Writer At The Sea's Blog

The non-reality of reality shows

writeratthesea — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 18:27:36 +0000

The Non-Reality of Reality Shows

By Carla Iacovetti

With the invasion of television reality shows, one has to wonder about the validity and “reality” of these shows. Worse still, many of these programs only bring out the worst in people, and sport gross arrogance, manipulation, betrayal, utter self-centeredness, deception and ridicule. In fact, here is a news flash: Most all of these so-called reality shows are not real. They do have scripts, which are known as paper-cuts. While these shows are not written in the traditional sense, many of them have plot points, a beginning, middle and end, and a narrative arch. Some of these shows also have loosely drafted lines fed especially to those on contest-driven shows. The credits show “story editors,” not “writers” and/or “segment producers.” Even though the public believes these shows are unscripted, they are not.

Former president of the Writers Guild of America, West, Daniel Petrie Jr., says, “We understand that shows don’t want to call the writers writer’s because they want to maintain the illusion that it is reality, that stuff just happens.” The truth is that these shows are mere illusions, and in some cases nothing more than sophisticated trickery set to dupe audiences all over the U.S.

In an article called, “How Reality TV Fakes It,” published by Time Magazine, James Poniewozk says, “While we may have long suspected that a cast of camera-smitten future trivia answers can’t really be that interesting without professional help, details of how these shows manipulate reality have begun leaking out—because of a dispute with the employees hired to do the jiggering.”

Even though there have been a number of lawsuits affiliated with reality television, these shows are big money makers for the networks. Because they are not produced in the conventional sense, they cost about half as much to produce as a traditionally scripted show. So, it is not any wonder why these mindless, sensationalistic shows continue to flood our networks, and one has to wonder if this flaming fire will die out?

A new show set to grace television audiences this fall with 10 episodes epitomizes deception at its finest. If you have an item to auction, you might want to re-think your options instead of taking it to reality! Here is the way it works:

The show gets you to bring your item to their televised auction, and then you are filmed in an interview. The reason for being filmed is for the producers to determine whether or not you are going to work on camera. Essentially, it is a test run. If you are picked to be on the show, then your soon-to-be-auctioned item is taken to a storage locker. In the meantime, the seller (guest) is sent an ironclad contract stating: “If you are offered the money, and it is cleared (approved), then you are finished.” The guest can basically go home. If not, then the item must go to auction. Interestingly, there is no reserve price that this show sets in the auction. This is far from reality, because most actual auctions do have reserve prices on the items. Two days before the alleged auction, the guest is interviewed outside and filmed. The following personal questions are asked: How much were you offered to sell your item for? Why didn’t you take the money? Do you need the money? What do you plan on doing with the money after it is auctioned?

The auction is nothing like a real auction. In fact, it is completely staged. The guest is taken into the area where they are supposed to have fair bidding, but that is far from what happens. The audience is presented as the bidders, but when the auctioneer starts the bid, problems arise.

Normally, real auctions begin with the auctioneer explaining everything about each item being sold, and there is a starting price. That way, everyone should know the value of the item, but that is kept hidden on this show. On this show, the auctioneer never looks at the value of the item. In addition, an auctioneer should start off at 20% of what the item is worth, and that is not done. Instead of the usual 20%, it is around 2% of what the item’s are worth.

The process is not long. Once the bid begins and someone responds, then the auctioneer looks for a higher bid and it is usually double. For example, if the bid comes in at $500.00 dollars, the auctioneer will say, “Do I hear $1,000?” Instead of doubling the auctioneer keeps the bid low by going only to $575. By doing this, he makes certain that the item sells way under its value. It is the responsibility of the auctioneer to build the price of the item, and that is not done. The item is sold immediately.

Why would the auctioneer keep the selling price low? Is this a way for to be bought dirt-cheap when they are worth so much more? Are these items getting re-auctioned at the valued price and for larger profits?

When it is time to auction the camera focuses on the seller’s shocked expression as he or she realizes that their item is being underbid. Even more interesting—the 50 people in the audience with paddles are not holding them at all. With the exception of 4 people in the audience, the remainder has their paddles on the floor or chair. It is very obvious that it is pre-determined who would bid, and in all “reality,” the 50 supposed bidders in the audience are more than likely TV extras on the set and really have no intention of bidding at all.

Once the auction is completely over, the seller is then taken into a room to again be interviewed and taped. If a person has anything negative to say about the auction, they are asked to restate the comment again with a more positive tone. It seems that they want a generic answer. They really do not want the truth.

Jane X is a writer here in Southern California who was asked to work on a reality TV show that was being shopped from network to network. She is actually a screenplay writer, but when approached about the reality show, she embraced the challenge. After nearly working on this project for a year, she was surprised to find it to be a structured, highly manipulated show. She says, “One of the synonyms for the word ‘reality’ is ‘truth,’ and I have come to realize that reality TV is nothing more than a fabrication of truth. It is not accurate or actual.”

Do audiences mind being somewhat manipulated by falsely enhanced or fabricated shows? J. Rupert Thompson, a television director/producer, who produced Big Brother and Fear Factor says, “Certainly reality TV is a very manipulated format where the basis of it is that real people are put into unreal situations to create a story.”

Ray Richmond, the television critic for the Hollywood Reporter and entertainment blogger says that he has been trying – so far unsuccessfully – to have the term “reality television” switched to “partially scripted television.”

In a recent article published in Psychology Today, Jim Taylor, Ph.D. says, “Reality TV promotes the worst values and qualities in people–and disguises them all as entertainment. Reality TV has made the Seven Deadly Sins–pride, avarice, envy, wrath, lust, gluttony, and sloth-attributes to be admired. Throw in selfishness, deceit, spite, and vengeance–all qualities seen routinely on reality TV–and you have the personification of the worst kind of person on Earth. Reality TV makes heroic decidedly un-heroic values, characters, and behavior.”

This upcoming show about auctioning is not the only show deceiving people. The popular reality televisions show Survivor sports manipulation and deception in order to pick a winner. Bridezillas boasts the following quotes on its website: “It’s my day, it’s my way. If you don’t like it—there’s the door,” and, “If I’m not happy, no one’s gonna be happy.” Despite the shows efforts to make every bride out to be an excessive, spoiled bitch, most brides are nothing of the sort. Remember, this is generally the happiest moment in a young woman’s life. The list of unrealistic, fabricated reality shows are endless and seem to be on the rise, and why? Since so many of these shows seem to expose the worst in people, what makes these shows so popular?

It is hard to understand, especially when many of these shows are sensationalistic-driven. Out of 50 people/sellers on the auction-based show only 3 were satisfied because they broke even. This is definitely not reality, but unfortunate exploitation.

Richmond says, “What they are doing on these shows is taking a kernel of fact and using it to construct a multi-pronged piece of fiction in the guise of truth and actuality. This makes for a product that’s not only mislabeled, but disingenuous and deceptive.”

