Politics, Artifical Sweeteners, and Zen

David Broder wrote an op-ed declaring that "it's not over for Obama." No, really? It's nearly three months until the first primary for chrissake. Jim Lehrer, the PBS newsanchor, was on Charlie Rose last night praising the longer campaign cycle. This way, his argument went, we won't be able to complain later on that we didn't know such-and-such about any of the candidates. But doesn't this presume that a longer campaign is also a more informative campaign? Is it more nourishing to eat three hot pockets instead of two? I submit that given the nature of modern presidential campaigning, longer is not better. Who needs an additional six months of prepackaged soundbytes, phony debates, and "expert" analysis? This just in: Clinton raised more money than Obama! Barack hasn't been wearing his American flag pin!

I can't help but suspect that the media's consistent portrayal of Clinton as "the Frontrunner" serves to reinforce her lead in the polls. As Broder points out, when Obama gave his big foreign policy speech on October 2nd, the headlines splayed across every front page the next day were not about his stances on these issues, but rather the fact that Clinton's camp had raised more money than his.

Regarding the obsession with constant polling, I think we'd be better off without it. A pipe dream, I know, but think about it: the "major" candidates (ie, the ones with money and press coverage) are slaves to poll results, creating a situation in which their handlers discourage authenticity in favor of carefully managed public relations statements. The end result of all this is that instead of a campaign designed to inform voters, we get an extended advertisement. As Noam Chomsky said, the techniques used to sell these wannabe presidents are the same as those used to sell toothpaste. Some call broadcast news "infotainment." I agree with that, except for the "info" part. that's right, it's tainment.



I've been wondering whether or not aspartame is bad for you. Aspartame is a chemical used in many products as a low calorie sweetener ("Nutrasweet.") Or how about sucralose (Splenda?) I found a website (aspartame.org) intended to assuage fears spawned by what it refers to as "myths." But who pays for that website? Is it really an unbiased arbiter of hard facts? It's difficult to know what to believe when there's so much contradictory information floating around. Perhaps we are suffering from what the great Murray Jay Siskind termed "brain fade." Too much information. More "facts" available than ever before, so consequently we know less and less. And just what does it mean to "know" something anyway? Two people are walking. A small bird flies by. One person says to the other, "I don't know what kind of bird that is." The other says, "It is a dove." Does knowing the name of something indicate any real knowledge of that thing? The same bird could be called "sparrow"; then one would know that it was a sparrow. Words are not things, they are symbols. They point to something beyond themselves. The thing-in-itself might be essentially unknowable, like Kant thought. Or is that a meaningless statement? Zen says that behind forms is empitness. Void. This sounds absurd but modern physics suggests it could be in some sense correct. Take a rock for instance. Nothing better exemplifies our notion of matter than a rock. It's hard, it's heavy, it's solid. It's made of stuff. But take a closer look and things get confusing. Almost all of the rock is actually empty space. Vast tracts of nothing with the occasional proton or electron or other subatomic particle. But those particles aren't really particles in the usual sense of the word. Take the electrons as an example. They're constantly in flux, whizzing about. The electron is more of an energy cloud than a particle; it only takes on particle like properties when observed (ie, interacted with physically.) Otherwise, it has no well-defined position in space. This was a big point of contention between Einsten and Neils Bohr; Einstein said that the electron "really has" well defined properties such as position and momentum, even when nobody is looking. Bohr said these properties do not exist until an observation takes place. It was later shown that Bohr was right (sorry Albert old sport!)

I can't remember now how I got off on this tangent. Oh yeah, aspartame! So it would seem that putting an artifical chemical in your body has potential for harm. It's hard to trust the FDA, which is an organization infiltrated by money and politics. How can they really be sure it's safe if no longitudinal studies on humans have been performed? Also: it tastes terrible. Unnatural, like one would expect a laboratory made chemical to taste. Are my tastebuds trying to tell me something? In their own inimitable tastebud language? Do they know something I don't?

Check out aspartame.org. The website has all the appearances of a big PR scam: witness the photos of children happily lapping up foods and beverages full of aspartame. Do I smell a rat??