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Killer Bikes in Amsterdam

/ Chris White / 16 Comments

As Emily and I continue our life stories, pursuing adventures and widening our perspectives through the blessings of travel, it becomes inevitable that we will occasionally experience the “down-side” of otherwise great experiences. It’s kinda like having a great big bowl of Southern pinto-beans with some good ole chow-chow and some hot buttered cornbread – Newton’s third law (every action has an equal-opposite reaction) will forever be relevant.

When you think of Amsterdam, your mind can’t help but to conjure up certain well-known images. Usually, it’s the canals lined by 17th century row houses or perhaps it’s the colorful tulip fields, big chunky windmills, unruly Vikings with tangled hair, or maybe its of famous artists such as Van Gogh and Rembrandt. Of late, we might be more interested in what they do or smoke in the “red light district”.

What about your first instincts of Amsterdam? Have warm and fuzzy thoughts of millions and millions of bicycles ever been your first instinct? If so, you’re an asshole and you really need to grow the hell up and buy a car. Uhm, just kidding…ok, well, no I’m not.

Do you remember being a kid and laughing your guts out when your best friend wrecked his bicycle in the most insane way? I’m no longer ashamed to admit it because I now know that I’m not the only insensitive bastard out there who laughs out loud at other people’s crashes. The Germans, imagine this, actually invented a special word for the act of deriving pleasure from the misfortune of others – schadenfreude! The gal or guy who invented that word probably spent time vacationing in Amsterdam.

Pretty much everyone in the whole world hates bicyclists. If, however, you’re reading this blog from a distant planet who’s government already sterilized all of your fellow beings who were into bicycle riding a millennia ago, and you cannot comprehend the emotions shared by beings on your sister planet, just imagine on Christmas Day giving your precocious 6 year old son a real police badge, an assault rifle, three loaded magazines, a police car and a full tank of gasoline. The child you once thought you loved would do some pretty awful things right? Well that same child, after leaving prison, now has exactly what it takes to be a great cyclist. Just sayin.

A typical daily conversation in Amsterdam:

Tourist in Amsterdam: “Jesus freakin Christ! This 25 foot wide sidewalk is super nice but these asshole cycling sadists run me down every time I try to walk on it!“

Cyclist in Amsterdam: “Euupid Tseuurist! Stey uun yor tinee 2 feet svidevalk you dum dum, dis red painted zuper highvay is only for uun cyclists!”

Tourist in Amsterdam: “Screw you, Dutch asshole, I’m a f***ing American. We invented oxygen and you’re using way more of it than I’m comfortable with at the moment; plus, the word is actually TOURIST, not TSEUURIST! We probably invented that too.

Cyclist in Amsterdam: CRASH, OWW, OH F**K! “Euupid American, oh vell, more red paints for uun bicycle zuper highvay. Um de hur de hur de hur”.

It all makes complete sense when you factor in the enormous amount of marijuana being smoked in this city. Hell, even if you don’t smoke weed, you can get completely stoned out of your mind just by walking around town…any part of the city, not just the red light district. And if you’re riding a bike at 15 mph, it’s much like a continuous “shotgun”. But, trust me, those evil-doers on two wheels are definitely doing some shady stuff.

No shit, bicycles in Amsterdam are killing people and the world is asleep! Where’s Pol Pot when you really need him? Dutch sources report that in 2017, fatalities from bicycles exceeded those from cars. Yet the Dutch government seems to be doing everything they can to make things worse. They’ve built more than 500 kilometers of bike paths in the city – the most in the world.

What else? The city charges cars 5 Euros per hour to park a car while bikes litter up every bridge, canal bank, tree row, and front porch at no cost. They’re not using fuel so who’s paying for those miles and miles of red colored bicycle super highways – yeup, you guessed it. The car drivers are paying almost $7 bucks a gallon for gas, I’m guessing the sole source of funding for yet more and more miles of those fancy paved red carpets for this entitled group of serial killers on wheels.

Who do they think is gonna keep up those systems when they finally exterminate the last car driver and frighten off the last pedestrian? Seriously, this place literally has these things called “parking flats” which are essentially parking garages for bicycles which can hold between 2500 and 6000 bicycles. Used by commuters who might take the train into the city for work then grab their two-wheeled death machine from the “bike flat” then ride the extra distance to work. Bikes are a big deal in this place.