So, why are we lured to watch these mindless, unrealistic, deceptive, overly sensationalistic shows? Reality television’s ratings are up, and these kinds of shows do not seem to be disappearing anytime soon. There are many who believe that reality television is the lowest form of entertainment. In fact, it is an insult to human intelligence – rising to the most licentious form of human amusement.

Recent research by psychologists at Rutgers-Camden reveals that teenagers who regularly watch ‘aesthetic-enhancing” reality shows like Extreme Makeover are more apt to undergo cosmetic surgery than youth that do not watch such shows. Teenagers have a heightened sense of awareness when it comes to the way they look, and shows like this make it all seem so easy. Charlotte Markey, an associate professor of psychology at Rutgers-Camden published research on this topic in the academic journal, Body Image. She says, “If plastic surgery makes you feel better about yourself, then why do you keep getting it done? This mindset is very similar to that of an anorexic wanting to lose just five more pounds.”

Since reality TV is cheaper to produce and a moneymaker, it is probably not going anywhere anytime soon. RV writer, J. Ryan Stradal recently wrote the following on Writer’s Guild of America, West’s website: “Call it whatever you want – reality TV, nonfiction programming, docu-soap, docu-style – unscripted television has asserted itself in international media, and until something cheaper and/or more popular comes along, it will continue to expand its presence.”

Last month Lifetime Television announced that they are looking for figure skaters to be a part of a new show called, Kids On Ice. Some believe this show is not going to do anything for the sport, in fact, it might show the sometimes obsessive, crazy side of the skating world—which includes, overly controlling coaches and obsessive skating mothers. Truthfully, this kind of show could go either way. Worse case scenario, it will join the ranks of other reality TV shows and relay a very negative message to a potentially curious audience, and give a new meaning to the name “Skating mom.”

Will these shows continue to ravage America’s perception of “reality?” Stay tuned for more of the good, the bad and the obnoxious!

Holiday joy: Anonymous donors pay off Kmart layaway accounts

writeratthesea — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 03:44:11 +0000

Anonymous donors pay off Kmart layaway accounts

This is truly heart-warming, especially at this time of year.

Photo by AP

December 15, 2011 — OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The young father stood in line at the Kmart layaway counter, wearing dirty clothes and worn-out boots. With him were three small children.

He asked to pay something on his bill because he knew he wouldn’t be able to afford it all before Christmas. Then a mysterious woman stepped up to the counter. “She told him, ‘No, I’m paying for it,’” recalled Edna Deppe, assistant manager at the store in Indianapolis. “He just stood there and looked at her and then looked at me and asked if it was a joke. I told him it wasn’t, and that she was going to pay for him. And he just busted out in tears.”

At Kmart stores across the country, Santa seems to be getting some help: Anonymous donors are paying off strangers’ layaway accounts, buying the Christmas gifts other families couldn’t afford, especially toys and children’s clothes set aside by impoverished parents.

Before she left the store Tuesday evening, the Indianapolis woman in her mid-40s had paid the layaway orders for as many as 50 people. On the way out, she handed out $50 bills and paid for two carts of toys for a woman in line at the cash register.

“She was doing it in the memory of her husband who had just died, and she said she wasn’t going to be able to spend it and wanted to make people happy with it,” Deppe said. The woman did not identify herself and only asked people to “remember Ben,” an apparent reference to her husband.

Deppe, who said she’s worked in retail for 40 years, had never seen anything like it. “It was like an angel fell out of the sky and appeared in our store,” she said. Most of the donors have done their giving secretly.

Dona Bremser, an Omaha nurse, was at work when a Kmart employee called to tell her that someone had paid off the $70 balance of her layaway account, which held nearly $200 in toys for her 4-year-old son.

“I was speechless,” Bremser said. “It made me believe in Christmas again.” Dozens of other customers have received similar calls in Nebraska, Michigan, Iowa, Indiana and Montana. The benefactors generally ask to help families who are squirreling away items for young children. They often pay a portion of the balance, usually all but a few dollars or cents so the layaway order stays in the store’s system.

The phenomenon seems to have begun in Michigan before spreading, Kmart executives said. “It is honestly being driven by people wanting to do a good deed at this time of the year,” said Salima Yala, Kmart’s division vice president for layaway.

The good Samaritans seem to be visiting mainly Kmart stores, though a Wal-Mart spokesman said a few of his stores in Joplin, Mo., and Chicago have also seen some layaway accounts paid off. Kmart representatives say they did nothing to instigate the secret Santas or spread word of the generosity. But it’s happening as the company struggles to compete with chains such as Wal-Mart and Target.

Kmart may be the focus of layaway generosity, Yala said, because it is one of the few large discount stores that has offered layaway year-round for about four decades. Under the program, customers can make purchases but let the store hold onto their merchandise as they pay it off slowly over several weeks.

The sad memories of layaways lost prompted at least one good Samaritan to pay off the accounts of five people at an Omaha Kmart, said Karl Graff, the store’s assistant manager. “She told me that when she was younger, her mom used to set up things on layaway at Kmart, but they rarely were able to pay them off because they just didn’t have the money for it,” Graff said.

He called a woman who had been helped, “and she broke down in tears on the phone with me. She wasn’t sure she was going to be able to pay off their layaway and was afraid their kids weren’t going to have anything for Christmas.”

“You know, 50 bucks may not sound like a lot, but I tell you what, at the right time, it may as well be a million dollars for some people,” Graff said. Graff’s store alone has seen about a dozen layaway accounts paid off in the last 10 days, with the donors paying $50 to $250 on each account.

“To be honest, in retail, it’s easy to get cynical about the holidays, because you’re kind of grinding it out when everybody else is having family time,” Graff said. “It’s really encouraging to see this side of Christmas again.”

Lori Stearnes of Omaha also benefited from the generosity of a stranger who paid all but $58 of her $250 layaway bill for toys for her four youngest grandchildren. Stearnes said she and her husband live paycheck to paycheck, but she plans to use the money she was saving for the toys to help pay for someone else’s layaway.

In Missoula, Mont., a man spent more than $1,200 to pay down the balances of six customers whose layaway orders were about to be returned to a Kmart store’s inventory because of late payments. Store employees reached one beneficiary on her cellphone at Seattle Children’s Hospital, where her son was being treated for an undisclosed illness.

“She was yelling at the nurses, ‘We’re going to have Christmas after all!’” store manager Josine Murrin said. A Kmart in Plainfield Township, Mich., called Roberta Carter last week to let her know a man had paid all but 40 cents of her $60 layaway.

Carter, a mother of eight from Grand Rapids, Mich., said she cried upon hearing the news. She and her family have been struggling as she seeks a full-time job. “My kids will have clothes for Christmas,” she said.

Angie Torres, a stay-at-home mother of four children under the age of 8, was in the Indianapolis Kmart on Tuesday to make a payment on her layaway bill when she learned the woman next to her was paying off her account.

“I started to cry. I couldn’t believe it,” said Torres, who doubted she would have been able to pay off the balance. “I was in disbelief. I hugged her and gave her a kiss.”

