..

AMOUNT OF TRAFFIC FINE

The amount of the traffic fine assessed for a traffic citation should fit the crime.

Poor people should not be required to pay a fine beyond their means.

Fines should be related to means.

THE BURDEN OF PROOF

The burden of proof to obtain a conviction in a criminal trial is “it must be beyond a reasonable doubt. that the accused committed the crime charged.”

The burden of proof required for a plaintiff to prevail – to obtain a judgment – in a civil trial is “that it is more likely than not the defendant caused damage suffered by plaintiff.”

The burden of proof to obtain a finding of police misconduct against a police officer involved in traffic-stop shooting ought to be “it was unreasonable for the police officer who shot the victim to believe his LIFE was in jeopardy.”

DEFUNDING THE POLICE WOULD BE A TRAGEDY FOR BLACK PEOPLE

According to FBI Crime Statistics, Black People are responsible for 50% of all murders and 50% of all strong armed robberies.

The vast majority of violent crimes (murder and armed robbery) are black on black crimes.

Black victims are most often the victims of violent crimes committed by black people.

Black people need to be protected by policemen and policewomen from violent crimes perpetrated by black criminals on them in their neighborhoods.

Police departments shouldn’t be de-funded unless necessary to implement a viable alternative system.

FBI VIOLENT CRIME STATISTICS

There are 500,000 violent crimes between people of different races per year.

In approximately 450,000 of those 500,000 violent crimes the victim is white and the perpetrator is black.

In approximately 50,000 of those violent crimes the victim is black and the perpetrator is white.

Although the black population is only 13% of the population, the black population is responsible for 50% of all murders, and 60% of all strong arm robberies.  The vast majority of these are black on black crimes.

Although 13% percent of the population of the United States is black, black people are responsible for between 24-26% of all hate crimes according to FBI statistics.

Information from FBI Statistics.

Information provided by my research assistant.

BLACK PRISON POPULATION

The number of young black men being arrested is going down.

Compared to 20 years ago, there are now half as many black men under the age 25 in prison.

Prison numbers come from Department of Justice.

Information from my research assistant.

WHAT EVERYONE TAKES FOR GRANTED IS OFTEN FALSE

Although almost everyone takes it for granted that there is systemic bigotry in America.

That is not true.

The fact that two and a half times as many black men are killed by police while in police custody than the number of white men killed while in police custody does not mean there is systemic bigotry in America.

It is inflammatory and self-destructive to claim that the majority of people in America are bigoted.

The majority of people in America are not bigots.

America is a county where capitalism flourishes.

That is one of the reasons immigrants immigrate to America.

America is a nation of immigrants.

Most people in the United States are highly ambitious.

All the people I know personally are highly ambitious individuals.

People can go from rags to riches in America.

For example consider Steve Jobs.

He was an orphan.

He had to drop out of college because he did not have the means to pay tuition.

Today the stock of the company he founded, Apple, is worth more than the entire net worth of the entire oil and gas industry,

Minorities are highly successful in America.

I personally know a number of spectacularly successful minorities.

I personally know that a high numbers and a high percentages of the graduates from the most elite universities in America are minority students.

Myself and my daughters attended elite universities in America.

When I was an undergraduate at UC Berkeley in 1964 – 1967, over 75% of the students in my chemical engineering classes were students who were – immigrants or foreign nationals – not born in the United States.

When I attended the graduation ceremony of my daughter at Cornell University, an Ivy League University in Ithaca, New York, about 25 years ago, it seemed to me that over 80% of the students receiving MS and PhD graduate degrees in scientific disciplines and in engineering fields had Asian names.

When I worked on a graduate degree (MS degree in biochemical engineering) in the Olin Hall School of Chemical Engineering at Cornell University in 1967 and 1968 the Dean of the School was a White man.  Today, the Dean of that School is a Black man.

A high percentage of the people earning the the most money working for tech companies in Silicon Valley are minorities; a high number and a high percentage of the most successful start-up companies in Silicon Valley and their founders are minorities-immigrants.

A high percentage of the managers of high tech companies in Silicon Valley, and elsewhere, are minorities.

Recently, the United States has had a Black President and a Black Attorney General.

Mayors and Chiefs of Police throughout the United States are Black.

In a big city like Los Angeles, more than 50% of the residents are either an immigrant or the child of an immigrant.

More that 200 languages are spoken in the City of Los Angeles.

POLICING NEEDS TO BE HUMANIZED

Recent events shown on social media show unnecessary brutality and excessive use of force by policemen.

Policing needs to be humanized.

JOHN GRISHAM’S DESCRIPTION OF POLICE

In John Grisham’s latest novel “Camino Winds”, as three characters are approaching a bridge to get back on an island that has been pounded by a hurricane, the following discussion takes place:

BRUCE “You are not going to believe this. The cops have the road blocked this side of the bridge and they’re searching each car with dogs.  Can you please tell me why?

BOB: “Because they can.”

BRUCE: I mean, these people just had their homes and businesses blown away, so why would they want to sneak explosives onto the island? These cops are out of control.”

BOB:  “For the same reason they send SWAT teams to arrest people for bad checks. Because they can and it’s far more dramatic. These guys think they are as tough as Navy Seals and they have to prove it.  Look at all the military gear they wear. Why does every Podunk police department have a tank these days?  Because the Pentagon has too much stuff and sells it cheap.  Why do they send canine dogs units to sniff around the country fair? Because they have the damn dogs and need to use them. Don’t get me started.

BOB: “Why does every fender bender need three cop cars and four fire trucks?  Because these guys are bored, sitting around the station and they get their jollies racing up and down the streets with sirens screaming.  Tough boys in action.  They like to block traffic in all directions, makes ’em feel powerful.  They control the situation. Sniffing dogs.  Unbelievable. It’ll be midnight before we get there.”

NEWS MEDIA

There are many ways to weave together facts to tell a story.

News media compete with other news media for eyeballs.

Media sell a product (advertising) to advertisers based on the number of viewers that view what they broadcast, who those viewers are, and how much and what type of attention their viewers give them.

In July, 2020 over 100 brands that used to advertise on FACEBOOK will not be advertising on FACEBOOK as their protest against FACEBOOK for FACEBOOK disseminating misinformation and hate on its platform.

On Friday, June 26, 2020, Honda of America announced it will not advertising on FACEBOOK and INSTAGRAM because it has “chosen to stand with people united against hate and racism.”

Levi Straus & Co., said it will suspend advertising on FACEBOOK through the end of July because of FACEBOOK’S failure to stop the spread of misinformation and hate speech on its platform.

The North Face said, We’re in. We’re out.” — will stop posting content and advertisements on FACEBOOK through July.

Coca-Cola, Starbucks and others have temporarily stopped advertising o FACEBOOK in protest of FACEBOOK spreading misinformation and hate speech.

THE SAME INFORMATION IS REPORTED DIFFERENTLY BY DIFFERENT NEWS MEDIA

News is reported in a way that supports the views and desires of specific audiences.

That is why news/information is reported differently by different news media.

Each news outlet broadcasts information that supports the particular set of political/religious views/values of its audience and its advertisers.

POINTS OF VIEW PROPAGANDA

People in social organizations, business organizations, religious organizations, political organizations, political parties, politicians, and highly specialized special interest groups, as well as governments, use social media such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to provide propaganda – information and disinformation.

So called “educational institutions” [Kindergarten through high school, colleges, universities, and specialized schools] provide information [which they call education] which fits the agenda of the people in charge.

Like the picture below of two wolves fighting to the death, social media and the so called news media and educational institutions tell stories (report information) differently.

HISTORY

Mary Beard reports in her book ‘HOW DO WE LOOK” that people have been engaged in wars and fights to the death about how to think, in which each side claims it is on the side of God and claims the other side is the devil.

THE MEANING OF SYMBOLS

People write history (and the news of current events reported by the media is) slanted to favor the values of a particular audience.

We have reached a place in human social evolution where you may now purchase your choice of color of Band-Aid from Johnson & Johnson.

INTELLECTUAL VALUE LANDSCAPE

Today, the most searched words on Google are “protest” and “racism.”

   

HOW WE LOOK AT THINGS

Saturday morning, June 13, 2929), I was sent a video titled ALL BOARDED UP.

The video consisted of a man talking as he is taking a video as he is driving on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

The video showed one boarded up high end retail store after another.

In the video the narrator says, “The media doesn’t show us this.”

The narrator went on to say that the media does not want us to know that all the high end stores on Fifth Avenue were looted during the “protest rally” in Manhattan; the media does not want to wee all those broken windows, or that all the expensive merchandise in those high end stores was stolen.

That doesn’t fit with the narrative the media is selling.

The media is selling the narrative that the protests were all about injustice, the protests were all about the tragic violation of a black man’s (George Floyd’s) civil liberties.

Q: WHERE ARE WE NOW? A: WE ARE NOW LIVING IN GEORGE FLOYD’S AMERICA!

For the past two weeks,  whether we like it or not, we have been living in GEORGE FLOYD’S AMERICA.

WHERE ARE WE GOING?

Will there be a statue of GEORGE FLOYD erected in Lafayette Park across the street from the White House?

Will there be a statute of George Floyd erected in parks in every city in the United States?

Will the will of the people expressed in who they vote for as next president of the United States be based on what has been happening with respect to COVID 19 pandemic and what has been happening as a result of the murder of George Floyd?

DO WE WANT TO VENERATE GEORGE FLOYD?

THE PROTESTORS HAVE LEVERAGE

Who do we want to venerate?

Do we want to venerate George Floyd?

Will the protestors force us to venerate George Floyd?

Nobody’s back ground is perfect.

I’ve been told George Floyd spent years in prison for armed robbery.

I’ve been told George Floyd was sent to prison for having pointed a loaded gun at a pregnant woman’s stomach, then robbing her.

I’ve also been told that George Floyd served his time and went to Minneapolis got a job as a night security guard and wanted to turn his life around and to redeem himself.

ITS A REVOLUTIONARY TIME

People are tearing down statues, removing statues and defacing statues which they consider to be emblems of white supremacy – which they consider to be powerful and hurtful symbols of systemic racism.

Police have been using tear gas on protestors protesting police brutality and systemic racial injustice.  Police have shot rubber bullets at protestors and have senselessly roughed up protestors.

People not associated with the cause of racial justice have joined protest marches. Those people have set fires which burned buildings, and burned police cars; they have been looting and destroying stores, generally causing mayhem.

Let’s hope we don’t go to the next thing.

VISUAL IMAGES SHAPE OUR ENVIRONMENT

RACIAL SENSITIVITY, CAPITALISM, BAND-AID/Johnson & Johnson, AND CRAYONS/Crayola Company

When I grew up Band-Aids came in only flesh color.  See photos below.

    

Now Band-Aids come in many flesh colors.

Band-Aids now come in many tones of color so that once a person puts one on it is the same color as that person’s skin.

Many years ago, 30 years back, the Crayola Company in an act of racial sensitivity, pulled the flesh colored crayon out.

Many years ago the Frito Lay Company did away with the Frito Bandito.

These acts of racially sensitivity came about without the enactment of any laws or the filing of any lawsuits.

About that band-aid, why not just make it clear so everyone’s true color shows through…because isn’t that what it is all about.

We are all unique.

Embrace the beauty of that.

A HISPANIC WOMAN’S IDENTITY CRISIS

I know a Hispanic woman who had an identity crisis when she transferred from a community college to UCLA.

When she arrive at UCLA, as a minority student, she was told she “had to join” a Chicano Club.

She attended one meeting.  At that meeting she was told her skin tone wasn’t dark enough; that she could pass as being “white” and therefore she wasn’t wanted, she wouldn’t be welcome as a member in the club.

When she told people she wanted to be a corporate lawyer, she was told not to do that.

Instead, she was told to get a PhD in Chicano studies, and learn in her PhD studies how oppressed an victimized Mexicans and other Latin people are in the United States of America.

They told her she would be selling out her “people/her race” if she went to law school and became a corporate lawyer.

She had an identity crisis. She had never thought she would be selling out her “people” if she went to law school to be a corporate lawyer.

She couldn’t relate.

Her parents are immigrants from Central America.

She had never in her entire life felt underprivileged or oppressed or victimized.

She had always felt privileged and still feels privileged to be living in America.

She had always thought, and still thinks, it is wonderful that in America she could/can borrow money to go to UCLA, then borrow more money to go to law school.

A WHITE SUPREMACIST’S IDENTITY CRISIS

Consider the fact that Jesus Christ was not a White Man.

The divine body of Jesus was not white.

There were no white men in the Middle East when Jesus was born, or when Jesus was alive.

Jesus did not have blond hair, or blue eyes, or white skin.

Jesus was either black or an Arab with dark hair and darker skin.

Photo below is a mummy portrait from Roman Egypt.

Mummy portraits were painted in late first – early second century CE.

Photo above is taken from the coffin of a young man called Artemidoros, who died in the early second century CE, excavated at Hawara in Central Egypt.

His mummy is a wonderful combination of the traditions of Egypt, Greece and Rome, and a brilliant example of the cultural mix of the ancient Mediterranean.

His name is Greek and is written in Greek across his front.  “Artemidoros, farewell’ it reads. His face is a Roman portrait.

What will happen if and when White Supremacists realize that Jesus was black, that Jesus was not a while man?

What would happen to the psyche of all Americans if all the Jesus’ in all the churches in America were black or a shade of black?

What would happen to the the collective psyche of Americans if all the crucifixes in the United States of America had a black Jesus?

Would things be calmer or more peaceful in America?

Black is celebrated as being being beautiful in the Torah.

The Torah tells us Moses’ wife was black.

The Queen of Sheba, also, was black.

ANOTHER POINT OF VIEW

Jesus was a Jew and would have looked like the Jews of 1st century Judea at that time.

How Jews looked is not abundantly clear as Jews tended not to paint pictures of themselves and there was no photography.

At or about the 1st century — there were two main locations where Jews were located: Judea/Galilee and Babylonia.

There were also thriving diaspora communities in Byzantium (Istanbul), Alexandria (Egypt) and, of course, Rome.

Following the two failed Judean revolts against the Roman Empire of 65 and 135 most of the Judean Jews were dispersed in the diaspora.

The conventional wisdom is that the majority of Judean Jews stayed within the confines of the Roman Empire and ultimately were the forebears of the Ashkenazi diaspora.

Therefore it is most likely (an another point of view is) that Ashkenazi Jews with the more traditional Semitic features – such as Adam Sandler, Jeff Goldblum, or Jerry Stiller – are probably closer in appearance to Jesus than is a blond haired, blue eyed white man.

FURTHER REFLECTION ON THAT OTHER POINT OF VIEW

The only people who drew a lot of pictures were the Egyptians.

When drawing themselves they usually colored themselves in medium reddish-brown tones.

When drawing Semitic people — they would typically draw them as bearded with black and often curly hair, almond eyes, and either tanned or olive skin.

They also depicted black skinned Nubians as blond haired slaves.

The Egyptians artists were sensitive to skin tone when drawing subjects.

The Songs of Songs

A description of a Jew is found in the “Song of Songs” as follows:

“10. My lover is radiant and ruddy.

“11.  His head is gold, pure gold, his hair like palm fronds, as black as a raven.

“14. His arms are rods of gold adorned with gems; His loins, a work of ivory covered with sapphires.

“15. His legs, pillars of alabaster resting on golden pedestals.”

Alabaster and ivory are typically white.

Gold and ruddy could describe tanned or olive skin.

Black as a raven is black as a raven

Hair like palm fronds — in an imaginative person’s imagination could be a colorful simile for a Jewfro.

While this is not conclusive it is not consistent with a person that looked African or Southern Arabian.

MORE MUSINGS

The Bible doesn’t pay much attention to skin color, but there are inferences here and there.

So we have “Simeon who was called Niger,” (Acts 13:1) who may have been black, or else just a nickname, paired with “Lucius of Cyrene,” who may or may not have been black, being from Cyrene.

THE BIBLICAL PERSPECTIVE

The Bible is much more interested in cultural differences, which to some is more fundamental and pertinent than race or skin color.

We’re all one human race, after all, but many cultures that overlap across races and skin colors.

All of us are the “skin colored people,” whichever color that might be.

SACRILEGIOUS

One person (BEN) I spoke to told me:

“I think he was probably the exact same shade as Barack Obama. Apparently, there is something about that shad that can convince Jews to follow any idiocy.”

Another person (JOE)) I spoke to told me:

“If it’s sunny and bright in heaven – perhaps one’s spirit would get sunburned and be darker?  If it’s dark and no natural light in hell, one should be as white as snow.

“But no matter what color you are or skin tone if you figure out you are either in heaven or hell.”

EXPRESSIONS OF AN OPPOSITE POINT OF VIEW

Veronica:

Who cares? Race is an invention of the industrial era to divide and conquer people.  It is being used as such now to distract the populace and keep our minds enslaved.  Let’s not play their game.  I’d rather talk about Jesus’ philosophy of how to treat others than the color of his skin. If they want to paint him black, let them. If they want to make him into a cartoon, sure! Let’s just keep the conversation about what matters and let go of division.  Let’s elevate!

Richard:

The image of God is a concept and theological doctrine in Judaism, Christianity, and Sufism of Islam, which asserts that human beings are created in the image and likeness of God.  If you believe in the Word of God, then you believe that we all can find something of ourselves in Jesus; so Veronica is correct.  There are no true images of Jesus because it is irrelevant because the artist would have only have chosen to place emphasis on the things important to the artist.  The Word of God therefore forbids us to make those images; yet we persist because like Sinatra, we all want to do it “my way.” As Veronica said we should be emphasizing the Words of Jesus, which I personally consider to be of great importance, rather than His appearance. God bless all of you. You might even consider reading the Bible to learn  what it says about this subject and many other things that affect our lives, I do each day!

Dan:

Veronica you are absolutely right.  The importance is the philosophical and moral teachings not his complexion.

In many ways this is an angels on the head of a pin type argument.

But, its one relevance is that for centuries the image of Jesus was Europeanized in order to disconnect him from his Judaic roots.

I think this was psychologically necessary in order to justify the persecution of his religious and ethnic kin, along with so many other non-Europeans.

The Europeanizing of Jesus was not merely a means of better identifying with him and his teachings, but to claim him for yourself in much the same way that so many people claim God to be on their side hence, any opposition to our way of thinking is not merely a difference of opinion but also an affront to God and God’s will — thereby justifying my resorting to violence against those who would blaspheme.

To Africanize or Arabize Jesus would be doing the same thing.

Keeping him a Jew puts EVERYONE on exactly the same footing – he is no more European than African, Arab, Indian or East Indian.

You can partake of his philosophy and teachings but not on YOUR terms, but on his.

My gut instinct is that the rejection of Jesus’ Judaic roots is one of the reasons why Christians around the world for so many centuries have such an inglorious record of acting in every way but Christian.

Some people think the only thing that matters about a person – or the most important thing about a person – is the color of a person’s skin.

The more important thing is Jesus’ philosophy of how to treat others, which has nothing to do with the color of their skin.

In this time of civil unrest in the United States let’s be much better than wolves.

LET’S BE BETTER THAN WOLVES

Wolves are intelligent, adaptable, fierce, and playful.

 

When strangers meet it usually results in a fight to the death.

Although a model of animal cooperation a wolf pack is not wholly harmonious.

Members are constantly being tested by more lowly wolves trying to rise up the ranks and such subordination must be dealt with quickly.

A wolf pack must defend its territory.

Without it, the pack cannot find food, cannot produce young, and will be forced to disband.

The pack patrols its borders regularly; if it encounters outsiders then its members have no choice but to attack.

Up to one fifth of all wolf deaths occur during these inter-pack bottles.

In this time of civil unrest, and new political realities, many persons are mustering the moral courage necessary to confront and solve problems with effective, honest and emphatic dialogue that seeks solutions rather than sowing seeds of division and disunity.

LIEUTENANT GENERAL U.S. ARMY DARRYL A. WILLIAMS

In connection with President Donald Trump giving the graduation address to the cadets at West Point, General Williams wrote a letter staking out the U.S. Army’s position on sowing seeds of division and disunity, a copy of which is set forth below.

The cadets who had been quarantined at home were ordered to come back for a graduation ceremony once President Trump informed the Army he would be giving the graduation address.

They sat six feet apart during the graduation ceremony.

 

  

President Trump caused an uproar of concern in the media and on social media about his health when he was photographed having difficulty walking down the ramp from the podium after having just given his graduation address to the graduating cadets.

 

  

WE DO NOT HAVE EQUAL OPPORTUNITY IN CALIFORNIA!

WE DO NOT HAVE EQUAL OPPORTUNITY ANYWHERE IN THE UNITED STATES!

THE COLOR OF A PERSON’S SKIN MATTERS IN CALIFORNIA, IN THE UNITED STATES AND IN THE ENTIRE REAL WORLD!

An Assembly Constitutional Amendment relating to governmental preferences is pending in the California Legislature.

It states that Equal Opportunity is deeply rooted in the American ideals of fairness, justice, and equality.  It states that as a result of the passage of Proposition 209,  women and people of color continue to  face discrimination and disparity in opportunities to participate in numerous forms of association and work that are crucial to the development of talents and capabilities that enable people to contribute meaningfully to, an benefit from the collective possibilities of national life.

It states that disparity still exists, particularly for Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, Black Americans, Latino Americans, Native Americans, and women, which should be rectified.

You should read the full text of ACA 5.

Here are some of the statistics cited in ACA 5:

• Women, particularly women of color, continue to face unequal pay for equal work.  White women are paid 80 cents to every dollar paid to white men doing the same work.
• Black women are paid 60 cents for every dollar paid to white men doing the same work and would theoretically have to work an extra seven months every year to overcome that differential.
• Since the passage of Proposition 209 underrepresented groups at the Berkeley and Los Angeles campuses of the University of California immediately fell by 60 percent and system wide enrollment fell by at least 12 percent.

In this bill state, is stated, “Underrepresented group high school graduates faced substantial long-term declines in educational and employment outcomes as a result of those changes.

The California Legislature has forcibly stated that the color of a person’s skin matters in the real world.

IN SOLIDARITY, STRENGTH – AND ALWAYS, LOVE:

TIMOTHY LAW SNYDER, PH.D., PRESIDENT LOYOLA MARYMOUNT UNIVERSITY

MAKES THE DIVINE VISIBLE IN THE HUMAN WORLD THROUGH WORDS AND DEEDS

In a letter, dated June 16, 2020, to the LMU Community, President Snyder stated up front, “The killings of Black people – Rayshard Brooks, Tony McDade, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice and many others – resulted from anti-Black racism.”

He dedicated himself and LMU “…to eradicating systemic racism at LMU and addressing the histories and systems of injustice perpetrated against people of color, while also taking responsibility for LMU’s institutional complicity in the perpetuation of white supremacy.”

In his letter, President Snyder, listed ongoing and imminent actions at LMU including a review and change of the art and images in the University Hall:

“We will change the art and images in University Hall as part of a broader effort to ensure that LMU reflects more inclusive and diverse representations of our shared history and community, under the guidance of the Committee of Public Art and Images.”

In the last paragraph of President Snyder’s letter, President Snyder states:

  “As is so with all of America society and culture, our pathway to justice, and its clear goals, will require renewed and reformed reflection conversation, commitment and action.  We must be sure that each of us holds each entity of our community – person, organization, program – accountable.  We need to be open to calling out what needs to be called out and accepting what others witness in our behaviors and actions as loci for revision.  As actors within our larger society, we must do the same.  Let us champion dignity.  Let us champion justice. Let’s get to work.”

In his letter he mentioned participating in a “Black Lives Matter” demonstration organized by LMU students.

“On June 6, while participating in a Black Lives Matters demonstration organized by LMU students, I was reminded that the police violence and systemic racism that infects our society by killing Black people is a system in which I, as a white person of privilege, am complicit.”

He went on to say:

“I am grateful and humbled by our Black community’s leadership and willingness to impart its experiences, pain and anger; I am not in a position to understand fully how exhausting and burdensome it must be, especially given the persistent nature of experience in a racist society. Amidst this understanding, LMU’s duty to our Black students, faculty, and staff is, and will remain, steadfast.  We are committed to a process of institutional transformation that addresses systemic racism and oppression.

EUGENICS

Eugenics is a science that deals with improvement (as by control of human mating) of hereditary qualities of a race or breed.

Famous people in recent history were eugenicist – advocates of eugenics.

WINSTON CHURCHILL

Winston Churchill – the Prime Minister of Great Britain in World War II – and Adolf Hitler – Fuhrer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party – the leader of Germany in World War II – were eugenicists – advocates of eugenics.

Winston Churchill had great energy and pugnacity.

Not everyone appreciated Churchill’s energy or brilliance.

Lord Halifax – the man the King of England wanted to be Prime Minister, but who refused the position – was skeptical of the wild energy Churchill seemed likely to bring to office of Prime Minister.

The office of the Prime Minister was at 10 Downing, which was both the Prime Minister’s residence and official office.

Halifax grumbled that  Churchill’s new cabinet appointees lacked intellectual heft. Halifax likened them to “gangsters,” the chief gangster in his view, being Churchill.

On Saturday, May 11, 1940, the day after Churchill was appointed Prime Minister by King George V, Lord Halifax wrote in his diary, “I have seldom met anyone with stranger gaps of knowledge, or whose mind worked in greater jerks.”

One staff member at 10 Downing said Churchill was a lackluster student at Harrow (AN ELITE HIGH SCHOOL FOR BRITAIN’S UPPER CRUST) who exhibited “phenomenal slovenliness.”

Many in Whitehall considered Churchill to be capricious and meddlesome, inclined toward dynamic action in every direction at once.

Churchill’s appointment enraged the wife of one member of Parliament, who likened him to Herman Goring, the obese, brutal chief of the German Air Fore, the Luftwaffe, and the second most powerful man in the Third Reich. “W.C. is really the counterpart of Goring in England,”  she wrote “full of the desire for blood, Blitzkrieg,’ and bloated with ego and over-feeding, the same treachery running through his veins, punctuated by heroics and hot air.” – information excerpts from pages 22 and 23 of “The Splendid and the Vile” by Erik Larson.

But ordinary people loved Churchill.  One diarist wrote, “If I had to spend my whole life with a man, I’d chose Chamberlain, but I think I would sooner have Mr. Churchill if there were a storm and I was shipwrecked.” – quote from page 23, of “The Splendid and the Vile” by Erik Larson.

“My wish is realized,” wrote Violet Bonham Carter, daughter of H.H. Asquith, the former Prime Minister, who died in 1928. “I can now face all that is to come with faith & Confidence. I know as you do that the wind has been sown, & that, we must all reap the whirlwind. But you will ride it — instead of being driven before it — Thank Heaven that you are there & at the helm of our destiny — & may the nation’s spirit be kindled by your own.” – quote from page 23 of “The Vile and the Splendid” by Erik Larson.

May 1940 Onward

“Everywhere I went in London people admired [Churchill’s] energy, his courage, his singleness of purpose. People said they didn’t know what Britain would do without him. He was obviously respected.  But no one felt he would be Prime Minister after the war.  He was simply the right man in the right job at the the right time.  The time being the time of a desperate war with Britain’s enemies.” – Ralph McAllister Ingersoll.

“The responsibilities which are his now must be greater than those carried by any other human being on earth. One would think such a weight would have a crushing effect upon him.  Not at all.  The last time I saw him, while the Battle of Britain was still raging, he looked years younger than before the war began… His uplifted spirit is transmitted to the people.” – Hubert Knickerbocker

The people of Great Britain loved Winston Churchill during World War II because they thought he sincerely loved them.

He demonstrated in word and deed that he sincerely cared about them.

He was flamboyant and electric and had an indomitable spirit.

When he gave his first speech before the House of Commons, on May 13, he said “I have nothing to offer, but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.” and vowed to achieve victory.

On Tuesday, June 18, he addressed the House of Commons to address the French debacle, France had just been overrun by the Nazis.

“The “Battle of France” was over” he said, adding, “I expect the Battle of Britain is about to begin.” At stake was not only the British Empire but all of Christian civilization. “The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us.  Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war.”  He then said:

“If we can stand up to him, all of Europe may be free, and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands; but if we fail the the whole world, including the United States, and all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister, and perhaps more prolonged, by the lights of a perverted science.

“Therefore let us brace ourselves that if the British Commonwealth and Empire lasts for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.'”

INFO ABOUT CHURCHILL – PROVIDED BY DANIEL J. CHEREN

As a young politician, Churchill was staunchly against votes for women.

While Home Secretary, there was an incident where politically motivated burglars holed up in a house that subsequently caught fire – Churchill ordered the Fire Department NOT to put out the blaze preferring that they die than water be needlessly wasted on them.

However, very much unlike Trump, Churchill knew how to be tactful. Indeed, Churchill defined tact as “the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way, that they look forward to the trip.”

Despite being lauded during WW II as the right many for the job and the right time, he was promptly voted out of office in 1945.

ADOLF HITLER

The Nazis persecuted those they considered to be racially inferior. Nazi racial ideology primarily vilified Jews, but also propagated hatred for Gypsies and blacks. The Nazis viewed Poles and other Slavs as inferior, and stated them for subjugation, forced labor, and sometimes death.

The Nazis viewed Jews as racial enemies and subjected them to arbitrary arrest, internment, and murder. Jewish prisoners received the most brutal treatment in Nazi concentration camps.

Among the first victims of persecution in Nazi Germany were political opponents – primarily Communists, Social Democrats, and trade unionists.  Jehovah’s Witnesses refused to serve in the German army or to take an oath of obedience to Adolf Hitler and were also persecuted.

Prisoners in concentration camps were identified by a colored inverted triangle sown onto their prison uniform. Political prisoners wore a badge consisting of an inverted red triangle.

ATTEMPT TO USE NAZI SYMBOLS ON FACEBOOK

On Thursday, June 18, 2020, Facebook removed 88 ads that had using an Nazi symbol – an upside down red triangle – posted by Trump, the Trump campaign and Vice President Mike Pence that Facebook said were “violating our policy against organized hate.”

The red triangle is a symbol that Nazis used to identify Communists and other political prisoners in concentration camps.

The removed ads warned “dangerous MOBS of far-left groups are running through our streets and causing absolute mayhem.”

The ads began running on Wednesday.

Before their removal they gained more than one million impressions on the Facebook pages of President Donal Trump  and Vice President Mike Pence.

QUESTION RAISED: Is it difficult to criticize a political opponent without using Nazi era imagery?

The red triangle was “the most common category of prisoners registered at the German Nazi Auschwitz camp.

Mr. Bark Bray, a historian at Rutgers and the author of “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” said: “This is a symbol that represented the extermination of leftists.  It is a death threat against leftists.

ATTEMPT TO USE MANIPULATED MEDIA ON TWITTER

On Thursday, Twitter added a “manipulated media” warning to one of Mr. Trump’s tweets that featured  a video about a supposed “racist baby” that had been altered to appear as if CNN had broadcast it.

FAILURE OF CHURCHILL’S AND HITLER’S PRACTICE OF EUGENICS

BECAUSE YOU ARE WHITE DOESN’T MEAN YOU ARE SUPERIOR

WINSTON CHURCHILL

Winston Churchill’s attempt to practice eugenics was a failure.

Winston Churchill’s son, was a failed effort at breeding a super race person.

Winston Churchill’s son Randolph Churchill was a complete failure and screw up.

He was a gambler. His ineptitude at gambling was legendary.  He was always awash in debt.

He was loud, lacked tack, drank too much, spent beyond his income and gambled with particular ineptitude.

He was a drunkard. Once drunk he had a propensity for making horrible embarrassing scenes.

His father once wrote to him, “Your idle and lazy life is [very[ offensive to me. You appear to be leading a completely perfectly useless existence.”

There was no way his marriage was going to work.

