Smart phones create a head down approach to life.

Riding a bike can be hazardous to your health, especially if you’re around people who are connected.

I routinely ride a bicycle for exercise in the summer along the streets and off-road trails around my neighborhood in Dearborn, Michigan. I wear safety gear to protect my head and hands, but there’s no padding to deflect drivers on cell phones or school kids walking with their heads down and locked in on smart phones.

Last week, I took a late lunch and went for my usual 45-minute ride. I go about eight miles, and I’m used to carefully crossing busy main streets. Most drivers are courteous and will stop for me even when they have the right of way. But those on phones will roll right through stop signs. Many will be on the phone and looking in one direction, preparing to turn, while continuing to move right through an intersection and blowing the stop sign. I stay on the sidewalk until I’m confident it’s safe.

I don’t normally see too many young people at lunchtime, but my late departure last week changed that. It was amazing! High school kids can walk for blocks with their heads down, eyes glued to cell phone screens as they obliviously stroll through intersections or up sidewalks. Last week, I watched a long line of kids on their way out of Dearborn High School, each one alone, many looking at devices or listening to music on ear buds. It looked like a line of drones headed home in a trance. No jovial conversations, No one living in the moment absorbed with friends and natural surroundings. Just a somber stroll back to the hive, with an electronic buzz guiding them home.

I stopped my bike for a good minute and observed some 50 kids, no one talking to the other. But half of them were on devices in virtual conversations. Their expressions were glum despite the gorgeous weather on a brilliantly sunny and mild day.

All communications technology comes with its share of hazards. But I predict today’s small-screen hyper-connectivity will produce poor vision, sore necks and a decline in conversation.

Hopefully, the person-to-person contact doesn’t occur because people are literally running into each other. Heads up out there!

Food for thought: Organic vs. non-organic farm products battle for bucks and buzz.

The radio blared the morning’s headlines. The CBS network news on the hour is part of my daily wake up routine. This week I heard a story that stunned me.  “Study shows organic food no more nutritional than standard products. Little evidence it makes a significant impact on health.” Many newspapers and TV networks reported it, as well.

I couldn’t believe it. “How did that get past the editor?” I thought. Of course not, people don’t eat organic foods to increase nutrition, they pay more for it because it’s not chemically enhanced. Fewer pesticides, antibiotics, hormones or other “better- living-through-chemistry” additives. That’s why I eat them.

When you dig deeper into the recent Stanford University study, indeed the results are revealing. Organic food is 30 percent less likely to contain detectable pesticide levels. Also, when bacteria appear in poultry or pork, non-organic meats are riskier. They’re 33 percent more likely to be resistant to a variety of antibiotics. Organic foods not more nutritious?  Maybe not, but do you like more robust bacteria in your food?

Despite the details, for some reason, the headline said organic foods weren’t healthier. 

Was that the food lobby and marketers pushing the spin? Can’t say, but the real devil is in the details. Organic foods make up less than five percent of the retail market. Have you ever bought organic dairy products and wondered why the expiration date for them is several weeks away, while the abundant, standard dairy products usually expire in a week or ten days? It’s true. Could it have something to do with the hormones that cause cows to produce 15 percent more non-organic milk? I don’t know, but it’s a question I’d like to hear a journalist ask.

A PBS-TV special program, “The Blood Sugar Solution” reveals a theory that toxins in our environment, including foods, are contributing to childhood obesity, diabetes and adult obesity. Best-selling author, Mark Hyman, MD, has testified that these contaminants prevent the body from functioning and metabolizing foods properly. Hyman reports unborn children have more than 200 toxins in their umbilical cord blood. He believes these are playing a role in unhealthy, overweight infants as they grow bigger and fatter.

With so much attention on the cost of healthcare, this topic deserves more exploration. But we’re not likely to get it from media or medicine. There are too many ad dollars at stake and no profitable prescription drug or procedure to cure the problem. It’s simply about making good choices and preventative medicine. There are also major players in the chemical industry with a lot on the line. It’s up to us to read more than the headlines. Analyzing food-packaging labels in detail is important, too.

