Scary New Research on Cell Phone Effects

Last evening, I was in a common room where a lot of young and middle aged people were taking a dinner break. Rather than chatting, I was astonished to observe that most were on their phones--the room was almost silent.

I believed there was a loose correlation between lousy spelling and language mechanics brought on by the laxities of texting, but an article in The Atlantic Monthly tells a much different, deeper  and scarier story. Here’s a quote from it:

"A smart phone can tax its user’s cognition simply by sitting next to them on a table, or being anywhere in the same room with them, suggests a study published recently in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research. It finds that a smart phone can demand its user’s attention even when the person isn’t using it or consciously thinking about it. Even if a phone’s out of sight in a bag, even if it’s set to silent, even if it’s powered off, its mere presence will reduce someone’s working memory and problem-solving skills.
These effects are strongest for people who depend on their smart phones, such as those who affirm a statement like, “I would have trouble getting through a normal day without my cell phone.”
But few people also know they’re paying this cognitive smart phone tax as it plays out. Few participants in the study reported feeling distracted by their phone during the exam, even if the data suggested their attention was not at full capacity."

Whoa! We better all get off our phones and have a conversation while we still can!

Black Friday/Turkey Excess & an Atheist with an Advent Wreath

I

My niece and nephew one a doc, one a resident, both in the East, both had to work Thanksgiving. Rather than the usual drug ODs, they had a lot of diabetes, overweight, proscribed low-salt diets, i.e. precarious health to begin with, overeating and ending up in the emergency room on Turkey Day. What do you say to a doctor who has to work a holiday to save people from a self-inflicted excess? How are we supposed think about being in an insurance pool with such folks?

II

Got an early dose of Black Friday Wed night at my little X-mas gig. There is an employee store, and the company let us in to shop the discontinued, 2nds and returns merchandise, most of which is brand new and priced a fraction of what it originally cost. One person in particular acted like a frenetic fool, shoving and grabbing. The fact that it was clearly an immigrant makes me jaded about the “better life” bit. And how the immigrants are used to feed commerce in this country.

III

Holiday lights make me long for Berlin, Germany, where the tradition is put the tree up on Christmas Eve, celebrate for a few days into the new year or perhaps to the Epiphany. My dear friend there, Frau Eva-Marie Welters was a quintessential secularist/atheist, yet she never failed to get an Advent wreath. I rode my bike through the frigid Berlin dark, for breakfast with her nearly every Sunday morning of the time I lived there. Together we disparaged the excesses of traditional religion (think clergy sex abuse) thought and talked about “real” spirituality. She didn’t hate religion per se; she hated its excesses, was circumspect enough to see its advantages. Her genuine spirituality shines sweeter than all environmental pollution X-mas excess.

Saluting the Vet who said "War is a Racket"

The vet Critical Eye wants to salute is Smedley Darlington Butler. Butler was a Marine general, and the highest decorated soldier of his time, unequivocal and unassailable on the topic of war.  Here are a couple choice quotes from him:

“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street…”

 "Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. This was to be the "war to end wars." This was the "war to make the world safe for democracy." No one told them that dollars and cents were the real reason. No one mentioned to them, as they marched away, that their going and their dying would mean huge war profits…”

Lots more at: https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/115545.Smedley_D_Butler  or get his book called War is a Racket. We need to reconnect with Butler, then get our critical eyes and ears on and ask questions like: What did George Bush, Donald Trump et al do while ordinary boys were dying in Vietnam and elsewhere?

Viewing Racism in Light of Jewish History

My dear friend Rona, circa 1986, glamer than we are now, in her office at the NGO where she worked then.

In late October a man with a gun went into a Pittsburg Synogogue and shot a dozen people. In the days following the atrocity, radio and TV featured an incredible run of rabbis, Jews and Jewish experts hectoring us about racism.

While living in Israel in 1986, I read a slew of Jewish history (Abba Eban’s My People, A History of the Jews, the best written) and a precise pattern emerges: any time a sizable portion of a country's population is left in the economic dust, racism ignites. It happened in Spain, repeatedly in England, so often in Russia they coined a special term for it “pogrom,” and most disastrously in Germany when the country could not pay its WWI reparations.

There is always some bonehead like Adolf or Donald around the place with a box of matches. Count on it.

Then, I believed it could never happen here. I did not envision American elites enriching themselves beyond all decency, which, in the wake of the 2008 Recession has pauperized ordinary people and local governments supposedly serving them, creating homelessness, a drug epidemic, and fanning anti-Jewish racism.

The Jews are not to blame, but blaming/hectoring victims only exacerbates the problem. Not one news organization (on air or in print) I heard bothered to educate people on this history.

Marking the History We All Use

A few folks among us take the time to mark history but sometimes don't get much notice: (L to R) Dan Volk, Janice Juchems (Iowa State Historian), Marsha Hucke (State Regent), Sylvia Blaesing (State Registrar), and Douglas Monk. In late October, they dedicated a little plaque in Riverview Park commemorating the Military Road (plowed by Lymon Dillon, an 1850's Cascade resident) that many of us drive/ride every day.  It is essentially the route of Hwy. 151, Main Street through Cascade.

      The ladies are members of Iowa Society Daughters of the American Revolution.

Dia de los Muertos, All Souls or All Saints

In Praise of Autumn

Whose trees do their best

to color the place up but

Even they cannot disguise

The fact that we are all

temporary, worse yet,

the people we love

are

So I spend autumn

lamenting the flowers

and friends of summer

Forever.

When was the last time I put poem here? Perhaps never.