MM Daily Dispatch

I go there in my mind

The improbability of anything turning out as intended disproves Intelligent Design

I just read a column in another local publication, titled "There’s no way that just happened!" This was a religion column, and — beyond a number of the doctrinal and hortatory points it made — one of the notable things about it was the number of words printed in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. (Now, I’m sure this was completely intentional. We sometimes hear the advice as to e-mail etiquette, "Don’t type in all caps, it looks like you’re yelling." Here, I’m sure that was the intended effect: This pastor was writing as if delivering a sermon, and at various points in that sermon, I know he would be rather worked up and joyously enthusiastic, and he wanted you to feel that, even while reading quietly to yourself. And I did feel it.)
The other thing notable about his column, though, is that, starting with its title, it takes the opposite view from the one in an essay I recently wrote for my evangelical Jewish friend, who lives in Washington. D.C. Yes, you heard me, this is a right-wing, evangelical Jew (no, not a "messianic Jew," not one of those so-called "Jews for Jesus"). He’s an avid supporter of "intelligent design," and of President Bush, along with all of his policies (except his refusing to veto excessive spending). He’s also virulently anti-"choice," considers Jack Abramoff an upstanding fellow, says liberals and the New York Times are all a bunch of liars promoting a radically secular agenda, etc., etc.
He and I have been arguing over a number of these issues, especially evolution, ID and scientific vs. Biblical explanations for things, via e-mail for about 5 years now.
Side note: Interestingly, this friend and I go back to the 7th grade, and in that era, there was no particular clue he would turn out to be a right-wing wacko. Within certain margins, he seemed quite normal, including being normally rebellious. He introduced me to some good rock albums when I first joined a record club. He also sold me his electric guitar. In the 8th grade, we got sent to the principal’s office for gambling on the school bus. (We were just playing gin and Ohell, for a half-cent a point. Is that gambling?! I ask you.) We tried growing pot out at his once-reprobate-bachelor Dad’s old babe-lair cabin in the woods … just to name a few mutual, harmless adolescent exploits. (Actually, speaking of pastors, visiting him at college once, a preacher’s daughter seduced me at a frat party. Dating her later, I took her out to said cabin one weekend. "David, is this wrong?" she drawled, apparently in shock at the now non-drunken, premeditated brazenness of our trysting.)
Back to bizness. Well, I had a brainstorm recently and figured I might finally be able to explain the correctness of evolution to my old friend — to everyone, in fact — in simple, easy-to-understand terms. Like the reverend’s column I just read, it has to do with what’s more likely: improbable things happening by blind, random chance, or, alternatively, "on purpose"? The idea is so easy, so universally comprehensible, I even sent it to Newsweek as a "My Turn" column. Still waiting to hear back on that. In the meantime, I offer it here, where lesser renown and notoriety, or even pillorying may await me:

The proof is now available. Kind of like with profound mathematical and physics theories, I can now prove the veracity of evolution and the falsity of intelligent design "theory" by way of a thought experiment.
In doing this, I think I am emulating the ID proponents. They construct thought experiments that "prove" ID by showing it defies common sense to think certain things in nature could happen by chance; therefore they must have come about due to an underlying, purposeful mind--probably God, but who knows? It could be those aliens who left the monoliths around littering the solar system, in order to further our evolution from dumb, doomed australopithecines to aggressive, therefore thriving, hominids (and beyond!).
Now, in response, scientists tend to come up with points that get around the IDers’ objections to evolution. I’m not going to go into those back-and-forths. I will instead comment on how philosophers of science--and without having to know much actual science either--can also identify the fallacies in IDers’ thinking, at a more fundamental level.
For instance, a few months ago, one of those liberal-secular New York Times contributors pointed out that one reason ID seems appealing as an explanation is because people basically have trouble truly grasping the immensity of time and space--and, I would add, the amazingly fertile hubbub in the realm of the very small and fast. In other words, if people other than cosmologists, subatomic physicists, geologists, microbiologists and so on could really get their heads around how zillions of events (most of them leading to nothing much interesting), over huge spans of time, at a minuscule, frantic scale and pace could and have led and do lead to all observable natural phenomena (even the most complex and autonomous, such as most "higher" animals, and many people), they would have much less problem allowing the explanatory power of evolution.
By contrast, since many people have very little imagination concerning scientific concepts, and limited ability to hold several abstractions in mind long enough to connect them into an intellectual framework, they think a number of what I consider superstitious, pseudo-explanations for things are more likely, and simpler. But pushing the question of complexity back one step to a Mind capable of coming up with nature’s forms and processes doesn’t really explain anything, even if it might perchance be true. That’s probably why the Founding Fathers were Deists, if by it they meant that a God may be the "First Mover," but the way in which it then all works out over the eons is a fascinating subject for scientific inquiry, not faith-based nostrums. (Nate also disputes what he calls the "propaganda" that says the Founders were Deists and promoted "separation of church and state." Oy vey, vas ist dis mishugahss?)
So, back to my thought experiment:
I have a concept called, "Couldn’t have done that if you tried." [Editor’s note: See, there’s the contrast with the pastor’s title, "There’s no way that just happened."] You know, like when you toss a piece of trash at the wastebasket and it happens to perch precariously on the edge, just barely teetering there (maybe with the help of the wall--but it’s still pretty cool, and highly unlikely). Or something else, say a slightly crumpled envelope, playing card or piece of a box, or a dollar bill (or, for the less flush, a quarter): you toss it or drop it, and it lands--and stands or leans--on its side or in the slot in a way that you could never have achieved in a million years if you were trying. I’m sure everyone can come up with their own examples. (Many of mine have to do with throwing something and it balancing improbably somehow--must be my inferiority complex about how I’ve never been able to get a basketball anywhere near the basket, let alone propped on the rim, against the backboard. By contrast, my old friend was pretty good with a ball, and still has a nickname associated with some player named Hal _____, number 15 …)
But I digress (again). The bottom line is, my thought experiment (really more just a notion, actually) proves that evolution is correct. The most amazing things happen by chance, more amazing than what tends to happen by design, and the more amazing, the more likely it is that it couldn’t have happened "on purpose." (OK, so it’s just a variation on the old saw, "Truth is stranger than fiction.")
Same for evolution: Only chance could account for all the amazing occurrences that have led to all the complex and bizarre forms we know in nature. Such as Michael Jackson. (Ta-dum.) No way anyone--even a God, or a super-brainy and unaccountably benevolent alien--could have done it all on purpose. That would defy the odds, for sure.

