MEDICINE

contents of this page:
medicine
psychology - an unremitting condemnation
scholarship
real scholarship

a merry heart doth good like a medicine, 
but a broken spirit drieth the bones.          
- king solomon, proverbs 17:22

what would we do without the comix pages?

for a closer examination of this attitude plus its effects on childbirth, try this LINK, with a further LINK to an actual story.

arrogance
here is another link to a fantastic advance in neo-natal care from a dirt poor back water doctor. why did this take until the end of the twentieth century? the only
answer is arrogance.                                                      KANGAROO CARE.

a simple equation
from the best estimates of today, every dollars spent on prenatal care prevents four dollars being spent on the retarded, social programs and prisons. as any banker will tell you, that's a remarkable return on your investment. even with the remarkable success of the european countries' "welfare state" - while remaining totally capitalist -  americans abhor anything with the word "socialized" in it.

g

that annoying word
overwhelmingly, all medical treatments are concieved of as after the fact of a disorder. why is there so little concern for prevention. for one thing it would require thought, and for another it would cut into profits. there is widening awareness of general health at all age levels, but this is predominantly the province of the middle class, and then only among those who are educated. 90% of what most people think of as the progressive ailments of middle age are simply the result of sloth and bad diet, not to mention a little hyper-tension. a walk around the block won't do. think about how people lived before industrialization, and please, eat your vegitables.

more icky history and facts
america’s vaunted “best medicine in the world” is based entirely on research on males, with no reference to the effects of disease/disorders, drugs, therapies, or even vital statistics of women, leading to deadly errors. perpetually, the greatest benefit cited in favor of the medical profession is the extension of the average life span. yet the largest factor in this was the widespread adoption of public and private sanitation, which the profession fought tooth and nail as “ridiculous.” historically, this began in maternity hospitals, which had a fantastic rate of female death from “puerperal fever,” yet the profession  ostracized the people who advocated the “new” theory of infection, though there were historical precedents going back thousands of years. the proposed heretical procedure was washing one’s hands!! the other factor in extended life span is increased understanding of nutrition, which happened literally only in the last fifty years.

inoculation against disease, still touted as a tour de force of scientific method, was in reality pioneered by an obscure american doctor and a diplomat’s wife in the middle east, both after observing african and middle eastern folk medicine. the only ready reference we have is Mckeown 1976a+b, who said exactly the same thing. the american was inducted into the Royal Society and the woman was told to go away. in the u.s.a. until recently there was barely a hospice movement. instead people’s savings were drained away to the poverty level to pay for ever more heroic efforts to prolong life just a little bit longer, while the “patient” lived in often excruciating pain, denied the use of opiates to make their last days human. europeans think this is barbaric. read "a way to die" in the reading list for an extremely touching portrayal of dignified release from life. doctors learn chemistry and biology but not the theory and history of medicine, only the latest techniques. faced with a unique situation or conditions in a poorer region of the world, they are at a loss, not knowing the five or ten solutions that led to the latest technique. the chinese, because of the difficulty of educating their vast population, compiled "the Barefoot Doctor's Manual," though it definitely has weaker areas. listening to the patient is supposed to be the first of the primary skills of a doctor, yet usually no courses on personal interaction or testing for emotional sensitivity exist or are emphasized. people have been threatened with expulsion from medical school for trying to reform this major deficit. there are tens of thousands of deaths yearly from mis-prescribed/dosed drugs and surgical errors. people wanting to detract from this try to shift debate to errors in surveys, as if a few thousand more or less made a difference. there is no standard legal system in place to even inform people of malpractice convictions. this is beyond barbaric.

treating the body and not the mind
the effects on personality of both diseases and treatments are totally ignored or dismissed – even when they are known - because they are too far outside the scope of “modern” medicine. as examples, lyme disease can cause severe mood swings. many treatments severely  effect both memory and the very clarity of the personality."pumphead" is a general blurryness described by many people who require any kind of transfusion, for instance from dialysis or a major operation. "chemo head" is what it sounds like, the after effects of chemo-therapy.

both passages are from the "oxford textbook of medicine."

in short
testing for listening skills and emotional sensitivity should be mandatory, at all levels.

the medical establishment is TOTALLY ARROGANT and treats their patients like fodder.

you might be well treated. you might be subjected to a whim or the latest theory.          

as in life in general, there are good and bad people,

but this is your life.

you just take your chances.

