Letters to NIH
It turns out you're cargo cultists yourselves. Somewhere you've heard that writing an editorial led to a change in a society (presumably for the better). Now you think that writing an editorial has a hope of bringing forth a positive change in Canadian society.
Give up.
Knott Dickens
[The editors reply: Knott, we do not publish NEW IMPROVED HEAD for the good of society, but so that when things inevitably turn to crap no one can say we didn't warn them.]
Re: Cargo Education
So the accountability culture is rapidly becoming another cargo cult. The process works this way: develop a religion around standardized testing, test kids till they develop carpal tunnel syndrome, publish the results on the state education website and in the local paper, punish schools that fail to meet the "norms" – do all this and good teaching will follow.
Family Man
[John FitzGerald replies: In fact, if you expand the testing program enough you won't have to teach at all!]
Sorry, can't buy this premise. Doesn't anybody bear any responsibility for himself? If I see a slender person on TV bolting ten slices of pizza am I really obliged to believe that the stuff will make me slim too?
Knott Dickens
[Wentworth Sutton replies: Thank you, Knott, for raising this issue, which I could have dealt with more clearly. Of course people should take responsibility for themselves, and if they want to eat a lot of pizza, it's a free country. However, the media should take responsibility for themselves, too.
The media are not obliged to believe that, unlike every diet guru they've promoted before, this one who wants to be promoted now has finally come up with a diet that will get people to lose weight. If they sell someone the Brooklyn Bridge and then don't deliver title to the Brooklyn Bridge, they go to prison. If they sell someone the idea that a diet will help him lose weight when in fact they have every reason to suspect it will make him fatter, they get to count the profits from their publishing division.]
Re: Why They Want to Make You Sick
Another great NIH article this week. I'd be worried that NIH may start to get into the sights of governments identifying seditious threats; The true addiction – as you point out – is to the revenues from gambling.
Peterson F. Whalley (NETWIT)
[Wentworth Sutton replies: Thank you for your keen appreciation of current cultural reality, and for your solicitousness about our health. Luckily, the only way I might get into the sights of a sedition-seeking government would be by changing my name to Wentworth al-Sutton.]
Re: DeFrosting
Jack Frost is always YELLING. His entire dialogue must be in CAPITAL LETTERS. Dude, please chill!
Just an explanation of why this particular over-educated, neo-Californian, anglophile, Canadian ex-pat can't watch that show. I am, however, hot for the Night Detective...
Joe Mama
Why Belinda Stronach crossed the floor:
- She wanted to show off her new shoes.
- She liked the way they go click-click on the marble floor.
- She saw the sun coming through the windows of the House in the afternoon and thought it'd be better for tanning on the Liberal side.
- To get away from Peter McKay.
- Better buffets served at Liberal caucus meetings.
- Her dad Frank told her to.
- She aspired to follow in Stewart's shoes in Human Resources Dept.
- Better parking privileges with Liberals.
- She figured the Liberals needed their own Kim Campbell.
- She wants to be a role model for women by showing them how far an average IQ, blonde hair, a rich daddy, a good complexion, ruthless ambition, disloyalty, lack of principles and a mediocre media will carry you.
E. N. Beej
My guess is that no one single person will ever be blamed for anything. References will be made to systems, mechanisms, departments, civil servants, politicians, etc. but there won't be any consequences for any individual (except for any whistle blower naive enough to come forward). No one ever really pays in these cases. I'm sure even Gagliano has landed on his feet back in Quebec. Look at Jane Stewart of the HRDC.
[Wentworth Sutton replies: The public's chief interest in these scandals seems to be in feeling superior to the crooked politicians. As Cosburn pointed out in his article, to keep politicians from being corrupt you have to do something to stop them being corrupt. At the moment wwe leave that job to parliament. Of course if we did make it difficult to be corrupt the supply of corrupt politicians to feel superior to would dwindle to a trickle.]
Re: Don Cherry, Breasts, and War
I prefer to take a middle position. I don't watch any sports whatever. However, if I did I'd rather watch Ms Jackson's breasts than either Cherry or MacLean.
Knott Dickens
[The editor replies: But they're all boobs! Folks! We're here all week!
But seriously, and we're nothing if not serious here, your average red-blooded hockey fan would be more interested in seeing what Sónia Silva has to say about hockey than what Don Cherry has to say. So of course women are not allowed on air at Hockey Night in Canada. Wentworth Sutton will have more to say about that in a future issue.]
