Life in an Era of Pied Pipers Wielding Weapons of Mass Manipulation

I still remember when I first heard the story of the Pied Piper as a child. It must have been something on TV because I have images in my memory closet associated with the story. In junior high school, a few years later, Crispian St. Peter's recording of "The Pied Piper" reached the top ten as a 45 single (which I recorded on my Estey two-speed reel-to-reel from the radio, and still own.)

As I'm often fond of saying, we live in an era of spin. Nearly every major event has spinners striving to control the way viewers, listeners and readers perceive these events. But it doesn't stop there. Political opponents are also busy trying to recast past events as well. As George Orwell famously stated in his opus, "Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past."

While looking through one of my notebooks I came across this parallel notion. "We live in an era of Pied Pipers wielding weapons of mass manipulation."

For those unfamiliar, the old folktale tells of a mysterious figure who had been sought out to help rid the city of rats. He arrives not with rat traps but with a magic flute. When he plays his magic tune, the mayor, city council and half the city leaders follow him off into the mountains.

No, just kidding. He plays his flute and all the rodents follow in a parade to a place far away.  

When he returns to receive his agreed upon compensation, they choose instead to stiff him. Well, he's got another trick up his sleeve. He pulls out that flute again, and plays a different tune, this time charming the minds of all the children of that town who proceed to follow him off into the mountains, never to return.

Today the flute has been replaced by algorithms, screens, and carefully engineered narratives, but the principle is much the same. The modern Piper doesn't need a stage in the town square; he operates through phones in our pockets, feeds on our screens, and voices in our earbuds.

The tools of persuasion have never been more powerful. Social media platforms can amplify a message to millions within minutes. Data analytics allow organizations to tailor messages to specific fears, desires, and identities. Images, slogans, and emotional appeals are designed not merely to inform but to provoke reaction. The result is an environment where attention is captured, outrage is cultivated, and loyalty is shaped with remarkable precision.

The danger is not simply misinformation. It is the erosion of independent judgment. When people are continually immersed in streams of emotionally charged content, it becomes difficult to step back and evaluate claims carefully. The Pipers' melodies are constant, and it is often easier to follow than to question.

One difference between the fable and now is that there are multiple pipers, though what you respond to will increasingly result in more affirmation of the perspective you're leaning into.

History reminds us that charismatic voices have always had the ability to sway crowds. What is different today is scale and speed. A manipulative message can circle the globe before reason has time to catch up. Political movements, commercial interests, and ideological campaigns all compete to command the tune, and our loyalty. This is where the real battleground it.

The antidote is not silence but discernment. Citizens must cultivate habits of skepticism, patience, and humility in the face of persuasive appeals. The responsibility ultimately rests with individuals who choose whether to follow the music or pause long enough to ask where these Piper intend to lead us.

Photo of Paquita, a girl from the orphanage in Mexico where we once served. 

Harry Gold, Revisited

SHORT STORY MONDAY
The following is a piece of flash fiction written in a rather unconventional manner. All of the sentences from this story have been borrowed from other works of fiction created by other authors. It was sort of a word game. For continuity sake I did add a few sentence fragments and used the name Harry Gold in all the places where needed. I think it interesting how a sentence, placed in a new context connotes new meanings through the unexpected juxtapositions. See if you can tell where the original ends and the newly created addendum begins.

Harry Gold

"The rule of 'nothing unessential' is the first condition of great art."
--Andre Gide

After dinner Harry Gold reads us the last two chapters of his La Nuit. The next to last especially seems excellent to us, and Gold reads it very well. Being rich is an occupation in itself, particularly for people who arrive at it via parachute in middle life.

We go out for a walk -- William Williams, Gold and myself. Never has it seemed such a long way to the top of this hill. The road with its tossing broken stones stretches on forever into the distance like a life of agony. It is hot as a furnace on the street and we sweat profusely.

I bring up the question of ownership. "Who owns language? Can a man own words? Sentences? The turn of a phrase?"

Gold's face becomes agitated, defiant. "It's mine now. No matter what they say, it's mine."

