The View From the Outback© 2000 Richard C. Rhodes
A great deal of what we read in newspapers, magazines, and books, and what we see in the movies and on TV is written and produced in New York City or Los Angeles. Much of the "political wisdom" comes from the PR machines of the White House, the Congress, and from the Washington media corps. In short, one might conclude that all knowledge, wisdom, and wit are confined to those who inhabit New York City, Washington DC, or Hollywood. I am now a senior citizen, in my 7th decade. My experience was gained in many cities in the U.S. and in about 30 foreign countries. That experience has included the U.S. Marines, law school, the ATF, the CIA, Fortune 500 executive, writer, public speaker, educator, editor, and publisher - for openers. Some insights come from talking with ham-radio operators in every major country and such idyllic places as the Cook Islands. For over 20 years, I have written articles off and on for various magazines and newspapers. I've had an enormous number of letters published in major national publications. The Outback is the rural area in Northeast Texas where I have lived for the past 15 years. Every other Saturday I will attempt to post a new set of musings from the Outback - with dated updates as appropriate. Click on a Topic to go directly to that topic. In an earlier Outback, I suggested that one test for dumping your doctor is if he or she tells you not to eat eggs. The evidence is overwhelming that the cholesterol in eggs is not harmful, and that is does not raise your cholesterol level. Our body needs cholesterol to function. In fact, eggs are a nearly-perfect food. Now, another small-scale study of 49 healthy adults published in the March 10th issue of the International Journal of Cardiology notes that eating two eggs a day for six weeks did not increase cholesterol levels. This simply adds to the multitude of other studies in which doctors seem surprised that eggs are not bad for you. Most doctors still cling to the argument that saturated fat and high cholesterol are the culprits in heart disease. Some are hedging their bets by saying that the real villain is trans-fatty acids. Some are hedging even further, saying that the problem is "inflamation" in our arteries. One prominent researcher whose work I read said that in 10 years if a doctor suggests that saturated fat and/or cholesterol cause heart disease, other doctors will look at him as if he is crazy. I think that this sea-change in thinking will happen in less than 10 years. There will be a lot of kicking and screaming, and the statin drug makers will do everything they can to prevent this from happening. But, pieces of the perimeter of the saturated-fat/cholesterol argument are chipped away nearly every month. In time, the whole core idea will collapse. And are you going to be mad that you gave up Cheescake and Pecan Pie 20 years ago. This just in! "We are in the process of losing all our natural resources." This pronouncement from Cameron Diaz on the "Tonight" show with Jay Leno. The Earth is about 4.5 billion years old. First life forms came about 3.5 billion years ago. Around 600 million years ago, there was an explosion of life forms. So, it would appear that we have been in the process of "losing all our natural resources" from as far back as at least 600 million years. But, Ms. Diaz had me worried, so I checked by looking out my window here in the Outback. There was grass, more trees than were here 15 years ago, fresh-water ponds stocked with fish, goats, cattle, horses, a Llama, four dogs, three cats, several varieties of birds - one family with a nest in my Rose trestle - and crops of various descriptions. At dusk, deer race across the edge of the woods, and at night packs of Coyotes howl through the blackness. The pungent smell of Skunk often permeates the night air. My yard is overrun with Crawfish, nurtured by all this stupid rain that makes everything grow so fast. Not long ago, thousands of Geese landed on the various ponds on the neighboring ranch. What really appears to be happening is that "the brains of most of our celebrities seem to be seeping out of small holes in their skulls." If this seepage is not halted, we will deprived of their valuable insights into how to run the government and how to save the planet from its second-class beings - homo sapiens. Those who are on a dialup Internet connections have long deplored the explosion of graphics on Web sites. They take forever to load when there are several on a news page, for instance. We all know what President Bush, Condi Rice, and most other important people look like. My Web Accelerator - Slipstream - speeds up surfing (by 6-9 times at my house) in part by allowing graphics to be compressed to where they look like paintings done by Chimps. Of all the many, many news sites I visit, one stands out with regard to graphics. The Wall Street Journal has no graphics, other than the line (dot) drawings of people they are famous for and a graph here and there. They get away with this because they actually have original content of substance, for which we pay. Many, if not most other news sites, rely