Hold the applause

This isn't, actually, another post about music except incidentally. It's about audiences.

The other day I was listening to Bill Evans Trio at Shelly's Manne-Hole, recorded at a club performance in 1963. Bill Evans hardly needs a plug from me. Aside from the playing, one thing that struck me about the recording was ... the audience.

At the end of each number, they applauded. That's all: they applauded. No shouting. No whistling. No "Yeah!"s. No foot stomping.

The bassist, Chuck Israels, did a fine extended solo on "All the Things You Are." (This was a different trio from the one with which Evans had become famous. That earlier line-up had ended with the tragic death in a car accident of the bassist Scott LaFaro.) There were only two or three seconds of mild applause for the solo, which today would have sent the crowd wild.

You might argue that the audience wasn't sophisticated enough to understand what now passes for correct receptivity. I say ish kabibble to that. A trio date in a Los Angeles club would not have had a bunch of rubes for customers. They were more likely some of the keenest listeners around. They expressed their appreciation through treating Evans and his crew as artists, not circus performers.

So they didn't ecstatically applaud Israels's solo. Could it have been because they understood it was a component of the song as a whole, not a personal exhibition?

The behavior of audiences has worsened considerably in my lifetime. Rock music started the breakthrough, or breakdown. ("More! More!") I've been to some great rock concerts, but almost always felt distaste for the shrieks and "participation" of the listeners, if they really were listening that is.

What's going on? I think at the most primitive level concerts are one of the few occasions now where people feel they can express themselves without fear of getting into trouble. In everyday life, they must pre-censor every word. Better to stick to sports and weather. You never know who might be offended. Heavens, they might innocently utter a politically incorrect formulation that would cause some identity freak to screech, "That's racist! Xenophobic! Homophobic! Patriarchal!" etc., etc. But who can criticize you for going over the moon about musicians? 

And it's not just rock or jazz performances anymore. Classical concert audiences have their own buffoons. While only a small portion -- so far -- applaud between movements, once the piece is over they go ape. Always, always a standing ovation for a concerto or symphony. A standing ovation used to mean something, that this wasn't just a good performance, but something truly extraordinary. Now the standing is routine.

Classical audiences like to imagine how deeply they appreciate what they heard. Oh, do they appreciate it. They desperately show the world their "sensitivity": "Yeah!" "Bravo!" (They're too ignorant to know that if you must use this word, it should be "Brava!" when directed at a woman.) "Woh!!!!" What dolts they are.

But that's not enough for a writer in Britain's The Telegraph, within living memory a conservative paper, now a mouthpiece for that sad country's cultural Marxist Establishment.

"Are young people scared of the Proms [the annual Promenade concert series] -- or the audience?" asks the headline. Jonathan McAloon writes:

The classical music establishment has never been more desperate to shake its elitist image. The Proms is especially conscious of making space for fresh musical combinations to entice people who might feel alienated by the repertoire: Gabriel Prokofiev’s Concerto for Turntables and Orchestra saw traditional instruments remixed live by DJ Switch in 2011. This year, the late slot opened its arms to dance icon Pete Tong and grime duo Krept & Konan. No one could fault the on-message Proms programmers for their inclusivity. But it isn’t the repertoire that’s forbidding to newcomers: it is the audience.
  
While on the surface there is a pressure to modernise, there is also a deep-seated coldness and snootiness in the attitude of many – though of course by no means all – hardened Prom-goers. 

He doesn't give many examples of the alleged "snootiness" except for some traditionalists glaring at audience members applauding inappropriately and making too much noise.

There needs to be an incentive for new audience members to take seats in the stalls. Perhaps a limited number of seats could be reserved for those who have never attended before. Or there could be a special offer for Proms regulars who bring first-timers, thus encouraging the passing on of tradition and knowledge [Huh? Tradition and knowledge are exactly what McAloon despises]: in this way, newcomers could quickly learn how best to avoid annoying the unforgiving killjoys. 

Of course, the first timers might need to learn something about manners. But that would mean they'd have to, my God, restrain themselves. Oh, the poor dears. Imagine some ancient mossback looking askance at them for whooping, dancing in the aisle, or maybe taking their clothes off and doing cartwheels. If classical music is to have any future (according to this McAloon character) the audience must feel comfortable expressing itself, any time, any way. 

I, an unforgiving killjoy, hope McAloon's attitude is mainly limited to degenerate London. But I wouldn't bet on it. Waive, Britannia! Britannia, waive the rules! Those are for snooty old people. Why don't they just f-f-f-ade away?

All along the Apple Watchtower

I've got a mind to give up living
And go shopping instead
I've got a mind to give up living
And go shopping instead
Pick me up a tombstone
And be pronounced dead

— Variously attributed; performed by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band  

Living is uncool. What matters now, for those who can or imagine they can afford it, is showing your up-to-the-second personal technology.