To Randolph, fidelity was a fungible  condition.  He loved sexual conquest, whether his target was married or not. He once bragged that he would enter the rooms of women without invitation, just in case his presence might be welcomed.  He told this to a female friend, who quipped sardonically “You must get a lot of rebuffs.”  He said, laughingly, “I do, but I get a lot of fucking too.”

ADOLF HITLER

Hitlers attempt to practice eugenics – to create a master-race, was a failure as well.

When Germany lost World War II, Hitler committed suicide.

Hitler’s effort to kill all the “impure people” in the world, and to have the Aryan Race, with himself as its leader, rule the world ended up being a failed effort as well.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Statues of famous people are being taken down, torn down and defaced all over the United States.

On June 22, 2020, The American Museum of Natural History decided the bronze statue of Theodore Roosevelt on a horse flanked by a Native American Indian and a Black Man on foot (photo above), that had presided over entrance to the museum since 1940, was coming down.  Currently it is being protected by police in two police cars.

Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the Unites States, was a racist and eugenicist who thought African Americans to be inferior to white citizens.

His election in 1904 marked one of the first Presidential  administrations opened opposed to civil rights and suffrage for blacks.

He believed in racial hierarchy, and endorsed sterilization of the poor and intellectually disabled.

That was the common thinking of the elites in the United States at that time.

in the early 20th century American eugenicists used forced sterilization to “breed out” traits considered undesirable.

They believed in “survival of the fittest” and thought they could help nature along by planning who reproduced and who didn’t.

They were frightened that unintelligent people were taking over, reproducing more quickly than intelligent people.

SUPREME COURT JUSTICE OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR.

Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. was raised to believe that he and his “well-born” wealthy neighbors in Boston were the best people in the country, or the world.

He believed in eugenics, and wrote about eugenics, which he supported.

He wrote the majority opinion in a case [Bell v. Buck, 274 U.S. 208 (1927] in which the majority upheld a state’s right to forcibly sterilize a person considered to be unfit to reproduce – unfit because they were mentally deficient.

In his opinion, Justice Holmes, urged America to do more eugenic sterilizations.

He wrote that it is better for the world if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crimes or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit for continuing their kind.

A FEEBLE MINDED HEARING

It was very hard to prove at a feeble minded hearing that you were not feeble minded.

Feeble minded was a broad term used to define large categories of people that were disliked by someone in charge of the decision making position.

AN ARIAN THEORY

Only Nordic types were considered good.

Jews from East Europe and Italians and Asians were considered to be mentally deficient and were discriminated against.

This was the belief of those who enacted the IMMIGRATION LAW OF 1924.

The Immigration Act of 1924 created quotas for the number of different groups that could immigrate and required that immigrants pass a mental feebleness test.

BUCK V. BELL

Buck v. Bell upheld eugenic sterilization.

It is still good law,.

It has never been overturned.

The decision in Buck v. Bell led to 70,000 forced sterilizations.

The woman in Buck v. Bell was not feeble minded.

She was set up to protect her foster parents son who had raped her and to get a court ruling that forced sterilizations are legal.

Her appointed lawyer believed that forced sterilizations should be legal.

He wrote arguments in his briefs that supported forced sterilizations.

THE EXISTENCE OF A SUPER RACE

The Nazis adopted American eugenic theory.

The Nazis took American eugenic theory – that there exists a racial hierarchy that requires breeding a super race – and ran with it.

THE CODE OF HAMMURABI

The guiding objective of the 3,500 year old Babylonian Code of Hammurabi is to protect the weak from the strong to create a rule of RIGHTEOUS JUSTICE.

DOES NOT PLAY WELL WITH OTHERS

While writing this post I couldn’t help comparing U.S. President Donald Trump’s thinking to Nazi ideology.

POST ON INSTAGRAM @garyspassion

Earlier today (Tuesday, June 23, 2020) I post on Instagram @garyspassion the picture above “DOES NOT PLAY WELL WITH OTHERS.”

In my post I compare President Trump to the little boy (the major star) in the movie JoJo Rabbit.

JoJo Rabbit is a farce about Nazi thinking, Nazi ideology, Nazi conduct, and worship of Adolph Hitler.

THE RULE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS

 

The wild popularity, even today, of the 1862 French novel ‘LES MISERABLES’, shows us something.

LES MISERABLES is the story of Jean Valjean, a handsome young woodcutter, who is cruelly sentenced to nine years in jail for stealing a loaf of bread he took to feed his starving family.

Javert, an ice-cold Inspector of Prisons, relentlessly persecutes Valjean, determined to keep him in prison for life.

It is tear-jerking feel good story, that has been made into a movie several times.

I strongly recommend seeing the movie.

That movie should help even the most rabid law and order person understand the outrage after watching the video of a police officer murdering George Floyd by putting his knee on George Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes while George Floyd was handcuffed and pinned down by two other police officers while a fourth police officer directed members of the public away.

George Floyd was suspected of having used a counterfeit $20 bill. Nobody knows if the $20 bill was counterfeit or how George Floyd came to have it.

George Floyd lost his life because four police officers thought nobody would mind if they took his life.

Nothing happened to any of the police officers until AFTER world wide street protests erupted.

ONLY after protests against the police brutally murdering George Floyd erupted in 150 cities in the USA did the police officers involved get charged and arrested for breaking the law.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT IV’S, age 77, great grandson of 26th President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt, PLACE IN THE MOVEMENT FOR RACIAL JUSTICE

The grandson of President Roosevelt felt it necessary to remove the statue of his great grandfather from the entrance to the American Museum of Natural History.

He recognized that statue was a powerful and hurtful emblem of “patriarchy, white supremacy, and settler-colonialism.”

That statue was a symbol of systemic racism; that statue was a narrative of white racial superiority and domination.

Theodore Roosevelt IV said, “The world doesn’t need statues, relics of another age, that reflect neither the values of the person they intend to honor nor the values of equality and justice.”

The image of that statue is too offensive to stand as a monument to American History.

That statue is clearly a narrative of white racial superiority and domination.

That statue implicitly depicts Black and Indigenous people as subjugated and racially inferior.

JOE BIDEN’S, PRESUMPTIVE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE, PLACE IN THE MOVEMENT FOR RACIAL JUSTICE

At a meeting on Monday, June 21, 2020, Joe Biden said,

“Hate just hides. It doesn’t go away, and when you have someone in power who breathes oxygen into the hate under the rocks it comes outs from under the rocks

“I really do believe that the binders have been taken off.  I think the tidal wave is moving.  I realize we’ve got to do something big, we can do it, and everyone will benefit from it.

Information taken/obtained from AOL news.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP’S PLACE IN THE MOVEMENT FOR RACIAL JUSTICE

On the same Monday evening (June 21, 2020), President Donald Trump declared himself, “the president of law and order” from the White House as military police and law enforcement fired tear gas and cleared protestors from nearby La Fayette Park.  La Fayette Park is located directly across the street from the White House.

After President Trump’s speech, one mayor complained, “President Trump has offered us military support to address violent protestors while denying mayors federal support to address the coronavirus fall-out.

During the protest on Monday (June 22, 2020) protestors attempted to topple a statue of President Andrew Jackson in La Fayette Park.

President Jackson has a record of owning slaves and oppressing Native Americans.

The next morning, President Trump tweeted that he had ordered the arrest of anyone tearing down a statue on federal land.and threatened such protestors with a long prison term and a large fine – imprisonment of up to ten years and a fine of up to $250,000.00.

Information taken/obtained from AOL news.

 

MAKING THE DIVINE VISIBLE IN THE HUMAN WORLD THROUGH ART

                   

Art symbolizes and instructs what it means to be a civilized human being.

Art challenges our senses and provokes our senses.

Just imagine the effect having a black or brown Jesus in every church and on every crucifix in America would have today.

Above photos taken by me while I was viewing the art in one church after another and viewing the interior design and exterior design of one church after another while spending a summer vacation in Sicily.

All the paintings, all the statues, and all the decorations in the churches were of and about white people.

In “HOW DO WE LOOK” Mary Beard shows how making the divine visible in the human world has never been easy.

In her book HOW DO WE LOOK” she points out all religions have destroyed art as well as creating it.

“Iconoclasm” comes from the Greek word meaning “image breaking.”

Below is my recap of Mary Beard’s many poignant stories of destruction of religious art in the name of religion.

CHRISTIANITY

Throughout the history of Christianity there have been violent and sustained clashes between ‘image-lovers’ and ‘image-breakers” – the destruction of religious art has gone almost hand and hand with the appreciating and adoration of it.

In the past lurid stories were spread about the evil of the iconoclasts, which went so far as to suggest that the wickedness of those who destroyed images of Jesus was second only to those who crucified Jesus in the first place.

One of the first examples occurred in 726 in the capital of the Byzantine empire (modern Istanbul) when – so it is said – the emperor ordered the image of Jesus be removed from the facade of his imperial palace.

Whatever the reasons, the removal of that one painting has come to represent the beginning of an official ban on all kinds of images of the divine – painting, sculpture, mosaic – that lasted on and off for more than a hundred years.

Almost a thousand years later, thousands of miles away, during the fight between Protestant Christians and Catholic Christians fought out in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ‘idolatrous icons’ and other ‘excesses’ associated with Catholicism were destroyed or removed by ascendant Protestants.

During the religious schism, the splendor of Ely Cathedral – a jewel of Gothic architecture of the Middle Ages – fell victim to one of England’s most determined Protestant reformers.

On January 9 1644, Oliver Cromwell, who was then governor of Ely, marched into the Ely Cathedral in what is one of the most mythologized and probably highly embellished incidents of those English religious wars.

The story goes that Cromwell went up to the priest who was conducting evening services, told him to put away his (Catholic) version of the prayer book and to stop the choir singing ( a ‘turn off the music’ moment).  On the following days, it is said, he actively encouraged – or at least did nothing to stop – his troops turning on the fabric of the building, on the images and on the glass.  As they made their way through the vestry and the cloisters, they smashed the place.

Above photo is a photo of Ely Cathedral, looking up into the great ‘lantern’ and down the nave (whose colored ceiling is part of the nineteenth-century restoration).

Decades before Cromwell, in the Lady Chapel (the chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary), remains evidence of widespread destruction wreaked on another occasion decades before Cromwell.

The iconoclasts also attacked the sculpted figures of saints, kings, and prophets, and scenes from the life of the Virgin. Sometimes the whole sculpture was removed, but often only the head and hands, leaving the body in place. Above is a photo of one of the sculptures.

This was not just a series of random acts of vandalism but destruction that was targeted, even thoughtful, and set against a background of debates about the power and potential dangers of religious images.

HINDU IMAGES

In the late 1100s Muslim armies from Afghanistan invaded northern India. By all accounts, they were horrified by what they found. This was home to the Hindu religion, whose people worshiped not one god but, on some counts, millions.

Muslim writers as far back as the tenth century CE often presented India as a place of image worship gone mad.

The Muslim invaders smashed the idols and destroyed the Hindu temples.

The first mosque to be erected in Delhi, the Quwwat-ul-Islam Mosque, constructed in the 1190s, was once known as the most imposing mosque in the world.

But in this mosque various elements of earlier Hindu structures and images have been reused and incorporated into the fabric of the mosque the human figures often defaced. It is striking that, even when they have been defaced some aspect of the humanity of those figures have been preserved.

The simple fact that the builders of the new mosque have chosen fairly consistently to place the reused figures the right way up suggests a respect for the human form and itrs image.

It betrays a certain appreciation for the very images that Islam condemned.

THE HAGIA SOPHIA

Does God dwell in hand-made temples? The correct answer is that he does not, but men have always been inclined to believe whereas He is present everywhere, He is nevertheless more fully present in some places than in others.

I have been to the Hagia Sophia.

It is magnificent.

God is obviously more fully present in the Hagia Sophia than in other places.

It has such grandeur.

      

The historian Procopius said about the Hagia Sophia:

“Whenever anyone enters to pray, he understands at once that it is not by human power and skill but by God’s will that his work has been so finely finished.  His mind is lifted up to God and floats on the air, feeling that God cannot be far away, but must especially love to dwell in this place, which He has chosen.”

The present Hagia Sophia is the third church built on the same site.

The present church was built by Justinian between 532 and 537.

Justinian was a military expansionist and ambitious civil reformer (his law code still lies at the foundation of many modern legal systems).

The second church was built by Theodosius and consecrated in 415.

But who built the first and why? Constantine according to legend and Constantius II (337-361) according to historical evidence.

Constantine was the first Roman emperor to have become a Christian.

With the exception of of the short-lived Julian (361-363), all Roman emperors after Constantine were Christians.

Like wise, Constantinople continued to be an imperial city for the next eleven centuries, before becoming the seat of another, Muslim, empire.

To describe all the events that took place within the Hagia Sophia would almost be tantamount to writing a history of the Byzantine Empire.

The name Hagia Sophia means Holy Wisdom or God’s Wisdom, a designation which by the fourth century was applied to the second person of the Trinity, i.e. Christ.

Early Christians believed – and perhaps Christians today believe – that Wisdom was a separate entity created or engendered by God before the beginning of time, an entity that guided or informed the act of creation.

The Ottoman Turks converted the Hagia Sophia into a mosque in 1453.

The Muslim, Ottoman Turks, retained that name.

They did not considerate the Hagia Sophia as an alien entity, the temple of a hostile if conquered religion.

They took steps to incorporate it mythically into the Islamic tradition.

The very word Ayasofya was interpreted to mean ‘house of worship’ (ibadetgah).

As strange as it might seem, in light of Muslim usage, the figural mosaics representing Christian personages and Byzantine emperors were not systematically covered up as soon as Hagia Sophia was converted to into a mosque.

       

The Ottoman conquest ensured not only the Hagia Sophia’s preservation but also its continuing maintenance and repair because it became the chief imperial mosque, amply endowed and often visited by the sultan.

FIRST CONCLUSION

What is going on – the Pandemic, the new George Floyd World, marginalized groups and women getting the short end of the stick in money earned for the same work etc. etc. etc., police brutality, stay-in-place orders, mass unemployment, the economy in shambles, extreme income inequality, extreme wealth inequality, climate change, mass protests, unequal opportunity, rioting in the streets, wide scale looting,- is scary.

You can’t solve a problem if you don’t know what the problem is.

SECOND CONCLUSION

People love art.

Art conquers all.

What we see depends on how we look.

Gary Smolker, Social Commentator, Values Critic

 

 

 

Copyright © 2020 by Gary Smolker, All Rights Reserved

 

LION KING – a movie and value review by Gary Smolker

Bullying

The new Disney movie “Lion King” is about bullying, a weak man, and a strong woman.

It is subtly a feminist diatribe.

My Favorite Character

My favorite character is a warthog.

Throughout the story the warthog is easy going, doesn’t care about anything, UNTIL hungry hyenas start talking about him.

The hungry hyenas loudly tell each other – in his presence – that he is fat and would make a juicy delicious meal.

His response, is to say he can’t stand being made fun of by anyone.

While this conversation is going on, the Lion King is being attacked by an overwhelming number of hyenas.

The provoked warthog responds to being called “fat” by attacking the hyenas talking about him.

After killing them the warthog goes attacks the hyenas attacking the lion king.

The warthog’s attack is so fierce that all surviving hyenas beat a hasty retreat, saving the outnumbered lion king.

The Lion King is saved by the warthog.

The Lion King Is A Weak Man

Until the very end of the movie, until the final scenes of the movie, the Lion King runs away from his problems.

Feminism

Feminist believe: “Women have to scrounge around the edges for our share, and let the men think they’re so far above us, we’re just happy to be along for the ride. It won’t always be that way, but it’s the way it is now.”

That isn’t their psychology education talking.

That is their common sense talking.

That is the conclusion they come to from living in this world.

That conclusion, that world view, is supported by Disney’s newly released movie LION KING.

In the new Disney movie, women just hang around until a female lioness, Nala, takes control of a horrible situation.

A Strong Woman

The strongest, bravest, most noble character in the movie is Nala.

Throughout the movie, Nala knows she is part of something bigger.

Nala is raised to know she is destined to be the queen; she will become the queen when her fellow cub, the lion cub Simba, becomes the new king.

Dramatic Tension

After Simba’s father dies – he was murdered by his brother evil brother SCAR – the dead king’s evil brother SCAR becomes king.

Through mismanagement the lands ruled by SCAR goes to ruin.

Dramatic Tension Builds

Nala realizes the end is near for everyone if SCAR remains in control.

Nala stops hanging around with the other lioness, she goes out to find help, she goes out from her den to find someone to overthrow SCAR.

Nala travels far away from her home, travels far away from the den where she hung out with all the other females in her tribe.

Nala finds Simba living haphazardly in a paradise far far away.

Nala convinces Samba to come back home to claim his kingship.

Posturing

The “Lion King” postures as being about the circle of life, teaching the audience the meaning of life and death.

“Lion King” is actually a politically correct feminist movie about how men need a smart woman; it is about how weak and silly men are.

Swahili

If you speak Swahili you know Simba is a boy’s name that means “Lion.”

“A Boy Named Sue”

“A Boy Named Sue” is a Johnny Cash song about a boy whose father named him Sue.

The father named his son Sue so that he would grow up strong.

The father knew a boy named Sue would be picked on, would learn to fight to survive, and because of being ceaselessly picked on would become strong, smart and sensitive.

If you are a Johnny Cash fan, you know the “Lion King” isn’t Johnny Cash signing “A Boy Named Sue.”

Being Politically Correct

Names are important.

At a deeply linguistic intellectual level, “Lion King” teaches us a Swahili name “SIMBA.”

CONCLUSION: If a girl is named Simba it is for no other reason than her parents don’t know Swahili or her parents are idiots.

 

Copyright © 2019 by Gary Smolker, All Rights Reserved

 

Nature-Deficit-Disorder – by Gary S. Smolker

Live A Little

I’ve concluded that life is for living.

I have concluded that the best type of life for me is one in which I stop being afraid of wasting my time by going out or by going to new places or by meeting new people and instead that I should travel to new places, meet new people, have new experiences and learn new things while doing so.

Medicine Is A Way of Life.

In my opinion life is beautiful and how I live my life is either good medicine for me or poisonous.

The key to being “healthy” for me is knowing how to live.

I’ve found I can –

• Be Happy, Healthy and Full of Wonderment.
• Relieve stress, regenerate my spirit, laugh and be joyful.
• Go out in “nature” and see directly in front of my eyes that all living things (plants, animals, fish and fowl] that live naturally in harmony with their nature flourish.

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park

I recently went on a trip to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina and Tennessee with my three adult daughters.

One of the great things I discovered while being high up the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is that there is no cell phone reception there.

Consequently it was a place where I could relax and (re)connect with nature.

While I was in the Smoky Mountains I was able to decompress, relieve stress and regenerate my spirit as a result of  being in nature with no distractions – as a result of being in a place where there was no cell phone service.

I personally experienced the value of (a) breathing fresh air, (b) seeing clear clean running water in streams creeks and rivers, (c) seeing picturesque waterfalls, (d) hiking in pristine woods and (e) solitude.

As a result of “being “n nature” without the distractions imposed on me by cell phones, Internet connection, talking texting or emailing I was able to see clearly the way things work “in nature” and as a result of that after I returned from my “retreat” in nature with my daughters I have been able think clearly without distraction about several things of concern to me.

Additionally, my trip to the Smokies was an amazing bonding experience with my daughters, nature and myself.

During the entire time I was in the Smoky Mountains I was happy, healthy, full of wonderment and stress-free.

The kinds of experiences I had on my trip to the Smoky Mountains have provided memories which I will enjoy for years to come and a reference point and base line to use when thinking about things in my daily life that are important to me.

The experiences I had and the observations I made on that trip have increased ability to think many fold about how I spend my time and other resources and about medical, financial, family and emotional issues of great concern to me.

The Area In and Around the Great Smoky Mountains National Park

The whole area in and around the Smoky Mountains is quite stunning – light traffic on the freeways, lush green all around the hills and in the mountains.

“Nature” is preserved in a pristine state in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

People Who Know How to Live

The people I met in the areas in and around the Smoky Mountains during my vacation/retreat in the Smoky Mountains with my three daughters know how to live.

They live rustic sensible refined remarkable and somewhat “funky” lives.

Every one I met was good -natured, calm, friendly, hospitable and grounded, and seemed to be alert and happy.

The people I saw and met in cafes, restaurants, and grocery stores during my sojourn in and around the Smoky Mountains were striking different from the people I typically see in similar places in and around Los Angeles.

The people I met in the South (in and around the Smoky Mountains) were all very calm, relaxed and laid back.

I didn’t meet or see anyone during my sojourn in and around the Smoky Mountains who was up tight, anxious, or stressed out.

Below is a photograph I took of a man a man I met in the “Lil Black Bear Cafe” in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.

I’ve never seen anyone wearing a T-shirt in Los Angeles like the T-shirt the man in the photograph above is wearing.

By the way, the chocolate Bear Claw served in the “Lil Black Bear Cafe” in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee is something to write home about.  I ate one.  See photos below of the Bear Claw I ate in the “Lil Black Bear Cafe.”

I survived eating the Bear Claw pictured above.

I purchased a T-shirt to celebrate my accomplishment.

See photograph of the T-shirt I bought.

The people I met, and the culture and way of life I observed, in and around the Smoky Mountains was tremendously different from the culture I experience every day in Los Angeles.

I think people in the South (at least the people I met and interacted with) are more “natural” and more in tune with their core human nature that people in and around Los Angels that I see when I go out to eat or to a grocery store or to any other public place in Los Angeles.

Below is a photograph of a man I met in a grocery store in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee and a close up photograph of the T-shirt that man was wearing when I saw and met him.

I’ve never seen anyone in Los Angeles wearing a T-shirt like that.

 

Popularity of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most popular park in the National Park System.

Ten million people per year visit the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Everyone Needs A Perfect Place to Think

Everyone needs a perfect place to think without distraction, a retreat.

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is such a place.

All four of us (Leah, Judi, Terra and me) found the Smoky Mountains to be a perfect place to think.

My Search for A Clear Mind

The search for a clear mind is one of my fundamental goals.

The search for a “clear mind” is the fundamental goal of “all” creative and highly productive people.

During my trip to the Smoky Mountains, the solitude I experienced and my interaction with (a) my daughters, (b) nature and (c) the people I met gave me a clear mind.

My Trip to the Smoky Mountains

I left my in Encino, California on May 14, 2016 and visited the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina and Tennessee for ten days, from May 14 to May 24, 2016, with my three daughters Leah, Judi and Terra.

As a result of taking my trip to the Smoky Mountains, I feel totally connected to life – physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.

It is clear to me that the state of my energy, my health and of my over-all-well-being are dependent on being connected to nature.

The Best Way to Live

Life is about choice.

I advocate relieving stress, being healthy and living a creative down to earth purposeful gratifying meaningful healthy life.

I’ve found that the best way for me to live is by being connected simultaneously with my natural core and nature.

I’ve discovered it is okay for me to enjoy a glass of wine, to have a beer, to have a shot of whiskey; it is not crazy or a waste of my time to go for hikes in woods, to do yoga, to read a book, to think and reflect in solitude, or to go to car shows, or to take photographs with my iPhone of whatever strikes my fancy, and that it is beneficial for me yo travel to new places to meet new people and to see new things.

In my opinion going to new places, meeting new people, connecting to nature, and having new experiences should be part of everyone’s life goals.

As a result of my recent vacation in the Smoky Mountains I have concluded that –

1. I will achieve clearer thinking and better health by connecting myself to nature.
2. My live is energized by experiencing a sense of oneness in the energy flow I make when I am in the moment.
3. My life is about making choices.
4. The best “medicine” for me is living the way of right relationship – I found that living a healthy  LIFE is about doing that.

Failure and Making Mistakes Are A Natural Feature of Life and of Making Progress and of Making Something New

Creativity is a resource we continually draw upon to make something from nothing, to make the non-existent come into being.

Part of being healthy is to not be afraid of trying something new, or trying to do something new.

Inevitably active alive and creative people experience failure and make mistakes.

Healthy people realize mistakes are not a necessary evil.

Mistakes are an inevitable consequence of doing something new, and as such, they such be seen as being valuable; without them, we’d have no originality.

Mistakes and failures are learning experiences.

Think of failure like learning to ride a bike; it isn’t conceivable that anyone could learn to ride a bike without making mistakes – without toppling over a few times.

Personality Plus

The first place I landed on my way to the Smoky Mountains was in Asheville, North Carolina.

Asheville is known as “Beer City, USA” because it has so many microbreweries.

We went to Asheville first because my daughter Leah is a beer connoisseur.

I saw “good humor” and “personality plus”, and experienced “positive energy” and “social commentary” everywhere I went during my three day stay in Asheville, North Carolina.

The people I met in Asheville had good nature, and were happy, hospitable, calm, and grounded.

It was pleasant to interact with each person I interacted with in Asheville.

Each of them exhibited a good sense of humor.

Below is a picture of a sign I saw posted in the window of the “12 Bones Smokehouse” in Asheville, North Carolina.

That sign made me laugh when I saw it.

By the way, the “12 Bones Smokehouse” is President Obama’s favorite rib joint.

While in Asheville I saw another which made me laugh.

See picture of that sign below.

It is a sign on the wall of a place where you can self-wash your dog.

The Most Famous Place in Asheville, North Carolina: Biltmore House & Gardens

I love chocolate.

During my trip to the Smoky Mountains, I visited the most famous place in Asheville, North Carolina: the Biltmore House.

The Biltmore House was built in 1895 by George Vanderbilt.

It is a 250 room house.

It is situated on a 8,000 acre estate.

It has gardens and trails, a conservatory, a bass pond, a boathouse, lawns and woods.

In “the house” itself, there are restaurants, a courtyard market, a bake shop, a ice cream parlor, and specialized stores for shoppers and highly specialized shopping experiences.

For shopping there is a store called “Christmas Past”, a store called “Bookbinder’s”, a store called “Carriage House”, a store called “Confectionery”, a store called “Toymaker’s”, and a store called “A Gardener’s Place.”

My favorite part of the house is the candy store (the confectionery).

I am a fan of tasty chocolate and good advertising.

My First Most Favorite Experience at Biltmore House

My favorite experience, while I was touring the Biltmore House, was seeing what was printed on boxes of chocolate for sale in the “Confectionery.”

See photos below.

I also love cupcakes.

I was thrilled when I saw the package below in the confectionery, advertising cupcakes, yum.

My Second Most Favorite Experience at the Biltmore House

My second best experience at Biltmore House was looking at the exotic flowers growing in the Conservatory at the Biltmore House.

Below are photographs of exotic flowers I saw growing in the Conservatory at the Biltmore House.

My Third Most Favorite Experience at the Biltmore House

My third best experience at the Biltmore House was looking at a group of flowers growing in a pond above the gardens.  Those flowers are shown in the photograph below.

Character and Assertive Individuality Have Been Alive and Well in the Great Smoky Mountains in Eastern Tennessee for Many Years

For various reasons the Great Smoky Mountains have always been a very special place.

The people who lived in the Smoky Mountains in the recent past were famous for hiding their stills from tax collectors and for selling their homemade distilled spirits when it was against US Federal Law to do so.

Being surrounded by natural beauty and making homemade distilled spirits and having a great down to earth sense of humor has been a way of living in and around the Great Smoky Mountains for generations.

When it was illegal to manufacture or sell liquor, certain people [who lived in and around the Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee were called Moonshiners and also called bootleggers] manufactured and sold homemade distilled spirits nicknamed “moonshine”; they manufactured and sold “homemade” wine and whisky (“moonshine”) in violation of federal law.

Doing that earned them a “romanticized” place in the history of the United States.

Today, it is not against federal law to manufacture or sell distilled spirits.

However, in an attempt to take advantage of romantic and nostalgic feelings about “moonshine” and “moonshiners” , major distillers pretend to sell “moonshine” — and promote the sales of their products (wine and whiskey) with sales messages associating their products to individualistic rebel character traits romantically associated with moonshine and bootleggers.

These messages are printed on ancillary merchandise – soft good items – such as T-shirts, pillows, and dish towels sold in “Moon Shine” stores and boutiques in Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge Tennessee.

For examples, at their stores in Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge the “Old Smoky Tennessee Moonshine” company provides free moonshine tastings, live music, distillery tours and sells “moonshine” (jars of whiskey) as well as T-shirts, Sweat Shirts, and sundry other items.

Master Enjoyment of A Glass of Wine Because You Have Worked Hard and Traveled Far

Wine is a symbol.

The wine industry in Tennessee has made a successful effort to have me associate drinking wine with Individuality, Character, Relaxing, Relieving Stress and Being A Fun and Wise Person.

In their boutique wine and whiskey tasting stores near the Smoky Mountains their customer (me) can’t help but associate Being Fun with Drinking Wine, Wine Drinking.

Below are pictures of miscellaneous soft good items imprinted with messages celebrating and encouraging the consumption of wine.

I recently took the pictures below in a so called wine tasting store in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

Notice that each of the items shown in the photographs below cleverly delivers the message that a person who drinks wine is a fun person.

Each message has a “fun”, “be fun”, “have fun” emotional arc I relate to.

I had “fun” reading each message.

I smiled when I read each message.

I took each of the above photographs on May 23, 2016 at the “Bootleggers Home Made Wine” store in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

Gatlinburg is a small town located at the foot of the Smoky Mountains in Eastern Tennessee.

The Majesty of Nature

Seeing nature in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is a spiritual as well as a physical and mental experience.

I can’t imagine any person with sight not being able to visually spiritually and mentally experience the majesty of nature on display in the Smoky Mountains and our deep rooted connection with nature.

Below is a series of photographs I took of the Smoky Mountains behind a layer of clouds I observed from my Majestic View cabin in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, at 6:30 a.m.

Note: the clouds in front of the Smoky Mountains look like smoke coming up from and rising up from the Smoky Mountains.

 

 

Next are photographs I took of the same view from the cabin with the Majestic View four hours later at 10:40 a.m. – after the morning mist and clouds in front of the Smoky Mountains began dissipating, then dissipated and then disappeared.

Below are photos taken later in the day.

Below are photographs I took at sunset while standing on the deck outside the kitchen at my cabin.

More Than 40 Note Worthy Waterfalls

There are over 2,000 miles of sparkling rivers, prongs and branches and over 40 noteworthy falls in the Smoky Mountains.

During our time together in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, my three daughters Leah (age 28), Judi (age 31) and Terra (age 45) and I hiked together to several of those noteworthy waterfalls.

Below is a series of photographs I took at one of those waterfalls.

The first photograph is of one of those waterfalls.

 

The second photograph is of my one of my daughters standing next to that waterfall.

 

 

The third, fourth and fifth photographs below are photographs of my daughter standing behind that waterfall.

 

 

 

Below is a photographs I took of my two youngest daughters standing in front of another waterfall.

Below is a photograph of my youngest daughter with me in front of that waterfall.

Below is a photograph of me standing in front of that waterfall.

Below is a close up photograph of of the top of that waterfall.

Below is a photograph of another water fall in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park we hiked to.

Sparkling Rivers Prongs and Branches

Professionally taken photographs:

My photographs:

Hiking To Abrams Falls

Below is a picture of my youngest daughter Leah (age 28) Leah took of herself while Leah and I were hiking together through the woods in the Smoky Mountains to Abrams Falls.

It took us five hours of hiking through woods in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to get to the Abrams Falls.

At Abrams Falls water water with the volume of a river plunges 25 feet into a large pool.

The force of the fall throws spray over 50 feet into rhododendron and hemlock on the bank opposite the trail we hiked on to get to the falls.

The deep pool under the falls has a very strong undercurrent.

A sign near the falls warns people not to swim in the pool under the falls – swimmers have drowned.  See sign below.

People are also warned to be aware of bears near the falls.  See sign below.

Below is a photograph I took of myself in front of Abrams Falls.