A Dow chemist once told me most people have such a high level of food preservatives in their bodies that they don’t really require embalming when they die. That’s one of the cost-saving benefits of eating chemically enhanced food.

Bon appétit. 

Don't hedge your bets on the elections, pull the lever and make it a sure thing.

As we roamed around the 2012 Detroit Jazz Festival and the Hamtramck Labor Day Festival, my wife, Ellen, and I had a blast people watching.

But then a thought crossed my mind. How many of these folks will vote this November? How many of them are informed about the issues?

Last weekend, we spent some quality time with our two, twenty-something sons and a few of their friends. A couple of them said, “Why bother voting for President? A few states will decide everything in the Electoral College.”

There’s no arguing America’s founding fathers wanted a hedge on democracy. In fact, they didn’t want a democracy at all. The Constitution creates a representative republic. They really didn’t trust the voters to choose the President.

But state and local elections feature referenda that allow citizens to cast a ballot for or against specific laws. It’s our best example of pure democracy and a great reason to go to the polls.

The diversity of faces in the crowd this Labor Day weekend was impressive. Men and women in saris, a Turkish food stand, sizzling kielbasa and pierogi, Belgian beer, Latin and African-American jazz artists and a Bosnian buffet said more about the challenge of uniting America than any words I could string together. But the ethnic mix made me think of my own immigrant parents and how much they valued their American citizenship and the right to vote.

For those who don’t remember the struggle, voting seems more like a quant custom than the voice of the people. But it’s the people who choose the judge, the dog catcher, the county clerk, the state reps and the mayor and governor. And those are the folks who levy the fines, impose the fees, decide the zoning and impact the salaries and policies of local law enforcement. Now, if you don't’ care about those issues, don’t bother voting.

As for the Presidential election, the Electoral College is a peculiarity that deserves United Nations observers, but it’s part of our Constitution and has been since the beginning. If you don’t bother voting, there’s always the possibility that a powerful majority will one day amend the Constitution to eliminate voting for President as we know it.

Sound ridiculous? Sure, but freedom is something that must be protected and defended. There’s a lot of sentiment in this country about supporting the troops that sacrifice so much and risk everything to guarantee our freedom. To honor their service, we should seriously exercise our voting rights and do what we can to protect the inner workings of our nation. We owe it to them to be well-informed voters, too, on all the issues on our ballots.

Finally, Presidential elections are about more than who wins or loses. They’re about consequences like Supreme Court appointments and forward-looking legislation, even war and peace. The more votes a President receives, the more political capital and power he or she has. A squeaker election usually means a divided Congress that reflects a divided country. But that’s not how you get change, especially when change is required.

We’ve got two months to do our homework to prepare for the polls. Remember, we’re the change we seek.

Everybody with a smart phone or tablet is a reporter in the global news business.

Do you remember where you were when Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon? Where were you when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated? How did you first learn of the Martin Luther King Jr.’s slaying?

For baby boomers, these watershed events were also media bonfires. In other words, the world gathered around radios and televisions for live broadcasts of the unfolding details. They read in-depth coverage in the morning and evening paper and full-length features in magazines. Breaking news had a way of uniting people, at least in the shared experience of discovering the information. Millions and even billions simultaneously huddled around broadcasts and read the same publications on the way to work or back home or in their dentists’ waiting room.

However, the children of boomers are all journalists. And none of them saw Lee Harvey Oswald gunned down on live TV. They receive bulletins and alerts on smartphones sometimes faster than mainstream media. I was aboard a Chicago River tour boat on Saturday, taking in the windy city’s architecture with my family. Our younger son elbowed me and showed me his smartphone screen. It said, “Neil Armstrong First Man on the Moon Dies.”