If you run a traffic signal, by car, in Amsterdam, the ticket cost is $240 euros. That’s a lotta jack. Are there traffic signals for the dreaded bicycles? Nope! How much sense does it make to replace hundreds of thousands of law-abiding car owners with an equal number of outlaw bicycle villains whom, as a group, have no intention to share those fancy red carpets with anyone else and who’re not contributing a single red cent financially to the machine that makes the whole damn thing work?

This place is so crazy over bicycles, they actually created a “bicycle Mayor” specifically to liaise with cycle groups. Yes, they actually have professional “bicycling” groups. The Nazis were looking for something to do after the big war so it seemed a natural fit. They just changed their names to fit in – Hans Hess could instantly become known as Venom Dingersloot and suddenly he can rule the entire world – only this time people are taking him seriously.

The “Mayor of Mayhem”, I’ll call her, decided that Amsterdam needed even more bike lanes and paths and that they should all be covered with roofs so riders outfits don’t get wet while cycling in the rain. Blood is fine; it’s the rain that sucks. Yeup!

Also reported was the fact that cars get 44% of available public parking space while bikes, used for more than 60% of local journeys, get only 11% of the available parking space. Seems horrific doesn’t it? I wonder how much larger in size, percentage wise, a car is over a bicycle? Would it matter?

We’re told that bicycles outnumber people in Amsterdam by 1.2 million. Literally, you stand at the edge of the red bike-lane for 10 minutes waiting for a quick opportunity to cross; the bikes number in the dozens coming from both directions – never stopping, seamlessly never ending, and certainly never slowing down or attempting anything mimicking courteousness.

Last year the city of Amsterdam recovered over 5000 bicycles from just one canal they were dredging. After cleaning them up and reconditioning them, the city of Amsterdam donated them to a 3rd world country. I’m trying hard to find out which country got them so I can avoid it in our future travels.

Amsterdam is often held up by public transport advocates as a modern, progressive city that accommodates cars, trams, canal boats, cyclists and pedestrians with ease but the image is at odds with reality. What is obvious from all this? When you allow one particular public interest group to dominate anything…anything at all, it will feed and grow itself at the expense of every other group. Schadenfreude…I’m really liking this word!

Foes

/ Chris White / Leave a comment

Thank you Fate for all my wonderful foes. Am I being facetious? No, not really. I won’t lie though, I do wish everyone would like me.

Am I all that different from the rest of you in that regard? I really don’t know the answer to that, I’m just assuming that the desire to be liked is consistent among all of us.

I will say that it definitely hurts my feelings when I find out someone doesn’t like me, especially when it’s someone I respect or someone I’ve invested a lot of myself into. In retrospect, however, what could be more inspiring or motivating than an outright enemy or competitor? They keep us sharp don’t they?

People without foes cannot imagine the passions that burn within those of us who do – the fire being constantly kindled by people whose only real goal in life,  it seems, is to subvert the goals of others.

A wise older man told me once that “most people don’t care if you do well, they just don’t like it when you’re doing better than they’re doing.” If you count yourself as a hard worker, a creative type, detail oriented, a smart cookie, or maybe just lucky as hell, someone out there is going to hate you for whatever it is that sets you apart or is perceived by them to elevate your status above their own.

Thankfully, the laws of selection have likely killed off a good bit of that asshole DNA over the life-span of humanity. Our “old school” ancestors weren’t as obliged to take as much lip as we are these days and swords aren’t as readily accepted as a part of daily dress as they once were.

But despite all that early character-cleansing activity, there’s still some decently pathetic people out there continuing to fertilize prick-eggs. They just keep coming. Just because one may die, you’re never going to be out of the woodwork. If you are a do’er or a leader or a facilitator – there’s always another sniper out there ready to put you in his/her cross-hairs.

Batman-Villains-2-600x400

The jealousy gene is present inside all of us, especially me. If I meet someone who seems to have it all together, living the easy life, I’ll admit that I sometimes feel a bit of jealousy. For a fleeting moment, not really knowing the back story of that person, I unwittingly think that I want what he or she has.

