Namesakes

During the mid-1960s in England, there was a young rock singer/songwriter who aspired to fame. He was very talented and knew that, with determination, he would make a name for himself. And he did, but not initially in the way he had planned. For across the Atlantic, in America, another British entertainer, actor Davy Jones, had passed his audition and joined up with a new TV series designed to parody the Beatles (as they were in A Hard Day’s Night) by introducing a band called “The Monkees”. The Monkees were not only a big TV hit, but also sold many records and had a very large fan base (I was one of them). Each of the group’s members became famous and their names were common knowledge. The young man in England, whose name just happened to be David Jones, didn’t want to play second fiddle to someone else who had the same name as him, so he changed his name to David Bowie. The rest is rock ‘n roll history.

Why do I bring this up? Well, like many people who surf the web, I typed my own name into a search engine to see what came out. And I discovered that there are a few people out there who go by my name. There is a Bill Irwin who is a Tony Award-winning actor and professional clown. Billy Irwin, a professional boxer, has done quite well in his field. In a Pennsylvania college, you can find a philosophy professor named William Irwin who specializes in studying the philosophical ramifications of popular culture. And there are more of my namesakes out there as well. Come to think of it, outside the Internet, I know of the existence of several other William Irwins besides me. And now I have something important to say: I am not, never have been, nor will I ever be any of these William Irwins! But I do admit to being a card-carrying William Irwin!

With the ability of the Internet to connect so pervasively throughout this country and the rest of the world, it should be no surprise that people besides me would keep running across others with their own names. And the temptation to compare oneself with his or her namesake is strong. But, at least from my point of view, this is just something that goes with the times and the technology. I accept it, but to give myself just a little bit of difference from the others, I will use my middle initial (M) with my name whenever I’m doing my blog. For first names, I use either William, Bill, or Billy, and from time to time may change that on my blog ID. I never thought that my name was all that common, but I guess when you consider the millions of people out there, the odds favor there being a few of them. Nevertheless, it is a bit disconcerting to see people out there completely unrelated to me with my name, although I’m not going to do anything drastic like David Jones did!

Reality TV

I am apparently one of those poor lost souls who totally miss the appeal of the tidal wave of “reality” shows that have swept through television programming during the past few years. I put that in quotations because I have difficulty understanding how it is “reality” that the concept of being a survivor is based on how popular one is within a group. Being “voted off” a show is complete hogwash to my evidently unenlightened mind.
There is a danger that I perceive exists in just sitting in front of a TV set and surfing the channels without any purpose to what I am watching. The fear is that some day I’m going to look at the times when I did this and regret the time I wasted when I could have been engaged in more meaningful activities. That’s a fear of mine, but the idea that sitting for hours on end watching asinine “reality” shows (whose titles don’t even deserve passing mention) is a complete waste is a complete certainty!
Having spewed out my venom regarding this atrocious plague of bad programming on my television set, I would like to raise a caveat regarding reality TV. If enjoying this stuff helps other people to cope on some level with their lives, then that’s good. Showing people screwing up in something, whether it’s real or scripted, and then showing them recovering from their failure and getting on with their lives is a very valuable lesson in what life must be about. Some people are prone to extremely harsh self-judgment and think that it’s the end of the world for them if they fail or are humiliated in something. And one thing for sure is that reality TV is full of programs showing people failing in just about any way conceivable! To the extent that people portrayed on these shows assess their mistakes, adjust their behavior to avoid repeating them, and then act boldly to get it “right” the next time, then it is a worthwhile viewing experience that can give some in our society the hope that they, too, are bigger than their failings. There, I did it. I said something good about reality TV. Now back to the surfing!

More on Comments

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Favorite Songs: #15 to #13

Besides my all-time favorites list, at any given time there is always a song that is my favorite among those that are currently out there. My “current” favorite right now (and for several months, actually) is Starlight by Muse, a relatively subdued work of theirs that is sung with a lot of feeling. Muse is considered to be an independent/alternative rock band.

#15 Both Sides Now by Judy Collins (from Wildflowers,1967)

Both Sides Now was a big singles hit on the radio in 1968. Back then, I always called it “Clouds” because of the song’s first stanza. But it wasn’t one of my favorites then. As years passed by, it became one, though, primarily for two reasons. The first was Judy’s beautiful voice and the second was the song’s message: at various points of our lives, we think we have certain things like life and love (and even clouds) figured out, but then things always seem to develop that confuse our conclusions. Then we have to either enlarge our understanding or start all over. But that is all part of the process of maturing, isn’t it? And it may go a long way toward explaining why I wasn’t enraptured by this song during its heyday, when I was only eleven. In 1976, Judy Collins came out with Send in the Clowns, another tune which I like a lot.

#14 Message of Love by the Pretenders (from Pretenders II, 1981)

The antidote for all of the dreary songs that permeate the rock scene, Message of Love has the best self-described title I know. Pretenders singer/songwriter Chrissie Hynde has always been one of my favorite voices to listen to, and she doesn’t disappoint here, either. This song never became a big hit, although it should have. The lyrics and tone of the song are exuberant and exciting. There’s no way anyone can hear it without feeling at least a little bit better than before! Watch the video to Message of Love, too, if you want to see the whole band jamming away. I also like their songs Back on the Chain Gang and Middle of the Road (which sounds a bit too much like Dobie Gray’s old hit The In Crowd, though). Unfortunately, Rush Limbaugh ruined one of their songs (My City Was Gone) by using it as the lead-in piece for his radio show.

#13 Imitation of Life by REM (from Reveal, 2001)

Considering the long, illustrious career of this great Georgia band with their enormous catalogue of quality songs, it is ironic that my favorite of all of them would be Imitation of Life, a song recorded after REM had been in a state of decline for a while, at least in terms of their general popularity. I, on the other hand, thought that their CD Reveal was one of their best, and this tune was the best on it. It is the other song from the 2000’s on my list (besides 12:51 at #19). Imitation of Life has a dark and sad tone to it that I find irresistible. Avoid the ridiculous video, though, if at all possible. Other REM songs that I recommend are Stumble, South Central Rain, The Wrong Child, Half a World Away, Find the River, Let Me In, and Walk Unafraid. I guess you might conclude that I’m a fan of theirs. And I am, owning all of their studio works from their 1982 debut EP Chronic Town all the way through their latest CD Around the Sun (although I don’t quite “get” that one).

Next favorite songs: #12 to #11

Victim as Aggressor

It is interesting to me how prevalent the tendency is for people to try as hard as possible to portray themselves as victims of some other party, and then use that self-portrayal as grounds for aggressive behavior. Here are some examples:

---A group of kids at a school bus stop interpret a shy kid’s demeanor as meaning that he thinks he’s better than them, so they pick on him “in retaliation”.

---A released prisoner feels such a victim of the system from the eight years of his incarceration that he goes out and kills eight innocent people, one for each year spent behind bars.

---A car going down the road slowly in the left (fast) lane causes the car behind it to miss a light. At the next opportunity, the “victimized” driver pulls up alongside the slow car and shouts obscenities at its driver.

---Because the United States has troops stationed on Saudi Arabian soil, this “victimization” of Muslims, in the view of some, justified hijacking and flying jet planes into World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing thousands.

---Because the U.S. was victimized by those terrorists, they are justified in going out and killing thousands more.

---Many people in Germany, after World War I, felt humiliated and victimized by the harsh conditions in the Treaty of Versailles. So, within a few years Adolf Hitler was promoted to power and began his nightmare rampage across Europe.

---The Soviet Union, at least in their propaganda, asserted that they occupied and controlled several East European countries under the Warsaw Pact because they had been so badly victimized by Germany and its allies during World War II, and that they would never let it happen again.

---The white supremacist organization Ku Klux Klan came into prominence in the South and later across the country because some people felt victimized by groups of other people that they perceived threatened them and their way of life.

---All of the conflicting sides in the Iraqi sectarian war see themselves as victims of the others who must be beaten down hard to prevent them from getting the upper hand.

---Countless assassinations have been committed by people who felt they had been victims, usually indirectly, supposedly betrayed by the ones they ended up killing (e.g. assassinations of Mahatma Gandhi, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, John Lennon, Anwar Sadat, Yitzhak Rabin, James Garfield, and Abraham Lincoln, to mention a few).

---In Yugoslavia during the 1990’s, Serbs, Croats, and Muslims all began to settle scores with each other from past conflicts as close as World War II and as distant as the Muslim Ottoman Empire’s invasion of this land in the fourteenth century. The Serbs, who considered themselves victims of both the Croats (seen by some of them as collaborators with the occupying Nazis in World War II) and the Muslims (for centuries, Serbs were subject to Ottoman rule, especially in Kosovo and Bosnia). And these historically victimized Serbs were the biggest aggressors in the conflict that broke out.

