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The KISS
Survival Food System

By W. David Goines
(Copyright 1999)

The KISS (keeping it simply simple) Survival Food System is designed to introduce and integrate fresh foods into daily living such that it becomes part of your lifestyle. In searching for an adequate “survival food”, I was concerned for a number of elements: This food needed to have superior qualities of: storage, usability, economy, nutrition, and be manageable with minimal energy requirements. In other words – it needed to be simply SIMPLE. If it could also replicate itself would also be nice – just in case I could never buy any more of it in this lifetime.

In a “survival” or “emergency” sense, it seemed unrealistic, and almost incomprehensible that I could store a years supply of everything that I would like to have or that I am accustomed to in our everyday modern living standards. Likewise, I wanted my foods to be fresh, not canned, not frozen, and not require a lot of energy to either store or use/prepare. Further, I needed my food to be familiar, such that it would not require a drastic dietary change – which of itself could be a disaster. I would also like to be able to store a years supply in small containers – such that if I had to flee, I could easily take my food with me. I wanted a food that was good tasting and could be used in a number of ways providing a lot of variety. Lord – what could this food possibly be?

Indeed, I prayed about it and was told that only one food upon the earth would meet my requirements. This food is the humble “bean”. In its dry state: it stores well, with virtually no energy requirements other than to be protected from moisture or extreme heat. It and its many cousins offer a profound variety of taste, texture, and nutrition for its incredibly low dry weight. Indeed, it is portable, economical, and it can replicate itself if necessary. While in its dry form, it can be ground into flours or meal with simple tools, mixed with water for a variety of breads & crackers using minimal energy (sun baked even). With soaking, the bean can be easily worked into a paste or eaten raw if necessary.

As a sprouted product – the humble bean becomes a live vegetable providing many times its own volume and nutritional value. A nearly complete food capable of replicating itself many times over when planted in soil, again with very minimal energy requirements i.e. beans fix nitrogen back to the soil instead of depleting it and have only minimal requirements of their own for fertility. The leaves of the bean plant can also be eaten as part of the crop while you are waiting for the beans to mature and return to the dry state. Harvesting is simple. The sprouting process can be carried out year round with very minimal requirements. No doubt – this is real “survival” food. Likewise, sprouted beans can easily be incorporated into your modern daily diet with measurable health benefits. The Chinese have long valued the sprouted bean as a mainstay food. Note that I am advocating sprouted beans – not just bean sprouts, as the sprouted beans represent a much superior food product than just eating the sprouts. Interestingly, sprouted beans contain all the enzymes necessary for proper digestion as a more complete food. When greened or allowed to leaf a little the simple bean becomes a nutritional powerhouse of incomparable value. A living fresh food.

WHICH BEAN IS BEST?
I have researched and tested every bean I could find across common availability. Of the grocery store varieties, I found that the small varieties seem to work best for sprouting. These include: Navy bean, Black Turtle Beans, Red field peas (actually beans) and Lentils. All are legumes (beans) . They offer good taste, texture, and nutritional variety. Mung beans work well, but are usually more difficult to find outside of Asian markets. These varieties typically cost something in the range of 50 cents per pound (retail). In selecting a bag of beans, look for packages that contain very few broken beans. A broken bean definitely won't sprout and a large percentage of broken beans means that the beans have been poorly handled, are old, and might even be dead due to poor handling. Definitely, buy your beans from many sources (different stores) and plan to test and repackage each pound of beans that you buy. If indeed you get a package that does not sprout well, you can use it more immediately for either flour or as a cooked bean product. Even a dead bean has value – just not for sprouting. I buy beans nearly every week of the year, sprouting some from each batch for our weekly usage, repackaging and labeling with date in zippered plastic bags. Properly packaged and stored beans can remain “sprout” viable for up to 5 years. I prefer to keep mine in nearly constant rotation to assure annual freshness whenever possible. Otherwise, be sure that your beans are for human consumption as a food product – NOT seed. Seed for growing has most likely been treated with a pesticide and is not safe for consumption as a fresh food sprout product. For flour – I like pinto beans.

(Click here to read about some problems with sprouting large beans.)

QUANTITIES
As a primary food source, figure approximately 100 pounds of beans per person per year. Two to four ounces of dry beans will produce a pound or more of sprouts. From a survival sense – a person could live on a pound of sprouted beans a day. As a supplemental food source in which you will add grains, seafood, game meats, or other food products, then 50 pounds of beans per year per person is probably adequate to have on hand. Likewise, some of this supply might possibly be planted, thereby fully replicating your annual supply in one 60 to 75 day growing season. One pound of planted beans could produce 50 pounds or more at harvest. I have opted for a supplemental supply system for our needs. Purchasing 2 to 4 pounds of beans a week, you will soon have your supply even with daily or “sprout test” quantities removed.

STORAGE
I use two plastic totes (10 gallon capacity). Each will hold approximately 45 to 60 pounds of beans, is easily portable, and requires only a small amount of storage space. (You could actually use your stacked totes as end or coffee tables if space is a premium.) I immediately re-package each pound of beans I purchase. I also sprout test a couple of ounces from each package/variety to check for viability. If sprout viability is poor – then I separate and use that package (s) as a cooked bean product or for flour as soon as convenient. Quart size zippered bags will easily hold one to two pounds of beans per. Press excess air from each bag as you seal them. Likewise, they may be reused as desired.

SPROUTING EQUIPMENT
There are several so called “sprout farms” on the market today. Likewise, a “sprouter” can be as simple as a quart jar, topped with plastic window screen, the jar ring or a rubber band. I discovered however that beans sprout best in a lightless environment i.e. the sprouts will reach greater lengths if searching for light. I therefore developed my own “sprout farm” or “system” if you please. I use an opaque (cream colored) plastic dish pan measuring approximately 12 x 14 x 5 inches. I form a lid from heavy duty aluminum foil. Likewise, I found that mesh bags constructed from plastic window screen measuring approximately 7 x 10 or 8 x 12 (depending on gross measurement of raw material) worked best for sprouting beans. From a roll of plastic window screen – say 32 inches wide – I measure off 24 inches. Fold the fabric once to 12 inches. From this you can cut four 8 inch bags from the 32 inch width. With the fold being the bottom of the bag, then you only need to seam each side of the bag on a sewing machine using the longest stitch length – tacking at each end of the seam. You could also whip-stitch the edges with a hand needle and thread if you don't have a sewing machine. Even though the dish pan will hold up to 8 to 10 bags of fully sprouted beans – I typically use five bags – since I usually sprout 5 varieties of beans per run. For me, this system constitutes a simple, but very productive “sprout farm” that requires little more than a square foot of space. While sprouting – the “sprout farm” can be placed anywhere that is convenient in your (heated space) with a preferential temperature range of 65 to 85 degrees. (70 to 75 degrees being optimal). This sprout farm will produce approximately 5 pounds of sprouted beans a week (using 5 bags). This is very adequate as a supplemental food supply or for mainstay supply, I would operate two of these units. (For a family of 2 to 4).

SPROUTING PROCESS
Any food processing requires good sanitation practice. I like the above sprout farm because it is easy to maintain a sanitary environment. I use one part household bleach to 4 parts water in a spray bottle for all my kitchen sanitizing. This solution will kill all bacteria and viruses known even including HIV. Since beans come from the field and may contain soil borne contaminates, plus those they may have picked up in handling, I briefly wash all beans for sprouting in this solution – either dipping or spraying and rinsing in chlorinated tap water immediately.

Likewise, I choose the smaller varieties of beans because they sprout faster and more consistently with less risk of “souring” than do some of the larger varieties of beans. Into each bag, measure approximately two ounces of beans or about 1/3 of a cup or 1/8 of a one pound bag of dry beans. Sanitize each bag with either a through sanitizing spray or dip and rinse immediately. Place the bags in the dish pan and add enough tepid chlorinated tap water (99 to 100 degrees) to cover bags. Allow the beans to soak 2 to 4 hours to activate the dry beans. (Note: prolonged soaking as in overnight can drowned the beans and they will not sprout well).
If your tap water is not chlorinated, it is probably ok, but should be tested annually for un-friendly bacteria. Otherwise, you can chlorinate your sprouting water with about a half a cap full of household bleach per gallon of water.

After the initial soak, rinse and drain the beans twice daily (morning & evening) in tepid tap water right in the dish pan, draining each time just so water drains freely and stops running. Do not allow beans to dry out. We want a moist but not soggy environment. Cover the dish pan with a single or double layer of heavy kitchen foil to minimize light. Repeat this process daily for 4 to 6 days until beans have nice ¾ to 1 inch long sprouts. Yes they will have some roots too.

On the final day, complete a final rinse, then either using a salad spinner or just allowing them to drain very well in a colender , then spread the sprouted beans out on a towel and expose them to room light for two or three hours to allow them to “green” a bit. You will see the formation of a tiney leaf at the end of the sprout and this completes the nutritional explosion of the humble bean. The sprouted beans may now be mixed and stored in a zippered plastic bag in the refrigerator for up to a week – where indeed they continue to grow very slowly while you use them. You should use or discard them after about a week. Incredibly, this wonderful living food – is ready to eat! Simply wash/rinse the bags and dish pan using the sanitizing solution and hot water and start another batch.

CONSUMPTION
As both a survival food and as part of a daily diet, sprouted beans are ready to eat. I love them fresh as a raw vegetable perhaps sprinkled with a little red or white wine vinegar. (Yes you may eat them with your fingers!) You can also use them fresh as a slaw or mixed with other salad greens dressed as you like. For their greatest food value (as a living food) do try them raw.

I eat 2 to 4 cups per day and even my grandchildren love them at meals and as a unique snack food. Indeed, you can live off of this product because it is very nearly a perfectly complete food. (Quite divinely appointed). You can also cook your sprouted beans by steaming, microwave, or added to soups, stews, stir fried, literally in any way that you would use a fresh cooked vegetable. Sprouted beans can be chopped or puree and added to breads, muffins, griddle breads for a big nutritional power boost.