Steve Jobs's last words were said to be, "Oh wow! Oh wow! Oh wow!" Not quite as elegant as Goethe's "More light," but perhaps his first glimpse into the life following death. I don't think he was looking down the tunnel to the Apple Watch.

No doubt, the Apple Watch — which has the world gaga — is capable of wonders, practical and pointless. I haven't bothered to learn all about it. Yours truly (as people used to sign letters), but I won't be yours in Apple blossom time. There seem to be three basic models, keyed to your socio-economic class, and loads of designs. Doubtless there are a billion aps, and it can do everything but spit nickels. Watch Ben-Hur on your wrist!

Throw in a Tesla to your instrumentarium and you're in the Elysian Fields without even bothering to cross over like Steve Jobs.

"The Apple Watch Will Create Its Own Market Based On Emotional Needs," writes a commentator who styles himself Clinically Sound Investor on Seeking Alpha. He's right.

The Apple Watch pre-orders totaled over $600 million. One thing people can take for granted and Apple doesn't have a problem with is heightened public awareness. The TV spots, the live demos at Apple Stores since April 24, as well as Guided Tours online, all have people thinking about the Watch even before they develop an interest. Once the Watch is out on the street and people see them on others, if there was thought of a "lack" before, it will feel more real. ...

The ability to send virtual taps, heartbeats, and drawings through Digital Touch actively reminds owners, "Great, I have the Watch," for staying connected to their community. ... For younger users, who grew up in an age where online contact with their social network is as pervasive as face-to-face time with their friends, the demand for the Watch may be even greater. The best way to stay connected is through instant sharing of emotions and ideas, which is more conveniently done with the Watch's texting and iMessage capabilities than finding your phone. 

In other words, "the Watch" enables people (especially the young, whom many from older generations now emulate) to find virtual meaning in their lives, often without interacting in "meat space."

You can argue that in principle there's nothing about wearing an Apple Watch that differs from the jewelry and decorative clothes that women and men have worn since the beginning of history (and probably before): it's a high-tech version of an aborigine's bone necklace. Right enough, it's human to want to be stylish, and if a gyroscopic sundial could have been made small enough, Egyptians of the XVIII Dynasty might have worn them or endowed their animal-headed gods with them.

I myself used to collect watches of eccentric or unusual appearance. They included a Sekonda whose face noted in microscopic letters, "Made in the U.S.S.R." My timepieces were — admittedly — intended to attract attention and show how hip I was. I still have them but no longer wear a watch, except occasionally on trips, because there are readouts all around on computers, car dashboards, TV screens, even electric ranges.

My watches were cheap, though, and nobody would have assumed that I'd paid any more for one than for a Timex. Style aside, all they did was tell the hour and minute. You even had to adjust them if you went to a different time zone.

There's a different and, to me, distasteful vibe about the Apple Watch. To judge from photos, some of the variations might be visually attractive, but the bragging rights they give the owner cross a line that ought not to be crossed. It's impossible to define where that line is exactly, but it has something to do with the biblical admonition that where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. 

Traditional Christianity doesn't much appeal to me, but it deserves credit for ceaseless analysis of human motives and the inner drives that can seize the soul and turn it away from the moral and spiritual. The Seven Deadly Sins are deadly precisely because they are tempting and often pleasurable. If we must derive and then satisfy an "emotional need" from a fancy science-fiction watch, we will deserve what we get.

The end of the middle-class neighborhood

Countless words have been delivered about the ever-shrinking American middle class, caught in a vise between our élites and the burden of supporting that half the population who can't or won't support themselves. It's not that obvious in the blessed Virginia suburbs of Washington that politicians, federal employees, lobbyists, and similar call home. But you don't have to drive very far beyond the charmed circle and the picture is ever so different.

My wife and I are reluctantly looking to move because we can no longer afford the house we rent in our attractive northern Virginia burb. For 10 years we have watched the surroundings morph into a 'hood fit for Washington grandees, signaled by a wave of tear-downs and building of bonsai castles. 

We have been checking out a couple of other locations closer to where my wife works as a reference librarian two counties south. Let me tell you about one of them. I won't name it, but anyone familiar with the War Between the States would instantly recognize it as a famous battle site.

Like so many towns in this region, it is sharply divided between a historic district and suburban development stretching quite a way from the historic bit. The old town has considerable charm, with many Victorian and early-20th-century houses and few apartment buildings or townhouses. It went downhill for a while but seems to be undergoing a revival, which I suspect is due to an in-migration of rather well-off people, some of whom are willing to make the hour commute to Washington.

Then there's the rest. All in all it probably encompasses three times the area of the historic district. The main commercial drag is typical of contemporary America -- indoor malls, strip malls, car dealerships, gas stations, fast food restaurants. The chain stores, Macy's, Best Buy, Starbucks, the usual. Uninspiring but what you would expect.

