But the fact remains that these plot devices, despite being completely divorced from normal life experience, are so overused that they’ve become ridiculous clichés of modern entertainment. Here are a few other devices so overused and that they’re now silly:

The ticking clock. How many times have we seen a drama that conveniently introduces some artificial deadline, only to have the hero avert catastrophe at the last second? It was already old when 1960s spies were disarming bombs in the nick of time, and now it’s just tiresome and obvious.

The misunderstanding. This is the “Three’s Company” plot device, because nearly every episode of that sitcom was based on somebody mishearing, misinterpreting or misunderstanding something said by one of the other characters. A simple clarification between them would of course bring the whole house of cards tumbling down, which is why that never happens until the last scene. Although I do respect anyone who can write a whole story based entirely on a misheard fragment of a secondary conversation, I don’t respect it enough to sit through 22 minutes of it.

The car chase. The entertainment value of the car chase has been on the decline since the 1970s. You know at the outset that there are going to be a bunch of near misses, screeching tires, sparks flying, destruction, slow motion airborne shots, implausible explosions and vehicles launching themselves off unseen ramps. It’s all been done. Bo-ring. When I’m watching a movie at home, the beginning of the car chase is when I get up to grab something from the kitchen.

Don’t you knock? When writers can’t figure out a clever way to reveal something to a character, they just have him/her walk in at the precise moment necessary to catch others in a compromising position. The timing is uncanny, and it’s become such a common device that viewers can predict precisely when it’s going to happen. Apparently, nobody locks their doors in Hollywood. A variation is the discovery of a confessional document/letter/photo that just happens to be in the right place at the right time.

Bad guys can’t shoot. Entire movies are predicated on this concept. For some reason, “badness” induces a severe handicap to hand-eye coordination. Six bad guys with fully automatic weapons usually can’t hit the good guy even once from five yards away, while the good guy can pick them off at will with his six-shooter. Of course, the protagonist would be dead in the first scene if the bad guys had even 10 minutes of firearms training, so you’ve got to suspend some disbelief here. But while I can accept that they don’t teach marksmanship in bad guy school, it really irks me when there’s a guy we think is good, then later turns out to be bad and suddenly becomes a lousy shot. Stupid.

If I pull up in front of your house and start a big generator, the noise and exhaust will pollute your environment. If you object to that and take action to stop me, you’re an environmentalist.

If the local grocery store leaves all its trash piled up on the corner, stinking up the whole block and causing garbage to be blown down your street, you and your neighbors might band together to remedy that situation. You’d be environmentalists.

And if you joined an effort to prevent your neighborhood from becoming the site for a big factory that would spew pollutants into the air, you’d be an environmentalist then too.

The people who fight on a national scale for clean air, water and preservation of natural resources are just doing the same thing, but with a wider scope. The term “environmentalist” has been denigrated by political forces with specific agendas who want the public to think of “tree-huggers” or “hippies” when they hear the term. But the truth is, when you get past the labels and propaganda, we’re all environmentalists.

Stories like this make me so sad to see what my country has come to in my lifetime. It’s just heartbreaking.

I take away three key lessons:

1. Always exercise your Fifth Amendment right to remain silent.
2. Anyone who justifies curbing civil liberties with an argument akin to “if you’re not doing anything wrong, then you’ve got nothing to worry about” needs to read this story, plus the stories of Richard Jewell, the Duke University lacrosse team, and the hundreds of people exonerated by the Innocence Project just before their government was about to murder them.
3. With very few exceptions, everything you see on television “news” programs is first designed to entertain and sensationalize in the name of profit. The goal of truthfully informing the viewership is a distant second on the priority list.

–

The internet has become an incredibly easy publishing vehicle whereby anyone can mass-distribute his ideas. On the surface, that’s great. But as purveyors of this information, how do we separate the wheat from the chaff? How do we know what to believe?

These days, when I see or read something new, I start by asking two questions. First, “How does this make me feel?” Because if the answer to that is really anything other than “indifferent,” I know I’ve got a potential problem with my ability to accurately interpret the topic at hand. The second question is: “What are the countering positions?” Then I go about my research with as open a mind as possible, always keeping a critical eye on those two questions.

