Wild Thing: A Novel (45 page)

*
World population in 500 BC is unknown but is likely to have been under 200 million—less than 3 percent of what it is now.

*
Or to the Constitution: the Second Amendment says “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed,” which people like to interpret as meaning that gun control is unconstitutional. But I’m pretty sure there’s a “well regulated” in there somewhere.

*
Famously at the time, the striking workers held up a sign inviting the press—who instead mocked them from shore for being illiterate—to “
COME ON BOARD AND LEARN THE TROUT.
”

*
http://www.itfglobal.org/files/seealsodocs/884/Miami%20Guidelines%202004.pdf
.

*
http://www.itfseafarers.org/files/publications/4076/globalisingsolidarity.pdf

*
Something I find particularly compelling in Bates is his observation that designed objects (and by extension designed spaces and “realities” and so on) tend to be drearier than natural ones in part simply because they have a lower level of detail—that just as we erase species from our reality, we also erase other kinds of complexity, to our detriment. See
The Forest and the Sea
, pg. 254.

*
Released by WikiLeaks and published online in “US embassy cables: US queries Saudi Arabia’s influence over oil prices,”
guardian.co.uk
, 8 Feb 2011.

*
Want to know why Darky Lake is called Darky Lake? Neither do I.

*
For details on the biology of the various regenerative processes, see chapter 17 of
Textbook and Color Atlas of Traumatic Injuries to the Teeth
, by J. O. Andreasen, Frances M. Andreasen, and Lara Andersson, 2007.

*
Light Elements: Essays in Science from Gravity to Levity
, 1991.

*
Consumer Reports
blog for 3 Aug 2009. If corporations have rights, why can’t
Consumer Reports
run for president?

*
When I graduated from medical school the most competitive field to enter was dermatology, because it was considered a sure path to wealth through easy-to-perform (and schedule) procedures. Family practice—which is where the heroes of the medical profession are, and where, demographically, the U.S. most needs doctors—was among the least competitive. For insight on how hard it is to get paid as a family practitioner, see “10 billing and coding tips to boost your reimbursement,” by Joel J. Heidelbaugh and Margaret Riley,
The Journal of Family Practice
, Nov 2008, Vol. 57, No. 11: 724–730.

*
Notes
General Surgery News:
“A benign 1.5cm lesion of the face would be billed [to Medicare in Alabama] at $140; if you subsequently remove 3 more lesions of similar size, they would be reimbursed at $70 for a total of $350.” However: “When ultrasound guidance is added to a fine-needle aspiration (FNA; CPT code 10022), the physician can bill with code 76942, which reimburses $120 for the FNA, whereas the ultrasound component reimburses $150.” (“Minor Pay for Minor Procedures? Think Again: General Surgeons May Be Leaving Much on the Table By Passing on Minor Surgery,” by Lucian Newman III, GSN, Dec 2009, 36:12.)

*
A 2009 report from the Committee on Energy and Congress of the U.S. House of Representatives (which at the time was controlled by Democrats) found that insurance companies had been routinely rescinding (without refund) coverage because patients failed to inform insurance companies of pre-existing conditions they didn’t know they had, because of errors in paperwork not committed by the patient, and “for discrepancies unrelated to the conditions for which patients seek medical care,” as well as rescinding coverage to the dependents of rescinded patients and evaluating insurance company employees based on how much money they were able to “save” the insurance companies through rescinding policies. For a PDF of this report, go to
http://democrats.energycommerce.house.gov/Press_111/20090616/rescission_supplemental.pdf
.

*
Also, the results of poor diet and exercise habits tend to be “pre-existing conditions.”

*
Sam and Max: Freelance Police
, Issue #1, 1987.

*
The piece by Pies that Coyne quotes is available (without any obvious date, although it states it was written in response to an essay in the
New York Times Magazine
of 28 Feb 2010) at
http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2010/03/01/the-myth-of-depressions-upside
.

*
And said by Ben Dattner, PhD, to have been Jim Morrison’s favorite movie.

