Optimistic Skepticism

Washington joins the list; why doesn't everybody?

2012-02-02T21:00:00.000-05:00

Yesterday the state senate in Washington passed a bill which would permit same-sex couples to marry. Passage is apparently expected in the Assembly, and the governor has indicated that she will sign the bill. Washington will then join Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont and the District of Columbia is permitting such marriages.

However, opponents in Washington are already threatening a referendum to overturn the law, although a similar effort in 2009 failed to overturn a civil union law. Prominent among these opponents is the Catholic Church.

This reminds me of a discussion a friend and I had last week. An acquaintance of hers had fulminated against gay marriage, and she was dismayed that her defense hadn’t been a coherent as she would have wished.

In light of these two events, I thought I would commit my thoughts to paper, or at least electrons flitting about the web.

Let me start by noting that I have a number of close friends and relatives who collectively personify all four letters of LGBT, and I've thought about related issues quite a lot.

It seems to me that there's a good chance my friend’s acquaintance was blurring the distinctions between marriage as a legal institution and marriage as a religious institution. That's easy to do, since for most couples the two occur simultaneously; most American couples are married in religious ceremonies officiated by clerics empowered by both the church and the state to perform both functions, and from then on, everybody views the couple as being simply "married."

However, the two aspects of marriage are quite different. The preeminent earthly aspect is, of course, the secular one, as marriage is a unique contractual agreement that conveys specific legal rights and privileges (e.g., preferential tax and inheritance rights). Granted, a civil union law can conceptually be tweaked to fully mimic the legal rights of marriage, but what's the purpose? If the goal is to have exactly parallel legal ramifications, why maintain the separate status? That makes no sense. And at a gut level, my friend’s interlocutor probably realizes this ... and since he perceives a difference, he wants the legal definition to reflect something of the antipathy he feels for "gay marriage."

But of course, civil union laws do not fully mimic marriage laws. The federal "Defense of Marriage Act" (DOMA) and other federal statutes prevent individuals in civil unions (or even same-sex marriages legally sanctioned by states) from enjoying the same rights and privileges of marriage (again, for example, federal tax treatment, and for federal employees, insurance benefits). As was the case with public schools in the era of legal segregation, "separate" is in fact unequal.

There is another, more abstract issue here, as well. Formal marriage carries an imprimatur that is socially valuable. Let's face it: marriage means that we accept without reservation the right of two individuals to engage in behavior which would in any other context be subject to some opprobrium. Further, spouses enjoy a higher social status than “partners.” Granted, standards are more lax now than they once were, but members of a couple desiring to be wed wants the world to recognize their partner as their spouse, and any form of civil union less than marriage fails on that measure.

What then is the basis of the opposition to legally recognizing same-sex marriages? Some argue that the purpose of marriage is procreation, but of course that is a specious argument since our laws and our culture happily embrace the marriages of heterosexual couples unable or unwilling to have children. (For example, who would criticize my 90 year old father if he were to wed his 81 year old "girlfriend"? Or the marital plans of a much younger friend who is sterile because of her endometriosis?)

The other major argument is that homosexual marriage is "wrong." That might be a convincing argument if there was societal unanimity on the subject (as there is, say, with murder or pedophilia), but clearly there isn't. The views of large numbers of citizens who view such marriage as acceptable are just as valid as those who oppose it, with the difference that the former group would not prevent the latter from exercising the right, while the latter group would prevent gays in the former group from doing so.

The core of the argument that it is wrong has religious roots, yet even there we have a good deal of diversity of opinion. A number of faith communities feel very strongly that same-sex marriage is wrong. I have no problem with that. But if we acknowledge the relevance of that perspective, we must also acknowledge the relevance of the opposing perspective, since a goodly number of faith communities and non-faith based value systems embrace the concept, and many of them celebrate such marriages. Examples include the United Church of Christ, Unitarian Universalists (Unitarians), most meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), and Reform Judaism.

That being the case, it is inappropriate to cloak within the law the perspective of one or more faith communities to the exclusion or denial of the beliefs of other faith communities and non-faith based value systems. It is inconsistent with our standard of the separation of church and state, for example, for the Catholic Church to use the power of the state to enforce its concept of marriage and prevent the Unitarian Universalists from celebrating theirs.

In other words, the state has no valid reason to limit this class of contractual relationship to heterosexuals, and any attempt to do so should be seen as violating the first amendment's establishment clause, as well as the fourteenth amendment's standard of equality before the law.

This is not to say that homosexual marriage is "right" any more than it is "wrong," since both are value judgments held by members of our society. It is merely to say that in this pluralistic society, such value judgments should be reserved for private entities and not be given the force of law by the state. Nor should one faith seek to use the law to codify its perspective to the negation of the perspectives of other faiths.

However, were same-sex marriage be universally permitted, non-state institutions would still be free to continue to hold such values as they choose, and if they wished to prohibit extending the religious aspects of marriage to homosexual members of their own communities, they could continue to refuse to perform such marriages. If the Catholic Church, for example, refused to marry same-sex couples, that would be fine. Marriage-minded gay or lesbian couples within religious communities prohibiting same-sex marriages would then be able to change religions if religious marriage were still a goal, and they would be free to obtain a state-sanctioned marriage (e.g., before a judge) if they so wished.

Of course, there is yet another argument raised in opposition to same-sex marriage, that somehow such marriages would weaken the traditional institution of marriage between men and women. But that argument is specious; in no way would the ability of two men to marry or two women to marry in any way impinge upon the right or ability of a man and woman to marry. And if one needs proof of this assertion, one merely has to look at those states already permitting same-sex marriage. In all of them, straights still marry straights, and nobody objects.

Bus 1, Car 0

2012-01-24T20:37:00.000-05:00

Driving these big yellow boxes, one thinks about Sir Isaac Newton a lot. When accelerating, when stopping, when turning, when approaching kids on the sidewalk. You know, mass and inertia, objects in motion and all of that. Most of all, though, one thinks about 17 tons versus one ton. As in, collision.

Luckily, although the thought of it is constantly with them, most school bus drivers never have to face the reality. The opportunity is out there, to be sure; all bus drivers have their share of stories about near misses, of car drivers somehow failing to see them ("we're big, we're yellow, and we have lights all over us; what's hard to see?") and pulling out in front of them, or changing lanes into them, or running stop signs or traffic lights. And all too often, the cars' drivers are on their cell phones. (How else to understand overlooking our behemoths?) Scary stories, but thankfully mostly near misses.

A week ago Tuesday the worry became my reality.

I was driving on a 4 lane divided expressway. I had just picked up the last of my middle-schoolers and was headed for their school to let them off. I had turned on to the expressway only a quarter mile earlier, so I was still accelerating, probably doing 30-35 m.p.h. on my way up to the 45 m.p.h. limit. As I approached a minor intersecting two lane residential street, I saw a car decelerating towards the stop sign, i.e., behaving in way that looked pretty ordinary, but then it started accelerating into Parkway, and directly into my path! I swerved to the left, thinking at the time that the other driver still had time to stop if they had my now-vacated right lane to use. (Fortunately I knew the left lane was empty, so swerving was a relatively safe option.) Instead, the car kept coming and plowed into the middle of my bus's side.

It was amazing how quickly it all happened.

I heard the crash more than felt it, and fortunately my control of the bus was never in doubt.

I immediately pulled back into the right lane and parked against the curb. My first thought was for the kids, of course, but they all seemed to be okay. Still, I asked, and they all said they were okay. So then I radioed our central dispatch (which alerts police and rescue), and set out my reflective triangles. Before I finished that task, the police and an ambulance arrived (we were only a quarter mile from their shared regional headquarters).

It was only then that I looked at the car that hit us. It was about 150 yards behind me, and its entire front end had been destroyed -- utterly destroyed; even the engine was damaged and deformed. (Fortunately, the passenger compartment was perfectly intact, and the driver's only injury came from the airbag.) The car was a fairly new Nissan Versa.

By comparison, the bus suffered little damage. One tire and its rim were ruined, and there was sheet metal damage along the side, but all of that was below the level of the main frame and there was no structural damage at all. Once the wheel and tire were changed, it drove normally.

Score: Bus 1, car 0!

I really don't think I could have done anything differently. There was too little time to stop, or even decelerate significantly; maneuvering to avoid was the only real option. Had I not swerved, I might have run into the side of the car, especially if I had tried braking, in which case there would have been a good chance that I would have killed the driver, or at least seriously injured her.

There were no skid marks from the car. Frankly, I don't think the driver saw me until the bus flashed in front of her. My guess - and it's only that, a guess - is that she was on a cell phone. Like I said, she was coming from a minor residential street while I was on a major one - it's the sort of intersection where a driver on the lesser road just naturally expects to stop for the fast-moving, heavy traffic of the major road. If she wasn't distracted by a cell phone, it's hard to imagine why she did what she did. I mean, it's not as if a 40 foot long, 17 ton brick-shaped yellow box with lights on is hard to miss!

As for my reaction ... some of the other bus drivers asked me later if I was OK (in the sense of not being so rattled I couldn't work, or some such) but it didn't affect me much at all, really.

It all happened faster than I could react emotionally (e.g., I was initially too busy to feel anything, and the adrenaline hit well after the fact). After it was over and I thought back on it, I couldn't see anything I did that I wished I could have done differently, nor did I have any regrets about what I did do. So it wasn't upsetting or scary or anything like that.

It did help, I think, that when the police and my boss arrived on the scene and surveyed the scene, they were very matter-of-fact and didn't criticize or comment on my actions directly or indirectly at all.

It made for an interesting morning. Besides, one student aboard told me she didn't really want to go to first period math anyway.

Citizen drivers

2012-01-22T09:17:00.007-05:00

A couple of the aspects of school bus driving I like most are the drivers' implicit assumption of equality, and the utter lack of competitiveness between them. I've never seen anything like it, anywhere else.

We're a diverse lot. Broadly speaking, we fall into two groups: those who started driving school buses before the lesser depression hit in 2007, and those who came after. The first group is primarily made up of people - mostly women - from blue collar families or the lower rungs of the service sector. By in large, they never went beyond high school, and most of them lived in the county when it was still rural, and both wages and land prices were low. Their number includes both whites and African-Americans.

It's a little more complicated for the newer drivers. Many of us are victims of the recession, mostly middle-aged, who lost our jobs as the economy plunged; this group tends to be college educated, and a lot of us have advanced degrees. Many of us were employed in professional careers; there are a lot of former IT professionals among us and a lot of building contractors, but many other fields are represented too, from graphic design to retail management. Then, too, a lot of the newer drivers are "new wave" immigrants, from the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Africa, Latin America, and both South and Southeast Asia ... and many of them are well educated too, having left behind various professional careers when the emigrated.

There's certainly a rich mixture of accents over our radio!

What's more interesting, and profoundly satisfying, is that I've never - never - seem or heard anything to suggest that any one of us harbors any dislike or distrust or any other evidence of group-related, ethnic, national or racial bias against anybody else. Clearly, we see ourselves as a community of equals, involved in and dedicated - yes, truly dedicated - to the same goal.

That respect for each other leads directly to our cooperative approach to our work. During those times when we're sitting idle, waiting for the students to be released to our buses, we gather together just as bus drivers, chatting about the usual inanities of life or discussing work-related issues. We live the same lives, at least at work, doing the same job, facing the same problems, employed in an experience more completely shared than I've seen in any other working environment. When one of us encounters a problem - say, a traffic obstruction, or a mechanical problem, or an sudden illness, or any other personal or work-related problem - we all pitch in ... and we do it not for money or some other tangible reward, but just to help out.

I should add that the lack of bias spills over to our attitude about the kids we carry: they, too, are a diverse lot, but although I've head many a driver complain about poor student behavior, I've never heard any such complaint tinged with a whiff of bigotry.

I'm finding that school bus drivers are a great community of people, and I'm proud to be among them. And happy, too.

Not your hospital room

2012-01-22T08:51:00.003-05:00

Today's New York Times has a story about hospitals catering to the ultra-rich which is definitely worth reading, for it raises some very disturbing questions beyond the simple arrogance of the 99.9% and their contempt and disdain for the rest of us.

The article describes how many hospitals have established special wings for the very wealthy with butlers, gourmet menus ("mushroom risotto with heirloom tomatoes", or maybe lobster tails) prepared by dedicated chefs, plush furniture (antique mahogany to contemporary sleek, with polished marble in the bath), sophisticated entertainment systems, fancy linens ... and direct access to the best physicians.

Yet these are the hospitals which also serve the poor, and the ordinary schmucks who think they're "covered" by health insurance. These are the same hospitals where regular patients, the article reports, can be stuck in the emergency room for three days, or lie in pain on a gurney for two days without even a bed pan.

It isn't the elitism or even the financial cost of this that is most bothersome, but the opportunity costs. To the extent that hospitals pamper the ultra-rich, they are de-emphasizing their care for the rest of us, whether they admit it or not. Resources which could and should be going to improve the care for the entire patient load are being siphoned off to pamper the very wealthy, and preserve their "splendid isolation" from the "common people."

Two lines in this story really stand out: New York-Presbyterian statement that it "is dedicated to providing a single standard of high quality care to all of our patients” when they obviously aren't (haven't we long known that the patient's state of mind matters a lot?), and the one ultra-rich patient's comments that she feels “perfectly at home here — totally private, totally catered,” with “a primary-care physician who also acts as ringmaster for all [her] other doctors," so she sees "no people in training — only the best of the best.” The converse is perfectly true: everybody else gets a lesser level of care.

Is it any wonder that 99% of us are finally starting to resist the tenth of one percent?

To have been on the mountaintop

2012-01-15T09:25:00.003-05:00

In the hope we never forget why we have a holiday tomorrow, nor why it matters today, tomorrow, and forever ....

In memory of Martin Luther King, Jr., and more important, his work, I offer these links to his final speech, the one popularly known as his "Mountaintop Speech." He gave it the night before his assassination, speaking in support of striking sanitation workers of Memphis, Tennessee. It is memorable for it captures well his views on non-violence; on the importance of economic freedom, economic injustice and economic rights; and on history and his role in it. The speech is also known for his prophetic view of his own mortality, so cruelly realized the next day.

The text of the speech, from (quite fittingly) the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees, AFSCME: “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

A video of the speech, from the series Great Speeches, volume 6th, published by the Educational Video Group, and to be viewed for educational purposes only: Martin Luther King, Jr: "Mountaintop" speech full length.

DWT

2012-01-12T17:22:00.004-05:00

Waiting for a left turn signal, heading north waiting to turn west. Signal turns; I've got the green arrow. Same for the line of cars headed in the opposite direction.

Car southbound jumps forward as I begin my turn; my guess is that the driver saw the cars to his immediate left starting up so he hit the gas too. Problem, of course, is that he still had the red, and my big yellow box was starting to turn across his bow.

I hit the brakes hard. Also hit the horn hard. The guy stops, fully in the intersection. I look at him, but he's not looking at me or around at the rest of the traffic. No, his attention immediately returns to the electronic device cradled in his lap. Texting.

Personally, I'd rather he'd been drinking a beer. Then at least other drinkers might think, "There but for the grace of God ...." But I doubt that many cell phone users would see the connection, even if the safety stats are alarmingly similar.

Brrrrr

2012-01-11T12:23:00.004-05:00

I like school bus driving. I really do. Okay, the pay is lousy, but I like the job.

But there is one aspect of it I hadn't foreseen, and which at times makes that old office job seem awfully inviting: cold.

Cold, as in 14 degrees Fahrenheit.*

Which is what it was the other morning, when I arrived to prepare my bus for the day's schedule. Of course, that was before dawn, but dawn didn't bring much help; the thermometer reached only to 28 by the afternoon.

Worse, the heater in my bus is anemic. Running full blast, it didn't raise the inside temperature enough to make me think I could remove my gloves until the final run of the day, and it didn't feel even vaguely comfortable until I had dropped off my last kid for the day. And no, I never removed my parka. I was chilly all day. Very chilly.

I know, it could be worse. I could be our roving mechanic, working all day outside (and often under buses trying to thaw out frozen brake lines, or swinging a wrench to replace a frozen stop sign actuator). Or have any one of a number of other jobs that require one to be outdoors all day in all types of weather.

On the other hand, I could be in an office, where cold days mean 72 F (and hot, 78). Has a nice sound to it, y'know? Granted, back then I worked for a malevolent tyrant whose only saving grace was blinding incompetence. But I never came home chilled to the bone ....

________________________________
* Yes, I could say -10 Celsius, and Celsius really does makes a lot more sense. But using a positive number makes it sound warmer, or at least not quite so cold. And 28 definitely sounds better than minus two. The time to go metric is the summer, when 40 Celsius sounds so much better than 104.

She's twenty today

2011-12-30T09:23:00.003-05:00

I remember so clearly holding her in my arms that first time, sending her off for her first day of grade school, holding her upside down so she could walk on the ceiling and then "berating" her for the footprints she left up there, coaching her softball and soccer teams, watching her dance in "Firebird," siting on the edge of her bed at the end of the day as we talked about things on her mind and then tucking her in (even through high school), hiking Billy Goat and Cedar Run and Rip Rap trails, going off with her to "rescue" a bewildered little dog and then watching the two of them become best friends, sharing her college road trip, sending her off to school ... and now she's not even a teen any more. It's amazing, it's astonishing, and I really don't believe it.

Friends have warned me that each coming era of her life would be the toughest, but they've all been good - each with its challenges and frustrations, to be sure, but each to be treasured and then remembered with the wistful smile that perhaps only parents understand. And I know there's a lot more in the future that will be wonderful in its own way.

But where did her childhood go? It seemed to take forever, but now it's gone in as if in a flash, and I mourn its passing.

Yet at the same time, I cherish the adult she's become.

America first

2011-12-26T15:27:00.012-05:00

Like many others, my daughter's university offers "study abroad" courses and even semesters of study to its students, affording them the opportunity to experience living in a different cultural milieu and interacting with people whose life experiences are quite different from their own. The selection available to the students is quite broad, with over a dozen programs on five different continents.

This is a good thing, for although the America most of us know has an amazingly diverse cultural heritage, Americans are justly ridiculed world-wide for their cultural insularity and ignorance. On one of my parents' post-retirement trips overseas, a guide told a very telling joke that played on this:

Question: What do you call somebody who speaks three languages?
Answer: Trilingual.
Question: What do you call somebody who speaks two languages?
Answer: Bilingual.
Question: What do you call somebody who speaks one language?
Answer: American.

Emblematic of our cultural naivete, we've quite recently had a President who had been born into privilege but was apparently proud of having never left the United States, save for short excursions into Mexico.

Nevertheless, many Americans avidly seek out intercultural knowledge, and programs such as college "study abroad" semesters are popular. A number of companies serve similar interests by non-collegians, and also enjoy real popularity. Rosetta Stone, for instance, offers home-study courses in over forty languages, representing Africa, Europe; the Middle East; East, Southeast and South Asia; and Latin America.

Living on the east coast, I've met many people who have traveled overseas extensively, mostly in Europe, even if they haven't seen much of their own continent. When I ask them why, they usually talk about the importance of seeing other cultures, or lands quite different from their own, or to visit places where the language and the way of life are fundamentally different from our own.

And these efforts to broaden cultural horizons are all laudable.

Yet they're all missing something vital, and very, very American. There is within our own boundaries a cultural diversity unimagined in Europe, of which most of us are utterly ignorant. What we miss is extremely important: it's uniquely indigenous to our own continent, and we must know of it if we are to truly know ourselves. Our land is home to amazing cultures and people who are almost invisible to most of us, but whose history here seems ancient compared to most of the rest of us: these are the peoples who are actually indigenous to our own continent, and still live in a cultural milieu uniquely there own and have languages uniquely their own. Theirs is a cultural and linguist world which differs from the standard "American" more than any one might find in Europe.