---In the mid-1990’s in Rwanda, the majority Hutus, feeling themselves to be an underclass to the traditionally more dominating but minority Tutsis, went on a genocidal rampage against them at the prompting of their Hutu leader.

---All blood feuds, be it the old Hatfields vs. the McCoys feud or the gangland feuds prevalent in organized crime, use victimization as the justification for further violence.

---The perpetrators of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing rationalized their atrocity by identifying with groups such as the western militias and sympathizing with David Koresh’s Waco cult, both supposedly persecuted and victimized by the Federal government.

The above examples vary in the degree of legitimacy of the aggressive actions taken as “reactions” to perceived victimization. Pure hate, I believe, is behind some of this, covered over with the pretense of following a principle. Another cause is the idea that what’s happened cannot be reversed, but by standing up to the perceived aggressor, it may be prevented from recurring in the future. And there is always the tit-for-tat rationale to explain some actions. Whatever the reasons, adding another link in the chain of aggression just makes it worse in the long run, regardless of whatever short-term benefits that may accrue. But what really gets my goat are the people that aren’t really victims of anything to speak of but go around acting as if they are anyway, apparently just to make others feel indebted to them somehow. But then again, there’s a little of that in most of us, isn’t there?

The Miami Floridians

One day, during the fall of 1968, I picked up the newspaper and saw a funny cartoon drawing of a man dressed up like a stereotypical Florida tourist with sunglasses, dribbling a basketball with a big grin on his face. It was the announcement that, yes, the Miami Floridians had come to town! In the American Basketball Association’s inaugural season, 1967-68, they were originally the Minnesota Muskies and did rather well on the court (50-28) and rather poorly with their attendance. The Muskies had hired for their coach the old Minneapolis Lakers star Jim Pollard, and had assembled an impressive lineup, headed by Mel Daniels and Donnie Freeman, to represent their entry in the ABA’s bid to compete against the National Basketball Association on a major league level. The ABA became noted for its innovations, such as the three-point shot (not yet allowed in the NBA) and its red, white, and blue basketball. In spite of this, I was completely oblivious to the existence of the ABA during its first season; actually, come to think of it, I really wasn’t aware then of the NBA, either!

The Muskies’ owner decided, after one season, to pack up his team and send them down to Miami. Why they picked such a ridiculous name as “Floridians” is beyond me (can you imagine calling a team the New York New Yorkers? Wait a minute, the NFL has the Houston Texans!). But that’s what we were stuck with. I suppose that if enough people in South Florida had risen up in objection to it, it might have been changed. But there were very few down there who even knew of the Floridians’ existence, much less cared about them. I started following the Miami Floridians in the 1968-69 season almost from its beginning, which was a slow start for the team. They had dealt away Daniels to the Indiana Pacers, one of the four franchises that would survive to finally become part of the NBA. I was just fiddling around on my AM radio one evening and tuned in to 1450-WOCN in Miami, a weak 250-watt station usually devoted to playing “elevator” music full-time. But that night it was doing play-by-play of Miami’s game against Connie Hawkins and the Minnesota Pipers. The Pipers, it seemed, weren’t too happy with their location the previous year in Pittsburgh, so they moved right in to Minnesota as soon as the Muskies cleared out. But that didn’t work out either and they eventually moved back to Pittsburgh as the Condors. The Pipers started the season hot, just as they had ended the first season, and beat the Floridians that night. As the season wore on, I became more aware of Miami’s stars: Donnie Freeman, Skip Thoren, Les “Big Game” Hunter, Don Sidle, and Willie Murrell. And Coach Pollard, of course. It was hard sometimes to find articles about Miami’s game the previous day in its own hometown paper. They tended to be buried away in small spaces deep in the Sports section. The Floridians continued their slow start until they fell into a deep slump and found themselves in last place at 9-17. Then, seemingly out of the blue, they caught fire and went on a 23-8 run, finding themselves in first place at 32-25. The remainder of the season saw both ups and downs. The Miami Floridians finished second in their division (behind Indiana) with 43 wins and 35 losses, a standard they would never remotely approach for the rest of the franchise’s short existence. Miami beat the slumping Pipers in the first playoff round, but were creamed by Indiana, who went on to lose to Rick Barry’s Oakland Oaks (who moved to Washington, D.C. the next season) for the league’s championship. The next year, the Miami Floridians were promoted heavily in the local press, broadcast their games on powerful 50,000 watt 710-WGBS, and fell flat on their faces, finishing dead, dead last in the league. Coach Pollard was fired early that season and then hired to coach basketball at a small Ft. Lauderdale college. A few years later, in 1974, I began my first term at Broward Community College. To help fulfill my physical education requirements there, I took a conditioning class, knowing that I’d be doing a lot of running in it (I was heavily into running at the time). Guess who my instructor was in this class? Coach Pollard!

For the 1970-71 season, the ownership of the Floridians decided to fire the whole team and bring in players from other teams. Mack Calvin and Larry Jones made them more competitive than the previous year, but they never again had a winning season. Fan apathy in Miami, coupled with the lack of a decent place to play, gave impetus to the “next big thing”: the Floridians would play some of their home games in Tampa and elsewhere; henceforth the franchise would drop “Miami” and only be known as “The Floridians”! The only change in fan apathy that I noticed was my own increasing apathy toward them. The fact that none of their games were televised didn’t help, either.

So, my hometown franchise did not survive the ABA merger with the NBA. Only four franchises made it: the New Jersey Nets (formerly the New York Nets, formerly the New Jersey Americans), the San Antonio Spurs (formerly the Dallas Chaparrals), the Denver Nuggets (formerly the Denver Rockets), and the Indiana Pacers. I was glad to see these teams make it, but I was also saddened to see the Kentucky Colonels, a franchise with a history of exciting, winning basketball which had great fan support, relegated to a fond memory. They would have been my first choice for an ABA franchise to be assimilated into the NBA. This on top of the fact that they gave themselves a great nickname!

Nowadays, things in Miami have changed. The NBA’s Miami Heat has an adequate place to play in as well as decent media coverage and fan interest. But I moved away from that area many years before that franchise began and feel no loyalty at all to it. You would think that I’d be a big Orlando Magic fan because that’s the closest NBA city to Gainesville. But instead of that, in the last couple of years, I’ve become a fan of the Phoenix Suns with their exciting brand of offense under players like Steve Nash, Amare Stoudemire, and Shawn Marion. I don’t know whether they’ll win a championship anytime soon, but they are fun to watch! Alas, if only the Colonels had made it into the NBA instead of those obnoxious Spurs (who keep beating my Suns) …

Rooting for One's Religion

When someone is in the midst of a particular religion as one its followers, he (or she) is surrounded by fellow adherents who abide by a doctrine specific to that religion. The same people tend to associate with each other and repeat the same points of doctrine. When stepping outside of this “feedback loop” and conversing with outsiders, such a follower may encounter incomprehension or even opposition in reaction to statements he is making that, to him, are self-evident. He may also react in this same way to what others are saying. If you’re one of these people, you may find what I have to say to be like this.

There is a tendency nowadays for people who follow a particular religion to behave as if they are following their favorite sports team. Their team is the banner of the religion they follow. And the opposing team is the rest of the world, which must be conquered/converted. Encounters with people on the outside who don’t line up with the home religion’s doctrine (and most of them don’t, regardless of which religion we are talking about) are the “games”. And there are certain litmus test issues, such as evolution vs. creationism or Israel/Palestine, that are used to determined which side people are on. People who see the world this way see every meeting, every transaction, and every news story as a contest between the “good guys” on the home team and the “bad guys” (the infidels/ outsiders/ nonbelievers). Because of this, conflict is seen as inherent in human relationships, because even within a particular religious group, co-believers are continuously evaluating, confronting, and correcting each other according to the words they speak and their actions.

You can insert vastly different religions into the assertions I have made above and it still rings true. This is easier to see when examining a religion whose doctrine diverges greatly from your own, and even more so if you can point to violence in the news that involves its followers. But I hold that, if different religions can be inserted into the “formula” without changing its truth value, then the philosophy of viewing everything in the world as a contest between the true believers and the outsiders is meaningless. I submit that, if this is all there is to one’s religion, then it is pointless, since most religions deem themselves as unique and exclusive. Which should direct the believer to consider the truly important aspects of his own religion, which is the relationship between him and his God, and how he should behave toward the world in a manner that reflects this special relationship instead of acting like all of the other “rah-rah, hooray for our side, down with the other side” people. And with love and compassion taking the place of taking sides.