*
The lieutenant of Reggie’s River Assault Group would have reported directly to Rear Admiral Ward, who would have reported directly to General Westmoreland, who would have reported directly to Secretary of Defense McNamara. In other words, Reggie would have been five phone calls from President Johnson.

*
http://njscvva.org/vietnam_war_statistics.htm

*
See
Molecular, Clinical, and Environmental Toxicology: Volume 2; Clinical Toxicology
, by Andreas Luch, 2010, pg. 250.

*
Widely reported. In the case of the Alcor scandal, almost invariably with the word “chilling” in the title. See below note on shellfish.

*
They don’t.

*
The drought continued. See “Rick Perry’s Unanswered Prayers,” by Timothy Egan, the
New York Times
, 11 Apr 2011, according to which he also answered a question about how he would govern as president with “I think it’s time for us to just hand it over to God, and say, ‘God: You’re going to have to fix this.’ ”

*
For Perry on evolution, see, e.g., “Rick Perry: evolution is ‘theory’ with ‘gaps,’ ” by Catalina Camia,
USA Today
, 18 Aug 2011. For Perry on climate change, see, e.g., “Perry Tells N.H. Audience He’s a Global-Warming Skeptic—with VIDEO,” by Jim O’Sullivan, on website of
National Journal
, 17 Aug 2011; note that it’s the article that uses video, not Perry.

*
Although he may have meant that as a compliment.

*
Right from the Beginning
, 1990, pg. 31. Buchanan, a turd whose frequent designation as a “paleoconservative” would make Violet Hurst vomit, speaks of Pegler with admiration, although even he notes that “Peg did go overboard—on not a few occasions.”

*
P. 187. She describes Scully, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, as “to use author Rod Dreher’s term, a ‘crunchy con.’ A political conservative, he is a bunny-hugging vegan and gentle, green soul who I think would throw himself in the path of a semitruck to save a squirrel.” I call the seat not next to that guy.

*
If you watch the full 9:47 version (address below), you’ll get to see Muthee call Buddhism and Islam “witchcraft and sorcery” and say “In the economic area [it is] high time that we have top Christian businessmen, businesswomen bankers, you know, who are men and women of integrity running the economics of our nations. That is what we are waiting for. That’s part and parcel of transformation. If you look at the, you know, if you look at the Israelites, that’s how they won, and that’s how they are today.” Address:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl4HIc-yfgM&feature=player_embedded
.

*
Palin’s own relationship to wildlife is less clear. In
Going Rogue
(pg. 250) she says that a man who had fooled her into thinking he was Nicolas Sarkozy (bear with me) “started talking about hunting, and suggested we get together and hunt from helicopters, which Alaska hunters don’t do (despite circulated Photoshopped images of me drawing a bead on a wolf from the air)….
He’s got to be drunk
, I thought.” On the other hand, regardless of whether Alaskans shoot wolves from helicopters, during the Palin administration the Alaskan government offered $150 to anyone who could shoot a wolf from an
airplane
, and Palin approved a $400,000 “educational” program to advertise the practice. (For more on this, including Palin’s false claims that killing wolves was part of a scientifically sound wildlife management program, see “Her deadly wolf program: With a disdain for science that alarms wildlife experts, Sarah Palin continues to promote Alaska’s policy to gun down wolves from planes,” by Mark Benjamin,
Salon
, 8 Sept 2008; also “Aerial Wolf Gunning 101: What is it, and why does vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin support the practice?,” by Samantha Henig,
Slate
, 2 Sept 2008.) Also worth noting may be Palin’s successful promotion of construction considered likely to be detrimental to Wasilla Lake in 1998, while she was mayor, including her saying, “I live on that lake. I would not a support a development that wasn’t environmentally friendly” (Benet, ch. 7)—and her then moving to Lake Lucille, the town of Wasilla’s other lake, into a house that seems to have been paid for at least in part by construction contractors. To be fair, both Wasilla Lake and Lake Lucille are now considered “dead” lakes. For questions about funding for the Lake Lucille house, see, e.g., “The Book of Sarah (Palin): Strafing the Palin Record,” by Wayne Barrett, the
Village Voice
, 8 Oct 2008. For more on Lake Lucille itself, see “Sarah Palin’s dead lake: By promoting runaway development in her hometown, say locals, Palin has ‘fouled her own nest’—and that goes for the lake where she lives,” by David Talbot,
Salon
, 19 Sept 2008.

