Gay Men: Closeted, Repressed, and so forth

As readers of this blog who have read my bio know, I am a gay man. In blog postings I think I alluded to that fact once, but I have not posted very much, if anything, specifically on that subject. I guess I haven't wanted to make this a "gay" blog.

Well, I had some thoughts I shared with a friend, and I think I ought to make this more widely available. So, here goes:

As practically anyone knows, a lot of gay men are closeted. (It's very surprising, and incomprehensible to me, that even among older gay men--men my age--there is a percentage who are closeted. I have to wonder who they are hiding their sexuality from; maybe their children.)

Also, among gay men my age, a lot of them are or have been married. I've heard some say that when they were young they were pressured by family to marry and maybe have children as well (as an aside: for a humorous look at that sort of scenario, check out a delightful Mexican film called Doña Herlinda y su Hijo--Doña Herlinda and her son).

And many gay men get married, and perhaps have children, for the advantages--career and otherwise--of "passing." Around here there are a lot of guys who are married and yet are trolling the internet for a connection with a guy. That often makes me angry because I think they are trying to have the advantages of both; seems unfair to me.

Plus, many years ago--probably when I was just coming out and felt a need to find out, Just what is this gay thing, anyway?--I read a book called Society and the Healthy Homosexual, where he talks about the psychological toll of hiding one's sexuality. I tend to be a bit preachy on that subject as a result.

And then there are the men who are even more than just closeted: they even deny their sexual orientation to themselves. Maybe "repressed" would be a better term than closeted. The boyfriend of someone related to me, in my view, is one of those. When my relative first told me about this guy who'd entered her life, describing him, I said, "It sounds to me like he's gay." She said, quite defensively, "He's not gay, I can assure you!" Okay, end of subject. But there are doubtless many guys like this one. If they do ever wake up to their gay leanings, and it comes at a pretty late point in their lives, it can be devastating. Those to whom it happens at an earlier age are more fortunate--totally aside from the fact that guys who come out at a relatively mature age feel that they've "missed" a lot. The reader must surmise what that means.

Update, October 3, 2011
Here is a link to an article on coming out at a late age:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/15/national/main6299584.shtml

Copyright (c) 2011 by Richard Stein

Should You Listen to Food Gurus?

There's a lot of advice on food and eating and nutrition, these days: on the Internet, on TV, in magazines and books. A lot of it is mainstream, is well-established and backed by medical research, and has been around for a while. This type of stuff is what I think we should be paying attention to.

Some other sorts of advice are a challenge to the intelligent and well-informed consumer. It's not always obvious when we really should ignore what we're being told, either because the person giving the advice is not disinterested (meaning he stands to gain financially, either by blatantly selling you something, or more subtlety, he may be advocating a product such as a supplement that's made by a company he owns); or because it's a bit extreme and not practical for most of us. Or even simply nonsensical. (Note: Just because something is recommended as "natural," that should not automatically recommend it. Remember, poisonous mushroom are "natural." Snake venom is "natural.")

So, what are some examples of what we ought to be listening to? Well, the government tells us to reduce the sodium (salt) and fat in our diets (particularly, avoid trans fat and cut saturated fat). And eat more whole grains and fruits and vegetables.

Okay, that's all very sound advice. It should guide our shopping and make us eat less fast food. (Read those nutrition labels!) Even the big food processors have begun to adjust their products to be healthier in these respects.

But one person—I think I heard this on TV—said, "Don't eat anything with a label on it." Okay, it would be nice if we ate more stuff made from scratch, so we could avoid chemical ingredients like artificial colors and flavors and so forth. But this is not going to be practical for most people. With many wives and mothers having careers outside of the home, the trend has been for more and more of what we eat to come ready-to-eat or ready-to-heat. That trend has its downside, I'm sure, but that guy is definitely spitting into the wind.

I don't know how far that guy's dictum was meant to be carried. Does he mean to include things like eggs, milk, and even produce from the supermarket, that has those little adhesive labels on it? It's probably true that we'd get more nutritious eggs if we kept our own chickens and let them wander around. And we'd get tomatoes that would taste better (and might or might not be more nourishing) if we grew our own.

But isn't that a bit extreme for the majority of Americans who are urban or suburban? Do I need to avoid buying yogurt, and make my own? Even if I said, Okay, I'll make my own yogurt (actually, no way), then where would the milk come from? If not from a bottle or carton with a label, then I'd have to keep my own cow, right? I'm pretty sure cows, or even chickens, are not allowed by my condo homeowners' association.