They are wonderful fresh (raw) or steamed for cold or hot sandwiches of every description. I frequently saute them with onions basil, Italian herbs, garlic and fresh or canned tomatoes – then puree with a hand blender for an excellent pasta sauce that people swear has meat in it. A quick stir fry with bits of chicken or shrimp served over rice or pasta – a gourmet delight!

CONCLUSION
So, this is my KISS Survival Food System, consisting of a years supply of dry beans, a highly productive sprouting (sprout farm) device that requires very little space, is profoundly portable, requires virtually no energy to maintain, minimal maintenance, minimal storage space for the whole system, yet produces a profound amount of wonderful living food that I can use daily and as a survival food system even should I have to flee my normal living quarters. The whole system comes together for less than $100. and saves me a small fortune annually in fresh food cost while being very simple to maintain and manage. Likewise, since it is incorporated with my daily nutrition – I would have no difficulty should my nutritional needs suddenly become dependent upon it. Besides, this is what God told me to do – and I choose NOT to argue. KISS: (keeping it simply spiritual) and (keeping it simply simple). I'm just so grateful that I asked for a simple solution and got it! Interesting that this simple system could feed the world if necessary.

To enhance my Survival Food System, I also store simple flavorings such as onion powder, garlic flakes, red pepper flakes, whole black pepper corns and some dried herbs. I also have 25 pounds of brown rice and rotate an assortment of dry pasta. All fit nicely within the KISS system and three portable totes.

I hope that by my sharing this KISS Survival Food System you too will receive the blessings of good health daily and in the event of a crisis – you too will be prepared to survive very well. In a real crisis – a hand full of beans could also become your money to acquire something else that you need or desire. Indeed, the humble bean might well be God's greatest food gift for everyday and survival living.

We also have an e-mail discussion list called Simple Survival where we can discuss, share, and learn more about everyday survival issues, coping, recipes, techniques/technology or anything else that will help with the survival process. You can subscribe yourself by using your web-browser and going to: http://SimpleSurvival.listbot.com/ We hope you will become part of our group.

W. David Goines
Royal Publishing Company
413 Highridge Drive
Morganton, N.C. 28655
828-433-5909

Via :

http://www.newyorker.com/critics/atlarge/?040830crat_atlarge

Skepticism about the competence of the masses to govern themselves is as old as mass self-government. Even so, when that competence began to be measured statistically, around the end of the Second World War, the numbers startled almost everyone. The data were interpreted most powerfully by the political scientist Philip Converse, in an article on “The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics,” published in 1964. Forty years later, Converse’s conclusions are still the bones at which the science of voting behavior picks.

Converse claimed that only around ten per cent of the public has what can be called, even generously, a political belief system. He named these people “ideologues,” by which he meant not that they are fanatics but that they have a reasonable grasp of “what goes with what”—of how a set of opinions adds up to a coherent political philosophy. Non-ideologues may use terms like “liberal” and “conservative,” but Converse thought that they basically don’t know what they’re talking about, and that their beliefs are characterized by what he termed a lack of “constraint”: they can’t see how one opinion (that taxes should be lower, for example) logically ought to rule out other opinions (such as the belief that there should be more government programs). About forty-two per cent of voters, according to Converse’s interpretation of surveys of the 1956 electorate, vote on the basis not of ideology but of perceived self-interest. The rest form political preferences either from their sense of whether times are good or bad (about twenty-five per cent) or from factors that have no discernible “issue content” whatever. Converse put twenty-two per cent of the electorate in this last category. In other words, about twice as many people have no political views as have a coherent political belief system.

THE UNPOLITICAL ANIMAL

by LOUIS MENAND

How political science understands voters.

Issue of 2004-08-30
Posted 2004-08-23

In every Presidential-election year, there are news stories about undecided voters, people who say that they are perplexed about whic candidate’s positions make the most sense. They tell reporters things like “I’d like to know more about Bush’s plan for education,” or “I’m worried that Kerry’s ideas about Social Security don’t add up.” They say that they are thinking about issues like “trust,” an whether the candidate cares about people like them. To voters who identify strongly with a political party, the undecided voter is almos an alien life form. For them, a vote for Bush is a vote for a whole philosophy of governance and a vote for Kerry is a vote for distinctly different philosophy. The difference is obvious to them, and they don’t understand how others can’t see it, or can decid whom to vote for on the basis of a candidate’s personal traits or whether his or her position on a particular issue “makes sense.” To a undecided voter, on the other hand, the person who always votes for the Democrat or the Republican, no matter what, must seem like dangerous fanatic. Which voter is behaving more rationally and responsibly

If you look to the political professionals, the people whose job it is to know what makes the fish bite, it is clear that, in their view, political philosophy is not the fattest worm. “Winning Elections: Political Campaign Management, Strategy & Tactics” (M. Evans; $49.95) is a collection of articles drawn from the pages of Campaigns & Elections: The Magazine for People in Politics. The advice to the political professionals is: Don’t assume that your candidate’s positions are going to make the difference. “In a competitive political climate,” as one article explains, “informed citizens may vote for a candidate based on issues. However, uninformed or undecided voters will often choose the candidate whose name and packaging are most memorable. To make sure your candidate has that ‘top-of-mind’ voter awareness, a powerful logo is the best place to start.” You want to present your candidate in language that voters will understand. They understand colors. “Blue is a positive color for men, signaling authority and control,” another article advises. “But it’s a negative color for women, who perceive it as distant, cold and aloof. Red is a warm, sentimental color for women—and a sign of danger or anger to men. If you use the wrong colors to the wrong audience, you’re sending a mixed message.”

It can’t be the case, though, that electoral outcomes turn on things like the color of the buttons. Can it? When citizens stand in the privacy of the booth and contemplate the list of those who bid to serve, do they really think, That’s the guy with the red logo. A lot of anger there. I’ll take my chances with the other one? In Civics 101, the model voter is a citizen vested with the ability to understand the consequences of his or her choice; when these individual rational choices are added up, we know the will of the people. How accurate is this picture?

Skepticism about the competence of the masses to govern themselves is as old as mass self-government. Even so, when that competence began to be measured statistically, around the end of the Second World War, the numbers startled almost everyone. The data were interpreted most powerfully by the political scientist Philip Converse, in an article on “The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics,” published in 1964. Forty years later, Converse’s conclusions are still the bones at which the science of voting behavior picks.

Converse claimed that only around ten per cent of the public has what can be called, even generously, a political belief system. He named these people “ideologues,” by which he meant not that they are fanatics but that they have a reasonable grasp of “what goes with what”—of how a set of opinions adds up to a coherent political philosophy. Non-ideologues may use terms like “liberal” and “conservative,” but Converse thought that they basically don’t know what they’re talking about, and that their beliefs are characterized by what he termed a lack of “constraint”: they can’t see how one opinion (that taxes should be lower, for example) logically ought to rule out other opinions (such as the belief that there should be more government programs). About forty-two per cent of voters, according to Converse’s interpretation of surveys of the 1956 electorate, vote on the basis not of ideology but of perceived self-interest. The rest form political preferences either from their sense of whether times are good or bad (about twenty-five per cent) or from factors that have no discernible “issue content” whatever. Converse put twenty-two per cent of the electorate in this last category. In other words, about twice as many people have no political views as have a coherent political belief system.

Just because someone’s opinions don’t square with what a political scientist recognizes as a political ideology doesn’t mean that those opinions aren’t coherent by the lights of some more personal system of beliefs. But Converse found reason to doubt this possibility. When pollsters ask people for their opinion about an issue, people generally feel obliged to have one. Their answer is duly recorded, and it becomes a datum in a report on “public opinion.” But, after analyzing the results of surveys conducted over time, in which people tended to give different and randomly inconsistent answers to the same questions, Converse concluded that “very substantial portions of the public” hold opinions that are essentially meaningless—off-the-top-of-the-head responses to questions they have never thought about, derived from no underlying set of principles. These people might as well base their political choices on the weather. And, in fact, many of them do.

Findings about the influence of the weather on voter behavior are among the many surveys and studies that confirm Converse’s sense of the inattention of the American electorate. In election years from 1952 to 2000, when people were asked whether they cared who won the Presidential election, between twenty-two and forty-four per cent answered “don’t care” or “don’t know.” In 2000, eighteen per cent said that they decided which Presidential candidate to vote for only in the last two weeks of the campaign; five per cent, enough to swing most elections, decided the day they voted.

Seventy per cent of Americans cannot name their senators or their congressman. Forty-nine per cent believe that the President has the power to suspend the Constitution. Only about thirty per cent name an issue when they explain why they voted the way they did, and only a fifth hold consistent opinions on issues over time. Rephrasing poll questions reveals that many people don’t understand the issues that they have just offered an opinion on. According to polls conducted in 1987 and 1989, for example, between twenty and twenty-five per cent of the public thinks that too little is being spent on welfare, and between sixty-three and sixty-five per cent feels that too little is being spent on assistance to the poor. And voters apparently do punish politicians for acts of God. In a paper written in 2004, the Princeton political scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels estimate that “2.8 million people voted against Al Gore in 2000 because their states were too dry or too wet” as a consequence of that year’s weather patterns. Achen and Bartels think that these voters cost Gore seven states, any one of which would have given him the election.