 

Below is a series of photographs of Abrams Falls.

Messages Printed on T-Shirts Present Moonshine as The Nectar of Pure Unadulterated Living

In Gatinburg, several breweries give free tastings in addition to selling “moonshine (whiskey)”; they also sell  T-shirts on which are printed provocative messages.

The photographs below were taken by me in the “Old Smoky Tennessee Moonshine’s” store on the Parkway, in Gatinburg, Tennessee on Monday night, May 23, 2016, after Leah and I finished our hike to Abrams Falls.

Knoxville Vibe

All of us (Leah, Judi, Terra and Me) got back to our homes by flying out of Knoxville Airport.

Leah and I spent the morning looking around the Art District and the Old City District of Knoxville.

Both are very cool places.

Below are photographs I took which express the “come on in” attitude I experienced in and around the Art District in Knoxville, Tennessee.

I Saw Art and Beauty Everywhere During My Trip to the Smoky Mountains

At the Curious Dog in Old City Knoxville, Tennessee

See photograph below I took of a  booth in the “Curious Dog” in the Old Town section of Knoxville, Tennessee on May 24, 2016.

Photos below are close ups of sections of the mural in the photograph above.

Photograph of a guy sitting in that booth.

Photograph I took the sign on the exterior street side of the entry door to the “Curious Dog.”

Paintings on the Two Walls in A Dead End Alley in the Old Town Section of Knoxville, Tennessee

While walking around the Old Town section of Knoxville on May 24, 20167, with my daughter Leah, we found ourselves walking down a blind alley, an alley the “dead-ended”, an alley which had no exit.

Below are photographs of paintings I saw painted on the two walls in that alley.

Chair In A Shop in the Chicago O’Hare Airport Terminal

Below is a photograph I took of a chair I saw in a shop in O’Hare Airport, Chicago, Terminal 1, Gate B-6, on May 24, 2016 as I was on my way to catch a connecting flight to Los Angeles International Airport, LAX.

I had started my journey home to Los Angeles from the Smoky Mountains on a flight departing from Knoxville Airport.

My trip home involved taking a plane from Knoxville Airport to O’Hare Airport in Chicago and then catching another plane at O’Hare Airport that flew me back to Los Angeles.

It took over 10 hours to get back home from the time I left the Knoxville Airport to the time my plane landed in Los Angeles at LAX, the airport in Los Angeles.

Art and Beauty Everywhere

On Saturday, June 4, 2016 I went to return a computer to the Apple Store at the Grove — a upscale shopping cent in Los Angeles.

While I was at the Grove I discovered there was an event, an auto show, at the Grove.

By the way, the Grove is located near the intersection of Third Street and Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles, California.

Of note to me, as a father of three adult women and a lover of women, I saw more women then men looking at the cars on display on the street at the auto show.

So much for the cliche that boys like cars and girls like dolls.

Below are pictures I took of three of the multitude of  “classic cars” I saw on the street, on display, as part of the car show at the Grove.

Really interesting: on the top two cars pictured above, the rear view mirror is strapped to the spare tire.

 

 

Save Yourself from Nature-Deficit-Disorder, Get Out: Visit The Great Smoky Mountains; Travel to, Visit and Explore New Places

The Smoky Mountains are one of the most bio-diverse places on earth.

According to the National Park Service over 18,000 different types of animals and plants live in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Synchronous fireflies (Photinus carolinus) are one of 19 species of fireflies at Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  They are the only species in the Americas whose individuals can synchronize their flashing light patterns.

No one is sure why the fireflies flash synchronously.

The fireflies do not always flash in unison.

They glow in the dark.

They may flash in waves across hillsides, and at other times will flash randomly.

Synchrony occurs in short bursts that end with abrupt periods of darkness.

The Smoky Mountains is also the home of the “American Black Bear.”

More than 1,500 black bears live protected “in the wild” in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

More statistics:

• More than 1,500 different specifies of wild flowers are found in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, more than in any other North American National Park.
• More than 100 different species of trees grow there.
• More than 240 different species of birds have been spotted there.

The Southern Appalachians are one of the temperate zone’s hot spots for plants.  North of the tropics, only China has more species.

The climate of the park encompasses a range of conditions from warm to cold temperature, and rainfall is abundant everywhere.

Elevations in the park range from 850 feet to 6,643 feet.  As one moves from lower to high elevations the climate becomes cooler and wetter and cloud cover is more frequent.

Rainfall ranges from about 55 inches at low elevations to 90 inches on high peaks.

Differences in elevation and the ruggedness of the mountains – topographical features affect soil moisture – result in a vast variety of environments that produce a wide variety of vegetation.

Slope aspect, slope position and slope shape all combine to determine the amount of sunlight reaching a site, its warmth, and its ability to retain soil moisture.

Even if you stay in a narrow elevation range, the habitat changes dramatically.  And because habitat changes, the species of wildflowers and plants you see growing also varies.

As a result of its biodiversity and its closeness to population centers, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most popular park in the National Park System; 10 million people visit the park each year.

The National Park Services maintains 380 miles of scenic roadways, 800 plus miles of trails and bridges, 9 front country campgrounds, and more than 100 back country campgrounds in the Smoky Mountains National Park.

ASIDE:

• The National Cancer Institute and other groups have repeatedly visited the Smokies to take, under permit, small plant samples, looking for new medicines.
• Fully, 25 percent of our prescription drugs contain at least one ingredient taken directly from a higher plant.
• The Cherokee had documented uses for 60 percent of the flora in the Smokies.
• Over 600 species from these mountains were or are still used as medicines by the Cherokee.
• Generations of trial and error of uses of plants in these mountains represent a refined knowledge of plant biochemistry and the potential for use.
• A recent study showed that study of traditional cultural use of plants in an area is a faster route to discovering new medicines than blind screening of all plants in an area.

The prime directive of all national parks is to preserve not only native species, but also the natural processes that maintain them.

This year (2016) the American National Park Service turned 100 years old.

THE ART OF LIVING

I see art everywhere and beauty everywhere.

I can’t wait to tell you about “the Swag” in Waynesville North Carolina; “Lil Black Bear Cafe” in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee; and, “Curious Dog” and a blind alley in Old Town Knoxville, Tennessee, which I will do in a future blog post article on the “Gary S. Smolker Idea Exchange Blog.”

The Swag

Below is a photograph of what I found on my bed when I went to my room at the Swag.

There was also a backpack on my bed.  See photo below.

There was a note explaining the materials inside the backpack.  See photo below.

On one of the night stands besides the bed was a book of poetry.  See photo below.

I adopted “Mr. Rocky”, the Black Bear I found on my bed in my room at “the Swag.”

I can’t wait to tell you more about “the Swag.”

Conclusion

We determine the trajectory of our lives.

We should learn how to see.

We should live with our eyes wide open.

We should travel to places we have never been to before and meet people we have never met before.

Having/enjoying good health is a way of life.

 

 

Copyright © 2016 by Gary S. Smolker, All Rights Reserved

 

What My 2015 Toronto International Film Festival Experience Was Like – Best Meal I Ate, Best Films I Saw, Most Wonderful Things I Heard and the Joy of Being in Toronto in September – by Gary S. Smolker

 

While at the festival, I constantly watched films that updated me on what is going on in the world and exposed me to other people’s (filmmakers’, audiences’, people in the street’s) ideas, perspectives, and thoughts.

Filmmakers discussed their films before and after their films were shown.

I talked to many people from many countries who love movies.

We discussed their reaction to the movies they saw.

We also discussed what is going on in the country where they live.

I also became more familiar with the City of Toronto.

Toronto is a highly energized charming city, full of dynamic people.

The weather in Toronto in September is divine, compared to the weather in Los Angeles where I live.

The skylines of the downtown areas of Toronto are bursting with construction cranes.

There was ongoing construction everywhere I walked and the streets were paved.

I didn’t see any potholes in the streets of Toronto.

By comparison,:

• Many of the streets I drive on in Los Angeles have potholes.
• The alley I must drive through to get to the garage in my building is in disrepair — it has several potholes.
• The street in front of the building I live in (Burbank Blvd) has potholes.
• The street on the side of the building I live in (Tyrone Ave.) has potholes too.

Comparing the two cities (the City of Los Angeles and the City of Toronto):

• The City of Los Angeles is an old decrepit decaying city which has many streets in disrepair.
• The City of Toronto is a bustling city full of charm.
• Toronto has charming older buildings and neighborhoods as well as new buildings.
• All the streets I saw in Toronto were new streets or well maintained well repaired streets.
• There are many newly constructed buildings under construction in Toronto in the process of replacing older smaller buildings.
• There is a well maintained, clean, efficient, safe and inexpensive subway system in Toronto — great clean safe affordable quick public transportation.
• The air in City of Toronto, compared to the air in the City of Los Angeles, is remarkably clean.
• It is safe to walk in the downtown areas and in the university areas of Toronto at all hours, day and night.
• Overall, the City of Toronto is a very charming very well kept city.

Best Meal

The best dishes I ate at the festival was at a lunch where I had a Melon Gazpacho Appetizer followed by a Watermelon Salad entrée.

Below is a photograph of those dishes taken with my iPhone.

Recipe for Melon Gazpacho

Melon Gazpacho: Watermelon, honeydew, mint, honey.

Recipe for Watermelon Salad

Watermelon Salad: Compressed watermelon, pickled rind, jalapeno, avocado puree, hazelnuts, dunkkah.

While at the Festival I Discovered the Secret Sauce of Success

It is abundantly clear to me that film makers who make the best films are doing something that comes from doing who they are; they do not think of their work – their part in making their films – as just a job.

They honestly think and believe the work they are doing while making the film they are making is a dream come true experience.

They thoroughly love what are doing, mostly because they believe they are making a film containing a message they believe in and/or making a movie which tells a story they feel must be told.

The films I enjoyed watching had the following ingredients:

1. The people making that film loved making that film.
2. The film had well-developed characters.
3. The best films are stories the audience will not forget.
4. The very best films I saw at the festival told stories that will live in my heart forever.
5. The characters said things that are memorable.
6. I always learned something.
7. The were provocative.

The best films are made with intellectual scruples and so well made they can’t be ignored.

Variety

Over 300 films from 71 different countries were shown at the festival.

The films that I saw told stories about on-going events and perspectives in different places in the world and in different age groups.

Each film I saw was a different window into human thought; each film uniquely reflected the way each film maker grasps reality.

The local history of the place where the film maker experienced life and the vicissitudes of the film maker’s life came through in the “reality” portrayed in each film made by each film maker.

Takeaway

My takeaway from 18 films I saw at the festival is:

• The world is an immense tapestry of many interesting people, a throbbing intricate convoluted mosaic of people living in their own separate cultural planets and worlds.
• You can have no sense of reality nor can you be connected to reality in the absence of observation.
• People are mentally agile enough to interpret events in many ways.
• The mind is powerful enough to frame a single situation in very different ways.
• Everything you see is filtered through the prism of your prior experiences.
• You have to dare to be yourself, however strange that self may prove to be.

I now understand what Henry David Thoreau meant when he said, “The bluebird carries the sky on his back.” and what Carl Gustav Jung meant when he said, “Life is something that has to be lived and not talked about.”

The Bravest Film I Saw at 2015 TIFF

The best film I saw at 2015 TIFF was the Hindi film “Parched.”

Anyone watching this film will immediately realize this film was made with great love and faith by everyone involved.

In the question and answer period following the film, the producer advised the audience

1. Films cannot be shown in India without approval by the Censor Board.
2. No one has ever shown a nude scene in a film shown in India.
3. The producer would rather not have this movie shown in India than remove or change the nude scene in this film, or any other scene.

“Parched” is about the lives of women who live in villages in India; the story follows the lives of three women who live in a village in India.

The “fact” I came away with by watching the story told in “Parched” is that Hindu men and Muslim men routinely beat their wives in rural villages in India.

The Second Bravest Film I Saw at 2015 TIFF

The second bravest film I saw at 2015 TIFF was the French film “Un Fracais” (“French Blood”).

After this film was shown, the director (Diasteme) told us he was having difficulty getting the film shown in France because far-right wing groups in France have threatened to bomb any movie theatre in France which shows this film.

“French Blood” is a pull no punches searing portrait of the rise of skinheads and what they have been doing in France, beginning in 1985.

This film is based on real events.

The Most Provocative Film I Saw at 2015 TIFF

The most provocative film I saw at 2015 TIFF was filmmaker Michael Moore’s “Where to Invade Next.”

The most provocative speaker I heard after the showing of a film was Michael Moore.

I was one of approximately 1,700 people who attended the world-premiere showing of Michael Moore’s film “Where to Invade Next” in The Princess of Wales Theater at 9:30 p.m. on Thursday, September 10, 2015.

All of us listened to Michael Moore speak after his film was shown.

The Most Provocative Idea I Came Away with From Listening to Michael Moore Speak After His Film Was Shown

I understood Michael Moore to say that as the Black Civil Rights movement gained traction (steam) in the United States the violation of drug laws was raised to a felony in order to disenfranchise black people.

I understood Moore’s argument to be (i) that more black people than white people are prosecuted for violation of drug laws; (ii) once a [black] person has been convicted of a felony that [black] person loses his or her right to vote.

Therefore, the end result of making drug crimes higher rated crimes is that the elected representatives in the governments which made violation of drugs a felony effectively made blacks a more disenfranchised minority when they passed such laws.

TAKE AWAY: The impact of making the violation of drug laws felonies has resulted in more blacks than whites being prosecuted.  When they [the violators of such drug laws] got out of prison, they could not vote because they were felons.  The end result of such changes in drug laws is that blacks have become a more disenfranchised minority.

I had never thought of that before.

The Most Provocative Idea I Came Away with From Watching Michael Moore’s Film

Another set of “facts” and thoughts I came away with from watching Michael Moore’s film “Where To Invade Next” –

• (1) Grammar school and/or high school students in Finland are not given homework.
• (2) The Finish education system is the best in the world.
• (3) Giving kids lots of “homework” is counter-productive.
• (3) Using standardized tests to measure “learning” is ridiculous.

Michael Moore is completely against giving standardized tests to children in grammar school, middle school and high school.

As a result of “standardized testing”, teachers tend to teach their young students how to pass those tests by making their students MEMORIZE facts.  This  kills their young student’s curiosity and desire to learn.

When teachers teach kids how to pass standardized tests, teachers are reduced to dispensing so called nuggets of information to pupils who try to retain them in their minds long enough to give them back on an exam.

YUK.  I am glad I was not regularly tested with standardized tests while I was in grammar school, middle school and high school.

In the film, and in the talk he gave after his film was shown, Michael Moore mentioned several countries in which college education is free, no tuition is charged.

He also mentioned one country (Slovenia) in which students from foreign countries are not charged tuition and in which many classes (if I remember correctly 145 classes) are taught in English.

In “Where to Invade Next”, Moore has filmed the educational system and prison system in Finland and laws regarding drug usage in Finland and in many other countries in action.

A friend of mine commented to me that some of the ideas Moore shows working in “Where to Invade Next” worked because they were used on a Scandinavian population.

My friend then told me, “I doubt that kind of prison system would work with some of the U.S. prison population or that Detroit would have some of the world’s best schools if it switched to the Finish system.”

I replied: “There are an infinite number of generalizations, most of them wrong, that are logically consistent with any sample of experiences.”

Down with Negativity

At the end of the showing of “Where to Invade Next”, Michael Moore came to the stage in the Princess of Wales Theater and said, “We need to get off our asses and be inspired to be what we can be.  We need to be part of what needs to happen.”

I totally agree with that sentiment.

I often wear a t-shirt which states “Official Member of the Piss and Moan About Everything Club.”   See photograph below.

People often come up to me to tell me how much they agree with the sentiment expressed on that t-shirt.

When they do, I tell them, “If you don’t like the road you are on, pave your own.”

That is one of many memorable statements Sandra Bullock makes in the film “Our Brand is Crisis.”

It is obvious to me that Sandra Bullock made “Our Brand Is Crisis” because she is fed up with “lying” politicians  – politicians who make promises they don’t intend to keep and who do not work in the best interests of the public.

Another memorable statement Sandra Bullock makes in “Crisis is Our Product” is her answer to the question: Do you have any heroes?  Her answer: My heroes were politicians and elected leaders, until I met them.

After the end of the showing of his film “Where to Invade Next” (on September 10, 2015), Michael Moore told the audience he made the film “Where to Invade Next” to tell the truth about the positive things happening in other countries.

He told the audience he went to other countries “to pick the flowers, not the weeds.”

Obviously, Michael Moore is a man with a mission, on that mission.  That shows in his film “Where to Invade Next.”

In explaining how he was able to be so successful, Steve Wozniak, says: “If you love what you do and are willing to do what it takes, it’s within reach.  And it will be worth every minute your spend alone at night, thinking and thinking about what it is you want to design and build.”

I think Michael Moore would agree with that, Sandra Bullock would agree with that and all the other filmmakers whose movies I saw at the festival would agree with that.

I tell everyone I know who asks me how to be successful:

1. Do the work.
2. There are no short cuts.
3. Don’t “piss and moan” about that.
4. I realize that is more easily said then done.

 

Films Are Windows into Human Nature

The films I saw portrayed a wide variety of fact patterns occurring in different parts of the world.

But, they all had something in common.  They were all about the bonds that tie humans to each other, human nature, and what it means to be a “civilized” human being.

For example:

Example One

During the story told in “Les Cowboys”, an older man gives advice to a young boy who lives in rural France about the need to be social.  Another older man, in another part of the story, advises the boy when he has grown up to become a young man that the young man needs to live in the right physical environment.

Example Two

In the story told in “Let Them Come” the filmmaker shows the audience what can happen if a man does not make an effort get to know who his spouse is.

In that story, the filmmaker shows the audience what happened to “moderate” Muslims who practiced Islam when Islamist extremists take over Algeria, his country.

Example Three

In “Collective Inventions” the audience is shown people in all layers of upper society in South Korea living a life of pretense, inventing stories, in order to advance their own material interests.  The idea I came away with is that everyone in a profession in South Korea would do anything “socially required of a fraudulent nature” to get ahead.

 

Have You Ever Felt Like A Giant Bird Living in A Cage That Is So Small You Can’t Extend Your Giant Wings?

All I could think of while I watched Thomas Bidegain’s film “Les Cowboys” is what it must feel like to be a giant bird living in a small cage.

In one scene in Thomas Bidegain’s film “Les Cowboys” a young boy is shown fishing in a stream with an older man.

The older man asks the young boy: “Why are you here with me instead of with your school mates?

The young boy responds: “All the kids my age are too boring.  I can’t stand being with them.”

The older man replies: “You must force yourself to be with kids your own age.  Otherwise, you will end up being an old man living alone in a log cabin in the woods eating squirrels like me.”

In another scene in “Les Cowboys”, the young boy has grown and is now a young man.

He is shown in the wide open spaces in Pakistan looking for his sister – who he believes has been brainwashed and kidnapped by a Muslim extremist.

He is traveling with an older man who is on his way to pay ransom to Muslim kidnappers to obtain the release of Belgium engineers who have kidnapped.

While in the middle of a no-man’s land in Pakistan, the older man advises the younger man:  “We are too big for civilized places.  This is where we belong.  We are too big to live in a city.”

All of the above conversations take place while the story the filmmaker is telling is unfolding – a haunting tale of a young woman’s disappearance from her home in rural France.

In this film, her brother spends sixteen years searching for her.

His search takes him across international borders.

While searching for her, her brother comes into contact with all kinds of different Muslims.

In the question and answer period which followed the showing of this film, when asked how it felt to make this film, Bidegain replied:

“Making your first feature film is like your first marriage.  It is frightening and it goes too fast.”

Do You Know Who You Are Married To?

In “Maintenant ils peuvent venir” (“Let Them Come”) the main character Noureddine had no idea of who he was married to, albeit he and his wife had two children together and ate breakfast and dinner together all the time.

In this film, film maker Salem Brahimi tells the story of Noureddine – a moderate Muslim living in Algeria who works as a newspaper reporter.

Noureddine promised his mother at her bedside in a hospital that he [Noureddine] would marry the lovely Yasmina, a neighbor who was graciously watching over his mother during her illness.

Noureddine made this promise to his mother although he had no interest in getting married and he had no interest in marrying Yasmina or otherwise.

Yasmina is an intelligent educated “moderate” good looking Muslim woman who is very modern, who doesn’t wear a shawl.

Noureddine and Yasmina arranged marriage takes place in Algeria in the 1980s, more than two decades after Algeria had gained its independence.

In this story, Noureddine and his wife Yasmina have two children together, albeit Noureddine and Yasmina don’t get to know each other even though they have meals together every day because Noureddine is so preoccupied working on things he thinks are related to “doing” his job.

Their marriage is mired in disenchantment as soon as it begins and their relationship with one another rapidly disintegrates as time goes on.

While their unhappy marriage is in the process of disintegrating strict Islamists take over Algeria.

Thereafter  everyone living in Algeria has to follow rules promulgated by strict Islamists at penalty of death.

Many horrible thing happen to Noureddine and Yasmina after the strict Islamist take control.  As a result of Noureddine and Yasmina’s refusal to follow dictates of the strict Islamists, Yasmina’s father disowns Noureddine and disavows Noureddine’s marriage to Yasmina and “gives” Yasmina to a strict Islamist as a second wife to the strict Islamist.

There is nothing the Noureddine can do to stop Yasmina living thereafter as the second wife of the strict Islamist except to kidnap and recapture her.

Up to this point in the story, Noureddine has no idea who Yasmina is because he had never made an effort to get to know Yasmina, except to have sex with her and eat meals she prepared with her.  Many more horrible things happen after this point in the story.

After the film ended, Brahimi explained to the audience that Algeria is no longer run by strict Islamists because the majority of Muslim’s living in Algeria got fed up with the strict Islamists running Algeria and retook their country.

According to Brahimi:

1. Moderate Muslims refused to send their children to schools run by the strict Islamists and told other moderate Muslims that if they sent their children to such a school they would kill them and their children
2. Eventually, moderate Muslims took back control of Algeria by force of arms.

Are You Totally Fed Up with the Degree of Corruption in Modern Society?

In “Dolyeon Byeoni” (“Collective Invention”) South Korean filmmaker and screenwriter Kwon Oh-kwang tells a tale of corruption at many levels of the modern society currently existing in South Korea.

“Collective Invention” in a story riddled with witty twists and goofy detours about a man who is turned into a half-fish-half-man while participating as a person in an experiment at an advanced bio-engineering research laboratory.

After that happens an idealistic aspiring journalist Sang-won accepts an on-spec assignment to find out if the rumor that a man was turned into a fish – part fish and part man – after participating in clinical trials for a major pharmaceutical company.

What happens next to the aspiring journalist, the half-man-half-fish man, the head research scientist who ran the clinical trial, the pharmaceutical company that conducted the research experiment, the news media industry, and in the legal and the judicial system in the Asian country in which this story takes place gives a bird’s eye view of how a modern popular culture operates in highly advanced industrialized countries.

This movie is well worth seeing.

Sandra Bullock’s film “Crisis Is Our Brand” has a similar theme: elected politicians are phonies who make promises they think the population wants to hear them make with no intention of keeping those promises.

The Most Personally Relevant Film I Saw at 2015 TIFF

As a young man, I never met a woman who understood what is involved in becoming a great success.

As a result of having intimate relationships with women that didn’t work-out when I was a younger man, I have been fascinated by the topic of what is involved in becoming an expert, expert performance and being at the top of your game, at the top of any field of endeavor for many years.

My interest in those interrelated topics made “Being AP” the most personally relevant film I saw at 2015 TIFF.

“Being AP” is a documentary about a man who is/was a great success.

This documentary was shot during the 20th year of champion jump race-horse jockey A.P. McCoy’s career, at a time when AP was trying to be the jump race-horse jockey of the year for the 20th year in a row.

Jump race-horse jockeys are the men who ride horses in races in which race-horses jump over barriers as they race around a track.

The jumps are perilous and the accidents life-threatening.

This movie is relevant to me because I am, or at least have been, a man driven by the need to succeed.

• AP is a man driven by the need to “win.”  So am I.
• AP is an addict to winning.  So am I.
• AP had to decide when to retire.  So do I.
• AP decided he rather retire when people would ask “Why did he retire?” then retire after people asked “Why hasn’t he retired yet?”
• That does not entirely make sense so me.  I prefer to change my career or broaden my career then to completely retire.

In this documentary AP makes many statements about what is required of a person who strives to be a champion:

• “You have to be selfish.
• “It has to be all about you.
• “The more you win, the more you need to win.
• “It has to be that way.”

I totally agree with all of the above statements.

During the documentary, AP’s wife tells the crew filming the documentary “on the record” that AP is a man who has had a drive for greatness his entire life.

The Most Interesting Film I Saw at 2015 TIFF

The most interesting film I saw at 2015 TIFF was “L’Ombre des Femmes” (“In the Shadow of Women”).

“In the Shadow of Women” is a film which tells a story about how a young man Pierre juggles having a “wife” like “domestic partner” (Manon) and a mistress (Elisabeth) at the same time.

In this film, Manon gives Pierre a speech in which she (Manon) explains how she (Manon) knows he (Pierre) is cheating on her.

The desires explicated in Manon’s speech constitute a list of requirements, a script to follow, for men who want their women to love them should follow.

It is also a script women who want their men to love them should follow.

Following the script given by Marion in her speech to Pierre is a script to follow if you want to have the greatest sex with a member of the opposite sex.

The man who wrote the screenplay of this movie completely understands the sexual aspects of human nature.

The Most Romantic Film I Saw at 2015 TIFF

The most romantic film I saw at 2015 TIFF was the documentary, “He Named Me Malala.”

The Arranged Marriage

Either in this film or after the showing of this film, Malala’s father Ziauddin Yousafzai explained how and why he married Malala’s mother, his wife.

Here is what I heard Mr. Yousafzai say:

1. He “saw” a beautiful woman.
2. When he saw her: He was an educated man. The woman he wanted to marry couldn’t read or write.
3. He told his mother he wanted this woman as his wife.
4. At the time, in Pakistan, where and when this took place, men and women did not date before getting married.  Their marriages were “arranged marriages.”
   
5. People told him his marriage to the woman he wanted to marry wouldn’t work because he was an educated man and she was an uneducated woman.
6. He told the people who told him that: He would teach his wife how to read and write and she would make his life beautiful.  They would complete each other.
7. Half an hour later his mother arranged the marriage he wanted.
   

Traditional Pashtun Culture

Malala is a Pashtun.

The most important value to a Pashtun is nang, or honor.

Malala was named after Malalai of Maiwand, the greatest heroine of Afghanistan.

All Pashtun children grow up with the story of how Malalai inspired the Afghan army to defeat the British in 1880 in one of the biggest battles of the Second Anglo-Afghan War.

A traditional Pashto couplet is:

Rather I receive your bullet-ridden body with honor

Than news of your cowardice on the battlefield.

This is the tone and flavor of this film and the attitude shown by the actions of Malala and her father and what makes this film an incredibly romantic stirring and moving documentary.

The Most Quotable Film I Saw at 2015 TIFF

The film with the most quotable comments I saw at 2015 TIFF was “Our Brand Is Crisis.”

The subject of this movie is lack of character of politicians and deceitful things political candidates do while striving to get elected.

A political consultant (played by Sandra Bullock) is hired to bolster the prospects of an unpopular Bolivian presidential candidate (played by Joaquim De Almeida).

I predict I will be using statements made in this movie in the future, such as:

• Once idealism is gone there is no way of getting it back.
• If voting changed anything they would make it illegal.
• There is only one wrong: Losing.
• You don’t change the man to fit the narrative.  You should change the narrative to fit the man.
• If you don’t like the road you are on, pave your own.

It was obvious to me that everyone involved in making this film is emotionally committed to promoting the message this film delivers.

Directors’ and Actors’ Comments

At the festival, highly accomplished film makers – directors, actors, producers, etc. – made presentations and answered questions after their films were shown.

Film makers explained

• why they made their film,
• what they were trying to depict in their films,
• the message they are attempting to convey in their film and
• what they wanted their films to accomplish.

Each film maker who spoke at the festival made the film maker’s best effort to spread their positive energy to the world.

Life Shrinks or Expands in Proportion to One’s Courage

I strongly believe that life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.

I wish people were required to see and discuss what they learned by watching the documentary “Being AP” – they ought to be required to discuss the risks and sacrifices involved in having a drive for greatness illustrated in that documentary – before getting married.

“Being AP” is a movie about A.P. McCoy’s twenty years as a horse-racing jockey.

During his career he achieved legendary status.

• He was crowned Champion Jump Horse-racing Jockey twenty consecutive times.
• During his career he tallied up more than 4,000 wins.
• His goal each racing season was to win more horse races than any other jockey.
• His goal was to win so many horse races that no other jockey would ever be able to win as many horse races as he had.

In this documentary, AP describes himself as being an addict to winning.

He also makes the following comments:

Winning Is A Drug

• Winning is a drug.
• But the effect of the drug wears off, then you have to win again and again and again.
• Once you become addicted to winning you never stop wanting to win again and again and again.
• The more you win the more you want to win.

What It Takes to Be A Champion

• In order to be a champion, you have to be selfish.
• It has to be all about you.
• It has to be that way.

The story in this documentary film takes place during the twentieth year of AP’s racing career.

During documentary, AP said he thinks he was never content in his life because he could never be as good as he wanted to be.

During the documentary, which was shot during the twentieth year of AP’s career as a jump race horse jockey, AP also said he is determined to win as many races as possible this year because “The thing about records is they always get broken.  I  want to make it as difficult as possible to break my records.”

The Kind of Spouse A Champion Needs

In the movie AP is shown

• Coming home and getting into a bath tub full of ice after a race — to cool off his inflamed muscles and joints;
• Driving or being driven in an automobile to one race after another race in the same day;
• Looking at x-rays of his broken bones and punctured lung;
• Riding a horse that falls down after a jump and then being stepped on by a horse in the middle of a race;
• Riding horses while being injured and in great pain;
• Being followed during races by an ambulance.

AP’s wife Chanelle totally supported AP throughout his career.

She insisted that it was up to AP alone to decide when AP will retire, when AP will stop being a jump race horse jockey.

During the movie, AP’s wife Chanelle said

• AP’s philosophy is: “Pain is temporary. Losing is permanent.”
• AP rides driven by fear, fear of losing.
• AP is an addict to AP’s way of life.
• AP is an addict to winning.
• AP’s way of life is to win races.
• AP is a total control freak:  He controls his fear.  AP controls his pain. AP is obsessed about controlling everything in his life.
• She wouldn’t have him be any other way.

According to AP and his wife Chanelle: Control is what makes you.

During the filming, Chanelle said, “I wouldn’t change anything about him.  Because it made us the couple we are today.”

At the end of the film, AP  said I’m a control freak.  Control is what makes you.  You have to be selfish.  It has to be all about you.

Then AP said,

• “I just woke up. 
• “I might have lived my dream, but I am awake now.
• “I am going to retire.”
  

During the film, AP’s wife Chanelle explained that during each horse race she worried about bodily harm to AP [jumps are perilous and accidents life threatening]; she worried whether each race would be AP’s last race; although she wanted to ensure AP’s future as father to their two children it was up to AP alone to decide when to retire because AP would have to live with the consequences.

During the filming of this documentary. when AP finally decides to retire he explains, “I decided to retire when people would still ask – Why did he retire? Instead of postponing retirement until people asked – Why hasn’t he retired.

I attended the world premiere of this film on at 2015 TIFF on September 16, 2015.

After this film was shown,  film maker Anthony Wonke explained to the audience:

• AP is obsessive and competitive about everything.
• AP wanted to make the best film ever.
• Nobody put words in AP’s mouth.
• Everything AP said in the film was unscripted, spontaneous.
• This was an observational film.
• AP was quite involved in making this the best film ever.
• He (the film maker) didn’t know if AP would die in a horse racing accident while this documentary film was being shot.
• That is one of the risks of making this type of documentary.

