Author Archives: Scott Bowles

The Science of Denial

Baddomalhi  

As a boy, I was always intrigued by the commercials for Trident chewing gum. To this day, I can remember the exact wording of part of the ad: “Four out of five dentists surveyed recommend sugarless gum for their patients who chew gum.”

Even then, two things stood out in my mind. One, that wasn’t an ad for Trident; it was an ad for sugar-free gum. And two: Who in the hell is that fifth dentist? Did he also recommend Pixie Stix as part of a balanced breakfast? Image result for pixie stix

Apparently Donald Trump found that doctor. And he’s appointed him head of what was once called the “The Federal Committee on Climate Security.” His name is William Happer, and apparently he took his own advice regarding sugared gums and Pixie Stix. Just check out his chompers. Image result for william happer's bad teeth

But I digress. I say once called Trump’s federal committee because it will no longer be called that. It will instead be called his “advisory committee.” And, in a rarity for the president, it was a canny, subtle shift.

You see, when Trump first called for a new federal advisory committee to offset the findings of the the congressionally-mandated report on climate change (www.globalchange.gov), he was hoping to lessen fears of the committee’s startling findings. The report, written by more than a dozen U.S. government agencies and departments, said the effects of climate change would harm human health, damage infrastructure, limit water availability, and alter coastlines. Agriculture, tourism and fishing industries that depend on natural resources and favorable climate conditions would all be hit, it said. In all, the report concluded, global warming would reduce the U.S. economy by 10% ($1.93 trillion).

That’s bad news for any president who wants at least one more term (and maybe more: Trump publicly stated that “maybe we should try that” when he returned from a visit to China, which recently named Xi Jinping “president for life”).

So Trump launched a new contrarian federal committee, one that consisted of his hand-picked stooges. The problem with the first name, he discovered, is the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) (Pub.L. 92–463, 86 Stat. 770, enacted October 6, 1972). FACA is a federal law which governs the behavior of all federal advisory committees. In particular, it has special emphasis on open meetings, chartering, public involvement, and reporting.

The last thing Trump would want is public involvement or documentation of his naysayers’ research methodology. After all, a U.S.-led team of international scientists wrote last month in the journal Nature Climate Change that global warming had hit the “gold standard” of research. They said confidence that human activities were raising the heat at the Earth’s surface had reached a “five-sigma” level, a statistical gauge meaning there is only a one-in-a-million chance that the signal would appear if there were no warming.

And Trump’s going to appoint a federal advisory committee to argue against that? Not a chance. That would be like betting on the Washington Generals against the Harlem Globetrotters. So he switched the title to panel, which does not require any public reporting.Image result for harlem globetrotters vs washington generals

This is the art of subterfuge. Trump can’t disprove global warming. But with a federal “panel,” he can argue the science is debatable. That’s all the ammo his supporters need.

Already, he’s putting climate deniers in key governmental positions. Like Kelly Craft, the U.N. ambassador to Canada. In an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, she responded to a question on global warming by saying “I think both sides have their own results from their studies, and I appreciate and I respect both sides of the science.”

By the way, her husband, Joe Craft, is the billionaire president of Alliance Resource Partners, L.P., the third-largest coal producer in the eastern United States.

The GOP has done this before, most recently with Creationism to battle the science of evolution. In Texas, for instance, the state is considering a bill that would allow public school teachers to present alternative theories to subjects that “may cause controversy,” including climate change, evolution and the origins of life.

Texas needs a new bumper sticker: “Fuck you, Darwin and physics.” Expect some of those slackwits on Trump’s advisory panel.

We in the media, of course, will play along. Fox in particular, but even CNN and MSNBC are complicit in the deceit. Consider the networks’ debate format: One talking head is pro, while the opposing one is con. This format, either consciously or sub, gives the viewer the impression the scientific community is split 50/50. Image result for cnn split screen global warming

If the panel were truly representative of the facts, you’d have nine scientists debating one on the boob tube. And even that would be underestimating the true consensus.

Alas, consensus has never been part of Trump’s lexicon. For one, it’s multi-syllabic. And has truth ever been high on his priorities list?

