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Bad Manners and Good Gossip

« Seinfeld, Kramer and the Red Ribbon Brigade! | Main | Heroic Doctor Exposes Big Pharma! »

September 01, 2006

Comments

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Dean Esmay

Sadly, I can't seem to find this in a format listenable online. Can you let me know if/when they have it in a form we can link to, Hank?

George

Hank,

"I can't believe I heard the whole thing", and on NY WOR radio too where I listened to Jean Shepherd and Ms. Farber's father, Barry (the FIRST talk radio host in the US) as a younger man!

But, real discussion requires balance and fairness as we know.

I can think of no one I would rather have provide it than the AIDS insurgency's best friend. the alpha-monkey prof. from Cornell, JP Moore.

Don't you all agree?

Pharma Bawd

Dean,

I can get it here:

http://wor710.com/pages/46370.php

using firefox and windows.

Kind of annoying though, no fast forward.

Oh wait, if you download it here:
http://podcast.wor710.com/wor/29869.mp3

you can fast forward.

Pharma Bawd

Huhhh! They are censoring her!

The tape stops right as she's bringing up Padian!

George

PB,

Thanks.

To my mind, the *very last things* that are said by Dr. Segal are the very most important utterances on the entire show by a factor of "c" (almost)!

George

Crossed comments. The thanks remains PB, for the concern and effort, even if the plug was pulled so to speak.

But now people are unable, for the moment, to quick fast forward to the final words of Dr. Segal, so let me paraphrase them here.

"The most important thing that can be done from a public health standpoint to reduce the "AIDS burden" of Africa is to spend what it takes and provide clean water to the continent. Clean up the water and the primary killer of children (diarrheal diseases) is all but eliminated. It ain't high-tech and glamorous and the stuff of news conferences, but it would work!"

celia farber

I am so grateful to you guys for being so supportive. My father is a radio master, literally, and so I have a serious dread of speaking at all, ever. Also, English is in some ways my second language, having grown up in Sweden not speaking English until I was almost 19. For these and other reasons, I write, and avoid radio when possible. I don't like to sell anybody on anything, or have to persuade or punch or sock em or bop em. In this case, it wasn't necessary. It was an old world type "salon' conversation. Really civilised and inspiring.

I'm afraid I was less than fully articulate in many places but I did my best.

Thanks for listening.

Dean Esmay

I'm amazed you speak English as a second language, Celia. I would never, ever have guessed that.

Celia Farber

More simply,

I second 100% the comments of George, about Dr. Seigel's comments on Africa.

Dean Esmay

Well I listened to the podcast but it stopped right where Celia mentioned the Padian study. Is there more or is that it?

Celia Farber

Hi Dean!

No it continues well past that point. The show was scheduled from 1-2 am. It ran to 3 am, and another guest was unfortunately bumped. Joey thought it was a very important subject and show. We were amazed.

I think the antagonism against this discussion aka debate is a thing of the past, a kind of Potemkin Village. Not quite real.

Michael

Celia and Stephen did a fantastic job. Actually, Celia, you speak very well, and very clearly and understandably. It is unfortunate, that just as you would clarify an important point, the show would go to a commercial or Joey or Dr. Mark would bring out some point based on false logic. The show started a bit slow, as Joey likes to ramble, and Dr. Siegal and Joey put out their old beliefs about the virus = AIDS = Death, and there was a bit of hoorah from Dr. Mark for the viral tests, which he believed were so accurate and helpful, and a bit of hoorah for medications, but by the middle of the second half, and by the end, Dr. Mark Siegal and Joey Reynolds were fairly well pulled out of the Matrix and saw the light. It was great how Dr. Siegal himself brought out how bird flu is hyped by fear and falsity. Hopefully Celia and Stephen had a few minutes after the show to discuss a bit more with Dr. Siegal as well. I think he is connected to teaching medical students, so this bodes well for the future.

Claus

Ms Farber,

Jeg kan hoere din svenske accent til tider, men du er meget velformuleret. Jeg gentager uhoerligt (inaudibly) hvad jeg skrev til dr. Bialy om dig og dr. Culshaw tidligere i dag...