All political systems make their claim to legitimacy by some theory, whether it’s the divine right of kings or the iron law of history Divine rights and iron laws are not subject to empirical confirmation, which is one reason that democracy’s claims have always seeme superior. What polls and surveys suggest, though, is that the belief that elections express the true preferences of the people may b nearly as imaginary. When you move downward through what Converse called the public’s “belief strata,” candidates are quickl separated from ideology and issues, and they become attached, in voters’ minds, to idiosyncratic clusters of ideas and attitudes. Th most widely known fact about George H. W. Bush in the 1992 election was that he hated broccoli. Eighty-six per cent of likely voter in that election knew that the Bushes’ dog’s name was Millie; only fifteen per cent knew that Bush and Clinton both favored the deat penalty. It’s not that people know nothing. It’s just that politics is not what they know

In the face of this evidence, three theories have arisen. The first is that electoral outcomes, as far as “the will of the people” is concerned, are essentially arbitrary. The fraction of the electorate that responds to substantive political arguments is hugely outweighed by the fraction that responds to slogans, misinformation, “fire alarms” (sensational news), “October surprises” (last-minute sensational news), random personal associations, and “gotchas.” Even when people think that they are thinking in political terms, even when they believe that they are analyzing candidates on the basis of their positions on issues, they are usually operating behind a veil of political ignorance. They simply don’t understand, as a practical matter, what it means to be “fiscally conservative,” or to have “faith in the private sector,” or to pursue an “interventionist foreign policy.” They can’t hook up positions with policies. From the point of view of democratic theory, American political history is just a random walk through a series of electoral options. Some years, things turn up red; some years, they turn up blue.

A second theory is that although people may not be working with a full deck of information and beliefs, their preferences are dictated by something, and that something is élite opinion. Political campaigns, on this theory, are essentially struggles among the élite, the fraction of a fraction of voters who have the knowledge and the ideological chops to understand the substantive differences between the candidates and to argue their policy implications. These voters communicate their preferences to the rest of the electorate by various cues, low-content phrases and images (warm colors, for instance) to which voters can relate, and these cues determine the outcome of the race. Democracies are really oligarchies with a populist face.

The third theory of democratic politics is the theory that the cues to which most voters respond are, in fact, adequate bases on which to form political preferences. People use shortcuts—the social-scientific term is “heuristics”—to reach judgments about political candidates, and, on the whole, these shortcuts are as good as the long and winding road of reading party platforms, listening to candidate debates, and all the other elements of civic duty. Voters use what Samuel Popkin, one of the proponents of this third theory, calls “low-information rationality”—in other words, gut reasoning—to reach political decisions; and this intuitive form of judgment proves a good enough substitute for its high-information counterpart in reflecting what people want.

An analogy (though one that Popkin is careful to dissociate himself from) would be to buying an expensive item like a house or a stereo system. A tiny fraction of consumers has the knowledge to discriminate among the entire range of available stereo components, and to make an informed choice based on assessments of cost and performance. Most of us rely on the advice of two or three friends who have recently made serious stereo-system purchases, possibly some online screen shopping, and the pitch of the salesman at J&R Music World. We eyeball the product, associate idiosyncratically with the brand name, and choose from the gut. When we ask “experts” for their wisdom, mostly we are hoping for an “objective” ratification of our instinctive desire to buy the coolest-looking stuff. Usually, we’re O.K. Our tacit calculation is that the marginal utility of more research is smaller than the benefit of immediate ownership.

On the theory of heuristics, it’s roughly the same with candidates: voters don’t have the time or the inclination to assess them in depth, so they rely on the advice of experts—television commentators, political activists, Uncle Charlie—combined with their own hunches, to reach a decision. Usually (they feel), they’re O.K. If they had spent the time needed for a top-to-toe vetting, they would probably not have chosen differently. Some voters might get it wrong in one direction, choosing the liberal candidate when they in fact preferred a conservative one, but their error is cancelled out by the voters who mistakenly choose the conservative. The will of the people may not be terribly articulate, but it comes out in the wash.

This theory is the most attractive of the three, since it does the most to salvage democratic values from the electoral wreckage Converse described. It gives the mass of voters credit for their decisions by suggesting not only that they can interpret the cues given by the campaigns and the élite opinion-makers but that the other heuristics they use—the candidate seems likable, times are not as good as they were—are actually defensible replacements for informed, logical reasoning. Popkin begins his well-regarded book on the subject, “The Reasoning Voter,” with an example from Gerald Ford’s primary campaign against Ronald Reagan in 1976. Visiting a Mexican-American community in Texas, Ford (never a gaffe-free politician) made the mistake of trying to eat a tamale with the corn husk, in which it is traditionally served, still on it. This ethnic misprision made the papers, and when he was asked, after losing to Jimmy Carter in the general election, what the lesson of his defeat was, Ford answered, “Always shuck your tamales.” Popkin argues that although familiarity with Mexican-American cuisine is not a prerequisite for favoring policies friendly to Mexican-Americans, Mexican-Americans were justified in concluding that a man who did not know how to eat a tamale was not a man predisposed to put their needs high on his list. The reasoning is illogical: Ford was not running for chef, and it was possible to extrapolate, from his positions, the real difference it would make for Mexican-Americans if he were President rather than Reagan or Carter. But Mexican-Americans, and their sympathizers, felt “in their gut” that Ford was not their man, and that was enough.

The principal shortcut that people use in deciding which candidates to vote for is, of course, the political party. The party is the ultimate Uncle Charlie in American politics. Even élite voters use it when they are confronted, in the voting booth, with candidates whose names they have never seen before. There is nothing in the Constitution requiring candidates to be listed on the ballot with their party affiliations, and, if you think about it, the custom of doing so is vaguely undemocratic. It makes elections a monopoly of the major parties, by giving their candidates an enormous advantage—the advantage of an endorsement right there on the ballot—over everyone else who runs. It is easy to imagine a constitutional challenge to the practice of identifying candidates by party, but it is also easy to imagine how wild the effects would be if voters were confronted by a simple list of names with no identifying tags. Every election would be like an election for student-body president: pure name recognition.

Any time information is lacking or uncertain, a shortcut is generally better than nothing. But the shortcut itself is not a faster way of doing the math; it’s a way of skipping the math altogether. My hunch that the coolest-looking stereo component is the best value simply does not reflect an intuitive grasp of electronics. My interest in a stereo is best served if I choose the finest sound for the money, as my interest in an election is best served if I choose the candidate whose policies are most likely to benefit me or the people I care about. But almost no one calculates in so abstract a fashion. Even voters who supported Michael Dukakis in 1988 agreed that he looked ridiculous wearing a weird helmet when he went for a ride in a tank, and a lot of those people felt that, taken together with other evidence of his manner and style of self-expression, the image was not irrelevant to the substance of his campaign. George H. W. Bush underwent a similar moment in 1992, when he was caught showing astonishment at the existence of scanners at supermarket checkout counters. Ideologues opposed to Bush were pleased to propose this as what psychologists call a “fast and frugal” means of assessing the likely effects of his economic policies.

When political scientists interpret these seat-of-the-pants responses as signs that voters are choosing rationally, and that representative government therefore really does reflect the will of the people, they are, in effect, making a heuristic of heuristics. They are not doing the math. Doing the math would mean demonstrating that the voters’ intuitive judgments are roughly what they would get if they analyzed the likely effects of candidates’ policies, and this is a difficult calculation to perform. One shortcut that voters take, and that generally receives approval from the élite, is pocketbook voting. If they are feeling flush, they vote for the incumbent; if they are feeling strapped, they vote for a change. But, as Larry Bartels, the co-author of the paper on Gore and the weather, has pointed out, pocketbook voting would be rational only if it could be shown that replacing the incumbent did lead, on average, to better economic times. Without such a demonstration, a vote based on the condition of one’s pocketbook is no more rational than a vote based on the condition of one’s lawn. It’s a hunch.

Bartels has also found that when people do focus on specific policies they are often unable to distinguish their own interests. His work, which he summed up in a recent article for The American Prospect, concerned public opinion about the estate tax. When people are asked whether they favor Bush’s policy of repealing the estate tax, two-thirds say yes—even though the estate tax affects only the wealthiest one or two per cent of the population. Ninety-eight per cent of Americans do not leave estates large enough for the tax to kick in. But people have some notion—Bartels refers to it as “unenlightened self-interest”—that they will be better off if the tax is repealed. What is most remarkable about this opinion is that it is unconstrained by other beliefs. Repeal is supported by sixty-six per cent of people who believe that the income gap between the richest and the poorest Americans has increased in recent decades, and that this is a bad thing. And it’s supported by sixty-eight per cent of people who say that the rich pay too little in taxes. Most Americans simply do not make a connection between tax policy and the over-all economic condition of the country. Whatever heuristic they are using, it is definitely not doing the math for them. This helps make sense of the fact that the world’s greatest democracy has an electorate that continually “chooses” to transfer more and more wealth to a smaller and smaller fraction of itself.

But who ever does the math? As Popkin points out, everybody uses heuristics, including the élite. Most of the debate among opinion-makers is conducted in shorthand, and even well-informed voters rely on endorsements and party affiliations to make their choices. The very essence of being an ideologue lies in trusting the label—liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat. Those are “bundling” terms: they pull together a dozen positions on individual issues under a single handy rubric. They do the work of assessment for you.

