The blurring of opinion and fact

I don’t particularly like opinionated people.  However, opinionated people are a fact of life and there is nothing I can do about them or their opinions. Where I draw the line though is when they put forward their opinions as facts. It is an all-too frequent trait with these people and deeply disturbing in that they often present it with implicit superiority suggesting they know something we don’t or that their opinion/fact is akin to a divine revelation.
There is a difference between opinion and fact.  That “Bishop” Tamaki is extracting money from vulnerable and naïve people is an opinion; that he is extracting money is a fact.
The blurring between opinion and fact came into sharp relief this week when I read an article in Stuff by Glenn McConnell. In the article McConnell takes to task a National member of parliament for purportedly questioning climate change. That member of parliament is, in McConnell’s opinion, not allowed to do that and is making his party look “clownish” and should leave Parliament at the next election.
That is McConnell’s opinion. Some will disagree with it. Some will also disagree with his assertions, presented as facts, that: “climate change is the biggest issue facing agriculture, and the biggest challenge facing the world,” and “the overwhelming consensus is that [climate change] will happen.”
McConnell may be right. I don’t know. But nor does McConnell.  In his article, he presents no evidence for the overwhelming consensus he refers to. That evidence may exist, but equally there is evidence that climate change, if it exists at all, is a natural and cyclical event. In other words, there are two sides to the argument. That is a fact. Yet McConnell presents his side of the argument as correct and climate change as a fact. It is not, it is an opinion and whilst it may be shared by many it is still an opinion.
What concerns me most about this article though is that McConnell’s so-called facts are shared by his publisher, again with vague reference to some unspecified supporting evidence. At the end of McConnell’s article, Stuff makes this astonishing statement:
“Stuff accepts the overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is real and caused by human activity. We welcome robust debate about the appropriate response to climate change, but do not intend to provide a venue for denialism or hoax advocacy.”
Really? So Stuff will welcome robust debate on the issue but only one part of it (response) and only from the side it is supporting. I find that incredible from a media organisation. I don’t deny their right to have an opinion and to exhibit it, but to shut out anybody that disagrees with that opinion is simply wrong.
We are not talking about hate-speech here, for goodness sake. We are talking about a contentious subject that needs our media to get on board and present us with as much information as is available—from both sides—so we can, if we wish, form an informed opinion.
Above all, we cannot, I suggest, have media that present opinion as fact. That’s just wrong.
That’s my opinion, anyway.

My name is Dewey Raindrop

My name is Dewey Raindrop.
I am a 46-year-old capricornian male looking for love. I am not looking for superficial or fleeting love—the type of generated-dross of The Bachelor or the love-lust that Nigella Lawson has for chocolate. I am looking, instead, for love that is instant and lasting, deep and meaningful, requited and resilient.
I would prefer a woman, but a man with feminine features and traits would be okay.
I live in a world of my own, mercifully free of chemtrails, where visits by extra-terrestrials are common and welcomed, and where the very atmosphere is imbued by a relaxing rejuvenating purple hue. It is a world which I wish to share with you.
Physical characteristics mean nothing to me, nor should they mean anything to you. What is a body, other than a haven for the mind? It is your mind that I am interested and my only wish is to meld mine with yours.
You do not have to educated. Education is but a journey and we shall share that journey together. We will have no clear direction on our journey. Direction is meaningless in the face of fate, and we will I know be drawn together by fate, for we—you and I—are kindred souls, destined to be together.
You do not need to apply. I know who you are. Just send a mind message and we will interact, we will engage, we will be one.
Meet me in the toilets out the back of New World tonight at 11.30.

Ear Hair

Cecil C. Sackrider and Jimmy Swaggart will tell you one thing, I will tell you another: God is not perfect.
Among His many miracles, good and bad, such as my grandson and the election of Donald Trump (the latter an acute embarrassment to God), God makes mistakes, the most visible of which is hair.
Hair lacks logic. God seems to have got it wrong on so many levels. Either that, or He has displayed His impish sense of humour. How else could we explain why, follicle for follicle, He gives more hair to men yet is far quicker to strip them of it in terms of baldness? Why, too, is it that women, with far less god-given body hair, are more obsessed than men with ridding themselves of it? To be fair, the latter has less to do with God and more to do with the thinking of women, which all men, God included, will never understand.
But the one mystery that hovers over me more than any other is why God replaces the hair he takes from men with hair elsewhere. Men lose hair from the top of their heads only to find that it navigates (or is it gravitates?) to their noses and ears. Why is that? Why is it we can we lose it somewhere, only to grow it elsewhere? It defies logic.
Well, apparently we can put it down to hormones; those things that most men had an excess of in their teens but thought they had lost six months into their marriage.
The hormones, that cause the pattern of thinning and hair loss in the scalp, also cause the mass of Vellus hair that is naturally present in the nose and ears to grow darker, longer and grow coarser. It is believed that the increased growth of hair in the nose and ears among ageing men is tied to the same causes as male patterned baldness.
The different reactions within the different hair follicles relate to the way men develop secondary sexual characteristics (whatever they may be). So while the testosterone can cause the loss of scalp hair, it can lengthen and coarsen the hair on other parts of the body.
That is the pseudo-scientific explanation, but it only answers how it happens, not why.
Lacking a valid answer to the question of why, we are forced to fall back on the simple though unappetising explanation that it is God’s perversity and misogynosity to his fellow man, which He first demonstrated as far back as His creation of Eve. God has chosen to inflict on man (and not on woman) the loss of hair from the top of the head where it is most attractively and pragmatically placed and reposition it in the nasal and ear cavities where it is both unsightly and decidedly not pragmatically and accessibly placed.
Thanks a lot, God.