So, now you’ve been given some exposure to simple, common-sense based, easy-to-understand formulas for the opposing viewpoints on a major issue of our time. Which side do you come down on? Let us know.
— Or, maybe, you happen to have landed kind of on edge, improbably balanced on an ear, shoulder and hip-bone, not even immediately apt to fall over one way or the other. But if you write to tell me about it, I have only one request: Avoid all-capital-letters.
Thanks!!!

--David Tell

MM Daily Dispatch

Rights group assails exploitation of baby greens in salads

From ‘Ban foie gras’ to ‘Don’t walk on the grass’?

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) offshoot PET-V announced in a release distributed to major news outlets yesterday that it is calling for a boycott of the growers and purveyors of baby greens, widely used in--and increasingly, as--salads in homes and eateries around the world.

Originally a trendy niche item like sun-dried tomatoes, pine nuts and “designer” salty snacks such as Pringles and Sun Chips, the little-understood “bistro effect” has led to a broad demand for the confetti-like mixtures of young spinach, callow arugula, immature lettuce and something tantalizingly dubbed “escarole” by savvy marketers.

Now that ordinary supermarkets sell the forage by the bagful directly to unwitting consumers, PET-V has put its foot down, it says (though only on designated paved walkways). Following on successful campaigns of decades past to raise awareness of the brutal clubbing of baby seals for their oh-so-silky pelts, PET-V says as a parallel effort to the boycott, thousands of volunteers will commit civil disobedience, trespassing at organic farms throughout California’s Central Valley, lying in the path of mechanical harvesters before they neatly, inhumanely, and with chilling efficiency, shear off millions of the young sprouts in the prime of infancy.

PET-V’s release pointed to the seminal example of the late anthropologist Carlos Castaneda, whose training as a Yaqui Indian medicine man included not only talking to plants, but constantly apologizing to them, especially to the female specimens of dioecious, or sexually differentiated, varieties. Shortly prior to his death a decade ago, Castaneda said plants, including fresh salads, had finally begun talking back to him, and that--while, unlike erstwhile comedian and noted amateur early childhood development specialist Steve Martin, he does not “speak baby talk”--he could detect especially heart-rending sighs and plaintive-sounding whispers when consuming underage salad ingredients, especially chervil.

Addressing how, in addition to just eschewing “baby greens” whenever detected on menus and in stores, consumers might recognize them in unlabeled situations, the PET-V release said, “they’re not crunchy, and they don’t taste very good.” The lack of turgor pressure “crispness” otherwise normally found in fresh samples of Romaine, and, especially, iceberg-based salads, “also means the leaves of juvenile lactucas are much too flaccid to really support the frequently added walnuts and cranberries, not to mention leaden globs of goat-cheese-laced dressing,” the release noted. “Observing these rules of thumb may also help consumers avoid regular, but very wilted, salads,” it added.

A visit to the PETA website also turned up news of the imminent formation of PET-M, one of whose first campaigns will be to seek alternatives to the brutal culinary grinding of natural, defenseless sea salt--a practice that harks to the grinding of human bones to make bread for giants, who cited their need for the additional high-quality dietary calcium and phosphorus in justifying the now frowned-upon practice.

Meanwhile, civil rights groups have called for activists as well as members of the media to cease the demeaning use of “boycott” in their promulgation and coverage of rights campaigns.

--David Tell

MM Daily Dispatch

Dried salted shrimp adulterated with eye crusties, regulators say

Accidental discovery puts agencies on spot to develop new tests

Almost unnoticed in the recent spate of tainted imports from China, an alert consumer has found another compromised product category: dried salted shrimp. Tiny specimens of the crustacean--a slightly less puny version of the shellfish typically served by the wheelbarrow at Red Lobster restaurants--are customarily sold, shell-on, in small bags of only an ounce or so. Used as a seasoning in Chinese cooking, their tangy pungency contributes a subtle zing to a variety of traditional recipes.
Used as directed, the adulteration of the seasoning might never have been caught. However, Boise, Idaho resident Angelica K. Lowery, who eats the crunchy, tawny, translucent little arthropods “out of hand” as a salty snack, recently noticed one of the tiny “shrimp” apparently wrapped around an eyelash.
“I knew right away it wasn’t just one of their feelers”--bits of antennae often mixed in with the shrimp--“because it was jet black and lustrous, like in some of those mascara commercials where they have really pretty Asian girls,” Lowery explained. “I was so lucky it stood out so I noticed it. I absent-mindedly eat my own boogers just like anybody else, but eating somebody else’s eyelash and gunk woulda really grossed me out.”
In fact, “I like to vomited” when she realized the little “shrimp” was originally a large-ish gift to some unidentified Chinaman from The Sandman, according to an affidavit filed as part of a $66.3 million lawsuit for emotional distress against Vietnamese packager Suk Lam Dik, Chinese distributor Long Yum Wong, Singaporean shipper West Oceania Consolidated Maritime Freight, Inc., the U.S. Customs Service, the Food and Drug Administration, Ranch 88 Mercado supermarket and the Food Network’s "Iron Chef" television program, from which she originally learned of the tasty condiment.
Besides the eyelash, another tip-off to the ersatz nature of the insect-like tidbit she almost consumed was its absence of the little black eyes normally present on the authentic version, the lawsuit said. Other than that, the eye crusty closely resembled one of the crunchy little crustaceans in its color, contorted curvature, apparent consistency--and even its seeming segmentation and the presence of leglike offshoots, Lowery claimed.
In other recent product safety scares involving Chinese imports, thousands of American dogs, cats and gerbils have died from tainted pet food; farmed fish has been found to contain banned antibiotics; unapproved antifreeze ingredients have been detected in “people” toothpaste; and lead has been found in the paint on “Thomas the Tank Engine” train toys often recommended as reusable “teething biscuits” by the U.S. WIC mother and infant nutrition program.
The FDA, which sets maximums for the number of roach parts, rat feces, and other inevitable contaminants that literally creep into the United States’ bountiful and otherwise wholesome grain supplies, said it would have to develop regulations imposing similar limits for “eye sandies” in imported dried salted shellfish.
Consumer groups urged the agency to be proactive and take the crisis as an opportunity to also regulate nail clippings, toe jam, regular (nasal) boogers, pubic hair, dental fillings, dandruff and the like, and to develop the needed chemical tests or inspection regimes for detecting these and myriad other forms of "foreigner" human detritus. However, in a joint release, the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Democratic Leadership Council noted that, as of the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings following his 1991 nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, pubic hair contamination has a domestic and not just an international component.
Risks from such contamination of the Oriental seasonings, imports of which measure in the hundreds of pounds and thousands of dollars annually, “absolutely” militate in favor of extensive new inspection programs, according to a government spokesman, who said the project would likely be outsourced to contractor subsidiaries of Halliburton and Bechtel corporations and Goodwill Industries, under the supervision of the Army Corps of Engineers. In the meantime, consumers have been advised to carefully examine packages of the seafood they may already have in their pantries, especially those from lot number Chs87DLkjf [irreproducible Vietnamese ideograms] AiuX1222222ZLk.