Associated Press writers Michael J. Crumb in Des Moines, Iowa; Matt Volz, in Helena, Mont.; and Jeff Karoub in Detroit contributed to this report.

Recession or depression? 1 out of 2 people in the U.S. are living at poverty levels

writeratthesea — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 20:42:23 +0000

I came across this article on Yahoo News and had to share it. I hope this census is not anything close to accurate, but the subject matter is certainly concerning. I cannot begin to tell you the numerous people that I personally know who are living in a financially compromised state; this includes families too. Something seriously needs to shift in our economy. Is this really a recession or a depression? This reality of this article is chilling.

Census shows 1 in 2 people are poor or low-income

By HOPE YEN | AP

WASHINGTON (AP) — Squeezed by rising living costs, a record number of Americans — nearly 1 in 2 — have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income.

The latest census data depict a middle class that’s shrinking as unemployment stays high and the government’s safety net frays. The new numbers follow years of stagnating wages for the middle class that have hurt millions of workers and families.

“Safety net programs such as food stamps and tax credits kept poverty from rising even higher in 2010, but for many low-income families with work-related and medical expenses, they are considered too ‘rich’ to qualify,” said Sheldon Danziger, a University of Michigan public policy professor who specializes in poverty.

“The reality is that prospects for the poor and the near poor are dismal,” he said. “If Congress and the states make further cuts, we can expect the number of poor and low-income families to rise for the next several years.”

Congressional Republicans and Democrats are sparring over legislation that would renew a Social Security payroll tax reduction, part of a year-end political showdown over economic priorities that could also trim unemployment benefits, freeze federal pay and reduce entitlement spending.

Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, questioned whether some people classified as poor or low-income actually suffer material hardship. He said that while safety-net programs have helped many Americans, they have gone too far. He said some people described as poor live in decent-size homes, drive cars and own wide-screen TVs.

“There’s no doubt the recession has thrown a lot of people out of work and incomes have fallen,” Rector said. “As we come out of recession, it will be important that these programs promote self-sufficiency rather than dependence and encourage people to look for work.”

Mayors in 29 cities say more than 1 in 4 people needing emergency food assistance did not receive it. Many formerly middle-class Americans are dropping below the low-income threshold — roughly $45,000 for a family of four — because of pay cuts, a forced reduction of work hours or a spouse losing a job.

States in the South and West had the highest shares of low-income families, including Arizona, New Mexico and South Carolina, which have scaled back or eliminated aid programs for the needy. By raw numbers, such families were most numerous in California and Texas, each with more than 1 million.

The struggling Americans include Zenobia Bechtol, 18, in Austin, Texas, who earns minimum wage as a part-time pizza delivery driver. Bechtol and her 7-month-old baby were recently evicted from their bedbug-infested apartment after her boyfriend, an electrician, lost his job in the sluggish economy.

After an 18-month job search, Bechtol’s boyfriend now works as a waiter and the family of three is temporarily living with her mother.

“We’re paying my mom $200 a month for rent, and after diapers and formula and gas for work, we barely have enough money to spend,” said Bechtol, a high school graduate who wants to go to college. “If it weren’t for food stamps and other government money for families who need help, we wouldn’t have been able to survive.”

About 97.3 million Americans fall into a low-income category, commonly defined as those earning between 100 and 199 percent of the poverty level, based on a new supplemental measure by the Census Bureau that is designed to provide a fuller picture of poverty. Together with the 49.1 million who fall below the poverty line and are counted as poor, they number 146.4 million, or 48 percent of the U.S. population. That’s up by 4 million from 2009, the earliest numbers for the newly developed poverty measure.

The new measure of poverty takes into account medical, commuting and other living costs as well as taxes. Doing that pushed the number of people below 200 percent of the poverty level up from the 104 million, or 1 in 3 Americans, that was officially reported in September.

Broken down by age, children were most likely to be poor or low-income — about 57 percent — followed by seniors 65 and over. By race and ethnicity, Hispanics topped the list at 73 percent, followed by blacks, Asians and non-Hispanic whites.

Even by traditional measures, many working families are hurting.

Following the recession that began in late 2007, the share of working families who are low income has risen for three straight years to 31.2 percent, or 10.2 million. That proportion is the highest in at least a decade, up from 27 percent in 2002, according to a new analysis by the Working Poor Families Project and the Population Reference Bureau, a nonprofit research group based in Washington.

Among low-income families, about one-third were considered poor while the remainder — 6.9 million — earned income just above the poverty line. Many states phase out eligibility for food stamps, Medicaid, tax credit and other government aid programs for low-income Americans as they approach 200 percent of the poverty level.

The majority of low-income families — 62 percent — spent more than one-third of their earnings on housing, surpassing a common guideline for what is considered affordable. By some census surveys, child-care costs consume close to another one-fifth when a mother works.

Paychecks for low-income families are shrinking. The inflation-adjusted average earnings for the bottom 20 percent of families have fallen from $16,788 in 1979 to just under $15,000, and earnings for the next 20 percent have remained flat at $37,000. In contrast, higher-income brackets had significant wage growth since 1979, with earnings for the top 5 percent of families climbing 64 percent to more than $313,000.

A survey of 29 cities conducted by the U.S. Conference of Mayors released Thursday points to a gloomy outlook for those on the lower end of the income scale.

Many mayors cited the challenges of meeting increased demands for food assistance, expressing particular concern about possible cuts to federal programs such as food stamps and WIC, which assists low-income pregnant women and mothers. Unemployment led the list of causes of hunger in cities, followed by poverty, low wages and high housing costs.

Across the 29 cities, about 27 percent of people needing emergency food aid did not receive it. Kansas City, Mo.; Nashville, Tenn.; Sacramento, Calif.; and Trenton, N.J., were among the cities that pointed to increases in the cost of food and declining food donations. Mayor Michael McGinn in Seattle cited an unexpected spike in food requests from immigrants and refugees, particularly from Somalia, Burma and Bhutan.

Among those requesting emergency food assistance, 51 percent were in families, 26 percent were employed, 19 percent were elderly and 11 percent were homeless.

“People who never thought they would need food are in need of help,” said Mayor Sly James of Kansas City, Mo., who co-chairs a mayors’ task force on hunger and homelessness.

___

Online:

Census Bureau: www.census.gov

U.S. Conference of Mayors: www.usmayors.org/

Egg lovers do not read: The egg industry horror

writeratthesea — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 05:04:18 +0000

I could not help but post this. If true, it’s pretty jolting.