Earlier that same afternoon while walking along the Miracle Mile, my older son’s fiancée expressed her dismay with the Today Show on Friday. She lives in Chicago, so she’s used to watching NBC’s morning fare on tape delay. Unfortunately, the newscast is also prerecorded. Her iPhone vibrated to announce the Empire State Building shooting. It wasn’t until several minutes later that NBC went live to report the tragedy. Just not fast enough in today’s 24/7, always-on news cycle.

When I studied electronic journalism at Wayne State University in the late 1970’s, there were wire machines in the classrooms, fed by the United Press International (UPI) and the Associated Press (AP). Occasionally, one of my instructors would run to the machines when they chimed bulletins, flashes and alerts. All my teachers were working editors, reporters and executive producers.  They knew real-life breaking news was something only a professional experienced. For a journalism student, the classroom wire service was the next best thing. I remember one day, the professor tore the wire copy off the machine seconds after it chimed. He slapped it face down on the photocopier and instantly printed 12 copies, one for each of us in the class. We were in the midst of typing up a rundown for a newscast. He briskly walked into the room with the copy and announced, “this just in” as he tossed the bulletin in front of each of us. We had to shuffle our plans and reorder the events of the day. We were learning news judgment and how to manage information.  We gained insight into developing leads, story angles, following up details, identifying sources and corroborating facts.

Today, your son or daughter, neighbor, work colleague or the passenger next to you on the bus, subway or plane is a journalist, re-reporting information that arrives very hot off the wire. Billions of people today are experiencing breaking news all by themselves or via social networking. We’ve lost the collective journalistic bonfire we once gathered around to feel the warmth of mutual interest and smell the smoke of sizzling, hard news. Now, each of us will have his or her own point-of-view on historic events, developed in 140 characters or less. Whether the information has been validated or not.

There’s a good thing in town, but mums the word.

Henry Ford’s hometown, Dearborn, Michigan, has a secret.

I know it, but I can’t tell you. Well, of course, I could, but then many people would be upset. Actually, it would make two groups angry. Both, the people who want to keep the secret to themselves, and the people who wish the secret didn’t exist.

In fact, I told a person who loves the secret that I was intending to blog about it and he urged me not to post. When I mentioned a blog to another Dearborn resident who doesn’t take advantage of the secret, he thought it was a bad idea.

“Then even more people will know the secret and people who live near the secret will be even more unhappy,” he cautioned.

Word of mouth is the most powerful form of advertising. It’s what makes social networking such an enticing and provocative milieu. Facebook lured plenty of smart Wall Street money with the advertising possibilities of the virtual community and its shared photos, videos and messages, between friends, family and total strangers. LinkedIn has created a virtual club for professionals where people exchange business contacts, news, ideas, job leads and even free advice.

Yet, nothing is more alluring than a secret. Tell someone they can’t get something and it becomes a must have. That’s the foundation of limited editions and short supplies. Say no to customers and they just might demand you sell your product or service to them, even for more than your asking price.

Dearborn’s secret is a place with limited capacity. It’s visible from many locations; however, unless you see someone using it, you won’t know it’s there. A neighbor and his wife were excited to share the secret and even offered to give me a personal tour of it. They’ve experienced it in every season and find it even more appealing during Michigan’s chilliest weather, when many of us suffer from cabin fever.

I personally have enjoyed it on wheels and on foot, alone and with my wife, Ellen.

We’ve met four-legged Dearborn residents who know about the secret. Yet, most humans in our community are fully unaware.

In this era of constant electronic connectivity, people have managed to keep a special experience quiet that stretches across miles. Some of it is public territory and parts are private.

And I don’t want to be the one to spoil it, but I wonder if I’ll be able to keep the secret next week.

The Olympic spirit can live on ... if you let it.

