Friday, December 22, 2006

The Problem of Treatment (Contd.)

(A) CORRECTING THE CAUSES (Continued).

2. SECONDARY CAUSES.

MECHANICAL. A complete therapeutic system will not ignore the effect upon bodily function of dislocations or subluxations of vertebrae; whether accidental or resulting from toxic conditions.

Many sick individuals - and some well ones too - are benefited by expert Chiropractic and Osteopathic adjustments. In numbers of instances, symptoms can be dispatched by no other means. In others, improvement ensues. Stimulation or inhibition of excretory and secretory action is easily possible. Pain is relieved.

Deformities and disabilities of many kinds are put right by these means. Only the hidebound bigotry of orthodoxy prevents their wider adoption.

Manipulative measures of all kinds, including skilled massage, particularly by responsives who understand something of the operation, through physical contact, of spiritual healing Power, are among the most effective of physical helps.

Discriminating co-relation of all good methods is desirable; for which is worst - trying to reduce displacements by psychological means, or neck-thumping selfish neurotics?

The ECONOMIC are among the worst of the secondary causes. Perhaps more than ever to-day the people languish and anguish and die, for want of a little obedience. Self-interest and financial considerations impede, but need not. In an age of unprecedented plenty, any struggle for a living should be an anachronism. Good health and prosperity may be ours almost for the mere taking. Natural resource is unlimited. Productive capacity is virtually as great. We are richer than Croesus. The principal reason we cannot enjoy as much as we like, as well as all that we need, is WE SCRAP FOR IT INSTEAD OF WHACKING IT UP - "but if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another." - Gal., V, 15.

Natural animal man is selfish, greedy, lustful of power, lazy, thriftless, improvident, stupid, ignorant, apathetic. But the greediest, most ruthless and powerful have usurped control of financial wealth.

Such of our real wealth as they permit us access to is capitalised, and the costless corresponding financial "wealth" issued in the form of interest-bearing debt which continually grows.

When, but never before, sufficient of us are willing to compete for the common good instead of for gain, we can resume effective control of our credit and currency; and, deciding our policy ourselves, vest responsibility for administration in a body appointed for the purpose.

Instead of heart-breaking taxation we should be drawing dividends from the national increment of association. Emancipation and freedom are within our reach. We must strike off the shackles of moral and financial servitude, and enter into our glorious inheritance as sons and daughters of God.

Balking the banditti, however, will not, alone, solve many problems. So many other factors are involved. Malnutrition, for example, is as much a matter of unwise as of under-indulgence; and self-control is a virtue of Spirit.

- Dr. Ulric Williams, N.D., M.B., Ch.B., Hints on Healthy Living: The "New World" Order, 4th ed., 1939, self-published, pp. 80-81.

American hashish

I poked at one of the long Russian cigarettes with a finger, then laid them in a neat row, side by side and squeaked my chair. You don't just throw away evidence. So they were evidence. Evidence of what? That a man occasionally smoked a stick of tea, a man who looked as if any touch of the exotic would appeal to him. On the other hand lots of tough guys smoked marijuana, also lots of band musicians and high school kids, and nice girls who had given up trying. American hashish. A weed that would grow anywhere. Unlawful to cultivate now. That meant a lot in a country as big as the U.S.A.

I sat there and puffed my pipe and listened to the clacking typewriter behind the wall of my office and the bong-bong of the traffic lights changing on Hollywood Boulevard and spring rustling in the air, like a paper bag blowing along a concrete sidewalk.

They were pretty big cigarettes, but a lot of Russians are, and marijuana is a coarse leaf. Indian hemp. American hashish. Evidence. God, what hats the women wear. My head ached. Nuts.

I got my penknife and opened the small sharp blade, the one I didn't clean my pipe with, and reached for one of them. That's what a police chemist would do. Slit one down the middle and examine the stuff under a microscope, to start with. There might just happen to be something unusual about it. Not very likely, but what the hell, he was paid by the month.