The human brain has been proven time and again to be a flawed processing engine when it comes to determining truth:

• Studies show that an overwhelming number of us will hold onto false beliefs, so long as they’re presented prior to even the most powerful contradictory evidence.
• The phenomenon of “confirmation bias” allows us to conveniently discard information which might contradict our preconceived notions, while we quite easily accept information that “feels” right.
• We are highly prone to believing things we perceive as potential threats to our safety.
• We naturally seek patterns and infer causes, even when there is insufficient evidence to identify patters or determine causes.
• We are wired be give more weight to anecdotal evidence, especially if based on our own experience, than any objective or comprehensive examination of the topic.
• Groupthink commonly prevents us from exploring alternatives to what many around us believe.
• We are highly susceptible to logical fallacies. (The one I see most often is: correlation equals causation.)
• Any information, no matter how implausible, becomes more believable the more it is repeated.

All combined, these innate flaws make a treacherous path for truth-seekers in the information age. But given the pace of life and change today, the need to focus our attention on real problems and solutions, rather than chasing wild geese, is greater than ever.

That means it’s imperative to improve the way we process the huge amount of information that now makes it to our brains, and then distill it into objective truth. It’s not an easy task. As usually happens in human history, our technological progress has outpaced our ability to adapt behaviors to suit. Critical thinking, based on a rigorous examination of the facts, is something that many of us were never taught how to do. But we risk our very future if we don’t force ourselves to quickly evolve our thinking.

I watched most of the health care summit that was held in Washington last week. A lot of it was just aggravating, with so much political grandstanding that I couldn’t imagine any of those gasbags actually solving real problems. But the discussion reignited some thinking that I had a couple years ago, so I thought I’d share it here.

A large part of the health care debate comes down to what each of us believes the role of government should be. Some say that health care is a privilege, and doesn’t fall within the government’s purview. Others believe that health care is a right, but as with other rights, the government’s responsibility is simply to not infringe upon it, leaving each person to attend to his own needs without interference. Still others believe that, as an individual right, health care is something that should be provided by the government. I understand all three of those viewpoints and I’d like to explore this idea a little further to reveal why I believe one of them is more in line with our national identity.

The United States of America was born out of a carefully constructed document called the Declaration of Independence. The famous preamble says that, among the “unalienable Rights” of all men are “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” and that governments are “instituted among Men” in order “to secure these rights.”

That is, the role of government is, at the very least, to secure citizens’ natural rights, and one of those is the right to live. This is exemplified by the widely accepted view that government is responsible for things like law enforcement, sanitation, emergency response and national defense, all to prevent us from losing our lives to causes beyond our control.

On this point, I think it’s useful to focus on our military. We have armed forces to protect our government institutions, private property, the Constitution and our interests abroad. But the primary mission of our military is to protect American lives. When the nation has been attacked, we’re always talking about how many lives were lost, and we rightfully get angry at our government if we think they are failing to protect us. So, at least when it comes to foreign threats, protecting our lives is part of government’s role. To that end, our tax dollars are used to support a government-run institution that we call the Department of Defense.

The question then becomes: If it’s alright for the government to spend money protecting American citizens from foreign attackers, why is it not the government’s responsibility to protect Americans when the attacker is a virus, or a hereditary ailment, or cancer, or an accidental fall?

This issue comes even more sharply into focus when you look at the real threats to our lives. The following chart shows the biggest killers of Americans over an eight-year period.

The number of Americans killed by foreign powers during the same period, including by terrorism, is so miniscule that it’s difficult to show. The green box below symbolizes all American deaths for the timeframe, with the small white dot in the upper left corner representing the proportion of casualties from foreign aggression.

source: CDC

I’m not a big fan of government spending. In fact, I think the government over-taxes and wastes a huge amount of resources. But there are some big projects that benefit every citizen; projects that fall directly within the government’s mandate and which cannot be as equitably accomplished by the free market. Pooling tax dollars to protect all American lives is one of those endeavors, and there doesn’t seem to be a fundamental difference between doing that through the military and doing it through a national health care plan — other than the fact that health problems are a much greater threat to Americans than anything the military is protecting us from.

What our current policy says to people is: “If you happen to be attacked or threatened by a person, domestic or foreign, we will protect you. But if your attacker is a foreign body, such as a virus, bacterium, falling object, cancer, etc.; sorry, you’re on your own.” That makes no sense to me, and it makes no sense to the citizens of every other modern, industrialized nation.

Those nations have already had this debate, and they’ve come to the conclusion that some type of national health care system is the right way to go. Here’s a great Frontline episode examining five such systems. In every one of those countries, the citizens pay significantly less for health care (either through taxes or regulated insurance) than Americans do, and get better overall results. We deserve better.

The goal should be NON-partisan, not bipartisan.

I’m getting really tired of the White House touting all of their “bipartisan” efforts. Why should partisanship have anything to do with good policy? I understand that there are political realities in getting legislation passed, but if you’re appointing a commission to study an issue and offer solutions, it should be nonpartisan, not bipartisan.