The key words here are “seems” and “think”. But not everything is always as it seems. Our jealousies are oftentimes out of sync with the person’s real life – perhaps they’re living a life that we wouldn’t want for ourselves at all – we just haven’t seen it naked yet.

Some people, though, have a jealousy gene which is Enormously Dominant. Let’s just call this condition E.D. for now.  These people are genetically engineered to feel threatened by another’s outward successes. They are so consumed with jealousy that they actually believe that your successes (big or small), undermine their own abilities.

Maybe they believe you will be favored or loved more than them. Perhaps they have a tinge of mental illness – your popularity or success emasculates their own self-perceptions. These folks are driven to try and derail you. It’s not personal, it’s their E.D...

dr-evil

We’re really never going to know the exact reasons why these insecure folks will sell their souls to undercut your efforts, or why they are drawn to careers in selling school supplies; we just have to recognize them for the value that they bring to our lives.

Haters don’t necessarily hate you, it’s far more likely that they actually hate themselves. You become a reflection of what’s missing in their own mirror and a painful reminder of their own inadequacies.

To sum it all up, backstabbers and haters are not going away. If you lose one, you will get another. Why not elevate their status in a way that brings about positivity instead of stress? First learn to recognize them, then learn to appreciate them for the challenges they help you overcome. Perception is reality, they say.

FOES

Thank you Fate for foes! I hold mine dear

As valued friends. He cannot know

The Zest of life who runneth here

His earthly race without a foe.

I saw a prize. “Run,” cried my friend;

“’Tis yours to claim without a doubt.”

But ere I half-way reached the end,

I felt my strength was giving out.

My foe looked on while I ran;

A scornful triumph lit his eyes.

With that perseverance born in man,

I nerved myself, and won the prize.

All blinded by the crimson glow

Of Sin’s disguise, I tempted Fate.

“I knew thy weakness?” sneered my foe,

I saved myself, and balked his hate.

For half my blessings, half my gain,

I must thank my trusty Foe;

Despite his envy and disdain,

He serves me well where’er I go.

So may I keep him to the end,

Nor may his enmity abate;

More faithful than the fondest friend,

He guards me ever with his hate.

W. Wilcox

When the Levee Breaks

/ Chris White / 15 Comments

I don’t know about you but I often catch myself drifting away from the present with random unrelated thoughts. Many times those random thoughts evolve into blogs just like this one. Just as often though, my brain might be interrupted by some random Led Zeppelin song lyrics or stupid childhood memories or even grilled cheese sandwiches. I should probably donate my brain to science.

Having significant hearing loss, I probably don’t always hear what I think I hear. As such, I hope I’m not always held 100% responsible for some of the things I think I’ve heard throughout the day then later regurgitated with some “slight” differences.

The combination of my incompetent little brain, malfunctioning ears, and fifty-plus year-old eyes means that you never know exactly what you’re going to get from me. The saddest thing of all is that half of these blogs could literally be reactions to problems that never existed in the first place.

I can’t, of course, possibly know how many other people drift away like I do but I have to assume that everyone does it or else I might feel like I’m embarrassing myself right now. It helps me to imagine that for the most part, there’s really only one thing that distinguishes my random thoughts from anyone else’s. That would of course be the arrogance with which writers assume that some other person(s) might actually be entertained by their stupid stories.

One thing I can’t seem to let go of lately is the feeling I get when I hear various people espousing their political views. Political divisiveness is not new, it’s just different, louder, meaner and far more inflammatory than I’ve ever seen before now.

Today, it’s definitely en vogue to feel utter hatred for political candidates and it’s far more common than uncommon for the media to inundate us and indoctrinate pure negativity and bias than ever before. The divide between Walter Cronkite and Sean Hannity or Dan Rather is like the Grand Canyon; they’re not even in the same industry.

A quick example: in the 60’s, we didn’t choose our news based on its political bias matching our own. It was just called “news” and everyone trusted it to be “news” (drops mic).

Disclosure: I consider myself to be an extremist moderate. I’m dead in the middle socially but with a fiscally conservative slant. I’m one of those weirdo’s who think we should do everything we can afford for our elderly, invalids, and handicapped and provide a temporary, not permanent, leg-up for those of us who are having a hard time for any reason.