It occurs to me that Williams doesn't like this reply, but there are no others to turn to and we are forced to accept it. Gold feels guilty because his work is heavy with borrowing. Ideas, phrases, sentences, even whole paragraphs have been shamelessly appropriated, pilfered without attribution, plagiarized.

Harry adds, in a low voice, "The will of man is unconquerable. Even God cannot conquer it."

I can not bear to see him like this. To myself I think, Why do you do these things? In human affairs every solution only serves to sharpen the problem, to show us more clearly what we are up against. I consider how sages of the future will describe this historic day.

For a while we walk without speaking, the heat pressing down on us like a heavy hand. The hill seems steeper than before, as if it has grown suspicious of our intentions. Williams kicks at a loose stone and sends it rattling down the slope. The sound echoes faintly, like a small confession that no one intends to pursue.

Gold wipes his forehead with a handkerchief that was once white but now bears the stains of long arguments and careless pockets. He walks with a strange determination, as if pursued by invisible editors demanding an explanation.

At last he stops and looks out over the valley. The town lies below us, quiet and indifferent, its roofs glowing in the late afternoon sun.

“You speak of ownership,” he says, almost gently now. “But language is a river. We drink from it, we carry it away in cups, and still it flows.”

Williams nods slowly, though whether in agreement or exhaustion I cannot say.

I begin to suspect that Gold’s crime, if crime it is, lies less in the borrowing than in the boldness of admitting it. Most men prefer their thefts to remain hidden beneath respectable silence.

The wind picks up briefly, stirring the dust along the road. For a moment the heat lifts and we breathe more easily.

Gold laughs then—a short, unexpected laugh.

“Perhaps originality,” he says, “is merely the art of remembering badly.”

We continue our climb.

Somewhere beyond the crest of the hill a dog barks, and the sound travels toward us as though the evening itself were calling us onward.

# # # #

Illustration: ChatGPT

Doctors Who Put Their Lives on the Line to Meet Urgent Needs: Médecins Sans Frontières

At work in Jabalia, Gaza 

Nearly 50 years ago I met a doctor who would take a month off every year to address medical needs in Haiti. He told me there were many others who did similar work. Several years later we attended a church in which a doctor there told us of a clinic in Madagascar that he devoted a month out of every year to serving the people there. Dr. Roach said the entire clinic had  a rotating staff composed of volunteer doctors and nurses who flew in and took care of patients with every conceivable kind of medical need. 

These memories came to mind in January after a close friend died and his obituary suggested people give to Doctors Without Border in lieu of gifts to the family.

If you follow the news (and not everybody does) Doctors Without Borders (also known as Médecins Sans Frontières or MSF) has been mentioned a lot in the media these past few years for their heartbreaking sacrificial service in Gaza. This is a very different environment from the above-mentioned Madagascar clinic where doctors don't lose sleep worrying about missile attacks and surgeries are conducted with appropriate anasthesia.

Since the start of the war on October 7, 2023, more than 1,700 healthcare workers* (including doctors, nurses, paramedics, and other medical personnel) have been killed in Gaza, according to figures from the Gaza Ministry of Health (MoH), cited by multiple sources including UN agencies, NGOs, and media reports as of early 2026. You may read some quibbling amongst these details, but there's no question that a lot of health care professionals and volunteers have lost their lives trying to meet the needs of the wounded and dying. At least 15 staff members from Doctors Without Borders have been killed.

Attacks on healthcare have been extensive: WHO documented hundreds (e.g., 697–735 verified attacks by mid-2025), affecting nearly all facilities, with many raided, besieged, or hit by strikes. In 2023 there were 35 or 36 hospitals in Gaza. Today 94% of these hospitals have been damaged or destroyed? If 1700 medical staff have been killed one can only imagine what happened to the Palestinians who were receiving care in these hospitals. 

MSF is widely recognized for providing emergency medical aid in conflict zones, disaster areas, and underserved regions worldwide. Founded in 1971, the organization operates independently and has earned strong endorsements from major charity evaluators for its efficiency and transparency.