--David Tell

MM Daily Dispatch

President Bush’s colonoscopy finds blockage due to those little fruit label stickers

Delicate removal procedure adds tense minutes to Cheney's term as acting president

Long the bane of consumers who trim their fingernails too short and of fastidious housewives annoyed at finding them pasted all over the kitchen, the little stickers adopted years ago by supermarkets to individually identify each vegetable or piece of fruit have now claimed a more significant victim: President Bush.
Little reported following the president’s recent colonoscopy—which put Vice President Cheney openly in charge of the world for a few hours and turned up a few more innocuous polyps—was a near-complete blockage of President George W. Bush’s ascending colon due to an accumulation of the obnoxious (though not actually toxic) little stickers.
"I've been wonderin' why my 'output' didn't seem, as, uh, to match my intake," remarked the president before his regular radio address the following week, apparently not aware he was on the air. He added he hadn't felt especially bloated. But, even using Metamucil, "my spool did seem kinda rabbity," he said.
After he fainted briefly choking on a pretzel during his first term in office, the president’s handlers have closely monitored his noshing, in an attempt to assure his safety. “We watch him like a hawk when it comes to stems, pits and seeds,” as well as other, already implicated choking hazards in the form of salty snacks, said a spokeswoman for the Secret Service, on condition of anonymity. “We’ve observed the president successfully removing the fruit labels, so we felt we had no reason to be concerned in that area.”
However, “He seemed to be a bit bewildered what to do with the label from a banana” following a state luncheon at Camp David, confided Queen Elizabeth II to Entertainment Tonight about her recent visit stateside. “He finally just put it in his mouth, which did seem a little odd.”
Such "pica" behavior—the eating of inedible materials such as lead paint chips, bits of dirt and memos concerning fired U.S. attorneys and warrantless wiretap programs—usually tends to be limited to the very young.
Former U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona, originally an emergency room physician, said the president’s approach to the labels—removing them first, eating them afterward—is probably habitual, even with fruits whose peel is normally eaten. “If he was just eating the labels along with the skin, not bothering to remove them first, the natural laxative effect of the fruit would probably have carried the stickers out of the system,” Carmona speculated.
The White House chef corps insisted they aren’t partly responsible for the blockage. “Af course we remove ze labels from ze frooeet and ze vegetables before we cook zem”—even from potatoes during the Freedom Fries episode—transliterated Deputy Chef Jacques Argenteuil. “Do you sink we are barbarians?”
Doctors say the blockage, though significant, was never life-threatening, though they were concerned it posed a risk of cutting off the flow of nutrients to the president’s brain, especially when clearing brush. More interestingly, they said, it may have affected his judgment during the estimated decade during which the stickers formed an almost inch-thick layer. Ironically, they may have interfered with the absorption of vitamin W, a newly discovered compound present in trace amounts in the left parietal lobe of the normal adult male Bush brain. The vitamin’s precise function is not known, but initial studies have shown that members of the political dynasty whose ascending colon has been removed have less of it in the brain and display a propensity to praise the incompetent and invade the wrong country.

—David Tell

Midtown Messenger's District 7 City Council endorsement

Marston: the real deal, indeed!

Whatever your affiliation in this technically non-partisan race, she is the best pick for Dist. 7, hands down

© 2007, Quicksilver Publishing Group/The Midtown Messenger. All rights reserved.

