Youre Listening to 103.6FM, Curin Cancer to the Oldies
John Kanzius is a retired radio executive living out his retirement in Florida. He may also be the man responsible for curing cancer. At first, when you read the story of his adventure into medical research, you might think bullshit. But thats only until you read that several major medical research hospitals have taken up his cause, and that John has been raising millions of dollars to help fund research.
John Kanzius has no background in cancer research but might have invented a real cure. He was diagnosed with leukemia, and struck by the idea that radio waves could kill cancer cells.
Radio waves! How? Powerful radio waves can heat metal, so John built a prototype high-powered radio transmitter in his garage, grabbed a hot dog, injected it with copper sulfate, and subjected it to his treatment. The hotdog heated to the point where cells would die, but only in the area of the injection. The rest of the hot dog was the same temperature as it had been before the test.
He nuked a hot dog. Big fuckin deal, right? Yeah, actually. It kind of is. This device would allow doctors to focus treatment on a single area, neutralizing the targeted cells but leaving the surrounding cells healthy and unharmed.
Kanzius thought he had found a way attack cancer cells without the collateral damage caused by chemotherapy and radiation. Today, his invention is in the laboratories of two major research centers - the University of Pittsburgh and M.D. Anderson, where Dr. Steven Curley, a liver cancer surgeon, is testing it.
To address the issue of injecting patients with metal, John suggested metal nanoparticles instead of chemical solutions. Trillions of nanoparticles can be injected into the body with just a few milliliters of solution.
Enter Rick Smalley, another cancer patient at M.D. Anderson and the man who won the Nobel Prize for discovering nanoparticles made from carbon. As luck would have it, Dr. Curley was called in one day to examine Smalley. Before leaving, he asked him for some of his nanoparticles.
Rick said ho-ho, good luck with that, but shut his mouth when Curley called him back and let him know that he and Kanzius had managed to get his vial of nanoparticles to boil in Kanzius' machine. Rick, youre not going to believe this. He just blew the smithereens out of your nanoparticles! Rick paused and then responded: Holy shit.
Theyve already shown that the Kanzius machine can heat nanoparticles and cook cancer to death in animals. Dr. Curley with rabbits, and in Pittsburgh, Dr. David Geller demonstrated to 60 Minutes how he used nanoparticles, made from gold, to kill liver cancer cells grown in rats.
Unfortunately, there have been numerous studies that succeed in treating cancer in lab environments and in test animals, but fail in humans. Human trials are about four years away, and right now they can only target focused tumors (no metastasized cancers, yet), but the researchers involved are hopeful.
"Right now it is a little science fiction," Curley agreed. "Were not quite to the real time yet, but its got a lot of promise."
Sadly, John might not be around by the time his invention proves itself. His only option at this point is a bone marrow transplant, which would only prolong his pain and suffering.
"Did you ever say, 'Im not going to do this anymore. Im not going to put myself through it,'?" Stahl asked.
"Yes. I said that-only about a year and a half ago," Kanzius replied. "I changed my mind because I think with all the research thats going on with the institutions, that maybe, I'd like to be around for the first patient to get treated and just have a smile."
Comedy Outlawed
It's been almost a month since the controversial New York-based radio show "The Dog House" was taken off the air and away from it's loyal listeners. Despite the best efforts of their fans, the show's hosts JV and Elvis are still without a forum to do what they do best -- create hilarious comedy. Godspeed, gentlemen. Apparently it no longer pays to be funny.
One month after CBS Radio fired radio host Don Imus, it has permanently pulled the plug on a pair of suspended New York shock jocks for a prank phone call rife with offensive Asian stereotypes. "The Dog House with JV and Elvis," hosted by Jeff Vandergrift and Dan Lay, "will no longer be broadcast," CBS Radio spokeswoman Karen Mateo said Saturday.