And then the new-old suburban residential streets ("new-old" because, by appearance, most of the houses date from the '50s and '60s). Originally, these areas were almost certainly considered desirable and even prestigious. It was probably a sign you were on your way up in the world when you moved there from the patchy old downtown.

Today the houses present a mixed aspect. For the most part they aren't decrepit, but many offer clues that they are inhabited by a much lower socio-economic class than they were designed for. Some need painting and repair. You see a lot of Kmart furniture through the windows at night -- a time when nobody seems to be about walking anywhere. Maybe it was the cold weather, or maybe there are other reasons as well.

Some house owners were clearly determined to keep up the looks of their properties. My guess is that they would sell and move out in a blur if they could get the price they want. Which they never will.

As we got to know this famously named town better on subsequent visits, it became clear what was going on. It has gone Hispanic in a big way. Most of the restaurants other than the chains serve Mexican food. In the Denny's where we had lunch, all the waitresses spoke to one another in Spanish, although their English was fine when dealing with gringos like us. They were perfectly pleasant; I have nothing personal against them, but they represent an alien culture that is rapidly taking over from the indigenes. 

Store signage was, naturally, in English and Spanish. Most of the Anglos we saw were well into their later decades, with a backstory of life in a traditional southern town and a future, for whatever time is left them, as part of a dwindling minority.

It's kind of like a border town on the U.S.-Mexico line (although the Virginia influx is probably from many Spanish-speaking countries). I was reminded of Nogales, Arizona, next to Nogales, Sonora. Nogales (AZ) still flies the stars and stripes on the post office flagpole, dollars are recognized as currency, and a few other vestiges of the American nation survive. The inhabitants are good at sussing out whether to speak to you in English or Spanish.

The point: where is a middle-class, middle-income family to live in the Virginia burg I was describing? Chances are they can't buy into the gentrifying island, and few (however they may claim to favor diversity) would choose to settle in a neighborhood now occupied largely by immigrants and minorities. The dilemma repeats itself, in varying degrees, all over the United States.

Calling Nell Gwynn

I used to believe in reincarnation, but that was in a previous life.

Uh, sorry. What I meant was, I used to believe in reincarnation, and that was in this life. Now ... I'm not sure. A little while ago I wrote a post about the alleged spirit of Helena Blavatsky, a founder and popularizer of Theosophy, who recanted (from the Other Side) her teaching that the soul undergoes a series of earthly lives to learn the lessons needed for spiritual growth.

It's not unusual that I blog about something and the subject continues to rattle around my mind for days afterward, until I feel like I must study it more. This was such an eventuality. Not having a bunch of time to apply to it, I decided to re-read a book that had once impressed me.

That was Encounters With the Past: How Man Can Experience and Relive History (1979), by Peter Moss with past-life regression hypnotist Joe Keeton. (More recent editions have wisely dropped the misleading subtitle, which makes it sound like a how-to manual, which it is not.) Rather, it's an account of seven people in modern times who apparently recalled, under hypnosis, earlier personalities they had once been. In each case the past life memories emerged over many sessions, and Keeton was able to shift them to various ages in those lifetimes.

(The usual disclaimer: you can add "alleged," "supposedly" or other qualifiers to such statements. I refrain from the words' repeated use simply on stylistic grounds.)

What makes Moss's book particularly interesting is that, as a witness to the regressions described, he is still willing to question various aspects of the stories told by the "past life recallers" and try to analyze the evidence for and against their veracity. I can recommend two other books on reincarnation: Reliving Past Lives, by Helen Wambach, and Exploring Reincarnation, by Hans TenDam. Both authors are scientific in their research, but seem to take hypnotic regressions at face value. 

Moss is -- correctly in my view -- on guard against assuming that the voices of previous personalities that emerge under hypnosis are literally what they seem to be. And he is continually struck by the contradictory factual status of claims by the people in other incarnations -- some remarkably accurate about little-known aspects of life in earlier times and places where the hypnotized subjects have never been, yet other statements that Moss's own thorough research tends to disprove.

I said in my Blavatsky posting, "In hypnotic regressions, there is usually a curious inability to come up with specifics, such as the person's name in the earlier life, the year, who was the king or president at the time, what the town, city, or country was called, &c." Moss writes, in a similar vein:

There are so few spontaneous mentions of births, illnesses and deaths; hopes and fears, successes and failures [recounted in the "past life memories"] are rare -- just small talk and evasive answers of the dullest kind. Memory, even if from another life, should be of stronger stuff, and it is difficult to explain why, if reincarnation is operating, a brownish skirt or a pot of rabbit stew should have some sort of immortality while the names of parents, a home town and a lifelong occupation may leave no imprint at all.

