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2011-07-282025-03-04

Trinity Christian College – Dr. Martin Vrieze

Trinity Christian College in Palos Heights, Illinois, was founded in 1965 or thereabouts. It is a reformed Christian college, founded on the idea that science is not neutral, that all knowledge is influenced and shaped by a person’s worldview, and that Christians, therefore, need to study in a Christian College to reach an understanding of the world that is in harmony with their faith

You can buy it or not buy it. As a student, it was clear to me that the history and philosophy departments were trying their best to follow the program, but English classes seemed to me to be pretty well the same kind of classes you would be taking at York or the University of Toronto or the University of Western Ontario or the University of Chicago.

If you took art and needed to learn how to draw the human figure, you had to go to Saint Xavier University down the street to see a nude model because, apparently, Christians didn’t do nudes. Well, at least not on Trinity’s campus. I’m amazed we had a pre-med program– when did they ever get to look at a human body?

As for the business and accounting departments, they were all eager little capitalists who believed that religion was largely relevant to Sunday mornings. The philosophical perspective of my friends in these departments could be summed up thusly: “Hey, watch your language guys– there are girls around.”

Philosophy, at Trinity, was like the art: we didn’t do nudes. You had to go elsewhere to study the shapes and contours and shadows of an undraped human mind. We studied rationalism and humanism and scholasticism and Marxism and read Kant’s Transcendental Critique and always, near the end of the course, bang, biff, whap! we put them in their places.

Christian Reformed Doctrine held that all of us have a prior faith commitment which coloured all of our conclusions about science and truth. So Kant could write ten critiques if he wanted but he would be no closer to the truth because he was, at heart, a humanist. Geez, that’s a gross simplification. But it will have to do: I don’t have all day.

So, at the end of the course, our professors would expose these philosophers’ hidden biases, offer the “correct” Christian perspective, and then we would move on to the next great fraud.

Now, this Christian philosophy was not supposed to be the same as a reactionary, conservative philosophy. Heavens no! Even if, at the end of the long torturous journey through the Bible, Augustine, Aquinas, and Herman Dooyeweerd, and Abraham Kuyper, we ended up, lo and behold, agreeing with Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. I didn’t get that at the time. I didn’t get it until I was at a Christian Labour Association of Canada banquet five or six years later where the guest speaker, Bernie Zylstra, attacked the media for attacking Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. I didn’t get it until I realized that a lot of these devoted “Reformed Christian” thinkers were astoundingly similar, in outlook, to neo-conservatives like Daniel Bell, Patrick Moynihan, and Irving Kristol. (Oddly, they opposed support for Solidarity in Poland at first, because they thought it was doomed to failure, and because they fervently believed that communist regimes never liberalize, while our cuddly U.S.-friendly capitalist autocratic regimes– like Pinochet in Chile, and Somoza in Nicaragua, and the Shah of Iran– do.)

Reformed Christian Philosophy…. in a word, we believed that truth was handed down from high, given to us in the Bible, but also– as per some Scholastics– through “general revelation”, evidence to be found in creation itself, and in natural law as divined through science. That explained why non-Christian scientists occasionally or often hit on a “truth” or two even while blinded by their own humanistic determinism– they were working from evidence from God’s own hands, his creation, which is an expression of divine will, and part of the way God communicates with us sinners.

I don’t mean to be too glib. Our professors, Dr. John Roose and Dr. Maarten Vrieze, were respectful of their achievements, and properly awed by the depth and breadth of their insights. But we were convinced that the great reformed thinkers– Abraham Kuyper, Herman Dooyeweerd, Bob Goudzwaard, and others could hold their own with these mighty intellects. Especially Dooyeweerd who was rumored to be almost as smart as Kant, and maybe even smarter, if not at least equally incoherent.

And then there was Contemporary Philosophy. There was a course called “Philosophy of Science”. It was truly mind-altering.

I took this course in my senior year, I think it was, with a few philosophy die-hards, with Dr. Maarten Vrieze. I have no idea why I thought this but I had the idea that Dr. Vrieze was a bit pissed off at the Reformed establishment for some reason. It may have been because, unlike some of the other reformational professors like Calvin Seerveld and Robert Vandervennen, he hadn’t been asked to sign on to The Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto, one of the other, bigger Reformed Christian Colleges, or the new King’s College in Edmonton. I had a feeling he was fed up with something. Whatever the reason, the course was an eye-opener and it completely altered my perception of Christian philosophy.

There was no text-book, no digest, no over-view: content was taken from philosophical journals and books by the philosophers. These philosophers were not dusted off from their positions in the pantheon of all-time BIG thinkers, buffed and admired, then discredited. These were living, breathing philosophers, mostly, who were engaged with living, breathing currents of philosophy and were way ahead of the constructs and discredited frameworks of Hume, Descartes, and Kant.