I slit one down the middle. The mouthpiece part was pretty tough to slit. Okey, I was a tough guy, I slit it anyway. See, can you stop me?

Out of the mouthpiece shiny segments of rolled thin cardboard partly straightened themselves and had printing on them. I sat up straight and pawed for them. I tried to spread them out on the desk in order, but they slid around on the desk. I grabbed another of the cigarettes and squinted inside the mouthpiece. Then I went to work with the blade of the pocket knife in a different way. I pinched the cigarette down to the place where the mouthpiece began. The paper was thin all the way, you could feel the grain of what was underneath. So I cut the mouthpiece off carefully and then still more carefully cut through the mouthpiece longways, but only just enough. It opened out and there was another card underneath, rolled up, not touched this time.

I spread it out fondly. It was a man's calling card. Thin pale ivory, just off white. Engraved in that were delicately shaded words. In the lower left-hand corner a Stillwood Heights telephone number. In the lower right-hand corner the legend, 'By Appointment Only.' In the middle, a little larger, but still discreet: 'Jules Amthor.' Below, a little smaller: 'Psychic Consultant.'

- Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely, 1940, chapter 14.

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Three letters to The Economist, December 16, 2006

The dating game

SIR - I found your article on the fashion for purity in America to be, well, quaint ("In praise of chastity", November 18th). As an evangelical Christian man who, in keeping with his religious convictions, has remained chaste before marriage into his 40s, my experience with women, including Christian women, has been that they care not one jot about pairing with a spouse who is chaste. In fact, I have had a few instances where a chaste woman actually preferred a fellow to have a resume, especially if he was a little older. It does not mean that an otherwise attractive buck-a-roo is taken out of the rodeo, but being chaste does not appear to move one from the runner-up category to the leader board. Christian guys go down in flames in the proverbial dating dogfight. Until women really care about their partner being chaste and use it as a criterion to select a spouse the concept of chastity will remain drivel, fantasy and wishful thinking.

Scott
Fairfax, Virginia

Coffee circle

SIR - Your article on Ethiopia's conflict with Starbucks challenged the motivations behind the Ethiopian government's initiative to trademark its coffee brands ("Storm in a coffee cup", December 2nd). You did this with an air of great certainty, pointing out that Ethiopia ranks horribly low on indices of investment and corruption. However, the indices to which you refer are constructed largely on the basis of surveys of perceptions of investors and consultants, that is of readers of publications like The Economist. Think about it: you tell your readers the government is up to no good, and you, in turn, use that "evidence" to support your argument that the government, indeed, is up to no good. Ethiopia's government may or may not have benign intentions, but your argument would be more compelling were it less circular.

Ken Shadlen
Lecturer in development studies
London School of Economics
London

SIR - As a Starbucks barista, I was pleased to read your even-handed treatment of the Ethiopian trademarking controversy. Anyone who studies the way Starbucks buys its coffee (which is required of all employees) knows that it lives up to its goal of "contributing positively to our community and our environment". But you made one error. At Starbucks the wetness of a drink refers to its proportion of foam to steamed milk. A latte is almost entirely steamed milk with only a dollop of foam. Thus, your "grande extra-wet triple latte" is actually a triple grande no-foam latte.