One or two little asides: First, some people think that sea salt is better, or less unhealthful, than regular salt. This is simply untrue. With the very minor exception that sea salt contains very small amounts of some of the minerals found in sea water, it's still just salt: it's very close to 100% sodium chloride, which is what ordinary salt is.

Second, many people try to avoid sugar, and doing so may be a good thing--but that would be another subject. Fact is, they're too easily tricked by the food makers. I recently saw, as a food ingredient, "evaporated sugar cane juice crystals." Hey, if you know how sugar is made, that translates into nothing more nor less than ordinary sugar! Add that to my comments, in other postings, on deceiving the consumer!

Third, a common sweetener--so ubiquitous as to be unavoidable in store-bought food--is high fructose corn syrup. It's gotten a bad rap, but most likely it's not bad for you. It contains two kinds of sugars which are both naturally found in food; so it's no worse than any sugar.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

Attack on Government Employees

A number of state governors—most notably Wisconsin's and evidently all Republicans—believe that they have a mandate to cut their state budgets and are trying to do so on the backs of state workers.

Many government entities, particularly at the lower levels such as counties and municipalities, are having difficulties because they must pay very generous pensions to retired workers. In this instance I might agree that the benefits have been too generous. But more generally, the governors and so forth are unjustly scapegoating public employees, and their claims that they are very well compensated are often exaggerated at best.

There is, unfortunately, a public perception that government workers do little and are not very competent. Let me share a bit of what I know or perceive from where I stand.

I have worked (indirectly, as a contractor) for the state, in this case the State of Illinois, which is a large and populous state. Contrary to what people might think, I found that the people working in this particular state agency were typically quite competent and performed a complex job well.

On the other hand: I live in one of the suburbs of Chicago. My town is included in Cook County, which includes Chicago and is the second-largest county in the United States (presumably after Los Angeles County). I have to admit that when I have had to deal with county employees, I have sometimes found them not to be helpful. I have even found that they don't answer their phones. And I consider myself lucky not to have to deal with the bureaucracy of the City of Chicago.

Big, lumbering, inefficient and wasteful bureaucracies like the City of Chicago or Cook County may suffer from the fact that their employees often hold their jobs not by virtue of their competence but because they are a second cousin of the alderman (city councilman). On the other hand, and in the somewhat larger world, government workers are more typically competent and hard-working.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

When Small Companies Sell Out

People start small businesses and then, once the enterprise has grown to be successful, they sell it. No need to keep knocking yourself out; you can sell the business and retire to a life of leisure and luxury.

One such business was Ben and Jerry's ice cream. Probably everyone in the U.S. knows them, not only for their premium ice cream but also because they were just general good guys. They really were two guys named Ben and Jerry. They started out by opening an ice cream parlor in Vermont with an investment of $12,000. In a David-and-Goliath battle, they twice took on giant Pillsbury in legal suits. They started a foundation to fund community-oriented projects and then funded it with 7.5% of the company’s annual pre-tax profits. They also joined with the Children's Defense Fund "to bring children’s basic needs to the top of the national agenda" (Wikipedia).

Then they sold out. Ben and Jerry's is now owned by Unilever, a (to quote Wikipedia) "British-Dutch multinational corporation that owns many of the world's consumer product brands in foods, beverages, cleaning agents and personal care products." Ben and Jerry themselves no longer hold any board or management position in the company they started and are not involved in day-to-day management of the company (source: Wikipedia). However, in all fairness, in its post-independent days Ben and Jerry's has tried to use environment-friendly containers, and it (I must not say "they") launched a protest against the opening of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling on Earth Day in 2005 (source: Wikipedia).

We might think of many health-food brands as sort of counter-culture or at least non–big business or non–big, evil, capitalist companies (that is, if you're an overage hippie like I am; otherwise you probably don't think in those terms), and more pro-consumer. However, if they ever deserved that image, many of them now belong to giant food processors. Honest Tea and Odwalla are brands of Coca-Cola Company (source: Wikipedia).

In another story a bit like that of Ben and Jerry, Kellogg also took over Famous Amos cookies. Meat-substitute maker Morningstar Farms also is part of Kellogg. (It never was a small, independent company but from Day 1 was just a brand, although not originally part of Kellogg.)