For anyone who thought this endorsement was a foregone conclusion, based on our long acquaintance with the endorsee and our alignment of interests given this paper’s mission and scope—we wrestled with it. We had misgivings (see next few paragraphs). And in the end, foregone or not (believe what you will), we think we can defend it, decisively.
Before we get really rolling on the whys and wherefores of the endorsement, we have a confession to make. While City Council elections are officially non-partisan, the reality is, party still matters. As readers may have intuited from our public Valentine to District 4 Councilman Simplot last winter, our only issue with him in his races for his Council seat in 2003 and 2005 was that he wasn’t the Democrat. Perhaps partly for that sin, he came within a few dozen votes of losing to the interim appointed incumbent, Jessica Florez, who replaced Phil Gordon upon his run for mayor.
Here at Midtown central, we’re died-in-the-wool Democrats, a fact of which my parents are proud (they raised three for three, they point out). While on one hand I’m all for personal responsibility, dislike the public K-12 education establishment (teachers unions and colleges) and support many traditional “family values” (and am a biker, a gun rights supporter, erstwhile hunter, etc., blah blah blah)—I also vehemently oppose school vouchers, the current administration, and the Republican tilt in general toward corporate welfare and creeping infringement on civil rights and liberties and the economic well-being of the middle, working and underclasses.
That said, that’s why, faced with two reasonably competent and honest candidates, I will always vote for the Democrat. I am a registered Democrat. I vote a straight ticket in statewide and national elections. There are two other simple reasons for this:
One may personally know, like and feel aligned, sometimes, with the candidate of the other party. To my Dad’s irritation, my mother once softheadedly voted for a Republican candidate for city council (back East) because he had been my piano teacher. However, how would you like to have given someone you wouldn’t ordinarily vote for because of their party affiliation their first elective office, only to find them later rising to high public office as an outed demagogue and fascist? I wouldn’t. That would be adding injury to the “insult” of having crossed party lines in the first place. (That’s the “Oops! I voted for young Hitler or David Duke!” argument.)
Second, as my father always pointed out, in legislatures, the outcome on many critical issues comes down to party-line votes, where with arm-twisting enforcement of discipline by party leaders, the result is often a matter of simple arithmetic. Would you want a key legislative issue to go the wrong way because you helped put a member of the opposite party in the Legislature—just because you liked him or her? As I’ve seen it expressed elsewhere recently, party identification is shorthand for the likelihood that Candidate A probably shares more of your values than the one from the other party. (What’s that you say? Independents? They’re the agnostics of the American political scene, and, as my senior Honors thesis was in philosophy of religion, you don’t want to get me started on agnosticism …)
So, on to the District 7 candidates, who are vying to replace longtime incumbent Doug Lingner. First, let’s note that most of the city’s historic districts and many other vulnerable neighborhoods lie in District 7. And like the city as a whole, there is great change—development and its associated tensions, pressures and controversies—going on in the district. That said, we’re focusing on the Midtown end of the district and what we feel is best for it. (What’s best for it is probably best overall.)
For starters, we’re not endorsing Art Harding. He seems like a good guy, granted—earnest, knowledgeable, experienced in governmental matters and processes. But in his answers to our candidate questionnaires, published last month, he notably seemed less than fully sensitive to the issues raised by last year’s passage of Proposition 207, which authorizes lawsuits over alleged loss of value to properties based on government actions such as historic preservation zoning. While Art has his finger on the pulse of the wider electorate on this issue, he seems to lack a nuanced view of and sensitivity to the excessive impediments such lawsuits throw up against some appropriate, protective rezonings. That position, as well as some other general leanings appertaining to Art’s political persona, was enough for us to rule him out.
Then there’s Michael Nowakowski. Frankly, the guy scares us. (Either it’s him or his shrewd and aggressive communications director, Stephen Molldrem, but in any case, we have to identify a candidate with his campaign’s style and tactics, even if he is not the author of all of them.) Nowakowski’s campaign has seemed to us nakedly and abusively opportunistic from the get-go. OK, it’s nice he realizes the value of campaigning in this end of the district, where educated and informed voters turn out in higher numbers than elsewhere, it’s believed. It’s great that Michael and his aides recognize the existence of the historic neighborhoods, and their activities and issues (and this newspaper). However, we felt beaten over the head right out of the starting gate last winter with notice of Michael’s appearances at the Willo Home Tour, the Encanto Clubhouse, his requests for meetings and coverage, you name it.
You may see nothing wrong with that, and there isn’t, until you also see how the campaign has glommed onto active controversies in the ’hoods to weigh in on, such as the Willo streetscape issue, where he’s apparently going to bang heads together in the city to get it resolved. Sure. And, Mike, can you come fix my leaky dormer? Maybe you’ve also got some front porch benches to hand out. Oh, and my neighbor parks in front of my house. Anything you can do there, if elected?
That’s not to say the Willo issue isn’t a valid one requiring some leadership in the city and in the district’s Council office. It’s the way the Nowakowski campaign has cynically identified some hot-button neighborhood issues to inject himself into that offends us.
For instance, there’s also his participation on one of the 2006 bond committees last year, leading to claims in his campaign literature that he got the big bucks allotted for preservation items. Yeah! Like his campaign signs around Midtown, that he’s “preserving historic homes,” and "enforcing the law" or whatever the wording is. Yep. Mike Nowakowski is out there on the right side of whatever your concern is in Midtown, you betcha!
Seems to me the guy just wants the office real bad.
More seriously, folks, then there’s Laura Pastor. She and Nowakowski have been slugging it out for months, each trying to lock up coveted endorsements: the Firefighters Association, Police organizations, the Chavez family, etc., etc. Still, if these were the sum of the candidates, she’d probably have our vote. She’s the daughter of the effective and respected Rep. Ed Pastor. She’s paid some dues in community, civic, political involvement and educational and professional experiences. But we’re also a little put off at the way the presumed Democratic establishment in central Phoenix has virtually stampeded in her support. It’s a juggernaut! (Except for a few pickings for Nowakowski.) I guess her dad’s position carries corresponding influence, not to mention that in the many officially, putatively nonpartisan power circles in downtown Phoenix, being Democratic is increasingly chic. (Except for Mayor Phil, who in his latest endorsement—we’ll kindly call it a gaffe, though there are other names for it—has said [according to reports] he’s behind Sen. John McCain for president, no matter whom the Democrats field next year. As when Phil endorsed both Earl Wilcox and Democratic primary rival Bill Brotherton for a state Senate seat four years ago … well, what can we say that less restrained rags such as the New Times haven’t already said more pithily?)
But Laura isn’t the last word in this race. We’ve discussed Midtown’s “favorite son” candidates with a number of local neighborhood and community leaders, and some of them like her. They have found her to be a good listener, to be someone who wants to find out from the community (especially from them) what it needs, and act accordingly.
From our point of view, that’s partly because she doesn’t know or understand the community and its issues as well as many others do (including the remaining candidate, Ruth Ann Marston).
Frankly, as nice and thoughtful as I believe she is, our distinct impression is that Laura is not the brightest light in the firmament. Do we want someone who needs to be led, or do we want someone who is a true leader? Do we want someone who needs to have the issues explained to them (and then, who knows from whom she takes her final cues in her votes and advocacy?), or do we want someone who knows the territory and its issues inside and out, and, while opinionated (sometimes immodestly so), at least knows not only the community, but her own mind, and is guided by long experience and sound principles? —Someone who can and will hold their own with community leaders, moneyed interests, Council colleagues and city staff alike (not to mention players in other levels and branches of government). That said, Ruth Ann is always courteous, measured and respectful in her demeanor and interactions.
In my view, we’ve had just about enough of political dynasties in this country. I like the Kennedys, but look at the latest generation—in particular, Patrick. I don’t like the Bushes, and look at Jeb—a competent but highly partisan governor—and worse, his brother, our (I choke on this) president. Let’s not give another Pastor our vote just based on name recognition, family pull and party affiliation, notwithstanding my partisan preamble above. As far as that goes, for Ruth Ann, the District 7 Council seat may be the capstone of her long career in public involvement, to which she can be expected to fully devote her substantial experience and energies. For Laura, it’s probably just positioning herself for higher office—i.e., succeeding her dad in Congress?
Forgetting Laura for the moment, let’s just home in on Ruth Ann’s positive attributes and accomplishments that qualify her for the Council seat: Longtime educator in Midtown, in leadership roles. Longtime member (including as chair) of the Encanto Village Planning Committee, the citizens-level body that gets the first shot to hear zoning and other land use issues, and helps work out the most effective compromises between property owners and other residents. Director of the Phoenix Historic Neighborhoods Coalition, a forum for airing and addressing issues facing those neighborhoods. Key participant in the Downtown Voices Coalition, which seeks to support a place in downtown’s cultural and economic life for the vitalizing and civilizing role of artists and small independent businesses, by addressing potential incursions by more powerful interests and attempting to hold the city to its own policies and ordinances, as well as promoting progressive and innovative solutions.
The number of difficult and sensitive public policy issues Ruth Ann has already personally helped mediate and resolve is … innumerable.
Ruth Ann is a longtime Phoenix resident, who raised a family and still lives in a modest house in Willo, where she remains approachable to residents with concerns. She has a vast wealth of knowledge and experience of the city, the state and the district. She, of course, could tell you more about her experience and other qualifications. If you’ve got any doubts or questions, why don’t you let her? We think you’ll become a believer.
With that, we throw out this challenge to Ruth Ann: Whether you win or lose, we urge you, some respectable period of time after the election, to switch parties. You say you’re a “Goldwater Republican,” while acknowledging the party has changed both locally and nationally since that label made much sense—or had much of a place under the tent. In fact we were surprised to learn you’re a Republican. (Likely, in our view, it stems less from a youthful infatuation with Barry than as a holdover from the days when, to be taken seriously politically in this state, to be a real player, you pretty much did have to be a Republican. But the times they are a changin’.) And you can switch. You should. You belong as one of us. Be like Reagan: You can say “You didn’t leave the Republican Party … it left you.” Just do it.