So where does Nell Gwynn, 17th century actress, mistress to Britain's Restoration monarch Charles II, come in? She speaks to us via Edna Greenan of Liverpool, described by Moss as a 57-year-old housewife who "left school at the minimum age -- then fourteen -- and worked in a number of factories and shops, and in the same time bringing up a family of five children. ...

"Edna would deny any pretension to, or even interest in, literature or history, and though she was aware of the name Nell Gwynn before her regression, she knew virtually nothing of the person nor of the social and political background." (Nell is shown at right in a drawing by Sir Peter Lely, who made a good living portraying King Charles's mistresses with much flesh to be admired.)

Despite what many skeptics think, the vast majority of past-life recollections are not of terms spent as famous figures such as Julius Caesar or Marie Antoinette. Usually they were obscure, boring lives. This is one exception.

Nell Gwynn's origins were humble, to put it mildly. Moss transcribes this dialogue (questions by Keeton):

Q. You are Nell Gwynn with all the memories of a seven-year-old. Where are you?
A. (Instantly in a coarse voice) I'm sellin' bleedin' fish.
Q. How much do you charge?
A. (Shouting out stridently ignoring Keeton) Fresh 'errings ... thrippence ... fresh 'errings ... thrippence.
Q. You don't sell many at threepence do you?
A. Shut yer bleedin' mouth. (Calling out) Thrippence ... thrippence ... thrippence.
Q. Where do you get them?
A. (Pause) Eeeeee. I think Rose [her older sister] gets 'em me. I didn't get them.
Q. Yes, but where does she get them?
A. I don't bleedin' know where she gets 'em. (Calling out) Fresh herrings? thrippence ... do you want fresh herrings, lady ... Yes, I've just chopped their bleedin' heads off ... (Pause then in the normal conversational voice to Keeton) She bought a bleedin' 'errin'.

Although nothing in Nell's speech can be verified historically, it sounds oddly convincing. First, if the 20th century Edna Greenan was totally ignorant of Gwynn's life she would not have known that the girl started her career as a fishmonger. (No one can be sure of that detail either, but all the evidence we have suggests Nell began working in lowly jobs.)

Second, anyone making up a "script" for Nell's "character" would probably not devise such near-comical lines. The rather limited swearing vocabulary seems right for a seven-year-old of the lower classes. But notice also that when she is offering them for sale to the "lady," she pronounces the h at the beginning of "herring," as though knowing that her potential customer, probably of a higher social class, might have been annoyed at Nell's usual pronunciation. Well-bred English people still look down on those who "drop their aitches," although it is now politically incorrect to admit it. But when Nell returns to talking to Keeton, the h leaves again.

"At some time before she was ten the real Nell Gwynn gravitated to the tavern-brothel where her mother worked, running errands, serving drinks and it may be anything that might add a piquancy to customers with specialized interest," Moss writes. Nell would not have been one to tax a lot of her time in defending her honor when she later caught the eye of the King of England.

Keeton advances Nell to the age of eight.

Q. What do you do? 
A. I go to that gin shop over there ... I take gins around.
Q. What do they pay you for that?
A. They don't pay me nowt -- they give it Kate [her mother]. They say I'm making a bonny lass ...
Q. Have you ever had a sip of gin?
A. Yes.
Q. Do you like it?
A. I don't know right (smacks lips several times, runs tongue over lips not very happily for a few moments) Catches yer at back of t'throat a bit ...

But this doesn't feel entirely authentic. Nell was raised in or around London. No one except those whose origins are northern English (like Edna) says "nowt." That "back of t'throat" also sounds like it's spoken by somebody from "oop theah in t'North Coontry." And bonny lass? Pure Scottish as far as I know. Conceivably Nell might have picked up such alien (for London) expressions from a person or persons in her environment, but it's improbable.

The language question is one of the most vexing in past-life regressions. The old personalities seem to talk in more or less present-day English, although there is often a sprinkling of obsolete words. If someone from a previous incarnation speaks through a subject living now, it would not be surprising if the speech pattern was drawn mostly from the mind of the hypnotized subject.

Unfortunately Moss doesn't say anything about "Nell's" accent. He would surely have noticed if it had resembled Liverpool pronunciation, so perhaps it didn't. But even a Londoner from the time of Charles II would have sounded quite different from a native-born Londoner today. I wish our author had gone more deeply into this.

In further sessions, which Moss says tallied up to 80 hours or so, Keeton interviews Nell as she relates the ups and, well, downs of her career -- she says of another of her lovers, " 'E gives me 'undred pounds fer lyin' on me back ... ." Considering all the time spent on regressions, the signal-to-noise ratio is typically poor. 

Still, there are intriguing "hits." Nell frequently mentions her acquaintance with the famous literary diarist Samuel Pepys (whom she knew well enough to nickname Pippy), which is historically correct, as Pepys mentions her in his diary. Of course this could be discovered with a little research, but Edna is adamant that she has had no time to study that era and never read a book concerning it.