Thanks for "Blood on the Tracks"! Good to see the numbers reflect my intuition about government debt. I've been wanting to see those numbers put together--great job!
Too bad Martin probably won't take the debt to the next generation as seriously as the national debt.
Renson Rhodes
[The editor replies: But he's done a pretty good job of getting the government to brighten his own kids' humdrum lives running CSL. Thanks for the praise.]
Re: O. J. Hussein
I think Saddam sold the weapons of mass destruction to Costco.
E. N. Beej
[Roland Barphe replies: In fact, they may now be brightening the lives of American hunters and street gangs. Not quite as powerful as their usual weapons, but a refreshing change of pace.]
Re: Crazed Pottery
Although I liked the Harry Potter movies as pure entertaiment, I recognize the merits of the comments made in "Crazed Pottery". I guess almost everything comes down to marketabilty to the masses, no matter what the quality. Even wars (a recent one sponsored by the U. S. of A. comes to mind) get "marketed", which is really pathetic and disgusting.
Duane Borden
[St. Clair Carr replies: You are quite right. In the end we should be grateful to J. K. Rowling for providing actual literature to our children instead of adventures starring Britney Spears and featuring innumerable product placements.]
I sense that it is "understood" that a capitalist market will converge on monopoly. I find it curious that the half-assed privatisation of Hydro amounts to an attempt to re-institute a market once the asymptotic or limiting, stable configuration, a (government) monopoly, has been sustained for so many years. By what mechanisms will the society throw up the structures that it needs to replace the monopoly with some form of true competition? Can history be made to run backwards?
I sense also that many arguments and discussions in this period of history essentially turn on conflicting attitudes about whether it should be government or business to call the tunes to which we will all dance. In other words I have suspected that much of what passes for discussion is really just about the opposing sides' attitudes.
I was dismayed when the apparently very able central figure in the local branch of the Green Party resigned recently over an issue called "privatisation" by the party elite. This central figure made a few of us aware that the great peril of privatising electricity production in Ontario (privatising in the usual sense) would be that, under NAFTA, governments would entirely lose control of pollution standards and the rest of it--as well as losing sovereignty over energy transformation. I can't claim to understand this aspect of the issues either; however, it does appear that the stupid kinds of privatisation (the kinds of policies usually favoured by governments) might result in disaster.
The NETWIT authors wrote, "Ontario needs nothing less than a powerhouse public institution, backed by Provincial resources, that champions energy efficiency and distributed generation ... ." Stripped of their use of the word "privatisation", this sounds (to me) like what the Green Party of Ontario is advocating. Even as an anarchist I could support this because most of us, especially in rural areas, are entirely disenfranchised. Having to take a turn oiling the local windmill would be a big step forward as far as I am concerned.
Knott Dickens
[The editor has forwarded this interesting letter to NETWIT and is awaiting their reply.]
Re: Medieval marketing (March 7)
I dunno, Bryce. Are you referring to Chapters?
The aisles I in which I spend most time in these stores display books about computing topics. I sense that the range and quality have declined, not because of arbitrary decisions on the part of the stores' management, rather because people don't buy the books that you find so valuable.
Knott Dickens
[Bryce Mallow replies: Thank you for raising the issue of computer books. The willingness of purchasers of computer books to pay enormous prices and to buy multiple books about the same subject, and the constant turnover in these books as computer fads rapidly succeed one another, have made revenue per square foot in the non-computer sections of bookstores look woefully anemic next to the revenue per square foot in the computer section.
As a result, the price of non-computer books has been driven up faster than the rate of inflation to compensate, so people don't buy non-computer books because their prices have risen above the equilibrium price.
If the proprietors of big box bookstores had the requisite knowledge and discrimination, they could pick from their non-computer shelves a small selection which would produce high turnover at reasonable prices. They could then expand their computer sections to sell even more books to the insatiable computer-book-reading public.
Note to Heather Reisman: send your cheque to me c/o NEW IMPROVED HEAD.]
Re: Smoke gets in Your Mind (February 14)
"Smoke Gets in Your Mind" certainly elevates the discussion above the "gutter" politics currently at play. Thank you.
Duane Borden
[The editor replies: No, thank you, dear reader, for being able to tell the wheat from the chaff. If only science could find some way to teach this valuable ability to journalists.]
["Smoke Gets in Your Mind"] sums up pretty well what I thought of the evidence uncovered by the investigators. And maybe the millions who protested around the world.
