The Color of Skin: Racial Prejudice In Russia

He is known as "the Chocolate Man" by those who pass him daily on Nevsky Prospekt. He "stands outside the Chocolate Museum in St. Petersburg. I had only been in Russia for a few days when I spotted this Senegalese man decked out in a white wig and a pale 18th century court costume. Under the wig was Jacques. 'I hate being a chocolate man. Believe me. It's degrading. Humiliating. But I ran out of money when studying dentistry here, and my country cannot repatriate me. You'd be a chocolate man if you were in my situation.' His eyes were thick with red micro-veins. After work he puts on his own clothes, rags of the worst imaginable quality. Then he distributes flyers for an R' and B' club outside a metro-station. 'Most people take the leaflet, but every hour I'll hear a racist jibe. "Nigger," usually.' Stuck in Russia with only hideously expensive flights home, Jacques and other black Russians are trapped.

I met Samba when studying at the State University of St. Petersburg in the summer of 2006. We were both eighteen. Samba had been there for a year already, so he showed me the ropes: which far-right students to avoid when they dribbled home late from the vodka bars, how to reach the sealed-off rooftop of the crumbling Khrushchev-era tower-block without falling off. When he learned I was Jewish, he become more sympathetic: 'The Russians hate us Blacks, but you Jews are rubbish like us here.' . . . .

We would drink cans of St. Petersburg's native larger, Baltika, in a tent on the beach that ran out behind the dormitory. . . . Just over a mile out, the water-tower of a nuclear power station looked like a vat steaming with boiling radioactivity.

One night I asked Samba about the long scar on his right-arm. 'They chased me,' was the reply. He was from Burkina Faso. Though his country may be as underdeveloped . . . Samba has little time for Russia: 'I hate it here. It was a terrible mistake to come. . . . I looked at a map. Russia was in Europe. They are all rich there, I thought. I came. I made a terrible mistake.' He would screw his face up and throw his cigarette butts into the water . . . . ' . . . . The things they've done you wouldn't even believe. I've had a banana thrown at me more than once. I've been chased down Nevsky Prospekt. Taunts. Whispers. Always fights.' Samba suddenly smiled and pulled himself closer to me so nobody else could hear him speak. 'They are the primitive people. Seriously.'" More

Also see Mind Shadows about Robert Robinson an African American who spent 44 years in the Soviet Union. The Soviets claimed to be prejudice free. Robinson, a Detroit auto worker, was virtually captive in the Soviet Union, and through a deceptive maneuver (a travel visa to Uganda) finally returned to America, where he died.

Move To A Greek Island To Live Long

Generally speaking, there is no reason people cannot live to 115 years old. Some have lived beyond that age. There is the famous case of Jeanne Louise Calment (1875-1997) who at 13 met Vincent Van Gogh. She later described him as "dirty, badly dressed and disagreeable," and "very ugly, ungracious, impolite, sick." She died at 122 as the oldest person on record. At 90 she signed a reverse-mortgage contract with a lawyer. Age 47, André-François Raffray would pay her 2,500 francs monthly until she died. After that, he owned the apartment outright. He died at 77. She kept on living. She wound up with more than the equivalent of $180,000, over twice the apartment's value.*

Then there is Calorie Restriction. In the 1930s Clive McKay found that he could greatly increase the life span of rats by cutting back on their calorie intake but without under-nourishing them. They far outlived the control group of rats. Today, Calorie Restriction is practiced by far-sighted people as it has been tested on a wide variety of animals and has been found to be the only proven method of extending life spans.

Recently, Icaria, a small Greek island in the Aegean Sea, has made the news. There, the inhabitants regularly live to 90 and beyond.

Dan Buettner "and a team of demographers work with census data to identify blue zones around the world. They found Icaria had the highest percentage of 90-year-olds anywhere in the planet—nearly 1 out of 3 people make it to their nineties."

" 'Our life spans are about 20 percent dictated by our genes,' Buettner says. The rest is lifestyle. People in Icaria live in mountain villages that necessitate activity every day. 'They have gardens,' he says, for example. 'If they go to church, if they go to their friends' house — it always occasions a small walk. But that ends up burning much more calories than going to a gym for 20 minutes a day'."