Nell also mentions the plot fabricated by Titus Oates, an incident now forgotten by all but scholars of the period. 

In another questioning session, she says:

A. I know ... I know what you'd like to know.
Q. What's that?
A. I told you about Frances ... Frances Stewart -- didn't I? Well ... Charles decided he'd 'ave a new (gropes for the word) ... a new coin ... an half penny ... a new half penny ... an' Frances is on the back of it ... she's sat there 'oldin' something up ... an' something on 'er 'ead ... an' she's sat there.

Moss says, "The new halfpenny of 1672 carried for the first time on the reverse the traditional figure of Britannia, for which Frances Stewart was indeed the model."

But for someone who lived through an intensely dramatic period of British history, including the re-establishment of the monarchy after 12 years of Puritan rule, a king much remembered for his pleasure-seeking ways, the reopening of the theaters, the Great Fire, and the Plague, Nell is vague and mostly sounds unconcerned. "For an event as traumatic as the Great Plague, which must have struck the ultimate terror into the heart of every Londoner, Edna/Nell gives nothing but the stereotyped picture that every schoolchild knows," Moss says.

In one respect Edna's case is almost bulletproof. It is often claimed that so-called past life memories have their origin in information that was read or heard by normal means, but consciously forgotten (a phenomenon called cryptomnesia). According to this view, a few facts unknowingly retained from a novel, conversation, movie or similar source are released from the unconscious and form a nucleus around which the subject creates an imaginative past-life story.

Perhaps that happens in some cases. It seems, though, unable to explain what must by now be tens of thousands of regressions performed by experimenters and therapists. Considering Edna's hard life in Liverpool, England's poorest city at the time and not a center of intellectual life, the chance is vanishingly small that information about Nell Gwynn or the Restoration era came her way.
 

A lot more could be said about the chapter on Edna's regression, as well as those about the other subjects' regressions induced by Keeton. But this is getting to be a long entry, and you may be pushed for time, so let's stop here and ask: what can we conclude?

Very little. The evidence supports two hypotheses. (1) Something genuinely paranormal does take place. (2) Whatever emerges under hypnosis about previous lives, it is not pure memory, but has been modified by some factor or factors.

We should keep in mind, however, that nothing about past-life hypnotic regression directly bears on the truth or falsity of the reincarnation hypothesis. Even if every regression were somehow shown to be an illusion, it would not disprove that we have a continuity of lives.


I will save for another occasion -- perhaps the next posting -- a description of what might be a fragmentary past-life memory firmly lodged in my mind.

(Paper)white flight

I've long been intrigued by the idea of an e-reader but never owned one. Recently my wife gave me a present -- an Amazon Kindle Paperwhite 3G, supposed to be the most advanced ever.

In such free time as I am allotted, I've started getting acquainted with it. Although there are no buttons (other than an on-off switch) and you convince the Paperwhite to do what you want it to by tapping the screen, navigation is actually pretty easy and I think will quickly become second nature. The screen is smaller than a paperback book but you can (with its preferred file types such as AZW and MOBI) choose a font and adjust its size.

Being able to carry hundreds of books or periodicals, and select any you want to read at a given moment, in a device you can hold in one hand is obviously useful. So is being able to download such items without even a Wi-Fi hot spot (with the 3G version, not earlier generations). This is no toy. In their way the Kindle and other e-readers are as much of a game changer as the PC.

So far I have only one gripe, and it's about Amazon's incomplete instructions. The how-to onscreen manual starts well, clearly explaining the moves you need to make and the menus, in something very like actual English instead of technobabble. So far, so good. 

But after that it's pure sales promotion, herding you to the Amazon store. That's okay too; most Kindle users will want to buy some downloaded books from Amazon.com. I understand the company doesn't make money on the Kindles themselves, so it's reasonable they'd flog e-books from their own store.

But that's all you're told. Not a word about how you can use the Paperwhite for books and periodicals from other sources, some of then [whisper] free -- the Gutenberg Project, for instance. Certainly no instructions for converting other types of files to MOBI.

So you have to go online and find tutorials, written and video, which are of varying quality. Free conversion software is available; Mobipocket Creator and Calibre seem to be most prominent (not, as I say, that you'd ever hear about them from Amazon). Once they do their job, you transfer the MOBI file to the Paperwhite via a USB cable. 

It's not actually hard, but typically of software developers, they don't explain the conversion technique well. Through trial and error or, if you must, one of those "For Dummies"-type Paperwhite manuals (presumably), you get the hang of it. If I can, anybody can. I suppose the average eight-year-old today would understand the process quicker than I did.

Regardless of Amazon's rather petty withholding of useful information, the Paperwhite is life-enhancing, and a welcome diversion from our national Time of Troubles.

Who uses Expedia, and why?