I also believe we should be able to afford whatever it is we’re trying to do for people and if we reach a stage where we can’t, we should cut something else less important from an otherwise balanced budget. I do not believe in creating tremendous debt like the situation we’ve been in now for decades.

There’s an overwhelming feeling of obviousness to me that others don’t seem to share. If roughly half the citizens of the country support one party and subscribe to its core beliefs and roughly half the citizens of the country support the opposite party and subscribe to its core beliefs then logic should dictate three (3) very obvious things:

  • The majority of the members of each party are not as far away from each other as they think;
  • There are very smart people on both sides of each isle so you cannot rule out that each could potentially have good arguments in support for their beliefs; and,
  • There being a wide range of differing levels of intelligence, socio-economic, gender and regional demographics making up the members of each group, we must assume that there really is no specific right or wrong answer to all political ideology because examples of each have positively and negatively impacted each group’s members to the point where each respective groups’ members want to fight about it.

There are incredibly wealthy democrats and republicans. There are incredibly poor democrats and republicans. There are incredibly smart and dumb democrats and republicans. Each group’s members, despite what you hear on television, are essentially made up of the same types of people and both groups make up nearly identical halves of the registered voters in this country – the middle swinging from side to side depending upon the platform du jour.

Said differently, what happens to be the right thing today might not have been the right thing in the past nor the right thing in our future. Generally, most people actually find themselves situated somewhere just left or just right of this imaginary line of right and wrong.

Regardless of that center majority, each party is pushed to try and convince its supporters to pick a side and to do their level best to scare the dickens out of those people to the point of polarizing everyone.

Hmm, What about that Led Zeppelin song, “Good Times Bad Times”? Is it just me or is anyone else confused about the girl leaving him but then he says they will never part?  

Good Bad Times

People pick sides because they fear the extremism represented on both isles – which is the very thing the opposition wants you to know about the other side. The world and America, in particular, is organic – not fixed.

We are learning the effects of yesterday’s political decisions today and tomorrow our children will be learning about the choices our elected leaders are making today. It’s our children who are left behind to clean up our mistakes and it’s our children too who are left behind to ride whatever wake of success that trails behind us.

This country has rode enormous waves of prosperity and it has suffered the hopelessness of economic despair. When the country has suffered, we’ve risen to the challenge by creating safety nets. When the country has soared, we’ve invested in infrastructure and added chairs to the table.

Along its way, this country has matured and altered the way it treats and represents its citizens. Maybe not everyone of course, but enough to steer the direction of the country nonetheless.

But, regardless of any of that, we should not be surprised to discover that people will always be left behind. No society is perfect and no society, however determined it is to be perfect, will ever be.

We cannot make policy on the fallacy that it will perfect that which cannot be perfected. There is a balancing act between economic prosperity and opportunity for entrepreneurial investment against the weight of humanity itself. If you concentrate on civics then you lose on economics. If you focus on economics, benevolence takes a second seat. It is the way of things.

There’s this Led Zeppelin song, “When the Levee Breaks”… I love the drum groove in that song. John Bonham was an awesome drummer! Oh, sorry. Let’s get back on track.

FeatImage-Bonham2

One problem is that ALL of us are horribly but perfectly made to be biased. It is a human survival mechanism. Our brains are simply wired with greater sensitivity to unpleasant news than positive news.

Our capacity to weigh negative input more heavily than positive input most likely evolved for a good reason – to keep us out of harm’s way. From the dawn of human history, our very survival depended on our skill at dodging danger.

The brain developed systems that would make it unavoidable for us not to notice danger and thus, respond accordingly. All well and good in the jungle but having a brain apparatus super-sensitive to negativity means that bad-news bias, at work in every sphere of our lives at all times, can alter our realities to the point of insanity.

If you want comedy, OK, how about some bad-news biased comedy. You want news, no problem, here’s some negative news for you; you’ll love it. How about dinner conversations based upon biased bad-news learned from every source except the real one?

One half of the country pays attention to biased news that leans left and the other half of the country pays attention to biased news that leans right. We’re tuned in to institutional bias rather than being tuned in to each other. If we’d just listen to each other, we’d find that we’re really not all that different.