Hometown publisher, international profile

The Midtown Messenger gets a letter printed leading page A13, Wall Street Journal, July 19, 2007

July 10 commentary piece pooh-poohing the furor over the threat Rupert Murdoch's takeover of Dow Jones represents to the Journal's excellence and editorial independence leads this editor to weigh in on the issue

Our letter, those by others, appear above the essay that instigated them. Ours in particular demonstrates that, as an editor ourself, we know how to get a letter published: Flatter the editor of the page, and obliquely disparage his or her right-wing, corporate-toady ass-kissing colleagues across the fold on the editorial page, and the overlords at the top of the masthead. (Note: We didn't write the "Independence Dies ..." headline; they did!)

Independence Dies When a Newspaper Owner Has One Goal—Profit
July 19, 2007; Page A13

Jim Prevor's editorial-page commentary "The Roots of Editorial 'Independence'," July 10, begins with a good premise but draws a conclusion that does not follow. Editorial independence may, in large degree, stem from an editor's willingness to be fired. However, that a publication's owner is for some reason the best guarantor of that independence is a non sequitur. That an owner would hold a publication's credibility uppermost would be the ideal case, from the point of view of editors and most readers.

However, clearly, an owner or publisher considers many things beyond editorial integrity and excellence in his or her decision-making: Currying favor with or not alienating readers, advertisers or policymakers are typically factors that carry weight with owners more than with editors. Whether a board of some kind to insulate editors from the whims, biases or self-interest of an owner is the best solution for Dow Jones, I do not profess to know. But in the specific case of Rupert Murdoch's prospective ownership of the company and of The Wall Street Journal, it seems it is precisely being fired (or interfered with) by him that Journal editors, the Bancroft family, and many members of the public who appreciate the Journal's excellent news coverage if not always its editorial page stances, rightly fear.

David Tell
Editor and Publisher
The Midtown Messenger: News for Phoenix's Historic Districts
Phoenix

Jim Prevor's commentary is a naïve view of the media business and Rupert Murdoch that one can only hope the Bancrofts do not share. He is correct in his assertion that a board designated to protect editorial independence will not work, but his reasoning is seriously flawed.

Reading the New York Post's Page 6 or the The Sun's Page 3 demonstrates the importance of "editorial integrity" to Rupert Murdoch. News Corp. has one goal: profit. There is, of course, nothing wrong with this, but let us not kid ourselves into believing that editorial integrity is what sells newspapers.

The Bancrofts must decide to either sell the business and recognize that they will have no say in what goes on at Dow Jones, or keep control of Dow Jones and maintain its editorial reputation. Neither decision is necessarily better than the other, but it is disingenuous to act as if there is any middle ground.

Michael Trachtenberg
Scottsdale, Ariz.

Mr. Prevor's throw-away reference to the tenure of Henry Ford II at the Ford Foundation does a disservice both to Henry II and to the enormous impact he had on the institution his father founded.

Henry II served on the foundation's Board of Trustees for 33 years, both as chairman and president. One of his many great acts of leadership was commissioning a blue-ribbon panel to determine how best the organization could use it vast resources to fulfill its charter. He did this in 1950, already seven years at the helm. The goals he and his fellow trustees unanimously embraced -- reducing poverty, promoting democratic values, striving for peace and building knowledge and understanding -- cleave closely to his father's original vision and remain at the heart of the foundation's mission.

While Henry Ford II did offer incisive, constructive criticism of the foundation at the time he retired in 1977, he also heaped it with praise. "The Foundation already has a magnificent record of achievement," he said. "I'm confident that it is capable of still more significant contributions to the world in the years to come. . . . The future of the foundation is in capable hands."

