The Straight Dope 09/12/2003

The Straight Dope -- By Cecil Adams
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THE STRAIGHT DOPE 09/12/2003

Dear Cecil:

I'm sort of surprised that you dismiss the work of Freud
as mere quackery in your recent column about B.F. Skinner.
No doubt Freud's theories and the therapeutic
effectiveness of psychoanalysis remain open and 
controversial issues. But accusing the father of
psychoanalysis and one of the greatest thinkers of the
20th century of quackery is simply "Freud-bashing" and
serves no purpose. 
--T. Mehr, via the Straight Dope Message Board

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Cecil replies:

I never accused Freud of mere quackery. On the contrary, I
think most fair-minded folk nowadays would agree that Freud
elevated quackery to a whole new level. Phrenology, animal
magnetism, and the like have been consigned to the dustbin
of history, but you'll still find intelligent people
praising Freud's pioneering contributions to our
understanding of the human mind. To adapt General Bosquet's
remark about the Charge of the Light Brigade: Freudian
theory may be magnificent, but it ain't science.

For more, see:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/030912.html

STAFF REPORT

Dear Straight Dope:

I was recently in the company of a person from Latvia who
told me that their dollar has always been worth more than
the American dollar. I found this hard to believe and
looked it up and sure enough, it is almost double the
U.S. dollar! How is that possible if we're the richest
country in the world? How are currency rates determined?
Why is the British pound always worth more than the U.S.
dollar and what's up with Latvia's dollar being worth
more than ours?! Do they have a lot of gold in their
hills? Is it oil? Has the whole world gone crazy? Please
help, I'm . . . --Losing It

SDSTAFF Dex replies:

Man, where to start? Just because a country's basic
unit of currency is worth more than ours doesn't mean
the country is richer. If you think that 100 pennies
is "richer" than 10 dollars because the absolute
number is bigger, then we're not going to have much
luck dealing with foreign exchange rates. 

Think of currencies as if they were units in different
systems of measurement, like inches and centimeters.
You can convert inches to centimeters because you know
that 1 inch = 2.54 cm. That doesn't mean things measured
in inches are bigger than those measured in centimeters.
Same with foreign currencies. As of today (Sept. 1,
2003), 0.57 Latvian lats = $1 U.S, and $1.75 U.S. = 
1 Latvian lat. In itself this means nothing. With me 
so far?

For more, see: 
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mexchangerates.html

STRAIGHT DOPE CLASSIC - 12/02/1983

Dear Cecil: 

I have a question about what seems to be a fundamental
contradiction in all the hype about the advantages of
aerobic exercise on the one hand and the disadvantages
of coffee and caffeine on the other. As I understand
it, the idea in aerobic exercise is to get your heart
pumping at an accelerated rate (say, 150 beats per
minute) for a sustained period (say, half an hour).
This supposedly strengthens your heart and enables it
to beat at a slower rate the rest of the time. OK, but
they also say coffee and caffeine are bad for you
because (among other things) they make your heart pound
too fast. Howcum it's good when aerobics makes your
heart pound faster but bad when coffee does the same
thing? Why can't you get a good workout by just trekking
down to the local diner every morning and drinking a
gallon of Maxwell House while doing the crossword puzzle
in The New York Times? Or is this just another example
of me-generation doublespeak? --Kathleen S., Washington 

Cecil replies:  

Katie, my little cactus flower, I admire your moral
tenacity on this issue, but I'm afraid you've fallen
victim to the same pernicious reductivism (God, how I
love this litcrit mumbo-jumbo) that afflicts the
nation's weight lifters. That is, you focus myopically
on the parts (for you, the heart; for weight lifters,
the chest and limb muscles) rather than the whole.
This is typical retrograde low-tech Chevy Impala-type
thinking. We nonlinear postindustrial children of the
Information Age, however, know that the important thing
is the Big Picture, the system--the cardiovascular and
pulmonary systems, to be precise. 

For more, see:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_273.html
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