MarketWatch has a story today with a bullish take on Expedia, as well as other online travel sites -- Priceline and TripAdvisor. (Oddly, it doesn't mention Expedia's main competitor, Travelocity, or the dozens of similar sites.)

It's a superficial analysis, comparing the profit potential of automated travel booking to that of owning casino stock.  I see no analogy that makes sense. Anybody who acquires Expedia shares on the basis of this piece might do better at the roulette table.

A more relevant alternative question is: who buys airline tickets and hotel rooms through Expedia (or Travelocity)? A lot of people, apparently, but it's hard to reckon why.

I'm a thorough vacation planner, and do check out the prices on Expedia and similar, but it's been years since I've found any deals there that beat what you can get directly from the supplier. Recently, putting together a modest upcoming vacation -- a long weekend, really -- I looked at hotel prices in our destination city. TripAdvisor will open up windows for all the so-called discounters (unless you uncheck boxes to opt out); in every case, a hotel room cost the same, to the penny, on the "cheap" sites as on the site of the hotel itself.

I'd walk a camel for a mile.

Ten or 15 years ago, when online booking was relatively new and most people got rooms and flights through a travel agent, Expedia and other discount brokers could offer the suppliers a mostly upscale clientele who knew how to work the 'Net. So the Expedia rake-off might have been worth it to hotel chains and airlines. Nowadays, with everybody's dog buying everything online, why would anybody lower their rates for Expedia?

Priceline, of course, is a different kind of critter ... if you bid for your hotel. (Priceline, too, offers fixed-price hotel rooms that cost the same as on every other site.)

I've gotten some good deals through Priceline, but you have to be very careful in trying to "name your own price." Go to the site Bidding for Travel and check out what hotels have been offered in each "star" category on Priceline. Above all -- know the areas that Priceline divides the city into. If you aren't familiar with the city at all, I wouldn't take a chance on a blind bid at Priceline.

TripAdvisor actually is a value-added app. Not because you can get anything cheaper on it, but because reading the customer reviews of hotels people have stayed at is a good way to get a multi-angulated view of the properties. I've even written a few reviews for TripAdvisor myself -- my handle is Trippist Monk.

It's best to read the reviews in small doses. Too many at a time can send you crazy. And individual reviews can cancel each other out -- one says the place treated him like a Maharajah, you could eat off the floors they were so clean, and they changed the views from the windows along with the sheets every day. Another says the staff was rude, crooked, couldn't be bothered; the plumbing was naff; the room looked out on an alley frequented by dope dealers.

You pays your money and you takes your choice.

What the devil has gotten into Barron's?

Maybe the Devil himself, operating in deep cover under the name "Rupert Murdoch"?

Before Murdoch's News Corp. took over the Wall Street Journal, it was one of the few newspapers in the United States worthy of the name. While I disagreed with some of its corporate-centric positions (particularly its open borders advocacy), it was notable for depth of research and thought-provoking op-ed articles.Now, three years post-Murdoch acquisition, the Journal has devolved into a USA Today targeted to a richer demographic. The paper's coverage is heavy on fashion, entertainment, expensive wines, and sports.

Let us turn our attention to Barron's, also bagged by Murdoch's company. Barron's is by a long stretch the best mass-circulation periodical devoted to investing, streets ahead of grade-school tripe like Money, Kiplinger's, and SmartMoney. I'd almost say that if you manage your own investments, Barron's is necessary reading (although of course it should be supplemented by other sources).

But what hath Murdoch wrought on Barron's?

There's no way an outsider can tell how much the reporting side of the paper has been affected by the influence of the Murdoch dynasty. But any reader can twig that orders have gone out from Supreme Headquarters, Murdoch Expeditionary Force to Barron's copyeditors who write the headlines: "You shall invariably find a metaphor related to the business of the company, even if you must scrape the bottom of the barrel deeper than mankind has yet ventured."

Examples from the past two issues:

"Harman [maker of car stereos] Pumps Up the Volume."

"A Total Opportunity for Growth" [Total, the French energy company]

"Some Healthy Respect for Novartis [pharmaceutical company], Please"

"It's Time to Put Tesco [grocery chain] in Your Basket"

"New CEO Is Nice Fit for American Eagle" [apparel marketer]

Please. I enjoy wordplay, probably too much, but there is nothing of play in headlines like these; they're just a formula, and quickly tire one to the bone.

The day Barron's starts running articles about what the fashionable investor will wear to a meeting, I'm outta there.

The high life

One of the oddest neglected fields in sociology and psychology is the effects of living in high rise buildings. It's possible some studies have been done on the subject, but I've never read of any.

As the world's population surges alarmingly, an ever-larger proportion of it lives in multi-story hives. That holds true in large cities everywhere; the few that have held onto their historic centers, like Paris and Rome, have simply put the high rises in suburbs. Nor is it only in megalopolises that high rise residences flourish. Ritzy seaside enclaves boast towers for living too, so developers can sell as many sea views as possible.