My Advice Regarding “Being AP”

If you want to see horse racing in all its beauty and intensity go see this film.

If you want a realistic view of what it takes to be a champion, go see this film.

Why People Interested in What It Takes to Be A Champion Should See this Film

The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether you win or lose, you have applied the best of yourself to the task at hand

— that can’t be explained in words but is quite easily understood after watching this film.

AP went to extremes to find his own limits.

This film shows in live action why that is what it takes to be a champion.

My Wish for Everyone Who Reads This Blog Post

“May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most dazzling view.  And, may your mountains rise into and above the clouds.”

Visual Aesthetic

I know there is a distinctively human model of reality.

My model of reality is I have to have the right environment in order to do my best work, in order to enjoy my life fully.

I recently spent four months looking for a new place to live.

Friends who didn’t understand that I needed the “right environment” in order to enjoy my life fully kept telling me — Quit looking.  Just rent or buy some place.

At 2015 TIFF, I learned my feeling that I am connected to my environment is the Australian Aborigine way of looking at the world.

In that regard, Stephen Page, a descendant of indigenous Australian people – a descendant of the Nunukul people and the Munaldjali clan of the Yugambeh Nation –  made the following comments to the audience after the world premiere of his English/Australian film “Spear”:

• “Art is medicine for the soul.”
• “Land shapes the person.”

My environment is extremely important to me.

That is exactly the way I “feel.”

While looking for a new place to live, I repeated tried to explain to people – especially to people who kept telling me to quick looking – that I need to live in a place where I feel cheerfully alive.

I need a place that makes me feel cheerfully alive in order to fuel and nurture my capacity to be “creative.”

Below is a picture of a tree in the neighborhood in which I now live.

 

There are solar powered and wind powered pinwheels in front of that tree.  See picture below.

Being Surrounded by Art of All Kinds Is Important

Toronto is a great place to hold a film festival, to work, to live and to visit because Toronto is an extremely charming city full of public art and dynamic-energetic-creative people.

Below is a picture of a charming artsy building, on Bloor Street West in Toronto.

I took that picture below from the Sports Club on the 32nd floor of the Chaz Yorkville, a one of a kind 53 story residential building, located at 45 Charles Street East, in Toronto, Canada developed by Jason Fane.

Look at the artwork on the side of that building.

Click on the photograph shown below.

While attending the festival I walked by that charming building at least four times as I walked from the Chaz Yorkville located at 45 Charles Street East to the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema located at 506 Bloor Street West.

I stayed in a guest suite in the Chaz Yorkville condominium complex while attending 2015 TIFF.

At Chaz Yorkville, Jason Fane has created a fun and supportive living/work environment in which a person’s best self can rise.

Teaching Loyalty by Living Example in “Legend”

I believe it is possible for gangsters to have more “honor” than the people running gigantic corporations such as the Volkswagen company.

Much of the news I watched today was about breach of trust, dishonesty, skulduggery, lack of loyalty to customers lack of loyalty to consumers, lack of loyalty to the public at large and the harmful power dishonest business executives hold:

1. Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn resigned amid scandal over Volkswagen rigging its diesel engine cars to pass air emissions tests.
2. Volkswagen admits rigging air quality emission test results on 482,000 Volkswagen’s 2009 through 2015 2.0 diesel engine run cars sold in the United States and 11 million cars sold worldwide.
3. A nationwide federal class action lawsuit has been filed in California against Volkswagen for fraud and false advertising on behalf of people who purchased diesel engine powered vehicles.
4. All cities, counties and states have a vested interest in having clean air.
5. There is going to be a lot of litigation as a result of Volkswagen’s purposely cheating on air emission tests.
6. CEO of United Airlines steps down over allegations of illegal dealings with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in relation to a half full flight United Airlines flight from New York/New Jersey to South Carolina, where the head of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has a weekend home.
7. General Motors admitted that faulty ignition switches in its cars caused 15 deaths (some say 124 deaths were caused) and a large number of  serious injuries and concealed these defects from its regulator the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
8. To resolve its criminal issues, General Motors agreed to pay a $900 million fine, endure a independent monitor who will review its safety policies and aadmit its wrongdoing in a deferred prosecution agreement.

Movies, even a movie about gangsters, I saw at TIFF taught strong moral, aesthetic and business lessons I fully subscribe to.

For example, in one scene in “Legend” (a Brian Helgeland film starring Tom Hardy , Chazz Palminteri and others), in response to a representative of Meyer Lansky (played by Chazz Palminteri) asking Reggie Kray (played by Tom Hardy) to stop being business partners with his [Reggie Kray’s] crazy sociopath twin brother Ronnie Kray (also played by Tom Hardy), Reggie replies, ” I measure myself by my loyalty.”

At the time,

1.  The Kray brothers had an alliance with Lansky who was an American crime lord, one most powerful mobsters in the United States.
2.  The Kray brothers were Britain’s most infamous gangsters, at the top of the London underworld.

Reggie (out of fraternal loyalty) refused to sell-out his brother Ronnie.

Good Relationships Are Built on Well Deserved Trust

I think the most important thing in a relationship is trust, each person in a relationship must be able to trust the other person.

On the one hand, as portrayed in “Legend”, Ronnie Kray could trust Reggie Kray.

On the other hand, according to accusations recently made by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and admissions made by Volkswagen: the public, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Volkswagen customers couldn’t trust and should not have trusted Volkswagen to honesty report emissions of Volkswagen’s 2009 through 2015 2.0 liter diesel powered automobiles.

Also, according to admissions made by General Motors, the public and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration can not depend on General Motors to follow the law that requires General Motors to report defects in its automobiles that are know to cause the death and/or serious injury to people.

In life it is important for people to be able to trust you.

Reports I’ve read state

• The United States Environmental Protection Agency has said Volkswagen could face fines as much as $18 billion for violating the Clean Air Act.
• The value of Volkswagen stock lost nearly 25 billion euros (around $28 billion) in the first two days of trading after the United States Environmental Protection Agency announced the Volkswagen is violating the Clean Air Act.  The value of Volkswagen shares went down 30 percent.
• General Motors agreed to pay a $900 million fine to resolve its criminal issues and to endure an independent monitor who will review its safety policies.

In order for people to trust you it is important for you to be authentic, to be perceived as the person you are and not a phony.

In “Legend”, Reggie shows what it takes to be a “stand-up guy”, someone you can trust.

In order to be authentic you must follow your values in making all your decisions.

That is what Reggie did when Reggie refused to sell-out Ronnie.

You have to make sure your actions match your principles and your true self.

That is what Reggie did.

Reggie did not back down; Reggie did not cave in when asked to sell out his brother Ronnie.

According to the reports I’ve read, Volkswagen installed software in its diesel engine powered automobiles so they would run cleaner during tests than in actual driving.

Seemingly/apparently the miles per gallon of gas of fuel consumption is better in Volkswagen diesel automobiles get more miles per gallon when they emit unlawful quantities of pollutants.  It is my understanding that those illegally polluting diesel-powered Volkswagen automobiles are able to achieve higher speeds and quicker acceleration when more “air polluting emissions” are emitted.

If you want people to trust you, you have to stick to your guns even when confronted by powerful forces pushing you to do something against your principles.  You must always follow your principles and never cave in.

For that reason I admire what Reggie Kray did in that scene.

I do not admire cheaters: I do not admire Volkswagen.  I do not admire General Motors.

Being Present

Another characteristic of being authentic is always being present when you are with someone else.

That means not texting or answering email while someone is talking to you.

It irks me a great deal to see people texting and emailing other people when they are with someone, even while someone is talking to them.

Throughout “Legend” everyone paid attention to Reggie when he spoke to them.  Likewise, everyone gave their full attention to Ronnie when he spoke to them.

Reggie paid full attention to Meyer Lansky’s representative.

If Reggie had a smart phone I am sure Reggie would not have bee texting or answering emails while Meyer Lansky’s representative was talking to him.

In “Legend” Reggie was fully there, in the moment, giving his full attention to Lansky’s representative at all times Lansky’s representative was talking to him.

At the time, this story takes place the Kray brothers (Reggie and Ronnie Kray) had swiftly risen from humble roots to rule London’s nightclub scene.

They had risen through the ranks of the underworld by crushing their rivals and placing local authorities in compromising positions.

They enforced their dominance by means of assault, robbery and murder.

The Kray brothers ruled the London nightclub scene for most of the swinging sixties.

Even though he was a big shot and a fearsome person, he (Reggie) gave his full attention to Lansky’s representative.

PERSONAL NOTE:

I have a very good friend, a lady friend, who has a bowl in the entry way to her home.

She requires every guest to deposit their cell phone into that bowl while passing through that entry way, before entering the entertaining and living sections of her home.

How To Be Credible

If you want to be credible, be respectful to other people.

Give other people your full attention when you are with them.

Do what you say you are going to do.

Be authentic at all times.

Make sure your actions match your true self.

In “Legend” and in real life, Reggie and Ronnie Kray had dramatic colorful powerful stirring legendary street cred.

Reggie was recognized as a creative genius in his own right, the brother responsible for the success of the Kray brothers’ criminal enterprise.

Stories Are More Valuable Than Facts and Truths

The ability to tell a story is a very important skill.

I strongly believe the following statements:

• Tell me a fact and I’ll learn it. 
• Tell me the truth and I’ll believe it. 
• But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever.

The story told in “Legend” presents an iconic image of Reggie Kray.

• Reggie Kray dared to be his true self.
• Reggie did what he believed in.
• Reggie did what he loved.
• Reggie lived his dream.
• Reggie was in love with what he was doing.
• This enabled Reggie to be extremely passionate about what he did.

My take away: “Being patient doesn’t get you what you want.” – Reggie Kray

Sexual Insights

A wide variety of sexual experiences were depicted and discussed in the films I saw at 2015 TIFF.

I talked with complete strangers and people I know about what I heard and saw in those movies.

Much to my surprise

1. I saw a movie – supposedly based on a true story – about high school students in France who had orgies because they were bored with their lives.
2. In that high school, the entire school was shut down after it was discovered that one of the students had contacted syphilis at one of the orgies.
3. The school was shut down to allow time for each student attending that school to be tested for syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases.

Medical Insights

Medical Care Is A Fear Based Industry

The pharmaceutical companies, the medical profession and the news media know that when people are afraid they can be manipulated.

It is my belief that pharmaceutical companies, in conjunction with the medical profession and news media, have intentionally frightened people (the uneducated public, including myself) into taking statins.

I have been told I must take a high dosage of such drugs in order to lower the level of “cholesterol” in my blood.

After studying literature related to medical tests upon which such advice is universally given, I  came to the conclusion that such tests do not indicate it would be more beneficial for me to take statins to lower my cholesterol than not to.

I look forward to fully discussing that topic with scientifically oriented medical professionals.

The Danger of Never Finding Out You Are Wrong

While attending TIFF, I began discussing whether taking/prescribing statins is justifiable with a renown cardiologist.

He asked me how I felt.

I answered: “I am at ease and comfortable with the fact that prescribing statins to “everyone” to lower the level of cholesterol in their blood is on a par with/below the level of the medical practice of witch doctors.”

That cardiologist responded to my comment comparing the practice of medicine by western educated physicians to the practuce of medicine by witch doctors as follows:

• That is true for many areas of medicine. 
• But, it is better to be treated by a medical doctor today then it was to be treated by a medical doctor fifty years ago and it will be better to be treated by a medical doctor in fifty years then it is to be treated by a medical doctor today. 
• We are making progress.

The Problem with Induction

The problem with the widespread medical practice of prescribing statins to lower cholesterol to levels defined by the powers to be in the American Medical Trade Organizations is that such levels have been determined by making generalizations about the future from selected limited data available at the present.

The problem the consuming public finds itself in, and the problem the medical profession does not readily admit to, is common to induction of all kinds: how to back off from an overly general hypothesis in the absence of negative data.

If you frame a conclusion too broadly, and don’t have complete corrective feedback from the world (say, you grow up thinking all swans are white, and never get to New Zealand, where you’d see black swans), you are in danger of never finding out that you are wrong.

It is my understanding that the majority of internists and cardiologist who prescribe statins for their “heart patients” have confined themselves to parrothood — to going by the book written by those with the most to gain by the sale of statins – and have not personally kept track of whether more of their patients with so called high cholesterol levels are admitted to hospitals for cardiac problems than their patients with so called low cholesterol levels.

It is my “understanding” that more people with so called low cholesterol levels than people with high cholesterol levels are admitted to hospitals for heart problems, i.e. have heart attacks.

The Progress of Medicine

In my opinion the practice of medicine has progressed over the past fifty years and the practice of medicine will continue to progress.

It has been my experience and the experience of several people I know that in emergency situations – where extreme measures have to be taken immediately – being treated by a competent caring physician is a divine experience.

• I have had such an experience and other people have had such an experience too.

Caring physicians generate the right result at the right time by doing the right thing.

They understand the logic of learning which is to discover knowledge by observation; they study particulars; they test hypothesis; they try to figure out why things happen.

They ask “what if?”

They appreciate that there an infinite number of generalizations, most of them wrong, that are logically consistent with any sample of experiences.

They realize the complexity leads to specialization which leads to dehumanization.

They realize that as knowledge in individual sectors become more compressed, people know more and more about less and less technologically and humanistically.

Not all physicians are confined to unthinking parroting; not all physicians lead a professional life confined to performing impersonal assembly-line procedures and practices.

• Many physicians help people get better when their patients have a problem without practicing extreme medicine.
• Those physicians are high touch, thinking and emphatic professionals.
• They focus on their patient’s welfare by giving their undivided unselfish attention to their patients.
• When a brilliant physician does that, it is a divine experience for both the physician and the patient.

The cardiologist I spoke to in Toronto is one of those rare individuals who constantly emit positive energy.

He gives his full undivided attention to the medical situation at hand and by doing do creates one divine experience after another for himself, his patients and everyone else who comes in contact with him.

Where Does Knowledge Come From?

A “belief” is an idea that has received wide acceptance.

Beliefs exclude doubt.

When the world becomes full of beliefs we will have reached the end of knowledge.

The Value of Life

I measure the value of my life by how many times my soul has been deeply stirred.

Every time I have heard that cardiologist speak my soul has been deeply stirred by his open-mindedness, his humility, and his broad erudition.

Every time I have attended the Toronto International Film Festival my soul has been deeply stirred by the variety of points of view presented in the films I’ve seen.

Every time I hear someone speak who has intellectual scruples my spirits soar.

Concluding Thoughts

Not only is it a matter of fairness to acknowledge alternatives to the theories one advances; it’s a matter of clarity and discovery.

Much can be gained by contrasting a theory with its alternatives, even ones that seem to extreme to be true.

It is a matter of mental organizing to do so.

You can only really know something when you know what it is not.

One must constantly test the truth of their knowledge, their beliefs and their assumptions.

Doubt leads to curiosity and the ability to inquire.

The more one “inquires” the more one will increasingly approach enlightenment.

Don’t be afraid to be on the fringe of respectable opinion.

The only place knowledge comes from is ignorance.

I had an eye-opening enlightening time attending the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival.

If you want to know how much concentration, focus, self-control and drive are required to be a champion go see “Pawn Sacrifice.”

It is now in general release.

I saw it over a year ago at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival.

Copyright © 2015 by Gary Smolker, All Rights Reserved

 

 

An Ode to Books by Gary S. Smolker

INTRODUCTION

When someone reads something (a book, a news report, an email, a letter, etc. etc.)  at the right time in life it can have a profound impact.

When someone learns about something – either through reading a book, publicity, watching a movie. looking/listening to a news report or looking at something someone sent over the Internet or otherwise) it can have a profound effect.

Reading a book and/or a newspaper or the post on a blog or an email or seeing an image on a screen (i.e., on your smart phone or on your computer or your TV screen ) can change your life and the “life” of other people, the life of Polar Bears, the life of “products”, “places”, rivers, forests, mountains, beaches, cities, countries, historical sites, museums, art objects, famous places, famous buildings, politicians, political candidates, celebrities, etc.

The fact that we can now transmit information (text and pictures) anywhere at any time via smart phones is the biggest most impactful technological advance in human history.

The smart phone has had more impact on mankind then the invention of the Gutenberg Printing Press, the invention of the steam engine or the impact of any other invention in human history.

Before the invention and widespread use of the smart phone it took relatively speaking “forever” for information to be transmitted long distances to anyone compared to how long it takes to transmit that information to someone else today.

For example, it took a long time for the general public to know of the existence of the Mona Lisa. 

The theft of the Mona Lisa from the most important museum in Paris was of great interest to the public.

What launched the Mona Lisa to worldwide fame was it becoming front page news after it was stolen.

The theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre created an international uproar over its theft in 1911 – pictures of the actual painting were published in the largest circulation newspapers in Paris as well as in leading newspapers all over the world.

This was followed by constant reporting on the investigation of the theft and on the worldwide search for the stolen painting.

People lined up in front of the now blank wall in the Louvre on which it had hung before it was stolen to look at where it had been.

The Mona Lisa had hitherto been known only to the most cultured of audiences, mostly for its prestigious backstory of swapping from one royal collection to another.

Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa did not inspire crowds to line up in front of the Louvre until after it was stolen in 1911.

Today, thanks to modern communications, and marketing, it is one of the most popular and famous paintings in the world.

It is universally recognized and even worshiped as an object of pilgrimage and long lines at museums.

Reading, Seeing and Thinking Changes Your Brain

You don’t just learn things by reading and/or by seeing life changing images.

Your brain actually grows and becomes better able to process and use information.

• You also become more well-rounded, more refined, more thoughtful, more knowledgeable and more skeptical.
• You acquire new knowledge, new information, new things to admire and love, as well as new things to be horrified about, new things to doubt and new things to be skeptical about.
• You acquire a deeper understanding of all aspects of your own life and the life of other people.
• As you become better “educated” your ability to understand other people’s feelings and motivations increases and you become better able to understand what another person is feeling and thinking.

COMMUNICATION GAME CHANGERS

There is a a clear continuity between word, thought, thinking, comprehending, hearing and listening.

They are each part of the long history of steps enabling man to better communicate, to better express himself, to more fully comprehend what he sees hears tastes and smells, and to become more articulate more persuasive and more able to influence, persuade, lead and control other people.

Its a testament to the extraordinary world we live in that the smart phone, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Google, Uber and the Internet have penetrated deeply into our lives and redefined both how we communicate and how we live.

As a result of Facebook, Google, YouTube, Instagram, Uber and the spread of use of the Internet there has been more change in the last five years than in the previous 55.  For example, if you Google the word health you will instantly see about 2 billion results.  If you call Uber you will quickly get a “low cost ride.”

 

• During the past five years the value of communications has dramatically gone up, the cost of communication has dramatically gone down and the number of communications (i.e., Google the word health) has exploded.
• As the cost of obtaining information continues to decline sharply and the cost of communicating information continues to decline, more and more of us are being given a glimpse of the ideas, forces, and trends that are now shaping our future.
• However, in many cases, information we randomly access on the Internet has not been edited or peer reviewed by unbiased experts.
• Sometimes reading such material can be as useful as reading unsolicited (junk) mail.
• We should ask ourselves: How valuable, how reliable is the information we are receiving, is the “information” that we have obtained beneficial?

It is no accident that the demand for instant information has gone up dramatically as the price of obtaining that information has gone down.

That is why you can get about 2 billion results if you Google the word health and why you can shop for almost anything on line.

We are all swimming in an ocean of information.

Those of us who own a smart phone have become an integral part of a multitude of interconnected systems of information.

We are now suffering from electronically transmitted information overload.

Most of us have at least 50 unread emails in our computers or on our smart phones at all times.

Some of us have over 100 unread emails on our computers and smart phones.

DOWNSIZING

I recently downsized by moving from a house I was living in (a 4,000 plus square foot two-story four bedroom three bath single family home with beautifully landscaped front and backyards in a prosperous section of Los Angeles) with an ornate designer swimming pool to a 1,100 square foot two bedroom two bath one story condo without a swimming pool in what has been called the armpit of the San Fernando Valley.

TRAUMA

I spent the months of February, March, April and May, 2015 looking for a new place to live.

Every aspect of looking for a new place to live was a traumatic experience, including looking at places offered for rent and looking at places offered for sale which were posted on the Internet.

One of the issues I had to resolve  during my search for a new place to live was the human need issue in my life of how important to me are my books.

All the places I looked at, except one, did not have enough room or the right kind of room for my bookcases and/or for my books or the right floor plan or the right ambiance/”feeling.”

My love of reading had created in me a need to find a house where I could have all the books in my home library at my fingertips.

When I finally saw a place for rent that had enough room for my books as well as an agreeable floor plan that would allow me to feel comfortable bringing my books and bookcases there, I immediately knew that it was the place for me.

Coincidentally, after I moved in, I discovered this place has beautiful views from eight of it’s ten windows and that it has three balconies.

I didn’t notice the windows or balconies when I first personally inspected place where I now live with my real estate agent because I was blown away by what happened on my one and only viewing before I made an offer to rent this place.

THERE ARE NO EMOTIONLESS ENVIRONMENTS

My real estate broker fired me while he and I were looking at this place because he couldn’t stomach the fact that I told the owner I loved this place while the owner was showing this place to me and to my real estate broker.

The minute I told the owner I love this place, my real estate broker immediately went outside while I was still telling the owner how much I loved this place.  As he left, my real estate broker told me to come to his car when I was done talking to the owner.

A MIRACLE

I surrendered to the inexplicable power of needing to find a home for my books without counting the cost.

Why did I do that?

Rabbi Jechezkel Landau, the eighteen century Chief Rabbi of Prague, said “G-d performs miracles to make a statement.”

If that is the case, I believe G-d made it take me four months for me to find the place where I now live to compel/provoke/stimulate me to write the “Ode to Books” below, to present my feelings to you about how important I feel books through which we exchange and transmit ideas and information are to everyone in this computerized information age.

AN ODE TO BOOKS

How odd it must be to go through life believing that a book is a book. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some are to be chewed and digested in full or in part. Books inspire a man to embrace the world or to flee it. The literary man can never have enough books. The eyes of a reader are eyes, that do not just take words in, but confront and challenge their worthiness. For me, books are not just words on a page.

The pages of a book can influence me and you in ways we never comprehend.

Reading can change you and me; they can make us do things without realizing it.

Books bring things, ideas and people to life and open our eyes.

What we read can be more real to us than events in our own lifes.

When reading I sense that the various words on the page are fighting for control,
for control of me.

Now, I never read a page without sensing that various people and forces are fighting for control of the words, for control of me.

HOW I THINK

It is interesting to me to note what I remember and what I soon forget, what I see and/or hear and what I comprehended.

ATTRIBUTION

All the thoughts about books expressed in the ode above are discussed in “The Last Bookaneer”, a recently published book, written by Matthew Pearl.

In “The Last Bookaneer”, Matthew Pearl has one of his fictional characters say, “A man’s library opens up his character to the world.”  A man’s books disclose what is (and/or has been) of importance to him.

QUERY:  How many people do you know who have a copy of the Compact Edition of the Oxford Dictionary of the English Language in their home?  I do because I “love” words and what to know what they really “mean.”

 

Without My Books I Would Be A Body

Deprived of Its Soul

I have spent the last three weeks arranging and rearranging all the books in my new home on bookshelves.

Each of my books represents a topic or subject I was interested in at the time I purchased it and at the time I read it.

Some times it has taken me ten or twenty years to get around to reading one of my books.

I don’t just read books; I write in them; I underline words and phrases and ideas in them; I highlight things of interest to me in them; I use a multitude of colors for underlining and for highlighting.

I tag pages with different colored and different sized tags.

I take (copy) statements that interest me that I have read in a book and put those statements in notebooks.

I use those statements when I talk to people, when I write to people, and when I think about things.

I have many such notebooks.

Those statements (ideas, thoughts, theories, arguments, bits of information) have become part of me.

WHAT REALLY MATTERS

During the process of moving out of my four thousand plus square foot home and looking for a new place to live, I lived in a hotel for a little over a month.

During the month I was living in that hotel, people urged me to quit looking for a new place to live and to “just rent someplace.”

They didn’t/don’t understand how important my books are to me.

Those people did not understand that books are a part of me.

Figuratively speaking, I am part book, part man.

UTOPIA

To have what you have written read by the right people – to modern writers – is positively utopia.

To have a film seen and understood is positively utopia to a filmmaker.

Today, for some people, films have replaced reading books and for other people watching films has stimulated their curiosity which in turn has increased the amount of reading and writing they do.

It is basic human nature that to love to be understood and appreciated.  That is utopia.

THE POWER OF A COMPLIMENT

For example, I read an article on miracles (why G-d creates miracles) written by Rabbi Lazer Gurkow and sent him an email after reading that article in which I complimented Rabbi Gurkow.

Rabbi Gurkow wrote back: “Wow.  Thank you for that.  A true compliment inspires greater effort and deeper power.”

Copy of email exchange below:

“Wow. Thank you for that. A true compliment inspires greater effort and deeper powers.”
R Lazer

On 2015-06-28 7:52 AM, “Gary Smoker” < gsmolker@aol.com> wrote:  In my post I made reference to your reference and “thought” about miracles which I thought was a wonderful statement.

You write fascinating articles.

As a writer you build suspense and then present one surprise twist and turn that open and then further opens people’s minds.

As a Rabbi you fulfill the vision that a Rabbi is a spokesman for G-d.

Of course, G-d isn’t boring and neither are you.

I mimic what you write because

you are a fascinating and exciting teacher.

Prometheus brought mankind fire.  

You bring mankind light by answering the question, WHY?

Sincerely

Gary

Sent from my iPhone

Gary S. Smolker

On Jun 27, 2015, at 7:57 PM, Rabbi Lazer Gurkow wrote:

I am flattered.

Thanks for reading my work.

R Lazer

On Sat, Jun 27, 2015 at 4:47 PM, Gary Smolker <gsmolker@aol.com> wrote:Rabbi,Thank you for contributing to my “Ode to Books” which was posted on my blog www.garysmolker.wordpress.com a few minutes ago. Gary

I AM WHAT I READ

Books are a part of me.

I would no more “voluntarily” live where I would not have my favorite books at my fingertips than I would voluntarily cut off one of my arms or voluntarily shrink out of existence.

If it is true that you become what you love, shocking as it sounds to me, I am part book and part man.

We have recently learned that almost half of the world’s population has access to the Internet: 3.2 billion people.

In the year 2000, this figure was somewhere around 400 million.

Try to imagine what would have happened in the past 15 years if technologically speaking we were still where we were in the year 2000.  That would be a world without Google, without Facebook, without YouTube, without Instagram, without Netflix, without Uber.

I agree with Alvin Toffler’s statement, “In the future illiteracy will not be defined by those who cannot read and write, but by those who cannot learn and relearn.” but would modify it as follows,” In the future illiteracy will not be defined by those who cannot read and write, but by those who do not use smart phones, computerized research and read books and those who do.”

As access to information and learning become more and more widespread information and learning becomes more relevant each day.

• In such a world, information needs to be read seen and listened to attentively, needs to be discussed thoroughly, needs to be studied carefully and needs to be evaluated critically.
• For those purposes books are more relevant today then ever before.

Each information processing and information transmission revolution that has taken place since the 1995 introduction of the graphics user interface Web browser for the Internet has made the truths and facts found only in books more important and more relevant.

Copyright © 2015 Gary S. Smolker

You Are What You See – A Commentary on High Fashion, Style, Sophistication, Glamour and the Business Genius of Louis XIV In “A Little Chaos” – A Movie Review by Gary S. Smolker

Updated October 19, 2014

 

The Eye Picks Up Clues As It Travels

Clothes do more than keep us warm.

Clothes are an extension of our personal style.

They are a key part of our taste and its expression.

Watching “A Little Chaos”, during its world premier at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival, reminded me that people do judge you by the clothes you wear.

Each piece of our clothing in its own way makes a statement about who you are, about what your style and what your tastes are.

Visually Spectacular

“A Little Chaos” is a visually spectacular movie about a style obsessed monarch who was also a business genius (King Louis XIV).

Louis XIV took great pleasure in the conspicuous display of gorgeousness, style, beauty, the newest fashion, opulence, conspicuous consumption of luxury goods, and the creation of must see places, such as the grand gardens at Versailles.

Watching this movie is an artistic experience.

Visually, everything in this movie is spectacular.

Each scene superbly showcases objects of the greatest quality, rarity and beauty.

The clothing many characters in this move wear rises to the level of art.

The clothing wore by the nobles in this movie are dazzlingly beautiful objects to look at.

The detailing and impeccable tailoring of the garments King Louis XIV (played by Alan Rickman) wears in this movie are unforgettable.

Although the garments worn by King Louis XIV in this movie were created and worn in the 1600s, today, over 300 years later, they are still beautiful and unbelievably magnificent.  They make you think, WOW, where can I get that now.

The trees, fruit growing on trees, flowers, terraced hills, engineered waterways, gardens and the clothes worn by the characters in this movie all play a significant part in the story being told.

King Louis XIV wanted his grand gardens at Versailles to be a “must see” tourist attraction — and they are.

They were created under Louis XIV’s direction to display his power and style at a time when he was the world’s most influential, creative and imaginative promoter of style and artistic expression.

Upon their “completion” they were simultaneously opened to the public and became a “must see” tourist attraction.

From that point forward, elaborate parties and affairs of state have been conducted there; they have been called the Eighth Wonder of the World.

In this movie the audience is shown these visually glamorous grand gardens being built and planted.

The movie ends when one section of the gardens (that section designed in this movie by Madame Sabine De Barra) is completed.

It Helps to Have Resources

At the time King Louis XIV created these gardens, Louis XIV did not have to fill out loan applications or prepare investment prospectuses for potential investors in his projects.  He had enough money and power to command and to employ whomever he wanted in his kingdom to do what he wanted.

He had the power to decide and the “power to be right” – he had the power to make his own decisions without being overruled by anyone.

He had enough money and power to make sure things were done the way he wanted.

Also, and most importantly, he also had the ability to listen to people who were “able.” He used that power to great effect.

He listened to people who “knew their ‘stuff’, to people who knew what they were talking about.

He listened to people who knew how to do things.

King Louis XIV desire to own things of breath taking beauty knew no bounds.

His imagination and creative ideas and desire to possess “one of a kind” things of great beauty gave him no rest.

In keeping with all of the above, King Louis XIV hired the most talented landscape architect of all time, Andre Le Nostre (aka Andre Le Notre), to design and build the gardens at the Palace of Versailles.

King Louis XIV convinced Le Nostre to set his sights on more ambitious horizons – to create gardens that would be the most spectacularly gorgeous gardens in the world until the end of time.

The Gardens at Versailles

The grand gardens at Versailles were designed for beauty, elegance, usefulness, and to be timeless by Le Nostre.

They were designed to be the most stunning spectacular gardens in the world and to be maintained for  King Louis XIV’s own personal narcissistic gratifications of being the one owning them.

When they were completed, Louis XIV knew he had done something eternal in creating those garden.  He knew those gardens would turn him into an icon.

They immediately became the setting for every occasion Louis XIV wished to turn into a demonstration of the power of his monarchy and the wonders worked by French technology.

[ASIDE: When Louis XIV moved into his new dream home at Versailles, with his family, his ministers and the entire court in tow, 36,000 men and 6,000 horses were still deployed on the construction site.]

Establishing Social Status By Making A Breathtaking Fashion Statement

These gardens are not a bunch of plants planted in someone’s backyard.

Hills and valleys were cut and filled and terraced; swamps were filled; rivers were diverted; and a great number of pipes were custom made by hand and lovingly laid to create these gardens.