It's one thing to censor a dinosaur like Imus, or, say, a teacher trying to make a difference. Fine, go right ahead, fire away. But to attack a duo on the vanguard of comedy as is clearly the case with JV and Elvis... Well, that to me reeks of idiocy.
Vandergrift and Lay broadcast a call to a Chinese restaurant in which the caller, in an exaggerated accent, placed an order for "shrimp flied lice," claimed he was a student of kung fu, and compared menu items to employees' body parts.
I don't know the secret to comedy, and I don't claim to... Is it luck? Opportunity? A magic rock? Some sort of bubbling liquid concoction drunk during a specific cycle of the moon? Who can say? The answer is: JV and Elvis. They can say. And for this, we punish them.
These two mavericks, these two students of human nature, train their razor-sharp comedic wits on the city around them and they see something none of us saw. The fact that some Asian people, when learning a second language, have a tendency to not do it with absolute perfection. In fact, sometimes they confuse letters... and it is fucking hilarious.
I had an inkling of this phenomenon a few weeks ago and believe me, I am kicking myself for not writing some sort of sketch or bit to cash in... But hey,
that's why they have access to a sound board filled with funny noises and I'm sitting here... with no sound board containing funny noises.
Then, our heroes let loose with a comedic wrecking ball. Shrimp. Flied. Lice. At first I thought I was looking at a typo. Then, it hits me. Oh shit, that is
totally how it sounds when an Asian person mispronounces the phrase "shrimp fried rice." Don't believe me? Try it. Out loud. Yeah, you're welcome.
But the wrecking ball wasn't done swinging. JV then claimed to be a "student of kung fu." Not following? Well, here's the thing, Asian people have been known to take kung fu. Not only that, it's a sport that originated in, you guessed it, China. Last time I checked, China was in Asia, folks.
The initial airing of the call went unnoticed, but a rebroadcast after Imus's firing prompted an outcry from Asian-American groups. Vandergrift and Lay were initially suspended without pay, but Asian-Americans quickly demanded the same penalty applied to the much higher-profile Imus.
Happy, America? You've silenced another artist. With the help of numerous Asian-American groups you pounded the final nail into their prop-filled coffin. Sure, there will be the scores of imitators now that the heavy lifting is done and the trail has been blazed -- third rate knock-offs running around with Fu Manchu mustaches, trying to run people over with rickshaws -- but it won't be the same.
Jeff Vandergrift and Dan Lay... This last one goes out to you. You will be missed... (pushes button)
SFX: (toilet flush) (game show buzzer) (goat bleat)
Don Imus is an Asshole
Last Wednesday, during what should have been a happy week for the womens basketball team at Rutgers University, radio host Don Imus decided it was a good time to be an incredible asshole. On his morning radio program, Imus called the team nappy-headed hos setting off a wave of controversy that has led many to call for his firing.
What he said was terrible not only because of its content, which was despicable in its own right. It was even worse because of its target, a group of 19- to 21-year-old, largely black women from a nearby state university who had just accomplished something wonderful and unexpected by reaching the Final Four. What do you tell these women now, who did absolutely nothing to deserve such shameful scorn, to face such horrendous racist remarks?
And though this never will happen in a million years, Imus should be fired for it today actually, yesterday just as the National Association of Black Journalists demands.
Many people might ask, Is it really such a big deal? Isnt this what shock jocks do? But Imus is more than just another shock jock. His radio show is simulcast on MSNBC. He regularly hosts the most influential people in politics and media on his program. Tim Russert of Meet the Press and Republican presidential hopeful John McCain, specifically, are frequent guests on the show. Shouldnt we expect better of them, if not Imus himself?
After all, this isnt the first time Imus or a member of his team has pulled this sort of thing. His former producer, Sid Rosenberg was fired for saying that cancer-stricken singer Kylie Minogue ain't gonna be so beautiful when the bitch got a bald head and one titty. Rosenberg also said that Venus and Serena Williams were better suited for National Geographic than Sports Illustrated. Of course, since nothing is too outrageous or fucked-up for an Imus associate, Rosenberg wasnt fired for long, and was actually in the studio on Wednesday when Imus made his Rutgers comments. Imus himself, remember, has been a racist for a while, calling PBS commentator Gwen Ifill a cleaning lady at one point.
Today, Imus is pretending to be contrite, apologizing on the air, and planning a trip to Al Sharptons radio format. He claims that he is a good person, and makes a vague sort of plan to change his programs tone.
"Here's what I've learned: that you can't make fun of everybody, because some people don't deserve it," he said on his nationally syndicated radio show Monday morning. "And because the climate on this program has been what it's been for 30 years doesn't mean it's going to be what it's been for the next five years or whatever."
Imus said he was "embarrassed" by the remarks, in which he referred to the mostly black team as "nappy-headed hos." He said he had made the comments in the course of "trying to be funny," but he was not trying to excuse them.
On Thursday, the day after the comments, Imus tone was much different, telling his audience that people should not be offended by some idiot comment meant to be amusing. That was before the media firestorm, of course. Now hes sorry. At least, that is, until the next time.
Democrats Try to Make Radio Suck Less
Commercial radio blows. It's no secret, it wasn't ever that great, but it has faced such a steep decline in recent years that the notion of how bad it is has almost become a cliché. Outside of satellite, college and internet radio stations everything available on the radio has begun to sound homogenized, and for good reason. Two companies, Clear Channel and CBS Radio together control over 25% of all radio stations in the country, a phenomenon made possible by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which removed ownership restrictions on radio stations within a given market, claiming it would increase competition. The opposite happened, and almost all commercial radio stations in the US are now owned by five companies. So it's no surprise that it's hard to go anywhere without hearing the same six-song playlist of focus group tested crap on the radio.
Congressional Democrats have finally woken up to this fact and have made it part of their agenda for this year's legislative session, pushing the FCC to tighten ownership restrictions and increase the diversity of the radio marketplace.
Recent FCC policies on media ownership, said Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.), have been "a spectacular failure."
He railed against rules that allow one entity to own eight radio stations in a large city and against proposals to allow one owner to have three TV stations in a city. "More concentration means less competition," Dorgan said. "The public-interest standards have been nearly completely emasculated."
But FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin, who has close ties to the Bush White House, defended the agency's policies.
"The commission has tried to make decisions based on a fundamental belief that a robust, competitive marketplace, not regulation, is ultimately the greatest protector of the public interest," Martin said.
Here's the problem with Martin's ideain theory, anyway, a free market should increase diversity and lead to an effective marketplace, giving consumers what they want. But when dealing with something like portions of the electromagnetic spectrum, which by government mandate are a fixed resource. Only limited frequencies for FM and amplitudes for AM are allowed for commercial radio broadcasting, as dictated by the Radio Act of 1927, which divvied up the available bandwidth setting upper and lower boundaries on what could be transmitted, and granted the FRC (which later became the FCC) the exclusive right to license portions of that bandwidth to companies that wanted to broadcast on them. So since there are a limited number of frequencies available, and broadcasting on any of them requires a government license, by definition they represent a limited resource, the opposite occurs. Unlike the idealized free market that Adam Smith envisioned, a company with innovative radio programming ideas could not just step into the marketplace and become a dominant plaer solely through a superior product because that company would need licenses to do so. Removing limits on how many stations a company could own in a particular market also meant that a large company (like Clear Channel) could step in and buy up all of the radio stations in town, giving listeners the stark choice of either listening to what the company wanted or turning off their radio.
The nature of the commodity (portions of the EM spectrum) essentially dictates that, ironically a lack of government regulation can and does lead to monopolistic business practices that hurt consumers. Clearly the changes in the marketplace over the past ten years should be sufficient to stand alone in illustrating that point for anyone wondering. And in fact, two internal FCC reports, both suppressed independently reached this conclusionone wonders who ordered the authors to keep their mouths shut?