I'm thinking most of the Navajo and Hopi peoples of the "Four Corners" region of the American southwest, but only because I am more familiar with their story. Yet theirs are only two of a substantial number of cultures indigenous to our soil which present fantastic differences from the experience of most of us. In both cases, the languages are very much alive - well over half of the Navajo nation, for instance, speaks Diné bizaad, and an even larger proportion of the Hopi people speak Hopi. In both cases, the languages differ from English by a far greater degree than any Indo-European language. Both people have a spiritual heritage which differs in very profound ways from any Judeo-Christian religion (yet also differs significantly from each others). In both nations, many people follow a pattern of life which differs more from what an urbanized American knows than anything a visitor to Europe might experience. And both, as is the case with all other native American cultures, look back to a rich history of which the rest of us are totally ignorant or, worse, suffer from gross misconceptions. Most important, though, is that the rest of us could learn and benefit greatly from knowing.

Yet the vast majority of us not born into a native American nation are utterly ignorant of the lives and culture and history - and wisdom - of these, our neighbors.

In short, an American unfamiliar with the worlds of our country's first peoples would do well to explore the amazing diversity found within our own land. Yes, Europe (and Asia, and Africa) hold a fascination for me, but I would much rather learn more of the people who share this land I call my own.

Cell phones and driving

2011-12-17T11:28:00.008-05:00

On December 13 the National Traffic Safety Board came out with a recommendation that all states "Ban the nonemergency use of portable electronic devices" in response to its study of a fatal traffic accident caused by a driver texting while in heavy traffic. Although the recommendation deals with all portable electronic devices, most of the media attention has pertained to its impact on cell phone usage by drivers. The recommendation has gotten a lot of press. It's also generated a lot of opposition, much of which, it seems to me, raises the red herring of other distractions to drivers.

It seems to me that the big difference is the context of the distraction. Whether it's eating or listening to the radio or carrying on a conversation with a passenger, the context of the distracting event remains the car and the traffic conditions in which it is operating. The driver and any passenger are aware of what's happening on the road, and automatically pause while the driver deals with anything requiring a reaction.

It's happened to me countless times. A conversation will halt while I deal with the suddenly changed traffic condition, and then resumes without a break when the situation permits. Or I disregard the piece of fruit or sandwich I had been considering a moment before. Or the radio is ignored until I am able to listen again. The normal sort of distracting event hardly interferes with my attention to the road at all, or with my ability to handle the car.

A phone call is different. The other person on the call has no awareness of what's happening in traffic, and indeed may have no awareness that the talkative driver is even driving. So they won't pause if somebody suddenly turns in front of their conversationalist, or the driver needs to check a blind spot while changing lanes. Worse, the driver too easily falls into the trap of concentrating on the phone call, and truly is distracted from the demands of safely driving. How else to explain such egregious lapses of attention, such as one I saw the other day when a driver at a "T" intersection when straight ahead when the light turned green, and plowed into the signal box controlling the intersection's traffic lights?

As a professional driver, I see many, many questionable and dangerous maneuvers, and almost invariably when I look at the drivers, I see that they are holding a cell phone to their ear, or are talking to somebody who isn't in the car with them.

Cell phones are wonderful conveniences. I rely on mine so much I've given up my land line. But they become dangerous when used by drivers. It's as simple as that. There can be no justification for driving while on the phone.

Herons in the 'burbs

2011-12-10T10:56:00.004-05:00

Driving a school bus has its little pleasures, which do a lot to grease the wheels. Before "my" elementary school lets out in the afternoon, we drivers stage along a street out in front of the school, waiting for the signal to pull in and pick up our kids.

Adjacent to that street is a small pond which provides its share of those small treasures, even among the signs warning trespassers to not enjoy the view (okay, they actually tell them not to swim, boat, fish or ice skate, but the meaning is clear). It's a little oasis despite the prohibitions, a reminder that there is a world of beauty beyond the commonplace.

Occasionally gracing the pond is a great blue heron, patiently fishing the shallows, largely oblivious of the big yellow boxes parked just beyond the bank. They're my favorite bird, and it's a delight to watch this one stand motionless intently watching the water or slowing wading through the shallows stalking its prey. Watching it, one can readily shake free from the mundanity of the surrounding cookie cutter architecture and appreciate in microcosm the beauty of our remoter estuaries and rivers. Indeed, even in the midst of soulless suburbia, one can find a glimpse of that wildness Thoreau found to be the preservation of the world.

Good for the body, good for the planet

2011-12-01T13:13:00.004-05:00

After I got the job driving a school bus and decided I liked it, I moved to be closer to work. Now, if I drive to work, I've got about a 7.1 mile round trip by car ... and since we get an enormous (unpaid!) break in the middle of the day, it's a round trip I usually make twice a day.

But I don't drive my commute; I bike it. Granted, the bike route saves about two miles on the round trip, since I can take a short cut that's not available to drivers. Thanks to that short cut, the elapsed time is about the same. But still, it saves 14 miles of driving every day I hop on the bike.

More to the point, biking puts me in better shape. Which is not an inconsiderable benefit, considering that I'm in training for yet another Grand Canyon hike. (see my other blog, ketches, yaks and hawks.)

But it also saves on gasoline. Assuming I bike both my commutes, morning and afternoon, every day of the week, I'm saving about 70 miles of driving. Which for me, would be about three gallons each week, which is three gallons of irreplaceable gasoline which isn't being pumped out of the ground, and three gallons of gasoline which isn't ending up as greenhouse gas emissions. Not a large amount in the scheme of things, but every bit saved really does help.

It also means I'm saving about ten dollars each week. Which isn't bad news for somebody who is still adjusting to being seriously underemployed.

So it's a win-win-win solution. I commend it to everybody who can find a way to get to work on a bike

Plan B: the big yellow box

2011-11-15T20:59:00.009-05:00

I had mentioned that I was laid off in the summer of 2010, and that I wasn't very optimistic about prospects in my profession.

Alas, that proved true, and despite a year of searching I wasn't able to find any position within my field. There weren't that many to begin with, and what there were paid far less than what I had been making. The few interview opportunities I was able to obtain seemed to end the moment I walked into the room, with the unmistakable look of "Oh my god, it's a geezer" spreading across the interviewer's face.

The best chance I had was with a small town library in a remote part of the state, working four full days and two half days each week, for less than half my previous salary and with just two weeks of leave annually. I was grateful for the confidence the interviewer had in me and was impressed by the library, but it was a mistake to have even applied. I suppose I'm stuck in my ways, but taking the job would have meant never seeing my college-age daughter or my very elderly father, save by splitting those two weeks, and never taking a trip just for my own sake. It also would have meant scrimping each and every day, but I knew that was to be my future under the best of possibilities.

So I finally opted for Plan B, in earnest. And landed a job driving a school bus for a suburban county on the outskirts of the metropolitan region. The pay is lousy - about half of that library position that was less than half of my "real" job. But the work is oddly satisfying and generally pleasant, and in many ways I'm far happier at the wheel of my bus than I ever was working where I had been. And I get summers off.

But more on that anon. Suffice it for now just to say that I'm a school bus driver, and consider myself fortunate for that fact.

A little act to save jobs

2011-10-26T20:38:00.004-04:00

More and more stores around here have installed self checkout counters. On the surface, that seems sort of interesting, an attractive and maybe even intriguing use of technology.

But don't use them.

Think about it. What's going on here? Go into a store with self checkout counters, and what else do you notice? Fewer cashiers. Which is to say, fewer employees. Which is to say, people who used to have jobs as cashiers, don't.

What you don't see are lower prices. The prices are the same whether you use self checkout or go to a cashier. The prices are the same whether you're in a renovated store with self checkout counters, or in one of the same company's older stores which don't yet have them.

So ask yourself: In whose interest is self checkout? Obviously not the employee's; more machines and fewer humans mean more people struggling to find jobs, more people desperate to make ends meet, more misery in the midst of a terrible recession which has brought unemployment and underemployment to millions. It's not in the customer's interest either. Do you get a price break when you use self checkout? No - any money saved goes to the corporation. Do you get a person on the spot who can quickly resolve any glitch that develops during checkout? No - you have to wait until some employee notices. Is it faster? Doesn't seem so, from what I can see - fairly often, in fact, I see customers confused by the process, or stumbling over one sort of problem or another. So who benefits? The store, only the store. And they don't pass their benefits back to either the consumer or the employee.

On the other hand, if you go to a cash register operated by an employee, you're doing your part to keep that person employed. You're doing your part to tell the management that they need to continue employing cashiers. You're even doing a little to combat this terrible recession. And you aren't paying a penny more than you would if you were in the other line.

Send a signal to the corporations. Do what you can to keep people employed. What goes around comes around ....

September 11, restrospective

2011-09-11T10:06:00.003-04:00

We were told that it was a day that changed everything ... and in ways more far-reaching and destructive than we could have imagined when first we heard the phrase, it has been. Consider some of the changes these past ten years have wrought.

Our national fabric and political process have been twisted into a cruel parody of the hopeful statement so often displayed on bumper stickers, that "United We Stand." A cynical President we never elected, aided by the even more cynical ideologues of his party and his supporters, used September 11 to pursue a nakedly partisan agenda that has divided our country so deeply that we're probably more disunited now than we have been at any time since the Civil War. In so doing, they have hobbled our nation's ability to deal with any of the genuine crises that have arisen since, while creating levels of misery not seen in the memories of people now living, and levels of economic inequality not seen in well over a century, if ever.

We've entered a period of permanent war. I grew up during the half-century long Cold War, when we were conditioned to accept the premise that the very existence of humanity was properly subordinated to the political conflict between the superpower, and I thought that was bad enough. I grew up, too, during a period where every President had his war, be it overt, covert or proxy. I thought that too was bad enough. But now we seem to be in a period of endless war, wars with no sign of ever ending, of ever resolving anything; wars whose sole functions seem to be continuation for the simple reason we see no way to quit. The spectre of war now plagues the entire lives of nearly every living American. We are raising a generation that has never known a period without war.

Beyond that, we've entered an era of permanent militarization. I grew up in the shadow of "the greatest generation," where all the boys donned their fathers' left-over uniforms and played at war in empty lots and orchards. And I came of age when those boys donned their own uniforms and went off to the jungles of Viet Nam or the stalemate of Germany. But we never lionized all things military the way we have during this past decade, ranging from the use of military and war-related metaphors in all aspects of our lives and commerce to de rigueur salutes to all things military to the infiltration of military motifs into fashion. This deadly militarization shows perhaps most profoundly as our nation struggles through this "Lesser Depression" with all forms of effort to improve lives becomming highly suspect, but military spending remains largely sacrosanct.

And we've similarly entered an era of blind patriotism with its corollary of mandatory paeans to patriotism. The evil standard of the Bush years that political opposition was equated with disloyalty to the nation has eased somewhat, but it is still with us, as is it's closely related partner, xenophobic bigotry.

Yet despite our militarization and our constant war-making, our influence throughout the world is considerably diminished, and we have abandoned the leadership role America formerly held in global matters, be they issues of peace and war, human rights and justice, technology and economic development, environmental protection, or cultural advancement. Meanwhile, we as a nation have become impoverished in spirit as well as in wealth.

Comparing what we were to what we have become, I can only conclude that this past decade has proven that with the connivance of American leaders whose interests have not been focused on American well-being but rather their own, the terrorists of September 11 are the ones who have triumphed, and not us.

Note: At the time, I lived close to one of the sites attacked that fateful day, and knew and know personally many people whose lives were ended or affected. I've long found it troubling that the people who used September 11 aggrandizement tended to be from elsewhere; it's worth noting that the two jurisdictions most affected have consistently voted against those who rode the tragedy to power.

Thirty-something?

2011-08-27T08:10:00.004-04:00

Was driving somewhere with my daughter, now nineteen. We were talking about the changes wrought by aging, with more of a focus on her time of life than mine. At some point, I commented that although I knew I'm sixty-two, I really feel like I'm still thirty. "Really," she dubiously asked?

Yes. Okay, I know I'm not, and there are certainly plenty of signs that I'm not - my eyesight grows steadily worse, my joints aren't as resilient as they used to be, I take longer to heal, there are creases where there used to be smooth skin, my bright red hair has faded to dull brown where it hasn't blanched to pure white ... and the list goes on.

But deep down inside, in my conception of who I am, I'm still in my thirties. I still do pretty much anything I want to, whether it's going for a 100 mile hike deep inside the Grand Canyon (see photos and commentary) or biking to work or swinging an axe. And my mind still feels the same way it always has (though perhaps I delude myself). An attractive woman still catches my eye. Most important, perhaps, I look at the future in terms of opportunities and plans, far more than in terms of restraints or memories or regrets.

I realize that in eight years I'll be seventy, that in the time it takes a newborn to be able to vote, I'll be eighty. And I look at my father - a remarkably vital and active ninety - and wonder how he sees himself? Is he still the handsome, dashing Army Air Corps pilot I never knew. Or is he the bowed, increasingly frail, easily fatigued old man with a deteriorating memory that I reluctantly see?

This aging process isn't what I thought it would be. Mostly, I happily add, it's better. Enough so, that I sometimes wonder if it's even occurring.

Until my daughter says "Really?"

Rick Perry, demagogue

2011-08-16T13:37:00.004-04:00

In reference to Chairman Ben Bernanke and his policy of "quantitative easing:
“Printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history is almost treasonous in my opinion .... If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I don’t know what you all would do to him in Iowa, but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas” -- Texas governor Rick Perry, August 15, 2011

There's no other way to call it. When a candidate for the nation's highest office uses terms such as "treasonous" to describe the actions of a public official whose clear purpose is to pursue a valid public policy, that candidate is guilty of demagoguery, pure and simple. It doesn't matter whether or not the candidate favors or doesn't doesn't favor the policy in question; treason is one of the most heinous of capital crimes, and invoking such a charge is execrable.

In case one is inclined to dismiss such rhetoric as a "boys will be boys" sort of offense, it is useful to use the "shoe on the other foot" test. Can one imagine President Obama (or Presidents Clinton, Cater, Eisenhower or Coolidge ever using such a phrase to describe a public official with whom the he had a policy difference?

I for one do not want a demagogue as President. I hope the rest of America feels the same way.

Does Perry really mean it?

2011-08-14T15:48:00.003-04:00

Texas governor Rick Perry wants to Washington “as inconsequential in your lives as [he] can.”

I'm sure that will sell well with the right-wing of the Republican party, but let's think about what he's saying, and take him at his word.

Taken literally, he's saying that our military should be "inconsequential," that we shouldn't be bothered with a strong national defense.

Is he saying that America's seniors should be denied the "inconsequential" benefits of Social Security and Medicare, and sink into poverty instead?

Should Americans with asthma and any of the rest of us who like to breathe see air pollution standards as "inconsequential?" Is clean water an "inconsequential" factor in our health?

Forget about the USDA protecting the wholesomeness of foods we buy in the market; like all other federal regulatory efforts, that activity is "inconsequential" in Perry's vision of our nation.

How many workers who have lost their jobs view unemployment benefits as "inconsequential?"

How many Americans consider that FDIC insurance is "inconsequential" when it protects their savings when banks collapse?

Try driving somewhere. It would be hard to do it in a Perry-esque world where our Interstate highway system is "inconsequential."

Are efforts to wean us away from our dangerous dependence on foreign oil "inconsequential?" I guess that governor Perry thinks so.

What happens to organized crime if the FBI is made "inconsequential?"

The list goes on and on. It's easy and maybe even gratifying to complain about the Washington, but we should stop and wonder how "inconsequential" we really want our government to be, how "inconsequential" we want the United States of America to be. The federal government is a vital and beneficial part of American life, and our nation would fall into chaos and misery if Rick Perry really succeeded with this idiotic pledge.

For us all, and for our nation, making our government "inconsequential" would have terrible consequences .

P.S. And what happens to national security when Rick Perry encourages a Chinese firm which both the Bush and Obama administrations view as posing a threat to U.S. cybersecurity? Will its potential for harming the U.S. be "inconsequential" too?

Media malfeasance in Ames

2011-08-14T10:15:00.003-04:00

The "Iowa Straw Poll" held in Ames yesterday was hardly the model of democracy. Not only did Iowans have to get to the Ames fairground, but they had to pay $30 to participate in the process. Hardly a good way to get a representative sampling of Iowa's electorate, or even of that state's Republicans. Which makes sense, because it's really a fund-raising dinner for Iowa's Republican party.

But the even comes loaded with hype, and the media are eager to cast it as an important test of candidates' appeal in the presidential "horse race." So what should be seen as an unimportant partisan fund-raiser takes on a significance far beyond anything that can be justified.

Anyway, a grand total of 16,584 made the drive to Ames (did anyone take public transit or bike there?) to ante up their $30. And the media anointed the results with suggestions of those magical terms "mandate" and "momentum." The front-runners had a lot to gain, and any candidate who didn't do as well as the pundits thought they should was condemned to marginality.

So Michele Bachmann got the support of the grand total of 4,823 ticket-buyers (fewer than three in ten of the attendees) and is declared the winner. By contrast, Tim Pawlenty finished third with nearly half as many, but the media called that a "major setback" him and it must have been, because he immediately dropped out of the race.

I'm not great fan of Pawlenty's, but shouldn't we as Americans be alarmed that such an inconsequential event as this minor small state partisan fund-raising event should be deemed so important that it can knock a candidate who has governed a fairly large state out of the race because he trailed another candidate by the support of a mere 2,530 people who decided to spend their Saturday traveling to Ames to pay $30 so they could hobnob with the candidates?

This is not how a democratic republic should work. Those in the media should be ashamed of what they have done, and we in the electorate should be appalled at how we allow them to twist, undermine and emaculate our electoral process.

Romney's epiphany

2011-08-11T16:54:00.002-04:00

“Corporations are people, my friend,” Romney said.

-- Mitt Romney, at the Iowa State Fair, August 11, 2011

White bread GOP debt panelists

2011-08-11T15:51:00.005-04:00

Okay, I realize that the Republican Party isn't very inclusive, and especially not at its top levels, but the best that Speaker Boehner and Minority Leader McConnell could come up with for the joint debt committee were a bunch of white guys in ties?

Nobody expects that members of Congress will be poor or homeless or unemployed, but let's face it: the people who will be most adversely affected by the cuts to be imposed by the panel will be poor or homeless or unemployed, just as they're the ones who have suffered the most from the long-running financial crisis left to America as a key component of George W. Bush's legacy.

But Boehner appointed Jeb Hensarling, Dave Camp and Fred Upton, while McConnell appointed Patrick Toomey, Jon Kyl and Rob Portman. Hensarling is a middle-aged wealthy white business executive from Texas; Camp is a middle-aged white lawyer from Michigan; Upton is a middle-aged white political drone from Michigan; Kyl is a middle-aged white lobbyist from Arizona; Toomey is a white financial wheeler-dealer and business executive from Pennsylvania; and Portman is a white political staffer from Ohio. Not exactly representative of the people suffering from our economic problems.

The Democrats on the panel are obviously not poor, homeless or unemployed either, but two are women, one is Hispanic, one is African American, one was a community organizer, one is a decorated combat veteran, one is the son of working class immigrants, and one is a former high-school teacher. Something tells me that they will bring to the debt discussions a greater intuitive understanding of the plight of ordinary Americans, and a greater awareness of how this unending recession is hurting them far more than it is hurting the moneyed classes so ably represented by the Republican members of the committee.