It would be impossible to do justice to their ideas here, so I’ll do an injustice instead, just so you know what I’m talking about. Ludwig Wittgenstein, a logical positivist, believed that truth was a construct of language and formal structures of thought, within which we distilled our experiences of the world into a coherent narrative. It wasn’t so much the ideas that mattered, as the way the ideas were expressed, shackled, as they were, to the expression itself.

Karl Popper believed that we formulated our perspective on the world in a sort of complex of patterns and systems of thought called paradigms. A paradigm was “true” as long as it was useful. As human knowledge would begin to exceed the framework of this paradigm, it might be overthrown, and a new paradigm would take it’s place. Again, it didn’t really matter if a paradigm was really true or not– there probably was no such thing as a “true” paradigm.

Imre Lakatos and Paul Feyerabend developed these ideas even further, and I remember, in particular, and argument from Paul Feyerabend that demonstrated, finally, to my satisfaction, that the idea that 2 + 2 does not necessarily equal 4 is not nearly as silly as it sounds. You can’t make any person who hasn’t taken advanced philosophy believe this.

What these gentleman called into question was the idea that you could measure a worldview, such as reformed Christianity, against it’s own reference points. Reformed Christianity would argue that even without the Bible, the evidence of creation is sufficient to explain a just and loving God and a purpose to life. Popper would argue that this world view prevailed only as long as it was “useful” to humanity. With the Renaissance and the Age of Reason, this paradigm was challenged, and eventually over-thrown.

More to come…

Some neo-cons like Irving Kristol support the idea of “intelligent design”. It’s very difficult to imagine that Kristol really believes in it. Maybe he does. Or maybe it just confirms the idea that neo-cons are just a bunch of neo-prudes with reactionary instincts who really don’t care for facts and information unless they can be marshaled in support of their conservative politics.

Or that neo-cons are just not as smart as they think they are.

Forrest Gump is a neo-con’s wet dream of a movie.

2011-06-282022-05-01

Acronym Syndrome

A year or so ago, Stockwell Day (a Conservative cabinet minister, in case you’ve forgotten) was defending a number of initiatives by the Harper Government to “strengthen” the criminal justice system. By “strengthen”, he meant “make people suffer more”. When a reporter asked what the reason for this was, considering that the crime rate was actually in decline, Day famously replied that “unreported crime” was on the increase.

I think Day should have set up a website first. “UnreportedCrimes.ca”. Then people could report their unreported crimes and we would have a better idea of the scale of the problem. He should have invented an acronym for it — UCD for “Unreported Crimes Disorder”. He would have sounded more authoritative if he had said, “of course, UCD is way up over last year, and URPCA is also on the increase. (Under Reported Perception of Criminal Activity). He might have added that if a citizen sees any activity take place which is not clearly a known legal activity then it should be treated as an unreported crime. And reported.

The problem is, if he had done this tens years ago, the numbers would still have declined. Because, after all, the rate of crime really is down, if you look at actual facts, so the amount of reported unreported crimes would also likely have declined. Do you see the problem?

Similarly, or not, there is a website for “The Invisible Disabilities Association of Canada”. It’s about two particular “syndromes”– I don’t know what to call it exactly– myofascial and fibromyalgia. Your first clue: myofascial is not in the dictionary. That is because it is not a real word. It is a made-up word. That means it was just discovered– or just invented.

Now before I go any further, I want to make it clear that I believe it is quite possible that some people in this world, particularly in the affluent developed countries, really do suffer from tiredness, sore muscles, aches, and pains. In fact, it is quite possible that all of us do, to some extent. In fact, it is quite possible that life, in general, sucks. I’m not being flippant– life generally sucks. You make the best of it if you can, but it sucks.

I don’t care about that. I do care about bad science and irrationality, because those things lead to trouble.

So when this website informs me that fibromyalgia is diagnosed when “other illnesses and conditions are ruled out”, I am astounded. Let’s say you meet a person. Are you French? No. Are you British? No. Then you must be Chinese.

Fibromyalgia, we are informed, affects either the upper half of the body, or the bottom half, and can affect the right side or the left side. I am not making this up– check out the website. [The website is out of business.]

Fibromyalgia consists of general aches and pains and tiredness. That’s good– because if it only affected specific parts of the body in a specific way, you would know when you didn’t have it.

Now, I have no idea how you would know if your aches and pains and tiredness are a syndrome or if they are just aches and pains and tiredness, or if your life sucks and you hate making the effort and you just want to veg out on the couch and you don’t have the courage to get out there and engage the world…. I don’t know. Nobody will ever know.

According to the website:

Generally people with Fibromyalgia state that they hurt all over, especially in the parts that are used the most. Stiffness, especially on waking, sleep disorders, irritable bowel syndrome (see separate sheet), irritable bladder syndrome, premenstrual syndrome, restless leg syndrome, headaches (especially migraines and tension headaches) (see separate sheet), muscle spasms, cold intolerance, TMJ, cognitive difficulties, numbness and tingling in the extremities are some of the symptoms. Other common symptoms include a decreased sense of energy, disturbances of sleep, and varying degrees of anxiety and depression related to patients’ changed physical status.

