The News and What to Do With It 

    I glanced at a picture connected with a news report. It showed two young boys, I’m guessing at the gender, who were covered with mud, from the hair on their heads to their feet. In the background were a few other people, also covered with mud. 
    My first reaction was that these two children belonged to some remote tribe in maybe New Guinea or Africa. And not knowing more about it than that my second thought was, ‘Well that’s interesting.’ 
    The next instant my eye caught a reference to their being from Detroit, and my next thought was again, “How sad.” 
    I get put out with people who base their whole response to life around them, such as politics, for example, by just reading the headlines, and here I was doing the same thing. 


     In Ottawa, Ontario, that’s in Canada, they have an annual ten-day music event called Bluesfest. This year, as they were constructing a stage for the performers, they discovered a Killdeer’s nest with four eggs in it. This brought the whole operation to a halt. They are now waiting for Environment Canada to decide to either move the nest or to incubate the eggs. 
    I couldn’t believe what I was reading and what they were considering. Incubate the eggs? Really? That meant that they were separating the children from the parents, just because the parents had made a poor decision. Now if someone I could mention, but won’t, had suggested separating these kids from their parents, the Internet and all the other media out there would have lit up like the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree, and be having a field day castigating the perpetrator of such an idea. 
    Right now the Canadians have a guard protecting the nest. 
    Also, it seems that in Canada the Killdeer is a protected species. If Canada needs more of these birds there are many areas in the USA that would probably be glad to ship them some Killdeers. Just a thought.

Scare the Money Right Out of Them 

    Inducing fear of being unhealthy or creating hope for an easy cure, is a huge industry. I’m not talking about valid medical establishments who freely make their findings available to the public or give advice based on their experience, research, or observations. In this category I would personally put the Mayo Clinic and many other fine establishments. 
    The ones I’m talking about come in two forms---those that scare people into action because they are afraid of becoming unhealthy and those who create the hope of a quick cure for whatever ails them. In either case it turns out to be quite expensive. 
   Many years ago, these people would have been traveling from town to town in a horse-drawn wagon, selling some kind of elixir that would cure anything, and if you had nothing it would prevent you from succumbing to anything. And while you waited to see if it was working, it gave you a nice little buzz so that you didn’t care anyway. And even then, it was quite expensive. 
    Both of these approaches to relieving people of their hard-earned money seem to follow the same basic script. They take bits and pieces of real or imagined medical information and by playing on people’s fears or hopes entice them into buying their pills, potions, magazine, or books, to solve or prevent the onslaught of medical problems.        Their common claim to fame is that because whatever they are selling is so revolutionary the big pharmaceutical houses or the American Medical Association or the US government are trying to shut them down, and unless you act quickly they won’t be around much longer to sell you whatever they’re selling. The reason these entities are trying to muzzle these people is that it will put big pharma out of business, make the AMA embarrassed because they didn’t come up with this miracle cure themselves, or embarrass the government because---well we’re not quite sure. But the short version is that you had better spring quickly for whatever these guys are selling because tomorrow their product will probably not be available. 
    Just one example. Some doctor takes a second grade multi vitamin and adds a minuscule amount of frankincense to it then claims that this remedy comes straight from the Bible. And that it will cure anything that is wrong with you, from baldness to sexual dysfunction. 
    And then there are the thirty-minute infomercials where the speaker keeps telling you that he is about to tell you the secret to his longevity or whatever, but first he would be amiss if he didn’t share four or five testimonials from people you never heard of and who’s opinion means zilch to you. 
    He keeps looking over his shoulder, claiming that the AMA is hot on his heels, and are about to shut him down because they don’t want his healing expertise in the public domain as it will cut into the vast profits they derive from treating whatever he/she is claiming to be able to cure.            Numerous times he just about spills the deep secret, but never quite gets there, until finally he tells you that all you need to do is subscribe to his newsletter, buy his book, order a three-months supply of his pills, or a case of his special lotion, to gain the healthy state you’re entitled to.        These infomercials are the slickest marketing cons going on today, but it is just one small piece of the industry that has grown up and seems to be doing well, playing on peoples’, fear of being unhealthy, or hope to stay healthy. 
    Not one of these forms of marketing, either fear or hope, offer anything to relieve the mental anguish caused by their products not working.