“War! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!” (Edwin Starr)

That’s what I thought on Saturday night while watching prime time Olympic coverage on NBC. Tom Brokow, who continues to milk his authorship of “The Greatest Generation”, narrated what felt like an endless feature on Great Britain’s role in World War II. As the images of clashing armies and Adolph Hitler flashed across the screen, I winced. From a TV producer’s perspective, it was in bad taste and bad timing. As a global citizen, it felt toxic.

Up until then, the 2012 London Summer Olympics had a minimum of politicization. I enjoyed NBC’s coverage, which has focused on the peaceful human drama and competition between the world’s most fabulous athletes. It has been a glorious and sometimes exhilarating experience to witness 10,000 gladiators from more than 200 National Olympic Committees running, swimming, vaulting, jumping, diving, volleying, dribbling, shooting, serving, spiking, acing, riding, rowing, punching and medaling without international incident.

The Olympics can make you feel like the world is a better place than it seems most days. A stage where battlers hug their rivals and acknowledge world-class performances, even when the other guy or gal wins.

Maybe the truth is that we live in a mostly good world. But when we become obsessed with following violence, strife and political division, we lose sight of what’s typical. Aberration becomes average. Dysfunction seems mainstream. Perception is reality.

Most people are working hard to succeed and not terrorizing or harming their neighbors. Each of us struggles to triumph in his or her own little way in life. And every once in a while, we break a world record, even if it’s only in our little world.

In the weeks and months to come, I’ll be thinking back on the 2012 Summer Olympiad. When ships bump each other in the Straits of Hormuz, when politicians lob mud bombs in the endless American elections, and when economists predict financial catastrophe, I’ll try to remember the remarkable global unity and the power of positive energy that is the spirit of the Olympics.

The cost of losing the human touch.

People aren’t perfect. Nor are machines. And that’s true, whether they operate in the public or private sector, despite all the politically charged criticism of government employees.

Perhaps you heard about this week’s technical glitch with automated trading at Knight Capital Group Inc. It rocked pricing on 140 stocks, with millions of shares trading hands in minutes, grossly exaggerating the volume and further shaking investor confidence in Wall Street.

Here’s another true story to add some real world perspective to my position about our era of errors.

Last week, I thumbed through the mail to discover a bill for $443.10 from a hospital emergency room for medical services, pharmacy and laboratory. I had been to that facility in Detroit’s northwest suburbs only once, some 20 years ago. The U.S. Postal Service is much more efficient and reliable than that, so, I called the 800 number on the invoice to deny the health system’s charge for services un-rendered. An automated system responded. It offered me several prompts and then a recording announced Customer Service was now closed and was available Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. I Googled the hospital’s main phone line and after a few touch tone strokes on my keypad, reached a human being who informed me that Customer Service was indeed closed.

“Those aren’t very convenient hours,” I said. “I’d like to take care of this quickly, since I did not receive any service from your emergency room.”

“They’re an outside agency,” the hospital operator responded. “You can leave them a voice mail.”

She connected me to the recorder. It was Friday about 4:30 p.m.

Monday morning, I called again and after navigating several prompts reached a human, Nora. When I informed her the emergency room bill was invalid, because I wasn’t at the hospital on July 16, 2012 or any other recent date, she asked for my account number. Then, to verify I was the legal party associated with the account, Nora asked, “What’s your address?”

When I answered, she said, “That's not the address listed on the account.”

“Please give me the address listed,” I requested.

“I can’t do that,” she said, “since this obviously is not you.”

“But what if the police would like to pursue that address?” I asked.

“Then they can call and ask for it,” Nora said.”

Fair enough. No need for vigilante justice here.

“But maybe someone has stolen my identity and is using my name,” I suggested. “The bill says ‘uninsured’, and I definitely have health insurance.”

“You should file a police report,” Nora said. “But I will need you to send us a letter declaring you were not in our emergency room and you’re denying payment.”

“Why do I have to do that work?” I asked. “You sent me an erroneous bill out of the blue, and now I have to write a legal document and mail it to you. You’re just trying to push your administrative costs on me.”

