Originally written Wednesday, November 24, 2004

What is the point?

What is the point of writing a letter to the editor? What is the point of challenging an assumption or having a discussion? What is the point of me writing this?

Why bother writing about events in Iraq as I have done here? After all, nothing I say will change what is happening there.

Anyone who seeks to change things through knowledge and information is faced with that discouraging question: what’s the point?

I think the answer is simple: the point is to influence a decision, however small, made by somebody in some place at some time.

Change occurs as a consequence of actions. People’s actions are based either wholly or in part on decisions. A key human trait is the ability to make decisions based on knowledge, not just on experience.

So by speaking, writing, and educating, change can happen. The smallest decision can be worth the effort that influencing that decision took.

A case in point: a colleague, Scott, told me he watched Fahrenheit 9/11. He said that he would likely not have watched it were it not for our conversations about current events.

Deciding to watch a particular movie is a minor decision, but change ripples outwards from small events. Decisions to read a particular book or see a certain movie have changed people’s lives.

So if you are out there trying to make a difference and you ask yourself this question, or others ask it of you: don’t be disheartened. The positive effect you have might be far larger than you think!

Originally written Saturday, November 13, 2004

The Discovery Channel can be pretty entertaining, and when I’m home briefly between work and class I sometimes watch 15 or 20 minutes of it while I’m eating. (I like the shows they have about engineering and monster machines.)

Yesterday I watched almost a full program about the “Hutchison Effect”. The Hutchison Effect is supposedly a series of effects (it’s not just one) that a Canadian inventor, John Hutchison, invented. Here’s a summary from a webpage that describes it:

The Hutchison Effect occurs as the result of radio wave interferences in a zone of spatial volume encompassed by high voltage sources, usually a Van de Graff generator, and two or more Tesla coils.

The effects produced include levitation of heavy objects, fusion of dissimilar materials such as metal and wood (exactly as portrayed in the movie, “The Philadelphia Experiment”), the anomalous heating of metals without burning adjacent material, spontaneous fracturing of metals (which separate by sliding in a sideways fashion), and both temporary and permanent changes in the crystalline structure and physical properties of metals.

I was immediately skeptical, just from hearing them talk about it during the beginning of the show. It didn’t help that Hutchison looked a little eccentric, or that he did all of his ‘experiments’ in his apartment using cast-away Navy and Army surplus equipment.

This guy lives in an apartment that has to be seen to be believed, it’s packed chock full of all sorts of crap, although it looks pretty organized. I’m talking wall-to-wall oscilloscopes, digital readouts, metal boxes, dials, knobs, chains and pulleys.

They started showing clips of this “effect” in action, specifically ones that showed its apparent anti-gravity powers. Each clip was a fairly close up shot taken from about 5 feet. They showed a wooden floor (you could see the bottom of a broom sitting on the floor) and a household object sitting on it. The object would then move a little bit and then levitate off the screen! Stuff like nails, a hammer, a wrench, a bowl, a bottle of 7-Up, tin foil, etc.

This was pretty interesting, I thought, but hardly conclusive evidence. I was trying to think up ways that you could make an object “levitate” like that, say, using magnetism, when it showed a very interesting clip. The clip was of a cup of a thick white liquid or syrup, about the consistency of creamy plaster. You could see a glob form at the top of the liquid, then rise out of the cup and go up off the screen! It left behind a spike in the liquid, if you know what I mean – like it globbed upward, and when it separated there was a kind of liquid string pointing straight up.

This had me impressed. How could you make THAT levitate? It’s one thing to fake levitating a piece of tin foil, but that was pretty convincing!

But I was still skeptical. I started trying to think of how you could do this as the show progressed. They then interviewed a guy from a US intelligence agency. They sent a team of 6 or 8 observers up to Canada in the early 70s to do tests and observe this phenomenon (I think the LSD craze permeated into the US military back then too). Well, it didn’t work out too well, because although Hutchison claimed that things happened during these tests, they ONLY happened when the observers weren’t there.

How convenient.

Then Hutchison went on about how he was worried that the US government could be using his invention to create weapons. As he talked, I suddenly realized how he’d faked his levitation videos.

In each case, the wooden floor is NOT actually a floor, it’s just a piece of wood. The videos are taken UPSIDE DOWN. He uses an electromagnet above the piece of wood to hold the object in place, and he’s got the end of a broom stuck on there to give the illusion that it’s a floor. Then, he slowly reduces current to the electromagnet, and the object loosens and then falls. Turned upside down, it looks like the object is actually going UP, not down!