HMOs STINK
HMOs were originally intended to cut costs, but are now the whip masters of the poor and elderly, and increasingly the entire population, and are DESTROYING INFRASTRUCTURES, i.e., teams that have worked together for years and risk their jobs to promote efficiency and humane treatment. under HMO doctrine people lose their insurance, forcing them to go to emergency rooms, while simultaneously closing down ERs as "not profitable." insurance agreements are enforced to the letter and you may be released as "cured" only to be re-admitted after only days or hours. there are endless anecdotes. 

gasp !

why not just get rid of insurance companies?

on arrogance
some doctors use EXTREMELY deceptive jargon and BRUTAL emotional manipulation to force people to accept the STANDARD DOCTRINE or their OWN PREFERENCES, WITHOUT EVEN BEING AWARE OF THE CURRENT LITURATURE. it is impossible to emphasize the fantastic degree to which this is true. the terrified or the ignorant have no choice but to submit, especially if they are too poor or scared to seek a second or third opinion, today a practice which is otherwise widely encouraged.  in the book mentioned immediately below the patient is told that no one survives his type of cancer, untreated or treated, WHICH WAS A COMPLETE LIE IN BOTH cases.

because of cancer a woman has most of the lymph nodes in her upper body removed, which causes immense pressure to build up. even though the woman is screaming from pain her doctor, the head of the cancer department, is against any new exercise regimen to relieve the pressure because it is not in the liturature.

standard doctrine
as the most egregious example, the biggest lie going is that CHEMO-THERAPY HAS AN ABSOLUTE VALUE. they’ll tell you how soon you’ll die if you don’t do chemo but then talk about “survivability rates” with it, but the real difference IS VERY SMALL. most people who die while on chemo DIE FROM THE EFFECTS OF A DESTROYED IMMUNE SYSTEM, NOT CANCER. the overall life expectancy of cancer patients has not improved since the first use of radiation/chemotherapy. of course it works, and has greatly reduced many types, including juvenile cancer, thank god. in addition, new approaches to chem/radiation are yearly conquering additional forms of cancer. 

not all doctors are bastards, but it’s most likely that, whatever your malady is, you won’t be told the whole truth. read  "living proof" by michael gearin-tosh, an oxford professor who after experiencing incredible emotional abuse and glacial resistance to even the idea self education decided to try alternative therapies, and at last notice was still alive.

education through brutality
there is the pointless, bizarre institution of interns having brutal, sleep depriving schedules, which sometimes puts patients at risk. nurses are often deprived of a living wage,  while having all the responsibility of a doctor, and also all the work, and support staff are unable to afford even daycare. sometimes support people are given almost no training.  elementary sanitation is incredibly lax. attempts to change these conditions are fought on all levels, from the administrative to the legislative.

concern meets profit
again and again women medical professionals have tried to open desperately needed inner city prenatal clinics, but doctors, who are still mostly white males, refuse the necessary supervisory position solely because of the low pay involved. so much for the altruism of the profession in general. just try getting your local legislature to fund such a clinic.

all the wrong reasons
many advances in medicine are motivated by corporate profit or immense ego, ignoring less dramatic or more rare ailments. it has been only recently that “orphan diseases” have received any attention or funding, no matter how many people  suffer and die - its just not profitable. everyone today wants to win a nobel prize for finding a cure for A.I.D.S., yet a bad back, one of the most prevalent medical problems, is totally ignored. it only cripples you slowly. the very latest of ultrasound scanners can barely find a kidney stone.

you are told that pre-natal ultra-sound scans are harmless for the baby, yet the latest research indicate

                         possible brain damage.

drugs, drugs, drugs
the subject of drugs is mentioned  in the section on psychology and also corporations. the truth is that while many drugs are life saving, many others are only experimental, being used only with a waiver from the patient. the number of drugs is astronomical and drug companies use every trick of deception and proselytizing and skewing of research to find a profit, even where an older drug still works or a whole different type of treatment may be applicable. for many decades patients have been used as guinea pigs, either after signing a waiver or simply from being overwhelmed by institutional aura. industries and even researchers and susceptible government agencies have worked diligently to establish a hideous norm of 

for drugs. patients are put on a round robin of various drugs on the mere hope that something will work or that the side effects will be minimalized. the side effects range from 
                                                  uncomfortable to horrible to permanent to death, 

and you are supposed to be greatfull that you are alive even if your kidneys no longer work right or your head is permanently fuzzy, or your joints decay a few years earlier than normal. an amazing number of drugs exist only to alleviate the side effects of other drugs, especially those used for serious illness or the elderly, and then these have their own side effects. this abuse of patients' very physical integrity is institutional and 