The Horrific Truth Behind the Egg Industry

The Horrific Truth Behind Egg Industry

Hens spend their entire lives in cages, where they can’t even move. They suffer from depression, like any other living being whose liberty was taken away. In order to reduce injuries resulting from excessive pecking — an aberrant behavior that occurs when the confined hens are under stress or frustrated — practically all laying hens have part of their beaks cut off. Debeaking is a painful procedure that involves cutting through bone, cartilage, and soft tissue.Baby male chicks, who are of no economic value to the egg industry, are simply tossed into a dumpster with shells and other waste. They either get ground up alive, or they are just tossed into plastic bags with hundreds of others, and left to suffocate.

http://www.thenazareneway.com/vegetarian/eggs_and_laying_hens.htm

ANY HUMAN BEING IN ITS RIGHT MIND WILL KNOW THAT THIS IS NOT NORMAL AND TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE. NO LIVING BEING DESERVES TO BE ENSLAVED, RAPED, TORTURED AND KILLED, SO A HUMAN CAN SATISFY ITS ”DESIRE”. STOP SUPPORTING THIS MADNESS / INSANITY – THE UNNECESSARY TORTURE AND SLAUGHTER OF INNOCENT LIVING BEINGS, STOP NOW! GO VEGAN!

TO ALL VEGANS AND ACTIVISTS: PLEASE TAG AND SHARE THE PHOTOS / ALBUMS! IT’S THE EASIEST WAY TO RAISE AWARENESS ON THE INTERNET, AND IT ONLY TAKES A FEW SECONDS TO SHARE! ONE SHARE COULD SAVE MANY LIVES!

The Egg Industry – It hides some of the most horrifying acts of extreme cruelty on Earth!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v =JJ–faib7to http://www.chooseveg.com/ohio-fresh-eggs.asp

Those poor defenseless living beings just live to endure extreme horrific torture and die a horribly painful death! For what? Just to satisfy a human’s “desire”? “A common method used to dispose of unwanted male chicks is grinding them up alive. This method can result in unspeakable horrors as a research scientist described, “Even after twenty seconds, there were only partly damaged animals with whole skulls.” In other words, fully conscious chicks were partially ground up. Eyewitness accounts at commercial hatcheries indicate similar horrors with chicks being slowly dismembered on augers carrying them towards a trash bin or manure spreader.”

http://www.veganbakesale.org/v eganbakesale/vbs-eggs.html Video shows chicks ground up alive at egg plant: http://www.mercyforanimals.org/farm-to-fridge.aspx

“A US animal rights group has released a video showing unwanted chicks being tossed alive into a grinder at an Iowa plant and accused egg hatcheries of being “perhaps the cruellest industry” in the world. The undercover video was shot by Chicago-based Mercy for Animals at a hatchery in Spencer, Iowa, over a two-week period in May and June. The video was first obtained yesterday by The Associated Press. “We have to ask ourselves if these were puppies and kittens being dropped into grinders, would we find that acceptable?” asked Nathan Runkle, the group’s executive director, at a news conference in Des Moines. “I don’t think that most people would.” The group said that tossing male chicks, which have little value because they can’t lay eggs or be raised quickly enough to be profitable for meat, into grinders is common industry practice. United Egg Producers, a trade group for US egg farmers, confirmed that. The hatchery is owned by West Des Moines-based Hy-Line North America and is one of many operations in Iowa, the nation’s leading egg producer. The video, shot with a hidden camera and microphone by a Mercy for Animals employee who got a job at the plant, shows a Hy-Line worker sorting through a conveyor belt of chirping chicks, flipping some of them into a chute like a poker dealer flips cards.

These chicks, which a narrator says are males, are then shown being dropped alive into a grinding machine. In other parts of the video, a chick is shown dying on the factory floor amid a heap of egg shells after falling through a sorting machine. Another chick, also still alive, is seen lying on the floor after getting scalded by a wash cycle, according to the video narrator. Hy-Line said the video “appears to show an inappropriate action and violation of our animal welfare policies,” referring to chicks on the factory floor. But the company also noted that “instantaneous euthanasia” – a reference to killing of male chicks by the grinder – is a standard practice supported by the animal veterinary and scientific community. Company spokesman Tom Jorgensen said Tuesday an investigation was continuing, and once it’s completed the company would release more information. Runkle acknowledged that his group’s ultimate goal was to get people to stop eating eggs. He said he believe many would refuse to eat eggs if they knew what happened to male chicks. “The egg industry is perhaps the cruellest industry on the face of the planet,” Runkle said. Mercy for Animals also sent letters to the nation’s 50 largest grocery store chains, including Walmart, Whole Foods, Safeway, Harris Teeter and Trader Joe’s, asking them to include a label on egg cartons that says, “Warning: Male chicks are ground-up alive by the egg industry.”

A spokesman for United Egg Producers called the proposal “almost a joke.” The egg producers spokesman, Mitch Head, said Mercy for Animals had no credibility and questionable motives because “this is a group which espouses no egg consumption by anyone – so that is clearly their motive.” Mercy for Animals estimated 200 million male chicks are killed a year, which the United Egg Producers also confirmed. “There is, unfortunately, no way to breed eggs that only produce female hens,” Head said. “If someone has a need for 200 million male chicks, we’re happy to provide them to anyone who wants them. But we can find no market, no need.” Using a grinder, Head said, “is the most instantaneous way to euthanise chicks.”

There is no federal law that ensures the humane euthanasia of animals on farms or hatcheries, according to Jonathan Lovvorn, vice president and chief counsel of the Humane Society of the United States. The Humane Society also says that virtually all egg farms, even those that sell cage-free eggs, get their hens from hatcheries that kill their male chicks. Hy-Line says on its website that its Iowa facility produces 33.4 million chicks. Based on that figure, Mercy for Animals estimates a similar number of male chicks are killed at the facility each year. Hy-Line did not comment on that estimate.” Solution: GO VEGAN!

I do NOT own the copyright for these photos. The copyright belongs to their respective owner. I uploaded them for educational purposes only. ~ NO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT INTENDED!

By: Veganism Is The Future

Original post:

horrific-truth-behind-egg-industry.html

The dysfunctional dynamics surrounding estate battles

writeratthesea — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 20:40:19 +0000

My newest article in Ventura County Reporter:

WHERE THERE’S A WILL
The dysfunctional dynamics surrounding estate battles

By Carla Iacovetti

“Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.” — George Burns (1896-1996)

One would think that a death in a family should draw its members close together, but this is not always the case.

Oftentimes, astounding things happen when someone dies. In fact, many family members will spend more money on legal fees to fight each other than the money that they hope to receive from their deceased family member’s estate.

Mark T. spent most of his childhood in Boise, Idaho, until his father was transferred to Ventura. He is one of three kids, and the only one still living in Ventura County. Both of his sisters live out of state, and they had not seen their father for many years. One of them didn’t even show up at his funeral, but she did show up for the reading of the will.

“You see, Daddy had a sizable estate,” Mark said. It was after the will was read that all hell broke loose. “It became a five-year battle that basically sucked any hopeful inheritance away with legal fees, and now the three of us siblings do not speak.”

In a New York Times article author Fred Brock recalls a pitiful state of affairs. “Two clients — brothers — who fought in his office over a Howdy Doody lunch box in their father’s estate. One brother said, ‘That lunch box has the smell of my childhood on it, and I’m not giving it to my brother.’ ” While fighting over a lunch box seems completely absurd, the craziness that often accompanies property battles can be shocking and intensely overwhelming.