“Irritable bladder syndrome”? “Numbness and tingling”? “Cold intolerance”?.

Think about how it sounds if you say “I am cold”. Now say, “I have cold intolerance”. Different effect, isn’t it? Now try: “I have cold intolerance syndrome”. I will rush out and get you a blanket.

All of it sounds like the normal wane and flow of everyday physical life. It gets cold, it gets hot. If you move, you use energy, and if you use energy you feel tired, and if you feel tired you want to sleep, and if you feel restless, you have “restless leg syndrome”.

Why? Because a label is a label. Why did you stop going to work? Why do you sit on a couch all day watching TV and eating potato chips? Why are you fat?

If you think you have fibromyalgia, I’m not saying your symptoms are not real. I’m saying that you don’t have something that is left over if nothing else can be diagnosed. I’m saying that you have no way of knowing how tough it is supposed to be to get up in the morning or to get out of the house and engage with the world. You say, I don’t know how real your symptoms are. You don’t know how real my symptoms are. Neither of us knows where the line is between attitude and illness, but I know that any illness that can affect the upper half of the body, or the lower half of the body, or the right side, or the left side, and fails to produce any empirical manifestations, hasn’t earned the right to an acronym.

Your last refuge: you don’t know what it’s like to not want to make the effort. And I admit that we have something pure there.

Of course there is an acronym. Developing an acronym for mythical conditions is essential to selling these conditions to the public. So fibromyalgia becomes “FMS”. I think it is believed that the general public will be more easily convinced of the reality of any condition if it has an acronym, especially if it has the word “disorder” in it.

PTSD. SARS. ADHT. TMJ. MPS.

2011-06-222022-05-01

Generals Who Never Admit Defeat Even When it Stares Them in the Face

General Petraeus thinks that Obama is leaving Afghanistan too soon.

After 10 years of rather conspicuous failure, Petraeus and the other generals and a few faithfully militant Republicans like John McCain claim that we are on the verge of success– just give me one more chance, honey. I know I’ve let you down over and over again, but this time I think it’s going to work.

Philosopher Karl Popper argued that a scientific theory (or any theory) could not be said to be true unless it was theoretically possible, in a rational sense, to prove that it was false. In other words, to “falsify” it. I wish there was a succinct, well-known term for this position. Maybe there is and I just don’t know it. But once you understand it, it makes perfect sense.

For example, someone tells you that he is underpaid. He deserves more money for the work he does. That’s his theory, his hypothesis. But is it possible that everyone deserves more money for the work they do? I think a rational person would think not. Next question: is there a single person in the world who does not feel he deserves more money for the work he does? No. So you can’t falsify the hypothesis here– you can’t reasonably believe that any person feels that he should not get paid more. So you respond, “don’t we all”. He hasn’t made his case.

So when the generals argue that the Afghanistan effort is on the verge of success, we could believe they might be right if you could make a sensible case for the idea that they might, if the evidence was convincing, believe that they were ever not on the verge of success. But it is clear that, short of a total annihilation, these generals will never admit that they lost this war. We know this because the generals have lied from the very beginning about how well they were doing, and the prospects of a conclusive victory. Now, some generals even argue that they shouldn’t even look for a conclusive victory: let’s just stay there forever.

That, of course, is not what they promised the American tax-payer when they initiated this war.

In certain criminal cases, fiber evidence is sometimes presented by an “expert” to prove the guilt of an individual. The question I always ask is, knowing what we now know about fiber experts, is it possible that this expert could have failed to find at least one match for any fiber in any suspect’s apartment?

Apparently not. Has one of these experts ever testified in court that they could not match any fibers from the body with any fibers found in the suspect’s apartment? I’ve never heard of it.

So if I had been a congressman back in, oh, 2005, and had been part of one of those hearings at which the generals explain what they are doing and why and how it will lead to success, I would have asked the generals to lay out for me a definition of “failure”, just so we would know what it looks like if it was ever staring us in the face. I would have written it down carefully, made it into a framed poster, and hung it on the wall in the hearing room, so that five, six, seven, ten years later, when the same general was arguing that the U.S. should continue to spend over $1 billion a week on this war, I could point to the poster and say, no, we failed, let’s admit it and move on.

Without a doubt– without the slightest doubt– people like John McCain would have objected. He would say, we didn’t define failure in the right way. I have a new definition. And it’s not what we have now. And we would know that the truth is that every last U.S. soldier could be killed and every last armament destroyed and he would still insist they could win if they would just do the same except more of it.

At least it would be more transparent what people like John McCain want to do, how they see the world, how they understand the purpose of government.

2011-06-082022-05-01

Wienergate

Unemployment. The War in Afghanistan. The war in Iraq. Global warming. Thousands killed in Syria. The government collapsing in Yemen. Spain and Portugal going broke. Japan. Cancer. AIDS.