I don't know about you, but when I consider giving to a charity, the first question is usually this: Will my money actually help people? In the case of Doctors Without Borders (often referred to as MSF USA), the answer is reassuring. Independent charity watchdogs consistently rank the organization among the most trustworthy and effective humanitarian groups. Charity Navigator gives it a Four-Star rating—its highest level—with particularly strong marks for financial accountability and transparency. CharityWatch also rates it an “A,” placing it among the most efficient charities when it comes to using donations for real work in the field rather than overhead.

Just as important, the majority of donated funds go directly toward helping people in crisis. Recent financial reports show that roughly 85 to 87 cents of every dollar spent goes to medical programs—things like emergency surgery, vaccines, treatment for malnutrition, and frontline care in war zones and disaster areas. Only one percent is used for administration. 

Doctors Without Borders also publishes detailed annual financial reports and audited statements so donors can see exactly how money is used. For donors who want their contributions to translate quickly and directly into lifesaving care, Doctors Without Borders remains one of the most respected and effective options available.

While the organization, like any large international effort, has faced occasional criticism or internal debate, there have been no credible scandals involving misuse of funds or systemic fraud. 

Related Link

Remembering Our Colleagues Killed In Gaza

https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/latest/remembering-our-colleagues-killed-gaza

* The numbers are disputed by some who suggest that only 1500 have been killed.

Brave New World 2.0: Just Another Daily Commute

Jack finally got the car of his dreams, a car that drove itself.

He said it was for safety, but everyone knew the real reason was convenience. The car did all the steering, braking, and thinking while Jack comfortably sat back and enjoyed the ride. His only real task: adjusting the straps on his virtual reality headset.

The headset was an Oculus Rift 19.01 — sleek, lightweight, and cheap enough now that you could pick one up at Walmart between the breakfast cereal and the motor oil. The first models had come out around 2016 and were mostly for gamers with too much time on their hands. But technology improves quickly when there’s money involved, and before long the headsets had become standard equipment in self-driving cars.

Jack slid the visor down over his eyes.

Outside the window the city was waking up the way cities do — uneven sidewalks, tired buildings, an occasional siren somewhere down the street. But Jack didn’t see any of that.

His Oculus neighborhood was spectacular. The headset transformed the streets into wide boulevards lined with tidy lawns, fountains, and cheerful neighbors who always seemed to be watering flowers or walking friendly golden retrievers. Children flew kites. The sky was a permanent shade of blue that meteorologists in the real world could only dream about.

Jack quietly commanded, “Google Zoo.”

The neighborhood melted away. Suddenly he was strolling through an enormous park with no cages in sight. Lions lounged in the shade. A herd of elephants wandered lazily past. Overhead, birds circled in slow motion. The remarkable thing about Google Zoo was that many of its residents had already disappeared from the real world years ago. But here they were doing just fine.

Jack reached out and brushed the side of a tiger. The software generated a faint vibration in the glove sensors that made the stroke feel convincing enough.

“Google Sea,” he said.

Now he was underwater. Blue light filtered down through endless water while whales drifted silently past like ancient submarines. Somewhere in the distance one sang — that long, haunting call that used to travel across oceans before the oceans became and mix of shipping lanes and wind turbine farms.

A notification appeared:

BEACHED WHALE EVENT AVAILABLE. 

WOULD YOU LIKE TO HELP?

Jack did, and within seconds he was part of a team of heroic volunteers rolling the enormous creature back toward the tide. When the whale finally slipped free and swam away, the headset rewarded him with a warm burst of orchestral music.

Jack smiled. Helping others always felt good, even if the "others" were algorithm-generated pixels.

As the car continued its route toward downtown Jack considered his options. Some mornings he preferred Google Adventure, where he could step into old Hollywood films and become one of the characters. He’d once chased a spy across rooftops in a Hitchcock thriller — black-and-white mode, naturally. Another time he’d ridden beside John Wayne across Monument Valley. Maybe his fave--the headset kept track of one's favorites like a playlist--was portraying Robert Redford in The Natural, hitting the final game-winning home run that set the sky ablaze with fireworks. He'd done that 73 times and wondered why he wasn't bored yet. 

