Opioid Numbers

            A Chicago Tribune editorial reprinted in my local newspaper as "How to halt deadly toll of opioids" (Nov. 13) says that in 2016, "64,000 people died of drug overdoses," generally opioids. In 2014, there were 207,400 drug-related human deaths, so it's safe to assume there were more than that in 2016; 64,000 is for the US.

            It is a number that needs to be put in context and analyzed.

            In 2014, there were 2,624,418 total deaths of Americans, nearly 46% of them from heart disease and cancer. The 64,000 figure would put the US death rate from drug overdoses between those in 2014 for diabetes (76,488) and influenza plus pneumonia (55,227).

            What makes the 64,000 newsworthy — aside from money, politics, and the good old American obsession with drugs — is that such deaths are largely preventable.

            The Trib editorial suggests some ways of prevention, but we need more detailed numbers and analysis.

            To clarify a related discussion, I've suggested that the most direct way to decrease gun deaths in the USA would be to provide old men like me ways of killing ourselves more elegant than blowing out our brains. How many of those drug deaths are relatively nonmessy suicides? We might have less an opioid crisis than one of despair; and the responsible social answer to despair is psychological intervention and helping people achieve lives worth living.

            Are many of the deaths from accidental overdose? We keep down the rate of overdose deaths for legal drugs by regulation of purity and labeling. A direct way to reduce deaths by accidental overdose would be similar supply of FDA-approved illegal drugs, dispensed by responsible people. If we refuse to supply drugs of certified purity and dosage, then we need to make that decision consciously, and tone down laments about the horrors of overdose as such: we clearly have other priorities.

Climate-Change Revisited: Thought-Experiment (20 Nov. 2012)

            I've got a thought-experiment for you: "Let's pretend" for grownups.

            Let's pretend our sun is moving into a cycle of greater output of energy trivial for the sun, but important on Earth since we get a period of warming, what looks to be a long period. And the question would be what humans could do to moderate the effects of this sun-caused climate change.

            Some astronomer might note the "greenhouse effect" on our neighbor Venus, whose surface is very hot not just from Venus's nearness to the sun but also from its (mostly) carbon dioxide atmosphere, which efficiently traps heat.

            One thing we might try to slow down the heating of the Earth would be to reduce the carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere.

            One way we could do that is to do some things we should do anyway to reduce our use of fossil fuels and leave some oil, coal, and natural gas for future generations, along with an infrastructure that runs well and fairly directly on what in human terms is the virtually unlimited power of the sun. We could leave a legacy of power from wind, water, geothermal sources, and focused sunlight, photovoltaic cells — etc.

            Got it?

            As a practical matter, for policy decisions, it's not crucial what the source is of long-term climate change, including the source of net global warming. If net global warming is occurring, we can help cool the planet by reducing carbon emissions.

            So stop already with arguments that human-released greenhouse gasses don't cause climate change! Reducing greenhouse gasses can help reduce the risk, and we owe it to future generations not to gamble with their planet, and try.

Patriotism, Teams, and Tribes

I've got three stories for you, one I've told before.

A decade or two ago, I complained to the manager of the Aerobics Area of the Miami University (Oxford, OH) Recreational Sports Center that the Muzak was too loud (getting through both ear stopples and heavy-duty hearing protector muffs). Among other things, he asserted, "But it's your music, meaning classic rock, which was the general soundtrack for the growing up of my generation. I responded that "My music is music I can turn off."

Possibly also at the "RSC," a colleague sort of trapped me for a mild rant on his sense of betrayal by his team, the Cincinnati Reds, whose manager and upper-echelon coaching staff he believed incompetent. Eventually I smiled and asked "Then why don't you fire the manager and the least competent coaches?" He said, "I can't do that; only Marge Schott can do that." "Then it's not your team," I said; "it's Marge Schott's team."