*
Note, however, that Cameron had previously been caught attributing fake quotes to John Kerry, including, re Bush, “I’m a metrosexual—he’s a cowboy.” (The Associated Press article on this, by Siobahn McDonough, 2 Oct 2004, appeared in numerous publications.) In November 2008, Palin told reporters that “I think if there are allegations based on questions or comments that I made in debate prep about NAFTA or about the continent versus the country when we talk about Africa there, then those were taken out of context and that is cruel.” (Widely reported, e.g., “Palin hits back at ‘jerk’ critics,”
BBC News
, 8 Nov 2008.) In an interview in March 2011, Palin said, “Rumors like I didn’t know Africa was a continent, that’s still out there, that’s a lie.” (“Will Sarah Palin run for president and can she win?,” by Jackie Long,
BBC Newsnight
, 7 Mar 2011. The interview was with Long.) Carl Cameron still works for Fox News Channel.

*
Anti-Semitism.

*
If you don’t think western activism based on Jew-hatred rather than actual sympathy for Arabs can and does harm Palestinians, note that by 2006 Palestinians had been so severely exploited and betrayed by Yassir Arafat, the PLO, and the Palestinian Authority that, despite favoring peace with Israel by a two-to-one margin at the time (according to Palestinian demographer Khalil Shikaki; see
Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East
, by Robin Wright, 2008; note also that polls show Israeli Jews, themselves constrained by assholes at home and abroad, tend to favor a two-state solution by the same ratio), that they voted for fucking
Hamas
—a Syria-based organization that, while providing far better social services than the PLO ever did, is formally opposed to, among other things, peace or even negotiations with Israel, cooperation with non-Islamic states in general, and, evidently, ever giving Palestinians another chance to vote. That the same jackasses who lionized Arafat (in 2004, BBC’s Middle East correspondent Barbara Plett said on the air that she had cried at Arafat’s funeral, prompting an internal investigation of anti-Israel bias at the BBC the results of which the publicly funded network refused to release) are now lionizing Hamas does not constitute humanitarianism.

*
My own much shorter history of the British vs. Yiddish conflict will eventually be available in some form or other. And, I’m sure, will end anti-Semitism forever.

*
Source re Saudi ownership: “How Fox Betrayed Petraeus,” by Frank Rich, the
New York Times
, 21 Aug 2010; also widely reported elsewhere during the News Corp scandals that began in the summer of 2011.

*
Historical aspects that Ross elides or glosses over for speed in this chapter, but which I would personally recommend for any longer study of the topic, include the demographics of the region prior to the twentieth century (which are contrary to what is commonly imagined) and the decision in 1921 by Great Britain, which had been “mandated” by the League of Nations to set up a homeland for Jews in the western 20 percent of Palestine and a homeland for Palestinian Arabs in the eastern 80 percent, to instead give the eastern 80 percent to the son of
Sherif
Hussein of Mecca to form first Transjordan and then Jordan. Jordan to this day has a disempowered Palestinian majority. For demographics see particularly Karsh, Segev, and Dershowitz, above. For an in-depth discussion of the history of Jordan see
Britain, the Hashemites, and Arab Rule, 1920–1925: The Sherifian solution
, by Timothy J. Paris, 2005.

*
For an interesting perspective on this, see “Censors Without Borders,” by Emily Parker, the
New York Times Book Review
, 6 May 2010, although things have improved slightly since then.

*
Unfortunately, the manner in which the WikiLeaks cables were disclosed tended to promote the Chinese government’s obfuscation of the event. For example, a 13 June 2011 article in
The Telegraph
, by Malcolm Moore, while noting that “instead, the cables show that Chinese soldiers opened fire on protesters outside the centre of Beijing, as they fought their way towards the square from the west of the city,” was headlined “WikiLeaks: No bloodshed inside Tiananmen Square, cables show.”