WE DECIDE FOR YOU
partly from older norms in which death was a TABOO and partly from godlike arrogance many doctors automatically refuse to inform the patient of a particular treatment or the possibility mortality.
                          that this is still allowed is amazing.

INCOMPETENT
most saliently, at all levels workers are commonly found to be incompetent to the level of CRUEL IDIOCY. at higher levels it's not unlikely and at lower levels this is prominent. you may be given the wrong medication, the wrong operation, therapy by a student who has no professional training, procedures that are outmoded, or everything you say may simply be ignored, you may be treated with dangerous indifference. the myth that medical professionals are all idealists is a sham. to most it is simply another job, and if they have a bad day so will you. if they will profit from an unnecessary operation every trick may be used to persuade you. people have ended after operations with two left feet, or have a kidney removed when the problem was their gall bladder.

no change
as mentioned in the introduction and the beginning of this section, hospitals can be breading grounds of deadly disease. this is not a small problem. often get NEWBORNSlife threatening disease that the mother has tested negative for, and the necessary treatments cripple a still unformed immune system. the hospital caused illnesses for a single state can number in the tens of thousands. there have been no surveys and no overall enforcement of  sanitary procedures despite endless anecdotal evidence.

check this linked article from the wall street journal for the first survey ever, uncovering massive infection rates and deaths and added costs in the billions of dollars. notice that the article makes

a subject too upsetting to suffer public exposure. also notice the conclusion that hospitals consciously skew their statistics to preserve their good image. this is the 21st century? 

FOR THE INCREDIBLE UNDERBELLY OF HOSPITAL SAFETY, 
click:

INFECTIONS.

• hunched over 
• pale
• watery eyed
• with thinning hair
• slow moving and dull with the boredom of their life
• few are interested in athletics 

as the opening quote says, education is the primary assurance of health, yet no serious medical knowledge is part of a standard education. most people know little of the effects of even diet and exercise, the basic functions and organs of the body, or a generalist's knowledge of current research, much less genetics, allergies, the immune system, cholesterol or the harmful effects of many common products, i.e., the hugely profitable and addictive nicotine, caffeine and alcohol.

DON'T BE AFRAID OF AN ELEMENTARY BIOLOGY TEXT.

IT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE.

PSYCHOLOGY - AN UNREMITTING CONDEMNATION

  
 - from “who got einstien’s office?”   (-?)

 profound as psychology is, it is a knife that cuts both ways.. you
 can prove anything by it...  I am speaking of the abuse of psychology, gentlemen.
-“the brothers karazov”
  feodor dostoevsky

MODERN DAY ALCHEMY
 there is no science of psychology. there is no limit to the duration of therapy or predictable stages because there’s barely a coherent literature. its an endless judgmental game for a lame father figure. it, along with the other social “sciences”, is not really a science at all, but just another series of self important academics, one more white male power clique. people who practice the hard sciences have expressed an extreme negative opinion, to each other informally and in their writings. this is based on an almost total lack of writing that is either coherent or of a density that would differentiate a science from mere babbling, instead relying on jargon and lineages of received truth. there are numerous examples of extremely messed up people who were certified psychologists, while most, at best being neurotic and in absolutely no way different from the average members of their community. these people are

with their power, seeing everything through a warped lens, forgetting freud’s qualification, “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”

above the most sacred laws

try this LINK to see 

what YOU can be subjected to.

