Oprah Winfrey: False Prophetess for the New Age

The secret of eternal youth for women may have been discovered; it very well may be tied to daily injections of oestrogen into the vagina. Interested in trying? If you are a regular follower of the High Priestess of Daytime Television, the Prophetess of the New Age Oprah Winfrey, the likelihood is that you will have already encountered information such as this from many of the eclectic quests gracing the stage of the show that has become an institution. You may also have unwittingly been exposed to information that could kill you if you took it to heart too seriously, for this is a show that, in its ongoing attempts to entertain, presents points of views from seemingly every spectrum available, without bothering to check whether those views may or may not be potentially harmful to anyone attempting the advice being promoted on the show or in one of the many books recommended by the hostess.

It all begins and ends with Oprah, or so it would seem. As various guests parade across the stage of the show that has become the personal soap-box for whatever new philosophy happens to have intrigued Oprah Winfrey few people are aware of the real dangers that may be facing the audiences that willingly expose themselves to Oprah and the guru-du-jour who has come to peddle their wares, dangers that are as real as death itself. While Suzanne Somers and her vaginal oestrogen therapy may never become the ‘next big thing’ there are some things that should not be dismissed so quickly, particularly when they result in the loss of human life. That is exactly what happened when two people who had decided to pursue the vision of one of the ‘gurus’ appearing on Winfrey’s show died while participating in a ‘spiritual cleansing’ modeled after Native American ‘sweat lodge’.

The coverage of the tragic deaths, and their connection to Oprah Winfrey, has surprisingly gained very little coverage in the mains stream media. The article in the Ottawa Citizen was found in the third section, the ‘Arts & Life’ section, on page six (Oct. 20). Adding insult to injury, as it were, the Citizen, truncated the original article, as it had originally run in the Sunday London Times, leaving out more than two full paragraphs of the article. While it is important to point out that Oprah Winfrey had absolutely nothing to do with the retreat attended by the two men who died, it also seems significant that the man who organized the ‘spiritual warrior’ retreat, James Arthur Ray, had appeared on Winfrey’s show at least twice in order to promote his ‘spiritual cleansing’. The deaths are currently being investigated as possible homicides, but you can be sure that Oprah Winfrey will not be charged with contributory negligence for having promoted the means by which two men died and at least 19 others were taken to hospital as a result of their participation in the ‘cleansing’ in the ‘sweat lodge’. Being a billionaire, after all, does have its perks.

For Oprah Winfrey there is a different kind of justice apparently; a justice that need not be concerned with the veracity of that which is being promoted on your show. Why should the truth matter, people may ask; after all, Oprah is not in the news business, just as Fox Noise was released from the terrible constraints of telling the truth when faced with the moral dilemma of broadcasting a story about Bovine Growth Hormone in milk manufactured by Monsanto in Florida. News and truth do not go hand in hand, according to the courts, why should Oprah be concerned about what appears on her show? Perhaps because of the decency of morality, or because she might just care about the people that have made her obscenely wealthy through years of faithful watching; that element of naïveté may sound admirable, but it is hardly practical in a business that lives by the adage ‘if it bleeds, it leads’. Sensationalism sells, period. We all recognize this when we look at anything on that most watched piece of terrain in our possession. Television has, for the past several years, used sensationalism to greater extents, all to attract larger and larger audiences. But when people start to die as a result of the advice being peddled on television shows, that imaginary line that exists in the sand is crossed, and all bets are off.

For the faithful viewer of the Oprah Winfrey show there is the implied message of endorsement when a guest appears. When she presents the latest New Age guru who either has a new book or a spiritual ‘process’ that they have ‘discovered’ and which, when employed by those who need to ‘reconnect’ with their ‘unfulfilled’ lives, will work miracles, the message that is received is that ‘you need to do this’. If being on the Oprah Winfrey show is not an endorsement of one’s product or philosophy, it is difficult to imagine a show that has had a lesser influence on the careers of its guests after their appearances. The Oprah ‘Book Club’ is only one example of how Winfrey exerts her personal taste changes the fortunes of writers over night; of course, when some of the books she endorses turn out to be frauds it does not seem to bother Oprah Winfrey one iota. It makes for an excuse to have the writer on the show for another interview.

