Edward Jay Epstein, the investigative journalist whom I praise here, offers free copies of his latest books (which include Myths of the Media, Who Killed God’s Banker?, and Armand Hammer, The Darker Side, all Amazon Kindles) to those who will write Amazon reviews. I took him up on it. You can reach him at ed ~at~ edwardjayepstein.com.
In a brief Atlantic article about the paleo diet, Alesh Houdek writes:
There is no question that we should eat more fresh and unprocessed foods. . . . The Paleo diet’s dictum to eat as fresh as possible is shared universally with all modern sane eating guidelines.
As regular readers of this blog know, I disagree that “fresh is better”. Fermented is not just better but necessary. To work best, I think our bodies need substantial daily doses of fermented food or their microbial equivalent. Evolution has shaped us to like sour, umami-flavored, and complex-flavored food so that we will eat more microbe-laden food. More about this in these posts. Pass the umeboshi.
Last night I slept unusually well, waking up more rested and with more energy than usual. I slept longer than usual: 7.0 hours versus my usual 5.1 hours (median of the previous 20 days). My rating of how rested I felt was 99.2% (that is, 99.2% of fully rested); the median of the previous 20 days is 98.8%. Because the maximum is 100%, this is really a comparison of 0.8% (this morning) with 1.2% (previous mornings); and the comparison is not adjusted for the number of times I stood on one leg to exhaustion, which improves this rating. During the previous 20 days I often stood on one leg to exhaustion six times; yesterday I only did it four times. Above all, I felt more energy in the morning. This was obvious. I have just started to measure this. At 8 am and 9 am, I rate my energy on a 0-100 scale where 50 = neither sluggish nor energetic/energized, 60 = slightly energetic/energized, 70 = somewhat energetic/energized, and 75 = energetic/energized. My ratings this morning were 73 (8 am) and 74 (9 am). The median of my 9 previous ratings is 62. The energy improvement (73/74 vs 62) is why I am curious. I would like to feel this way every morning.
What caused it? I had not exercised the previous day. My room was no darker than usual. My flaxseed oil intake was no different than usual. I had not eaten more pork fat than usual. However, four things had been different than usual:
1. 2 tablespoons of butter at lunch. In addition to my usual 4 tablespoons per day.
2. 0.5-1 tablespoons of butter at bedtime. Again, in addition the usual 4.
3. 1 tablespoon (15 g) coconut butter at bedtime. Part of a longer study of the effect of coconut butter. Gary Taubes suggested this. I had eaten 1 T coconut butter at bedtime 13 previous days. On the first of those 13 days, I had felt a lot more energetic than usual in the morning. On the remaining days, however, the improvement was less clear. I started measuring how energetic I felt in the morning to study this further. Last night was Friday night. On the previous two nights (Wednesday and Thursday) I had not eaten the coconut butter. Maybe absence of coconut butter followed by resumption of coconut butter is the cause.
4. Fresh air and ambient noise. Following a friend’s suggestion, I opened one of my bedroom windows.
My first question is whether the improvement is repeatable. If so, I will start to vary these four factors.
In the 1990s, I discovered that if I see faces on TV early in the morning, I feel better (happier, more eager, more serene) the next day, but not the same day. Faces Monday morning, for example, make me feel better on Tuesday but not Monday. I studied this effect extensively. The results suggested that a circadian oscillator controls our mood and sleep and needs morning face exposure to work properly. Absence of morning face exposure, this theory says, increases your risk of depression — a view not compatible with the “chemical imbalance” explanation of depression but one supported by the strong association between depression and insomnia.
I told friends about this. One of them had devastating bipolar disorder. As he describes here and here, he got great benefit from looking at faces in the morning. After I posted his account of his experience, a man I’ll call Rex wrote me that he was going to try it. At 29, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. At 32, he slit his wrists. He is now 37.Since then he’s been in and out of mental hospitals. Now he lives at home. I wanted to follow his use of morning face therapy “prospectively” — before knowing what would happen. I posted this, about his background, around the time he started. (more…)
Thanks to Mark’s Daily Apple.
After I posted on the relation between Jane Jacobs’s ideas and the British phone-hacking scandal, Jim Jacobs, one of her sons, wrote to me. The first back-and-forth emails in our discussion are here and here. Finally, I wrote:
Thanks for more explanation. You’re quite right that exposure of the truth is at the heart of journalism and is utterly counter to what governments want. In this sense good journalism and governments are opposites — or rather opponents. In this sense, also, journalism is inherently populist whereas governments rarely are. Businesses are inherently populist.
