Before I Am Love, directed by Luca Gaudagnino and released into American movie theaters this summer, the Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer John Adams had never written a soundtrack. In a way he still hasn’t, since more than 30 minutes of music he supplied for this Italian soap opera without the suds were cannibalized in one and two minute bites from his earlier work. It’s not an unusual way for a composer to get a screen credit, even from beyond the grave. Beethoven did it for A Clockwork Orange, Mozart for Amadeus, and Bach for Tree of Wooden Clogs. Each one of those was a far better movie than I Am Love. At least Adams is still alive and might one day sign on to a movie worthy of his gifts.

Adams once turned down an invitation to do a film score for Francis Ford Coppola, but the composer seems to be on board for I Am Love, which cost him little or no creative energy. After having seen a rough-cut of the film in London in 2009 he made some suggestions, and for the American campaign he has promoted the movie along with the film’s star and co-producer Tilda Swinton.

As more people discover how to send text messages on their ever-present cell phones, we have become a nation of hypnotized zombies who stare into our phones while we drive into telephone poles, walk into trees, wander into fellow pedestrians, jam up traffic in the cereal aisle and generally tune out to what is going on right in front of our noses.

Who ever thought that our culture would be taken over, not by robots, not by the Russians, not by rock and roll, but by little hand-held walkie talkies that send writ­ten notes of no more than 140 characters in length.

It’s as if we’ve collectively returned to fifth grade when we learned the joy of passing notes.

Oh, to get a folded up note! A message from an ora­cle!

A note passed in class was magical. It was concealed. It was secret. As you opened it, you dreamed of the pos­sibilities inside.

The content always disappointed, of course. The mes­sage was meaningless, stupid or incoherent.

But for that moment when you held the note, knew it was meant for you and you only, a special drug took effect.

That drug is hope, for it is always possible that an unopened note might contain the evidence you crave that you are special, loved, complete and whole.

The fifth grade notes always fell short, but enough of the hope drug lingered in the body that the over-all experience was pleasurable. The next note was wel­comed with the exact same exhilarating sense of unreal­istic expectation.

Like lab rats pressing a bar to get their pleasure zones zapped again and again, even at the expense of food, water and safety, people are now passing notes to each other while thousands of miles apart. Or while in the same car.

Did we think it could get worse than people talking on cell phones everywhere?

It just did. People now talk with their thumbs.

Actual cell phone conversations, even though they dis­tract drivers and leave them sitting at stop signs while everybody else waits for them to go, still allow people to use their eyes.

Cell phones used in restaurants for gag-inducing con­versations about Grandma’s colostomy, Ellen’s weight issue or the dog’s ear infection are merely rude.

But text messaging, although bystanders are spared the agony of hearing the message out loud, occupies both eyes, both hands and all of one’s attention.

The people standing right next to you are left to won­der if you even know they are there. When the oracle from beyond issues a message of less than 140 charac­ters, everything stops.

Nobody seems to mind the tremendous inefficiency of talking with one’s thumbs. Sending little text messages takes time, especially for older folks like myself who were taught to type using all of our fingers.

Nobody seems bothered when people tune out mid-conversation to smile at their phone, happy as a fifth grader who just got a note that not-so-incidentally, the person next to them did not get.

Nobody seems to mind that the problem of people tuning out to text is literally taking lives on our high­ways.

Text messaging triggers the production of a powerful drug by our glandular nodes that overrides all other con­cerns.

It is the same drug that makes unopened Christmas gifts under the tree more thrilling than the disappointing box of junk you take home after the gifts are opened.

It is a drug produced by hope that an oracular mes­sage from beyond will finally soothe the unbearable anxieties of existence.

As with all drugs, we love to deny their pernicious effects. Texting is “more efficient,” people say.

Efficient? Try going through the same revolving door as somebody who is trying to finish up a text message.

The reason people insist texting is more efficient is it doesn’t require the hassle of clumsy social conventions like saying hello and goodbye.

Texting doesn’t require that you look a person in the eye.

No wonder 20-something lovebirds now break up with each other by text message.