WHAT YOU DON'T KNOW IS THAT
PSYCHIATRIC COMMITMENT
SUPERCEDES the BILL OF RIGHTS.

a collection of critically repulsive facts
freud's student Jung totally broke with him, emphasizing spirituality over the REPRESSED VICTORIAN fascination with sex. freud was undisciplined and self deceiving - he "just happened" to forget case records concerning incest during a fire at his home - he expressed in writing that so many cases just couldn't be true - and if they were it would nullify his whole theory. 

pavlov, the russian grandfather of behavioralism, was a total autocrat who would run students out of a college and even out of town just for using the word "mind." do these progenitors sound healthy to you?  one relatively recent best seller described a young girl who was “put away” by her parents for being “intractable.” in the hospital she was forced to attend classes on “make-up” and “being sociable with the opposite sex.” one intern on his first assignment as a psychologist with the V.A. (veterans administration) hospital entered his not yet cleared out office to find a whole shelf of books with titles like “Christian Therapies for Homosexuality,” even though being gay was removed from the DSM as far back as 1973. when personnel in the department were cut, the same person confronted his superior with the fact that he already had 200 patients, saying “what if I get sick?” his boss laughed and said “don’t get sick.” so much for concern for people who gave their all for their country. under communism the name of psychology was used to wrap people tightly in damp sheets, give them monumental doses of drugs and leave them that way for months. there is a major school of psychology nowadays that thinks there is a drug for every problem. they have learned societies and glossy brochures for conferences in exotic locations, and insiders say that no one bothers with the seminars - in other words, it’s one more expensive, exclusive club. there are innumerable cases in the press of various psychologists espousing ideas that flatly contradict each other and this is wholly true in court cases - on both sides the shrink is testifying for the handsom fee. there has been a lot of sexual abuse. and above all, always DRUGS, for the depressed housewife to the harried celebrity to the innocently confused victims of human nature – "if one doesn’t work we’ll try this new one."  lithium, a very simple drug that does wonders for bi-polar disorder - which in the pre-"politically correct" era was called manic-depression - was discovered totally by accident, and we still don't know why it works. the absolute only modern exception to this is that there are now drugs that help, if not cure, schizophrenia, one of the major categories of organic disorder. there is an insiders "sight gag" concerning the  difference between the three major anti-depressants: a slow shuffle with the classic drugged "frozen hands," a slower shuffle, and a shuffle where you barely move. what all these drugs do is down you out, but because we longer prescribe barbituates it's all acceptable. second and third generation drugs have been developed derived from those which had very dubious efficacy yet which became widely prescribed by people who never had to suffer their effects.

another darn turncoat
r.d. lang - see the reading list: "politics of experience" - one of england's most famous psychologists, became the icon of the current wave of anti-psychology with his words:

"psychology is the science of becoming
well adjusted to an insane world."

the sick with power over the sick
it sounds so simple to say that there is a group of people who have studied a very specialized field. they have the backing of acredited universities. the truth is that psychology is nothing more than a collection of charlatans, many of whom have very warped personalities, extremely mean spirited people who have no qualms about behavior that would shock kids in a school yard, not to mention a gathering of friendly adults, being bullying, hyper-critical, haughtily condescending, and totally insensitive to basic emotions. their only concern is power.

anecdotes are endless where
they diliberately and consciously hurt people.


an advertisement from the late 60s.
 
regarding drugs, one national patients' rights group has a poster that says, 
"he came to them for help with his emotions. now he doesn't have any."

drugs, drugs, drugs
these people are nothing less than

MONSTROUS DRUG DEALERS.

it's all done

FOR MONEY.

before people that weren't understood were 

BURNED AS WITCHES.

now we just just 

BURN THEIR PERSONALITIES AWAW WITH DRUGS.

some of the largest corporation in the world
if you ride public transportation in any large city that has a university, let's say, like boston, you will be overwhelmed with posters asking, "are you depressed? are you hyperactive? lets us pump you with the latest experimental drugs. we'll even pay you." to lure innocent people into being GUINEA PIGS for untested drugs that EFFECT YOUR MIND is really, really sick.

russian roulette
brain research did not even BEGIN to be a real science equal to its task until there were major new advances in bio-chemistry and the refinement and multiplying of scanning techniques in the late 1980s. at the present date, no one, ABSOLUTELY NO ONE, knows what the heck is going on, and more importantly, how this relates to consciousness and what serious lasting side effects  ANY drug might have. yet drug companies began pushing psych meds LONG, LONG AGO, in a field where there are ONLY 5 OR 6 MAJOR ILLNESSES. lithium, one of two major drugs for bi-polar disease, was discovered totally by accident and no one has yet found out why it works, and it causes slow but sure liver damage and turns your hair gray.

bleak, airless, joyless.
those new things called cities.
we no longer have public adds for hard liquor,
but its acceptable to push other hidious drugs
that twist your soul,
whose only purpose is PROFIT.