Dine skrevne ord er fantastiske. Jeg tror bestemt det er en fordel at kunne se sproget (det engelske) udefra samtidig med at existere indeni det.

Celia Farber

Claus,

Tack sa valdigt for det fina brevet och uppmintringen. Hur kommer det sig att du talar Svenska?

Jag beklagar forresten att detta skrivs lite sent.

Ha det gott!

Celia Farber

Here's a concept: How about of Claus and I conduct a wing of the HIV debate entirely in Swedish. This will take longer for John Moore and Nathan Geffen to decode and they will undoubtedly develop entirely new rafts of klepto-paranoia about who we are and what we "believe."

After that, we move on to Finnish...

George

I thought that was Danish. Goes to show. Great idea Ms. Farber.
Be sure to include a few untranslatable phrases to keep em on their tippiest of toes, like "Minkey Doc.", "maricon HIV/AIDS Researcher", "AIDS, Inc.", "Der Fuhrer" etc.

claus

It is Danish. Jeg er fra Koebenhavn, hvilket er grunden til, at jeg forstaar svensk, men brevet var skrevet paa dansk, hvilket jeg vidste du maatte kunne forstaa. Finnish is a beautiful language, but I think until we've got some really dangerous belief systems to discuss and secretly promote, we'd better keep it in English

George

And "HIV is not the cause of AIDS" is NOT dangerous enough?

I understand that that construct is in fact the opposite of a *belief system*, and that *promoting* one (any one) is something I am certain neither of you would do -- in Danish, Finnish, Babylonian, Sanskrit, Ugaritic, Urdu, Yoruba, Ibibio, Thai (with its matriarchal, totally weird orthography) or any other language spoken by men and women, living or dead -- but still.

George

I have no idea how many actual, different languages there are or have been on this strange planet I sometimes think I inhabit, but the number is pretty big and the different languages pretty different often in syntax, grammar, etc.

And yet, we all suppose that whatever is said, in whatever language at whatever time and place, expresses exactly the same range of emotion and experience.

The genetic code may be a universal language of life, but human language is the best proof we have that everybody is either the same, or an undifferentiable part of the same hypercontinuum.

Celia Farber

My father (who speaks over 20 languages)would disown me if he knew I had looked at Danish and called it Swedish, to a Dane!

Heavens. I am sorry.

But may I explain Claus: My father learned Norwegian first (in North Carolina in the 1940s)and then married a Swede, (my mother, Ulla) and also speaks Danish, sort of. At times, when we're with friends and all having a bit too much fun, it all becomes a kind of fusion language, which I call Scandihoovian. Without fail, as the night wears on, the wine flows and song breaks out... my father's Swedish rises an octave and morphs into Norwegian, and we just sort of keep going. Just as it crosses over, it becomes inexplicably funny. Norwegian spoken at a high pitch by a 76 year old Southern American man is something apparently so unique and funny that Swedish TV has made a documentary about it. Were we not at war on all fronts of consciousness, we could have all kinds of fluffy fun talking about these life-affirming things.

But back to my defense... Danish...more so to the American ear than Norwegian OR Swedish, is of course unmistakable. It is dignified and sort of bitter. I want to say in parting that I am wild about Denmark, Danish people, the Danish Prime Minister (!!) and pretty much all Danish men, who are perfect as far as I can tell.

I didn't want to sound like a besservisser by saying "that's not the King's Swedish!" and didn't read it close enough (the first time)to realize that its quality meant it was written by a native speaker. Then there's the whole business of your umlauts and ours, and these hopeless keyboards missing so many letters...

Please forgive me and please don't take this laziness of mine as indication of other intellectual faults.

Now, back to our nightmare, made so much more bearable by the lyricism of writers such as Claus, George and others.

One of the worst things about AIDS when we're gotten past the corpses, is how shoddy the language is. That's always a sign of a malignant orthodoxy. (Orwell, all pages.)

