Under The Table

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser October 2011)

“As far as income tax payments go, sources vary in their accounts, but a range of studies find that immigrants pay between $90 billion and $140 billion in Federal, State, and local taxes. And let us not forget the Social Security system. Recent studies show that undocumented workers sustain the Social Security system with as much as $7 billion a year. Let me repeat that: $7 billion a year.” Luis Gutierrez

Which seems to contradict…

“The Center for Immigration Studies found that illegal immigrants cost the United States taxpayer about $10 billion a year. A large part of that expense stems from the babies born each year to illegal immigrants.” Nathan Deal

Marcia and I both have web sites and use the interweb for research, marketing, entertainment, and communication with the world outside of Mendocino. Her office and mine are separated by a wall through which we occasionally shout at each other, though we can never be certain what the other person is shouting about until one or the other of us rises from his or her chair and walks around the corner to find out; or we send each other emails. It occurs to me that we could call each other on the phone, since we have separate lines, but we never do. That would feel silly.

We both have taken to scanning news synopses and articles on the interweb and exclaiming about various horrors and wonders and nonsense we discover. These exclamations can be heard through the wall and often elicit shouts of “What?” or may cause the hearer to rise and walk around the corner to find out what the exclaimer is exclaiming about. We are particularly fond of reports of recent studies by so-called scientists that may prove or disprove something that absolutely, trust me, does not need proving or disproving, though this lack of necessity never stops the studiers from carrying out their needless studies because, hey, in these difficult economic times what else have they got to do with their time and your money?

For instance, recent studies reported in Epidemiologic Reviews show that people who have been smoking marijuana are more than twice as likely as other drivers to crash their vehicles; and if a person has been smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol, the risk of crashing climbs higher. Imagine how much higher the risk would climb if that person was also talking on a cell phone and having sex.

“Genetic studies in Iceland have found that many of the women who were the founding stock of Iceland came from England and what is now France. Some were probably captured and carried off in Viking raids only forty generations ago.” Keith Henson

Is that a great study, or what? Those English and not-then-yet French women of only a thousand years ago were probably captured and carried off by Vikings and transported to Iceland, probably on boats, don’t you think? I would guess probably it was male Vikings who did the capturing and carrying because even only a thousand years ago I can’t imagine Viking women carrying off English women and women from what is now France but was then…what? France? And the words probably and some suggest that the English women and the women who, in time, would have been French, may not have been captured and carried off, but rather volunteered to go to Iceland or possibly arrived there accidentally to contribute their female traits to the Icelandic gene pool. And, I suppose, English and soon-to-be French men may have been captured and carried off, too. But that’s pure conjecture on my part.

“Harvard Medical School, the University of South Florida, and the American Psychiatric Association have all conducted studies showing that the earlier one begins gambling, the more likely one is to become an addicted, problem gambler.” Spencer Bachus

The implication of this quotation is that one could be addicted to gambling without the addiction being a problem, or one could be a problem gambler but not necessarily be addicted to gambling. I can see that. Sure.

Actually, and tragically, my uncle was problematically addicted to gambling to such an extreme that he committed suicide at age fifty rather than be murdered by the unscrupulous organization to which he owed over a million dollars. His death was a terrible blow to our family and inspired me to read several studies of compulsive gamblers, from which I learned things that may be true and were probably not talked about in those more recent studies conducted at Harvard and South Florida and by the psychiatrists. I was looking for something to explain my uncle’s death to me, something more meaningful than “the earlier one starts gambling” etc. And I found a description of a particular personality that fit my uncle exactly, and this description helped me to better understand my uncle’s fatal compulsion.

It seems that most seriously addicted gamblers are not so much hoping for the Big Win, though they may think they are, but rather they are constantly striving to put themselves in position for the Big Loss—irrefutable proof of their being big losers and unworthy of love. My uncle, an extremely successful attorney, could win with ease when he gambled with lower level gamblers, but it was in Las Vegas, in back rooms playing against high rolling mobsters, where he put his fortune on the line again and again until he lost everything.

“Studies have indicated there is a strong correlation between the shortages of nurses and morbidity and mortality rates in our hospitals.” Lois Capps

Here’s a recent favorite of mine. “A study of 33,000 Swedish women indicates that those who ate the most chocolate had the lowest chance of stroke. Women (not men) who ate 66 grams of chocolate per week, about a bar and a half, were 20 percent less likely to suffer a stroke than those who consumed eight grams or less a week, reports the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.”