The persistent idea that all policy issues come down to a conflict between two predetermined sides is akin to saying there are two kinds of music, country and western, and we’re going to appoint a commission whose members are fans of each to determine which style we’ll play in our nation. Just as there are dozens of popular music styles, there are many good policy ideas which don’t currently fall under the Republican or Democratic banners. Why limit ourselves to only the ones that do?

The Washington political cyclone seems to have blotted out the reality that roughly one third of voters do not identify themselves as either Republican or Democrat, so it’s no wonder they feel the government doesn’t represent them. Please open up the process.

There I go, tilting at windmills again.

It struck me as both funny and profoundly true. Far from remembering it, I wonder how many people even know what the Enlightenment was.

The Enlightenment, also sometimes referred to as the Age of Reason, was a period in Western history where philosophers, predominantly in France but also in other countries, cast aside old notions of superstition and governance, and promoted instead concepts of reason, natural rights, democracy, freedom and equality. The ideas caught on and the result was a blooming of reason and scientific thought the likes of which the world had never experienced. It also gave birth to many new republics, the first of which was the United States of America, whose founders were greatly influenced by Enlightenment philosophy.

The topic is not something I was taught much about in school, so I imagine that many Americans, who owe their country to Enlightenment philosophies and ideals, don’t know much about it either. The way I was taught, the American Revolution was entirely homegrown, and other nations followed by the colonies’ example. But that’s not how it went. The discussions and writings in Europe at the time strongly influenced the founders. Prior to this period, the mere notion of a nation governed democratically, with the power vested in the people instead of the church or monarchy, was unimaginable.

It would do us some good to look back a few hundred years and remember where we came from.

This is a tribute to a true companion.

Bandi was my dog, but more than that, he was my companion through trying times and interesting adventures. He passed away on the afternoon of February 11th, 2009 at a veterinary clinic where we live in Panama City. He was 11 years old.

What happened?

Bandi got very sick in December of 2008, and an ultrasound revealed a large mass in his small intestine. The surgery to remove it actually went quite well, but the poor guy was already so weak that he stopped breathing shortly afterwards. Despite his age, tests results indicated that, had he survived the recovery, he probably would have had a good amount of time left.

I was with him for his final moments, and I think he knew that.

Where did Bandi come from?

Bandi was found in the street as a tiny, excitable, incontinent puppy by a man who worked for my grandmother. When he arrived at my grandmother’s house, long a home for wayward dogs, she named him Bandi because he had been “abandoned.”

A Jewish grandmother’s solution to everything is food, so Bandi grew a lot while living with her. Within a few short years, he tipped the scales at a chunky 96 pounds. He was also afraid to leave the house.

Why was Bandi so special?

Bandi was more than a dog. He was part of the family.

To understand the role he played in my life, you have to understand the history. And by that, I mean the history starting long before Bandi arrived on the scene.

My grandmother was a towering presence in my life that I still feel daily. When her health was failing, I  helped care for her, and before she passed away at 99 years old, she asked me if I would take care of her two dogs.

The older dog, Michael, passed away a couple years later, oddly of exactly the same heart condition that had taken my grandmother. Bandi and I became even more attached after that.

Little by little, the various people who helped care for my grandmother left the household too. Then my relationship with my girlfriend of four years ended and she also moved out. Eventually, only Bandi and I remained.

A few months later, we moved to a new house, and 10 months after that, we moved to Costa Rica. We shared three different houses with my friend Shaun there, and Bandi even made some dog friends on the beach (a rarity for him).

After a year, I decided to pick up and move farther south to Panama City, where I knew nobody. Once again, the only consistent element was Bandi.

On the rare occasions that I’d leave the house without him, people would ask “Where’s Bandi?” I think some people didn’t even recognize me without him. As of this writing, it’s been a month since he passed and people are still asking.

Over the years, there have been friends, relatives, girlfriends, housemates, traveling companions and neighbors. For one reason or another, as often happens in life, they have all come and gone. But Bandi was my constant companion and my last daily connection to my grandmother.

What was Bandi like?

Bandi was really more like a young child than a dog.

In fact, he wasn’t much of a dog at all. He couldn’t catch a ball to save his life, wouldn’t run up to greet you, knew very few tricks and despised almost all other dogs. His idea of playing fetch was to slowly make his way to the object in question, gently pick it, then saunter to a secure corner and quietly commune with it. He liked to be pet for a few minutes, after which he’d simply go sit somewhere else. He was afraid of the freezer and things that sizzled.

If I dropped the leash while walking him, he’d just stop in his tracks and wait for me to pick it up again before taking another step. He didn’t like when I took off his collar. Generally speaking, he wouldn’t take food from strangers.