When considering religion, one naturally thinks about the nature of God, or the Lord. If one assumes that God is all-knowing and all-powerful, then it is, in my opinion, preposterous that any believer can even pretend to have any idea as to what God’s work is in every situation. There are rules for people to live by, of course, and a believer will want to abide by them. But to accept God for what He is demands the realization that there is much mystery in the world, and only God has a handle on it all. We cannot sit on the sidelines and wave our figurative flags around, hooraying the good people and booing the bad people, for the very reason that we just might be mistaken in our judgments, not to mention that we may be overlooking areas in our own lives that need attention. For the often-stated statement, “The Lord works in mysterious ways” is something all believers need to incorporate within themselves, if for no other reason than as an expression of their humbling themselves before their God.

Plant Homelands

A few years ago, I saw a TV program (it may have been Nova or a Discovery Channel show) that examined the original homelands of different species of plants that are cultivated as food, medicine, energy, clothing, or for other purposes. The aim of the program was to show that the diversity within a species is by far the greatest within the relatively small area of its origin. And that diversity, which can be used to develop new strains of plants that are more adaptable to different environments and more resistant to plant diseases, is being threatened on a world-wide scale as these homelands are cleared by the encroachment of human activity. An example in the program was made of coffee and its natural place of origin in Ethiopia. At least in that place, there was interest in preserving the natural habitat of coffee plants that grew in the wild. But even then, they had to contend with war conditions that threatened their native wild-growing coffee plants.

But do we know where the homelands are for the myriad other species of plants that we depend on so much? It’s my guess that too many of them have already been wiped out, leaving only some limited strains that we depend too heavily on. I’m no expert on botany or agriculture, but I do remember learning about the Ireland Potato Famine of 1848 and how it was caused by almost exclusive use of one particular variety of potato that was suddenly decimated by disease, destroying Ireland’s chief source of food at that time. There is concern today that many of our staple grains, such as wheat and corn, are grown in mass amounts with very limited genetic diversity, putting them and enormous populations at risk from potential grain epidemics in the future that could destroy production on a global scale.

In biology, an endemic species is one that found in only one specific area, or biota. A very large amount of these species are endemic to the rain forests of the world, in particular the Amazon rain forests in Brazil, many of which are going by the wayside, lost forever in the pursuit of farming and economic development. There is no telling how many different plants there could be ultimately used, especially in medicine, if they can just be permitted to exist in their own unique habitats there.

I know that a subgroup of biology is dedicated to the study of species’ homelands, but I can’t remember its name. Maybe it comes under the general classification of “biodiversity”, which would be a logical place to put it. It’s important, with our upward-spiraling population, mass-farming, danger of new fast-spreading diseases, economic development in rural areas, and the tragic continuing plague of war, to quickly find the areas that are still intact, preserve them as much as possible, and collect as many living samples of the plants in question for preservation and study.

Locust as Metaphor

There is a certain type of grasshopper in Africa that, when conditions are just right (or wrong, depending on your point of view) and its population within a particular area passes a certain threshold, actually undergoes a biological change and transforms into the aggressive and swarming locust of infamy. The idea of the locust can be used as a metaphor for the same type of phenomenon that occurs elsewhere. Our bodies contain many germs that, in small amounts present no health risk but, if given the opportunity to reproduce without our built-in checks to their population, could pass a point where they upset the body’s equilibrium and are transformed into an actual disease. In meteorology, events such as thunderstorms or hurricanes happen when commonly occurring processes in the atmosphere involving moisture, heat, pressure, and winds get beyond a certain point where counterbalancing forces are insufficient to restrain them. In physics, chain reactions are originally natural processes that have been allowed to escalate beyond control as well. And I’m sure there are many more examples of this in science. But I’d like to examine the locust metaphor as it applies to human society.

If anyone’s ever been to a party from its beginning, they know that there can eventually come a point when the party seems to take off and drastically rise in intensity with the arrival of just a few more people, taking on a life of its own. This was the effect that poor Mary Richards (Mary Tyler Moore’s character) kept seeking and failing to attain with her sad parties. There are times during protest marches when the number of people concentrated in a small area can reach a point when just a small event can trigger the beginning of a riot. A nation can mobilize its troops for a potential military action, like Germany did just before World War I, and at a certain point of the buildup, the political pressure to go ahead and engage them in warfare starts to become overwhelming. I got that feeling in February 2003, when the U.S. and its coalition’s forces were teetering upon the Iraqi border. In gambling, there is a threshold when a gambler feels that he has lost too much money to walk away from the game, and then he really begins gambling in earnest trying to win it back. In verbal arguments, there is a threshold that escalating insults can reach, beyond which one or both of the parties begin to direct violence at the other. I’m sure you’ve seen ugly celebrity divorces where the couple initially proclaimed themselves as splitting up amicably, but one little charge after one gets leveled between them until one of them blows up and accuses the other of all kinds of heinous abuse, to which the accused in turn replies by accusing the accuser. A rough foul committed in a professional basketball game can lead to harsh words spoken between the players involved, increasing the overall tension to the point when a fan throwing an object at one of the players can spark a players’ riot, where players not even directly involved in the original altercation are in the stands slugging it out with fans not directly involved in throwing anything. And children are especially susceptible to this phenomenon. At a certain point, if a child keeps receiving either a lot of positive reinforcement or negative reinforcement from others, then there will come a point when he will begin to identify himself with that feedback in a more accelerated way so that his self-image can became fixed as “good” or “bad”, depending on the type of input he has been receiving.

I suppose that just becoming more aware of the “locust” dangers in our human society is in itself part of the cure. We can use this metaphor to bring good things to a threshold of momentum toward progress and compassion while being vigilant against tipping events in dangerous directions that could get out of control and bring great harm.

Florida Offshore Drilling

There has been an ongoing debate concerning how the United States can meet its own energy demands without overrelying on foreign sources, especially with respect to petroleum and natural gas. By becoming more independent, America could use its foreign policy more as a benevolent worldwide force for peace, prosperity and human rights instead of having to make strategic decisions that sometimes involve supporting repressive governments and even going to war. As far as domestic petroleum exploration and production is concerned, one of the areas considered promising is the offshore area in the Gulf of Mexico. Already, exploration and production is occurring off the Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama coast. Florida, though, has refused to allow any drilling in the wide area of the east Gulf, drawing a line in it straight down from the western border on the state’s panhandle and going eastward to its gulf coast. Both Republicans and Democrats in Florida have been united in this effort to bar oil exploration in “its” area, both in the state government and in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate (although more Republicans tend to support drilling than Democrats). Former Republican Governor Jeb Bush was strongly for the moratorium on drilling. Democratic Senator Bill Nelson has started filibusters in the Senate just to avoid having any provision inserted into a bill that would authorize drilling off Florida’s coast. The rationale is environmental and economic: Florida depends on the quality of its environment, not only for its seafood industry, but also for its tourism industry. Opponents of off-shore drilling maintain that accidents have happened in the past, while the area is dangerous because many hurricanes go through it. Proponents of using the eastern Gulf for oil exploration hold that the technology for preventing accidents and containing their effects has dramatically improved over the years. Also, the other gulf states depend on their tourism and seafood industries as well, so why should Florida be so selfish?

Most Florida residents oppose off-shore exploration, which explains why this issue is a no-brainer for its politicians. But there is one issue that they cannot answer to: U.S. territorial waters only go so far offshore and then they become international waters. Most of the eastern Gulf of Mexico that is under the drilling moratorium is international, which means any country may drill there. Already, it’s been reported that Cuba and China are interested in what lies beneath the sea floor there. It would be a big mistake, in my opinion, if we were to refuse to exploit this area, when we could regulate and control our own drilling and production, while placidly watching other nations fill in the void with their probably less safe drilling. And then we’d have to buy from them! Would that make any sense? Short of the United States doing something drastic and declaring ALL of the Gulf of Mexico as its territorial waters, I see no other option than to support tightly regulated oil exploration in the eastern Gulf.

Late last year, both the U.S. Senate and the House finally overwhelmingly passed legislation doing essentially that, opening up vast areas originally under the Florida moratorium to oil and natural gas exploration and drilling. President Bush signed it, a reasonable act if I do say so. This year there are more efforts being made to further increase the permitted area. Hopefully, this will end happily for all concerned parties, although it appears that with most people in my home state, that result has already passed by the wayside.

Favorite Songs: #18 to #16

#18 Close to Me by the Cure (from The Head on the Door, 1985)

I’ve never been much into dancing, and if you ever saw me “dance”, you might not recognize it as such. Having said this, I still have a dancing instinct within me (without the talent, though). If I hear a song that has a good beat and sound, I just might find myself spontaneously jumping around and swaying to it. And that’s about as far as you’re going to come toward seeing me actually dance! Close to Me by the Cure is one those infectious types of songs that can pick you up from the doldrums and get you moving! The music is upbeat and funny, not the sort of thing you’d expect to hear from the Cure, whose music is pretty melancholy, for the most part. I also felt that the video for this song was hilarious. Close to Me is an example of an artist or group stepping out of its routine sound and producing something truly special!