Bea’s immigrant grandfather was a self-made millionaire who had a good life. In 1936 he founded a restaurant in downtown Los Angeles that became a city landmark, and it opened up the door for enormous financial success. Her grandparents had three children, and were very happy. After Bea’s grandmother passed away at 73, he re-married Ruby two years later. Ruby was 10 years younger; she had no children or money. “He treated her like a queen and when my grandfather died at 94, Ruby inherited millions, along with a home in Palm Springs free and clear,” Bea said. “Basically, none of his children or grandchildren received anything!”

Some people will stop at nothing …
“Ruby was 84 when my grandfather died, and very lonely,” Bea said. “Five years later, she became the victim of a scam. She was still living at her home in Palm Springs, and hired a caregiver (Janet) to assist her in her home.” Ruby did not know that this woman was just waiting to prey on her. George, a man in his late 50s, and Janet’s partner in crime, posed as a gardener and began flirting with Ruby. In no time, she let her regular gardener go, and George took over — in fact, within a few months George and Ruby got married.

Not long after the wedding, George began helping himself to her sizable bank accounts. He blew through the money quickly, buying property and a large ranch in Palm Desert. George had control of all of her accounts and assets, with the exception of the house they lived in. For security purposes, Bea’s father was kept on the title deed of her house, and this ended up becoming a nasty battle in court after her death. Shortly after the wedding, George began to neglect Ruby and physically and emotionally abuse her, and then she was diagnosed with cancer. Once she became ill, George moved to his ranch and completely ignored her until she died.

“After Ruby’s death, George and Janet moved on to their next victim and no one ever got any money,” Bea said. Should only one person in the family be in charge of a trust?

Early in 2001, Phil’s father was getting too old to handle his business affairs, so he handed everything over to his second-oldest son. Phil’s father and stepmother were to be taken care of out of the trust that was set up; once his brother got hold of the paperwork, however, he had access to everything. (Phil, who asked his real name not be used, is a longtime Ventura County resident.)

“In 1972 my father took $100,000 and put it into a savings account for all five of us kids,” Phil said. “By now, this should have matured into millions and should come into effect after my stepmother dies, but because my father gave my brother sole power to handle all of his money and investments, we’re powerless, and we have no idea whether we have been kept in his will or removed.”

When one person in the family is made sole executor, there are no checks and balances, and it becomes easy to abuse the situation.

“Dad owned 27 homes and sold them before the real estate market began to fizzle out. So – where’s all the money?” Phil asked.

Attorney Ted Muegenburg of Meta Law Inc. claims, “Every life needs a good plan.” In the many years Muegenburg has served Ventura County as a trust and estate counselor, he has seen firsthand about every kind of family dynamic erupt after a relative passes away. Greed seems to be the culprit that invades the nicest of families. “Believe it or not,” Muegenburg said, “a lot of dissension comes from a jealous in-law or a sibling with unresolved resentments that suddenly surface when a parent dies.”

Goals are simple, but getting there seems to be complicated

Muegenburg believes that every family has some level of dysfunction, and the dysfunction will be disclosed when someone dies and family members seek out an estate attorney. “Even though the goals are simple, complications arise because no one seems to have the same plan. Greed is not seen in any stronger form than when someone dies.”

Many times a parent will appoint a child as trustee, but the appointed person has no clue what this entails, and it comes down to whom you can trust to carry out a parent’s intention without bias or interference. “The wisest decision is to appoint a corporate trustee because he or she is professional, neutral, unrelated and uninvolved with the family,” Muegenburg said.

In his co-authored book The Family Fight, Planning to Avoid It, Les Kotzer said, “People should worry more about saving their families than saving taxes.” Kotzer is a will and estate lawyer and has been featured as a commentator with various news outlets. He is dedicated to educating families about planning for the future, so that when a parent passes away, the children left behind are not at war.

Assumptions of any kind can be dangerous. No parent wants their children to battle over their inheritance, but when a parent does not properly plan for the future (and that is to include their death), they are assuming the kids will agreeably work things out, and that is not always the case.

“One of those assumptions is that children will exercise good will and settle things amicably,” Kotzer said. “Another assumption is that everything will be fine if each child receives an equal share in an estate … they should never make one sibling dependent on the good will of another sibling.”

“Without a good plan, and basic documents in place, people really get into a spot. The worst thing is that when there are no documents, then they have to go to court, where everything is exposed and in public view,” said Muegenburg.
People can get crazy when money is involved.

Muegenburg recalls one of the craziest scenarios that he personally observed. All the children lived out of the area, and when their mother passed away, while the funeral was in session, the husband and one of the kids snuck away, rented a U-Haul truck and went back to the house and stripped it clean.

One Ventura family watched the estate and all the assets completely disappear after the death of a very wealthy aunt who was living in upstate New York. While Aunt Christina had no children, she was very close with all of her nieces and nephews, and promised to “take good care of them.”

“It is curious why a woman who had millions would not have planned things better. In fact, she didn’t have a plan,” said Christina’s niece Marianna. “When dementia suddenly crept in and affected her mind, one of the ‘trust-worthy’ nephews got her to make him sole executor, and one by one every asset began to disappear.”

Not only were Christina’s wishes never executed, the niece and nephew in New York discovered a pot of gold, while their rival cousins here in California got absolutely nothing, and there was not anything that could be done.

Naturally, the more money that is involved, the bigger the fight, and celebrity deaths are guaranteed moneymakers for lawyers. In a recent article by John Goff in Investment News, he cites some of the biggest estate battles in America. While John Wayne has been dead since 1979, his estate is still valued at anywhere between $10 million to $15 million.

“Given the stakes, it’s hardly surprising that the actor’s children, grandchildren and assorted relatives are still duking it out over the star’s estate 30 years after he died,” Goff said. Michael Jackson’s sudden death in 2009 has opened up a can of worms, and according to Goff, “It’s an ugly, high-profile estate battle that could keep lawyers employed for years.” Elizabeth Taylor and Farrah Fawcett can also be added to the list.

Who can you trust to carry out intentions?
So often parent appoint one of the children to act as a trustee, but they do not know what they are doing. Muegenberg said, “Many people spend their lifetime working hard, raising their kids, and making a comfortable life for themselves, but what about preparing for death? It’s going to happen. Ignoring it is not going to make it go away. Please remember that probate attorneys are counseling roles, not an adversarial role; they’re here to help.”

When a family member dies, there are numerous legal taxation matters that should be addressed, and if there is property involved, probate proceedings will need to commence. The process can be overwhelming, and particularly complicated if the loved one didn’t handle the situation ahead of death. “The difference between a plan and no plan or a plan and an old plan is like good writing; it needs to be well-crafted and drawn up,” Muengenberg said.

In the state of California, dying without a will can create costly, complicated, onerous circumstances for the surviving family members. When there is no will, the court steps in to distribute the estate according to California’s laws. With a will, or living trust, the decedent decides how the estate will be distributed after he or she is gone.