Whatever is said or done by a person from either political party, the reporting agency will edit and peel away the things that doesn’t fit their agenda and emphasize the parts that do, sometimes completely out of context. Whatever gets your attention sells. For the media, that’s all they really care about. Real news can be boring – you can’t run a profitable business trying to sell real news anymore.

As individuals we generally, but not always, will have two opinions about everything. The first opinion we have is the one that we never or rarely share with anyone. That opinion is how we truthfully feel about any given situation.

The second opinion we will have is our public opinion which is carefully crafted not to offend and generally, but not always, exactly aligned with our given party. Then, of course, there are those with only one opinion.

Just so we’re being straight up with each other, if you always only have one opinion on every issue then you’re probably too ignorant to vote. Just sayin’.

Oh well, I don’t want to put a bustle in your hedgerow but people really need to get a life these days. Whatever is happening in Washington D.C. whether there’s a democrat in office or a Republican, you’re not going to be allowed to know enough about any given subject in order to form a logical opinion anyway. The media is only going to report the part that sells the most copies and they’re going to seriously spin that small part of it in order to sell a few more.

The issue itself will be so heavily marred in red tape so that you could never understand why it happened that way and the facts will be muddied by the existence of classified elements which you cannot possibly be told.

You’re going to be provided with a smidgen of details which are painted and embellished to the point where it no longer resembles the truth. Therefore, your opinion, no matter how eloquent your delivery, sounds completely stupid to the people who actually do know and possibly brilliant to those others, who like you/me, don’t.

“Dazed and confused for so long it’s not true…Lots of people talkin’, few of them know”. What is it with the melancholy chords anyway? Do you think Led Zeppelin members were doing drugs back in the day or were they like Nostradamus – like, foreseeing the future/present? Hmm.

R.214 LED ZEP PAGE VIOLIN BOW

In the end, none of us are really qualified to question what happens in the District of Columbia. We can have opinions as to whether liberalism or conservatism is a better or worse solution for any given set of circumstances but we’re never going to really know the whole truth about the other stuff. Yes, yes, there are always signs on the wall, but you know sometimes words have two meanings.

Legitimately, either direction can be the right direction depending upon the specific set of circumstances. Likewise, neither direction works as a system in and of itself. Too much a good thing is never a good thing.

Push liberalism too far and you get communism; push the right wing agenda too far and you may pull a Nazi out of the bag. The powers are made to be balanced because they need to be balanced in order for our country to work as it was engineered to work. We’ve seen the atrocities committed by both polar extremes – so who wants to give up prosperity and freedom for either of those two bullshit alternatives?

There’s a lady who’s sure, all that glitters is gold, and she’s buying a stairway to heaven. I don’t know her personally but I can tell you that if she’d just focus on the area somewhere between the stratus’ of gold and pot metal, she might make a better investment. It is so easy to deceive.

Smear on a little paint and spike it with a little lead and voila. Viewed from a distance the pot metal looks just like gold and it weighs the same too. That is the lure of political parties but it’s just a façade. It’s never exactly what you think.

There’s an enormous effort from both sides of the isle to convince you that their path is the true stairway to heaven. In my world there are lots of stairways and many correct paths. Gold too, is not just an element on a periodic table. It’s a condition, it’s a place, it’s a relationship, and it’s a state of mind. As Alaskan’s are fond of saying, “Gold is where you find it.”

Stairway to heaven

If there’s one thing I could convey here that I hope will resonate with people is that we should try and respect, not necessarily agree, with people who don’t share our opinions. We’re losing our ability to show respect to others who may be different.

Deference is no longer fashionable. I want you to respect my views/sexuality/race/identity/etc., but it’s completely unfashionable for me to respect you in return. This one-way street of acceptance will, if not cured, incubate a future filled with hate and intolerance all over again.

If you are allowed to hate me, I am within my rights to hate you back, right? Isn’t that the way of the world today? I would hope that we’ve moved beyond that particular stage of humanity, or is it inhumanity?

On one hand our society has done a great job of learning to embrace people who look or act different, but we’ve completely lost our ability to embrace people who think different. Today, we celebrate differences on television and in movies and even parades. Kids who feel different about their sexuality no longer feel as if they have to conform to anything. Different races and different ethnic backgrounds blend and assimilate back and forth to the point where the word “cultural appropriation” has actually become a subject in college.