largely on wire service reports and quotes from WSJ, Washington Post, NY Times, etc. So, they load up the page with photos, mostly of people and scenes that we are already familiar with. What a waste of bandwidth. Although browsers will allow you to prevent the download of "images," there are often charts and other material that you want to see and possibly save. You cannot make a silk purse out of a Sow's ear by splashing color graphics on every page. The New York Times has few graphics to detract from their content. The Washington Post uses some graphics, none of which contribute anything to my understanding of the news. MSNBC.MSN.COM is the most bloated page I have ever seen and the slowest to load, so I no longer have it on my Bookmark list. China has passed a law that if Taiwan tries to become independent, mainland China is authorizing force to put down the effort. China has about 700 short-range ballistic missiles targeted at Taiwan. China also has many modern submarines and advanced jetfighters. The press talks about how we go to war to protect our oil supply. But, if S. Korea is attacked by N. Korea and Taiwan is attacked by Communist China, our economy will be staggered. Do you have any idea of how many electronic items we import from S. Korea and Taiwan? Just two examples, LCD screens from Korea and computer motherboards from Taiwan. A large disruption in these, and other electronics, could bring our economy to its knees over time. So, if China attacks Taiwan, we have little choice but to intervene, partly because President George W. Bush has stated that the U.S. would help defend Taiwan if the Chinese attack, and partly because our economy cannot afford to be cut off from the supply of electronics from Taiwan. I just bought an ACER laptop made in Taiwan, so I am even more sensitive to the Taiwan "problem" with China. The same for S. Korea. We cannot afford to allow the N. Koreans to invade, or shell, or drop an A bomb on S. Korea. Who would benefit from S. Korea and Taiwan losing most or all of their electronics capability? China. And China is rising rapidly as a supplier of electronics to the world. If nothing else, the Terri Schiavo case should make millions of Americans consider executing a Living Will and/or a Durable Power of Attorney in which they describe which kinds of "life extending" health care they want or do not want. To be sure that their intentions are understood, maybe some people should have DNR (do not resuscitate) tattooed on their chest. On April 1, 2005, www.caringinfo.com will have samples of the documents from all the states, as states vary in their legal requirements for these documents. Like most everyone, I am deeply moved by Terri Schiavo's saga. But, once again, the vultures in the media have flocked to the scene. It takes about 15 minutes to clearly identify all the legal issues that pertain here. And another 15 minutes to discuss the moral and religious overtones of the case. Yet, cable news devotes entire hours to this matter - day after day. They are simply acting as ghoulish voyeurs in a private family matter. Terri's husband talks about being by her side until the matter is decided, etc. It is hard for me to take his statements too seriously, since he is living with another woman and has had children by her. Not that I might not do the same thing in similar circumstances. But, you don't often hear that side of the story from the bleeding-heart liberal media. Comparisons of HDTV sets in the mainstream media seem to favor comparing only LCD and Plasma sets. Once in a while, there will be a sentence or a paragraph that mentions the DLP technology, the TI DLP chip being deployed in projection and rear-projection HDTV sets. To those of us who own DLP HDTV sets, this lack of notice in the media is astonishing. A comparable size DLP set is less expensive than either LCD or Plasma, there is no burn-in on the screen, and other than the projector bulb (8000 hrs + or -), DLP sets do not deteriorate with age. The nit-picking purists argue themselves blue in the face about the picture quality, brightness, rendition of blacks, and so on, of the various technologies. My Samsung HL-P4663W, a 46-inch HDTV, produces amazingly bright and lifelike pictures, even on most satellite TV channels. And satellite TV is in the process of transitioning to MPEG4 compression, which will make satellite HDTV even more realistic. Over-the-air signals, when the station is using the full bandwidth needed for the HDTV signal, are like "being there." One who does not have it can only assume that HDTV on cable is very high quality. If you need a better picture than a DLP HDTV provides, you are really picky. Actors and actresses are already becoming concerned about how HDTV shows up all their skin defects. And you can often see even the most genteel of ladies sweating. If you are shopping for an HDTV set, don't overlook the DLP technology. My Samsung rear-projection set is only 15 inches deep and weighs only 69 pounds. The "Made in China" label is getting ridiculous. Johnson & Johnson is now having Gauze Pads made in China! They are made of Rayon, Polyester, and Cellulose. The