The Washington Post seems to have noticed the same imbalance: "Debt Supercommittee’s Membership Dominated by White Men."

Do unto the Republicans as they have done unto us

2010-11-03T14:49:00.004-04:00

After yesterday's election in which the electorate rewarded the "Party of No" for thwarting every effort to improve Americans' lives and condition, President Obama said he takes "direct responsibility" for the failure to improve the nation's economy, and pledged to work with the strengthened Republicans. Meanwhile, Senator Reid said the vote shows Americans want jobs and cooperation.

That's like a robbery victim offering to co-sign bank loans for the criminal because the crime merely proved that the perp wanted the victim's cooperation in obtaining better access to funds.

The Republicans top goals were and are getting rid of President Obama, and preserving the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy. They have manifestly proven they have no interest in boosting employment or in seeking bipartisanship. Their electoral success was solely the result of their implacable opposition to everything the Democrats tried to do coupled with their success in blaming the Democrats for the impasse, while the Democrats dithered away their majority by foolishly holding on to a patriotic hope for bipartisanship.

Now that the Republicans have the House, what makes President Obama and Senator Reid think they'll be any more interested in compromise than they were before? Do they think that if they compromise with the Republicans that either they or they nation will benefit? No, all they would accomplish would be to further strengthen the Republicans at great cost to themselves and the American people. The Republicans aren't out to restore bipartisanship or help the nation; they're out to help the fat cats lurking behind them and to gain power for themselves. They clearly care nothing for the welfare of the country.

The Democrats must come to realize that giving in to the Republicans is suicidal for them, and harmful to the nation. President Obama and the Democrats' legislative leaders must oppose the Republican agenda just as unwaveringly as the Republicans opposed theirs.

Such good company we keep

2010-11-01T10:00:00.005-04:00

Cluster munitions are weapons such as bombs and artillery shells which contain a number of smaller bomblets which designed to be scattered about on impact. These bomblets, or sub-munitions, can remain active and dangerous long after they are distributed, posing active threats to civilians as they re-occupy the vicinity after the fighting has moved on or stopped.

Thus, a large number of civilians have been killed by cluster munitions have killed over the years, and some estimate that a quarter of them have been children who find unexploded sub-munitions and begin to play with them.

An international treaty banning most forms of cluster bombs was adopted on May 30, 2008 and went into effect August 1, 2010 after it had been ratified by 30 countries. The agreement permits signatories to keep certain types of relatively large submunitions which have self-destruction or de-activation mechanisms, thus permitting them to be used on the battlefield as anti-tank weapons and similar purposes. The treaty was opposed by some major users of cluster bombs, by signed by many others.

So far, 108 nations have signed the agreement, and 43 have ratified it. Among the NATO members which have ratified it are Britain, Germany, Denmark, Belgium and Norway. NATO nations which have signed it include Canada, France, Italy and the Netherlands. It has also been signed by such other important American allies as Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Mexico, Chile, Iraq and Ireland.

Signatories must destroy their stockpiles of cluster munitions within ten years, but seven countries have already started doing so, and two more are clearing then from areas where they had been used.

Notable in their refusal to sign are the United States, Israel, Russia, China, Cuba and North Korea. The same sorry list has refused to sign the Ottawa treaty on landmines (formerly, the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction). Such good company we keep!

It is time for America to join the community of nations working to make the world - and even the battlefield - safer for civilians. It is time for the United States to sign and ratify both the landmine and cluster munitions treaties.

Sources:

Convention on Cluster Munitions
Alastair Leithead, "Cluster Bomb Stockpiles 'Being Destroyed,'" BBC, November 1, 2010
John F. Burns, "Britain Joins a Draft Treaty on Cluster Munitions," New York Times, May 29, 2008
"Convention on Cluster Munitions," Wikipedia
International Campaign to Ban Landmines

Lemonade

2010-10-06T21:11:00.013-04:00

Getting laid off is more than dispiriting. Unemployment is a hemorrhaging slash in the psyche. In this economy especially, it verges on being disastrous.

That said, it can have its benefits.

This morning I was filing some e-mails I had sent during the months before and after being laid off, and I was reminded quite forcefully of how awful it was to work for a petty tyrant. Every morning my stomach would knot up, every day was nerve-wracking, every evening found me exhausted, and every night brought nightmares.

These days I feel isolated; I had never realized how much I had come to depend on my interaction with other people, and how empty a day at home can feel. That laceration in my psyche is still pretty raw. And I'm definitely worried about money.

But it is so nice to be free of that tyrant. The nightmares are gone, my stomach is quiet, my life is calm. I've even forgotten the private nickname I had for her. My life is incredibly more peaceful. And that's worth something.

Update: The name was Odious.

The rich need jobs

2010-09-20T08:47:00.010-04:00

There has been a fair amount in the press of late about the anger of the rich, both articles and columns. The rich, the people whose incomes put them in America's top 1%, seem to be increasingly upset about historically mild attempts to reign in some of the advantages they enjoy, steps like letting the Bush II tax cut for the top echelon expire, or limiting the bonuses paid to the top executives of the companies bailed out by the taxpayer, or closing tax loopholes for hedge fund executives, or levying the same Social Security tax on their wages as are levied on most workers, or even - horror of horrors - taxing some of their unearned income at rates corresponding to those levied on the sweat of the working man's brow.

The irony is that what the very rich need more than anything else is political stability. In the final analysis, their wealth and their way of life depend on the great mass of people less affluent than them being sufficiently satisfied with their lot to support the political, social and economic structures which permit the wealthy to exist, and to enjoy their wealth.

But persistently high unemployment and underemployment, increasing disparities in wealth, increasing poverty and increasing hopelessness imperil that stability. It is in the interests of America's very wealthy to support economic and social reforms and policies which would dampen such threats to stability, and they're not doing it.

Too many Americans need jobs, and they need them now. Allowing the Bush II tax cuts for the wealthy will not stimulate the economy or produce jobs. What will work is getting the unemployed back to work, and to do that, we as a nation need to start creating jobs, and the best way to do that would be to start investing in the infrastructural improvements, new technologies and new markets that can keep us competitive in the 21st Century.

Unless we create those jobs, more and more people will become increasingly desperate, and desperation brings enormous risks to stability. I don't wish to sound alarmist, but America is today approaching a point where all bets will be off, and political chaos could be a distinct possibility. The wealthy, just as much as the rest of us, have a vested interest in getting Americans back to work, and restoring hope and optimism throughout our land.

Go Skins?

2010-09-12T22:38:00.005-04:00

Why do Washingtonians support a football team with a racist name?

Washington D.C. has a long and proud history of confronting racism and celebrating diversity. The city has seen so many demonstrations, rallies, marches, legislative actions and presidential initiatives denouncing racism or celebrating racial and ethnic diversity that one can justly consider it to be the epicenter of American equality.

Washington, D.C. is also at the heart of a large and proudly diverse populaiton. The city itself has a majority black population. The larger metropolitan region is extremely diverse and is on the threshold of having a majority minority population (i.e., no one ethnic group will comprise a majority of the population). Washington's elected mayors have all been African American or had significant African American ancestry.

Why then are its football fans so loyally committed to a team with a racist name? Why do they permit that team's owners to perpetuate their brand of racism? The term is offensive to large numbers, probably most, of the Native American community.

Some defend the term on various and mostly specious grounds, but consider putting "the shoe was on another foot" for a moment. Let's imagine using racial slang for another ethnic group as the team's name. Would Washingtonians support it if the team were named, say, the " Washington Darkies"? Or "Chinamen" or "Wops" or "Honkies" or "Dagos" or "Coolies" or "Crackers" or "Ragheads," or any other name used disparagingly to describe an ethnic group and offensive to a significant population of that group? I seriously doubt it. It the team's owners tried to change the name in such an odious way, fans and the general public would be outraged.

Why then do we accept the name "Redskins"? The name must be changed, and area fans should refuse to support the team - and especially its owners - until it is.

Helicopter-free zone

2010-08-30T16:17:00.006-04:00

Woke up in a childless house for the first time in seventeen-plus years. She's in college now, one day into her freshman year. Three days, if you count the weekend.

First reports are highly positive: good room-mate, good suite-mate, new friends, dorm room working out well, lots of fun so far. Too early to know about her classes, of course. But college seems wonderful. At least, that's her view of it.

Mine is different. The house seems terribly empty, unnaturally quiet. The dog - her dog - seems bewildered. So am I, but he shows it more. I think.

Knew full well long before this weekend that she is the central figure in my life, and as every reluctantly realizes, I was doomed to abandonment. And now it's happened. Knowing that it's for the best, knowing it's what she's been craving, knowing that it's what I've always wanted for her, knowing that this past weekend would be the biggest step in her long road to independence ... knowing all of that helps, but not that much. I miss her, and there's a huge hole in my life.

But it's up to me to fill it; she quite properly is looking forward, not backward.

Right now the best I can do is to avoid becoming a helicopter parent, or worse, a velcro parent. The temptation is strong, but it would be destructive of everything I want for her. So I try to limit my calls and e-mails to plausible excuses.

Fortunately, she's helping in that regard. A couple of excited calls about new friends. A wail about a cold night and a missing blanket. A small gift of something I know she'll like, to arrive in her mailbox later this week. And then the first call for money. (And that, I'm pleased, was for a good reason, and easy to oblige.)

But her departure is not without benefits. For the first time since she arrived all those years ago, I'm cooking to my tastes, not to the lowest common denominator she imposed. And I'm biking on those small errands she used to like to share ... provided we drove. I know too that there will be other little surprises along the way, until my life reaches a new dynamic that defines her as a welcome but only occasional visitor.

Still, I miss her. Powerfully. This giving of one's heart to a child isn't an easy thing.

A summer of obsessing

2010-08-14T16:58:00.007-04:00

Choosing the school turned out to be easier than I had anticipated. But the anticipation is proving tough on the kid.

Spent the spring obsessing about finding a roommate. She joined the FaceBook page for members of her class, and developed virtual friendships with a bunch of them. Found one she thought she'd like to room with; met her at a local mall and it wasn't exactly love at first sight. Back to obsessing.

Headed south for the school's new students' orientation. Parents in dorms (air conditioned, thankfully!) with the students in different dorms (and not so lucky in the blistering weather).

But luck was with her; she hit it off with the student randomly assigned to be her roomie for the night, and vice versa. They decided to make it official for the full year, figuring the one night shared gave them a far better bet than taking pot luck.

More than that, the trip confirmed that THIS is the college. She met her academic advisor, registered for classes, arranged for her books, selected her computer, dined in the mess hall, bought the requisite tee-shirts.

The virtual friendship with the new roomie blossomed, via FB and a seemingly constant stream of text messages. Took the two of them to an amusement park in early August, and they both had fun; more to the point, the excursion's success augurs well for school-year compatibility between the two.

Of course, she's still obsessing about college. All summer long, she's marked the days down on the calendar, but now that she's down to a dozen she's getting VERY anxious. Which seems about right; I can't imagine it otherwise. My guess is that she'll be happy down there, probably quite happy, but the transition may well have its rough spots.

But there's probably not a better way for her to go ... and go she must, as every parent must recognize.

(Of course, how those parents feel about it is a completely different matter ....)

And now I am one

2010-08-04T10:57:00.000-04:00

Back when the Obama administration was taking form in the midst of the Bush-era financial debacle, there was considerable discussion of the appropriate scale for a federal stimulus package. The new President opted for a timid approach, perhaps because he didn't want to imperil his chances for bipartisanship, perhaps because he thought he could come back for a second installment if necessary, or perhaps because he thought his timid package would prove adequate. Some political leaders, several prominent economists, and a few progressive pundits thought that Mr. Obama was wrong on all three counts; the Republicans were not interested in bipartisanship, the political consensus needed to pass a stimulus package would soon unravel, and that the package being promoted would prove woefully inadequate.

Sadly, the skeptics were proven right on all counts. The Republicans became the party of "No," much more interested in thwarting President Obama than in helping America. The opportunity proved very short-lived, withering in the face of Republican obstructionism and a sustained rhetorical assault by the right wing -- an opposition unwittingly aided by a curiously detached White House. And the stimulus has proven so inadequate that the county appears to be locked into a long term period of stagnation in which millions upon millions of Americans will suffer as high unemployment numbers remain unchanging and the unemployed slip into long-term unemployment and lives of hopelessness and increasing levels of misery. Meanwhile, America's political leaders seem apathetic to the sufferings of their constituents and astonishingly removed from the realities Americans face.

All along, I've been siding with the progressive skeptics. All along, I've favored a much more aggressive stimulus package (coupled with a rapid drawdown in our pointless and expensive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and a roll-back of the lopsided tax cuts given to the nation's affluent by the Bush administration). All along, I've sided with those who saw this terrible recession as an opportunity to embark on economic development strategies which would improve American competitiveness, address the growing problems of climate change and foreign petroleum dependence, and provide unemployed Americans with modern jobs that would help build our collective future.

But I never thought I was arguing in favor of what I personally would need.

Wrong.

Laid off. In a field which is dying. And of an age where the few prospects available to younger unemployed are unavailable to me.

These are dismal times for our nation. And now they're dismal times for me.

Dismal times, and very humbling. I entered the job market during a recessionary period when jobs were hard to find, and job scarcity has characterized most of my career. And here I am, still years from retirement but with no prospects.

One hopes hope will come, but it seems awfully distant now.

The library's flowers are wilting

2010-05-02T15:09:00.002-04:00

We have a fairly new part-time employee whose job title is "research assistant" but who in reality is a library assistant, with precious little in the way of research duties. She's student at an MLS program in the region, full of enthusiasm for the profession she seeks.

The other day she got very upset with me. I forget how the conversation started, but she noted that she is disappointed with the job because it's mostly boring stuff and doesn't involve any research or much other opportunity for creativity. Mind you, I didn't write the job proposal, I didn't interview her, and I don't supervise her, so her disappointment isn't my fault. Anyway, I responded by noting that the field is mostly about process, and not content. We help others do the creative stuff, but mostly we just keep the information process operating as smoothly as we can.

We then started talking in greater depth about the field. I told her what I see: around the country, libraries are cutting back, laying off staff, reducing hours, even closing libraries. That's true in all sorts of libraries: public, academic, law and special. I also mentioned what's happening to just about all the people in the field whom I know. There's gloom across the board.

And I mentioned what's happening to my library. Next year my institute moves to a new building; for most people here, that's good news ... but for us in the library, it's definitely not. We'll suffer nearly a 50% cut in space, drastic reductions in work space and working conditions, loss of all of our bound journals, loss of the vast majority of our reference works, and loss of nearly half of the rest of our collection. Indeed, I'm already spending a goodly share of my time disposing of books, and I'll be doing that throughout the coming year. (I have to add that it's very dispiriting to be whacking at a collection I had carefully built over the past dozen years.)

And no, the losses won't be made up by electronic resources. Much of it simply cannot be replaced that way, and in any case there's no promise of corresponding increases in funding so we can afford to switch to more intensive use of electronic resources ... and they don't come cheap! And no, the researchers dependent on the library won't have anywhere else to go.

I guess I sounded pretty dispirited.

Anyway, the research assistant got really upset with my "negativity" because she is "just entering the field" and doesn't want to hear anything negative about it! Sorry sister, but the library field is a declining and increasingly stressed field throughout; like I said, I don't know anybody in the field who doesn't have dismal tales to tell. And I don't know of any libraries where morale -- or funding, or workload, or job prospects -- are improving. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad. I suppose that I shouldn't be telling her about the weeding going on here and what it means for the collection, either, huh? Guess I shouldn't mention global warming or financial reform or the war in Afghanistan, either; just happy stories from here on out. Much better to be an ostrich.

It's not a good time to be a librarian. Wishful thinking won't help; the field is declining.

Relections on Iceland's volcano

2010-04-18T11:18:00.007-04:00

As all of Europe and probably most of the rest of the world now knows, ash spewed from Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano has shut down much of Europe's airspace. It's obviously a tremendous inconvenience to would-be airline passengers, and a serious hit on the finances of a great many airlines and airports. Perhaps less obvious are three interesting implications of the eruption.

Iceland is comparatively far from Europe, but even western Russia and northern Italy are being affected, and flights from or to Europe have been canceled around the globe. Officials are sounding public health warnings about the ash, as well. We're four days into this phase of the eruption, with no indication of how much longer it will last; it's conceivable that ash in the atmosphere will come to affect air travel throughout the northern hemisphere. It is a very dramatic illustration of how weather events in one part of the world affect life and commerce quite remote from the event. We would do well to remember Eyjafjallajokull when we consider the effects of climate change!

This also highlights the extent to which modern economies and consumers have become dependent on high altitude jetliner travel. High altitude insertion of greenhouse gases is particularly pernicious. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has estimated that aviation is responsible for around 3.5% of anthropogenic climate change, and the impact is growing. It would be good if Eyjafjallajokull leads us to be more mindful of the need to reduce the impact of jet travel on the global climate.

One of the many impacts being felt in Europe is the impending loss of most fresh produce deliveries, as much of Europe's produce is flown in. I'll bet that is coming as a surprise to a great many shoppers! This should highlight how even such a simple act as eating a fresh fruit contributes to our greenhouse gas emissions. Perhaps Eyjafjallajokull will encourage consumers to choose locally grown foods? One can hope.

Virginia Treason Month

2010-04-08T22:56:00.008-04:00

The governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia, my own state, has named April to be "Confederate History Month." One wonders why. What does he think we should celebrate? Treason? Bloody, needless war? The attempted destruction of the United States? Slavery?

Oh, I know, apologists for the secessionists will reject the treason charge. But what is the truth? Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson, James Longstreet, George Pickett, Jeb Stuart, Jubal Early, and just about all of the other Confederate "heroes" swore to "bear true allegiance to the United States of America, and [to] serve them honestly and faithfully against all their enemies or opposers whatsoever." No exceptions, no limitations, no avenues for evasion, no escape clause. And certainly no allowance for rebellion. Oath-breakers, all. Enemies and opposers of the United States. Treason. Is this what Governor McDonell wants to honor?

The same apologists will blithely skip over the terrible blood price of their war, or wrap it in a filmy gauze. But face it; the War of Southern Treason was the bloodiest war in our history, even when counted in absolute numbers; deadlier than both World Wars combined. As a proportion of our population, their war was even worse, killing nearly one out of every 50 Americans, and maiming far more. Those weren't numbers; they were sons, husbands, brothers, fathers, dying in agony, millions of man-years of potential life, snuffed out. Hundreds of thousands of families shattered, widows and children thrust into destitution, wives and mothers keening for their dead. Is that what Governor McDonell wants to celebrate?

The proclamation refers to the South's treasonous war as "a war between the states for independence." Independence? No, destruction of the United States. Destruction just as sure as envisioned by any of our foreign enemies. Funny how many apologists for the Confederacy today proclaim loudly an espoused patriotism for the country their heros tried to destroy. Had the South succeeded in seceding, what would have become of what was left? Every regional squabble would have carried the threat of further dissolution, until North America was utterly Balkanized, with its various fragments lurching form one European alliance to another, dragging us into innumerable wars. Where, then, would have been the bastion of hope, the arsenal of democracy, when the Nazis marched over Europe, when Stalin looked for conquest?

The governor speaks of the "sacrifices" of Confederate leaders and soldiers. What of the sacrifices of the millions of heros who paid with their blood and sweat to save the United States from the terror the Southerners brought to the land? They are the ones I would honor.