In my younger days, culture was something that only old and frightened white people felt deserved protection. Now the majority of people who want to insulate and protect their culture are ethnic groups. The desire to homogenize is no longer as prevalent as it once was. Ethnic peoples used to pray for a day where they could just be called Americans, now they’d much prefer a richer more diversified cultural identity.

Ironically, they have become that way only because they now have the freedoms and the acceptance that allows them to concentrate on themselves for a change, and not a broader more inclusive goal as once was necessary.

Coalescence is to the modern American joke what the Pollock was when I was twelve years old. Oh how the world, and I, have changed – for the good.

The irony is that the better things become, the more selfish we’re allowed to be, and the more faults we find in the world because the world is not suiting our individual goals anymore. Things may be great for my community, my state, my gender, my race, or my culture but its not so great for moi. So, I should start a go-fund-me page in order to change all this shit to accommodate my blossoming individuality.

Meanwhile at the coffee shop, I read that Republicans want to outlaw go-fund-me accounts. Should I write another blog about it or just keep my mouth shut and hope they don’t shut down the one I started to buy myself a fishing boat cancer policy?  Why am I so cynical these days?

How are we so systematically being pushed away from each other? What around us is so deliberately tapping into our brains innate sensitivity to fear and danger? I think I know but maybe I don’t.

Being that I am not the god of knowledge, I think it’s time for me to ramble on then allow you to figure that one out for yourself. Hmm, this reminds of another Led Zeppelin song.

ramble on

News Makes You Fat

/ Chris White / 1 Comment

Along my own crooked path, I’ve painfully recognized a few of the hazards of this so-called American overabundance of things. We don’t always recognize it because it’s our ‘normal’, but we’re a very fortunate bunch of people in the big scheme of things. Having traveled all over the world, I’ve been witness to how quite a few of our neighbors live. While there are rich and poor people in every place you go, it seems there is a much bigger divide between the rich and poor in most other places.

Statistically, our moderately low income and bottom-middle class demographic in the U.S. are living far superior lifestyles here in the U.S. than how our neighbor countrymen are living abroad. Most people here never travel to see how others live. We don’t know.

Even though the media will tell us our middle class is shrinking, and it may be true for all I know, we have a very large middle class and our middle class is wealthy in comparison to the middle earners in many other countries. We’re also the biggest exporter of food in the world, exporting enormous quantities of corn and wheat and meat; “feeding the world” we like to say.

Simultaneously, we’re also over-stuffing our own pie-holes. This is why we are also leading the world in obesity and diabetes. Americans or carnivorous consumers of everything we see, whether its food, entertainment, or information. With the advent of social media and news-on-the-go, we’ve also become the leading consumers of information which has led to all sorts of unintended outcomes.

Most of us do not yet understand that news is to the mind what GooGoo’s are to the body. News can be very addictive and super easy to digest, much like Chinese food, leaving us hungry for more in an hour. The media feeds us small tasty morsels of trivial matter, snippets, and tidbits that have little or nothing to do with our daily lives and which require absolutely no brain power to process at all.

Unlike reading books and magazine articles, which require a little bit of brain power, we can swallow limitless quantities of news flashes or political innuendo, which are like bright-colored candies for the mind. Today, we have reached the same point in relation to toxic news and information that we faced 20 years ago with regard to food. We are just now beginning to recognize the real toxicity of news.


News misleads, oftentimes intentionally, but most often as a result of confirmation biases and group think. We watch the news stations that we know, up-front, will most likely present or frame their stories in ways that agree with our own views and opinions, such that all of the information we consume does nothing but to confirm what we already believe we know.

From the perspectives of someone whose job it is to deliver our news, they know their audiences and work hard to creatively frame their reporting in ways that are congruent with the expectations of their audiences. In fact, I think it’s disrespectful to the real news reporters of our yesteryears to even call it news. It should be called entertainment, not news.