If you find it all too much, relax. Just take some Valium, and crush it up into powder form. A Pixy Stick full should do you.

Yo Adrian!

 

Sports makes for natural cinema. You’ve got the underdog hero, the heavily-favored villain, the climactic clash, the clear-cut winner and loser.  That’s what fueled Rocky to eight films and $800 million at the box office in the U.S. alone.

But many forget: Rocky lost the first championship fight. And losing can make for equally compelling viewing. Consider Raging Bull, The Bad News Bears, A League of Their Own, Friday Night Lights, Moneyball and on.Image result for bad news bears

You can add Losers to that list. The new Netflix show is a heartwarming docuseries that examines those who lost in high-profile fashion, but turned defeats into victory, both moral and literal.

Created and directed by Mickey Duzyj, a veteran of ESPN’s 30 for 30 short films, Losers mixes documentary interviews with animation to examine eight sports across the globe and looks anew at some high-profile failures to examine athletes who redefined their lives in the aftermath of loss. The result is akin to eight mini-Rocky Balboas, complete with feel-good endings minus the predictability of a film franchise.

If anything, unpredictability is the underlying strength of a series that could have grown tired quickly. Duzyj features athletes who never wanted to be athletes, stars who never sought stardom and sports you probably know little about, including curling and dog racing. His targets are so eclectic that even if you do know the sport, you probably don’t know the heroes hidden within.

Fittingly, Losers begins with a Rocky-like tale, but with a significant twist: The Miscast Champion follows the life of Michael Bentt, a championship fighter who admits his dislike of the sport’s savagery — and was nearly killed by it. Despite his success in the ring, Duzyj follows Bentt after his near-fatal defeat and chronicles his unlikely path to Hollywood, where he finds his true calling.Image result for michael bentt

The hope of the episode underpins the tenor of the series, though the themes and lessons of the story are vastly different. The Jaws of Victory is a hilarious episode about a perennially awful soccer club whose very existence is saved by police dog that becomes a local hero. Lost in the Desert is a harrowing tale of a marathon held in the heat and sand of the Saraha Desert where simply surviving the race is a victory in itself. Stone Cold tells the story of Canadian Pat Ryan, whose loss ultimately changed and popularized the sport of curling (which is concisely explained, as is its rabid following).Image result for pat ryan curling

Each of the episodes would make for a feature-length documentary or sports film. But at roughly a half-hour apiece, Losers manages to flesh out its heroes with humor and emotion — all within a binge-able timetable. And the animation is brilliant, a dash of flashy graphics that encapsulate events cameras never could capture mixed with the retro charm of an 80’s video game.Image result for losers series animation

Losers is not the place to find tragic stories, which litter all sports and sometimes become the lasting memories of athletes. There are no Greg Normans tightening up on the last 18 holes to lose the Masters, no Roberto Durans, declaring as they walk from the ring “No mas, no mas.” Hope, redemption and the beauty of giving it your all underscore every episode.Image result for roberto duran no mas

If there’s any strike against Losers, it may be the order of the episodes, which lead the series to end on a so-so note. The 72nd Hole, the tale of Jean Van de Velde’s 18th hole collapse at the 1999 British Open, is certainly a worthwhile entry. But it has nowhere near the emotional punch of Ally, which chronicles the story Iditarod dog musher Ally Zirkle, or Judgement, the story of black figure skater Surya Bonaly. Both will leave you fighting back tears — of joy.Image result for surya bonaly backflip

But it’s a minor setback in an otherwise resounding victory for cinematic storytelling. It may be full of tropes about winning and losing. But Losers does, ultimately, remind us that the beauty of sport really is in how you play the game.

The Subtle Beauty of True Detective’s Dud Finale

 

HBO’s finale to True Detective hasn’t seen this much controversy since the end of  The Sopranos, which is fitting, because both ended on anticlimactic notes. Throughout its eight-year run, The Sopranos suggested that death was sudden blackness, an unexpected and unexplained exit from existence. To prove the point, Sopranos capped its own fans, ending the series in such sudden darkness viewers thought their TVs had shorted.