Steven Crawford
Tuscon, Arizona

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Progress of the Huns

In the second year of the reign of Valentinian and Valens, on the morning of the twenty-first day of July, the greatest part of the Roman world was shaken by a violent and destructive earthquake. The impression was communicated to the waters; the shores of the Mediterranean were left dry, by the sudden retreat of the sea; great quantities of fish were caught with the hand; large vessels were stranded on the mud; and a curious spectator amused his eye, or rather his fancy, by contemplating the various appearance of valleys and mountains, which had never, since the formation of the globe, been exposed to the sun. But the tide soon returned, with the weight of an immense and irresistible deluge, which was severely felt on the coasts of Sicily, of Dalmatia, of Greece, and of Egypt: large boats were transported, and lodged on the roofs of houses, or at the distance of two miles from the shore; the people, with their habitations, were swept away by the waters; and the city of Alexandria annually commemorated the fatal day, on which fifty thousand persons had lost their lives in the inundation. This calamity, the report of which was magnified from one province to another, astonished and terrified the subjects of Rome; and their affrighted imagination enlarged the real extent of a momentary evil. They recollected the preceding earthquakes, which had subverted the cities of Palestine and Bithynia: they considered these alarming strokes as the prelude only of still more dreadful calamities, and their fearful vanity was disposed to confound the symptoms of a declining empire and a sinking world. It was the fashion of the times to attribute every remarkable event to the particular will of the Deity; the alterations of nature were connected, by an invisible chain, with the moral and metaphysical opinions of the human mind; and the most sagacious divines could distinguish, according to the color of their respective prejudices, that the establishment of heresy tended to produce an earthquake; or that a deluge was the inevitable consequence of the progress of sin and error. Without presuming to discuss the truth or propriety of these lofty speculations, the historian may content himself with an observation, which seems to be justified by experience, that man has much more to fear from the passions of his fellow-creatures, than from the convulsions of the elements. The mischievous effects of an earthquake, or deluge, a hurricane, or the eruption of a volcano, bear a very inconsiderable portion to the ordinary calamities of war, as they are now moderated by the prudence or humanity of the princes of Europe, who amuse their own leisure, and exercise the courage of their subjects, in the practice of the military art. But the laws and manners of modern nations protect the safety and freedom of the vanquished soldier; and the peaceful citizen has seldom reason to complain, that his life, or even his fortune, is exposed to the rage of war. In the disastrous period of the fall of the Roman empire, which may justly be dated from the reign of Valens, the happiness and security of each individual were personally attacked; and the arts and labors of ages were rudely defaced by the Barbarians of Scythia and Germany. The invasion of the Huns precipitated on the provinces of the West the Gothic nation, which advanced, in less than forty years, from the Danube to the Atlantic, and opened a way, by the success of their arms, to the inroads of so many hostile tribes, more savage than themselves. The original principle of motion was concealed in the remote countries of the North; and the curious observation of the pastoral life of the Scythians, or Tartars, will illustrate the latent cause of these destructive emigrations.

- Edward Gibbon, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1781, Volume II, Chapter XXVI, Part I.

Monday, December 18, 2006

Burger King

Flipping hamburgers began to pay off in some unexpected ways for Tim, who had grown into a handsome young man with wavy brown hair. In the winter of 1985 he began flirting with a woman he'd met at the restaurant. She was married, and at least ten years his senior - but her husband worked nights, she told him, and their flirtations soon heated up. One night after Tim finished work, they started fooling around, and Tim finally worked up the nerve to invite her over to his house.

"My dad goes to work at ten-thirty," he told the woman. Invitation accepted.

Inside the Campbell Boulevard house, Tim offered a confession. "I don't know what to do," he admitted.

"Well, first turn on some music," she said. She relished the job of teacher.

They whipped off their clothes and climbed into his bed. She climbed on top of him and showed him exactly what to do. "I love to fuck!" she said - words Tim never forgot.

"I'm on the pill," she told him later, as they lay together. She complimented him on his endurance, which caused Tim to suspect that her husband must be an older man. That was all right with Tim: he would play the young buck.

After that relationship fizzled, Tim turned his attention toward another young woman who worked at the restaurant, one much closer to his own age. A senior at the nearby Sweet Home High School, she became Tim's first real girlfriend.

- Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck, American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh & the tragedy at Oklahoma City, Avon Books, 2002, pp. 39-40.