The Anthony Wiener story is intended to amuse the illiterate, the sheep, and the frigid-hysterics while the government and big corporations continue to ensure the gradual impoverishment of the middle and lower classes and continuation of disastrous foreign policies over there.

I am hugely disappointed in Jon Stewart. The story was funny for five minutes, not 105. And it wasn’t funny because a foolish young politician made stupid decisions. The very, very funny part of the story is Wolf Blitzer with a straight face pretending to be a journalist. At least he got that right.

I was baffled, at first, by the amount of time Stewart was giving this story. Wasn’t he doing exactly what he frequently ridicules other media organizations of doing? Tunnel vision. Flogging a trivial, inane issue to death?

Mystery solved: Stewart is very touchy about some critics who claimed he low-balled the issue on the first day because of his personal friendship with Anthony Wiener– not, they believed, because he was rational. Those critics successfully manipulated Jon Stewart and made him look like a fool as, on the very next Daily Show, he desperately tried to muster the hysterics to prove that he really, really can’t be tricked out like some CNN tart. He made the story the centerpiece of three consecutive Daily shows, long after it stopped being funny.

But then, that’s about all you get on the news these days, including the CBC up here in Canada. When it’s not falling over itself to drool over the royal wedding.

At the end of the June 8th “Daily Show”, Stewart played a clip of a reporter listing five or six important stories she had intended to cover and then announcing that she would not be covering those stories because there were new developments in the Anthony Weiner story.

My wife and I could never could figure out if the reporter was being sarcastic or serious. It is so had to tell nowadays. But it was utterly shameless of Stewart to play it because he was doing the same thing or worse.

If you were to be honest with yourself for a moment… if you woke up one day and heard that Anthony Wiener, who is married, had flirted with several other women online, would you really believe that this was an important story that needed to be on the front page of every newspaper and online news website in the country?

But you believe it now, don’t you? Because it was on the front page of every newspaper, top of the news on every broadcast, all over the web. You believe that no story would be given such prominence by so many different news organizations and media entities if it wasn’t really and truly important.

Or do you think for yourself?

No matter how many news organizations cover it, nor how many gallons of ink are spilled on it, or how many photographs or videos or web pages, or self-serious pundits using euphemisms, no matter, no matter, no matter, the Anthony Weiner scandal is trivial and irrelevant and unimportant.

The real story now is just how bad is the entertainment-news industry in the U.S.? And the next real story is, is this really what Americans want– because they do tune in– or is something they are having shoved down their throats? The Anthony Wiener story might well begin to seem important to some people because coverage of it is ubiquitous.

This story will die soon enough. Unlike Sarah Palin’s enduring idiotic appeal to every numbskulled dissident survivalist in the U.S.– something that appears to be trivial but isn’t (we’re talking about the intellectual ability of a potential candidate for the highest office in the land)– this never was a real story, there never was a real impact, and not even Fox News can make a whole turd out this fart.

No crime was involved. No political issues were involved. It’s none of anybody’s damn business.

2011-05-112022-05-01

Paul Martin and Jean Chretien

From 1998 to 2003, the Canadian government received proposals from Canadian banks to merge, with each other, and with entities in the insurance industry, in order to compete with the big American financial institutions that were madly rushing into hedge funds and derivatives.

The liberal government of Jean Chretien and Paul Martin thought the idea was unwise and refused the request. They also initiated a review of banking policy that ended up favoring consumer protections over the new profit centers for the bank.

They also looked at the Canada Pension Plan. Like the U.S. Social Security system, economic and social factors had conspired to raise questions about it’s long term viability. What did the Americans do? After bickering and arguing for 20 years: nothing. What did Paul Martin do? Analyzed it, consulted with the provinces, and then fixed it. Done.

Canadian banks did not require a single dollar of government bail-outs during the world-wide financial crisis of 2008-2009. Not one dollar. Canada emerged from the global economic crisis with one of the healthiest economies in the G-8.

In 2002, Stephen Harper criticized the Liberal government for standing in the way of progress by blocking “innovations” in the banking sector. Now he struts around crowing about his management of the financial crisis.

Born on third base; thinks he hit a triple. Mr. Chretien and Mr. Martin left you a surplus, Mr. Harper. Where is it now?

The details of the Liberal approach to bank mergers.

More on the pressure resisted by Martin.

Calgary Herald thanks Jean Chretien.

And nice tribute from Newsweek.

From a Liberal website:

In 2002, Stephen Harper lambasted the then-Liberal government for “the failure to adapt bank regulation to the needs and challenges of a financial sector that is less and less national, and more and more global.”

Yes, it’s from a partisan source.

2011-04-222022-04-30

Zapruder Notes: Oswald, Kennedy, Connally

This is a rambling, improvisational discussion of some elements of the Kennedy Assassination. Look, it’s been a rambling, improvisational assassination. A good conspiracy theorist is allowed to wander.