“It’s the only way we can compare your signature with the one on the patient chart,” Nora explained.

“Silly, Nora,” I thought. If I were a deadbeat,  I could simply alter my signature or have someone else sign the letter for me? Not a very reliable validation method.  And truthfully, I was hesitant about giving my signature to an organization that had sent me a bogus bill.

“Don’t they check ID at the hospital when patients are admitted,” I asked.

“They do,” Nora responded.  “You should also look at your credit report, in case someone has stolen your identity,” she suggested.

Frustrated with her analysis, I requested her phone extension and told her I’d file the police report.

When I dialed the Dearborn Police Department, after a list of automated options, I selected one that allowed me to speak to a police officer. He listened to my story and then quickly offered to send a car to our home for me to file a report. It was 9:45 a.m. on Monday.

“I have an 11 a.m. phone conference,” I said.

“There’s a car in the area. It can be there in the next 10 or 15 minutes,” the officer responded.

“Great,” I said and gave him my address.

Within 15 minutes, two professional Dearborn Police officers arrived, Corporal Tapping and Officer Burns. I invited them in and quickly walked them through my story.

“You probably should do a credit report check,” Corporal Tapping said.

“You’re entitled to do that once a year without affecting your credit rating,” added Officer Burns.

I had provided them with a copy of the invoice as well as Nora’s name and extension.

“This is the first billing,” noted the corporal. “Rather than you writing them a letter, we’ll call them and find out what’s going on.”

Before leaving, Officer Burns wrote down my police report number, her name and her partner’s and tore the sheet from her pad. She took my phone numbers and promised to get back to me. It was about 10:20 a.m. I told them I had an 11 a.m. phone conference so they might get voice mail.

After walking the officers out onto the front porch and saying thank you, I immediately checked my credit report online. Fortunately, there was no sign of foul play.

By 10:40, Corporal Tapping was calling back. “We reached the hospital and it seems like someone with a very similar name as yours was indeed in the ER on July 16,” she explained.

Turns out only one letter separated our last names. We also had the same first names, but he was more than 25 years younger. Too bad the hospital didn't pause to match birth dates when issuing the bill.

“Well that explains it,” I said. Must have been a keystroking error, I surmised. The electronic billing system automatically pulled up my address.

I told the corporal my credit report check was clean.  She promised to call again to let me know about the need to write a follow-up letter to the hospital.

“You might get my voice mail,” I warned. “Feel free to leave me a message, and thanks very much.”

I was already feeling better and got ready for my phone conference.

10:59 a.m. Dearborn’s finest was on the phone again.

“I talked to the hospital. They said there’s no need to write them a letter,” said the corporal. “If you receive another bill, simply call and give them your police report number.”

“Thank you so much,” I said.

Then I dialed into my phone conference with peace of mind, and gratitude that I have such a responsive city government.

My identity hadn’t been stolen. There was no unpaid bill for hundreds of dollars, just a clerical error someone made when they relied on automation, the way a novice might trust Microsoft’s spell-check feature. The private healthcare corporation got free investigative services, complete with a house call, courtesy of the local government. And the hospital wasted at least an hour of my time.

We live in a technology-obsessed world. This weekend, I saw a self-serve key-cutting machine at the big box hardware store. There were also multiple self-serve checkouts, way more than those with clerks. Much of this is sold as convenience. In reality, it’s designed to replace people with machines. Machines that customers operate. We run the switchboard when we call. We book our own flights and hotels, schlep our own luggage, pump our own gas, and, if we don’t want to wait, check and bag our own groceries.

And it’s all getting cheaper, right? Especially healthcare.

I love technology when it’s used properly, as a tool. In “The Jetsons” cartoon, “Rosie” the robotic maid was always so friendly. But, in real life, machines are only as good as the people who make and control them. Thank goodness the Dearborn cops I called weren’t androids.

By the way, neither Nora, nor anyone else from the hospital called me back to apologize.

There’s no profit in that — in the short run.