{"id":88517,"date":"2017-03-13T12:00:45","date_gmt":"2017-03-13T12:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=88517"},"modified":"2017-03-12T12:34:43","modified_gmt":"2017-03-12T12:34:43","slug":"peeping-pigs-and-propaganda-by-omission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/03\/peeping-pigs-and-propaganda-by-omission\/","title":{"rendered":"Peeping Pigs and Propaganda by Omission"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.\u201d<\/em>
\n— George Orwell, Animal Farm<\/em><\/p>\n

5 Mar 2017 – <\/em>While there is much talk these days about \u201cfake news,\u201d omitting important news is perhaps as widespread and egregiously harmful to an informed public.\u00a0 The following report tries to remedy the way the mainstream media have for years ignored one of the oddest but more important news stories of the last sixty years.\u00a0 Its implications are momentous, especially in the light of the exponential growth of spying and the loss of privacy. There are eyes everywhere these days. That we are being watched is beyond dispute; but by whom and why?\u00a0 This is the real story that the mainstream media have failed to address.\u00a0 Their failure to do so is truly laughable.<\/p>\n

Extensive scientific research over fifty years has concluded that pigs that stink and grow larger as they age have small eyes and tend to stare at people. I have previously reported on these startling studies, but they have been met with a blind eye. Researchers across the world continue to replicate and confirm the findings of the original research done in 1953 in Kansas by Dr. Wilfred Jeffred Eftie. Yet the mainstream media, as is their wont, keep failing to report these extraordinary studies or slight them as worse than fake news.\u00a0 Averting one\u2019s gaze from their import won\u2019t make them disappear.\u00a0 Surveilling pigs may not be obvious, but the fact that they\u2019re not makes them triply dangerous.<\/p>\n

While seemingly insignificant on the face of it, these replicated studies in abnormal autology have led to new insights into our osmological understanding of the place of egoism in political life. The epistemology of egoism has long perplexed scientists, but Eftie\u2019s brilliant counterintuitive insights have led to some major breakthroughs. However, the story of Eftie\u2019s original discovery, ignored for years, deserves renewed attention.\u00a0 But I will get to that in due course. It is best to proceed backwards.\u00a0 Looking back will allow us to see if we have learned anything from the past and if something is gaining on us.<\/p>\n

So let\u2019s first take a look at a few of the significant follow-up studies that have added so much to our understanding of human animal behavior. It\u2019s surely an understatement to say that in the world of science we stand on the shoulders of giants such as Eftie. It allows us to see so far.\u00a0 One study that was replicated 789 times found that small eyes in humans tended to result in marked elevations of dopamine and diminished activity in the frontal cortex, the same results that were found in pigs. When translated into the political arena, researchers found that politicians with small eyes tend to stare at people as a power tactic, and such body language is correlated with a tendency for them to grow larger as they age \u2013 i.e. get fat.\u00a0 Their small-eyed stares seem to intensify the power differential between them and those stared at, but this was not conclusively proven. Not yet, at least.<\/p>\n

Unlike the pig studies from which this research emanated, no correlation was found to body odor.\u00a0 However, one eminent New York City based researcher, Dr. Wilbur Shoat, made the startling discovery that smell is very subjective, and therefore in the human samples an intervening variable, such as the number and consistency of nose hairs, may be a factor. Shoat did find a possible link that demands further study: In the politicians and celebrities that comprised his sample – seemingly different from the original pigs \u2013 there was a significant probability that the sulfuric whiff they gave off came from their mouths when they talked, unlike the small-eyed fat pigs that stank all over; that, at least, was what some researchers felt they smelled when working with pigs. \u00a0Ironically, pigs have an acute sense of smell far superior to that of humans, which may explain why non-scientists might think otherwise. Then again, it may not.<\/p>\n

But Dr. Shoat, coming from a long line of swine scientists, had presciently hypothesized that finding, though common sense would have us expect the exact opposite. But then again, common sense often over-exaggerates its ability to grasp the nuances of science and understand its processes.\u00a0 Perhaps this is because so much science reporting is written in jargon-filled prose and not clear, non-redundant language understandable to the average normal person.\u00a0 Unlike today, reporters and doctors once wrote clearly, as the following quote from Dr. Eftie exemplifies.<\/p>\n

In one of his follow-up studies, Dr. Eftie put it this way: \u201cWithout resorting to value judgemnets, it is the intent of this research project to substantiate an empirical relationship between the small size of the medium swine eye (as intensified through the pig smell\/eyelid blink factor) on the one hand, and resulting intrafamily behavioral oddness on the other\u2026. Animals in the control group progressed, without exception, from small to large size as they matured, thus creating the impression that they could both see more and take increasingly decisive action in response to visual stimuli.\u201d<\/p>\n