A friend of mine is convinced that he Zapruder film shows that Kennedy and Connally were hit by the same shot. A version of the Zapruder film we looked at about five years ago seemed, to me, to be ambiguous on the issue.

There are now clearer reproductions of the frames of the Zapruder film available.

Firstly, it seems reasonable to me that there was a first shot that missed the limousine entirely, and many if not most of the eye-witnesses remember it. In fact, Kennedy himself, and Connally, appear to be startled by the sound and seem to be looking in the direction it came from just before the first hit.

Kennedy was hit while blocked from Zapruder’s view by the Stemmons Freeway sign. He emerges from the sign beginning to clutch his throat with his hands, in obvious pain. Connally does not emerge from behind the sign puffing his cheeks out and clenching his fist. He has not yet been hit. And if he has not been hit, there is a second gunman, because Oswald could not have fired again by frame 234.

Here are links to the critical frames:

Frame 160: First shot fired, a miss; reactions of people in limo and out. Poignantly, a young girl (Rosemary Willis, aged 10) running alongside the limousine stops and looks in the direction of the crowd on the opposite side of the road. She is on record: she remembers that she stopped running because she heard the first shot.

Frame 230: Kennedy is definitely reacting to the throat wound. I don’t think anybody seriously disputes this. Connally may or may not have been hit by now but if he was hit by the same bullet as Kennedy it is very odd that he is not reacting at all.

If you watch the Zapruder film in motion, you can see Connally’s sudden, involuntary, abrupt movement a few frames later which could only have come in response to a shot. If you watch the film in motion, the two reactions seem almost simultaneous– but that is partly because Kennedy has been hidden behind the sign. His reaction obviously started earlier than Z230. If you examine it frame by frame– which, logically, is the way you should look at it to understand what really happened– the two reactions are not simultaneous.

Dale Myers, among others with an axe to grind, insists that Connally was hit by the same bullet, and that his reaction at 234 proves it. But Kennedy has already been reacting for at least four frames, probably more. Four frames– 1/4 of a second– may not seem like much, but it is much, much longer than it takes for a bullet to travel through two bodies. For all practical purposes, Connally’s and Kennedy’s reactions should have been at exactly the same instant. Myers has to argue that Connally’s reaction was delayed, even though this bullet struck his ribs and shattered his wrist bone because Oswald could not have fired two shots between the time that Kennedy disappears behind the sign and the time he emerges clutching his throat.

And no matter how you cut it, you can’t really argue that Connally’s reaction was delayed if he was reacting to the same physical event as Kennedy. The bullet took out a piece of his rib and shattered his wrist. Connally’s jacket puffs forward after Kennedy is already clutching at his throat. Well, yes you can argue it…. In this age of instant, omnipresent video, we have seen lots of strange things. We see the driver of the limousine applying the brakes after hearing a shot. That’s about as crazy as you can get.

There are literally hundreds of books on the issue but in my mind there is no way around “conspiracy” if Connally was not hit by the same shot as the one that caused Kennedy’s throat or back wound (or both).

Frame 224: Connally’s jacket flips in front of his shirt. This is probably the point at which Connally was actually hit. Since Kennedy is already reacting to a shot, it simply is not possible that it was the same bullet.

Frame 236: Connally is clearly in pain, and his shoulder has dropped. If you jog between the two frames repeatedly, it seems pretty clear to me that Connally is trying to see what is happening in all the frames from emergence behind the sign to 230. Somewhere before 234, he has been hit.

Dale Myers, among others, argues that 224 and 225 show Connally being hit. This page contains links that defend that point. Well, no they don’t. They slip and slide around the issue, but the truth is Kennedy had to have been hit earlier. He is already reacting with his hands to his wound while Connally has not even grimaced yet. This is consistent with John Connally’s own memory of the event.

It’s not a slam dunk and people should learn to live with the uncertainty. You can make a case for 225, but the same arguments– sudden movement, body twisting, grimace– apply equally well to 234, suggesting a third possibility: that Connally was indeed hit by the shot that made Kennedy’s throat wound, but then was hit by a second shot at 234. Since Kennedy was hit shortly afterwards again, there would have had to have been two shooters.

However, because Kennedy is already reacting to the shot as he emerges from behind the Stemmons Freeway sign, it is possible that Connally was hit immediately after Kennedy. The famous jacket flap– the movement of his dark jacket over his white shirt– argues for it.* Those who are opposed to a conspiracy theory have to argue that it was the same bullet because it is impossible for Oswald to have fired two shots in such a short period of time (perhaps 1/2 second). But it is equally impossible that the bullet hung in the air for 1/4 second before continuing on to hit Connally. This was one of the first points seized upon by conspiracy theorists and it remains one of the most persistent.