When the bestselling memoir by James Frey was shown to be a fake, Winfrey was embarrassed, but not enough to stop recommending books that had not been fully checked for facts. Further embarrassment came from her love for a fictional account of a holocaust survival story. Writers that incorrectly labeled their works as non-fiction is one thing, however, death is something altogether different. People do not usually die after reading a book (not even a bad book, though you may want to die). Giving someone an opportunity to spread their ideas when you have no idea as to whether or not they may be dangerous is, in a word, reckless. It demonstrates that Oprah does not care about her audience, only the bottom line; she is only concerned with what she can get from having those bodies in the seats and the advertisers filling the minutes when she isn’t spreading the idiocy being spouted by her guests.

This is not only something limited to the spiritual pursuits of those who sought the cleansing in Sedona where the two deaths took place, earlier in October. Oprah Winfrey has made a habit of presenting questionable medical advice on her show, an issue that was investigated in a Newsweek magazine story this year. Does it matter that an organization with no less clout than the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has declared that there is no proximal connection between the MMR (Mumps, Measles and Rubella) vaccine and autism. No, that doesn’t matter because Jenny McCarthy believes the MMR vaccine caused her son’s autism, therefore it must be true. After all, a former Playboy model turned actress must be smarter than a bunch of scientists who work for the government at the CDC, right? But, faithful fans of Oprah are now ‘well versed’ in the causes of autism; or not.

The fact that there has not been any peer-reviewed study to connect autism to the MMR vaccine has done nothing to convince Oprah Winfrey that one of the guests she holds in such high esteem may be wrong; perish the thought. Apparently infallibility is one of the things conferred to guests of the Oprah show; infallibility and book sales. Not to mention clients lining up to get into their quasi-Native American ‘Sweat Lodges’ so they can have their ‘spiritual cleansings’, all for the bargain basement price of $11,000. So, for $22,000 two people died; anyone for refunds?

Review: Aviat A-1A Husky - What you Need to Know about this Aircraft

It is sometimes difficult to convey the ideal type of aircraft that X-Plane is suited for as every response is likely to inspire a debate unto itself regarding the virtues of various aircraft and the abilities of X-Plane to emulate certain aspects of each aircraft. No debate on this topic, however, can dismiss the fact that X-Plane is, perhaps better than anything else, ideally suited for the replication of 'bush flying' in that it provides excellent scenery, with even better available through third party add-ons such as the 'Inside Passage' and 'Final Frontier' for Western Canada and Alaska, which replicate much of the terrain that the bush pilots had to navigate in their rugged aircraft so long ago, and even today.

One such aircraft is the Aviat A-1A Husky, called the successor of the Piper Cub, it is faithfully replicated for the X-Plane community by Shade Tree Micro Aviation (STMA) with data taken from a Type Certificate Data Sheet, from an actual Husky Owner's Handbook, as well as from the invaluable experience of pilots who have flown the Husky in real life. Anyone who has sat in the cockpit of the PA18-150 Super Cub will not feel out of place in the Husky, in fact, they will find everything expected, as well as a few unexpected extras that make this an aircraft well worth investigating.

As far as bush planes go, the Husky lives up to its name quite admirably; with the tenacity of the dogs that dragged cargo across the north, the Husky — with its 180 hp Lycoming engine the Husky may be more akin to a sleigh being pulled by reindeer, but it more than manages to conquer the skies with the power that it has been given. With a cruising speed of 122 knots, or 140 mph, the Husky is by no means the fastest aircraft to fly, but it may be one of the most enjoyable.

Once you enter the flight model of STMA’s Husky you are immediately aware of a few things: this is not your ordinary X-Plane aircraft. The 3D cockpit is comprised of only one object which results in a seamless architecture that I have only encountered, thus far, in other aircraft created by STMA (their PA18-150 Super Cub and Dhc2 Beaver being two prime examples).

The second thing that you notice is that everything you expect to be in the cockpit, including a GPS unit that can be removed if you do not need it, is there; waiting for you in your office. This is not a cockpit so much as it is a pilot’s office: a place where a pilot will be spending many hours, working in a relatively small area, but as well organized as possible.

An exquisite 3D cockpit that seems perfect in almost every way is not enough of a reason, however, to purchase this plane: there must be more. Don’t worry, there is: STMA is not run by a bunch of stingy people, of that we can be certain. When you purchase the Husky you do not just get one aircraft, you get FIVE different models. The aircraft also comes with two plug-ins from STMA that are extraordinarily valuable on their own: Chase View Deluxe and HangerOps. Chase View Deluxe will change the way you use X-Plane; Period.