Sunday, December 17, 2006

Durable and specialized assets

If the assets of a business, either fixed or working capital or both, are highly specialized to the particular business, company, or location in which they are being used, this creates exit barriers by diminishing the liquidation value of the firm's investment in the business. Specialized assets either must be sold to someone who intends to use that in the same business (and if they are specialized enough, to use them in the same location) or their value is greatly diminished and they must often be scrapped. The number of buyers wishing to use the assets in the same business is usually few, because the same reasons that make the firm want to sell its assets in a declining market will probably discourage potential buyers. For example, an acetylene manufacturing complex or a rayon plant has such specialized equipment that it must be sold to another owner for the same use or scrapped. An acetylene plant, furthermore, is so difficult to dismantle and transport that the costs of doing so may equal or exceed the scrap value. Once the acetylene and rayon industries began to decline, the potential buyers willing to continue to operate the plants up for sale were close to nonexistent; those plants that were sold were sold at enormous discounts to book value and often to speculators or desperate employee groups. Inventory in a declining industry may also be worth very little, particularly if it normally turns over very slowly.

If the liquidation value of the assets of a business is low, it is economically optimal for the firm to remain in the business even if the expected discounted future cash flows are low. If the assets are durable, the book value may greatly exceed the liquidation value. Thus it is possible for a firm to earn a book loss but it be economically appropriate to remain in the business because the discounted cash flows exceeded the opportunity cost of capital on the investment that could be released if the business were divested. Divesting the business in any situation in which the book value exceeds the liquidation value also leads to a write-off, which has some deterring effects on exit that will be discussed later.

In assessing the exit barriers caused by asset specialization in a particular business, the question is whether or not there are any markets for the assets as, or as part of, a going concern. Sometimes assets can be sold to overseas markets at a different stage of economic development, even though they have little value in the home country. This move raises the liquidation value and lowers exit barriers. Whether there are overseas markets or not, however, the value of specialized assets will usually diminish as it becomes increasingly clear that the industry is declining. For example, Raytheon, which sold its vacuum tube-making assets in the early 1960s when tube demand was strong for color TV sets, recovered a much higher liquidation value than the firms that tried to unload their vacuum tube facilities in the early 1970s, after the industry was clearly in its twilight years. Few, if any, U.S. producers were interested in purchasing by this later time, and foreign firms supplying vacuum tubes to less advanced economies either had already purchased tube-making equipment or were in a much stronger bargaining position once U.S. decline was obvious.

- Michael E. Porter, Competitive Strategy: techniques for analyzing industries and competitors, The Free Press, a division of Macmillan, Inc., 1980, pp. 259-60.

Saturday, December 16, 2006

Think of horses before zebras

Radioactivity is such a glaringly obvious cause of lung cancer that it is truly amazing that any other culprit had to be sought. It is as if radioactivity, like a defiant criminal, was shouting from the rooftops, "Yes, I am the cause of lung cancer", with people closing their ears to it. But, as we have seen, it did not suit some interests for it to be blamed, and these interests have encouraged the tobacco hating puritans to lay the blame at tobacco's door, pulling the wool over the public's eyes in one of the most sinister campaigns imaginable. The 'statistics' they produced could easily have been duplicated as regards coffee or beer or anything else, but they chose the age-old whipping boy, tobacco. A wise old medical lecturer used to say, "When you hear hoof beats think of horses before zebras." In other words, why ignore the obvious?

Professor Sternglass of the University of Pittsburgh cites evidence showing that the lung disease death rate increased one hundred times in the States of New York and New Mexico. He said in 1975, "We are now getting the effects of earlier use in Nevada and the Pacific of nuclear activity."

U.S. government reports showed figures leading to the assumption that radioactivity may cause up to 50,000 deaths a year in the United States. These reports show that the number of lung cancers in uranium miners was in proportion to the amount of radiation. These are government figures (Occupational Division of Public Health Services, quoted by John Gofman and Arthur Taplin 1970).

A little known but alarming source of radioactivity is the widespread radon gas that comes from the natural decay of the radium in the earth. To hand is a report from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that it probably causes up to 30,000 deaths from lung cancer in the U.S. every year. How many of these deaths are blamed on smoking?

A most significant finding of the American National Cancer Institute shows that children of women who had X-rays (a form of radioactivity) before conception had a 2.61 time increased risk of getting cancer, compared with children of mothers who had never had an X-ray.