High rise living was almost unknown until the recent past. Ancient Rome and Ostia had apartment buildings (insulae), limited to four or five stories height. They were notoriously shoddy and constantly falling down. Only the poor in rough neighborhoods like the Subura lived in them. After the fall of Rome, living on top of and beneath other people stopped for 1,500 years, partly because the technology and engineering skills weren't available, partly because land was plentiful. The poor lived in appalling conditions, but they lived in their own space -- "a poor thing, but mine own."

Apartment buildings began to make a comeback in late 19th century Paris and London, but even they were not much taller than those of the Romans. It had to wait for the invention of the elevator and steel frame construction for real skyscrapers, and eventually high rise dwellings, to dominate the urban landscape. So there have really been only three or four generations in which lots of people lived well above ground level.

Well, so what? Aren't high rise apartments and condos great? If the altitude of your pad is great enough -- and the most prestigious units, or "penthouses," are at the very top -- you get a view for miles and miles. It might be a dreary landscape of other tall buildings, freeways, and malls, but at night even that can become a magical panorama of lights. Heck, even supposed ecological visionaries like James Howard Kunstler love the kind of high-density housing that high rises permit, so people will be able to multiply their numbers at will and still not take up more suburban space. Plus, if they are city office workers, they can live near their offices and not commute by car. I don't know why Kunstler doesn't pursue his logic all the way and advocate living quarters attached to offices in skyscrapers. It would be terribly efficient. Terribly.

Anyway, it seems to me that there is a cultural and emotional gap between living in a single house with at least a bit of turf around it you can call your own and being one of hundreds on dozens of floors. Why would anyone want to be surrounded left, right, above, and below by others? Especially with the poor sound insulation of most modern high rise residential construction?

Yet many do. You can buy rooms in the sky on the 30th floor for millions of dollars in places like New York. Are we creating a new breed of people with different values from those of almost all previous eras?

Manhattan, where practically all residences are in high rises (except for Gracie Mansion, the mayor's house -- if dwelling height is so wonderful, why doesn't the mayor live at the top?), serves as an instructive example. Manhattanites are different from those of us who prefer houses, and while there are surely lots of reasons, spending their home as well as working lives packed vertically is a major one.

High rises turn people into mass man, the end goal of all forms of collectivism. My observation is that New Yorkers have become psychologically attached to density. They are unlike people who become uncomfortable in crowds. They will happily queue up around the block to get into a popular show or fashionable restaurant: being in a huge throng reassures them that they are in the right place.

Still, even New York -- because of its history (time to create some sort of manners for living with others constantly around them), residual wealth, and culture -- generally manages to blend a degree of civilization into the mix. That almost certainly isn't true of new high rise cities that have sprung up in the past 30 years, containing millions of people. What does the high rise life do to the heads of occupants who have gone in their own lives from peasantry to urban slabs in China, India, Brazil, Nairobi? 

In fact, while the people in Cairo who are currently tearing up their city undoubtedly have politics in their forebrains, is it possible that behind at least some of the instability is the shock of finding themselves uprooted and suspended in forests of concrete? Steve Sailer touches on Egypt's overpopulation issue, and as usual lots of short-sighted critics insist that the population growth party can go on forever, just like economists insisted that the great borrow-and-spend bubble could.

Maybe we are evolving into human ant colonies where individual space is a luxury for the very rich, and even many of them don't care about it. At least for the rest of my lifetime, it will be possible to live in a house if my luck holds. It would be nice if future generations had the same opportunity.

Drop that nutritional supplement or we'll shoot!

 

Milk thistle: Hate crime in progress

Remember those childhood puzzles that presented you with a drawing and asked, "How many things can you find wrong in this picture?"

Europe to ban hundreds of herbal remedies, says The Independent.

Hundreds of herbal medicinal products will be banned from sale in Britain next year under what campaigners say is a "discriminatory and disproportionate" European law. With four months to go before the EU-wide ban is implemented, thousands of patients face the loss of herbal remedies that have been used in the UK for decades.

From 1 May 2011, traditional herbal medicinal products must be licensed or prescribed by a registered herbal practitioner to comply with an EU directive passed in 2004. The directive was introduced in response to rising concern over adverse effects caused by herbal medicines.

 I can't promise to find all of them, but here are some things wrong with this picture.

1. This isn't an act of the British medical bureaucracy, but British people will be denied the use of herbal supplements because their unelected masters in the European Union say so. Technically the U.K. isn't even a member of the EU, but what's that to the international government elite? For reasons that have never been clear to me, the U.K. seems bound to follow every EU ruling anyway.

2. The government parasite class, as it does so often, is creating more regulation to solve a non-problem. As the story says, these herbal products have been used for decades -- which means, I think, sold as dietary supplements for decades. Many have been used in folk medicine for centuries. They are legal in the United States, which itself suffers from Regulation Fever. But starting soon, they will be guilty until "proven" innocent in the EU and its British satellite state.