Cascadian Farm and Nature Valley both belong to General Mills. (Disclaimer, aka confession: I have not been able to confirm, in the cases of these last two, that they started as small, independent companies.)

Of course, once a giant company owns a brand, they hope that the customer/shopper will go on treating it like a small, fuzzy, green, and otherwise consumer-friendly brand. Unilever seems to have done a fair amount to maintain the aura that surrounded Ben and Jerry's; but as regards some of the other brands I have to suspect that, at best, the jury is out.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein.

How to Read Minds and Speak All Languages

On several occasions I was able to make people think I could read their minds. Well, probably they knew I really couldn't—they were all too smart to believe in that; but still, maybe just a teeny bit, they had to wonder. That's lots of fun.

Well, here are the episodes.

1. I know this guy who has traveled to an incredible number of countries. At one point—and this was years ago!—the count was over 100.

So, I heard him say something like, "I've been all over, I've had the cuisines of so many countries, and I can handle any and all of them. There's just one I really don't care for. . . ."

And I quickly interjected, "Ethiopian!"

And he's like, How did you know I was going to say that?

2. I used to have this friend, a doctor, who was divorced. He was telling me about finding women to date--through personal ads, I think.

He mentioned one woman, a Jewish girl who has a PhD in Philosophy.

I chimed in, "Theresa Sungeld" (not the real name).

Again, he's like, How did you possibly know that??

3. I was visiting my uncle and aunt. I was conversing with my uncle at one point, and he said, "Do you know what you ought to invest in?" And I said, "A condo on Hilton Head."

Again, amazingly, that was what he had been going to say.

Okay, want to know the secrets? I wish, dear reader, that I could tease a bit before revealing how it was all done.

In (1), it really was pretty much just a good guess. I, too, can eat almost anything, but I believe Ethiopian food looks like vomit.

In (2), it was pretty much a matter of It's a small world. I knew this woman. And there might have been other single (and dating) Jewish girls around who have PhD's in Philosophy, but I thought I'd risk that it happened to be the same one (he might also have said, ". . . from the University of ____"). Besides, both this woman and my doctor friend were quirky enough individuals that I could see them hooking up with each other.

Now, (3) is a little more devious. I'd been reading the paper at their house; it was either the Wall Street Journal or the financial section of the New York Times. And I saw an ad touting condos on Hilton Head as an investment; so I figured Unk had just seen the same thing I had.

I can also make people think I understand their language.

One time I was eating in a Chinese restaurant. I ordered a dish with tofu.

This was one of those old-fashioned places, with waiters. And they were not busy at all; I may have been the only customer. So a couple of these old waiters were sitting at a table in the back, talking among themselves in Chinese. Overhearing them, I could understand tofu . . . tofu.

When the waiter came back, I said "You're talking about what I'm eating." He goes No, no.

Later he comes back, looking very sheepish, and says, "Uh… you understand Chinese?" I guess I said something like Not really, and he said, "I was saying that tofu was Sun Yat-sen's favorite food." Yeah, right. More likely "They used pretty awful, old, spoiled tofu in the kitchen to make that guy's dinner."

Another time, at work I sat in a cubicle behind a guy from the Philippines. He was running some kind of business on the side, right from his work desk, selling perfume or something like that. His conversations were carried on in Tagalog, the national language of the Philippines.

Well, as a linguistics graduate student I had done some work on a Philippine language that is similar to Tagalog, so I was able to pick up a few words of what this guy was saying. So I had him believing I could understand his whole conversation.

Just as I found when traveling abroad, people often don't realize that knowing a word or two of a language is a far cry from really being able to speak it or understand it. But if, like me, you have a bit of a mischievous streak, boy, can you make them nervous, just with your limited knowledge.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

Old Rulers Hate to Give Up Power

The world learned today that Hosni Mubarak has stepped down as president of Egypt. He had been pressured to step down for more than two weeks, and for a while it looked as though he was resolutely clinging to power.

The man is 82 years old and had been in power for 30 years. I retired when I was 64, and it's hard for me to understand people who want to keep on working until their eighties.

But I guess there's an important difference between them and me: power. People who have power typically don't want to give it up. I guess having power, and ruling, is a lot of fun.

I thought it would be interesting to look at some other people who ruled for a long time and into an old age.