In cases like the pepsi bottle or the white liquid, it would be simple to just put metal in the base of the container and hold it in place that way (the 7-Up bottle was closed, by the way).

The show was ending, and convinced that I would find other skeptics on the Internet, I ran upstairs and looked it up on Google. Well, there’s stuff all over the place, but not really any skeptics, at least none that really talk about how he could have faked his experiments.

Then I found a site that had a different video I hadn’t seen. You can see it right at the top of the page. It looks like a metal object jumping around. Hmmm, I thought – that doesn’t fit in well with my upside-down electromagnet hoax idea. Then I read farther down the page and found this (bolded emphasis mine):

I’ve received a number of messages about the above video-links pointing out that a string is clearly visibly holding up the toy-UFO that Hutchison is experimenting with. I asked John for more information on the purpose of the string, and received the following reply:

“The string is not string but #32-gauge double polythermalized wire on a takeup up reel with 20 to 50000 volts DC. The the main apparatus was turned on, causing the toy plastic ufo to fly all about in amazing gyrations. This was a pretest to gryphon films airing this fall for fox TV. I did not need the extra high voltage 2000 time period so the toy levitated without a high voltage hook up during the filming for gryphon there was a string on the toy no high-voltage dc but interesting movements.” – John Hutchison

This is the most ridiculous explanation I’ve ever heard. Someone sees the string attached to the object, and his excuse is, “no, that’s not a string, it’s a wire?!!! Then he tacks on a pile of mumbo-jumbo to try and mask the fact that he’s bouncing the object around on a wire!

Although videos are easily faked, it would have been easy for him to make the videos a lot harder to criticize. He must have known that people would have a hard time believing that he can levitate objects using some equipment he bought at the neighbourhood surplus store, or that an aging hippie who wears cut-off jean vests has managed to leapfrog ahead of Einstein and NASA. Levitating the object while pouring a glass of water from a pitcher would have been a good demonstration. Or simply standing next to the object. Or showing the object COMING DOWN again – I found that very interesting! The videos don’t show where the objects go, and it doesn’t show them coming back down. I wonder why?

The man is obviously a total charlatan. And I am extremely unimpressed with the Discovery Channel. I realize that they are in the business of entertainment BUT they also claim to educate. Yet there was not a single skeptic or critic on the entire show!

I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard the defense, “it’s true, I saw it on the Discovery Channel” when people are confronted with skepticism about some bizarre claim. The Discovery Channel is BOGUS, people!

If you want to read some skeptical views on a variety of hoaxes, frauds, and outlandish claims, go to www.skepdic.com, which includes a criticism of the famous Philadelphia Experiment mentioned near the beginning of this post.

Videos

January 29, 2006 – added some videos that purport to show Hutchison Effect.

Originally written Monday, February 28, 2005

My friends Niall and Jim and I moved in together a few years ago. It was the first time I’d lived on my own, an observation that could be made easily by anyone who noticed my tremendous lack of useful possessions: no pots, pans or kitchen appliances, no end tables or couches, no lamps or pictures. In contrast, Jim had lots of useful possessions, as well as an overwhelming abundance of junk (a retinue of belongings that follow him to this day) and a great many plants.

My bedroom had an enormous window, and Jim’s did not (an unlucky coin toss on his part), so my room became the home for several of Jim’s plants. Although I suppose he would have looked after them if I hadn’t, I was soon watering and taking care of them as though they were my own. And oddly enough, I started to develop an attachment for them.

That’s one of the first things I noticed about my relationship with plants. It was a relationship. They provided me with decoration and the illusion that I was outside, even though I was trapped indoors studying for exams or working. I provided them with water and ensured they got sunlight. They took care of my mental wellbeing, and I cared for their physical wellbeing. A relationship based on mutual trust developed.

It’s odd when you realize that you care about a plant, that you have a favourite plant, that you feel sorry for a plant that is suffering because someone else is not tending to it. While buying smokes with Wayne one Saturday night before going to the bar, I noticed a small plant languishing under the feeble fluorescent lights of the store. It looked diseased and lonely and sad, somehow, so I bought it. It had begun. I was falling in love with plants. I was becoming a herbophile.