Buettner explains that their diet "is very high in olive oil as well as fruits and vegetables." Of the 150 kinds of greens growing wild on the island, he points out they have about 10 times the antioxidants in red wine. More
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* At 85, Calment took up fencing. At 100, she was still riding a bicycle. At 117, she gave up smoking.She claims to have eaten 2 pounds of chocolate a week. When asked why she had lived so long, she mentioned garlic, vegetables, cigarettes, red wine, and avoiding brawls.

I'm Away

Click on the Random Read Generator for a chance post until I get back. I hope to resume posting on July 27th.

Adam Smith: Is The Age of The Free Market Over?

In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith wrote, "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." Today, given the disasters ripping Wall Street financial houses and toppling international economies, that passage might be rewritten thus: "it is not from the malice of the butcher, the brewer, or the banker that we expect to be deprived of our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."

Ayn Rand made Atlas Shrugged a bible for many, as that novel turned self-interest into a gospel, the good news to be spread far and wide.

The only problem is that recent economic events have shown that self-interest can be far from enlightened and can degenerate into an ignorant greed that plunges an entire national economy down onto the brink of an abyss. In short, government is not all bad. Laws are needed. Even former Fed Chief Alan Greenspan, once a disciple of Rand, has publicly stated that he was wrong.

As for Adam Smith, he never would have agreed with the cartoonish ideology of Ayn Rand. A literate man, he would have found her characters stiff and wooden, merely vehicles for her ideas. He strongly believed "that infrastructure and education should *not* be left to the invisible hand, and one can easily imagine he would feel the same way about health care. (He also recognized that the position of the laborer was only good under conditions of market expansion -- exploitation ruled otherwise.) His enthusiasm for the market was a *tempered* enthusiasm, and so should be ours." More

Who Is The Real Dalai Lama?

The author's father traveled to India to meet the Dalai Lama after the monk and his followers fled Tibet after the Chinese invasion. His father returned with a photograph of the Dalai Lama, a gift to the boy. The boy grew into a man and when young the man got to know the Dalai Lama and has had conversations and meetings with him since then. His is more than just a passing acquaintance with the Tibetan leader.

"In truth, the Dalai Lama is a hyper-realist, who constantly enjoins people not to hope or wait or pray for a miracle to come, but to look at reality closely, unblinkingly, as through a scientist’s microscope, and then see what can be done with it. His favourite adjectives, as you may notice when you listen to him speak, are “logical”, “realistic” and “practical”; and his own life, being enthroned at the age of four, receiving envoys from Franklin Delano Roosevelt at the age of seven and facing a monastic civil war in Lhasa when he was 11, has never allowed him to traffic in abstractions or to sit above the clouds. The fiercest I have ever seen him came once when, 20 years ago, I carelessly referred to him as a “Living Buddha” and a “god-king” in an article I wrote. The whole point of Buddha’s teaching, and therefore of his own, he reminded me next time I saw him, was that all of us are humans, trying our hardest to awaken the potential we have within us, while acknowledging that all of us are mortal, flawed and always works-in-progress. “Lord Buddha I really consider to be a scientist,” he said last year in Japan, invoking once more his empirical, scientist’s contention that every word of the Buddha’s, let alone the Dalai Lama’s, should be thrown out if it were shown to be faulty by new research. If there is any blind faith involved in this contest between a spiritual and a material view of the world, it is on the side of the latter." More

On Eccentrics: It's A Bird! It's A Plane! No! It's Angle Grinder Man!

People in the United States call them weirdos, lumping them together with everyone else who does not fit in. The British have a more understanding term for them. I wrote an article years ago on an eccentric whom the English press called Angle Grinder Man. More on Angle Grinder Man later but I came across a review of a book on eccentrics, and here are a few comments on them.

The author, David Weeks, finds that eccentrics frequently enjoy good health, and even live longer than the rest of us. I have read his book and think there should be many more like it.

Anyone who has followed this blog for some time knows that I have a penchant for eccentrics. Here are some links to my posts on Poppa Neutrino, a fine example.