Long before that, when I was in high school in Chicago, the senior class advisor accused me with, "You never take part in school activities." I told her that I was in Key Club, actually, and that she was angry with me because of something I'd done working for the senior class; but, okay, I did put most of my effort into non-school activities (I was an officer of a freaking charity and that was a serious commitment!). "I can never be elected principal," I finally told her, "and I put most of my efforts into groups where I have some influence ... the possibility of clout." (Offered a choice, I never wanted to be the president of an organization but a VP or secretary or such: someone with access to the president, someone who'd be consulted.)

I'm at an extreme here, growing up political in Chicago, and in the Cubs neighborhood to boot (where many became either fanatical fans or learned to enjoy Wrigley Field without getting emotionally involved with that baseball stuff we viewed from cheap seats). Movies I liked greatly, but otherwise I wasn't much into being a spectator.

Most Americans, I suspect, are mostly fans of the American Nation: what Trey Parker and Matt Stone called "TEAM AMERICA" (WORLD POLICE). Part of Tribe America: or a subgroup felt to be the real America. A minority of Americans, I think, want, primarily, to be citizens of the Republic, with at least the possibility of at least a tiny bit of influence. These are overlapping groups and don't have to be opposed. But those on the other extreme from me, people who identify with Team America as "one Nation, under God, indivisible" and monolithic — these folk are right to see small "r" republicans, Americans who want to be citizens of a republican state and not members of a tribe as competitors for the soul of America and deeply opposed opponents.

We are in one of those "hearts and minds" struggles, and it will not be pretty.

Meditation on a T-Shirt (Standing Up for Science, in Good Faith)

A really neat T-shirt on sale on the web says on its front,

            Earth Is Not Flat

         Vaccines Work

         We've Been To The Moon

         Chemtrails Aren't A Thing

         Climate Change Is Real

         Stand Up For Science

But if I were making a shirt for myself, I'd want on on the back,

         Teaching Flat-Earth v. Round-Earth Hypotheses Is a Fine Way to Introduce Kids to Scientific Method and the History and Philosophy of Science

         The Human Species Evolved Like the Other Species, and Is Contingent, Not Special

         In a Universe of "Billions and Billions of Stars," the Human Species Is Trivial

         If There's a Multiverse of Universes, the Human Species Is Really Trivial

         If the Human Species Is Trivial, You Certainly Are Nothing Special

         If You Eat Carrots, Let Alone Hamburgers, You Deny that Life Is Sacred

         Like the Carrot or Steer You Eat, When You're Dead You're Dead

         Belief that "in the Big Picture" Humans Have Value Over, Say, Sheep or Cockroaches Is Necessary But Absurd

         Stand Up For Science and Its Implications

Herman Melville's Ishmael (or just the Narrator of much of Moby Dick) tells us that "[…] the truest of all books is Solomon's, and Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered steel of woe. 'All is vanity.' ALL" (ch. xcvi, "The Try-Works"). In a bit more detail, and more modern language — "vanity" means "emptiness": "All is emptiness" and "a striving after wind" — Koheleth tells us that he looked deeply into the truth of things and "decided as regards men, to dissociate them [from] the divine beings," gods and angels, "and to face that fact that they are beasts. For in respect of the fate of man and the fate of beast, they have one and the same fate: as the one dies so dies the other, and both have the same lifebreath; man has no superiority over beast, since both amount to nothing" (Tanakh Ecclesiastes, 3.18-19).

Since the Renaissance and increasingly since the Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution, scientific research has expanded the human-eye view of the universe in space and time and displaced us from the center of things. This is good for human humility — a virtue we generally lack — but it has its dangers.

Robert Ardrey tells is in his African Genesis about a theory that circulated for a bit in the mid-20^th century, on "The Illusion of Central Position" as the birthright of every human child. I look around, and I see that the universe revolves around me. "With maturity, however, the illusion is undercut and the child and then the man comes to a truer perception of his place in the scheme of things." 