The five models of the Husky are: the bush model (with the thicker tundra tires); the regular tire version; a floats version (with wheels); a tire version with retractable skis, perfect for glacial exploration; and a gussied up version with ‘pants’ on the wheels, for ‘high fashion’ flights – or, perhaps – for racing. With the brilliant animations of the opening doors, the opening engine cowling and all the moving parts, it is almost as beautiful to watch this plane as it is to fly, but this plane was made for flying and that is what it does best.

Once you are inside the cockpit and you hear the sound of the Husky’s engine running there is one thing that you can be certain of: this Husky has a growl that will scare away any roving bear. The sound of the Husky’s Lycoming engine is extremely throaty, with rich, deep harmonic overtones that add to the overall sensation of aural authenticity to this acf. In a brief interview that I had regarding this particular issue with Jim ‘Papamac’ McNeill, one of the names behind STMA, Papamac indicated that a pilot who owned a Husky had remarked that this Husky’s sounds ‘were very impressive’. Well, if this is what ‘impressive’ sounds like, I would find ‘astounding’ or, ‘the real thing’ to be quite difficult to imagine, if not downright disturbing.

Slight adjustments to the Mixture caused the Husky’s Lycoming engine to not only change pitch, but the volume of the engine’s sound changed – as did the quality of the sound being produced by the simulated engine. The leaner the mixture became, the tighter the sound grew, as though you were choking off this splendid beast, preventing it from breathing. As soon as I pressed in the mixture to full the throaty growl of the engine returned with a roar (I am reminded of the fact that dogs don’t roar … but, so it doesn’t really matter). Similar adjustments could be made by altering the prop’s RPM, the lowering of which caused the engine to deepen in pitch while the addition of power, or RPMs caused the sound to ‘ramp up’ in pitch as the engine growled to its full potential.

Some of you might be thinking ‘what’s the big deal, of course it effected the sound of the engine’, well, the truth of the matter is that many of the aircraft that I have listened to in X-Plane do not differentiate all that much when it comes to changing the pitch of the engines when the engines are changing (lower prop RPM, just as an example). There is often very little differentiation in the sound modulation of many engines when there are subtle changes that should have a direct bearing on the ‘tuning’ of that sound while in the Husky, after only a few flights, it would seem that breathing heavily near the throttle causes the engine to hum louder for a few seconds. Of course, I may be a bit overly sensitive to issues relating to acoustics and engine sounds considering my musical background. When listening to the engine of the Husky in flight it is easy to hear the engine as a musical device; it hums with delight as it pulls the fuselage aloft, barely complaining when you ask it to do things that it is unused to doing, such as rolls, loops and spins.

One of the things that STMA has done is develop the ability to move the stick of the aircraft with the mouse and then hold that position – it locks in place – so that you can attend to other things in the cockpit without having your Husky careen into a mountain (Personally, I don’t mind the hands-off approach, but my passengers tend to complain when we begin to go inverted). It is small things like this that only adds to the brilliance behind the model. Essentially, if you took away all of the animations, all of the plug-ins and things that are new to X-Plane, this would still be one of the best general aviation propeller aircraft you could hope to find. With everything added, it is simply in a class by itself.

Shade Tree Micro Aviation has proven that they are the masters of the bush plane. Once and for all, they are the best.

Now for the nitty-gritty of it all: the regular price of the Aviat A-1A Husky is $24.95, but the aircraft is currently being sold for the value price of $19.95. Bear in mind, this price includes the Chase View Deluxe, which was used to take all of the exterior screen shots that appear below, and the HangerOps plug-in, which allows you to open hanger doors and pull your aircraft around (remote control provided inside aircraft!). That price, again, is for all five aircraft, not just one.

The Husky can be purchased directly from the Shade Tree website or from the Org store from the download manager.

The following screenshots represent the Aviat A-1A Husky as it appears on my system. With half-filled fuel tanks the plane was nimble enough to perform full three-sixty loops, power dives and other thrilling aerobatic moves that, quite frankly, surprised me in many ways, not the least of which being the abrupt crash I experienced when I stalled at 40 ft after trying to do a rudder-roll … unsuccessfully … and nosed-over with the sudden loss of momentum. Fortunately, as speculated earlier when I wrote about the virtues of X-Plane, the one thing that X-Plane will always be perfect for, regardless of what aircraft you are flying, is the forgiveness of stupid mistakes.