E. N. Beej
[The editor replies: And our thanks go to another perceptive reader. NEW IMPROVED HEAD will continue its tireless efforts to keep all our readers abreast of the latest developments in smoking gun/jacket technology.]
Re: Blog item about weapons of mass deconstruction (February 5):
Thank goodness someone has had the courage to blow the lid off the French's despicable harbouring of deconstructionists. Typical that the World had to wait for NIH to take the "bull" by the horns (if not lower in the bovine quadruped's anatomy), as it were! I predict you will be vilified for your whistleblowing but stand firm! Too long has the fear of mass deconstruction cast its evil shadow, like Sauron's ring-wraiths, over the civilized World (and parts of Yorkshire, British Columbia, Mississippi, the Vatican and Ontario). We are all in your debt. Limbaughaturi te salutamus!
Bravo!
Dr Shirton-Backwards
Oxon
[U. S. secretary of state Colin Powell replies: The United States remains resolute in its determination to rid the earth of the scourge of deconstructionism. And I am sure the prime minister of the United Kingdom agrees with me, don't you, Tony?
Prime minister Tony Blair replies: Gosh, yes! I couldn't agree more! I couldn't have said it better myself! As you Americans put it, I heard that! Word! Isn't that right, Cherie?
Cherie Blair replies: I knew Mr. Roland al-Barthes and Mr. Jacques al-Lacan as personal friends only. I was unaware of their connections to and involvement in deconstructionism. Boo hoo hoo.]
Re: Housing the Homeless (January 31)
[S. Cosburn Mortimer] left out one advantage [of his plan to end homelessness]: when all these scruffs start paying rent it will boost the economy by getting those dollars flowing.
Knott Dickens
[S. Cosburn Mortimer replies: Mr. Dickens raises an extremely important point. The homeless constitute one of the few sectors of the economy not to have suffered from the collapse of the stock market. Getting their money into the real estate market will ultimately give a boost to equity markets, which will boost consumer confidence, which will restore the economy to the high-flying days of the 1990s.]
Re: New Improved Multiculturalism (November 1)
Tediculturalism, is it?
Renson Rhodes
Re The Semantic Front (September 20):
[This letter was received after the announcement of President Bush's National Security Strategy.]
Apparently, life imitates art.
Perhaps you should consider using your powers of prescience and persuasion to alter the course of future history? You could help prevent the ecological/nutritional/military debacle that our non-elected double-digit IQ fizzled-out frat boy of a president has planned! The Onion informs us that Bush is now planning to send troops to the West Nile to punish them for acts of biological terrorism against the U.S. – I mean, what's next?
Mr. Head, your planet needs you.
Sternly yours.
Joe Mama
[President George W. Bush replies: Who is this Art fellow? Whoever he is, he cannot escape the armed might of the United States of America, which has many, many mighty arms that will grab him and slap him silly before he can commit his nefarious deeds.]
Re The Semantic Front (September 20):
I often refer to America as 'the imperial power' when discussing current news with my class. It explains an awful lot. For instance, why is everyone interested in American rather than European or English culture? Obvious – it makes more sense to understand your master than just another underling. And I don't suppose the Romans looked round for a moral justification for invading a foreign nation. They did a lot of pre-empting themselves.
Ardly Cabbock
[President George W. Bush replies: Is Romania where this Art guy is from? He's got a nerve. Only the United States is allowed to pre-empt other nations. But don't worry. We'll get Art and all the other Romantics.]
Re The Semantic Front (September 20):
I think the US's "influence" is even more subtle than what used to be called gunboat diplomacy. For example, Canada is thinking of decriminalizing pot. But what are the chances given that the U.S. wouldn't want its neighbour to be pro-pot? The dollar speaks as loud as the gun. The gun is quicker though and more viscerally satisfying.
GMAP ret. Sr.
[President George W. Bush replies: I detect the evil influence of Art here. Even Canada has fallen under the sway of the nefarious Romantic Empire. Canada, Romania, and West Nile – the Axis of Nefariousness. If Canadians had been allowed to shoot each other more often this wouldn't have happened..]
Maybe Dr. Phil has missed the boat... perhaps we should be getting rid of our authentic selves and just become our fictional selves.
Renson Rhodes
[Farrell Childe replies: Having a self of any kind would be an improvement for many people, including a large percentage of the political community.]
Re: Summer fiction
Now you've gone and done it! I was so enjoying my summer rags until you came along with this preposterous theory that statistics is fun!! and reading about statistics even more fun!! And the point is...statistics is an art...just as we always knew.