NOTICE also how reflected in the poster are buildings that are just as crowded and bleak as those in dublin. 
but we have cars, movies, coffee and cell phones!!

by the rules - inherited from old times
any person entering a mental health facility will always be offered drugs, even before a preliminary exam. there are legal and organizational rules that say you must be offered drugs. to the confused or insecure this is equivalent to torture, consent in these cases being meaningless. it is common knowledge to some people that in psychiatric institutions some drugs are given to intractable patients because of their long term side effect of massive permanent weight gain, because it slows them down and lowers their self esteem. after the renaissance the “civilized” western european nations began authorizing “institutions for the insane”, essentially squalid, dehumanizing, horrifyingly brutal, catch-all group confinement houses, which were often employed for personal revenge or as a dumping ground for the old. in many parts of the world this sort of institution still exists. therapy and drugs should be just one aspect of repairing the damage caused by society.

more insanity
not satisfied with pumping people full of totally unproven drugs, there's still the medieval practice to fall back on of just running a good jolt of electricity directly through peopls' heads - that'll fix em. one thing is for sure - they won't be bothering anyone anymore, or complaining about how they're treated. and they can always find a good job sweeping floors somewhere.

do we still "bleed" people?

an absurd idea
don't say, "read a book, get some exercise, expand your circle of friends, devote yourself to some new interest, work on getting proper sleep, try traveling," all proven ways to alleviate depression or distress.

endorsed by a strung out rich woman                                         

$  $
kitty dukakis
has garnered national attention with her pro-shock testimonial, while being oblivious to national level organizations warning of abuse by psychologists.
this is one of the only three personal portraits we felt compelled to use.

- from The People's History  of the United States             
  by howard zinn - in the reading list

all of these things
are in the history of psychology and there is nothing in recent events or literature to indicate that it’s become any more a science or any less the province of ignorant or even warped individuals. the field is totally overburdened with jargon and an infinite variety of therapies that sprout like weeds, yet doesn’t even require its practitioners to subscribe to an elementary theory of personality development. the result is that outright characters with their egos at stake learn an overbearing arrogance that is backed by institutions. according to the latest version of the D.S.M. (diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders), the bible of psychiatry, a person who is still depressed at the end of only two months following the death of a loved one can be diagnosed as having “a major depressive disorder.” shyness is no longer an innocent personality trait to be cherished or gotten over as an integral part of personality, or even an aspect of creativity, but one of many "social anxiety disorders." what heartless arrogance!!  pity their victims. of course some people have done decent writing, and every field has its brilliant practitioners, but a science? not by any stretch. especially when you consider WHAT IS AT STAKE, a person’s stability and even sanity, not just people seeking to untangle their lives but also those who’ve experienced extreme trauma or biologic malfunction. recall the above paragraph on childhood

KIDS
in the modern world a fantastic number of kids are drugged to KEEP THEM IN LINE, almost invariably from well to do neighborhoods. some kids report that

of their friends are forced to take drugs. why is this as common as milk? who writes these prescriptions? a large number of children have committed suicide while on forced  medication and even more when stopping their medication. minors, as until recently women and afro-americans, have no legal rights. 

if you were forced to take mind numbing drugs, would it make you more or less depressed? 
WOULD YOU LOVE YOUR PARENTS MORE IF YOU WERE FORCED TO DO THIS?

in the 1940s at all levels of society popular wisdom was deeply influenced by the budding institutions of psychology, which advocated totally ignoring the child as the best rearing practice, in order to foster independence and quash “primitive impulses of control.” what a load of...

a little better reference

there are no social sciences!!!

this is the “picture of author” of richard feynman, the einstein of the middle twentieth century, whose “lectures on physics”, for it’s combination of common sense and crushing brilliance, has been compared to shakespeare. doesn’t seem to fit the populist conception of the cold abstracted intellectual does he? he didn't want his nobel prize.

in not just one, but two chapters in “surely you’re joking mr. feynman” - see the reading list - and in lectures elsewhere, he describes what he calls “cargo cult science,” basically where you have all the window dressing of science yet not the essence: professional societies, conferences, journals, degrees and titles, large textbooks, long traditions of professorships and the paraphernalia of note books, lab coats and jargon. this is definitely not real science, yet many small minds take refuge in these appearances. at his draft board psychological examination he was given a deferment for mental incompetence!!!!!