My friend Wayne, on the other hand, is a plant sociopath. To him, a plant is a colourful piece of furniture, no more desirous of water and attention than his couch. I imagine that when Wayne walks into a nursery, plants cower into their pots like Dalmations near Cruella DeVil. His apartment is scattered with the dead and dying remains of his purchases. Those that still cling to life do so because of my infrequent visits, when I always make sure to give them some water.

That’s one of the most remarkable things about plants: their incredible tenacity. Plants cling to life like nothing else. When Wayne bought a large cactus, with two main spiny trunks rising from the soil, and parked it near his perpetually covered window, I did not expect it to live. Although cacti can make do without much water, they certainly need light, or so I thought. Somehow, it stayed alive. I would water it each time I visited. After a long period of no water (I hadn’t been by in a while), the cactus could not go on without moisture. Instead of dying, it made a sacrifice: it took all the water out of one trunk, and put it in the other. The dehydrated trunk died, but the cactus lived on, and as far as I know, it’s still alive.

The ability of plants to renew themselves, to find a way to keep going, is encouraging. When I was making dinner on an exceptionally cold day this winter, I opened the window because it was getting so hot and smoky in the kitchen. The air entering the kitchen was so cold it froze the leaves of the plants that were near the window. The leaves of the plants promptly wilted, turned brown, and fell off. Weeks later, the plants are showing finally signs of rejuvenation. Small new green leaves are appearing. Each new leaf is a visible sign that the plant will live in spite of its scars:

This plant should be taken into protective custody.

Under the right conditions, plants grow incredibly quickly. One of my favourite plants here at home was just a single stalk, six inches tall, when I gave it to Casie. A couple years later, the plant is a many-stalked five-foot tall giant of a plant, and Casie and I are married. You could say that our relationship has grown like that plant. That’s why to me, plants are a symbol of hope, determination, and life. They are a daily reminder that survival is possible even when times are tough, and that growth and vibrant life will happen when something is carefully tended to.

This is the plant I gave Casie.

Poinsettias are the plant no one waters, because they expect them to live over Christmas and that’s it. Faced with no water, this plant shed most of its leaves.

But after a regimen of Beethoven and aromotherapy, it is showing signs of recovery in the form of tiny new leaves.

One of my favourite plants, this Norfolk Pine was given to me by Casie’s grandmother “Nanny”.

Originally written Friday, January 21, 2005

A close friend and relation, Denise R., recently forwarded an email to me called “The Stella Awards for 2003”, subtitled “Annual Stella Awards for the Best Frivolous Law Suits of the Year”. These “awards” are named after Stella Liebeck, described in the email as an 81-year-old who “spilled coffee on herself & successfully sued McDonalds.” You might remember this famous lawsuit, which created a storm of controversy and spurred calls for litigation reform.

The email goes on to list lawsuits the writer deems frivolous, for example:

Kara Walton of Claymont, Delaware, sued the owner of a night club in a neighbouring city when she fell from the bathroom window to the floor & knocked out two of her front teeth. This occurred whilst Ms. Walton was trying to crawl through the window in the ladies room to avoid paying the $3.50 cover charge. She was awarded $12,000 & dental expenses.

And the winner:

This year’s runaway winner was Mr. Merv Grazinski of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma Mr. Grazinski purchased a brand new Winnebago Motor Home. On his trip home from an OU football game, having driven onto the freeway, he set the cruise control at 70 mph & calmly left the drivers seat to go into the back & make himself a cup of coffee.Not surprisingly, the RV left the freeway, crashed & then overturned. Mr. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not advising him, by reading the owner’s manual, that he actually could not do this. The jury awarded him $1,750,000 plus a new Winnebago Motor Home.

The “lawsuits” are certainly an entertaining read, although their validity is in question – I researched the “winner” to find that this story is just another version of an urban legend that began in the late 1970s when cruise control was first available for RVs. But that’s beside the point – the point is Stella Liebeck, whose story Denise would not have known about when she sent me the email.