On the other hand, journalism is not a standard commercial enterprise. This is why at many publications there is strict separation between advertising (devoted to raising money) and “editorial” (which spends it). They don’t want what they print to be affected by commercial considerations. That is utterly different than a conventional business. Powerful newspapers, such as the NY Times, see themselves (rightly) as far more than mere commercial enterprises — which is one reason the NY Times has lost so much money lately. It is one reason the NY Times took so long to get a sports section and why they barely have a gossip column. I have seen too many “undercover investigations” and “hidden camera” interviews to believe that journalists find anything wrong with deceiving for the sake of the task. They usually identify themselves, true, but so do police officers.
Exclusivity varies with organizational needs. Journalists do mix with everyone to get stories but that’s because of what they do; it couldn’t be otherwise. Some religions (which are far more guardian than commercial) make a big deal out of missionary work — again, the details of their enterprise demand it. Along the same lines, some businesses try to appear exclusive — the nature of their brand (luxury) demands it.
I agree that journalists trade information and favors with powerful sources. (But think it bad form to pay for interviews.) Whether this is different than governments forming alliances and signing treaties I don’t know.
Because journalism is actually a business, there are necessarily some commercial values, such as avoiding waste, being efficient, and so on.
In contrast to trading and rulers, which have been around for many thousands of years, powerful newspapers and powerful journalists are no more than a few hundred years old, if that. So there has been less time to clarify values. But there’s a reason they’re called the “fourth estate” — two of the other estates being religion and government.
And you’ve heard the phrase “the pen is mightier than the sword” — implying that the pen and the sword are on the same playing field. I can’t imagine anyone saying “the jacket is mightier than the sword” or “the carton of milk is mightier than the sword”.
To which Jim replied:
As I mentioned before, Jane had real trouble finding good names for the two syndromes. You can see it in the part of Chapter 2 where she talks about names – first A & B, then heroic is rejected, etc. and finally she ended up with commercial & guardian. She later regretted the choice because these names can be quite misleading. Activities using the commercial syndrome don’t need to make money or be ‘commercial’ – most good science, for example. Activities using the guardian syndrome don’t need to be guarding anything – classical music, for example. Writing can be either, depending on its use. Advertising shares much with propaganda writing – deception, ostentation, fortitude, etc. No wonder advertising and journalism need to be kept apart! Too much charitable work will ruin any business’ profitability, but it isn’t inherently at odds with the moral syndrome. Nor are stupid business decisions.
I agree that journalists do use unscrupulous means to get their information – like hacking phones. It works. It’s effective. But it isn’t right, and in the end, like all unethical behavior, there’ll be a comeuppance. But what’s wrong for a journalist is right for a police detective, as Jane explains.
Religions are guardian activities, as you say, and missionary work can be either charity or largesse, or a mix. It’s not an aberration that missionaries were traditionally expected to remain aloof from their flocks, just as religious leaders were. Although a luxury goods dealer may sell its goods to royalty, it should itself operate ‘commercially’, being non-exclusive in its dealings with suppliers, rich foreigners, etc. Journalists get much of their material from government, and to government the selling of information is treason. Don’t expect government to give such activity any blessing! Unlike the breaking of a contract, the breaking of a treaty between governments is considered ‘strategic’ (the Hitler/Stalin pact, for example). Between governments the aberration is a contract (Alaska purchase, for example).
Journalism may be older than one would guess. Sometimes it’s hard to tell after ages of editing and translation. Homer probably wrote propaganda, but Herodotus and Thucydides, although usually thought of as historians, seem much like journalists to me – their values certainly align with those of journalists.
And just as the sword and shield can be used to make dinner (paella may have originated as a soldier’s meal, prepared on a shield) so may the pen be made to serve both commercial and guardian work – and be mighty in either role.
And there you have it.
After I wrote about the relation between Jane Jacobs’s ideas and the British phone-hacking scandal, I heard from Jim Jacobs, one of her sons. He wrote: (more…)
Nathan Myhrvold is presumably a billionaire. He is regularly called a genius. Yet he is in charge of a business (Intellectual Ventures) that one person, in a great This American Life podcast, compared to the Mafia.
Please read my story at Boing Boing about how a woman figured out what caused her migraines. I am always interested in cases where people figure out for themselves how to be healthy. If you have a story like that please contact me.
It has generated a lot of comments. Mark Frauenfelder, who posted it, told me he knew it would generate a lot of comments and one of the first would be “anecdotes are not data”. He was right. Preventive stupidity in action. It tells you something that scientists teach that “anecdotes are not data”, when all major scientific truths, as far as I know, began with a single observation. For example, the discovery of electricity began with a single observation that a dead frog’s leg twitched when touched with a scalpel. Why is something so at odds with reality taught and repeated by scientists, whose job is paying attention to reality? My explanation is human nature: How much we enjoy feeling superior.
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