Similarly, the third season of True Detective telegraphed how the whodunnit would end, though that hasn’t stopped Reddit and YouTube pundits from becoming engulfed in anger over the unspectacular conclusion. The real twist to the crime series may be yet to come: whether HBO decides to renew the up-and-down show.

Despite its labyrinthian setup and hint of a vast conspiracy finally explained, Detective ended on the simplest of notes. After two months worth of shows and three and a half decades worth of investigation, Now Am Found revealed that the fates of the Purcell children was barely nefarious: Will died accidentally and Julie ran away and remained alive and happy.

The conclusion sent much of the True Detective fanbase into conniptions; some took to the net minutes after the finale, asking, in essence, WTF? They lamented that the ending didn’t feature a Woody Harrelson or Matthew McConaughey cameo from Season 1.  They blasted it for wrapping loose ends too quickly (halfway through the episode), too cheerily for a dark series, and too bizarrely with a final scene of Wayne Hayes back in the jungles of Vietnam.

     But that may have been creators Nic Pizzolatto’s point all along, one he hinted at in Episode 2, Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye. In that episode,  the show referenced the Franklin child prostitution allegations, a reference that sent conspiracy fans and the character Elisa Montgomery, a documentary true-crime filmmaker, scrambling to solve a vast conspiracy.Image result for franklin child prostitution ring allegations
     The Franklin case was a true incident that began in June 1988 in Omaha, Nebraska, when authorities looked into allegations that prominent citizens of Nebraska, as well as high-level U.S. politicians, were involved in a child prostitution ring. Alleged abuse victims were interviewed, who claimed that children in foster care were flown to the East Coast to be sexually abused at “bad parties.” The case attracted significant public and political interest until late 1990, when separate state and federal grand juries concluded that the allegations were unfounded and the ring was a “carefully crafted hoax.”The Franklin Cover-Up
     Still, the conspiracy remains. And even the book that it inspired, The Franklin Cover-up: Child Abuse, Satanism, and Murder in Nebraska, became reference fodder for fans seeking clues to the show.Related image
     Which may explain why the True Detective finale disappointed so many. From the JFK assassination to the 9/11 attacks to fictional crime dramas, it’s tough to accept that profound misfortune can result from commonplace events or simple bad luck. It’s easier (and more cinematic) to discover a massive conspiracy behind massive devastation.Image result for jfk conspiracy
     And that was True Detective‘s point in the half-hour wrap up, as characters tried to reconcile the deaths and decimated relationships borne of a simple, tragic, traffic accident. Viewers learned that Isabel Hoyt, the wife of produce magnate Edward Hoyt, lost her daughter in a car crash. Devastated, she grew attached to Julie Purcell, became obsessed, and, after going off her meds, abducted her. With the help of groundskeeper Junius Watts and several nuns, Julie eventually escaped to go on to live a normal life.  Not the crescendo viewers expected.Image result for true detective julie and will purcell
     Even the characters admitted disappointment at the anticlimactic ending. As Wayne and wife Amelia meet at a bar to discuss what went wrong in their relationship, Wayne admits, “There’s always been this big secret between us,” he says. “It’s all tied up in a dead boy and a missing girl.” They agree that a date night won’t fix their problems, but Wayne tells her to go write her next book and they will move on together. “Let’s put this thing down,” says Wayne. “It’s not ours.”Image result for wayne and amelia true detective
     Even the final scene was a red herring in a series chock full of them (for what is a conspiracy theory but the pursuit of inconsequential evidence?). Wayne is back in the jungle of Vietnam because he suffers from Alzheimer’s, a common disease that robs its victims of associating place and time.Image result for wayne vietnam ghosts true detective
     It’s unclear whether HBO will be more swayed by ratings or reactions in determining the fate of another installment of True Detective, whose second season was lambasted by fans and critics alike. Regardless, Pizzolatto succeeded in making the point he began raising in 2014 when the show premiered: Time, indeed, is a flat circle.Image result for pedophilia circle true detective