They are the end product of the highest most advanced level of the civil engineer’s and landscape architect’s arts.

They have character and panache – a dash of flamboyance and style – that are sublime.

During this movie, Director Alan Rickman shows the audience mountains at  Versailles were cut and terraced, pipes were fashioned and laid with loving hand crafted precision, and flowers, bushes and trees were chosen and planted with great passion and expertise.

In his (this) film, Director Alan Rickman shows us the detail with which these gardens are/were put together, the purposefulness with which they were created, the passion to make something that would give pleasure that went into making them, in every detail – the whole spirit of them.

The flowers and trees and bushes in these gardens are beautiful in all seasons due to the choice of plants planted.

Aura and Presence

Watching “A Little Chaos” will remind you, if you need to be reminded, that people will judge you and your aura by more than the quality of the clothes you wear.

• Each piece of clothing displayed/worn by the nobles in “A Little Chaos” is showcased as fine art.
• Every piece of the nobles’ clothing is in a certain way an art object.
• Every detail in their clothing is like fine art.
• Their clothing is refined, it’s elegant, and it is very beautiful.
• Those garments look as good today as they did at the time they were made.
• They are ageless.
• The gardens themselves are each an absolutely impressive truly original creation.

Beyond that, this movie makes it clear that these gardens are one of a kind in terms of their presence and magnificence, with all that implies in terms of social status.

Louis XIV achieved immortality by creating monumental must see works during his reign, such as these gardens.

A Work of Art about A Work of Art

As a result of Alan Rickman’s superb direction, “A Little Chaos” is nothing less than a work of art about a work of art.

It is a movie which proves that a picture is worth a thousand words and that good design is timeless.

Unrelenting & Frenetic Opulence

In his movie (“A Little Chaos”), director Alan Rickman captures the sophistication, style, spirit of pleasure, competitiveness, values (each person in court strove to outshine the other by wearing more stylish clothes than everyone else) and desire for luxury, luxury goods, luxurious living and glamour in King Louis XIV’s court.

• The garments worn at King Louis XIV’s court in “A Little Chaos” are extravagantly elaborate, of high style and bespeak wealth.
• They have a distinctive look which is a reflection of a the wearer’s privileged life.
• It is obvious that Louis XIV encouraged the nobles in his court to try to outdo each other in efforts to wear the most stylish sumptuous clothing.

Director Alan Rickman also captures the essence of what King Louis XIV aspired to be and the thinking that drove King Louis XIV to create the grand gardens at Versailles.

• Louis XIV wanted Paris and France and Versailles to have the image as being of the epicenter of high style, sophistication, glamour, luxury living, and of graceful elegance and tasteful opulence.
• Louis XIV believed his immortality would be assured by the body of creative work produced during his reign as King of France.
• King Louis XIV personally made sure that all the buildings and gardens that he built were so obviously monumental that they were certain to remain conspicuous for posterity and simply had to be seen.
• Not only did great things happen under Louis XIV’s reign, he made them happen.
• In this movie, King Louis XIV is shown unrelentingly living a life full of glittering glamour, luxury, fashion, and extravagant spending on beautiful things.

Dazzlingly Luxurious Living

Virtually under Louis XIV’s royal decree, France embarked upon the most extraordinary age of creativity and luxurious living in it history.

Louis XIV is the person who made the diamond what it is today.

He loved diamonds.

He turned his clothes into a pretext for wearing diamonds.

On one over garment he showed off at least 1,500 carats of diamonds.

One of his day wear outfits featured 125 buttons, each fashioned from a single diamond.  Louis XIV also wore diamonds on his show buckles and garters.

He was the original male peacock.

His diamond mania succeeded in making the display of glittering gems an integral part of attractiveness.

It is said that at the candlelit dinners at Versailles woman’s hairdos seemed to be virtually on fire with diamonds.

Diamonds were the part of Louis XIV’s personal fortune closest to his heart: In the early 1690s he decreed that the magnificent silver furniture (all twenty-seven tons of it) and solid gold plate settings that had dazzled visitors to Versailles be melted down to get money to pay his troops, but refused to part with any of his diamonds.

Due to Louis XIV’s influence (love for diamonds), in the late seventeenth century shopping for fine jewelry became an integral part of the Parisian experience.

By the end of the seventeenth century, fashions in jewelry, like fashions in dress, were decided by designers in Paris.

At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the English crown jewels were the richest collection in Europe, but the by beginning of the next century, the French owned nearly all the greatest stones in Europe, and the English collection was so impoverished that for the coronation of George II, in 1727, many of the diamonds adorning the crowns had to be rented.

Louis XIV created the modern jewelry business.

Business Genius

Some people (myself included) believe that Louis XIV’s understanding that life is art and emphasis on style and fashion were a masterstroke of economic genius and that Louis XIV was the most farsighted creative businessman of all time, more farsighted and better able to see the future than Walt Disney and Steve Jobs.

It can be argued that without the fabulous things that Louis XIV’s passion for style inspired his subjects to create and his extraordinary spending on the luxurious and glamorous goods manufactured and/or designed in France (1) the luxurious experiences for which France is known today would not have come into existence, (2) and without them, tourism and luxury goods would not be France’s top industries today, (3) France would not be the dominant force in the luxury goods and fashion industries which it is today and (4) Paris would not be the destination place to go it is today.

Watching “A Little Chaos”  will bring you head to head and face to face in intimate contact with King Louis XIV’s astoundingly intense focused attention to detail; his creative vision and his extraordinary marketing and image making brilliance.

In “A Little Chaos”, Director/Screenwriter/Actor Alan Rickman showcased Louis XIV’s buoyant grace, exceptionally high level of ambition and deliberate and elaborate image making.

“A Little Chaos” is a 116 minute fashion-art-and-culture show of the highest level of originality in which flowers in full bloom, fruit trees bearing fruit, hills and valleys being cut and filled, swamps being filled and a great swatch of raw land being terraced and then turned into magnificent gardens as well as rich elaborate garments worn by the members of King Louis XIV’s court at royal festivities and while touring his gardens are as much a part of the story being told as the dialog of the principal characters.

As the movie progresses, the exquisite impeccably tailored magnificent garments Mr. Rickman wears throughout this film, as he plays King Louis XIV of France, create the unforgettable impression that Louis XIV was an extremely powerful ruler who loved luxury, style, fashion, glamour who happily and brilliantly exercised his absolute power with gusto and the purpose to create a country that would make people all over Europe declare “The French have style.  Their style and sense of fashion make them glamorous and beautiful.”

When the reign of King Louis XIV began France had no particular association with elegance, by its end, the French had become accepted all over the world as the arbiters in matters of taste and style.

Nightlife which is now seen as the essence of glamour and fun did not exist before the reign of King Louis XIV.

Before Louis XIV’s reign there were no street lights in any cities in the world.  All cities became pitch black at nightfall.

Before the reign of Louis XIV, no cities glittered after sunset.  Instead they were plunged into darkness.

In 1667 that changed.  By Louis XIV’s royal decree 2,736 lanterns were installed in Paris – positioned on and throughout each of the 912 streets of Paris.

Paris quickly became the original ville lumiere, the first city in the world where public life did not stop at sunset; for the first time life both outside and after dark did not stop.

Paris became the first city that never seemed to sleep.

The minute these lanterns were lit, Paris at night came into existence, and a completely new and glamorous way of experiencing cities came into existence.

After the streetlights in Paris were installed, people went shopping at night, people went to cafes and shows at night, etc. etc. etc.

The installation of street lights in Paris changed the world of shopping and world of nightlife for all time for people who live in or visit cities.

Installing street lights in Paris made Paris the destination place to go shopping.

Nightlife and nighttime business flourished.

Street lighting and business go hand in hand: shops, restaurants, cafes and theaters in Paris flourished under the newly possible extended business hours.

As soon as Paris began to sparkle at night, the beautiful people began to indulge in high-end shopping after dark and foreign visitors naturally followed suit by shopping at night as trendy Parisians were doing.

Recognizing the Need to Create Dazzling Experiences

To make Paris more outstandingly beautiful, and to add a touch of elegance to the Seine, Louis XIV imported hundreds of expensive white swans and had them placed in the Seine so that Parisians and visitors would see them as they strolled along the most popular street in Paris (the Cours-la-Reine) displaying their beautiful fashionable clothes and also see them as they traveled by coach from Paris to Versailles.

Louis XIV made Paris unsurpassed by creating landmarks that had to be seen, landmarks so fantastic that someone from a foreign city would believe they had to come to Paris to take them in.

Guidebooks prepared visitors for a “dazzling new experience”: arriving in Paris was like “suddenly coming out of the shadows into bright daylight.”

One of the guidebooks, published in 1692, rates street lighting as one of the wonders of the modern world: “This invention alone is worth the trip, no matter how far away you live.”

For the first time ever it had become possible to shop until one dropped, travel now included a new way of spending nocturnal hours.

Foreign visitors descended on fashionable Paris and wrote letters home comparing Paris to their native cities.

Recognizing the Need to Create Aesthetically Pleasurable Experiences

Under Louis XIV’s patronage, formerly everyday experiences were transformed into performance art.

Many of the finer things in life became just that, no longer “mere things” but finer aesthetically pleasurable experiences.

Louis XIV understood that being “good” or “exquisite” wasn’t good enough.

Louis XIV understood, atmosphere (glamour) is important, i.e., the way in which the plate and food are displayed is as important as what is placed on the plate.

[ASIDE:  During the reign of Louis XIV, cooking and eating began more and more to be thought of no longer as simple necessity but as a domain in which sophistication was possible and desirable.]

Louis XIV’s elaborate banquets began a process which resulted in France becoming a culinary world apart; eating became one of the finer things, no longer a “mere thing” but a finer aesthetically pleasurable experience.

Thanks to Louis XIV’s extravagantly luxurious lifestyle, France acquired the reputation as the country that had written the book on elegant living.

NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE IMPORTANCE OF ELEGANCE AND STYLE

King Louis XIV’s program (as portrayed in Alan Rickman’s film “A Little Chaos”) to redefine France as the land of luxury, glamour and creativity – by changing the cultural world we live in – has been a fabulous success.

In a nutshell, in “A Little Chaos” the eye and imagination travel in historical time and space to the time when France became the epicenter of culture, fashion, sophistication, glamour and the art of luxury living.

Modern businessmen, since the reign of Louis XIV began, have to offer their customers something more than a good product; in order to stand out businessmen of all kinds have to make their customers feel special by providing a heavy dose of emotion along with their merchandise and/or service.

After the connection between street lighting and commerce became obvious other rulers took notice.

In 1620, Amsterdam became the second capital city to introduce street lighting.  Street lights were first installed in Berlin in 1630, in Vienna in 1687, in London in 1694 and in Geneva in 1793.

Dialogue

Dialogue in “A Little Chaos” takes place between the characters in words that bristle with visual possibilities, words that lend themselves to visual excitement.

In one, of many memorable scenes, a female gardener – while wearing the modest clothing of a gardener – asks a magnificently dressed courtier while he is escorting her down the grand staircase in the main ballroom at the Palace of Versailles at a party hosted by King Louis XIV at his Palace at Versailles:

“Why is everybody looking at me?  I am nobody.”  

The courtier replies:

“That is why everyone is looking at you.”

Use of Sex to Move this Movie Along

At that moment, in this film this female gardner (whose name is Madame Sabine de Barra) is a fictional character added to this film to provide sexual tension to this otherwise sexless story.

Madam de Barra is portrayed as Andre Le Nostre’s brilliant, provocative assistant and as a woman who challenged sexual barriers and class barriers in 17th century France by being a woman with passion and intensity who woke up in the morning with desire to reject the status quo and come up with something better.  She was obviously a gardener extraordinaire and landscape architect.

Shortly before that moment, Andre Le Nostre had been hired by King Louis XIV to design and construct the grand gardens at Versailles.

Of historical note:

• Before Versailles was a palace with grand gardens, it was a swatch of untilled countryside dotted with ponds and swamps.
• The earth-moving required to make the slopping ramps and raised terraces at the grand gardens of Versailles, designed by Le Nostre, would be daunting with modern earthmoving equipment.  In Le Nostre’s time, earth moving work had to be done with pick, shovel and wheelbarrow and the labor of thousands of men.
• Excavation of a Grand Canal in the grand gardens designed by Andre Le Nostre, was begun in 1668.
• Once constructed, fifteen gondolas sent by the Venetian Republic that were used in possessions and festivities in the Grand Canal by Louis XIV.
• The Grand Canal was also used by Louis XIV to put on naval demonstrations and mock battles
• Most of the festivities marking the status of King Louis XIV’s reign took place in the grand gardens of the Palace of Versailles.
• • Moliere’s plays were enacted and Lully’s music was performed there.
  • Upon completion, the elaborate fetes at Versailles, with their theatrical extravaganzas on both land and water, fireworks, and great feasts, were all enacted in the gardens.
• Versailles has played a wide variety of roles, occupying the center of French history and the world stage many times (including site of the official ending of World War I), since it began its evolution to the magnificent palace of palaces in 1661, at the command of King Louis XI.
• Looking at these seminal gardens today, their iconic design and magnificence remain as alluring and pure as ever.
• They beckon you to come in to have picnic on one of their lawns, and to get a sense of what the good life was all about more than 400 years ago during the reign of King Louis XIV.
• They feel aesthetically right.

This movie begins shortly after Le Nostre is awarded the commission to design the King Louis XIV’s grand gardens at Versailles.

As the movie progresses, we watch four applicants being interviewed by Le Nostre to serve as Le Nostre’s assistant on that project.

One of the applicants we watch Le Nostre (masterly played by Matthias Schoenaerts) interview is Madame Sabine de Barra (charmingly played by Kate Winslet).

At this interview, Madame de Barra is attired in the modest attire of a gardener.

The other three applicants are (each male) landscape architects attired in exquisite clothes.

Each of the four applicant’s clothing powerfully communicates the ideas, opinions and beliefs of each applicant – captures the real truth of who that applicant is – i.e., what you could reasonably expect from each applicant if you hired him or her to help you design and/or to landscape a garden.

The three male applicants are attired conventionally and are conventional.

There is nothing conventional about Madame de Barra.

On her way to her interview, she passes through a court yard full of potted plants.

She does not like the way the potted plants are arranged.  She moves the potted plants in the courtyard around as she walks through the courtyard.

Le Nostre observes her doing this.

Her sense of purpose was an overwhelming differentiator.

At her interview she provides Le Nostre with a portfolio of detailed plans of gardens she had designed and built which prove to Le Nostre that she has done imaginative and aesthetically perfect work – work which when looked at from any angle is an impeccably flawless sophisticated work of landscaping.

It is obvious to Le Nostre that Madame de Barra is a master of balance and form and has courage audacity and good taste.

Le Nostre knows, from his own experience, that she possesses the capabilities and capacities to face the challenges his assistant will face.

Le Nostre knows:

1. that that the courage to create great work, and fight to protect it, at all costs, is not generated in the head … it comes from the heart and soul;
2. that timidity leads to mediocrity;
3. that there is no such thing as a cautious creative;
4. that in Madame de Barra, he has met a another landscape architect brimming with talent, brimming over with taste, and endowed with invincible personal conviction;
5. and that Madame de Barra is his soulmate.

In this movie, Andre Le Nostre and Madame de Barra are each a truly original person who defies convention.

Le Nostre describes Madame de Barra as “a tiara among the weeds.”

Great Communication Holds Audiences Spellbound

Alan Rickman is a great communicator.

There is no empty ostentation in this movie.

Each character in this movie wears superbly conceived clothes.

The magnificent garments King Louis XIV wears in this movie adds to the sense that this is a real king.

Every detail of King Louis XIV’s impeccably crafted exquisite garments adds to that sense.

In your mind’s eye they become instantaneously connected to your brain and heart.

You will never be able to get them out of your memory.

Whomever did the costuming in “A Little Chaos” should win the Academy Award for costuming.

I “promise”, if you watch “A Little Chaos” you will never forget the exquisite garments Alan Rickman wore (as he was being dressed) and Stanley Tucci (wore in court as court dandy) or the pearl studded gloves Le Nostre’s wife (played by Helen McCrory) wore.

“A Little Chaos” displays film maker Alan Rickman’a taste for decorous elegance and inimitable sense of style.

The dialog, screenplay, acting and costuming in “A Little Chaos” are superb – a riveting and moving melange of colorful, fascinating characters, and ideas captured in an irresistible mix.

Kudos and congratulations for a job done exceeding well to Director/Film Maker Alan Rickman; Screenplay writers Alison Deegan, Alan Rickman, Jeremy Brock; Cinematographer Ellen Kuras; Editor Nicolas Gaster; Production Designer James Merifield; and principal cast Kate Winslet, Matthias Schoenaerts, Alan Rickman and Stanley Tucci.

Watching “A Little Chaos” is an enveloping and spectacular visual, emotional and intellectual experience.

History provides a lexicon of subjects, stories and ideas to be mined.

In “A Little Chaos” Alan Rickman shows how to artistically mine that lexicon.

Intoxicating Release

If you are one of those people who have “style”, who believe we are put here for the joy of it, if you believe totally in romance, love, pleasure and beauty, the “elegance” of the grand gardens of Versailles will hold you.

They have been bedazzling people for more than 400 years who found being in the grand gardens of Versailles is an intoxicating release from the banality of the world.

Testament to Imagination

Just as the grand gardens of Versailles are a powerful representation of who Louis XIV was, similarly, “A Little Chaos” is a powerful representation of who Alan Rickman is.

“A Little Chaos” is a testament to the imagination, audacity, good taste, brain power, creativity, directorial skill, screenwriting skill and acting skill of Director/Screenwriter/Actor Alan Rickman.

“A Little Chaos” has staying power – it will stand the test of time – because it has a beauty all its own, and no age.

This is a movie that will make people talk and think about creativity, good taste and the importance of elegance and style.

Copyright © 2014 Gary S. Smolker

If you want big success, build a business that responds to big trends – Ongoing Trends that Are Changing the Practice of Medicine and People’s Health and Making Many People, Companies and Organizations Feel Good About Themselves, Healthier and Wealthier

 

Copyright © 2014 by Gary S. Smolker

Updated April 25, 2014

America cannot afford to spend as much money as it will be spending if Americans keep on becoming sicker and sicker.

Since there is a dispute about what course of action to take (what path to follow) among scientists, physicians, health experts, and healthcare experts we need to get a grip on our predicament.

Science is not decided by vote.

Science is not decided by consensus.

There is only our best current understanding.

If the “Big Names” had it right we would be living on a flat Earth around which the universe revolves praying to Zeus for our lives.

Business People Are Responding to Our Anxiety and Fear About Our Health

Many professionals – who are businessmen with a variety of credentials – have “jumped-in” to tell us how to live long healthy productive lives and have written books and are giving lectures which promise to fill in the gaps in our knowledge and understanding with information we need.

Other business people have jumped in (either as “idealists”, or “capitalist” – to “milk” our anxiety and fear about being “healthy”) by starting companies that “grow good healthy food”, “sell healthy food”, “serve healthy food”, give nutritional advice, give Yoga lessons, etc.

None of the “author experts” whose books I review in this article suggest that we pray to Zeus for good health, or to lose weight.

However, (a) reading what experts/authors have written, (b) listening to what lecturers on “health and healthy living” say, and/or (c) listening to what your own personal physician(s), nutritionists, dietitian, trainer and/or friends and colleagues tell or advise you to do might leave you confused.

Be that as it may be, life is action.

You are going to do something.

If you want to be healthier and/or to keep your health

• it is up to you to make a change based on what you decide makes the best sense for you to do, or
• you may “blindly” do what someone else tells you to do, or
• you may continue to do what you are presently doing now.

Those are your choices.

I have a modest proposal.

Call to Action

You and I realize, if we want to change our health, we need to change our habits.

We realize, change is a matter of choice.

We are told by a multitude of people that Americans need to adopt a cultural shift away from treating sickness and disease and toward preventing them.

We are bombarded with messages promoting a culture of wellness.

We are bombarded with messages telling us we – the American people – are getting sicker and sicker, our healthcare costs are skyrocketing, we are becoming fatter and fatter, we are becoming more and more stressed out and more and more sleep deprived and we waste a lot of time on the Internet, or on our smart phones, and that we don’t get enough exercise.

We are told that we have been sucked into a vicious cycle of becoming more and more unhealthy and sicker and sicker and sicker.

We are told we need to break out of that vicious cycle.

I, for one, have concluded that I need to think about and decide what I and the rest of us can do and what I want to do to keep my health and to become healthier.

I have asked myself: “Do poor habits pose a dire health problem that I am willing to try to fix or that anyone would be willing to fix?”

Do Poor Habits Pose A Dire Health Problem?

In “The Cleveland Clinic Way” Toby Cosgrove, MD, President and CEO of Cleveland Clinic, says the facts facts tell the story.

• Despite widespread antismoking campaigns, about a fifth of Americans still smoke, and some 4,000 people under the age of 18 try their first cigarette each day.
• Only 13 percent of American men and 9 percent of American women report that they exercise vigorously for 10 minutes or more five or more times per week.  The vast majority of Americans never break a sweat.
• Most Americans eat the wrong foods – and too much of them.
• All of this leads to an epidemic of obesity.
• According to the National Institutes of Health, some 63 million Americans now qualify as obese, defined as having a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or more.  BMI is calculated as a function of height and weight.
• Of these, 3 million are described as being superobese, or 100 pounds or more above their normal weight.
• Obesity like smoking is taking a severe toll on the American population.
• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identifies tobacco use, poor diet, physical inactivity, and alcohol abuse as the leading factors in American death statistics.
• Infections and viruses, by comparison are way down the list.
• It’s true that deaths from heart disease have decreased – from 203 per 100,000 people in 1979 to 135 per 100,000 people today.  The reduction has resulted from improved treatments, preventive care, and heightened awareness of the major risk factors, such as (a) smoking, (b) inadequate exercise and (c) eating the wrong foods.
• Yet heart disease remains the leading cause of death among men and women, affecting 16.5 million Americans.
• The American Heart Association estimates that about every 34 seconds, an American will have a heart attack.
• In addition, the lifetime risk of having cardiovascular disease after age 40 is two in three for men and more than one in two for women.
• Meanwhile, rates of other chronic illnesses remain high or are trending upward.
• Rates of diabetes have more than quadrupled sine 1990.
• Obesity may be responsible for up to a quarter of some of the most common and deadly cancers, including gallbladder, ovarian, and pancreatic cancer.
• Americans have everything they need to save themselves.
• But, it requires Americans to adopt a cultural shift away from treating sickness and disease and toward preventing them and promoting a culture of wellness.
• Michael Rozen, Cleveland Clinic’s chief wellness officer likes to point out, people who stop smoking before age 35 can live just as long as someone who never smoked.  Regular exercise in middle to late life decreases the risk of heart attack by 55 percent, the risk of dying from cancer by 45 percent, and the risk of dying by infection by 95 percent.  The overall death rate drops 60 percent.  Studies have shown that even people in their eighties see a benefit.
• Some people may see their bodies decline very little (if at all) over time.
• The key is how well they take care of themselves.
• Before age 35, a person’s genes largely account for a person’s overall health.
• After 35, a person’s health is mainly within their control.
• By adopting a few healthy daily habits people can live near or at the top of the health curve for a good part of their life.

In “The Daniel Plan” Rick Warren, D. Min., Daniel Amen, M.D. and Mark Hyman, MD report,

“One in two Americans suffer from some chronic disease.  Heart disease; diabetes; cancer; dementia; autoimmune diseases; allergies; acid reflux; irritable bowels; neurological problems; depression; attention deficit hyperactivity disorder; thyroid, hormonal, and menstrual problems; skin problems including eczema, psoriasis, acne, and more.  We spend almost $3 cotillion a year in our healt care system, and almost 80 percent of that is for chronic lifestyle preventable and reversible disease.”

In “Strive” Arianna Huffington reports:

• “Higher levels of stress can lead to higher instances of diabetes, heart disease, and obesity.
  
• “According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fully three-quarters of American health care spending goes toward treating such chronic conditions.
• “The Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital estimates that 60 to 90 percent of doctor visits are to treat stress-related conditions.
• “In the United Kingdom, stress has emerged in recent years as the top cause of illness across the nation.
• “Burnout, stress and depression have become worldwide epidemics.
• “In the United Kingdom, prescriptions for antidepressants have gone up 495 percent since 1991.
• “In Europe, from 1995 to 2009, the use of antidepressants went up nearly 20 percent per year.
• “In the United States more than twenty-two million people are using illegal drugs, more than twelve million are using prescription painkillers without a medical reason, and almost nine million need prescription sleep aids to go to sleep. And the percentage of adults has gone up 400 percent since 1988.
• “Women in highly stressful jobs have a nearly 40 percent increased risk of heart disease and heart attacks compared with their less-stressed colleagues, and a 60 percent greater risk for type 2 diabetes.
• Women who have heart attacks are almost twice as likely as men to die within a year of the attack, and women in high-stress jobs are more likely to become alcoholics than women in low-stress jobs.”

It is easy to let technology wrap us in a perpetually harried, stressed-out existence.

“In fact, one of the legal defenses offered by Steve Cohen, CEO of SAC Capital, the hedge fund that was indicted in 2013 and agreed to a record $1.2 billion fine, was that he missed a warning about insider trading because of the one thousand e-mails he gets every day.”

The Big Picture

In books reviewed in this article, author-experts argue that every bite of food you take is a small but important choice: every bite of food you eat either increases or decreases your odds of living a longer healthier life.

The authors of these books point out that there are diets that lead to obesity, diabetes, heart attacks, stroke, cancer and dementia.

There are other diets that lead to weight loss and a healthier life.

The Bigger Picture

For the first time in history, while millions of people suffer from not having enough to eat, millions are struggling with the effects of being overweight.

Today, as many people are suffering from the result of too much food as malnutrition.

Diabetes, heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, cancer and other “lifestyle-based diseases” now kill more people than infectious diseases.

The next time you are with two friends, consider that two of the three of you are likely to die from heart disease or cancer.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identifies tobacco use, poor diet, physical inactivity, and alcohol abuse as the the leading factors on American death statistics.

Behavior-related factors, including tobacco use, poor food choices, excessive portion sizes, and physical inactivity, now account for 75 percent of all healthcare costs.

Preventable chronic diseases are responsible for 81 percent of all hospital admissions in the United States, 91 percent of all prescriptions, and 76 percent of all physician visits.

Because of preventable chronic diseases, America spends twice as much on healthcare as Europe and Canada do and four times as much as Mexico, Japan and India.

The United States also has 80 percent more high blood pressure, 110 percent more heart disease, and 800 percent more strokes than other developed countries.

Seven in ten Americans are overweight.

Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and many types of cancer are not mysterious disease that come out of nowhere.

They are largely caused by our own lifestyle choices.

In “Wheat Belly” William Davis, M.D. advises us:

• The personal and societal costs of developing diabetes are substantial.
• On average, one person with diabetes incurs $180,000 to $250,000 in direct and indirect health carte costs if diagnosed at age fifty and dies eight years earlier than someone without diabetes.
• Diabetes is a disease caused in large part by food.
• Adult diabetes through the ages was mostly the domain of the privileged who didn’t have to hunt for their food, farm the land, or prepare their own meals.
• Only during the last half of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century, when sucrose (table sugar) consumption increased across all societal levels, common laborer on up, did diabetes become more widespread.
• Today, diabetes is epidemic.  The number of Americans with diabetes is growing faster than any other disease condition with the exception of obesity (if you call obesity a disease).
• The explosion of diabetes and prediabetes has been paralleled by an increase in people who are overweight and obese.
• Actually, it would be more accurate to say that the explosion of diabetes and prediabetes has been in large part caused by the explosion in overweight and obesity.
• The fatter Americans become, the greater the number that develop prediabetes and diabetes.
• Weight gain is predictably accompanied by diabetes and prediabetes, though the exact weight point at which they develop can vary from individual to individual.
• Some estimate show that, over the next twenty years, an incredible 16 to 18 percent of all healthcare costs will be consumed by health issues arising from excessive weight: not genetic misfortune, birth defects, psychiatric illness, burns, or post-traumatic-stress disorder from the horrors of war -no, just getting fat.
• The cost of Americans becoming obese dwarfs the sum spent on cancer.
• More money will be spent on health consequences of obesity than education.

In “The Cleveland Clinic Way”  Toby Cosgrove, M.D. observes that:

• “When patients get sick, they typically have to visit numerous specialists to get proper treatment. One study found that between 2000 and 2002, the typical Medicare beneficiary with a chronic condition such as diabetes or heart disease saw up to 16 physicians in the course of a year, not to mention pharmacists, imaging technicians, and other specialists.
• “Almost a hundred years ago, the founders of group practices were struck by the complexity of modern medicine and the consequent need for collaboration across specialties.  
• “Cleveland Clinic founder Dr, George Crile observed that a modern-day doctor is no more able to undertake intricate patient problems alone than to build a car alone.”

According to the books reviewed in this article,  many people today are at a fork in the road with two paths:

Path One

• If people with poor eating habits and life style habits take continue along that path they will have a future of pain and mental deterioration.
• If they don’t take care of their brain and body and just keep doing what they’ve always done, in the future they will have brain fog, memory loss, be depressed, be tired, and have physical illness.
• Sadly this has already happened.  Among today’s older adults, most have at least one chronic disease, and at least one in four has two or more.
• According to the Administration on Aging, more than 40 million Americans are currently aged 65 or older.
• By 2030, the number of Americans who are over 65 will more than doubled from their number in 2000, to almost 20 percent of the population.
• Because of poor living habits in the past, many elder Americans are suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and other age-related neurodegenerative diseases; their bodies  have outlived their brains.
• Alzheimer’s disease currently affects an estimated 5.2 million people, costs the United States about $200 billion, and is the sixth leading cause of death.
• Doctors aren’t sure exactly what causes Alzheimer’s disease, but they do know that Alzheimer’s shares major risk factors with cardiovascular disease, such as obesity, smoking and a sedentary lifestyle.

Path Two

• If people take the path of caring for their body and their brain they will increase their chances of having mental clarity, better energy, a brighter mood, great memory, a trimmer and healthier body, healthier skin, a healthier brain and not dying from a heart attack or stroke or cancer or diabetes or Alzheimer’s disease sooner than later in the future.

The Path Being Taken by Big Business

Ill health is costly to corporate profits.

Americans today are so unhealthy, and ill health is so costly to corporate profits and the need for Americans to become more healthy is so great that most big businesses have adopted programs aimed at improving the health of their employees.

According to a 2013 survey by the National Business Group on Health, an association of large employers, about 93 percent of U.S. employers have some kind of wellness program — an umbrella term that encompasses everything from in-house yoga to help quitting smoking.

Eighty percent of those companies also offer health exams to their employees, according to a study last year by the RAND Corporation.  They typically give employees incentives to participate, and the Affordable Care Act has boosted the size of such incentives.

In “Strive” Arianna Huffington reports:

• “Studies show that U.S. employers spend 200 to 300 percent more on the indirect costs of health care, in the form of absenteeism, sick days, and lower productivity, than they do on actual health care payments.
• “In the United Kingdom, stress results in 105 million lost workdays each year.
• “Germany lost fifty-nine million workdays to psychological illness in 2011.
• “Right now, about 35 percent of large and midsize U.S. employers offer some sort of  stress-reduction program, including Target, Apple, Nike and Procter & Gamble.”

There Is Controversy and Debate About the Impact of Cholesterol Levels on Health

According to most doctors, high cholesterol is a risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease as well as a major risk factor for heart disease and heart attacks.

However, according to neurologist David Perlmutter, MD, cholesterol is not a major risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease, for heart disease or for heart attacks.

Dr. Perlmutter’s thoughts about cholesterol, heart attacks and Alzheimer’s disease are discussed in his recently published book “Grain Brain”, published in 2013.

