Category: Arts and Culture

Believe in this. Young apple seeds,
In blue skies, radiating young breast,
Not in blue-suited insects,
Infesting society’s garments.

Believe in the swinging sounds of jazz,
Tearing the night into intricate shreds,
Putting it back together again,
In cool logical patterns,
Not in the sick controllers,
Who created only the Bomb.

Let the voices of dead poets
Ring louder in your ears
Than the screechings mouthed
In mildewed editorials.
Listen to the music of centuries,
Rising above the mushroom time.

~Bob Kaufman

With yesterday’s passing of Fidel Castro, I have to share my personal (and surreal) Castro story. In 1994, I spent 10 days in Cuba on a journalistic visa with my then-girlfriend, attending an International Film Festival. Unforgettable trip, and great films. On the last day, Fidel threw a party in his palace to entertain the international visitors (PR move?). I remember the palace being spacious and well-appointed, but not gaudy — green slate tiles on both the floor and the walls, brass sconces. Palace bartenders kept the mojitos flowing, and Castro himself was mingling with the guests. We joined a circle of people listening to him passionately answer questions about how hemp farming could benefit Cuban workers and the economy.

Then, suddenly, my friend leaned in and pointed coyly toward a wiry-haired old man with big bushy eyebrows standing near Castro and said “Do you recognize him? It’s Grandpa Munster!” Sure enough, it was Al Lewis himself, (much older than he had been on the TV show of course). And then the weirdness of the moment dawned on me: I’m standing in Castro’s palace, drinking mojitos with Grandpa Munster and Fidel Castro, talking about marijuana legalization at a time when our own country wouldn’t even contemplate it. Unforgettable.

Orlando is kind of a perfect storm of American hot-buttons. Terrorism, homophobia, racism, politics, mental health, and guns all in one monumental tragedy. The gay issue is complicated by the fact that there are so many homophobes on the right who are secretly (or not so secretly) happy to see gay people slaughtered. The Islam issue is complicated by the fact that the shooter is an American. The mental health issue is complicated because so many people “on the verge” aren’t identified even by those closest to them. The gun issue is complicated because it always is. There is an element of exhaustion – we’ve all been down the Mass Shooting road too many times, and all of our arguments are all worn out. We each rant and plead in our own ways, but nothing ever changes. And this time, we’re having ten different arguments at once. But we can’t stop talking, because the alternative is apathy.

Meanwhile, we’re not even focused on the bigger part of this tragedy. 50 people all in one place is horrific, yes, but people are overlooking the larger fact that, on average, we lose 91 people per day to gun violence. That’s almost two Orlandos every freaking day.

One of the reasons we end up focusing so hard on guns is that it’s something concrete we can address with the force of law. We can’t “fix” mental health by throwing money at it. We can’t “fix” religious extremism by closing our borders, because it grows in our own soil and is fed by the internet. But we can, at least potentially, “fix” the gun situation by recognizing that the Constitution is a fluid document that was designed to adapt to the times. We can stop thinking of gun ownership as an “inalienable” right and treat it as a privilege instead – one that has to be earned or bestowed (to hunters and law enforcement), not one granted willy nilly to every bozo who wants a human-killing machine for “reasons.”

The current interpretation of the 2nd Amendment is not one the Founders would ever have imagined or wanted. Better background checks, banning assault rifles… all well and good, but I think that’s splitting hairs, and won’t have much impact in the long run. I’ve been ranting for the past year about how it’s time to repeal or rewrite the 2nd Amendment. The sentiment is finally gaining traction. Thank you, Rolling Stone, for this excellent piece by Constitutional scholar David S. Cohen: Why It’s Time to Repeal the Second Amendment

Just think of what would have happened in the Orlando night-club Saturday night if there had been many others armed. In a crowded, dark, loud dance club, after the shooter began firing, imagine if others took out their guns and started firing back. Yes, maybe they would have killed the shooter, but how would anyone else have known what exactly was going on? How would it not have devolved into mass confusion and fear followed by a large-scale shootout without anyone knowing who was the good guy with a gun, who was the bad guy with a gun, and who was just caught in the middle? The death toll could have been much higher if more people were armed.

Please read: Why It’s Time to Repeal the Second Amendment

Our tenth annual father-son excursion to the world’s largest convention of inventors, sculptors and weirdos. Different every year – both as the fair changes and as we change. Spent more time this year having conversations with makers, which makes it so much richer. Unfortunately, the trend of making the fair safer every year also makes it a bit less exciting every time. Still, this trip is always one of the highlights of our year, and has become an important bonding time. Here’s to the next 10!

Flickr set

Many people confuse the terms “homeopathic” and “naturopathic,” or think that all natural medicines are homeopathic. Not true! Homeopathic medicines are, by definition, diluted past the point of chemical detectability. In a typical homeopathic pill, not a single molecule of the original substance is present. They don’t work because it is not even conceptually possible that they could work (beyond their placebo effect of course). This is why you can swallow a whole bottle of homeopathic sleeping pills without dying from an overdose – you’ve swallowed nothing but lactose.

On the other hand, many natural medicines are perfectly effective in their recommended doses, and often preferable to their laboratory counterparts.

So if you want to take natural medicines but don’t want to waste your money supporting the scumbag snake-oil hucksters who sell homeopathics, how do you tell the difference? The issue gets especially cloudy when you have a single manufacturer selling both variants. Case in point: One of the world’s biggest homeopathic/naturopathic vendors, Boiron, sells Arnica as both a cream and as a homeopathic pill. But there’s a huge difference: The topical cream contains 7% actual Arnica, whereas the pill is a true homeopathic, therefore containing 0% Arnica. Consumers who don’t want to waste their money must read the label to know they’re getting a product that might actually help them.

How to tell the difference? It’s simple once you know the “code”.

Homeopathic “potency” is described with a “C” or an “X” – the more diluted the ingredient, the more potency it’s considered to have (which is of course absurd). For point of comparison, “one third of a drop of some original substance diluted into all the water on earth would produce a remedy with a concentration of about 13C.” Boiron’s Arnica pellets are sold at a dilution of 30C.

So:

1) Sugar pills (i.e. “diluted” homeopathics) will list their “potency” (which is really ​the opposite of their potency) as C or X, whereas actual natural medicine will list the active ingredient as a PERCENTAGE (i.e. 7% actual arnica root).

2) If there is an active ingredient, as with the cream, there will be an “Active Ingredients” section on the back label, listing those active ingredients and their percentages. But with sugar pills, you’ll often see only an “Inactive Ingredients” section (mentioning lactose, etc.) but NO “Active Ingredients” section (because there aren’t any and they can’t legally claim that there are any). So a missing “active ingredients” section on the label can be interpreted as code for “sugar pills.” In some cases, homeopathic pills will have an Active Ingredients section, but with a footnote pointing out in small print that **C, K, CK, and X are homeopathic dilutions.