A few words about Chase View Deluxe: CVD is a plug-in included with many of the new STMA aircraft, as well as individually for a nominal price from the website (see above link). What does Chase View Deluxe do? In a word, it blows your world apart; literally. Chase view is the most common way to ‘look’ at your aircraft, either as you are flying or during the replay of a flight – or portion of flight (either pressing ‘a’ or ‘,’ respectively, without the quotation marks). What you experience with Chase View Deluxe is an entirely different situation. Rather than merely ‘chasing’ your plane, CVD provides you with the point of view of a cinematic camera, a tool that can be used for making videos in X-Plane; with CVD you can move about the sky freely, like a disembodied eye that sees everything. The best part of Chase View Deluxe, depending on your point of view, is the discrete – and easily deactivated – heads-up display that appears on the screen when in CVD mode. This HUD provides you with the basic flight information to keep you flying while watching your aircraft from the comfort of the director’s seat, or you can turn off the HUD during the playback of a recorded flight and snap some screenshots while moving around your aircraft in ways you never imagined possible. In short, Chase View Deluxe is well worth the $3.99 that is asked for when purchased on its own; when it comes as a part of the Aviat A-1A Husky? Priceless. Enjoy the screenshots and, I hope, many hours exploring ‘low and (not that) slow’ in this wonderfully crafted Husky; a true gem from Shade Tree Micro Aviation.

Hold onto the Dream

Yesterday was the 46th anniversary of the now infamous 'I have a dream' speech, delivered by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. at the March on Washington. While I was not born until 1968, both of my parents - strangers to each other in 1963 - traveled to Washington to hear Dr King speak. [As an aside, my mother traveled on a bus with my grandmother and, when they arrived in Washington D.C., from New York, my grandmother broke her ankle when she stepped off of a curb and miscalculated its height ... but, she stayed for the event.]

This post came to being as a response to an article posted by DesertPeace, on his blog. He was at the rally as well and, yes, he is my father (though I have wondered on occasion if there could be a mistake, then I see my hairline and these thoughts are immediately dismissed ... not to mention the 'duck waddle' ... there is a predisposition in our family to 'walk like ducks' ... but I digress. Suffice it to say, I have not questioned issues of paternity for a long time).

As a result of his article I posted the following reply, but I decided to turn it into a post of its own, with some minor changes.

You may see a video of the speech here (it will open in a new window).

There are many people who are convinced that the dream espoused by Dr King is dead. As dead as King himself. There may be cause to believe this; at times the United States gives one the impression that it is going to implode upon itself, finally reaching a critical mass that cannot exist for one more minute and which must destroy itself lest it destroy everything in the surrounding area. The alternative is to allow this seemingly ever-increasing organism to continue to lash out at other nations as they try to get their way in political matters. This path has led the United States, over the past eight years, to travel down a path of war against a nation that had nothing to do with attacking them, torturing political prisoners for questionable information about potential attacks that could not be verified by other sources, and a litany of other offenses that make the term 'civil rights' appear to be an umbrella phrase for the types of things that the government is going to limit or take away, all in the name of 'security' and the 'protection of freedom'.

The protection of freedom, however, can only exist when all people share the freedom. There cannot be freedom for a portion of society when another portion languishes in any form of inequality. This is as true today as it was during the time of slavery, or back when the Catholics expelled the Jews from Portugal in 1492. Freedom cannot discriminate, it must be universal in order to exist. So long as there are people in the United States who are oppressed as a result of their economic standing or because they are perceived as being lesser than the rest of the group to which they are being compared, freedom will only be an ideal to which people aspire but which is not achieved. The simple reason that this is that the nation is unable to confer the same rights and freedoms to all when it knows that this involves something more basic than any legislation could deliver or any march could confer, it requires the education of the public.

Once the population of America learns that they are EACH afforded the same rights and opportunities, guaranteed by LAW (something that you can only learn if you stay in school, which the ultra right count on not happening to those who they want to keep down), what can stop people from actively pursuing a future that does not have anything to do with the perpetuation of the stereotypes that have kept them locked into poverty since the end of the Civil War?

Image Copyright by Ben Heine
The Dream must not be allowed to die, it is far too important, far too vital, and far too essential to the future of America. The Dream must be revitalized, taken to its extreme, and it can be, if only people would stand up and demand from their elected officials the things that they asked for during the election campaign. A president will only do what they believe the people want, if the electorate seems to be turning away from the core message, what does that tell the administration? Many from the Civil Rights 'movement' voted for Barack Obama - seeing him as a direct result of the dream. Now is the time to continue with that vision; now that he is in office, continue to write to him and encourage him to maintain his focus, to not abandon his agenda and to fight for the rights of those that elected him. A silent majority is, quite frankly, useless.