#17 America by Simon & Garfunkel (from Bookends, 1968)

America is an anecdotal song about a young man and his friend (Cathy) hitching rides from Michigan and then riding a bus from Pittsburgh through New Jersey. It captures the feeling one gets riding public transportation, when all that seems to be available to do, for hours, is either look out the window, “play games with the faces”, or just fall asleep. The lyrics and the way they were sung deeply touched me, making me feel like I was there on the bus with them. But that’s Paul Simon for you, and Art Garfunkel’s beautiful harmony combined with a poignant melody to bring out an outstanding song, one that has grown in my estimation over the years. My other favorite S&G songs are Scarborough Fair and Fakin’ It, while Paul Simon’s Boy in the Bubble is my favorite of his solo work (along with the incredible video).

#16 No Milk Today by Herman’s Hermits (from There’s a Kind of Hush All Over the World, 1967)

This is another example of artists transcending the pattern that they used to become successful and coming out with something great. No Milk Today is simply a song about a guy who delivers milk and is love with one of his customers. But he keeps seeing the sign “no milk today” and realizes his amorous hopes are for naught, for his “love has gone away”! Pretty silly, huh? In spite of that, the musical production for this song, combined with Peter Noone’s compelling singing and an unforgettable melody, made this one of my favorites even back in 1967, when I was ten years old. And my affection for it has never wavered through the years. Unfortunately, No Milk Today never received much radio air play, and it came out when British rock music was starting to fade a bit from the American scene (excluding supergroups like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, of course). Herman’s Hermits was one of the many bands of the mid-1960’s that I used to look forward to watching as guests on the Ed Sullivan Show.

Next favorite songs: #15 to #13.

Alcohol

There was a once a period in my life for a little more than two years when I was a “drinker”. From March, 1979 until August, 1981 I consumed alcohol, predominately in the form of light beer, because anything stronger was apt to cause a terrible hangover the next day. I believe that I started this habit because I would be very physically tired, hot, and emotionally and mentally spent after working all day. Instead of interpreting my body’s signals to my brain as thirst (for water) and exhaustion, I reacted by drinking beer, and usually quite a bit at a time. I knew the trigger was job-related because I simply did not have the urge to drink on my days off. And whatever purpose it served me when I drank, it lasted a while because I never drank on successive days. I never developed a tolerance for alcohol. On the contrary, by the summer of 1981, I was becoming physically sick after drinking. This was a blessing that enabled me one day to just walk away from it. Looking back, I wish I had just drunk a lot of water or Gatorade after work, along with taking a two-hour nap to break the feeling of physical and mental fatigue that had prompted my reaching for a beer. But I am glad that I had the common sense to never get behind the wheel of a car while under the influence of alcohol. The only other time I ever drank beer again was during a span of a few days in 1988, and I stopped when I realized that it just made me feel more tired.

As the years passed and I observed others dealing with their own relationships with alcohol, it began to dawn on me how extraordinarily intolerant my body really is to it. So, being a confirmed non-drinker as I am is not even remotely a matter of will power or virtue. It is as if I never drank in the first place! But, strangely enough, I do remember that during that period long ago, it was a habit that at times had a strong pull on me when I was physically and mentally tired. To be able to remember without any fear of its recurrence is true deliverance!

If it were just about me, I probably would have just kept all this to myself. But it bears attention that people have widely varying reactions to alcohol. Some are comfortable with moderate consumption and are careful to avoid driving or engaging in any similar dangerous activity when under the influence. Still others are died-in-the-wool alcoholics from whose thoughts the desire for a drink is never far away. From my point of view, if someone is in the former group, then the more power to them. But it is a risky venture to get involved in this habit because, if one’s body does easily develop a tolerance to this legal, widely advertised, easily available, and cheap drug, then it can destroy their lives and those of their loved ones (and of total strangers as well if they drink and drive). In other words, someone won’t know if they are susceptible to alcoholism until it’s too late to back out. I was fortunate to have a body predisposed to react to alcohol as a poison. But I also know someone who went to jail on a DUI manslaughter conviction.

So, because of the potential dangers involved in alcohol consumption, I’d like to caution anyone who thinks that a beer might be a refreshing “cap” to a long day to stop, take a deep breath, and listen to what their body is trying to tell them. Maybe they are just tired and thirsty. There are better and easier ways to remedy that than popping open a cool one!

Drive-in Theaters

When I was growing up, my parents’ idea of taking the family out at night was to go to a drive-in movie. During the 1960’s, I actually came to the conclusion that the drive-in theater was the wave of the future and those indoor theaters were just relics of the past, doomed to extinction and nostalgic remembrances from the old folks. There were drive-ins all around. Just down the road from the Seminole Indian reservation on US 441 in north Hollywood was the Arrow Drive-in, where we probably saw most of our movies. There was the Hi-Way Drive-in on US 1 in Dania. Sometimes we went south a few miles into Dade County near Opa-Locka, where the Golden Glades Drive-in was, complete with two screens. One night we went there to watch The Ipcress File, a spy flick starring Michael Caine. The other movie showing that night was a silly farce based on a comic-book character called Modesty Blaise and which starred European film star Monica Vitti. Well, that movie was the only one I wanted to watch. It was the first one we saw on our screen, and then, when The Ipcress File began, I just turned around in my seat in the back of the car and watched (without sound, of course) Modesty Blaise way off on the other distant screen. My parents were exasperated that I wanted to see that stupid movie, especially when Ipcress File was so good, but I (nine years old) couldn’t follow its plot and, besides, Monica was on the screen behind me! A few years later (1977), I found out that Monica Vitti was an accomplished European film star and saw two of her movies on a PBS series showing foreign films: La Avventura (a very good romance-mystery-drama and L’Eclisse (a strange film dealing with the stock market, among other things). We saw other movies for the first time at the drive-in, among them The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, Mike Nichol’s The Graduate, and several science fiction flicks. Whichever theater we went to, one of the highlights of the experience was go to the concessions stand, where they sold pop corn, soft drinks, hot dogs, pizza, candy, and other stuff.

My father later worked at the Hi-Way Drive-in as a part-time manager. He got me a small part-time job there as well working in the concessions stand and tending the cash register (I was 12-13 years old at the time). The register we used there just rang up the totals, so whoever worked it had to add the subtotals on paper before ringing up the total for each customer to pay. I got to where I just added everything up in my head, which sometimes caused consternation with the customers! After my work was over for a night, I would just sit in our car and watch the movie that was on until my father finished his work and drove us home. Later, after I no longer worked there, they began to add more and more screens to show more movies. The Hi-Way Drive-In was next to both a large airport and some marshland, so the moviegoers had to contend with loud jets taking off every few minutes as well as massive amounts of mosquitoes! A few years ago I went back to Dania, driving down US 1 to see what had become of my old workplace. I was shocked to find that the entire US 1 in that area had been diverted far west of its original path, so the old Hi-Way’s location was now literally “off the beaten track”!

Nowadays, of course, drive-in theaters have pretty much died out. The only one I know of that still shows movies here in north central Florida is one on US 441 just south of Ocala. I miss them, but to be perfectly honest, I much prefer the more pleasant, comfortable indoor theaters.

Crossroads Controversy

Back in the early 1980’s, I was listening one evening to a local talk show on Gainesville’s 850-WRUF. The topic was the Crossroads Church of Christ (now renamed and with new leadership and direction) in Gainesville, a church situated near the University of Florida on the west end of campus, near the College of Law. Its congregation was largely students, and it was very aggressive in evangelizing and recruiting. The show was about Crossroads’s tactics. Besides the moderator, there were some parents (from out of town) of students who had joined up with this church, as well as the coordinator for an organization nowadays called the CMC (Campus Ministry Cooperative). This guy had a position that was supposed to handle issues concerning churches and their relationship with the student body. So he was an obvious choice for a guest. Crossroads was invited to send a representative to the show, but declined.

The front part of the program was all about parents laying down their grievances about Crossroads. Their precious children, it seemed, were taking this Christianity thing way too seriously. Why, they themselves belonged to main-line denominations, but this idea of making Christ first in one’s life and feeling the burden to evangelize was a bit over the line for them. They also charged the church with having their children shun them and that their children were encouraged to take out loans to give money to the church. Through all this the “coordinator” never questioned any of their statements, but added his own criticism of Crossroads, saying that they refused to be part of his group of churches. The moderator, after all this time of criticism, decided it was time to open up the phones. Most of the calls were critical of Crossroads as well. But one caller, obviously supporting Crossroads, began to quote a biblical verse that was clearly intended to explain where this church was coming from. He barely got a few words out of his mouth when the moderator abruptly cut in, declaring that we can’t have all this Bible reading on the air. And the religious coordinator chimed in with the moderator (against the lone dissenting voice on the entire show up to that time), saying that anything can be quoted from the Bible out of context and you have to read the full text to discern the true meaning. But since the announcer refused to allow any of the Bible to be read on the air, then the book that this church (and supposedly the other Christian churches) based its doctrine and behavior on could not be used in the forum of talk show radio debate (at least on WRUF). More calls ensued, slamming Crossroads. Then, at the very end, an individual called and said that he worked with someone who went to Crossroads, and that person never bothered him about religion but simply lived a quiet, clean,and dignified life. He said he admired that individual and that it reflected well on the church. Quickly, the “impartial” moderator corrected the deluded but well-meaning caller, saying that it wasn’t the evangelistic techniques of Crossroads that were being called to question, but rather the complaints that the parents who were present had about how they treated their children. This after call after call after call condemning Crossroads for its evangelism techniques was accepted without criticism!