And then there was that little matter unmentioned by the governor, that curious institution which bound men and women as property of other men and women. What was slavery? Do they reflect on that as they celebrate "Confederate History Month"? What do those who wax nostalgic for the Old South think of slavery? As little more than a form of employment for those enslaved, exchanging their labor for room and board, and not of much significance beyond that? Slavery was oppression, at its most vile. A human being who had no future but toil. A human being utterly subjected to the whims and caprices of his and her oppressor. Men and women denied the ability to strive for better lives, build families, raise children, know their parents and their brothers and sisters. Women raped to serve the carnal lusts of their oppressors. Men beaten and humiliated to profit and amuse the heartless who commanded them, the psychopaths who abused them. What would the governor have us celebrate about the effect of the Confederacy upon their lives?

Oh, I know, the apologists will argue that the South's treason was about states rights, and a way of life, and an economic order. But slavery was the essential link to all of those things. Without slavery, the supposed cause of states' rights would have been meaningless, except perhaps to debating societies. Without slavery, the Southern way of life wouldn't have existed. Without slavery, the Southern economic order would not have been opposed to the rest of the country. The Civil War was about slavery; the Confederacy was about the debasement of millions of Americans. Is that what Governor McDonell wants to honor?

I hope not. For if it is, neither he nor his supporters understand anything about what America is. The Confederacy belongs in the dustbin of history. If this sorry chapter in Virginia's history is to be remembered, it should be understood for what it was, so that this country can finally overcome the errors that led to this greatest violation of Americans' rights, and our bloodiest war.

Do School Libraries Need Books?

2010-02-15T12:13:00.006-05:00

The New York Times online op-ed page includes a feature entitled "Room for Debate: A Running Commentary on the News." Following on a news account of a prep school's decision to remove the books from its library, "Room for Debate" earlier this month asked the question "Do School Libraries Need Books?" Except for the head master of that school, the participants - authors, a professor and a school library director -- answered with a resounding "Yes."

Today's "Room for Debate" continues the discussion with "The Library, Through Students’ Eyes." In most cases, the educational level of the students queried wasn't given, which is too bad, but most read like high schoolers. Be that as it may, several participants echoed the oft-heard critique that books and the libraries that own them are obsolete. Like the similar critiques frequently given by those in positions of greater authority, the arguments have enormous holes in them.

One student wrote "Books are very expensive and schools could put that money toward many other investments such as charities, fund raisers, proms, etc." This chestnut probably requires little comment, although one is left wondering about this student's concept of schooling in general. The same student went on to state that "Students, such as [the writer] do use the Internet for nearly every assignment because of online encyclopedias/databases, online texts, blogs and other Web sites and search engines." Another extolled the currency of the electronic, stating that "Online research ... typically yields more up-to-date and accurate information than books," contrasting books with "online journal databases, JSTOR, etc., [which] are invaluable."

As a librarian in a library catering to scholarly researchers, I have a perspective that some of these students might lack. First of all, my researchers use both electronic and traditional print resources extensively. For example, about 19% of my book collection circulates annually, and interlibrary borrowing of books adds an effective 10% on top of that -- that's heavy usage. My online journals aren't accessed nearly as often (and aren't expected to be). Serious scholars continue to rely on books to a very significant degree. Perhaps surprisingly, many of the books my researchers use are comparatively old, too, although they're also interested in my new books.

Second, books aren't library budget busters. My annual book acquisition budget is far, far lower than my electronic journal and database budget. Any one of our more extensive online journal services and commercial databases (e.g., Academic OneFile, LexisNexis, SCOPUS) cost more than my entire book budget. And yes, those services, too, come from the library and its budget; they're not the product of the school administration waving a magic wand. Where the old library only acquired paper books and journals, the contemporary libary needs to do not only that, but subscribe to a host of expensive electronic resoruces. (Admittedly, space is a separate and costly issue, and sooner or later libraries face very difficult weeding decisions as a result.)

Third, some of these students' comments undermine their own arguments. For instance, one cited JSTOR as an example of an up-to-date resource ... and I've heard the very same assumption from many of my own library's patrons. Wrong! JSTOR is a wonderful resource, but it is archival and not current. Nor is it meant to be; for most journals covered by JSTOR, there's a five year moratorium; for almost all of the rest it's a three year moratorium. Even many of the journals covered by more current journal services, such as Academic OneFile and Academic Search Premier, are embargoed for several months or even a year. Woe to the researchers who assume that by searching JSTOR or other online services that they've located the current literature on a topic!

Moreover, some of these students' comments echo a common failing which most librarians (and faculty) must confront: students have great difficulty separating quality research material from the chaff freely available on the Internet. A simple question illustrates the problem: which source is more trustworthy and presents material which is more effectively vetted: a blog written by an unknown writer (such as me!) or a book or journal published by a major academic press? There is an enormous literature on this topic, but it all comes done to a single point: most students cannot effectively separate the wheat from the chaff on the Internet, and by relying on it instead of more traditional information sources make their research weaker, not stronger.

Lurking behind this entire debate is the issue of funding, and the frequent desire of administrators to pare back their budgets. Libraries look like easy targets, but the reality is that the advent of electronic resources is the principal engine driving up library costs, not books. Libraries need both if they are to serve the information needs of their patrons, and administrators ill serve their researchers by trying to skimp.

Mission accomplished

2010-01-28T20:08:00.008-05:00

The College Road Trip did what it was supposed to do: bring clarity. It was also fun, mostly.

Long, long drive down to Wise, in the rain. Lot's of snow hanging around from December's big storm, some still pretty, some not. Near Radford a farm field of concentric furrows, with snow in the troughs, was particularly striking. Not many trucks on the road, thankfully - not much traffic at all. 27.7 m.p.g. in the Chevy truck; not bad, but hardly green.

Wise is pretty remote, a little town up in the mountains. Definitely coal country. Must be really beautiful in the Spring and Fall. UVa-Wise surprised by being thoroughly modern. Liked the school and liked the people, but Goldilocks would have understood: it was too small. Thought that would be an attraction, but it wasn't.

Liked Longwood U. a lot when she visited it last year, but was generally underwhelmed this time around. Did like the chair of one of the prospective majors, but that wasn't enough. Farmville is bigger than Wise, but somehow neither the town nor the school rang her bell this year.

But Radford! Loved Radford. Loved the size - big enough to offer a lot of variety, small enough to still be personal. Loved the look, rather what Hollywood thinks a college should be. Liked the majors, and really impressed by some of the faculty. Liked the amenities, liked the town. Had lunch with the daughter of a friend who's a senior there, and what she had to say just added to the enthusiasm. Will take real commitment, especially to being proactive in seeking help - tutors, profs, library, etc., but I'm pretty sure she gets it. And the help seems to be there for those who seek it.

Decision made.

And I didn't embarrass her.

College Road Trip

2010-01-12T16:01:00.007-05:00

We're going on a college road trip!

Daughter worried that she'd never get into college, but dutifully sent in early admission apps to three schools. Minor snafu when the high school counselor forgot to send in transcripts, but that was resolved in time.

Pick up the phone at work; daughter screaming. First thought: something terribly wrong! Second thought: no, wonderfully right!

Admitted! To her first choice school. About a week later, another letter: admitted to a school she didn't think would accept her. (Still waiting to hear form the third.)

Much fretting over which to accept. A slowly dawning smile when I reminded her that a couple of weeks earlier she worried about never getting into college. This is a far, far better dilemma.

So we're leaving Sunday. Four days, three schools, a lifetime to chart.

I'm told that under no circumstances am I to sing "Double Dutch Bus." Or anything else to embarrass her.

Not your grandmother's tofu

2009-11-30T14:44:00.003-05:00

Even as a long-time vegetarian, I find that I sometimes miss the taste of meats I once associated with pleasant experiences; the smell of cooking bacon, for instance, reminds me of family camping trips. So this article from the 29 November 2009 Sunday Times on real meat that isn't the product of slaughter houses is intriguing: Scientists Grow Pork Meat in a Laboratory.

Obviously there's still need for further development (not the least being the nature of the growth medium being used with the prototype), but a source of meat free of the slaughterhouse and free of the most deleterious environmental effects of the meat industry would be very, very welcome.

Why I don't use FedEx

2009-11-25T20:04:00.003-05:00

Today at about 12:30, a FedEx truck stopped in front of my house. Grown daughter was home and saw the truck. Daughter guessed that the driver was bringing our new cell phones, and waited for the doorbell. No doorbell. No knock. Truck drives off. Daughter checks the door, and finds a hanger saying nobody was home, that we can get the package by driving to their office ... about 45 minutes away ... or take a chance on their "delivering" it on another day. I come home. Daughter describes what happened. I call FedEx and complain. And maybe, maybe, it will be delivered on Friday.

Did I mention that although I don't use FedEx, Verizon does?

Subtle media bias on the mix of religion and politics

2009-11-21T08:19:00.005-05:00

A recent article and headline in the New York Times well illustrates the bias prevalent in the mainstream media when they cover abortion and religion. Both the headline and the content of the article "Christian Leaders Unite on Political Issues" by Laurie Goodstein imply a unity among Christian leaders which does not exist, especially on the issues which are the central topics of the article, abortion rights and gay rights.

Although many Catholic and evangelical Protestants find the common cause reported in the article, a great many Christian churches, Christian leaders, Christian theologians and lay Christians (including many Catholics and evangelicals) take -- and advocate -- very different perspectives on these issues. Their voices should be reflected in any article and any headline which implies directly or indirectly that it is reporting on some sort of consensus within the Christian community.

Instead, the only critical comment in the article come from an individual affiliated with an academic institution rather than a religious one, implicitly a secular intellectual rather than a believer. The casual reader would wrongly infer from this that the issues involve a divide between religion and academe, but would not be aware of the substantial disagreement within the Christian community itself, as well as the broader religious world.

A more accurate headline would have been "Some Catholic and Evangelical Leaders Unite on Abortion and Gay Rights Issues," or perhaps "Christian Leaders Lack Consensus on Political Issues." A more balanced article would have mentioned some of the prominent voices within the Christian community which favor abortion rights and gay marriage, or at least oppose entangling the state in such issues.

It is also worth noting that the article cites not a single woman on the issue of abortion; all the voices quoted or referenced are men. Curious.

And this is the New York Times, supposed bastion of the effete intellectual snobs of the left.

He's not me

2009-11-19T09:34:00.004-05:00

A new, young colleague hurried to two older, more experienced ones and excitedly told them she had just seen John Bolton in the halls. They questioned her, and laughed. That's not him, replied one; that's this blog's author. The other quipped that there's nobody on staff less like Bolton, in fact.

I suppose I'm flattered by the second comment.

But still, I went home and trimmed the moustache.

Response to a response

2009-11-16T14:45:00.006-05:00

I received a comment from Jon-Roy Sloan on a posting of mine which suggested that Congress enact an increase in the federal gasoline tax to encourage drivers to conserve fuel, and thereby mitigate several problems facing our nation. The original posting came almost a year ago, when gasoline prices had declined so far that an additional dollar per gallon would have left prices well below what they had been even a few months before. Since the comment goes far beyond that rather narrow topic, I thought it merited a separate discussion.

Here's Sloan's comment, in full, with its native grammatical blemishes:

Why do want the government to regulate every portion of our lives? Do you seriously believe what you are saying? You want government to take even more of my hard earned money and give a rebate to low-income earners? I worked hard, school, military, grad school, to get where I am and you want to take it away because you believe the sky is falling? The weatherman can't accurately predict the weather for more than 24 hours out, and they have only been able to that for the past 8-10 years and you expect me to believe in Al Gore. Apparently your not from Tennessee, there is a reason Tennesseans didn't vote for him in 2000, he is a LIAR and a CHEAT!

I find his comment of considerable interest, particularly because much of what he says isn't at all related to the posting. I'll take his comments point by point.

I was not advocating that government "regulate every portion of our lives." Indeed, quite the contrary. I feel very strongly, for instance, that government should not regulate private behavior which does not adversely affect the interests of other people. For instance, I favor the right of loving couples to marry, regardless of the race or gender(s) of the couple; I favor the right of people to hold and voice the political views they favor regardless of whether their views offend others or even call into question the political and economic policies of the nation at large, I favor the right of individuals to write and publish and read whatever they choose, and I favor the right of all of us to live free from bigotry regardless of our ethnicity, gender, religiosity, or sexual orientation. I may be making an enormously incorrect assumption about Sloan's ideology, but I wonder if he feels the same way?

Yes, I do seriously believe what I am saying. I would not have wanted to take the effort of writing if I didn't, and I think it does little for the sake of discourse to doubt the seriousness with which others propound their opinions.

I gather Sloan opposes the concept of either progressive taxation or government expenditures which do not favor the wealthy, or both. I disagree. The existence, let alone the growth, of substantial income disparities weakens the fibers holding our nation together, yet ever since the so-called "Reagan revolution" that is exactly what has been happening. Income disparities are at their greatest level since such records began to be kept over a century ago. I'm not going to go into the specifics here, as there is a lot of commentary and data supporting this assertion; highly readable collections of resources for those interested can be found in the writings of folks such as Paul Krugman and Robert Reich. Indeed, I should think that even the very wealthy would be concerned, lest the disparities spark such political turmoil as could threaten their own privileged position. Reduction of those disparities would be of common interest for this reason, if no other. But there are other reasons. A broader sharing of the nation's wealth would promote the national interest by stimulating productivity, encouraging growth, and building a richer, stronger and more cohesive nation. (You'll notice I say nothing here about the ethical implications of such disparities, but I would argue that they are of even greater moment.)

In reply to Sloan's specific complaint about using federal tax policy to transfer some of the wealth of the very affluent to the very poor, I would say "yes." We saw during the Bush years how ineffective and unjust tax policies were when they served to transfer tax burden to the working poor and lower middle class from the very wealthy, and how little those policies did to benefit the nation at large (and here I am being generous). It is time to reverse that trend, and restore some economic justice to our tax system. Frankly, for starters, I'd be happy to see it revert to the level of progressivity we saw during the Reagan years.

What I'm guessing that Sloan is missing here is any understanding of how more equitable federal tax and expenditure policy can benefit the nation at large. Higher education provides one of the most obvious examples, as expenditure and tax policies which make college more affordable for students from less affluent families not only expand the horizons of those students, but enrich the nation at large by increasing our national intellectual capital. Or take the issue that seems to stir Sloan's ire. Higher gasoline prices encourage Americans to use less fuel, either by eliminating unnecessary driving, driving more fuel efficient vehicles, using mass transit more, or biking and walking more. Each of these alternatives provide multiple benefits, among them being a reduction of American reliance on foreign oil (which benefits the economy and national security), reduction in air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions (which benefits our health, environment, and ability to deal with environmental degradation) and our quality of life (by leading to better exercise, less traffic congestion), while simultaneously providing motivation for our automobile manufacturers to become more globally competitive.

Sloan doesn't like the idea of tax rebates for the working poor, but he is ignoring (or is blind to) a basic question of equity. The working poor are the people least able to upgrade their automobile choices to more modern fuel efficient vehicles, and are most likely to be stuck with older, less efficient cars. A tax -- whether directly imposed by the government or indirectly imposed by the marketplace -- which has the effect of dissuading people from driving gas hogs hits them the hardest, but a rebate of the tax they paid can mitigate that impact, and do so in a very productive way by further encouraging them to switch to more fuel efficient transportation.

Sloan also misses a key aspect of a rebate: the rebate of gas taxes paid by poor consumers to those same consumers is not a transfer of tax revenues from the affluent driver Sloan seems to favor, but a return to the working poor of taxes the working poor have paid out of their own funds.

He also misses the sad fact that many of the working poor work hard too. They just don't have the advantages Sloan presumably has (e.g., college education, including a graduate education), so their hard work doesn't provide them with the income Sloan's hard work provides. That's testimony to a difference in opportunity, not in effort or virtue.

Despite his good education, Sloan then segues into an ignorant dismissal of issues relating to global warming, confusing the uncertainties of short-term weather forecasting with the causes, nature and consequences of global warming. And no, I don't expect Sloan to "believe in Al Gore" (whatever that means) but I do expect any educated and informed human being to be impressed by the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community regarding global warming, and to participate in a serious discussion of the issues rather than retreat into silly ad hominem attacks on a single individual, especially ones based on personal anger over matters totally unrelated to the topic nominally at issue.

The way it was

2009-11-13T13:52:00.003-05:00

My cell phone died three weeks ago. Talked with Verizon - long story short, it doesn't make sense to get a new one until January 1. So I'm suddenly living back in 1 B.C. wondering how I can get in touch with this person or that company, or for same to get in touch with me. Not that I used it that much (he says defensively) but it's what I used.

I had fantasized about this moment ever since I got the thing, figuring that if it died I'd do fine. Would be liberating, even. Peaceful. Maybe even discontinue the service entirely.

Wrong.

Okay, maybe with time it could be. But then, maybe in time world peace will break out and hunger will be conquered.

I want my phone now!

Ban them. Now.

2009-11-09T22:38:00.004-05:00

I'm sure I'm not the only one who is struck by the tragic similarities between the murderous rampage at Ft. Hood last week, and the one at Virginia Tech last year. In both cases, innocent lives were shattered by unarticulated rage. In both cases, acts of courage, communities in shock, lingering questions about warning signs missed, of opportunities to stop the killer long before the killings occurred. And in both cases, calls for more effective ways of identifying and screening potential killers before their rage explodes.

But in both cases, there has been one glaring omission in the media coverage, in the cacophony of voices asking "how" and "why" on the morning after. Yes, it's appropriate to focus on the emotional demons that drove the murderer to kill. But shouldn't we be asking why we allow such deadly weapons to be available to them?

Both killers apparently used handguns guns capable of firing rapidly and often. And both of them appear to have legally acquired their murderous weapons. (In this most recent case, the alleged killer apparently bought an FN Herstal 5.7 mm. pistol at a local store called Guns Galore -- what a name! This particular model can handle a 30 round clip, and was unsuccessfully targeted for a federal ban in 2005.)

It should go without saying that they would have been far less effective killers if they did not have easy access to such weapons! Can anybody imagine that either killer would have been so murderously effective if he had been armed with a knife instead of a rapid-fire automatic?

This is crazy! We as a nation get all excited about killer spinach and tainted lettuce, but we freely allow our killers to buy guns. It is time -- way past time -- to stop this madness, reclaim the Second Amendment for the purpose the founders intended, and join the company of civilized nations which strictly control access to such deadly weapons.

The owners are naked; I hope they freeze

2009-11-08T15:48:00.001-05:00

A friend e-mailed me this morning to say she didn't understand why the Angels didn't play better defense in last night's American League Championship game.

Look to corporate baseball's greed, and their slavish deference to the Great God, Television.

Last night's game might be counted as an exciting game, but it wasn't a championship game -- not by any stretch of the imagination. And why? Because the game shouldn't have been played at all, and certainly shouldn't have been extended into the late innings. Infielders should never have to wear balaclavas ... especially when they interfere with their ability to hear a team-mate calling them on or off a pop-fly. Batters should never have to face inside fastballs when their hands are too cold to get around on a swing. Fielders should never lose a popfly because rain is lashing their eyes when they look up for the ball. Fielders should never have to take the time to make sure they're gripping the ball by the seams before throwing to make a close play. Pitchers should never have to forgo particular pitches because it's too cold for them to control the ball as well as they're able. It was cold, it was wet, and it was raining -- too cold, wet and rainy for baseball, but the game went on.