Dreams can only die when the dreams are allowed to be forgotten. Just imagine what would have happened if everyone who was at that march went back home and became a genuine agent for change. Rather than just talking about 'having been there' and reminiscing about how wonderful it was they could have used the event as a rallying cry to galvanize their cause, to collectively join together - both black and white, Jew and Gentile, to create the America that was dying to be born.

After the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. the dream didn't die, the man did; the dream, however, became something of a hallowed fantasy that was more spoken of in whispers of awe rather than in the tones of something that could actually be accomplished. Even with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, after the assassination of JFK, a bill that was brought to fruition with the help of a junior senator from Massachusetts, Edward M. Kennedy, there was not as much support as there should have been for the simple reason that the 'movement' found it difficult to separate their hatred of Lyndon Johnston and his involvement in Vietnam.

Once Martin Luther King, Jr. was out of the way the civil rights movement was right where the south wanted it; instead of having a galvanizing force to keep the blacks, whites, Jews, and other colours of the rainbow working together for a single cause there was now a myriad of agendas competing to be heard. This allowed the southern states to react to the new laws without worrying about pesky 'leftists' from the north as they were seemingly less interested in risking their lives now that their guiding light had been removed from the picture.

Perhaps that sounded cynical; good, it was supposed to sound cynical. There is nothing worse than taking something like the messages delivered by Dr King and dismissing them, saying they have not been achieved, or will not be achieved, without asking the very serious question: why not. What is the cause of the failure? Where there not enough people invested in the cause that this should not have succeeded with flying colours? Of course, the answer is that it should have been an overwhelming success; there is no reason on earth for the cause of civil rights to have been stalled in the United States, unless there is an inherently racist nature in a certain part of the nation that is resistant to the entire prospect of civil rights and liberties. In fact, one might actually begin to believe that there is a portion of America that would be perfectly happy to re-institute the old lynching laws where it was legal to hang 'colored' folks from trees if'n there was a witness to the wrong doin', especially if one of them dared to look at a white girl askance, or was uppity enough not to step off of the sidewalk when white folk were approaching from the other direction.

God forbid these colored folk learned their letters. You know what they says about 'educated Negroes', don't you? Well, actually, I can't recall, but it can't be good, can it?

Give me a break. The end of the Jim Crow laws was the best thing to happen to America since the end of the Civil War, until the rise of the Civil Rights Movement - but when that movement did not, en masse, renew itself and turn out to support the initiatives that came out - the Civil Rights Act and the Voter Rights Act - they lost their vision, they lost their teeth, they lost their cause.

Certainly, there was great merit to the Civil Rights Movement morphing into the 'Peace' movement, and the 'Anti-War' movement - but, unfortunately, the organizers were very narrow minded in the focus and could not see the forest for the trees. They did not understand that there was a marked difference between the domestic policies of a government and their foreign policies. Was Johnson involved in an outrageous, unlawful war in Vietnam? Certainly - it was horrible and should not have been allowed to continue. However, what he was trying to do on the 'home front' was an entirely different matter and that, regardless of the war, deserved the support of those who had been fighting for the rights of others; those pieces of legislation proved to be fundamental for the future of the advancement of Civil Rights in America, regardless of whether or not 'the movement' was there to support those who created the legislative language. They simply missed the boat.

History is often a recounting of the stories telling us about lost opportunities or seemingly unique occurrences that led to a totally unlikely outcome. In the history of the Civil Rights Movement the name of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. will never be easily forgotten, but the acts of his many followers - after his death - will go down as one of the greatest losses of potential political power the United States has ever known.

It reminds me, very much, of what happened when a 'community organizer' rallied the support of grass-roots individuals, using the Internet and anything else at his disposal to create an irresistible atmosphere that countered anything his opponents could muster. People have been intent on trashing his presidency without giving him a chance to do his job, but it is always easier to judge than to allow someone the opportunity to do what they have promised. After all, before he was elected, did the previous president include the spending on the war in the numbers on the debt? No. Why? Because it looked bad; on the other hand, this guy has - but it looks bad - yes, it does, but it is truth. Now he gets blamed for it; how sad. Short memories make things like George W. Bush possible.

It also makes the passing of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. even sadder for we forget how often the dream is invoked, and then forgotten. Why forget? Pick it up and carry that dream; it encompasses all that America has not yet achieved, all that it can be, all that it should be, all the promise that has not yet been fulfilled by those words, 'We the people,' - a declaration that rings hollow if it does not represent all of America, not only a select part of the nation.

That is a tragedy from which there may be no recovery.

Edited: October 21, 2009.