Bandi was extremely mellow, except when confronted with a cat, an unknown dog of any size or gender, or a motorcycle. Faced with any of those stimuli, he would instantly turn into the scariest growling, snarling aggressive beast you can imagine. It would shock even people who knew him well.

He would bark at the doorbell, even if it came out of the TV and sounded nothing like the doorbell to our house.

Bandi was very sensitive. If you gently asked him to do something, he’d do it without hesitation. But if you raised your voice, he’d get scared and sulk, as if to say, “Please don’t yell at me.”

He loved to have his chest and belly scrubbed. His back too.

Strangers were scared of Bandi, especially in Panama, which is something I don’t think he ever understood. Lucy, my other dog, will run up to any person, tail wagging, with a big happy grin on her face, and get all kinds of love and attention. Seeing this, Bandi would sheepishly approach the same person to receive similar affection, but invariably, the person would retreat in fear, all the while continuing to pet Lucy. That always made me feel bad for him.

He loved turkey. There was no other food that could actually get Bandi to sit up and beg. While he was sick, I bought a whole turkey breast and roasted it up for him.

It is said that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but nobody told that to Bandi. He was entirely untrained at 5 years old, but after two weeks of work, which included three visits from the trainer, he was done: completely obedient, respectful and demonstrably proud of knowing what to do. Over the course of one week in Costa Rica, Shaun taught him to “fist bump” Tico-style.

I spoke to Bandi in complete sentences, just as I would to a person. He was an amazing listener. In fact, I sometimes even called him “Bandi the Listener”. That was just one of his many nicknames, given to him by various people. Here’s just a sampling:

Bandushka, Bandush, Dush, Bandu, Bandu-koo-koo, koo-koo, kooky, kooky-boy, the boy, the big boy, the big woof, big love, big guy, the big dog, the large canine, Bandalino, Bandalore, Bandikins, Bandido, el lobo, Loby, el oso celoso, Bob Barker and el matapasto (it’s funny in Panama).

But beyond all the history, nicknames and idiosyncrasies, Bandi was my best friend. The house feels empty without him.

The people who loved him

So many people affected Bandi’s life over the years that it’s hard to keep track of them. Shaun, Lyena and Dean all lived with and cared for Bandi at various times. Bob, Nicole, Karmen and Christina bonded with him when I traveled.

Being so removed from our traditional support system down here, there are some people who just must be thanked for helping Bandi through his last two months.

Because I was out of the country when he took ill over Christmas, Kira was Bandi’s lifeline. She went way beyond the call of duty, caring for Bandi as if he were her own and keeping me up to date all along the way. I have no doubt that she saved his life while I was gone.

Joyce was my angel. During the toughest times, whether I needed someone to watch over Lucy while I cared for Bandi, or just someone to talk through the tough decisions that come along with being responsible for another person’s life, Joyce was always there for me.

Adela cared for Bandi like a son from the moment she started working here, making sure he had everything he needed when I wasn’t around, cleaning up his occasional messes, and even feeding him by hand when necessary.

Lyena and I cried together over the tough decisions and rejoiced over the small victories. She and Dean also saved my skin with work when caring for Bandi was taking up all my time.

Rachel lent more than her expertise and advice. She showed infinite patience with my barrage of questions and disorganized record-keeping, never once losing her caring nature. I know that she felt a special connection with Bandi as more than just a veterinarian.

Dra. Carmen Solis, Dra. Sandra Rios and her father, and everyone at Cats & Dogs Care Center and Mundo Animal were absolutely wonderful and patient with Bandi, Lucy and me. They all far exceeded my expectations.

I share this loss with all of these people, and all of you who are reading this.

Comments

Some comments people sent me upon hearing the news of Bandi’s passing…

My sister Judy: “…it’s a sad end to a tie to our past. I will miss the connection and know that you will miss the companionship.”

Kira: “I loved Bandi and will miss him sincerely. He was a very special presence to be around.”

Cousin Jay: “He really was a unique animal. He was a dog who actually had an awareness of and appreciation for his life, and for the people around him.”

Marion: “Bandi was one of the most amazing dogs ever. Truly, truly.”

Cory: “He had SUCH a great life. First with your grandmother and then with you.”

Cousin Tom: “He was a sweet guy and Grandma loved him so.”

Shaun: “That breaks my heart.”

My dad: “…he was more of a good friend than just a pet.”

My brother Dan: “What a great dog. Companion to you and grandma, world traveler, nice guy. He had a great life, albeit too short.”

If you have any Bandi stories you’d like to share, please add a comment below.