A Los Angeles Times feature article about estate planning called “Time to Prepare Your Will,” it states, “If you’re rich, the best estate planning advice would be to die quickly. If you’re not, the best advice is to either review or rewrite your estate planning documents to make sure your heirs aren’t left high and dry if you die.” Part of the motivation for this comment stems from the fact that Uncle Sam can walk off with up to 45 percent of bequeathed assets.

Surprise, surprise!
Quite often, parents will not even discuss their worth with their children before they die. A recent U.S. Trust study posted in the Wall Street Journal studies shows, “52 percent of parents with assets of $3 million or more said they haven’t told their children just how wealthy they are, and another 15 percent haven’t even told them that they’re well off.” Most parents seem to think they have all the time in the world. This topic gets put on the back burner and is frequently ignored, and the reasons are many.

No matter what your net worth, it’s important to have a basic estate plan in place. Preparing for the future helps to ensure that your financial wishes will be met after you die. The bottom line – everybody needs a will, and trusts are not merely for the wealthy. Discussing your plans with your heirs can also help to avert disputes, sudden surprises or misunderstandings. “If there’s no will and no trust, then everyone starts complaining and uncertainty is undeniable. If there’s a trust in place, the trustee takes over and everything rolls along,” Muengenberg said.

Oh boy…this could shake things up a bit!

writeratthesea — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 08:59:13 +0000

Dwarf galaxies suggest dark matter theory may be wrong

16 September 11 13:47 ET

By Leila Battison
Science reporter, Bradford

Scientists’ predictions about the mysterious dark matter purported to make up most of the mass of the Universe may have to be revised.

Research on dwarf galaxies suggests they cannot form in the way they do if dark matter exists in the form that the most common model requires it to.

That may mean that the Large Hadron Collider will not be able to spot it.

Leading cosmologist Carlos Frenk spoke of the “disturbing” developments at the British Science Festival in Bradford.

The current theory holds that around 4% of the Universe is made up of normal matter – the stuff of stars, planets and people – and around 21% of it is dark matter.

The remainder is made up of what is known as dark energy, an even less understood hypothetical component of the Universe that would explain its ever-increasing expansion.

Scientists’ best ideas for the formation and structure of the Universe form what is called the “cosmological standard model”, or lambda-CDM – which predicts elementary particles in the form of cold dark matter (CDM).

These CDM particles are believed to have formed very early in the Universe’s history, around one millionth of a second after the Big Bang, and they are “cold” in the sense that they are not hypothesised to be particularly fast-moving.

The existence of the particles has not yet been proven, as they are extremely difficult to detect – they cannot be “seen” in the traditional sense, and if they exist, they interact only very rarely with the matter we know.

Various experiments are being carried out in deep mines in Yorkshire, on the Fermi Space Telescope, and in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland to try and detect these elusive particles, or indirect evidence of their effects.

So far, none of these experiments has conclusively spotted them.

Scientists working on the problem have recently expressed dismay at the universally negative results coming from the LHC, and this has led some to consider that the standard model may be wrong.

‘Disturbing possibilities’

Prof Carlos Frenk at Durham University, working with the Virgo Consortium, now has data suggesting that our understanding of the formation and composition of the Universe is incomplete.

These data come from an unlikely source: dwarf galaxies, a “halo” of which surrounds our own Milky Way.

These dwarf galaxies are believed to be mostly made up of dark matter, and contain just a few stars. Their dimness has made them difficult to study in the past.

But the Virgo Consortium has created computer simulations to visualise how the dwarf galaxies formed, using their assumptions about CDM.

The team found that the final results of these simulations did not at all match what we observe. The models showed many more small galaxies in a wide halo around the Milky Way, whereas in reality there are fewer, larger dwarf galaxies.

Prof Frenk explained that there were two “equally disturbing possibilities” for why this is the case.

One idea is that many dwarf galaxies formed as in the simulation, but there were violent supernova explosions during their formation that radically changed the structure of the dwarf galaxy halo.

“If this were the case, it would mean that galaxy formation is a much more exciting process than we thought,” said Prof Frenk.

But there are still uncertainties over whether the small fraction of normal matter in the Universe (4%) could have such a fundamental effect on the structure of the dark matter.

An alternative cause for the discrepancies between the modelled data and what we observe is much more fundamental: that CDM does not exist, and the predictions of the standard model relating to it are false.

Prof Frenk said that after working for 35 years with the predictions of the standard model, he is “losing sleep” over the results of the simulations.

Warmer Universe

But he believes he has found a solution to the CDM problem. He proposes that instead of “cold” dark matter that formed within the first one millionth of a second after the Big Bang, the Universe may instead be filled with warm dark matter (WDM).

The WDM would have formed later, up to minutes after the Big Bang, and is described as “warm” as the particles would be lighter and more energetic.

When simulations of galaxy formation are run with the later-forming WDM instead of CDM, the halo of dwarf galaxies has the same structure as we observe in reality.

The WDM solution is “remarkably elegant”, Prof Frenk said, and it means that “the standard model is by no means dead”.

But if all dark matter is WDM and not CDM, this poses major problems for our current attempts to detect it.

The LHC is designed to recreate the conditions one millionth of a second after the Big Bang. If WDM is the dominant dark matter, however, the facility will not see a trace of the particles.

Other possibilities exist for trying to detect WDM. The most likely WDM particle, the “sterile neutrino”, could be identified by the X-rays it emits; but much more sensitive X-ray detectors would be needed.

Alternatively, the James Webb Space Telescope, which is designed to peer into space to look for the earliest stars, and is due to be launched in 2018 pending funding agreements, could be used to prove the non-existence of CDM.

If WDM is the dark matter holding galaxies together, then at the very earliest stages of the Universe, the telescope will see nothing, because the WDM and its accompanying galaxies would not have yet formed.

Prof Frenk explained that there is no definitive proof yet that the dark matter theories need a “paradigm shift”, but he remains positive that an answer will be found soon.

Reading good poetry …

writeratthesea — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 20:35:16 +0000

Puts me in a type of drunken stupor. Somebody stop me today… I am fixated on the poetry of John Keats. ‎Keats believed that there is a “holiness to the hearts affection.” I couldn’t agree more…

“I almost wish we were butterflies and liv’d but three summer days—three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.” – John Keats.

‘The great beauty of Poetry is, that it makes every thing every place interesting.” – John Keats to his brother George, 1819

I get weary

writeratthesea — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 18:32:40 +0000

…of the war between Democrats and Republicans. Perhaps that’s why I remain Independent. I came across this insightful and well-written article on military historian, Victor Davis Hanson’s blog Private Papers, and thought I would post it here. I particularly enjoyed the closing sentence:

“So let’s drop all the discussion of whether this or that candidate or office-holder is “intelligent” or “smart,” something none of us ordinary citizens can know firsthand. Instead, let’s see by their deeds and choices whether they are wise and virtuous.”