It is widely assumed that the upcoming Presidential election will be decided by an electorate that is far more ideological than ha historically been the case. Polls indicate much less volatility than usual, supporting the view that the public is divided into starkl antagonistic camps—the “red state-blue state” paradigm. If this is so, it suggests that we have at last moved past Converse’s picture o an electoral iceberg, in which ninety per cent of the population is politically underwater. But Morris Fiorina, a political scientist a Stanford, thinks that it is not so, and that the polarized electorate is a product of élite opinion. “The simple truth is that there is n culture war in the United States—no battle for the soul of America rages, at least none that most Americans are aware of,” he says i his short book “Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America” (Longman; $14.95). Public-opinion polls, he argues, show that o most hot-button issues voters in so-called red states do not differ significantly from voters in so-called blue states. Most people identif themselves as moderates, and their responses to survey questions seem to substantiate this self-description. What has become polarized Fiorina argues, is the élite. The chatter—among political activists, commentators, lobbyists, movie stars, and so on—has become highl ideological. It’s a non-stop “Crossfire,” and this means that the candidates themselves come wrapped in more extreme ideologica coloring. But Fiorina points out that the ideological position of a candidate is not identical to the position of the people who vote fo him or her. He suggests that people generally vote for the candidate whose views strike them as closest to their own, and “closest” is relative term. With any two candidates, no matter how far out, one will always be “closer” than the other

Of course, if Converse is correct, and most voters really don’t have meaningful political beliefs, even ideological “closeness” is an artifact of survey anxiety, of people’s felt need, when they are asked for an opinion, to have one. This absence of “real opinions” is not from lack of brains; it’s from lack of interest. “The typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field,” the economic theorist Joseph Schumpeter wrote, in 1942. “He argues and analyzes in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within the sphere of his real interests. He becomes a primitive again. His thinking is associative and affective.” And Fiorina quotes a passage from the political scientist Robert Putnam: “Most men are not political animals. The world of public affairs is not their world. It is alien to them—possibly benevolent, more probably threatening, but nearly always alien. Most men are not interested in politics. Most do not participate in politics.”

Man may not be a political animal, but he is certainly a social animal. Voters do respond to the cues of commentators and campaigners, but only when they can match those cues up with the buzz of their own social group. Individual voters are not rational calculators of self-interest (nobody truly is), and may not be very consistent users of heuristic shortcuts, either. But they are not just random particles bouncing off the walls of the voting booth. Voters go into the booth carrying the imprint of the hopes and fears, the prejudices and assumptions of their family, their friends, and their neighbors. For most people, voting may be more meaningful and more understandable as a social act than as a political act.

That it is hard to persuade some people with ideological arguments does not mean that those people cannot be persuaded, but the things that help to convince them are likely to make ideologues sick—things like which candidate is more optimistic. For many liberals, it may have been dismaying to listen to John Kerry and John Edwards, in their speeches at the Democratic National Convention, utter impassioned bromides about how “the sun is rising” and “our best days are still to come.” But that is what a very large number of voters want to hear. If they believe it, then Kerry and Edwards will get their votes. The ideas won’t matter, and neither will the color of the buttons.

O'Halloran RL, Dietz PE: Autorerotic fatalities with power hydraulics. Journal of Forensic Sciences, 38:359-364, 1993

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=8454997&itool=iconabstr

Autoerotic fatalities with power hydraulics.

O'Halloran RL, Dietz PE.

Ventura County Medical Examiner Office, CA.

We report two cases in which men used the hydraulic shovels on tractors to suspend themselves for masochistic sexual stimulation. One man developed a romantic attachment to a tractor, even giving it a name and writing poetry in its honor. He died accidentally while intentionally asphyxiating himself through suspension by the neck, leaving clues that he enjoyed perceptual distortions during asphyxiation. The other man engaged in sexual bondage and transvestic fetishism, but did not purposely asphyxiate himself. He died when accidentally pinned to the ground under a shovel after intentionally suspending himself by the ankles. We compare these cases with other autoerotic fatalities involving perceptual distortion, cross-dressing, machinery, and postural asphyxiation by chest compression.

Via .

http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/angier_24_5.htm

My God Problem

by Natalie Angier

The following article is from Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 24, Number 5.

In the course of reporting a book on the scientific canon and pestering hundreds of researchers at the nation's great universities about what they see as the essential vitamins and minerals of literacy in their particular disciplines, I have been hammered into a kind of twinkle-eyed cartoon coma by one recurring message. Whether they are biologists, geologists, physicists, chemists, astronomers, or engineers, virtually all my sources topped their list of what they wish people understood about science with a plug for Darwin's dandy idea. Would you please tell the public, they implored, that evolution is for real? Would you please explain that the evidence for it is overwhelming and that an appreciation of evolution serves as the bedrock of our understanding of all life on this planet?

In other words, the scientists wanted me to do my bit to help fix the terrible little statistic they keep hearing about, the one indicating that many more Americans believe in angels, devils, and poltergeists than in evolution. According to recent polls, about 82 percent are convinced of the reality of heaven (and 63 percent think they're headed there after death); 51 percent believe in ghosts; but only 28 percent are swayed by the theory of evolution.

Scientists think this is terrible—the public's bizarre underappreciation of one of science's great and unshakable discoveries, how we and all we see came to be—and they're right. Yet I can't help feeling tetchy about the limits most of them put on their complaints. You see, they want to augment this particular figure—the number of people who believe in evolution—without bothering to confront a few other salient statistics that pollsters have revealed about America's religious cosmogony. Few scientists, for example, worry about the 77 percent of Americans who insist that Jesus was born to a virgin, an act of parthenogenesis that defies everything we know about mammalian genetics and reproduction. Nor do the researchers wring their hands over the 80 percent who believe in the resurrection of Jesus, the laws of thermodynamics be damned.

No, most scientists are not interested in taking on any of the mighty cornerstones of Christianity. They complain about irrational thinking, they despise creationist “science,” they roll their eyes over America's infatuation with astrology, telekinesis, spoon bending, reincarnation, and UFOs, but toward the bulk of the magic acts that have won the imprimatur of inclusion in the Bible, they are tolerant, respectful, big of tent. Indeed, many are quick to point out that the Catholic Church has endorsed the theory of evolution and that it sees no conflict between a belief in God and the divinity of Jesus and the notion of evolution by natural selection. If the pope is buying it, the reason for most Americans' resistance to evolution must have less to do with religion than with a lousy advertising campaign.

So, on the issue of mainstream monotheistic religions and the irrationality behind many of religion's core tenets, scientists often set aside their skewers, their snark, and their impatient demand for proof, and instead don the calming cardigan of a a kiddie-show host on public television. They reassure the public that religion and science are not at odds with one another, but rather that they represent separate “magisteria,” in the words of the formerly alive and even more formerly scrappy Stephen Jay Gould. Nobody is going to ask people to give up their faith, their belief in an everlasting soul accompanied by an immortal memory of every soccer game their kids won, every moment they spent playing fetch with the dog. Nobody is going to mock you for your religious beliefs. Well, we might if you base your life decisions on the advice of a Ouija board; but if you want to believe that someday you'll be seated at a celestial banquet with your long-dead father to your right and Jane Austen to your left-and that she'll want to talk to you for another hundred million years or more—that's your private reliquary, and we're not here to jimmy the lock.

Consider the very different treatments accorded two questions presented to Cornell University's “Ask an Astronomer” Web site. To the query, “Do most astronomers believe in God, based on the available evidence?” the astronomer Dave Rothstein replies that, in his opinion, “modern science leaves plenty of room for the existence of God . . . places where people who do believe in God can fit their beliefs in the scientific framework without creating any contradictions.” He cites the Big Bang as offering solace to those who want to believe in a Genesis equivalent and the probabilistic realms of quantum mechanics as raising the possibility of “God intervening every time a measurement occurs” before concluding that, ultimately, science can never prove or disprove the existence of a god, and religious belief doesn't—and shouldn't—”have anything to do with scientific reasoning.” 

How much less velveteen is the response to the reader asking whether astronomers believe in astrology. “No, astronomers do not believe in astrology,” snarls Dave Kornreich. “It is considered to be a ludicrous scam. There is no evidence that it works, and plenty of evidence to the contrary.” Dr. Kornreich ends his dismissal with the assertion that in science “one does not need a reason not to believe in something.” Skepticism is “the default position” and “one requires proof if one is to be convinced of something's existence.” 

In other words, for horoscope fans, the burden of proof is entirely on them, the poor gullible gits; while for the multitudes who believe that, in one way or another, a divine intelligence guides the path of every leaping lepton, there is no demand for evidence, no skepticism to surmount, no need to worry. You, the religious believer, may well find subtle support for your faith in recent discoveries—that is, if you're willing to upgrade your metaphors and definitions as the latest data demand, seek out new niches of ignorance or ambiguity to fill with the goose down of faith, and accept that, certain passages of the Old Testament notwithstanding, the world is very old, not everything in nature was made in a week, and (can you turn up the mike here, please?) Evolution Happens.

And if you don't find substantiation for your preferred divinity or your most cherished rendering of the afterlife somewhere in the sprawling emporium of science, that's fine, too. No need to lose faith when you were looking in the wrong place to begin with. Science can't tell you whether God exists or where you go when you die. Science cannot definitively rule out the heaven option, with its helium balloons and Breck hair for all. Science in no way wants to be associated with terrifying thoughts, like the possibility that the pericentury of consciousness granted you by the convoluted, gelatinous, and transient organ in your skull just may be the whole story of you-dom. Science isn't arrogant. Science trades in the observable universe and testable hypotheses. Religion gets the midnight panic fêtes. But you've heard about evolution, right?

So why is it that most scientists avoid criticizing religion even as they decry the supernatural mind-set? For starters, some researchers are themselves traditionally devout, keeping a kosher kitchen or taking Communion each Sunday. I admit I'm surprised whenever I encounter a religious scientist. How can a bench-hazed Ph.D., who might in an afternoon deftly purée a colleague's PowerPoint presentation on the nematode genome into so much fish chow, then go home, read in a two-thousand-year-old chronicle, riddled with internal contradictions, of a meta-Nobel discovery like “Resurrection from the Dead,” and say, gee, that sounds convincing? Doesn't the good doctor wonder what the control group looked like?