But today he had meetings. So he switched programs.

Simon Sinek appeared in front of him like a motivational prophet standing in a stadium of roaring fans. “Today,” the digital voice boomed, “we choose greatness!”

Jack nodded solemnly as his car rolled past a block of boarded-up storefronts he never saw. The headset glowed softly.

Outside, the city moved along as it always had — uneven, imperfect, and stubbornly real. Inside the goggles, however, Jack’s world was going wonderfully.

* * *

Related Link: The original blog post that set this story in motion.

My Take on LBJ, the Rob Reiner Film now on Netflix

When I saw LBJ show up on Netflix I assumed it to be a new film about our 36th president. After a couple recommendations I decided to watch it. I was surprised to learn at the outset that this was a Rob Reiner film, surprised only because of his recent passing. I then assumed it must have been his last film, but nope. LBJ, starring Woody Harrelson as the gritty Texas senator who became our 36th president, was released in 2016. 

Those familiar with Rob Reiner know that he was a political activist who used his celebrity status to bring attention to equal rights and social issues. In this film, Reiner exercised great restraint and allowed the story to tell the story. Besides being an up close and personal profile of Lyndon Baines Johnson, it's essentially the story of how the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed into law.

Having dabbled with Hollywood screenwriting, I'm always intrigued by how a director chooses to tell a story. I've read numerous books that were translated to celluloid over the course of a lifetime. From Planet of the Apes to The Godfather to No Country for Old Men, many of these books have become film classics. Others, Like Bonfire of the Vanities and Ironweed, were disasters, despite the A-Team casts and the highly praised novels they inhabited.

As regards LBJ, Reiner knew he had his lead in Woody Harrelson. And the script itself was good, beginning with the choreographed events of that fateful visit to Dallas on November 22, 1963, interspersed with flashbacks highlighting LBJs character and the times he lived in as he rose to power.

The film centers on LBJ's complex role in pushing forward the Civil Rights Act amid personal insecurities, political rivalries (especially with Bobby Kennedy), and the weight of national tragedy. 

Woody Harrelson delivers a standout performance as Lyndon B. Johnson. When the film opened, my thought was, "That's Woody Harrelson acting like LBJ." But as the film played out I was surprised how effectively Harrelson "became" LBJ.

All movie making involves trade-offs and risks. The actors playing John and Bobby Kennedy were "adequate" but how much money do you want to spend to make every actor a replica of the characters they played. The important ones to get right were LBJ and "Lady Bird."

Harrelson captures LBJ's larger-than-life personality: the crude, profane, arm-twisting Texan wheeler-dealer with a mix of ambition, vulnerability, and genuine commitment to civil rights. His portrayal is energetic, entertaining, and often vivid, bringing the "Master of the Senate" to life through barking commands, colorful obscenities, and moments of raw emotion. Jennifer Jason Leigh was solid as Lady Bird Johnson, adding warmth and grounding to the story and providing a foil where Lyndon's insecurities could be shared.

The film made me wonder what other presidents' insecurities might have been and to whom they shared them. 

The screenplay keeps things focused on a pivotal few years, beginning with JFK winning the nomination at the Democratic Convention. I'd forgotten that part of the story when I read Theodor White's The Making of a President 1960. What I recall most from White's account was the degree to which the Kennedys were organized and the dirty tricks they play on Humphrey to impede his campaign. 

Johnson wanted that opportunity to head the ticket and had the foresight to see that the Kennedy clan was aiming for dynasty, not just an election. 

The film emphasizes not only Johnson's political maneuvering, but his post-assassination determination to honor Kennedy's legacy by passing civil rights legislation. It's a sympathetic portrait of LBJ, painting him as an under-appreciated pragmatist who rises to the occasion. 

Critics described it as pedestrian or by-the-numbers, with a mixed reception: Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 55% critics score (average around 5.7/10) and a more favorable audience rating, while Metacritic sits at 54/100. For me, it was a refreshing look at a president I've not had the highest regard for due to his aggressive insertion of our nation no the Southeast Asia conflict known as Vietnam, among other things.