Marta L. Tellado
Vice President of Communications
Ford Foundation
New York

COMMENTARY

The Roots of Editorial 'Independence'

By JIM PREVOR
July 10, 2007; Page A21

The controversy over the possible sale of Dow Jones and particularly The Wall Street Journal to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. may be predictable, and the efforts of the Bancroft family to maintain the editorial integrity of the publication may be laudable. Yet the complicated negotiations to create a board that would secure editorial independence are a mistake. They misinterpret the nature of editorial independence and miss the point that the owner of a publication is the person most likely to defend its editorial integrity.

Editorial independence is always a function of one thing and one thing only: an editor's willingness to be fired. In his autobiographical book "Making It," Norman Podhoretz, the long-time editor of Commentary magazine, reflected on how he could both have independence as an editor, yet work for a magazine owned by the American Jewish Committee, which had decided interests and opinions:

"The editorial independence which the American Jewish Committee had always granted to Commentary consisted simply in this: no person except the editor or anyone he might voluntarily wish to consult could read articles in advance of publication or could dictate what should or should not appear in the magazine . . . The editor of Commentary, like any chief executive of any operation owned by others, only had as much freedom -- which is to say power -- as he was willing to risk exercising. If he did something he thought right and of which the AJC then disapproved, it was not enough merely to defend himself and hold firmly to his ground; he also had to make certain that he would not be deterred in the future by the fear of similar trouble from taking an action which he believed to be in the best interests of the magazine. There was only one way I or anyone else could be faithful to this principle: I had to be ready at any moment to lose my job. The AJC could fire me at its pleasure; that was its protection against me. My protection against it was my willingness to get fired; the minute I lost that willingness, I would lose my freedom and consequently my power to do the best editorial job I was capable of doing."

All of the mechanisms being discussed as possible ways to maintain editorial independence for The Wall Street Journal in a possible post-Bancroft era are designed to evade this fundamental fact: If the editor in chief of a publication is not willing to lose his job, he will always operate in a manner designed to please those who can assure his employment. The only thing that elaborate mechanisms such as independent committees to hire and fire chief editors, etc., will achieve is changing the names of the people to whom the editor will be subservient.

Now, some would say that Rupert Murdoch is some kind of uniquely sinister force in journalism and they would, in fact, be pleased to see a system set up to make sure that anyone other than him makes the important editorial decisions. Yet the incentive system is such that the owner of a publication, in this case presumptively Rupert Murdoch and News Corp., is the one with the greatest incentive to maintain the publication's reputation.

Readers turn to publications for information and insight on various subjects. If a publication is taken over and is losing money, as in the case of News Corp.'s purchase of the New York Post, the owner may look to change editorial approaches because the old one was not a component of a successful business model. But what is the alternative? Allow an independent board to dictate an editorial approach that does not attract readership and leads to bankruptcy?

A large, reputable and profitable company such as Dow Jones offers a very different set of risks and rewards to an owner. Any attempts to utilize the publication for personal benefit by, for example, talking up friends and attacking enemies, would be greeted with resignations by top editors who refuse to prostitute the editorial content in that way.

These resignations would be widely reported, and the word would quickly get out that readers are being fed propaganda, not news and analysis. This loss of reputation leads to a loss of readership and imposes on the owners an enormous loss of value. So ownership, though perhaps tempted to use editorial coverage to its advantage, has powerful incentives not to do so.

On the other hand, independent, self-perpetuating committees have nothing to lose and so they are not restrained in their actions. Typically, this means the publication will become a bore because the members of the independent board will look to appoint people who are admired by their friends and represent the mainstream viewpoint of their social class.

We should expect that a self-perpetuating board would eventually stray very far from what its founders intended. A good example is the board of directors at major foundations. Henry Ford II felt compelled to resign in disgust from the Ford Foundation explaining that: "In effect, the Foundation is a creature of capitalism, a statement that, I'm sure, would be shocking to many professional staff people in the field of philanthropy. It is hard to discern recognition of this fact in anything the Foundation does. It is even more difficult to find an understanding of this in many of the institutions, particularly the universities, that are the beneficiaries of the Foundation's grant programs."

Publications do not edit themselves, so editors must be hired, and they are always answerable to somebody. Even if the editor happens to own the publication, he is only free to act as he chooses to the extent he is indifferent to the effects of those actions on subscriptions, readership and advertising.

Setting up self-perpetuating boards only serves to switch the names of those the editor is answerable to. A board with a lack of interest in the business success of a publication is unlikely to lead to successful and thus greatly important and influential publications.

This whole exercise of trying to ensure editorial independence is somewhat insulting to the editors of Dow Jones publications, now and in the future, as it implies that they are so desperate for employment that they need to be protected against a demanding or opinionated boss.

Great publications always come from editors on fire with ideas and with a vision for their publication. Their independence comes always and simply from their willingness to be fired. No committee can change that truth.

Mr. Prevor is founder and editor in chief of Phoenix Media Network, Inc.

The Literary Offenses of ... some obscure scribbler

They say everybody’s a critic. So? Everyone else thinks they’re an author
The case contra on-demand publishing

On the second anniversary of the appearance of this essay in the print publication, we post it here the better for other anal-retentives to bask in its glow and bathe in its delights. Or something like that.



Ahem. Allow me to present Prof. Frumly Lymphschtickenraad, to deliver the latest in his series of lectures on the decline in American letters since Feb. 29, 1997. The professor (whose seminal study of cheese as metaphor in Moldovan literature during the brief post-prandial renaissance of 984 to 1011 we are all familiar with), has in this essay—which he will present with the aid of Ashlee Simpson using a laser pointer to keep him focused on his TelePrompTer—updated Herr Mark Twain’s rules governing literary art in domain of romantic fiction, which that luminary applied so incisively to the work of Mr. J.F. Cooper. Ms. Simpson—please—no—The laser pointer is only to be used with the briefest of applications to the professor’s sensitive nasal lesions and diaphanous wattle, just to keep him alert—no—no!—please, not in his eyes. OK, then.