When I was a student at UF, I had a run-in with one of those evangelizing Crossroads students. I was in my dorm bedroom and he walked into the dorm uninvited and came into my room to give me the standard talk about salvation through Jesus. I told him to please leave, but he reacted to me like I was a sinner resisting the Lord instead of acknowledging and apologizing for the fact that he was trespassing and invading my privacy. Finally, I threatened to call downstairs and report him, and he left. So, I didn’t dig this church if this was how their members were taught to spread the word. But I decided not to condemn it for one bad experience. A couple of years later, a UF professor and his wife invited me to the same church, and I attended there a few weeks as well as some of the “soul talk” small group discussions that were held at his house. That was a positive experience. The fact is, there are positive and negative aspects to any church. Crossroads expected its members to dress up to go to church. Other churches were informal, especially the ones by UF. I think that the parents were confronted by an aggressive church that, in their view, displaced them and substituted church authority instead in their children’s lives. And that, I think, was the real underlying, unrevealed issue.

I think that some churches deliberately foster a sense of collective persecution from outside among its members in order to be able to control them more. Although the Bible does affirm that the outside world will persecute the church, it is a mistake for a church to lay too much emphasis on this. Otherwise, it creates an “us vs. them” mentality that runs the danger of over-insulation of the group from the "evil" outside and transformation into a cult-like organization. I got the impression back then that Crossroads was proud of its isolation within the Gainesville religious community and thought itself to be the only true voice for Christ in the area. And this played into the hands of those who accused it of being a cult.

But this being said, the radio show I heard was blatantly unfair to the church’s side of the argument. The parents’ claims about the loans and their kids’ aloofness from them were legitimate concerns that went unanswered on the show. It is true that Crossroads could have officially participated and didn’t, but at least the couple of callers who spoke in their defense could have been shown more respect. And just what kind of all-important religious authority was this “religious coordinator” that he felt empowered to make judgements on others' use of the Bible?!

Math and Magic

When I was in elementary school, I saw an entertaining movie titled Donald Duck in Math-a-Magic Land. It was intended to spark interest in mathematics among the young, and it came away, I believe, revealing perhaps a little more about the field than it intended. Although I barely understood anything that the duck said, the announcer came through quite clearly, especially when he told of secret societies in the ancient past whose members shared esoteric mathematical ideas with each other. This film was the first hint of what was to come in my education.

I have reached the conclusion over the years that mathematics is an academic field that is treated somewhat differently from the others. This difference shows both in the classroom and in the library. When I took any other type of class, be it history, Spanish, literature, chemistry, biology, social studies, etc., I could take any question pertaining to that field and do research in the library to answer it and probe more deeply into it. But the answers to many mathematical questions are hidden when one tries to find them in the library. It is as if the assumption is that the important thing about math is the training, not the body of knowledge on which the field is based. I suppose that it is also presumed that the only person looking for the proof of a theorem would be a student trying to “cheat” his way out of his “training”. In other words, math educators are overly concerned with getting inside the students’ heads and building up their “math power” than they are about opening up this field to comprehensive examination. This makes mathematics more like the wizardry classes in Harry Potter! And knowledge in Harry’s school, Hogwarts, was power, to be hidden from and simultaneously lorded over others. Mathematics is the real-world projection of magic in the way that it seems to be deliberately made as esoteric as possible, while at the same time it is the indispensable key to thoroughly understanding modern science and technology.

And yet very few in our society understand the advanced mathematics that is used in the design of all the handy gadgets we use. It’s no wonder that the cargo cults of the Pacific Islands that cropped up during and after World War II held as part of their creed that it was gods who bestowed the magic upon the Americans and British with their planes, ships, weapons, and radios. And if they worshipped these gods, so they thought, the cargo cult believers would receive all this high tech stuff as well. Gods? Magic? Wizards? This is the very image that is pushed about mathematics. For example, in the movie A Beautiful Mind, mathematician John Nash’s abilities in math were portrayed as being magic-like in nature. And, like the talent for magic in Harry Potter, there is the widely-held belief that, with mathematical talent, you either have it or you don’t; that was another characteristic of Nash’s story. Or, learning math is like climbing an enormous mountain, and you have to start at the bottom and struggle to ascend, step by torturous step. But why should becoming good, even at an advanced level, in math, be like either of these models? Within the content of mathematics lie strict rules of reasoning and logic. But the handling of this discipline as it is taught is anything but reasoned: it derives more from the historical background of secret societies, esoterica, and Gnosticism than is ever acknowledged.

People learn things in different ways. The way math is taught in schools straightjackets people into learning it only in the way that the “masters” want it learned. I think that if more creative ways were given for people to study math, it would help us as a people to become more literate in it. And that involves making mathematical material more readily available in libraries while eliminating the “wizard-training” nonsense going on in our schools regarding mathematics education.

My Latest Readings

In an earlier entry, I mentioned that I had begun reading Stephen King’s Night Shift, the first short story collection that he had published. While doing that, though, I got myself sidetracked into reading Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy (Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation). He wrote several other Foundation novels as well and, after his death in 1992, other renown science fiction writers wrote authorized Foundation novels. I liked the Foundation trilogy very much. I especially got a big kick out of the names that Asimov chose for his characters! Originally, Asimov had simply written a pulp magazine short story titled Foundation, which I read a few years ago. Later, he decided to expand it into the novel (and its numerous sequels). After the Foundation reading, I read Dolores Claiborne, a Stephen King novel, once again set in Maine, and written in the first person. Writing in the first person seems like it would be very challenging, but if done well (as King did in this novel), it is something very special. I think my favorite short stories written in the first person style were Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes (1959) and Evening Primrose by John Collier (1941). The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger, is another example of a good novel written from the viewpoint of the protagonist.

My home town has a pretty cool used book store, the Gainesville Book Company, which opens its doors twice a month on the weekends and sells a wide variety of books at incredibly low prices. I already have a tremendous backlog of books that I mean to read, but whenever I visit this place, I usually come out with an armful of more books. Most recently, I purchased a book of four Robert Ludlum novels. I’ve begun reading the first, The Scarlatti Inheritance, and I’m enjoying Ludlum’s writing. He apparently likes to use different historical settings in which to place his stories. I don’t think it will be possible to read his novels without enriching my knowledge of history quite a bit. And I was a history major in college! I suppose that eventually, I’ll get back to Night Shift, but right now I’m having too much fun reading this other stuff! But that’s the cool thing about a short story collection: you can leave it for a while to read other things and don’t have to worry about trying to remember your place when you come back to it.

As for the stories I mentioned in this entry and in previous ones, you can find books that they were published in by referencing the Locus Index to Science Fiction link I have provided on the left. The CampusI and Biblio.com links will give you search engines to companies that can sell you inexpensive used copies of many books, usually including the ones I refer to. But it’s best to first try to find the books you want in your library or in a good used book store in your home town.

Bigapplophobia

I have never been to New York City. What images and impressions I get from this great city is all from the media. Of course, the 9/11 tragedy put it in the world’s spotlight. I can see webcams of New York streets on the computer, updated every fifteen seconds. From time to time, various news events are reported with New York as the setting, and of course there’s the annual Macy’s Christmas Parade on Thanksgiving morning. There have been many television series set in the Big Apple. But the most enduring impressions that I get of America’s biggest city is from the movies. And from the composite picture I’ve built up from watching movies such as North By Northwest, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Midnight Cowboy, The Godfather, and Saturday Night Fever, along with many, many others, I come away with the feeling that it is inconceivable how any visitor could feel anything but utter claustrophobia in that place. And to actually live there? I shudder at the thought! Why would so many people allow themselves to be pressed so closely together like sardines in a can, when just a few miles away there are plenty of wide open spaces as well as communities with reasonably large populations to provide city-like services, if that’s what one desires. Is it just that some people live lives of inertia without seeing a future ahead of them that they can be a creative part of, including the part that dictates where would be the best place to live? Or maybe many of them are wired differently than me and thrive in such an overcrowded environment.