It is alarming that although radioactivity is well known by scientists to be a major cause of cancer, especially lung cancer, this fact is rarely mentioned in the press. When lung cancer is spoken of, smoking only is mentioned.

We must realise that there is more than enough radioactivity in the environment to account for every case of lung cancer that has occurred.

Following nuclear blasts there is an increase in all kinds of cancers. Everyone agrees with this. But increase in lung cancer according to the zealots must be due to smoking.

Well-documented increases in leukaemia (blood cancer) have been shown after atomic tests. This has been shown in many countries.

Atomic tests in Nevada in the 1950's have been followed by a marked excess of cancers among the inhabitants of neighbouring Utah. A Congressional hearing was told that the Atomic Energy Commission knowingly exposed people to large amounts of radiation and downplayed any possible health risks.

According to documents submitted, President Eisenhower told the Commission to keep people confused about the dangers. One resident, ten members of whose family died from cancer, said, "We were told that there was no danger." The actor, John Wayne, spent a lot of time in the area during this period and died of lung cancer. The anti-smokers were quick to claim that smoking had killed him. However, after extensive investigation it is now quite clear that Wayne and some other movie people died from the effects of excessive exposure to radiation.

- Dr William T Whitby, The Smoking Scare De-bunked, Common Sense Publications, 1986

Friday, December 15, 2006

Nihilism

Another great measure concluded during this reign, the emancipation of the serfs, by which nearly 45,000,000 of men were delivered from hereditary bondage, was perhaps the vastest act of philanthropy which it ever fell to the lot of an individual man to accomplish. (See section Tenure of Land, &c.) Russia under Alexander has taken an active part in European politics, but her chief efforts have been directed towards the East. For some time her progress in this direction was arrested by the results of the Crimean war, but the Caucasian tribes were subdued in 1864, and a war with Bokhara, begun in 1866, ended in 1868 with the conquest of Samarkand. During the Franco-German war Russia seized the opportunity of the isolation of Great Britain to denounce those articles of the Treaty of Paris which prohibited her from fortifying Sebastopol and maintaining an armed fleet on the Black Sea. On the remonstrance of several of the European powers a conference was held in London, which led to a treaty abrogating the Black Sea clauses, signed 13th March, 1871. Since that date the most important events in the history of Russia are the expedition to Khiva and the outbreak of war with Turkey. The expidition to Khiva (1873) rose out of the detention by the Khivans of some Russian subjects as prisoners, and resulted in the annexation to Russia of the whole of the Khivan territory on the right bank of the Amu Darya. The war with Turkey was one of the remote consequences of the insurrection in Herzegovina that began in the summer of 1875. This insurrection brought to light the continued misgovernment by Turkey of her Christian subjects; and other risings having followed, Russia, acting as champion of the Christian provinces of Turkey, crossed the Turkish frontier on the 24th of April, 1877. The war ended early in 1878 with the complete overthrow of Turkey, and on the 3d of March a treaty of peace was signed before the gates of Constantinople at San Stefano. In this peace Russia obtained the cession of a portion of Armenia in Asia Minor, including the fortress of Kars, and the retrocession of the portion of Bessarabia which she had ceded to Roumania after the Crimean war. By the treaty of Berlin concluded in July following the portion of ceded territory in Armenia was reduced, but Russia was allowed to retain Kars and Bessarabia. Since the conclusion of this war Russia has been more than ever disturbed by the Nihilist movement. (See NIHILISTS.) After various attempts at assassination made on the emperor and persons in high authority, and believed to be due to the Nihilists, and after an attempt to blow up the whole imperial party in the winter-palace in 1880, the Emperor Alexander was assassinated by means of a bomb in St. Petersburg, March 13, 1881.
- from "Russia", in Charles Annandale, M.A. (ed.), The Popular Encyclopedia; or, Conversations Lexicon. Being a dictionary of science and arts, literature, biography, history, and general information, new and revised edition, vol. XII: Randers-Seleucia, c. 1895?