• The last Habsburg emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Franz Joseph, died at age 86, at which point he had ruled for 68 years.
• Queen Victoria of England died at age 81, after she had ruled for 63 years.
• The present Queen of England, Elizabeth II, is 81 years old and has been ruling for 58 years. (The queen of England, as a constitutional monarch, really does not have much power to "rule.")
  
• Fidel Castro is now 84 years old. He stepped down as head of Cuba in 2008, when he was 81. He had been in power for 49 years.
  

Copyright (c) 2011 by Richard Stein

More Thoughts for Consumers

I wrote recently about how producers of food and other consumer products subtly deceive us with shrinking packages; and, in another posting ("Lie to, Deceive, Manipulate Them--They're Only the Great Unwashed Masses," January 12, 2010) about how TV "pitches" can contain a variety of deceptions.

I want to add a few things I've noticed recently. First, a little contradiction in claims: I receive mailings from a car dealer from whom I bought a car. They offer a "100+ club" that offers a discount and other benefits, saying "All Toyotas with 100,000 miles are eligible." It sounds like a good deal. I have a friend with a Toyota with an awful lot of miles on it, and I was going to show him this flyer.

Then I noticed the fine print which says "2001 or older Toyotas models only." Excuse me, but doesn't that contradict the statement about "all Toyotas"? What is one to think of that? Are they being sneaky? Well, whoever said that car dealers are honest and forthright? Even the best of them are not above some not-so-kosher tactics when they sell you a car and probably when they service it, too. I could talk about experiences of my own as both a car buyer and a service customer.

How about this: Say you are an airline, and you want to figure out a way to improve your record for flights arriving on time. Well, here is a good idea for you. Say a flight from A to B takes one hour. Well, you simply announce a scheduled arrival time of, say, 70 (or 73 or 76) minutes. Then you can arrive 10 (or 13 or 16) minutes late and still be "on time." Presto, now you're on time 98 percent of the time instead of 68 percent! I believe that some airlines are doing this because they now arrive "early" quite often. Do you think it's because of unexpected tail winds?

Do you ever pay attention to TV pitches for acne medications, weight-loss pills, or exercise devices? The ones with "before" and "after" photos? Notice that the photos are seldom really comparable. They use all sorts of subtle tricks to make the "after" image more attractive. First, the person in the "after" shot is invariably smiling. Also, the hair style (for women) is different and more flattering. The lighting is different. The pose is different. All of these little tricks are used to subtly make the "after" image more attractive, and they operate on the viewer to subliminally make her feel she will be more attractive if she buys the product.

Various tricks and deceptions, subtle and not-so-subtle, have been used for as long as there's been advertising. How much money has been extracted from the less-than-wary customer over the years since we've had mountebanks pitching snake oil? Even if you feel that government should step in and act against the more egregious perpetrators of deception upon customers, the villains will probably always keep one step ahead.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

Companies Cheating Us with Smaller Packages

It's been going on for a long time. Once upon a time, the smaller size box of tissues was 200 tissues. Then at one point it was 140. Now it's 120 or 110.

Yogurt containers at one time were all 8 ounces. Then one major brand switched to 6 ounces and then all the others followed suit. I recently noticed my "Greek-style" yogurt container was 5.3 ounces—which is 12% less than even 6 ounces.

The big container of ice cream, which we were used to calling a "half-gallon," is now 1.5 quarts—one-quarter less. (Apologies to my non–U.S. readers for the U.S. units of measure. The point, of course, is the comparison of the amounts.)

Paper for many years was bought and sold by the "ream," which is 500 sheets. I recently bought a big package of paper—and only when I got it home did I notice that it's 400 sheets, not 500.

And of course these smaller sizes are not being sold at proportionately lower prices. No, it's less product for the same price—the manufacturer's way of raising the price--hopefully, and frequently, without our noticing.

Worse, some containers are deliberately made to deceive. I complained to a certain food store chain that their house-brand hummus came in a container with a convex bottom, so that the container held less than it looked like. They wrote back claiming that the container shape was for the sake of the physical strength of the container. I'm skeptical.

Recently I bought a small frozen pizza that came in a box. When I opened the box, the diameter of the pizza inside was 2" less than the size of the box! Can there be any doubt that this is deliberate deception?

This is a bit off-topic--not concerning smaller container sizes--but there is a mattress widely advertised on TV, where you can adjust the firmness with a remote control whereby you dial in a setting from 0 to 100.