Politics colours everyone’s perceptions of what the facts mean in the Kennedy assassination. Conservatives know that if there was a conspiracy, it was their conspiracy. The conspiracy was the expression of powerful and corrupt institutional forces determined to assert their control over government in the face of the self-confident, independent, sophisticated. liberal Kennedys.

John Connally’s own testimony is that he heard the first shot, and he thought it hit Kennedy. He didn’t hear the second shot which hit him. That leaves it possible– if, admittedly, less likely, that two shots were fired so close together that many witnesses thought they only heard one. As everyone knows, there would have been an echo. And some witnesses reported a “flurry” of shots, though most seem to have heard one shot distinctly, and then a “flurry”. In some ways, the reactions of Kennedy and Connally and Connally’s extensive wounds would be better explained by a “flurry” of shots– but the Warren Commission, of course, desperate to economize on assassins, made it all the work of a single bullet.

*Finally, another website points out — eureka! — that the bullet did not even go through the jacket lapel in the first place! So what the hell is that black thing flapping up in front of John Connally’s shirt? You got me. Or maybe it’s a kind of fluke combination of his shoulder going down in pain, the jacket pushed out where the bullet came through, the momentum of the car….. who knows.

The very last thing I will point out is that it is possible that one shot hit both Kennedy and Connally at the same instance and for reasons undiscovered they reacted at different speeds. After all, Kennedy was President. His reaction time should have been faster. (I’m kidding.) Connally was turning. Kennedy was waving. Who knows? It’s not the craziest idea in the world.

In either case, I must point out two obvious facts: firstly, the timing of the the shots does not, in any case, prove that Oswald fired them, or that he was alone. Secondly, Dale Myers, who glibly asserts that his “analysis” proves the shots could only have come from the 6th floor window “sniper’s nest” is a total dink and completely discredits himself on this account. If the conspiracy analysts are ridiculous sometimes with their assumptions about pristine bullets and manholes and post-assassination alterations to the body, his claim that his data about the angle of the shot is so accurate and precise that he can positively identify the exact window– as if he didn’t know already which one it was– that it came from… it’s beyond ridiculous. Talk about junk science. Why or why could he not have simply made his point without leaping to a conclusion which can only be political.

The only way to give credibility to a conclusion like that would be if you could take the raw information about the assassination, the physical properties of the car and the road and the buildings, give this information to a scientist who had never even heard of the Kennedy assassination, and ask him to please try to determine where the shots came from. I’ll bet he would not come back with “exactly” this or “exactly” that or “exactly” anything.

Although, it would be pretty funny, and not to Dale Myers, if he came back with: behind the car, about 6th floor, in some kind of book depository.

And he still cannot prove that Oswald acted alone (or that he even acted, other than to flee when he realized he had been set up) and he should know that and stick to what he can or cannot prove– not to the grand conclusion he really cares about. Given the incompetence of the investigation– which is all a conspiracy really needs to succeed– we will probably never know the truth. And that’s probably the way the real powers that be like it.

Overlooked in almost all of the discussions about conspiracy is the truly remarkable web of relationships between Oswald and various people associated with the CIA and the government. To argue that these relationships are not, at the very least, extremely suspicious, is ridiculous.

Note: it’s striking that not one of the secret service agents in the follow-up car looked up in response to the sound of the first shot. They looked back and to the right. One of them looked down and to the left. (In fact, Connally, Kennedy, and Jacqueline Kennedy all looked briefly to their left just after the first shot was fired.)

True, that’s where the crowd was. Also true: they did not distinguish a sound coming from above and back of the limousine.

Even more striking? Governor Connally stated that he immediately recognized the sound of a high-powered rifle. Why? Because he had served in the military, as had Kennedy. In fact, watching the film today, it is easy to imagine that Kennedy’s reaction to the sound of the first shot is that of a man who knows what he just heard and is processing it.

The Secret Service agents have only one job: detect threats to the life of the President and take immediate action to protect him. It is very striking that not a single one of them seemed to have a clue that their job was calling them on November 22, 1963. In fact, William Greer, the driver of the limo, famously applied the brakes, as if to make sure that Oswald or whomever was holding the rifle, got a good shot at the President.

Rather odd and ironic and strange that the one thing Will Greer should have been trained for during all his years as a Secret Service agent was how to react to someone shooting at the President… and how does he react? He puts on the brakes. It’s really amazing.

The most annoying thing about theorists on both sides? Their tired insistence that, after 50 years, they have incredibly discovered something new that nobody else knew before and that nobody else had ever thought of and which is of the ultimate significance.

The truth is that almost all of the real, substantive issues about the Kennedy assassination were uncovered within the first few years, and almost none of them have been explained or solved in a satisfactory, conclusive manner.

It is also true that paranoids have real enemies.

Zapruder Film: download.

All frames individually archived.