Overall, LBJ is a solid, watchable historical drama elevated by Harrelson's committed, entertaining adaptation of the persona. It's not groundbreaking, but it offers an insight into a transformative moment in American politics. We've all read much about the Kennedy assassination from a hundred perspectives, but I can't recall seeing or reading about that day from the perspective of the man whose life was most dramatically impacted by the events of that day.

Tech Tuesday: The Man Who Tried to Hold Infinity

A Cold War Episode That's Never Been Told

Dr. Franklin “Sandy” Reeves believed, above all else, that nothing was perfect. Not the meter in Paris. Not the constants in textbooks. Not even the speed of light — though he would never say that out loud in a room full of physicists.

“Nothing is perfect,” he would mutter, tapping a yellow legal pad. “That’s the first fundamental.”

He worked for MITRE, which meant he worked for the Pentagon without quite admitting it. In 1962, the problem on his desk was simple enough: determine how accurately a fighter-bomber could hit its target using a forward-pointed laser and a corner reflector beyond the objective.

The mathematics were straightforward. The field intensity should vary as r⁻⁴. That’s what the textbooks said. That’s what the instructors had said.

But Sandy had a habit of looking more closely.

After the test run, he slipped a 16-inch reel of streak film into a standard projector — not because it was required, but because curiosity had always been his private religion. He watched the beam flare and fade as the aircraft crossed from far field to near field. 

Then he stopped the projector.

The intensity had doubled.

Leaning close with a magnifying glass, he saw. It doubled far too quickly.

He sat back and pondered. If the mathematics were correct, the film was wrong.

If the film were correct, the math would be incomplete.

He went home that night and began scribbling. What if light carried mass — not convertible mass, not E=mc² in the tidy classroom sense, but a companion mass that had to be accelerated from zero at the antenna? What if the outward flow of energy was not merely radiation, but acceleration?

--Mass times distance equals force.

--Energy equals hν.

--Set Planck’s constant equal to one — the convenient dodge. Let grams, centimeters, and seconds collapse into unity. c = g = s = 1.

He circled it twice. If the variables reduced, then the universe reduced. And if the universe reduced, perhaps the equations could be added — mass side and electromagnetic side — into one structure. Two triplets of differential equations. Add them properly and you reach it: A Theory of Everything. 

He wrote it in the margin once. Then crossed it out.

He wasn’t a crank. He worked with hardware. He built a computer for aircraft — a pulser amplifier circuit using a new planar transistor designed by a brilliant MIT graduate. The fall-time problem vanished. The pulses were clean. Too clean.

Some transistors were so fast that the flip-flops double-triggered and canceled themselves out. A machine that thought so quickly it thought nothing at all.

Sandy laughed when he realized it.

“Too perfect,” he said. “And perfection is impossible.”

The solution was human. Three technicians traveled with every unit. He went with them to the high-altitude test chamber so they wouldn’t balk. He passed the test.

Later, the USSR fielded intercontinental missiles and bombers became relics overnight.

The machine he had built — ounces shaved, circuits refined, technicians trained — became unnecessary and irrelevant.

He didn't rage. As usual, he returned to his notes. "Infinity," he had written, "does not mean forever. It means you can always name a number larger than the last. Energy flows from high to low until equilibrium."

Somewhere in the infinity of space, he believed, every extremum existed: 10⁻¹⁰ grams, 10¹⁰ grams; 10⁻¹⁰ seconds, 10¹⁰ seconds. The universe of universes had always been. Would always be.

Late one evening Sandy closed his notebook and looked out the window at a Maryland sky buzzing faintly with unseen transmissions. If mass and energy were twins, if fields rose and fell faster than predicted, if constants were conveniences — then perhaps the universe was not a finished equation but a balancing act of perpetual motion. Never perfect. Never still. Never ending.

Photos by the author. Galileo Museum, Florence

THIS STORY IS A WORK OF FICTION