Scientists, however, are a far less religious lot than the American population, and, the higher you go on the cerebro-magisterium, the greater the proportion of atheists, agnostics, and assorted other paganites. According to a 1998 survey published in Nature, only 7 percent of members of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences professed a belief in a “personal God.” (Interestingly, a slightly higher number, 7.9 percent, claimed to believe in “personal immortality,” which may say as much about the robustness of the scientific ego as about anything else.) In other words, more than 90 percent of our elite scientists are unlikely to pray for divine favoritism, no matter how badly they want to beat a competitor to publication. Yet only a flaskful of the faithless have put their nonbelief on record or publicly criticized religion, the notable and voluble exceptions being Richard Dawkins of Oxford University and 

Daniel Dennett of Tufts University. Nor have Dawkins and Dennett earned much good will among their colleagues for their anticlerical views; one astronomer I spoke with said of Dawkins, “He's a really fine parish preacher of the fire-and-brimstone school, isn't he?” 

So, what keeps most scientists quiet about religion? It's probably something close to that trusty old limbic reflex called “an instinct for self-preservation.” For centuries, science has survived quite nicely by cultivating an image of reserve and objectivity, of being above religion, politics, business, table manners. Scientists want to be left alone to do their work, dazzle their peers, and hire grad students to wash the glassware. When it comes to extramural combat, scientists choose their crusades cautiously. Going after Uri Geller or the Ra‘lians is risk-free entertainment, easier than making fun of the sociology department. Battling the creationist camp has been a much harder and nastier fight, but those scientists who have taken it on feel they have a direct stake in the debate and are entitled to wage it, since the creationists, and more recently the promoters of “intelligent design” theory, claim to be as scientific in their methodology as are the scientists.

But when a teenager named Darrell Lambert was chucked out of the Boy Scouts for being an atheist, scientists suddenly remembered all those gels they had to run and dark matter they had to chase, and they kept quiet. Lambert had explained the reason why, despite a childhood spent in Bible classes and church youth groups, he had become an atheist. He took biology in ninth grade, and, rather than devoting himself to studying the bra outline of the girl sitting in front of him, he actually learned some biology. And what he learned in biology persuaded him that the Bible was full of . . . short stories. Some good, some inspiring, some even racy, but fiction nonetheless. For his incisive, reasoned, scientific look at life, and for refusing to cook the data and simply lie to the Boy Scouts about his thoughts on God—as some advised him to do—Darrell Lambert should have earned a standing ovation from the entire scientific community. Instead, he had to settle for an interview with Connie Chung, right after a report on the Gambino family.

Scientists have ample cause to feel they must avoid being viewed as irreligious, a prionic life-form bent on destroying the most sacred heifer in America. After all, academic researchers graze on taxpayer pastures. If they pay the slightest attention to the news, they've surely noticed the escalating readiness of conservative politicians and an array of highly motivated religious organizations to interfere with the nation's scientific enterprise—altering the consumer information Web site at the National Cancer Institute to make abortion look like a cause of breast cancer, which it is not, or stuffing scientific advisory panels with anti-abortion “faith healers.” 

Recently, an obscure little club called the Traditional Values Coalition began combing through descriptions of projects supported by the National Institutes of Health and complaining to sympathetic congressmen about those they deemed morally “rotten,” most of them studies of sexual behavior and AIDS prevention. The congressmen in turn launched a series of hearings, calling in institute officials to inquire who in the Cotton-pickin' name of Mather cares about the perversions of Native American homosexuals, to which the researchers replied, um, the studies were approved by a panel of scientific experts, and, gee, the Native American community has been underserved and is having a real problem with AIDS these days. Thus far, the projects have escaped being nullified, but the raw display of pious dentition must surely give fright to even the most rakishly freethinking and comfortably tenured professor. It's one thing to monkey with descriptions of Darwinism in a high-school textbook. But to threaten to take away a peer-reviewed grant! That Dan Dennett; he is something of a pompous leafblower, isn't he?

Yet the result of wincing and capitulating is a fresh round of whacks. Now it's not enough for presidential aspirants to make passing reference to their “faith.” Now a reporter from Newsweek sees it as his privilege, if not his duty, to demand of Howard Dean, “Do you see Jesus Christ as the son of God and believe in him as the route to salvation and eternal life?” In my personal fairy tale, Dean, who as a doctor fits somewhere in the phylum Scientificus, might have boomed, “Well, with his views on camels and rich people, he sure wouldn't vote Republican!” or maybe, “No, but I hear he has a Mel Gibson complex.” Dr. Dean might have talked about patients of his who suffered strokes and lost the very fabric of themselves and how he has seen the centrality of the brain to the sense of being an individual. He might have expressed doubts that the self survives the brain, but, oh yes, life goes on, life is bigger, stronger, and better endowed than any Bush in a jumpsuit, and we are part of the wild, tumbling river of life, our molecules were the molecules of dinosaurs and before that of stars, and this is not Bulfinch mythology, this is corroborated reality.

Alas for my phantasm of fact, Howard Dean, M.D., had no choice but to chime, oh yes, he certainly sees Jesus as the son of God, though he at least dodged the eternal life clause with a humble mumble about his salvation not being up to him.

I may be an atheist, and I may be impressed that, through the stepwise rigor of science, its Spockian eyebrow of doubt always cocked, we have learned so much about the universe. Yet I recognize that, from there to here, and here to there, funny things are everywhere. Why is there so much dark matter and dark energy in the great Out There, and why couldn't cosmologists have given them different enough names so I could keep them straight? Why is there something rather than nothing, and why is so much of it on my desk? Not to mention the abiding mysteries of e-mail, like why I get exponentially more spam every day, nine-tenths of it invitations to enlarge an appendage I don't have.

I recognize that science doesn't have all the answers and doesn't pretend to, and that's one of the things I love about it. But it has a pretty good notion of what's probable or possible, and virgin births and carpenter rebirths just aren't on the list. Is there a divine intelligence, separate from the universe but somehow in charge of the universe, either in its inception or in twiddling its parameters? No evidence. Is the universe itself God? Is the universe aware of itself? We're here. We're aware. Does that make us God? Will my daughter have to attend a Quaker Friends school now?

I don't believe in life after death, but I'd like to believe in life before death. I'd like to think that one of these days we'll leave superstition and delusional thinking and Jerry Falwell behind. Scientists would like that, too. But for now, they like their grants even more. 

Reprinted from The American Scholar 72, no. 2, Spring 2004. (c)Natalie Angier. By permission of the publishers.

Natalie Angier is a science reporter for the New York Times and author of Woman: An Intimate Geography, Natural Obsessions, and The Beauty of the Beastly. In 1991 she won a Pulitzer Prize for her science reporting.

Via .

http://www.msu.edu/~jdowell/King_Everything.html

“Everything You Need to Know About Writing Successfully – in Ten Minutes”

by Stephen King
(reprinted in Sylvia K. Burack, ed. The Writer's Handbook. Boston, MA: Writer, Inc., 1988: 3-9)

I. The First Introduction

THAT'S RIGHT. I know it sounds like an ad for some sleazy writers' school, but I really am going to tell you everything you need to pursue a successful and financially rewarding career writing fiction, and I really am going to do it in ten minutes, which is exactly how long it took me to learn. It will actually take you twenty minutes or so to read this essay, however, because I have to tell you a story, and then I have to write a second introduction. But these, I argue, should not count in the ten minutes.

II. The Story, or, How Stephen King Learned to Write

When I was a sophomore in high school, I did a sophomoric thing which got me in a pot of fairly hot water, as sophomoric didoes often do. I wrote and published a small satiric newspaper called The Village Vomit. In this little paper I lampooned a number of teachers at Lisbon (Maine) High School, where I was under instruction. These were not very gentle lampoons; they ranged from the scatological to the downright cruel.

Eventually, a copy of this little newspaper found its way into the hands of a faculty member, and since I had been unwise enough to put my name on it (a fault, some critics argue, of which I have still not been entirely cured), I was brought into the office. The sophisticated satirist had by that time reverted to what he really was: a fourteen-year-old kid who was shaking in his boots and wondering if he was going to get a suspension … what we called “a three-day vacation” in those dim days of 1964.

I wasn't suspended. I was forced to make a number of apologies – they were warranted, but they still tasted like dog-dirt in my mouth – and spent a week in detention hall. And the guidance counselor arranged what he no doubt thought of as a more constructive channel for my talents. This was a job – contingent upon the editor's approval – writing sports for the Lisbon Enterprise, a twelve-page weekly of the sort with which any small-town resident will be familiar. This editor was the man who taught me everything I know about writing in ten minutes. His name was John Gould – not the famed New England humorist or the novelist who wrote The Greenleaf Fires, but a relative of both, I believe.

He told me he needed a sports writer and we could “try each other out” if I wanted.

I told him I knew more about advanced algebra than I did sports.

Gould nodded and said, “You'll learn.”

I said I would at least try to learn. Gould gave me a huge roll of yellow paper and promised me a wage of 1/2¢ per word. The first two pieces I wrote had to do with a high school basketball game in which a member of my school team broke the Lisbon High scoring record. One of these pieces was straight reportage. The second was a feature article.

I brought them to Gould the day after the game, so he'd have them for the paper, which came out Fridays. He read the straight piece, made two minor corrections, and spiked it. Then he started in on the feature piece with a large black pen and taught me all I ever needed to know about my craft. I wish I still had the piece – it deserves to be framed, editorial corrections and all – but I can remember pretty well how it looked when he had finished with it. Here's an example:

(note: this is before the edit marks indicated on King's original copy)

Last night, in the well-loved gymnasium of Lisbon High School, partisans and Jay Hills fans alike were stunned by an athletic performance unequaled in school history: Bob Ransom, known as “Bullet” Bob for both his size and accuracy, scored thirty-seven points. He did it with grace and speed … and he did it with an odd courtesy as well, committing only two personal fouls in his knight-like quest for a record which has eluded Lisbon thinclads since 1953….

(after edit marks)

Last night, in the Lisbon High School gymnasium, partisans and Jay Hills fans alike were stunned by an athletic performance unequaled in school history: Bob Ransom scored thirty-seven points. He did it with grace and speed … and he did it with an odd courtesy as well, committing only two personal fouls in his quest for a record which has eluded Lisbon's basketball team since 1953….