Autism and Witchcraft

In his presentation, Wakefield sounded impatient but righteous. He used enough scientific terms — “ataxic,” “histopathological review” and “vaccine excipients” — that those parents who did not feel cowed might have been flattered by his assumption of their scientific fluency. He also tried to defend himself against a few of the charges laid out in The British Medical Journal — offering defenses that did not hold up before the journal’s panel of editors but were perhaps enough to assure an audience of his fans that he did, in fact, have defenses. Some part of Wakefield’s cult status is surely because of his personal charisma, and he spoke with great rhetorical flair. He took off his glasses and put them back on like a gifted actor maximizing a prop. “What happens to me doesn’t matter,” he said at one point. “What happens to these children does matter.”

Andrew Wakefield has had a wildly pervasive influence for a man without the slightest claim to scientific credibility. But he’s a good case study. Scientific truth sometimes seems drastically disadvantaged in our age of the anecdote, the interview on tv, the tears on Oprah. It must be true if you cried.

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Rudy

I watched and admired a movie called “Rudy” several years ago. It’s the “true” story about a devoted Notre Dame football fan named Rudy Ruettiger, who saved up his money and enrolled in Notre Dame so he could try out for the football team. He tried out and practiced hard and trained with determination and sucked up to the entire football department for four years and got to be a second-stringer, without once getting a chance to play. Finally, in his last year, his teammates all threw their sweaters onto the coach’s desk and declared that they would not play if Rudy was not put onto the field. So he was allowed on the field– for one play– in the last minute of a game that was already decided.

I thought the film was intentionally funny. I thought it did a reasonably good job of showing how Rudy wasted four years of his life under a delusion. I thought most people watching the film would realize that if Rudy had devoted half the energy he gave to the Notre Dame football team to almost any other pursuit, he would have had something important and meaningful or even beautiful to show for it.

I thought it revealed that our so-called heroes– athletes, especially– inevitably use people like Rudy because that’s the way the system works.

Years later, I realized that I had it all wrong: it was meant seriously– Rudy was to be admired for wasting most of his college life waiting for a chance to play while he had none of the skills or attributes required to be a good player. He was a hero. He never quit. The lesson we were supposed to take away from this film was: never give up on your dreams.

Even if your dream is to flap your arms and fly, or marry Angelina Jolie, or be nominated to the Supreme Court.

Well, the one thing that didn’t occur to me was that most of the movie was pure hokum. It didn’t occur to me because I assumed that a film made of an unremarkable man who led really an unremarkable life would at least adhere to a few unremarkable facts.

The main “facts” are that Rudy tried out for the team, never got to play until the very last moment, and in that very short moment, had some peripheral involvement in a quarterback sack. The crowd did not know Rudy’s story and did not cheer wildly because he had just realized his dream (as if). They did not chant his name. The play-by-play announcer did not note his presence. The opposing quarter-back did not mutter, “who was that man!” under his breath (all right — I made that up — it wasn’t in the movie). He didn’t have a brother. The coach did not oppose him going into the game– in fact, he insisted on it. His team-mates never dropped their sweaters on the coach’s desk as a protest gesture against Rudy being denied a chance on the field.

Without those delusional Rudy’s out there– the losers in this scheme of things– how could we have winners?

So, aside from the facts, yes, it’s a true story. Does it still inspire you? I have an investment opportunity, if it does…

A real comment by a real fan of the film on IMDB:

If this movie doesn’t get you motivated, then something is wrong with you. This movie proves that good things happen to people who work hard and don’t except[sic] the circumstances they are dealt. I’ve seen this movie more than 30 times in my life, and i still cant get through the end of this movie without getting tears in my eyes. Another thing this movie teaches you is to listen to the people in your life who believe in you and want you to succeed, don’t listen to the people who want you to fail and constantly remind you that you are going to fail. “The best revenge is success.” One of my favorite quotes comes from this movie as well, when the coach dan devine tells rudy and the rest of the team that “Nobody, and i mean nobody, comes into our house and pushes us around.”

And thus the viewer becomes complicit in the hoax.

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The Perfect Car

To me, you are just perfect.

My dream car. At least, when I was 14, this is the car I dreamed of. I saw a dark, maroon version of it in a movie once– I forget which one. Probably some kind of spy film. I remember that it was occupied by a very large, bald man and he was coming to kill the hero. He wasn’t the real bad guy– just a henchman. That’s the car I dreamed of owning some day.

I saw this in an ad a few years ago. I suddenly realized that, if I had really wanted to, I could have bought it right then and there. It was about $14K.

Anywhere, here, for my own personal contemplation, the actual car. Fourteen thousand dollars. I could have bought it, but I’m old and more sense than that.

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1960’s Princesses

Among all the princesses and all the mermaids and all the goddesses of late 60’s popular culture, she may well have been the most entrancing: Michelle Phillips, fine-featured, blonde, green eyes.

She married John Phillips at 18. Aesthetic member of the Mamas and the Papas. Inspiration for “California Dreaming”. Sang backup for Leonard Cohen on one of his tours, 1970. Married, briefly, to Dennis Hopper, one of the few genuine psychos of all the Hollywood psychos.

