Motus Mentis

Today’s news carries a story about the motion picture industry’s seemingly intractable difficulties with illegal file-sharing. This is the same affliction that brought down the record business (and forced your humble correspondent to abdicate his career as a big-shot recording engineer and get a real job), although for the movie industry it is perhaps even more worrisome, as the cost of high-end movie-making has always been higher than that of record-making — more so now, perhaps, than ever.

A lot of clever people have tried to solve this problem, but so far without success; the real problem is that these industries have gone from producing easily protected physical objects (LPs, reels of film) to producing weightless and infinitely fungible packets of information. The only hope (and it is a faint and most likely futile one) lies not with technological advances, but moral and social change — as expressed, in the item linked above, by the director of worldwide anti-piracy operations for the Motion Picture Association of America, one John Malcolm:

If a person is a true movie lover, they will want to respect the art, the artists and the countless people behind the scenes who make the magic happen, Malcolm said.

And no true Scotsman puts sugar in his porridge. I used to be one of the people who “make the magic happen” myself; now I’m writing code for a living. If this forlorn hope is what the industry is counting on, they’d better brace for impact.

It seems the pork industry is not at all pleased with the term “swine flu”. I agree it is hardly a mellifluous name, but their objection is more practical than aesthetic; apparently they are concerned that it is depressing their market, even though you won’t catch the disease from eating pork. Given how poorly informed most people are about most things, they’re probably right.

We had already learned that two other groups who rarely see eye to eye about anything — Jews and Muslims — also dislike the name; they both have an skittish aversion to pigs, which they consider unclean and are forbidden to eat. (That nobody anywhere has suggested that swine flu is in fact clean, or should be eaten, least of all by them, doesn’t seem to matter; they simply don’t want to hear any talk at all of matters porcine, or be reminded that there even are such things as pigs, it seems.)

According to this news item, the pork-packers, giving up on educating the public as to the undiminished safety and nutritiousness of their scrumptious product, are taking another tack: they are trying to convince us that the term is actually a misnomer, and that this new flu has nothing to do with pigs at all:

“This flu is being called something that it isn’t, and it’s hurting our entire industry,” said Dave Warner, communications director for the National Pork Producers Council. “It is not a ‘swine’ flu, and people need to stop calling it that … they’re ruining people’s lives.”

This is audacious nonsense, of course: pigs are indeed a vector for this form of influenza, just as birds were for the “avian flu” a little while back — but you have to admire the industry’s feisty attitude, and that they are not about to be bullied around by mere facts. I expect they are actually well aware that the name is not just a capricious inaccuracy, and has a sturdy connection to the truth of the matter, but, as Mark Twain said, “Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.”

As several commenters have suggested, it’s time we had a “Name That Flu” contest. The pork producers have already offered an alternative:

Minnesota is the nation’s third-largest pig farming state, and its health experts said Wednesday they would be calling the illness “H1N1 novel flu” going forward.

” ‘Swine flu’ gives a connotation that really it shouldn’t have, and makes people wonder about eating pork,” said Minnesota Health Commissioner Dr. Sanne Magnan.

The European Union has followed suit.

“In order not to have a negative effect on our industry, especially under this crisis situation, we decided to call it ‘novel flu’ from now on,” said Androulla Vassiliou, the European commissioner for health.

The “novel flu”? That won’t do at all: the publishing industry is already up in arms about it.

Any ideas?

An item in the news today inquires as to the secret of a happy marriage. Well, I’ve been happily married since 1982, and have some thoughts on the subject.

A married couple are like two moving parts that must operate together, in constant contact, as a working machine. Unlike manufactured parts, however, they are somewhat irregularly shaped, and when they are brought together there is, inevitably, friction.

This can have two outcomes: either the parts are so mismatched as to be incompatible, interact destructively, and the apparatus flies apart, or, over time, the continuous engagement of the two parts smooths away the irregularites, and the machine settles into harmonious and productive operation.

The less friction, the better chance that the parts will manage, over time, gradually to reshape themselves to one another. How then, to provide the necessary lubrication? If there is a single piece of advice I’d give married couples, it is this: choose your battles.

There will always be disagreements: about home, money, travel, friends, food, entertainment, recreation, and a thousand other things. If you want your marriage to last, identify, sincerely and frugally, those things that really, really matter to you — the essential things that you would never be able to give up, or change about yourself, without deep and lingering resentment — and stand up for them. If you can do this honestly, in a spirit of love and generosity, the list will be short. Your spouse’s will be too. This list is also different for each of us, so no one-size-fits-all advice column can tell you what it contains. You have to figure it out for yourself, and it isn’t always easy.

For everything else, give way lovingly, cheerfully, and entirely without anger. You’ve already decided that these are the things that don’t really matter; they are certainly worth nowhere near as much as the happiness of a solid and loving marriage.

For those of us “of a certain age”, this swine flu outbreak (which is all over the news just now: see here, here, and here) is something of a madeleine, awakening memories that carry us all the way back to 1976, and the brief and forgettable presidency of Gerald R. Ford.

It was a strange and dreary time, the middle 1970’s: after the paroxysms and upheavals of the 60’s, and the agonies of Vietnam and Watergate, the nation was spent. The economy, enervated by “stagflation”, gasped for air; the major cities lay crime-ridden and bankrupt; and a rudderless popular culture drifted from fad to mindless fad, with the fashion industry, evidently relieved of all fealty to beauty, good taste, or even fundamental human dignity, creating monstrosities that still, even three decades later, evoke a frisson of horror. Ahead lay Son of Sam, the Hee Haw Honeys, and disco.

At the helm was Mr. Ford, a placid draft-horse of a man, who probably lives on in most people’s memories wearing a “Whip Inflation Now” button and bumping his head on something. In 1976, with an election looming and a wish, no doubt, to demonstrate dynamic leadership, he seized upon the death from influenza of a young Army man at Fort Dix as an occasion for decisive action. Mr. Ford, announcing an impending Swine Flu epidemic on the scale of the Black Death, began an aggressive, and enormously costly, national vaccination campaign. To his credit, the epidemic never materialized, but more than a few people seemed to die from the inoculations themselves. In the end the whole affair was judged, perhaps unfairly, to have been a colossal fiasco, and in November the nation showed Mr. Ford the door, preferring instead to order up four years of Jimmy Carter.

You can read the whole story here.

For those of you who have never clicked on the “why waka waka?” link on our sidebar, this site takes its name not from Pac-Man or Fozzie Bear, but from the lyrics to the song Coffin For Head Of State, by the great Nigerian musician and political activist Fela Kuti. Here’s a clip of the song. If you’d like to know more (and learn the song’s sad story) click the link.