(1) from long experience that kids, no matter what the cause of family problems or misfortunes, will always blame themselves, perhaps warping a whole life,
(2) from  literature it took the idea of crushing alienation,
(3) from  ages of seeing aberrant behavior the idea that some causes seem to be organic,
(4) from  folklore and a flood of patients that emotions can’t be ignored,
(5) from  biology and cognitive sciences that, partially at least, the mind is a highly complex mechanism,
(6) from many kinds of culture that environment partially shapes character despite all intentions,
(7) and hopefully from  common sense that attention, respect and creativity are basic needs at all ages.

from little seeds
not a profound truism back in the works is that a baby loves her mother only because she feeds her. it is not a far leap in this mechanistic philosophy to say that anger and hate are psychologically normal, with all the bizarre twists a society can take totally unmentioned. this is in fact the case. anger is seen as normal while, as mentioned above, mere shyness is seen as a disease. 

without the beautiful rigor of mathematics or the accountability of scientific method, this "science" measures its success as does most professions: the most money, the finest house, vacations, famous clients, prestige. instead of fostering intimacy it is just another job. the rule is conformity. you wont find any einstein of psychology wandering around with wind blown hair and without his socks.

lost in the maze
with no organized theories, there is also no organized help. consider this. you discover, slowly and with much heart rending anxiety, that your child has one of the major mental illnesses. you will find that the government is no help at all. you will find that your child is at the mercy of the whims of doctors and programs, subject to experiments and drugs, liable to brutal treatment by often totally unscreened personnel. you assume you are safe but find no help anywhere. psychology is truly just more professional egos and not an outreach of the concerned. people have drained their life savings stretching over years

one family went through almost twenty hospitals, agencies, government "programs" and specialized institutions and were universally treated with either indifference or arrogance. most government mental health programs exist only as a line in a state budget, not a well considered policy, the officials involved often being, without exaggeration, totally clueless. this story is from the supposedly progressive state of california. 

you live your life content with your surroundings, trusting to the wonders of "modern science", and when what is really a quite common problem befalls you, you find that,

HIRED AS A TORTURER
this is recent history. 

this man is insane.  he worked for the government.  he was President of the American Psychiatric Association. HE WOKED FOR THE CIA. HE EXPERIMENTED ON UNSUSPECTING, UNINFORMED PEOPLE. HIS GOAL WAS TO PERFECT BRAINWASHING EMPLOYING THE CRUDEST TECHNIQUES. the plan was to DESTROY MINDS, then REPLACE it with ANOTHER. ALL RECORDS WERE DESTROYED ON HUNDREDS OF PATIENTS.

THE MOST TELLING FACT IS THAT
HE WAS NEVER EVEN CENSURED BY HIS COLLEAGUES.

 this man is his victim.

click this MUST READ article for 

a truly horrific story. 

AND YOU TRUST THESE PEOPLE?

especially in institutions, these people can't breath without distorting the whole world to their pre-conceptions. 
you look for help. 
first you're seen as possibly crazy, then only a little crazy, 
but then if you have the awareness to ask for your records you find that in incredibly convoluted jargon 
you've been labeled approximitely crazy. 
no one escapes, no one is merely unhappy.

and like your supposedly cleared police record after exhoneration,
this label will follow you
for LIFE.