Text messaging is one more way machines have drained the blood from human communication.

Yes, we can be in constant touch with everybody. Yes, we can get magical messages from beyond. Hun­dreds per day!

But to the extent we prefer oracular machine mes­sages to face-to-face human communication, we set our physical, emotional and mental health aside in favor of a pernicious drug.

Comments on the Oliver Stone film “South of the Bor­der” accompanied by a Carmen Miranda tune, at Berkley’s Elmwood Theatre, July 17, 2011, with econo­mist and scriptwriter Mark Weisbrot (with Tariq Ali-in the film) fielding questions.

The film originated when Oliver Stone decided to interview Hugo Chavez to counter the general distortions in the US media. While in Venezuela Stone apparently took off with the film crew to interview South American Presidents who are the new wave of elected social democrats, who did not come to power via a revolution as in Cuba. Chavez -Venezuela, Correa-Ecuador, Morales-Bolivia, Lugo-Paraguay, Lula-Brazil, Fernan­dez- Argentina, and a snippet of Raul Castro, the only one who came to power via a legitimate revolution.

High Times magazine sponsored the original “Canna­bis Cup” in Amsterdam in 1987. The event inspired plant breeders and publicized their strains and their seed com­panies. It has been held annually ever since — a fine excuse for a trade show and an extended party at harvest time.

The pretext of a cannabis cup is that discerning judges will sample various strains and determine the best (to be announced at the climactic awards ceremony). The truth is, it’s impossible for judges, after sampling strain #1, to then distinguish the effects of sample #2. The body needs an interval of at least three or four hours for a return to baseline cannabinoid levels. Lester Grinspoon, MD, thinks that evaluating only one sample a day would be preferable.

High Times recently launched a glossy quarterly called HT Medical Marijuana News and Reviews, edited in San Francisco. To celebrate their arrival on the scene, the magazine staff organized the first ever “medical” cannabis cup, It was held last week-end at Terra, an events center — an erstwhile factory with a large side-yard — on Harrison St., kitty corner from the Sailors and Seamen’s Union hall.

The weather was okay on Saturday, perfect on Sun­day, and a whompin’ good time was had by about 2,000 medical cannabis users each day. Tickets cost $50, ven­dors paid $1,500 for tables. It was not the standard High Times demographic — there were more middle-aged people and senior citizens. I figured about half the sen­iors had done time. And all had lived in fear of the cops and endured social contempt. Now they were passing joints in the sunshine, ignoring the “no tobacco smok­ing” signs, enjoying a sliver of freedom.

Valerie Corral, the leader of WAMM, had been assigned to judge the strains classified as Sativas. She was given 42 samples to evaluate six days prior to the event. I saw her one day that week at a meeting — she was sampling #32 and conscientiously recording her impressions in a notebook. DJ Short, the renowned plant breeder and seed merchant, had to judge 38 Indica sam­ples. He and Val each managed to select a top five (in consultation with High Times editors), and then Jorge Cervantes, the best-selling author of cultivation guides, made the final call.

Valerie Corral is a very positive woman. She said that every bud she evaluated was “a jewel grown with the best intentions.” But the chemical residue on some made her cough, and one gave her a headache. DJ Short, who is not partial to Indicas in general, didn’t find any he especially liked among the cup entrants. But the show must go on, and Cervantes made executive decisions based on appearance and aroma.

And the winners were… Best Sativa: “God’s Pussy,” from GreenBicycles up in Crescent City… Best Indica: “Cali Gold,” from Mr. Natural, Inc…. Best concentrate (chosen by Chris Conrad and Mikki Norris from among 16 entrants): Ingrid, by the Leonard Moore collective, Mendocino… Best edible: biscotti from Greenway in Santa Cruz.

Steep Hill lab in Oakland tested the entrants for THC content. Steep Hill’s David Lampach says that the canna­bis cup entrants averaged 15-16% THC, whereas the buds the lab ordinarily tests average 10-12% THC. “The winners all had high THC levels,” according to Lam­pach, “but not necessarily the highest.” God’s Pussy was found to contain 18.2%; Cali Gold 18.4%; and Ingrid hash 45.5% THC.