The question is, why did the game go on? Because it "had" to be played, and played to its finish. Baseball owners have tied their bank accounts to the dictates of television -- play on the date and times scheduled for the convenience of television, and players, fans and the very quality of the game be damned.

Angels' defense? How about the Yankees' defense? It wasn't just Izturis's error in the 13th; Jeter erred in the 8th, and Cano in the 13th. Beyond that, the play was sloppy on both sides. Why? Not because the players are sloppy players -- far from it! Those are championship-quality players, all of them. It was because of the rain, and the cold. That wasn't a championship game; it was a game of errors, sloppy defense, sloppy pitching, sloppy batting, and sloppy baserunning -- all because the game should never have been played in those conditions. Never.

Why not play in the afternoon, when it was marginally warmer? Because of television -- God forbid they should conflict with televised college football games. Why won't today's Dodgers/Phillies game be played in the afternoon, when it will be warmer? God forbid they should run afoul of NFL viewership!

And they'll be playing into November anyway. That's a travesty, especially if the World Series is between New York and Philadelphia -- not because I have anything against New York (okay, maybe I do) or Philadelphia, but because November in the northeast is much too late for baseball, especially night baseball. And not just the northeast -- look at the ridiculous conditions the Phillies and Rockies faced in Denver.

A radical proposal: baseball should be played in warm weather, or covered stadiums. I mean, why do we call them the "Boys of Summer"? Baseball should be played in dry conditions. There's a reason games used to be postponed because of rain. But no, you can't postpone a playoff game, or call it in mid-game to be continued on a better day, because television won't permit it.

In my estimation, no game should be played in rain, no game should be played in temperatures more appropriate to ice hockey, and no game should be played in November ... unless the World Series is permanently moved to Puerto Rico.

If baseball insists on early winter playoff games, they should all be scheduled in sun-belt cities, regardless of the teams involved. And if corporate baseball doesn't want to do that, they should shorten the season -- either by reducing the number of games or bringing back the old doubleheader ... but heaven forfend; they'd lose revenue!

I'm not upset at my friend for her question; I'm upset at baseball owners, and the media commentators who won't report the emperor's nudity.

Bah, humbug!

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 18 October 2009

Casey's bummed

2009-11-08T15:45:00.002-05:00

Good news. The Orioles just officially announced that they traded their 27 year old ace, Eric Bedard, for 5 players.

Let's see, Bedard was 13-5 last year, with 221 strikeouts and a 3.16 ERA. Despite his shortened season, he tied Roy Halladay, Johan Santana and Justin Verlander in the Cy Young voting last year. Here's what they got for him:

George Sherrill, a pretty good 30 year-old reliever who went 2-0 with 3 saves and a 2.36 ERA for Seattle.

Adam Jones, a pretty good 22 year-old Class AAA minor league outfielder with a .314 average at Tacoma last year.

Chris Tillman, a 19 year-old Class A pitcher with a 4.84 ERA and a 7-11 record last year.

Kam Mickolio, a 23 year old minor league reliever with a 2.68 ERA at Class AA and AAA ball last year.

Tony Butler, a 20 year old minor league pitcher with a 4.75 ERA and a 4-7 record in Class A ball.

I'm impressed. Bet the Red Sox are worried.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 10 February 2008

America's un-American capital

2009-11-08T15:41:00.000-05:00

Never mind Iraq, ignore S-Chip, pay no attention to global warming. We have a crisis which surpasses all the others. Washington, D.C. is the nation's capital and baseball is the national pastime, so why can't a baseball fan in the Washington metropolitan area listen to the World Series? I live in Arlington, Virginia which until it was retroceded to the Commonwealth of Virginia in 1846 was actually part of the District of Columbia. Yet there's not a D.C. area radio station carrying the World Series with a signal strong enough to cross the Potomac. It's an outrage!

Can anybody imagine that the Nationals will fare any better than the lamented and lamentable Senators in a city of such philistines?

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 24 October 2007

Mortification at the heart of the evil empire

2009-11-08T15:36:00.003-05:00

Spectator sports bore me. Or worse. Basketball's presumed attractions mystify me; abnormally tall people running back and forth throwing a ball in the hoop. Who cares? I mean, beyond those tens of millions who succumb to March madness? Hockey is basketball played on skates, with alarming assaults and flailing sticks thrown in. Football, as we Americans so chauvinistically call it, is incomprehensible to the uninitiated and so brutal that that victory seems to go to the teams with the fewest injured. I loved playing real football -- as the world knows it -- but watching a game is a personal cure for insomnia ... although, it must be admitted, 99.44% of the world clearly disagrees with me. But there you have it.

But baseball! There's a game! One to be savored, full of intricacies and fascinations for the most discerning of fans. Well, okay, maybe not, but still, I confess to an inordinate fondness for the sport. But even there, the political influences; a populist heart must lead any conscientious fan to an intractable antipathy for the New York Yankees. Save for those few benighted souls who hail from Gotham, how could anybody respect a team which so perfectly exemplifies the arrogance of wealth?

Over the past 13 seasons, the Yankees have lavished nearly $1.6 billion on their players, an amount far in excess of any other team. The imbalance is so severe that just one Yankee pinch hitter from Thursday's game (he didn't even play yesterday) is paid nearly a third of the combined salary for the opposing team.

Yet here's the rub: the Yankees barely reached the playoffs this year, and have done about as poorly for the past two years. As I write, they trail their comparatively impoverished (stress the word "comparatively" -- no contemporary major leaguer has any grounds for financial complaint!) two games to none in the first round of the playoffs despite a payroll over three times their opponent's, and stand in danger of being ignominiously dispatched tomorrow night into the netherworld of the off-season.

Better, it's not just the Yankees this year. Which populist amongst us cannot be smiling because not only is the team ranked 22nd in payroll (Cleveland) leading the team ranked first, but the team ranked 23rd (Arizona) is leading a team with a payroll 62% greater (Chicago) and the team ranked 26th (Colorado) is leading a team paid 66% more (Philadelphia) ... and in all three cases, the David is leading its Goliath two games to none (Colorado and Arizona have subsequently swept the Phillies and Cubs).

Baseball. There's a sport.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 7 October 2007

Whirling peas day

2009-11-08T15:31:00.002-05:00

Today, October 15, is Conflict Resolution Day, which is celebrated internationally to promote the peaceful resolution of conflict. At the United States Institute of Peace it was celebrated by, uh, doing nothing. No celebration, no acknowledgment, nothing on the home page.

Guess they forgot.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 15 October 2009

The new orthodoxy?

2009-11-08T15:27:00.002-05:00

Of late, when I close down Word, it reassures me with this line:

Word is saving normal

I am so relieved.

Update: More recently, it has started asking me if I want to save normal. Such a burden of responsibility!

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 1 October 2009

Unreported elephant in the room

2009-11-08T10:20:00.002-05:00

Today a few thousand demonstrators came to Washington to demonstrate against something. It's not clear from listening to them what that "something" is, but nominally, the unifying complaint dealt with high taxes and/or high deficits.

Practically, it can't be either of those. Taxes are no higher now than they have been for several years and there aren't any indications that Congress is moving to increase them. And these people sure didn't show up when George W. Bush was busy turning Bill Clinton's surpluses into huge deficits. I didn't notice any of them joining the multitudes protesting Bush's wars, complaining about the hundreds of billions he was adding to the deficit.

But maybe that's not why they came. Maybe they came to protest the socialistic -- or is it communistic? -- tide sweeping across America in the form of, uh, what? Public funding of fire-fighting? Our nationalized military? Tax-supported schools? Federalized air traffic control? State-owned streets and highways? Social Security and Medicare? (Maybe these people are a little slow?) Uh, no, maybe it's a health care reform proposal which is built around, uh, privately owned insurance companies?

Nope. They may be making the noise, but socialism's surge isn't exactly lapping against these shores yet.

Nor was it about patriotism -- not with all those Confederate flags floating around.

Ah yes, they're upset about President Obama trashing the Constitution. I'm not quite sure how he's supposed to be doing that, but isn't it odd how they weren't here to protest George W. Bush's many transgressions in that regard? Y'know, I doubt many of them could tell you anything about the 14th Amendment; or Article 1, section 8, clause 11; or that pesky little clause in the middle of the Second. Nope, it's not about the Constitution.

Or maybe there's another reason. A reason not mentioned in any of the news coverage I've heard or read about these demonstrations, but apparent when one looks -- really looks -- at the photos of the the demonstrators. All white. I looked through every photo of the demo I could find on the web, and not one -- NOT ONE -- non-white face.

Maybe, just maybe, they're upset that Barack Obama, native of Hawai'i, resident of Illinois, did intentionally move into the White House knowing full well that he is of African ancestry.

Let's face it. Race is the unreported unifying factor among the demonstrators. Race -- or diversity -- is the one theme unifying their anger. These people aren't angry about socialism or deficits or health care or the Constitution. They're angry about the reality that America is a very diverse place, with citizens of differing skin colors, differing religions, differing sexual orientations, differing understandings of what America is. They're angry because President Obama's very existence threatens their fantasy about what America is.

Personally, I'm angry that the media don't delve beyond counting the numbers or parroting the slogans, and examine the real reasons why these people came to Washington. Racism is the elephant in the room, but none of the major media are willing to see it.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 12 September 2009

Letter to the leaders: health care reform

2009-11-08T10:18:00.001-05:00

Sent this to President Obama, the legislative leadership and my Congressional representatives. It's something all of us who support national health care reform should do; we need to push back against the right-wing demagogues and their lies.
--------------
It might seem I would have little interest in supporting or funding national health care reform. I have good health care coverage coverage through my employer, in six years I will be eligible for Medicare, and my family income is about $200,000 so the sort of tax increases which might become necessary would hit me fairly significantly.

Far more important, however, I am a citizen who cares about his fellow Americans, tens of millions of whom lack health insurance, tens of millions more of whom lack truly adequate coverage. This is appalling. The United States is the richest country in the world, yet we are the only affluent nation which does not insure that its citizens have proper health care. The consequence is that most of our key health indicators compare unfavorably to those of other modern nations, and that translates out into shorter lives and lower quality of life for millions of Americans. We should be ashamed! Ironically, it also means that our national health care costs are significantly higher than in countries which provide a humane level of care.

We need health care reform. And a key part of the necessary reform is what is commonly being called the "public option." The public option will insure coverage at reasonable rates for all Americans, will bring health care costs down, will improve our quality of life, and will keep insurance plans competitive.

Of course, one must be concerned about costs. Yet good health care reform, which must include the public option, will go a long way towards constraining costs. Better health care, and especially more effective early intervention and preventative health care, will improve American productivity, making us an even richer nation ... with higher tax receipts. If funding cuts elsewhere need to be made, winding down our futile war in Afghanistan and accelerating our withdrawal from Iraq would provide billions in savings. And if higher taxes on the affluent are necessary, so be it; I am more than willing to see my tax bill go up if if means that all of my fellow citizens will have ready access to the health care they need.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 5 September 2009

Unsociable networks?

2009-11-08T10:08:00.001-05:00

Two social network "friends" have recently been adding material that stretch the concept of social networking well beyond norms which seem reasonable to me.

One plasters angry, even vicious political screeds, replete with ad hominem attacks and hostile non sequiturs, on to the walls of his social network "friends," many of whom are his co-workers. Okay, my friends include a lot of political junkies and policy wonks and our walls display a lot of political content but generally the discourse is quite civil, the norm seeming to be that if you don't agree, you either don't say anything at all, or you politely disagree. But this guy just slams people on the other side.

I mean, the reason they're called "social networks" is that we're 'sposed to be sociable, right? Suffice it to say, said "friend" is no longer on my list of network friends. Come to think of it, he's no longer on my list of workplace friends, either.

Then there's the "friend" who is apparently desperate to get pregnant, and fills her postings with no end of detailed -- and I mean, detailed! -- descriptions of her gynecological problems and the medical attempts to deal with them. Were we close friends, perhaps I'd understand, but we're merely professional colleagues and the intended father of her child is definitely not me.

I suppose I'm hopeful that she gets to have the kid she wants, yet aren't we better off leaving more of the process to our imaginations?

Call me old fashioned, but aren't there some things better left unsaid, at least in public?

Note: this was originally posted to ketches, yaks & hawks 1 September 2009

Tragic, futile milestone

2009-11-08T09:08:00.004-05:00

The results are in: more allied troops have died in Afghanistan this year than in any year since the war began. An "improvised explosive device" killed four American troops today, raising the total of allied dead to 295 for the year, one more than last year's record total. Since the war began, 1,340 have been killed. Of those, 802 have been Americans, including 172 this year.

Update: As of 8 Nov. 2009 it's 466, for a total of 1,513; 916 have been Americans.

Many, many more Afghans have died too, although our news media seem far less interested in them; I suppose they're just part of the scenery although to their families I'm sure their deaths are very real, indeed.

In the meantime, George W. Bush's ill-considered war has morphed into Barack Obama's, and as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs noted on Sunday, the situation is "deteriorating." How many more allied soldiers will die before President Obama decides it's time to stumble to the exit? How many more Afghan civilians?

And what will be left? Another failed state, slipping back into anarchy, chaos and oppression? A destabilized, nuclear Pakistan? An American colossus, further hobbled by debt and weakened by our reckless intrusion into the historical tangle of Afghanistan? There is no good answer, no sure solution. But what seems certain is that this war will end badly, whether it ends soon, or drags on for decades.

Our president is a learned, thoughtful person; he needs to heed the lessons of history, both Afghan and American. We need a credible exit strategy now. We need to do what we can to help Pakistan stabilize. We need to focus our resources on our own problems at home. And we need to staunch the flow of blood and treasure into the rugged soil of Afghanistan.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 25 August 2009

This is what our soldiers are fighting for?

2009-11-08T09:05:00.001-05:00

News item, as reported by BBC:

"An Afghan bill allowing a husband to starve his wife if she refuses to have sex has been published in the official gazette and become law .... It allows a man to withhold food from his wife if she refuses his sexual demands .... [The] bill has passed quietly into law with the apparent approval of President Karzai."

Point of reference: 1,315 allied soldiers, 782 of them from the U.S., have died to create and protect the government that just enacted this barbaric law.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 17 August 2009

Summer evening, eastern seaboard

2009-11-08T09:01:00.001-05:00

Humid and warm, not quite sultry, a heavy feel to the air. Big old oak trees block half the sky, lightning bugs flickering underneath. Massive clouds overhead, eerily visible in momentary flashes, backlit by sheet lightning, shape and depth and color momentarily revealed, again and again, each time different, each time fantastic. Forgotten in the beauty is the oppressive heat of the day: summer in the east at its best.

Oh yes, and bats, flying through the dusk in eternal herky jerky pursuit of insects.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 26 June 2009

Pop quiz

2009-11-08T08:58:00.001-05:00

1. Which of the following countries held presidential elections within the last decade which were marred by such widespread cheating and voting irregularities that the results were fraudulent?
a. Iran
b. Ukraine
c. United States
d. All of the above

2. The citizens of which of the following countries took to the streets in protest and severely disrupted or even shut down their government?
a. Iran
b. Ukraine
c. United States
d. Iran and Ukraine

3. The citizens of which of the following countries forced their governments to annul the fraudulent elections and hold new, fair elections?
a. Iran
b. Ukraine
c. United States

4. The citizens of which of the following countries reacted to the fraudulent presidential election by sitting on their hands, only to watch their unelected leader drag their country into illegal and ruinous war?
a. Iran
b. Ukraine
c. United States

5. Which of the following countries routinely lectures the world on the importance of democracy?
a. Iran
b. Ukraine
c. United States

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 23 June 2009

A virtue of pacifism

2009-11-08T08:56:00.001-05:00

I won't go postal.
I won't go postal.
I won't go postal.
I won't go postal.
I won't go postal.
I won't go postal.
No matter how well justified it would be.
I won't go postal.
Really. I won't go postal.
I won't go postal.

Note: originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 30 March 2009

Moving day approaches

2009-11-08T08:54:00.001-05:00

Update on the move. Learned on Thursday that we vacate on tax day, which seems appropriate since moving is a very taxing process. Still don't know how much collection space we have, but I'm savaging the reference collection in anticipation. Still don't know if I get an office, or am consigned to an intern's working space. Still don't know if we have movers who know what they're doing. The thought of a refreshing game 15,000 card pick-up almost makes me want to volunteer for the job. (As the day draws closer, I probably will).

One constant remains: Fearless Leader continues to hoard information.

Am desperately hoping the escape route opens on Friday ....

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 22 March 2009

Mushroom

2009-11-08T08:46:00.003-05:00

Looked up from my desk yesterday as Mr. Anti Social, the facilities manager, led two strangers through, muttering something about replacing the carpet. No surprise, but Mr. Social didn't deign to explain what they were up to, so I quietly reflected on what changing a wall-to-wall carpet means in a library of 15,000 volumes.

This morning Mr. Social and his new friends reappeared. Snippets overheard included mention that the strangers would need carts on which they could hold the books for a couple of days. Sounded ominous. The strangers didn't sound like library people, and there's little librarians dread more than having their collection moved by warehouse men who know nothing of call numbers. (Ever play 52-card pickup? Try it with 15,000 scrambled cards, ur, books.)

Around noon, an officious brown dress suit appeared, photographing and measuring everything in sight -- windows, door frames, office widths, electrical outlets. Asked what she was doing; was told "Measuring everything." Duh. Okay, says I, "Why?" "I was tasked to do it." Illuminating response, thought I, as dread forebodings became more prominent.

Late afternoon, the house carpenter came in. He's a good guy, so I got to talking, and espied the plan he was working on. Clearly our space, but no longer a library; the collection spaces were carved up into what looked like training rooms. Very ominous.

Very late afternoon, one of the Powers That Be came around. Oh yes, we were brightly told, the library is moving to another floor. Did Fearless Leader, renowned for reveling in cluelessness and keeping her staff in ignorance, but who was out of the office today, know? I wondered. So I asked. Oh no, not yet, I was told.

Forget that libraries aren't easily moved. Forget that when they are moved, the movers need to understand how libraries are organized if chaos is to be avoided. (Yes, it DOES matter what order those books are in!) Forget that floor loading needs to be carefully considered. Forget that the public, who are allowed to use the library, aren't allowed on the intended floor. Forget to wonder, even, about how much space we'll have. Just focus on what this suggests about the respect and esteem with which Powers That Be view the library and its drones. Makes one feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Well, actually, makes one wish the job market looked more promising ....

Oh yes, did I mention that the organization is one nominally dedicated to the prevention and peaceful resolution of conflict? How wonderfully ironic!

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 5 March 2009

Dittoheading themselves to irrelevance

2009-11-07T23:33:00.002-05:00

Michael Steele, the Chairman of the Republican National Committee, was reportedly upset when a CNN reporter referred to Rush Limbaugh as the de facto leader of the party. “No he’s not,” Steele is said to have replied. “I’m the de facto leader of the Republican Party. Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer; Rush Limbaugh, the whole thing is entertainment. Yes, it’s incendiary. Yes, it’s ugly.”

Aha, for a moment we could harbor some respect for Steele; he certainly caught the essence of the neocons' favorite drug abuser.

But no. Rush didn't like what Steele had to say, so he blasted him. Did Steele stand up to the demagogue? Did other Republican leaders back Steele?

Nope. Steele called Limbaugh to apologize. “My intent was not to go after Rush," he is reported to have said, "I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh.”