Liebeck’s successful lawsuit against McDonald’s for spilling coffee on herself is often used as an example of how litigation is out of control. I didn’t question this until I came across the facts about her lawsuit in a book called “The Good Fight” by Ralph Nader. Here’s what you should know about the “frivolous” lawsuit that she brought against McDonald’s:

– The coffee at McDonald’s was far hotter than ordinary coffee.
– McDonald’s had already received 700 complaints of burns, but hadn’t lowered the temperature or placed a warning on the cups.
– Stella Liebeck, who was 79 at the time, suffered third-degree burns to her thighs, buttocks and genitals which required a week in the hospital and skin grafts!
– After the incident she wrote McDonald’s saying that she didn’t want to sue them, but only wanted them to cover her medical costs and examine their coffee procedures to avoid more burns.
– McDonald’s declined to change anything and offered her just $800.
– Out of the $2.9 million verdict only $160,000 went to Liebeck – $200,000 was arrived at as compensation for her but 20% was knocked off the total because of her negligence in spilling it. The remainder of the damages was punitive, designed to make McDonald’s cool their coffee (which they did).
– The trial judge reduced the punitive damages by 82% to $480,000.

So the lawsuit was not frivolous at all, and to the extent that the verdict was unfair, mechanisms after the trial ensured the verdict was reduced. In the end, an elderly woman was compensated for pain and suffering and a giant corporation was punished for ignoring the safety of consumers. This is a far cry from being an example of why the civil justice system needs to be reformed!

This made me think about how much influence corporations have over what we think. Why is it that so many people, myself included until recently, believe that we really do need to overhaul the litigation system? Could it be because that’s what corporations want us to think? In the same book, Nader points out that many of the companies calling for reform (including limits on the amount of compensation you can receive as a result of a lawsuit) make huge profits each year. According to Ernst & Young and the Insurance Risk Management Society, in the US in 1999 liability costs amounted to just $5.20 for every $1,000 in revenue. And only a tiny percentage of the people injured by companies bring lawsuits, and an even tinier percentage of them receive large verdicts.

I think the common perception that lawsuits against companies “just trying to make an honest living” are out of control is one created and fostered by those same companies. I think that is the same reason many people are anti-union, something I hope to write about later. When it comes common perceptions like these, I think it’s worth wondering: who benefits?

Friday, December 17, 2004

SIR TOBY BELCH: Here’s an overweening rogue!
FABIAN: O, peace! Contemplation makes a rare turkey-cock of him; how he jets under his advanced plumes!– Twelfth Night by Shakespeare

Turkey has been in the news recently, as it negotiates for entry into the European Union. There are a number of controversies and outstanding questions about whether or not it will be able to join the EU. But there’s an important question that has yet to be answered by the major news media: why is turkey called “turkey”? And why is it so delicious?

Although the turkey is far older as a species than Turkey is as a country, Turkey proudly bore its name well before the turkey arrived on the dinner plates of English-speakers, assuming they used plates in 1530’s England. The bird was brought to England by merchants from an area of the eastern Mediterranean called the Levant, which was then part of the Turkish Empire. The English creatively called these people Turkey merchants, a term that was to become increasingly affectionate as they started hauling in a remarkably tasty bird, a bird that became known as the “Turkey bird”.

The English were the only people who thought the bird came from Turkey. Everybody else, including the Turks, thought it came from India, or at least what they thought was India, but which was actually Mexico. People were pretty confused at this point about where the New World was, but as long as they were getting fat, juicy, tasty birds from there, they didn’t much care.

When people from Britain decided to settle in America in tightly-packed ships, they were faced with a stark choice about what to bring with them: their prized possessions and their children, or as many turkeys as they could carry. The result was the re-introduction of the turkey to North America. The settlers were surprised to find that the turkey already lived in the wild where they landed. I theorize that this is the true origin of Thanksgiving: “Wow, look at all those turkeys! We don’t need to save the ones we got. Let’s eat!”

So why is the turkey so tasty? First of all, there’s something just plain excellent about the meat. It’s firm, it’s juicy, it has a special flavour that makes it different from the plainer taste of chicken. You get dark meat and white meat all in one package. And best of all, you can stuff it! Turkeys are specially designed for maximum stuffing potential. Whether it’s bread and spices, sausage, or another bird, turkeys are all about the chest cavity. And if you’re feeling adventurous (and incredibly ambitious), there’s the turducken, a truly remarkable feat of culinary ingenuity: a deboned chicken, stuffed inside a deboned duck, stuffed inside a deboned turkey, all packed with layers of stuffing.

Turkey is enjoyed all over the world. In India, the turkey is called “gall dindi”, which literally translates to “Indian cock”. Mmmmmmm! If that doesn’t make your mouth water, go to Greece, where it’s called “gallapoula”, which means “French girl”. Opaaaaa!