An ingenious researcher, Dr. Edward Edwards, an amphigorologist known for his determinist determining twin studies, took the small-eyed pig studies and applied their methodology to self-promotion among well-known people \u2013 i.e. celebrities. He reviewed thirty-five books they had written, including autobiographies and political memoirs, and concluded that those with the smallest eyes (based on optical scans of book jacket photos) tended to have the largest egos.\u00a0 While his sample size was admittedly small, so were their eyes, and he thought intensity of gaze was more important than size.\u00a0 He reported that in a eureka moment he realized that they all seemed to be looking intensely at him. What his subjects had in common \u2013 aside from money and having been mentioned in the gossip columns \u2013 was that they considered themselves to be \u201csomebodies\u201d (his term, based on their notorious egocentricity).\u00a0 As a good researcher does, he operationalized the term \u201csomebody\u201d to mean \u201cnot nobody,\u201d making sure to be precise.\u00a0 What else, if anything, a \u201csomebody\u201d is he left hanging until his follow-up study when he plans to interview the thirty-five and ask them.\u00a0 He expects they will gladly answer, and that those answers will buttress his empirical findings.<\/p>\n

Sadly, the first pigs observed by Dr. Eftie are long deceased.\u00a0 They stare no more.\u00a0 Absurd as it may sound, we owe them a great debt.\u00a0 Since a pig\u2019s life is a brief prologue to bacon in a country devoted to devouring the evidence of its crimes, most researchers have had to study the children and grandchildren of Eftie\u2019s pigs.\u00a0 But their offspring have flourished \u2013 thank God for that. Pigs seem to reproduce rapidly and in great numbers, and researchers today have a wide assortment to choose from \u2013 across species.<\/p>\n

One of the most intriguing aspects of all this ground-breaking research is how it sheds light on the need to replicate studies and repeat inconvenient truths that people wish to avoid. Repetition, repetition, repetition \u2013 that\u2019s the key \u2013 a sine qua non of the scientific method and the best news fit to print, as Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud\u2019s nephew and mentor to a certain German leader, instructed our finest opinion leaders.<\/p>\n

Of course the news of Dr. Eftie\u2019s important work can\u2019t be repeated by the mainstream media since they have never reported it. Their focus on fake news reporting has diverted our attention from this censorship by omission. One might reasonably conclude they have no interest in autology or pig gazing, and that is a god-damned shame.\u00a0 You can see I\u2019m getting emotional, but the findings about pigs reported here need wide and ceaseless publicity, and we depend on our mainstream media to do that. Keep hammering the same point; that way truth will emerge. People need to hear things repeated before they sink in.<\/p>\n

Not just the research into political pigs with small eyes and big egos, but what they say, and what we say about what they say, and what the media repeats about what they think about what they say.<\/p>\n

We need the straight truth, and I think that if we compulsively repeat ourselves, we will be marching toward the light.\u00a0 I am sure of that.\u00a0 But it takes perseverance.\u00a0 If we stick to our guns, remain humble, and keep repeating ourselves, this writer believes we will perhaps discover that even pigs with large eyes stare at people. That may be shocking, but it should wake people up.<\/p>\n

After all, Dr. Eftie\u2019s dazzling insights had humble beginnings, but he kept after it.\u00a0 The roots of his genius lie in his childhood, as his first observational study makes clear.\u00a0 He was a brilliant and precocious child.\u00a0 When he was seven years old and just starting the second grade, his teacher, Mrs. Schmidt, had the original idea of having her students write about what they did on their summer vacation.\u00a0 Wilfred\u2019s scholarly career began with that essay.\u00a0 Here it is:<\/p>\n

\u201cWilfred E\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 2A\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My Sumer Vacation<\/p>\n

I spent too <\/span>to weeks all sumer at my Granpa Efties on a farm in Conzu Canz<\/span> Canzus. i saw many pigs their. Sum of the pigs saw me too <\/span>two. With there tiny eeis <\/span>eyes. The Big pigs were very big.\u201d<\/p>\n

While this childish writing is humorous, it became the inspiration for Dr. Eftie\u2019s scientific breakthrough years later.\u00a0 In 1973, the writer Tom Koch wrote a fascinating article describing his step-by-step maturation on his way to his Ph.D.(*) It reads like a case study of Piaget\u2019s four stages of cognitive development or Dr. Kubler-Ross\u2019s five stages of grief \u2013 Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance (DABDA); I forget which.\u00a0 Scholars from across the disciplines should study it since they tend to like stages.<\/p>\n

But little news since has been devoted to the advances made by Doctors Shoat and Edwards in their follow-up studies.\u00a0 After all, studies replicated 789 times demand attention, especially considering their findings.\u00a0 It is hoped that this update will convince the skeptical that there is more truth in a pig\u2019s eye than seems to be the case.\u00a0 News like this is often overlooked by the mainstream media that prefers what they call \u201creal news.\u201d\u00a0 It behooves us to stand with Dr. Eftie and the importance of his insights into pigs, especially those with small eyes, since they are looking at us. The surveillance state has arrived.<\/p>\n

NOTE:<\/strong><\/p>\n

(*) Dr. Eftie\u2019s lifetime work, including \u201cMy Sumer Vacation,\u201d is comprehensively presented by Tom Koch in the April 1973 issue of Mad magazine<\/em>, perhaps this country\u2019s finest research journal.<\/p>\n

______________________________________<\/p>\n

Edward Curtin<\/em> is a writer whose work has appeared widely.\u00a0 He teaches sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. His website is <\/em>http:\/\/edwardcurtin.com\/<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

5 Mar 2017 – While there is much talk these days about \u201cfake news,\u201d omitting important news is perhaps as widespread and egregiously harmful to an informed public. The following report tries to remedy the way the mainstream media have for years ignored one of the oddest but more important news stories of the last sixty years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[213],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food-for-thought"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88517\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}