Actor Denzel Washington recently summed it up for us after the media ran a “fake news” story on him falsely claiming that he switched political support from Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump. “If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you do read it, you’re misinformed. So what a responsibility you all have — to tell the truth.” Washington exclaimed to the rabid pack of reporters gathered like starving hyena’s on the red carpet. “In our society, now it’s just who’s first — who cares, get it out there. We don’t care who it hurts. We don’t care who we destroy. We don’t care if it’s true, just say it, sell it. Anything you practice you’ll get good at — including BS.”

We as a society are not rational enough to be exposed to this modern psychology-driven press. Most of us grew up with responsible news anchormen like Walter Cronkite who was, at that time, touted as being the most trusted man on television. In my childhood, I learned that nightly television news was where I could get my daily doses of reality. But Walter is dead and so is unbiased news. Thus, we are woefully unprepared from a psychological sense to qualitatively analyze and filter out the kinds of biases that are common in news reporting today. Today’s news is designed to get ratings, not to educate or inform. 

Watching an airplane crash on television is going to change your attitude toward that risk, regardless of its real statistical probability. If you think you can compensate with the strength of your own inner contemplation, you would be sadly mistaken. Bankers and economists – who have enormously powerful incentives to compensate for news-borne hazards – have historically shown us that they cannot. The only solution: cut yourself off from news consumption entirely.

News today is mostly irrelevant. Out of the approximately 10,000 news stories you may have read or watched in the last 12 months, name one story that – because you consumed it – allowed you to make a better decision about a serious matter affecting your life, your career or your business. The point is: the consumption of modern news is totally immaterial to any of us aside from an occasional Amber Alert – which you can get on our smart phone. The sad reality; most of us would find it extremely difficult to recognize or decipher what is and isn’t worthwhile and meaningful information.

It’s much easier to recognize what’s new. The relevant versus the new is the fundamental battle of the current age. Media organizations want you to believe that news offers you some sort of a competitive cerebral advantage. Many of us totally fall for that great marketing ploy as it appeals to our egos. Some of us actually get anxious when we’re cut off from the constant flow of news – unable to enjoy a dinner or social situation without constant manipulations of our smart phones. In reality, news consumption produces a huge competitive disadvantage. The less news you consume, the bigger life advantage you have. Why?

News has absolutely zero real explanatory power. News items are mere bubbles of air popping on the undulating surface of a much deeper and complex world. Will the accumulation of tons of news-facts help you better understand our world? Sadly, no. The relationship is inverted. The important stories are non-stories: slow, powerful movements that develop below a shock-journalists’ radar but have a transformative effect like Rock and Roll, hippies, or frozen food.

If more news information leads one to higher economic success, we’d expect journalists to be at the top of the economic pyramid.

News Makes You Fat, Chris White

The more “news factoids” you digest, the less of the big picture you will understand. If more news information leads one to higher economic success, we’d expect journalists to be at the top of the economic pyramid. That’s not generally the case except for the journalists who tease our imaginations with fantastic works of fiction like Harry Potter or Star Wars.

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News can also be toxic to our bodies. It constantly triggers the human limbic system. Shocking stories spur the immense releases of cortisol. This deregulates your immune system and inhibits the release of growth hormones. In other words, your body finds itself in a state of chronic stress. High cortisol levels cause impaired digestion, lack of growth (cell, hair, bone), nervousness and susceptibility to infections.

The other potential side-effects include fear, aggression, tunnel-vision, desensitization and weight gain. Now you know; it’s amazingly unfair to be forced into watching sexy news anchors on television with perfect bodies who’s job it is to make us bald and fat by force-feeding us sugar-coated stress balls.

News also increases cognitive errors. News feeds the mother of all cognitive errors: confirmation bias. In the words of Warren Buffett: “What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact.” News exacerbates this flaw of humanity. We become prone to overconfidence, take stupid risks and misjudge opportunities.

It also exacerbates another cognitive error: the story bias. Our brains crave stories that make sense – even if they don’t correspond to reality. Today’s journalism proposes simplistic answers for complex situations. There’s no time to explain, it’s just easier to offer us viewers whatever explanations that both entertain us and fit the agenda. The news industry has, in some ways, reverse engineered the human brain and developed an information product which was bio-engineered especially for us. It manipulates our senses much like Genetically Modified Food’s (GMO’s) have been designed in labs to taste better. 