And married again and again: five times.

“Go Where You Want to Go” is a slight song, typical of the John Phillips’ Mamas and Papas: melodic, cleverly-arranged, and ephemeral. And pretty and alluring like Michelle’s face– you wonder and hope there’s something rich and satisfying beneath that pouty face.

The haunting parts of the song are the voices of the girls, Michelle and Cass:

You’ve been gone a week, And I tried so hard
Not to be the crying kind
Not to be the girl you left behind

Actually, the really haunting part is the “with whomever”:

You gotta go where you want to go
Do what you want to do
With whomever you want to do it with…

Listen carefully– I hear something authentic in the yearning voices on that line.

Cass was in love with Denny Doherty but he did not reciprocate, and Denny and Michelle had an affair a year or so after this song was recorded and she was kicked out of the band in June 1966 for a few months (that’s how you fire your wife. Note that Denny was not kicked out of the band.)

Is that what we also hear in Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours”, the insinuations of real desire, real longing into the voices? She returned to the group at the end of August in the same year and dubbed over her replacement’s vocals. To this day, no one is quite sure which vocals on “The Mamas and the Papas” are hers and which are Jill Gibson’s.

Barry McGuire called Cass Elliot a “stallion”. She must have rued the cruelty of fate putting such a monumental voice and hunger into a package that was not Michelle Phillips– oh, life is unfair!

Or just real sadness, as you, as Neil Young put it, “try to make arrangements with yourself”. That’s a pretty good description of 20-somethings trying to manage their lives– the components of happiness are often there, circulating, waiting, not-waiting, hesitating. Sometimes holding out to see if something better might come along. The movie “St. Elmo’s Fire”, frustratingly, took the raw material of poignancy and ambivalence and turned it into melodrama and sentimentality and mush and I almost feel haunted by the potential for something interesting in the elements they placed before us and failed to deliver on. “Once”, on a smaller scale, delivers more, because there are no fireworks but real unresolved urges, missed opportunities, and uncertainties.

Hollywood loves to blueprint relationships for us. In real life, as in “Once”, it may not be clear to us where a relationship might or should end.

Michelle is the last surviving member of the band. Cass Elliot– she of the voice as beautiful in sound as Michelle’s face in light– died of a heart attack in London at age 33 after three “stand-out” performances at the Palladium in July 1974. John Phillips burned himself out, deep into drugs and alcohol and waste, and died of heart failure in 2001. Denny Doherty died in Toronto of an illness January 19, 2007.

The TV record, now strung out on Youtube, is cruel: most of their performances seem to be lip-synched. Their opportunity to shine at Monterrey with their signature song, “California Dreamin'”, was fatally marred by a lack of preparation and massive drug abuse: it’s one of the most disappointing live performances of an important song by a successful pop group ever. You can’t hide the embarrassment. Most of the video archives simply dub the studio recording over it.

But it wasn’t their most preposterous live performance ever– that came on “Hullabaloo”, with go-go girls popping out of bathtubs, and the band visibly ridiculing the dance moves.

John woke Michelle up in the middle of the night in New York City in 1963, I think it was, because he had a great idea for a song and needed her help to finish it. She has admitted that she basically just wrote down the words for him, and chords, and maybe helped with a few phrases, for which she, nevertheless, still receives a healthy income: the song was “California Dreamin'” of course. The first two lines– and the hook– “California dreamin'” made the song what it is:

All the leaves are brown, and the sky is grey
I’ve been for a walk on winter’s day

The distilled moment of 20-something ennui and disconsolate self-absorption. Think of those lines when you’re young and maybe in love and maybe not and maybe you could do better and maybe not and the evening didn’t go all that well and you’re not sure if maybe you shouldn’t move on and try some other future and all the leaves are brown and the sky is grey… and the wind is blowing your hair and the leaves and you feel such delicious desolation that it’s almost tragic, and it’s definitely deep, and you feel alive.

In the early 1960’s– nobody seems to have a definite date– The Mamas and the Papas went to the Bahamas to work on their music and ran out of money. Desperate, they went to a casino and Michelle threw 17 straight winners at craps to get them enough money to fly back to New York.

It is remarkable that they resisted the temptation to continue betting.

The essential dynamic of gambling is this: when you are losing, you will keep trying to win back what you lost, believing that your luck is likely to change for the better. When you are winning, you will feel lucky, and human nature will drive you to want to win more and more and more.

The inviolable statistical fact about gambling is that the longer you gamble while winning, the more inevitable it is that you will eventually lose everything you won, and more.

That’s why it is so astonishing that John Phillips decided to quit while they were ahead and use their winnings to fly back to New York.

Want to get rich? Own a casino.

In 1967, Cass Elliot had a child– out of wedlock — , a daughter. She refused to identify the father.

Me.