When Gould finished marking up my copy in the manner I have indicated above, he looked up and must have seen something on my face. I think he must have thought it was horror, but it was not: it was revelation.

“I only took out the bad parts, you know,” he said. “Most of it's pretty good.”

“I know,” I said, meaning both things: yes, most of it was good, and yes, he had only taken out the bad parts. “I won't do it again.”

“If that's true,” he said, “you'll never have to work again. You can do this for a living.” Then he threw back his head and laughed.

And he was right; I am doing this for a living, and as long as I can keep on, I don't expect ever to have to work again.

III. The Second Introduction

All of what follows has been said before. If you are interested enough in writing to be a purchaser of this magazine, you will have either heard or read all (or almost all) of it before. Thousands of writing courses are taught across the United States each year; seminars are convened; guest lecturers talk, then answer questions, then drink as many gin and tonics as their expense-fees will allow, and it all boils down to what follows.

I am going to tell you these things again because often people will only listen – really listen – to someone who makes a lot of money doing the thing he's talking about. This is sad but true. And I told you the story above not to make myself sound like a character out of a Horatio Alger novel but to make a point: I saw, I listened, and I learned. Until that day in John Gould's little office, I had been writing first drafts of stories which might run 2,500 words. The second drafts were apt to run 3,300 words. Following that day, my 2,500-word first drafts became 2,200-word second drafts. And two years after that, I sold the first one.

So here it is, with all the bark stripped off. It'll take ten minutes to read, and you can apply it right away … if you listen.

IV. Everything You Need to Know About Writing Successfully

1. Be talented

This, of course, is the killer. What is talent? I can hear someone shouting, and here we are, ready to get into a discussion right up there with “what is the meaning of life?” for weighty pronouncements and total uselessness. For the purposes of the beginning writer, talent may as well be defined as eventual success – publication and money. If you wrote something for which someone sent you a check, if you cashed the check and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.

Now some of you are really hollering. Some of you are calling me one crass money-fixated creep. And some of you are calling me bad names. Are you calling Harold Robbins talented? someone in one of the Great English Departments of America is screeching. V.C. Andrews? Theodore Dreiser? Or what about you, you dyslexic moron?

Nonsense. Worse than nonsense, off the subject. We're not talking about good or bad here. I'm interested in telling you how to get your stuff published, not in critical judgments of who's good or bad. As a rule the critical judgments come after the check's been spent, anyway. I have my own opinions, but most times I keep them to myself. People who are published steadily and are paid for what they are writing may be either saints or trollops, but they are clearly reaching a great many someones who want what they have. Ergo, they are communicating. Ergo, they are talented. The biggest part of writing successfully is being talented, and in the context of marketing, the only bad writer is one who doesn't get paid. If you're not talented, you won't succeed. And if you're not succeeding, you should know when to quit.

When is that? I don't know. It's different for each writer. Not after six rejection slips, certainly, nor after sixty. But after six hundred? Maybe. After six thousand? My friend, after six thousand pinks, it's time you tried painting or computer programming.

Further, almost every aspiring writer knows when he is getting warmer – you start getting little jotted notes on your rejection slips, or personal letters . . . maybe a commiserating phone call. It's lonely out there in the cold, but there are encouraging voices … unless there is nothing in your words which warrants encouragement. I think you owe it to yourself to skip as much of the self-illusion as possible. If your eyes are open, you'll know which way to go … or when to turn back.

2. Be neat

Type. Double-space. Use a nice heavy white paper, never that erasable onion-skin stuff. If you've marked up your manuscript a lot, do another draft.

3. Be self-critical

If you haven't marked up your manuscript a lot, you did a lazy job. Only God gets things right the first time. Don't be a slob.

4. Remove every extraneous word

You want to get up on a soapbox and preach? Fine. Get one and try your local park. You want to write for money? Get to the point. And if you remove all the excess garbage and discover you can't find the point, tear up what you wrote and start all over again . . . or try something new.

5. Never look at a reference book while doing a first draft

You want to write a story? Fine. Put away your dictionary, your encyclopedias, your World Almanac, and your thesaurus. Better yet, throw your thesaurus into the wastebasket. The only things creepier than a thesaurus are those little paperbacks college students too lazy to read the assigned novels buy around exam time. Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule. You think you might have misspelled a word? O.K., so here is your choice: either look it up in the dictionary, thereby making sure you have it right – and breaking your train of thought and the writer's trance in the bargain – or just spell it phonetically and correct it later. Why not? Did you think it was going to go somewhere? And if you need to know the largest city in Brazil and you find you don't have it in your head, why not write in Miami, or Cleveland? You can check it … but later. When you sit down to write, write. Don't do anything else except go to the bathroom, and only do that if it absolutely cannot be put off.

6. Know the markets

Only a dimwit would send a story about giant vampire bats surrounding a high school to McCall's. Only a dimwit would send a tender story about a mother and daughter making up their differences on Christmas Eve to Playboy … but people do it all the time. I'm not exaggerating; I have seen such stories in the slush piles of the actual magazines. If you write a good story, why send it out in an ignorant fashion? Would you send your kid out in a snowstorm dressed in Bermuda shorts and a tank top? If you like science fiction, read the magazines. If you want to write confession stories, read the magazines. And so on. It isn't just a matter of knowing what's right for the present story; you can begin to catch on, after awhile, to overall rhythms, editorial likes and dislikes, a magazine's entire slant. Sometimes your reading can influence the next story, and create a sale.

7. Write to entertain

Does this mean you can't write “serious fiction”? It does not. Somewhere along the line pernicious critics have invested the American reading and writing public with the idea that entertaining fiction and serious ideas do not overlap. This would have surprised Charles Dickens, not to mention Jane Austen, John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, Bernard Malamud, and hundreds of others. But your serious ideas must always serve your story, not the other way around. I repeat: if you want to preach, get a soapbox.

8. Ask yourself frequently, “Am I having fun?”

The answer needn't always be yes. But if it's always no, it's time for a new project or a new career.

9. How to evaluate criticism

Show your piece to a number of people – ten, let us say. Listen carefully to what they tell you. Smile and nod a lot. Then review what was said very carefully. If your critics are all telling you the same thing about some facet of your story – a plot twist that doesn't work, a character who rings false, stilted narrative, or half a dozen other possibles – change that facet. It doesn't matter if you really liked that twist of that character; if a lot of people are telling you something is wrong with you piece, it is. If seven or eight of them are hitting on that same thing, I'd still suggest changing it. But if everyone – or even most everyone – is criticizing something different, you can safely disregard what all of them say.

10. Observe all rules for proper submission

Return postage, self-addressed envelope, all of that.

11. An agent? Forget it. For now

Agents get 10% of monies earned by their clients. 10% of nothing is nothing. Agents also have to pay the rent. Beginning writers do not contribute to that or any other necessity of life. Flog your stories around yourself. If you've done a novel, send around query letters to publishers, one by one, and follow up with sample chapters and/or the manuscript complete. And remember Stephen King's First Rule of Writers and Agents, learned by bitter personal experience: You don't need one until you're making enough for someone to steal … and if you're making that much, you'll be able to take your pick of good agents.

12. If it's bad, kill it

When it comes to people, mercy killing is against the law. When it comes to fiction, it is the law.

That's everything you need to know. And if you listened, you can write everything and anything you want. Now I believe I will wish you a pleasant day and sign off.

My ten minutes are up.

Dowell's comments:

So you thought Stephen King was only good for some giggle-in-the-graveyard, dark-o'-night shivers, eh? Well, keep in mind he used to teach English composition to high school kids his own darned self while struggling to write a little novel called Carrie – as well as work part time at a steam laundering industry and help his wife Tabitha raise their first child. Learned a thing or two while among those school kids, I'd say. So if you want a little friendly advice from the person who has probably made the single best living of anyone who has ever tapped finger to keyboard, this is your guy.

The biggest problem I have with King's essay is that business in #5 about throwing away your thesaurus. Throw it on the floor – till after the first draft, I say. While you're first-drafting, however – and that's really what #5 is about – ol' Steve is exactly on the proverbial money (and he knows something about money, gentle reader).

For our present purposes, however, I recommend that we all pay particular attention to what our hyperrich storytelling friend has to say about other/self-evaluation, the elimination of (shall we say) “filler,” and having fun during the writing process. By the bye, despite what King says about writers not having to “work anymore,” he – likely more than most professionals in the business – truly knows better. In his Danse Macabre (New York: Everest House, 1981), King states something to the effect (I'm paraphrasing a bit here) that, unlike most visions of chubby little cherubic Muses who are thought to gracefully float about the ether while whispering inspiration into an author's ear, his has a Marine-style crewcut, wears bib overalls, and has a voice like Jack (Dragnet) Webb shouting, “Time to get to work, you sonofabitch.”

http://query.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F00816F6385B0C738EDDAC0894DC404482

May 20, 2004, Thursday

CIRCUITS

In the Era of Cheap DVD's, Anyone Can Be a Producer

By PETER WAYNER (NYT) 1638 words
IN the fall, on the Monday after each University of Texas football game, the university's athletic department produces a bulk mailing for the post office: DVD's containing a complete video of the game, interviews with the coaches and other features.

There may be more college football on television than ever before, but even so, schools like Texas with prominent football teams can't count on reaching a national audience every Saturday. So the university offers DVD's of its 12 games as a $300 package; so far about 300 fans around the country are subscribers.

Sports events may seem an unlikely subject for distribution by DVD, but football games are far from the only discs in the mail carrier's bag these days. Independent filmmakers, specialty magazine publishers, artists, educators — all those with a video to sell, no matter how narrow the niche — are turning out DVD's and distributing them through the mail. It's a trend that began in the era of videotape but has accelerated with DVD's because they are inexpensive to duplicate and ship.