In spite of this media-induced, vicarious anxiety I feel about New York City, it would be a great experience just to visit there for a few days. But where would I go? Manhattan, of course, where the main attractions are. But what about Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and the Bronx? What is the appeal of these areas? If I just stayed around Manhattan, wouldn’t that be prohibitively expensive? And I have a sneaking suspicion that once I’ve stood on a Manhattan street for a few minutes and have taken in the scenery and the feel of what it’s like to be in this city, then I’m going to say to myself “O.K., I’ve done it, I’m here. Now get me out of here!!!”

Favorite Songs: #21 to #19

#21 Not Enough Time by INXS (from Welcome to Whenever You Are, 1992)

The first INXS song I heard was The One Thing in late 1982. I instantly liked it a lot. This Australian group, a six-man band centered around three brothers and front man, (the late) singer Michael Hutchence, came out with a succession of quality songs in the 1980's. Their biggest commercial successes were the albums Kick (1987) and X (1990), which produced a string of hit singles. The following album, Welcome to Whenever You Are, was not as commercially successful, but did include my favorite song of theirs, Not Enough Time. Hutchence's deep and emotional voice always dominated their music, but even more so in this song. It's one of INXS's slower pieces and conveys a strong sense of mystery and longing to me. I can't figure out why it wasn't a bigger hit than it was. This song also reminds me of an earlier "time" song, Jim Croce's 1973 Time in a Bottle. Both deal with the fact that there "never seems to be enough time", quite opposite from the sense of another "time" song, the excellent Too Much Time on My Hands by Styx in 1981.

#20 The Good's Gone by The Who (from The Who Sings My Generation, 1966)

The first time I heard a Who song, it was I Can't Explain in 1965. At first, I thought they had released a new Beatles song, but, no, it was a new British band. I think that song was the first time I ever played air guitar! But, for some reason, the Who didn't catch on during the 1960's in America, although they did release a moderately successful string of singles. It wasn't until about eleven years ago that I was able to fully appreciate the range and quality of their music. I was rummaging through the used albums at Hyde and Zeke's record store across from the University of Florida campus when I made an incredible find. They had the four album set of the Who's first four studio albums, and at a steal of a price! The songs were superb, and made me scratch my head again, wondering why they weren't bigger in the U.S. back then. The first album contained the title track My Generation, as well as the The Kids Are All Right and A Legal Matter. But my favorite of all was a deep track, The Good's Gone, a relentless, driving tune with Roger Daltrey singing at just about his deepest and roughest and songwriting genius Pete Townshend pitching in with his typically impeccable harmonizing. The guitar work at the beginning and in the middle break is what made this song one of my favorites. Later on, the Who would catch on in America and be recognized for the great act that it was. My favorite albums from them are Quadrophenia and The Who Sell Out.

#19 12:51 by The Strokes (from Room on Fire, 2003)

12:51 is the first of only two songs from the 2000's on my favorites list, and is the most recent. The Strokes are currently my favorite band, reminding me (without sounding like them) of the Beatles in their early years when they played so tightly together as a band. I've heard several Strokes songs over the past three years and have yet to hear one that I don't like. If you want to see them in action, watch their video for the song Reptilia. Their front man/singer Julian Casablancas is usually out there belting out the songs loudly and powerfully, but in 12:51, he actually sings within the background of the instruments, producing an interesting effect. I also like the time 12:51 (AM), because that's when I am usually sitting at home in my recliner after a day's work, relaxing with my dinner and trying to find something on TV worth watching (or else placing entries on my blog).

Next favorite songs: #18 to #16.

French Election

Just recently, France elected its new president to succeed Jacques Chirac, who had served for about ten years. The contest was billed over here in the U.S. as a referendum about whether the new government would be pro-U.S. or anti-U.S., which completely misses the point. France has always been pro-U.S. (except for the Vichy period during World War II), and that goes for whichever party has been in power, be it the Socialists under Mitterrand or the Gaullists and their successors under D’Estaing or Chirac. What some people over here (like Bill O’Reilly with his boycott of France or others with their “freedom” fries) fail to ever understand is that France is a large, strong, and independent democracy with its own electorate to be accountable to and its own national interests to take care of. Their behavior is not anything less than we would expect from our own leaders. Regarding the Iraq War, polls across Western Europe have consistently shown about 80-90% of the population opposing a military invasion. Since these countries are all democracies, one would think that their leaders would have been especially attentive to this overwhelming consensus and have sought alternative solutions with the Bush administration when the Iraqi crisis escalated in late 2002/early 2003. Some countries, like Spain, Italy, and the United Kingdom, went against their people’s sentiments and signed on with Bush on the basis of their alliance. But an alliance is supposed to be in the interests of all participants, with everyone being able to play an active role in it. But the U.S. was the only country pushing for an invasion. Countries like France and Germany, both of which supported us (in accordance with their people's wishes) in the war against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, listened to and followed their people’s concerns about Iraq. They presented the alternative of allowing U.N. weapons inspectors to do their work, while the Iraqis under Saddam Hussein would have the pressure of American forces poised across the border to ensure cooperation. We all know what happened, though: France and Germany were vilified by U.S. Defense Secretary Rumsfield as part of the “old Europe” and the “shock and awe” campaign to bring Iraq to its knees abruptly ended a reasonable effort to keep peace in that area. Chirac, the “conservative” president of France, was seen as betraying America in its time of need. But if he had followed the Bush agenda, he would have been betraying his own people!

In the recent election for French president, “conservative, pro-U.S.” candidate Nicolas Sarkozy defeated Socialist candidate Ségolène Royal by about a 53-46% nationwide vote. But don’t expect Mr. Sarkozy to be another Tony Blair: none of his predecessors towed the U.S. foreign policy line verbatim, either. And one of the U.S.’s best friends in the international arena was a Socialist, François Mitterrand, who was president from 1981 to 1995. Although he didn’t allow Reagan to fly American planes over France to bomb Gaddafi’s Libya in 1986 in retaliation for a West Berlin terrorist bombing, he did support us in the First Gulf War in 1991. Also, when, in 1989 under President George H.W. Bush, the U.S. invaded Panama, toppled the government, arrested the former leader Manuel Noriega, and charged him with violating U.S. law (explain that one to me), France joined with the United Kingdom in the U.N. Security Council in vetoing a resolution condemning the American action, an invasion which was an act roundly condemned all over the world and even by Augustus Pinochet, the pro-U.S. right-wing dictator of Chile. France is currently helping in the Mideast by stationing, along with Britain, peacekeeping forces in southern Lebanon following last year’s brief conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.

No, the French presidential election was not about the United States. It was about the French economy and its problems in assimilating into French society its large Arab population. The French voters believed the more conservative candidate would be able to more effectively handle the nation’s domestic problems. I believe that regardless who would have won the election, the winner would have continued France’s friendship with America while maintaining its own national interests. So lighten up, Mr. O’Reilly and friends, and have some French fries to go!

Bush's Humor

The other day, while giving a speech in honor of visiting United Kingdom monarch Queen Elizabeth II, President George W. Bush made a very slight gaffe when he said that she helped celebrate the U.S. bicentennial in 1776. After correcting himself, he looked sheepishly over at her, gave a little wink, and made a little joke. The whole atmosphere around was light-hearted, and the incident provoked laughter, as it should have. So, a little later, MSNBC's confirmed Bush-hater Keith Olbermann (with whom I often agree when he sticks to the issues) replayed the gaffe and jokes and treated Bush like he was either stupid, crazy, or disrespectful (or all three). My take on the incident is that it reminds me of the hilarious time that Bush stood side-to-side with a look-alike comedian in front of a crowd. First the President would say something and then his alter ego would speak his thoughts behind the words, poking fun at him. Later, I heard a conservative radio talk show host bemoaning how badly Bush had been humiliated as well as liberal Air America personality Randi Rhodes reacting in puzzlement to the performance as if Bush had lost his mind. To me, this goes to show how humorless some people are who have skewed agendas, unless of course the humor involves ridiculing their ideological opponents.

Before I go on, I need to make it clear that I am not a Bush supporter. I think the war in Iraq was a big mistake and that he is responsible for it. I also believe that his politics are that of a corporate elitist who believes, like Dan Quayle, that people are usually rich because they are better than others. He opposes trade unions and regulations designed to protect workers and the environment. He also panders to narrowly defined religious interests, I believe, for political gain rather than from personal conviction. I do think his approach to undocumented immigrants is reasonable, though, and he also has the country’s best interests at heart in fighting terrorism while shoring up defenses to prevent further attacks at home. But I also think that he is committed to fundamentally altering the ideological makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court to make it more amenable to corporate interests. Overall, I would have preferred that a Democrat (not necessarily Kerry) had beaten him in 2004. These are just my opinions, and anyone else is entitled to theirs. But now Bush is our President, for better or for worse, and sometimes it’s good to look on the good side of someone you politically oppose. And he certainly isn't the first President with a penchant for making jokes.