However, the increments of adjustment are by 5's--0, 5, 10, etc. In other words, there are actually 20 steps of adjustment. Why don't they make the control go 0, 1, 2--up to 20? Because (as they rightly believe), we feel there is a greater range of adjustment if it goes up to 100 than if it goes up to 20.

So all these guys are making money--because they are smarter than we are! I'd like to wake up one day and find that everybody had gotten smarter overnight, and these petty ruses and deceptions wouldn't work anymore.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

Remembering Ronald Reagan

I never liked Reagan—not as a candidate, not as president, not now.

Because he was "the Teflon president," the press never had the guts to criticize him—so we began to hear about all the bad things he had done only once he had left office.

When he was campaigning for the presidency, his speeches had a blatant appeal to Americans' racism. Also while a candidate, he negotiated with the Iranians—in violation of U.S. law—so that they would not release the American hostages they were holding until the campaign and election were over with. Sure enough, the hostages were released on the day of Reagan's inauguration.

Also on his Inauguration Day in 1980, he immediately halted all government funding for alternative energy research. If, 30 years later, we still don't have much in the way of alternatives to petroleum-based fuels, that's directly and simply due to Reagan.

There was an anecdote that on the eve of a big international conference, his aides provided him with a lot of briefing papers; but instead of reading them and doing his "homework," he spent the evening before the big conference watching movies.

Also, he greatly undermined environmental regulation by the EPA; and regulation of our food supplies, our medications, and so forth by the FDA. We are still suffering from inadequate governmental oversight of public health because of him.

The best thing I can sat about Reagan is that the Religious Right folks who helped elect him were sorely disappointed that he did not deliver for them everything they had hoped or wanted.

Update, August 24, 2011
A recent PBS TV program on energy showed an expert who stated that, as I indeed said here, Ronald Reagan set back US alternative energy programs by 30 years.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

For Once, U.S. Is on the Right Side

The United States finds itself in a difficult position regarding the current popular unrest in Egypt. Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak has been a friend and ally of the United States. If he goes, the way may be open to a radical Islamic, anti-American regime that might even support terrorists. Also, Egypt under a new regime could abrogate its current peace treaties with Israel. Plus, Egypt, while not an oil producer, is an important transit point for oil supplies, partly because it controls the Suez Canal.

Nevertheless—surprisingly, and to his credit--President Obama has clearly expressed his sympathy for the Egyptian demonstrators who are calling for an end to Mubarak's regime and the establishment of greater democracy in Egypt.

This is surprising both because Obama is placing human rights above what might be America's interests in the Middle East and also because, so many times in the past, America has backed, supported, and even installed right-wing dictators.

Just one example would be Iran. The U.S. can pretty much blame itself for the current anti-American regime in Iran because the U.S. staunchly supported the Shah, who was hated because of his repressive regime: by means of his secret police he used torture and so forth to suppress opposition.

In fact, going back a bit further still, the U.S., in the 1950s, helped overthrow a democratic government in Iran and engineer the Shah's assumption of power.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

Have Cars Changed?

Anybody who repairs cars would tell you that cars have changed a great deal. And if you look under your hood yourself, you'll notice that the engine compartment has gotten more crowded. Today's cars have many more features, systems, and devices for safety, emissions, and more. Cars have sophisticated electronic controls (basically computers), and can even diagnose themselves.

One could argue whether cars of today look very different from the cars of a few decades ago. They still have four wheels, headlights, and taillights (although even the lights are changing, with LED taillights becoming common).

We may be starting to witness a major change in our cars. Toyota has sold over a million of its hybrid Prius model. And the first electric cars are appearing. Are hybrids and electrics the wave of the future?

If you took all the Priuses and all the exemplars of a few other hybrid models, they'd all add up to a small percentage of the cars on the road. The overwhelming percentage of cars we're driving use gasoline internal combustion engines that may have changed in detail but still use the same fundamental principle as cars of 100 years ago.

One would be foolish to say that cars are not going to evolve, and even evolve in some fundamental ways. I personally think that the hybrid automobile is an interim solution. Having in essence two drive systems is complicated and expensive; in engineering terms, the hybrid is not an "elegant" solution. We need some simple system of storing a fuel or energy source, and a simple, compact, efficient motor for converting that fuel to motion.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein