the great melting pot

American has long been known as a melting pot, and nothing brought that home more than the 2020 Academy Awards ceremony.

Early in the show, Indina Menzel and Aurora sang “Into the Unknown”, the theme song from “Frozen 2”. On stage were 9 other singers, who sang the song in 9 other languages, including Danish, Russian, German, Thai, and Spanish.

In the days when Bob Hope was the master of ceremonies, virtually all of the people on the stage looked pretty much the same – mostly white and male. Although Noah Cullen was nominated for an award in 1958, Sidney Poitier broke the color barrier in 1963, when he was awarded the Oscar for his performance in Lilies of the Field. Subsequently, Denzel Washington, Jamie Foxx, and Forest Whitaker also were awarded the statue for their Best Actor performances. The only black female to win an Oscar was Halie Berry, in 2001.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_black_Academy_Award_winners_and_nominees#Best_Actress_in_a_Leading_Role

Overshadowed by the musical performances and great speeches was the fact that a former president ALSO won an Oscar. Netflix's “American Factory,” produced by Michelle and Barack Obama, took home the award for best documentary at the 92nd Oscars. It's the first Academy Award for the Obamas' production company, Higher Ground. The former president and first lady weren't able to attend Sunday's ceremony in Hollywood. (If you are a student of history, you may remember that Michelle Obama first said, “when they go low, we go high” during the 2016 midterms elections – hence the name for their production company.)

Worldwide, Korean is not a popular language. Only 75 million people in the world speak Korean.48 million of them are in South Korean, and 24 million are in North Korea. However, that did not prevent “Gangnam Style to become the first video to reach 1 billion views on YouTube in December of 2012.

   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH1XGdu-hzQ

There ARE people in our society who think that should all speak English, and they decry the fact that English is NOT our official language. However, their perception of reality is more than a little skewed, since there are more than 220 languages spoken in California, and 44% of the residents speak a language other English at home. Seven million Californians also say they cannot speak English well, which is nothing to be ashamed of.

Neither can the commander-in-chief.

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-court-interpreter-20170905-story.html

Incidentally, if you feel like you would learn how to speak (or understand) Korean, the paragraphs below show you how it looks in the Korean language – and Google Translate can put it in a form that you can actually pronounce.

위대한 녹는 냄비

미국인은 오랫동안 용광로로 알려져 왔으며 2020 아카데미 시상식 이상으로 그 집을 가져 오는 것은 없습니다.

쇼 초반에 Indina Menzel과 Aurora는“Frozen 2”의 주제가 인“Into the Unknown”을 불렀습니다. 무대에는 덴마크어, 러시아어, 독일어, 태국어 및 스페인어를 포함한 9 개의 다른 언어로 노래를 부르는 9 명의 다른 가수들이있었습니다.

밥 호프 (Bob Hope)가 의식의 달인이었던 날, 무대 위의 거의 모든 사람들은 거의 백인과 남성으로 거의 같았습니다. 1958 년 Noah Cullen이 수상 후보로 지명되었지만 Sidney Poitier는 1963 년 Lilies of the Field에서 오스카상을 수상하면서 컬러 장벽을 무너 뜨 렸습니다. 이후 Denzel Washington, Jamie Foxx 및 Forest Whitaker도 최고의 배우 공연 동상을 수상했습니다. 오스카상을 수상한 유일한 흑인 여성은 2001 년에 Halie Berry였습니다.

https://ko.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_black_Academy_Award_winners_and_nominees#Best_Actress_in_a_Leading_Role

뮤지컬 공연과 훌륭한 연설에 그림자가 있지만 전 대통령 ALSO가 오스카상을 수상했다는 사실이 사실이었습니다. Michelle과 Barack Obama가 제작 한 Netflix의 "American Factory"는 92 번째 Oscars에서 최고의 다큐멘터리 상을 수상했습니다. 오바마 제작사 Higher Ground에서 최초로 아카데미 상을 수상했습니다. 전 대통령과 영부인은 할리우드에서 열린 일요일 행사에 참석할 수 없었습니다. (역사 학생이라면, 미셸 오바마가 2016 년 중간 선거 기간에 처음으로“낮게 갈 때 우리는 높아진다”고 말한 것을 기억할 것입니다. 따라서 생산 회사의 이름입니다.)

전 세계적으로 한국어는 인기있는 언어가 아닙니다. 전 세계에서 7 천 5 백만 명이 한국어를 사용하며, 4 천 7 백만 명이 한국에, 2 천 2 백만 명이 북한에 있습니다. 그러나“강남 스타일은 2012 년 12 월 YouTube에서 10 억 회 시청 한 최초의 동영상이되었습니다.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH1XGdu-hzQ

우리 사회에는 모두 영어를해야한다고 생각하는 사람들이 있으며 영어가 우리의 공식 언어가 아니라는 사실을 밝힙니다. 그러나 캘리포니아 주에는 220 개가 넘는 언어가 사용되며 거주자의 44 %가 집에서 다른 영어를 사용하기 때문에 현실에 대한 인식이 약간 왜곡되었습니다. 7 백만 명의 캘리포니아 주민들도 영어를 잘 못한다고 말하는데 부끄러운 일이 아닙니다.

사령관도 마찬가지입니다.

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-court-interpreter-20170905-story.html

또한 한국어를 구사하는 법을 배우고 싶다고 느끼면 아래 단락이 도움이 될 것입니다.

spit it out!

One of the rooms I was in today had a can of Zyn nicotine patches on the desk, which got me wondering. Who invented snuff?

Technically speaking the stuff on the desk was chewing tobacco, not snuff, and there IS a difference.

Snuff is made from tobacco leaves that have been ground into a fine powder. Pre-Columbian American inhabitants were the first known snuffers. It's been used in Europe since the 1500s, mostly among the aristocracy, both for enjoyment and for its perceived medicinal properties. Use has declined sharply over the last hundred years, but the stuff is still around.

Typically, it is placed between the thumb and the forefinger and inhaled. Modern snuff comes in a variety of flavors. It is sniffed quickly into the nostrils, where it produces a stimulating burn — and a heady nicotine buzz — without the tobacco smoke that's been banned from many public locations.

The U.S. Surgeon General will not recommend dry snuff as a safe alternative to other tobacco products, and tins sold in this country bear the same warning stickers as oral snuff and other forms of smokeless tobacco.

Snuff is much cheaper than cigarettes. While a pack of 20 smokes can set you back $7, dry snuff costs between $2 and $5 for a pocket-size container of about 7 grams. One such tin can last a regular user several weeks

https://www.wired.com/2009/06/snuff/

Chewing tobacco, on the other hand, is typically placed between the gum and the jaw line, or placed in the mouth and chewed. Unlike dipping tobacco, it is not ground and must be manually crushed with the teeth to release flavor and nicotine. Unwanted juices are then expectorated (spat) – which is why many offices in the early part of the 20^th century had cuspidors.

Chewing is one of the oldest methods of consuming tobacco. Indigenous peoples of the Americas in both North and South America chewed the leaves of the plant long before the arrival of Europeans, frequently mixed with the mineral lime, in the same way as coca leaves.

The southern United States was distinctive for its production of tobacco, which earned premium prices from around the world. Most farmers grew a little for their own use, or traded with neighbors who grew it. Commercial sales became important in the late 19th century as major tobacco companies rose in the South, becoming one of the largest employers in cities like Winston-Salem, NC, Durham, NC, and Richmond, VA. Southerners dominated the tobacco industry in the United States; even a concern as large as the Helme Tobacco Company, headquartered in New Jersey, was headed by former Confederate officer George Washington Helme. In 1938 R.J. Reynolds marketed eighty-four brands of chewing tobacco, twelve brands of smoking tobacco, and the top-selling Camel brand of cigarettes. Reynolds sold large quantities of chewing tobacco, though that market peaked about 1910.

There are four main types of chewing tobacco – loose leaf, plug, twist, and chew bags, all of which are further defined in the article below.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewing_tobacco

In the early days of baseball, it became popular because it kept the players’ mouths and gloves moist on the dusty fields they played on. Chewing tobacco, however, had a nasty side affect – oral cancer.

Bill Tuttle was a Major League player who made a big name for himself both through baseball and his anti-chewing-tobacco efforts. Tuttle was an outfielder for the Detroit Tigers, Kansas City Athletics, and the Minnesota Twins. He was an avid tobacco chewer; even his baseball cards pictured him with a bulge in his cheek from the tobacco. Nearly forty years after he began using smokeless tobacco, Tuttle developed a tumor in his mouth so severe it protruded through his skin. A few years before he died, Tuttle had many of his teeth, his jawbone, his gums, and his right cheekbone removed. He also had his taste buds removed. Tuttle dedicated the last years of his life to speaking with Major League teams about not using chewing tobacco where television cameras could see the players so that children could not witness and be influenced by it. He also dedicated time to the National Spit Tobacco Education Program, which was being run by friend and former Major League player, Joe Garagiola. Tuttle died July 27, 1998, after a five-year battle with cancer.^]

Babe Ruth, perhaps the most famous player of all time, also died of throat cancer. In the mid-1940s, Ruth was diagnosed with nasopharyngeal carcinoma (cancer of the upper throat). The top two causes of this disease are alcohol and tobacco; Ruth was a heavy user of both.

In 1965, 42% of the American population smoked cigarettes. The number has decreased ever since, and today is 14% - and is even less for teenagers. As a result, lung cancer rates have also decreased dramatically as well.

Smokeless tobacco products, like Juul, have recently become more popular. However, due to the health issues related to the product, they are now banned for use by anyone under the age of 21.

https://www.lung.org/our-initiatives/research/monitoring-trends-in-lung-disease/tobacco-trend-brief/overall-tobacco-trends.html

I’ve long enjoyed a good cigar, and used to smoke about one a week on a Saturday afternoon when I was washing the cars or cutting the grass. Today, it’s usually a maximum of 3 a year – Father’s day, on my birthday, and one other day when the mood strikes me.

I’m pretty sure that I tried chewing tobacco at some point in my life, but it literally has been decades since I’ve done so. If you’ve got a hankering for chewing tobacco, here’s my advice:

Spit it out.

suicide is painless - part 3

This morning’s Arizona Republic had an uncomfortable article about a topic none of us likes to discuss – suicide.

I’ve written about this topic a couple of times before (see below) , but this morning’s article (which I have paraphrased below the other two links) adds a couple of additional facts.

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2013/12/suicide-is-painless.html

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2018/06/suicide-is-painless.html

America’s suicide rate won’t stop rising.                          

Numbers released Thursday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show 48,344 people died by suicide in 2018, up from 47,173 the year before. While the increase was small, just two-tenths of a percent, the rise in deaths over time has been steady. Since 1999, the suicide rate has climbed 35%.

Death rates in 2018 increased for only two of the 10 leading causes of death: suicide and influenza/pneumonia.

Suicide is the nation’s 10th-leading cause of death, with 14.2 deaths per 100,000 people, though that rate alone belies the scope of the problem. While thousands of people die by suicide each year, millions think about it. In 2017, 10.6 million American adults seriously thought about suicide, 3.2 million made a plan, and 1.4 million attempted it, according to the CDC.

The complete list of the leading causes of death is listed below.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm

Since 1899, there have only been 8 years when more than 48,344 people died from car accidents. In the most recent year (2018) the number of motor vehicle deaths was 35,560. The drop in motor vehicles deaths is due to (1) safer vehicles and (2) stricter drunk driving laws.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year

The drop in motor vehicle deaths, however, has been offset by the INCREASE in the number of overdose deaths. In the most recent year available  (2017) 70,237 people died from drug overdoses, far more than the number of people who died from suicide. Since drug overdoses are not listed in the “top ten” list of the CDC, it’s safe to assume that the vast majority fall into the “accidental” category.

https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates

Far too often, many people assume that if a well-known celebrity dies of a drug overdose, it is sure to be a suicide, which was the assumption when Tom Petty died a couple of years ago. The truth, though, can be found at the link below:

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2018/02/runnin-down-dream.html

Michael Jackson suffered many of the same ailments as Tom Petty. In his case, his personal physician (Conrad Murray) simply gave him too many drugs,  and ultimately was charged with a homicide. 7 years after his death, his estate earned  his estate earned $825 million, the highest yearly amount for a celebrity ever recorded by Forbes.

Some suspect a lack of funding is to blame. Money to research and combat suicide continues to lag behind other leading killers. The National Institutes of Health, the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world, spent $103 million on suicide and suicide prevention in 2017. It spent $689 million that year studying breast cancer, which killed only a few thousand more people. In 2018, spending on suicide increased to $147 million.

Some experts say reducing the suicide rate won’t occur without examining the environments people live in or larger societal ills, such as economic insecurity and discrimination that may drive people to despair. Survivors agree.

For example, a study published last month in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health found that increasing the minimum wage by $1 could reduce the suicide rate among workers with a high school degree or less, especially when unemployment rates are higher. Being unemployed or living in poverty can increase the risk of suicide, according to the CDC.

This month, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention announced it had moved into “Phase II of Project 2025,” which aims to reduce the suicide rate by 20% over 10 years. The plan is focused on four areas: firearms, health care systems, emergency departments and corrections systems.

It's always a shock to learn of the death of a friend or relative (as my wife and I did just two weeks ago), but it is especially tragic when the death is caused by suicide. The vast majority of us will never lose someone we know to suicide – but I have. The story of Dan’s death is detailed in the article listed above that I published in June of 2018.

Although 70,000 suicides a year sounds high, it’s actually a bit surprising that the number of suicides is not higher.

Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the U.S., affecting 40 million adults in the United States age 18 and older, or 18.1% of the population every year.

It's not uncommon for someone with an anxiety disorder to also suffer from depression or vice versa. Nearly one-half of those diagnosed with depression are also diagnosed with an anxiety disorder.

Even people who seem to be happy can actually be depressed, and Robin Williams is the most recent example of that phenomenon.

https://adaa.org/about-adaa/press-room/facts-statistics

If you, or someone you know, is suffering from anxiety and depression, my closing comment is this:

Relax. Tomorrow is another day, and you’ll be fine.