News actually inhibits normal thinking. Thinking requires concentration. Concentration requires uninterrupted time. News pieces are specifically engineered to interrupt you. They are like viruses that steal attention for their own purposes. News makes us shallow thinkers. But it’s worse than that. News, as we know it today, severely affects memory.

There are two types of memory, long-term and short-term memory. Our long-term memory’s capacity is nearly infinite, but our so-called working memory is limited to a certain amount of slippery data. The path from short-term to long-term memory is directly through a sort of narrow choke-point in the brain, but anything you want to fully understand must pass through it. If this passageway is disrupted, nothing gets through.


Because news disrupts our concentration, it weakens overall comprehension. Online news has an even worse impact. In a 2001 study, two scholars in Canada showed through the results of their study that comprehension declines as the number of hyperlinks in a document increases. Why? Because whenever a link appears, your brain has to at least make the choice not to click, which in itself is distracting. Online news is an intentional interruption system. Online news works much like a drug. As stories develop, we want to know how they continue and end. With hundreds of arbitrary storylines in our heads, this craving is increasingly compelling and hard to ignore.

Most news consumers – even if they might have been avid book readers – have lost the ability to absorb lengthy articles or books. After reading four or five pages they get tired, their concentration vanishes, and they become restless. It’s not because they got older or their schedules became more onerous. It’s because the physical structure of their brains has changed. This phenomenon is constantly proven every time I write a blog that is more than two pages long. Information is no longer a scarce commodity; attention is.

Now, I realize that it may be my writing skills that are lacking, or perhaps my subject matter a bit too geeky or boring for most, but you’d want to believe that the people closest to me would just read these things to appease me or even make me feel as is I may be a better writer than I am. At this point, I can literally say anything I want, because we’re now way beyond the word-count where my typical fan actually stops reading altogether. It may be pathetic and sad, but my reality proves my theory. Modern bio-engineered news has changed us – maybe for good. 

But this isn’t about me, it’s about all of us. Modern news is also killing our creativity. This is one reason that mathematicians, novelists, composers, song writers, and entrepreneurs often produce their most creative and productive works at a young age. Their young and pliable brains enjoy a wide, uninhibited space that emboldens them to come up with and pursue novel ideas.

I don’t think I know a single person with a truly creative mind who is also a news junkie – not a writer, not a composer, mathematician, physician, scientist, musician, designer, architect or painter. My own sister, an accomplished artist and creativity sensei, could care less about news. She inspires me to un-clutter my mind all the time. On the other hand, I know a bunch of boring and non-creative minds who consume news like meth-addicts.

Society needs journalism – but in a different way than we’re getting it. Investigative journalism is always relevant. We need reporting that polices our institutions and uncovers truth. We need warnings of relevant danger and notices of pertinent  information like obituaries, new restaurant openings, and 10 mile-long yard sales. But important findings don’t have to arrive in the form of news. Long journal articles and in-depth books are good, too.


News only shows the exception to the rule, never the rule itself. An example might be the Michael Brown/Ferguson, Missouri news story. How many people have been hurt, cops killed, stores looted, cars set on fire and collective property damage calculated as a result of a reputed criminal who robbed a store and died while trying to kill a police officer? The toxic ratings-oriented news of today exacerbates ones feelings of institutional racism and disillusionment with government because its profitable to report the news in that way. It doesn’t “pay” these days to report facts. Fact’s just get in the way of a good story. 

A car drives across a bridge, and suddenly the bridge collapses. What does modern news media focus on? The car. What direction it was traveling. The driver. Where he came from. Where he was headed. How he survived his near-death experience, his many struggles to cope with his new physical limitations, and frustrated attempts to walk unsupported at his September wedding.

But all that stuff is completely irrelevant. What is relevant? The structural stability of that dang bridge! That’s the underlying risk that has been lurking, and could lurk in other bridges, right? But the car is flashy, it’s dramatic, the injured person is entertaining, his long recovery and efforts to walk down the isle unsupported is heart warming, and most importantly, it’s all news that’s cheap to produce. News leads us to walk around with the completely wrong risk-map in our heads.

No news is actually good news. Perhaps it’s time to hit the scales because you probably just gained 4 pounds reading this blog.