Renson Rhodes
[St. Clair Carr replies: But what an art! One art makes you taller, and one art makes you small, but the art that is statistics blows your freaking mind, man.]
I tell my students that we do not live in an era of tragedy – in the classic literary sense at least. Clinton was a comic figure, not only because of his embarrassingly public private life but also because he refused to own up and accept consequences. Of course I admired his ability to slither out of every tight corner, but he would have been a much more admirable figure if he had just said, "Yes, I did it and it was a mistake."
On the other hand, I would never even expect Bush to show that kind of integrity. He's just a stuffed shirt.
Ardly Cabbock
[Jason Capodimonte replies: And what's that shirt stuffed with, eh?]
Isn't sickeningly sweet comedy-Red Skelton, Lucille Ball, George Burns – more the American product? The Honeymooners expressed something atypical in American humour – the frustration of the common man, but Gleason's later show was just as disgustingly treacly as Red Skelton's.
Weren't the Smothers Brothers and Lenny Bruce products of the exceptional wave of protest brought on by the anti-war and civil rights movement? And doesn't everyone in American have to toe the line if he wants to succeed? Ergo Drew Carey.
Perhaps just Canadian colonial thinking, but I have always regarded American popular, manipulated culture as being essentially incapable of self-criticism – and therefore of satire (how many really good satirists have there been in the American tradition?). And the logical extension of this failing is the mass hysteria and repressive reflexes that we've seen politically since 9/11.
Inquisitive in SZ
[Wentworth Sutton replies: America is in fact rich in satire, but it is satire of victims and of so-called losers. Drew Carey's show is a satire of the life of the loser. Its message is that he and his friends would be pitiful if they weren't so laughable. At one time there was on this site a tribute of mine to the brilliant satire of the Three Stooges. I wonder what happened to it. I think we should be told. Anyway, the Stooges satirized the Cult of Success and were wildly popular. Today humour satirizes the unsuccessful. The provenance of the Smothers Brothers and Lenny Bruce was, as you so rightly point out, American society, a different American society than today's. Your point about treacle is well taken. I will not attempt to justify treacly humour as gentle satire. What we are seeing today, then, is the aftermath of the victory of the co-opted strand of American humour over the authentic. And yes, Americans do now appear to be incapable of self-criticism, and that does imply the consequences you mention. Perhaps what America needs most at the moment is not the obliteration of Afghanistan but the resurrection of Lenny Bruce.]
Re: Into the Box
As a longtime reader of NIH I am disappointed to note that the otherwise erudite Mr Sutton has chosen to adopt the spelling of "donut" as "doughnut". I suspect this betrays both his Anglo-Saxon origins and prejudices. What is the difference between "donut" and "doughnut"? Ugh, of course! The very spelling of the word favored by "the mother country" displays contempt for this most delectable of colonial confections. As a seasoned semiologist, I cannot believe this is an accident on his part. However, I observe with pleasure that the website itself retains the "donut" spelling.
Dr P Shirton-Backwards
[Wentworth Sutton replies: As Dr. Shirton-Backwards implies, the choice of "donut" or "doughnut" is rich with semiotic significance. "Doughnut" seemed the superior term to me because of the monetary connotations of its first syllable, which so aptly reminds us of the primary concern in the minds of corporate purveyors of "donuts" (this connotation is probably why they introduced the new spelling). However, further consideration inspired by Dr. Shirton-Backwards' comments suggests to me that "donut" may be the superior choice. First of all, the connations of the first syllable of "donut" include the "do" (often spelt "doo") in "dog do," which is an apt metaphor for the "donuts" served in "donut" shops. It also makes one think of "McDô," a common nickname for the originators of the Skinner box strategy.]
Actually, those who run distances sufficient to produce pain begin to manufacture perfectly legal endorphins in their own little biological laboratories. Anti-depressants become unnecessary. Drug suppliers become unnecessary. The distance from the producer to the consumer is minimized. On the downside, nothing is added to the GDP through this increase in efficiency.
N. Finndor
[Wentworth Sutton replies: This is a very good example of how our very lives have been co-opted by large corporations. I first read this letter after eating a lunch of Thai red curry beef which had also created a concentration of endorphins which rendered antidepressants unnecessary (and without producing pain). I suppose we can look for Roche and Squibb to start buying up Thai restaurants and shutting them down.]
Letters to NIH © 2002-2007 by their authors