Wusses! Have we yet failed to to exorcise, expectorate and scuff into the dust, like a worm, the last castings of the putrid, pusillanimous pastiche of sensibilities and execrable esthetic errors that characterized the ’60s and ’70s? While there is the ages-old maxim, “Dance with the one what brung ya,” must we be Brautigan and again back to this sad and laughable era? What Merry Pranksters have visited this viscid and flaccid “literary” corpse upon us? O exquisite corpse, would that you did not, like wide-gauze-bandaged mummy or pale and ghoulish zombie, visit and revisit yourself upon us, spreading pestilent prose, dusty declamation, and chalky snowblindness upon those who would gaze upon your papery raiment?
Well. Let us now, for the purposes of our elucidation, distill the illustrious Prof. Twain’s 19 or so rules governing the art of fiction to a mere two or three:

1. Do not, unless with artful skill and satiric intent, sully sublime notions, vulgarize eternal mysteries, excrete on the ethereal essences.
2. Do not depict chemically-altered psychic excursions, or physic ecstasies, unless with clarity of vision and dextrousness of narration that would suffice to suggest why the depraved seek (yet, paradoxically, fear) these debased states.
3. If, indeed, you are authentically acquainted first-hand with these states, would you, nonetheless, mind terribly refraining from writing whilst in them?
4. Employ your language of choice in such manner as to avoid boring or repulsing the reader.

(OK, four.)
Here, we assess the literary efforts of one Henry Wingfield; and, to adumbrate our conclusion, we find that H.W., a fervid if not continuously employed massage therapist, ought reserve the laying on of his hands, not to the alphabetic keyboard, but to the human or (if also a pet masseur) animalian corpus. H.W., having graduated in his literary output from a book relatively blank and at least inoffensive in its austerity (Imagine Art) to one busy, verily squirming, with words, ought to be sent back a grade.
The subsequent tome is notable. It is remarkable. It is even admirable (if one admires crime consistently, predictably and reliably committed) in the breaking of at least two of the four foregoing rules in nigh every paragraph of H.W.’s novel Ancient Lovers—and of all four on virtually every page! Multiple times, in many instances.
Synoptically, we describe the book as mucking about in the notion of “past lives”—as far as we can tell. Apparently, in the main, modern phase of the novel, certain antiquated paramours’ spirits dwell or manifest in the embarrassingly juicy and concupiscent flesh of modern humans, who, without prior contemporary acquaintance, then justify their hedonistic couplings—not to mention their nostalgic gazings one into another’s eyes—by their ineradicable and soulfully “deep” connection across time and space. (A process and a connection, we venture, not unlike when VP search committee chief Cheney became George Walker Bush’s vice-presidential running mate Dick.)

How do these fallible figures know they have this connection? Via one of the most clumsily banal faults of the book (and, simultaneously, one of the most egregious violations of Rule Number One - or Two - or Four): They see it (among other things) in each other’s eyes, as if watching a movie in said orbs:

Pedro and Abby sat next to each other. They held hands. Pedro turned and fell into Abby’s eyes. This time she concocted the results. It was mesmerizing. Pedro again sat hypnotized, entranced. Almost a minute passed, but what Pedro saw he knew lapsed back 2100 years. He blinked and withdrew his stare from Abby, expounding, “It is absolutely, spellbindingly unbelievable to me. I have no other way to express it. I do not understand it. What I just saw was us—you and me—but we were different people in a different time, in a different place, and we were lovers. I knew that. In fact, we were together as a couple. I want to say “married,” but I know we were not because they did not have that back then, and somehow I just know that. I do not believe this is a form of reincarnation, although I do believe in reincarnation. This is something else. I am watching a movie of ancient times in your eyes, and we are the actors. I see myself in the form of some other body with what appears to be a burlap sack on my body as clothing. I might be 15 years of age, but I feel older. You are plain and yet stunning because I love you so much. Your complexion is olive and your eyes are different than what I see now, but they are just as beautiful. You are so gentle and full of love—new love fresh with every breath. You are very happy. You might be 13 or older. Can I go back there again?” Abby, quickly with sincerity, “Not now. We should go back to the clinic. Will you take me? I need to rest. We’ll explore again soon.”

Pedro, “Of course. How insensitive of me. You must make those arrangements.” pp. 28-29

Contrary to supposition, Abby and Pedro are not engaged in a brief constitutional during a furlough off the grounds of an inpatient mental health sanitarium. But nor, whatever other purposes it serves, is this necessarily a fitting paragraph to hold up against the harsh requirements of the rules of fiction-writing. For, whatever errors and gaffes, lamenesses and atonalities might appear in it, who is to say Mr. Wingfield did not knowingly intend his speakers to sound thus, in a subtle exposition of their particular foibles?
No, it is in the narrative and descriptive stretches of Mr. Wingfield’s writing that we can most instructively apply the rules. Such a segment may be found on virtually any page of the book; we marveled at these paragraphs found as early as page 13, at the beginning of the second chapter:

Abby and Stephan, her husband, had been vacationing in Central America since January 1st, 1997. Their jeep overturned January 22nd in Guatemala, and Stephan was killed They were madly in love with one another and shared a bountiful life together, but had no children. Abby did not know the long-range ramifications of what was about to transpire with this dreadful, fatal single-car accident.
Abby suffered a broken leg, cuts and bruises and a concussion. She was transported to Callebocca, Guatemala, on the east coast near the Caribbean Sea to a small public medical clinic. She was unconscious for five days while under Pedro’s care and supervision. He took an unusually special interest in Abby. Something touched him with her beauty. He could somehow see a past life from deep inside her eyes. Pedro checked them every day for consciousness or awareness, but instead saw into her past like a movie flashing before his eyes. He recognized a main character as himself in someone else’s body It was, in fact, a movie he was watching inside Abby’s eyes. He was fascinated by this, not freaked out or scared. He fell deeper into the plot, but really did not know where it was going.