Lampach points out that Cali Gold, though classified as an Indica by the Cup organizers, might actually be a sativa-dominant strain, based on its lineage. The taxon­omy of cannabis is very loose, to put it mildly. Sativas are said to have longer, narrower leaves; to take longer to reach maturity (important for growers); and to have a more cerebral effect (as opposed to sedating Indicas). DJ Short says there is no clear dividing line and cites the example of Flo, a strain he developed that is “a quick finisher but has narrower leaves and a Sativa effect.”

Both Valerie Corral and DJ Short said they were struck by the predominance of cannabis grown indoors and felt impelled to extol the virtues of the sun. So did Jorge Cervantes, who gave a talk on cultivation to a rapt SRO audience. Note that the Amsterdam cannabis cup is held in November, when the outdoor harvest comes in. In California, where most cultivation is indoors, the cup was held in June. Obeying the law of supply and demand requires lots of electricity.

High Times Medical News and Reviews gave an award to Lester Grinspoon, MD, for his enduring service to the cause… Grinspoon winced when he learned the name of the winning Sativa, and High Times promptly took the offensive term down from its website. Grin­spoon has an idea to promote more dignified nomencla­ture in the future: judges should give weight to the name of a strain when evaluating its worth as a medicinal product.

Previously, I raised a point that is crucial for under­standing the situation of Greece today: that all of the images of Greeks as over-paid, lazy, extravagant, blah blah blah— hit the international media after the run on their sovereign debt by financial profiteers had begun. In other words, popular opinion about Greeks is essentially an echo chamber justifying the “judgment of markets,” or the actions of financial debt and derivatives swindlers, hedge fund division, Goldman Sachs conference. So let’s consider just how extravagant Greeks really are.

Community radio enthusiasts descended onto the small town of Garberville, California on May 14th-16th for the 15th Annual Grassroots Radio Confer­ence. Sta­tion managers, show hosts, producers and newsmakers from around the country gathered for the three-day con­ference to share skills, network and dis­cuss all things radio.

Author and independent news producer Laura Fland­ers was the keynote speaker.

She discussed the media’s role in holding public offi­cials accountable, and the mainstream media’s failure in fulfilling that role.

“Keeping someone accountable? We’re no better than the people of Afghanistan,” she said.

Last week, the president warned a graduating class against a few gadgets and toys, iPods, iPads, Xboxes and PlayStations, where “information becomes a dis­traction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation,” but this could easily describe nearly all of our media, with Obama, like the rest of our ruling class, a prime beneficiary. As our entire society unrav­els and the Gulf of Mexico becomes a dead sea, what do you find on television but singing and dancing con­tests, huge people losing weight, pregnant teens and endless sports? That is, the usual stuff, all noise and no consequences.

Thank you for your opinion piece in the “AVA” about the lack of responsible reporting by the “Fort Bragg Advocate News” especially in coverage of Aaron Vargas.

I’m sure I don’t have to tell you the corporate-owned, corporate-friendly print and electronic media has an OBLIGATION to inform—as fairly as possible—its readers/audience.  A major reason for the current Wall Street meltdown, affecting the entire world, is because, exactly like Congress, the corporate media hasn’t been watching out for us.  All along, the so-called “major media” has placed profit before people, allowing advertisers to dictate editorial policy. And, adding insult to injury, the corporate media consistently denies this.  How the right-wing can call the corporate media “liberal” is proof of the low integrity and/or equally low intellectual wattage of so-called “conservatives.”

I studied journalism at the University of Texas at Austin in the early 60s and ended my brief career in that field just a few years later publishing and editing an underground newspaper in San Antonio that almost got me literally killed. I still haven’t fully healed and am still seeing a shrink, the direct result of placing people before profit in my newspaper.

I am now 73 and it galls me more than ever how we students at UT were drilled over and over to be “objective” in our writing.  It didn’t take me long “on the job” to figure out there ain’t no such animal in journalism as “objectivity” especially in the US of A which today ranks about fortieth among nations in freedom of the press, according to Reporters Without Borders.