Well, duh! My own studies show that more studies are done about chocolate than any other substance because chocolate is fun and easy to work with, participants in these studies love eating chocolate, and because the participants are so relieved to be eating chocolate without guilt and in the name of science, that they experience vastly increased sex drives and are much less prone to depression, heart attacks, cancer, and worrying about the future.

Interestingly, a recent parallel study indicates that a diet rich in fruit and vegetables may reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. However, most of the participants in this parallel study were also eating lots of chocolate, so no one can say with statistical certainty which of the tasty comestibles was most responsible for improving cardiovascular health.

“Studies have consistently shown that financial hardship is the biggest obstacle to heterosexual marriage, yet the Republican leadership has done precious little to help address the financial hardship faced by American families.” Kendrick Meek

A recent Brigham Young University study concludes “less materialistic spouses are more likely to find themselves in happier marriages than those who dwell too much on money and possessions.” The team of researchers explored “the impact that value differences about materialism could have on a marriage. (Value differences about materialism? Somebody get me Wittgenstein on the phone and have him explain what value differences about abstract concepts have to do with anything.) Previous studies were limited to materialism in itself, and not the importance that husbands and wives placed on material things. (Materialism in itself? I smell the English language rotting in the noonday sun.) Data collected from 1,734 couples may indicate that even among spouses who shared the same materialistic values, materialism had a negative association with marital quality. (Can college degrees be taken away from people for good cause? Please say they can.) And marriages in which both spouses reported low materialism were better off on several features of marital quality when compared to couples where one or both spouses reported high materialism.”

Man: What’s wrong, honey?

Woman: I think I’m suffering from low materialism.

Man: Are you sure it’s not high materialism? In itself?

Woman: I’m not sure. In myself.

Man: Here. Have some chocolate.

Not to worry. In conclusion, the Brigham Young researchers admit they “recognize that personality traits do influence the degree of materialism. Thus it may be the personality traits that are most damaging to the relationship and not materialism alone.” Materialism alone is one thing; but materialism in itself is a whole other can of worms.

“It is still not clear from this study how laughter can directly help the heart, but other studies have shown that laughter is beneficial for every system in the body.” Allen Klein

Okay. So. A new study involving 6,000 Swedish women carried out by the Karolinska Institute suggests that coffee may reduce the risk of breast cancer. Women who drank five or more cups of coffee every day (they didn’t say for how many years or what these women used for downers) lowered their risk of breast cancer by 57%. However, these women were also taking part in several ongoing and cross referencing chocolate studies and were, in themselves, much less materialistic than American women, which may or may not make any difference in how the coffee (unless it was the chocolate) impacted the cancer cells.

“If you look at the studies coming out of the Congressional Budget Office, the number one thing that’s going to blow a hole in the deficit as we go forward twenty, thirty years is government spending on healthcare.” Christina Romer

“Vitamin E supplements may be linked to an increase in the risk of prostate cancer among men (as opposed to prostate cancer among women?), U.S. researchers say.”

Reading beyond the headlines, we find that the motivation for studying the impact of Vitamin E on the prostate was to confirm that taking Vitamin E reduced the risk of prostate cancer, since American medical doctors have for several years now been aggressively prescribing Vitamin E as an important and proven health supplement for men. Oops. Don’t you just hate it when those hard cold facts turn out to be soft hot nonsense? However, the researchers did use that word may in their summary of the results, so, you know, whatever.

This just in: “A small new study (as opposed to a big old study) suggests that human intelligence may fluctuate throughout adolescence. (But not in middle and old age?) IQ has long been thought to remain stable over a person’s lifetime. (Not by me.) ‘Approximately one-fifth of our sample had very substantial changes such that they moved from above average to below average or vice versa,’ said Cathy Price, senior study author and professor at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, University College London, U.K. Prior studies have shown changes in IQ in individuals over time. (But I thought you just said IQ was thought to remain stable…) However, those earlier studies were not able to rule out the possibility of chance.”

Aha! Chance. So what these researchers seem to be saying is that people used to think there was something called chance. But the researchers have now ruled out the possibility of chance, so we can say with great confidence (backed up by all this rigorous scientific research): ‘There is no chance. No way. No how.”

From these and many other studies conducted by semi-literate scientists and shameless academics, we conclude that as our intelligence fluctuates, we (which includes you) should eat lots of chocolate, guzzle coffee, stop being such greedy materialists in ourselves, and not drive when we’re stoned and drunk and talking on cell phones and having sex. And remember, in the words of Robert Sternberg, “So long as you restrict your populations, your testing materials, and the kinds of situations you look at, you can keep finding the same wrong thing again and again.”