I quote from a review of Weeks' book:

"Eccentrics experience much lower levels of stress because they do not feel the need to conform," Weeks insists, which means that "their immune-response systems function more efficiently." He emphasizes that positive forms of stress, however, such as "sex, exercise and the intellectual excitement of new ideas, have been found to trigger the release of slightly more growth hormone, which helps keep us young." Weeks' eccentrics often seem similar to the people psychologist Abraham Maslow called "self-actualizers," individuals who are unafraid to challenge convention. Maslow's self-actualizers enjoy what he termed "peak experiences"--moments of great awe, understanding and rapture. "

"There is little doubt that modern consumer culture has depersonalized relationships, addicted us to acquisitive behavior and contributed to the erosion of community. Therapist and theologian Thomas Moore, writing in Care of the Soul, views the current state of American mental health as suffering from what he calls "psychological modernism," which he defines as "an uncritical acceptance of the values of the modern world, blind faith in technology, inordinate attachment to material gadgets and conveniences, uncritical acceptance of the march of scientific progress, devotion to the electronic media, and a lifestyle dictated by advertising." Moore puts forth some skillful arguments on how to replenish the impoverished self with many of the qualities inherent to Weeks' eccentrics."

"Eccentrics, according to Weeks, are in fact less likely to be addicted to consumer culture than the general population. And fewer than 30 of the more than 1,000 eccentrics he sampled had been substance abusers or alcoholics."

"According to David Weeks, eccentrics have never been studied scientifically before the research described here, because psychiatrists only ever study people with real illnesses or pathologies. Eccentrics also usually don't see themselves as being in need of help or as being eligible for study, so therefore they are mostly unknown to science."

"They are strong individuals with strange inclinations of their own, which they are not afraid to express."

More here and here and here. Click this in case you want to buy the book. You can also read parts of the book.
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Here is a post I did several years back on Angle Grinder Man:

As Andy Warhol Said, Everybody Gets His Fifteen Minutes of Fame. Now It's Angle Grinder Man's Turn.

Some people call him a Clark Kent lookalike. You can tell the difference, however. He has an AGM logo on his chest, not an S. He also helps damsels in distress. He certainly has a sense of humor.

In a 7 October 2003 New York Times article, the masked man gave an interview. Calling himself Angle-Grinder Man, he comes to the rescue of those whose car wheels have been booted by police for illegal parking. The New York Times reporter described him as dressed in cape and gold lamé underpants.

He has become a folk hero of sorts among frustrated South London motorists. He takes his name from an Angle Grinder, a power saw that cuts through wheel boots, Whenever he turns on his loud saw, people know he's around, but he always insures the police are absent. No matter--in less than a minute he can liberate a wheel from the clutches of authority and earn the undying gratitude of drivers who escape their fines.

Just like Superman and The Lone Ranger, he accepts no money for his deeds, as he is merely on the side of the little guy. He hides his identity behind his mask, and the public doesn't know, much as nobody suspected the mild mannered reporter Clark Kent. Like the Lone Ranger, he strides off into the sunset and townsmen turn to one another and ask, Who was that masked man?

A damsel in distress, Petite Tendai, found a boot on her illegally parked car. ("No signs saying `no parking,' " she declared.) She felt the weight of injustice and authority almost bringing her to tears when suddenly Angle-Grinder Man appeared.

Since then, he has become Ms. Tendai's hero.

Ms. Tendai said of him, "Basically, he jumped out of his car in his outfit and said, `If anyone can, Angle-Grinder Man can,' " She added, "Then he just started sawing it off. It was wicked."

He was brought to his noble duty by a boot clamped onto his own car wheel, and insult was added to injury by a £95 fine (a little over $150) to remove it. He did what any Robin Hood would do, renting a circular saw for about £30. Unemployed, he saved himself a hunk of change.

An extremely sensitive nature

He taped a photograph of the sawed-up clamp to his windshield, along with a note saying, "Please don't clamp me because I've got an extremely sensitive nature."

From that day forward, Angle-Grinder Man had found his calling. "There was so much injustice out there," he said.

A champion of the downtrodden must look the part. He worked hard on his appearance, but finally settled on blue and gold. He bought a fabric roll of gold lamé at a flea market after holding the material around himself to ask the salesgirl how he might look in it.

He spray-painted a pair of cowboy boots gold. The underpants are a pair of bikini briefs covered with the flea-market lamé. The gloves came from a piercing-and-fetish shop. Angle-Grinder Man designed the logo himself, including the letters AGM glued on his costume. "I wanted to have a balance between the political side and the comedy side," he explained.

"I'm a heterosexual superhero," Angle-Grinder Man told the reporter, "although I have no problem being a gay icon."