packets say "Sterilized in U.S.A." At least J&J did not trust the Chinese to sterilize the gauze bandages, so not all the American jobs were lost in this misadventure in manufacturing. Although the sterilization is probably done in a machine operated by one person, or a computer. And the machine may be Made in China. Who knows? I am on everyone's mailing list for health newsletters and books. Recently, I got a mailer from the Mayo Clinic with an offer for "Mayo Clinic on Alzheimer's Disease." I was intending to order the book, but I forgot where I put the order form. The "Vitamin E will kill you folks" continue to produce study results. Despite the hordes of studies that show Vitamin E to be effective for a variety of conditions, a new study suggests that Vitamin E does not reduce the risk of cancer or major cardiovascular events and in a segment of the population it increases the risk for heart failure. The HOPE and HOPE-TOO trials were conducted on patients at least 55-years-old who had either a vascular disease or diabetes. The subjects were given either 400IU of Vitamin E or a placebo. Without all the mumbo-jumbo, the study concluded that long-term Vitamin E supplementation (400IU or more) increases the risk for heart failure. Remember that the group studied were age 55 or older, had a history of coronary heart or peripheral arterial disease, prior stroke, or had diabetes. The note in my files is "Vitamin E not good for old geezers with heart trouble or diabetes." Here is something for the "How dumb can you be?" category. For months, I had what appeared to be a blood-filled blister on my forearm. Twice I pierced it with a sterile needle and drained the swamp. But, the ugly thing persisted. On a visit to a dermatologist, he immediately diagnosed the "blood blister" as a Cancer, a Basal Cell Carcinoma. I was embarrassed beyond words, and I confessed that I had even thought about taking an Xacto knife to the thing. The doctor excised the lesion, along with another on my neck. The one on my arm is very slow to heal, but is making steady progress. Moral? Don't ignore strange looking things growing on your face, neck, arms, legs or back. If you are a man, try to get over the "I only go to the doctor if I am nearly dying" thing. In fact, you may be closer to dying than you think. By the way, Basal Cell Carcinoma is the kind that is rarely fatal, and can usually be "cured" by being excised from the skin. We'll see, on my future frequent trips to the dermatologist - even though his office is 60 miles away. In Dallas, there was a late-night fight at a bar. One guy was hit on the head with a beer bottle. Later, friends of the injured man trailed the group that was in the fight. Popping out of the sunroof opening in a Jaguar with a semi-automatic rifle, a man shot and killed three occupants in the other car. In the years that I worked as an unpaid consultant with the Crime Prevention Div. of the Dallas Police Dept., I collected a lot of statistics. A majority of the murders seemed to be related to drug traffic and a very substantial number after 1 a.m. in parking lots at bars. So, if you did not deal with drug sellers, and did not hang around bars or clubs until closing time, and were not a victim of a homicide by a family member or lover, you had a relatively small chance in Dallas of getting murdered. Not much appears to have changed in 30 years. Unless you work the night shift and have no choice, you are asking for trouble to be on the streets in the wee hours of the morning. Drunk drivers, road rage turning to shootings, and other "manifestations of the night" await you. The first report I read in the online version of The Dallas Morning News said that the shooter had "... a high-powered rifle - possibly an AK-47 style automatic weapon...". This newspaper, along with most others, tends to report any crime committed with a so-called assault rifle as being done with possibly a fully-automatic version. They are usually wrong. The weapon used by the killers in the Jaguar in Dallas, noted above, is an SKS semi-automatic rifle (an AK-47 look-alike). It is classed as an assault rifle by many statutes, although true assault rifles are fully-automatic. It is part of the attempt by Congress, various legislatures, and the media to demonize guns, especially ones with box magazines holding many rounds of ammo. Thus, we nearly always get an initial report that the shooter had "possibly an AK-47 automatic weapon." The actual use of fully-automatic assault rifles in crime is actually quite uncommon. As seen by the tragic results, even a semi-automatic high-power rifle is deadly in the wrong hands. But, the reason the "assault weapon ban," was not renewed by Congress is that there was no proof that the ban helped reduce violent crime. In fact, the Dallas shooting with the SKS is not a common thing. And banning the import or sale of guns does not affect criminals. They can buy them off the streets. The Statin PR machine strikes again. In the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Dr. Micael Freeman said that when mice were injected human prostate cancer cells and the mice were fed a high-cholesterol