August 14, 2011
Do We Need Politicians Who Are Smart or Virtuous?
by Bruce S. Thornton
Advancing a Free Society

“The president isn’t very bright,” Bret Stephens writes in The Wall Street Journal, an assessment that raises an important question: Is “intelligence” necessary in a president?

That we raise the question at all is a testimony to how thoroughly progressive ideas about governing have permeated our political consciousness. This is obvious from the fact that Democrats are the ones who typically assert the superior intelligence of their candidate over the Republican. Indeed, every Republican candidate since Eisenhower has been characterized as a simplistic ideologue, if not an outright dunce, a tradition that continues with the scorn heaped on Sarah Palin’s intellect and alma mater. Partly this reflects the unproven assumption that liberals are by definition more nuanced, complex, subtle thinkers than are conservatives. More important, however, is the underlying assumption of progressive ideology: that modern politics in a technologically advanced world needs technocratic managers with specialized knowledge and skills, what French political philosopher Chantal Delsol calls “techno-politics.”

Yet this belief goes back even farther, to the philosophical debates of ancient Greece. When Plato in the Republic creates his ideal government, he imagines a ruling elite of philosopher “guardians” who are selected at an early age and educated for thirty years in philosophy and mathematics. In contrast, the democracy of Athens assumed that all citizens, by virtue of being citizens, were capable of participating in running the state. To Plato’s credit, in the Protagoras he gives a fair version of the argument underlying democratic rule: for social order to exist at all, Protagoras argues, all people must have the politikê technê, the craft of politics, one innate to humans. Thus all are capable of managing the state.

Modern progressive ideology reflects the triumph of Plato’s anti-democratic idea of techno-politics. Hence the belief that a president should have superior intelligence, its presence usually validated by the prestige of university training, the correctness of pronunciation, and the prowess at intellectual name-dropping. But as well as being necessarily undemocratic, this prizing of intelligence has problems. First, how can the mass of citizens truly know if a presidential candidate, armed with a legion of researchers and speechwriters, is really intelligent? We can’t trust university degrees or transcripts, given the lowering of admission standards and rampant grade inflation. Nor are speeches necessarily an indication of smarts, given the aforementioned speechwriters. Correct pronunciation or syntactical smoothness sometimes is evoked as markers of brightness, but these could merely reflect a skill at reading the words of others. Most people called upon to speak ex tempore will mangle a word or garble their syntax, as has every political candidate. Thus it becomes a matter of political prejudice to see George Bush’s mispronunciation of “nuclear” as evidence of irredeemable stupidity, whereas Barack Obama’s saying “corpse-man” for “corpsman” is shrugged away.

But do we really need a president to have technical intelligence learned in the university? Isn’t what Aristotle called “practical wisdom” more important, the knowledge of human life and action learned from experience? Who was the better president, the self-educated Abraham Lincoln, or the Princeton graduate Woodrow Wilson? Ronald Reagan, a graduate of obscure Eureka College, or Bill Clinton, holder of degrees from Georgetown and Yale? A life of manifold experience in the real world of challenge, risk, and accountability can create a “practical wisdom” more important for political leadership than is the abstract technical knowledge garnered in the rarefied cloisters of the academy or think-tank, where utopian schemes are never held to the strict test of real-life accountability. And let’s not forget that most of the horrors of 20th-century totalitarianism were wrought by those “technicians of the soul” drunk on abstract ideas and theories that seemed flawless in words but turned bloody in deeds when confronted with the stubborn, unpredictable complexity of human passion and free will.

Finally, more important than certain kinds of technical intelligence or knowledge are virtues like prudence, humility, and self-control, the premier qualities thought indispensable for leaders from antiquity to the American founding. Indeed, republicanism always assumes that virtue as well as wisdom is the sine qua non of political freedom. As James Madison wrote in Federalist 57, “The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust.” Throughout The Federalist Papers, wisdom and virtue are constantly linked as the necessary qualities for political leadership. Technical skill or knowledge may be necessary for governing, but without practical wisdom and virtue such knowledge and skills are mere mental machinery that can be turned to evil ends as well as good.

So let’s drop all the discussion of whether this or that candidate or office-holder is “intelligent” or “smart,” something none of us ordinary citizens can know firsthand. Instead, let’s see by their deeds and choices whether they are wise and virtuous.

Wonders never cease: NYC strips naked

writeratthesea — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 16:05:56 +0000

I just had to share!! Wow!

A Bare Market Lasts One Morning

By MELENA RYZIK

Published: August 1, 2011

It was an early Monday morning like any other on Wall Street. Before most of the blue-shirted financiers descended, there came an army of helpers: the custodians and coffee fetchers, personal trainers and headsetted assistants who make the money street run smoothly. They marched along the sidewalks, in a hurry to start their workweek.

Enlarge This Image

Michael Nagle for The New York Times

Drea Bernardi playing her part in the art project “Ocularpation: Wall Street.”

Exposing Wall Street

A performer being arrested in front of the New York Stock Exchange on Monday morning after appearing in the project.

Here and there, though, a few people were slowing down, like the trader barking into his cellphone in the calm before the market opened. He paused to loosen his tie. Unbutton his shirt. Take off his pants.

“He’s buck-naked — Lord have mercy!” a woman said, stopping to gawk at, loudly judge and then photograph a sudden expanse of flesh.

Seconds after 7 a.m. on Monday, trousers were dropping and skirts were lifting all along Wall Street. The mass dishabille was part of a site-specific work of performance art, “Ocularpation: Wall Street,” by an artist, Zefrey Throwell. It was intended as a commentary on work and the economy, Mr. Throwell said, though that seemed to be lost on the police stationed near the New York Stock Exchange.

There, three people — two men and a woman dressed (briefly) as a stock trader, a janitor and a dog-walker — were arrested and taken to a nearby precinct, where they were given summons for disorderly conduct and later released. By 7:05 a.m., the remaining 46 men and women who were part of the project had simply put their clothes back on and gone about their day. Mr. Throwell, who also participated — he was dressed, then undressed, as a hot dog vendor — pronounced the artwork a success and went off to the precinct to see about his compatriots.

“It’s like a Fluxus happening — it’s sort of jaw-dropping, it’s this moment, and it’s never going to happen again,” said Argot Murelius, a 43-year-old art writer who participated, her black lace lingerie peeking out from beneath her pink sweatsuit. (Her role in the piece: prostitute.)

For Mr. Throwell, 35, the moment has been a long time coming. Over coffee in Bryant Park last week, he explained his project. It was “an educational attempt,” he said, “to lend more transparency to Wall Street, a street which is so damn mysterious.” Drawing on the common fear of appearing in public naked, he hoped to create “an absurdist Freudian nightmare” of nude employment: “Wall Street, exposed,” as he put it.

The idea came to him after conversations with his mother, Jan Elliott, who retired as a high school counselor in Corvallis, Ore., only to see her nest egg disappear in the financial crisis of 2008; she was forced to re-enter the labor force to survive. Around the same time, Mr. Throwell was eking out a living in a cubicle for the first time, as a customs broker in San Francisco: “One of the most Kafkaesque jobs I’ve ever had,” he said, “like entering the void for eight hours at a time. It was horrible. I’d never been enslaved by labor before.”