''The costs have come down, and it's an open market to put whatever you can on a disc,'' said Maureen Healy, publisher of DVD News, a trade publication.

Poetry Television, for example, a San Francisco-based group devoted to verse, sells a DVD of readings, ''Weapons of Mass Production: The Spoken War'' for $20 through its Web site, www.poetrytelevision.com. The DVD is part of a planned subscription series.

''We're looking to reach at least 500 subscriptions by the end of the year,'' said Isaias Rodriguez, the group's founder. ''It's a small number, but it will have a huge impact.''

For $29.95, fans of mountainboarding (a sport best described as all-terrain skateboarding) can subscribe to a year of Mountainboard Video Mag on three DVD's (www.mountainboardvideomag.com). Each installment contains video of daredevil runs and spills, interviews and features on the sport's culture.

And Primedia Workplace Learning, a division of the media company Primedia, ships programs of continuing education for firefighters, police officers and other emergency workers on disc so that lessons can be paused and replayed between calls. February's selection was ''The A and the B: Airways and Breathing.''

As these and other projects demonstrate, even 500 cable or satellite channels aren't enough for a nation filled with so many stories, lessons and events. DVD distribution has helped create a market for specialized visual programming.

At its most developed, DVD distribution includes companies like Netflix, which rents movies — everything from Hollywood blockbusters to small art films — to consumers by mail. Netflix (www.netflix.com), which charges a flat monthly fee for rentals, had revenues of $272 million last year.

Beyond Netflix, lots of individuals and groups are producing videos in a market that is as varied and heterogenous as the book industry. The market has even spawned companies like CustomFlix (www.customflix.com), the equivalent of a custom book publisher, which for a fee will duplicate DVD's in small runs and help distribute and sell them.

Consider Jimi Petulla, a man who says he invested $400,000 of his own money to produce ''Reversal,'' a semi-autobiographical film he wrote and starred in.

Mr. Petulla said that several early screenings of the film about a high-school wrestler and his father brought about 20 distribution offers from companies specializing in smaller independent films. The terms, however, were too onerous.

''I've met so many people who've done good little movies, and they've never seen a penny from their distributors,'' he said. ''It's insane what these companies can get away with.''

Instead, Mr. Petulla began making the DVD's himself. To date, he said, the film has grossed about $650,000 and continues to bring in $15,000 to $18,000 a month. The discs sell for $29.95 at www.reversaldvd.com.

John Geyer, the vice president for marketing at CustomFlix, tells the story of a customer who made ''RoadRace,'' a movie about people who race motorcycles on weekends. ''He's an accountant,'' Mr. Geyer said. ''I think he works for a Fortune 500 company and he races motorcycles on the weekend. He went around and put five video cameras on his bike. In two months he sold $10,000 worth of his product.''

Mark Brereton, the movie's director, is also the director of credit and payroll for the tire maker Pirelli North America. ''I just wanted to film a few things and make something for my friends as a memento,'' he said. ''Then I showed it to some friends and they said, if you put a bit more work on it, you can take it out and sell it.''

The final version included video shot from the motorcycle of a friend who races, along with music from a local band. Mr. Brereton is at work documenting this racing season and promises that the next DVD will incorporate suggestions from fans.

Both Mr. Petulla and Mr. Brereton showed a knack for marketing. The DVD for ''Reversal,'' for example, includes testimonials from celebrities like the gymnastic gold medalist Shannon Miller and the track and field star Carl Lewis. Once he received these endorsements, Mr. Petulla paid college students $10 an hour to spread the word about the film by e-mailing wrestling groups, electronic newsletters and Web sites.

Mr. Brereton gained publicity by donating $5 from the sale of each disc to a charity for equipping racetracks with special barriers that can reduce the injury during a crash. Now several Web sites that report on motorcycle racing carry notices about his generosity, and also mention the film.

In some cases, DVD producers get lucky. Mary Dalton, a professor of communications at Wake Forest University, also creates documentaries, including one about an artist named Sam McMillan.

When an article about Mr. McMillan appeared in Smithsonian magazine, Ms. Dalton started receiving requests for copies. So she started making 50 copies at a time, storing them in her bedroom and selling them online.

The Internet is more cost-effective as a medium for advertising and selling DVD's that are delivered by mail than as a video distribution network. Andrew M. Odlyzko, a professor at the University of Minnesota who studies the evolution of broadband, says that it would cost $5 to $10 to deliver the four gigabytes of data on a standard DVD over the best high-speed Internet connection.

Discs, on the other hand, cost between 60 cents and a dollar to fabricate and can be sent through the mail for the price of a first-class stamp. Moreover, some DVD's contain 9 or even 18 gigabytes of data. These cost slightly more to duplicate, but no more to ship.

Videographers for the Poetry Channel discovered the cost advantage recently. They captured poetry readings for the local cable public access channel, then jumped to the Internet when they realized that it would extend their reach beyond the San Francisco Bay area. The video clips at their Web site, however, were small and often took a long time to download.

''The DVD subscription allows people to affordably get more content,'' Mr. Rodriguez said, adding that their new DVD burner will enable them to duplicate the DVD's themselves.

The notion of DVD's by subscription is growing because of its simplicity and economic stability. Craig Lillard is the owner of Visual Realities, a company that ships a disc called ''Video Illustrations for Youth Ministry'' to churches four times a year. The vignettes come in two formats and can be displayed either with a standard DVD player or incorporated into a PowerPoint presentation.

''Why sell one when you can sell four at one time?'' Mr. Lillard said. ''That's really how we started our business. We were selling four videos when we hadn't finished one of them. We were getting payment up front.''

CustomFlix and a number of other companies are hoping to help serve niche markets in a similar way. Amazon, for example, stocks DVD's and videotapes from small companies alongside films from major studios. The DVD creator must produce the duplicate DVD's. Amazon collects 55 percent of the list price for the service.

CustomFlix offers a more sophisticated service, bundling manufacturing, order processing, payment collection and shipping. A filmmaker pays $50 to open an account and $9.95 for each film that is produced on demand. The filmmaker receives any revenue beyond that. If the title is popular, the profits can rise because CustomFlix's price drops to $7.95 per disc after 20 copies and $6.95 per disc after 50 copies.

While these companies can help deliver the discs to a niche marketplace, they can't do much for the greater challenge of finding a large audience. It is still difficult for small productions to break into the larger marketplace.

Warren Lieberfarb, the former head of Warner Home Video, said that the big studios continue to dominate the stores and other major distribution channels. ''There's a concentration of retail distribution,'' he said. Although companies like Amazon are doing a good job of reaching out through the Web, he said, ''specialty retail akin to what's happened in books and music just hasn't materialized.''

''It's hard to get into a store,'' said Ms. Healy of DVD News. ''It's the same problem that we've always had with this industry. The studios dominate the distribution.''

''You can sell it online,'' she said, ''but then you've got to get your Web site out there.''

CAPTIONS: Photos: INDEPENDENTS — Mark Brereton, left, produced a movie on DVD about weekend motorcycle racers in Rome, Ga., above. Jimi Petulla said he invested $400,000 of his own money to produce ''Reversal,'' right, a semi-autobiographical film about a wrestler and his father. (Photo by Tami Chappell for The New York Times)(pg. G6)

Drawings (Drawings by Viktor Koen)(pg. G1)

Via

http://washingtontimes.com/specialreport/20040821-115510-9758r.htm

Moving to create a truly Free State

By Jon Ward
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Calvin Pratt raised a Colonial-era flag at his new home in Goffstown, N.H., in December.
J.M. EDDINS JR. (THE WASHINGTON TIMES)

LANCASTER, N.H. – Thousands of voters who say the country's two-party system has become too homogenous, bureaucratic and inept have begun a pilgrimage to New England with the dream of starting a new party that will become a national force and unite legions of the equally disenfranchised.
    ”Most elections are like trying to get lunch out of a vending machine,” said Philip Boncer, 41, a biomedical engineer from San Diego. “You have choices, but they're all bad for you. Democrats are increasing regulations and the strain on business, and Republicans are increasing moral laws.”
    The movement, known as the Free State Project, was started in late 2001 and now has about 6,000 members. It also has an ambitious plan to more than triple its membership and become firmly entrenched in New Hampshire politics by 2011.