My parents told me once that when John F. Kennedy was President, he once played a joke on his brothers Bobby and Teddy, both already involved in politics. One day, each of the three of them were scheduled to give speeches in different parts of the country. JFK had his own speech prepared, and then he gave each of his brothers, without their knowledge, a copy of the exact same speech for them to deliver that day. Later, the news shows broadcast each of them giving the identical speech! Now that's something our current President would appreciate! And George W. Bush does have a genuine sense of humor that is respectful of others and self-deprecatory in nature. This, I believe, can’t be faked. And if some people don’t have this within themselves, then they won’t understand his humor, which, to me, is one of his stronger points.

Head Start and Religion

A week ago, the federally-funded Head Start and Early Head Start programs for helping preschool children, infants, toddlers, and pregnant women were renewed for five more years by a House of Representatives vote of 365-48. That sounds good to me. Before this vote, there was a vote to remove language from the bill that prohibited any organizations that used Head Start funding from using religion as a factor in the employment of their staffs. This proposal was defeated, 195-222. So, any religious-based organization already in place either has to forgo its creed in hiring its own people in order to participate in Head Start or it has to forgo Head Start and go on its own.

Now I understand that, according to the U.S. Constitution, the State can make no law establishing a state religion or elevate one religion over another. But, if our elected representatives see a problem in our society, such as poverty, and use the power of the Federal government to seek remedies by passing laws, then they are extending the reach of the State into more and more areas of society that used to be the domain, at least partially, of religious concerns. Head Start should not be in competition with religious organizations that are seeking to help children in poor families break the cycles of their impoverishment and become more affluent and productive citizens. Perhaps our First Amendment is being a little too broadly interpreted regarding religion. After all, it was designed as a check against the power of the State to make religious policy. But rejecting an organization because of its religious policies is in itself an act of making religious policy. There is an important difference, at least how I see it, between acting without regard to religion and acting by excluding or prohibiting religion. The spirit of our Bill of Rights seems, to me, more in line with the former than with the latter.

Is Gainesville Number One?

The news is out: the book Cities Ranked and Rated, Second Edition has placed Gainesville, Florida at "number one" in the country. At first glance, this sounds great, but having seen some of the factors involved in the rankings process, now I'm not so sure. If a city has relatively low employment in the manufacturing and construction sectors, that is regarded as "good" while relatively high employment in the public sector is "good", too. I'm not sure why, though. Another "positive" trait of Gainesville that I really don't understand is that our fair city averages 104 days per year when the temperature rises over 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Why would anyone think that this makes a city more livable? And it appears that being a college town makes Gainesville a more desirable place to live in than other communities. But I beg to disagree. I've lived in Gainesville, which has an disproportionately high population of late teens/early adults and in Leesburg, which has an disproportionately high population of senior citizens. I personally prefer that the population be distributed more evenly among the various age groups than it is in either of these cities. There are times in the year in Gainesville when you can't get from one place to another because of the excessive congestion. The University of Florida keeps expanding and expanding, now bringing in more than 50,000 students. When I go about my business during the course of the day, I usually take pains to steer as clear from the UF campus as possible, and that sometimes means driving miles out of my way. Also, in a university town like this, some within the student population tend to look down upon the local residents as being rather like "rubes". I know this because when I was a student here, that's the kind of thing that I heard being said. I also think that some of the drivers who are students are very careless and inconsiderate, especially regarding lane-switching and running red lights. And the University itself has such a problem with limited parking that ordinary residents cannot use UF facilities like the library without either using distant parking garages, bicycling there, or taking the bus or a cab.

Gainesville tends to regard itself as a city that tries to balance growth with something called "quality of life". A few years ago, Wal-Mart decided to build two supercenters in Gainesville. The first one was going to be built in the far northern part of the city on the site of a wooded area about a mile and a half from my home. There was a great outcry from two different groups against the plan. One was anti-Wal-Mart, period: Wal-Mart was purportedly a bad company that would come into an area and undersell and drive under local business while providing low wage dead end jobs. The other group claimed that the location Wal-Mart wanted to build on was right at where the headwaters of Gainesville's Hogtown Creek were and building there would ruin the creek. Although Wal-Mart offered an ambitious plan to protect the headwaters at the site and at its own expense, its proposal for this location was turned down by the city commission. It was permitted, however, to build a supercenter way out in the northeast corner of the city, apparently out of the way of any environmental concerns (in economically depressed areas, there are apparently no environmentally endangered places). So imagine my surprise when I saw that on the exact site that Wal-Mart was turned down for, they are now building a huge Home Depot store! Now can someone please explain that to me?! But this is how our city commission works. I believe that allowing Wal-Mart to build out east killed two birds with one stone: it got Walmart out of the way and into a more economically depressed part of the city where it would be more welcome. But the Hogtown Creek headwaters problem, although it may have originally been raised as a legitimate concern, in the end was just a phony issue held up to give the commission a cover to hide behind when they rejected Wal-Mart's earlier proposal. This sort of nonsense doesn't exactly inspire my confidence in the government of my "number one" city!

Having said all this, I still think Gainesville is a good place to live. I think the people here are, by-and-large, quite friendly. Gainesville has a great system of bike paths. There is a good community college here: Santa Fe Community College. And there many other "positives" as well. The ranking of cities in Cities Ranked and Rated is like my ranking of my favorite songs. I use my own subjective factors in my rankings that others may either discount or disagree with. And I strongly disagree with some of the factors used in rating Gainesville!

My Blog After One Month

We are very fortunate to be living in a time when we can set up our our web logs and express ourselves openly to others who may live anywhere in the world. It's been one month since I began this, my first blog. At first, I used a pseudonym to allow myself to put out stuff relatively anonymously. In less than a week, though, I switched to my real name and, a little later, put in my location and picture. My rule of thumb with my blog content is the same that I've heard people stress about e-mail messages: don't send out anything you're not prepared for the whole world to read! And I haven't, although at this point I doubt that very many people have been reading it. This is fine with me, because my purpose with this blog has always been to instill within myself the discipline of daily writing coupled with the knowledge of others possibly reading it.

Along with this blog project, I've been sampling blogs that others are doing. The contents of different blogs vary greatly. Some are purely commercial; others are academic. There are religious blogs and political blogs. Still others, like mine, are personal in scope. Among these, there is also great diversity. I've seen blogs dedicated to babies, running, cooking, political opinions, travel, poetry, music, and personal diaries. There are also blogs that, like mine, deal with different topics from day to day. And there are many that reflect a much more sophisticated knowledge of computers than I have. It is with these that I have to be on my guard about comparing myself. For Desiderata, a spiritual poem written by an Indiana lawyer/poet named Max Ehrmann (1872-1945), contains the thoughtful lines, "If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself". Everyone who writes in their personal blog does so from their own unique perspective and experiences. And that includes me as well. As long as I keep that in mind and just be myself, then I should be able to avoid the "comparison trap". But I do see some things that others are doing with their blogs, especially concerning graphic design and pictures, that I'd like to get good at on my own.

Wildfires

At this writing (posted later), I am sitting outside, surrounded by smoke emanating from a wildfire many miles away in northeast Alachua county. Yesterday I heard that Florida was currently experiencing several wildfires and that other parts of the country were plagued with fires, most notably Minnesota and California. It reminds me of the plague of wildfires that afflicted Florida back in 1998, but at that time firefighting help came from other parts of the country. If they're fighting their own fires, we'd better hope for some rain, and soon.

During that time in the spring of 1998, immense stretches of land in Flagler and Volusia counties east of us were scorched to the ground (whenever we go to Ormond Beach, we pass a sign marking a site of the "Firestorm of 1998"). But Alachua county had its share of trouble, too. At the same time as the other fires, there was a bad one on the outskirts of Waldo (a small town about twenty miles northeast of Gainesville known chiefly for its speed traps on U.S. 301) threatened to engulf it, but I didn't get the full thrust of its severity until the wind changed direction. The fire had been raging for a few days, and I pulled into my workplace's parking lot a little before 11:00 PM. When I stepped out of my car, I was astounded and frightened, because the entire air had heated up greatly and grown much smokier, with even small particles of ash visible. And this was about twenty-five miles from the scene of the fire! But it felt as if the fire was just a block or two away. I cannot begin to understand how intense it must have been for those actually near the conflagration. A few years later, we also had a smaller wildfire about two miles north of us. It seriously threatened some nearby homes, but, like the Waldo fire, was put out before it could cause too much damage.