For an earlier, one-man iteration of “Ocularpation,” Mr. Throwell sat naked behind a desk in the financial district of San Francisco for 10 minutes, part of a series of works questioning business and consumer culture. The authorities there barely batted an eye. He moved to New York in 2008, where his projects have led to detainment and once to arrest, he said — not surprising, perhaps, for an artist who considers the absurdist comedian Andy Kaufman a prime inspiration.

Mr. Throwell, an admirer of the performance group Improv Everywhere, has also staged an office worker olympics in Midtown Manhattan, with events like the 50-meter swim (held in a fountain). For “New York City Paints Better Than Me,” he donned a white jumpsuit and crawled the streets, becoming a canvas for a composition of trash and slime.

Mr. Throwell studied painting but supports himself as a photographer and filmmaker; he also runs Engineer’s Office, a very small gallery — it’s 6 feet high, 2 feet wide and 2 feet deep, in a decommissioned water fountain nook — in the basement of Rockefeller Center. “Nothing is for sale,” he said, “and it all gets thrown away by a janitor at some undetermined time.”

Though Mr. Throwell wants to push boundaries creatively, he said he does not set out to flout laws with his work. “I see it operating paralegally, alongside the law, in many cases,” he said. “It’s not necessarily illegal to give people 100 air horns and conduct a symphony in the streets and use the building as the resonator. It’s more paralegal, a gray area.”

For “Ocularpation” he was given use of a work space at 14 Wall Street through a program sponsored by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Aside from the residency, “L.M.C.C. did not provide any financial grants or support for the production of ‘Ocularpation: Wall Street,’ ” a council spokesman said. Being there allowed Mr. Throwell to canvass the area; his nonscientific survey revealed a labor force at odds with what people might expect.

Enlarge This Image

Michael Nagle for The New York Times

A performer being arrested in front of the New York Stock Exchange on Monday morning after appearing in the project.

Exposing Wall Street

Michael Nagle for The New York Times

Zefrey Throwell, who devised the project, speaking with a police officer on Wall Street. Mr. Throwell also participated in “Ocularpation,” playing the part of a hot dog vendor.

“Kids in Calcutta and kids in Tulsa right now are talking about Wall Street, but they have never been there, and don’t know that there’s a Tiffany’s,” he said, or “that there’s more sandwich shops than banks, that there’s more gyms happening there than stock trading.” Demystifiying the street, he said he felt, was one step in educating people about the interconnected financial realities and critiquing the system.

Casting was not a problem. Mr. Throwell first put out a call to artist friends, “and I found an organization that I love very much now, called the Young Naturists and Nudists of New York City,” he said. “They’re a fun-loving bunch.” (Asked why he chose to stage the project now, he answered, “Because it’s warm.”)

Roger Gindi, 59, a member of the Young Naturists group, played the part of a janitor in “Ocularpation.” Wearing only a yellow sweatband, he carefully mopped a section of the street. “I like this kind of participatory art,” said Mr. Gindi, a veteran of several Spencer Tunick nude photos and, in his clothed hours, a Broadway producer.

Though Mr. Throwell hoped that the public would connect the nude Wall Street workers with the economy, most did not make that leap. Faced with a woman stripping off her bra and panties as she talked into a headset about ordering a case of Champagne for her boss, or with a man, all his bits dangling, leading an invisible aerobics class on the sidewalk, passers-by simply whipped out their camera phones.

“It’s a commercial,” someone said. “Some kind of stunt,” another person ventured. “The craziest thing I’ve seen down here,” offered a third.

“Is it a statement?” asked Aileen Carson, a health aide who stopped to take in the scene. “What are they trying to say?” Whatever it was, she liked it. “They had the boldness to do it, which I admire,” she said, surveying the bodies. “It looked to me that they’re free.”

Korey Smith, a newspaper vendor outside the Wall Street stop of the 2/3 subway, watched the proceedings as only a New Yorker might. “There has been a lot of nakedness this summer,” he observed. “That’s the theme this year. I’m not even shocked.”

One person who understood the work’s aim, since she helped inspire it, was Mr. Throwell’s mother, whose maternal support extended only so far.

“My son is very creative,” Ms. Elliott said carefully when reached by phone. “I’m a little bit more prudish.” She did not make it to the Wall Street installation on Monday morning.

“She doesn’t necessarily agree with it,” her son said. “But she said she appreciates the thought.”

zefrey-throwells-ocularpation-wall-street.html?_r=1&smid=fb-nytimes&WT.mc_id=AR-SM-E-FB-SM-LIN-ZTO-080111-NYT-NA&WT.mc_ev=click

All fruit turns to acid in the body and can affect your health!

writeratthesea — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 19:26:26 +0000

I came across this article on microbiologist, Robert O Young’s website and found it insightful. I have been reading/studying pH balance and the breakdown of various foods in the body for a number of years now, and believe this completely. I have also experienced it in my own life. I was in an accident in 1999 which damaged my hands and wrists, and opened up the door for chronic arthritis. After going on various diets that concentrate on pH balance, and focus on eating more alkaline than acidic foods, I can testify that this is absolutely true. All of my pain left by day 5 of a cleanse where I consumed only fluids that alkalize the body. In addition, when I stay away from foods (like fruit) that break down to acid in the body, my pain levels are very low, if not removed.

Enjoy!

All Sweet Fruit is Acidic and Compromising to Good Health!

By Robert O. Young, Ph.D.
When you eat an acidic sweet fruit like Mango the salivary glands in the mouth will immediately secret sodium bicarbonate to buffer the acidic fruit sugars which causes the pH of the saliva to increase. This gives the illusion that eating sweet sugary fruit is alkalizing. But it is not!

As soon as you bite into a sweet fruit the stomach goes into sodium bicarbonate production to fill up the salivary glands with alkaline buffers to buffer the fruit sugars. To continue this practice will cause depletion of alkaline buffers, over-stress the stomach with hydrochloric acid and compromise the alkaline pH of the small intestines leading to serious illness.

A raw foodist or fruitarian can get away with this practice for awhile but sooner or later will pay a high price in their health for their over-indulgence of acidic sweet fruit.

I have found that anyone who is eating sweet fruit daily will have anemic-yeasty blood as seen in the phase contrast micrograph above.

My recommendation: eat sweet fruit sparingly and only in the season thereof. The best scenario is to eliminated all sweet fruit, especially if you are dealing with a serious illness.

Here are the fruit which should only be eaten in the season thereof and in moderation. If one is dealing with a serious symptomology these high sugar fruit should be completely avoided. Here is the list of acidic fruit to avoid: apples, oranges, bananas, berries, pineapple, mango, Thai coconut, honey dew, watermelon, cherries, grapes, kiwi, dates, and dried fruit. The fruit which can be eaten freely are cucumbers, lemon, lime, avocado, peppers, cantaloupe and grapefruit.

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