    For Keith Murphy, a legislative aide for Maryland Democratic state Sen. George Della, the decision to become part of the movement and migrate to New Hampshire came after a constituent he was helping with Medicare benefits died while recovering from cancer.
    Mr. Murphy, 29, said the elderly woman needed a nutritional supplement to complete her recovery at home, but federal guidelines mandated that she get her dosages at a hospital.
    She died at home in mid-December, and Mr. Murphy formally resigned the same day.
    ”In our dream world, we'd like to see Medicare gone,” he said. “It's inefficient, ineffective and expensive. The private marketplace can do a lot better job of providing medical care.”
    Mr. Murphy said the group members chose New Hampshire from among 10 states because it has no state income tax, the local school systems are free of state mandates and it has a culture of self-sufficiency and libertarian ideals.
    ”It is what America was supposed to be,” said Mr. Murphy, who plans to move after earning his graduate degree in urban planning from the University of Maryland in December.
    Members also thought the state's rugged landscape, notoriously cold winters and motto of “Live Free or Die” was the ideal setting for the movement.
    ”We know it's going to snow, and it's going to be a [bear] of a winter, and we don't care,” said Kristine Brooks, a Free State member and Mr. Boncer's fiancee.
    Limited government
    Organizers say their primary goals are to limit government, reduce taxes and increase personal liberties. If the plan works, they say, other states will have to follow or lose residents and their tax dollars.
    After voting on New Hampshire last September, the group held its first gathering there. About 300 members met at a campground in the White Mountains for the inaugural Porcupine Festival — named after the group mascot, which they say is a gentle creature but well-prepared when others try stepping on its back.
    While there, they met with Gov. Craig Benson, a Republican, who has called the group a “friend” and has welcomed it to the state. He has also appointed members to a task force on government efficiency, but Democrats have attacked his association with Free State during this election year and he had stopped short of endorsing the group.
    Among the disaffected are Washington residents and political exiles, most of them libertarians.
    ”Right now, people think there are two ways to do it — the Democratic way or the Republican way,” said Miss Brooks, a Californian who plans to close her business selling hand-painted yarns. “They get so entrenched in the Washington way, and nothing really happens, and you get in this terrible situation where all this money is spent and nothing really happens.”
    Two group members are already New Hampshire state representatives and new arrivals such as Calvin Pratt are making scorecards ranking each of the state's 24 senators and 400 state representatives on their “pro-liberty” voting records.
    Eight of the senators received F's, 11 received D's, one got a C, two received B's and one receive an incomplete grade.
    State Sen. John Gallus, a Republican, was the only senator to receive an A.
    Mr. Pratt and his wife, Karen, arrived in Goffstown, N.H., from Chicago in December, the day before the first Nor'easter of the winter. Mrs. Pratt, 44, quit her job as a senior executive at Merrill Lynch so the couple could move, and her severance package is paying the bills and the mortgage on their new house.
    Mrs. Pratt is the treasurer and an organizer of Free State and the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance. She calls herself more of a “nuts and bolts” person than her husband, who is a self-taught political ideologue. Her interests in government are more immediate, about how the system affects lives.
    Mr. Pratt, 53, runs his own Internet sales company and has quickly become one of the most active Free State and the Liberty Alliance members.
    The Pratts and Amanda Phillips, the group's president and spokeswoman, are among the five Free State members appointed to the committee on government efficiency.
    ”Liberty is like oxygen,” Miss Phillips said. “It's so important to me that I'm willing to pack up everything and move and make a career change.”
    Miss Phillips favors the privatization of government functions and allowing the free market to meet all needs, but says: “I'll probably never see my anarchist utopia … but I'm willing to ride the freedom train as far as other people want to.”
    No easy road
    Despite the enthusiasm and intermediate successes, competing against the more powerful and wealthier Democrats and Republicans will be difficult.
    Miss Phillips and some Free State members — including founder Jason Sorens, 27, a political philosophy lecturer at Yale University — have no immediate plans to come to New Hampshire, and right now fewer than 100 members have done so, with most waiting until the group has reached its goal of 20,000 members.
    Miss Phillips said she intends to move to New Hampshire, but right now cannot because of her 8-year-old daughter and a well-paying financial job at a Fortune 500 company in Boston.
    For the project to succeed, the group must expand recruiting to include more traditional libertarian groups, though Tampa, Fla., lawyer Tim Condon and others know it will be difficult.
    ”It's not easy to persuade people to leave home and go somewhere where it's cold in the winter, to alter their lives and change the world,” Mr. Condon said. “We've got to find committed people who are excited about liberty.”
    He said some libertarians have even gone as far as saying Free State members are going to “freeze in the dark.”
    

Keith Murphy is a member of the Free State Project, a group that chose New Hampshire as the state with the least government intrusion. He plans to move there from Maryland in December.
J.M. EDDINS JR. (THE WASHINGTON TIMES)
J.M. EDDINS JR.
(THE WASHINGTON TIMES)

    Refining, rehearsing
    As a result, the group has begun refining and rehearsing its message.
    ”Over the last 30 years, libertarians have not had much of an impact,” said Mr. Boncer, who delivered his practice speech while dressed in black boots, cargo pants and a black T-shirt that read “Extremely toxic.”
    ”We're too scattered, and there are too few of us who remember what freedom is about anymore,” he continued, before launching into the group's mission statement.
    Miss Phillips then stood and gave a critique.
    ”Great job mentioning the Web site,” she said. “That's something we always want to do. And Phil mentioned it like three times.”
    Miss Phillips encouraged members to use the term “we” instead of “I” or “they.”
    Their attention then turned to potential new members. They made a running list with libertarians, gun-rights advocates and home-schoolers at the top. Next came groups against taxes, groups for legalizing marijuana and groups promoting homosexuality or other “lifestyle alternatives.”
    After about two hours, Mr. Condon asked what has become the defining question for many members.
    ”How do we respond to people who say, 'You're for incest, heroin and bestiality, right?' ”
    Miss Phillips said only that members can do what they want when in New Hampshire, then returned to discussing the group's goals of moving 20,000 “freedom-loving people” to the state.
    A spectrum of beliefs
    Members hold to a wide variety of beliefs, from Mr. Boncer and Miss Brooks' atheism to Floyd Shackelford's devout Christianity.
    ”The Bible is very clear that the only purpose of the state is to be a terror to those who do evil,” said Mr. Shackelford, 45, a self-employed computer programmer from Troy, Ala., who will move to New Hampshire with his wife and three children.
    ”It's not supposed to be a nanny to those who will not work for themselves.” he said, reciting the Bible passage Romans 13 to support his position. “I guess I am a missionary at heart. If I have freedom, I have liberty to share my faith with my homosexual neighbor, with my prostitute neighbor. Under tyranny, I don't have that opportunity, because it's hate speech. … As long as I have liberty, I can go and wrestle with other people about spiritual matters.”
    Miss Phillips wants Free State to remain unattached to one cause or point of view. The group's goal is simply to facilitate a mass migration to one place with the primary goal of advancing freedom and reducing government, she said.
    Image problems
    But the broad range of views among libertarians, especially on social and moral issues, has created some image problems for the group.
    Larry Pendarvis, of Brandon, Fla., was kicked out of the group after causing an uproar in Grafton, a small town of 1,200 in the center of New Hampshire.
    Mr. Pendarvis proposed that 200 members move there and “take over” the town government.
    Once that was done, Mr. Pendarvis said, they would pull Grafton from the school district, suspend the planning board and stop enforcing drug and prostitution laws, which he called “victimless crimes.”
    Most members insist they do not want to take over the government and have no plans to settle in a specific area. They say their first priority is to be good neighbors, but the incident in Grafton has made them appear otherwise.
    ”If anything is going to beat us, it is going to be us beating ourselves,” said Mr. Pratt, who insists he will remain the same, whether the group succeeds or fails.
    ”Nothing changes for me, because I'm not leaving New Hampshire, and I'm going to abide by [Free State's] principles,” he said.
    D.C. residents Adam Rick, 23, and his 24-year-old wife, Kate, also are moving, no matter what.
    After the festival, they spent a week in New Hampshire looking at houses before returning home. They hope to be settled by next summer.
    Mr. Rick is a computer programmer who does most of the work on the group's Web site, and he is trying to launch his own Web-based business.
    Mrs. Rick works as a researcher at the American Enterprise Institute, a D.C. think tank. She recently took over as Free State's coordinator for the D.C.-Baltimore region.
    Still, the couple has not invested all their hope in the group — or at least in its overnight success.
    ”I'm not optimistic about seeing significant changes at the state level for a long time, at least 20 years,” Mr. Rick said over homemade pizza at the couple's high-rise apartment in Northwest. “But it's OK. It's a great hope to think about any change.”
    Near the door, a homemade sign peeped out from behind a shelf, a remnant from tax day, April 15, when Mr. and Mrs. Rick had demonstrated in front of the local post office.
    ”Hate Taxes?” the sign read. “Move with us to New Hampshire.”
    At the festival in New Hampshire, Mr. Rick looked around the campfire and said, “I see this as a long-term thing. I'm going to be living around and working with these people for the next 60, 80 years.”

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=000gcA

From Organic Gardening and Farming, December 1975.

(Summarized by OG)

The late Robert Rodale, founder of Organic Gardening and Rodale Press, asked one of the Rodale R&D engineers, Dick Ott, to come up with a handier and more efficient sprouting method. The traditional canning-jar is fine but provides only small yields and the 3-5 times a day rinsing can be a problem. Rinsing is essential to prevent molds and fungus, one of which can be the carcinogenic aflatoxin fungus. For jar and regular sprouter projects, “R&D researchers found that soaking seeds in the very hottest tap water (150 deg.) prevented essentially all mold growth.”

Dick came up with a self-watering system that can be built with a little perseverance. Although he began with a plastic waste can, I'd suggest the ubiquitous food-quality 5-gallon bucket we all know and love. Here's the remainder of the description.

“A holding tank fits into the top [of the bucket]. In the [center of the flat] bottom of the tank [which appears to be a stainless steel bowl] a petcock is installed, so that water can drip through to a small dumping pan fastened beneath the tank. The dumper is balanced so that as it fills, it flips over, spills the water into a large round cake pan, and then rights itself. The cake pan is perforated and acts as a distributor, sprinkling the water over the sprouting trays stacked below it. (These sprouting trays can be fashioned from wire and wood, or drainage holes can be unched in smaller cake pans.) All you need to do is fill the reservoir every day or two and harvest the sprouts.

. . . [With automatic ] spilling at two-hour intervals, the self-rinser has averaged 8.9-fold increases over seed weight, producing 4-inch sprouts in only five days.

. . . We feel that this is significant because tests have shown that Vitamin C content peaks at between 3 and 4-1/2 days after germination. Sprouts this young are often not as tasty, but if you let them grow for 6 to 7 days, over half the vitamin C can be lost. [This] system yields 4-inch sprouts close to the optimum period.”

Muraven M, Baumeister R, Tice D. Longitudinal improvement of self-regulation through practice: Building self-control strength through repeated exercise. J Soc Psychol 1999;139:446.

For .

Via Darren of Boing Boing:

“”Jill Greenburg is an accomplished celebrity photographer. Recently, though, she's turned her attention to another biped: monkeys. She discovered her affection for monkey portraits on a commercial, and started renting various species of trained primates and taking their photos as if they were A-list celebrities. The portraits express an amazing range of emotion, and are way more interesting that your average celebrity pic.”