Shadow Flutter

We spend too much time worshiping (or damning) our president.  Not just this president, but all presidents.  We worship him because the national media covers him around the clock.   The national media covers him 24X7, because if they can make him important and ubiquitous, they make themselves indispensable and almost as important.  Everything the president says, no matter how mundane and irrelevant, is televised and reported.  He burps -- news flash -- “President burps.  Details at 11.”  He is portrayed as constantly under siege or victorious -- his every thought dramatic, his every decision apocalyptic.  We are taught to wait on his every word.  Like in the old commercial where everyone shushes everyone else to hear E.F. Hutton speak, the media forces the president’s every utterance upon us, no matter how irrelevant the utterance might be.     The reality is we live out lives locally.  What happens to our famili...

A year late, but what the heck. We could talk all day about why and how Romney lost the election.  He hemmed and hawed over releasing his tax returns, his foreign policy was an extension of Bush’s, he accused 40% of the population of preferring to live off the other 60%, and he couldn’t attack Obamacare because Obamacare was Romneycare with a makeover.  But the real reason, I think, most people didn’t vote for him is they didn’t feel comfortable with him.  You can agree all day on policy, the Middle East, global strategic maneuvering, the economy, and health care.  In the end, you have to feel comfortable with the person you are bestowing so much power on, and Romney was never that person.  Just something about him.  People don’t mention it, but I think the dog affair hurt him a lot.  I know I it hurt him with me.  He placed the family dog in an animal cage and then tied the cage to the top of his car.  The poor dog stayed in that cage for th...

Comes now from the Universities of Toronto and Milan a new study that shows diets rich in bread after menopause raise the risk of developing breast cancer among 55 -- 64 year-olds by 60%, while those diets rich in pasta don’t.  The researchers work with the World Health Organization, a fact that boosts their credentials, while having absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the study or the accuracy of its results.  The media are always reporting such “scientific results.”  Morning shows are the worst offenders, being almost singularly responsible for promoting pop-science and quackery.  If you eat the right things, wear the right clothes, and organize your life the right way, you can live a fulfilling and healthy life. So what is one to make of studies like this?  The Economist reports that less than half the results of research reported in peer-review magazines can be replicated.  That’s a sad state of affairs that says much about the general shoddine...