That's right, Dittoheads. The Republican Party has "enormous respect" for Limbaugh. The Grand Old Party has melded with him; the two are one, and it's Rush who seems to be calling the shots. Great. The party has seemed intent on marginalizing itself for some time now, and this should finish them off. The party will remain enormously strong with its Dittohead constituency, and totally irrelevant to the rest of America.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 4 March 2009

'Nuff said

2009-11-07T23:19:00.008-05:00

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring."

And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

(click here to watch video of entire "I have a dream" speech)

Note: this originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 19 January 2009

Will there be future Miracles on the Hudson?

2009-11-05T19:07:00.003-05:00

As nearly everybody seems to know by now, in what New York's governor David Patterson termed a miracle on the Hudson, the flight crew of US Air flight 1549 successfully ditched their mortally damaged Airbus A320, saving the lives of all 156 aboard.

By all accounts, it was a feat requiring tremendous skill, quick thinking and steady nerves, reinforced by countless hours of training and years of experience. When one reporter asked the pilot of a similar airliner how he would characterize losing both engines shortly after takeoff as flight 1549 did, his answer was simple: "Catastrophic."

Pilot Chesley B. Sullenberger III and first officer Jeffrey B. Skiles are heroes. So are the flight attendants who successfully and quickly evacuated the plane's 150 passengers. The passengers of flight 1549 have to be thankful, indeed, that their fates were entrusted to such a highly competent air crew. So, too, do the people of New York City, who were spared the horror of a fully loaded airliner crashing into their city.

There's an interesting lesson in this which nobody seems to be noticing, but which bears attention. The airline industry has been financially troubled for some time now, and has been desperately seeking means of cutting costs. One of the industry's favorite targets is employee salaries, and most companies have been trying to force pilots and flight attendants to accept significant pay cuts. Despite resistance by the Airline Pilots Association and the other employee unions, the pay cuts have been significant.

It used to be the airline pilot pay was quite good. It isn't anymore. Top pilots are paid less than many other professions, and junior pilots are paid quite a lot less. A recent report found that beginning pilots with one of the major airlines makes just $21,000 per year, while the same airline's most senior pilots with decades of experience top out around $150,000.

Okay, most of the time, even many airline pilots will admit that they really don't earn their pay. I've heard some self-deprecating pilots liken flying airliners to driving a bus. It's easy to understand the pressure to cut their salaries.

But when flight 1549 lost its engines moments after takeoff, or Aloha Airlines flight 243 suffered an in-flight explosive decompression that ripped huge pieces of fuselage away, or United flight 811 flying over the open ocean lost a cargo door that then shredded much of the fuselage, or United flight 232 lost an engine plus the hydraulic system needed to control the plane and could only be steered by using the throttles of the two remaining engines, their pilots earned every penny of their salaries, and more. Altogether, their skill saved 780 lives which would have been lost had the pilots not be extraordinary.

What are the implications? If airlines keep trying to weaken their unions, and keep trying to cut flight crew and maintenance salaries, will they be able to attract the quality of pilots that the public deserves, and the airlines need? Will the Chesley B. Sullenbergers, Robert Schornstheimers, Mimi Tompkins, David Cronins and Alfred. C. Haymes of the future still be attracted to commercial flying if this trend continues? Will the flying public be able to retain their confidence in the skill of their flight crews?

Airlines understandably seek to manage costs and operate as efficiently as possible, but it is a false economy to seek savings which could over the long term dilute the quality of the flight crews upon whom so much depends.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 18 January 2009

Hypocrites, stimulus and the nuclear option

2009-11-04T22:23:00.001-05:00

Back in 2005, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and the Senate Republicans considered confirmation of some of George W. Bush's ill-considered judicial nominees so important that they threatened Democrats with the "nuclear option." The threat was to abolish the centuries old Senate tactic of filibustering, so small majorities -- and that's all the Republicans had, small majorities -- could ram partisan preferences through the Senate.

Back then the issue was partisan advantage. Today, the issue is the nation's economic health ... and the nation's economy is very, very sick. The country is entering a frightening recession and hovers on the brink of another Great Depression. We have a President (not Mr. AWOL, but the guy who will be sworn in just nine days from now) who is proposing a massive stimulus package to pull us back from the brink.

And the tables are turned now. Democrats control the Senate with a large majority, almost but not quite large enough to invoke cloture. However, the current Republican leaders of the Senate are threatening to stall (read: filibuster) the stimulus package because it includes too much red ink.

Yes, these are the same folks who didn't blink an eye when their party controlled both Congress and the White House. They didn't stall for a moment when the Bush administration started pouring red ink and red blood into the Iraqi desert.

But wasting a trillion is okay to them, apparently, as long as it's wasted in the Middle East. Using a trillion to help America is beyond the pale, however.

Okay, to be honest, it isn't just their concern about red ink. They also want tax breaks for corporate America and for America's wealthy. Never mind that these tax breaks won't do anything to pull us out of the recession or forestall a real depression. They will help the Republicans' key constituency, and that's all that matters.

In 2005 all that was at risk was partisan advantage. In 2009, it's America's economy, America's jobs, America's people, America's very well-being. Yet the Republicans are threatening a filibuster.

It's time for Senator Reid to revive Bill Frist's threat. Bring back the "nuclear option." No filibustering the stimulus package. The issue is far, far more important than the petty squabble of 2005, and if the Republicans don't like it, Senator Reid can send them each a dictionary so they can look up the word "hypocrite."

The time to enact a real economic stimulus package is now. The Republicans can either support the effort, or be shoved out of the way.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 11 January 2009

Gerontological Old Party

2009-11-04T22:18:00.002-05:00

A friend wrote to me recently, wondering if we're starting to see another historic partisan realignment, as when the Whigs disintegrated and former Whigs united with Free Soil Democrats to form the Republican Party. He said he can't see moderate Republicans ever wresting control of the GOP, and suggests that they will leave to form a new party.

I think that on the narrower question he's wrong, but on the larger question he could be correct. This is only surmise, but the early evidence seems to me to support the likelihood of a lasting and significant partisan shift occurring.

In my estimation, President Obama has both the opportunity and the inclination to drive a wedge between the more moderate and the more extreme Republicans. He appears to clearly favor communication, compromise and reconciliation, so he has a natural inclination to reach out to the more centrist Republicans. He has already shown this in his selection of his cabinet, naming a significant number of Republicans and centrist Democrats, and very few from the more progressive portion of the Democrats.

Plus he's going to be pushing some major issues that are not going to be easy to duck for the moderate Republicans, such as the forthcoming stimulus. Since he may need the help of a few moderate Republicans, especially in the Senate, in order to accomplish much, he's really got an incentive to do that, anyway. Bear in mind, too, that the stimulus package will inevitably and unavoidably be, in effect, a gigantic constituent bill (watch the right wing media portray it as a humongous piece of pork barrel legislation), so fairly centrist members of Congress will have enormous incentives to be on board, regardless of party affiliation. At the same time, he seems to be shying away from the sorts of policies the more progressive of his supporters want.

Add all this together, and he's perfectly positioned to drive a wedge through the Republican Party, peel off the more moderates AND reward them ... and to tell the unreconstructed conservatives to get lost.

George W. Bush (Remember him? He's AWOL now, but he used to live in the White House) has made such a hash of his presidency that right-wing Republicans have little else left other than their traditional weapon, the race card. However, this past November's election shows that in a nation that is becoming increasingly comfortable with its diversity, the race card doesn't play so well any more. Moreover, President Obama is perfectly positioned to further defuse its political utility for the Republicans,

Combine this with the economic meltdown and we have a political opportunity not unlike the one FDR had in '33. So, if I am reading all of this correctly, and Obama manages to pull it off, we could indeed be seeing the beginning of a major and lasting shift.

However, I cannot see the GOP disintegrating. During the realignment of the 1850s, the new Republican Party drew not only from the disintegrating Whigs, but from the more progressive, northern segments of the badly fractured Democrats. Today the Republicans may be fragmented, but the Democrats are not (well, they always are, of course, but even Will Rogers would see them as more unified than usual), so there really isn't anywhere for moderate Republicans to go to form a successful new party.

In other words, any major partisan shift will play out within the context of the existing two-party system, with the GOP ending up more like what it was during the Eisenhower era but with the seeds of Goldwater/Reagan reactionary politics still intact within an at least temporarily marginalized right wing of the party.

And if the Republican right-wing controls enough of the party to run Palin in '12 they seal their doom, at least for a generation.

Note: this originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 2 January 2009

Disposable toys?

2009-11-03T09:28:00.008-05:00

Every once in a while I drive up past the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, and being something of a maritime history aficionado I always check out the decommissioned warships docked and moored there. In the not so distant past it was home to an amazing collection of World War II era Essex and Independence carriers, cruisers and Fletcher destroyers. Those are all gone now (to the scrap yard or sunk as targets, unfortunately; it seems almost criminal that the more historic weren't preserved), to be replaced in the mothball fleet by much more modern ships.

Among the ships floating there now are three Aegis missile cruisers. I didn't expect any ship so modern to be languishing there, awaiting the scrapper's torch or the ignominy of being sunk as a target, so I did a little research, and saw that the first five of the Aegis cruisers have been stricken, including the U.S.S. Vincennes, a ship infamous for shooting down an Iranian airliner and killing all 290 people aboard. One of the five has already being "expended" as a target. Two of them (Valley Forge and Thomas Gates) had served only 18 years old when decommissioned, and the oldest of the five (Ticonderoga, the name ship of the class, was only 21).

From what I learned, the "Tico" class ships cost about a billion dollars each in 1980 dollars, which is the equivalent of about $2.75 billion today, and were planned to have a 35 year service life. That means their cost is being amortized over just half the time, effectively doubling the cost of the ships.

Indeed, this seems to be typical of an accelerating and exceedingly expensive trend. The first Spruance class destroyers lasted 30 years but many of the later ones were in service for only 18. Indeed, a large number of several comparatively short-lived classes were decommissioned during the administration of George W. Bush.

Warships are basically platforms for weapon and electronic systems, and should be rather durable. The systems may change, but the basic ship remains essentially the same over time. Some of the Essex and Midway class carriers built in World War II were modified time and time again, with service lives of thirty and even forty years, despite the profound changes in aircraft technology over that period. The post-World War II carriers such as the Forestall, Kitty Hawk and Enterprise classes have had similarly long lives. Even the Iowa class battleships, already dinosaurs when first commissioned, served from Franklin Roosevelt's administration until Bill Clinton's.

This accelerating rate of decommissioning and scraping seems to run counter to trends seen in other services. The Air Force keeps its designs in service for an astonishingly long time, compared to the Navy. The various models of the B-52 bomber have been in service since 1955, and the youngest, which is still a front line combat airplane, is 47 years old. The F-4 Phantom II of Viet Nam fame served for 38 years. The F-16, still a front line fighter and fighter bomber, entered service thirty years ago. Another front-line Air Force fighter, the F-15, has been in service for 32 years. Variants of the M-1 Abrams tank have been in service for 28 years. If anything, one would think modern naval ships would have longer service lives than modern aircraft or tanks.

One is lead to wonder why these modern and very expensive ships are being retired so early. Are they poor designs? Are they poorly built? I've not seen any reports that suggest they are. Is their retirement being driven by military considerations? It's hard to think so, since the military is still happily building F-22 and A-35 aircraft and littoral combat ships and both Arleigh Burke and Zumwalt destroyers, and planning a "CD/X" cruiser, which suggests the Pentagon sees a continuing need for high-cost, hi-tech weapon platforms. Meanwhile, the Bush administration has never lost its enthusiasm of all things military, nor relaxed its view that the world is an exceedingly dangerous place.

Then why are we scrapping all these expensive ships before their time? If the ships aren't defective, and the Navy still thinks it needs ships, and the Bush White House still wants to lavish money on the military, one is left inferring that the driving force is political or economic. Scrapping good ships and building new ones may not be about defense, but about pleasing lawmakers and the defense industry. In short, it may be nothing more than pork barrel politics and corporate welfare.

Compared to the rest of the mess the Bush administration is leaving for Barack Obama, this issue is small potatoes, but one hopes the new administration will take a look to see whether the money being poured into naval construction is money well spent.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 2 January 2009

Tax now

2009-11-02T20:20:00.001-05:00

Bought gas the other day. Back on June 28, I paid $4.06.9/gallon. This past Wednesday it was $1.59.9. Pretty good, huh?

I don't think so. The last thing we need is to once again be lulled into complacency about energy costs and revert to our taste for gas-guzzlers and gas-guzzling ways. Already the fevered calls for energy efficiency are dying away, and one suspects that sales will soon be picking up for SUVs, big pickups and other super-sized low-efficiency vehicles.

Let's not fool ourselves. The cost of fuel has plummeted because the economy has plummeted. Once the economy gets rolling again, fuel prices will rise again, and we will be staring at $4.00 gas and worse, probably much worse. There aren't any major new sources of oil out there. We simply cannot drill our way out of the inevitable crunch. It is not be possible to drive down the road to our future in gas guzzlers.

Nor do we want to. Global warming is real, and really dangerous. We must do whatever we can to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, and one of the best ways is to wean ourselves from our addiction to fossil fuels. We may already be out of time; at the very least, we're running out of time.

Many options are before us; some focus on conservation, others on developing alternatives. Both basic approaches must be employed, but one of the simplest, quickest and most effective was demonstrated pretty convincingly when consumers reacted to the skyrocketing gas prices last spring by curtailing their driving and shifting towards more fuel-efficient vehicles; sharp increases in energy costs promote conservation effectively and quickly. To put it crudely, we need high fuel costs to break our addiction to gasoline.

Right now, gas prices are low. This is the time to bite the bullet and increase gas taxes. Nobody likes taxes, but backtracking to wasteful driving habits would be worse. Even a dollar per gallon tax would not bring prices at the pump back to the levels we've seen over the past year and a half, but it would ensure that real incentives to conserve would remain in place.

One of best the arguments against such an increase is that it would disproportionately affect low-income drivers who need their cars to get to work but cannot afford modern, fuel-efficient vehicles. However, there is a way around that dilemma: a targeted tax rebate to low-income wage earners to offset the cost of the new tax. Even better, such a rebate would encourage further conservation, because eligible taxpayers would qualify even if they changed to more efficient forms of transportation.

The time to enact this tax is now, while the cost of gas is abnormally low. The initial adverse impact on family budgets would be small, and consumers would have time to adjust their habits by the time prices reach for the sky again. If we let this moment pass, it will be much harder to do in the future ... and for the sake of our future we cannot afford to delay any longer.

Sixty-seven years ago we were complacent as Japanese bombers approached Pearl Harbor. This time the danger is even greater, our adversary is fully apparent, and there is far less excuse for complacency.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 7 December 2008

Grounding

2009-11-02T20:19:00.000-05:00

A relaxed lunch in a comfy little restaurant, a friend with whom one can discuss anything. No pressure, no time, just conversation.

Note: first posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 2 December 2008

Don't kick the dog

2009-11-02T20:12:00.001-05:00

Whenever large corporations totter on the edge of bankruptcy, the first reaction of most corporate leaders and most pundits is to recommend forcing labor to bear the lion's share of the burden, usually in the form of reduced wages, reduced pensions, and reduced benefits, as well as the more easily justified layoffs. Perhaps that may be necessary, but before we advocate punishing workers for GM's problems, we should remember several key principles:

1) Labor did not create GM's problems; management did. The workers did not design a product line manifestly unsuited to the needs of consumers and unable to compete with the likes of Honda and Toyota. When GM was producing vehicles consumers were buying, the company was profitable and workers were doing well. GM's workers can still build vehicles; the problem is that the vehicles they are building are not the vehicles consumers are buying. The fundamental problem at GM, Ford and Chrysler is a product line unsuited to the times and a corporate inability to respond quickly to the changing needs of consumers. We should not punish labor for management's mistakes.

2) Retirees in particular shouldn't be punished. They played by the rules all their working lives, producing cars for consumers and profits for the company. Now they're old, they deserve the retirement they've earned, and they're vulnerable to cynical efforts at post hoc rule changes. So the solution should be to turn on them now, changing the rules when they're too old to adapt? I hope not! That would be an enormous injustice.

3) Domestic car manufacturers operate at one significant and substantial disadvantage compared to imports. In the rest of the industrialized world, worker health care, like everybody's health care, is provided through a national health care system. That puts foreign car makers at a considerable competitive advantage over domestics; some estimate the difference can amount to $1500 per vehicle. The answer isn't cutting health benefits for American workers and retirees, however. The answer is nationalizing health care costs, so every American is guaranteed quality health care while American manufacturers are operating on a much more level international playing field. Strangely, this issue isn't getting much attention, but it should, and not just in the automobile industry.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 25 November 2008

Who do you call when the fire station is burning?

2009-11-02T20:08:00.001-05:00

Patron requests arrive via an automated HelpDesk ticket system. Said system was down this morning. Our library tech went to glorious leader to inform her of the problem. Her response: "Send a HelpDesk ticket."

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 17 November 2008

November 4 changed everything

2009-11-02T20:04:00.003-05:00

I realized as I was walking to work today that there was a lightness to my step, that I was feeling prouder of my country than I think I ever have been before. And I sensed from the many smiles I saw this morning and the many conversations I heard and overheard today that I am not alone in feeling this new pride.

I thought -- no, I hoped -- that Barack Obama would win, but I also thought that it would be pretty close and that there would be serious efforts made to undermine or directly sabotage the election. Instead, he won pretty much around the country -- the Northeast, major portions of the South, the upper Midwest, the Rocky Mountain States, the Far West, including both traditionally Democrat and traditionally Republican states. He won with a convincing majority -- bigger than any Democrat since Lyndon Johnson's landslide victory over Barry Goldwater. He won with solid numbers across nearly every demographic group, and even economic group. Did you know that he won in that portion of the electorate that reports a family income above $200,000 as well as that portion below $100,000? I thought that racism would rear its ugly head and be decisive, or nearly so -- and that was clearly the hope of many of the Republicans -- but even more clearly, Americans by in large were much bigger than that.

It's as if we emerged from a long national nightmare that climaxed during the past eight years but stretched back 38 years to Ronald Reagan, and realized that instead of waking up fearful and confused, we awakened to a remembrance of Martin Luther King's dream, and smiled.

I am certain that future historians will recognize this election as one of the defining moments of America. We have always been a diverse country, but the mythologies we've created have denied that diversity for nearly all of our existence. Last night, we embraced it, and in embracing it, we moved into our common future, a future that can be far more hopeful, far less fearful, and far more progressive than any part of our history we have ever seen. This will indelibly alter -- and alter in the best of ways -- the way we see ourselves, and the way we see our nation. Pundits like to say that September 11 "changed everything." I think that is mistaken. But I think that November 4 changed everything.

Note: this originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 5 November 2008

Are we panicking yet?

2009-11-02T19:45:00.003-05:00

The Dow Industrials have surged well past 10,000 as I write this -- it's now at 9,786 and falling precipitously, already down 5.22% for the day. In exactly one year, it has fallen 4,492 points, or 31.5%. The story is essentially the same in markets around the world. And credit is freezing up everywhere. Where's the slide going to stop? More to the point, what will the landscape look like when it does?

Several conclusions seem obvious.

We're heading into a recession, quite possibly a deep and long one. Yet another legacy of the Bush years, another consequence of Ralph Nader, a few dozen hanging chads, a twisted Supreme Court decision, and popular indifference to the suborning of the republic. Elections do matter.

McCain's chances, and the Republicans' generally, look dismal. It's an ill wind that blows no good, one is tempted to say, except that it's hard to envy President Obama and the new Congress for the tasks awaiting them. The ability of the federal government to mitigate the effects of the looming recession, let alone prepare for the future and deal with such major problems as alternative energy development and global warming, are hamstrung by three decades of neocon domination of our government and especially by the current administration's mammoth deficits and ruinous Middle Eastern wars.