Nonetheless the theory grants that should a man ever attain a state of total maturity — ever come to see himself, in other words, in perfect mathematical relationship to the tide of tumultuous life which has risen upon the earth and in which we represent but a single swell; and furthermore come to see our earth as but one opportunity for life among uncounted millions in our galaxy alone, and our galaxy as but one statistical improbability, nothing more, in the silent mathematics of all things—should a man, in sum, ever achieve the final, total, truthful Disillusionment of Central Position, then in all likelihood he would no longer keep going but would simply lie down, wherever he happened to be, and with a long-drawn sigh return to the oblivion from which he came. (145; ch. 6)

So let us Stand Up for Science and Truth — but count its costs and face the pain of the human position and condition in the real reality of such materialist truth.

Blade Runner 2049 et al. and Overstimulation: Aural Division

In Elizabethan London, one would go to hear a play.

In America, we go to see even a concert.

The different word choices are significant.

            After having participated in an on-line discussion of Blade Runner 2049, I may have to expand to five my current “standard four O’s” for the tent-pole movie: to over-financed, over-produced, over-long, and overblown, we might have to add, “overly loud.” 

            To that I’m going to throw in just having learned that back in Oxford, OH, Kona restaurant is closing after some 20 years of operation. That’s not a bad run for a restaurant and no big deal for those not directly involved. Relevant for me here is that some Miami University (Oxford, OH) faculty liked to eat there, and we got to watch when the restaurant remodeled. I knew the manager, and I commented to him that just about every change they made to the restaurant worked to make it noisier. The manager said that was intentional and noted that among other reasons for that strategy was “We want to get rid of people like you.” I.e., they wanted to get rid of older diners who wanted to eat a meal and then sit around and talk. They wanted to attract youngish drinkers, who would drink, shout a few lines at one another — this was in the BT era (Before Texting) — order some snacks, drink more, and then leave, freeing the table for more drinkers.

            About the time of the Kona remodeling, I had a brief series of conversations with the manager of the aerobics area — it had some fashionable name I've forgotten — at Miami U’s Recreational Sports Center. I asked him to turn down the volume of the Muzak since even wearing ear stopples and “shooting muffs” I still could hear it pounding away. He said (1) they had an audiologist check it out, and it wasn’t too loud, (2) it was “my” music (classic rock), and (3) I was the only one to complain. I told him (more or less) that “my” music was music I could turn off and that they should try klezmer, progressive jazz, or light classical at that volume and see if there were any complaints. 

            And one bit more to throw into the mix as I sidle up to my point: For a while I’ve been intrigued with why “splatter” movies would be so popular with audiences largely the age of the victims in splatter movies. I could see why American youngsters might pay to see and hear the grotesque deaths of people of the older generations screwing them over, but what’s the kick in watching messy deaths for their peers? One answer I’ve received is that young people suffer (if not much) from sensory overload and need increasing doses of stimuli to respond. A touch of terror can get through, and feeling anything can be a positive.

            Maybe.

For sure the fashion nowadays is for sensory overload even on such old-fart-infested contexts as the busy, busy, busy screens on CNN. Jokes about hearing loss among teens aside — it’s a real problem but not that bad — it may be that the loud volume on movies is designed precisely to appeal to The Prime Demographic of 18-24 year-olds (skewing male) and that annoying unfashionable old people would be an advantage. 

            There are people in the movie biz who see problems in sticking with this fashion. First, essential to fashion is change, and film projects started now and going for loud may come out when the fashion moves toward something quieter (although that seems unlikely). Second, the Prime Demographic — blessings upon their free time and disposable income! — have sources of entertainment besides movies and may prove disloyal. Old people have even more free time and more money and can prove a profitable (and artistically challenging) niche market in a number of venues. The problem for now is getting old folks out of the house and into the remaining movie theaters. 

            A strategy to attract the young and somewhat repel the old — as a direct goal or side effect — has its problems commercially. Esthetically, legitimate occasions for volume at the border of pain are rare. So the next recycling of some Ridley Scott or Stan Lee product, remember that the original audiences for dreaming andoids, Wonder Women, and X-Men are getting on in years — and turn down the volume.