Here let us digress a scoche, and refer to Herr Twain’s Rule 9 as applied to Fenimore Cooper’s The Deerslayer, one of those of which the four above are a distillation: “The personages of a tale shall confine themselves to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle, the author must so plausibly set it forth as to make it look possible and reasonable.” Foremost among the remarkable things in the above paragraph is that Pedro was “not freaked out or scared.” So often this is the dilemma in popular entertainment: that in the face of unworldly experience that no one would at first believe—all the evidence of their senses notwithstanding—how credulous to make the protagonist? We do not yet know or care enough about Pedro to feel relief that he is not “freaked out or scared”—but in truth, do we believe it? Here is a man who is dutifully tending a patient in a prolonged swoon, and checking her eyes for awareness or consciousness, and it’s like he’s a kid at Harkins in 1966, kicked back, watching “One Million Years B.C.”
On points more mundane—but, in their pervasiveness, equally grave—Rule 4 of our abridged set finds ample play. To begin, writing with good English requires avoiding clichés, as well as empty, gushy descriptives lacking in concreteness and specificity. (To its credit, the Moldovan tongue and literary canon also support these virtues.) Note the number of words and phrases violating this prescriptive in this brief passage: “madly in love,” “bountiful life,” “about to transpire,” “care and supervision,” “like a movie flashing before his eyes,” “freaked out,” “fell deeper.”
Too, Mr. Wingfield seems much in haste to get wherever it is he is going—maybe to the “movies” of the sex scenes, ja?—rather than attend to basic matters of the storyteller’s art: painting the setting, imagery—concrete specifics—that would place us in the characters’ world, and in turn, keep them from resembling Punch and Judy animated by a drunken puppeteer. We learn merely that the star-crossed couple were “vacationing” “in Central America,” that their jeep overturned “in a dreadful, fatal single-car accident.” It might further the verisimilitude of the tale to know something about how they were spending their vacation, and, especially, what they were doing that resulted in the tragic upending of their Jeep. Were they miles beyond ordinary, enjoying a few Coronas? Did the flash of a bright-plumed macaw or menacing jagular catch Stephan’s eye and cause him, mortally, to swerve? Was Abby engaged unseemly with the gear shifter? Sadly, we do not know.
On additional inspection, the generally clumsy, cluttered stacking up of words without care for sound, sense or meaning grates on the reader throughout the passage. For example, that Abby “did not know the long-range ramifications of what was to transpire” should surprise us so little as to require no mention, as we had not been previousy advised that she possessed any extraordinary faculty of prescience.
To say she “suffered” “a broken leg, cuts and bruises and a concussion” comes off as a mere statistic, as Herr Twain would say. It reads as if quoted from the clinic’s chart, not the imagination’s tabula rasa. Truly she may have “suffered,” and from the broken leg most of all, yet it is only in the academic sense that the word is used, i.e., as in “sustained a copious bleeding from the ears.” Cuts and bruises, and a broken leg—Oh my!
Abby was “transported” to Calleboca, about whose geographical situating we learn much; while about the particulars of her life-threatening trip thence, nothing. “She was unconscious five days while under Pedro’s care and supervision.” Do we here detect the suggestion of a causal connection, so that when Pedro relinquished her care and supervision to another practitioner, her condition improved? (If so, Pedro, at least, took not only a special interest in Abby (in her vulnerable state), but an “unusually special interest.” Hmmm. Nurse, please remain in the room at all times.)
Here’s our favorite: “Something touched him with her beauty.” Now, we all know what Wingfield here means. But that is not his fault. It’s due only to our toleration for syntactical impreciseness, as veteran language users, that we understand him. We take him to mean, “In some indefinable way, her beauty touched him.” And so he should have put it. Or, it could be as simple a fix as by the choice and placement of preposition; viz.: “Something in her beauty touched him.” Or: “He was touched by her beauty.” As it reads on the page, however (“Some thing [nom., subject] touched [v.t.] him [d.o.] with [i.e., “using,” “with the instrumentality of”] her beauty.”), it is as if something—perhaps a wandering howler monkey—somehow actually held Abby’s beauty in its simian grasp, and poked (or merely stroked) Pedro with it, as if with a leafy tree-limb. Clearly, as an abstract, even Ideal-partaking Platonic form informing and infusing the substance of Abby’s human visage, her “beauty” is not something to be bandied about like a stick in such manner. So one should not write as if it was.
Too, not only should the writer stick to the possible, or at least dabble in rendering the improbable plausible—he should avoid the use of such fake and facile realism-intensifiers as “in fact,” “literally” and suchlike clichés, reminding ourselves anyway that they are mental placeholders serving largely to give thinking a holiday. “He recognized a main character as himself in someone else’s body. It was, in fact, a movie he was watching inside Abby’s eyes.” (Emphasis reluctantly added.)
First, a hint please, as to how Pedro “recognized a main character as himself in someone else’s body”? —We are not being coy. Please make something up—anything: a tic, a certain leer of lip, a piebaldness, or one eye being a different colour than the other—to justify and explain how he recognized himself in someone else’s body; not a regular occurrence, after all.
Then, no matter how sincerely Mr. Wingfield wants us to believe Pedro’s experience is like watching a movie play in Abby’s eyes, let us not abandon and deny the essential artifice of simile and insist there is literal cinema-going going on here. For I doubt Mr. Wingfield envisions a little film projector—nor even a tiny iPod Photo—perched on Abby’s nose, or hidden inside a sinus or tear duct or Eustachian tube, “in fact” projecting a movie in her eyes there for Pedro to see. No, no matter how much he would like to indulge—sloppily, incoherently, and impossibly—to the contrary, there are no such miniature movie projectors in the jungle (or on the coast) of Guatemala. Nor is there sufficient bio-mechanical expertise in that largely agrarian economy to implant such technology and operate it—much less maintain it. Nor did they have the filmmaking equipment “way back then” to make the movies now “in fact” playing in Abby’s eyes ... in the time, as if in ancient Greece, that the original souls lived and loved under the moonilght by the wine-dark sea, la-de-doo-dah (just like they “didn’t have marriage” then, either). (Well, OK: Maybe gay marriage.)
— D. Tell

Editor’s note: The foregoing is loosely—maybe feebly—modeled on two classic, hilarious essays by Mark Twain on the “literary offenses of Fenimore Cooper.” The first of them may be found online at users.telerama.com/~joseph/cooper/ cooper.html. We also advise our readers that Henry Wingfield, as a good sport, agreed to see a review published that took this tack. Still, fortunately for Cooper, perhaps, he had established his literary fame and reputation—and had been dead for over 40 years—before Twain published his calumnies. (And, as it turned out, Wingfield was not so sanguine after seeing the published review.)
Ancient Lovers can be ordered from Xlibris, 1-888-795-4274, www.xlibris.com, orders@xlibris.com.