3. Using one of lazy journalists' cliché phrases, the writer talks of "rising concern" over herbal supplements (not "medicines" -- no one except a newspaper reporter calls a supplement a medicine). Rising where? How high? We are told that "the UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has issued more than a dozen safety alerts in the past two years, including one over aristolochia, a banned toxic plant derivative which caused kidney failure in two women."

I get catalogs in the mail from supplement merchants and read the Life Extension Foundation's magazine, so I am at least familiar with the names of most supplements, including herbs. (Brits, by the way, pronounce the "h" while Yanks don't; 'erbs sounds like east London or "Cockney" pronunciation to the English, low class, so it probably won't be long before the BBC insists its announcers say 'erbs lest they sound elitist.)  Never have I run across aristolochia supplements. A Google search turns up information about the genus Aristolochia -- "evergreen and deciduous woody vines and herbaceous perennials." I find loads of sites with descriptions of it, some including warnings. No herbal supplement company is selling Aristolochia for what ails ya.

4. It is a fallacy that there are clearly delineated "safe" and "unsafe" substances. Fully approved medicines are bad for some people, and quite a few have side effects that are real downers. A doctor told me once that occasionally aspirin proves dangerous. According to this site, "The Journal of the American Medical Association reports studies showing 2,000 deaths occur due to unnecessary surgery, 7,000 deaths are due to medication errors in hospital, 20,000 deaths are due to general hospital error, 80,000 deaths are due to hospital induced infections and 106,000 deaths are due to in-patient adverse drug reactions." 

Okay, MedicalMalpractice.com is a tort lawyers' site, and they should have given a citation for the AMA data and also said what time span the data cover. Still, there's no doubt that checking into the hospital is one of the riskier things you can do, and that "real" pharmacological drugs, patented and all that, sometimes kill people even when administered according to accepted protocols. I work in the field of risk reduction and can tell you risk is part of life; all you can do is mitigate it, not eliminate it. As substances go, the overwhelming majority of herbs seem pretty benign.

According to the Alliance for Natural Health (ANH), which represents herbal practitioners, not a single product used in traditional Chinese medicine or ayurvedic medicine has been licensed. In Europe, around 200 products from 27 plant species have been licensed but there are 300 plant species in use in the UK alone. 

The ANH estimates the cost of obtaining a licence at between £80,000 and £120,000 per herb. They say this is affordable for single herbal products with big markets, such as echinacea, a remedy for colds and flu, but will drive small producers of medicines containing multiple herbs out of business.

 4. Here, at least, the story gets it right. If you have to obtain a license costing £80,000 to £120,000 per herb to have the right to sell it, that obviously is the kiss of death for any company except a member of Big Pharma. They're only going to shell out for licenses to sell hot stuff like resveratrol. If there's a herbal remedy for something that only a small percentage of the population suffers from, or a herb that 60 Minutes hasn't done a segment on, it will go out of circulation regardless of whatever virtues it may possess. For our own protection.

Under EU law, statutorily regulated herbal practitioners will be permitted to continue prescribing unlicensed products. But the Coalition Government and the previous Labour administration have delayed plans to introduce a statutory herbal practitioner register.

 5. So EU law is designed to uphold a closed shop of healers, a guild of the anointed. You can be sure these proud few will sell unlicensed herbal supplements, at eye-watering prices with a nice rake-off for themselves. Thralls of the EU won't be able to buy quality supplements from a reputable source like Vitacost.com at a discount. 

There'll be a new Board of Herbologists determining who is fit to dispense the unlicensed products of nature -- those very ones that are too dangerous for the masses to choose for themselves. Naturally, the Board will be careful not to approve too many practitioners, which could lead to competition.

This isn't to say the herbal supplement business couldn't be upgraded. Most products are not independently assayed to insure that they have the ingredients at the dosage claimed on the label (although some manufacturers have third-party quality control). A government agency spot checking the truth of the labeling could perform a valuable service, at relatively little cost. It wouldn't have to regulate anything, either, just publish its testing results.

Probably some of the thousands of herbal products on the market, while not dangerous, aren't very effective. I'd make a rough guess -- and it's only a guess -- that a third of them are useless. The trouble is, we don't know which third. Well-designed and executed large-scale, double-blind, placebo-controlled research projects on non-patentable substances are expensive and don't have a big payoff. (Actually, the citations in Life Extension magazine reveal an amazing number of studies on supplements, but they are published in obscure journals that even medical doctors, let alone the public, are unaware of.)

Some of the money the spent on supplements is wasted. Some is worth every brass farthing and more. Why shouldn't people experiment and judge for themselves, instead of being subject to a class of official witch testers choosing what they can try and who can supply it?