diet, the cancer-induced tumors grew. When administered a statin (simvastatin), the tumors stopped proliferating. The doctor opined that statins, "which are widely used and fairly safe," might be effective in preventing prostate cancer. Cancer cells injected into mice are slowed in growth by statins? That's some-rock solid evidence to go on. Let's all ask our doctors, "are statins right for me?," especially since they are "fairly safe" to take. And it seems to help the mice. Writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA 2004;291:2243-2252), Drs. Judith M.E. Walsh and Michael Pignone commented on the drug treatment for women with high cholesterol and the effect on coronary heart disease (CHD) and total mortality. Under "Conclusions," they wrote: "For women without cardiovascular disease, lipid lowering does not affect total or CHD mortality. Lipid lowering may reduce CHD events, but current evidence is insufficient to determine this conclusively. For women with known cardiovascular disease, treatment of hyperlipidemia is effective in reducing CHD events, CHD mortality, nonfatal myocardial infarction, and revascularization, but it does not affect total mortality." Are you confused with all the medical news? First, Vitamin E is bad for you. Then Vit E cuts prostate cancer risk. Then, Vit E may cause heart failure in older people with heart disease and diabetes. Finally, Statins may help prevent prostate cancer. So, should I take Vit E to prevent prostate cancer? That depends on whether you are old and have heart disease and diabetes. Or take a Statin to ward off prostate cancer, even though it has potentially serious side effects? If you read long enough in the medical news, you can find a study that will support both sides of nearly every issue. First, I would ignore most reports in the popular media, especially the wire services. I have found the Wall Street Journal is usually accurate and thorough in its medical reporting. More and more medical literature is being made available on the Web. Read the actual studies and analyses. Buy books by medical doctors and researchers in your field of interest. Then, talk with every doctor you come in contact with about your questions. A family physician, a cancer specialst, a cardiologist, and a dermatologist, all may have different slant on the same subject. Finally, you may have to make an informed decision on your own about taking a certain medication, vitamin, or herbal supplement. The conventional wisdom is to eat at least three meals a day, with a good breakfast being very important. This is supposed to keep our blood-sugar level on an even keel and our energy level high through most of the day - and to keep from "binging" in the evening. Dr. Michael DeBakey, age 96, the famous cardiovascular surgeon, on most days eats only one meal, dinner, and often just a salad. He drinks only about one cup of coffee per day, does not drink alcohol, and never smoked. He is still active in the medical field and is at work for long hours each day at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. He no longer performs surgeries. For some time, there has been a theory about longevity that suggests that a very low level of food intake will help extend life. Lab rats and mice have demonstrated this phenomenon with repeated studies. Dr. DeBakey, age 96, has inspired me to eat less - and less frequently. So far, I have lost about 10 pounds. It will be interesting to see what happens to my food intake once I reach my target weight. If I keep eating less than I "need" to maintain that weight, will I continue to lose weight? My guess is that I would lose down to where I was in the Marines, which was probably my natural weight - and level off. That is a long way from where I am today. One of my sources of information about the heart and heart disease is: "The New Living Heart," by Michael E. DeBakey, M.D., and Antonio M. Gotto Jr, M.D., which I purchased in trade paperback. Sen. Robert Byrd has been the most vociferous about the Republican threat to vote to change the rules on filibustering judicial nominees in the Senate. It is the pot calling the kettle black. Sen. Byrd used a majority vote to change Senate precedents on filibusters when he was Majority Leader in 1997, 1979, 1980, and 1987. And comparing President Bush to Hitler is pretty amusing from a fellow who used to be active in the Ku Klux Klan. You would think Byrd would be careful about calling people names. Fed up with Sen. Byrd and his comparisons of Bush to Hitler, the Wall Street Journal referred to Byrd as "Herr Byrd" in an editorial. "Guten Tag, Herr Byrd," has a nice ring to it. There is a lot of talk about instituting a national sales tax - in place of our income tax, one would hope. The sales tax would be grossly unfair to poor people, people on modest pensions, the disabled, and so forth. Many of these folks pay very little or no income tax today. So, there would no doubt be exceptions carved out. Before long, the tax code might be as complex as it is now, as the lobbyists work their magic on the Congress. For persons of modest means, the idea that there would be a national