As he left the interview his gold cape glittered in the afternoon light. Unknowingly, he had smitten the heart of another damsel who had been watching him. A sales clerk said she was a great fan of his.

"I think he's extraordinarily attractive," she said. "Especially the golden knickers."

Michael Shermer: Why People Believe Weird Things

Michael Shermer was once a born-again Christian. Now he is a skeptic toward religion and anything that does not pass the test of empirical reason. In short, he either waits for proof or has made up his mind. His book is Why People Believe Weird Things. Here are a few notes from his book along with my own interpolations:

Sleep Paralysis. Waking up during a dream causes the dream to leak into consciousness even while you are conscious. It immobilizes your body, makes it rigid. It causes feelings of helplessness, weird visions. Long ago, I woke up and apparently a dream had entered my conscious mind, although I was unaware that was what happened. Awake, I heard a voice that said, "You have only a few weeks, maybe months, to live." Without an understanding of sleep paralysis, I was, shall we say, upset. Yet here I am all these years later.

In a recent study, feelings of loneliness were induced in people by a question which caused them to feel they would have few friends and would be isolated in middle age. After this ruse they were more likely to say they believed in ghosts, angels, the devil, God. Those told they would have friends in mid age were less likely to do so. The study was guided by Nicholas Epley, University of Chicago.

Neurons in the superior parietal lobe provide a sense of where the body ends and the world begins. Alter these neurons by drugs, meditation, or other means and one's sense of body-boundary changes.

Regions in the brain that become active when we imagine seeing or hearing something are the same regions active when we really do see or hear. This holds true for schizophrenics and normal people. The schizophrenic visual cortex becomes active when hallucinating. Normal people see or hear when intensely thinking about seeing or hearing.

Confirmation bias. The mind is better at recalling what validates that which we believe as distinct from that which refutes it. The behavior of Confirmation Bias is sometimes called Tolstoy Syndrome, after Leo Tolstoy who wrote this: "I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabrics of their life."

At a British Association Festival of Science, Professor Bruce Hood of Bristol University, conducted an experiment. It is described this way: "Professor Hood asked members of the festival audience if they were prepared to try on an old fashioned blue cardigan in return for a £10 reward. After receiving no shortage of volunteers, he then told the volunteers that the cardigan used to belong to Fred West, the mass murderer. On hearing this, most of the volunteers put their hands down. Though a few did try it on, others moved away from them.

In fact, the cardigan had not belonged to Fred West. The experiment demonstrated that the belief that even the most rational of people can be made to feel uncomfortable by a physical object associated with evil.

Shermer points out that this suggests people think evil is physical. There is a spiritualist in people that thinks evil can transfer to the physical. Shermer suggests that our ancestors found it appropriate to assume a rock formation was a bear until they could prove otherwise.

Shermer states that within us is a deep dualism. We think of our essence as mental and our body as physical. Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things

William James Sidis: Myths and Inaccuracies

I found a review of Amy Wallace's The Prodigy, about William James Sidis. I have a post about Sidis here. The reviewer is sympathetic to Sidis in that he claims too many myths have been put forth about the man. According to him, they largely stem from Wallace's book, which has many inaccuracies. As for my post on Wallace, he lists it among the many myth-promoting articles that can be found on the web. (I don't believe he read the article, although I grant his attention was caught by my title, which is hyped. The article, by Jim Morton, is about Sidis' collection of street-car transfers)

I like opinions that run contrary to conventional wisdom as we tend to absorb it unthinkingly and, I must confess, I know little about Sidis. The reviewer's chief point is the damage done to Sidis' reputation by Wallace's book. Here are excerpts:

"It is more than a little absurd that a frenzy of myths have been created about a man that was little known while alive, and even less known today. Relative to William Sidis’ life, for myself the final answer to all questions will forever remain 'I don’t know.' Never in my life have I researched a topic so satiated with exaggerations, fantasies, and outright lies as what is found in the William Sidis story."

"It is unfortunate that the errors within The Prodigy have become the primary source for the majority of current beliefs about William Sidis. Hundreds, if not thousands of authors, chose to not research beyond the reading of The Prodigy, and while holding up The Prodigy as if an inerrant holy book without flaw, the authors accepted the words within The Prodigy unchallenged." More

Gone For The Long Week End

The 4th of July is coming. I'll be back next week.