SCHOLARSHIP 

 g

school is a good place to die
there is no doubt learning elevates a person, by gentling the soul and broadening horizons, which is of equal import as whatever is learned. but in america it is a truism that college is just an extension of a very sheltered childhood, being little more than a party, while in europe and the eastern bloc countries even at the level of high school education is much more rigorous, especially in math and science. a high school teacher in germany must have two degrees, approximating something between an american masters and a ph.d., while in south america even higher education is almost entirely by rote. in america, for elementary schools the only requirement is a state level "certificate," while for high school a few minor degrees will usually suffice. unfortunately, the world over most scholars do live in an “ivory tower,” where the number of footnotes in a paper, demanding shows of respect from students, and personal connections are more important than truth or imagination. being academics in no way excludes them from being part of the “old boy network”, just the opposite. just as with any other profession, until very recently attempts of women to even study, much less get to the head of their field, has been openly ridiculed. see the quote from an ex-president of Columbia in the large print section under “know your enemy.” there is political chicanery everywhere. would someone truely interested in learing waste so much time on these things?. a fault of the otherwise reasonable idea of a “thesis advisor” is its liability to egos, which can kill a career and totally sour a person’s creativity. a person must study for decades before they get to even be taken seriously, with no guarantee that they will be allowed to do creative work at the end, just ending up as one more teacher, or possibly finding out that their education was no practicle use at all, ending up in a low wage job. at every point a person has to consider whether the smallest points, a personal frienship, choice of school, fawning over a professor, praying for a sane thesis advisor, will effect an entire career and lifetime. it was the endlessly dry “academic poetry” - a now accepted historical term - that sparked the revolution of the Beat poets.

what did dear alfred mean?
it's very simple really. some person decides to write on a subject, possibly doing some research, and possibly not. someone else does the same thing. a third person decides to read the works of the other two and then write their own book, according to what they've read. this process continues. for the most part, it is highly likely that any person down the line will not ask whether the original authors got their facts from some reliable source. this does not stop them from writing their own book. this goes on for a few thousand years. it's true that many subjects can only be a matter of opinion, while others succumb only slowly to research. for wonderful examples of all sorts of nonsense go back and read the classic greeks, then skip ahead to the medieval europeans. much of it reduces to the notation on the earliest world maps covering areas not yet explored - "here there be dragons."  the point is simply to be rigorous, and not wallow in spurious opinion. but mostly this is not done. people are concerned with prestige and keeping their job, and end up putting most of their energy into that. "community colleges" are pretty pathetic, being a bit like extended high schools. regular colleges are mostly a way to get a job. blessed is the person at any stage is fortunate enough to meet a teacher who truly both loves knowledge and is a good judge of character and abilities.

this syndrom reaches all the way down to the beginning grades. have you ever wondered about the word "kindergarten"? it's german for "children's garden," used to designate a school for children that was begun in 1840. doesn't that sound nice? it elicits images of healthy frolickng, spontaneity, and being surrounded things that facinate the mind. would that it were so. no one values liveliness of mind and body as the centerpiece of learning. method is never taught. at least in america, by third grade the main twin goals are conformity of behavior and rote memorization. by sixth grade there is an atmosphere of stultifying boredom. by the time they reach high school most people have lost the last vestiges of curiosity and imagination, and have the appearance of not-quite-formed adults, meaning heavy of body and dull of eye. they are all set, the ones who don't flunk out or get pregnant, to enter the world of college, purely imparted knowledge circumscibed by academic politics. 

it is absolutely amazing the degree to which environment and the educational system negatively effects children. it is very often the case that a retarded person, someone of subnormal intelligence, because they are less subject to the normal avenues of social programming, actually retain more curiosity than a person of normal intelligence.

after the first week of school, the teacher asked gerik what he was interested in.
he responded, "the origins of unicorn mythology."
"can you read?" his teacher asked.
"of course, everyone can," he answered.
"no," replied the teacher, "not many kindegatners can read."
"that's too bad," said garik. "it's how you find out stuff."
                               - from a book for parents of gifted children

                 

after reading “heartbreak” by andrea dworkin we considered not including this
picture, but it’s just too beautiful. in the background, allen ginsberg, who's
"Howl" was called world literature by nabokov.  both books are in the
reading list. we found this photo in an alternative publication without a credit.