In “Grain Brain”Dr. Perlmutter claims:

• Cholesterol is at most a minor player in coronary heart disease and represents and extremely poor predictor of heart attack risk.  Over half of all patients hospitalized with a heart attack have cholesterol levels in the “normal” range.  The idea that aggressively lowering cholesterol levels will somehow magically and dramatically reduce heart attack risk has now been fully and categorically refuted.  The most important modifiable risk factors related to heart attack risk include smoking, excess alcohol consumption, lack of aerobic exercise, over-weight, and a diet high in carbohydrates.
• Cholesterol is one of the most critical chemicals in human physiology, especially as it relates to brain health,  The best lab report to refer to in determining one’s health status is hemoglobin A1C, not cholesterol levels.  It is rarely, if ever, appropriate to consider high cholesterol alone to be a significant threat to health.
• Studies dating back to the mid-1990s reveal a link between statin use and an increased risk of certain cancers, not to mention a long list of side effects from digestive challenges to asthma, impotence, inflammation of the pancreas, and liver damage,  A trial published in January 2010 in the American Journal of Cardiology  found that statin medications actually increased the risk of death.  Researchers in Israel followed nearly 300 adults diagnosed with heart failure for an average of 3.7 years, and in some cases up to 11.5 years.  Those who were taking statin drugs and had the lowest levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) were found to have the highest rates of mortality.  Conversely, people with higher levels of cholesterol had a lower risk of death.
• The benefits of statins are questionable, and major studies have failed to show how they protect the body from illness.
• However, Dr. Perlmutter does state in “Grain Brain”: numerous studies do point to the positive effects statins have on reducing mortality rates in people with coronary artery disease.  [Emphasis added.]

I Would Like to Know the Answer to the Following Two Questions:

• Has the evidence in those studies been interpreted correctly?
• Do those studies prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt?

A eyebrow raising cartoon first published in 2004 shown in “Grain Brain”  (which was published in 2013) reminds us of the evolving state of knowledge about what to heat and what not to eat.

In this cartoon a physician is shown telling his patient, “The high-carb diet I put you on twenty years ago gave you diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease.  Oops.”

An article published on March 18, 2014 in the Annals of Internal Medicine reports that a team of international scientists, lead by Dr. Rajiv Chowdhury, a cardiovascular epidemiologist in the department of public health and primary care at Cambridge University,  found no evidence that eating saturated fat increased heart attacks and other cardiac events.

The new research did not find that people who ate higher levels of saturated fat had more heart disease than those who ate less.   Nor did it find less disease in those eating higher amounts of unsaturated fat, including monounsaturated fat like olive oil or polyunsaturated fat like corn oil.

For decades, health officials have urged the public to avoid saturated fat as much as possible, saying it should be replaced with unsaturated fats in foods like nuts, fish, seeds and vegetable oils.

“My take on this would be that it’s not saturated fat that we should worry about” in our diets, said Dr. Rajiv Chowdhury, the lead author of the new study.

This study (published on March 18, 2014 in the Annals of Internal Medicine) has set off a flurry of debate questioning the conclusions of the study and back-peddling by experts who have been urging people to avoid saturated fat (dairy, meet and eggs).

However before that article was published both William Davis, M.D. (in his best selling book published in 2011, “Wheat Belly”) and David Perlmutter, M.D. (in his best selling book published in 2013, “Grain Brain”)  challenged the accepted wisdom that saturated fat is inherently bad for you and gave the “green light”to eating more steak, butter and other foods rich in saturated fat.

Although You Are Never Going to Change Human Nature You Might Alter the Environment in which It Is Expressed

We/you don’t want to be gameable and we don’t want to be gamed.

The Role of Prevention

More and more people realize, they have not done what is necessary to prevent disease.

They realize that prevention, not treatment once illness has begun, is key to optimal health and longevity.

With each passing day, more and more people recognize that in order to reach their optimal health they need to change their life style, they need to change how they live.

They realize they need to design a dietary and exercise protocol that suits their needs.

They realize they need to proactively care for their body and mind and that in order to do so they need to

• undergo the blood tests and screenings appropriate for their age, particular circumstances and medical history,
• raise their awareness about the things they do today that affect their tomorrows,
• gain the knowledge they need to take advantage of modern science and medicine,
• find out what is right for them, what works for them,
• know how to live healthy,
• think through their live style choices,
• develop goals that deal with longevity,
• devise a plan,
• set milestones,
• set measures they will take to get to their goals,
• develop healthy habits, and
• follow a comprehensive long-term health strategy.

They also realize there is no “one size fits all medicine.”

Most of us are going to die at a ripe old age or sooner if we don’t take preventive measures.

Change Is A Matter of Choice

Change is a matter of choice.

You can’t passively sit around doing nothing and expect your life to get better.

Ultimately, you must act to take better care of yourself, i.e. stop eating foods that harm you; dump junk food; stop living a sedentary life and reduce stress in your life.

Many people, including bottom-line oriented businessmen, are making (and/or want to make) an effort to experience a whole new level of wellness and better health.

Astute businesspeople/employers now recognize they [the employer] will benefit if they help their employees become healthier.

In her latest book (“Strive”, published in 2014),  Arianna Huffington advises:

1. “Right now about 35 percent of large and midsize U.S. employers offer some sort of stress-reduction program, including Target, Apple, Nike and Procter & Gamble.
2. “At Aetna, the third-largest health insurance provider in the United States, CEO Mark Bertolini discovered the health benefits of meditation, yoga, and acupuncture while recovering from a horrible ski accident that left him with a broken neck.  He proceeded to make them available to his forty-nine thousand employees and brought in Duke University to conduct a study on the costs savings.  The results?  A 7 percent drop in health care costs in 2012 and sixty-nine minutes of additional productivity per day for those employees who participated in Aetna’s wellness programs. And doing yoga one hour each week reduced stress among employees by one-third.
   
3. “Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater, one of the largest hedge funds in the world, who has been meditating for more than thirty-five years and considers it ‘the single most important reason’ for his success, pays for half of his employees’ meditation classes and picks up the entire bill if they commit to it for more than six months.
4. “Increasingly, companies are realizing that their employees’ health is one of the most important predictors of the company’s health, as well.  In those all-important Wall Street conference calls, business analysts, in addition to asking about sales reports, market share, and earnings, should be quizzing CEOs about their employees’ stress levels.”

In “The Cleveland Clinic Way”, Toby Cosgrove, MD, President and CEO of Cleveland Clinic, advises of steps the Cleveland Clinic and other companies have taken to assist their employees live a healthier life.

 

The “wellness movement” provides a fabulous/fantastic business opportunity to alert business people.

One of the books I review in this article, “The Daniel Plan” by Rick Warren, D. Min., Daniel Amen, M.D., and Mark Hyman, M.D., argues that people are unhealthy because the food they choose to eat is harmful to them.

Below are some “ideas”/”facts”/”opinions” set forth in “The Daniel Plan”,  I think about constantly.

Food has the power to harm you/me.

What you/I put on your/my fork determines whether you/I are/am sick or well, slim or fat, depleted or energized.

Processed food (packaged food) and sugar are our enemies.

Since 1980, more than 600,000 packaged and processed foods have been introduced into the marketplace.

Eighty percent of them are full of sugar.

Since low-fat dietary recommendations in the early 1980s, we have doubled our rates of obesity in adults and tripled it in kids, and the rate of type 2 diabetes around the world has increased sevenfold.

In fact, today in America, one in two people have pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes.

We have seen the number of people with heart disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer, dementia, depression and infertility skyrocket.

Actually, to diagnose cancer, doctors give patients radioactive sugar.  The sugar then goes to the cancer and lights up on the PET scan.

Sugar triggers a cascade of changes in your body that make you sick and fat.

Here is what happens:

1. You eat quickly absorbed sugar or refined carbohydrates (like white flour).
2. Your blood sugar spikes.
3. Your insulin levels spike.
4. Insulin triggers the storage of fat in the belly and increases your appetite and sugar cravings.
5. The sugar (particularly the fructose in high fructose corn syrup) turns into a cholesterol factory in your liver (called lipogenesis), increasing LDL [sometimes called bad cholesterol], lowering HDL [sometimes called good cholesterol], and raising triglycerides.
6. This leads to fatty liver (now affecting 60 to 90 million Americans).

All of this increases something called insulin resistance, where your cells become numb to the effects of insulin, requiring more and more insulin to keep your blood sugar normal.

Insulin resistance is the major cause of all age-related chronic disease such as heart disease, heart attacks, high blood pressure, stroke, many cancer, type 2 diabetes, and dementia.

Hunter-gather populations consumed about 22 teaspoons of sugar a year; now the average American consumes 22 to 30 teaspoons every single day.

In 1800, the average person consumed 5 pounds of sugar per year; now we average 152 pounds.

I have lots to say about the current state of what is going on in people’s mind about health, diet and exercise and the response of pioneering business people to the health tragedy caused by people being confused and/or not being able to figure out what is the right thing to do.

Consider based the following “facts” about soft drinks/processed food presented in “The Daniel Plan.”

The average 20-ounce soda has 15 teaspoons of sugar.

Sugar sweetened drinks like soda now make up 15 percent of the calories consumed by the average American.

One can of soda a day increases a kid’s risk of obesity by 60 percent and a women’s chance of getting diabetes by more than 80 percent.

Sugar is more addictive than cocaine.

In “The Daniel Plan”, Dr. Mark Hyman advises:

One of the things you can do to dramatically improve your health and lose weight is “don’t drink liquid calories.’ 

This means don’t drink soda, sports drinks, flavored coffees or teas, energy drinks and juices, except fresh-made green vegetable juice.

Diet drinks are not good substitutes for sugar-sweetened drinks.  They also increase cravings, weight gain, and type 2 diabetes.  And, they are addictive.

Our processed, low-fiber, high-sugar diet alters the bacteria that live in our digestive system.  There are 500 species of bacteria in there.

The bacteria outnumber our cells 10 to 1, and we have 100 times more bacteria DNA in us than our own DNA.

We live in a “processed food” toxic nutritional wasteland.

• When we eat processed food, we change our gut flora (bacteria) and foster the growth of bad bacteria that promote inflammation.
• Bread, ketchup, and salad dressings are full of sugar.
• The average serving of commercial spaghetti sauce has more sugar than a serving of chocolate sandwich cookies.

If “being healthy” was all about “eat less” and “exercise more”, we would all do it and be skinny and “fit.”

Getting to a state of being “fit” and “healthy” is more complicated then that.

Dr. Hyman reports:

“I had to eat an MRE – meals ready to eat – while I was working after the earthquake in Haiti.  When I read the label of the chicken and dumplings, there were more than 500 ingredients  I recognized almost none of them and couldn’t pronounce most of them,  In fact, I couldn’t find chicken on the label – it was a ‘chicken-like substance.’

In the material which follows, I chronicle/discuss what “informed people” are doing to become fit and healthy. 

I also chronicle and discuss pioneering intelligent businesses’ and business people’s actions in response to the widely growing public awareness that what we put in our mouths to eat will determine whether we we will be sick or healthy, depleted of energy or energized, able to concentrate or be confused and suffer from brain fog.

This is a significant trend.

There is a confluence of many forces, which I call “the health movement.”

In “Mission in A Bottle” Seth Goldman and Barry Nalebuff state they started “Honest Tea” in 1997 because all the bottled teas on the market were too sweet.

1. The average commercially available bottled tea had twelve teaspoons of sugar in a 16 ounce bottle.
2. The World Heath Organization advised: “Consume no more than 10 teaspoons of added sugar per day.”
3. Although they had no experience in beverage industry, they (Goldman and Nalebuff) decided to launch a company that made bottled tea with only 2 teaspoons of sugar in it.
4. They built something they believed in.
5. Ten years later, they sold their company (Honest Tea), for a reported price of $40 million, to the Coca Cola Company.
6. Today you can find Honest Tea’s beverages in 100,000 retail outlets.

In “The Daniel Plan”, Pastor Rick Warren reports that in 2010 he realized he was severely overweight.  The next day, he stood before his congregation and made this public confession:

“Friends, I’ve been a poor steward of my health and a terrible example for you.  While we’ve been helping many around the world, I’ve ignored a problem at home.

“So today I am publicly repenting, and I ask for your forgiveness!  God expects us to take care of the bodies he has given us, but I have not done that.  Now, I’ve only gained two or three pounds a year, but I have been your pastor for thirty years.  So I need to lose ninety pounds.  Do any of you want to join me in getting healthy.”

The audience responded with sustained applause.

He was overwhelmed, when in the first few weeks more than 12,000 people signed up to join him in his quest to get healthy.

We Are Living in the “Age of Insight”

In “The Daniel Plan”, Rick Warren, D. Min., Daniel Amen, M.D. and Mark Hyman, M.D. point out “the National Institutes of Health spends $800 a year trying to discover the cause of obesity.”

They (Warren, Amen, and Hyman) then ask, “Could it be the 29 pounds of French fries, 23 pounds of pizza, 24 pounds of ice cream, 53 gallons of soda, 24 pounds of artificial sweeteners, 2.7 pounds of salt, 90,000 milligrams of caffeine consumed every year by the average American.”

According to the Center for Disease Control more than two thirds of Americans are overweight or obese.

Being obese leads to many health problems, including diabetes.

The fatter Americans become, the greater the number that develop diabetes.

The number of Americans with diabetes is growing faster than any other disease condition with the exception of obesity, if you call obesity a disease.

How did we get to the point where seven out of ten Americans are overweight and diabetes is as common as gossip?

Some estimates show that over the next twenty years sixteen to eighteen percent of all health care costs will be consumed by health issues arising from excess weight; more money will be spent on the consequences of obesity than on education.

Physicians should rejoice in conveying information that empowers individuals to take control of their own health.

Have you ever told your physician that you have decided to get healthy to live a healthier life, or asked any physician one of the following questions or had the following conversation with your physician?

1. I have decided to get healthy.  What can you do to help me successfully answer the challenge of getting healthy, the challenges of improving my health and the quality of my life that goes with healthier living?
2. I would like you to coach me in getting healthy and help me design  a plan for getting healthier.  Are you up to coaching me in getting healthier and designing a plan – a lifestyle program – to improve the quality of my life?
3. What are you prepared to do to enable me to successfully live a healthy and healthier life?
4. What can you do to enable me to avoid having a heart attack?  By the way, in “Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease”, Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr., M.D. claims it is possible to prevent and reverse heart disease and presents a specific plant based nutrition program for doing so.  Dr. Esselstyn claims people who follow his program have become heart attack proof, their heart disease either stopped progressing or was reversed and they did not subsequently have a heart attack and will not have a heart attack.
5. What are you prepared to do to enable me to avoid having a heart attack?
6. What can you do to enable me to avoid having diabetes?  By the way, in “Dr. Neal Barnard’s Program for Reversing Diabetes”, Neal D. Barnard, M.D. claims that diabetes is not an irreversible condition.  It is possible to repair insulin function and reverse type 2 diabetes by following his nutritionally based program.  By closely following Dr. Barnard’s  program you can cut back on diabetes medications, if not eliminate them completely and reduce your risk of diabetes complications.  His program is a method for preventing, controlling and reversing diabetes.  His program zeros in on the type of food you eat.  According to Dr. Bernard, that is the critical factor.
7. What are you prepared to do to enable me to avoid having diabetes?
8. What can you do to enable me to avoid having Alzheimer’s disease?  What are you prepared to do to help me avoid having Alzheimer’s disease, to enable me to avoid having diabetes?  Various physician authors claim, in the books reviewed in this post/article, that the same things you can do to prevent and/or to reverse heart disease will lower the risk Alzheimer’s disease, stroke and diabetes.
9. What can you do to enable me to avoid having high blood sugar levels?  It is claimed that following Dr. Barnard’s nutritionally based program is three times more effective at controlling blood sugar levels than the standard dietary regime for people with diabetes that has been followed for decades. 
10. What are you prepared to do to enable me to avoid having high blood sugar levels, to control my blood sugar levels?
11. Are you able, and if so willing, to restructure the information provided in current medical reports prepared by testing laboratories and sent to you to provide higher-value information and to provide such higher-value information in written report form to me?

Have you ever wondered why you can see more practical relevant information related to a car on the dashboard of a recent model automobile than you can learn about the status of your body or about your health from any device or software your physician has advised you to use?

I can ask my car questions (i.e. how to get from one place to another) and get intelligent answers (i.e. a map with a route specifying how to get from a starting point to a desired end-point as well as oral instructions on when and where to turn as I take the route calculated by my car).

I can see on a screen on the dashboard of my car the tire pressure in each tire, the oil level, the level of fuel in my gas tank, the outside temperature, speed, etc. etc. etc.

My car (a 2013 Nissan GTR) posts a message on a screen on the dashboard when the tire pressure is too low and when my car needs maintenance.

My car senses and analyzes car performance factors and integrates and uses that information to calculate and post on the dashboard how many miles per gallon I am getting while driving as well as an estimate of how many more miles I can drive before I run out of gas.

Almost all of us know more about how to keep our cars running (for 200,000 plus miles) than how to keep our bodies, minds, and souls healthy for a lifespan of 120 years.

Ancient cultural knowledge about how to create and maintain health has not been widely available because western medical schools don’t teach this and conventional western medical doctors and nutritionists don’t learn this.

However, our ability to access, understand and learn from data has been transformed by the widespread use of smart phones and computers and the creation of new sensors, new software and new electronic devices.

We know we can get “the answer” from technology; we only need to have the right devices and then to decide what to ask.

We are transitioning from the “Age of Information” (currently called the “Information Age”) to the “Age of Insight.”

That being said, if you are not afraid to do so, ask your physician (a) to advise you of the availability of sensors and wireless communications using smart metering/monitoring software that will gather, store and integrate/crunch/analyze and track the status of information your body now generates at all times and how you may exploit that information and (b) to answer any or all of the questions listed above.

Do you have your Hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) checked regularly?

HbA21c measures average glucose (sugar level in your blood) over the past 60 to 90 days. 

I have gone on a diet and I am tracking my HbA1c.

I had my HBA1c checked today (March 27, 2014).

At a minimum, consider having your medical records stored on an electronic device so that your medical records can be accessed and electronically distributed at any time from any place.

In the Past, Effort At Trying to Find the Truth About How to Live Longer and Be Smarter and Healthier for Most People Has Been Like Trying to Touch A Rainbow.

That is why

• (a) by 2009 Americans were spending more on potato chips than their government spent on energy research and development;
• (b) in fully one out of four patients with heart disease, the first symptom is sudden death;
• (c)  comprehensive preventative medicine will not become the driving force in a physician’s life as long as medicine is practiced on a fee-for-service basis;
• (d) several prominent physicians have publicly indicated that the majority of other physicians are either inept out of their depth lightweights and/or socially irresponsible charlatans whose goal is to maximize their income;
• (e) you might find yourself after a heart attack in a hospital recovering in one of the cardiac care recovery rooms while in that same hospital room being fed eggs by a specially trained cardiac care nurse who at the same time is also giving you a high dosage cholesterol lowering pill prescribed by your personal cardiologist [although this makes no sense it is a daily occurrence];
• (f) a mass market size number of people do not trust the medical establishment or the education establishment;
• (g)  the health care industry, the food industry and the education industry are becoming spaces filled with significant thinkers (thought leaders) who are innovative social entrepreneurs providing highly appreciated mission oriented vital services and specialized sections of the health care industry, health food and health product industry and the education industry are experiencing explosive growth.  

Because physicians have not been rewarded for educating patients, all the elements (including a surge in consumer interest) are present and in place for the explosion of new methods of providing health care in a way that will change the world for the better.

A Social Trend that Needed to Happen

Throughout recorded history, health has been one of our most common preoccupations and most popular areas of research yet most of us still don’t know what to eat or where we can purchase healthy tasty delicious food or how to live a longer healthier more productive life.

People all over the world are interested in learning more about health.  Americans, in particular, are obsessed with their health.

The Internet’s potential to change human life is staggering.

If you Google the word health you’ll see about 2 billion results.

The amount of  “information” about health presently available is challenging and today’s fast moving river of  new data/information/studies and controversial opinions about health shows no sign of slowing down.

Recently, highly credentialed and experienced physicians with piercing and witty intellects have written mission driven best selling books about what to eat and how to live a healthy life.

In their best-selling books, they criticize standard medical practices and the governmental and non-profit agencies and organizations who set nutritional and medication guidelines.

Their best selling books often include recipes for healthy dishes and daily food plans.

In addition to practicing medicine these physicians give seminars at conferences and retreats they organize and are also speakers at seminars and conferences organized by others.

The general public is solicited to attend the seminars and lectures and seminars and conferences at which they speak/“teach.”

The business of organizing and holding retreats for the general pubic to learn about health is a growing.

At these retreats attendees are given instruction on how to become healthier.

The people who put on these retreats and conferences and the educators/physicians who speak at these retreats and conferences are capitalizing on America’s growing obsession with health.

They are capitalizing on the fact that members of the general public (a) are fearful that they are too fat, (b) can’t figure out how to lose excess weight, and (d) the diets and exercise programs have have participated in have not worked.

As a result of  lack of useful information being provided by the medical profession many members of the general public are flailing around in darkness without being able to obtain the help of their primary care physician in their efforts trying to figure out the puzzle of how to lose excess weight and live a healthier life.

The “health-movement” these educator-best-selling author physicians promote and the “health-education”/health information industry they are in the process of creating is still a relatively small, balkanized, nascent industry.  It is a growth industry just at its infancy.

Alert persons who look into the growing size of the “health-movement” see huge profit growth potential in addition to growth of consumer acceptance of products and services related thereto.

Physicians whose books are reviewed in this article have become the newest mythic archetype of the American entrepreneur.

As a result of demand by patients, the demand of major employers who pay for their employee’s health insurance, and as a result of the demands of the federal government and the demands of the insurance industry, it is inevitable that in order to stay alive convention-run-of-the-mill-old-school physicians with a “Doctor-Is-God” mentality who do not yet actively practice giving individually tailored detailed information regarding prevention of diseases and aliments to their clientele  will change the way they practice medicine.

Conventional medical practitioners will have to practice education based preventative medicine in response to growing demand for information on how to live a healthier life as more of that kind of information is being provided by the development of technological products by entrepreneurial companies.

At some point in time, information and records will be kept on patient outcomes as a measure of how well physicians contribute to the health of their patients.

Conventional medical practitioners who are incapable of practicing preventive medicine are structurally hampered in trying to be responsive to consumer demand for products and services that help them live a healthier life.

As time goes on the economic usefulness of physicians in terms of the cost of not preventing diseases, in terms of whether their patients remain overweight/obese, etc. will become very clear to the public at large, available to the public as well as to other interested persons and parties.

Outdated operating procedures, impossibly inflexible systems and screwed-up fee-for-services-maximization of physician income as a way of running a medical practice of medicine is becoming a thing of the past through a process of creative destruction.

The $19 billion paid by Facebook for a 50-something Silicon Valley start-up (What’s App) represents the latest confirmation that a new economic world has arrived in which riches go to plucky social entrepreneurs whose goals are simply to make life better for the public.

Is What’s App app worth more than Southwest Airlines, or Sony, or scores of other companies with thousands of employees and decades of profit?  Apparently so.

What’s App’s app actually does something so beneficial as to make What’s App more valuable than Southwest Airlines, Sony, and scores of older bigger companies.

Social Entrepreneurship

Question:  Are each of the physician-authors whose books are reviewed in this post/article a social entrepreneur? Answer:  Yes.

Soap Box Idealists, Social Engineers, Religious Fervor and Social Entrepreneurship

In “Grain Brain”, David Perlmutter, MD advises:

“Nowadays, you get fewer than fifteen minutes (if that) with a doctor who may or may not be trained in all the latest knowledge about how to prevent and improve your mental faculties.  What’s more disturbing is that many of today’s physicians originally trained decades ago, don’t have a firm grasp of nutrition and its effects on your health.”

In “The Blood Sugar Solution”, Mark Hyman, MD advises:

“Today conventional doctors are the primary method by which people with diabesity [diabetes and obesity] receive health care.  Unfortunately, most of these doctors have no training in lifestyle medicine or behavioral change; lack the time, resources, and support team to facilitate change; and do not get paid for helping patients create a sustainable lifestyle. ….Telling their patients to eat better and exercise more is just not enough.”

In “Wheat Belly”, William Davis, MD reports:

1. Americans are fat.
2. According to the Centers for Disease Control, more than two thirds of Americans are overweight or obese.
3. Being obese leads to lots of health problems, including diabetes.
4. Diabetes is in large part a disease caused by food.
5. Weight gain is predictably accompanied by diabetes.
6. The fatter Americans become, the greater the number that develop diabetes.
7. The personal and societal costs of developing diabetes is huge.
8. Some estimates show that over the next twenty years sixteen to eighteen percent of all health care costs will be consumed by health issues arising from excessive weight.
9. More money will be spent on health consequences of obesity than on education.
10. On average, one person with diabetes incurs $180,000 to $250,000 in direct and indirect health care costs if diagnosed at age fifty and dies eight years earlier than someone without diabetes.
11. Adult diabetes through the ages was mostly the domain of the privileged who didn’t have to hunt for their food, farm the land, or prepare their own meals.
12. Today, diabetes is as common as gossip.
13. The number of Americans with diabetes is growing faster than any other disease condition with the exception of obesity, if you call obesity a disease.
14. And diabetes is just the tip of the iceberg.  For every diabetic, there re three or four people with prediabetes waiting in the wings. 
15. Depending on whose definition you use, twenty-two to thirty-nine percent of all US adults have prediabetes.
16. The combined total of people with diabetes and prediabetes in 2008 was eighty-one million, or one in three adults over eighteen years of age.
17. Since 1960, the ranks of the obese have grown the most rapidly, nearly tripling in 50 years.
18. Weight grew at the fastest pace once the USDA and others (the American Heart Association, the American Dietetic Association and the American Diabetes association) got into the business of telling Americans what to eat.

In “Wheat Belly”, Dr. Davis also remarks that too many of us blame ourselves for being overweight: too many calories, too little exercise, too little restraint.  But it is more accurate to say that the advice we’ve been given to eat more “healthy whole grains” has deprived us of control over appetites and impulses, making us fat and unhealthy despite our best efforts and intentions….Taking this advice has disastrous repercussions on health.

At the beginning of his book “Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease” (published in 2008), Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr., M.D. tells us:

“By now, most everyone is generally aware that what you eat has something to do with whether or not you will develop heart disease.

“My subject is coronary artery disease, its cause, and the revolutionary treatment, available to all, that can abolish it and that has saved….many others.

“My message is clear and absolute: coronary artery disease need not exist,and if it does, it need not progress.

“Here are the facts.  Coronary artery disease is the leading killer of men and women in Western civilization.  In the United States alone, more than half a million people die of it every single year.  Three times that number suffer known heart attacks.  And approximately three million more have ‘silent’ heart attacks, experiencing minimal symptoms and having no idea, until well after the damage is done that have are in mortal danger.  In the course of a lifetime, one out of every two American men and one out of every three American women will have some form of the disease.

“The cost of this epidemic is enormous – greater, by far, than that of any other disease.  The United States spends more than $250 billion a year on heart disease.  That’s about the same amount the nation spent on the first two and a half years of its military venture in Iraq, and fully twice as much as the federal government allocates annually for all research and development – including R&D for defense and national security.

“But here is the truly shocking statistic: nearly all of that money is devoted to treating symptoms.  It pays for cardiac drugs, for clog dissolving medications, and for costly mechanical techniques that bypass clogged arteries or widen them with balloons, tiny rotating knives, lasers, and stents.  All of these approaches carry significant risk of serious complications, including death.  And even if they are successful, they provide only temporary relief from symptoms.  They do nothing at all to cure the underlying disease or to prevent its development in other potential victims,

“I believe we in the medical profession have taken the wrong course.  It is as if we were simply standing by, watching as millions of people march over a cliff, and then intervening in a desperate last-minute attempt to save them once they have fallen over the edge.  Instead, we should be teaching them how to avoid the chasm entirely, how to walk parallel to the precipice so that they will never fall at all.

“I believe coronary heart disease is preventable, and that even after it is under way, its progress can be stopped, its insidious effects reversed.  I believe, and my work over the past twenty  years has demonstrated, that all this can be accomplished without expensive mechanical intervention and with minimal use of drugs.  The key lies in nutrition – specifically, in abandoning the toxic American diet and maintaining cholesterol levels well below those historically recommended by health policy experts.

“The bottom line of the nutritional program I recommend is that it contains not a single item of any food known to cause or promote the development of vascular disease.  I often ask patients to compare their coronary artery disease to a house fire.  Your house is on fire because eating the wrong foods has given you heart disease.  You are spraying gasoline on the fire by continuing to eat the very same foods that caused the disease in the first place.

“I don’t want my patients to pour a single thimbleful of gasoline on the fire  Stopping the gasoline puts out the fire.  Reforming the way you eat will end the heart disease.”

Personal Aside

With each passing day, more and more people are realizing they need to eat healthy food.

They realize that the junk food bandwagon and their sedentary lifestyle are a horrible thing.

In my own personal life there is not enough time in the day to read all the books I want to read or all the books I am currently reading in my quest to find out what to eat and what not to eat and what else to do to live a longer healthier life.

I realize that if I put water into the gas tank of my car the engine will not run properly and might blow-up.

With that image in mind, it makes sense to me that if I put too much of the wrong food (fuel) in my body my body might not run property and I may die as a result of having poisoned myself.

