Cultural “conservatives,” like William Bennett, that insufferable stuffed-shirt, hypocrite, like to huff and puff about the decay of values and the culpability of left-wing moral relativists.  Over and over again, he and his ilk trip over or ignore the fact that the biggest fans of relativism are his allies, the monied corporate marketing interests that keep our consumer economy going…when it’s going, that is.  Consider the latest advertising campaign from HSBC Bank, out in force today in the New York subways:

In each “Different Values” ad, created by JWT, New York and London, a single image repeats three times, with a different one-word interpretation imposed over each photo… As occurred with the HSBC’s “Your Point of View” campaign, some of the new ads have already begun to generate blogosphere buzz over some of the words and images used.

My favorite shows an image, repeated three times, of a hefty billfold, stuffed with money and credit cards, lying on the ground in a parking garage where, obviously, it has been lost by some poor soul.  The words superimposed?

MISFORTUNE     OBLIGATION     TEMPTATION

Put that one in your Book of Virtues, Mr. Bennett!  Are these all “values?”  No, but that’s a minor point.  Are we to assume that the quivering temptation of the unscrupulous person who will take the wallet without bothering to return it to the owner is a person with values that are equivalent to those of the person who feels obliged to try and return it to it’s rightful owner?  Okay, kiddees, what lesson did you learn today?

The slogan that goes with all this is:  “Different values make for a richer world.”  I’ll say!  Where would we be without cutthroat greed!

Journey To Perplexity

File this under “Food for Thought.”

Last month I blogged about a Starbucks ad telling customers “Everything we do, you do.” (See: You Are Starbucks.) The idea implied by that poster was that all the stuff Starbucks does (in particular, all of its “corporate social responsibility” activities) is actually done by its customers — after all, customers are the ones paying the bills. Without customers, Starbucks wouldn’t exist.

It’s long been acknowledged that there’s a sense in which corporations don’t exist. On the “nexus of contracts” view, a corporation is just the name we give to the intersection of a whole bunch of private contracts: suppliers, employees, managers, and customers, all linked together by this thing we call a “company.” (Example: you can think of Walmart as just a vehicle by which millions of Americans buy tons of products from millions of Chinese. Exxon is just a mechanism by means of which millions of car drivers hire to oil-rig workers and geologists to help each of them exploit a tiny bit of the earth’s petroleum reserves.)

So, from that point of view, consider this: since corporations (in some sense) don’t exist, they also don’t pollute. Nor do they have any social impact at all, either for better or for worse.

Seen this way, Shell Oil has never emitted any pollution. Sure, smokestacks bearing its name have, but that’s just a short-hand way of saying that millions of car-drivers (and folks who heat their homes with oil or natural gas) have each contributed, incrementally, to that pollution. Likewise, Exxon has never spilled a drop of oil in the ocean. And Walmart has never driven a smaller store out of business: if a smaller competitor went out of business, it’s because thousands of consumers chose to shop at Walmart rather than at the smaller store.

Now keep in mind that this is not intended as a way of letting corporations (or managers) off the hook for bad decisions. It’s a kind of thought experiment, to see where it gets us, ethically, if we look at the corporation as a conduit between people who want to sell things (e.g., garments sewn in China) and people who want to buy them (e.g., North American teenagers).

Of course, from this point of view, no company would get credit, either, for any of the good things it “does.”

So, is this way of thinking about things helpful, or dangerous? Does it make sense for some of the examples suggested above, but not for others? Why?

via The Business Ethics Blog, by Chris MacDonald, Ph.D..

August 29, 2009, 10:33 pmYour Comments on my Sunday Health ColumnBy Nicholas KristofMy Sunday Column argues that our existing health system erodes family values — by causing the divorce of the woman who was the spine of my column — and costs far more lives than an army of “death panels” ever could. I’m quite horrified at the thought that we may miss this chance to reform our health care system and assure universal coverage for all Americans. I’d welcome your thoughts on the column, particularly by those working in the medical world or those who have had major encounters with it.Update: Read through these comments and those beside the column itself — they offer an excellent education in what it means to fall through the cracks.

From the Blog

The Article

This week, the health care debate journeyed through the looking glass. . . .

Investors Business Daily claimed that physically disabled scientist Stephen Hawking would have had his life cut short by the government-run British health care system if he lived in England. Which, in fact, he does. And always has. Who needs details when there are town hall discussions to disrupt — or bring a gun to?

Arianna Huffington

via Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post.

I don’t usually talk about politics but I am increasingly concerned with this  mob mentality that seems to be rising in our nation. No doubt economic anxiety is increasing the intensity of reactions but why are so many so quick to react so forcefully to issues without investigating the sources and veracity or even thinking through the accusations?

references:

Republican Death Trip

Some pundits claim that Mr. Obama has polarized the country by following too liberal an agenda. But the truth is that the attacks on the president have no relationship to anything he is actually doing or proposing.

Right now, the charge that’s gaining the most traction is the claim that health care reform will create “death panels” in Sarah Palin’s words that will shuffle the elderly and others off to an early grave. It’s a complete fabrication, of course. The provision requiring that Medicare pay for voluntary end-of-life counseling was introduced by Senator Johnny Isakson, Republican — yes, Republican — of Georgia, who says that it’s “nuts” to claim that it has anything to do with euthanasia.

And not long ago, some of the most enthusiastic peddlers of the euthanasia smear, including Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House, and Mrs. Palin herself, were all for “advance directives” for medical care in the event that you are incapacitated or comatose. That’s exactly what was being proposed — and has now, in the face of all the hysteria, been dropped from the bill.

Tonight the wind was hard, cleansing and freeing. The rain was brilliant. I was dripping onto my plate as I ate. It was two ears of corn from a basket a customer/friend had dropped by on his way home from the garden. I threw 2 (in the husk) on a fire of coals and mesquite wood to roast as I unshod myself into the gospel of bare feet. I can live in the succulent romance of these things because I choose them as my life.