The fatal weakness inherent in the drive to privatize Social Security lies exposed for all to see. It's bad enough the retirees with 401(k) and similar "defined contribution" retirement plans are watching their income evaporate, but think what would be happening to them if Social Security was tied to the market. At least Bush was stymied on this.

Workers who have watched -- largely indifferently, and largely in ignorance -- as defined contribution plans have been substituted for the defined benefit plans their parents knew are now looking at their own old age with growing alarm and even fear. Workers whose employers eviscerated their traditional pension programs with the willing acquiescence of successive right-wing governments should be especially angry, although they have not as yet created the political tsunami that this connivance of capitalists and neocons should have produced. Score this as the next wave of voter anger, a grey wave which has to potential to reshape the shoreline of our political continents.

Hold on, folks, this ride is only going to get scarier.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 7 October 2008

The proposed bail-out plan needs to be fixed

2009-11-02T19:39:00.002-05:00

The proposed financial bail-out plan is a bad deal for American taxpayers and should be opposed unless several changes are made to protect the taxpayers' interests and the well-being of ordinary Americans.

The financial assistance should take the form of an equity interest in the distressed companies. This is essentially the same approach taken to the bailout-out of AIG, and other bail-outs before then. Why change the model now? The current plan apparently envisions federal purchase of toxic debts at prices high enough to bail out those companies, but that will likely result in the federal government -- the taxpayer -- paying too much for them, and getting gouged in the end. An equity interest would inject the necessary capital while giving the federal government a realistic chance to recoup the taxpayers money. It would also give the federal government greater say in guiding the behavior of the companies that got us into this mess. After the economy has recovered, the equity interests could be sold at a profit for the taxpayer.

Any financial assistance provided to the companies which spawned these toxic mortgages and the ensuing crisis should include relief for the millions of Americans facing foreclosure. At the very least, bankruptcy judges should have the power to modify the terms of their mortgages. This power exists in most forms of corporate bankruptcy; why not extend the same principle to ordinary citizens?

Financial corporations should be required to pay into an insurance system to protect us against any recurrence of such problems in the future.

Any bailout should not go forward unless it has true bipartisan support. Conservative Republicans will otherwise use this hugely unpopular measure to castigate Democrats who are, after all, going to provide most of the "heavy lifting" on this bill. In particular, the Democrats should make the whole-hearted support of the package by Senator McCain a requirement for passage.

Yes, this approach would be a high-stakes gamble. But this crisis is the product of the very people now resisting its resolution, and they should be forced to become part of the solution as well.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 29 September 2008

Delegation

2009-11-02T19:36:00.001-05:00

Fearless Leader returned from fact-finding, having found that penurious budgets exist elsewhere, too. Useful information, that. And surprising.

Whereupon Fearless Leader decided her plate was too full, so the task of setting up new vendor contracts including serials (nonlibrarians are excused for tuning out; librarians for shuddering) should be transferred to moi. Sure, why not? Two days still remain until the new fiscal year, and reassignment of the tasks is yet to be accompanied by transference of the necessary information.

To compensate, I was relieved of a task that takes 30 seconds per day, and two of the four functions I had which I still enjoyed.

That decision having been made, F.L. retired to the staff kitchen for nearly an hour of serious schmoozing, followed by a "meeting" that consisted mostly of small talk and laughter (the walls are thin) that lasted almost to the end of the day.

More hard work, but that's why she gets the big bucks.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 27 September 2008

How does one spell "junket"?

2009-11-02T19:34:00.001-05:00

Fearless Leader is off next week on a four day fact-finding trip to a distant metropolis (where, coincidentally, she has family and friends) to meet with librarians at four universities to learn how libraries serve the needs of graduate programs. Apparently there are no libraries serving graduate programs in our own metropolitan region, AND her phone is broken. Hard work, but somebody's got to do it.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 18 September 2008

Buddy, can you spare me a dime?

2009-11-02T19:31:00.003-05:00

Sixty thousand of them, in fact.

You ought to.

You just loaned Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and AIG that much. Each of you did. So did all your friends and neighbors and family and fellow citizens. So why not me? I've got bills to pay and I'm just as deserving. C'mon, pony up; I'm waiting. I'm sure America doesn't want me to renege on my debts, either ....

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 17 September 2008

Worse than a hypocrite

2009-11-02T19:27:00.002-05:00

John McCain is a stupid hypocrite. Hasn't he ever heard of YouTube? Politicians who make fools of themselves seem to wind up there pretty quickly these days ....

As we all know by now, John McCain's campaign called Barack Obama's "lipstick" metaphor -- which Obama used to describe specious claims by McCain -- as a sexist, offensive and disgraceful put-down of Gov. Palin and said Obama owes her an apology.

But wait! What metaphor did John McCain use last October to describe Senator Hillary Clinton and her health care proposal? He said "I think [Sen. Clinton] put some lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig." Don't believe he could be so stupid as to criticize Obama for something he's been doing himself? Well, here's the proof: John McCain likes "Lipstick on a Pig" references too.

So, uh, did John McCain ever apologize to Hillary for being so sexist, offensive and disgraceful? I don't think so!

Sheesh! Not only is McCain a hypocrite who's lost at sea in the YouTube era, but he can't even "Swift boat" effectively. The big question is whether the media will roll over and let him get away with it.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 10 September 2008

Palin's right

2009-11-02T19:24:00.001-05:00

Sarah Palin wants to take on the entrenched Washington elite, and more power to her!

The Republicans have held the White House for all of the last 8 years, 20 of the last 28, and 28 of the last 40. Let's take Palin's advice, and throw them out.

Republican appointees have controlled the bureaucracy just as long. Let's break their stranglehold on their "permanent political establishment."

Republicans have controlled the Senate for 11 of the last 14 years, and the House of Representatives for 12 of the last 14. Let's ensure that their brand of "politics as usual" doesn't return.

All of the last 4 Chief Justices of the Supreme Court and 7 of the current members of that Court have been appointed by Republicans. Talk about a permanent elite!

So yes, let's follow Palin's logic. It's time for a change in Washington; it's time to get rid of the entrenched, corrupt political Republican elites who have been running this country for their own enrichment, and give the country back to the people who have made it great.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 4 September 2008

Sexism?

2009-11-02T19:20:00.001-05:00

If criticizing Sarah Palin is sexist, why is it that the most vociferous critics of her nomination among the people I know are women? And that none of the women I know support her? And that their criticisms all deal with her policy perspectives, her actions in government, and her hypocrisy?

Doesn't sound like sexism to me.

Sounds instead like the neocons are just dusting off the same old tactics they have been using for a generation: if they lie often enough and loudly enough, the media end up reporting what they're saying as if it has merit, and some voters may be sufficiently confused to put them back in the driver's seat. You know, it's no coincidence that her most vocal supporters are the same folks who have worked against women's interests every step of the way.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 3 September 2008

Splitting hairs, hypocritically

2009-11-01T08:27:00.002-05:00

John McCain tells us* that Barack Obama favors "surrender" in Iraq. Barack Obama tells us that he wants American troops to be phased out of Iraq by the summer of 2010, with a residual force left there to train Iraqis and deal with terrorists. The Bush administration now tells Iraq that U.S. forces will leave Iraq by the end of 2011.

So, are we to believe that the difference between victory and surrender is whether or not we keep U.S. troops there for an extra 15 months? Or are we to believe that John McCain will attack Barack Obama's patriotism and character any way he can, as long as it may help McCain reach the White House?

* This post originally linked to the McCain statement, but it has been removed from the Web

Note: this was originally posted to ketches, yaks & hawks 22 August 2008

Who now the price of his dear blood doth owe?

2009-11-01T08:11:00.004-05:00

This is no defense of Russia's actions in Georgia. Would that they had used methods other than massive, deadly force. And there's probably truth to the contention that they were spoiling for an opportunity to chasten Georgia's president, Mikheil Saakashvili.

But as much as the American political leadership and news media try to ignore or obfuscate the facts, the Russians engaged the Georgians in force only after Georgia had launched a massive assault on the the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali. As BBC reports, on August 7, Georgian forces and separatists in South Ossetia agreed to observe a ceasefire and hold Russian-mediated talks to end their long-simmering conflict. Hours later, however, Georgian forces launched a surprise attack, sending a large invasion force against South Ossetia and reaching the capital Tskhinvali, devastating that city and killing and maiming thousands of civilians. On August 8, Russia came to South Ossetia's aid and engaged the Georgian military. The rest we know.

Even though Georgia started this month's bloody conflict, our media and our leaders depict Russia as the aggressor, condemn Russia as the violator of peace and international law, and issue denunciations of Russia which are as hypocritical as they are severe.

Imagine the shoe on the other foot. Imagine that in 2005, six years after the United States and other Western nations intervened in Kosovo, Serbia had launched a surprise invasion of Pristina, Kosovo's capital. Imagine that the NATO allies serving as peacekeepers in Kosovo counterattacked, blasting military bases across Serbia and driving the Serbian invaders back, deep into Serbia. Imagine that the Russians had then termed the NATO forces the aggressors and darkly hinted at reprisals. What would Americans have thought of the Russian charges?

So, how is South Ossetia's case that different from Kosovo's, except that Serbia didn't launch that attack in 2005?

But George W. Bush doesn't care who started the war. His is the focus of on unreconstructed Cold Warrior stuck in the 20th Century. Forget the facts, he seems to say; Russia is bad. AS quoted in a White House news release of 15 August, he said "The world has watched with alarm as Russia invaded a sovereign neighboring state and threatened a democratic government elected by its people. This act is completely unacceptable to the free nations of the world."

The United States sided with Kosovo both because of Serbian outrages against Kosovo, and because we sympathized with the Kosovars' thirst for freedom and autonomy. In short, we supported the separatists of Kosovo, and we still do.

The opposite is occurring in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. George W. Bush decries Russian support for the irredentist movements in Georgia, asserting that those restive provinces must be considered part of Georgia and that no country has the right to challenge Georgian sovereignty there. "There's no room for debate on this matter; we will continue to insist that Georgia's sovereignty and independence and territorial integrity be respected," he states (quoted in a White House press release of 16 August).

As with Georgia and South Ossetia, Serbia and the world used to consider Kosovo to be part of Serbia. Yet when Kosovar separatists fought for independence, the United States and other Western nations ultimately sided with Kosovo and attacked Serbia. Years later, when Kosovo asserted its legal independence, the Bush administration championed their cause rather than acknowledge Serbian sovereignty. This is not a defense of Serbia oppression of Kosovars or outrages against them, nor is it a condemnation of Kosovo's independence, but it is a fact. It is a fact, a precedent, which diametrically opposes to the principle the Bush administration is now espousing in South Ossetia.

Perhaps the best - or worst - chestnut comes from John McCain, however, when he assets in a press release of his own that "Russian actions, in clear violation of international law, have no place in 21st century Europe. We must remind Russia's leaders that the benefits they enjoy from being part of the civilized world require their respect for the values, stability and peace of that world."

Clear violation of international law?

Clear violation of international law???

Recent Republican administrations have a very clear record on international law, but it's not a good one. Ronald Reagan invaded the sovereign nation of Grenada on a pretext, in "clear violation of international law." George H.W. Bush invaded the sovereign nation of Panama on a pretext, in "clear violation of international law." George W. Bush invaded the sovereign nation of Iraq on many pretexts, in "clear violation of international law." Candidate McCain has supported all these clear violations of international law, and darkly threatens Iran with a similar fate should he take the White House.

One word describes the United States response to the recent conflict in Georgia: hypocritical.

Why does this matter? After all, Georgia is far away, and the United States does not appear likely to get caught up in the fighting there.

But what if we had a treaty obligation requiring the U.S. to go to Georgia's defense, requiring us in this case to get into a shooting war with Russia? Yet that is exactly what George W. Bush and the Republican right-wing want to do.

Caught in the trap of their Cold War mentality, they want to extend NATO membership to Georgia and other small countries formerly in the Soviet orbit, building a network of interlocking military commitments encircling the right-wing's old nemesis, Russia.

Folly!

That is how World War I started; a cascade of interlocking defense agreements led from a relatively minor act of terrorism in a remote corner of Europe to a war that engulfed the entire world. Do we want to do that again? Can we allow ourselves to be blinded by hypocritical propaganda, acquiesce to a perilously ill-advised military alliance with countries like Georgia, and link our fate to their pursuit of their own dangerous agendas?

I think not!

As for Georgia, Russia and all who would use war to settle disputes, I quote stout Mercutio: a plague o' both your houses!

ADDENDUM: Michael Dobbs, former Moscow bureau chief for the Washington Post, has a good column on the topic.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 17 August 2008; it has been revised slightly because some of the original documents to which it linked have been removed from the Web.

A license plate for America

2009-11-01T08:04:00.002-05:00

Today I saw a car with the perfect personalized license plate for America: CHRGIT. Charge It. Shop 'til you drop; spend as if there's no tomorrow.

Americans' consumer debt is rising at an annual rate of 6.4% and we currently owe $2,586,300,000,000 in short and intermediate term loans, according to the Federal Reserve Board. That's about $8,400 per person. That's not including home mortgages, either. Nearly a trillion of that is on our credit cards. Meanwhile, our personal savings rate has been steadily dropping for some time now; according to the Department of Commerce's Bureau of Economic Analysis, our personal savings rate sank to 0.6% last year (as recently as 1984 it was over 10%).

Quite simply, we delight in spending money we don't have, but are increasingly reluctant to save anything for our future. Our parents read us Aesop's fable of the ant and the grasshopper; we apparently didn't listen.

CHRGIT

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 16 August 2008

Racism and the race

2009-10-31T22:12:00.002-04:00

I was listening to a major broadcast network news analyst and another political analyst discussing the tightness in recent presidential polls and they were coming up with all sorts of reasons why Obama might be doing worse than expected or McCain doing better than expected. They discussed matters ranging from recent drops in the price of gas to continued fall-out over the lapel pin fracas to the pace of war in Iraq. What they didn't mention at all -- not at all -- was race. Guess they didn't want to play the "race card" ... or, more to the point, they were probably afraid to bring up the subject. But for good or ill, the voters know that race is the issue lurking out there, possibly unacknowledged publicly but nevertheless present in everybody's awareness.

We won't ever be able to move past racism unless we acknowledge it and face issues relating to race head-on. That's not so much the responsibility of the candidates as it is of our news media and, especially, ourselves. (Never mind his brilliant speech in Philadelphia; Senator Obama has, after all, done more to do that than anybody ever has, just by running so successfully.) Towards that end, I commend the following column from the New York Times of August 9: "Racism and the Race," by Charles M. Blow.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 10 August 2008

Legacy

2009-10-31T22:06:00.002-04:00

We're told that retiring presidents become concerned with their legacy. Let's look at the current incumbent's legacy ....

War in Afghanistan, not only with no end in sight, but with the government we installed riven with corruption, opium production skyrocketing, the war increasingly endangering Pakistan's fragile democracy, our enemies emboldened, the Taliban and al Qaeda becoming stronger and Osama bin Laden still free.

War in Iraq, with all the rationales for invasion exposed as lies, over a million dead, deadly violence still common, ethnic partitions hardening, political reconciliation still a distant dream, Iranian influence greater than ever, widespread corruption, hundreds of billions of dollars wasted, no concept of what "victory" might look like, and no realistic exit strategy.

The nation disgraced by torture, Guantanamo, rendition, Abu Ghraib, denial of the most basic human rights, unlawful wiretaps and surveillance, obsessive secrecy, shredding of the rule of law, secret murders and untold crimes against humanity.

Shocking denial of the most pressing environmental threat to ever threaten humanity, and an almost criminal refusal to take even the most basic measures to reduce or even postpone the danger.

An appalling eagerness to take advantage of a national tragedy for narrowly partisan purposes, coupled with a squandering of a global wellspring of sympathy for our national pain so astonishingly incompetent that most of the world now fears us, holds us in contempt, and views our espoused values as hypocritical.

Ruinous energy policies which threaten the collective health of the planet and all its inhabitants, send vast amounts of the national treasure to unstable and dictatorial regimes and quite probably into the hands of our enemies, and do enormous damage to the national economy and our industrial base.

Transformation of an inherited federal budgetary surplus into the largest deficit to ever saddle an incoming president, simultaneously saddling future generations with a mountain of debt and enormous consequences for the ability of the nation to deal with emergencies and other pressing issues in the future.

Massively regressive fiscal, tax and health care policies plus encouragement of appalling corporate excesses which combine to worsen the plight of the nation's less fortunate and exacerbate the gap between the rich and everybody else.

Cynical manipulation of public opinion, the mass media and the political process to divide Americans, foster intolerance and distract the nation from issues critical to its well-being.

Utter contempt for the hallowed principles of the Republic, starting with the antidemocratic machinations which established the incumbent's administration in the first place and leading on to packing the courts with reactionary judges, Congressional maneuvers to undermine the legislative process, dictatorial assertions of unchecked executive power, and both illegal and unethical practices to drive professional judgment out of government and replace it with partisan rancor.

The list goes on and on; readers can surely add many more examples. The sum of it all is not only that this is the worst President this country has ever had, but that succeeding administrations will need to labor heroically for a long, long time to even begin to repair the damage.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 28 July 2008

Gift

2009-10-31T21:54:00.005-04:00

What's the best gift imaginable?

Attended a conference a while back. My employer is usually penurious when it comes to conferences and travel for people like me. But this one was in town and my boss thought I'd somehow benefit. I didn't want to go; it was sponsored by a vendor and wasn't terribly relevant to my work. Besides, I've got lots to do, since I keep getting new responsibilities without losing any of the old ones. But orders are orders; I went.

Turns out my boss was right, just not in the way she thought.

Towards the end of the conference I was sitting in a fairly crowded lecture hall. A late arrival found the seat next to me. I don't much remember what the presentation was about, but I certainly remember the conversation that my neighbor and I fell into after it ended. Polite noncommittal comments on the presentation slid into professional issues and rapidly branched seamlessly into myriad topics ranging from current events to literature to baseball to history to music to electoral politics to family histories and on and on. The neighbor finally had to run to catch the train home to a distant city. Then exploratory e-mails wondering if the conversation was a fluke, followed by more e-mails, more exchanges, more sharing over a gulf of two hundred miles that confirmed a simpatico soul.

Sometimes the origins of true friendship stretch back into a dimly remembered past, seemingly as much a part of the firmament of life as the earth beneath your feet. Sometimes it grows slowly, framed in familiarity, creeping silently into your life until some anomalous event suddenly reveals the bond's strength. Or it can be forged in compelling shared experiences. And sometimes it bursts forth from a vacuum with breathtaking abruptness.

However it comes, it's a gift almost beyond compare. Friends are good. Very good.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 3 July 2008

I just don't get it

2009-10-31T21:48:00.001-04:00

But then, I'm old.

Got my 16 year old a cell phone a while back. Unlimited calls within network, and a generous allotment for prime-time out of network calls. No good; it didn't include unlimited texting.

"But you can call," says I.

"Daaaaaaaad," says she, clearly frustrated by my ignorance of all matters significant.

Despite exhortations to be prudent, if not miserly, texting still occurred, month after month. Recriminations.

Back to the provider; signed up for unlimited texting within network, and what looked to me to be a generous ration of texting outside of network. Kid agrees to bear the cost for any over that amount. First month's bill with the texting service comes today. 178 messages out of network over and above that generous allotment.