1. I am currently reading “Spark” by John J. Ratey, MD with Eric Hagerman.  “Spark” is about how your mind and the movement of your body are connected to each other.  The author of “Spark” agrees with Plato’s statements, “In order for man to succeed in life, God provided him with two means, education and physical activity.  Not separately one for the soul and the other for the body, but for the two together.  With these two means, man can attain perfection.”  — Plato 
2. According to Dr. Ratey: The sedentary character of modern life poses one of the biggest threats to our continual survival.  
3. According to Dr. Ratey: Evidence of this is everywhere:: 65 percent of our nation’s (America’s) adults are overweight. or obese, and 10 percent of the population has type 2 diabetes, a preventable and ruinous disease that stems from inactivity and poor nutrition.
4. According to Dr. Ratey: Inactivity is literally killing our brains – physically shriveling them.  Exercise builds and conditions our brains. Physical activity improves brain function.  It makes the brain function at its best.  Physical activity is crucial to the way we think and feel.  
5. In “Spark” Dr. Ratey goes on to say, if you had half an hour of exercise this morning, you’re in the right frame of mind to sit still and focus on this paragraph, and your brain is far more equipped to remember it.
6. The brain responds like muscles do, growing with use, withering with inactivity.
7. If exercise came in pill form, it would be plastered across the front page of the New York Times, hailed as the blockbuster drug of the century.  
8. In “Spark”, Dr. Ratey discusses the Zero Hour PE program designed and conducted by a group of maverick physical education teachers who have turned the nineteen thousand students in Naperville District 203 into the fittest in the nation – and also some of the smartest.  
9. Dr. Ratey describes the Zero Hour PE class as follows – it’s goal is to get students prepared to learn through vigorous exercise by getting them into a state of heightened awareness- and then sending them off to class.  
10. In “Spark”, Dr. Ratey quotes one of the Zero Hour PE coaches as having told Dr. Ratey, “In our department, we create the brain cells.  It’s up to the other teachers to fill them.  As a PE teacher it’s not my job to make kids fit. My job is to make them know all the things they need to know to keep themselves fit. Exercise in itself is not fun.  It’s work.  So if you can make them understand it, show them the benefits – that’s a radical transformation.”  
11. In “Spark”, Dr. Ratey explains: the Zero Hour PE curriculum is designed to teach kids the principles, practice, and importance of fitness.  Students are shown how to draw up their own fitness plan centered around a fitness assessment they complete each year starting in the fifth grade.  
12. They design their plans as freshman and track their improvement until they graduate, at which time they get a fourteen page health assessment.  It combines fitness scores with facts like blood pressure and cholesterol levels, along with lifestyle and family history surveys, to predict risk of disease and suggest preventive measures. 
13. In 1999 Naperville’s eight graders were among some 230,000 students from around the world who took an international standards test which evaluates knowledge in math and science.  In recent years, students in China, Japan and Singapore have outpaced American kids in these crucial subjects, but Naperville is the conspicuous exception:  when its students took the test, they finished sixth in math and first in the world in science.  
14. Naperville is a small town west of Chicago that doesn’t follow the rule that the amount of money a school spends on each pupil is a clear predictor of success.  
15. THE AMOUNT NAPERVILLE SPENDS PER PUPIL IS NOTABLY LOWER THAN OTHER TOP-TIER ILLINOIS PUBLIC SCHOOLS.  FOR EXAMPLE, AT NAPERVILLE CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL, WHERE ZERO HOUR PE BEGAN, PER-PUPIL OPERATING EXPENSE IN 2005 WAS $8,939 VERSUS $15,403 AT EVANSTON’S NEW TRIER HIGH SCHOOL.
16. I am also currently reading “21-Day Weight Loss Kickstart” by Neal D. Barnard, MD.  In this book, Dr. Barnard explains how food can control your appetite and ramp up your metabolism so that weight loss is almost automatic.
17. Dr. Barnard explains how the speed of your metabolism determines the speed at which the calories you consume is burned by your body.  Those calories are either turned into energy or turned into fat depending upon the speed at which they are burned by your body. 
18. According to Dr. Barnard: you make the choice of either burning calories or getting fat by what you choose to eat.  “Metabolism is the process of turning fuel into energy.  If you have a “fast metabolism”, you have what is essentially a little inferno inside each cell.  You’re burning lots of calories minute by minute.  The faster your metabolism, the faster you’re burning up calories, and the less fat you’re storing.”
19. In “21-Day Weight Loss Kickstart”, Dr. Barnard tells us how to control our appetites and to ramp up our metabolism so that weight loss is almost automatic.  
20. In “21-Day Weight Loss Kickstart”, advises that chicken is not health food, albeit Americans now eat more than one million chickens per hour under the false belief that chicken is a health food. 
21. According to Dr. Barnard: Chicken’s fat content is not that much different from beef’s (about 29% for lean beef, 23% for skinless chicken breast, compared with less than 10% for typical vegetables.)
22. If you were to swallow a forkful of chicken, according to Dr. Barnard, even without the skin, about a quarter of the calories of that piece of chicken you were eating, would be nothing but fat, which is why your hands will be greasy after touching it.  
23. Are you thinking about ordering french fries with you meals when you go out to eat?  
24. According to Dr. Barnard: Our bodies are so efficient at holding on to fat, that exercising more is not enough.  Getting more hours of exercise per day is not all you must do, if you want to have a healthy weight; you could run flat out for a mile and not burn off all the calories in half an order of french fries. 
25. After reading as much as I have read of “Spark” and “21-Day Weight Loss Kickstart”, I am convinced that the intelligent comparison of diets of rural people in China in the past and/or present with the current diet of people in the United States alone will not help anyone really understand why there is a worldwide epidemic of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, heart attacks, stroke, cancer, dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
26. In order to understand what you can do to “live healthy” you must take into consideration how the growing and processing of food has changed over time as well as how consumption levels of various types of food changed at different times in different places as well as the activity level of people at different times in different places.
27. With respect meat consumption, Dr. Barnard reports between 1909 and 2007, meat intake in America rose from 124 pounds per year to more than 200 pounds per person per year.  That is more than seventy-five pounds of extra meat for every person every year. 
28. Dr. Barnard also reports, “But the rise in meat consumption is not the whole story.  Back in 1909, Americans had not yet discovered cheese pizza or cheese-burgers, and an average American ate less than four pounds of cheese in a year’s time.  Today an average American eats about  thirty-three pounds of it every year, nearly thirty pounds more than a century ago.” 
29. By the way, according to Dr. Barnard, You can’t pour cheese like an oil; you have to cut it with a knife.  It is loaded with saturated fat.”  – the same cholesterol-raising, artery clogging fat found in chicken fat, pork fat, and other less-than healthful products. 
30. In order to understand an effect, i.e., why someone had a heart attack, you must study all antecedent factors:  The type of foods we eat, the amount of activity and exercise in our lives, “our” sedentary life style, hours we spend working, hours we spend sleeping, and the impact on eating habits of having both parents working — the absence of a “stay-at-home-mom” – require our special attention. 
31. In my quest to find out how to live a healthier longer life, I am also currently reading “Natural Prophets” by Joe Dobrow.  “Natural Foods” is a history of the natural food industry told in story form.
32. In “Natural Prophets”, Mr Dobrow reports the following facts about food, farming, the raising of livestock, the manufacture and widespread presence of processed foods in our diets, consumption of processed foods and sugar, and the presence of chemical additives and pesticides in our foods.
33. From the time Homo sapiens first appeared on the planet at least 200,000 years ago up until nearly the present day, all of the food we ate was “organic”, found in nature.
34. The ingredients in our foods were found were pure and natural for roughly the first 199,000 of those years.
35. In the early 20th century, America was still predominately a rural country where most of the food was grown on small farms that operated much the same way they had since agriculture was invented 12,000 years earlier.
36. Farming was not an Elysian existence; it was backbreaking and inefficient.
37. Then modern science took over:  Herbicides greatly reduced the need for farm labor, and from 1920 to 1955 farm output per labor hour jumped by 146 percent.  From 1935 to 1955, corn yields per acre increased 58 percent, milk per cow, 21 percent, and eggs per hen, 42 percent.  By adding antibiotics to livestock feed and administering female sex hormones to bulls, calves could be brought up to “slaughter weight” in as little as one quarter of the time it used to take.
38. There was also an explosion of processed foods.  By 1930, 40 percent of all cheese in the United States was processed in some way.
39. Since about the time of World War II we have shifted almost in toto to a diet of chemically treated crops and animal proteins, and highly processed foods.
40. Almost every single person in America has traces of pesticide in his blood.  Because some pesticides are fat-soluble, they can penetrate the cells of plants on which they are applied, and can “bio-accumulate” into each successive member of the food chain that consumes the plants.
41. It is estimated that the average American now consumes about 9 pounds of chemical additives each year.  Many of these compounds have been linked to brain an lung damage, cancer, developmental disabilities and a host of other diseases, conditions and afflictions.
42. Only about 10 percent of the world’s grain in 1910 went to feed livestock, but that number doubled by 1950, doubled again by the late 1990s, and has now surpassed 60 percent in the United Sates.  That produced a surge in the supply of beef, which in turn produced a surge  in the consumption of beef in America from about 112 pounds per person in 1909 to about 271 pounds.
43. High-fructose corn sugar (HFCS) was introduced in 1980.  HFCS quickly became a staple of the American diet.  By 1984 it had replaced cane sugar i Coke and Pepsi.
44. By 2012, the average person was consuming almost 55 pounds a year of HFCS without any corresponding decrease in sugar consumption.  In the opinion of many, HFCS is the “worse” type of sugar to consume.
45. By the end of the 1950s, the chemical revolution and the march of progress had almost completely transformed the way food was grown, prepared, shipped and sold.
46. In 1959 an article was published that blasted Tang, the new General Foods orange juice-flavored powdered drink that actually contained no juice at all.  “The best thing you can say about this product is if you drink it with enough water, it won’t kill you,” the author wrote.

Think about the following statements made by Joe Dobrow in his recently published book “Natural Prophets”:

“Early humans got 65 percent of their calories through fruits and vegetables; modern Man derives only 7 percent of calories from the combination of fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grains, nuts and seeds.  Instead, 52 percent of our food energy comes through processed foods, 

“So in the span of one or two human lifetimes – a mere heartbeat, evolutionarily speaking – we have gone from a world of authentic to synthetic, from connate to construct, from pure to processed.”

ASIDE:

• My personal health goal is to have a highly functional brain, to be mentally sharp and to live a healthy vibrant highly productive life until I die.
• I do not want to be one of the 65.7 million people expected to be living with dementia by 2030.
• Research published on March 5, 2014 in NEUROLOGY, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, indicates that Alzheimer’s disease – a mind destroying disease – may contribute to almost as many deaths in the United States as heart disease or cancer. 
• I don’t want to get Alzheimer’s disease.
• I believe Dr. Ratey’s statement, Aerobic activity (exercise) is an indispensable tool for anyone who wants to reach his or her full potential.
• Dr. Ratey emphasizes that the real reason I feel so good when I get my blood pumping (exercise) is that it makes my brain function at its best and that building muscles and conditioning the heart and lungs are essentially side effects.
• I agree with Dr. Ratey’s observation that in today’s technology driven world we’ve engineered movement right out of our lives.  I know that is terrible and have taken “affirmative” action to put lots of movement into my life.
• I would like you to discuss with your physician, with your children and with the people responsible for educating your children the following controversial ideas set forth by Dr. Ratey in “Spark.”
• To keep our brains at peak performance, our bodies need to work hard.  
• Exercise cues the building blocks of learning in the brain. 
• Moving our muscles produces proteins that travel through the bloodstream and into the brain, where they play pivotal roles in the mechanisms of our highest thought processes.
• Nutrition and exercise are important. 
• All experts appear to agree that being overweight is one of the most prominent risk factors in virtually all chronic disease.
• Due to poor nutrition, in America, heart disease and becoming obese starts in childhood.  
• Years ago, heart disease eventually killed half of us and it lurked in three-quarters of men by the age of twenty-three.   It is still the number one cause of death in America.
• In a recent study of  the arteries of seventy children aged ten to sixteen, using a noninvasive ultrasound technique, it was determined that all of the children had the typical signs of artery thickening that a cardiologist would expect to see in  person forty-five years old.
• One out of three children in the United States under the age of 18 is obese.  Being obese leads to diabetes.
• Diabetes leads to heart disease.  Heart disease is artery disease.  Heart disease/artery disease leads to stroke and to heart attacks.
• Heart attacks and stroke are the two leading causes of death in the world.
• We should each do our part to ignite powerful forces in the world the will result in wiping out the worldwide epidemic of childhood obesity and heart disease.

 

Purpose of this Article

This article contains my thoughts, opinions and interpretation of what I have read about health and healthy living.

In this article I discuss (a) what I experienced while trying to live a healthier life and (b) my opinions on what the future inevitably holds in for people interested in health and healthy living.

The public purpose of writing this article is to share information I have come across and opinions I have formed on how to live a healthy life which might help people gain a new way of thinking about (a) food, (b) the power of healthy habits (c) the risk of living a sedentary life, and (d) the importance of learning about the power of nutrition and exercise in disease prevention and academic performance.

I would like people everywhere to talk about the correlation between physical activity, lack of physical activity, and academic test scores.

I would like everyone who reads this article to talk about what has been accomplished by the children at Naperville District 203 in Illinois. I would like kids to get hooked on moving instead of sitting in front of the television.

I would like everybody to discuss Dr. Ratey claim that its no coincidence that academically, Naperville District 203 district consistently ranks among the top ten in the State of Illinois, even though the amount of money spent per pupil is notable lower than the amount spent at other top-tier Illinois public schools.

Please pass on the following story told by Dr. Ratey in “Spark.”

1. When Naperville Central High School signed up on its own to have it kids take the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) test to get an international benchmark on its student’s performance, some 97 percent of its eight graders took the test – not merely the best and the brightest.
2. How did they stack up?
3. On the science section of the TIMSS, Naperville’s students first just ahead of Singapore, and ahead of a consortium of North Shore of Chicago schools – a consortium of the wealthiest schools in Chicago.  Number one in the world.
4. On the math section, Naperville scored sixth, behind only Singapore, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Japan.As a whole, US students ranked eighteenth in science and nineteenth in math.

I have read the provocative statement that “Americans spend more money on potato chips then their government spends on energy research and development.”

That seems to me to be a good indication of why so many Americans are obese and diabetic, why so many people die from heart attacks, stroke, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.

It would please me if the people who read this article demand that physician(s)

• (a) stop practicing 10 minute office visit medicine,
• (b) discuss their thinking on eating potato chips, drinking soda pop, and other nutritional choices with each of their patients at each office visit, and
• (c) provide their patients with lab reports written for lay men before office visits enough time in advance of the office visit to allow patients sufficient time to digest/process the information presented in their lab reports before each office visit.

You are an extremely lucky individual if your personal physician regularly discusses using the power of nutrition in the prevention of disease at each office visit with you.

Consider the action implications of the following ancient Egyptian Proverb: One quarter of what you eat keeps you alive.  The other three quarters keep your doctor alive.

My calls to action are:

1. Each person needs to take personal responsibility for their own health.
2. Each person needs have an intelligent informed conversation with themselves about the state of their health and their health goals.
3. Each person needs to seek their own physician’s advice on all aspects of their medical care and health.
4. Each person needs to prepare themselves to have an intelligent conversation with their physician before each office visit.
5. Each person needs to evaluate and determine for themselves whether the medical research (their lab report results) reported to them is done intelligently and ethically.
6. Each person needs to evaluate whether they are consulting a competent and caring physician.
7. Each person should evaluate whether they are consulting the right physician.
8. Each person should determine for themselves whether they need to get out of a dietary rut, onto a better path.
9. Each person should ask themselves whether they know what effect each thing they eat has on (a) their size, (b) shape, (c) state of their health and (d) body processes.
10. Each person should ask themselves the following questions. What do I know about using the power of food for health: (a) what do I know about how foods affect my body, (b) which foods work best for me, (c) which foods ramp up my ability to control my appetite, (d) which foods help my metabolism, (e) which foods keep me healthy, (f) which foods make me more hungry, (g) which foods destroy my health?
11. Each person should ask themselves which tools, if any, their physician has given them to keep themselves healthy for life and if they are using tools provided by their physician they should ask themselves if they have obtained objective reliable measurements showing they have obtained a demonstrable benefit as a result of using those tools.
12. Each person should ask himself or herself: (A) What are my health goals?  (B) How should I measure whether I am achieving those goals and/or making progress towards achieving my health goals? (B) Am I taking appropriate measurements?  (C) Am I making progress?  (D) What am I not doing, or doing wrong, if I am not making progress?
13. Each person should ask themselves: If I need one, has my physician given me a workable/actionable plan for becoming thinner, healthier and more energetic?
14. Each person should ask themselves: [A] How much longer (in days, weeks, months, years) can I reasonably expect to prolong my life if I take the medication my physician has prescribed for me?  [B] If I do prolong my life, what may I reasonably anticipate will be the quality of my life during that extended period of time?
15. Each person should determine whether they are consulting appropriate health care experts.

Powerful forces are changing the practice of medicine.

Basis of My Predication We Are At the Beginning of A Transformative Epoch for the Practice of Medicine

The public is no longer blinkered and uncurious when it comes to the impact of  lifestyle on their health.

The educated public has an irrepressible curiosity about what they should be doing to live a healthier life.

The educated affluent members of the public re buying books, attending lectures, seminars and going to retreats which claim to tell them what they need to do to live a healthier longer life.

More and more members of the public are concluding that their personal physician is not qualified or interested in providing accurate information on what to eat or on how what they eat effects their bodies health and life.

More and more patients are disturbed by the fact that their personal physician has not given them personalized accurate informed advice on what they should eat and not eat and have not reviewed or help create detailed plans for living a healthier life with their patients.

Many members of the American public are convinced that food is central to many health issues.

Many members of the public believe that American medical practice is not very good at prevention and that doctors tend to overlook the power of nutrition in disease prevention.

Although, Hippocrates, a Greek physician in the time of the third and fourth century B.C. considered the father of Western medicine, recommended over two thousand years ago “Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food.”, physicians today are quick with prescriptions and slow with nutritional information and many are not qualified to discuss or advise on the role of nutrition.

That being said, the public at large is highly disappointed when they learn how little highly compensated physicians know about nutrition and shocked to learn that no medical school in the United States has offered a course in nutrition or has required that medical students take such a course prior to graduating from medical school.

Most, if not all physicians in American medical schools, spent no time in medical school devoted to learning about the power of nutrition.

As a result of the public’s growing obsession with being healthy and realization that they cannot obtain beneficial advice or information from their physicians (or other medical professionals), book stores are now filled with books about health care which claim to provide information on how you may let food be your medicine and medicine be your food.

Prominent physicians, such as William Davis, MD (author of Wheat Belly), David Perlmutter, MD (author of Grain Brain), Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr., MD (author of Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease), Dean Ornish, MD (author of Dr. Dean Ornish’s Program for Reversing Heart Disease). John A. McDougall, MD (author of The Starch Solution), Mark Hyman, MD (author of The Blood Sugar Solution), Joel Fuhrman, MD (author of Eat to Live), Neal D. Barnard, MD (author of Dr. Neal Barnard’s Program for Reversing Diabetes), John J. Ratey, MD (author of A User’s Guide to the Brain) and many others (including  Michael Pollan author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Tom Rath author of Eat Move Sleep and JJ Virgin author of The Virgin Diet), have recently written best selling books on how to improve your health by changing what you eat.

Each of the above best selling authors are highly critical of the current standard of care in the medical profession.

These authors simultaneously introduced the rest of the world to a very large number of beautiful ideas, lowered the radiance, grandeur, and majesty of the medical profession in general and caused many members of the public to no longer trust standard medical practice or to trust standards or protocols/recommendations promulgated by the American Diabetes Association, or the American Heart Association.

There is now a ferocious competition for money spent on relevant medical and health care information.

Software developers, technology companies, and smart phone manufacturers have entered the competitive fray. They are now competing with the medical profession and with the laboratory testing industry — and are presently in violent competition with each other to become the “go to source” for information and analysis of medically important test results.

Samsung Electronics’ latest flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S5, has a heart rate sensor which measures a user’s heart rate with a finger press. Samsung’s Gear Fit, is a fitness measurement device.

These new Samsung smart watches have fitness management software and can display text messages and let users accept or ignore incoming calls.

Over 7,000 smart phone apps are now available to the public which make, monitor, report and interpret medical information. A multitude of best selling “health books” are taking the place of office consultations with physicians.

Software is being developed by health care mission oriented people intensely passionate about providing better health care.

According to Eric Topol, MD (author of The Creative Destruction of Medicine), the digital revolution will create better healthcare; software will take the place of special lab tests presently taken in laboratories (regularly ordered by physicians) and the need for patients to make revenue generating visits to their physicians’ offices.

It is no a secret that the practice of medicine is a business more than a profession, a giant fee generating lucrative business.

In that regard at a dinner I attended a few nights ago, a MD told, in his opinion, one of the reasons MDs prescribe so many pills is that drug companies, in the aggregate, spend $70,000 to $80,000 per doctor per year telling the physicians they call on why those physicians should prescribe medications manufactured by their drug company employers.

This physician also told me that medical schools teach doctors how to make money not how to minimize the number of office visits their patients could have been avoided if their patients had eaten the right foods.

This physician also explained that it his understanding that campaign contributions are at work in the type of research funded by federal government agencies and health related rules and regulations.

According to this doctor: drug companies and other industries that profit from governmental action related to public health expect that for every $1.00 they spend “lobbying” they expect to receive at least a $100 return from action related to their efforts taken by the US federal government.

Other physicians have told me to keep in mind that best selling book authors say extreme things in order to sell books.

More than one cardiologist has expressed the opinions that best selling-authors critical of the practice of cardiology are pseudo-prophets and false messiahs.

Originally, prophets were not predictors of the future, but analysts of the present – propheteia in Greek means the interpreting of the will of the gods.

As Technology Advances Mankind’s Lifestyle Changes

I love elaborate theatricality, charismatic spirituality, theatrical drama, pageantry and have favorite icons.

For example, I love the current Coca Cola advertisement featuring Polar Bears in the Arctic which I see every time I go to my local AMC movie theater.

But I think about this: Polar Bears have nothing  to do with the nutritional value of Coca Cola or health consequences that I will probably suffer if I drink a Coca Cola.

In that we know that eating sugar causes more death than taking any controlled substance, why are we allowing Coke to advise young people to drink Coca Cola, why does Coke get to advertise Coca Cola consumption to young people? Why doesn’t the Federal Drug Administration require Coca Cola to put on every can and bottle of Coke the following warning:

WARNING:

Sugar consumption in all forms poses potentially serious threats to health.

People should think about why people eat so many potato chips, drink so much soda pop, consume so much food that is harmful to their health.

Think about why obesity, diabetes, heart attacks are epidemic.

Think about the way man is bombarded with advertisements produced by soda pop manufacturers, snack food manufactures and other junk food manufacturers.

We can all clearly see that the use of modern technology has destroyed a previously existing world order in which heart attacks, stroke, cancer and Alzheimer disease were not the leading causes of death.

Not only does man no longer have to go to a stream to get water to drink, or dig a well to drop a bucket down to lift out drinking water out of the well in order to get a drink, man no longer needs to be near a source of fresh water in order to get something to drink.

I urge everyone to consider whether change in lifestyle brought about by the use of technology has caused changes to the level of man’s health and well being.

Man’s Calorie Requirement for Staying Alive in the Ice Age vs Man’s Calorie Consumption Today

In the Ice Age, in order to survive,  Neanderthal Man, Homo Erectus and Homo Sapiens needed to consume 6,000 to 6,500 calories per day of food in order to stay warm, in order to hunt and in order to be able to participate in other activities (such as obtaining drinking water) that were part of their daily life.

Man no longer needs to consume 6,000 to 6,500 calories per day to stay alive or to be able to participate in normal every day activities.

Over thousands of years, technology has substantially changed man’s environment, changed the way man lives, man’s energy requirements, what he eats and drinks, what he worries about and the level of his physical activity.

For example, we can now use a straw when we drink, that was unknown to men in the Ice Age.

Men can now take an elevator or escalator instead of climbing stairs.  Elevators and escalators were unknown hundreds of  years ago.

Manufacturers now manufacture irresistibly delicious potato chips for us to eat and and sugar laden soda pop for us to drink.

Potato chips and soda pop did not exist in the Ice Age.

Fish and chicken are now mass produced in farms. Cattle and chicken are fed things (i.e., corn) they are not designed to eat and did not eat when they ran wild.

People now eat wild fish filled with toxins such as PCBs and Mercury. Those fish live in oceans that have been poisoned by men.

Television sets and  smart phones an tablets are now used by kids who spend seven to eight hours of their time daily using them.

People now receive electronic mail (email, tweets, text messages, etc.) and search the Internet. Those electronic devices and forms of distribution did not exist even one hundred years ago.

Three Sets of Questions to Discuss with Your Physician

In my opinion, everyone should prepare their own answers to the following three sets of questions (Set Number One of questions to discuss with your doctor) before they next see their doctor.

1. Is it okay to eat McDonald’s french fries?  Is it okay to eat any fried food?
2. Do things go better with Coke?  Is it okay to drink any carbonated soft drink?
3. Which local restaurants serve tasty and delicious healthy food?  Name three healthy delicious dishes at each of those restaurants.

At their next office visit, whether a normal office visit is 10 or 15 minutes or longer, at the next office visit each person should ask those same questions and discuss the answers with their doctor, even if doing so takes three minutes or longer.

New Worries and Business Opportunities

Some people now “worry” about while other people see business opportunities when they think about the same things which were unknown to man during the Ice Age, such as the (a) the amount of pesticides and herbicides used in growing food and ending up contaminating the water supply, (b) chemical additives in food, (d) sugar content of soft drinks and other bottled beverages; (e) disposal of soda cans and plastic bottles; (f) time spent checking e-mail, and  (g) microwaves emitted by cell phones. Consider the following.

1. In “Natural Prophets”, Joe Dobrow reports: By 1972 50,000 different pesticides had been approved for use in the United States.
2. By 1986 it was estimated that farmers were using more than 1 billion pounds of pesticide annually, an increase of 500 percent since the 1950s.
3. A Newsweek magazine article pointed out, “[L]ess than 1 percent of the poisons reach their target pests, the rest wind up as contaminants in water, residues on produce and poisonous fallout on farm workers.”
4. By 1972 “plastic food” was everywhere.  Processed goods (foods) now dominated supermarket shelves.  There were 1,800 additives in use, with per capita consumption amounting to 5 pounds; most processed food products contained some combination of artificial colors, flavors, sweeteners, preservatives, thickeners and stabilizers.
5. In 1969 the Whole Earth Catalog, gave readers the following bit of information to ponder: “BHT is a legal, inexpensive, non-addictive, non-psychoactive, non-nutritious, anti-oxidant chemical that may make you live twice as long as the other mice.”
6. In the 1970s the word “natural” began to appear with frequency on mass market products.  By the 1980s it estimated that 7 percent of all processed food products were being promoted as “natural.”
7. There is no legal definition of what the word “natural” means.
8. Today, Nutriwash is now alive and well.
9. That is to say, the word “natural” has been squeezed and twisted to fit new self-serving definitions.  For example, in 1984, Kraft switched as a description of Velveeta – a creation of scientists and chemists, often ridiculed as the archetypical “plastic” food –  to a “blend of natural cheeses and other wholesome ingredients.”
10. Even, Harvard Business Review editors have woken up to the existence of a marketplace of activist consumers.  See the article by Daniel Birnbaum titled “How I Did It” in the January-February 2014 issue of the Harvard Business Review.
11. In that article, it is noted that soft drink manufactures (i.e. Coke and Pepsi) now compete for a share of the $260 billion a year global soda business.
12. In 2012 Coca-Cola’s advertising budget was about $11 billion.
13. The containers soft drinks (cans, plastic bottles, cases) are unhealthy to the environment.
14. In the United States, the average family discards 2,000 cans and bottles a year.
15. For more details read the “How I Did It” article on pages 39 through 42 of the January – February 2014 Harvard Business Review by Daniel Birnbaum, CEO of SodaStream.
16. However the issue of the dangers presented by consumption of sugar is not discussed in the Harvard Business Review article “How I Did It.”
17. However, for the past few years, more and more people have been coming to realize that sugar is a toxin.
18. This trend presented a business opportunity which was seized by Seth Goldman and Barry Nalebuff.
19. They were personally frustrated by their inability to purchase bottled tea that wasn’t too sugary.
20. They were so frustrated that they decided to make a tea that wasn’t two sugary.
21. Seth Goldman (age 32) and Barry Nalebuff (age 39) were two outsiders to the beverage industry when they launched their start-up business.
22. The sole aim of their company (Honest Tea) was to make/sell tea in a bottle that didn’t taste sugary.
23. They wanted to improve the American diet.  When they launched their company they envisioned their company (Honest Tea) as being the anti-Snapple.
24. Goldman was intrigued by Snapple.  In Goldman’s opinion, Snapple was a brand that had emerged as a healthy alternative to sodas.  And ironically, Snapple wasn’t much healthier.  According to Goldman it was the same product without the fizz.
25. Seth Goldman and Barry Nalebuff explain how Honest Tea (a business making bottled tea that isn’t too sweet) rode the health and wellness mega trend in their recently (2013) published book “Mission in A Bottle.”
26. Goldman was famously thrifty around the office – using the backs of invoices as fax cover sheets.
27. Honest Tea had sales of $250,000 its first year (1998) and grew to sales of $85.5 million in 2012.
28. Goldman and Nalebuff sold Honest Tea (which was launched in 1998) to Coca Cola for a reported $43 million in in 2008.
29. Goldman stayed on to run Honest Tea after it was sold to Coca Cola.
30. According to “Mission in A Bottle”, when Nalebuff asked Muhtar Kent, CEO of Coca-Cola What did Coca Cola hope to achieve by purchasing Honest Tea? Mr. Kent replied “We want to inspire more entrepreneurial thinking and more creativity  Now that our company is so large, it’s hard to spread that kind of thinking.  Honest Tea was created with a strong commitment to sustainability built into the enterprise, and we want you to share that mind-set with our organization.  This deal is not about making Honest Tea more like Coca-Cola; in many ways, we want Coca Cola to operate more like Honest Tea.”
31. According to Dobrow: in the past, Coke’s response to soda’s link to obesity had been to form something called the Beverage Institute for Health and Wellness, which according to PR Week magazine, made, “outlandish industry-science yarns ….to diffuse concerns that sugary foods are a culprit in America’s obesity epidemic.
32. See “Good Calories, Bad Calories” by Gary Taubes, first published in 2007, in which Taubes argues that the key to good health lies in the the kinds of calories we take in, not the number.  Also see Gary Taubes’ 2011 article published in the New York Times titled “Is Sugar Toxic?”  in which Mr. Taubes describes how sugar affects our body, specifically how various types of sugars are metabolized differently by the human body, which was published April 13, 2011 and is available on-line.
33. One hundred calories consumed when one consumes table sugar is metabolized by our bodies differently than 100 calories of sugar consumed when one is eating a potato which is metabolized differently than 100 calories derived from consuming the sugar contained in fruit and honey.
34. Not all calories are created equal.  Consuming 100 calories by eating broccoli has a different effect on your body than consuming 100 calories by eating a chocolate chip cookie.
35. Sugar fuels diabetes, obesity, heart disease and cancer.
36. At current American consumption levels (150 pounds per person per year) sugars and its derivatives kill more people than cocaine, heroin or any other controlled substance.
37. Eating sugar is habit forming.  The more you eat, the more your crave.  Sugar is addictive.
38. For more than 40 years high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), the sweetener in Coke and Pepsi, has been known to be the most fattening carbohydrate by biochemists.
39. There is a difference between table sugar, fruit sugar, high-fructose corn syrup (sugar )and the like.
40. It takes one teaspoon of sugar to take away the bitterness of the taste of tea.  A second teaspoon adds a touch of sweetness.  Each additional teaspoon of sugar contributes less and less to taste.
41. Drinking the typical bottle of ice tea may be dangerous to your health because there are 12 teaspoons of sugar in a typical 16 ounce bottle of iced tea.
42. The World Health Organization recommends consuming no more than 10 added teaspoons of sugar per day.
43. We increasingly hear about the relationship between sugar and obesity, sugar and heart disease, sugar and fatty livers, sugar and metabolic syndrome, sugar and the risk for cancer, etc.
44. In “Grain Brain”, David Perlmutter, M.D. explains that keeping blood sugars balanced is the key to avoiding diabetes and that diabetes leads to Alzheimer’s disease.
45. Dr. Perlmutter also warns that drinking apple juice can be dangerous to your health.
46. In “Grain Brain” Dr. Perlmutter explains: “A medium size apple contains about 44 calories of sugar in a fiber-rich blend thanks to the pectin; conversely a 12-ounce can of Coke or Pepsi contains nearly twice that – 80 calories of sugar.  If you juice several apples and concentrate the liquid down to a 12-ounce beverage (thereby losing the fiber), lo and behold you get a blast of 85 sugar calories that just as well could have come from a soda.  When that fructose hits the liver, most of it gets converted to fat and sent our fat cells.” 
47. In “Grain Brain” Dr. Perlmutter also advises: “The more sugars we eat, the more we tell our bodies to transfer them to fat.  This happens not only in the liver, leading to a condition known as fatty liver disease, but also in the body as well.  Hello, love handles, beer bellies, etc.”
48. Dr. Angus advises that stress causes heart disease and can lead to heart attacks.  Dr. Angus also advises that looking at e-mail can cause stress.  In “A Short Guide to a Long Life”, David B. August. M.D. states: the average working professional spends roughly 23% of the work day on e-mail and glances at the inbox about 36 times an hour.  It takes most of us more than a minute to return to the task at hand once we’ve stopped to read a new e-mail.  And that can add stress.  The more pressure you feel at work the more likely you are to suffer a heart attack.  That is why it is no surprise that we are most likely to have a heart attack on Monday, the first day of the work week.
49. In “Spark”, Dr. Ratey describes additional ways “stress” can harm you: heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing increase.
50. In “Spark” Dr. Ratey describes how exercise can relieve stress.
51. According to Dr. Ratey: When we exercise in response to stress, we’re doing what human beings have evolved to do over the past several years.  We can literally run ourselves out of that frenzy.  Just as the mind can affect the body, the body can affect the mind. 
52. After all, states Dr. Ratey, the purpose of the fight-or-flight response is to mobilize us to act, so physical activity is the natural way to prevent the negative consequences of stress.
53. The body reacts the same way whether you’re staring down a hungry lion or a restless audience, or living through a remodel project in your own home.
54. I am taking a high dosage of a cholesterol lowering drug, a high dosage of a statin.
55. I have read that taking a cholesterol lowering drug (i.e. s statin) will increase the probability of developing Alzheimer’s disease.
56. According to an article published on March 5, 2014, in “Neurology”, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, the number of people with dementia is expected to double to 65.7 million by 2030.
57. Currently, Alzheimer’s disease falls sixth on the leading causes of death in the United States, but is under-reported on death certificates.
58. According to that report, this mind destroying disease (Alzheimer’s disease) may contribute to as many deaths in the United States a heart disease and cancer.  That worries me.
59. I work on the fifth floor of a highrise office building.
60. I take an elevator to get to my office.  Often times I see other people in the elevator talking on their cellphones, or reading or sending messages or playing games on their cell phones.
61. I have been told that when everyone in a small enclosed elevator is talking on their cell phones or playing games on their cell phones, or texting or emailing or checking the Internet on their cell phones the microwaves emitted by those cell phones are enclosed in that elevator.  Those microwaves bounce off the walls of the elevator.
62. Consequently, when in an elevator while cell phones are in use, I worry: Are the microwaves being emitted so concentrated by reflecting and bouncing off the walls of the elevator that they are “cooking” him (injuring cellular tissue – causing lesions) as he is riding in that elevator?
63. In “The Blood Sugar Solution”, Dr. Hyman notes that we live in a wireless, connected, linked-up world surrounded by invisible waves of energy that have not been proven safe over time and that increasingly data link EMFs (electromagnetic radiation exposures) to cancer and other health conditions.
64. Dr. Hyman recommends that children and pregnant women avoid talking on cell phones.  Do not keep your cell phone near your head or use it to play games, movies, etc. Turn it off when it is not in use.  Try to keep your cell phone at least six to seven inches away from your body while it is on or when you are talking, texting, or downloading.
65. Dr. Hyman also advises: Keep your cell phone away from your hip.  The bone marrow in your hip produces 80 percent of the body’s red blood cells and is especially vulnerable to EMR damage.  Replace as many cordless and WiFi items as you can with wired, corded lines (phones, Internet, games, appliances, devices, etc.).  Sit as far back from the computer screen ads possible; flat screens are preferable.  Use wired Internet connections, not WiFi – especially for laptops.  Take action to minimize your EMF exposure.