But the days such as this one when so many ask you for magic in their dilemmas and are so lost, despairing and demanding. . .  I am older and my back has been in so many corners that surely one is similar to theirs. So I perform the illusion of a miracle with an answer. It’s show biz and they ask me for an autograph, my hot line number, their salvation insurance policy. But we have none of that here.

On this avenue of the carnival creatures all we have is the secret ability to take off our shoes and be with the rain, the lightening and the grasses of earth. Ultimately, that somehow always leads us to them and we become a small rain shower that disperses the storm.

Paroxysm: The Perfect Crime

Jean Baudrillard

If not for appearances, the world would be a perfect crime, which is to say, without criminal, without victim, and without motive. Wherein the truth is forever withdrawn, and where the secret is never exposed, for want of traces. But, precisely, the crime is never perfect, because the world gives itself away through appearances, which are the traces of its inexistence, traces of the continuity of nothingness. For nothingness itself, the continuity of the link, leaves traces. It is by this that the world betrays its secret. It is by this that it lets itself be felt, all the while concealing itself behind appearances.

Quote From Elizabeth Wong’ Blog

(a meditation on Thinking Without Thinking)

Yesterday I posted this to another site:

I dreamed a friend was calling me urgently, in trouble but the connection was bad. Over and over he called and I asked where he was, what was wrong. Finally I understood. He was warning me about someone across the street. I got up and walked out into the cool, full moon’s light to my unlocked car. I picked up spilled change and re-stuffed my glove compartment wondering what if they had stolen my jazz or opera CDs.

Some comments were made and I added:

But I’m not worried about the robbery part. I’m concerned about how the experience may have effected the thief. What if Frank Morgan or Pavarotti had been part of that experience?

Sitting in the garden last night I wondered if I was guilty of a class or cultural or educational arrogance by insinuating there was a type of salvation to be found in certain types of music or the “Mozart for Kids” effect or some such righteous affirmation.

Rauscher et al. show that the enhancing effect of the music condition is only temporary: no student had effects extending beyond the 15-minute period in which they were tested. The study makes no statement of an increase in IQ in general, but in participants’ spatial intelligence scores.

via Mozart effect – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Evaluations:

All that was stolen was change, quarters to be exact. Pennies and nickles were spilled/discarded on the floor and console.

Left behind were CDs, a cell phone car charger, a flashlight, a notepad with pen and a tire guage.

It’s senseless to ascribe de facto possibilities since potentials are infinite. I doubt that the thief needed quarters to get out of a hospital parking lot or put air in a low tire.  I doubt that the iPod that was once stolen from me was ever used to download Jesus sermons resulting in a Damascus Road experience.

It is equally doubtful that locking my car would have lessened the crime committed against us all. The intention was there. The inscape of that person determined the manifestation of the event, the instress.

I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark, Not Day

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.

What hours, O what black hours we have spent

This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!

And more must, in yet longer light’s delay.

With witness I speak this. But where I say

Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament

Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent

To dearest him that lives alas! away.

I am gall, I am heartburn. God’s most deep decree

Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;

Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.

Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see

The lost are like this, and their scourge to be

As I am mine, their sweating selves, but worse.

via I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark, Not Day – Poets.org

Newly unveiled court documents show that ghostwriters paid by a pharmaceutical company played a major role in producing 26 scientific papers backing the use of hormone replacement therapy in women, suggesting that the level of hidden industry influence on medical literature is broader than previously known.

The articles, published in medical journals between 1998 and 2005, emphasized the benefits and de-emphasized the risks of taking hormones to protect against maladies like aging skin, heart disease and dementia. That supposed medical consensus benefited Wyeth, the pharmaceutical company that paid a medical communications firm to draft the papers, as sales of its hormone drugs, called Premarin and Prempro, soared to nearly $2 billion in 2001.

But the seeming consensus fell apart in 2002 when a huge federal study on hormone therapy was stopped after researchers found that menopausal women who took certain hormones had an increased risk of invasive breast cancer, heart disease and stroke. A later study found that hormones increased the risk of dementia in older patients.

The ghostwritten papers were typically review articles, in which an author weighs a large body of medical research and offers a bottom-line judgment about how to treat a particular ailment. The articles appeared in 18 medical journals, including The American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology and The International Journal of Cardiology.

The articles did not disclose Wyeth’s role in initiating and paying for the work. Elsevier, the publisher of some of the journals, said it was disturbed by the allegations of ghostwriting and would investigate.

via Ghostwriters Paid by Wyeth Aided Its Drugs – NYTimes.com.

The first person to utter “shit happens” must have been a traveler.

As I emptied myself from both ends for the better part of 36 hours in the hills of northern Ecuador recently (a bad batch of cevichochos, I suspect), I was reminded that we owe our readers an accounting of how we usually manage to stay healthy while we travel.

Fortunately, Audrey and I have each only endured stomach bugs three or four times in the last few years of travel — in places like Vietnam, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Guatemala, and most recently for me, Ecuador.

“You ate on the streets in Burma and never got sick? All that food in China and never sick? India even?”

Yes. That’s correct.

If you follow us, you know that we rarely deny ourselves the joys of exploring local street food and meals in hole-in-the-wall restaurants. And although it appears that we eat with reckless abandon, we do tend to follow some basic guidelines. These are not hard and fast rules (we do break them sometimes) but a philosophy and approach that seem to work for us. The idea is to sharpen our ability to size up eating situations while balancing the reward of authentic local dining with the risks of becoming ill.

via Ten Tips for Eating Local and Staying Healthy While Traveling Around the World.

A good read with advice good for the road and at home.