Forgetting Altamont

Last week’s Fryday remembering Woodstock struck a chord (pun intended) with many readers, though, alas, none admitted to being there.  Two further little-known facts about that festival: there were two deaths—one from an overdose predictably and one, somewhat less predictably, from being run over by a tractor. There was also one reported birth, which doesn’t quite balance it out, but is nevertheless good news.

If Woodstock is the acknowledged high point of outdoor music festivals, their nadir was to come just four months later on the other side of the United States at Altamont Speedway in Northern California.

Instigated by the Rolling Stones as a free concert to end their United States tour and to counter criticisms that their concert ticket prices were too high, Altamont was touted as “Woodstock West” and would feature, as well as the Stones, Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Flying Burrito Brothers, Santana and Crosby Stills Nash & Young.

Held on Saturday, December 6, 1969, the day turned into a logistical and tragic nightmare. Rolling Stone magazine described it as “rock and roll’s all-time worst day.” There were four deaths, scores were injured, many cars stolen and extensive damage. But the concert is notable mostly for the violence, much of it captured on film by Albert and David Maysles in their documentary Gimme Shelter.

That film has graphic footage of the most infamous of those deaths—the stabbing  of Meredith Hunter by the Hells Angels. 

The Rolling Stones hired the Angels to handle security, reportedly on the recommendation of The Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane, both of whom had previous used the motorcycle gang in that capacity. Ironically, the Angels beat up Jefferson Airplane singer Marty Balin and the “Dead” refused to take the stage…because of the violence!

By the time the Rolling Stones took the stage that night the mood was ugly. The Hells Angels, who had been paid $500 worth of beer for their services were drunk and intimidating as they ringed the stage.

The unruly situation visibly intimidated Mick Jagger, who had already been punched in the head by a concertgoer within seconds of emerging from his helicopter, and urged everyone to, "Just be cool down in the front there, don't push around."

During the third song, Sympathy for the Devil, a fight erupted in the front of the crowd at the foot of the stage, prompting the Stones to pause their set while the Angels restored order. After a lengthy pause and another appeal for calm, the band restarted the song and continued their set with no incident until the start of Under My Thumb.

Some of the Hells Angels got into a scuffle with Meredith Hunter, age 18, when he attempted to get onstage with other fans. One of the Angels grabbed Hunter's head, punched him, and chased him back into the crowd. Following his initial scuffle with the Angels,  Hunter returned to the front of the crowd and drew a revolver from inside his jacket. Hells Angel Alan Passaro, seeing Hunter drawing the gun, drew a knife from his belt and charged Hunter from the side, stabbed him twice, and killed him.

The Stones say they were unaware of the killing at the time and that’s probably correct. Nevertheless the band (most of them) were clearly rattled and ended their set early and were helicoptered out from the site in a hurry.

Characteristically, Keith Richards was relatively sanguine about the show, calling it "basically well-handled, but lots of people were tired and a few tempers got frayed” and "on the whole, a good concert."

Maybe.

But the three (or four) days of peace and love that had occurred on the east coast four months earlier are still celebrated today and even Woodstock’s down-sides—the mud, the overdoses, the rain—are remembered reverently.

But Altamont? Altamont was different. And perhaps best left forgotten.

Woodstock Remembered

On August 15 it will be 50 years since the opening day of the Woodstock Music Festival. A planned celebration and repeat of the ‘three days of love and peace’ has been cancelled; perhaps fortunately given that it was to feature Miley Cyrus and Jay-Z who are unlikely to ever gain the legendary status of many of the original artists.
Like most New Zealanders my experience of Woodstock was confined to the movie and buying the soundtrack. Neither had much effect on me—as an 18-year-old in 1969 I had other preoccupations: trying to get laid and trying to avoid conscription. Besides, two of my favourite musical acts of the time weren’t in the movie—Bob Dylan didn’t even make the festival and his erstwhile backing band, The Band, did but were cut from the movie.
There were also some misconceptions around the event that lingered long and put something of a superficial sheen on what was largely a mud-incrusted latrine. The first is that (as is widely known now) Woodstock wasn’t held in Woodstock. It was meant to be—Woodstock was Dylan and The Band’s  home town—but the organisers couldn’t find a suitable site, and after the back-up  town of Wallkill decided the use of portable toilets didn’t meet the town’s code, another site was found: Max Yasgur’s 243 hectare dairy farm near the town of Bethels 70 kilometres southwest of Woodstock.
Second in misconceptions is that the festival attracted a reported crowd of more than one million. It didn’t. It is now known that at most 400,000 people attended over the four days of the festival, and the people of Wallkill were right—there still wasn’t enough Portaloos.
It is true that very little went to plan. Even the widely advertised “three days” stretched to four. The festival itself finally kicked off at 5.30 pm Friday with Richie Havens after the scheduled first act Creedence Clearwater Revival failed to arrive on time (they didn’t make the movie either) and closed Monday morning at 8.30, with Jimi Hendrix doing his iconic rendering of the Star-Spangled Banner. By that time the crowd had dwindled to 30,000.
Some artists arrived late; some not at all. Some refused to perform in the rain, and it rained most days. Some such as Dylan and the Rolling Stones refused outright. Some later regretted their refusals. And Woodstock lost money. It cost US $3.1 million; it took in $1.8 million. It took ten years for the original promoters to turn a profit from movie and record sales.
Yet the three and a bit days of peace and love on Yasgur’s farm live on as a special event—sociological and musical. There are today and especially to come on the 15th grandparents telling their grandchildren proudly that they were there—perhaps thousands more than were actually there.
And nobody minds that.  Don McLean’s American Pie and “the day music died” was 20 years into the future. But back then for those days in August 1969 everybody wanted to be there the day music really lived.