Celia Farber

I know we're supposed to be talking about AIDS, AIDS, AIDS as they called it in "Team America," but one last thing about Scandinavian Competition. In 1941, in the local bookstore in Greensboro, the same Norwegian book cost fifty cents less than the equivalent Swedish book, so my father had to buy the Norwegian one. He'd specified that he wanted a book to teach him whatever language Ingrid Bergman spoke. This being America back when it was sentient, the clerk knew Bergman's language was Swedish, but the boy (my father) was nonetheless fifty cents short, so off he went with the Norwegian book, learning his first of many languages... as a way to pick up women, biensur.

And why not?

It meant I got born, and without me, John Moore, Laurie Garret, Nathan Geffen and friends would have little or no way to measure depravity and badness in AIDS journalism.

George

Dignified? Danish? Hrummph, Ms. Farber. *I* was in Copenhagen once and damned if I could order a decent ale without getting a stinking eel. Furrners with their furren languages always make real Americans madder than hell.

And makes them afraid almost as much as their worst nightmares of sexual inadequacy that are so strangely and invertedly accepted by the very envy hate duality it is directed against and that engulfs their psyche along with all the other pathologies that go with their identity/preference complex and a society that as the earthly poet Ed Dorn put it, has "entrapment as it's sole activity."

Goerge

Ms. Farber,

I have just this moment realized, silly me, that this is the first time I have had the pleasure of making your blogospherical acquaintance, and the very first time you have ever addressed me directly, AND the first time since my own beautiful daughter said those very words concerning a certain lyrical quality she perceived me to possess so many, many years (if not aeons)ago, it seems.

I am knocked off my socks, as you say, by the compliment.

Gad, Zooks!

Claus

Ms. Farber

I am in no wise offended, by your discretion in not correcting my 'Swedish', especially since I so boldly rated your English. But I must hasten to say, in order to save you from the thunder gathering I'm sure on your father's brow as I write, that there are no 'umlauts' in written Danish. My problems with foreign keyboards, as well as your ditto with recognizing the language, are due in their entirety to the omission of the last three letters uniquely found in the Danish alphabet. Those letters, I add for the edification of people like George, whose understanding of langauge is obviously limited to the universal genetic code, represent contractions of 'ae' 'oe' and 'aa'.

The reason why he was not able to order his usual plebeian beverage in the capital of the oldest still existing monarchy in the world is that the sound made by the 'oe' combination, and which makes up half the Danish word for 'ale' is well beyond his vocal range.
Like any good American, therefore, he resorted to the mangled remnants of the English language spoken in the colonies, who at their own cultural peril severed their ties with the old world not so long ago - by our reckoning.

On the perfection of Danish men, Ms. Farber's Circean flattery will not turn this particular specimen into a pig, since in my experience it is easily reconciled with the profound observations made by the visiting George. The uneasy feelings of sexual inadequacy we inflict on superstitious strangers is merely the fear projecting on itself of being infected with the virus that gets Danish men voted the most boring in Europe - year after year.
Ms. Farber I suspect knows this, as presumably she knows, that woman loves the child in man, or in terms of the real world outside the ideal realm of 'poesie': his weakness, her strength.

Which brings me to George's hopelessly romantic notions of languages in an undifferentiated hypercontinuum.
Come to Bangkok, young man, and re-experience the chaos-gulf in which flows the semantic waters of the word 'love' on and on towards the black caves where your lantern will no longer show you up or down or the way back to the hypercontinuum of. . . man

The Danish prime minister, by the way, is very short, sort of in between George Bush and Ahmadinejad.

George

Claus,

If I was indeed a "young man" (or even a slightly younger one) I would take you up on your offer in a millisec or less. And in fact am not unacquianted with the delights BKK has to offer.

There is *only* the undifferentiable (not undifferentiated) hypercontinuum (cf. my old friend David Bohm's excellent inquiries into its properties that he calls the "wholeness of the implicate order".)

So sad *he* ain't around today too, along with the mightiest of Maxs. Things we dare not speak of in scientific circles might be different if Delbruck had not passed when he did.

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