Is There Such A Thing As An Ideal Calorie Consumption Level?

I’ve read, and I assume you have read and/or you have been told, that if I want to lose weight I have to consume less calories than the amount of calories I expend.

I’ve been told that in order to have the number of calories consumed equal the number of calories expended most people require (on average) 15 calories per pound.

That is a statement which presupposes that a person’s caloric consumption requirements are directly proportional to weight.

I don’t buy either statement.

In my opinion a person’s health condition, genes, level of activity, and the type of calories consumed need to be considered by people wishing to lose weight.

Dr. Barnard points out in “21-Day Weight Loss Kickstart” that one of the keys to losing weight is to speed up your metabolism; points out that certain foods will speed up your metabolism, and lists those foods.

Different foods have different effects on your body.

For example, consuming 500 calories eating broccoli will have a different impact then consuming 500 calories by eating a chocolate chip cookies.

The books reviewed in this article make it abundantly clear that you ought to consider what you eat (i.e., the type of food or drink consumed), how much you eat and additional lifestyle factors if you want to live a healthier life.

Consider the idea that eating potato chips and drinking soda pop is not a good idea the next time you read or hear that the typical American today needs to consume about 2,000 to 2,500 calories per day of “real food”*, but instead  is sickly, obese, etc. because he or she consumes more than 2,500 calories per day and doesn’t get enough exercise.

The Concept of Real Food

The concept of real food begins with the statement: Products (i.e., potato chips and soda pop) are products.  They are not “real food.”*

* “Real food” is “food” that was once a “living thing.”

* “Real food” doesn’t have a long shelf life.

* “Real food” doesn’t come with a list of ingredients.

Consider the fact that after Procter & Gamble introduced introduced Pringles in 1969 – a product made from dehydrated and reconstituted potato dough – the Potato Chip Institute actually filed a lawsuit to try to prevent P&G from calling these “potato chips.”

At its beginning, Fresh Fields market built a rabid and loyal following through marketing that was both and sophisticated.

According to Dobrow:

Fresh Fields created a pervasive radio campaign that featured the well-known avuncular voice of TV Character-actor Tom Poston, saying things like “Question for you:  How long should you marinate your flounder fillets in pool chemicals before you grill them?  At Fresh Fields, we think not even for a second.”  

Another Poston ad promoted Fresh Fields’ natural hormone and antibiotic-free beef that tasted “like beef was supposed to taste before Man messed with it and started drugging the livestock.”  Poston then urged listeners to pull their cars over whenever they saw cows in a field, “lean over the fence and tell them to just say no.”

Leading Causes of Death 

Heart attack, stroke, cancer, diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease (which were unheard of one hundred years ago) are  now leading causes of death in America and in other modern developed countries.

Each of the experts who have written the books reviewed in this article have expressed the opinion that diseases are preventable by people changing their life styles.

Some of them, perhaps all of them, have stated that lifestyle changes are critical to reducing heart disease risk, the risk of having a stroke, the risk of diabetes, the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, the risk of Parkinson’s disease, and the risk of cancer.

Dr. Angus, in “A Short Guide to a Long Life”, advises, the vast majority of us are going to die of heart disease, stroke or cancer either at a ripe old age or sooner if we don’t take preventive measures. 

The statements about the relationship of health to diet, exercise and sleep made in the books reviewed in this article have convinced me that the state of my health is to a large degree related to what I eat and drink, when I eat, how much I eat, how much sleep I get, how active I am during the day and the level of stress in my life.

Making An Effort to Live A “Healthier Life”

I now stay away from dairy products.  

I no longer drink milk that comes from an animal; I no longer eat cheese, and I rarely eat ice-cream.  

I now consume flax milk, hemp milk and almond mild instead of cow’s milk.

I now stay away from wheat products.

I try to stay away from oils, albeit it is impossible to always accomplish that goal.

For the most part and most of the time, I avoid eating meat, chicken and fish.

I make it a point to walk at least 10,000 steps a day.

I try to get at least six hour of sleep each night; my goal is to get at least eight hours of sleep a day. Going forward: I believe I can either take steps to live a longer healthier life or instead I will become sickly and die sooner than I need to.

Personal Background

As best I can remember I have been under medical care for high cholesterol and taking cholesterol lowering drugs for at least 40 years.

Since September 2012 I have been continuously reading about how to lose weight, how to avoid having diabetes, how to avoid having a heart attack and Alzheimer’s disease.

I have been continuously discussing those topics with friends, family members, colleagues, associates, casual acquaintances, dietitians, a personal trainer, medical doctors and additional types of experts.

In spite of all of the above, on September 14, 2013, I had a heart attack while in a movie theater attending the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival. While in the midst of having a heart attack, I was rushed by ambulance to Saint Michael’s Hospital, in Toronto, Canada, where I received excellent medical care.

While in St. Michael’s Hospital it was discovered that one of my coronary arteries was 100% blocked and three of additional coronary arteries were substantially blocked.

Angioplasty was immediately performed on the 100% blocked artery; a  stent was inserted in order to make that artery operational.

In the next few days two more coronary arteries were opened stents inserted.

I realized that having stents inserted in previously blocked arteries does not solve the underlying problem of having heart disease.

I realized these interventions (angioplasty and stents) are aimed at alleviating the symptoms of coronary artery disease, not at curing the disease itself.

I’ve since learned that there results erode with time.  Arteries widened with angioplasty tend to clog one again.

Stents may have to be reopened because scar tissue reblocks the artery.

Drug-eluting stents (coated with drugs to lessen the body’s natural healing response to the injury caused by the stent’s insertion) may suddenly block after a few years because a clot forms where the endothelium was injured; the drug in the stent that prevents inflammation also inhibits the endothelium’s capacity to heal.

Since learning those facts and digesting what those facts might mean to me in the future, I’ve been on a campaign to learn all I can about heart disease and heart attacks.

A friend advised me to read and follow the advice given in Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr. MD’s book “Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease.”

I’ve followed my friend’s advise and read Dr. Esselstyn’s book several times.

I’ve also read many more books that provide information about the use of food as medicine to prevent heart attacks.

I’ve been advised in everything I’ve read and by everyone I’ve talked to that:

• Being overweight is associated with heart disease, stroke, diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease and can be prevented by living a healthy life.
• Sleep is critical to good health.

In the past, I slept four to six hours per night. Of particular interest to me, I recently read  “how” and “why” getting quality sleep is directly involved in being healthy. In his book “A Short Guide to a Long Life”, David B. Agus, MD reports that he asks his patients the simple question: “How are you sleeping?”

How Are You Sleeping?

On the topic of sleep: I know, and I’m sure you know, if you don’t get a good night’s sleep you will not feel well the next day; you will not feel up to speed the next morning. In Dr. Angus’ book  “A Short Guide to a Long Life”, Dr. Angus advisesthat if you lose just one and a half hours of sleep your body needs for one night, your alertness will go down about one third the next day. On the topic of sleep, I’ve read that:

• The quality of your sleep and sleep habits can dictate how much you eat, how fast your metabolism runs, how fat or thin you are, how well you can fight off infections and how well you can cope with stress;
• The side effects of your sleep habits include cardiovascular disease, and depression.

• Sleep deprivation is associated with depression; depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide.
• In developed countries, including the United States, depression is among the top causes of mortality.

• I have also read that sleep loss is associated with neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease.

In a recent article, I read, the author speculates that the human brain creates “brain debris” while we are thinking that is cleaned out while we are sleeping.

E-Mail with Friends About Health

My friends and I have been exchanging ideas and information on how to live a healthy life for months. Below is a partial summary of information opinions theories and concepts on how to live a healthy life which my friends and I have exchanged in the past two months in a series of email correspondence. I have been informed there are four things we should do if we want to live a healthy life.  Those four things are:

• (1) Eat the right food.
• (2) Get the right amount of the right type of exercise.
• (3) Get the proper amount of quality sleep.
• (4) Get mental stimulation. 

Below (in the form of an e-mail) is a partial summary of information, theories, experiences and musings contained in the contents of a series of e-mail exchanges I have had with those friends over the past two months. ________________________

January 09, 2014 through March 10, 2014

Dear Friends,

Before reading the the New York Times article you recently sent me (attached to the link below), I had not come across the idea/theory that the human brain becomes cluttered with trash (brain debris) that must be taken away in order for you to be able to think clearly. The concept/idea that brain debris clutters your brain, impedes your ability to think and is taken away by metabolic processes in your brain while you are sleeping is new to me.

The article in The New York Times (link below) you sent me concludes that:

1. The main function of sleep is to take away neural trash.

2. While the human brain is “sleeping” it is busy cleaning out the waste that accumulated while it was awake. Sleep is a brain cleaning system.  

3. When our sleep is disturbed, whatever the cause, our cleaning system breaks down.

4. Modern society is increasingly ill equipped to provide our brains with the requisite cleaning time. 

5. On average, we are getting one to two hours less sleep a night than we did 50 to 100 years ago and 38 minutes less sleep than we did 10 years ago.

6. Eighty percent of working adults suffer to some extent from sleep deprivation.  Between 50 and 70 million people in the United States suffer from some form of chronic sleep disorder. 

7. Sleep loss is associated with neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. However, scientists don’t know if sleep loss causes those diseases or those diseases lead to sleep loss.

Putting on my thinking cap and trying to connect the dots (facts, concepts and theories identified above) leads me to raise the following questions:

1. Are people overweight because they do not get a good night’s sleep?
2. Is a reason so many people have diabetes sleep deprivation, i.e, because they were unable to get a good night’s sleep over a long period of time?
3. Is a significant reason that heart disease, followed closely by cancer and stroke are leading killers of people in the United States “lack of sufficient high quality sleep”?
4. Is the reason depression is about to become the second largest cause of suffering in the world “lack of sleep”?
5. Is the number of days and years remaining in our lives related to how well we sleep at night?

CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING WELL KNOWN FACTS

According to Dr. Perlmutter:

• Getting enough sleep and keeping a very strict sleep-wake cycle is key to regulating our body’s hormones and maintaining homeostasis – the body’s preferred state of being, where its physiologically balanced.
• Virtually every system in our body is affected by the quality and and amount of sleep we get.
• Our body’s natural day/night cycles pretty much controls everything about us and are at the heart of our well being.
• Our body’s inherent rhythm is grounded in our sleep habits and controlled by our brain.
• If you do not get enough sleep your brain will deceive you and cause you to  become overweight by  signaling to your brain that you are hungry when your stomach if full. 
• Fat is a hugely powerful hormone and organ system that can generate pro-inflammatory compounds that trigger inflammatory pathways which raise your risk for heart disease, diabetes and dementia.

Virtually every system in your body is affected by the quality and amount of sleep you get, especially your brain. Sleep deprivation, as everyone who has experienced it knows, impedes are ability to concentrate, to pay attention to our environment, and to analyze information. It leads to brain fog, confusion, and memory loss.

When we are sleep-deprived we can’t integrate or put together facts.

Sleep can dictate (a) how creative and insightful we can be, (b) how many new things we can learn, (c) how quickly we can process information and learn new things, (d) how well we can organize and store memories, and (e) much we can remember.

Neurologist David Perlmutter, M.D., states in his book “Grain Brain”: We require a regular, reliable pattern of wakefulness and refreshing sleep to regulate our hormones. Sleep deprivation results in confusion, memory loss, brain fog, obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and depression. Lack of sleep makes us moody, uncreative and unproductive.

The amount of sleep we get regulates the level of leptin in our body.

The hormone “leptin” coordinates our body’s inflammatory responses and helps determine whether or not we crave cards.

Leptin signals to our brain that we are full so we can stop eating.

When the level of leptin in our body becomes too high our brain becomes disconnected from our stomach; our brain can no longer receive the signal that we are full; at this point we can no longer control our craving for food.

In summary: Leptin controls metabolization: regulates the rate of metabolism, decides whether to make us hungry and whether to store more fat or to burn fat.

Not a single drug or supplement on the planet can balance leptin levels.  But better sleep, as well as better dietary choices, will do the trick.

Dr. Mark Hyman agrees with Dr. Perlmutter that in the big picture sleep is critical to health.

In “The Blood Sugar Solution”, Dr. Hyman states:

• Lack of sleep or poor sleep damages your metabolism, causes cravings for sugar and carbs, makes you eat more, and drives up your risk of heart disease, diabetes and early death.
• Getting enough sleep and sleeping well are sentential for health and an way to maintain blood sugar balance and lose weight.
• Unfortunately our lives are infiltrated with stimuli and we remain stimulated until the moment we go to bed.  This is not the way to get a restful sleep.
• Take a hot bath before going to bed.  raising your body temperature before bed helps to induce sleep.
• A hot bath also reduces tension physically and psychically.
• A key to good health is to get good-quality sleep and to relax every day – even for just 5 minutes.

INSOMNIA AND SLEEP DEPRIVATION

In “Grain Brain”, Dr. Perlmutter reports:

• About ten percent of Americans suffer from chronic insomnia.
• Sleep increasingly becomes a challenge the older we get.
• As many as forty percent of older adults can’t get a good night’s sleep.

ROUTINES

David B. Agus, M.D. advises that one of the best ways of reducing stress on your body and keeping it it its preferred state of being physiologically balanced [homeostasis] is to maintain a constant routine on a daily basis, 365 days a year to the best of your ability, of sleep wake cycles, eating times, periods of physical activity, and schedule for taking prescribed medicine.

In his most recent book, “A Short Guide to a Long Life”, Dr. Angus points out that just as your body aches for a consistent sleep schedule, it also craves a regular eating routine. Dr. Angus advises:

• Never skip breakfast.
• It takes a lot of dietary calories to keep your brain functioning.
• After fasting all night long, your body needs a metabolic jump start (breakfast).
• Eating a “good breakfast” will give your brain a much needed metabolic boost which will fuel your productivity and creativity for the entire day.
• If you wait to long to eat after rising a high a level of the stress hormone cortisol will be released (result) in your body.
• Cortisol encourages your body to retain fat.
• Skipping breakfast to “lose weight” is one of the worse things you can do.
• Skipping breakfast will have the opposite effect.

According to Dr. Angus, if you don’t eat when your body anticipates food, your body will release a surge of a stress hormone (cortisol) that will sabotage your efforts to lose weight by telling/causing your body to hold onto to fat.

However, in his book “A Short Guide to a Long Life”, Dr. Angus does not comment on the impact of “fasting on health.”

In his book “Grain Brain”, Dr. Perlmutter states:

Fasting is an excellent way to set the foundation and speed up your body’s shift to burning fat for fuel and producing biochemicals that have astounding pro-health effects on the body and brain.

Dr. Perlmutter points out:

Fasting in spiritual quests is an integral part of religious history.  All major religions promote fasting as far more than a ceremonial act.  Fasting has also been a fundamental part of spiritual practice, as in the Muslim fast of Ramadan and the Jewish fast at Yom Kippur.  Yogis practice austerity with their diets, and shamans fast during their vision quests.  Fasting is also a common practice among devout Christians, and the Bible has examples of one-day, three-day,  seven-day, and forty-day fasts.

In “Grain Brain” Dr. Perlmutter points out that when we burn fat as opposed to carbohydrate, we enter ketosis.

Dr. Perlmutter states there is nothing inherently bad about it; having a mild ketosis state is actually healthy.

According to Dr. Perlmutter: We are mildly ketotic we first wake up in the morning, as our liver is mobilizing body fat to use as fuel.  Both the heart and brain run more efficiently on ketones than on sugar, by as much as 25 percent.  Healthy, normal brain cells thrive, when fueled by ketones.

Both doctors (Dr. Angus and Dr. Perlmutter) agree that it is important to maintain sleep-wake cycles and routines as well as to eat at regular times. Dr. Agus goes so far as to advise that if you need an afternoon snack, have it at a regular time and don’t snack or eat randomly just to counteract an emotional state such as boredom, loneliness or depression.

THE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN FOOD CHOICES, EATING HABITS AND HEALTH

Experts agree that diets can be helpful, but disagree at a basic level about the connection between food and health. They disagree about what is good for you to eat and what is bad for you to eat.

At one extreme, David Perlmutter, M.D., in his book “Grain Brain”, encourages people to eat meat and praises the “Mediterranean Diet. Dr. Perlmutter states: if you remove gluten (i.e. foods containing grains such as wheat) and refined carbohydrates from your diet you will watch your mood brighten up, your weight go down, your energy soar and your brain’s functionality will be in high gear.

Another expert, William Davis, M.D., in his book “Wheat Belly”, also advises the general public against eating wheat, advises everyone in the general public to remove gluten containing foods their your diet and that it is beneficial to eat meat.

At the other end of the spectrum, another expert Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr., M.D., advises people not to eat meat (or chicken or fish) and spends an entire chapter in his book “Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease” debunking the “Mediterranean Diet.”

Dr. Esselstyn advises against consuming any oils, including olive oil and canola oil.

Dr. Esselstyn advises people to eat a plant based diet consisting of grains, carbohydrates, fruits and vegetables.

Another expert, John A. McDougall, M.D., in his book “The Starch Solution”, recommends eating grains, including wheat and other carbohydrates and advises against eating meat (or chicken or fish).

Should you eat gluten free, low carb and high fat and protein as advised by Dr. Perlmutter and Dr. Davis?

Or, should you follow a vegan diet in which you eat no meat or fish or chicken as advised by Dr. Esselstyn and Dr. McDougall?

Experts disagree on which path (meat or no meat, gluten or no gluten) path you should take.

One expert, David B. Agus, M.D., in his book “A Short Guide to a Long Life”, advises:

• Keep in mind, just as there are many religions in the world, there are many healthy eating traditions that beat out our processed fast food culture and that traditional eating habits have worked for centuries among different peoples with vastly different diets around the world.
• These habits include moderate portions, sharing a communal table, not going back for seconds, or thirds or fourths, eating fresh (just picked or plucked seasonal produce) real foods (foods that don’t come in a box or a bottle) and letting hunger build up between meals (no snacking).

All experts, agree that we should not eat processed food and that most people consume too much sugar.

Nutritional Value of Fruits and Vegetables

According to Dr. Agus:

1. There is convincing evidence that eating at least five servings of fruits and vegetables a day can help prevent chronic diseases and decrease one’s risk of obesity
2. If you can, buy most of your fresh produce from a local farmers market.
3. Go for leafy greens and fibrous vegetables instead of sugary fruit.
4. Choose as many colors as nature segregates nutrients by colors; the blend of nutrients that makes a carrot orange is different from the blend that makes broccoli green, but they are both needed to support health.
5. To maximize the number of nutrients you consume, you’re better off eating a yellow bell pepper and a red one than eating two of a single color.
6. The minute a fruit or vegetable is picked is the moment it begins to change chemically and to lose nutritional value.
7. By the time the vast majority of produce reaches your local grocery store, it doesn’t contain the same amount of nutrients as when it was plucked or picked from the plant or yanked from its roots.
8. If fruits or vegetables are picked before they are ripe they have less time to develop a full spectrum of vitamins and minerals.  It will not have the same nutritional value as it would have if it had been allowed to ripen fully before being picked.

Pastor Rick Warren, Daniel Amen, MD and Mark Hyman MD report in “The Daniel Plan” their method food selection is as follows: Our philosophy is, if it was grown on a plant eat it.  If it was made in a plant, leave it on the shelf.”

In “The Cleveland Clinic Way”, Toby Cosgrove, MD, President and CEO of Cleveland Clinic, states:

“Because fresh foods are the healthiest and most delicious, Cleveland Clinic started a farmers’ market at our main campus in 2008, an idea that soon spread to multiple sites.  Local unemployed citizens were trained in farming, and two surface lots were converted to ‘internship in farming sites.’  In addition, Cleveland Clinic guaranteed all growers farming organically within 115 miles of the main campus that we would purchase all the produce they brought to the farmers’ markets that had not been purchased by Cleveland Clinic employees and patients or members of the community.”

Dr. Agus, also advises us, in “A Short Guide to a Long Life”:

1. Taking vitamin supplements is correlated with increased risk of diseases and produces little benefit to health.
2. By taking copious amounts of vitamins, especially those touted as antioxidants, you block your body’s natural ability to control itself.  You block a physiological process; you a system we don’t fully understand yet.
3. You cannot expect a pill or packaged food product to satisfy nutritional needs in the same way real food can.
4. Stop taking vitamins.
5. Your body is expertly designed to detox naturally.
6. Don’t use supplements or detox formulas marketed to clean you out.  They are nonsense.
7. Toxins will accumulate in your body over time.
8. There is no safe way to remove them other than relying on the body’s built-in systems, which are equipped to handle the job.
9. There is no such thing as an “immune-boosting” anything.
10. The best way to enhance your immune system is to eat well and stay active.
11. Superfoods don’t exist.
12. Some foods contain more nutrients than others, but it is hyperbolic and misleading to call any food a “superfood.”
13. Don’t assume you can take care of everything all the time.  None of us can.
14. None of us can be expert in everything, even with the Internet at our fingertips.
15. If you need expert professional support in designing a dietary and/or exercise protocol that suits your needs, ask for it.
16. Enjoy the benefits of the wisdom and experience of other people.

A BRIEF COMMENTARY ABOUT SUGAR

The average American consumes between 100 and 160 pounds of refined sugar annually – reflecting upwards of a 25 percent hike in just the last three decades.

All “experts” agree that “we” consume too large a quantity of refined sugar, that consuming excess refined sugar is toxic, and that we should not consume sugar substitutes.

One expert, Tom Rath, in his book “Eat Move Sleep” says this about sugar:

“Sugar is a toxin.  It fuels diabetes, obesity, heart disease and cancer.   At the current dose we consume, more than 150 pounds per per person per year, sugar and its derivatives kill more people than cocaine, heroin, or any other controlled substance.

“One report aptly described sugar as ‘candy for cancer cells.’   Sugar accelerates aging and inflammation in the body and subsequently fuels tumor growth.  It is now clear that if you lower your sugar intake, you reduce the odds of cancer. ”

“As additional research emerges, even higher ‘normal’ glucose levels (82 to 110 mg/dL) have an adverse impact on your health over time.  

“Blood sugar levels at the higher end of the normal range have been linked to significant shrinkage of the brain….There is simply no good reason to consume any added sugar beyond what you get from whole fruits and vegetables.

“Much like cigarettes, sugars are addictive. Each time you eat sweets, it causes your brain to light up, produce dopamine, and want more sugar.  

In the words of one leading neuroscientist, sweets ‘fire the the upward regions in our brain’ much like other drugs.  

“Your brain also builds tolerance to sugar every time, one that mirrors, the way people habituate to alcohol or tobacco.  As a result, once you consume sugar, your body needs larger quantities over time to mimic the pleasurable sensation.

“Remember, there is absolutely no nutritional need for foods with added sugar.

“As you reduce this biological desire for sweet tastes over time, you will need significantly less willpower to pass on the cake.”

“Anything that makes your food or drink taste sweet leads you to crave less healthy foods later….Once a sweet taste hits your tongue, it sets a cycle in motion, and you consume even more sugar by the hour.”

A very health conscious person who reads my blog, recently wrote to me: “Sugar should be by prescription.  It is in everything we eat.”

A RECENT SUGAR PHOBIA EXPERIENCE

On Sunday, January 12, 2014, I had lunch, with one of my four daughters, at “Real Food Daily” in Santa Monica, CA.

Real Food Daily prides itself for “making the art of eating healthy easy.”

Before I could sit down at a table, a prominent attorney (who knows that I am keenly interested in the impact food has on health) stopped me and asked me whether all the dishes offered on the “Real Food Daily” (“RFD”) menu are “healthy.”

Rather than telling him that there are many nuances to good health and healthy living related to food consumption (including whether or not you get enough quality sleep and maintain a strict sleep-wake cycle) or that both how you eat (i.e., whether you eat “fast” and on the “go”” or eat slowly while lingering during a meal having a conversation with a family member or friend while eating your food) and what you eat (i.e., whether you eat freshly picked or plucked fruits and vegetables, or animal containing growth hormones and antibiotics who were fattened up by eating GMO corn, etc.) impacts your health, I said,  “That is a complicated question. My answer to that question will create more questions than it will answer.”

I then sat down at a table to have a slow meal with my daughter.

Shortly after I sat down, a waiter came to our table.

I asked the waiter if RFD was serving oatmeal.

The waiter said, “No.”

I asked the waiter if RFD had lentil soup.

The waiter said, “No.”

I asked the waiter what he recommend I order for brunch or lunch.

I told the waiter I would like to eat a gluten free meal, a meal with no animal product and no dairy product, and I did not want to eat any dish contained or prepared with any oils.

I also told our wait that I did not want to eat anything that contains a lot of sugar.

The waiter recommended No-Huevos Rancheros – scrambled tofu, onions, tomatoes, bell and chili peppers, corn tortillas, ranchero sauce, avocado with black beans, and pico de gallo.

TOOTH DECAY VS THE BRAIN’S NEED TO CONSUME SUGAR

I asked the waiter: Do you know when [at what time in the evolution of the human race] tooth decay first began to be found in the remains of humans? I would like to minimize the amount of sugar I consume because of its toxic effects and because sugar causes tooth decay. According to a friend of mine who is a dentist:

• Tooth decay is found in the teeth of humans only after farming began; only after humans started eating grains.

•  Digestion begins in the mouth.  When food is broken down into sugar in the mouth tooth decay results.

I am afraid (but don’t know or remember reading if) while you are eating corn (or corn tortillas), the saliva in your mouth chemically reacts with the corn.

That corn gets broken down into sugar in your mouth by your saliva. The resulting sugar causes tooth decay.  

I know that happens when you eat bread.

I also know we have to eat sugar in order for our brains to function properly.

It takes a lot of dietary calories to to keep our brain functioning.

Our brains, which represent about 2 to 2.5 percent of our body weight consume twenty-two percent of our body’s energy expenditure at rest and 20 percent of our oxygen consumption is used by the brain.

That being said, not all sugar consumption is bad.

Our bodies break everything down into either sugar, protein or fat.  

Our brains run on sugar and without sugar our brains can’t function.

Our saliva does break down carbs into sugars in our mouth, but that is not a good enough reason to never eat corn – which has essential amino acids that add to a complete profile for non-animal eaters.

By the way: The human brain expends about 350 percent more energy than the brains of other anthropods like gorillas and chimpanzees. I have been advised: If you are concerned about the health of your teeth, brush your teeth after meals.

Also according to my dentist friend: A dentist – who knows biochemistry, nutrition and tooth decay – can tell who eats a lot of sugar (i.e., who consumes a lot of grain) by looking at a person’s teeth.

PUBIC POLICY QUESTIONS:

IF IT IS TRUE THAT EATING GRAINS SUCH AS WHEAT AND EATING CORN PRODUCTS [IN BREAD AND TORTILLAS] CAUSES TOOTH DECAY WHY HASN’T THE NUTRITIONAL ESTABLISHMENT, THE MEDICAL ESTABLISHMENT AND THE DENTAL ESTABLISHMENT TOLD US THAT?

WHY ARE WE ONLY TOLD TO “NOT EAT CANDY BECAUSE CANDY WILL CAUSE TOOTH DECAY, CAVITIES” AND NOT BEING TOLD NOT TO EAT WHEAT OR NOT TO CORN PRODUCTS BECAUSE BREAD, TORTILLAS, ETC. WILL CAUSE TOOTH DECAY AND CAVITIES?

WHY HAVEN’T WE BEEN WARNED THAT SUGAR IS TOXIC, THAT SUGAR AND ITS DERIVATIVES KILL MORE PEOPLE THAN COCAINE, HEROINE OR ANY OTHER CONTROLLED SUBSTANCE?

Why haven’t we been told that sugar fuels diabetes, obesity, heart disease and cancer?

Why haven’t we been told what excess sugar consumption does to the brain?

Why haven’t we been told that our bodies metabolize different types of sugars differently and what effects that has on our health?

Why haven’t we been told what, exactly, is the difference between table sugar, fruit sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, and the like?

INCREASING BRAIN HEALTH THROUGH BRAIN STIMULATION

According to Dr. Perlmutter:

• The brain rises to the challenges of intellectual stimulation by fortifying and building new neural networks.
• This results in the brain becoming faster and more efficient in its processing capacity and better able to store information.
• Keeping the brain challenged is good for brain health.

For brain health reasons, and other reasons,  I drove to Palm Springs from Los Angeles on Friday (January 10, 2014) afternoon to watch films being shown at the 25th Annual Palm Springs International Film Festival.

—–Original Message—– From: Name Deleted ~~ Email Deleted To: Gary Smolker <gsmolker@aol.com> Sent: Mon, Jan 13, 2014 12:56 am Subject: NYTimes: Goodnight. Sleep Clean.

Very interesting ...

http://nyti.ms/1itahwO

Why do we have to rest? Meet your brain’s janitorial staff.

Sent from my iPad

Copyright© 2014 by Gary S. Smolker