In the twenty plus years I’ve lived here on the coast, the “Advocate News” has published many dozens of my letters-to-the-editor and even opinion pieces.  A letter I submitted recently in support of Aaron Vargas is the very first—in my memory—NOT to be published.  This gives credence to supporters of Vargas who say the “Advocate” has been blocking news about him for political considerations.

If this is true, the owners and staff of the “Advocate News” must be truly chagrined at the incredible amount of national major media coverage of Vargas. If this young man receives justice, it will not have been with the help of his hometown newspaper.

Tom Cahill
Fort Bragg

It is the topic of somber conferences and alarming stories on public radio: the speed of internet service in our rural areas is falling way behind the rest of the world.

Internet speed in the United States ranks thirtieth in the world, and is about one-third the speed of the leader, South Korea.

But in America’s rural areas, it is worse. Internet speed is less than one-fourth our already low national average.

According to one statistical analysis, internet serv­ice here in the American countryside is slower than Africa’s.

The studies focus on the economic impact of the slow service. If you make your living on the internet, goes the argument, you’d just as well be farming with horses.

Of course, the real issue is that the internet is used far more often to avoid work than to finish it.

As the coffee brews in the morning, most internet users start reading through the equivalent of 43 news­papers stacked on their front step.

With slow internet service, when you click on a headline, it takes a good few seconds for the article to pop up on the screen, seconds which pile up in to minutes, which pile up into hours.

Reading online is much like surfing 100 channels of satellite television: most of it is trash and unless you employ ironclad discipline, you end up gobbling up mind-candy by the bagful.

Eventually, things deteriorate even further as peo­ple check up on their friends on Facebook, play games, gawk at images some might consider unwhole­some or chat with people they’ll never have to meet face-to-face.

Work? Most people who work on the internet rely less on internet speed than do those who play on the internet.

The economic impact of low internet speed comes down to a question nobody asks: Does it really matter if we waste our time more efficiently?

Since we’re already wasting our time, maybe its best if we have to wait a bit for our time-wasting diversions to show up on the screen so we don’t end up with so much mental clutter.

What’s missing is the resolve to tackle the real problem: When given the choice, people would rather be entertained than work.

Like lab mice in an experiment, we keep pushing the button that makes us giggle, even if it causes us to miss out on the food pellets.

If we do improve internet service, 94.7% of it will be used, not to produce and sell widgets, but to download stupid video clips.

“We weren’t ready for kids who watch video,” said the phone man when I whined to him about my slow internet service.

I didn’t tell him that my main use for faster inter­net would be to watch amateur blooper videos of cats that get their paws caught in ceiling fan cords and spin around howling bloody murder until they get thrown against the dining room wall and run under the bed.

Hilarious, but it sort of ruins the effect if the video pauses when the cat is mid-air.

Last spring, I spent 43 hours watching Susan Boyle sing. That time could have been reduced to 13 hours if we had decent internet speed.

Whether or not I would use the freed-up 30 hours to clean the garage or start a new business is an open question. Maybe I would have just found more cat videos.

Yes, it’s those kids, the phone man and I agreed. They come home from school and play on the com­puter. The increased traffic overwhelms that switch box across from the graveyard and pretty soon the economy grinds to a halt so kids can play shoot-em-up with their friends in Lithuania.

That theory held water until I remembered that 86.5% of the kids in our neighborhood are Amish, a group not known for heavy internet usage.

Then it hit me:

Even though the Amish actually farm with horses, I’ll bet one Amish family gets more done in a day than fifty families sequestered in front of their computers watching cat videos.

So, a question for those worried about the effects of slow internet service on the countryside: if we get faster service so the cat videos download instantly, will we spend the extra time shocking oats?

(Visit Eric’s weblog at www.countryscribe.com.)

Sure, the paper’s not making anywhere near as much as it once did from other classified ads, but that doesn’t justify trying to make up for it by outrageously exploiting the saddened friends and families of the recently deceased.