education as part and parcel of repressive institutions
the absolute place of ego and it’s whimsical manifestations is demoralizing to the new student filled with a love of learning, and this power is often only used as a reinforcement of the “status quo” in society in general – all differing opinions or, god forbid, politics, are ridiculed, crushed, or insidiously, just given straight failing grades. it wasn’t just war and civil rights that made campuses of the sixties and seventies a battleground, but the snide insistence of academics that they were above these things, often while openly or secretly working directly for the government and usually making no secret of racist views. instead of being decided by scholarly review, a person’s work is thrown into the melee of “publish or perish.”  in the field of bio-chemistry, one person sent his Ph.D thesis to a journal fifteen minutes later than a man who used the exact same data, yet who claimed the exact opposite conclusion. the first paper was accepted, contrary to all scientific principles. recently, while simultaneously refusing to acknowledge the affect of decades of reduced funding for education, in an effort to raise standards governments have instituted  the bogus panacea of “standardized testing”, TOTALLY SKEWING EDUCATION TOWARDS ROTE MEMORIZATION, and AWAY FROM ANY RECOGNITION OF DEPTH OF UNDERSTANDING OR CREATIVITY. this is a crime against young minds and will surely produce a generation of fools.

one pretty good example: 
harvard university, supposedly one of the best in the world and the oldest in the u.s.a., has an endowment greater than the budget of many nations, yet for decades has fought giving it’s non-academic support staff a mere living wage, using barely concealed underhand tactics. 
“we’ll (eventually) form a committee , that will (supposedly) include staff, that will reach a “reasonable” solution.
none of this happened. 
the president would continually refer to the all benefits of employment at harvard , stressing the long standing policy of free classes for the families of employees. to which the reply on picket signs was

what do you want from a university where the graduation yell includes the words:

this is a school where the crowds along the banks of the charles river to watch the annual regatta look like a gathering of the Aryan Brotherhood - for non-americans, this is a neo-nazis group - every last person blond and blue eyed but having the disaffected faces of inhereted wealth.

it's a lot sicker than you think
for an horrific story about  a woman MURDERED at a school near harvard  for challenging one of most powerful "old boys' clubs"  in the world, and the jeering attitude of some students,

you can't be serious
america is the laughing stock of the world, where whether evolution should be taught in schools is still a hot topic. recall that near the beginning  it was stated that  america has a literacy rate below even third world countries!!! yet  it's academics are so arrogant  that the rest of the world must come up to their standards, especially if you want a "working" degree, such as in medicine. nothing can really be said about this idiotic situation except that it is both  really embarrassing and terrifying in a country that is the most powerful in the world. basically, christians are retarded.

the hard sciences are in no way immune
the world over, very few researchers or scholars begin their study at the very basis of their field, and a great many are no better than memorizers. what reaches a journal or text becomes gospel, and this goes on for generations. the whole history of science is rife not just with oppression from outside, but glacial bias within. the quote that begins this section was not from some uneducated outsider.

vested interests are the standard. 
a career can be broken if you don't agree with those in power.

cfree
a blue galaxy, which, ahem, of course does not exist.

a happy example:
astronomy is a field where competition is extremely stiff for the use of the relatively few telescopes in the world. someone theorizes that there exists a whole new class of dim blue galaxies. since no one will take him seriously he invents a plausible but entirely fictitious project in order to obtain telescope time. he surreptitiously gathers data completely vindicating the theory.

the worst example
the study of HISTORY still overwhelmingly emphasizes war and economics. this numbs the mind and emotions to the horrors involved. there are no elementary courses for "comparative history" as there are for "comparative liturature." lists of important people and dates of major events are a very far cry from a really rounded appreciation of a culture.

crippled for a hundred years
according to the then new science of linguistics, european languages could not be related to sanscrit. why? simply put, because sanskrit was spoken by little brown people. this held back linguistics for almost a hundred years. it also helped obscure the extremely imbarrassing fact that sanskrit is a highly complex artificial language. the study of languages is so facinating that everyone should know a bit about it. knowing how language effects thought is very liberating. and the sounds of different languages are amazingly beautiful. different forms of humor are not the least of the eye openers.

REAL SCHOLARSHIP

"out of print,"
the three dumbest words in any language    

she was one of a mere handful of people who totally transformed dance in the early twentieth century.
as fantastic as ballet is, until then it had never escaped its 400 year old heritage from italian opera, 
which in turn was based on the stiff dancing of the royal courts.
it totally lacked spinal movement, and the more varied elements of the dances of commmoners. 
the new wave took these elements and raised them to the level of ballet. 

later still, twyla tharp made a science of what had before been seperate schools.
left. yes, that's mistah baryshnikov. copyright richard avedon.
notice the differences in costume, and the combination of athletics and posture. for her, everything has a notation.
right. an older photo of twyla.  couldn't find a copyright. from something called the achievement foundation.

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