The smell of the smoke from today's fire and from the one back in 1998 reminds me of the first time that I experienced this sort of thing. Back in South Florida in the spring of 1971, we were experiencing a drought, which, besides putting a strain on the water supply, didn't really bother people all that much. Until some contemptible fool(s) decided it would be fun to set fire to the Everglades! For weeks, fires blazed unchecked and all of South Florida was blanketed in a thick cloud of stinky, filthy smoke that got into everything. The only similar thing that I can compare that experience to is the sensation is get when I walk into the home of a heavy smoker, even when no smoking is going on. Eventually, of course, the fires were extinguished, rain fell, and life went on. The next spring, in 1972, saw the opposite occurrence: for weeks it looked as if it would never stop raining! That was a peculiar year, though , weather-wise. In June, Hurricane Agnes hit the Florida panhandle and merged with a severe cold front to cause massive flooding in the northeast, especially in Pennsylvania. After Agnes, there were only three other named Atlantic tropical storms that year, an anomaly. Which makes me want to say a few things about hurricanes, but I'll leave that for another time ...

Favorite Songs: #24 to #22

You may notice that my top favorite songs tend to go back a few years. That doesn't mean that I don't like the latest music, but rather that I don't feel that much of it has been tested through time. Maybe someday I'll devote some space to the music of the 2000's.

#24 I Won't Back Down by Tom Petty (from Full Moon Fever, 1989)

Much is made in Gainesville about Tom Petty growing up here before he made it big out in California with his band the Heartbreakers. Still, although Petty is usually identified with Los Angeles, every few years he comes back to Gainesville for a visit, where he is always given the royal welcome that celebrities usually get when they return to their home town. I'm not really a Tom Petty fan, but starting in 1987, he came out for a while with hits I liked such as Stop Jammin' Me, Running Down a Dream, and Learning to Fly. His 1989 breakthrough "solo" album, produced by former ELO superstar Jeff Lynne, contained my favorite. I Won't Back Down is on my list because of the message more than the music (which is pretty good,too): stick to your guns and don't let adversity sway or weaken you.

#23 Pressure by Billy Joel (from Nylon Curtain, 1982)

The first Billy Joel song I heard was Piano Man in the spring of 1974. From then through 1982 he turned out a string of great songs like Captain Jack, Summer Highland Falls, Angry Young Man, Scenes From an Italian Restaurant, and Allentown. I thought his best album was The Stranger, but my favorite song came two albums later from Nylon Curtain. Pressure perfectly captures the feeling of someone on the spot with everything at stake. The song's video was also terrific and funny. The following album he did, An Innocent Man, was a throwback to the (in my opinion, horrible) doo-wop period of rock and roll, although he had a lot of hits from it. Despite that, Billy Joel was America's troubadour for that 1974-1982 period when he was at his greatest.

#22 The Wasp (Texas Radio and the Big Beat) by the Doors (from LA Woman, 1971)

Back around 1995, a local AM radio station on 1390 khz (which is now Disney Radio) decided to play entire Doors albums, one right after another. Before that, I had only heard their top singles over the years. After hearing entire albums, I became a true believer in this band's greatness. Although their biggest hits Light My Fire and Touch Me were written by guitarist Robbie Krieger, it was Jim Morrison's deep voice and bizarre poetry, along with Ray Manzarek's maniacal keyboard work that gave the Doors their characteristic sound. The Wasp is the next-to-last track from their sixth and last studio album L.A. Woman. A little after the album's release, Morrison died and was buried under mysterious circumstances in France. Rumors began to circulate that he had dropped out of sight and changed his identity to avoid prison time in the U.S. from a public indecency charge in Miami in 1969. The Wasp fed those rumors with the words "We are building pyramids in honor of our escaping". But that's not what I like about this song. I like the way Jim's "rap" interacted with the rest of the band: guitar, drum, and organ. And my favorite part was the short instrumental jam near the end.

Next on favorite songs: #21 to #19.

Hobbies, Greed, and Seriousness

As a kid, I used to collect all sorts of things at different times. Card collecting was a big deal. There were baseball cards, football cards, three different brands of Beatles cards, Monkees cards, Outer Limits cards, Addams Family cards, Batman cards, elephant joke cards, and so on. I would collect them by walking down to the nearby U-Totem convenience store on the weekend and buying them one pack at a time, complete with the obligatory piece of chewing gum. During school, my friends and I would bring our cards, show them off, and make trades. There were some kids with meager collections while others had pretty impressive collections. Whatever the size, though, we all were gradually building our respective card collections up, looking at the gaps of cards we were missing and hoping that the next pack we bought contained one or more of them. This was what made the hobby fun, aside from enjoying looking at the cards. This fulfilling process of gradually building up a collection carries on to other things, like stamps, rocks and minerals, coins, or anything else within the scope of one's imagination. But the idea of being in competition with others to see who has the best and biggest collection, if not controlled, inflates and distorts the greed factor in these hobbies. This builds up demands that certain companies have cropped up to satisfy: stamp, coin, gems, rocks and minerals, and trading cards can now be bought by the bulk or by the individual piece, making collecting them too easy and, in my opinion, defeating the whole point of it all. Why, now you can buy complete collections of baseball cards if you have the money to spill out for them. And the new packs don't even have chewing gum!

Since these hobbies generally have their origins in childhood, and children generally are limited in how much they can spend on them, during this time they usually regulate themselves and don't grow out of control. And still the children may be giving their hobbies top priority in their personal spending. When these children grow up, then as adults, if they want to continue their hobbies, they reach a fork in the road. Either they continue all-out spending and end up amassing huge collections, or they place their own limits as to how much they will emphasize these hobbies in their lives. Those who choose the first route can rationalize their extravagance by deeming it to be a good financial investment or by using it as a way to give them a greater sense of social identity within certain groups. The problem I have is, if I were to start collecting something--say, stamps, and then hooked up with other adults in a stamp collecting club, then I'd be surrounded by the fanatics who spend large sums on their hobby. But what if I just want to recreate a sense of the social camaraderie of my childhood and gradually build a collection and share it others who collect their stamps within the same levels of self-imposed boundaries? I don't know if this is really possible, for it seems that in any hobby that adults engage in, be it collecting, bicycling, photography, amateur radio, camping, fishing, running, or anything else, the push is for the participants to compete with their fellow enthusiasts to see who can spend the most and have the most to show off, both in terms of equipment and experiences. This is called being "serious" with a hobby. And if you don't go all out like the others in pursuing it, that means that you aren't "serious", and therefore aren't to be taken seriously in their company. So the enthusiast with more humble aims finds himself more isolated in his pursuits. I find that regrettable.

Coast-to-Coast AM

One late night in the fall of 1997, I was listening in my living room to the play-by-play broadcast of the Miami Dolphins-Chicago Bears football game on the radio. The Dolphins, who had an overpowering defense under coach Jimmie Johnson, had come from behind to take a seemingly insurmountable 33-18 lead late in the game. But unexpectedly, the Bears, under their coach Dave Wannstadt, came back to tie the game and send it into overtime. Finally, the Bears prevailed in this very long game 36-33. But I had dozed off on my couch. When I awoke a little while later, a deep-voiced announcer was announcing how listeners could reach Art Bell on the "Wild Card Line". And then Art came on the air. That was the first of many times that I listened to Art Bell as well as future hosts of the late night nationally-syndicated radio show Coast-to-Coast AM. This program examined topics not covered in the mainstream media such as moon-landing denial, reverse speech, remote viewing, the Third Secret of Fatima, chem-trails, yeti, the face on Mars, UFO sightings, the Roswell (New Mexico) incident, ghost stories, and anything else unconventional enough to attract a listening audience. And it did, bringing the show to more than 500 stations at one time (I don't know how it's doing now).

For the first few years after that first show, my work shift was such that I heard many of Art Bell's late, late night shows. Sadly, he had some family tragedies and health problems that sidelined him from the radio. Ultimately, he came back to do weekend shows while George Noory came on to host the weekday shows. Back around 2000, Mike Siegel had, for a while, been the main host of Coast-to-Coast AM, but the program's ratings dipped and many stations dropped it from their schedules. That's too bad, for I thought Mike did a great job. Apparently, listeners wanted to hear Art Bell at the time and it was a no-win situation for Mike. Ironically, it was a late 2000 Mike Siegel interview with Jack Anderson about the JFK assassination that was my favorite Coast-to-Coast AM show. That was an instance of serious journalism, but most of the Coast-to-Coast AM shows I accept as entertainment to be taken with a grain of salt. My favorite all-time guest? Native American Red Elk, who expressed some very unorthodox views, to say the least. I also have come to really like the "bumper music" that leads into the show's segments.

I have a different work schedule now, so I don't hear as much of this program as I used to. But on my drive home from work, I usually tune in to hear what's going on. I used to click on to the Coast-to-Coast AM website archive to listen to earlier shows that I had missed, but had to stop when they began to charge a fee for that service. Still, I like the program (and so, apparently, do many cross-country truck drivers who call in and toot their horns over the air!).