"Pay up," says I.

"Daaaaaaaad,: says she, with that exasperated, dismissive voice only teens can master.

I just don't get it. But then, I'm old. And getting older.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 2 July 2008

No refuge from guns

2009-10-31T15:35:00.002-04:00

Today we learned that the Bush administration wants to let people carry loaded, concealed guns in national parks (click here for the news article). This letter is in reply.

To the editor, New York Times:

Permitting guns into National Parks is an incredibly bad idea. Poachers will be delighted. So will the deranged predators, the rapists, the thieves, the sociopaths who prey upon innocent people. But for the rest of us, it’s a recipe for tragedy.

The NRA tells us guns will make parks safer. Wrong. Department of Justice figures clearly show that the innocent are far, far more likely to be the victims of gun violence than the beneficiaries. In 2004, a fairly typical year, private citizens used their guns to kill 170 criminals. Criminals used their guns to kill 11,624 innocent victims. What makes anybody think that appalling ratio will somehow be reversed if we allow guns into our national parks?

When people come to National Parks, they’re looking for respite, for peace and quiet, for the simpler joys of our natural world. They want to get away from the violence and tension of their workaday world. Let’s not ruin it for them, for all of us.

Update: In 2009, President Obama signed into law a provision permitting guns to be carried in national parks.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 30 May 2008

A key to unlocking a vital door to peace

2009-10-31T15:31:00.002-04:00

The key to nearly the full range of conflicts in the Middle East is the resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict which establishes a viable Palestinian state and leads to a secure Israel, thereby removing a casus belli within the Middle East and leading ultimately to the furtherance of regional prosperity and peace. I've become increasingly convinced that the political forces holding that key reside in America and shape the direction of American policy towards the region.

In that light, I recommend an opinion piece appearing in today's New York Times by Jeffrey Goldberg, a correspondent for The Atlantic, who argues that the long-range interests of Israel depend upon the emergence of a Palestinian state and that American supporters of Israel must come to realize what many Israelis already know, that the Israel that they value cannot continue to exist unless the emergence of such a state is encouraged.

Goldberg's column can be found through this link to the Times.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 18 May 2008

Restraining the four horsemen of the Apocalypse

2009-10-31T15:24:00.002-04:00

George W. Bush is a master at redefining the bottom. Every time it's seemed that he's plumbed the lowest levels of leadership, he discovers ways to slide even deeper into the muck at the bottom. Today in Israel he did it again.

"Some seem to believe," he said, "that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have an obligation to call this what it is: the false comfort of appeasement."

Like much of what he says, this has a patina of sensibility to it. But as usual, that thin patina proves to be only camouflage for demagoguery.

What's he really saying here? That we shouldn't negotiate with our adversaries simply because they are, well, our adversaries? How, pray tell, is it otherwise possible to resolve conflicts, save by annihilation? Should we negotiate only with our friends, with people we find agreeable? Much help that is in resolving disputes.

The real world is filled with conflict. The quality that separates civilization from barbarism isn't the lack of conflict, but the ability to deal with conflict without resorting to violence and coercion. Negotiation is the tool for resolving conflicts. The only tool. Yes, that means talking with adversaries, even negotiating with them. But it's infinitely better than the desolation of war.

The easy route, the cheap route, the cowardly route, the barbaric route, is the one Bush would use. Negotiation is the more difficult, the more courageous, the more honorable ... but ultimately, the only successful way to resolve conflicts and still restrain the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 15 May 2008

Bush should be ashamed. But he's not, so his misguided approach must be condemned.

Keeping my fingers crossed

2009-10-31T15:17:00.002-04:00

The process was exhausting -- a day and a half of being "on" 100% of the time t'ain't easy for me -- but I like the people, the position, the place and the institution.

Now it's down to hoping they like me. And remembering that there are a couple of other candidates probably thinking and feeling the same thing I am.

Tick, tick, tick, tick.

Funny thing is, even if they don't want me and I end up staying where I am, there's good reason to try to build a cooperative relationship 'cause their place and mine would both benefit.

Update: Didn't get it. Didn't even get a rejection. Much more polite, I guess, to leave people hanging.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 14 May 2008

Crossing my fingers

2009-10-31T15:14:00.003-04:00

Tomorrow and Tuesday I've got a job interview I really, really, really, really want to go well. On the short list; only two others hoping the exact same thing. Spent the whole weekend preparing. Wonder how it'll go. Wonder how I'll manage being fatalistic, waiting for the word. It would be a good job I think, but I sure do hate the process ....

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 11 May 2008

The whole less than the sum?

2009-10-31T13:43:00.001-04:00

Are molecules smarter than people? An argument can be made ....

Add additional molecules to a gas and they'll quickly disperse through the gas until pressure is equalized. Add additional commuters to a subway car, and they'll congregate near the doors, in effect establishing a higher pressure of commuters there than in the spaces between the doors. Most stand cheek to jowl by the doors, with few if any dispersing into lower pressures of the mid-car spaces.

This experiment is not only reproducible, but is reproduced every day, on almost every train.

Molecules, or people? You be the judge.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 7 May 2008

Windy disconnect

2009-10-31T13:40:00.001-04:00

On Saturday, a horribly destructive cyclone hit Burma. Two days later, Laura Bush declared that the U.S. stands ready to send "substantial" disaster assistance to Burma provided its government plays nice. That's about as long as it took after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast for her husband to make his famous flyover of devastated New Orleans as he flew home to Washington after vacationing in Texas. If Burma's autocrats follow his schedule, they're due on Wednesday to compliment the leader of their emergency response effort for doing "a heck of a job."

The obvious question for the first lady is how well any "substantial" American aid to Burma would compare to the inadequate and dilatory assistance her husband's administration has provided to New Orleans. Put another way, one wonders if even Burma's autocratic government beat the Bush administration's sorry record of succoring its stricken communities.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 5 May 2008

When does life begin?

2009-10-31T13:32:00.003-04:00

In a recent forum on faith in Pennsylvania, both Democratic candidates were asked whether they thought life begins at conception, and both accepted an erroneous assumption that has skewed and inflamed the national debate over abortion ever since the issue became prominent. Life is a continuum; it does not begin at conception but began at the beginning. If we all understood that, we might be able to begin finding a way to successfully address the divisiveness of abortion and abortion rights issues in our culture.

Okay, what do I mean? Biology 101. All organisms which reproduce sexually alternate between haploid and diploid generations. A haploid cell or organism has but one set of chromosomes; a diploid has two. With humans, the people we see walking around are the diploid generation; the vast majority of our cells are diploid while our sperm and eggs are our haploid generation. In sexual reproduction, two haploid individuals join to form one diploid individual ... which, upon maturity, spends much of its time trying to find another diploid individual with which to share the haploid individuals it is producing and thereby form diploid zygotes which grow up to be mature diploid individuals, and so on. In some species, such as all mammals, the diploid generation is the one we notice the most. In others, the haploid is the more obvious.

But in one important sense, it doesn't matter which generation attracts our notice, for they're both part of an unending continuum which stretches back to the origins of life and this is true whether you are a firm believer in the validity of creationist doctrine or of evolutionary theory. Individual lives may end, but in every case their beginnings stretch in an unbroken chain back across countless generations to the origin of life, and forward through their progeny to the end of time (at least, as earthly life experiences it).

Conception thus represents nothing more (nor less) than a recombination of genetic material occurring when two haploid individuals join to form a single diploid individual. It is no more a beginning of life than when a diploid individual creates haploid individuals (a process which happens without our conscious knowledge), but is just an alternation of forms occurring repeatedly in an unending continuum.

Life does not begin at conception.

And that has profound implications for the social and political debate over abortion and abortion rights, as the question shifts away from when life "begins" to a determination of when we should recognize a new diploid generation of our species as an individual with "inalienable rights." And that question is one of interpretation, over which people of good will and sincere beliefs may honestly disagree.

But more on that in another posting.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 17 April 2008

Read Krugman, think globally, act locally

2009-10-31T13:15:00.004-04:00

As is usual, Paul Krugman's column today (use this link to read the original) about the sharply rising price of staple foods provides valuable insights into a vexing problem. Clearly, the problems he discusses are global. Yet it is possible for each of us to make changes which could prove very important collectively.

Krugman notes that raising meat is a lot less efficient means of producing food than raising crops for direct consumption. We don't need to become vegetarians to make a difference (although I do think it would be a great idea!), but by simply reducing the amount of meat we eat we can easily conserve arable land. Reduce demand for meat, and free land to feed others. Our dietary choices do matter globally.

Similarly, changes in our shopping behavior can make a real difference. To the extent that we increase the proportion of our food which is grown locally, we decrease the energy costs of its transportation. To the extent that we buy organically grown food, we decrease the demand for petroleum-based fertilizers. We don't need to be 100% pure to have an effect.

We can get smarter about our driving, combining errands and using alternative, more fuel efficient means of travel when feasible. Obviously we can move towards more fuel efficient cars, but perhaps just as important, we can keep cars longer and thereby reduce the resource costs of producing automobiles.

Do these things, we'll also save a good bit of money along the way. If enough of us do it, we may also redefine what living affluently means, making less wasteful practices more attractive to people around the world striving to become as affluent as we are.

We can also commit to voting for legislators and a president committed to energy conservation and intelligent usage of available resources, and also to pressuring them as candidates before their election and incumbents afterwards to work towards those goals. We can let them know that working to feed the poor of this world is a better use for our tax dollars than continuing a ruinous, illegal and counterproductive war in Iraq. It is disturbing that Senators Obama, Clinton and McCain seem so tightly wedded to ill-considered ethanol programs, but we can and should let them know that we think they're wrong on this issue, and that it matters to us.

Each of us can make a difference. Our choices matter, and if enough of us do it, our collective impact can be huge.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 8 April 2008

It went well. Maybe.

2009-10-31T09:51:00.003-04:00

You can come away from an interview thinking "I wish I had said ...." or not.

In this case, not is better. Then you can relax; your fate is out of your hands. The people on the other side of the table have a list and as you talked, they were checking off boxes on that list. Maybe their check marks are in your favor, maybe not. But if you said what you wanted to say -- no regrets -- then it's almost immaterial whether they put their checkmarks in the "good" or "bad" boxes; you did what you wanted to do, and it's up to them to decide that's what they wanted too.

Almost immaterial. But you do want to be invited back for the second round.

At least, I do ....

Besides, I actually did like talking with them.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 4 April 2008

Character does count

2009-10-31T09:43:00.003-04:00

I'll admit that I'm becoming more and more dismayed about the prospects of a Clinton presidency, and to my doubts are much more about character than policy. As many have noted (check out Paul Krugman's column in yesterday's New York Times, for example), from a liberal perspective, Clinton is better on domestic issues than Obama, albeit not by much in matters that count.

But character?

Her arrival in Bosnia has already blown up in her face, thankfully. (For any who haven't heard about it, she simply lied to make herself look more heroic, and when the lie was blown apart by archived CBS footage of her arrival she tried the classic weasel of claiming she had only "misspoken;" for me and many others the episode evoked memories of George W. Bush's "flight suit moment" aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln.) Somewhat less noticed are her claims to have been "instrumental" in the Northern Ireland peace process which led to the Good Friday agreement. Yet the newly released copies of her White House schedules clearly show that when Bill was dealing with Northern Ireland, Hillary wasn't involved. I am employed by an organization dedicated to promoting conflict resolution around the world, and we have an extensive library on the peace process in Northern Ireland. I checked the indices of every book on the shelf for mention of Hillary Clinton, and found only one which mentioned her, written by Gerry Adams after Bill had left the White House and Hillary had entered the Senate, and although Adams was clearly trying to curry favor with anybody who might be helpful, even he didn't describe any significant role for Hillary. As FactCheck.org notes, the list goes on: Hillary claims to have "negotiated open borders" in Macedonia, but didn't arrive until after they had been opened; her claimed role in trying the stop the Rwandan genocide was ineffective or minimal or both.

Like George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton seems to think that facts are malleable things that can be bent to passing political purposes. In short, she is a liar. And that is a character issue that matters.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 29 March 2008

Obama's speech on race

2009-10-31T09:25:00.004-04:00

We've known for a long, long time that race is the central test of who we Americans are as a people, as a nation.

We've come a long ways since I was a child, but we've much farther to go. Perhaps we'll never reach the point I'd like to see, but how we face the question is at least as important as how far we go; indeed, the means are the more important, for they - as always - determine the ends.

In America's long history of being tested, there are signal events which stand out, illuminating our lives and beckoning us onward. One such event occurred today. Barack Obama "had to do something," we were told, to deal with the racial issues swirling around his campaign. What he did was to rise well beyond the mere political, and move our collective discussion measurably forward.

I'll say no more, save to provide here a link to the transcript of his speech, as well as a link to an editorial review of it from a prominent newspaper supporting his rival. I commend both to your attention, in the hope and belief that our nation is better for the discussion he opened today.

Update: Here are some more editorial and op-ed reactions, from the Boston Globe, L.A. Times, Tim Rutten writing in the L.A. Times, Eugene Robinson writing in the Washington Post, and Mary Schmich writing in the Chicago Tribune. And here's a YouTube link.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 19 March 2008. The original post also linked to an editorial and columns by Annette Joh-Hall and Monica Yant Kinney which appeared in the 19 March 2008 edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer, but the newspaper removed those pages.

Another letter on the 2nd

2009-10-31T09:20:00.004-04:00

To the editor,
New York Times

Your analysis of the Washington, D.C. gun control case before the U.S. Supreme Court (Gun Case Causes Bush Administration Rift,” March 17, 2008) is interesting, but like many stories reviewing the Second Amendment, it relies on the standard but confusing punctuation which inserts a comma between the words “Militia” and “being.”

However, examination of volume I of the Journal of the Senate of the United States and the Annals of Congress for the first Congress shows that text of the amendment actually submitted to the states for ratification lacks that comma, resulting in a sentence which clearly links the concept of militia service to the right to bear arms: "A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed."

That linkage is all the more important given the technological development of weaponry from the time of the Revolution to the modern day. In the late 18th Century, the militia relied on the same types of weapons a common citizen might possess, but the responsibilities of today’s militia -- the National Guard and the Reserves -- demands weapons nobody would suggest should be in private hands.

This is not merely an interesting grammatical distinction, for a proper understanding of the Second Amendment best serves the needs of this nation even now.

Submitted March 17, 2008

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 17 March 2008

The war won't go away

2009-10-31T09:15:00.002-04:00

The war has receded from the headlines, displaced by the Presidential campaign, the credit implosion and resultant threat of recession, and the latest politicosexual contratemps in New York ... and especially the false but oft-repeated assertion that the "surge is working." Recent days have brought several grim reminders that the war won't go away, but will continue to demand our attention for quite some time to come.

First, there's the unending horror of the war itself. Yes, the number of American casualties is down, but yesterday's deadly blasts killing eight American soldiers was a distressing reminder that it continues. In fact, about as many American soldiers died over the past five full months as during the five months following George W. Bush's infamous "mission accomplished" photo-op on the U.S.S. Lincoln nearly four and a half years earlier, and quite a few more were wounded.

The horror has been even worse for Iraqis. Five were killed by a suicide bomber in Dhuluiya today and another ten in Kut, plus 16 in a bombed out bus near Basra and two political leaders in Falluja with five more killed by gunmen in Mosul. The day before, gunmen killed a doctor in Basra, a minibus bomb killed one in Baghdad, a suicide bomber blew up two in Muqdadiya, three were murdered in Mosul, and a suicide bomber killed a Sunni leader northeast of Baghdad. Last Thursday bombs killed 68 shoppers in Baghdad, on a day when other attacks killed one in the al-Waziriya district, four in Basra, and four more in Mosul. Day after day, Iraqis are being killed and maimed. Perhaps it's at a lower rate than during the worst of 2007, but let us not pretend the suffering is going away.

Meanwhile, let's face it, there's precious little evidence the Iraqis have been using the the surge as cover for forging the democratic, pluralistic government of national unity they need to create peace ... and without which, the war can never end on any terms remotely resembling real peace.

Then there's the cost. The Nobel laureate economist, Joseph Stiglitz, writing with Linda Bilmes, released a study this past week forecasting that the total cost of the war will be around $3 trillion when all the indirect costs are computed, including costs as diverse as long-term care for injured veterans and debt service costs for the massive borrowing the administration is using to finance the war. In the short term, the we're squandering treasure that could be used to address such pressing needs as funding national health care, strengthening Social Security and Medicare, improving schools, developing energy alternatives, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and balancing the budget. In the long-term, the war is seriously jeopardizing our economic future, constraining our ability to deal with other problems and handicapping us in the world economic and political arena.

And then there's the utter lack of any reasonable hope that it will end within the foreseeable future. The administration and its sycophants foresee no end to the war until the distant golden day when "victory" -- undefined and unknowable -- is finally attained.they'll be long gone while the war still drags on and poisons all aspects of national life.

As Stiglitz and Bilmes note, "the United States will be paying the price of Iraq for decades to come ... and the cost will grow the longer we remain." The time to end this awful war is now.

Note: this was orginially posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 11 March 2008

Troubling demagoguery

2009-10-31T09:09:00.002-04:00

Don't get me wrong. I'm not an Obama supporter, not really. My preferred candidate dropped out a while ago, and I harbor some serious questions about Barack Obama.

However, I am deeply troubled by Hillary Clinton, on a number of accounts. The latest is her hired gun's demagogic comparison of Obama's legitimate call upon Clinton to release her income tax returns with the odious witch hunt conducted by Ken Starr and the neocons of the Gingrich era.

As the New York Times lamented in an editorial back in November, the tradition of financial disclosure, and especially the release full income tax returns, is eroding. Although Senators Obama and Dodd had already released theirs, Hillary Clinton had not; the editorial noted that "primary voters should have this information while they ponder who should get their party's nomination."

The paper made a similar point in an editorial on February 15: of the leading candidates, Barack Obama is the only one who has released his full federal income tax return, "a level of disclosure," said the Times, which was "once routine for candidates."

And mind you: the Times endorsed Senator Clinton, so their criticism can hardly be viewed as unfair or partisan.

But when Senator Obama called for Senator Clinton to release her tax returns yesterday, the Clinton campaign accused Obama of "imitating Ken Starr."

Absurd attempts to deflect legitimate criticisms with baseless ad hominem attacks is the sort of scurrilous tactic we have come to expect of Dick Cheney, Carl Rove and George W. Bush. No leading Democrat should stoop to their level. That the Clinton campaign has done so is appalling, and certainly does not auger well for the kind of President she would be.

Note: this was originally posted in ketches, yaks & hawks 7 March 2008

Just some more random shootings in America

2009-10-29T22:24:00.004-04:00

Nine shot in a Memphis home; six are dead. Police said that neighbors reported hearing shots but that was not uncommon in the area.

In Emory, Texas, also on Sunday, a pair of teenagers angered that the girl's parents wanted her to stop seeing each other, apparently shot the girl's parents and brothers.

Yesterday, in Ft. Collins, Colorado, a woman was convicted of ordering her ex-lover's wife to her knees and then shooting her in the head.

The carnage goes on and on and on and on. If the killers had the same intent but didn't have guns, would these murders have occurred? One can't be sure, of course, but it's a lot tougher and a lot chancier to kill people with bare hands or even knives. Does anybody honestly believe that even a fraction of the killing would be occurring if guns weren't so horribly prevalent in our country?

Note: the second story was reported in the News Tribune of Tacoma, Washington, and the third in the Las Cruces Sun News of New Mexico, but the original links are now invalid

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 7 March 2008