sales tax on $10,000 watches, yachts, $500 bottles of wine, $10,000 evening gowns, and so on, would have great appeal. I am so tired of the argument that the rich pay most of the taxes now. Yet, they seem to have money left over for extravagant, if not obscene, spending. We are not alone in having big spenders. Have you ever paid any attention to the extravagances of the rich in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, for example? We sent our young men and women to fight the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq, so folks in Kuwait could continue to have mansions with gold faucets and a fleet of luxury cars. If our efforts in Iraq pay off, someday those in Iraq can also have gold faucets and a fleet of luxury cars. And we will still end up paying high prices for oil. Will we ever learn? In an earlier Outback, I mentioned that I had removed Pest Patrol (Computer Associates) from my hard drive. It did not seem to catch any spyware, while Ad-Aware and others did flag some spyware once in a while. Also, PC World was not impressed with the program, saying it was about 48% efficient. Then, I got an e-mail that I could upgrade to the "new" Pest Patrol - with its many improvements. But, I would have to sign in and download the program. Just for fun, I logged in. There was no indication of the size of the download file. This is inexcusable. I started the download of the PestPatrol5 file. After doing a mile on the treadmill and tuning around the ham-radio bands, I came back to find the "download complete." But the file was only about 3MB, which seemed small. I double-clicked the file to install the program and got the following message: "Error reading setup initialization file." A noble experiment. At least I got my exercise done. I will write CA and tell them if they want me to use the program, send me a CD-ROM. For the price I paid for that program, and the fact that it was useless, they can afford to send me a CD-ROM upgrade. At the upgrade Web site, they wanted $9 to send the upgrade CD. Forget it. Although I continue to be pleased with EZ Antivirus from Computer Associates, they are beginning to bug me. First, one of the three paid versions I had showed on the screen that my one-year subscription was due to expire three months after I bought it! An e-mail response from CA suggested uninstalling, reinstalling, and doing the online registering again. That gave me the full year from date of purchase to expiration. Put I had to download a very large file of virus updates on a dialup connection. A pain. On the CA members web site, I logged in and found a list of all of my EZ Antivirus paid programs with their expiration dates, but the dates did not agree with my purchase date and the expiration dates I was seeing on the screen. They were close enough that I will not argue until near time to renew. I have another life, besides hassling with software all day long. We are all used to nag screens, like WinXP telling you that you have only so many days to register or the program quits working. Computer Associates has taken this to an intrusive step further. On my main computer, as I would be getting my daily virus definition updates, a screen would open in IE6 with a full page telling me it was a good idea to register EZ Antivirus. I had already bought it from them online and had to "register my ID number" online to activate the program. How many more "registrations" did they need? Finally, I filled out one of the forms to keep it from popping up once or twice a day. Are they going to do the same nonsense to me on my two other computers with paid versions? Ridiculous. Comcast made a deal with TIVO for set-top cable boxes. TIVO's stock increased 75% on the news. All I could think about was Martha Stewart, and I wondered how many phone calls and cocktail-hour conversations might have preceded the announcement of the deal with Comcast. Not that I am saying that anyone benefited from insider information in the Comcast-TIVO deal. I have no information that such is true. But this is often how the rich get richer. "Get stock in your wife's name, or your kid's, or your aging Aunt's name. Just get it before Monday at noon," might be a typical conversation. Again, poor Martha Stewart. She took the fall for tens of thousands of fat cats who profit from insider information. For example, recently a senior Fidelity Investments trader purchased stock in his mother's personal account before Fidelity executed orders to buy the same security. He is no longer with the company, but so far not in jail, like Martha. COPYRIGHT 2000 Richard C. Rhodes You are welcome to quote sections from this page - or the whole page, as long as the source URL is included. Of course, I would be flattered if anyone linked to this page. It is very hard to be the writer, editor, fact checker, copy editor, and publisher of anything. So, I beg your forgiveness for the many mistakes that creep in. Suggested Reading From Past Columns Click Here for Suggested Reading List Archive of Back Issues Media List of Addresses and e-mails Postal Service State Abbreviations, etc. Postal Service Abbreviations - Richard C. Rhodes End |